Let me close on a policy note: What these overwhelmingly powerful corporate giants are trying to do now is to codify their worldwide power in a sweeping new way.
About once a century, a giant pulse can knock out worldwide power systems for months or even years.
Worldwide power consumption for air conditioning alone is forecast to surge 33-fold by 2100 as developing world incomes rise and urbanisation advances.
Similarly, Mostefa Souag, news director for the Arabic service, conceded that protesters might gravitate toward Al Jazeera's cameras, well aware of the worldwide power of the images.
Yet when one reads John XXIII's description of that "public authority, having worldwide power and endowed with the proper means for the efficacious pursuit of its objective," one recognizes that today there is another claimant to the role: the United States.
AES, a worldwide power-plant developer, announced Tuesday that it will partner with private-equity firm Riverstone Holdings to invest up to $1 billion in solar energy projects around the world.
She pointed out an irony: "All the political and social forces in Spain agree that for Europe to become a worldwide power it must have a common fiscal base and a supra government on top of all the governments of the member states.
Unlike the Maktoums, the royal family of Dubai, which has spent hundreds of millions building Godolphin Racing into a worldwide power, bin Salman started modestly with a string of claiming horses he campaigned in the early 1980's when he was a student at the University of California-Irvine.
Unlike the Maktoums, the royal family of Dubai that has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building Godolphin Racing into a worldwide power, bin Salman is comparatively frugal at the Keeneland Sales in Lexington, spending $20 million over the past three years for yearlings, according to sales officials.
The list may also include the terrorist organization of Osama bin Laden and, possibly, the Aum Shinrikyo sect of Japan — a quasi-religious group that had Ph.D. biologists as members and a belief that an apocalyptic war will bring them worldwide power.
