A conspiracy of intergalactic proportions...

When I was in elementary school, my teacher regaled me with ideas of the year 2000. These included the existence of everyday items like flying cars and jetpacks. Also, we were going to be living on the moon.

Now, 10 years into the millennium, not only am I still waiting for my jetpack, but we’re also not on the moon. We’ve yet to put a man on Mars, and really, the advances made in the space program haven’t really been that impressive since we took “One small step” by faking the moon landing in a Hollywood studio.

What happened? Why did our space program stumble so? I suppose one could claim that the Challenger disaster had something to do with it, or simply revised priorities. But doesn’t it strike you as odd that nobody, out of any of the nations with any sort of a space program, accomplished anything?

Doesn’t it sound like a bit of conspiracy?

Who, though, would be behind something like that? Who has that much power, and that much disdain for the entire world, that they could prevent the worldwide space program from expanding much at all?

What about one of the most evil – and powerful – families in the world?

What about the De Beers family?

We’re talking about a family that has managed to destroy the lives of entire peoples, and had tribes beaten, tortured and relocated, just so they could control the world’s diamond supply. By creating an artificial shortage of a sparkly rock that’s rather common, they stay rich.

But why, you ask, would they set sights on the space program? What benefit would they get from maintaining a stranglehold on that particular industry? Well, aside from the fact that they are just dicks, you’d be right in thinking they’d need a financial motivation as well, as greed has been the motivator for this family’s rise to running one of the most evil empires the world has seen, has set them up in a situation where they allow genocide to happen and has permitted the existence of a economic empire more powerful than any government that may try to hold them accountable.

What if that motivation was to prevent the discovery of diamonds in space? What if their motivation was based on knowledge that there existed, relatively close in astronomical terms, planets with entire oceans of liquid diamonds, with icebergs made of solid diamond floating on them? What if they realized that one voyage to one of these planets could effectively decimate their worth.

It might sound far fetched. But is it really? These guys don't think so.