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formercia's Journal
it takes you back to Bernays and WWI propaganda. http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title...  in the early 1920s Born November 22, 1891(1891-11-22) Vienna, Austria Died March 9, 1995 (age 103) Cambridge (MA), United States Occupation Public relations, advertising Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995) is considered one of the fathers of the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee. As a member of the Creel Committee, he helped U.S. President Woodrow Wilson propagandize in support of allied war aims during World War I. He went on to design PR campaigns for politicians and companies such as General Motors, Procter & Gamble and American Tobacco. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious. He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.<1> --snip--
The beginnings of this Crusade cane to us from the mouths of the right-wing-reactionary elements in society: The original link has been deleted but the Wayback Machine still had a copy: http://web.archive.org/web/20070703011333/... formercia (1000+ posts) Thu May-24-07 10:02 AM Response to Original message 8. The Crusader rationale behind the covert action: Edited on Thu May-24-07 10:03 AM by formercia THE WORLD IN 2050 by Hon. Frank Shakespeare Hon. Frank Shakespeare is the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. This address was delivered at the 1996 Wanderer Forum in Washington, D.C. http://www.catholic.net/RCC/Periodicals/Do... ... what is Islam? I had the privilege of living in Russia, in the Mediterranean, in Portugal, and in Italy for 5 years as your ambassador there. Those who have traveled know that Europeans think very, very differently at the visceral level about Islam than we do in America. To most Americans, Islam is vaguely a group of guys riding around on camels in the desert. That’s oversimplified , but we have no up close sense of Islam at all. For the Europeans, it is very, very different. Europeans know in their stomach, if they don’t know it in their immediate intellectual consciousness, that it was in historical terms just yesterday, just some centuries ago, that Islam was created in the wilderness of the Arabian peninsula, and went across the whole of northern Africa, that is to say, the southern Mediterranean, and then attempted in two prongs to take Christendom. One prong went up through the Balkans, and was stopped at the gates of Vienna by King John Sobieski of Poland in one of the pivotal battles of all history. And if that battle had been lost, it is probable that most of us in this room would be Muslim. And then at another point they went up through the other peninsula sticking down from Europe. The Balkan peninsula is on one side. On the other side is Iberia. And they went up through Iberia and they went into France and they were stopped only at Tours by Charles Martel, in another of the great, epical, momentous battles of history, and if that battle had been lost, it is probable that most of us in this room today would be Muslim. It took eight hundred years for them to be driven out of Iberia and down across the Mediterranean— 400 years to get them out of what is now Portugal and 800 years to get them out of Spain. And then there was the third critical battle, the naval Battle of LePonto, for which we have the Feast of the Rosary in the month of October. Europeans are very, very conscious in their viscera, that just across the Mediterranean from them is an enormous, forceful idea. Islam is not Russia, Islam is an idea. It is not a nation, it is an idea. And it came within a hair, on several occasions, of conquering Christendom, which would have changed the course of humanity. --snip-- A thought about Islam: Something tragic is happening in Western Europe, which was traditionally Christendom. It is almost never spoken about, it’s only very rarely referred to, but it seems to me to be of staggering importance. And when I say it you will say, "Well, that’s too dramatic a phrase." It’s not meant to be dramatic. It’s meant to be an exact description of the truth. And it’s this. Europe is committing suicide. What do I mean by that? Europe has a birth rate which is simply suicidal. For example, it takes 2.1 babies per woman in a nation, in a society, to keep the population even, if you exclude immigration and emigration. The birthrate in Spain is the lowest in the entire world. It is 1.2. The birthrate in Italy is the second lowest in the entire world. It is 1.3. We tend to think of a big fat Italian mama with ten bambinos, because that’s the way it used to be 50 years ago. Well it isn’t. Italy is dying. Spain is dying. Two of the most Catholic countries in the world. Why? That’s for people much wiser than I am to grope with. France is 1.4. Germany is 1.3. If you take the 15 countries that constitute the European Union, that constitute Christendom in the historical sense, the birthrate is 1.5. Right across the Mediterranean, directly across the Mediterranean, in the Muslim countries and in black Africa and in India, the birth rate is 3.7 to over 4. That is a staggering situation. What does it mean? What it means is very clear. In the lives of our grandchildren, or maybe our great-grandchildren, but in just a moment in history, you’ll look at a map and see a big structure that looks like a boot and it will stick down into the Mediterranean and it will say on it "Italy." But it won’t have Italians in it! It will have people who come from Libya, be cause Italy has a special relationship with Libya in the past, and people who will come from Turkey because they need work. 28 years ago there wasn’t one single mosque in Rome. When I left there 4 years ago there were over 200. In Rome! Now many of those are storefronts. But one of them is one of the biggest, most modern mos ques in all the world. In Italy! And what are the Italians doing? They have the second lowest birthrate in all the world. I do not know Islam. I haven’t studied it. But Islam has been re-animated in our time. After its enormous vitality three to four centuries ago, when these great battles took place, it sort of went to sleep. And in our lifetime, in the last 40 to 50 years, it has been re-animated. In many ways it’s been re-animated as an idea. Islamic fundamentalism is the governing mode in such countries as Iraq, and in Syria, and in Sudan, and in Algeria, and Iran. It has just taken over Afghanistan. An Islamic leader has just been elected the Prime Minister of Turkey. Who is to know where Islam is going? It would be a man wiser and more educated than myself. But it is an enormous question. Clearly there have been two elements which have played some role in it. There has been an insertion of two new things into that world in our lifetimes. One is oil, and the other is Israel. In any event, in all of that mix, you have a resurgent Islam, you have the huge money of oil, you have the fervor of belief, and of course you have something far more than just the Arab world. Islam runs down through Pakistan, and South east Asia and India. Muslims are 80% of the population in Indonesia, one of the largest countries in the world. And the struggle in our time for the soul of Africa is the struggle between Islam and Christianity. So in the year 2050, what is Islam?
They have me spending a year and a half in a mental institution. I didn't know physical rehab is now considered being in a mental institution. More choice tidbits: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers... To: franksolich Interesting. Interesting also that DUmmie "formercia" misstates the timing of the mining of Nicaragua's harbors. From a post of his copied on your link: "I was one of the CIA Officers that worked on the mining of the harbors in Nicaragua program. In January of 1982, I notified my superiors that I felt the program was illegal. Apparently, Poppy took great offense to this." You'll see at The Consortium that the idea of the mining venture didn't come about until January 1984. And it was in 1984, according to other sources, that Congress became up in arms about their being left out of the picture. It seems odd to me that someone with so much animosity toward the CIA and a former administration would be so specific about a date ("January of 1982") yet get it so wrong. --snip-- Actually, the project began in the fall of 1981. I know because I was there. sorry, assholes. The mines were not dropped until the Spring of 1984. That's where they're confused.
They did it by threatening my 8 year old son. They're such cowards that they sent a boy almost twice his age to do it. he's still a minor, thus pretty much untouchable.
They were sending me a message that they may not be able to get to me directly but my son is fair game.
We've turned into a Third World country where the inmates are in charge of the asylum.
I had to keep him home from school today because he's suffering from anxiety. He's borderline autistic and has enough trouble functioning at school as is, but this just pushes him over the edge. I complained before but nothing gets done.
The mining of the harbors in Nicaragua program began in the Fall of 1981. It was disguised as an arms interdiction program to prevent the smuggling of arms into El Salvador by mining the waterways inside El Salvadorian waters that the alleged smugglers used. When I found out the true intent of the operation, I notified my superiors at a meeting, in the presence of a group of paramilitary officers (OTS/SAD) that their operation was a violation of International Law and "When Congress finds out about this, they are going to cut our balls off."
They knew they were breaking the law from day one. Management knew they would never get authorization, let alone funding if their true intent were known.
Source: BBC Valentin Korabelnikov (left) speaks to Vladimir Putin and Sergei Ivanov (November 2006) Gen Korabelnikov had led the Main Directorate of Intelligence since 1997 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has dismissed the head of the country's powerful GRU military intelligence service, the Kremlin has said. Mr Medvedev signed a decree on Friday replacing Gen Valentin Korabelnikov with Gen Alexander Shlyakhturov. Officials gave no reason for the move. Gen Korabelnikov had led the Main Directorate of Intelligence since 1997.  Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/801637...
"Some of the proposals were said to have included the disbanding of several GRU-controlled army special forces brigades" SPETZNAZ is a GRU controlled entity. This would have been like taking JSOC away from Cheney. I wonder if Valentin Korabelnikov is headed for the 'conveyor?'
http://www.deepcapture.com / --snip-- As it turns out, there is a law, known as the “options market maker exemption”, which permits certain brokerages, specifically those registered as ‘options market makers’, to engage in a highly-controlled form of naked short selling in the course of bona fide options market making – comparable to the permission police officers have to exceed the speed limit under certain extreme circumstances when it’s in everybody’s best interest that they do so. Naked short sellers have discovered that they can essentially “rent” the options market maker exemption from certain corrupt options market makers, producing massive amounts of counterfeit shares in the process. -snip-- What does this have to do with Jimbo Wales? Well it turns out that both he and former Wikimedia Foundation trustee Michael Davis used to work at Chicago Options Associates, where Wales was a research director and Davis was CEO. --snip-- Byrne is tightening the screws...
http://finance.yahoo.com/insurance/article... Signs of Stress, Fraud on Roadside by Douglas Belkin Thursday, March 26, 2009 --snip-- Tow yards in Las Vegas are filled with the blackened hulls of Mercedes sedans and Cadillac Escalades. The wrecks were pulled from desert hills and city streets by the department's eight-member auto-theft unit, which responds to calls around the clock. Over one weekend this month, Mr. Menzie investigated eight car fires in 36 hours. "This is a money town," says Lt. Robert Duvall, who reorganized the auto-theft unit to include insurance arson fraud. "Where else can you lose a paycheck in a night?" The cops hunt suspected arsonists by SUV and helicopter, trying to identify registered owners as quickly as possible. "We see people with singed eyebrows and hands," said Sgt. Will Hutchings, Mr. Menzie's boss. "Some of them still smell like gas." --snip--
http://www.jainworld.com/literature/story2... Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today." They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.  "Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg. "Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail. "Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant. "It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant. "It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant. "It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant. They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said." "Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right. The moral of the story is that there may be some truth to what someone says. Sometimes we can see that truth and sometimes not because they may have different perspective which we may not agree too. So, rather than arguing like the blind men, we should say, "Maybe you have your reasons." This way we don’t get in arguments. In Jainism, it is explained that truth can be stated in seven different ways. So, you can see how broad our religion is. It teaches us to be tolerant towards others for their viewpoints. This allows us to live in harmony with the people of different thinking. This is known as the Syadvada, Anekantvad, or the theory of Manifold Predictions.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/01/wi... / Emails show journalist rigged Wikipedia's naked shorts Overstock's Byrne vindicated amidst economic meltdown By Cade Metz in San Francisco Two and a half years ago, Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne penned an editorial for The Wall Street Journal, warning that widespread stock manipulation schemes - including abusive naked short selling - were threatening the health of America's financial markets. But it wasn't published. "An editor at The Journal asked me to write it, and I told him he wouldn't be allowed to publish it," Byrne says. "He insisted that only he controlled what was printed on the editorial page, so I wrote it. Then, after a few days, he got back to me and said 'It appears I can't run this or anything else you write.'" The Journal never changed its stance. But last week, the editorial finally saw the light of day at Forbes - after Byrne added a few paragraphs explaining that naked shorting had hastened what could turn out to be the biggest financial crisis since The Great Depression. --snip-- http://www.deepcapture.com/do-i-live-in-a-... / March 21st, 2009 by Patrick Byrne “The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth.” - Morpheus to Neo, The Matrix It is the mission of DeepCapture to show you, dear reader, that the financial world you inhabit, a world vouched-for in dulcet Midwestern tones by actor-spokesmen you recognize and trust, a world inhabited by honest brokers looking after your money, brokers who interact through self-regulating exchanges overseen by diligent regulators, themselves overseen by elected politicians looking out for their constituents, themselves challenged by an adversarial free press maintaining a critical posture towards it all, is in fact a “world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth.” It doesn’t exist: it is a socially constructed reality designed to keep you complacent as you feed your savings to the machine. And I can prove it. For that matter, so can you, right now, from your computer. To explain how, I must continue with reference to The Matrix. There is a point in the movie where Neo and his comrades are walking up a staircase. Neo glimpses a black cat that disappears then reappears: --snip--
http://www.uniset.ca/lloydata/pravda_engfo... "The central charge against AIG and its offshore subsidiaries like Coral Reinsurance is that they were used to offset bogus losses in the same manner that Enron did. And, of course, there are numerous Bush connections in this. AIG used its offshore subsidiary, Coral Reinsurance, to issue, or to resell bogus reinsurance policies to Swiss Re That was the real connection. And it's what put Swiss Re into trouble. Swiss Re is the biggest reinsurer on the planet." "Reinsurance is simply excess and surplus insurance called E&S excess and surplus. They purposely would underestimate the risk in writing AIG's original policies in order to be able to steal the bids from everybody else. They would purposely underbid. Then they would go to their offshore subsidiary Coral, which was a reinsurance company and get Coral to sell a reinsurance policy on a contract on insurance policy or contract or fidelity instrument or guaranty instrument, etc. They would get Coral to write a reinsurance policy and get Swiss Re to buy it. But it wasn't worth anything because they had underbid the original insurance contract. So the reinsurance contract effectively wasn't worth anything. --snip-- "The Bush connection into all this is that they controlled a variety of insurance companies, National Heritage Life, for instance. The Bush family also controlled Cardinal Life and Kentucky Life. What they kept doing is underbidding,underbidding, underbidding, purposely giving out cheap quotes that the companies themselves didn't have the reserves to back. They would then purchase from Coral a reinsurance guaranty, a fidelity and guaranty instrument that was completely bogus. It wasn't worth anything because they had so severely underestimated the potential liabilities. The actuarial tables they used didn't make any sense. When National Heritage or Century or Cardinal sold insurance policy, they would make assumptions that, for instance, in 30 years the median life span was going to be 110. Using an actuarial table that was Bushonian fantasy, they would come up with an estimated value of a policy over time that wasn't worth anywhere near what they claimed. --snip--
http://finance.yahoo.com/techticker/articl... Geithner Caves on AIG Bonuses, Defends Liddy Posted Mar 18, 2009 10:32am EDT by Henry Blodget in Media, Newsmakers, Recession, Banking Related: AIG, ^gspc, ^dji From The Business Insider, March 18, 2009: Tim Geithner is now completely on the defensive. In a long letter to Nancy Pelosi, he explained how and why he approved the AIG bonuses (troubling) and described a plan to "recoup" them. The letter will not likely stop the growing chorus of criticism that may well drive Geithner out of office. Geithner's new plan will not "recoup" the bonuses at all: It will merely reduce the amount of the next taxpayer handout to AIG from $30 billion to $29.835 billion. This is not likely to quell the outrage: What most people are angy about is that AIG paid $165 million of taxpayer money in "retention" bonuses to executives who blew up the firm (many of whom aren't at the company anymore). The more troubling part of the letter, though, is Tim Geithner's description of his own approval of the bonuses. He says he registered "strong objections" and then asked for a written legal analysis of why the bonuses had to paid. This does not sound like the behavior a man who has the balls necessary to stand up to the many constituencies that want to roll right over him right now (which is the kind of man we need during this crisis). It sounds like the behavior of a man who is already thinking of how to defend a decision he knows is a bad one. --snip--
You connect the Bankers that created the financial meltdown and the Media that prevented the story being told and you will find that they are one and the same organization. http://www.deepcapture.com/what-we-should-... / March 12th, 2009 by Patrick Byrne What should we learn from the fact that “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart has in four evenings (1 2 3 and 4) exposed Jim Cramer in a way that, in any sane world, he would have been exposed a decade ago? To answer that, consider these associated facts: while the Jim Cramer constellation of journalists (Mitchell’s Media Mob) backed each other up while covering-up the subject of criminally abusive short selling by hedge funds to whom they were close, four channels of the media broke rank: --snip-- Could the lesson be that the first news organizations that can break ranks with the Party Line are either fringe (”Rolling Out Magazine” and “The Daily Show”) or the properties of billionaires (Bloomberg and Forbes) who cannot be intimidated? Perhaps someday, a journalist will look into the pressures that were brought on news organizations (e.g., on Bloomberg leading up to their running “Phantom Shares“). Just a few weeks ago I got the story, again, from a journalist: “I was working on a story about naked short selling and Deep Capture. Then, suddenly I was stopped. It’s weird because I have been a journalist here for 9 years. I have built a great reputation with my editor, and have never had a story interfered with. But I got a couple months into this story, and suddenly I was stopped from above. I’ve never seen that happen before.” I replied, If you only knew how many times a journalist has said that to me in the last couple years….
Deaths of gamers leave their online lives in limbo (AP) http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090314/ap_... * Posted on Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:39PM EDT NEW YORK - When Jerald Spangenberg collapsed and died in the middle of a quest in an online game, his daughter embarked on a quest of her own: to let her father's gaming friends know that he hadn't just decided to desert them. It wasn't easy, because she didn't have her father's "World of Warcraft" password and the game's publisher couldn't help her. Eventually, Melissa Allen Spangenberg reached her father's friends by asking around online for the "guild" he belonged to. --snip-- He set up a site called Deathswitch, where people can set up e-mails that will be sent out automatically if they don't check in at intervals they specify, like once a week. For $20 per year, members can create up to 30 e-mails with attachments like video files. --snip-- This might be a good idea for whistleblowers too...
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