Masopher's Mind

Do you know what I find annoying about email? A mass mail, a chain letter, comes in with some gimmick or trick or even an outright lie, takes you for a ride based on your own fears, desires and psychological drives (safety, belonging, self esteem, shelter etc.) and tells you that in order to fulfil them you have to send the mail out top 10 people. Sounds familiar right?

Viruses, most notably sexually transmitted infections, STDs, Social diseases, also travel in this way. Let’s say you desire to be held or to feel the high of an orgasm, or need companionship or the illusion of love or caring. You then meet another with similar wants or maybe you meet someone who knows this and takes advantage of you for a sick reason or maybe money or power or sexual conquest. You catch a disease, unbeknownst to you and the relationship ends due to the foundation-less premises of the union. You continue your lifestyle having learned nothing and perhaps more desperate to “make the next one work” oblivious to the fact that your choice of partners and own expression of your personality has not changed. You then spread the infection to all you other partners who in turn spread it to all of theirs.

There are two more examples of this type of stupidity.

The first is a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves paying abnormally high returns (”profits”) to investors out of the money paid in by subsequent investors, rather than from net revenues generated by any real business. There have been many very successful Ponzi schemes including Worldcom, Amway and to some extent Enron. Ponzi schemes have been about for about 200 or more years now. All you need for a successful Ponzi scheme is a charismatic idea, gullible victims with a little disposable income and the idea that they can get out of life a more than they put in. In truth the only person that gets anything out of a Ponzi scheme is the person who starts it. And the market for Ponzi and Pyramid schemes is phenomenal. There is a sucker born every minute. In one day 1440 suckers are born that means in a week there are 10080 suckers born. In a year there are 564480 suckers born. Over half a million suckers born! If each one of these suckers gave you one pound you would be a millionaire in barely 5 years. When the saying (very much a truism) was invented no one expected the population of the world to exponentially grow so when you think of it there are much more that one sucker born every minute, your profits could phenomenal! If you want to make money by convincing and recruiting people Ponzi and Pyramid schemes can earn you a LOT of money, because aside from Nigerian 419 schemes there is no scheme more effective than a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme.

The last of these is perhaps the most benign but operates on a similar premise. It is called Multi Level Marketing. Do you remember Avon? Tupperware parties? Herbalife? Mary Kay Cosmetics? I am not certain if Avon or Mary Kay were miracle products or if Herbalife ever made people lose weight and feel better but it all struck me as a lame way of doing business. Money is made not by selling superior products, not by convincing people to use the products; money is made by convincing people to convince people to convince people to convince people. Promotions are gained not by selling the product coming up with new products or by creating any real wealth or product, promotions are gained by making sure there are more tiers under you sending in money for whatever which you pinch a piece and pass the rest up towards the top.

Another business that I have encountered that employs this Multi level marketing is Primerica or “Citisolutions” as it is called here in the UK . While its product seem sound, its efforts to financially educate people are noble enough, none of these millionaires are millionaires because they invest or work hard educating others, they are millionaires because they are good at convincing people to convince people to convince people……

If you like convincing people to convince people etc etc. I think this will work for you. After many years of convincing people you probably can make it to be reasonably wealthy. After all, the more people you convince and recruit the more money you get. But here’s the kicker. If I work anywhere else and believe in myself, don’t act financially irresponsibly and do a bit of investing I will end up pretty much the same place as you will. In fact, because I really believe in myself, work really hard will almost never act financially irresponsibly and will do quite a bit of investing I will undoubtedly do better than all the Avon, Mary Kay, Herbalife and Citisolutions sales people/ recruiters. Or maybe I cross the road tomorrow and get hit down. Money means jack to me and as long as I can put food in my mouth, maybe go on a holiday and enjoy my job I don’t really see the need to go around accumulating wealth for the sake of it and I certainly don’t see the need to convince people to convince people to convince people.

I am a social and forensic psychologist. By the grace of what you may call God I was born with and was allowed to nurture my talent of seeing clearly the underpinnings of institutions, groups and people. How then is spending my career life selling financial solutions and recruiting recruiters going to help me in my self actualization? It isn’t. What I like best is deconstructing others and things around me. I have a direction already no thanks sirs. I am quite possibly going to become pretty famous also. Do you think I want my Who’s who to read that I was involved in shady Multi-level Marketing?

The Stewardship program. Do you know that under the rules of the Stewardship program Citigroup is avoided like the plague?

Citigroup which is owned for a large part by Saudi royalty, the same Saudi royalty that have bought more Eurofighters, American and British Military technology than any other country in the world including the UK and US. Saudi Royalty who will unabashededly and openly fund Sunni militias in the civil war of Iraq. Saudi Royalty which recently caused British Prime minister, Tony Blair to turn tricks and call off enquiries in the name of ‘national interest’. Saudi Royalty who supported the Saudi born terrorist Osama Bin Laden, he himself Saudi Royalty.

Fact: Citigroup itself is implicated in Worldcom and Enron scandals. Enron and Worldcom Corruption was so bad that no human being can fully comprehend the extent of the wrongdoings. I don’t know about you but companies that are so bad that it baffles even the human imagination? Think about that for a second.

Citigroup the largest financial multinational monster this world has ever produced is being benevolent and helping out the middle income? If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.

Read it up for yourself but in case you cant here is just some examples:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolpda/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4629000/4629391.stm

http://www.edgarsnyder.com/news/securities/citigroup-worldcom0504.html

Lying with statistics.

If one person earns a million dollars and his two friends earn zero dollars they on average earn 1/3 of a million dollars. Pretty good right? Never mind that the two guys make nothing at all. Lets expand this to the world. If the worlds wealth is divided equally we all would have about £3100. Not terrible right? Wrong. As you all might have read somewhere, 80% of the world own 14% of the world’s wealth. More nicely put   2% of the worlds population owns 50% of the world’s wealth. Using the mathematical average learned in secondary school is the most uneducated way of determining average. When you move on to get some more education you use instruments like median, mode, mean and range to get an idea of how things really are. When you go on to do financial and statistical arithmetic you learn about things like skew, inter-quartiles, percentiles and let me tell you a whole lot of other methods to get an idea of what’s really going. Using ‘averages’ to prove a point about how profitable a business venture is almost as good as lying.   

£144 for security check?

Are you kidding me? Has anybody failed this security check? I don’t know has anybody? I am paying you to give me a security check? No thanks. I can tell you right now that I am a virtual ghost. I have no credit records, no known violations and even my travel documents are incomplete and somewhat misleading. All the West Africans working in the Home Office can tell you how easy it is to side step security checks. I am giving you my money and you say you don’t trust me? Banks can feed you this bull all they want, we are dependant on banks so we have to. Real money launderers and the like easily bypass this means of social control because that’s all it is, social control to control the sheep like us. Nothing but several security firms with heavy ties in almost every country in the world would charge a total of £144 for a check to determine if the out of work person and or dreamer with debts is actually a crook.

Investment.

Having a graph that follows the FTSE graph is easy for any investment. You simply Invest in what everyone is investing in. It takes zero financial skill to just do what everyone else is doing. Why Merrill Lynch, Credit Suise and Smith and Barney Customers get for their money are experts who don’t just do what everyone else does, they make trends and make profits above the FTSE average. Do you know what type of instrument you are investing in? It’s a fund. Anyone can join a fund and to be quite fair it’s quite wise to do. Nothing special however. I have heard how successful people are working for this MLM but little evidence of how successful people are actually investing in the funds.

Who are you?

Look at yourself and look at the people in on a typical MLM scheme, fat people desperate to lose weight, people who have put themselves in debt, people with little direction looking for a job, people who want to either climb a ladder (like property ladders) or rise up a pyramid to success and riches without actually exercising original thought. Do you have any schooling in financial solutions? Do you have any skill with money? Most of the people in that lecture hall are there because they make bad decisions or lack self control or discipline. Do you think these people are the most suited to be advising others about self control and financial wisdom? If you think so then feel free to look for the nearest Herbalife function. After all obesity is just as bad ‘an epidemic’ as debt is. Climbing two pyramids should be doubly profitable using your impeccable judgement and logic. I love magic shows and I love movies. Magic shows and movies are fiction but they seem so real! Similarly I love visiting a church or lecture for the first time…..the presentation makes it seem so real! I am really excited after a movie talking about the characters as if they exist talking about levitation or disappearance of the magician. But after the thrill is over I remind myself that its all an illusion, that no one can fly, such creatures don’t exist, matter obeys the universal laws and most people who are rich are born rich or they invent or discover something that other people will want to pay a lot of money for and I remember too that some people get rich by selling imaginary things that gullible people pay for.

At the end of the day MLM isn’t illegal or immoral, it doesn’t overtly promise anything impossible. This MLM in particular gives people hope, some financial education and tools to help people make money and keep what they make. That’s what they say in any case. If you want to work hard, love to recruit and truly believe you are helping others by recruiting them then don’t let me be a wet duvet. But like pyramid schemes, STD’s and chain letters, I’d rather not be involved.

If what I am saying makes any sense to you then do yourself and your friends a favour and pass this on to 10 others.

That’s a joke and many of you probably haven’t read this far anyway. People don’t like to read, that’s another thing that tricksters take advantage of.

Post script: a few months after my post, the Citi-solutions company vanished with a lot of people’s money.

Originally published january 2007

US and allied UK forces have been playing (the usual) dirty mind games. Invading Iranian territory, sending both real and notional forces on scouting raids to get Terahn really jittery. The US forces raided and kidnapped several high level Diplomats including a high ranking Iranian military official. In retaliation, the Iranians make a grab at a small band of sailors who were terrorizing Arab/Persian boats in Iranian waters.

Great Britain (snicker) gets high and mighty and the MoD lies, telling the public about GPS and locations. However the Iranians being well on their toes actually takes footage of the British sailors being captured knowingly invading the sovereign nations waters in part of its angelo american bully psychological tactics. Takes pictures of the GPS devices saying exactly where they were, even gets the hostages to admit to it on camera. Typical tactics used by all modern military organisations were used. Isolation, a bit of false information to make them scared and therefore more pliable. But the clincher is parading them one after the other in front of the camera and getting them to expose the British lies. The press even makes the mistake of using fallacious arguments that typical criminals use. “I wasnt even there but even if I was there I wasnt doing anything wrong”. You were there! and you were intimidating a free democratic nation! That is stalking I beleive. I can see why a puny service industy nation would want to intimidate burgeoning regional powers. After all a strong Iran means that Israel cant always kill Lebanese and Palestinians without thought. A stong Iran can defend itself against the British Planes and missiles bought by the Oligarchy in the country now knows as “Saud’s Arabia”. Britain lost its power since the Faulklands. History has almost been rewritten to make Britain look like the victor there but they forget how alone they were in that. How a banana republic army trounced them and only stopped doing so after they ran out of missiles. The running out of the exocet missiles was due to MI-6 intervention. It was a unilateral war I suppose over a miserable strip of land populated by soldiers and their families but the psychology of having a strip of penguin infested land to launch an invasion of South America is somehow important to the psychology of the service industry nation/former world power.

HAHA! Off topic. back to the present: Well 15 sailors for 1 Diplomat. fair trade. So the swap goes off With britsh cover stories and saber rattling all theway, even outright lies in all the newspapers trying to tie a Basra bombing with Terahn. Even those that dont outrightly say it play the two stories together thereby implying continuity in the two events. The third even which was the release of the Iranian diplomat gets zero coverage.

After Abu-Ghraib and all the atrocities wrought upon Iraqis that were not outright killed by UK and US terrorism in Iraq. 15 smiling sailors in Persian suits with gift baskets cannot convince me that they experienced anything but a few harmless mindgames to get them to fess up. No stripping down no tying up like dogs, no sleep deprivation……. Forget Iraqi torture, that is a good description of what happens to UK and US prisoners (mostly Black ones of course).

Before the next Britney or Paris incident obliterates this incident completely into the sea of propoganda that billions of people are drowning in, I would like to make sure that I wont be part of it.

In the meantime when everyones eyes were focused elsewhere, the British Parliment voted and passed legislation to maintain and upgrade their nuclear military terrorism “Trident”. Quickly buried by the hypocrisy of sanctioning Iranian nuclear ambition the UK has hardwired the threat of Nuclear extinction into the human psyche for the next hundered years. Decommisioned old Tridents may no doubt find their way into other client states hands. Again very low on the radar but not altogether missed.

Last Night I cried. Not very strange, I don’t cry much but I do cry for movies about struggle and unfairness at times. Bruce Almighty and passion of the Christ (very unlikely pair I agree).  What was weird is that I was watching a documentary about President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Having done a profile on the man, I know about him; Populist, nationalist, socialist; Bolivarian, charismatic guy who will probably expend all his resources trying not to get killed by American/CIA Mercenaries and trying to remain ultra-popular. Not a villain at all however, Not even close to a dictator or a totalitarian. Venezuela finally emerged from a string of dictators and oligarchs, ultra rich European descendants living scornfully off the back of indigenous labour and national oil. A banana republic finally starts becoming a real republic and the guardians of the status quo conspire to kill the man who ushers in real democracy. The media, owned and operated by wealthy individuals assail his character and spread outright lies. Propaganda in its most blatant form is used by the rich, who fear the loss of their wealth. Chavez with his canny media savvy background fights fire with fire. Whether he keeps his head above the mud slinging is unclear but he combats slander with a call in show (with obvious planted calls).

In the third year of his presidency, the oligarch run media their rich toy soldier son, his aristocracy practically beaming off his head instigates a coup. Antigovernment sheep are herded against the pro-government sheep and then snipers (CIA trained or Mercenary) start popping shots at the clashing crowd. Shots ring out from the armed population and the coup begins. Chavez is blamed and the military lead by the old aristocrat toy general kidnaps the President and threatens to bomb the government. Here is where I cry as I watch a man who has only tried to help poor people being taken off to be executed.

Kidnapped and scattered the government watch the rich people install themselves in power and turn the country into a dictatorship, dissolving the constitution and abolishing human rights. Several days of repression follow until the palace guard gather their wits and realize that they have participated in reviving dictatorship. They retake the palace and the cockroaches of the government scuttle back into the light. The Vice president is installed even as he brays for Chavez to be spared and the poor soldiers across the country revolt against the rich-boys leading them. Had he been killed the country may have fallen into bloody chaos. Washington remained hands off, choosing words carefully but scowling menacingly and grumbling at Chavez’s socialist leanings which is implicitly dictatorial. Words like Columbian drugs and Castro are waved impotently around. Embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan and without the pizzazz or subterfuge of a charismatic democrat administration or spare resources that were used in Central America, Venezuela takes a back burner. The coup failed and Chavez won’t present enough of a target for assassination. As long as the oil rolls in, DC doesn’t care if it’s the rich people or poor people in Venezuela who are earning the oil cash. Venezuela’s rich just were not rich enough or special-interest enough to warrant more than a few backhanded comments. I am sure that Pat Robertson and the like are well paid by the Venezuelan Christian Right but buying American patronage is an expensive undertaking reserved for the bankers of this civilization, drug cartels and techno-industrial empires. Chavez was freed and immediately springs back to his jovial self. He is a threat in terms of his influence in South America and the world. Once the oil runs out his legacy and the rest of us might get nuked for his troubles.

You see that book he’s holding? It is written by the most powerful and invisible intellectual even born in the United States. What he says is true and suppressed by American media and government. Noam Chomsky is not my favourite author despite me reading many of his books.