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Warren Buffett and his attorneys still have nothing to say about 'MLM Income Opportunity' racketeering.

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In almost all business matters, I would not be so presumptuous as to claim more experience than Warren Buffett. However, the pernicious fairy story entitled 'MLM Income Opportunity' (which I have been studying for many years), has precious little to do with 'business' (in the traditional sense of the word) and, unfortunately, Warren Buffett still has lots of green reasons at risk preventing him from facing this reality.




Warren Buffett (b. 1930) is an agnostic businessman from Omaha, Nebraska, who reportedly is worth $58.5 billions, but who likes to portray himself as just an average guy living modestly on his $100 000 annual salary as chairman and CEO of  'Berkshire Hathaway.' 

Warren Buffett


As a little boy, Buffett already showed the same aptitude for making (but not spending) money, as he displays today.



In 1936, Buffett (aged just 6) went door to door peddling: chewing gum (at a 2 cents profit per pack), Coca Cola (at 5 cents per bottle, making a profit of 5 cents on a 25 cent pack of 6 bottles) and weekly magazines. 


However, the young commercial prodigy was not acting entirely independently, because Warren's supplier was, in fact, his grandfather, Ernest P. Buffett, who owned a long-established grocery store in Omaha. During his high school years, Warren Buffett continued to make money in his holidays and spare time by delivering newspapers, selling golf balls and stamps, and from various other traditional commercial enterprises. 


When Buffett filed his first income tax return in 1944 (aged just 13), he deducted $35 for the expenses of a bicycle and a watch - by claiming that these were items he needed to operate his paper round. 



In 1947, Buffett (aged 17) and a young associate, Donald Danly, started a company called 'Wilson Coin Operated Machines.' They bought a secondhand pinball machine for $25 which they installed in the local barber's shop. Their initial investment immediately generated a steady net-profit of $50 per week. Within a few months, Buffett and Danly had bought, and installed, a total of 3 secondhand pinball machines in barber's shops, but, in 1948, the pair sold 'Wilson Coin Operated Machines' for $1200.




Today, Warren Buffett is generally recognized as one of the most-influential people in the world. He has recently been treated (successfully) for prostate cancer. He has pledged to give away 99% of his personal fortune to philanthropic causes. 
________________________________________________________________________

May 9th 2013, I posted an article entitled:

 Warren Buffett denies all knowledge of the 'Herbalife (HLF)' racket.


This article addressed  all the thoughtless commentators who keep insisting that 'Multi-Level Marketing' can't be a fraud because Warren Buffett owns an 'MLM' company. In the introduction, I even explained that I'd once received a particularly absurd comment from a deluded 'Amway' adherent who was totally certain that Warren Buffett owns at least 10 'MLM' companies and that Warren Buffett recommends 'MLM' as 'the best way for anyone to become a millionaire.'



However, I did not disclose in my article that, when I'd previously tried to put my detailed concerns to Warren Buffett about the use of his name and iconic reputation, to commit fraud and prevent victims from complaining, neither he nor his attorneys had had the decency to respond. This was despite the fact that I'd gone to the trouble of telephoning Warren Buffett's secretary who had specifically invited me to submit my concerns in an e-mail to her boss.

________________________________________________________________________

In summary:



Warren Buffett's company, 'Berkshire Hathaway,' owns 80 other corporate structures.



 
One 'Berkshire Hathaway' possession, is a kitsch, but apparently innocent'party plan direct sales' company known as 'The Pampered Chef (PC)' which has sold the public a so-called 'MLM income opportunity.'


 

Recently, the corporate officers of 'The Pampered Chef' were boasting annual sales of $400 millions via a sales-force of 60 000 persons (mainly women). 

Even if the above, precisely-worded, passage of the 'MLM Income Opportunity' fairy story was entirely accurate, 'The Pampered Chef' would still be a far-from-ethical enterprise, in that its officers have been deliberately withholding key-information from the public in order to continue to exploit large numbers of non-salaried commission agents whilst, at the same time, requiring these ill-informed people to exploit their own ill-informed friends and relatives.


In theory:

participants in 'The Pampered Chef MLM Income Opportunity'  (i.e. persons who have signed a take-it-or-leave-it annually-renewable, contract in which they were arbitrarily-defined as  'Independent Consultants', and who have paid the $155 fixed price for the so-called  'Business Starter Kit'), can choose to make money via:

regularly organizing 'Cooking Parties' at which they can sell banal products (kitchen appliances, utensils, etc.) to their friends, neighbours, relatives, etc., for a straight percentage profit (20-31%).

or: 

an escalating system of percentage commission payments on the sales of further 'Independent Consultants' whom they have recruited, and on the sales of the recruits of their recruits, etc., ad infinitum.

In practise: 

'Pampered Chef' participants are obliged to invest their time and to pay all the considerable, allied, operational expenses, but exactly how much of their own resources this will inevitably involve, is not disclosed to new recruits.

most participants are generally able to organize one or two 'Cooking Parties' and use their existing relationships (based on love and trust) to sell some 'Pampered Chef' products to a few supportive friends and relatives, but no participant could be reasonably expected to generate a significant, and sustainable, net-income by paying to organize these kitsch sales meetings time after time, for many years.

no common-sense limit has been set on the number of 'Pampered Chef' participants operating in any given area, whilst the participants are clearly offered incentives to be their own best customers and to recruit any other customers as competitors. 

equivalent, or better quality, products to those offered by 'Pampered Chef' can be easily bought in all-manner of traditional retail outlets and On line.

all any free-thinking person (so desiring) has to do to obtain unused 'Pampered Chef' products, is go to the Internet, where there is always an unwanted mountain of the stuff going begging. (We are talking about many thousands of items listed on popular auction-Sites like e-bay each day, and at a substantial discount compared to their original fixed-price).


http://www.ebay.com/csc/i.html?_lncat=0&_sacat=0&_from=R40&_nkw=pampered+chef&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc




Thus, it seems that just as in 'Amway', 'Herbalife' , 'NuSkin'etc., a significant number of so-called 'MLM customers' have not been buying products from 'The Pampered Chef' in order to use them. On the contrary, the products might as well not have existed, because they appear to have been the classic'MLM' wampum; the real function of which has been to launder unlawful investment payments made on the false-expectation of future reward.





http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2013/05/06/herbalife-makes-cameo-during-berkshire-hathaway-weekend/

The vital question of what distinguishes lawful direct selling from an unlawful pyramid scheme, was raised at  'Berkshire Hathaway's' annual shareholder meeting of May 4th. 2013. 







Warren Buffett was asked by a concerned shareholder if Bill Ackman’s $1.2 billions short-selling bet that 'Herbalife' is an effectively-valueless company hiding a cruel fraud, will have a detrimental effect on Berkshire Hathaway's investment in 'The Pampered Chef?,' and if Warren Buffett considers Bill Ackman's analysis of 'Herbalife' as a fraud, to be accurate?




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/05/warren-buffett-paperboy_n_1406505.html


Remember, Warren Buffett prides himself on being a living example of the 'American Dream;' in that he took his first steps in business in the teeth of the Great Depression, as an enterprising young lad working for himself going door-to-door in Omaha, Nebraska, regularly peddling: chewing gum, Coca Cola and weekly-magazines, to the general public for a profit. As far as I'm aware, Warren Buffet never operated as a commision agent for any direct selling outfit, but then he was undoubtedly encouraged, guided, and protected, by his father 
(a stockbroker turned Republican Representative) and his grandfather (a successful retail grocer). However, given his iconic status as the shrewdest, and most successful, investor of the 20th century, and considering the irrefutable facts that:-

the 'Herbalife' racketeers have steadfastly pretended that their business is based on selling products to thousands and thousands and thousands of 'end users,' 



    'Herbalife' and 'The Pampered Chef' have been linked via the so-called 'Direct Selling Association,' and via an extensive, and precisely-worded, thought-stopping 'commercial' jargon (including the term'MLM'),

      the bosses of various other members of the so-called 'DSA' (which were subsequently closed-down by the FTC as pyramid frauds) also shared the same extensive, and precisely-worded, thought stopping 'commercial' jargon which they employed steadfastly to pretend that their 'businesses' were based on 'selling products' to thousands and thousands and thousands of 'end users,'


        - Warren Buffett's strangely-familiar and precisely-worded, responses to his shareholder's questions, demonstrate a staggering lack of knowledge of what actually constitutes economically-viable (and therefore, lawful) direct selling, and reveals the considerable risk he has taken (in this state of blissful ignorance) with his shareholders' money; for, self-evidently, when the blame-the-victim 'Herbalife' racket is finally closed-down as a pyramid fraud, whomsoever is left holding 'The Pampered Chef,' will also be in deep trouble.




        Warren Buffett said:

        'I have never looked at a Herbalife annual report and I do not know about its operation... Pampered Chef’s business is based on selling to the end user, and we have thousands and thousands and thousands of parties every week where people who are actually going to use the product buy from somebody. We are not making the money by loading up people and then having them leave the sales force…That should be the distinguishing characteristic if I were regulating the industry.'


        Readers will observe that Warren Buffett very pointedly did not say that according to FTC guidelines, for any direct selling income opportunity to be lawful, it must involve its participants regularly retailing an overwhelming majority of products which they have bought from the sponsors (at least 70%) to the general public.

        Warren Buffett merely repeated part of the so-called 'Direct Selling Association's' effectively-meaningless 'definition of direct selling,' i.e.  'selling to end users,' which has been specifically worded in such a vague way, that it can be taken to mean participants in 'MLM' schemes themselves. 


         I have some common-sense questions for Warren Buffett:

        • What percentage of 'Pampered Chef ' recruits have actually remained with your company for more than: 1 year?  3 years?  5 years?
          • What has been the average annual drop-out rate for 'Pampered Chef' recruits?
          • Apart from the $155 'Business Starter-Kit,' what is the approximate amount of additional money that 'Pampered Chef' recruits have been required to find, to finance their first 12 months, non-salaried activities on behalf of your company.  
          • 'Pampered Chef's' corporate officers have recently claimed 'a sales-force of 60 000,' but since your company's instigation, how many different persons in total have bought their own 'Pampered Chef Independent Consultancy' from it, and, by extrapolation, what is the overall vanishing-rate for these so-called 'Businesses?'
          • What lawful, and/or ethical,  reason can you put forward to explain why the key-information contained in the answers to the above questions has been withheld by your company from prospective 'Pampered Chef' recruits?
          • Why is the Internet loaded with unused 'Pampered Chef ' inventory for sale?' 
          • Hand on heart, would you personally recommend joining any so-called 'MLM income opportunity' (including 'The Pampered Chef'), as a viable and ethical means for ordinary people to earn extra income?
          • Again, hand on heart, what would be your personal reaction if a member of your own family announced that he/she had signed up with 'Herbalife?'
          • When you made your public statements relating to 'Pampered Chef' and 'Herbalife' at the recent 'Berkshire Hathaway' shareholders' meeting, were you aware that numerous, unsecured, Micro-Finance loans have been made to immigrants, and other poor persons, in the USA, via the 'Grameen Bank' (an institution which you were responsible for bringing to Omaha), in order that these vulnerable borrowers could start so-called 'MLM Businesses?'
            • Before you made your investment in 'The Pampered Chef', had you actually seen any quantifiable evidence proving that more than 70% of 'Pampered Chef's' claimed 'multi-million dollar sales' have been authentic external retail sales to members of the general public (based on value and demand)?
            ________________________________________________________________________

            As variations of the pernicious 'MLM income opportunity' fairy story go, the one known as 'The Pampered Chef' appears to have been amongst the least cultic and damaging, but in my article, I clearly identified the activities of this dubious publicly-traded company as being part of an overall, pattern, and no one has attempted to refute my wider analysis.


            My article on Warren Buffett's appearance in the tragicomedy entitled, 'MLM income opportunity,' has recently been visited by an anonymous commentator, pretending moral and intellectual authority, who has attempted to convince me that I'm wasting my time condemning 'Multi-Level Marketing,' because there is no substantial difference between all companies which use sales representatives, and 'MLM' companies. Laughably, this faceless individual claims to have 'been involved with' various 'MLM' companies (although he/she doesn't care to name them), but he/she does not claim to have made any money. Furthermore, this same anonymous commentator has also claimed that I am guilty of 'insinuation,' because no conclusion can be drawn from Berkshire Hathaway's attorney's silence on these matters, other than they cannot be expected to respond to every 'naysayer and critic of the company's investments.'

            In reality, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway's attorneys' silence on these serious matters clearly demonstrates that, to date, they have only been interested in making money; for various people (including myself) have made them fully-aware that 'The Pampered Chef' has been hiding behind the same extensive, and precisely-worded, thought stopping 'commercial' jargon which has been employed by the bosses of 'Amway', 'Herbalife', 'Forever Living Products', 'Nu Skin', 'Xango', etc. steadfastly to pretend that their 'businesses' are based on 'selling products' to thousands and thousands and thousands of 'end users.' 

            Berkshire Hathaway's attorneys have access to a veritable mountain of evidence which proves that, by purchasing a company peddling a so-called 'MLM Income Opportunity,' Warren Buffett has become linked with a form of ongoing, major, racketeering activity (as defined by the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970).  Furthermore, it has not been in the financial interests of Warren Buffett and his associates to face this reality and, consequently, they have made absolutely no attempt to protect their fellow citizens.  

            In the first week of November exactly 3 years ago, I posted an article on Shyam Sundar's Corporate frauds watch Blog, entitled:

            Pokorny vs 'Quixtar' ('Amway') = Reason vs Insanity.


            ... in 2007, a class action civil lawsuit was filed against  'Quixtar' ('Amway') and various associated enterprises, and individuals, in California, under the State's own version of the federal Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970. Three directors and advisers of Pyramid Scheme Alert (including Robert Fitzpatrick) served as experts and consultants to the victims in this case. At first, 'Amway's' attorneys delayed proceedings (and incurred huge additional costs for the plaintiffs) by steadfastly pretending that the plaintiffs had no right to sue, because as the signatories of 'Amway' contracts, they had voluntarily accepted a 'binding (internal) arbitration agreement.' However, a Federal court ruled that the arbitration process was unenforceable and unfair. The judge said of 'Amway's' own parallel system of dispute resolution , 'the requirement …is substantively unconscionable, and exceedingly so,' and graphically described the contracts as a 'stacked deck' in'Amway's' favour.

            The suit (which was handled by the firm of Boies, Schiller & Flexner) was finally allowed to proceed. It charged that 'Amway' deliberately misled consumers with false income claims, sold them overpriced products and marketing materials, and secretly transferred the lost investments of virtually all new recruits to a tiny few at the top, year after year. The suit accused 'Amway' of operating an illegal pyramid scheme and it argued that 'Amway's' main revenue source is ultimately its own so-called 'sales force,' since the company has little retail sales and few retail customers. Thus,'Amway's' real product is a fake 'business opportunity' generating huge unlawful profits through the recruitment of ill-informed consumers to invest in a reality-inverting swindle promoted as viable 'income opportunity.' The suit clearly explained that the overwhelming majority of 'Amway' recruits do not not make sales to the general public in an open market. Therefore, 'Amway' operates as a closed-market, dooming, by its 'endless chain' design, virtually all who join at the bottom, year after year.

            November 2010,  it was announced that 'Amway's' attorneys had halted the suit by agreeing to pay victims and cover litigation costs amounting to over $55 million in cash and goods. A judicially administered fund was going to be set up to pay refunds to two classes of victims, those who joined 'Amway' and quit within a year (usually paying only initial fees) and another group of those who stayed in longer (and lost much more). Another $50 million was to be paid in other costs incurred by 'Amway' to meet the terms of the settlement. Under terms of the settlement, 'Amway' was going to stop advertizing misleading income claims. In total, halting the suit was going to cost the billionaire bosses of the 'Amway' mob just $155 millions http://www.bsfllp.com/news/in_the_news/000144

            In the usual terms of class action settlements, the bosses of the 'Amway' mob admitted no guilt. Laughably, however, they volunteered to pay back a fraction of what they had stolen, lower the fixed-prices of their effectively-unsaleable wampum and increase the alleged 'refund period' on it, pay all the victims' court costs and give them more piles of effectively-unsaleable wampum. 'Significant changes' were also to be made in the so-called 'tools business.'

            ________________________________________________________________________
            This 'Amway' presentation is fraudulent.




            The above, Orwellian propaganda video (which employs covert hypnosis, ego-destruction, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, etc.) features various, exemplary, heterosexual 'Herbalife/MLM' shills acting out the fictitious 'Negative vs Positive' scenario which has always controlled the personalities, and behaviour, of the deluded 'MLM' economic cannon-fodder.  In this particularly disturbing presentation of the comic-book 'MLM' world, the 'successful' shills steadfastly pretend to have been once like 'dirty', 'miserable' and 'broke' little rats trapped on a treadmill in a form of Hell (i.e. the world of traditional employment), but after exactly duplicating a 'Proven Step-By-Step System,' they have achieved redemption as superhumans in the miraculous, clean and pure 'Herbalife' Utopia, where no one works, but everyone is healthy, wealthy, happy and free.... 


            ..... and also drives a Ferrari, and/or a Hummer, and/or a Bentley, and/or a Porsche!

            The perverted ritual belief system, that  Warren Buffett's name and iconic capitalist image has become linked to (via his acquisition of  a so-called 'MLM Direct Selling' company), almost beggars belief.



            Earlier this year, a deeply-deluded 'Herbalife' fanatic from India (who didn't disclose his/her name) sent me a link to this recent, kitsch propaganda video (apparently produced by 'Herbalife India') complete with a typically-arrogant command to remove 'The American Dream Made Nightmare' and a scripted-accusation:

            '... you are sick evil man for you try killing hopes and dreams of millions of my brothers and sisters...'





            At 10 minutes 38 seconds into the video, a particularly-unconvincing Indian 'Herbalife' shill who steadfastly pretends to be living in a Utopia where everyone is beautiful, perfectly-proportioned, healthy, wealthy, happy and free (thanks to 'Herbalife' products and training), quotes from 'Chairman'  Mao's 'Little Red Book.' 

            '...and let me tell you ladies and gentlemen, I had virtually no confidence, but I remembered the line of Mao Tse-tung, and he said you don't ought to be strong, but even if you are weak, if you are surrounded by strong people, you can lead to the top'

            For the benefit of readers who are perhaps unfamiliar with these 'Communist' cultural references, the Indian Shill is asking the 'Herbalife' faithful to take Mao as their role-model. He is describing the step by step journey through the 'Herbalife' ranks to become a superhuman 'leader' (which he insists ordinary mortals like himself can undertake), and comparing it to Mao's 'Long March' which (although lasting 370 days during 1934-35 and totalling 8000 miles) is itself considered to be the 'Chairman's' first step towards the supreme leadership of Communist China. Mao later wrote that he was only able to complete his journey to the top, because of all the strong people around him.




            When faced with persistent accusations of fraud, and/or cultism, and the possibility of criminal investigation, the bosses of  various 'MLM income opportunity' rackets have publicly fingered, and then excommunicated, their own junior partners in crime, whilst steadfastly pretending that they were not only completely innocent of any wrongdoing themselves, but also completely unaware that any unlawful activities had been occurring within the ranks of their organizations. When the wider-picture is examined, these transparent tactics constitute obstruction of justice in order to continue to commit fraud. As such, they clearly form part of an overall pattern of ongoing, major, racketeering activity as defined by the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970).



            As long ago as the 1980s, the bosses of the 'Amway' mob successfully dodged criminal investigation in France, when 'admired and respected Diamond Distributor,' Jean Godzich, was air-brushed out of the fairy story for 'breaking Amway's Code of Ethics.' This was after widespread French media accusations that 'Amway' had been hiding both a pyramid fraud and a form of cult. For years prior to these dramatic events, Godzich had, in fact, been allowed to peddle many millions of dollars of effectively-valueless publications, recordings, tickets to meetings, etc. on the fraudulent pretext that these 'optional training materials' contained secrets vital to achieving success in 'Amway' and 'Total Financial Freedom.' After this public excommunication, the 'Amway' racket virtually vanished in France, enabling Godzich to use his former 'Amway Network' as the launching pad for a copy-cat 'MLM income opportunity' racket, operated behind a new (apparently independent) corporate labyrinth known as 'le Groupement (GEPM).' It took a further 10 years, and at least 300 000 more French 'MLM' victims, before Godzich (who was facing a new criminal investigation) finally ran away to the USA taking several $ millions (stolen from his, now bankrupt, 'GEPM' front company) with him. 


            An international arrest warrant (issued in 2010) is still apparently outstanding for Jean Godzich who, during his 'Amway' and 'Groupement' years, was closely linked to 'Amway's top earning Distributor',Dexter Yager (pictured above) via Doug Wead.


            In 2007, the bosses of the 'Amway' mob again successfully dodged criminal investigation, this time in the UK, when various 'admired and respected Diamond Distributors', including Jerry and Mandy Scriven (pictured above), were air brushed out of the fairy story for again peddling hundreds of millions of dollars of what 'Amway UK's' corporate officers now described as unapproved 'training materials' or 'tools.' Since the 1980s, the Scrivens had also been closely-linked to Dexter Yager and his labyrinth of front companies known as, 'International Business Systems.' Subsequently, a corporate officer of 'Amway UK Ltd.,' committed perjury when she submitted a false deposition to the UK High Court in which she steadfastly pretended that the company had been completely unaware of the deceptive practises used by the company's top UK distributors.


            After excommunication, the Scrivens created a website on which they openly stated that, at all times, they had acted with the full-knowledge, approval and even enthusiastic participation of the corporate officers of 'Amway' UK Ltd.' Amazingly, the Scrivens were neither charged with fraud themselves, nor called as prosecution witnesses, when the UK government tried, but failed, to bankrupt, and close,'Amway UK Ltd. in 2008. 

            'Herbalife' boss, and world-class liar,  Michael Johnson.


            'Online Business Systems (OBS)' was a typical corporate front, or 'Network,' used not only to recruit 'MLM Income Opportunity' victims, but also to prevent, and/or divert investigation, and isolate the bosses of the 'Herbalife' racket from liability. Indeed, for years, the criminal activities of the ostensible bosses of'OBS,' brought in fortunes for the the bosses of 'Herbalife.' Thus, a
            t all timesthe corporate officers offers of 'OBS' had acted with the full-knowledge, approval and even enthusiastic participation of the corporate officers of 'Herbalife'

            'OBS' had previously been known as 'Global Online Systems (GOS)' - a company judged to be a criminal 'scheme of pyramid selling' by a Canadian federal court in 2004. However, both these (apparently independent) corporate structures have in fact, merely been constituent parts of an overall pattern of ongoing major racketeering activity. This classic Mafia-style system has been used to perpetrate various advance fee frauds linked to the closed-market swindle operated behind the fake 'direct selling' company known as 'Herbalife.'



            ________________________________________________________________________




            N.B. In recent years, the thought-stopping term 'selling leads,' has been widely-used by 'MLM income opportunity' racketeers to hide a related-fraud in which shills have been used to steal countless millions of dollars by steadfastly pretending that one of the secrets of their own success, is they have access to 'computer software' which can 'generate endless lists of interested-prospects' who are all willing to sign up,and that they are willing to share this miraculous, perpetual, money-making technology with anyone (for a price).

            ________________________________________________________________________

            'GOS' appeared to be independently operated by Deborah Stoltz and her sister Marilyn Thom. Yet, the 2004 Canadian judgement required these corporate officers to reform their previously unlawful 'business practices,' and to make full disclosures about how much money the company had been taking from Canadian 'Herbalife' adherents by peddling them publications, recordings, tickets to meeting, 'leads,' etc.
            Shawn Dahl, Deborah Stolz (left)
            In 2004, the corporate officers of 'GOS' were also required to notify all their 'customer's' of the company's criminal conviction. However, before the ruling was announced,  the activities of 'GOS,'were transferred to a copy-cat corporate structure, 'OBS,' ostensibly run by Nicole Dahl (the daughter of Ms. Stoltz) and her husband, Shawn Dahl.

            Propaganda websites previously operated by the bosses of 'GOS,' were simply re-labelled 'OBS.' One website persuaded 'GOS' adherents to register with 'OBS' and openly admitted that they would remain in the same 'network:' 
            'Your Herbalife lineage remains the same regardless of the changes to your new marketing system.'
            The previous members of 'GOS network' became part of the Dahl’s own 'Herbalife network', immediately promoting the couple in the elite group of 50 exemplary shills in the so-called 'Chairman’s Club.'However, Ms. Stoltz and Ms. Thom also continued to be shills.
            At the time, the 'Herbalife' Ministry of Truth described these events as: 
            'the company's 350-strong global distributor business practices and compliance team taking pro-active and responsive measures to identify, research, and address each and every infraction of Herbalife’s distributor rules and applicable regulation and law.'
            In reality, faced with possible criminal investigation,  the bosses of the 'Herbalife racket were merely distancing themselves from the criminal activities lurking behind 'GOS' and 'OBS.'
            This prompted Mr. Dahl to abandon 'Herbalife'  for another 'MLM Income Opportunity' racket where he could continue the profitable activity of peddling so-called 'leads.'
            'Herbalife' subsequently, announced that it had 'banned the sale of leads to or by distributors entirely.' 

            Then, it was suddenly announced by 'Herbalife' boss, Michael Johnson, that his 'direct selling' company's top-earning 'salesman', John Peterson, had died in a tragic 'accident,' 

            At this point, I was immediately asked if I thought he could have been murdered? The same enquirer also asked me (in all seriousness) how many more people do I think will have to die, before the FBI investigates 'Herbalife?'


            Expendable 'Herbalife' under-boss, John Peterson.

            For those readers who don't yet know, John Peterson's corpse was recently found slumped in a Ford pickup truck at his trophy-home in the upscale ski resort of Steamboat Springs, Colorado.




            Although the 'Herbalife' Ministry of Truth initially said that Peterson's death was an accident,  soon afterwards, the Steamboat Springs Sheriff's office informed the press that 'Herbalife's' top salesman appeared to have committed suicide via a single gun shot to the head. However, this explanation is by no means definitive, whilst 'Herbalife' now says it can't comment .











            Thirteen years ago, the original author of the 'Herbalife' fairy story, Mark Reynolds Hughes, was also found dead in his trophy-home, in very mysterious circumstances. The background to Hughes sudden death (http://articles.latimes.com/2000/may/22/local/me-32795), should have placed the dark scenario that he was the target of a Mafia-style hit (made to look like a suicide or tragic accident), very high on the list of possible explanations, but this doesn't seem to have been fully-investigated  


             

            Behind the fairy story, and all its impressive-sounding (made-up) 'Herbalife' ranks and titles, John Peterson (1955-2013) was only one of the organization's expendable under-bosses. For years, he was constantly presented in the reality-inverting 'Herbalife' propaganda as an exemplary role-model of limitless 'MLM' prosperity, happiness and freedom - earning $millions annually from commissions on the sales of products by 200 thousands 'Distributors' automatically-multiplying beneath him in the organization. 




            In the adult world of quantifiable reality, Peterson was a typically-excited, and avuncular, motor-mouthed shill dressed up as a businessman. It almost goes without saying that he was yet another (otherwise-mediocre) little, grinning charlatan play-acting the unoriginal comic-book role of ordinary poor working man: turned multi-millionaire 'MLM' superman (admired by men and desired by women) who was prepared to share his miraculous secret knowledge with anyone (for a price).
            ______________________________________________________________________________________________





            http://scams.wikispaces.com/Three+Card+Monte

            N.B.   'Shill' or 'Schill' (a.k.a. 'Outside Man'), is American slang for one of a crew of charlatans who is used to lure victims into frauds, particular rigged gambling games, by appearing to be an ordinaryeveryday guy in the crowd who keeps winning. In the classic sleight-of-hand scam known as, the 'Shell Game', (a.k.a. 'Three Card Monte', 'Three Card Trick', 'Three Card Molly', 'Chase The Lady', 'Chase The Ace', etc.), victims are deceived into believing that the game is genuine and anyone can win, by the use of innocent-looking shills, often with highly-distracting females on their arms. In the end, no victim can win, because they are up against a team of experienced criminals who all act-out a carefully-scripted, reality-inverting scenario. If a losing victim begins to challenge the honesty of the front man 'Handler' (a.k.a. 'Tosser'), other muscle-bound criminals, also pretending to be ordinary members of the crowd,will falsely-accuse the victim of cheating, kick over the table, start a fight or an argument, etc., all these are distractions created just to enable the 'Tosser' to run away with the money. Complaining-victims can also be silenced by telling them that they cannot go to the police, because they were breaking the law by gambling in the street.

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            To date (November 2013), US federal law enforcement agents are still nowhere to be seen, whilst the constituent parts of the reality-inverting 'MLM Income Opportunity' propaganda machine remain in full swing all around the world.

            Warren Buffet believes in Multi-level Marketing
            http://josephjmyoya.com/what-the-worlds-richest-men-says-about-network-marketing/

            'MLM Income Opportunity' propaganda (like this) has been used to shut down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, in order to defraud them and prevent them from complaining.

            Whilst millions of ordinary people continue to get burned by the pernicious, cultic fairy story entitled 'MLM Income Opportunity,' neither Warren Buffett  nor his attorneys, have had the decency to address any of my common-sense questions, but particularly this one:  

            Mr. Buffett - even if (as you have publicly claimed), the (demonstrably-unethical) activities of the 'The Pampered Chef' are not (technically) illegal in the USA, are you aware that, due to your acquisition of this member of the so-called 'Direct Selling Association,' your name and iconic status have been habitually-used by 'MLM Income Opportunity' racketeers, and their propagandists, in order to commit fraud and to obstruct justice all over the globe? 


            David Brear (Copyright 2010)

            ________________________________________________________________________

            Footnote.

            The Internet is alive with evidence that Warren Buffett's name has been used to lure struggling 'Pampered Chef' recruits into secondary advance-fee frauds a.k.a. 'Lead Generation' scams:




            'Pampered Chef is owned by one of the most successful business man in the us and even the planet, Mr. Warren Buffet. Warren is among the richest billionaires in the usa. Do you think this successful business man would be involved in pyramid schemes? Of course he would not.

            Warren is not the only successful business man that owns work from home company. What's of Mr . Trump? Donald Trump is currently inside the multi level marketing with his own mlm called Trump Network. Pampered Chef is a global company. They have a type of kitchen tools, cookbooks, and food items directed at consumers who're into cooking.

            They've got more than 60,000 reps and over 700 corporate staff. Pampered chef was founded in 1980 when reps would perform a "party plan" when a rep would demonstrate the line of products in the homes of moms and house wives.

            Most newbies to MLM avoid getting the proper multi-level marketing training. And also this can happen with any profession. The very first thing so many people are taught is to prospect their family and friends. While this is a means to quickly buy your first paycheck with Pampered Chef, also it really does work, it does not go far people because undergo their warm market list pretty quick.

            Every network marketer experiences the same struggles at first. First they're excited to start their very own business. They become overwhelmed because of all the information.

            Last but not least they become frustrated. They realize it's hard as they thought it might be. They end up chasing visitors to get them to join the organization. After all this, without results, it can be become pretty frustrating.

            If you wish to become successful in different multi-level marketing company it is important to learn the insider secrets 97% of home business owners never learn. First, how to become a frontrunner and brand yourself. Second, generate leads daily so you have an audience you are able to present your business to and industry to. And finally, how to recruit leaders who are motivated to build the company. But there is a fix for your problem. It's referred to as Internet.'





            'Lyoness' is only one chapter of a big propaganda lie.

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            Absurd, 'Income opportunity' liar, Hubert Freidl, posing as a historically-important businessman, philanthropist and financial guru - the victim of absurd lies.

            A reality-denying chapter of the pernicious 'MLM income opportunity'fairy story arrived this week from the USA, in the form of an unsigned, and unsubstantiated, comment:

            'I couldn't stop laughing after reading this blog. Obviously some very committed MLM and Lyoness haters here. LOL Looking for a demon, they found one in Friedl who has accomplished so much in only a decade by offering people an opportunity. The ad-homenem attacks on the CEO and the company are absurd and the Nazi-name calling and offensive. Lyoness a cult? Absurd. As a Lyoness member, I am saving and making money.....'


            Contrary to what the author of the above propaganda steadfastly pretends to be reality, I've not been calling anyone a 'Nazi' out of hatred. I've been explaining calmly and, in great detail, why the clandestine criminal activities of 'Income Opportunity' racketeers, like Hubert Freidl, have been neither original nor unique, and why, consequently, they cannot be fully-understood in isolation.

            In the final analysis, the impressive, technical-sounding, made-up labels which latter-day cult instigators always hide behind, should be recognised as being merely a collection of up-dated titles for an ancient fiction. 






            In 1945, whilst most, contemporary mainstream commentators were unable to look beyond the ends of their noses, with a perfect sense of irony, Eric Arthur Blair a.k.a. George Orwell (1903-1950) presented fact as fiction in an insightful 'fairy story' entitled, 'Animal Farm.' He revealed that totalitarianism is merely the oppressors' fiction mistaken for fact by the oppressed.




            In the same universal allegory, Orwell described how, at a time of vulnerability, almost any people's dream of a future, secure, Utopian existence can be hung over the entrance to a totalitarian deception. Indeed, the words that are always banished by totalitarian deceivers are, 'totalitarian' and 'deception.'








            Sadly, when it comes to examining the same enduring phenomenon, albeit with an ephemeral 'Capitalist' label, most contemporary, mainstream commentators have again been unable to look further than the ends of their noses. However, if they followed Orwell's example, and did some serious thinking, this is the reality-inverting nightmare they would find.








            More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs,' etc.).
            The overwhelming majority of all the countless millions of victims who have been consumed by individual 'Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cults, have remained silent and passive,  and continued (unconsciously) to form part of the overall lie: whilst, as a direct result of the silence and passivity of the overwhelming majority of the victims, all casual observers of individual 'Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cults (including, law enforcement agents, regulators, academics, legislators, judges, journalists, etc.) have also remained silent and passive, and have continued (unconsciously) to form part of the overall lie.
            Today, it is very difficult to determine exactly how many people in total around the world have already been churned through the pay-through-the-nose-to-play 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cultic game of make-believe, since it was first peddled as reality under the name of 'Nutrilite Inc. /Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.' back in the late 1940s. It is also important to distinguish between short-term and chronic, losing-players. In general, the overwhelming majority of fraud victims never complain, but, right from the outset, the self-perpetuating 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' lie was maliciously designed to implicate its victims - loading them with shame and guilt, and, thus, prevent them from ever facing reality. Classically, the quantifiable evidence proves that, without exception, chronic, losing-players have been subjected to co-ordinated devious techniques of social, and psychological, persuasion designed to shut down their critical, and evaluative, faculties. In this way, they have been conditioned (unconsciously) to think of themselves, not as the victims of a cruel deception or as brainwashed cult adherents, but as 'Independent Business Owners' exercising free-will.  What has made external reality even more unacceptable, is the ego-destroying fact that a large proportion of victims were deceived by a close friend or relative and, in turn, these victims then deceived, or tried to deceive, their own close friends and relatives. The few, destitute, chronic, former losing-players who have managed to recover fully their critical, and evaluative faculties, and who have filed well-informed civil lawsuits against the corporate fronts of 'Income Opportunity' cultic racketeers, have invariably been obliged to settle out of court. Although a number of isolated civil investigations, and successful prosecutions, have been pursued by the Federal Trade Commission against some smaller 'Income Opportunity' front-companies in the USA, no co-ordinated official effort has ever been made to face wider-reality and identify, let alone tackle, the overall criminogenic/cultic phenomenon that has lurked behind all the shielding layers of structural, and pseudo-economic/scientific, mystification, reality-inverting 'commercial'  jargon and kitsch capitalist/Utopian/American Dream imagery.


               


            Until the 1970s, the original 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cultic racket  'Nutrilite' a.k.a.'Amway,' remained confined to the USA. In the face of a prolonged (but far-from morally, or intellectually, rigorous) FTC investigation, the 'Amway/MLM' lie first spread to Canada, then to W. Europe and Australia. However, in 1979, when a corrupt, and/or naive, US federal judge failed to identify 'Amway' as the corporate-front for an ongoing, major, organized crime group, this classic regulatory-failure was widely-seen as a license to steal. Since that time, countless US-based copy-cat rackets have been instigated behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures pursuing lawful, and/or unlawful, enterprises - a significant number of which ('Forever Living Products', 'Herbalife', 'USANA', 'Nu Skin', 'Xango' etc.),  have been allowed to grow out of control and to infiltrate traditional culture all around the globe, accompanied by a distracting flock of co-opted political, academic and celebrity stooges, and shielded by a parallel labyrinth of legally-registered corporate structures known as, 'Direct Selling Associations.'

            In the past, various casual observers have thrown up their hands in horror when I have dared to say that, given its duration, scale and devastating impact on huge numbers of vulnerable persons,  blame-the-victim 'Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cultic racketeering is an ongoing financial, and psychological, holocaust (with a small 'h') of which many people have been in denial. Sadly, the essentially-absurd fairy story entitled 'MLM Income Opportunity' has been allowed to expand to such titanic proportions, that the truth has long-since become almost unthinkable. However, since the concept of the big propaganda lie, is widely-understood, it seems almost inconceivable that the directors of law enforcement, and intelligence, agencies around the world have also remained unable to look beyond the ends of their noses and identify what the bosses of 'MLM/Prosperity Gospel' cults have actually been doing. 




            The following sinister quote has often been attributed to one of history's most-sinister criminals, Joseph Goebbels: 






            'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.'

            Given its content, it is supremely ironic that there is no evidence for Goebbels ever having made the above statement. That said, it is a very accurate description of Goebbels' reality-inverting activities as Adolf Hitler's propaganda chief. Indeed, before his cowardly suicide in the face of reality, Goebbels spent the last years of his life steadfastly pretending that the heroic and enlightened leader of the 'Noble Aryan Master Race,' Adolf Hitler, was telling the truth, whilst the leaders of Britain and the USA (controlled by the forces of evil - Jews and Freemasons) were repeating big propaganda lies.




            The origin of the first part of the above Goebbels statement would appear to have been a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler, compiled in the USA during WWII by the 'Office of Strategic Services,' later to become known as the 'CIA.' This document concluded that : 

            'His (Hitler's) primary rules were: 
            never allow the public to cool off; 
            never admit a fault or wrong; 
            never concede that there may be some good in your enemy;
            never leave room for alternatives;
            never accept blame; 
            concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; 
            people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.' 

            Hitler's psychological profile was drafted (prior to the full-extent of his crimes against humanity being discovered) by a team of medically-qualified academics who had apparently been studying 'Mein Kampf,' Chapter 10:

             '... in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad mass of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly outrageous lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.' 





            Despite appearances, Hitler was not confessing to being a liar in Chapter 10 of 'Mein Kampf.' This was merely a typically-mediocre little narcissist (who imagined himself to be a great author/thinker - the anointed-Messiah/saviour of his people) revealing his extraordinary knowledge of how to lie successfully whilst steadfastly pretending to be struggling to establish the truth against the reality-inverting forces of evil. Hitler would soon transform into a megalomaniacal psychopath. The unconditional deference of his deluded followers only served to confirm, and magnify, his own increasingly-paranoid, and self-righteous, delusions of grandeur.


            David Brear (copyright 2013) 






            'Multi-Level Marketing' and the Gettysburg Address?

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            Samuel Johnson is often quoted as saying:

            'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.' 


            However, Johnson was not attacking patriotism in general, only false patriotism, and in this article, so am I.



            Autographed manuscript of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; The Granger Collection, New York.


            Several years ago, I spoke with a former 'Amway'adherent from the USA who, back in the 1990s, had once gone on a pay-through-the-nose pilgrimage to 'Amway'HQ in Ada, Michigan. He described an exhibition he'd been taken to by his fanatical 'Amway' handlers. This contained facsimiles of historic American documents including: 'The Declaration of Independence', 'The Bill of Rights' and 'The Gettysburg Address.' 

            Almost as a perfect reflection of 'Amway'(corruption of 'The American Way'), the words which these documents contained were authentic, but the documents themselves were thought-stopping, and essentially-worthless, fakes, presented as valuable artifacts locked in specially-lit, glass security-cabinets draped with thought-stopping flags, and images, and with patriotic music, and speeches, playing in the background. 

            I asked the former 'Amway' adherent the following question:

            At the time you visited this 'Amway' exhibition, what connection did you imagine Lincoln's Gettysburg Address could possibly have had with so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing?'

            To which he replied:

            'I really have no idea!'


            With an irony that is close to exquisite, one of the original authors of the pernicious'Amway' fairy story, Richard DeVos, once gave (along with his dutiful wife, Helen) $10 millions of his ill-gotten gains to 'The National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.' 



            Doug DeVos, new executive board chairman of the National Constitution Center, is the head of Amway.

            Whilst second generation 'MLM Income Opportunity' racketeer, and world-class false patriot, Doug DeVos, has recently been elected as executive board chairman of 'The National Constitution Center. '


            The founding fathers of the American Republic, and Abraham Lincoln, must be spinning in their graves. For the copy-cat nightmares which reality-inverting cultic organizations like 'Amway', 'Herbalife' , 'Forever Living Products', Nu Skin', 'Xango', etc., have all been peddling as a proven means of achieving 'The American Dream,'are about as far from the original high ideals upon which the American Republic was founded, as it is possible to get.




            In this historic photograph (taken at the Gettysburg national cemetery dedication of 1863), Abraham Lincoln is seen upper left centre. It is interesting to note at least one African-American member of the audience with his back to camera, right front centre. 

            One hundred and fifty years ago this week, on the gloomy afternoon of November 19th, 1863, US President Abraham Lincoln gave a two and a half minute address at the dedication ceremony of a national cemetery on the Gettysburg battlefield in Pennsylvania.  An estimated 15 000 people, were in attendance.



            Lincoln's landmark speech (now said 'to have set the tone for the following century'), was written and delivered by the President less than five months after the bloodiest battle of the Civil War had produced (during just three days) over fifty-one thousands casualties (of which approximately seventeen thousands were dead or missing).




            This week marks not only the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, but also the 50th anniversary of the murder of President John Kennedy in Dallas Texas (November 22nd, 1963), followed (two days later) by the murder of the Kennedy's apparently-motiveless, only suspected-assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, on live television by a known-mafiosi (and Dallas strip-club owner), Jacob Leon Rubenstein (a.k.a. Jack Ruby), whose bosses had plenty of motives for wanting Kennedy dead and any rigorous, independent investigation of Oswald, halted.

            Lincoln's Gettysburg Address is generally considered to be the most poignant, and eloquent, speech in all American history.



            'Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.



            Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

            But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'

            When translated into plain language (out of Lincoln's Biblical-sounding 19th century, political rhetoric): He portrayed the civil war as a test of whether his country's great republican experiment could continue and succeed; for the revolutionary idea that the people could govern themselves, was still in its infancy and unproven. Thus, in the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln claimed to be re-dedicating the American Republic to the high-ideals upon which it had originally been founded.



            The reality behind Lincoln's pretty words turned out to be somewhat ugly; for tragically, 100 years after the last shot of the civil war had been fired and Lincoln himself had been assassinated, the Southern States were still brutally enforcing strict 'racial' segregation.
            African Americans were first exploited as sub-humans, before being effectively-excluded from their country's much-vaunted, great republican experiment. However,1863-1963, was the century of American Apartheid lying between Abe Lincoln and Jack Kennedy.
            The Civil War was not originally fought over slavery. It was fought over the Southern States' rights to pursue their own way of life, free from interference by a remote federal government in Washington DC. However, the perennial American argument about the appropriate form, and size, of federal government, coupled with the politics of Americans' ethnic origins (often inaccurately described as, 'race'), are, in fact, the factors which directly connect Lincoln to Kennedy.
            By the 1960s, American liberals had identified southern 'racial' segregation as the remnants of slavery clinging on in the land of the free. John Kennedy was one of those pressing for change, but the white South was not ready to change voluntarily.
            For historical reasons, the South had always massively voted Democratic. In 1963, it threatened to swing to the Republicans. Jack Kennedy was facing re-election and he went to Dallas only because he had to win the State of Texas.





            According to legend, as Kennedy's motorcade drove from Dallas airport into town, the President turned to the First Lady and announced that they were now 'entering nut country'.


             
            It was Kennedy's Texan successor, President Lyndon Johnson, who was able to use the wave of sympathy, and outrage, that was created by the Dallas assassination, to force through Congress a series of Acts which ended legal segregation and gave voting rights to millions of African Americans. To many naive observers, these events have been seen as finally fulfilling Lincoln's Gettysburg promise. However, in reality, 'MLM income opportunity'racketeering, has made a mockery of Abe Lincoln's fine words, for US-based cultic organizations like: Amway', 'Herbalife' , 'Forever Living Products', Nu Skin', 'Xango', etc.,' have all been allowed (by successive federal governments) to infiltrate traditional culture and be run as parallel totalitarian states in microcosm: where government of the people, by the people and for the people, has quite literally perished from the Earth.

            Again with an irony that is close to exquisite, the so-called 'land of the free' has actually exported it's own home-grown variety of totalitarianism dressed up as 'American-style capitalism,' to the rest of the world.

            David Brear (copyright 2013)



            'Amway's' Co-opting of Norman Rockwell (How the pernicious 'MLM' fairy story infiltrated American culture).

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            In 1945, whilst most, contemporary mainstream commentators were unable to look beyond the ends of their noses, with a perfect sense of irony, Eric Arthur Blair a.k.a. George Orwell (1903-1950) presented fact as fiction in an insightful 'fairy story' entitled, 'Animal Farm.' He revealed that totalitarianism is merely the oppressors' fiction mistaken for fact by the oppressed.




            In the same universal allegory, Orwell described how, at a time of vulnerability, almost any people's dream of a future, secure, Utopian existence can be hung over the entrance to a totalitarian deception. Indeed, the words that are always banished by totalitarian deceivers are, 'totalitarian' and 'deception.'





            Sadly, when it comes to examining the same enduring phenomenon, albeit with an ephemeral 'Capitalist' label, most contemporary, mainstream commentators have again been unable to look further than the ends of their noses. However, if they followed Orwell's example, and did some serious thinking, this is the reality-inverting nightmare they would find.




            More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs,' etc.).
            The overwhelming majority of all the countless millions of victims who have been consumed by individual 'Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cults, have remained silent and passive,  and continued (unconsciously) to form part of the overall lie: whilst, as a direct result of the silence and passivity of the overwhelming majority of the victims, all casual observers of individual 'Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cults (including, law enforcement agents, regulators, academics, legislators, judges, journalists, etc.) have also remained silent and passive, and have continued (unconsciously) to form part of the overall lie.
            Today, it is very difficult to determine exactly how many people in total around the world have already been churned through the pay-through-the-nose-to-play 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cultic game of make-believe, since it was first peddled as reality under the name of 'Nutrilite Inc. /Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.' back in the late 1940s. It is also important to distinguish between short-term and chronic, losing-players. In general, the overwhelming majority of fraud victims never complain, but, right from the outset, the self-perpetuating 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' lie was maliciously designed to implicate its victims - loading them with shame and guilt, and, thus, prevent them from ever facing reality. Classically, the quantifiable evidence proves that, without exception, chronic, losing-players have been subjected to co-ordinated devious techniques of social, and psychological, persuasion designed to shut down their critical, and evaluative, faculties. In this way, they have been conditioned (unconsciously) to think of themselves, not as the victims of a cruel deception or as brainwashed cult adherents, but as 'Independent Business Owners' exercising free-will.  What has made external reality even more unacceptable, is the ego-destroying fact that a large proportion of victims were deceived by a close friend or relative and, in turn, these victims then deceived, or tried to deceive, their own close friends and relatives. The few, destitute, chronic, former losing-players who have managed to recover fully their critical, and evaluative faculties, and who have filed well-informed civil lawsuits against the corporate fronts of 'Income Opportunity' cultic racketeers, have invariably been obliged to settle out of court. Although a number of isolated civil investigations, and successful prosecutions, have been pursued by the Federal Trade Commission against some smaller 'Income Opportunity' front-companies in the USA, no co-ordinated official effort has ever been made to face wider-reality and identify, let alone tackle, the overall criminogenic/cultic phenomenon that has lurked behind all the shielding layers of structural, and pseudo-economic/scientific, mystification, reality-inverting 'commercial'  jargon and kitsch capitalist/Utopian/American Dream imagery.


            _____________________________________________________________________________________________

            The following article explains how the pernicious fairy story entitled,'MLM Income Opportunity,' progressively infiltrated traditional American culture, to a degree where the truth has now become almost unthinkable.



            Norman Rockwell at work, mid-career.
            Norman Rockwell circa 1945

            This week, an oil painting on canvas by the prolific American artist/illustrator, Norman Rockwell (1894 -1978), entitled, 'Saying Grace,' has been sold by Sotheby's in New York for $46 millions (against a pre-sale estimate of  $15-20 millions). 


            Kenneth Stuart

            Included in the same Sotheby's auction, were nine other works by Rockwell. Most of these had come from the family of Kenneth Stuart (1906-1993), the former art director of 'The Saturday Evening Post' - a magazine for which Rockwell produced more than 320 covers during 47 years. 


            'Saying Grace,' appeared on the cover of 'The Saturday Evening Post' (Thanksgiving Edition), November 24th, 1951. At the time, Rockwell (who was already an American institution) commanded what was considered to be the princely-fee of $3500 per cover. 

            Rockwell at work on “Golden Rule,” 1960.


            'If it [America] isn't an ideal world, it should be. So I painted only the ideal aspects of it. Pictures in which there are no drunks or self-centred mothers. Only foxy grandpas who played baseball with the kids and boys who fished from logs and got up circuses in the backyard.'



            Norman Rockwell

            During all but the last few years of his life (after American art critics reluctantly accepted that Rockwell had produced a number of historically-significant paintings reflecting progressive, egalitarian, non-sectarian/non-racist views which he shared with intellectuals and liberals, and which contributed to the transformation of American society) Rockwell was widely-dismissed as being a self-confessed idealist - a cultural anachronism who used his realistic style to portray an unrealistic, and self-gratifying, American Utopia.




            'The Four Freedoms' (1943) has been described as Rockwell's most important series of paintings - inspired by a wartime speech made by Franklin Roosevelt, in which the President affirmed that 'Americans held rights to four freedoms on which to stand in their defence.' Rockwell's typically-emotional depiction of Roosevelt's words immediately struck a chord with Americans. The paintings were exhibited around the USA during WWII to popular acclaim, and transformed into posters. They are credited with raising over one million dollars in war bond sales.


            Rockwell's 'Rosie the Riveter' (right) , loosely based on Michelangelo's 'Isaiah' (left) was also used as a cover for 'The Saturday Evening Post ' in 1943, and also toured the USA during WWII with 'The Four Freedoms.'  This oil painting on canvas was sold at auction in 2001, for $2 millions and then in 2002, for $4.9 millions. (Notice how 'Rosie' is depicted using a battered copy of Hitler's 'Mein Kampf' as a footstool).
            The model whom Rockwell chose to pose for 'Rosie' was, in fact, a 19 year old telephone operator, Mary Doyle Keefe, who weighed just 110 pounds.

            Although Rockwell was undoubtedly a culturally-important figure whose kitsch, technically-brilliant magazine covers immediately became some of the most familiar, and iconic, images of the American way of life in the mid 20th century, for his entire career, he earned his living by selling his artistic talent to anyone who was willing to pay.




            Many of the most famous (and not-so-famous) brands in the USA, employed Norman Rockwell to produce his characteristic 'American Dream' images to sell anything from insurance and airline tickets: to beverages and breakfast cereals.






            Tragically, in the late 1960s, when faced with a US federal government investigation, blame-the-victim'Multi-Level Marketing Income Opportunity'racketeers, Richard De Vos and Jay Van Andel, were easily able to co-opt (an evidently ill-informed) Norman Rockwell (aged 75) to produce a series of kitsch drawings.  In this way (as part of a pattern of ongoing, major racketeering activity), America's favourite artist was tricked into accepting stolen money (albeit no more than just a few thousands dollars) by cultic charlatans posing as patriotic Christian businessmen, and then used to infiltrate respectable American publications (including: 'Readers Digest' and 'The TV Guide') in order to shut down the critical faculties of not only the victims of the 'Amway' racket, but also those of all casual observers.





            Again, as part of an overall pattern of ongoing, major racketeering activity, in 1980 (two years after Norman Rockwell's death at the age of 86)  the 'Amway' bosses began to use Rockwell's celebrated, pro-United Nations, 'Saturday Evening Post' cover of 1961 ('Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'), to continue to commit fraud and to obstruct justice all around the globe. This particularly stomach-churning example of hypocritical 'MLM' propaganda bears the signature of Norman Rockwell along with the 'copyright of the Amway Corp.'However, it is unclear whether the De Vos and Van Andel clans ever handed over any of their ill-gotten gains in exchange for a license to hide their abusive activities behind Rockwell's reality-inverting'Do unto others' image. 


            Judging by the 'Amway' mob's monumental theft of other valuable copyrights (particularly, involving recorded, popular music), it is highly-likely that they did not. 


            Rich DeVos appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1982.

            In 1979, Jay Van Andel and Richard DeVos featured in a largely comic-book article by Frederick A. Birmingham in 'The Saturday Evening Post,' entitled'The American Dream.' Whilst, in 1982, Richard DeVos even appeared on the cover of,  and featured in yet another chapter of the pernicious 'MLM' fairy story, presented as reality, in 'The Saturday Evening Post.'


            David Brear (copyright 2013)

            Analysis of the death of 'FHTM' racketeer, Paul Orberson,

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            Readers should note that it is not my intention to cause distress to family of the late Paul Orberson, merely to uncover the wider truth.

            'MLM Income Opportunity'cultic racketeer, Paul Orberson (1956-2013)



            It has recently been announced that Paul Orberson - the instigator of the blame-the-victim 'MLM Income Opportunity' cultic racket hiding behind the labyrinth of legally-registered corporate structures known as 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing (FHTM)' - has died of cancer aged 57.



            Unfortunately,'FHTM'(which had recently been closed-down as pyramid fraud by the US Federal Trade Commission acting on behalf of the American people and 3 Attorney Generals acting on behalf of the people of the States of Kentucky, Illinois and N. Carolina), is only part of a overall pattern of ongoing, major racketeering activity (as defined by the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970).

            More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs,' etc.).

            The overwhelming majority of all the countless millions of victims who have been consumed by individual 'Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cults, like 'FHTM', have remained silent and passive,  and continued (unconsciously) to form part of the overall 'MLM' lie: whilst, as a direct result of the silence and passivity of the overwhelming majority of the victims, all casual observers of individual 'Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cults (including, law enforcement agents, regulators, academics, legislators, judges, journalists, etc.) have also remained silent and passive, and have continued (unconsciously) to form part of the overall 'MLM' lie.
            Today, it is very difficult to determine exactly how many people in total around the world have already been churned through the pay-through-the-nose-to-play 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cultic game of make-believe, since it was first peddled as reality under the name of 'Nutrilite Inc. /Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.' back in the late 1940s. It is also important to distinguish between short-term and chronic, losing-players. In general, the overwhelming majority of fraud victims never complain, but, right from the outset, the self-perpetuating 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' lie was maliciously designed to implicate its victims - loading them with shame and guilt, and, thus, prevent them from ever facing reality. Classically, the quantifiable evidence proves that, without exception, chronic, losing-players have been subjected to co-ordinated devious techniques of social, and psychological, persuasion designed to shut down their critical, and evaluative, faculties. In this way, they have been conditioned (unconsciously) to think of themselves, not as the victims of a cruel deception or as brainwashed cult adherents, but as 'Independent Business Owners' exercising free-will.  What has made external reality even more unacceptable, is the ego-destroying fact that a large proportion of victims were deceived by a close friend or relative and, in turn, these victims then deceived, or tried to deceive, their own close friends and relatives. The few, destitute, chronic, former losing-players who have managed to recover fully their critical, and evaluative faculties, and who have filed well-informed civil lawsuits against the corporate fronts of 'Income Opportunity' cultic racketeers, have invariably been obliged to settle out of court. Although a number of isolated civil investigations, and successful prosecutions, have been pursued by the Federal Trade Commission against some smaller 'Income Opportunity' front-companies in the USA, like 'FHTM', no co-ordinated official effort has ever been made to face wider-reality and identify, let alone tackle, the overall criminogenic/cultic phenomenon that has lurked behind all the shielding layers of structural, and pseudo-economic/scientific, mystification, reality-inverting 'commercial'  jargon and kitsch capitalist/Utopian/American Dream imagery.



            Paul Orberson was, in fact, a clean-cut, former high school basketball coach from Danville Kentucky who became a particularly-effective shill for a blame-the-victim'MLM Income Opportunity' racket hiding the behind the labyrinth of legally-registered corporate structures known as 'Excel Communications.'Despite being presented in the kitsch 'Excel' propaganda as earning $1 million per month, Orberson abandoned this racket in 1996 and launched his own copy-cat racket, 'FHTM,' in Lexington Kentucky. However, Orberson was no ordinary charlatan. He was almost certainly suffering from severe and inflexible Narcissistic Personality Disorder.


            _________________________________________________________________________ 

            ‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder,’ is a psychological term first used in 1971 by Dr. Heinz Kohut (1913-1981). It was recognised as the name for a form of pathological narcissism in ‘The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 1980.’ Narcissistic traits (where a person talks highly of himself/herself to eliminate feelings of worthlessness) are common in, and considered ‘normal’ to, human psychological development. When these traits become accentuated by a failure of the social environment and persist into adulthood, they can intensify to the level of a severe mental disorder. Severe and inflexible NPD is thought to effect less than 1% of the general adult population. It occurs more frequently in men than women. In simple terms, NPD is reality-denying, total self-worship born of its sufferers’ unconscious belief that they are flawed in a way that makes them fundamentally unacceptable to others. In order to shield themselves from the intolerable rejection and isolation which they unconsciously believe would follow if others recognised their defective nature, NPD sufferers go to almost any lengths to control others’ view of, and behaviour towards, them. NPD sufferers often choose partners, and raise children, who exhibit ‘co-narcissism’ (a co-dependent personality disorder like co-alcoholism). Co-narcissists organize themselves around the needs of others (to whom they feel responsible), they accept blame easily, are eager to please, defer to others’ opinions and fear being seen as selfish if they act assertively. NPD was observed, and apparently well-understood, in ancient times. Self-evidently, the term, ‘narcissism,’ comes from the allegorical myth of Narcissus, the beautiful Greek youth who falls in love with his own reflection.

            Currently, NPD has nine recognised diagnostic criteria (five of which are required for a diagnosis):
            •       has a grandiose sense of self-importance.
            •       is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, ideal love, etc.
            •       believes that he/she is special and unique and can only be understood by other special people.
            •       requires excessive admiration.
            •       strong sense of self-entitlement.
            •       takes advantage of others to achieve his/her own ends.
            •       lacks empathy.
            •       is often envious or believes that others are envious of him/her.
            •       arrogant disposition.
            _____________________________________________________________________  

             



            For several years, the 'FHTM'chapter of the pernicious, and mathematically-mystifying,'MLM' Income Opportunity fairy story (that anyone can become a millionaire simply by duplicating a step-by-step plan of recruitment and self-consumption) survived various low-level civil investigations and prosecutions (notably in Texas and Montana), when an echelon of shyster attorneys, acting for Orberson and his criminal associates, negotiated to pay substantial fines (without accepting any fault on the part of their client), but (all the same) undertook to reform all the alleged unlawful activities, of their client. In reality, the attorneys fees (and the fines they negotiated) were paid out of part of the proceeds of racketeering. Thus, the attorneys' manoeuvres were themselves a clear attempt to obstruct justice in order to continue to commit fraud.







            'FHTM' whistleblower, Joseph Isaacs.

            http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/2010-10-15-multilevelmarketing14_cv_n.htm

            'FHTM'was widely-exposed as a fraud and a number of courageous victims, like Joseph Isaacs, spoke out. Classically, as part of the overall pattern of ongoing, major racketeering activity, all former adherents publicly-dissenting from the pernicious 'FHTM/MLM' fairy story, were subjected to various forms of intimidation; particularly, malicious lawsuits.




            http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2013/01/ftc-action-leads-court-halt-alleged-pyramid-scheme

            At the start of 2013, as part of a long-overdue 'crack-down' on 'Business Opportunity' fraud, the HQ of 'FHTM' was finally raided by FTC officials accompanied by police officers, the counterfeit 'direct selling'company closed and all its visible assets seized (before trial) to protect the public. Laughably, this raid was ordered only after 12 years of crime, during which hundreds of millions of dollars had been stolen from several hundred thousands individuals (most of whom remained completely oblivious to the fact that they had not only been defrauded, but also tricked into believing that their failure to make money was entirely their own fault).  Charges were filed against Paul Orberson and his associates: including the operation of an illegal pyramid scheme, making false earnings claims and providing victims of the illegal pyramid scheme with false and misleading materials for the purpose of ensnaring more victims. However, the 'FHTM'bosses were allowed to remain free pending trial, whilst these protracted events only reveal the tip of a monumental iceberg of financial, and psychological, abuse which has been allowed to grow largely-unchecked behind the pernicious'MLM Income Opportunity'fairy story, for more than half a century. I have to say that the frighteningly-limp presentation of the FTC attorney in the above video, demonstrates the US government's pitifully low-level of understanding of this up-dated version of an age-old criminogenic cancer which has already gnawed its way deep into the heart of the Republic. That said, it should never be forgotten that no common-sense law exists in the USA to prevent legally-qualified law enforcement officers from going to work in the private sector, where they have used their inside knowledge to reap fat rewards by betraying their former employers, the public.  


            Would-be 'MLM Income Opportunity'racketeer, Marc Shamus

            Yesterday, 'The American Dream Made Nightmare' received a particularly stomach-churning comment on the subject of Mr Orberson's death, from a young fellow by the name of Marc Shamus, who seems to be currently attempting to emulate his dead hero's parasitic racketeering activities.

            'This is so sad to see how things unfolded with FHTM after the brilliant early career Paul Orberson developed through Coaching and of course Excel Communications. Also sad for Paul that he passed away a few days ago after a real long difficult struggle with cancer.

            I remember Paul from back in the days at Excel Communications during the mid 90's when I was aggressively promoting there at the same time. He was a smart marketer and knew that you had to keep the conversation real simple with prospects.

            He knew that he needed to quickly remove himself out of the equation so the prospect did not base the opportunity on him alone. I learned a lot from his wisdom then. Condolences to the family and friends of Paul. He will be missed.'



            Of particular note to readers, is Mr. Shamus' exhibition of the diagnostic criteria of severe and inflexible Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Perhaps, this time, America's federal and state law enforcement agencies will manage to put a stop to Mr. Shamus' clandestine criminal activities, before he causes too much damage.


            David Brear (copyright 2013)

            JP Morgan Chase and Madoff ring alarm bells at 'Herbalife' and 'NuSkin' banksters.

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            JP Morgan was Bernie Madoff's main bank - a temporary, and once highly-profitable, association which began in the 1980s and lasted right up to Madoff's demise.






            The following news probably wasn't noticed in the offices of prominent Utah 'Mormons' who have conspired with various'MLM income opportunity' racketeers, to commit fraud and obstruct justice, but it should certainly have rung alarm bells in the boardrooms of the financial institutions which facilitated the capitalization of the 'Herbalife' and'NuSkin'rackets on Wall St.  





            Last week, JP Morgan Chase agreed to settle all outstanding claims (government and private) connected to its own participation in Bernie Madoff's crimes.



            How Bernard Madoff made 'fraud' happen


            In brief, it is now a matter of public record that economic alchemist, Bernie Madoff, used JP Morgan Bank to launder almost all of the billions of dollars he stole by steadfastly pretending that he was running a lawful investment scheme - the 'world's largest hedge fund.' 






            In reality, all the apparently profitable stock market tradeswhich Madoff kept telling the world he was making, never actually took place, but the greedy little monkeys at JP Morgan who handled Madoff's accounts and who, therefore, must have seen with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears, that Madoff wasn't actually buying, or selling, the mountains of stock which he claimed, never once approached the authorities to say that there was something radically wrong. 





            It seems that almost everyone on Wall St. knew that Madoff was a world-class liar and a crook, but people who live in glass mansions, don't throw stones.





            Readers will recall that Mr. Madoff is currently serving a 150 year prison sentence after being convicted of instigating, and dissimulating, one of the most-outrageous Ponzi schemes of all time. 






            Mysteriously, even though every move Madoff followed (over a period of several decades) obviously formed part of an overall pattern of major racketeering activity (comprising literally thousands of counts of fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, etc.), neither he nor any of the troop of wise monkeys who enabled him to perpetrate and hide his catalogue of crimes, was charged under the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. 





            JP Morgan was merely accused (as a corporate structure) of not reporting any concerns about (what turned out to be) a sociopath, criminal client, Bernard Madoff. 



            Without accepting any fault, JP Morgan Chase has apparently been absolved of all further liability, after promising that, henceforth, its own staff will not to be so deaf, dumb and blind, when it is obviously being used to facilitate fraud, and agreeing to pay $2.6 billions to settle all outstanding claims (government and private) connected to the bank's previous participation in thousands of Bernie Madoff's crimes.  



            David Brear (copyright 2014)




            'NuSkin' and 'Herbalife,' China Crisis.

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            Before reading about the latest twist in the ongoing tragicomedy entitled'Multi-Level Marketing,'the many new visitors to this Blog (particularly, researchers working for Wall St. traders) are invited to take a look at some remarkable optical illusions which clearly demonstrate that the human mind can be easily deceived simply by changing the context in which we see things.
             http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11553099 .






            A stalking-panther, when photographed hiding in plain view in a jungle environment, is almost invisible to the human eye if shown only in black and white, but the same dangerous predator is immediately obvious to us, when shown in colour. 







            Two rectangles of identical colour and shade, appear to be of different colour and shade when each one is surrounded by rectangles which alter the context in which our minds automatically see them. 




            SHEEP WANTED!

            More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science hiding in plain view, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (lurking behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs,' etc.).
            No free-thinking observer now seriously disputes that deluded, core-'MLM' adherents  see the world only in two dimensions, 'positive vs negative.' The growing mountain of evidence shows that vast numbers of ill-informed victims have been deceived into entering this style of dissimulated cultic swindle, then, on the pretext that 'the exact duplication of a step-by-step positive plan will lead to success,' they have been intellectually-castrated (without their fully-informed consent) so that their minds will only accept what their leaders have arbitrarily defined as 'positive,' whilst systematically excluding what these same cultic charlatans have arbitrarily defined as 'negative.' Thus, when seen only in the fake 'positive' context of: 'Business', 'Independence', 'Financial Freedom' , 'Low Risk' , 'Direct Selling', 'High Quality, Good-Value, Scientifically-Proven Products', 'Research','Development', etc. 'MLM income opportunities' can appear to be authentic. Sadly, this dangerous inversion of reality has been further confirmed by celebrity/political/scientific/corporate endorsements contained in glossy-advertising. 

            Self-evidently, when the wider-picture is examined (by persons with fully-functioning critical and evaluative faculties), all two-dimensional 'MLM' propaganda forms a pattern of ongoing, major, racketeering activity, because these artificially-created, fake 'positive' contexts have actually been financed by the proceeds of crime in order to perpetrate further crime and to prevent the victims from confronting reality and complaining. 


            It is only when you take 'MLM income opportunity' frauds out of their artificially-created, fake 'positive' contexts, that their true, predatory nature becomes immediately obvious.








            Since they were first instigated in the USA in the late 1940s, so-called 'MLM income opportunities' have been hiding effectively 100% overall  loss/churn rates. Thus, when you examine the absurd, self-gratifying version of the'MLM' fairy story entitled 'NuSkin,' it's difficult to believe that any educated adult could swallow this up-dated hybrid of snake-oil, and pyramid scheme, quackery






            In essence, the authors of the 'Nu Skinfairy story have steadfastly pretended that: 

            They have not only found the secret of halting the human ageing process, but they have also found the secret of transforming ordinary, powerless people into happy and beautiful, superhuman multi-millionaires. 




            Furthermore, the creators of the 'Nu Skin' Utopia are willing to share their exclusive secret knowledge with anyone (for a price).





            Stuart Kim


            For a long time, the 'Nu Skin' quacks have been using millions of dollars of their ill-gotten gains to bedazzle academics and buy association with Stanford University. However, they have been caught using a researcher’s name - falsely claiming that 'Stuart Kim' (Genetics Dept. Stamford University) 'is partnered with Nu Skin.' 

            Consequently, Stanford University sent a letter to 'Nu Skin Enterprises,' warning the company that Stuart Kim's name had to be removed from all advertising material. 

            http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/16/us-nuskin-stanford-idUSBRE87F13W20120816


            It turns out that Stuart Kim was previously approached by the 'Nu Skin' quacks to fund research into skin-ageing.  Both the researcher, and a spokesman for Stanford  University, confirm that the Dermatology Dept. has indeed, previously received substantial funding from 'Nu Skin,' but Stuart Kim has not.


            Even though multi-level, commission-based, direct selling schemes were specifically identified as a means of dissimulating pyramid schemes behind effectively-unsaleable wampum, and declared unlawful, in China in 2005, in the same year, a corporate Trojan Horse labelled 'NuSkin' got inside Chinese defences. Representatives of the 'NuSkin'racketeers, pretending affinity with regulators, legally-registered a subsidiary company which obtained a license to operate:
            • a single-level direct selling scheme.
            • retail outlets.
            It wasn't until August 2012, after certain American short sellers began to publish analyses explaining how 'NuSkin'was potentially a very dangerous investment, because its real activities are not in compliance with the law in China, that  US-based financial journalists started to ask questions. CNBC was then given this very precisely-worded statement by the 'NuSkin' Ministry of Truth: 

            'We are confident our China operations are in compliance with the applicable (direct selling) regulations as interpreted and enforced by the government of China. Nu Skin has an eight-year history of doing business inChina under these regulations. Our business modelin China is different than the global business model. We follow all regulations and any member who does not follow company policies issubject to discipline.'

            It is interesting to note that, in the above statement, the 'Nu Skin'bosses didn't actually claim to be in compliance with Chinese criminal laws prohibiting fraud and corruption. On the contrary, they steadfastly pretended only to be in compliance with current, unnamed, senior Chinese government members' and officials' interpretation of technical regulations which define lawful (i.e. single level) direct selling and which (apparently) the 'Nu Skin'bosses, and other US-based 'MLM income opportunity' racketeers, had a hand in drafting. Classically of 'MLM' racketeers, the 'Nu Skin' bosses also steadfastly pretended that they are completely unaware of any regulations having been broken in China, but if they have been broken, 'Nu Skin' itself is not responsible, whilst the company will punish the individual adherents who are.  


            1/16/2014 2:25:00 PM - RTT News 
            1/16/2014 10:11:00 AM - Seeking Alpha 
            1/16/2014 10:08:00 AM - Seeking Alpha 
            1/16/2014 9:49:00 AM - RTT News

            Last week, it was announced in the state-controlled Chinese press that, the Chinese authorities are to investigate 'NuSkin's' real activities in China as a suspected pyramid fraud which has been brainwashing its victims exactly like a 'religious' cult. 

            • A middle-aged Chinese 'NuSkin' adherent was reported as telling relatives that she wanted to make 'NuSkin' her business of choice for the rest of her life, earn big money and change her destiny, and that she was going to sell her home to invest in more 'NuSkin' products.
            • Chinese reporters attended a recent meeting in Beijing which they described as 'fanatical.' Approximately, 20,000 delirious 'NuSkin' adherents wavedflash lights and chanted slogans.
            • The Chinese reporters discovered that 'NuSkin'adherents have been obliged to buy publications, recordings, tickets to meetings, etc. 



            This is not the first time that the Chinese media has used the term 'cult' to describe a counterfeit'direct selling' company peddling the 'American Dream.' Indeed, it was 'Amway's Prosperity Gospel' activities in China which led to the Chinese government banning so-called'MLM income opportunity' schemes in 2005, but (after the intervention of US government trade officials) allowing an 'Amway' front-company, and those of various 'MLM income opportunity' rackets, to remain in China after their representives apparently undertook to reform their established practises and become retailers and the sponsors of single-level direct selling schemes. 




            http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-herbalife-shares-tumble-nu-skin-investigation-china-20140116,0,2452650.story#axzz2qtAb7ZCISince around half of 'NuSkin's'declaredannual sales revenuehas lately derived from its claimed'reformed'activities in China, the news that 'NuSkin' is now to be investigated as a cultic pyramid fraud, triggered an immediate collapse (43%) in the artificially-inflated market price of effectively-valueless 'NuSkin' shares - also dragging down (10%) the artificially-inflated market price of effectively-valueless shares in the'Herbalife'racket. 

            All this, begs some important questions : 

            Might Chinese investors, and/or officials, with inside information about the'NuSkin'investigation, have obtained (or be about to obtain) short positions on Wall St. against counterfeit 'direct selling companies?'

            Might the US government be ultimately held responsible for not only allowing this form of cultic racketeering to go effectively-unchallenged in America, but also for actively assisting its infiltration into China?


            Since (the ironically-Orwellian year) of 1984, 'NuSkin' has been the label hung over the entrance to a typical labyrinth of corporate structures, which first appeared in the USA, then Canada (1990) and Hong Kong (1991) as a series of legally-registered, privately-controlled, limited-liability, commercial-companies comprising 'NuSkin International.' 

            In 1992, 'NuSkin' reached settlements with 5 American States (Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan) over allegations of misleading marketing practises; admitting no wrongdoing, but, all the same, paying the States' costs, refunding numerous losing participants and changing the wording of its literature. 





            The Connecticut Attorney General sued 'Nu Skin,' charging the company with misleading its participants and running a pyramid scheme. Following a 1994, low-level civil investigation by the US Federal Trade Commission,'NuSkin' was allowed to continue in the USA after paying $1 million and signing a effectively-toothless consent decree prohibiting it from making 'deceptive or unsubstantiated claims about its products.' 





            Despite the organization's reputation as an absurd scam, in 1996, 'NuSkin Enterprises' was allowed to be launched on the New York Stock Exchange, and  the criminal enterprise was exported around the globe. In 1997, the 'NuSkin' mob paid a derisory $1.5 million to the FTC to settle ongoing allegations of 'making unsubstantiated claims about its products.' At the same time, the Attorney general of Pennsylvania sued 'NuSkin,' again alleging that the company operated a pyramid scheme through a subsidiary corporate structure, 'QIQ Connections.' The Attorney General's office discovered that that 'QIQ' participants had paid for the right to market something which did not exist. 'NuSkin's' attorneys halted the suit by dissolving the subsidiary, obliging victims who had paid money to 'QIQ' to transfer to 'Big Planet' (a newly-created blind alley in the mystifying 'NuSkin' labyrinth) offering 'Internet technology.' Classically, the head of 'Big Planet' then dismissed the pyramid-scheme charge as 'a few distributors who, in their enthusiasm, have been overzealous in some of their marketing activities.'






            By the summer of 2010, 63 millions 'NuSkin shares' had been sold and these were illegally-trading at $27 a piece, making the counterfeit 'Direct Selling' company theoretically worth approximately $1.7 billions. 


            Blake Roney         Sandie Tillotson            Steve Lund



            At this time, 4.46 millions effectively-valueless 'NuSkin shares' owned by Blake Roney, Sandie Tillotson, Steve Lund and the 'Mormon Church' were unloaded for $114.3 millions. 


            http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700039356/446-million-shares-of-Nu-Skin-sold-
            for-114-million.html






            The financial institution which (apparently, in complete ignorance of reality) handled part of the unlawful flotation of the 'Nu Skin MLM income opportunity' racket on the New York Stock Exchange, is Deutsche Bank Securities USA. 

            Bill Schmitz  


            For obvious reasons, Bill Schmitz (Managing Director of Deutsche Bank Securities USA) once felt obliged to take part in the CNBC debate in defence of his de facto criminal associates. However, some of the statements which this grinning, young fellow made (apparently, still in complete denial of reality), were the equivalent of admitting that US-based 'MLM income opportunity' racketeers have conspired to subvert the rule of law in China. 

            At one point Schmitz foolishly-boasted:


            'They (the bosses of "Nu Skin") wrote the law in China. The chairman and CEO was there when the World Federation (of "Direct Selling Associations"satdown with the Chinese Government and scripted the law.'

            http://www.myvidster.com/video/7038861/Video_Nu_Skin_Violating_Chinese_Law
            http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000108202




            To date, the market-value of these bedazzling pieces of paper bearing the words, 'NuSkin Share Certificate,' has been based on the demonstrably-absurd lie that the constantly-expanding, and increasingly-profitable, 'NuSkin/MLM' enterprise is perfectly lawful, and that billions of 'NuSkin' products have been, and will continue to be, sold to customers (based on value and demand).

            However, some very important, common-sense questions have evidently never been put to the corporate officers of 'NuSkin Enterprises Inc.,' by anyone from the mainstream media, the FTC, the SEC or the FBI; principally:


            Where has the bulk of your alleged 'direct selling company's' alleged 'income opportunity's' alleged 'lawful sales revenue' actually come from:

            the regular retailing of goods, and/or services, directly to the general public by your alleged 'distributors' for a profit?

            or 

            from an endless-chain of recruits' regular, losing-investments (based on the false expectation of future reward) laundered as 
            'sales (based on value and demand)?'






            The following is essentially the same common sense question as above.  It was only put to Bernie Madoff after decades of increasingly-grandiose lies and mystifying distortions had been swallowed as the truth:

            Has your company's alleged 'constantly-expanding, and increasingly-profitable, investment scheme' had any significant source of revenue other than its own alleged 'investors?'

            In the end, it was discovered that the answer to the question was 'no,' and Madoff got 150 years prison for peddling his wealthy victims infinite shares of their own finite money and for going to extraordinary lengths to hide the truth; but Madoff was not accused of cheating millions of people or of obstructing justice via the covert bribing of a leading US Presidential candidate with, millions of stolen dollars.




            In February 1999, Mitt Romney was hired as President and CEO of the 'Salt Lake Organizing Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games 2002.' In that professional capacity, Mitt Romney arranged for the 'Nu Skin' racketeers to pay $20 millions to 'sponsor' the Salt Lake City Olympics. At the time Romney was hired, the Salt Lake Organizing Committee was facing a budget deficit of approximately $400 millions. Although 'Nu Skin' has been legally-registered as a commercial company, the source of its bosses' timely $20 millions contribution to save the Olympics, was crime.







            Immediately after the 'Nu Skin' Olympic 'sponsorship' deal was made public, Romney appeared at a typically-kitsch 'NuSkin' orgy of deluded self-gratification (held in Salt Lake City), attended by more than 10 000 adherents.





            In a glittering, pay-through-the-nose-to-enter, scripted-fairytale, reminiscent of the 'Biblical Golden Calf' (which, incidentally, was also produced entirely from its deluded worshippers' own gold), Romney enthusiastically told the unquestioning 'MLM' multitude that 'NuSkin' and the 'Olympics' were 'about taking control of your life and managing your own destiny.' 
            At the same 1999 assembly, 'Nu Skin' Boss, Steve Lund openly-boasted: 'We have aligned ourselves with the Olympics because this alignment helps you do your jobs better.'  Lund then claimed that the Olympic rings on distributors' business cards would bring them loads of new recruits, and that Olympic affiliation would 'also further mainstream our brands in the business community.'
             




            As part of the Olympic 'sponsorship' deal, 'Nu Skin' and its subsidiary, 'Pharmanex,' gave free 'nutritional supplements' and 'vitamins' to Olympic athletes. At the exactly the same time, the International Olympic Committee was instructing participants not to take any supplements, because of concerns that these might be adulterated with banned substances. The IOC even cited lax US regulation as being part of the problem. However, Mitt Romney insisted that he personally had 'no problem with Nu Skin's quality,' and, as a result, the 'NuSkin' racket was heavily-promoted on television during the 2002 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.



            In the light of the wider-evidence, the laundering of 20 millions stolen dollars to infiltrate the Olympic movement for the purpose of perpetrating and dissimulating a global fraud, clearly forms part of a pattern of ongoing, major racketeering activity (as defined by the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970). 


            To date, no rigorous investigation has ever been pursued into these extensive organized crimes, and, if Mitt Romney, had been elected to the White House, the chances of any 'MLM' racketeers being held fully to account in the USA, would have  become virtually zero.
            In 2011, it was revealed that two Utah-registered corporate structures controlled by the bosses of 'NuSkin' had each given $1 million  to 'Restore Our Future,' a so-called 'Super PAC' (instigated by former aides to Mitt Romney), to 'support Mr. Romney's bid for the White House.'

            Unfortunately, there was no one of a sufficiently high moral, and intellectual, calibre within the leadership of the Democratic party, or within the mainstream media, who had the gumption to put some blindingly-obvious questions directly to Mr. Romney in the lead up to 2012 US Presidential election?

            Where does 'MLM' money actually come from, and why do you suppose 'MLM' bosses have given so much of it to you?



            If the USA was a rational country ruled by law (which manifestly it has long-since ceased to be), it would be FBI agents putting the above questions to Mr. Romney and other corrupt 'Mormon' politicians in Utah, but then the ultimately-laughable, non-rational, criminogenic phenomenon of 'MLM Prosperity Gospel' cultism would never have been allowed to become established in the first place.

            David Brear (copyright 2014)



            Effectively-valueless 'Herbalife' shares plunge again, after US Senator intervenes.

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            More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science hiding in plain view, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term, 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (lurking behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs,' etc.).
            No free-thinking observer now seriously disputes that the most-deluded, core-'MLM' adherents see the world only in two dimensions, 'positive vs negative.' The growing mountain of evidence shows that vast numbers of ill-informed victims have been deceived into entering this style of dissimulated cultic swindle, then, on the pretext that 'the exact duplication of a step-by-step positive plan will lead to success and limitless financial freedom,they have been intellectually-castrated (without their fully-informed consent) so that their minds will only accept what their leaders have arbitrarily defined as 'positive,' whilst systematically excluding what these same cultic charlatans have arbitrarily defined as 'negative.' Thus, when seen only in the fake 'positive' context of: 'Business', 'Independence', 'Financial Freedom' , 'Low Risk' , 'Direct Selling', 'High Quality, Good-Value, Scientifically-Proven Products', 'Research','Development', etc. 'MLM income opportunities' can appear to be authentic. Sadly, this dangerous inversion of reality has been further confirmed by celebrity/political/scientific/corporate endorsements contained in glossy-advertising. 

            Self-evidently, when the wider-picture is examined (by persons with fully-functioning critical and evaluative faculties), all two-dimensional 'MLM' propaganda forms a pattern of ongoing, major, racketeering activity, because these artificially-created, fake 'positive' contexts have actually been financed by the proceeds of crime in order to perpetrate further crime and to prevent the victims from confronting reality and complaining. 





            http://www.cnbc.com/id/101313403


            http://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2014-1-22_Johnson_Herbalife.pdf


            http://www.markey.senate.gov/news/press-releases/markey-calls-for-investigation-into-herbalife-business-practices


            Senator Ed Markey Calls for Investigation into Herbalife Business Practices



            Lawmaker concerned nutritional supplement company could be operating outside securities law as a pyramid scheme



            Washington (January 23, 2014)  After hearing serious complaints of improper pressure and financial hardship, including from a constituent in Massachusetts who lost her entire retirement savings, Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass) is calling for more information about the business practices of Herbalife Ltd. In letters sent today to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and to the company itself, Senator Markey queried each for more information about Herbalife’s operations.


            Herbalife, which sells nutritional and weight-loss products through individual distributors, promises its sellers significant monetary compensation in the form of additional bonuses and royalties if they recruit new sellers and establish their own network of product distributors. This compensation system appears to strongly favor distributors who focus on selling to other distributors rather than the general public, a common feature of pyramid schemes. Concerns also have been expressed that Herbalife aggressively markets its business opportunities to lower-income and vulnerable communities, many of whom are at greater risk if they invest their savings in business ventures that have little potential to turn a profit. According to 2012 data from the company itself, 88 percent of product distributors received no payments from the company at all. 

            One family in Norton, Massachusetts reported that it lost $130,000, including the family’s entire 401(K), investing in Herbalife. Another Massachusetts resident claimed that she was encouraged to recruit new members by approaching her family and also received pressure to spend money to buy more Herbalife products so that she could qualify as a so-called “Supervisor” in the Herbalife system. She also stated that she was encouraged to stay in the program even after she said she wanted out. 

            “There is nothing nutritional about possible pyramid schemes that promise financial benefit but result in economic ruin for vulnerable families,” said Senator Markey, a member of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. “Herbalife may be a purveyor of health and wellness products, but some of its distributors are suffering serious economic ill-health as a result of their involvement in the company. I have serious questions about the business practices of Herbalife and their impact on my constituents, and I look forward to receiving responses to my inquiries.”

            A copy of Senator Markey’s letter to Herbalife can be found HERE. A copy of his letter to the SEC can be found HERE. A copy of his letter to the FTC can be found HERE.

            _______________________________________________________________________

            If Senator Markey would like to understand fully what he has really become involved in here; then, rather than write to the dunces with diplomas at the SEC and FTC, and to the charlatans at 'Herbalife,' I suggest he just reads the following:  

            For years, I have been openly-saying that the mystifying global labyrinth of corporate structures commonly-known as 'Herbalife,' is the deceptively-kitsch front for a highly-organized, blame the-victim, closed-market swindle, or pyramid scam, dissimulated as a so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing Income Opportunity,' and related advance fee frauds, dissimulated as so-called 'training and motivation programs.' 






            Tellingly, no one has attempted to refute this accurate, deconstructed analysis - which itself predicts that any commentator with a full-understanding of the widespread financial, and psychological, abuse which has secretly been occurring behind the essentially-totalitarian 'MLM Income Opportunity' fairy story, will be systematically excluded, and/or denigrated, and/or ridiculed, by it.


            Robert FitzPatrick




            Although I seem to have been almost alone in publishing a clear explanation of why 'Herbalife,' and various other essentially-identical organizations, should be investigated, and prosecuted, not as wayward multi-national companies in breach of civil legislation, but as subversive fronts for an up-dated form of ongoing, major, racketeering activity (as defined by the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970), a significant part of my published analysis of the 'Herbalife/MLM income opportunity' racket has been in broad agreement with various other informed observers, notably Robert FitzPatrick of the Pyramid Scheme Alert and, lately, Bill Ackman of Pershing Square Capital. 





            In December of 2012, Bill Ackman called the outrageous 'Herbalife/MLM Income Opportunity' bluff, and announced that he had bet $1.2 billion that the company's shares are effectively-worthless, because, although legally-registered in the USA and elswhere, 'Herbalife' is a fundamentally unlawful enterprise run by manipulative charlatans who, for decades, have been allowed to withhold key-information from the regulators and from the public, and who have never faced an intellectually-rigorous, independent inquiry.





            In simple terms, Bill Ackman's central charge against the so-called 'Herbalife MLM Direct Selling Income Opportunity' is that, since common-sense, +  the available independent evidence, indicates that the scheme's revenue can only have largely derived internally from its own participants (based on their false expectation of future reward), rather than from authentic profitable external retail sales to the general public (based on value and demand), 'Herbalife' has been hiding a giant pyramid scheme in plain view, in which billions of dollars of unlawful, losing investment payments have been laundered as'sales,' simply by giving a never-ending chain of ill-informed participants banal, but over-priced products, which no rational customer would want to buy on the open-market, and which, therefore, might as well not exist.

            Like all 'MLM Income Opportunity' racketeers, the 'Herbalife' mob have never said that  their company makes its profits by retailing anything directly to the general public. For decades, if challenged, they have steadfastly pretended that their company makes its money lawfully by selling its exclusive good-value products to its distributors at a discount, who then can sell these highly-desirable materials for a profit themselves, to their own customers and end-users. Amazingly, even though certain key-information would obviously reveal to regulators whether 'Herbalife' is a dissimulated pyramid fraud, the company's bosses initially responded to Bill Ackman's central charge that 'Herbalife's' profits have largely been unlawful, because they have derived from the company's own agents, by making the extraordinary claim that they have never tracked and, therefore, do not know for sure, what percentage of their company's own products sales have actually been resold by their company's distributors, but that they believed that this percentage of outside retail sales (to customers and end users) has always been significant.  




            The 'Herbalife' bosses then pretended affinity with the regulators, by implying that as responsible and patriotic Americans, they were going to employ an external private company to do the job of Federal Trade Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission, agents and, thus, save US tax-payers a fortune. 

            However, the common-sense key-questions which the 'Herbalife' bosses have always avoided answering, are as follows:

            Since the instigation of your company: 

            • Exactly how many people overall have signed up to become so-called 'Herbalife Distributors?' 


            • What percentage of these so-called 'Distibutors' have actually got back more money from the so-called 'Herbalife MLM Direct Selling Income Opportunity,' than they have invested in it?

            • What possible lawful reason can you put forward for withholding full, and truthful, answers to the above questions, from regulators and the public?




            Even though Bill Ackman has laid aces on the table and gone all-in financially, to date, the 'Herbalife' bosses and their remaining billionaire Wall St. supporter, Carl Icahn, have raised the stakes, whilst steadfastly refusing voluntarily to reveal their own empty hand and accusing Bill Ackman of cheating. However, the only novel attempt to maintain the multi-billion dollar 'Herbalife' bluff, comprised the bosses of the organization steadfastly pretending that they are also holding an ace. In reality, this dramatic new card was of their own manufacture and to their own devious design, because the 'Herbalife' bosses paid the Nielsen company to conduct a far-from-intellectually-rigorous survey into the ultimate source of 'Herbalife's' recent revenue, but only in the USA.


            'The Nielsen study found that 87 percent of the 349 respondents (out of 10,525 total respondents) who purchased Herbalife products for personal use in the past three months self-reported that they did not purchase it from the company as a distributor.'


            Thus, last year, the 'Herbalife' Ministry of Truth  triumphantly announced that Nielsen has conducted a study of 10 525 adult consumers, of whom 349 said that they had purchased 'Herbalife' products during the last 3 months, and of this 349, 87% (around 300) declared themselves not to be 'Herbalife Distributors.' Based on these figures, Nielsen apparently managed to extrapolate that 3.3% of the entire adult population of the USA, some 7.9 million people, bought 'Herbalife' products during the last 3 months, and that the majority of these purchases were made by legitimate end users.

            To date, it has never been publicly disclosed how much 'Herbalife' paid Nielsen to produce this survey. Nonetheless, to casual observers, when spun by the 'Herbalife' Ministry of Truth, it all sounds quite impressive; that is, until you consider that, even by 'Herbalife's' own admission, a staggering 13% of the people who apparently said yes, they had bought 'Herbalife' products in the last 3 months, did not confirm that they were not 'Herbalife Distributors,' whilst  the bosses of the 'Herbalife' racket were still boasting 550 thousands 'Distributors' in the USA. However, when put under pressure, they have previously confessed that the average, annual drop-out rate for their scheme is way above 50%, yet according to their other previous contradictory claims, over the decades this never-ending recruitment chain (already comprising millions of transient personsdidn't actually comprise 'Distributors' at all; for the 'Herbalife' bosses once suddenly said whoops, they'd 'mis-spoke,' the overwhelming majority of all these millions of so-called 'Direct Sellers' (who for more than 30 years have always been clearly described in millions of the company's own take-it-or-leave-it annual 'Distributor Contracts' as, 'Independent Business Owners') should have really been described as millions of 'Discount Customers.'




            Thus, no matter what thought-stopping bull-shit is used to cover-up all these millions of transient 'Herbalife customer /distributors,' given the fact that the acknowledged overall, hidden drop-out rate for them, has been effectively 100%, where have all these other many millions of  loyal 'Herbalife' customers (whom the Nielsen survey suddenly claims to have discovered infesting every State of the Union) been regularly buying their 'Herbalife' products from, and what prices have they been paying?

            Since Bill Ackman's $1.2 billion 'Herbalife' short-selling bet was made public, I've talked to numerous people who have been sat at the table as participants or spectators. In private, all of  them have agreed with my description of 'Herbalife' as a cult, but publicly they have deliberately avoided using the 'C' word.

            In reality, the 'Herbalife' racket is neither original nor unique and, consequently, it cannot be fully-understood in isolation.




            The original 'MLM income opportunity racketeer,' Carl F. Rehnborg (1887-1973), posing as a historically-important, visionary-scientist, autodidactic scholar and multi-millionaire, philanthropic businessman/saviour who helped thousands of people to start their own business.





            The above, Orwellian propaganda video (which employs covert hypnosis, ego-destruction, Neuro-Linguistic Programming etc.) features various exemplary schills acting out a scritpted scenario of control in which they once were like 'dirty' and 'miserable' little rats trapped on a treadmill in a form of Hell (i.e. the world of traditional employment), but after exactly duplicating a 'Proven Step-By-Step System,' they have achieved redemption as superhumans in the miraculous 'Herbalife' Utopia, where no one works, but everyone is healthy, wealthy, happy and free.... 


            ..... and also drives a Ferrari, and/or a Hummer, and/or a Bentley, and/or a Porsche!



            The self-proclaimed 'Herbalife' saviour.


                          Another 'Elmer Gantry'  



            The parallels between the aburd 'Herbalife' fairy story, originally peddled as reality by Mark Hughes (and currently by Michael Johnson and his criminal associates) and the the absurd 'Nutrilite' fairy story, originally peddled as reality by Carl F. Rehnborg (and currently by the De Vos and Van Andel clans and their criminal associates), are quite remarkable. In brief, these sanctimonious copy-cat charlatans (escorted by echelons of shyster attorneys) have played the unoriginal role of ordinary poor men, turned visionary supermen saviours - prepared to share their step-by-step secret of unlimited health, wealth, happiness and freedom with anyone (for a price). However, this is hardly surprising, because ‘Nutrilite Products Company Inc.’  was, after all, the prototype corporate-front for all subsequent 'Multi-Level Marketing Income Opportunity' cultic rackets.



            In many respects, it doesn't matter in the slightest what made-up label is fixed over the entrance to a cultic racket. Totalitarianism itself is enduring, its camouflage is ephemeral. 'Herbalife' boss, Michael Johnson (who has been described as 'the highest paid CEO in the USA'), has lately been receiving more than $80 millions annually from the 'Herbalife' racket. History proves that cult bosses feed off the unconditional deference of their deluded adherents. Consequently, no matter what damning evidence has been produced, they have continued to pretend moral and intellectual authority, and gone to almost any lengths not to be held to account.






            Despite all the kitsch contemporary advertising, in the early 1950s, 'Nutrilite' was already a highly-controversial trademark owned by Carl F. Rehnborg a.k.a. 'Dr.' Rehnborg, a previously-penniless, American toothpaste-salesman (of German origin) who'd acquired a considerable fortune by reinventing himself as a historically-important, visionary-scientist, autodidactic scholar and philanthropic businessman/saviour. Prosecutors from the US Food and Drug Administration Bureau of Enforcement, who successfully-challenged the authenticity of some of Rehnborg's many, absurd lies in the federal courts during two decades, privately knew him to be nothing more than one of a trio of sinister quacks escorted by an echelon of shyster attorneys, who’d combined, and updated, the medicine show and Ponzi-scheme to reflect the spirit of the age. However, Rehnborg was no ordinary charlatan. He almost certainly suffered from severe and inflexible Narcissistic Personality Disorder. 

            Former penniless science-fiction author, turned multi-millionaire, cultic racketeer, L. Ron Hubbard, a.k.a. 'Dr'Hubbard, posing as a historically-important,visionary scientist and philanthropist who had discovered the secret of how ordinary humans can become healthy, wealthy, happy and free super humans. Hubbard was also prepared to share this step-by-step secret with anyone (for a price).
            The Nutrilite Story


            Tellingly, Rehnborg's own comic-book version of his life and achievements (set-down in various published documents, including a book signed by his son and heir, Sam Rehnborg), reads uncannily like the autobiography dreamt-up by 'Scientology' instigator, L. Ron Hubbard - a man who was once famously described as 'a combination of  Baron Münchausen and Adolf Hitler.'


            Unfortunately, just as with the followers and casual observers of Hubbard, the only information made available to the followers and casual observers of Rehnborg, and to those of Mark Hughes, has been carefully controlled.


            Carl F. Rehnborg circa 1915

            Thus, to date, the world has been led to believe that Rehnborg (who was born in 1887 in St. Pitersberge, Florida) :- 

            - was a noted-child-prodigy who read voraciously and who amazed his teachers with his detailed knowledge of: philosophy, religion, history, politics, astronomy, mathematics, aerodynamics, chemistry and human rights. 

            - was  fluent in many languages, including Chinese. 

            - was not a believer, but he studied Christianity, making a boyhood pilgrimage to Palestine and Egypt.

            - had a great passion in his teen-age years - the study of planet Earth, its population, its food reserves, and the 'technology of conservation of natural products, but his first love was always the science of nutrition. 

             - was, by the tender age of 27, already a 'doctor of chemistry' who had moved to Tianjin in China to work as an accountant for an American Oil company.

            - ran a shipbuilding company, before becoming the representative of the 'American Dairy Company' and, eventually, the representative of 'Colgate Products Company' in Shanghai.

             - witnessed ‘mass-starvation’ in China, before surviving a ‘siege of Shanghai’ by supplementing his diet (and that of his starving friends) with an improvised, vitamin and mineral-enriched broth made from grasses, vegetables, powdered limestone, ground-up bones and rusty nails, etc.

            - sailed across the Pacific (studying its many island-cultures on the way) and landed on the West Coast of the USA, where, despite having no money, he managed to establish a 'research laboratory’ in his modest loft-apartment on California’s Balboa Island.


            - selflessly dedicated 6 years of his life (1927-1934) to develop a ‘Revolutionary New Food Supplement’ to save mankind from starvation, assisted only by his dutiful young wife, Edith.

            - first naively tried to give his wonderful new formula away, but the cynical world wasn’t interested, so, in 1934, he reluctantly decided to create ‘California Vitamins Inc.’ 

            - moved his flourishing  ‘Business’ to a ‘Manufacturing and Processing Facility’ in Buena Park, California, and created the ‘Nutrilite Products Company Inc.’ in 1939. 

            - acting in association with a ‘Network Sponsoring Company’, ‘Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.’ (to whom he’d sold ‘Exclusive Nutrilite Distribution Rights’) created the ‘World’s First Multi-Level Marketing Scheme’

            - had lived the American dream, starting from nothing to become an admired and respected millionaire through ‘Helping 15 thousands fellow Americans to build their own MLM Businesses.’ 


            Carl F. Rehnborg  circa 1936


            Exactly as with L.Ron Hubbard, scant quantifiable evidence has ever been produced to prove that Rehnborg was qualified (let alone expert) in anything, other than lying to people to get their money. There is even reason to doubt that Rehnborg (who apparently did once work for 'Colgate & Co') was in China in the exact period he claimed during, and after, WW I; whilst all the other exciting episodes in his various occidental and oriental odysseys are largely anecdotal. However, the truth about Rehnborg’s convoluted ‘Rags to Riches’ American fairy story is an entirely different matter.  




              

            In 1934, Rehnborg (aged 48) created ‘California Vitamins Inc.’, allegedly to manufacture and distribute what he arbitrarily defined as 'the World’s First Multi-Mineral/Multivitamin Plant-Based Food Supplement - a Unique Combination of Vitamins and Minerals in a Special Base.’ At first, this so-called ‘Health Tonic’ was brewed up, and peddled as 'Vita-6' a.k.a. 'Vitasol, in insignificant quantities. Consequently, it was of no particular interest to regulators. However, anyone with an ounce of common-sense could immediately tell that Rehnborg’s ‘invention’ was just another essentially-inert potion (in the absurd tradition of the medicine show); a random mixture of cheaply-procured common substances with an expensive price tag. It had probably taken Rehnborg 6 hours to concoct, not 6 years.






            By 1939, Rehnborg had spotted the existing term, 'Nutrilites' (probably, in an old Popular Science magazine). So he legally-changed the name of his pay-through-the-nose-to-play game of make-believe to the technical-sounding ‘Nutrilite Products Company Inc.’ and moved his quackery onto an almost unprecedented scale. 





            Aerial View of Nutrilite Products Inc. Plant


            Soon, Rehnborg was legally employing dozens of white-coated workers in purpose-built industrial buildings in Buena ParkCalifornia. He also acquired an alfalfa farm near to the city of Hemet in California's San Jacinto valley, but it is unclear exactly where he suddenly found all the necessary capital to pay for these impressive sites and their modern equipment. To his followers and casual observers, Rehnborg’s activity looked like any other lawful enterprise. His staff were ordinary honest folk, to whom the truth was also unthinkable. 





             Image 1 Vintage Nutrilite Food Supplement Box Only





            At this time, Rehnborg rechristened his potion ‘Nutrilite Double X (‘XX’Supplement.’ He now proposed to offer it as two ‘complimentary products’ in one pack -  comprising little green bottles of bright red ‘Multivitamin Capsules’ and pale-coloured ‘Multi-Mineral Pills.’ The product was deliberately designed to look modern and scientific (like a proprietary medicine), but, tellingly, the price was fixed at just less than $20 a box (the equivalent of several hundred dollars today). Rehnborg claimed that the ‘XX’ brand-name was derived from the Roman numeral representing twentyIt should have been read as ‘double cross;’ for when the former toothpaste salesman’s pricey wampum was routinely analysed by independent chemists working for the FDA, it was discovered that (although it contained essentially what it said on the labels and was quite harmless) ‘XX Supplement’ really did mostly comprise a random mixture of cheaply-procured, common substances (dried vegetable extracts: alfalfa; parsley; watercress; yeast; etc.). FDA experts later estimated that XX Supplement’  cost no more than a few cents a pack to produce.








            Thus, FDA lawyers must have known that Rehnborg was, in fact, using authentic pharmaceutical equipment to mass-produce a precisely-measured, harmless placebo, but labelled as a ‘Health Tonic’ (a meaningless term), and peddling it at an exorbitant mark-up (certainly, more than 1000%). This crack-pot pseudo-scientific swindle, which was tantamount to a self-styled 'alchemist' stamping a valueless amalgam of base-metals, 'Pure Gold,' and selling it for the price of pure gold, could have been quickly nipped in the bud, simply by charging Rehnborg with criminal fraud. Apparently, prosecutors never considered the possibility that they might be dealing with someone with severe psychological problems whose own inflexible delusions were contagious. Instead, at first, FDA lawyers felt obliged to take no action; reasoning that, by truthfully listing the banal ingredients, but avoiding making any specific therapeutic claims, on his packaging, Rehnborg had found a loophole in federal laws concerning criminal misbranding of medicines. As result, an up-dated version of an age-old fiction was permitted to be mass-marketed as fact to an unsuspecting public. Unfortunately, the lack of any rigorous, official challenge only brought its author more credibility. Not surprisingly, a host of copy-cat'Unique Vitamin and Mineral Health-Tonic’ scams quickly sprang up.




            As WWII drew to its close, ‘Nutrilite’ had lost its novelty, so Rehnborg (who was approaching 60) had teamed-up with two respectable-looking associates, Lee S. Mytinger and William S. Casselberry (later described by FDA officials as a ‘cemetery-plot salesman’ and a ‘psychologist’). The result was ‘Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.,’ a second corporate structure peddling ‘Exclusive Commission-Agency Rights’ to ‘Distribute XX Supplement’ using (what was first defined by the company’s owners as) a ‘New Business Model.’ In theory… you could try to sell ‘XX  Supplement’ to your social contacts for a small profit, but, if you wanted to make big money, you didn’t need to sell anything… you could buy a monthly quota of ‘XX Supplement’ yourself and sign-up your social contacts to do the same… your ‘Sponsored Recruits’ would then ‘Sponsor’ their own social contacts, etc., ‘compensation’ would automatically multiply in an infinitely-expanding geometric progression

            ‘Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.’ offered a mind-numbing contract’ in which the ‘company’ undertook to pay its ‘Independent Distributors’ an escalating ‘monthly commission’ on the totality of their escalating ‘Business Volume’ [i.e.their own regular monthly purchases (falsely defined as ‘sales’), added to the regular monthly purchases (falsely defined as ‘sales’), of their ‘Sponsored Recruits’, and those of the recruits of their recruits, etc. etcad infinitum].


            In reality, the new set-up was merely the original lie with a second chapter added, but to casual observers ‘Nutrilite Products Company Inc.’ appeared to be exclusively manufacturing for, and wholesaling ‘XX Supplement’ to, ‘Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.,’ whose commission agents, in turn, appeared to be retailing it to the public for a profit. Although‘XX Supplement’ was presented as ‘Unique,’ it mostly comprised substances which could easily be bought at a fraction of their exorbitant, assembled fixed-price, in traditional retail outlets. The product was effectively-impossible to sell to the public for a profit on the open market. Therefore, the overwhelming majority of its final customers were merely the non-salaried agents of the second corporate structure, which itself was the sole agent of the first corporate structure. In order for them to maintain the false hope that if they signed-up further contributing participants they would automatically become rich, the participants in this dissimulated money game were obliged by its rules to keep handing-over a monthly payment toMytinger and Casselberry, to be shared with Rehnborg. From all points of view (medical, economic, legal, etc.), ‘XX Supplement’ might have well not existed. It was just a convenient means of laundering illegal payments in a closed-market swindle based on the crack-pot theory of endless-chain recruitment. New victims were supplied with a $49.50 ‘Business Kit’ (i.e. a large cardboard box stuffed with a month’s supply of ‘XX Supplement’ and a fat folder containing page after page of mystifying pseudo-economic/medical presentations and diagrams, and instructions in how to go about remembering, contacting and recruiting everyone they’d ever known during their lives).









            These ostensibly 'commercial' presentations contained the concrete evidence which FDA lawyers could use to prosecute RehnborgMytinger and Casselberry. Contributing participants were being instructed to smile, project excitement and enthusiasm, and to recite a precisely-worded script which proclaimed ‘Nutrilite XX Supplement’ to be ‘good value,’ because it could ‘cure or prevent,’ virtually any known human illness.


            William W. Goodrich
            William H. Goodrich


            Interview with William W. Goodrich, Office of General Counsel, 1939 - 1971
            Even though it wasn’t his area of responsibility, FDA Legal Counsel (1939-1971), William H. Goodrich, was probably the first senior US law enforcement agent to deduce that the innocent baby that Rehnborg, Mytinger and Casselberry had baptised a ‘New Business Model’ (later to become known as: ‘Multilevel Marketing’) was actually the same old delinquent previously known a 'pyramid scam.’ Again, anyone with an ounce of common sense could work out immediately that, since Rehnborg had been peddling medical alchemythe strong likelihood was that Mytinger and Casselberry were peddling economic alchemy. The sinister trio of quacks were obviously acting in association, but agents of the Food and Drug Administration and those of the Federal Trade Commission acted independently. At this time, anti-racketeering legislation did not yet exist in the USA. However, in the late 1940s, the rapidly-expanding ‘XX Supplement’ dossier was already in the hands of FTC lawyers. Apparently, prosecutors still never considered the possibility that they might be dealing with persons suffering from severe psychological problems and whose own inflexible delusions were contagious. Instead, they still felt obliged to take no action; this time reasoning that Mytinger and Casselberry appeared to have found a loophole in federal law prohibiting fraud. For even today, the fundamental identifying characteristic of all pyramid scams and Ponzi schemes, has not yet been accurately defined by legislators. As a result, another updated version of an age-old fiction was permitted to be mass-marketed as fact to an unsuspecting publicYet again, the lack of any rigorous official challenge only brought its authors more credibility. Not surprisingly, a host of copy-cat 'income opportunity' swindles (camouflaged by banal, but pricey, wampum) quickly sprang up.




            By 1947, Rehnborg, Mytinger and Casselberry were steadfastly pretending  ‘15 000 Successful Distributorships in the USA,’ with ‘sales’ totalling ‘$500 000 dollars per month.’ They had also organised the production of a ‘Free’ booklet, ‘How to Get Well and Stay Well’, in which they further pretended that ‘Nutrilite Double X Supplement’ had ‘cured or greatly helped such common ailments’ as : ‘Low blood pressure, Ulcers, Mental depression, Pyorrhoea, Muscular twitching, rickets, Worry over small things, Tonsillitis, Hay Fever, Sensitivity to noise, Underweight, Easily tired, Gas in stomach, Cuts heal slowly, Faulty vision, Headache, Constipation, Anaemia Boils, Flabby tissues, Hysterical tendency, Eczema, Overweight, Faulty memory, Lack of ambition, Certain Bone conditions, Nervousness, Nosebleed, Insomnia, Allergies, Asthma, Restlessness, Bad skin colour, Poor appetite, Biliousness, Neuritis, Night blindness, Migraine, High blood pressure, Sinus trouble, Lack of concentration, Dental caries, Irregular heartbeat, Colitis, Craving for sour foods, Arthritis, Rheumatism, Neuralgia, Deafness, Subject to colds.’



            Carl.F. Rehnborg circa 1950

            Rhenborg now cast himself in the role of ‘Scientific Adviser’ to ‘Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.’ He toured the USA preaching the gospel to wide-eyed ‘Distributors’ - ‘for less than $20 a month’‘Nutrilite Double X Supplement’ was the ‘Answer to Man’s Search for Health.’ After both companies’ owners were approached by FDA officials and warned that they could face criminal prosecution for misbranding, the booklet was ‘revised.’ Specific therapeutic claims were supposed to be eliminated. ‘All illnesses’ suddenly became a ‘state of nonhealth’ produced by ‘chemical imbalance’.… ‘Nutrilite XX Supplement’ cured nothing, it merely ‘enabled people to Get Well and stay Well’ by themselves. However, pages 41-52 of the booklet still recounted alleged case-histories explaining that ‘Nutrilite brought relief from such ailments as diabetes, feeble mindedness, stomach pains, sneezing and weeping.’ Not surprisingly, the FDA officials were not impressed, so they finally launched a number of raids, and seizures of ‘Nutrilite XX Supplement’ and associated publications.





            In 1951, after a series of lawsuits, appeals and counter suits (in which Mytinger and Casselberry hired top lawyers who portrayed their clients as American capitalist heroes being crushed by Soviet-style bureaucracy), the FDA obtained (on behalf of the people) a permanent Supreme Court injunction against ‘Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.’ preventing ‘Distributors’ from referring to 50 publications making false claims about ‘Health Tonics and Food Supplements’ (including various ‘Revised Editions’ of ‘How to Get Well and Stay Well’). FDA agents soon found that the injunction was being flouted. As a result of mounting complaints, they infiltrated the organization (as potential recruits) and recorded deluded proselytisers chanting the same absurd, but potentially lethal, cure-all mantra about ‘XX Supplement.’ Faced with more litigation and fearing that their monopoly of information might be lost, in 1954, Rehnborg, Mytinger and Casselberry hired a leading advertising agency which handled the clean-cut Hollywood star, Alan Ladd. Along with his wife and children, Alan Ladd then featured in a kitsch 'Nutrilite' advertising campaign - published in various mainstream magazines right up until 1959.  






             


            The charlatan-trio, 'Mytinger, Casselberry and Rhenborg,' also paid a team of Hollywood professionals to produce a 20 minute colour propaganda film, From the Ground up’ (featuring themselves as three nice ordinary American guys turned philanthropic scientists and industrialists), and they began to publish their own propaganda magazine, ‘Nutrilite News’ (stuffed with colour photos of happy, healthy and wealthy ‘Distributors’). Soon, they were organizing ‘Rallies and Seminars’ (addressed by ‘Successful Christian Distributors’ like Rich De Vos and Jay Van Andel). No quantifiable evidence (in the form of audited accounts) was ever produced to prove what percentage of claimed ‘sales’ were authentic retail transactions to the public for a profit, or how many people who’d signed a ‘contract’ with ‘Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.’ had actually received an overall net-profit from the operation of what its instigators arbitrarily defined as an ‘MLM income opportunity’. Excluding the tiny percentage of grinning schills at the top of the pyramid, the hidden, rolling insolvency/churn-rate was 100%. Since there was no significant or sustainable external revenue, participants were actually buying infinite shares in their own finite money. 




                      Jay VanAndel                                                             Richard DeVos

            circa 1960



            In 1959, when it seemed that ‘Mytinger and Casselberry/Nutrilite Products Inc.’ might finally be shut down (under the ‘Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act 3381-3383’, rather than anti-pyramid scams legislation) De Vos and Van Andel hid behind familiar words and images stolen from popular culture. They created the ‘American Way Association’ - the first of what was to become a shoal of red, white and blue herrings.








            The original 'Nutrilite' lie was progressively-absorbed back into the spin-off 'Amway' lie, 1972-1994, where it still is peddled as the truth.





             



            Readers will observe that almost ever single thought-stopping technique present in the 'Herbalife'racket, has also been present in the 'Nutrilite' racket. Yesterday's clean-cut Hollywood stars, have been replaced by today's beautiful sports stars. 





            ss-wm-julie-a





            Down the centuries, in essence, the dramatic 'before and after' ritual imagery used by quacks to ensnare the gullible, never changes





            Unfortunately, the bosses of 'Herbalife' and 'Amway' are far from being the only cultic racketers to have employed co-ordinated devious techniques of persuasion (including association with celebrities and opinion makers), in order to commit fraud and prevent their victims from facing reality.


            David Brear (copyright 2014)



            Dieudonné and David Irving, their struggle (with reality).

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            Dieudonné M'bala M'bala (b. 1966)

            Recently, several English people have asked me for my opinion of Dieudonné M'bala M'bala (Dieudonné translates as 'God's Gift'). Essentially, these enquirers want to know if Dieudonné has instigated a cult? 




            'Ridicule alone isn’t enough, you’ve got to be tasteless about it. You’ve got to say things like More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.'



            David John Cawdwell Irving (b. 1938)




            Dieudonné, is neither original nor unique and, consequently, his activities cannot be fully-understood in isolation. In this article, I compare the reality-denying, public performances of Dieudonné, to those of David Irving. Indeed (although the pair are apparently not directly linked) they are evidently both living in essentially the same intellectual bunker with the door firmly shut. Classically of narcissistic personalities, Irving and Dieudonné have received a temporary boost to their inflated egos (as well as a temporary boost to their inflated bank balances), by reflecting, and peddling, the existing delusions of their fellow bunker-dwellers as reality, whilst provoking outsiders. Their public denial, and/or trivialising, of the Holocaust and defence of Hitler, has been guaranteed to attract a receptive audience and to make many usually calm people (and particularly, usually calm Jewish people) boil with rage.





            Prior to 1997, Dieudonné was a popular and talented comic (a national celebrity in France) whose stage partner, Elie Semoun, was Jewish. Dieudonné also dabbled in politics - standing as a way-left of centre anti-racist, anti-French National Front candidate.




            Although he now professes to be a 'Muslim,' to date, no one really knows who, or what, might be lurking behind Dieudonné's sudden personality transformation. There has been a lot of wild speculation, for today, Dieudonné still appears on stage in what he insists are 'comedy shows,' but these pay-to-enter  gatherings (43 Euros per ticket) have been used to dissimulate a form of abusive/extremist political meeting in which Dieudonné plays the innocent victim whilst acting out a complex 'Zionist' global conspiracy theory as though it is reality. Like David Irving, Dieudonne has attempted to hide behind laws protecting free-speech. However, his heartless, and outrageous,  mocking of holocaust victims has led to him being convicted of defamation, incitement of hatred and racial discrimination. Although his fines now total more than Euros 60 000, so far, Dieudonné has avoided paying, because (on paper) he is bankrupt. 

            http://www.lematin.ch/monde/europe/garde-dieudonne-levee/story/13603427

            Last week Dieudonné was questioned by Gendarmes concerning a violent incident with bailiffs seeking to collect his unpaid fines. Certain French commentators have already concluded that he is the charismatic focus of a new form of unifying extremist political cult, because his adherents comprise diverse groups of persons who usually are sworn enemies.



            Dieudonné receives support from the former leader of the French National Front, Jean-Marie le Pen.

            Dieudonne with Jean-Marie le Pen .


            Dieudonné has had everyone, from members of the French National Front to Islamist sympathisers, swallowing his unoriginal act.



            Other people seem to come along wanting to see just how far Dieudonné is prepared to go with his reckless provocation of authority.

            .


            Dieudonné's'comedy shows' have recently been closed-down at the request the current French Interior Minister, Manuel Valls, who received the backing of the French courts. This extraordinary measure was taken on the grounds that the continued anti-Semitic content of Dieudonné's message, despite previous judgements, reveals his deliberate intention to flout the law, and represents an ongoing threat to public order.




            Manuel Valls (who is Jewish) has been deliberately targeted and provoked by Dieudonné and his supporters.


            Faced with the threat of closure, Dieudonné initially claimed to have toned down the most-provocative content of his message, and his attorney even announced that all previous fines would be paid if his client's shows were allowed to go ahead as planned. However, Dieudonné evidently fears an investigation by the French authorities into his money-making activities. In brief, Dieudonné already stands accused by the press of using his wife, and members of his family, to set up an unlawful labyrinth of corporate structures in order to export the mounting profits from his growing-notoriety, out of the reach of the French taxman and effectively isolate himself from liability for his crimes. Apparently, Euros 400 000 has already vanished in the direction of Africa.



            French professional footballer (and Dieudonné's long-time friend), Nicolas Anelka, is to be charged by the English Football Association with making Dieudonné's strangled 'Nazi'salute, known as the 'quenelle.'




            Anelka's involvement has only brought more attention and profits to Dieudonné; whilst, ironically, the so-called'quenelle,' in fact, originally comes from the classic 1964 Stanley Kubrick black comedy film, 'Dr. Strangelove.'





            Readers will perhaps recall that Stangelove (a comically-gruesome former 'Nazi' scientist,played by the late Peter Sellers), gets so excited by the prospect of a nuclear holocaust, that he loses control of the right half of his body. Strangelove keeps attempting to strangle his involuntary 'Nazi' salute to the US president( also played by Sellers)with the left half of his body. This comic scene is what is actually being replicated in the so-called 'quenelle'- it is a gesture originally designed to ridicule deeply-deluded worshippers of a pathetic little narcissist, Adolf Hitler.

            At this point, I would remind readers, that Hitler became one of the wealthiest people in the world, via the sale of books, esoteric accessories and tickets to his performances in which he acted out a complex global Jewish conspiracy theory as though it was reality. Hitler also avoided paying tax by hiding his profits behind a labyrinth of corporate structures.

            Typically, Diedonneé claims his quenelle gesture to be anti-Zionist and anti-establishment and not anti-Semitic.

            It is, in fact, none of these things and all of these things, because it all depends on what is/was the real intention of the person making the so-called'quenelle'gesture.


            On November 11th  2005, the controversial British author and self-styled ‘WWII historical researcher,’ David Irving, was arrested in the southern Austrian State of Styria on charges of ‘denying the Holocaust’ under a warrant issued in 1989. Since the end of WWII, it has been a criminal offence to deny the Holocaust (in public) in numerous European democracies liberated from rule by the closed-logic‘Nazi’ myth of ‘Aryan Supremacy.’Although Irving was fully-aware that he had been barred from entering Austria (where he risked 10 years imprisonment), he did not seek to hide his presence. According to his Danish partner, Bente Hogh, Irving had gone there as ‘a bit of fun, to provoke a little bit.’In other words, the notoriously litigious author had deliberately sought confrontation with the law, and it was particularly shameful that Armistice Day should have been chosen to stage this narcissistic self-publicity stunt.

            Soon after his arrest, Irving issued a precisely-worded statement (via his lawyer, Elmar Kresbach), in which heacknowledged ‘the existence of Nazi-era gas chambers.’Irving seems to have convinced himself that this empty gesture would be sufficient for him to dodge prison.


            From the mid-1980s (when he became associated with the California-based, Holocaust-denying ‘Institute for Historical Review’), Irving has descended into the stale darkness of an existing intellectual bunker whilst steadfastly preaching the good news of Hitler’s innocence to a host of receptive far-right groups. In 1988, he sealed the door of the bunker when he appeared as defence witness for another Holocaust-denier, Ernst Zündel, in Toronto and stated (on oath):

            ‘I don’t think there was an overall Reich policy to kill the Jews. If there was, they would have been killed and there would not be now so many millions of survivors.’


            In 1991, Irving was recorded in Canada, strutting his stuff before a flock of fellow bunker-dwellers.


            On the above tape (after approximately 10 minutes), Irving says: 'Ridicule alone isn’t enough, you’ve got to be tasteless about it. You’ve got to say things like More women died on the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. (laughter applause) Now you think that’s tasteless? What about this? I’m forming an association especially dedicated to all these liars, the ones who try to kid people that they were in these concentration camps, it’s called the Auschwitz Survivors, Survivors of the Holocaust and Other Liars, A-S-S-H-O-L-E-S.’ Can’t get more tasteless than that, but you’ve got to be tasteless because these people deserve our contempt.’ 




            Irving himself was first convicted for ‘defaming the (Auschwitz) dead’ by a German court. He was fined $6000 and barred from entering Germany in 1992. He immediately appealed, but compounded his offence by declaring:

            ‘There were no gas chambers at Auschwitz, I will not change my opinion.’(His appeal was declined and he was fined an additional $12 000).

            Later, in 1992, Irving was also barred from Australia, Canada and South Africa. This led to him being deported from Canada.

            David Duke

            In 1994, he was the star-turn at a rally organized by the leadership of the American neo-Nazi’ movement and attended by the former, self-appointed leader of the ‘KKK,’David Duke. 




            In 2004, Irving was refused entry to New Zealand on the grounds of his 1992 German conviction and because (at various times) he’d been deported from (and/or refused entry to) Canada, Italy, the USA and South Africa. However, this didn’t stop Irving from staging yet another stunt in which he tried (unsuccessfully) to board a Quantas flight from LA to New Zealand.

            On February 20th  2006, Irving appeared in Vienna’s largest courtroom charged with denying the Holocaust in two speeches delivered to far-right groups in Austria in 1989. Although he pleaded guilty, under Austrian law (at the request of the State Prosecutor, Michael Klackl) Irving’s trial was allowed to run its course. Klackl explained that Irving had declaredthe gas chambers at Auschwitz to be a‘fairytale’and death camp survivors to be‘psychiatric cases.’Judge Peter Liebtreu asked Irving if he still held these views. Irving now claimed that he’d made a mistake in saying there were no gas chambers in Auschwitz.’He was ‘not sure how many people had died in Auschwitz,’ but he still believed that ‘Hitler protected the Jews’ and ‘tried to put off the Final Solution.’

            Irving’s Lawyer failed to convince the jury that his client wasjust a harmless old man with a 12 year old daughter and sick wife to support.He was found guilty and sentenced to 3 years imprisonment. Judge Liebtreu described him as ‘a racist, an anti-Semite and a liar.’ 


            Judge Liebtreu referred to a previous trial in which Irving had maliciously sought to suppress, a book, ‘Denying the Holocaust,’ written by an Jewish / American academic, Deborah Lipstadt. In this, Irving was not only identified as a ‘Holocaust denier,’ but also as a ‘falsifier and bigot’ who ‘manipulated and distorted real documents.’ 



            In 1998, Irving sued Lipstadt and her publishers, Penguin Books, for libel in the English High Court. Lipstadt and Penguin were represented by the noted English barrister, Anthony Julius, who produced Richard J. Evans (Professor of Modern History, Cambridge University) as an expert witness. Prof. Evans and his research assistants took 2 years going through Irving’s published works with a fine tooth-comb. They came up with a stack of distortions, and irrefutable evidence that Irving had also knowingly included material sourced from forged documents. Prof. Evans made the following statement to the court:

            ‘Not one of (Irving’s) books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he talking or writing about… if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian.’

            During the English trial, Irving represented himself, and (largely ignoring the evidence against him) concentrated on what he insisted was his ‘right to free speech.’He claimed that for three decades he’d been the victim of an international, mostly Jewish, conspiracy.At one point in Irving’s closing speech (March 15th  2000) there occurred a surreal moment, again reminiscent of ‘Dr Strangelove.’ He seemed to address the Judge, Charles Gray, as ‘mein führer.’Irving lost the case and his later attempts to appeal were denied. He was ordered to pay an estimated $6 millions costs. Finally exposed as a dangerous manipulator living in a paranoid delusion of his own absolute moral and intellectual authority, Irving filed for bankruptcy. Judge Gray had concluded that:

            ‘Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in a favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is an anti-Semitic and racist, and that he associates with right-wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism.’

            Irving was detained in the Josefstadt Prison in central Vienna, where he waited for yet another pointless appeal to be heard. In a BBC Radio 4 interview (recorded in Josefstadt prison and broadcast on February 28th 2006) Irving sounded quite rational, but what he said was anything but. He calmly asserted that the world’s historians have all lied about the Holocaust because, if they told the truth, they too would be sent to prison. Interestingly, Irving described his prison cell as ‘paradise for a writer.’ He stated that he would spend his time finishing his memoirs,‘Irving’s War.’ It’s not difficult to guess from whom he copied this latest career move, but how could Irving ever have come to identify with a megalomaniacal psychopath, Adolf Hitler? For that matter, how could he have overlooked the mountain of quantifiable evidence proving the Nazi regime’s systematic manipulation, cheating, dispossession and destruction of millions of innocent men, women and children? To anyone who has researched cultic groups, Irving’s own story is frighteningly familiar.

            David John Cawdwell Irving was born in March 1938 in Hutton, near to Brentwood, Essex. He was one of twin boys with one older brother.


            By a cruel twist of fate, in the week of David Irving's birth, the keel was laid for a brand new Royal Navy Cruiser, HMS Edinburgh. 
            HMS Marlborough
            John James Cawdwell (Jack) Irving 

            David Irving’s father was a middle-aged, Royal Navy Lieutenant-Commander, Jack Irving, who had survived the (8000+ death) battle of Jutland during WW I, and who went on to serve aboard HMS Edinburgh during the early years of WW II. 


            On April 30th 1942, the Cruiser was escorting a homeward-bound Russian convoy, QP-11, in the icy waters of the Barents Sea, when she was hit by two torpedoes from a German U-Boat. Two days later, a partly crippled HMS Edinburgh was attacked by German Destroyers off Bear Island and torpedoed again. This time, she was abandoned and later sunk by HMS Foresight. Although 58 crew members perished, Irving’s father was again amongst the survivors. Deeply traumatised by this experience, Lieutenant-Commander Irving abandoned his family, dying (two years after his wife, Beryl) in 1967.

            Beryl Irene Newington Irving, David Irving's mother
            Beryl Irene Newington Irving (1953)

            David Irving was brought up by his mother, Beryl , an illustrator. He attended St Anthony Brownes’s Grammar School, Brentwood, where he was considered to be well above average academically. He later attended the London School of Economics and Imperial College London, where, whilst studying physics, he wrote articles for the student journal, ‘Phoenix,’ and he edited the London University magazine, ‘Carnival Times.’ 


            As a child, Irving had already exhibited the desire to attract attention by being provocative, but, in 1959, he wrote and published a supplement to ‘Carnival Times’ containing racist cartoons, a defence of apartheid and Nazism and an accusation that the British press was controlled by Jews. Not surprisingly, Irving (aged 21) found himself in the headlines. He was branded as a self-confessed fascist and fan of Hitler by ‘the Daily Mail.’ Deprived of money, he was obliged to quit University. He tried to take-up his deferred National Service. Rejected by the RAF as being medically unfit, Irving went to Germany, where, whilst learning to speak German, he worked as a labourer at the Thyssen steel works in the Ruhr.



            He soon married and moved to Spain to work on an airbase in a clerical capacity (eventually, Irving and his wife, Pilar, produced 4 daughters, one of whom died in 1999). 


            The Destruction of Dresden, Irving, David


            During 1962, a series of 37 articles by Irving were accepted by a right wing German magazine. In 1963, these were used as the framework for his first book, ‘The Destruction of Dresden’ — a fully-illustrated account of the carpet bombing of Dresden during February 1945. The morality of the WW II allied bombing campaign was already the focus of a fierce debate in Britain, Germany and the USA. Throughout the 1960s, Irving’s book (in which he described the Dresden raids as ‘the worst single massacre in European history’) featured on best seller lists in numerous countries, and for a long time he was recognised as an authority on the subject.However, the first edition of ‘The Destruction of Dresden,’ in which Irving (aged 25) estimated the number of German deaths at between 100 000 and 250 000, and subsequent editions, in which he reduced his estimate to between 50 and 100 000 deaths, are discredited. It is now a matter of public record that Irving’s figures were bogus and that between 25 000 and 30 000 people actually died in the Dresden raids.



            Irving would later use the fact that he had (in March 1962) interviewed the wartime chief of RAF Bomber Command, Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris, to support his published claims.

            During the 1960s, Irving also brought out: ‘The Mare’s Nest’ (1964) and ‘The Virus House’ - accounts of Nazi secret weapons projects; ‘The (translated) memoirs of Field Marshal Keitel’ (1965); ‘Accident, The Death of General Sikorski’ (1967) - in which Irving implied that the exiled WW II Polish leader had been murdered at the direction of Churchill and other Allied leaders; ‘The Destruction of Convoy PQ-17’ (1968) - in which he libelled Commander Jack Broome RN. 


            David Irving, Jack Broome
             David Irving with Jack Broome


            In 1970, Irving and his publisher were sued for libel by Jack Broome. They were forced to pay him £48 000 damages + approximately £500 000 costs and withdraw the offending-book from circulation.

            David Irving with Hitler's Armaments Minister, Albert Speer
            With Hitler's secretary, Christa Shroeder 1976.

            During the 1970s, Irving was introduced to various surviving members of Hitler’s entourage via German far-right groups. He was immediately recognised as a kindred spirit and was given access to private diaries and documentation. Irving then published‘The (translated) Memoirs of General Gehlen’ (1972) and ‘The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe’ (1973) - a biography of Air Marshall Milch. Although his books were particularly well-written, and packed with incidental information which appealed to the general public, Irving was shunned by professional historians.




            In 1977, Irving (aged 39) suddenly brought out ‘Hitler’s War,’ a reality-inverting portrayal of the führer’ as an innocent politician whose only crime had been the desire to increase the prosperity of the German people.At this time, Irving had not yet begun to deny the Holocaust. However, he did claim that Hitler had no knowledge of it.‘Hitler’s War’ was quickly followed by ‘The Trail of the Fox’— a revisionist biography of Rommel, in which Irving portrayed the Field Marshall as a loyal supporter of Hitler, framed and forced to kill himself by the architects of the plot to murder the führer. Irving condemnedthe members of the plot as ‘traitors, cowards and manipulators,’and, thus, sought to justify the barbaric treatment they received at the hands of the Nazi regime (after torture and show-trial, they were skewered-alive on meat hooks). In 1978, Irving published ‘The War Path’a reality-inverting account of theperiod immediately prior to WW II. 



            Irving's books were commercially successful, but now, for obvious reasons, he was being openly criticised as a ‘Nazi apologist’ by the press and by mainstream academics. He didn’t care, he was living the high-life with a apartment in Mayfair, a Rolls-Royce and a string of attractive, young, female‘research assistants.’

            Following his divorce in 1981, Irving brought out ‘The War Between the Generals’ - in which he again attempted to distort history. This time he ditched his lofty style and descended into the gutter. He described savage disputes which he claimed to have taken place between the military leaders of various nations comprising the Allied High Command during WW II. Irving also dug-up lurid rumours concerning the private lives of various Allied Generals. He then published ‘Uprising’ an analysis of the 1956 Hungarian revolt, in which he made absurd claims thattheSoviet regime was controlled by Jews and that the Hungarian people had actually risen up against these Jews not against the Soviets.Irving was now dismissed as a crank and both these books were commercial failures. When he published ‘Churchill’s War, Volume I’(1987) - in which he portrayed Britain’s heroic wartime leader as a racist, coward, womanizer, alcoholic and puppet of ‘international Jewry,’ and a biography of Herman Göring (1989) - in which he attempted to convince us thatthe Reichmarshall was really a fun-loving guy who’dopposed the Nazi persecution of the Jews,the world had almost ceased taking notice of David Irving. Desperate to maintain his lifestyle, Irving staged his most-notorious self-publicity stunt (i.e. his failed libel suit against Lipstadt and Penguin) Currently, his readership comprises the adherents of far-right groups, upon whom he depends to peddle his latest (self-published) tomes. Prior to his bankruptcy, Irving was accused of stealing valuable historical documents and trying to sell them, and of refusing to refund advance payments for books which he had never produced.

            Who knows what David Irving might have achieved with his life, had his daddy come home from the War?


            David Brear (copyright 2014)

            'Amway' racketeer, Doug DeVos, has tried to deceive the Indian authorities.

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            Doug DeVos, one of the narcissistic bosses of the blame-the-victim'MLM Income Opportunity'racket known as 'Amway,' has recently been in India as part of a flagrant attempt to obstruct justice in order to continue to commit fraud. Laughably, even though common-sense, as well as his company's own documentation, has proved that virtually no 'Amway' wampum has ever been sold to the general public (based on value and demand), in what appears to be a sham interview with Ratna Bhushan of the Economic Times of India, DeVos steadfastly pretended that :

             'the direct selling industry hopes to make its messages clearer and simpler to its stakeholders in India besides convincing the authorities that it's a bonafide business and not to be confused with scamsters running pyramid schemes. '



            http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2013/05/william-s-pinckney-boss-of-amway-india.html


            'Amway'stooge, William Pinckney, and two expendable associates (Sanjay Malhotra and Anshu Budhraja), are still facing charges of fraud in the Indian state of Kerala. Yet it is US based racketeers, like Doug DeVos, who have been pocketing most of the cash.


            When fed a sycophantic question about the recent arrest for fraud of'Amway's'Indian stooges, Doug DeVos recited absurd lies, whilst pretending affinity with the Indian public and regulators:

            'Regulation was misapplied to our industry and that should not happen. We have been in operation for 100 years... We are as interested in identifying fraud and protecting consumers from fraud as the government is.'


            Meanwhile, back in the adult world of reality, it wasn't Indian trade regulators who arrested William Pinckney, and his associates, and charged them with criminal fraud, it was the Indian police. Indeed, if I was a senior Indian law enforcement agent, I'd be very interested to know how such an obvious racket as 'Amway' got past Indian trade regulators in the first place; for over 60 years of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science hiding in plain view, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term, 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (lurking behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs,' etc.).







            No matter what world-class liars like Doug DeVos continue to claim, no free-thinking observer now seriously disputes that the most-deluded, core-'MLM' adherents see the world only in two illusory dimensions, 'positive vs negative.' 

            Indian  'Amway' adherents at a typical pay-through-the-nose-to-enter'MLM' orgy of deluded self-gratification.








            The growing mountain of evidence shows that vast numbers of ill-informed victims have been deceived into entering this style of dissimulated cultic swindle, then, on the pretext that 'the exact duplication of a step-by-step positive plan will lead to success and limitless financial freedom,they have been intellectually-castrated (without their fully-informed consent) so that their minds will only accept what their leaders have arbitrarily defined as 'positive,' whilst systematically excluding what these same cultic charlatans have arbitrarily defined as 'negative.' Thus, when seen only in the fake 'positive' context of: 'Business', 'Independence', 'Financial Freedom' , 'Low Risk' , 'Direct Selling', 'High Quality, Good-Value, Scientifically-Proven Products', 'Research','Development', etc. 'MLM income opportunities' can appear to be authentic. 

            Hiding in plain view - the'Amway'bosses used stolen money to co-opt a popular Bollywood star, Diya Mirza, in order to shut down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims and casual observers in India.

            Sadly, this dangerous inversion of reality has been further confirmed by celebrity/political/scientific/corporate endorsements contained in glossy-advertising. 

            Self-evidently, when the wider-picture is examined (by persons with fully-functioning critical and evaluative faculties), all two-dimensional 'MLM' propaganda forms a pattern of ongoing, major, racketeering activity, because these artificially-created, fake 'positive' contexts have actually been financed by the proceeds of crime in order to perpetrate further crime and to prevent the victims from confronting reality and complaining. 


            David Brear (copyright 2014)

            Proposed Kerala State legislation on 'MLM direct selling,' is fundamentally flawed and dangerous.

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            As part of a pattern of ongoing, major racketeering activity (that now stretches back at least 60 years), in June 1994, representatives of the US-based ‘Amway’ crime families approached the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry  (Dept. of Industrial Development) bearing gifts.




            By steadfastly pretending affinity with officials (who, naturally, wanted to believe that all external investment creates employment), the ‘Amway’ crime families initially sought an agreement (renewable biannually) which simply paved the way for the creation a privately-controlled, unlimited-liability, commercial company, ‘Amway India Enterprises.’ As a subsidiary (entirely owned by its American parent company), the representatives of the ‘Amway’ racketeers meekly accepted that ‘Amway India Enterprises’  would be forbidden to manufacture or import. The proposed company would be permitted only to use its Multi-Level Marketing Business Model’ to sell products sourced from local, independent, Indian manufacturers. Furthermore, ‘Amway India Enterprises’ was obliged to file a separate agreement with the Reserve Bank of India, allowing the proposed subsidiary to transfer capital to, and from, its parent and, thus, act as a de facto, foreign exchange dealer. 


            dipp


            Consequently, without any informed scrutiny, officials at the Indian Ministry of Industry, Secretariat for Industrial Approval (Foreign Collaborations II Section) rubber-stamped the application for the proposed 'Amway' company (within less than two months) on August 26th 1994.





            http://www.fipbindia.com/

            Twelve months later,'Amway India Enterprises' was legally-registered after final approval by the Indian 'Foreign Investment Promotion Board.'








            In this way, America’s contemporary version of the Trojan Horse was dragged unnoticed into India with the assistance of the country’s own naïve regulators. However, it lay dormant until May 5th 1998 when a network of regional offices began to be established. 





            Six years later, the destructive contents finally began to spill out. On August 8th 2004, the (apparently safe) original (biannual) agreement was mysteriously altered (at the request of the corporate officers of Amway India Enterprises’) allowing the unregulated manufacture, and/or importation, of ‘Amway’s’ own range of effectively-unsaleable household, beauty and health products.






            At no stage did Indian officials bother to apply common-sense and ask how the so-called MLM Business Opportunity’ could possibly be economically-viable, and lawful, when ‘Amway’ products were now, self-evidently, several times the price of equivalent (and often superior) merchandise widely-available in traditional Indian retail outlets? Yet, implicit to the modified agreement was the understanding that Amway India Enterprises’ would respect Indian law and recruit non-salaried agents who could earn commission payments from retailing products to the public. In plain language, Indian officials were deceived by the de facto agents of US-based racketeers. 






            That said, it is not known what other inducements (if any) these conveniently-blind civil servants received.


            The guts of above information comes from a landmark judgement given on July 19th 2007 against ‘Amway India Enterprises’  by Chief Justice G.S. Singhvi, and Justice C.V. Nagarjuna Reddy, of the High Court of Judicature, Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad.


            In 2006, the Criminal Investigations Dept. of theHyderabad police raided, and sealed, the local offices of ‘Amway India Enterprises’ arresting various employees, following a particularly detailed complaint filed by A.V.S. Satyanarayana under the ‘Prize Chits and Money Circulation (banning) Act, 1978.’ This courageous individual confessed that he had been deceived into wasting a significant amount of time and money after having being subjected to overwhelming psychological pressure to join ‘Amway’ by two dominant men in his own social circle. Within three days of the registration of this complaint, aggressive lawyers acting for Amway India Enterprises’ issued two writs against the Hyderabad CID. Typically, ‘Amway’ posed as the innocent victim under attack. Ignoring all quantifiable evidence to the contrary, the lawyers steadfastly pretended that their employer’s ‘MLM Business Opportunitywas entirely legal and that ‘Amway India Enterprises’ was acting with the full-approval of the Indian government. Therefore, the Andhra Pradesh police had neither reason nor authority to launch such a heavy-handed investigation, and, thus, damage, a legitimate business. At the same time, both the lawyers and corporate officers of ‘Amway India Enterprises’ tried to convince the world that Satyanarayana was a pathetic liar who had filed a malicious complaint as the result of a marital/financial dispute which had, itself, resulted in his pursuing a vendetta against members of his family who were ‘Amway Distributors.’ Ironically, it was ‘Amway India Enterprise’s’ own malicious writs which brought the company under the rigorous scrutiny of the Andhra Pradesh High Court.



            Simply by applying common-sense, Chief Justice Singhvi and Justice Reddy were immediately able to see that the ‘Amway MLM’ fairy story is far too good to be true. Then, by ignoring the scripted-lies of ‘Amway’s’ attorneys, and by concentrating on the compelling testimony of the victim (backed up by documentary evidence), they deduced that the so-called MLM Income Opportunity’ is in breach of Indian legislation. Despite the mystifying, linguistic and mathematical complexity of ‘Amway’s’ corporate camouflage, de facto agents of the company actually propagate the self-gratifying delusion that limitlessprosperity can eventually be obtained without any further effort simply by regularly purchasing products and recruiting others to do the same, etc., ad infinitum. As a consequence, the two writs were dismissed, and the High Court of Andhra Pradesh ordered that the Hyderabad Criminal Investigation Dept. should be allowed to continue to follow whatever procedures are permitted by law to hold the corporate officers of  ‘AmwayIndia Enterprises’ to account.






            Yet, seven
             years later, despite the boss of'Amway India Enterprises' being arrested for, and charged with, fraud in the Indian State of Kerala in 2013, amazingly, the 'MLM Income Opportunity' virus still continues to infect India, whilst India legislators continue to be approached by the representatives of US-based racketeers who, obviously, do not wish to have their real activities rigorously investigated by independent Indian law enforcement agents. 




            Self-evidently, the main beneficiaries of the ‘Amway’ racket in India, have not been Indian citizens. Like the Empress of India in the 19th. century, the fabulously-wealthy bosses of the ‘Amway’ Empire have ruled from a safe distance.




            http://www.kerala.gov.in/docs/bills/1160_14.pdf


            The Kerala State Multi Level Marketing (Control and Regulation) Bill, 2013 (Draft)



            As per G.O. (MS) No.3/2013/ID dated 10.01.2013, the Government has constituted a Committee headed by the Secretary (Industries), consisting of the representatives of the Law Department, Home Department, Commercial Taxes Department and the Consumer Affairs Department for examining all relevant aspects concerning the direct marketing in the State and for preparing a draft Bill for the consideration of the Government.
              
            The final draft Bill approved by the Committee has been submitted for the 
            consideration of the Government.
            REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE FOR PREPARATION OF DRAFT BILL TO
            CONTROL THE MULTI-LEVEL MARKETING IN THE STATE, CONSTITUTED
            UNDER G.O.(MS) NO.3/2013/ID DATED 10.01.2013.

            Suggestions / recommendations are invited from the public and stakeholders :
            E-mail:                     industriesbdepartment@gmail.com
            Postal Address:       The Principal Secretary to Government,
                                             Industries (B) Department
                                             Government Secretariat
                                             Thiruvananthapuram – 695 001.
            Last date:                 15.02.2014 (till 5.15 PM)


            http://www.kerala.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=4759&Itemid=2919

            _____________________________________________________________________


            In response to the above appeal, today the following suggestion was sent to the Principal Secretary to Government, Industries (B) Department Government Secretariat Thiruvananthapuram – 695 001.
             
            I regret to inform you, but this proposed Kerala legislation is fundamentally flawed and dangerous, because it contains the classic meaningless definition of MLM direct selling which has obviously been fed to ill-informed legislators in Kerala by the agents ofUS-based 'income opportunity' racketeers:

            “multi-level marketing” or “direct selling” means marketing and sale of goods or providing services of amulti-level marketing entity through direct sellers or
            through direct sellers and distributors, otherwise than through shops, to the
            customers or consumers, generally in their houses or at their workplace or

            through explanation and demonstration of such goods and services at a
            particular place or by mail order sale;

            In order for any Indian legislation to have a chance of functioning and protecting the Indian public, legislators must first demonstrate that they have a clear understanding of the universal characteristic that identifies the presence of fraud dissimulated as 'MLM direct selling.' i.e. An absence of significant, regular retail sales to the general public (based on value and demand).

            Thus, any common-sense legal definition of direct selling, must not contain the misleading jargon terms, 'Multi-Level Marketing
            'and 'customers and consumers,'but should clearly state that :


            A lawful, economically-viable direct selling scheme is one sponsored by persons who can (on request) immediately provide quantifiable evidence that the overwhelming majority of the scheme's declared 'sales' have, in fact, always been authentic transactions comprising the regular retailing of goods, and/or services, directly to the general public (based on value and demand) via commission-agents: and not an economically-unviable money circulation scheme, pyramid fraud or closed-market swindle, largely-comprising losing investment payments made by a never-ending chain of ill-informed participants (based on the false-expectation of future reward), but laundered as'sales' by the sponsors who have arbitrarily, and falsely, defined the never-ending chain of losing investors as 'independent distributors/customers/consumers/end users, etc.' and supplied these persons with over-priced effectively-unsaleable commodities (often of a dubious pseudo-medical nature), and/or over-priced effectively-unsaleable services, in order to dissimulate their criminal objectives and obstruct investigation/prosecution. 

            Yours sincerely

            David Brear (copyright 2014)

            A Happy 'Herbalife (HLF)' birthday to Carl Icahn.

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            Carl Icahn (b. February 16th 1936)

            It is a little known fact, but, back in the 1950s, Carl Celian Icahn and Bernard Lawrence Madoff were neighbours, and near-contemporaries at the Far Rockaway High School, in the New York City Borough of Queens.




            Indeed, when you look at photos of Icahn and Madoff (who is two years Icahn's junior), they could easily be mistaken for cousins or brothers.

            In 1960, Bernie Madoff (aged 22) founded Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC, with $5000 earned from his jobs as a lifeguard and installer of fire protection systems. 
            Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities became one of the principal investment firms on Wall Street. His two sons, Mark  and Andrew, worked for him. 
            Bernie Madoff became active in the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), a self-regulatory association for stock-market companies. His own company becomes one of the top 5 companies developing Nasdaq, of which Bernard Madoff became Chairman briefly. 

            When Madoff's fund made significant losses, he instigated a dissimulated closed-market swindle which he hid in plain sight - attracting more and more victims by inverting-reality and steadfastly pretending always to generate significant investment profits regardless of market trends. In reality, Madoff was not making any trades, he was peddlinginfinite shares in his victims' finite money. After the fall of financial markets during 2008, victims caused Madoffs' swindle to collapse when too many of them demanded repayment. The FBI was called in by Madoff's own sons, and the SEC announced that Madoff's claimed50 billions assets, were fictitious. December 2008, Bernie Madoff was finally arrested by the FBI.
            It was then revealed that low-level SEC officials had been fully-informed of Madoff's hidden crimes many years before (when these were relatively small-scale), but senior SEC officials had refused to take any action.
            Furthermore, the absurd financial fairy story spun by this sociopathic Ponzi schemer, had never been seriously challenged by the mainstream media.

            Today (on his 78th birthday), Carl Icahn, evidently continues to believe (exactly as Bernie Madoff once did) that he can happily add to his own billions, without any risk of being held to account, by following the old Wall St. adage that:

            You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time (with the notable exception of the many ambitious attorneys temporarily holding-down low-paid jobs at the US federal Trade, and Securities and Exchange, Commissions).




            As far as I know, Carl Icahn has not instigated a fraud, but, even though (one day when caught) he will no doubt laugh out loud and insist that we should blame our own silent watchdogs, he has bought a significant percentage of a criminal racket (comprising related-frauds) - lining his own pockets whilst helping racketeers (posing as philanthropic businessmen) to continue to thieve billions of dollars from the rest of the world and avoid being held to account.




            Currently, around 2 millions ill-informed people per year are being churned through the'Herbalife' racket around the world, but (to date) few victims have dared to complain and demand their money back, mainly because billions of dollars of unlawful losing investment payments (made on the false expectation of future reward) have been allowed to be laundered as 'lawful sales to customers and end users' (based on value and demand), and effectively-unsaleable wampum has been given in return, but also because victims have been tricked into believing that only wimps and sore losers complain and that failure to make money is always entirely the fault of individuals who quit 'Herbalife': never that of the 'Herbalife MLM Income Opportunity' or its sponsors.















            During 2013, Carl Icahn acquired 17% of 'Herbalife (HLF),' pumping his own share of the market price of the effectively-valueless, counterfeit 'Direct Selling' company, to the tune of half a billion dollars, by inverting reality and steadfastly pretending that a financial fairy story (worthy of Bernie Madoff) is true, and that anyone who says it isn't, is a puerile liar.





            The above, Orwellian'Herbalife' propaganda video (which employs covert hypnosis, ego-destruction, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, etc. and which Carl Icahn will probably claim he's never seen) features various exemplary'MLM'shills acting out a fictitious scenario of control as fact, in which they once were 'dirty' and 'miserable' little rats trapped on a treadmill in a form of Hell (i.e. the world of traditional employment), but after exactly duplicating a 'Proven Step-By-Step System,' they have achieved redemption as superhumans in the miraculous 'Herbalife' Utopia, where no one works, but everyone is healthy, wealthy, happy and free....



            ..... and also drives a Ferrari, and/or a Hummer, and/or a Bentley, and/or a Porsche!

            Meanwhile, back in the adult world of reality, more than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science hiding in plain sight, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term, 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (lurking behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs,' etc.).
            Furthermore, no honest observer now seriously disputes that the most-deluded, core-'MLM' adherents see the world only in two dimensions, 'positive vs negative.' The growing mountain of evidence shows that vast numbers of ill-informed victims have been deceived into entering this style of dissimulated cultic swindle, then, on the pretext that 'the exact duplication of a step-by-step positive plan will lead to success and limitless financial freedom,they have been intellectually-castrated (without their fully-informed consent) so that their minds will only accept what their leaders have arbitrarily defined as 'positive,' whilst systematically excluding what these same cultic charlatans have arbitrarily defined as 'negative.' Thus, when seen only in the fake 'positive' context of: 'Business', 'Independence', 'Financial Freedom' , 'Low Risk' , 'Direct Selling', 'High Quality, Good-Value, Scientifically-Proven Products', 'Research','Development', etc. 'MLM income opportunities' can appear to be authentic. Sadly, this dangerous inversion of reality has been further confirmed by celebrity/political/scientific/corporate endorsements contained in glossy-advertising. 

            Self-evidently, when the wider-picture is examined (by persons with fully-functioning critical and evaluative faculties), all two-dimensional 'MLM' propaganda forms a pattern of ongoing, major, racketeering activity, because these artificially-created, fake 'positive' contexts have actually been financed by the proceeds of crime in order to perpetrate further crime and to prevent the victims from confronting reality and complaining. 



            In recent (separate) conversations (off the record) with a number of (young) legally-qualified US federal regulators (who are currently handling 'Herbalife'-related complaints), I have been assured that today, despite mistakes in the past, they are neither naive nor financially illiterate, and that they do accept that no one has made money by regularly selling 'Herbalife' products to customers who are not 'Herbalife Distributors.'





            However, I was then asked the following essentially-meaningless questions: 

            'What do you think will happen when we investigate Herbalife's business model?'

            'How can it be proved that Herbalife's business model is an illegal pyramid when most victims never complain, because they are brainwashed to believe they werediscount customers?'



            David Brear (copyright 2014)

            Why isn't 'Herbalife' racketeer, John Tartol, in prison?

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            'The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.'


            The purpose of 'MLM Income Opportunity' jargon is not only to provide a medium of expression for the unquestioning world-view and mental habits proper to the core-adherents of 'Herbalife,'  but to make all other critical and evaluative modes of thought impossible. It is intended that when 'MLM Income Opportunity'  jargon has been adopted once and for all and traditional language forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the 'positive' principles of  'Herbalife'  - should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary is so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every 'positive' meaning that an 'MLM Distributor' can properly wish to express, while excluding all other 'negative' meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This is done partly by the invention of new 'positive' words and phrases ('Herbalife', 'Multi-Level Marketing', 'Distributor' , Independent Business Owner,'), but chiefly by eliminating undesirable 'negative' words and phrases ('cult', 'totalitarian', 'fraud', 'deception',  'brainwashing', 'victims', 'exploitation' , 'de facto slaves') and by stripping such words and phrases as remain of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. 



            The outrageously-camp'MLM income opportunity' shill, John D. Patton Tartol (and sons), playing the absurd role of ordinary poor human who, after exactly-duplicating a Step by Step Plan, has transformed into multi-millionaire superhuman, and who is prepared to share his secret knowledge with anyone (for a price).

            Excluding the insignificant minority of narcissistic shills like John Tartol, the hidden overall loss/churn rate for the blame-the-victim 'Herbalife MLM Income Opportunity,'racket, has always been a solid 100%. Currently, the 'Herbalife' racket (alone) is consuming approximately two millions ill-informed humans annually around the world, or approximately twenty millions every decade.


            On entering the'Herbalife'racket, all these would-be'MLM millionaires' have been arbitrarily, and falsely, defined on their Orwellian take-it or leave it contracts as 'Independent Business Owners:'on leaving (after failing to receive any of the attractive financial rewards they were offered by world-class liars like John Tartol), the same persons have then been arbitrarily, and falsely, defined as 'discount customers who never expected to make any money.'



            The'Herbalfe' Ministry of Truth now quotes Big Brother John Tartol as saying:

            "....for the small percentage of Herbalife distributors who choose to work hard and build a business, there is an opportunity for significant financial success,”

            http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-fi-mo-ackman-accuses-herbalife-director-of-misleading-advertising-20140220,0,3670897.story#axzz2tyKRT5QI

            Quite clearly this statement is another demonstrable lie which itself constitutes wire fraud and obstruction of justice. A such, John Tartol's words, like those contained in countless other tightly-scripted, reality-inverting broadcasts made by the 'Herbalife' Ministry of Truth, form part of an overall pattern of ongoing major racketeering activity (as defined by the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970).

            All this begs some common-sense questions:


            • Even if they were all honest (which I very much doubt), how could the so-called 'regulators' at the FTC, have been so dumb as to have allowed this?
            • Where is the FBI?
            • Where is the mainstream media?
            • Where is the SEC?
            • Why hasn't 'Herbalife' long-since been closed-down as a dissimulated criminal enterprise?
            • Why haven't Tartol, and his criminal associates on the 'Herbalife'Board, long-since been arrested for racketeering, and all their unlawful profits seized?



            David Brear (copyright 2014)

            'Bitcoin' - the 'South Sea Bubble' of the 21st century.

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            Charles 'Charlie' Shrem IV (born November 25, 1989) co-instigator and CEO of the'Bitcoin startup company, BitInstant,' instigator of the 'Bitcoin Foundation' of which he was Vice Chairman until January 2014 when arrested for money laundering.
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Shrem

            Once upon a time, a good fairy created 21 millions miraculous coins (out of thin air) - the coins constantly rose in value and, thus, only those people who were clever enough to believe in them, lived happily ever after.

            At the present time, who has ultimately been gathering the lion's share of the cash out of peddling places in the non-existent 'Bitcoin' Utopia, remains a mystery. 


            One thing is certain, however, the real beneficiaries of the 'Bitcoin'bubble, have bailed out prior to its most recent crash. They will, no doubt, soon be creating a new, and even more-exciting, chapter, in their never-ending 'financial' fairy story.

            Protesters outside bitcoin exchange Mt Gox headquarters (picture: Reuters)

            http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25233230

            http://business.financialpost.com/2014/02/25/bitcoin-exchange-mt-gox-vanishes-in-blow-to-virtual-currency/

            http://www.channel4.com/news/mt-gox-bitcoin-japan-exchange-closed-authorities







            During 2013, I was asked for my opinion of :

            'Bitcoin' 

            Is it a Ponzi scheme or a speculation bubble?

            In response, I quite openly-stated that 'Bitcoin' is, without a shadow of a doubt, soon to go down in history as being to the early 21st century: what the 'South Sea Company' was to the early 18th century. i.e. 'Bitcoin' has been the name over the entrance to an absurd swindle hiding in plain sight and, just like 'Bitcoin's'historical counterpart, it has already spawned copy-cats.

            _________________________________________________



            Ignoring all their bedazzling camouflage, the universal identifying characteristic of Ponzi schemes, pyramid frauds, money circulation games, chain-letter scams, etc., is that they have no significant, or sustainable, source of revenue other than their own participants. Thus, about 15 years ago, I coined the common-sense phrase: 'premeditated, or dissimulated, closed-market swindle,' in order to describe all Ponzi schemes, pyramid frauds, money circulation games, chain-letter scams, etc. 



            However, although a few commentators have used my term (sometimes without attribution), a 'closed-market swindle' is not yet defined in law. That said, it is universally accepted that lying to, or withholding key-information from, people in order to take their money, is fraud which is a form of theft. Common-sense also reveals that, by 'passing any law, but failing to enforce it, has the effect of authorizing the very crime which you are trying to prohibit.' 


            The lie which is fundamental to all 'closed-market swindles' is thapeople can earn financial reward by first contributing their own money to participate in an (alleged) 'profitable commercial opportunity' which is secretly an economically-unviable fake, due to the fact that the (alleged) 'profitable commercial opportunity' has been rigged so that it generates no significant, or sustainable, revenue other than that deriving from its own participants.

            For more than 50 years, 'Multi-Level Marketing' racketeers have been allowed to hide in plain sight, dissimulating some of the most-extensive closed-market swindles of all time, by offering endless-chains of victims (arbitrarily, and falsely, defined as 'Distributors, Independent Business Owners,' etc.) various banal, but effectively-valueless commodities, and/or services, in exchange for unlawful losing-investment payments (based on the false-expectation of future reward), but laundered as 'sales' (based onvalue and demand to 'customers and end-users'). However, since no gang of 'MLM' racketeers has ever proved that 'MLM' wampum has actually been regularly re-sold to the general public for profit in significant quantities, tens of millions of 'MLM' participants have, in fact, been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money.




            In recent years, there have been a significant number of 'MLM Income Opportunity' racketeers who have hidden their criminal activities behind claims to be selling valuable coins, and/or precious metals and/or stones, which will increase in re-sale value.

            In the final analysis, other than their ephemeral external presentations, internally there is no real difference between all closed-market swindles; for any alleged 'opportunity to make money,' wherein (when challenged, and/or rigorously investigated) the promoters are unable to provide independent quantifiable evidence to prove that their alleged 'viable commercial activity' has had any significant, and sustainable, source of revenue other than its own participants, is self-evidently a dissimulated closed-market swindle.






            Should anyone begin printing or minting pounds, dollars, Euros, Yen, etc. they would be committing the criminal offence of counterfeiting.







            However, although it doesn't seem possible, the unoriginal economic alchemists behind the 'Bitcoin'phenomenon, have demonstrated that, currently, anyone can create, and peddle, an apparently revolutionary new means of exchange in the form of  an unguaranteed digital currency, provided enough uncomplaining persons continue to buy it using guaranteed currency, because, obviously, such individuals need to believe that their bitcoins have value and will increase in value.

            Readers, might be interested to learn that a team of so-called 'financial experts'working for the European Central Bank, recently looked at 'Bitcoin' and concluded that:

             'Bitcoin' exhibits some, but not all, of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme.

            Consequently, even the European Central Bank was unable to inform the public as to whether the so-called 'Bitcoin system' was fundamentally fraudulent and dangerous. However, these demonstrable dunces with diplomas seem to have forgotten that a counterfeit banknote might be 99.9% perfect, but the bit that is not, makes all of it worthless. They also failed deduce that, despite its up-dated 'digital currency' camouflage, the'Bitcoin' craze was neither original nor unique and, consequently, it could not be fully-understood in isolation  

            My first advice to any regulators/law enforcement agents trying to fathom what 'Bitcoin' is/was, is stop using all of the bedazzling jargon which the instigators of this absurd financial fairy story keep constantly-repeating, and try to describe what has occurred using only accurate deconstructed terms. I would also encourage all regulators and law enforcement agents looking at'Bitcoin', to ask the following question: 

            What exactly is it that a greedy minority of crooks always keep trying to do, when corrupt, and/or naïve, political leaders fail to identify them as being dangerous to the majority, and allow them to steer nations' monetary policies in whatever profitable direction they want? 

            The rather obvious answer to this important question has been known for three centuries; for, even before the Industrial Revolution (let alone the Digital Revolution), central banking systems and many of the other so-called essential structures, and instruments, of free-market capitalism (which have produced today’s failing global-economy) were already being installed in England, but without the slightest independent regulation.



            In 1694, a ‘joint-stock’ company, the ‘Bank of England,’ was created. A Royal Charter granted its Governor the monopoly to act as the English Government’s banker. Until this time, the ancient concept of money had been based on the intrinsic value of the precious metal content of a sovereign State’s coinage, but the ‘Bank of England’ was also given the monopoly to issue paper money (guaranteeing bearers payment on demand, in gold). However, thriving merchant banks, insurance and securities markets, and a stock exchange (turning over millions of pounds of business annually on promissory notes) were expanding rapidly in London at the dawn of the ‘Age of Enlightenment.’ By 1707, the United Kingdom of Great Britain had been created by the union of Scotland with England.









            In 1711, the incorporation of a ‘South Sea Company’ was proposed by two London merchant/ stockbrokers, George Caswall (of Turner Caswall & Co.) and John Blunt (of the ‘Hollow Sword Blade Company’). What they initially offered, seemed to be a perfectly viable investment scheme linked to profits generated by Britain’s growing overseas trade. As such, at first glance, the ‘South Sea Company’ prospectus closely-resembled that of the ‘East India Company’ which itself was based on a variation of the theory of insurance (i.e. the off-loading of financial liability held by the few, onto the many). 





            In 1708, the directors of the ‘East India Company’, supported by their political allies, had, in exchange for lending the government approximately £3 millions, legally-acquired the hugely-profitable (temporary) monopoly of British trade with the ‘East Indies.’ The government's £3 millions debt to the East India Company (upon which annual interest was paid via tarifs imposed on goods imported into Britain by the East India Company), was then carved up and resold to private investors in the form of ‘East India Company’ stock (the value of which was subject to market forces). Dividends were only paid to share holders on the East India Company's actual net-trading profits. However, the instigators of the ‘South Sea scheme’ actually intended to circumvent the ‘Bank of England’s’ juicy monopolies, by deliberating creating an insolvent corporate trading-front behind which lurked another profitable, but unlawful, national bank. Unlike the 'East India Company,' this mystifying, legally-registered corporate structure would first agree to pay dividends to share holders only on net-trading profits, but then make no significant net-profits from trade; instead, the 'South Sea Company' would hide in plain sight unlawfully paying dividends to its share holders derived from the government's annual interest payments whilst peddling more and more people an exclusive financial product derived from carving up more and more government debt. In simple terms, the so-called 'South Sea scheme'was a dissimulated closed-market swindle without any significant source of revenue other than its own participants. As such, it was based on the crack-pot economic theory that: never-ending recruitment + never-ending payments by the recruits = never ending profits for the recruits.



            Robert Harley (1661-1724)

            In reality, it is now generally accepted by most historians that the 'South Sea Scheme' had been largely-devised by Edward Harley, the younger brother of Robert Harley (Britain's new Chancellor of the Exchequer), and John Blunt.






            Robert Harley (a self-righteous, Nonconformist Christian and leading member of the Whig party) came to office in August 1710, at a time when government debt was spiralling out of control due to previous mis-management of the nation's finances, combined with Britain's ongoing involvement in the vastly-expensive ‘War of Spanish Succession.’ Desperate to find cash to pay the Duke of Marlborough's army fighting in Europe against Spain's allies, the French, the new Chancellor's first move was to turn away from the Bank of England. 






            John Blunt of the 'Hollow Sword Blade Company' (a bank), along with a private banking consortium including Edward Gibbon and George Caswell, were given the right to sell £100 tickets for a national lottery. This offered all players a minimum (net-loss) 'prize of £10,'but a few lucky players would get maximum prizes up to £20 000. However, the winners soon discovered that their prizes were not paid out as lump-sums. In this way, more than £1 million was raised within a few months. Blunt, Caswell and Gibbon (along with friends and relatives) pocketed huge commissions and 'expenses' for promoting the lottery and selling the tickets.



            Whilst all this was occurring, Robert Harley headed a parliamentary committee (including his younger brother, Edward, his brother- in-law , Paul Foley, and John Aislabie who led a group of 200 members of parliament known as the 'October Club). The committee was appointed to investigate, and calculate, the national debt. In reality, the Chancellor already knew this to be approximately £9 millions and he had also cooked up a scheme for managing it.



            Daniel Defoe

            In the face of political opposition, what appeared to be Blunt and Caswell's prospectus for a ‘South Sea Company,' was supported by Robert Harley, who was so enthusiastic, that he personally organised a campaign of pamphlets and editorials in newspapers. Notable poet and collector of antiquarian manuscripts himself, Robert Harley employed his literary friends as propagandists. They were some of the most talented English prose writers of the day, including Daniel Foe (a.k.a. ‘Daniel Defoe’) and Jonathan Swift. As a reward for his efforts, Robert Harley was made Earl of Oxford and promoted to the post of 'Lord High Treasurer.' Secretly, members of the British government (including Robert Harley) were already in peace talks. Consequently, rumours were rife that the 'War on Spanish Succession' was about to end and that the 'South Sea Company' was going to make all its investors rich.





            Behind all the pretty words and exciting images, the reality of the ‘South Sea Company’ was somewhat different. Although the instigators of the 'scheme'  knew that their company was really the front for an unlawful national bank (which obviously would not make its real profits from trade), the 'scheme's' covering 'commercial' activity was intended to be the purchase of kidnapped humans in W. Africa to be transported and sold into slavery in the Americas. This horrific racket was a perfectly legal business at the time; it was falsely justified by the convenient, contemporary belief that negroes were subhumans and, therefore, no different to farm animals. After discharging their surviving human cargo, the 'South Sea Company' slave ships (which each would have a Christian Minister on board) were to be used to transport goods to Europe.



            Share certificate of the South Sea Company.


            In 1711, a joint-stock company (i.e. a corporate structure with a specified commercial purpose, initially financed by capital raised from the public sale of shares in its declared assets and projected trading profits) was legally- incorporated by Blunt and Caswall. In return for a future monopoly of British trade with South America, the ‘South Sea Company’ was permitted, by Act of Parliament, to assume liability for a portion of the British National debt. Private holders of a recent issue of government securities (with a guaranteed face-value), were obliged, by the same Act of Parliament, to exchange these for ‘South Sea Company’ stock (with a nominated value). The initial rate of exchange was determined by the government, but, thereafter, the value of the stock became subject to market forces. The company was permitted to raise extra working-capital by borrowing against the security of the future debt-repayment due from the government. The government agreed to pay the ‘South Sea Company’ 6 % annual interest (in perpetuity) on approximately £9 millions value of the national debt (fixed at the moment of exchange). However, stock-holders had no rights to a share of the approximately £568 000 annual interest and 'expenses' payments to the company. Officially, dividend payments had to depend solely on the company’s actual trading profits. Unfortunately, South American ports had been closed to British ships since the start of the war in 1703, but the government intended to fund its interest payments to the ‘South Sea Company’ from tariffs on the millions of pounds worth of goods which the company was (theoretically) going to be importing once the war was successfully concluded.





            As predicted (by Robert Harley and his friends), the ‘War of Spanish Succession’ soon ended. However, as enormous international tensions remained, the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) granted Britain only limited trading rights with Spanish colonies. 





            Just one solitary British ship, carrying not more than 500 tons of cargo, was allowed per year. A further clause in the Treaty of Utrecht, specified a maximum annual British quota of 4800 slaves. Consequently, an immediate boom could not occur. In fact, the ‘South Sea Company’ only conducted its first, allotted slave trading during 1717, and this represented a net-loss. As they had always intended, to increase income, the company’s officers took on a further £2 millions of national debt to be converted into stock, but they now unlawfully increased the market-value of their existing stock-issue by paying dividends to share-holders using capital which they’d legally borrowed against the security of the government’s future interest payments. During 1713, the market-value of (what should have been) the technically insolvent ‘South Sea Company’ was artificially-increased by 40%. Despite the fact that, to achieve this the company officers had wilfully breached the terms of an Act of Parliament, no private investor had cause for complaint, and independent financial regulators didn’t exist. Although relations between Britain and Spain were on the slide, supporters of the ‘South Sea Company’ steadfastly denied this bleak reality, insisting that long-term prospects for future earnings were excellent. 



            George I

            In 1718, another war with Spain broke out. South American ports were again completely closed to all British ships. Therefore, the South Sea Company’s’ specified commercial purpose disappeared overnight. Since the company’s officers were only authorized to pay dividends using actual trading profits, the shareholders had become the contributing participants in an unviable system of economic exchange without a sustainable source of external revenue. Whilst the war continued, the company couldn’t conduct any trade. Self-evidently, there could be no actual profits to divide. In reality, the pieces of paper printed as ‘South Sea Company shares’ had become fake securities, because they had long-since lost their guaranteed face-value. Therefore, any unqualified ‘commercial’ vocabulary used to describe the subsequent criminal activities of the officers of the ‘South Sea Company’ should be considered a misleading use of language. Obviously, it was now impossible for everyone involved to face reality. To maintain confidence, Robert Harley and his friends had encouraged King George I to become ‘Governor of the South Sea Company.’ For a period, Britain’s Head of State was the unwitting front-man for what was soon to become one of the most convincing, and extensive, closed-market swindles in history.



            John Aislabie

            By 1719, Robert Harley had fallen from royal favour and the new ‘Chancellor of the Exchequer,’ John Aislabie, was again facing a rising national debt. This time, it was already over £50 millions. John Blunt and his ‘company cashier,’ Robert Knight, again offered salvation. In the face of competition from the ‘Bank of England,’ they proposed what they arbitrarily defined as a ‘larger joint-stock, investment scheme’ where private holders of a new issue of approximately £31 millions of government securities (with a guaranteed face-value) could voluntarily convert these into ‘new South Sea Company shares’ (with a nominated face-value). Without a full explanation of the source of their finance, Blunt and Knight offered to pay the government an immediate £7.5 millions fee for the privilege. To sweeten the deal, the pair even promised that the government would only have to pay 5% annual interest on the new debt, and that this would be lowered to 4% after 8 years. Knight then corrupted approximately 50 members of parliament and numerous friends of the King. The (freshly-Knighted) Sir George Caswall had been elected to parliament, 2 years earlier. The bribes comprised valueless pieces of paper, elaborately printed as ‘new company shares,’ but which would acquire a market-value only if the proposed ‘South Sea stock-conversion’ was voted through parliament.



            James Craggs the Elder
            James Craggs the Younger
            The Duchess of Kendal

            Recipients of the bribes included: Charles Spencer (First Lord of the Treasury), Charles Stanhope (Secretary to the Treasury), James Craggs the Elder (Postmaster General), James Craggs the Younger (Southern Secretary) and the Duchess of Kendal (the King’s favourite mistress).

            In the Spring of 1720, parliament duly passed another Act which agreed to Blunt and Knight’s so-called ‘investment scheme.’ In order to finance the new debt-acquisition, the ‘company’ was given official permission to increase its number of existing ‘shares.’ However, to pay the £7.5 millions fee, the government’s own securities needed to be exchanged for ‘new South Sea Company shares’ at a nominated rate already different to the securities’ guaranteed face-value. There were some common-sense objections at the time, but, incredibly, the South Sea Company directors’ were allowed to set their own rate of conversion. Obviously, the greater the nominated value of the new shares’ at the moment of exchange, the greater the profits were for the directors’ and for everyone whom they’d bribed. In the end, the exchange-value of the bribes alone totalled over £1.2 millions. In effect, the Parliamentary Act was a license to print, and launder, a form of counterfeit currency. Once the conversion was completed and the government was paid, the counterfeiters began to use various ruses to drive-up the market-value of their ‘new shares.’ Again, using pamphlets and newspaper editorials, exciting rumours were started about ‘secret, future trade agreements and the unlimited value of future trade with the Americas.’ When this ‘positive’ propaganda tactic worked, and share prices rose steeply, the counterfeiters then sold further issues of ‘new stock’ and started to lend cash (via their own Bank, the ‘Hollow Sword Blade Company’) against the artificially inflated market-value of their previous issues, but only to enable individuals to purchase the subsequent issues. There was a veritable mania to buy - a contagious mass-psychosis, akin to gambling fever, began to spread throughout the land. In the end, there were more than 30 000 reality-denying believers - all convinced that they couldn’t lose. 



            In January 1720, ‘South Sea Company shares’ were trading at approximately £130, by the end of May 1720 they were over £500. Not surprisingly, dozens of copy-cat swindles began to appear. Frustrated members of the public who felt they’d missed the boat, and who now couldn’t afford ‘South Sea Company shares,’ fell over themselves to get in on the ground floor of any ‘new prospectus’ that sounded speculative. The most infamous of these was presented as:

            ‘A Company for carrying on an Undertaking of Great Advantage, but nobody to know what it is.’

            One morning an enterprising young man circulated a ‘prospectus’ in London’s financial quarter for a joint-stock company’ that required £500 000 capital to be raised from 5000 shares to be sold at £100 each. Subscribers were to pay a £2 deposit per share which would entitle them to an annual dividend of £100 per share. The source of all the profits was to be kept an absolute secret at first. After one month, subscribers would have to pay the remaining £98 per share - only then would they be given the full explanation. An office was opened in Cornhill (opposite the Royal Exchange) at 9 o’clock the following morning. By 3 o’clock 1000 shares had been subscribed for, and the £2 deposits paid. The young man promptly closed the door of the office. He caught the first available mail-coach to Dover, and was never seen again.





            The even less-sustainable ‘joint-stock’ swindles were popularly known as ‘Bubbles’. They led to a temporary weakening in public confidence in the entire London stock-market, and demands for independent regulation. In June of 1720, the ‘Royal Exchange and London Assurance Corporation Act’ (or ‘Bubble Act’) obliged all ‘joint-stock companies’ to have a Royal Charter compelling their officers only to engage in ‘authorised trading activities.’ This was not enforced for two months, but confidence returned temporarily. Predictably, the loudest supporters of the legislation had been the ‘directors’ of the ‘South Sea Company’ and their corrupt political allies. However, in order to pay-out some profits, and to maintain their own more-sustainable, but essentially identical swindle, the ‘South Sea Company directors’ needed to keep raising more capital and to keep the market-value of their ‘shares’ increasing. Since there were no external trading profits being generated, the public were merely buying infinite shares in a finite quantity of their own cash.

            Apart from all the pseudo-economic mystification and ‘commercial’ shielding-terminology, the factors which fooled almost everyone, were that:

            - the ‘South Sea Company’ was associated with the King and the government
            - it had a Royal Charter
            - its directors were now some of the most wealthy and famous Christian gentlemen in Britain
            - all holders of the original share-issue had received annual dividends for 9 years





            Some profits were taken when some private ‘share-holders’ re-entered reality and began to realise that it was all too good to true. When the ‘South Sea share’ price hit the psychological barrier of £1000 at the end of June 1720, public confidence finally began to crack. An increasing number of people, including the instigators themselves, then began to sell-out in a panic. The bubble started to deflate. By the second week of September, ‘South Sea stock’ had lost 33% and it was still in free-fall. Fearing that the British economy might collapse, the directors of the ‘Bank of England’ (who managed about 8% of the national debt) offered their silver reserves to underwrite and stabilise ‘South Sea shares' at £400. Many grabbed this offer, but the ‘stock’ continued to plunge. On the September 24th the ‘South Sea Company’s’ own bank stopped redeeming South Sea stock.’ The directors of the ‘Bank of England’ now withdrew their previous offer, creating even more panic. Many depositors became convinced that the government’s bankers didn’t possess sufficient reserves to meet their obligations. Tens of thousands queued to withdraw their savings, and/or convert their paper money into gold. By the end of September 1720, the market-price of ‘South Sea stock’ had collapsed to approximately £135. Several thousands people (including many aristocrats) were ruined, five banks had failed. There was some rioting in London streets, whilst an unknown number of bankrupt victims committed suicide. Parliament was recalled in December and the government was forced to form a committee to investigate and report.





            In the Spring of 1721, the labyrinth of lies and corruption was only partially unveiled. Many of the guilty parties remained isolated from liability. Some, including Charles Spencer and Charles Stanhope, were impeached. James Craggs (the Younger) dropped dead before he could be held to account, whilst his father (probably) committed suicide. The Craggs’ vast profits and estates were confiscated from their heirs by the Crown. John Aislabie was imprisoned. Robert Knight, had already run away to the Continent with bundles of cash. John Blunt, was arrested and put on trial. His profits and estates, along with those of his fellow company officers,’ were also confiscated by the Crown. The new, First Lord of the Treasury, Robert Walpole, saw too it that these seized funds were used to relieve the victims. ‘South Sea Company’ stock was divided between the ‘Bank of England’ and the ‘East India Company’ and new directors were appointed. The restructured ‘South Sea Company’ continued to trade in times of peace until the 1760s, but its principal role remained the management of government debt. It was finally wound up in the 1850s.






            To give some idea of how convincing the ‘South Sea Bubble’ was at the time, the ‘Master of the Royal Mint’ and Britain’s leading mathematician, physician and astronomer, Sir Isaac Newton(1642-1727), was asked for his mathematical opinion on the rapid rise of ‘South Sea Company’ stock. Newton apparently replied that he ‘could not calculate the madness of people.’ However (according to his niece), Newton lost £20 000 himself. Ironically, he also owned one of the world’s largest private collections of antiquarian books on the subject of ‘Alchemy.’ 






            According to the ‘South Sea Company’s’ accounts, over a period of 25 years (1717-1742), 96 triangular trading voyages were undertaken and a total of 34 000 humans were purchased in W. Africa. At least 4000 (11%) did not survive the nightmare journey across the Atlantic.


            David Brear (copyright 2014)

            'OPERATION RICO' targets 'Boiler Room' fraud.

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            Around about 15 years ago, the name of one of golf's all-time greats, Gary Player, was used to perpetrate an extensive 'Boiler Room' fraud. This global crime was particularly targeted at prosperous, but gullible, Australians and New Zealanders.




            The term, 'Boiler Room,' was used during the 1970s inside American political parties to describe the practise of using a central office connected to multiple phone-lines (manned by party-activists) to seduce prospective voters across the nation. Supporters of (Republican) President Richard Nixon, are known to have employed the same practise in reverse - i.e. they cold-called thousands of known swing-voters in the middle of night, and pretended to be aggressively canvassing for the Democrats. The term 'Boiler Room fraud,' is thought to have been coined in the 1980s, to describe members of the American 'Mafia' who adopted similar, industrial cold-calling tactics to contact as many potential victims as possible. 




            'Boiler Room'gangs (so-called, because of the high-pressure techniques they use, and low-profile premises from which they habitually operate) pose as stock broking firms with hot-tips based on inside information, to deceive victims into buying valueless fake 'investments.'



             'Boiler Room' has even been used as the title for a Hollywood movie



            During the past two years, 14 Boiler Room gangs have secretly been targeted by a British-led coalition of law enforcement agencies, in what has been widely-described as 'anunprecedented international crackdown on fraud.' 




            http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2012/05/racketeer-influenced-and-corrupt.html
            'Operation RICO' (presumably named after the US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970), has so-far produced 110 arrests - mostly in Spain and the UK. Ironically, there is currently no RICO-style anti-racketeering legislation in the UK. However, to-date there are 850 confirmed'Boiler Room'victims in the UK with combined losses of approximately £50 millions, but these figures do not accurately represent the full extent of the problem, because, classically, most fraud victims remain silent out of fear, shame and embarrassment.


            Detectives have said that 'the aim of the two-year Operation RICO,' was to'decimate' Boiler Room fraud in Europe.'Presumably, by 'decimate,'they meant 'destroy,' because 'decimate' is one of the most misused words in the English language. Originally, in the ancient Roman army, it meant to execute one in ten as a punishment when a Legion fought poorly or exhibited cowardice in the face of the enemy.

            The UK National Economic Crime Co-ordinator, Commander Steve Head.

            'It is our most important investigation ever, targeting people we believe are at the top of an organised crime network that has been facilitating Boiler Rooms across Europe and which is suspected of being responsible for millions of pounds of investment fraud.'




            'Operation RICO,' was led by City of London Police officers. Targets for investigation, were described as 'ten tier-one criminals'suspected of being linked to organised crime and drug trafficking. Nine of them are British, one is a South African.




            Britain's 'Operation RICO,' involved the Spanish police and various other international law enforcement agencies, including the US Secret Service.



            An Aston Martin is towed away from alleged fraudster's home in Barcelona

            This week, 84 arrests were made in Spain in raids by 300 officers including 40 officers from the UK. A further 20 persons were arrested in the UK, 2 in the USA and 4 in Serbia. A number of luxury vehicles and properties were seized.
            Police have said that typical British'Boiler Room'victims have lost from £2,000 to £500,000. However, the 'Financial Conduct Authority' has admitted that a least £200m is being taken from UK citizens in 'Boiler Room' frauds each year, and that the largest individual loss recorded by UK police, is a staggering £6 millions.




            Those caught by 'Boiler Room' gangs are generally vulnerable, commercially-inexperienced individuals aged 40 and over, but many are in their 70s and 80s. Police admit that a significant number of destitute victims have already committed suicide.




            The criminals cold-call their prey, using classic, coercive behaviour modification techniques - pretending affinity with potential victims - tricking them into parting with their money whilst giving them the illusion that they arealways making free-choices. Victims are initially told of attractive returns of 10 to 20% per year. They are then pointed to fake commercial Websites and brochures and told that, if they hurry, they can still invest in secure bonds backed by famous legally-registered companies. Some victims have been paid'dividends,'to lure them further into the trap.






            One British woman in her late 70s, admits to being tricked into handing over £23,000 in exchange for valueless fake carbon credits. She was then coerced by another crook, posing as 'a salesman,' into borrowing £140,000 to buy valueless fake 'shares in gold.'


            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiler_Room_(film)

            According to the police, just as was depicted in the Hollywood movie (released in 2000), today's 'Boiler Room' gangs comprise a book-keeper, money launderer and lawyer, as well as a network of'salespeople.' Classically, the cold-callers are trained to  sound friendly and respectable and to recite a'100% positive'closed-logic script .In general, they are young men (and sometimes women), who speak good English and who generally pretend to be older than their years. A significant number of recently-arrested 'Boiler Room'salesmen, are apparently naive, and/or greedy, unemployed university graduates from Scandinavian countries, who have responded to what they were led to believe were authentic advertisements for commission-related, 'job/income opportunities.'


            The UK police acknowledge that they cannot eradicate 'Boiler Room' fraud, and that by forcing the gangs behind it, out of Spain, they are probably only shifting the centres of operations (that have been targeting UK citizens), to non-European countries like Thailand, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates.






            David Brear (copyright 2014)

            FTC Chairwoman, Edith Ramirez, blocks 'Herbalife' questions.

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            Behind all their bedazzling camouflage and mystifying mathematical presentations, the universal identifying characteristic of Ponzi schemes, pyramid frauds, money circulation games, chain-letter scams, etc., is that they have no significant, or sustainable, source of revenue other than their own participants. Thus, about 15 years ago, I coined the common-sense phrase: 'premeditated, or dissimulated, closed-market swindle,' in order to provide a definitive, generic label for all Ponzi schemes, pyramid frauds, money circulation games, chain-letter scams, etc.



            Although a few commentators have used my term (sometimes without attribution), a 'closed-market swindle' is not yet defined in law. That said, it is universally accepted that lying to, or withholding key-information from, people in order to take their money, is fraud which is a form of theft. Common-sense also reveals that, by 'passing any law, but failing to enforce it, has the effect of authorizing the very crime which you are trying to prohibit.' 







            The lie which is fundamental to all 'closed-market swindles' is thapeople can earn financial reward by first contributing their own money to participate in an (alleged) 'profitable commercial opportunity' which is secretly an economically-unviable fake, due to the fact that the (alleged) 'profitable commercial opportunity' has been rigged so that it generates no significant, or sustainable, revenue other than that deriving from its own participants.




            For more than 50 years, 'MLM income opportunity' racketeers have been allowed to hide in plain sight, dissimulating some of the most-extensive closed-market swindles of all time, by offering endless-chains of victims (arbitrarily, and falsely, defined as 'Distributors, Independent Business Owners,' etc.) various banal, but effectively-valueless commodities, and/or services, in exchange for unlawful losing-investment payments (based on the false-expectation of future reward), but laundered as 'sales' (based on value and demand to 'customers and end-users'). However, since no gang of 'MLM' racketeers has ever proved that 'MLM' wampum has actually been regularly re-sold to the general public for profit in significant quantities, tens of millions of 'MLM' participants have, in fact, been peddled infinite shares of their own finite money.

            The classic 'MLM'inversion of reality.

            Whilst looking at the following article, readers are invited to bear in mind that, currently, there are approximately 1000 essentially identical 'MLM Income Opportunityrackets which have been allowed to hide in plain sight (as labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) in the USA. Amazingly, no agency of the US federal government has ever uncovered the universally-insolvent results of'MLM'participation which might have enabled regulators to reverse-engineer how this type of blame-the-victim, organized fraud has functioned. Consequently, American legislators have never introduced any common-sense law accurately-defining economically-viable direct selling, in which the sponsors of all so-called 'Multi-Level Marketing direct selling schemes'would be required to produce independent quantifiable evidence proving that the overwhelming majority of their declared 'direct sales' have always been authentic retail transactions (based on value and demand) to members of the general public.



            Following the publication last week of Edith Ramirez' response to Senator Ed. Markey's concerns about 'Herbalife,' a reader has asked me what I would like to say to the latest (temporary) FTC Chair, if I was given the opportunity to meet with her face to face?

            One of the many questions which I have tried (unsuccessfully) to put to senior FTC officials in the past, is:


            Has it never crossed your minds that the failure of your agency to recognize how the instigators of the biggest 'MLM income opportunity'frauds have silenced the overwhelming majority of their victims, by convincing them thatthe concept of 'MLM income opportunities' is economically-viable and has already been thoroughly investigated and approved by the FTC, has made your agency a significant part of this problem and not the solution to it?


            For those readers who have not read Ms. Ramirez' letter, a copy can be found by clicking on this link http://www.markey.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/2014-02-27_FTC_re_Herbalife_Markey.pdf


            'Dear Senator Markey ... the FTC also takes seriously the harm illegal pyramid schemes have on consumers and has used its authority under section 5 of the FTC Act in appropriate cases. For example, since 1996, the FTC has brought 15 cases alleging that purportedly legitimate multi level marketing companies were, in fact, pyramid schemes in masquerade.' Most recently last year the FTC filed a case against Fortune Hi-Tech marketing and related entities. The FTC, amongst other things, alleged that the defendants operated an illegal pyramid scheme and falsely claimed consumers would earn extra money for selling various products and services. In reality, the FTC charged that nearly all consumers who signed up with the scheme lost more money than they ever made. The FTC further alleged that to the extent that consumers could make any income, it was mainly for recruiting other consumers.
            Sincerely 



            Edith Ramirez



            Chairwoman (FTC)



            February 27th 2014 





            Judging by the content of her recent letter to Senator Markey, evidently no one at the FTC has yet dared to inform Ms. Ramirez (who is a history graduate as well as a qualified attorney) that, ignoring the insignificant minority of grinning shills, the hidden overall-loss/churn rate for so-called 'MLM Income Opportunities' (large and small) has always been effectively 100%. Indeed, according to 'Herbalife's'own declared numbers of 'distributors' and annual drop-out rates, approximately two millions ill-informed people per year are currently being churned through the 'Herbalife MLM Income Opportunity' racket (alone) around the world, but (to date) few victims have dared to complain and demand their money back, mainly because billions of dollars of unlawful losing investment payments (made on the false expectation of future reward) have been allowed to be laundered as 'lawful sales to customers and end users' (based on value and demand), and effectively-unsaleable pseudo-scientific wampum has been given in return, but also because victims have been tricked into believing that the 'Herbalife Income Opportunity' has been examined and approved by governments around the world, that only wimps and sore losers complain and that failure to make money is, therefore, always entirely the fault of individuals who quit 'Herbalife': never that of the 'Herbalife MLM Income Opportunity' or its sponsors.









            The above, Orwellian 'Herbalife' propaganda video (which employs covert hypnosis, ego-destruction, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, etc. and which Edith Ramirez will probably claim she's never seen) features various exemplary 'MLM' shills acting out a fictitious scenario of control as fact, in which they once were 'dirty' and 'miserable' little rats trapped on a treadmill in a form of Hell (i.e. the world of traditional employment), but after exactly duplicating a 'Proven Step-By-Step System,' they have achieved redemption as superhumans in the miraculous 'Herbalife' Utopia, where no one works, but everyone is healthy, wealthy, happy and free....








            ..... and also drives a Ferrari, and/or a Hummer, and/or a Bentley, and/or a Porsche!

            Meanwhile, back in the adult world of reality, more than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science hiding in plain sight, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term, 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (lurking behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs,' etc.).
            Furthermore, no honest observer now seriously disputes that the most-deluded, core-'MLM' adherents see the world only in two dimensions, 'positive vs negative.' The growing mountain of evidence shows that vast numbers of ill-informed victims have been deceived into entering this style of dissimulated cultic swindle, then, on the pretext that 'the exact duplication of a step-by-step positive plan will lead to success and limitless financial freedom,they have been intellectually-castrated (without their fully-informed consent) so that their minds will only accept what their leaders have arbitrarily defined as 'positive,' whilst systematically excluding what these same cultic charlatans have arbitrarily defined as 'negative.' Thus, when seen only in the fake 'positive' context of: 'Business', 'Independence', 'Financial Freedom' , 'Low Risk' , 'Direct Selling', 'High Quality, Good-Value, Scientifically-Proven Products', 'Research','Development', etc. 'MLM income opportunities' can appear to be authentic. Sadly, this dangerous inversion of reality has been further confirmed by celebrity/political/scientific/corporate endorsements contained in glossy-advertising. 

            Self-evidently, when the wider-picture is examined (by persons with fully-functioning critical and evaluative faculties), all two-dimensional 'MLM' propaganda forms a pattern of ongoing, major, racketeering activity, because these artificially-created, fake 'positive' contexts have actually been financed by the proceeds of crime in order to perpetrate further crime and to prevent the victims from confronting reality and complaining. 

            David Brear (copyright 2014)





            'Herbalife (HLF)' - what happens when you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it.

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            Whilst looking at the following article, readers are invited to bear in mind that, if you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, eventually people will come to accept it as the truth;whilst a counterfeit banknote might be 99.9% perfect, but the bit that is not, makes all of it a valueless fake.




            Yesterday, a reality-inverting 'Herbalife'propaganda statement was fed to, and repeated by, thoughtless employees of the mainstream financial media (without the slightest qualification or irony). 

             'For the second year in a row, Herbalife, a leading global nutrition company, made the top 20 list of the “Best Social Projects in Russia” for its corporate social responsibility efforts in 2013.
            The second annual “Best Social Projects in Russia” recognition program is conducted in collaboration with the Russian Federation government. Its main objective is to identify best practices and social projects among businesses, society and the state, and to promote socially oriented projects of companies.
            The top 20 listing recognized Herbalife’s charitable activities through its Herbalife Family Foundation (HFF) and Casa Herbalife Program, and placed Herbalife alongside top national and international companies such as IBM, Sanofi, and KIA.
            Herbalife regularly holds events for sponsored institutions and is committed to improving the lives of vulnerable children lacking in proper nutritional care. In Russia, the Herbalife Family Foundation and its Casa Herbalife Program supports the following organizations: Udelnaya Boarding School at Udelnaya (Moscow region), Children’s Ark Social Shelter (Saint Petersburg), and Talsky Orphanage (Krasnoyarsk). In addition, Herbalife Independent Distributors support more than 30 charities and orphanages across the country by volunteering time and through financial donations.
            It’s not the first time Herbalife has been recognized for its commitment to its communities in Russia. In 2012, Herbalife charitable activities were recognized at the “Best Social Projects of Russia” awards, as well as at the sixth Annual International “Best Company” Awards in 2013, where Herbalife was awarded the honorary title of “Socially Responsible Company.” '





            This Blog has previously received angry comments from intellectually-castrated 'Amway' worshippers, wanting to know how I can possibly accuse members of the DeVos and VanAndel clans of being crooks, when they have given so much money to charity; particularly, 'UNICEF?' 



            'Lyoness'  racketeer, Hubert Freidl posing as a child-loving philanthropist

            Predictably, this Blog then received almost identical comments from an intellectually-castrated worshipper of 'Lyoness,'who wanted to know how I can possibly accuse Hubert Freidl and his associates of being crooks, when the mainstream media reports that they have created a 'children's charity?' 


            'Herbalife' racketeer, Michael Johnson, posing as a child-loving philanthropist.


            Thus, before any intellectually castrated worshipper of'Herbalife'asks me how I can possibly accuse Michael Johnson and his associates of being crooks when the mainstream media reports that'Herbalife' has given so much to charity, particularly to help underprivileged children,the following is my reply; for the apparently saintly 'Herbalife' mob are far from being alone as arrogant narcissistic charlatans hiding behind a sanctimonious public façade of  philanthropy in order to prevent, and/or divert, investigation of abusive crimes against numerous vulnerable victims.









            No one seriously disputes that'Herbalife' propaganda has  also featured various exemplary 'MLM' shills acting out a fictitious scenario of control as fact, in which they once were 'dirty' and 'miserable' little rats trapped on a treadmill in a form of Hell (i.e. the world of traditional employment), but after exactly duplicating a 'Proven Step-By-Step System,' they have achieved redemption as superhumans in the miraculous 'Herbalife' Utopia, where no one works, but everyone is healthy, wealthy, happy and free....








            ..... and also drives a Ferrari, and/or a Hummer, and/or a Bentley, and/or a Porsche!

            Deceptive coecive behaviour-modification techniques like those used in 'Herbalife'propaganda, are designed to give their ill-informed subjects the illusion that they are making free-choices. In reality, these deceptive procedures are the adult equivalent of manipulative-perverts offering attractive rewards (sweets, cigarettes, etc.) to children, in return for their compliance and silence. 

            During the course of my research into 'income opportunity' racketeers, I have discovered that all of them have attempted to prevent, and/or divert, investigation of their hidden criminal activities by steadfastly pretending to be'philanthropists.' When seen in isolation (by casual observers), the creation of, and the giving of money to, charity can appear to be entirely lawful activities. However, in the case of numerous gangs of  'income opportunity' racketeers ('Amway', 'Herbalife', NuSkin', 'Xango', 'Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing', 'Lyoness', 'Forever Living Products', etc.) when the wider picture is examined, these same activities are revealed as a blatant attempt to obstruct justice, forming part of an overall pattern of ongoing major racketeering activity.
               
            For decades,'Income opportunity'racketeers have not just been grooming their victims, they've been grooming the world.




            When the media reported the death of a 'British Icon/legend,' Sir James Wilson Vincent Savile OBE KCSG (1926-2011), his official obituaries were universally positive

            For decades, Jimmy Savile was a national celebrity in Britain. Today, he is universally recognised as a callous and cunning sex offender who hid in plain sight by grooming not only his victims, but also the British nation. 

            Jimmy Savile presenting Elvis with a gold disc, 1960.
            Jimmy Savile hanging out with the 'Beatles,' 1967.

            If readers would like to discover just how utterly-duped casual observers of Jimmy Savile were, then I suggest they read this sycophantic interview (linked below).

              


            The above interview first appeared in 'MENSA Magazine' and then it was re-published (+ additions) on the day of Savile's death. Unbelievably, MENSA is an association for persons with an IQ test score in the top 2%, and of which Jimmy Savile was a long-time member.




            Born the youngest of 7 children in a lower middle-class family in the Yorkshire city of Leeds, Savile spent the latter years of WWII as a conscripted coal miner. After recovering from a spinal injury caused by an explosion, for a while after WWII, Savile was known as an aspiring semi-professional cyclist and professional wrestler, but he is credited with being the person who, in 1947, invented the profession of Disc Jockey (i.e. using a microphone to introduce continuous recorded dance music on twin turntables).



            A flamboyant, eccentric and classless personality, who perfectly-reflected the upwardly-mobile spirit of Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, Savile transferred from 
            owning, managing and performing in dance halls, to presenting radio and television.



            Savile became particularly associated with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) where, from the 1960s to the 1990s, he fronted various popular radio and television shows. 1975-1994, he played the role of a kitsch, Rolls-Royce driving, cigar-smoking Santa usually dressed in a track suit or lounge suit and dripping with gold jewellery, on a television show called 'Jim'll Fix It.'



            At the height of Savile's fame, 'Jim'll Fix It' (on which he fulfilled the dreams of  ordinary folk, but particularly, under-privileged youngsters) attracted huge television audiences. In 1985, he even persuaded a former Master of the Rolls (Britain's second most-senior Judge), Lord Denning (1899-1999), to appear on the show.



            Jimmy Savile is one of the few celebrities to have featured twice on the UK version of 'This is Your Life.'


            Apart from his career in entertainment, which made him into a multi-millionaire, Savile (who claimed to be a devout 'Roman Catholic') is estimated to have raised around £40 millions for charity; particularly, Stoke Mandeville Hospital (which specializes in spinal injuries), where he worked as a volunteer porter and was given his own apartment. 


            Savile also worked as a volunteer porter at the Leeds General Infirmary and at Broadmoor secure hospital (in which some of the most dangerous criminally-insane offenders in Britain are held). 

            Savile also supplied substantial funds  to sponsor Leeds University medical students in the University Research Enterprise scholarship scheme.


            Savile became a celebrated charity marathon runner; finishing the London marathon as recently as 2005, when he was 79 years old.






            As result of his charity work, in 1972, Savile was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire. However, in 1990, he was awarded a Knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours list. 




            Later in 1990, Savile was created Knight Commander of the Order of Saint Gregory the Great, by Pope John Paul II. Over the years, he was also awarded a string of honorary academic titles. 


            Jimmy Saville and Diana (Pic: INS)
            From bedroom to waiting room: Sir Jimmy shows Prince Charles and Princess Diana around the National Spinal Injuries Centre in 1983 after raising £10million for its opening


            Savile was often described as a friend of the late Princess Diana and a friend and unofficial adviser to Prince Charles.


            Sir-Jimmy-Savile-funeral-Gold-coffin-1.jpg


            In October 2011, Savile's funeral (for which he left detailed instructions) included the public displaying of a his closed gilded coffin in the Queen's Hotel Leeds, followed by a service at Leeds Cathedral and burial in the Yorkshire coastal resort of Scarborough.




            In the summer of 2012, an auction of Savile's personal possessions (including a silver Rolls-Royce convertible) raised several hundred thousands pounds for charity.







            Soon afterwards, various UK newspapers reported that a number of women were claiming that they had been sexually-molested or raped by Savile during the 1960s and 1970s. One of these persons was just 14 years old at the time, but it was believed that Savile had targeted girls as young as 12. Investigative reporters at the BBC, had previously uncovered the same scoop, but a planned television expose was suppressed and, instead, a tribute to Sir Jimmy Savile was broadcast by the BBC.





            An independent television documentary, broadcast October 3rd 2012, contained the same allegations and interviews with Savile's victims. These revealed that Savile often targeted vulnerable youngsters who already had problems with authority and who, therefore, would probably remain silent, knowing that they would not be believed. Classically, Savile then groomed his young victims, by pretending affinity with them whilst identifying what they most wanted (cigarettes, sweets, perfume, trips to the BBC, contact with pop stars and celebrities). He then offered to fulfil his victims' dreams, but in exchange for giving him unlawful sexual gratification. In technical terms, Savile was a predatory, and habitual, paedo-sexual offender who could be physically, and/or psychologically, violent, and/or intimidating, but without exception, employed co-ordinated devious techniques of social and psychological persuasion to perpetrate his crimes and prevent his victims from complaining.

            Almost immediately, the London Metropolitan Police announced, that as a result of the recent media exposure, they had received 400 lines of inquiry, and that they were dealing with over 200 persons (including two men) who said that they too were victims of Savile's hidden criminal activities. 






            Senior management at the BBC, finally began to confront reality publicly, whilst  the corporation found itself in the tragicomic situation of launching its own internal investigation into the Savile scandal and potential cover-up, whilst being investigated, and condemned, for falsely accusing another public figure of being involved in child sex abuse.



            However, this was just the tip of an iceberg; for it was then revealed that, in the past, Savile was the object of a string of complaints to the police, and the press, dating back to the late 1950s, but, mysteriously, even though he had been interviewed by officers from six separate police forces in England, he was never held to account.





            The last time Jimmy Savile was interviewed by the police was in 2009 (when he was 82) and the transcript of this stomach-churning encounter has recently been released.  







            Since his spectacular fall from grace, numerous persons (including former BBC colleagues, hospital staff, patients, etc.) all came forward to testify that they knew all about Savile's abusive behaviour, but felt obliged to remain silent. They feared that, due to Savile's iconic status and friends in high places, no one would believe them. Other witnesses testified that their complaints to the management of the BBC about Savilehad been trivialised, and/or ignored. 






            It is now known that Savile's victims numbered at the very least 450 (the overwhelming majority were girls aged 12-16, the youngest was a boy of 8 and the oldest a woman of 47), and that many more victims probably still remain too ashamed to come forward. Indeed, this former British 'icon/legend' was easily Britain's most-prolific paedo-sexual offender. Currently, the highest informed-estimates for Savile's under-age victims, are between 1500 and  2500.




            Clair McAlpine committed suicide in 1971. 


            At least one of Savile's victims, Clair McAlpine (a 15 year old dancer), is known to have committed suicide. According to reliable witness tesimony, Clair left a diary detailing acts of sexual abuse perpetrated against her by Jimmy Savile, and other music industry celebrities, when she worked at the BBC television centre on the headline show, 'Top of the Pops.'  At the time, although Savile and the other persons named in Clair's diary, were interviewed, detectives supposedly investigating Clair's death,  recovered and then buried this key-evidence as 'teenage fantasy.' Consequently, no action was taken against any of the guilty parties by prosecuters or BBC managers, and the abuse was allowed to continue.


              

            For a while in 2013, serious suggestions appeared in the media that Jimmy Savile had possibly been indulging in all manner of grotesque sexual perversions including necrophilia. At one time, he had confessed in an interview (in his usual joking banter) that he had free access to all areas of the National Health Service institutions where he worked, and that he enjoyed spending time alone with the dead in hospital mortuaries.





             

            In 1988, Jimmy Savile was appointed by publicity-seeking, Conservative Health Minister, Edwina Currie, to chair a task force to advise on the governing of Broadmoor Hospital, but somehow he ended up in charge of this institution. Again, Savile was given his own free living quarters at Broadmoor, which again he used to sexually-abuse children. Rather than face an interview, 
             
            Edwina Currie issued a cryptic statement about Savile's time in charge of Broadmoor. This left many people (including me) wondering if he had been blackmailing her.
             

              



            With the benefit of hindsight, the world now accepts that Jimmy Savile was so devious, that he hid the terrifying fact that he was a pervert, simply by dressing and acting like a (comic-book version) of a pervert.


            Janet Cope worked for Savile for 28 years and claimed to be the only person who really knew him.

            Although Savile cannot be described as a cult instigator, he exhibited the diagnostic criteria of a severe and inflexible narcissist. However, there were bedazzled co-narcissists in his entourage who were blind to reality, and who, at first, defended the victim Savile played. Savile's former personal assistant, Janet Cope was sacked after almost 30 years of loyal service. Even then, she initially tried to convince reporters that her former boss's philandering was easily explained by the fact that he was besieged by young women admirers in search of casual sex, but she insisted that all the people who claimed to be Savile's under-age victims were liars and fantasists in search of money. Janet Cope then gave further interviews in which she began to confront the reality that she'd been duped. She also described Savile's violent temper and the level of control he held over people around him.








            The police began to arrest other persons, including Savile's former chauffeur, Ray Teret and 1970s 'Glam Rock' star Gary Glitter a.k.a. Paul Gadd, who had participated in his crimes. Even though, Gadd was a known paedo-sexual offender, the acts of abuse he committed with Jimmy Savile remained hidden until 2012. In 1999, Gadd was convicted of possessing child pornography and sent to prison in the UK. In 2006, he was convicted of committing obscene act with children (girls of 10 and 11) in Vietnam and deported to the UK in 2008.

            BBC chauffeur David Smth
            Former BBC chauffeur, David Smith


            A former BBC chauffeur, David Smith, who was also arrested in connection with the Jimmy Savile inquiry, and who was facing charges of abusing a 12 year old boy, committed suicide in October 2013.



            Amazingly, all anyone needed to do to discover the truth, was read Savile's autobiography, 'As it Happens,' published in 1974. In this, he openly boasted and joked about having unlawful sex with a pretty, under-age girl who had run away from a remand home, and of being above the law.


            This means, that countless persons, including Savile's publishers, his publishers' lawyers, indeed, anyone who read his autobiography of 1974, were party to the signed confession of a dangerous criminal, but they simply ignored it.





            Initially, certain members of Savile's family issued statements in which they condemned the press for attacking a dead man and for damaging the charitable trust which bore his name. All the same, other members of Savile's family had his recently-installed tombstone immediately removed and destroyed. This had born the ambiguous and inflammatory epitaph:

            'It Was Good While It Lasted'



            David Brear (copyright 2014)



            "Herbalife (HLF)' served with Civil Investigative Demand, share trading temporarily suspended.

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            Today, it was announced that the corporate officers of 'Herbalife' have been served with a U.S. Code § 1968 - Civil Investigative Demand.

            http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/12/us-herbalife-ftc-idUSBREA2B1KS20140312

            http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/herbalife-discloses-f-t-c-inquiry/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

            http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2014/03/12/gasparino-ftc-hits-herbalife-with-civil-investigation-demand/

            http://www.marketwatch.com/story/ftc-investigating-herbalife-trading-halted-2014-03-12?link=MW_latest_news


            http://www.businessinsider.com/herbalife-halted-2014-3


            http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/federal-trade-commission-investigate-herbalife/story?id=22882424


            http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/12/herbalife/6330287/


            http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/03/12/ftc-launches-herbalife-inquiry-shares-plunge/

            http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303730804579435303342418222?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB1000





            When the news broke, the extraordinary measure of immediately suspending all trading in 'Herbalife,' and 'NuSkin,' shares, was also taken. When trading resumed half an hour later, 'Herbalife'shares nose-dived and 'NuSkin' shares followed suit, before bouncing back .


            U.S. Code § 1968 - Civil Investigative Demand.


            (a) Whenever the Attorney General has reason to believe that any person or enterprise may be in possession, custody, or control of any documentary materials relevant to a racketeering investigation, he may, prior to the institution of a civil or criminal proceeding thereon, issue in writing, and cause to be served upon such person, a civil investigative demand requiring such person to produce such material for examination.

            (b) Each such demand shall—
            (1) state the nature of the conduct constituting the alleged racketeering violation which is under investigation and the provision of law applicable thereto;
            (2) describe the class or classes of documentary material produced thereunder with such definiteness and certainty as to permit such material to be fairly identified;
            (3) state that the demand is returnable forthwith or prescribe a return date which will provide a reasonable period of time within which the material so demanded may be assembled and made available for inspection and copying or reproduction; and
            (4) identify the custodian to whom such material shall be made available.
            (c) No such demand shall—
            (1) contain any requirement which would be held to be unreasonable if contained in a subpena duces tecum issued by a court of the United States in aid of a grand jury investigation of such alleged racketeering violation; or
            (2) require the production of any documentary evidence which would be privileged from disclosure if demanded by a subpena duces tecum issued by a court of the United States in aid of a grand jury investigation of such alleged racketeering violation.
            (d) Service of any such demand or any petition filed under this section may be made upon a person by—
            (1) delivering a duly executed copy thereof to any partner, executive officer, managing agent, or general agent thereof, or to any agent thereof authorized by appointment or by law to receive service of process on behalf of such person, or upon any individual person;
            (2) delivering a duly executed copy thereof to the principal office or place of business of the person to be served; or
            (3) depositing such copy in the United States mail, by registered or certified mail duly addressed to such person at its principal office or place of business.
            (e) A verified return by the individual serving any such demand or petition setting forth the manner of such service shall be prima facie proof of such service. In the case of service by registered or certified mail, such return shall be accompanied by the return post office receipt of delivery of such demand.
            (f)
            (1) The Attorney General shall designate a racketeering investigator to serve as racketeer document custodian, and such additional racketeering investigators as he shall determine from time to time to be necessary to serve as deputies to such officer.
            (2) Any person upon whom any demand issued under this section has been duly served shall make such material available for inspection and copying or reproduction to the custodian designated therein at the principal place of business of such person, or at such other place as such custodian and such person thereafter may agree and prescribe in writing or as the court may direct, pursuant to this section on the return date specified in such demand, or on such later date as such custodian may prescribe in writing. Such person may upon written agreement between such person and the custodian substitute for copies of all or any part of such material originals thereof.
            (3) The custodian to whom any documentary material is so delivered shall take physical possession thereof, and shall be responsible for the use made thereof and for the return thereof pursuant to this chapter. The custodian may cause the preparation of such copies of such documentary material as may be required for official use under regulations which shall be promulgated by the Attorney General. While in the possession of the custodian, no material so produced shall be available for examination, without the consent of the person who produced such material, by any individual other than the Attorney General. Under such reasonable terms and conditions as the Attorney General shall prescribe, documentary material while in the possession of the custodian shall be available for examination by the person who produced such material or any duly authorized representatives of such person.
            (4) Whenever any attorney has been designated to appear on behalf of the United States before any court or grand jury in any case or proceeding involving any alleged violation of this chapter, the custodian may deliver to such attorney such documentary material in the possession of the custodian as such attorney determines to be required for use in the presentation of such case or proceeding on behalf of the United States. Upon the conclusion of any such case or proceeding, such attorney shall return to the custodian any documentary material so withdrawn which has not passed into the control of such court or grand jury through the introduction thereof into the record of such case or proceeding.
            (5) Upon the completion of—
            (i) the racketeering investigation for which any documentary material was produced under this chapter, and
            (ii) any case or proceeding arising from such investigation, the custodian shall return to the person who produced such material all such material other than copies thereof made by the Attorney General pursuant to this subsection which has not passed into the control of any court or grand jury through the introduction thereof into the record of such case or proceeding.
            (6) When any documentary material has been produced by any person under this section for use in any racketeering investigation, and no such case or proceeding arising therefrom has been instituted within a reasonable time after completion of the examination and analysis of all evidence assembled in the course of such investigation, such person shall be entitled, upon written demand made upon the Attorney General, to the return of all documentary material other than copies thereof made pursuant to this subsection so produced by such person.
            (7) In the event of the death, disability, or separation from service of the custodian of any documentary material produced under any demand issued under this section or the official relief of such custodian from responsibility for the custody and control of such material, the Attorney General shall promptly—
            (i) designate another racketeering investigator to serve as custodian thereof, and
            (ii) transmit notice in writing to the person who produced such material as to the identity and address of the successor so designated.
            Any successor so designated shall have with regard to such materials all duties and responsibilities imposed by this section upon his predecessor in office with regard thereto, except that he shall not be held responsible for any default or dereliction which occurred before his designation as custodian.
            (g) Whenever any person fails to comply with any civil investigative demand duly served upon him under this section or whenever satisfactory copying or reproduction of any such material cannot be done and such person refuses to surrender such material, the Attorney General may file, in the district court of the United States for any judicial district in which such person resides, is found, or transacts business, and serve upon such person a petition for an order of such court for the enforcement of this section, except that if such person transacts business in more than one such district such petition shall be filed in the district in which such person maintains his principal place of business, or in such other district in which such person transacts business as may be agreed upon by the parties to such petition.
            (h) Within twenty days after the service of any such demand upon any person, or at any time before the return date specified in the demand, whichever period is shorter, such person may file, in the district court of the United States for the judicial district within which such person resides, is found, or transacts business, and serve upon such custodian a petition for an order of such court modifying or setting aside such demand. The time allowed for compliance with the demand in whole or in part as deemed proper and ordered by the court shall not run during the pendency of such petition in the court. Such petition shall specify each ground upon which the petitioner relies in seeking such relief, and may be based upon any failure of such demand to comply with the provisions of this section or upon any constitutional or other legal right or privilege of such person.
            (i) At any time during which any custodian is in custody or control of any documentary material delivered by any person in compliance with any such demand, such person may file, in the district court of the United States for the judicial district within which the office of such custodian is situated, and serve upon such custodian a petition for an order of such court requiring the performance by such custodian of any duty imposed upon him by this section.
            (j) Whenever any petition is filed in any district court of the United States under this section, such court shall have jurisdiction to hear and determine the matter so presented, and to enter such order or orders as may be required to carry into effect the provisions of this section.

            Accurate questions reveal the full-truth about 'Herbalife (HLF)' and 'Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)'.

            $
            0
            0


            In 1945, whilst most, contemporary mainstream commentators were unable to look beyond the ends of their noses, with a perfect sense of irony, Eric Arthur Blair a.k.a. George Orwell (1903-1950) presented fact as fiction in an insightful 'fairy story' entitled, 'Animal Farm.' He revealed that totalitarianism is merely the oppressors' fiction mistaken for fact by the oppressed.


            In the same universal allegory, Orwell described how, at a time of vulnerability, almost any people's dream of a future, secure, Utopian existence can be hung over the entrance to a totalitarian deception. Indeed, the words that are always banished by totalitarian deceivers are, 'totalitarian' and 'deception.'


            Sadly, when it comes to examining the same enduring phenomenon, albeit with an ephemeral 'Capitalist' label, most contemporary, mainstream commentators have again been unable to look further than the ends of their noses. However, if they followed Orwell's example, and did some serious thinking, this is the reality-inverting nightmare they would find.


            More than half a century of quantifiable evidence, proves beyond all reasonable doubt that what has become popularly known as 'Multi-Level Marketing' is nothing more than an absurd, cultic, economic pseudo-science, and that the impressive-sounding made-up term 'MLM,' is, therefore, part of an extensive, thought-stopping, non-traditional jargon which has been developed, and constantly-repeated, by the instigators, and associates, of various, copy-cat, major, and minor, ongoing organized crime groups (hiding behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures) to shut-down the critical, and evaluative, faculties of victims, and of casual observers, in order to perpetrate, and dissimulate, a series of blame-the-victim closed-market swindles or pyramid scams (dressed up as 'legitimate direct selling income opportunites'), and related advance-fee frauds (dressed up as 'legitimate training and motivation, self-betterment, programs,' etc.).
            ________________________________________________________________________
            Yet again, I have been asked:
            • How many victims have wasted their time and money in 'Multi-Level Marketing' scams?
            • Why do so few 'MLM' victims ever complain?
            The short answer to these frequently-asked questions, is that the overwhelming majority of all the countless millions of victims who continue to get burned by individual 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cults, will remain silent and continue (unconsciously) to form part of the overall lie: whilst, as a direct result of the passivity of the overwhelming majority of the victims, all casual observers of individual 'MLM income opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cults (including, law enforcement agents, regulators, academics, legislators, judges, journalists, etc.) will also remain passive and continue (unconsciously) to form part of the overall lie.


            Today, it is very difficult to determine exactly how many people in total around the world have already been churned through the pay-through-the-nose-to-play 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cultic game of make-believe, since it was first peddled as reality under the name of 'Nutrilite Inc. /Mytinger and Casselberry Inc.' back in the late 1940s. It is also important to distinguish between short-term and chronic 'MLM' losing-players. In general, the overwhelming majority of fraud victims never complain, but, right from the outset, the self-perpetuating 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' lie was maliciously designed to implicate its victims - loading them with shame and guilt, and, thus, prevent them from ever facing reality. Classically, the quantifiable evidence proves that, without exception, chronic 'MLM' losing-players have been subjected to co-ordinated devious techniques of social, and psychological, persuasion designed to shut down their critical, and evaluative, faculties. In this way, they have been conditioned (unconsciously) to think of themselves, not as the victims of a cruel deception or as brainwashed cult adherents, but as 'Independent Business Owners' exercising free-will.  What has made external reality even more unacceptable, is the ego-destroying fact that a large proportion of 'MLM' victims were deceived by a close friend or relative (acting under the guided-delusion that 'MLM' has been of great benefit to its participants) and, in turn, these victims then deceived, or tried to deceive, their own close friends and relatives (acting under the same guided-delusion that 'MLM' has been of great benefit to its participants). The few, destitute, chronic former 'MLM' losing-players who have managed to recover fully their critical, and evaluative faculties, and who have filed well-informed civil lawsuits against the corporate fronts of 'MLM' cultic racketeers, have invariably been obliged to settle out of court. Although a number of isolated civil investigations, and successful prosecutions, have been pursued by the Federal Trade Commission against some smaller 'MLM' front-companies in the USA, no co-ordinated official effort has ever been made to face wider-reality and identify, let alone tackle, the overall criminogenic/cultic phenomenon that has lurked behind all the shielding layers of structural, and pseudo-economic/scientific, mystification, reality-inverting 'direct selling/commercial'  jargon and kitsch capitalist/Utopian/American Dream imagery.




            Until the 1970s, the original 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cultic racket  'Nutrilite' a.k.a. 'Amway,' remained confined to the USA. In the face of a prolonged (but far-from morally, or intellectually, rigorous) FTC investigation, the 'Amway/MLM' lie first spread to Canada, then to W. Europe and Australia. However, in 1979, when a corrupt, and/or naive, US federal judge failed to identify 'Amway' as the corporate-front for an ongoing, major, organized crime group, this classic regulatory-failure was widely-seen as a license to steal. Since that time, countless US-based copy-cat rackets have been instigated behind labyrinths of legally-registered corporate structures pursuing lawful, and/or unlawful, enterprises - a significant number of which ('Forever Living Products', 'Herbalife', 'USANA', 'Nu Skin', 'Xango' etc.),  have been allowed to grow out of control and to infiltrate traditional culture all around the globe, accompanied by a distracting flock of co-opted political, academic and celebrity stooges, and shielded by a parallel labyrinth of legally-registered corporate structures known as, 'Direct Selling Associations.'



            In the past, various casual observers have thrown up their hands in horror when I have dared to say that, given its duration, scale and devastating impact on huge numbers of vulnerable persons,  blame-the-victim 'MLM Income Opportunity/Prosperity Gospel' cultic racketeering is an ongoing financial, and psychological, holocaust (with a small 'h') of which many people have been in denial. Sadly, the essentially-absurd fairy story entitled 'MLM' has been allowed to expand to such titanic proportions, that the truth has long-since become almost unthinkable. However, since the concept of the big propaganda lie, is widely-understood, it seems almost inconceivable that the directors of law enforcement, and intelligence, agencies around the world have also remained unable to look beyond the ends of their noses and identify what the bosses of 'MLM/Prosperity Gospel' cults have actually been doing. 


            The following sinister quote has often been attributed to one of history's most-sinister criminals, Joseph Goebbels: 





            'If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.'
            Given its content, it is supremely ironic that there is no evidence for Goebbels ever having made the above statement. That said, it is a very accurate description of Goebbels' reality-inverting activities as Adolf Hitler's propaganda chief. Indeed, before his cowardly suicide in the face of reality, Goebbels spent the last years of his life steadfastly pretending that the heroic and enlightened leader of the 'Noble Aryan Master Race,' Adolf Hitler, was telling the truth, whilst the leaders of Britain and the USA (controlled by the forces of evil - Jews and Freemasons) were repeating big propaganda lies.

            The origin of the first part of the above Goebbels statement would appear to have been a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler, compiled in the USA during WWII by the 'Office of Strategic Services,' later to become known as the 'CIA.' This document concluded that : 

            'His (Hitler's) primary rules were: 
            never allow the public to cool off; 
            never admit a fault or wrong; 
            never concede that there may be some good in your enemy;
            never leave room for alternatives;
            never accept blame; 
            concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; 
            people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.' 

            Hitler's psychological profile was drafted (prior to the full-extent of his crimes against humanity being discovered) by a team of medically-qualified academics who had apparently been studying 'Mein Kampf,' Chapter 10:

             '... in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad mass of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly outrageous lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.' 




            Despite appearances, Hitler was not confessing to being a liar in Chapter 10 of 'Mein Kampf.' This was merely a typically-mediocre little narcissist (who imagined himself to be a great author/thinker - the anointed-Messiah/saviour of his people) revealing his extraordinary knowledge of how to lie successfully whilst steadfastly pretending to be struggling to establish the truth against the reality-inverting forces of evil. Hitler would soon transform into a megalomaniacal psychopath. The unconditional deference of his deluded followers only served to confirm, and magnify, his own increasingly-paranoid, and self-righteous, delusions of grandeur.






            'Amway'a.k.a. 'Quixtar,'is the original, blame-the-victim 'MLM Income Opportunity' racket, but 'Amway' itself, is only part of the wider-phenomenon of pernicious cultism.


            Two grinning generations of the DeVos and VanAndel crime families (circa 1995)



            Today, Steve VanAndel and Doug DeVos, front the 'Amway/MLM'racket .


            By steadfastly pretending to be compassionate Christian capitalists,and by infiltrating traditional culture and discrediting, and/or intimidating, and/or paying-off, the few destitute, but determined, victims who have come forward, the billionaire bosses of the 'Amway'mob have been allowed to maintain a monopoly of information and continue to poison the minds of millions of vulnerable people around the world. 




            Registered in the Cayman Islands, based in California and capitalized on Wall St., 'Herbalife'has been the corporate front for a blame-the-victim  'MLM income Opportunity' cultic racket.

            Not surprisingly, the profitable 'Amway' racket has spawned countless, profitable copy-cats.



            Miniature
            Former'Amway' double-agent, Ian Howarth.
            Former'Amway' double-agent, Graham Baldwin.

            In 1994, when faced with partial exposure in the London listings magazine, 'Time Out,' the billionaire bosses of the'Amway'mob easily bought the services of two self-styled 'cult advisors' in the UK, Ian Howarth ('Cult Information Centre') and Graham Baldwin ('Catalyst'). Readers should also be aware that Mr. Baldwin is a particularly absurd character, who (for years) has got away with steadfastly pretending to be a former Army Intelligence officer. Following the 'Time Out' article, a significant trickle of desitute, but confused, 'Amway'victims were beginning to come forward in Britain. Not surprisingly, the 'Amway' bosses were keen to maintain their monopoly of information in order to prevent a criminal investigation and isolate themselves from liability.

            Subsequently, all persons approaching Messrs. Baldwin and Howarth with complaints, and enquiries, about 'Amway' (imagining that they were consulting independent experts) were told that although certain 'Amway Networks' had been accused (in the past) of operating like cults (by ill-informed journalists), the company itself was not a cult. Between 1994 and 2007, escorted by the affinity-pretending 'Amway' double-agents, Messrs. Baldwin and Howarth, numerous dissatisfied former'Amway' adherents continued to be taken back to the organization where they were shown finely-printed clauses in their take-it or-leave it 'Distributor' contracts which appeared to oblige them to remain silent and pursue 'Amway's' own internal system of dispute resolution. It's difficult to know exactly how many British 'Amway'victims were kept away from regulators, legislators, law enforcement agents and journalists using these classic,'Scientology'-style, subversive tactics. Due to the absence of victims, UK trade regulators did not launch a civil investigation of'Amway UK Ltd.' until 2007. By that time, around one million UK and Irish citizens had been churned through the 'Amway'racket and an estimated $ one billion of effectively-valueless publications, recordings and tickets to meetings had been peddled on the pretext that these 'optional business building materials' contained exclusive secrets for achieving success in 'MLM.'None of the largely-cash-based receipts from the related-advanced-fee fraud were channelled through'Amway UK Ltd.,'which itself never once declared a net-trading-profit in more than 30 years. Furthermore, during the same period, exactly the same system of inter-related frauds was being operated behind 'Amway's' mystifying corporate labyrinth all over the world. 

            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Federation_of_Centres_of_Research_and_Information_on_Sectarianism

            For a long time, Ian Howarth succeeded in infiltrating a French government-financed, pan-European federation of cult research/advice associations, 'FECRIS.' In 2004 (at my instigation), during a FECRIS conference in Marseilles (which I attended at my own expense), Mr. Howarth was invited by the board of FECRIS to participate in an internal enquiry into the extent of his connections with 'Amway.'Mr. Howarth's initial verbal reponse, was to admit that, yes, he was a'paid consultant to Amway UK Ltd.' He then told the astonished board members of FECRIS that 'Amway'had, in fact been covering all his expenses (including travel to, and accomodation in, Marseilles) and that he wanted the other FECRIS associations to pass any complaints they received about 'Amway' to him, because he had already negotiated compensation for people who had lost money. Subsequently, Mr. Howarth was given a series of written, common-sense questions about his paid activities on behalf of 'Amway,' which (not surprisingly) he flatly refused to repond to. However, before he could be kicked out of FECRIS, Mr. Howarth resigned and accused its board of 'behaving like a cult.'

            To date, Messrs. Baldwin and Howarth have never been fully-investigated (let alone held to account), but there is absolutely no doubt that they were duped into participating in an international conspiracy to commit fraud and obstruct justice. Indeed, when the wider-picture is examined, Messrs. Baldwin and Howarth's key-role in hiding the results of the (US-based) unlawful 'Amway' enterprise in Britain, clearly forms part of an overall pattern of ongoing, major racketeering activity (as defined by he US federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, 1970). Rather than heading UK-registered charities, these two self-righteous crooks should probably be in prison.

            In the late 1990s, I supplied UK trade regulators with completed questionaires from a few destitute former British 'Amway'adherents whom I had managed to track down via another (genuinely-independent) UK cult advice association, 'Family Action Information and Resource' (now known as the 'Family Survival Trust'), but 10 years later (when the UK government finally began to investigate 'Amway') these important testimonies had mysteriously been forgotten.



            Currently, the phenomenon of blame-the victim'MLM Income Opportunity'cultic racketeering has, yet again, begun to find its way into the mainstream media. This time, because of the involvement of well-informed Wall St. investors who have challenged the legality of the 'Amway'copy-cats known as 'Herbalife' and'NuSkin.'For many years, the officers of both these corporate structures have steadfastly pretended that their revenue has derived entirely-lawfully from billions of dollars of sales (based on value and demand) conducted by networks of non-salaried direct sales agents known as 'Distributors' or 'Independent Business Owners'. However, on the dubious foundation of this unoriginal encrypted 'commercial' fairy story, the reality-inverting cultic racketeers behind 'Herbalife' and 'NuSkin,'have taken their crimes well-beyond those of the DeVos and VanAndel clans.


             



            With the assistance of an enthusiastic echelon of amoral attorneys, accountants and bankers, the 'Herbalife' and 'NuSkin' mobs easily deceived US financial regulators, and got away with peddling effectively-valueless shares in what have been essentially-identical, dissimulated criminal enterprises - again comprising blame-the-victim closed-market swindles, or pyramid schemes, and related advance fee frauds, a.k.a. 'tool scams.'




            Hedge fund manager, Bill Ackman (of Pershing Square Capital), saw very clearly and very quickly, how the'Herbalife'racket has functioned. As an experienced and successful short-seller, he also saw how it was possible to make money by challenging the legality of 'Herbalife.'Consequently, during 2012, Bill Ackman quietly acquired a short position against 'Herbalife' totalling $1.2 billions (one thousand two hundred millions dollars). He also began to gather evidence and compile a common-sense explanation of:
            •  why 'Herbalife' is an effectively-valueless corporate structure.
            •  the extent to which the blame-the-victim frauds lurking behind'Herbalife,'have been causing significant damage to vulnerable people.
            •  why 'Herbalife'should never have been allowed to have been capitalized on Wall St.
            In December 2012, Bill Ackman hoisted battle ensigns; making his analysis, and his short position, public. At the same time, he bravely called for 'Herbalife' to be investigated and closed-down as soon as possible, in the interests of the public.

            Predictably, the bosses of the'Herbalife' mob reacted by inverting reality; attacking rather than defending. For decades,'MLM income opportunity' racketeers have been lying to, and withholding key-information from, the entire world, to make money and obstruct justice. They have also been using many millions of stolen dollars to subvert the legislative process of dozens of democracies. Amazingly, 'MLM'racketeers have even outspent the tobacco, and arms, lobby. Yet, all of a sudden, Bill Ackman found himself being accused of lying to make money and of influence-buying in Washington.

            Indeed the bosses of the'Herbalife'racket have been following some frighteningly familiar rules:
            • never allow the public to cool off; 
            • never admit a fault or wrong; 
            • never concede that there may be some good in your enemy;
            • never leave room for alternatives;
            • never accept blame; 
            • concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; 
            • people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it. 
            After more than 12 months of wild fluctuations in the market price of effectively-valueless'Herbalife' shares, last week, it was announced thatthe company is finally to be investigated by the Federal Trade Commission. 


            Although (to date) most mainstream journalists have refused to look beyond the ends of their noses, and reported 'Herbalife' as a purely financial story, what is actually at stake here is whether America is a grown-up democracy governed by the rule of law, or a sleazy de facto kleptocracy ruled by an axis of billionaire 'MLM Income Opportunity'racketeers, their amoral attorneys (many of whom have been former regulators), accountants, bankers, co-opted academics and corrupt, and/or stupid, politicians.

            As if to prove the validity of Bill Ackman's analysis, the 'Herbalife' racketeers and their criminal associates have recently rewritten theirfairy story in a transparent attempt to convince regulators that they have not been telling lies. 

            The modified description of the victims of the 'Herbalife's' racket, is a classic Orwellian inversion of reality. All persons formerly defined as 'Distributors/Independent Business Owners,'are, henceforth, to be known as
            'Members.'

            In order to avoid being held to account for fraud, the bosses of'Herbalife' now want the world to believe that the overwhelming majority of their transient loss-making 'Members,' have merely been transient 'Discount Customers.'

            The following, is what it actually says in 'Herbalife's'latest false declaration to the SEC:

            'Herbalife distributes and sells its products through a network of independent members, or Members, using the direct selling channel. We are in the process of changing our terminology to identify “distributors” as “Members.” Those Members who participate in the business opportunity that our network marketing program presents are referred as “sales leaders.” As of December 31, 2013, we sold our products in 91 countries to and through a network of approximately 3.7 million independent Members. Most of our Members are discount customers, however as of December 31, 2013, 672,000 achieved sales leaders status.

            The latest modification to the thought-stopping encrypted-language in which the 'Herbalife' fairy story has been presented, conforms perfectly to my overall analysis of how blame-the-victim 'MLM income opportunity' culic racketeering has functioned; for if any crook sets up a self-perpetuating money circulation game by persuading prospective players to hand over $200 per month and to recruit 6 more $200 per month players, who each can recruit 6 more $200 per month players, etc. ad infinitum, on the pretext that all players who obey the mathematical rules of the game can eventually build a constantly-expanding network of recruits/recruiters and receive an unlimited residual income comprising monthly commission on the $1200 monthly payments of their recruits/recruiters and on the $7200 monthly payments of the recruits/recruiters of their recruits/recruiters, etc. ad infinitum, then it is immediately obvious, that such a game is based on the crackpot pseudo-economic theory of infinite geometric expansion, or endless-chain recruitment, and is, therefore, a fraud.


            However, once you understand the above, it doesn't take a genius to work out that, if a narcissistic crook wants to dissimulate exactly the same fraud, all he/she needs to do is launder the unlawful payments by telling casual observers that his/her endless chain of losing players were 'customers' and by giving his/her endless chain of losing-players some cheaply-procured commodity, and/or service, in exchange for their money, and then telling casual observers that all these unlawful transactions (made on the false expectation of future reward) were really lawful 'sales' (based on value and demand). In other words, the products, and/or services, are just distracting wampum which might as well not exist.

             Amazingly, two US academics (who have previously acted as specialist economic advisors on pyramid schemes, to the FTC), William Keep and Peter Vander Nat, have almost arrived at the same common-sense conclusion in a forthcoming article, 'Multilevel Marketing and Pyramid Schemes in the United States: An Historical Analysis,'to be published in 'The Journal of Historical Research in Marketing.' That said, this article is fundamentally-flawed, because in private, William Keep has freely-admitted to me that there has been a cultic aspect to 'MLM' which he, and his co-author, were obliged to ignore, because this is not their field of expertise. 


            In simple terms, in respect of'Herbalife,' most researchers have been hunting for bear, but they have only been loaded for rabbit. Indeed, evidence of the above hybrid-variation of a sustainable pyramid fraud dissimulated behind effectively-unsaleable products, and/or services, is what agents of the FTC are finally going to hunt for at 'Herbalife', but unfortunately, it is not quite as simple as that, because, the instigators of the'Herbalife' racket (like those of the 'Amway' racket whom they have copied) have been inflicting impermissible, co-ordinated, devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion on their victims in order to shut-down their critical, and evaluative, faculties and prevent them complaining. In other words, since current 'Herbalife' adherents have been dissociated from external reality, their testimonies can be predicted with almost total accuracy, because they have unconsciously accepted the fictitious (but nonetheless emotionally and intellectually overwhelming) 'MLM Income Opportunity'controlling scenario, as fact.


            http://mlmtheamericandreammadenightmare.blogspot.fr/2013/10/mlm-income-opportunity-racketeering.html
             
            'The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever.'

            Georges Orwell (Appendix to 'Nineteen Eighty-Four')


            The purpose of 'MLM Income Opportunity' jargon is not only to provide a medium of expression for the unquestioning world-view and mental habits proper to the core-adherents of 'Herbalife,'  but to make all other critical and evaluative modes of thought impossible. It is intended that when 'MLM Income Opportunity'  jargon has been adopted once and for all and traditional language forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the 'positive' principles of  'Herbalife'  - should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary is so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every 'positive' meaning that an 'MLM Distributor' can properly wish to express, while excluding all other 'negative' meanings and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This is done partly by the invention of new 'positive' words and phrases ('Herbalife', 'Multi-Level Marketing', 'Distributor' , Independent Business Owner,'), but chiefly by eliminating undesirable 'negative' words and phrases ('cult', 'totalitarian', 'fraud', 'deception',  'brainwashing', 'victims', 'exploitation' , 'de facto slaves') and by stripping such words and phrases as remain of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meanings whatever. 


            Once this is understood, what has actually been occurring, can only be determined by asking past and present 'Herbalife'adherents the right questions written in thought-provoking, accurate, deconstructed language.

            'MLM' racketeers apparently still believe that all casual observers (including regulators, legal and economic advisors, law enforcement agents, legislators, journalists, Wall St. researchers and judges), will not be able to look beyond the ends of their noses. 

            Consequently, America's home-grown axis of evil remains certain that the full-truth will never be uncovered.

            _______________________________________________________________________





            (Short) Questionaire for Past, and Present,
            'Multi-Level Marketing Income Opportunity' 
            Adherents. 

            (Respondents are advised first to read all the questions before making any answer).
            ____________________________________________________________________________________________

            1. Was the person who first approached you to participate in 'MLM,' a friend or relative (i.e. a person with whom you enjoyed a relationship based on love and trust)?

            2. Did the 'MLM'recruiter present a bleak picture of the world of traditional employment, in which most people are forced to go out to work for 45 years with only retirement and a limited pension to look forward to?

            3. Did the recruiter present the 'MLM Income Opportunity' as a viable alternative to the world of traditional employment, in which it is possible for anyone to retire and enjoy total financial freedom, after a just a few years of concentrated effort?

            4. At the time you were recruited, would you say that you were entirely satisfied with life; particularly, your achievements, education, career/employment status/prospects, home, relationships, social standing, salary, etc.?

            5. How would you describe your level of satisfaction with your life at the time you were recruited?

            6. When, and how, were you first approached to participate in'MLM' and when was the name of the sponsoring company first mentioned?'
            • Was'MLM' first presented to you individually or as part of a group?
            • Did the presentation comprise drawing circles containing numbers and percentages on a board or sheet of paper? 
            • Did you fully-understand the presentation?
            • Was the presentation given by a man with a woman nodding in agreement next to him?
            • Were you given to believe that anyone could understand 'MLM?'
            • Did the recruiters seem generally happy and excited as though they had wonderful news to share?
            7. What prior knowledge did you have of'MLM?'

            8. What was your initial reaction when you were approached?

            9. At the time you signed up, what did you believe to be the success-rate of persons participating in'MLM' schemes (i.e. about what percentage of participants did you think made an overall net-income out of'MLM')?

            10. Were you ever shown any independent quantifiable evidence (e.g. income tax payment receipts) proving that anyone has ever made an overall net-income out of participating in 'MLM?'

            11. Did you ever ask to see such evidence? 

            12. Could you give a brief explanation of what you understand by the term pyramid scheme or scam?

            13. What would you say was the essential identifying characteristic of pyramid scams, Ponzi schemes, money circulation games, chain letter scams, etc.?

             14. Were you given to believe that'MLM' schemes are not pyramid scams, because they involve the sale of products, and/or services, to customers and end users, and offer money-back guarantees?

            15. Were you given to believe that'MLM' schemes cannot be frauds, because  they have existed for decades and have been investigated and approved by governments around the world?

            16. Were you given to believe that 'MLM' schemes cannot be frauds, because celebrities (including senior politicians) have endorsed 'MLM' schemes?

            17. Were you given to believe that 'MLM' schemes cannot be frauds, because their sponsors have given money to charity?

            18. Were you given to believe that 'MLM' schemes cannot be frauds, because they have sponsored professional sports stars and teams?

            19. What was your main motivation for joining an'MLM' scheme :
            •  to earn income?
            •  to buy products and/or services at a discount price
            20. Before you signed up, were your encouraged by the recruiter to seek independent legal/financial advice?

            21. Did you ever seek independent legal/financial advice?

            22.  What initially convinced you that'MLM' was an authentic opportunity to earn income?

            23. At the time you signed up, did you have any knowledge of pernicious groups that employ co-ordinated devious techniques of social, psychological and physical persuasion - designed to shut down the critical and evaluative faculties of ill-informed individuals in order to exploit them and prevent them from complaining?

            24. Could you give a brief explanation of what you understand by the terms:
            • Neuro-Linguistic Programming?
            • brainwashing?
            • coercive behaviour modification?
            • group pressure?
            • covert hypnosis?
            • ego-destruction?
            • thought reform?
            • mental manipulation?
            • love bombing?
            25. Were you given to believe thatit is possible for anyone to replace their income by participating in 'MLM?'

            26. Were you given to believe that after achieving a certain level of income in MLM you could cease all activity and receive the same residual income for the rest of your life?

            27. Were you given to believe that this residual income could be passed on to your descendants after your death?

            28. During you time in an 'MLM' group, were you taught that the 'exact duplication of a proven step-by-step plan'would bring you 'total financial freedom?'

            29. As part of this 'proven plan,' were you taught:
            • to alter you habitual way of speaking (if yes, give a brief explanation)?
            • to alter your habitual way of dressing (if yes, give a brief explanation)?
            • to alter you habitual way of eating (if yes, give a brief explanation)?
            • to alter your habitual sleep pattern (if yes, give a brief explanation)?
            • to alter you habitual social contacts (if yes, give a brief explanation)?
            • that everyone above you in your 'MLM Network'was your 'Upline'and everyone beneath you was your 'Downline?'
            • that your'Upline'was to be'admired and respected?'
            • that your'Upline's success in MLM depended on helping his/her Downline to succeed,'
            • to divide everyone, and everything, in your life into 'negative' vs'positive?'
            • that 'MLM'products were to be deemed 'positive'and non-'MLM'products deemed'negative?'
            • that you should buy a regular quota (by value) of'positive'products?
            • that you should draw up a list of prospective 'MLM'recruits comprising everyone you had ever encountered in your life?
            • that you should progressively contact all these persons and attempt to recruit themusing a precisely-worded'positive'script?
            • that you should never say anything 'negative'about 'MLM?'
            • that you should never listen to, or look at, anything'negative'about'MLM?'
            • that all persons who refused to join you(particularly, those who said 'MLM' is a scam) were to be deemed 'negative' and a threat to your own success?
            • that all 'negative'persons were also to be deemed losers, whiners, etc., and should be excluded from your life?
            • that all persons with regular jobs were to be labelled 'Just Over Broke' losers?
            • that you should only have contact with 'positive winners?'
            • that you should regularly buy, and listen to, recordings of'positive winners?'
            • that you should regularly buy tickets to, and attend, meetings conducted by'positive winners'at which you took part in rythmic chanting and moving?
            • that you should regularly buy, and read, publications, written by 'positive winners?'
            • that you should exactly duplicate the 100% positive mental attitude and behaviour of the 'positive winners'in your'Upline?'
            • that you should regularly visualize your 'dreams an goals' in life (luxury cars, expensive houses, exotic holiday destinations, etc.)
            • that you should fix images of your 'dreams and goals' in strategic places in your home? 
            • that 'all persons who develop a 100% positive mental attitude and never quit, ultimately achieve their dreams and goals in MLM?'
            • that 'all persons who fail to achieve their dreams and goals in MLM, are negative losers, whiners, quitters etc., who always try to blame others, when they only have themselves to blame?'
            30. As a result of duplicating the 'proven plan,'did you lose contact with anyone with whom you had previously been close (give brief details)?



            David Brear (copyright 2014)

            Doug Wead & Patrick Buisson - blackmailers of Presidents, Bush and Sarkozy?

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            I've recently been asked if I believe that senior agents of the US Federal Trade Commission will do their job and pursue a thorough investigation of 'Herbalife,' when, for years, the FTC has been protecting 'MLM income opportunity'fraud?

            This article begins to explain:

            •  just how deeply, and easily, traditional culture has been infiltrated by the absurd, but nonetheless pernicious,'MLM income opportunity' fairy story. 
            •  just how easy it is to deceive and manipulate persons who are certain that they cannot possibly be deceived and manipulated.


            'MLM'racketeer,'Pastor'Doug Wead, the man who shook the American Right



            Over the years, Doug Wead has made millions of dollars by steadfastly pretending to be a wealthy, 'Multi-Level Marketing expert' and 'Compassionate Christian' philanthropist who has a secret knowledge which can enable ordinary poor humans to transform into wealthy superhumans (just like him), and that he is prepared to share this secret knowledge with anyone (for a price)



            In other words, Doug Wead is a blame the-victim 'MLM Income Opportunity' cultic racketeer, but he has apparently pursued a parallel career as a blackmailer of George W. Bush, whom he once approached, and befriended, in the role of 'historian, author and 'special adviser' to President George Bush Snr.' In Brief, during the 1980s and early 1990s, Doug Wead, a pastor in a 'Prosperity Gospel / Domionist Church'known as the 'Assemblies of God,' was employed by President George Bush to help him to pretend affinity with voters from the 'Religious Right.'




            At this time, Doug Wead, worked alongside George W. Bush.





            In the late 1990s, Wead was consulted (in the capacity of 'spiritual advisor') by George W. Bush, when he was still Governor of Texas, but planning to stand as Presidential candidate. Wead then abused his position of trust and secretly tape-recorded his private conversations with George W. Bush. In 2005, a few tantalising extracts were released by Wead to the New York Times. In these, Bush began to make indirect confessions about his private life; particularly, his previous abuse of alcohol and narcotics. Bush also spoke of his non-conservative attitude towards homosexuality. At the time, certain commentators speculated that these extracts were released as a warning to George W. Bush and the Republican party, and that Wead probably held much more damaging material in reserve. 


            Timothy Muris
            Photo of David  Scheffman
            David Scheffman

            Perhaps it's all just an unfortunate coincidence?, but prior to these sinister events, in 2001, newly-elected President George W. Bush had appointed one of the'Amway'mob's own attorneys, Timothy Muris, as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.  Muris then just happened to appoint David Scheffman as the FTC's new Chief Economist (a post which Scheffman had previously held 1985-1988). 



            In 2000, Scheffman had enthusiastically represented a gang of blame-the victim 'MLM income opportunity'racketeers hiding behind a fake 'direct selling' company known as 'Equinox International.' Scheffman had appeared in court and steadfastly pretended that Equinox was not a pyramid scheme, insisting that his expert opinion was based on the fact that  'Equinox' was a regulated-member of the Direct Selling Association and operated exactly like 'Amway.'Despite Scheffman's jargon-laced lies, the FTC eventually succeeded in closing the 'Equinox' racket and recovering $50 millions for victims, but prosecutors had estimated that at least $330 millions had been taken from the public. 


            Amazingly, Scheffman, a de facto agent of criminals, remained hiding in plain sight at the FTC's Bureau of Economics for two years, 2001-2003, during which time, Orwellian modifications were made to the federal government's policy towards pyramid schemes dressed up as 'MLM/Direct selling income opportunities.'In short, the FTC steadfastly pretended to be protecting America's consumers, whilst a number of its senior agents began to protect'MLM' racketeers to the detriment of the public.



            Doug Wead's own connections with the'Amway' mob, and particularly with Dexter Yager, go back many years. 




            However, in 2007, Doug Wead and Dexter Yager's long-time criminal associate, Jean or John Godzich, was convicted and sentenced in France to a three year prison term (in absentia) for stealing 6 millions Euros from his bankrupt French'MLM'front company,'Le Groupement.' An international arrest warrant for Godzich (a former 'Amway Diamond Distributor'), has never been enforced, because the USA doesn't permit the extradition of its citizens.






            In recent years, Wead and Godzich have been peddling a new, deadly chapter of the pernicious 'MLM'fairy story entitled, 'Xango.'

            Patrick Buisson, the man who shook the French Right.


            As far as I know, Patrick Buisson has never been involved in any 'MLM' cult, but he has lately been exposed as a (failed) blackmailer of former French President, Nicolas Sarkozy whom he once approached, and befriended, in the role of 'historian, author and political adviser,'but who is now described as a cult-style guru and skilled mental manipulator.




            Indeed, the similarities between Patrick Buisson and Doug Wead, are quite astonishing. Whilst somewhat ironically, the French word 'buisson' means a small bush.




            In brief, against the advice of his conservative Republican, political allies, President Sarkozy employed Patrick Buisson (a man known to hold extreme right wing views and who has acted as a go-between for certain conservative Republican, and extreme right wing, politicians) to help him to pretend affinity with supporters of the French National Front.In other words, in the run up to the French Presidential election of April 2012 (won by Socialist, François Hollande), Buisson was seen by the increasingly-unpopular, sitting President Sarkozy, as the man who held the secret of winning a second term. However, during 3 years, Buisson abused his position of trust to record, in secret, hundreds of hours of Sarkozy's private conversations. Recently, a few tantalising extracts have been released to the press, but it is widely-believed that Buisson could be holding far more damaging material in reserve; for Nicolas Sarkozy is a man with more than the avererage number of skeletons rattling in his closet.  It has also been revealed that, apart from being paid 120 000 Euros annually to act as a 'Presidential Policy Advisor,'the President aranged for approximately 10 million Euros of French tax payers' money to be given to a company controlled by Patrick Buisson, in exchange for 'opinion polls.'



            Via his attorney, Patrick Buisson first insisted that no secret tape recordings of the President existed. He then claimed to have recorded his conversations with Nicolas Sarkozy accidentally. 


            Most-recently, only when faced with a lawsuit filed by Nicolas Sarkozy and his wife, Buisson has begun pretending that his private recordings were stolen, and that he had no part in releasing any of them to the press. 

            One thing is certain, with a few notable exceptions, almost everyone who has come into contact with Patrick Buisson, is now terrified to say anything. 



            David Brear (copyright 2014)










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