Wiki:  “Psychological manipulation… aims to change… behavior…  through underhanded, deceptive, or even abuse tactics.  By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another’s expense, such methods could be considered exploitive, abusive, devious and deceptive.”

I just heard my cat meowing in the back of the house.

“Did somebody leave the door closed?” 

No.

After staring, purring, and then meowing, she violates my policy not to be manipulated.  (‘Been there, done that.)  Yes, there’s no denying it: her strategy worked; meowing at the north end got me off my butt.

But Heck No.  I sat back down.  At 18 pounds, she can live off her reserves.

But, Oh, Kitty! 

No.

Must.

Resist.

Being.

Manipulated.

Really, though, the topic of manipulation is downright hilarious, coming from a MOM:  “I really need to get out there and weed the garden.”   Okay, okay: hoping all things, we take it at face value. … NOT!

From Mom to Kitty, and everywhere in-between, it gets on my last nerve: somebody messing with me surreptitiously.  [Sorry, I had to use that word today, albeit poorly: at work somebody used the word; I had to look it up later: clandestinely, by stealth.]

I used to know this person who tried to be a manipulator.

Epic Fail:

“Anybody who won’t do what I say… can’t be my friend.”

Um, okay, cya.

“Anybody who would [do this, or do that] is a bad person; don’t talk to them; just talk to me.” 

Um, No.

Even my cat knows her limits.  Howl all night, but the food bucket tells where the rubber meets the road.  Who’s still at the computer, and who’s still burning cat-fat?

Um, Okay.

Love wins.

I’ll go feed the cat.

Dr. Nick Begich on C2CAM with George Noory
27 February 2013

Dr. Nick Begich is well known for his work and research on HAARP, “Mind Effects” and more. He has widely reported in these areas as an expert for many publications, government organizations and private companies. He has been an expert witness for the European Parliament on these subjects and provides significant research contributions in this area. Also, through the Lay Institute on Technologies he organized a private meeting of top scientists in the area of mind effects in 2007.

Begich has authored five books in seven languages on technology and the impacts of change. Heard on thousands of radio and television talk shows and documentaries, he is a frequent commentator on new technologies, energy, politics, education and the environment.

Dr. Nick Begich talked about HAARP and the various functions the program performs, including possible weather manipulation. He described HAARP’s ultimate function as “taking the energy of the Earth and manipulating the energy so it begins to flow in directions at your demand.” This energy, he said, can then be used for “a variety of weapons effects” as well as positive applications such as restoring the environment, missile defense, and disrupting comets or asteroids if they pose a danger to the planet. Begich advocated for more open discussion on the risks and rewards associated with the program rather than keeping it shrouded in secrecy.

Regarding suspicions that HAARP could be used to weaponize or modify weather, Begich acknowledged that it is well within the possible functions of the program. Chillingly, he noted that weather warfare is nearly impossible to prove and allows for plausible deniability. “You could literally create the disaster and then get invited in to mop it up,” he observed, “and be the hero rather than the villain.” Beyond the weaponization of weather, Begich warned about the overall dangers of manipulating the climate. He explained that although international treaties allow for domestic use of weather modification, such tinkering could have adverse effects on neighboring nations or the entire planet.

(tune of: “Grandma’s in The Cellar”)

Certain parts of the brain

Are hard to restrain

Grabbing hold of an infatuous ideal…

Seeing someone to get

But not as of yet

Open-eyed enough

To see beyond their zeal.

-

Love is blind,

Like this kind…

That only sees the good it wants to see,

Before getting deeper

One must check out problem sleepers…

Plus and minuses before you’re married!

-

It’s a problem after marriage,

Attraction to a carriage

Not as old or slumpy as yours…

Certainly such a vision

Can foster division,

If infatuation’s got no real cures.

-

Love is blind

Like this kind,

That only sees the good it wants to see…

It’s a sticky situation

Blinded by infatuation,

One could be deceived completely!

-

The section of the brain

Where infatuation reigns

Exudes a stronger pull than cocaine…

If you’re under its spell

No one can tell

You anything against your thinking grain.

-

Love so blind

That this kind

Allows stupid things be done and said…

As in a drunken stupor,

One’s judgement isn’t super…

Everyone can tell you’re not right in the head!

–Jonathan Caswell

Points raised include; “never try to out psychopath a psychopath”, the cumulative effects of government schooling (schule’ing) amounting to mass grooming for future enslavement to psychopaths, and how to elevate yourself beyond the games of those incapable of love. With 1-4% of the population considered to be psychopathic or sociopathic; and the far reaching devastation wrought on a global scale by their pernicious influence, it is critical that the average person not possessed by this decidedly reptilian world view become aware of these often abusive and predatory aberrations and how they might prepare, cope and recover from any potential interactions with psychopaths…

http://disinfo.com/2013/05/how-to-identify-and-protect-yourself-from-psychopaths/

But oh it made me so mad (so much so I wrote this blog post as soon as I got on the train for my morning commute). Here is a popular show perpetuating the idea that manipulation is a good thing and the myth / perception that women want to manipulate men for their own means and that they need to do this to say get another date or a marriage proposal. Oh god!! I loathe this sort of crap!! This helps to perpetuate misogynist thinking and an unhealthy ideal of how women ‘should’ act. I.e. women should manipulate their men to get what they want. And the male presenter, although it was tongue in cheek at first, put men down describing them as unintelligent and easily manipulated. Oh jeez!!

Personally I believe we shouldn’t have to manipulate our significant others to get what we want. Isn’t a relationship a partnership of two people? If our partner doesn’t do what we want, talk about it, even get mad (and realise how silly you are for doing so – people aren’t mind readers), but for god’s sake don’t manipulate them to get what you want. It seems like such a selfish and controlling thing to do. And don’t listen to popularist TV shows, authors and magazines, especially when they perpetuate negative stereotypes of women and men.

Watch the video yourself at the Sunrise website.

Ähnlich verhält es sich mit den Medien. Die von Menschen praktizierten Medien sind unmittelbar. Sie kommen ohne Verzögerung zum Ausdruck und unverfälscht vom Moment ihrer Herstellung. Natürlich beeinflussen Prozesse aus dem persönlichen Umfeld (Herkunft, Bildung, Interessen) des Subjektes die Konsistenz des Mediums vor der Herstellung. Doch der Begriff unmittelbar bezieht sich auf den Zeitpunkt der Wiedergabe des Mediums.

Bei den selbstständigen Medien bestimmt der Mensch vorher die Konsistenz des Mediums. Dennoch ist er nicht das Subjekt des letzten Kontaktes wie bei dem Bespielen eines unmittelbaren Idiophons. Er ist ähnlich einem Menschen, der versucht mit einem Reissack zu musizieren und behauptet das Geräusch absolut kontrollieren zu können. Er mag ein Buch geschrieben haben, aber allein schon das Papier, die Wahl der Schriftart oder des Umschlags verändern das Produkt nachhaltig. Er vermag eine Nachrichtensendung im Fernsehen zu moderieren; präsentiert wie ein Monolog des Nachrichtensprechers ist es doch ein Dialog zwischen ihm und n-Fernsehzuschauer, ist es doch eine Art der Kommunikation, die mehrere Instanzen wie Aufnahmegeräte (Audio, Video), Festplatten, temporäre Computerordner und schlussendlich Fernsehgeräte durchschreiten muss und dabei so verfälscht wird, wie das Geräusch des Reissackes durch die Selbstständigkeit des Reiskorns verfälscht wird.

Es handelt sich hierbei um keine Kritik an den selbstständigen Medien, sondern vielmehr um eine Darstellung des momentanen Zustandes.

Der Mensch muss sich beschäftigen oder beschäftigt wissen. Der Wille zum Fortschritt ist uns angeboren. Kommunikation ist die Hauptbeschäftigung des Menschen. Daher war auch die Kommunikation zum Fortschritt gezwungen. Wir kommunizieren rund um die Uhr, meistens mit uns selber. Um dieser Einsamkeit im Innern zu entfliehen, erschufen wir selbstständige Medien. Nicht umsonst, gucken wir so oft den selben Lieblingsfilm, da wir jedes Mal im Dialog mit genau diesem einen Medium etwas Neues entdecken.

Desweiteren müssen wir die Richtung des Mediums beachten. Es gibt monologische Medien wie Fernsehen, Musik* und Bücher*, die generell keine Antwort des Gegenübers erwarten oder gar berechtigen, sondern sich als puren Überbringer von Informationen definieren. Im Gegensatz dazu stehen die dialogischen Medien, wo die Interaktion mit anderen Individuen eher gewollt ist und teilweise unterstützt wird.

Durch unsere vorherigen Ergebnisse können wir nur zu der Annahme gelangen, dass Medien von Grund auf menschlich sind, denn der Mensch produziert die Medien, um sie anschließend zu nutzen. Er alleine kann über sie verfügen und auch wenn seine Werkzeuge wie Fernsehgerät(Konsum) und Videokamera(Produktion) ihm das erst möglich machen, sind sie selber nicht imstande zu denken beziehungsweise das Medium aktiv zu verändern. Passiv werden die Geräte das Medium jedoch wie oben schon beschrieben immer verändern. Daran hat sich der Mensch jedoch schon gewöhnt und ihm fällt es mit dem bloßen Auge kaum noch auf.

Medien sind menschlich, d.h. unsere Fragestellung ist nicht mehr von Aktualität. Sie sollte vielmehr „Wie glaubwürdig sind die Menschen ? “ lauten, denn der Mensch macht das aus den Medien, was sie wirklich sind.

Der Mensch ist ein egoistisches Wesen. Bei der Lebenslust, die er hegt, handelt es sich eher um Todesangst und -ungewissheit, die ihn plagt. Liebe und Freundschaft werden organisiert, um sich selber vollends zu befriedigen. Ich helfe dir, in der Hoffnung, dass du mir hilfst. Ich gebe dir Befriedigung, in der Hoffnung, dass du auch mir sie gibst. Ich fühle nur deswegen Mitleid, in der bloßen Erwartung, dass es der Nächste mir gleichtut. In dem Zentrum unseres Menschenbildes gibt es nur Platz für uns. Für uns sind wir selbst der Nächste.

Wenn der egoistische Mensch maßgeblichen Einfluss auf die Medien und deren Folgen in der Gesellschaft hat, dann wird er sie auch nutzen. Der Mensch ist generell negativ und nicht glaubwürdig und solange die Medien seinen verlängerten Arm darstellen, werden sie es genauso sein. Die Selbstständigkeit der Reiskörner wird daran nicht viel ändern können.

Commentary By: Gordon King

So this is what it’s come to.  Test tube meat?  Synthetic hamburger?  Sounds delicious doesn’t it?  Not!  Have we gone so far over the edge that our next meal will come from a test tube?  You know we are living in the end times when all living organisms are now engineered or manipulated in test tubes.  Plants, animals, fuel, babies and now our meat!  What’s next on the world agenda?   Hmmm….sort of reminds me of a movie I once saw…”Soylent Green”!  Does something sound fishy here or is it just me?  The bible talks about genetic manipulation in the days of Noah with the Nephilim.  He also says that the end times will be like that in the days of Noah!  In Genesis 6:4 “There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.”  And also after that, meaning the Nephilim would be around after the flood!  I believe that the Nephilim are among us now and are playing a role in all of this genetic manipulation.  What do you think?

SOURCE

A Dutch scientist hopes he’ll change minds about the viability of test tube meat when his first genetically engineered hamburger, made from billions of stem cells, is served hot off the grill.

Mark Post, the head of physiology at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, has spent years growing the synthetic hamburger from bovine stem cells, which his team turned into thin strips of muscle tissue before mincing them into a patty.

While the process has taken time and run up considerable expense – the project received $325,000 from an anonymous donor – Post told the New York Times he hoped the cost of cultured meat could come down in the future, making it a viable food source.

After conducting an informal tasting, Post gave the synthetic tissue his seal of approval, telling the Times, it “tastes reasonably good” and that he planned to add just salt and pepper before serving it, perhaps at an event in London this summer.

Post told ABC News in 2011 that he expected meat consumption to double in the next 40 years.

Read full article

Related articles

• VIDEO! Proof of Nephilim Hybrids as Described in the Bible (vineoflife.net)
• Fallen Angels, Hybrids, and Pure Evil (raptureimminent.wordpress.com)
• Would You Eat a Test Tube-Made Burger? (gizmodo.co.uk)

Many of us got lost between “I feel” and “I must” (“all do that”) and have a problem to differentiate why they say or do what they say and do. Ego is easy to disclose if we can be honest to ourselves – it is enough to ask ourselves if we did that getting nothing in return. Ego’s rule is a deal; Love’s rule is an expression. Take a look at sentences people say and you will discover how many words that we say are empty, don’t come from our feelings – we have been taught to use them to get some effect and we repeat them like robots, expecting results. Make an experiment: just one day try not to say anything what doesn’t come from your heart, from your true opinion, from your feelings – try it and you will know what I mean, how far is our soul from our reality.

WE create untruth and block Love. The more of us do that, the harder is for a single person to break the rules and act differently, according own truth, making each word meaningful and true. But it is always possible, it is always question of choice: what is more important to me – to be faithful to self or to fit in. Each of us decides it every moment anew, again and again.

‘The price of being a sheep is boredom. The price of being a wolf is loneliness. Choose one or the other with great care’ – Hugh McLeod.

As much as I agree with the sentiment behind this quote, a wolf is born a wolf and a sheep is born a sheep – there is no choice. A sheep may become embittered by its pen and bash horns with its fellows, but it is still a sheep. And a wolf may lie down and rest after a wearying hunt, but it can never change its skin. The best a wolf can get from the sheep, apart from their meat, is their compliance, directing and manipulating them, as a hound does, by instilling enough fear or manipulation in them so that they move in directions that they are directed to.

The American system is broken and the Great American Experiment is almost lost.  But what is even more frightening is that (for far too many) the American people’s connection to their culture, traditions, religion and history are broken while in large part the American people as a whole have lost their common sense, their ability for critical thinking which is needed to connect the dots and their willingness to work and fight like past generations did and would have to get them back for themselves and for their children before they are gone forever.

Whatever you want to call them, the liberal left, Progressives, Socialists, Communists, Marxists, global elites, etc., which include most of our politicians, the media corps, Hollywood types and those who control our educational system, they have been on a mission for decades, while average and generally more traditional Americans, the Sheeple as they have been dubbed by Russia’s Pravda, ‘just lived’ allowing  themselves to be  manipulated, dumbed down and programmed.  The Progressives used political correctness; multiculturalism; White Guilt; division; attacks on societal and cultural norms; racism, diversion; the creation of a permanent underclass that they can theoretically control and manipulate out of dependence; and the infiltration of public schools, churches and both traditional and social media, especially to reach the young, to bring us to this moment in time in American history, when there are more low and under-informed citizens and voters than those engaged and involved.

Tom Brokaw’s ‘Greatest Generation’ was the lynch pin that was purposely broken between tradition and what America was and the rebellious baby-boomers and what America ‘could be molded into’ using the left’s plan.  The Greatest Generation fought in one or both World Wars or Korea and were “Great Depression” babies or children of survivors of the “Great Depression and the Great War(s) and in their attempt to spare them the hardships they grew up with, they produced the most rebellious, self-centered, self-indulgent and spoiled generation of all time.

Those in power today from the Clintons to the Obamas and the members of their administrations are and were products of the ‘could be’ generations that followed the so-called The Greatest Generation. 

Remember Hillary Clinton’s famous debate comment in 2007: “I prefer to think of myself as a Progressive!” (Video), after being asked if she was a liberal). Progressives… the Clintons are and were, having been part of the George Soros, Saul Alinsky and Cloward and Piven team; The Shadow Party.

Whereas the Obama’s are part of the generation inspired and spawned by Soros, Alinsky, Cloward, Piven , the Clintons and their ideas.  Both President Obama’s mother and grandparents were Communists, who attended the Little Red Church in Washington state as well as his mentor Frank Marshall Davis. They were part of the ‘anti-traditional America’ movement.

The members of the Greatest Generation generally grew up poor and gave their all (their youth, their health and their lives) for America and freedom, or definitely knew many who did,  and they deserve our gratitude and respect for all they gave and their sacrifices.  But where I differ with Tom Brokaw, who like Katie Couric and many other anchors and reporters is a member of the elitist CFR, the Greatest Generation didn’t follow through on their sacrifices and commitment to America after the war years. Instead, wanting to spare their kids the strife and hardships they went through, the Greatest Generation raised spoiled self-indulgent children, the baby-boomers, who in turn raised spoiled self-indulgent children, Generation X, Generation Y and the Millennials, with even less structure than they had and generally without moms at home after school and who, like our president, often grew up without stable fathers in the picture. They were rife for manipulation, indoctrination and experimentation!

American born and immigrant children learned American history and a pride in this amazing country. History was as important as reading, writing and arithmetic. Most people went to church so they had roots and were grounded with a support group from both home and church. And traditions, beliefs and culture were passed down from generation to generation by parents, grandparents, and communities.

America used to be a melting pot.  Immigrants came legally, in an orderly fashion in numbers that America could assimilate…  They brought with them their backgrounds, their traditions, their religion and their talents that would eventually help flavor the pot, but initially they came here hungry, grateful and with sponsors knowing it would be tough and that there would be no handouts. So they were ready to work, ready to blend in, ready to learn English and ready to become Americans… not expecting America to change for them.  They retained their personal cultures and honored them at home or in their communities.  They blended their traditions with American traditions but strived first and foremost to blend in. Immigrant children quickly learned to speak English, sometimes spoke 2 to 3 languages, and knew both their own history and American history as well, often better than anyone born here.

When you know where you came from, your history, which includes a pride and knowledge in America’s history and traditions as well as your own family history, traditions, and values plus your cultural and religious background you develop a natural love, respect and honor for all those things, even during the rebellious years, and most people find their way back to those fundamentals.  Those who have worked for generations to lay the groundwork to fundamentally change America understood that and have slowly, quietly and methodically chipped away at that core.

A little diversity, room for growth and positive change are good things, but what we have in common, not division or diversity, is the glue that makes any society, culture and country strong.

Several generations of Americans have now been dumbed down, have lost their religion, have abandoned their traditions, have decided to live by their own rules and have even abandoned the integrity of the family unit.  And the grandparents and great-grandparents who should have cemented the generations decided to play golf, go on cruises and indulge themselves instead of passing along the traditions, the stories and the history.  They left their grandchildren at the mercy of the Progressives, as they did their children, telling themselves that they had done enough and deserved a restful and fun retirement, that they wanted their children and grandchildren to have it easier than they did (less rules, structure and sacrifice) and opting for being the nice and fun grandparents who occasionally stopped by to spoil them in retirement, instead of the involved examples who passed the torch.

We have allowed ourselves to be dumbed down and our time to be filled with distractions and in turn have allowed our children to be dumbed down, manipulated and indoctrinated by electronic baby-sitters, an educational system with an agenda contrary to our beliefs and their peers that generally had/have the same or even less guidance.  Fewer and fewer families eat dinner together or they eat dinner in front of the television or allow cell phones and other distractions at the table.  Less and less people are attending church; after all it is easier to sleep in or more fun to go to a ball game.  And more and more people’s holidays revolve around sales at the mall and how many gifts they receive instead of traditions and celebrating and discussing the real meaning behind them.  And when was the last time you discussed politics, religion, current events or history with your kids, grandkids, neighbors, friends or co-workers? How about family history?  Our children are being programmed by people like Bill Ayers, mindless (or worse) television shows and video games full of sex and violence. And then we wonder what is wrong with society and our youth. And most Americans no longer read the newspaper or watch the news and if they do, the majority mindlessly read and watch the mainstream media outlets without question or research, that have become propaganda arms for our ever further left-leaning government.  And then we vote without knowing the issues, anything about the candidates or for a repeat and wonder why our lives keep getting worse.

Obama is presently fighting off a long list of scandals – Benghazi-gate, IRS-gate, Press-gate and now Sebelius-gate and EPA-gate plus he should be answering for  those scandals like Fast and Furious that his team buried.  And the leading Democrat Progressive choice for 2016, Hillary Clinton, is equally involved in many of those and others, yet the average American, is either completely unaware that they even exist, or if they have heard of them, really don’t understand what the scandals are about because of the bias liberal media spin and blackouts (Many people have not even heard about the murder trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell). It is just now because of the courage of whistleblowers in some of these scandals and the administration’s miscalculations that ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC are even mentioning them, but still under reported by them.  If this were almost any other president in American history, he would already be writing his resignation letter or be involved in impeachment proceedings.  Yet even with their protection of him, we now realize that this administration has become so paranoid and controlling that they were even spying on the friendly media.

Reader’s Digest recently took a ‘Trust’ Poll: The 100 Most Trusted People in America. They surveyed 1,009 people between January 24th and January 29th. "Who is the most trusted man in America?" Want to take a stab at it? Wanna take a wild guess? I’ll give you a little hint. Clarence Thomas is number 88… Tom Hanks is number 1 and Sandra Bullock is the most trusted woman in America.  What happened to the days where astronauts, reporters like Walter Cronkite, Mother Teresa or presidents like Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy headed up the list? We can kid ourselves all we want, but you only have to watch a segment of Jay-Walking with Jay Leno or Water’s World with Jesse Watters or callers to  talk radio shows like Howard Stern to realize how lost we really are.

“Sandra Bullock, the 2nd most trusted person in America?  I wouldn’t even trust her to tell me she was in a good movie.” –Glenn Beck

The Reader’s Digest Poll of the 100 Most Trusted People in Low-Information America

There is only one way to save America and to prove the goal of the Great American Experiment, that people can rule themselves.  But it won’t be easy and will take returning to a world with rules; enforcement of the law; respect for parents, grand-parents and authority… including a ‘higher authority’; a house-cleaning of the broken system and a concerted effort to replace facebook, twitter, texting, sexting, 24-hour electronic stimulation and even our obsession with the 24-hour sports cycle with family time, reading, going back and learning the real America history, attending church, as well as our family and cultural histories, delving into current events and the news and sharing the truth with everyone you know.  And then it will take our involvement in our schools;  involvement in elections at all levels; boycotting TV and other media that lie to us and harm our children, values and culture; and demanding honest media and honest politicians. How about running a kid’s patriot camp in your area or taking a summer trip to a presidential library, Gettysburg, Williamsburg or Washington, D.C. for a start? And leave the electronics at home.

You cannot love or honor what you don’t know or miss, let alone be expected to fight for it.  We have done our children and the future generations of Americans, if America survives at all, a great dis-service by allowing them to sail through life like ships without rudders. We are teetering on the edge as a nation, a society and a culture and the only way for us to keep from going over the edge is for those, mostly 50 and over, who were raised before common sense and critical thinking died and were educated in pre-rewritten America history, religion and with family and cultural traditions, to step-up and fill-in the gaps for those who are younger and those who are lost and floundering and become the leaders for change… a change back to what worked and mattered, no matter how tough or how unpopular… and to do it quickly.

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.  . . . whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right." –these are the cornerstones of Jefferson’s interest in education and the franchise. He placed education as the foundation of democracy and a prerequisite to vote.

Related:

Obama Tells Wealthy Gathering He Wants To “Institutionalize” Crisis Atmosphere

Jefferson, Education and the Franchise

Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime

Marco Rubio, His Chief of Staff Cesar Conda, Amnesty, George Soros and the Grander Plan

Anger gave me a voice. Not in a good way, since I’ve been healthy, but in a bad way, when I was still in the insanity of my codependency. When I began telling people about struggling with codependency, they would look at me like I was crazy. “What? You codependent?” They didn’t believe it because I have always been a strong personality with strong opinions. But this was a facade of self-worth and self-esteem that I didn’t really posses inside. This was me fighting to obtain a sense of security, because inside I felt wrong. I’m not talking about feeling like I was wrong about something in particular, but I was wrong in my being. And I was afraid. Of everybody and everything. I was afraid of making people angry. I was afraid of hurting their feelings. I was afraid of confrontation. I knew deep down that because of my fear, and feeling wrong, I couldn’t be myself, I didn’t have a voice. But I wanted one so badly. So I fought it by being opinionated and strong. However, I only expressed these traits when it didn’t involve direct confrontation or anger.

Eventually not having a real voice builds up inside a codependent, and we finally erupt in rage. We let things build inside: resentment, anger, frustration, hurt, and then the anger finally becomes bigger than the fear and we no longer care about hurting someone’s feelings or making them angry. We’ve finally had enough! But it’s usually only with those we’re the closest to. For me, this was my husband. Along with the anger would come lot’s of emotion with crying, yelling, pouting, and my favorite “codependent punishing behavior” – silence. I realized as I got healthy that all of it was manipulation. I wanted him to “feel” what I was feeling, to understand how he “made” me feel, to feel sorry for the way he treated me, and ultimately, to change. And, of course, I felt completely justified (and of course all my friends agreed!).

What I learned in my recovery process is that I wasn’t justified, because I was responsible for the way he treated me, for allowing his anger and control issues to impact me. I was responsible for enabling his thinking that everything was about him by making everything about him myself. I was responsible for constantly trying to “make” him feel better instead of letting him deal with his own emotions. I was responsible for not speaking up and saying what I wanted or didn’t want, directly and without anger instead of indirectly, manipulatively, with anger or pouting or punishment (yeah, that’ll make him listen and change – NOT). MY actions, not his, got me to that place of anger. I blamed him, and blamed him, and blamed him for my unhappiness, yet I chose every bit of it.

Learning how to have a voice without anger, learning how to be direct and honest without manipulation has been difficult, especially in the beginning when my husband couldn’t handle it and tried everything he could to keep me in a codependent place. I couldn’t have claimed it without the power of Christ in me. The Holy Spirit enabled me to claim (not reclaim, because I’ve never had it before) the free will he gave me. Christ died so I could be free, not so I could become a slave to anyone or anything. Even though it’s been really, really hard, going through the process of recovery has set me free to be me. Finally.

all solche aktionen dienen dazu den angepeilten emotionell oder intellektuell in eine beziehung** zu verwickeln, zu fangen, “zurückzurufen”
clevere angepeilte antworten nicht oder so wenig & emotionell so kalt, dass keine beziehung daraus werden kann, diese botschaft wird von dem emotionell agierenden empfangen & verstanden, welches wiederum zu einer verstärkung* der aktivität auf demselben kommunikationsweg führt

intellektuell kann hierbei zu misverständnissen kommen, wenn der agierende nicht mitkriegt, dass er etwas nicht mitgekriegt hat & dass faktisch bei ihm selber & nicht wie er postuliert bei dem anderen, nachholbedarf über die inhalte der situation besteht
(nicht wissen in welcher kirche es klingelt, sich selber mit dem anderen als die quelle des misverständnissen verwechseln – selbst dazu lernen vermeiden aus der absicht selbstverletzung zu vermeiden, weil jedes dazu lernen eine veränderung der gesamtkonstellation der selbst-kenntnis bewirkt – sich selbst entfremdet sein als grund für diese handlungen ? angst haben vor neuen situationen, nicht gelernt haben sich stabil als man selber zu definieren in verändernden situationen)

bildet das von müttern vs von vätern anerzogene gegenseitige unterschiede ?

• mütter – grundsätzliche position der unterwürfigkeit
  (subjekt, behandeltes objekt, gestaltung von aussen/fremd)
  negativer paternalismus

• väter – grundsätzliche position der übergeordnetheit
  (objekt, handelndes subjekt, gestaltung von innen/selbst)
  positiver paternalismus

*
verstärkung = vervielfachung dessen welches bisher nicht gewirkt hat
agieren auf dem quantitativen weg, dh massen-gewalt

ist gewalt nur massen-gewalt oder ist gewalt jeder akt mit zerstörerischer absicht ?
zerstörerische absicht ist die absicht der schwächung des anderen, um anschliessend in kommunikation gelangen zu können

zerstörerische absicht, aktionen, welche das gegenüber schädigen, schwächen

ist gewalt die zerstörerische absicht
oder
ist gewalt die zerstörung auch ohne absicht also zB aufgrund der verantwortungslosigkeit & dh, dummheit & dh verdrängtheit & dh angst & dh unfähigkeit benötigtes zu lernen
–> fahrlässige verletzung
–> bezweckte verletzung

sich verstellen :
weinen & ähnliches als falsche signale der eigenen faktischen schwäche dahinter & dh faktischen verletzbarkeit
weinen & ähnliches als schutzpuffer signale der eigenen faktischen schwäche dahinter & dh faktischen verletzbarkeit – warnen den anderen vor schuld, die er sich auflädt & dh, dass er seiner gesundheit selber schadet auf diese weise zu handelnd (Lencioni)
wie lange werden menschen noch fähig sein diese form der geselschaft zu führen ?
solange die grenzen zwischen den unterstützenden & den zerstörerischen handlungen nicht von jedem einzelnen menschen vollends mitgekriegt & in entsprechende handlungen eingebaut wurden

**
beziehung
hierbei ist konkret die positionierung im TA model gemeint

• manipulation ist eine aktion der beeinflussung innerhalb einer beziehung von unten nach oben

• diskussion ist eine aktion des austauschens, des ggs abgleichs des wissens & des voneinander lernens innerhalb einer beziehung auf gleicher ebene

• befehlen, beanspruchen, erwarten & verlangen sind aktionen der beeinflussung innerhalb einer beziehung von oben nach unten

Been busy within swing shift and commisson art work, plus I got a new phone (HTC EVO 4g through Sprint), doing my best too get use too its! (yup posting from the phone now!!!)

As you see above I also am creating what I call “mobile” art. I have three new art/photography programs on this phone and I am creating pieces in honor of family and friends.

Have no clue how these would print out, as soon as I know I lets you know.

Hope you enjoy them and if you want one created or have and idea send me an email @ trinityhawkphoto@hotmail.com

Until then keeps safe and keeps creating the world beautiful!

Chapter 6 on Daytime talk shows really expresses how ordinary people that come on these shows are exploited, and how this genre is targeting a specific audience. This topic is interesting for me to analyze because I myself have watched “daytime” talk shows. Grindstaff explains in the quote above, that certain groups of people that have been oppressed (looked down upon) throughout the years finally get the opportunity to have a voice and speak their opinion to the public, that opinion is then usually manipulated. This made me think more so to minorities on tv and their place within media.

“Topics became more “personal”, and guests-always predominantly female but now increasingly young, black, queer, and especially, working class- were encouraged to abandon politeness and restraint for more raucous, carivalesque performances.” (Grindstaff, pg. 177). Not only is Grindstaff making a point about how minorities, gays and working class are exploited on daytime talk shows, but this relates to the boom of reality tv. Like the shows “Love and Hip Hop, Basketball Wives, and Flavor of Love” all give african americans to be in the spot light and become “celebrities” yet the price they pay by being exploited and recreating stereotypes that have haunted and still to this day haunt african americans, creates problems for the Black community and other minority communities. The most interesting part of it all is that most of the ratings are by other black people themselves (myself included). Reading this chapter, there is obviously a tension and controversy in the manipulation daytime talk shows posses, but at the same time this wouldn’t be a problem if the tv producers and media didn’t see money behind it. Viewers are the people that make these type of talk shows relevant because there is a continuous interest in seeing this “ordinariness” of no self control or restrain that Grindstaff mentions. Minorities and working class going on these exploitative talk shows have to do with finally getting their big break. Many people these days get famous off of just putting out a sex tape (Kim Kardashian), like they say “any publicity is good publicity”.

On page 118, Grindstaff also touches upon how these talk shows are similar to other productions like “news gatherings”, which was discusses in our last discussion. How the news can trick “manipulate” viewers to think certain things. To me this is just all about being aware of how tv/media works. If you go into a situation knowing that everything isn’t what it seems, then nothing will catch you off guard or make you feel manipulated.

Alyson_H Flickr Stream by (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Published at OpEdNews
by Joe Giambrone

Ideology is the modern plague, because ideologues have all the answers already.  Every event, every situation fits the mold of their beliefs, and contrary evidence is discarded in the service of bolstering said ideology.  This is easily seen in the people one disagrees with on a regular basis, but nearly never acknowledged in one’s own determinations.

I have been wrong (as has the NY Times), and have occasionally written based on assumptions rather than on cold hard analysis.  That is the obvious danger of having partial information.  I’ve also corrected these assertions and moved on.  I have no problem being mistaken if I am proved wrong – the key word being proved.

Many people simply do not understand the concept of unproved or unknown issues.  This occurs when several competing explanations can hold true, but the actual truth is unknown, as in the case of classified state secrets, or hidden criminal conspiracies (often the same thing).  The public simply cannot know based on available information.  In that case multiple explanations may exist, but it is impossible to determine which – if any – is the correct one.  What we have are ever growing bodies of evidence to analyze.

These are Donald Rumsfeld’s “known unknowns.”  It is a perfectly valid analysis and probably more fitting much of the time than many of the snap rushed judgments of ideologues on the left, right and particularly the centrists, who are a breed unto themselves.  Unknowns are unthinkable to the ideologue, quite literally; these cannot be thought of in that manner.  Ideologues know, just like Tom Cruise “knows.”  They know.  Their leaders know, and usually the factions fall in line without a second thought.  A different reality would crush them, or would force them to think, rather than to place events into easily managed ideological boxes.

“Everybody’s talkin’ about Bagism, Shagism, dragism, Madism, Ragism, Tagism, This-ism, That-ism, ism, ism, ism.” – John Lennon , Give Peace a Chance

This psychological reality motivates those with the power to classify events as secret.  Withholding information from citizens is a very useful strategy indeed.  If the truth cannot be determined, then the people will continue to scramble to make sense of the events, usually by contorting the few known facts into an acceptable ideological narrative.  Secrecy prompts the common people to stay busy.  By following false leads and misinformation people waste valuable time and resources attempting to comprehend the secret event and resolve the conflicting evidence.  Even insider whistleblowers with partial knowledge of the actual event are sidelined, as they usually cannot explain the full extent of the hidden state secret, nor name the names, dates, contacts and all the related evidence required to fully expose the wrongdoing.  This is the “compartmentalization” organizational model, which is the gold standard in covert operations, and is well known and employed by intelligence services.  Whistleblowers are also routinely censored by the mainstream news, and most citizens simply never hear what they have to say.

The next option, if one’s strategy is to distract the population, is disinformation.  Deliberately false information, those “conspiracy theories” we hear so much about in the corporate media, are valuable to those seeking to keep secrets hidden.  As more false leads are provided for people to pursue, less time and effort is spent pursuing the true leads.  The more outlandish the disinformation, the better it can discredit those who choose to investigate it.  By simply discrediting people and discouraging them from investigating secret events, those who create the secrets are empowered and shielded from public accounting.  That is the game.  How have you been playing it?

Needless to say, this has not been an academic discussion.  These observations are the result of firsthand observations over many years.  The events in question are easily named, but this paper concerns the strategies behind the flows of information.  A strategy can apply to many events.  A strategy is employed because it works.  This strategy is proven, and it has a long track record.

Media censorship is a critical factor in keeping the population misinformed and distracted.  This may sound counterintuitive to some, as the media, your TV news, newspapers and magazines, present themselves as the informers of public awareness, the leaders of investigation.  But what aren’t they telling you?  What is not permitted to appear in these sources?

It’s not hard to find that out, actually.  Media censorship is a well-studied phenomenon in the United States.  The Project Censored group is perhaps the best known clearinghouse of censored critical information here.  Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) is also a notable media watchdog, as is PR Watch, Medialens and others.  To understand what is not permissible on public airwaves is to understand the reality of our governing system.  Washington, with its financiers from Wall Street, its Military-Industrial-Complex and its multinational corporate sector, rule through deception and not through honesty and full disclosure.  Deception is the default position, not an anomaly.

Case in point, when the United States military drops bombs in one of its many war theaters, the initial story told by the military is almost always that the enemy was killed; those killed are described as “militants” or “terrorists” or “high value targets” or some other euphemism for bad guys.  When independent sources investigate these incidents later the truth tends to come out.  Children, innocent families, weddings, funerals, first responders, these are the actual victims of many US bombings.  But the US public has already been told that they were “enemy combatants.”  The likelihood that the domestic public will ever hear about the correction from the US wall of media noise is very slim indeed.  Thus a false overall impression of US military operations is maintained and believed by a large percentage of the population.  This is a mechanism for promoting a global empire to the common people.

Occam, The Misunderstood

When someone mentions “Occam’s Razor,” it is usually a telltale sign that they wish to avoid actual investigation and settle for the obvious or simple explanation.  Thus all complicated crimes are rejected outright as many cling to this false faith-based argument instead of investigating the facts fully.  Highly complicated crimes are therefore abandoned to “the experts” perhaps rightly so considering the labor commitment required to understand them.  But one cannot simply trust the experts, particularly when these experts are challenged by factual, evidence-based refutation.

The scientific method relies upon disproving the impossible: if x, then y cannot be true.  As new evidence emerges, old assumptions are tossed out.  Occam’s full meaning aligns with this search for evidence and with the elimination of assumptions.

Whenever anyone makes a claim, be they the President of the United States, the Deputy Director of the CIA, or your mother, but they are unable or unwilling to prove the truth of their claim with evidence, then the choice to believe what they say is clearly an assumption.  Governments rely upon this tendency of the majority to assume that leaders are telling the truth.

Ronald Reagan went on television to tell glaring falsehoods to the nation during the Iran Contra Scandal revelations in the press, but he was soon forced to return to the airwaves and to apologize for it.

“A few months ago I told the American people ‘I did not trade arms for hostages.’  My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.”
–President Ronald Reagan, March 4, 1987

So what is an investigator to do?

Personally, I follow leads and weigh their veracity against known patterns.  It’s a natural process.  Most people lack the time and knowledge to investigate more fully.  Professionals dig far more deeply than I could, leaving me somewhere in the middle.  It’s telling to note which incontrovertible facts are censored by the self-aggrandizing “free press.”  Censorship is like a bright flashing beacon that lures us to pick up the slack.  While it takes no coordination or collusion to investigate an obvious lead, the practice of censoring the truth across a wide swath of the media, numerous entities, numerous newsrooms, numerous channels, must be more deliberate and intentional.  Pay attention to the verboten.  Pay close scrutiny to what those who are handsomely paid to inform the public will never admit to “on the record.”  To manipulate a society as large and as varied as ours is a feat indeed.  But it’s happening, every single day 24/7.  The publicly accepted term for this is “spin.”  Spinning the news works because only 5 or 6 media oligarchies control what the overwhelming majority of the public exposes themselves to daily.  Be aware.

A Central Intelligence Agency honcho named Frank Wisner once bragged that he could play the American media like a “Mighty Wurlitzer,” one of those ghastly carnival organs.  The CIA’s Operation Mockingbird had already infiltrated “friendly” US media sources, the owners and the talking heads entrusted to inform the nation.  An historical track record of what the CIA did exists and reveals what they wanted to accomplish.  Within 6 years of the CIA’s founding, already President Eisenhower was setting up a “Special Group” (5412) to keep the rogue CIA covert operations in check.  How can anyone assume that things have somehow changed in the bowels of secret state power?  If anything it has gotten more sophisticated with the advent of computers and globalization, not less.  The advantage is clearly with those who understand these matters, and not with the primarily ignorant worker class.

Crucial information about the state of the world today flows from top to bottom, and that is by design.  An air of distrust surrounds all grassroots journalism, those “bloggers” and worse whom the public is fearmongered into rejecting.  Without official blessing, be it governmental or corporate, the public mind is by and large not free to think for itself.  As unreliable as both government and corporate media have proven to be, countless times in the past, it is these sources that maintain a strict hold on the public information channels.  If it didn’t happen on shiny corporate TV News then it didn’t happen.

“Information is Power”

So what is the rational response to selective censorship?  Clearly what we have is not total censorship, as some facts slip through from time to time.  Not all newsrooms are so easily intimidated, particularly at the local level.  Foreign desks often report what the entire United States media self-censors across the nation.  Some alternative websites collate these news stories, but their reliability and thoroughness are spotty.  A variety of sources is recommended, a hedging of bets, a diversification of the information portfolio.

Paul Thompson noted this treasure trove of foreign reporting and uncensored local reports, and so he founded the History Commons website to keep track of the many thousands of reports streaming in concerning this alleged “War on Terrorism.”  His approach was to use only actual newspaper reports, dated, verified and summarized for ease of research.  Slogging through the History Commons site is like diving down Alice’s rabbit hole, and can consume a reader for hours.  Topics are searchable by names as well as by specific dates.

And so we research, we learn and we use what we have learned to try and understand the things that the current military empire does not want us to know.  This can be an ideological affair, or it can be evidence-based, but it can’t be both.  The ideologue tosses out all contrary facts, no matter how true they may be, as they are inconvenient to maintaining the integrity of his ideology.  Thus, ideology is the enemy of truth, the enemy of understanding, and the enemy of reality.  That is why I call it a modern plague, for fundamentalist ideology lies at the root of most world problems.  The other major underlying root problem is apathy, mass apathy and ignorance.

Beside the smug ideologist and the somnambulant apathetic couch potato is the realist, the evidence-based thinker.  In my view that is the only tenable position.

Joe Giambrone edits Politcal Film Blog (@polfilmblog), and here’s a Hell of a Deal.

Feel free to ask questions or comment in the field below.

Criminal and Complicit Mainstream Media | Global Research TV.

Yeah, in those days, I’d belly up to the bar and bemoan to the drunkards, ‘How’s it I’m no longer able to pound a 40, crack a sucker over the head with a bottle, and walk out of the bar without handcuffs on?’

Truly, there’s was no limit to my stupidity.

All our journeys are just one trip

Det pågår en dränering av staterna på kapital och dränering av folkets privata tillgångar. Detta sker, förutom direkt plundring av statskassan, genom så kallade hjälporganisationer, genom spelbolag och genom överdriven medicinering av människor. Det handlar alltså om en dold omfördelning av resurser från västvärlden till utvecklingsländerna, en sedan länge känd agenda för FN. Det är dock aldrig de förmögna som står för några kostnader här, det är hela tiden under och medelklass som tvingas sänka sin standard.

2 procent av världens befolkning, äger en absolut majoritet av världens tillgångar. Det är inte dessa som ger, det är dessa som tar. Trots att de har kontroll över nästan allt som du ser, ja troligen äger de till och med det hem som du bor i, så vill de nu ändå krama ur det allra sista, innan de presenterar sina nya förhållningsregler för världen.

Det är inte pengarna i sig som de önskar, det är makt över folket, eller snarare ett maktlöst folk, som inte vågar, kan eller orkar lägga sig i vad som sker.

Mediamonopol

Dessa människor agerar genom organisationer och företag, genom banker och försäkringsbolag, genom läkemedelsindustri och stora mediekoncerner, genom radio, TV, tidningar, filmer och böcker. Det som du läser i en tidning, bekräftas i en film du ser, och din bild av verkligheten besannas, när du får höra samma sak på nyheterna i TV.

De äger nämligen så mycket av jordens resurser, att de har makt att styra över nästan allt här i världen, med undantag för länder som t. ex. Nordkorea och Syrien. Genom stora organisationer utövas påtryckning på hela länder och deras regeringar. Om en regering inte genomför en viss åtgärd i sitt land, så riskerar hela landet att fördärvas, framförallt genom dolda handelsblockader och genom att återkräva stora statsskulder.

Vem styr då egentligen?

Sverige styrs av FN genom EU, och de som sätter agendan för FN, är de som verkligen styr västvärlden. Vilka är då dessa? Det handlar om främst två grupperingar som flyter in i varandra, och därför är det svårt att exakt säga vilka de är och vad de står för, men det kommer att visa sig, ganska snart.

FN skapades för att återupprätta Israel. Samtidigt lades grunden till EU. Nationerna i FN är inte vad de flesta tror. Den som har läst några rader i en Bibel, vet vilka dessa Nationer är, de är Israels tolv stammar, tillika Israels söner och deras avkomma. Israels söner ÄR Nationerna och Nationerna ÄR Israel. Dessa är nu tänkta att återförenas till varje pris, för att döma och styra över världens folk, från Jerusalem,  i “den nya världens ordning”, med en världsregering.
Målet med allt som händer oss nu är just detta, att återupprätta templet i Jerusalem, varifrån den nya världsordningen kommer att styras. De som styr världen och även Sverige är alltså Sionister.

Sionister

Sionister är Israeliter, alltså renblodiga ättlingar till “Nationerna”. Man kallar dessa för “The ten lost tribes of Israel“, men de är inte försvunna, de vet själva mycket väl var de befinner sig. Det går även att använda Bibeln till att räkna ut, att de flesta av stammarna hamnade i Europa, varifrån de flesta sedan utvandrade till USA. De tolv stjärnorna i Europas flagga är just Israels tolv Nationer. Man visar tolv eftersom målet är att återförena dem alla, även om vissa Nationer inte anser att alla har rätt att vara med.

I Europa finner man Nationerna i anslutning till de kungliga hoven. De flesta har dock blivit avsatta, eller avrättade, men deras ättlingar lever kvar. De flydde mer eller mindre till USA och etablerade sig där. Det var dessa människor som skapade den våg av frikyrklighet som uppstod på 1700 och 1800-talen, som t. ex. Jehovas vittnen och Mormonerna. Liberalismen var deras stora måtto, som i grund och botten handlar om frihet från kyrkan och frihet från monarker.

Genom liberalism, kapitalism och fri konkurrens, har företag och kapital koncentrerats till vad vi ser idag, endast ett fåtal globala aktörer. De allra flesta är amerikanska koncerner. Dessa erövrar världen i allt snabbare takt. Marknadsledande franchiseföretag tar över hela marknader. Detta var också målet hela tiden, att bygga upp USA som ett vapen mot Europa och omvärlden, för att hämnas, och för att tvinga Europa att böja sig för “Nationerna” på fredlig väg, genom fri konkurrens och ekonomiska maktmedel.

Frimurare

Sionister är experter på att hemlighålla kunskaper och information, för att styra världen från bakom ridåerna.  Detta kännetecknar även en frimurare. Frimureriets grundare var Israeliter. Anfäderna till dessa byggde Europas stora katedraler, de byggde templet i Jerusalem och långt före det, så byggde de även pyramider. Dessa människor besitter uråldriga kunskaper, som har hållits hemliga för folket, för att de skulle framstå som utsända från gud, för att på så vis kunna styra över länder och folk. Sådant som vi kallar för “magi” eller “mirakler“, som exempelvis att levitera, är en kunskap som kom väl till pass när stora stenblock skulle resas. Allt detta handlar egentligen om magnetism och anti-gravitation, genom matematiska formler. (Sök efter “ancient knowledge”)

Tolv ansikten

En frimurare är alltså en sionist, som är en israelit, som är en nation, som är en stam av Israel, från en av Israels tolv söner. Således kan en Israelit alltså ha tolv olika ansikten, varav en stam, Judahiterna stammar från Judaland. Vilket är bra att tänka på, om du någon gång skulle känna dig förvirrad inför vissa personers gärningar här i Sverige.

Insikten om detta, förklarar en del angående Hitler och Judefrågan. Hitler var religiös och enligt Bibeln och även Judendomens egna skrifter, så har Judahiterna förlorat rätten att ärva “Guds rike på Jorden“. Det kan till och med tolkas som så, på flera ställen i Bibeln, att Judahiterna lurade sina bröder för att ensam sätta sig på tronen. Det var detta som var Hitlers budskap, att den Nation (folkgrupp), som han tillhörde, hade större rätt till Guds rike – alltså att styra och döma över världens länder och folk.

Gud i mänsklig gestalt

Dessa människor anser sig vara gudar och halvgudar, precis som många ledare från Egypten, antikens Grekland och västvärldens kungar. Kanske mer idag, än någonsin tidigare, eftersom all de gamla vetenskaperna har undanhållits folkmassorna, som istället har blivit lärda till att tro på helt andra saker än sanningen. På universiteten har man under lång tid lärt ut att sanningar inte ens existerar (!) Mänskligheten har förvillats så långt bort från sanningen, att de låter sig styras utan att ifrågasätta någonting.

Vad värre är, så anser dessa människor att de är satta på jorden för att agera så väl skapare, som förstörare av både liv och materia. Detta faktum blir uppenbart för den som tar sig tid att läsa våra allra äldsta skrifter, “Bilgames Eposet“, som i originalversionen är från omkring 2600 BC. Däri beskrivs hur “Herren”, “konungarnas konung” Bilgames, såg som sin uppgift att dränka människorna när de hade blivit för många, och då de dessutom var fulla av synd, dvs att de inte följde lagarna.

Lertavlorna som handlar om denna hjälte-konung, är källan till alla våra religiösa skrifter, såväl nya som gamla testamenten, som stora delar av Koranen. Judendom och Islam har dock inslag av helt andra skrifter, som inte går att förena med Kristendomen.

I våra skrifter har det dock givits sken av att det var GUD som utförde dessa ting, medan det egentligen var kungar, alltså ledare för världens länder och folk, som härskade över folken. Om du har något intresse för religion och läser dessa tavlor, gärna en översättning från Oxford University, så kommer det att förändra din syn på omvärlden.

/Tack!

Yesterday we had a special guest group as a part of our worship service: The Children of the World (A ministry of World Help // see below).  

Predictably they touched a deep emotional chord in our hearts.

I was reminded of a couple of lessons from that experience.  The first is: Do not be afraid to open your heart to emotional manipulation.  (The second lesson will be tomorrow.)

Because of so many negative examples we have turned the word “manipulation” mostly into a negative word.  However, the word manipulation simply means to manage or influence skillfully.

Of course this can be done in an unfair or unethical way but it can be done with integrity and to serve a noble purpose.  That is what happened yesterday.  World Help intentionally set out to emotionally touch us so that we would hopefully respond to the desperate needs that they represented.  The good news is that they were very successful.  The people of the FMCOG were greatly blessed and also greatly blessed the ministry of World Help and thus many lives will be better because they skillfully influenced us to give to a noble and righteous cause.

Bottom line: don’t allow the negative examples of selfish and unethical manipulation to turn you into a hard-hearted cynic.  If you do you and many others will be the losers.

If you had to risk erring, I’d err on the side of being taken advantage of.  In the end God will make right any injustice done to you and in the meantime you’ve kept your soul pure.

________

World Help: A faith-based humanitarian organization that exists to serve the physical and spiritual needs of people in impoverished communities around the world. www.worldhelp.net

I was a Performing Arts student in London. It was a pivotal time in my life as I had fled the control of my mother and was about to embark upon a career in the entertainment industry. I believed only I could control my destiny; making myself a life that involved me doing what I wanted, when I wanted and with whomever I wanted. I was determined to make something of myself, but I had baggage, and I didn’t understand that I needed to unpack before I could even begin. So, my new beginning wasn’t really a new beginning at all, it was a continuation of what I had left at home with my mother. I just didn’t know it at the time.

When I met my husband he came at what seemed the right time. I had never had a serious relationship and I recall thinking that having a boyfriend would be the icing that topped my ‘independence’ cake. I’d met lots of boys since leaving my home-town but they had all been a waste of space, they were what they looked, losers. I just knew that this man was the one for me. For a start he was wearing a gentleman’s coat and carried a diary and briefcase. Not like the usual guys who carried what often looked like Mr T’s jewellery collection, a fake accent, a false walk and a pocket full of condoms. I didn’t want a rough-neck, I wanted a gent. This guy was a real man.

Tall, dark and handsome with good grammar – I felt proud that someone who looked so fine and talked so nice., had his eye on me. This guy was different. He took me to restaurants and even took me shopping. One time, he took me to Whitely’s Mall, in central London, and bought me a mustard coloured skirt – I was so captivated by him and I never wore the skirt, it just took pride of place in my wardrobe. Incidentally, I do not have the skirt today – I gave it away some years ago. I guess when I realised just how bad things had become. In hindsight, he had taken me to all the places he liked to visit. None of those wonderful places were about me – it was all about him. My life back then consisted of 8am dance classes, mid-morning recording studios, after lunch drama classes and mad-frantic tube dashes between Holborn and Kings Cross – to different classes in three separate campuses ., when I got home I was knackered, completely exhausted. So now I look back on all the little nice things he impressed me with – he did those things because he  liked them and not because they were treats for me.,I didn’t even wear that type of skirt, he bought it because he liked it. I remember inviting him to a studio to hear me sing – he told me he’d rather not – that he’d buy my CD. Another time I bought him a shirt and he took one look at it and smiled then said: “I’d like you to wear it.” Looking back, I had no one to advise me about what I was letting myself in for  - one wonders if I would have listened anyway. One thing is painfully clear though, I ignored every internal instinct that I had  and did not see this dangerous man coming.

I knew he wanted me before he even opened his mouth, and I wanted him too. Although us wanting each other wasn’t a physical thing, it felt more like both of us had found the missing piece to a jigsaw puzzle. Little did I know this is the lure of the narcissist, this man was a master manipulator drawing me in with the pull of his art of seduction skills. He’d been drawing me in with his magnetic charm – and I had confused his good manners for him being a good man. I’d never experienced a relationship like this before – neither real life or on the television. I also wrongly misinterpreted the emotional highs and lows of being in a relationship with him as what generally takes place in a real adult relationship.. no wonder it was such hard work. Every criticism this man drew my way, I accepted like a force-fed child. I hated it going in but once I tasted it I could reflect and it wasn’t as bad as I thought – this is because it actually made sense. After all – this advice came from somebody with a different experience to the life I had known and he’d recounted tales of near-perfect parenting by someone his entire community respected. I bought into every single thing this man told me. Like a newly recruited  Al-Qaeda member I let him strip me down and build me back up with a new internal programming system. We spent most of our time pretending to enjoy each others company although most activities ended up in a disagreement followed by making-up and the making-up always ended up with us making love. In fact we’d soon wonder why we even argued but since I have been doing a lot of thinking about the warning signs that I ignored back then; there were aspects of his personality I had thought against but he wouldn’t let me rest until I saw things his way. This was an every day occurrence. For example, it didn’t matter that prior to arriving at his place or him arriving at mine – I had already taken a shower; yet he expected me to have a shower before he did anything with me. He would tell me that he knew I had scrubbed myself really well when I washed but he wanted me to do it anyway. Eventually I would give in and he would treat me like I was the good girl that deserved the reward. This is how every episode went with him and I didn’t know this was not normal. When he left or on those occasions when he dropped me home., as if he was paying for a Prostitute he would make a bee-line for the Cash machine and withdraw £20 from the ATM. It didn’t matter how I objected – we would go through this same routine complete with argument that ended up with me giving in and accepting the cash. I didn’t like it and I felt like dirt until one of my college girlfriends said to me: “Wow, you have such a good guy. He gives you money – I wish I could find a boyfriend that did that for me” Then I felt better and thought it was just me who was the girl that did not know how to be treated nicely. After all, I was dating an adult, a real man. He was a local government officer with a law degree – preparing to open up his own law firm.

My biggest red-flag alert arrived when I found out I was pregnant. We should have been more careful. I have no excuses for that confusing period of my life. I know that it is painfully obvious that I had foolishly given it up for a man I hardly knew but had done so because I genuinely believed he was so much better than me  - so the risk had to be worth it. I was very naive. If I could go back in time, I would warn myself and kick this man to the kerb. Telling him I was pregnant should have been a happy moment for me , but like I said, I was very naive. In fact, looking back, I don’t know what the hell was going through my head because this guy seriously was not as into me as I was with him.  I recall asking him to meet with me after he had thought it over. I had imagined him telling me that he wanted to marry me. How wrong I’d been. As soon as we met  and I delivered my news, he told me that he wanted me to abort our child. I couldn’t cope with what I was hearing and my world came crashing down. The gravity of what I had done – the promiscuity with someone I hardly knew – but had convinced myself that I did – hit me. For the very first time I genuinely realised there was a gap between us that would always be a factor in our relationship. He was eleven years older than me and it hadn’t mattered before but at this moment I was crying in front of him, and either I felt younger than him, or he felt so much older than me. I needed to be cuddled and I needed to feel loved but I was rejected on every level I could imagine. His voice was stern, he was cold and I felt shattered into a million pieces. My heart felt crushed. Through tear stained eyes I found myself begging him to re-consider. I recall we were outside some building not far from where he worked when I told him; a stone’s throw away from Wembley Stadium. Some people walked by while he shadowed me from them so that they couldn’t see me crying. I remember having a really sick feeling in the pit of my stomach and I remember thinking: “This is what people mean when they say ‘love hurts’.” Although there clearly wasn’t a flow of love from his direction, I certainly loved him. I felt that I wanted to die because of the extent to which I was hurting. The emotional pain was just too much. Teenagers have no business falling in love. I’ll never forget that feeling of betrayal coupled with hopelessness, and now, the realisation that people like me with no family support are bait for predators.

I remember that pain of discovering that this man was not at all who I’d thought he was, that pain was the first betrayal. Yet somehow I chose to once again block out my internal red alert system and explain his cruel behaviour away as normal – like this is what happens in the real world.  There wasn’t anything loving about him asking me to abort our child – and he didn’t even show me any respect – instead he acted like having a child with someone like me would be the sickest thing anyone could ever imagine; although I wasn’t sick when we were ‘getting it on’. He now sounded desperate to fix a problem., and his approach showed me that a long-term relationship with me had featured nowhere in the plan he had for his life. I remember thinking back to how we’d met and the deception that had taken place from the start. How he’d told me he was a single man., then after our first intense week of involvement he admitted he was divorced; then a week or so later we had another ‘important chat’ where he had informed me that he was actually married, but separated – as I made my way to leave and kicked off in disgust – he stood up and held my shoulders – telling me that it was okay; that he had something else to tell me but once he told me I would know that I was the girl for him. I often console myself with the thought that a woman his own age would have just walked away, but I was just eighteen years and I unfortunately stayed to hear his story. He told me that he and his wife were separated. He promised me that the marriage was not a genuine marriage but was what he called, a paper marriage – because he was not British. He told me he’d wished he’d met me first and then he would not have had to do the fake-marriage-thing; that he would have genuinely wanted to marry me – because he loved me., and this was why he was telling me. I fell for it. I told myself that this plausible story was the reason for the big-hush-hush meetings for him to tell me these odd snippets of information. I remember telling myself that there would be no more surprises and just as I was thinking that – he said as much. Again, I was convinced that his skeleton was out of the closet.; that I’d known everything about him just as he knew everything he needed to know about me. Now while standing crying in front of him I was seeing the trail of deception that demonstrated who this man really was – yet I was still desperate for a sign or something, more lies even – to convince me that this pain I was feeling wasn’t real – that there was some explanation for it; even though it was clear that I was faced with reality. This man had suddenly managed to remove himself from the love of my life to the enemy of all time yet something destructive inside me desperately wanted to keep him a part of my life – and that is the damaged part of me. It was like he had a hold on me. However, he didn’t take my free will – I gave it to him without question. As usual, in my complete and utter ignorance and defiance for anything life could teach me, I acted without concern of consequence.

The next few days after I’d told him about my pregnancy went like a blur. I was living in student lodgings and spent the days, after his response, literally crying into my pillow. When my student house-mates came to disturb me – I just cried and said that I was crying because I felt like crying. I must have been so transparent back then because one of them had already worked out that I was pregnant and told me that if I was thinking of having an abortion – I should be ashamed of myself – that I must know that I would be doing a wicked thing. Those words stung because I knew that if I went through with it – I’d be doing wrong but every time I thought of this man’s face and the love I thought we’d shared was actually not what I thought – I grew scared. I was scared of him – but I had no one to tell, and he knew it.

The day arrived when he took me to a West London Abortion clinic. We went in a black cab. I was crying like a baby but he held my shoulders tightly as if to threaten me rather than console me. Every time I sobbed he squeezed my shoulders hard as if to shut me up. A few times I turned to him with tears in my eyes begging him to reconsider – I never guessed I could have had an option. If only The Spice Girls had been around then. I may have had the strength and motivation to tell him that the only thing I would have been aborting was him. Instead, I was just a dumb girl and I felt it. He wasn’t allowed to stay with me at the clinic so the nurse asked him to come back. I didn’t know whether he would return but I suspected I’d never see him again. At that moment in time I didn’t know whether this would be a good or a bad thing. The nurse took me through and all I saw was what looked to me like grown women on beds chatting happily about their lives – it seemed they all had children and felt this was not the right time for another; the stories appeared to follow a similar pattern and it all felt so easy – like we were all in some store and chatting while we waited to be fitted for a new bra – if not for the fact we were all in beds and wearing surgery gowns, who would have guessed. They all seemed to be at least ten years older than me and although I felt what I was doing was unnecessary, for a brief moment I felt able to justify why I was too young for a baby. It didn’t stop me crying though, especially when I reminded myself that being old enough to have sex meant I was old enough to give birth. If I was old enough to give birth then surely it should follow that somewhere in that underdeveloped brain, there would be space for me to develop the skills required for successful motherhood. After all, if I was prepared to learn about ‘how to keep a man happy in bed’ then why couldn’t I face up to my responsibilities and become a good parent? I was eighteen and I didn’t feel like a grown up, instead I felt immature and ignorant. In the operating theatre, the surgeon asked me to confirm my name and told me that it would soon be over. I didn’t find him caring and I didn’t find him uncaring – he just was. He was clearly doing a job that did not appear to bother him. I was mindful not to judge him but I was looking for answers and I didn’t like the fact he made the procedure so easy. No one asked me if I wanted to do this. No one asked me why. No one cared. I wanted someone to intervene. I wanted to tell someone that I didn’t want to go through with this but the man I thought loved me was making me have it done. I desperately wanted someone to tell me that they could sneak me out the back door and take me to a safe place where this man would not find me and I could have my baby.

On the operating table, I told the surgeon that I wanted to keep my baby – but the next thing I remembered – I came round from the anaesthetic crying. I guessed that I must have been crying in my sleep because as soon as I woke up I was in bed with blood between my legs. I must have been telling the surgeon that I wanted to keep my pregnancy while under the anaesthetic; but then I hadn’t actually told him not to do the surgery: I’d just told him that I wanted to keep my baby – or had I really? I really don’t know. I didn’t know what was real – other than the fact I had just aborted my child. My own mother didn’t even know what was happening to me. I wasn’t sure of who I was any-more. God only knows if I ever did. My guilt was crying out to me. I cried until I couldn’t possibly have cried any-more. I felt like I had willingly participated in the death of another human being. That is what having an abortion  meant to me. I sincerely regret walking into that clinic, and a day doesn’t go by when I am not feeling the loss of the child I aborted. As I write, my heart aches and my tears fall – I’ll never recover regardless of what anyone says. Forgive others – of course, but myself – I never could.

The nurse kept encouraging me to eat sandwiches that had been prepared for all the patients once they’d finished surgery; I remember staring at her and wanting her to disappear with all her sandwiches. All I could think about was what I had just done. I felt sick and did not know how I was going to cope with the rest of my life.  A few hours later, I was given permission to leave the clinic. For the past God only knows how long – I had been feeling like running out under a bus, or a taxi. I was considering whether I could do it and maybe the best place to do it was upon walking out of the clinic – that this would send a message to everyone that had helped me kill my child – I was sweating as I geared myself up for my death.  I remember walking out into the street and while I was wondering how I was going to run out into the on-coming traffic – there he was – the man who later went on to become my husband, he was waiting for me to take me home. He hadn’t abandoned me after all. Maybe he did want me – I told myself. I can hardly remember what happened next because following that procedure  - I was not the same again.

Today, knowing him like I do, I‘d say he was waiting for me to make sure I’d had the surgery rather than to come pick up his love. I guess he saw the state I was in – maybe he suspected I might try to hurt myself. Til this day – I don’t know why he was waiting for me but what I do know is that I regret the abortion and I regret ever meeting him. I still feel haunted by the experience. That abortion, is a stain on my character, a mark against my soul., and it reminds me of how weak I was. I often wonder why I couldn’t have had the baby alone. I was never given the chance to discuss or think about it. For years after the abortion I would deliberately revisit the moment in my private thoughts. I even remember him sitting with my doctor and the two of them discussing how having an abortion would be better for me. Until that moment, I had liked my doctor – after that, she became someone I could never trust again. For years afterwards., I would force-daydream that moment in time and saw myself leaving the abortion clinic with my baby still tucked up and safe inside my womb – with a confident me disappearing like a thief in the night. I lost the belief in my future. Having an abortion made me doubt I could ever have a good life or become anybody important. One evening; a week or so after the operation, I was undressing and noticed my right nipple was trickling milk. I fell to my knees and cried like a baby. After that, it seemed I was crying all the time. I turned into a frequent crier, crying whenever I saw a baby or thought about the needless thing I had  done.

Previously and ever since I had been a young child, I had always had dreams of pursuing a singing career, but suddenly the only thought I was able to hold in my head were of babies. I saw them everywhere. The only way for me to stop crying was for me to imagine myself as a mother. I can’t remember when I became so severely ‘mentally unwell’ but I think it was around the time I began daydreaming of being pregnant again. This new behaviour was a clear case for medical intervention – but I hid it well. I couldn’t think of anything else. I wanted a baby and I dropped all thoughts of pursuing what had always been my dream. It seemed – just like that – I had a new vocation. I wanted to be a mother and only God knows everything I was prepared to do to make that possible. Everyday I spent yearning for a baby. I moved out of my student lodgings, stopped studying, I stopped going out, and I started refusing calls from friends and people I worked with. The studio guys I had been working with were shocked that I just dropped off the grid – they could not believe I would throw what could have been a promising career away. They didn’t understand and of course I didn’t tell them. I just cut them off and lost myself. Instead I spent all day at home waiting for ‘him’ to come to my apartment, I wanted to have sex. We didn’t use contraception and he didn’t ask. I didn’t tell him my new plans of course, I just waited until he touched me intimately and then I was off like a rocket, on my mission. He had no idea. He thought he was just having what I guess he came to me for. It suited me just fine. I too had my uses for him. Not long after the abortion – I became pregnant again, and this time I was ready to drop him like a hot brick as soon as I heard anything that remotely resembled the word ‘terminate’. To my disgust – he told me that we should have just kept the first one. However, I didn’t care about what he thought this time; I just had woolly thoughts of shopping in Mothercare and all the other baby shops. I could see myself buying nappies and soothers and all the other little products associated with babies. I was going to be a mother at last!

When I think back to ‘him’ at that time in my life I can hardly remember his presence. I only had one goal and that was to have my baby. As for him, he had done his job. I do recall him telling me in an accusing tone, that I now had what I wanted – and I remember thinking triumphantly: “Yes, indeed I have.” It was only late in the evenings, when lights were off and everyone else had gone to bed that I stopped to reflect. I knew how ‘loopy’ my behaviour and my obsessing had become but I couldn’t make myself stop. In any case, I don’t think I wanted to stop. Thinking about the abortion was too much. I couldn’t handle what I had done. I guess I was grieving for the baby I had aborted. To me, the foetus was a baby no less. I had been six weeks pregnant but six weeks made no difference; the baby I had been carrying inside me was alive and I’d killed it. Nothing was ever going to make that fact better. Having a baby was just going to help me cope with what I had done – I hadn’t thought any more ahead than that. He, didn’t care about me – my feelings or even my decision to leave college. As for my dreams of becoming a singer – they were never mentioned. Nothing about me had been important to him – every so often he took the time to tell me that he felt saddled with me; that I had changed the course of his life. He had a toxic mouth but I was too broken to care about that any more. I wasn’t an emotionally balanced individual – I know that now. I wasn’t ready to be a parent emotionally or financially, and I hadn’t even considered what kind of parents a child would need. When I thought about the reality of the situation I immediately gave myself a mental kick and re-focused, switching on my own version of  Desperate Housewives, Bree Van-Der-Kamp mode. I mentally created a deluded-bish and entered my own little world where everything was going to be ‘aye okay’. In my private madness, where not even the rantings of my own sanity was going to steal my joy; I was having a baby whether anyone liked it or not.

Clearly I was broken. I knew it – he knew it, and anyone who came into contact with me had to have known it – but the excitement of knowing I was pregnant kept me on a high. I prayed for God to help me forgive him., I forgave him and got on with planning my pregnancy. I’d even started to pray properly again. All I could think about was my baby and how God would bless my future if I raised him/her right; how wonderful it would be to hold him or her in my arms and shower my child with love.  Then he brought me out of my bubble by telling me that he needed to return to his native Africa – he wanted to tell his family about me and that we were expecting a baby. I immediately sensed something was not right. I prayed and I felt this urge to tell him what I believe God wanted me to say to him. It came out of my gut feeling – my red alert system demonstrating to me that it worked and that I could listen if I wanted to – something was not right.  I felt the need to tell him and I asked him to hold me tight because I was scared. He did and he asked me what I knew. I told him that he should not do anything to upset God because if he did.,this would be the last I might get to hold him in quite some time. He held me so tight I thought my bones might crack. I could feel he was scared but he had no fear of God – the devil had his attention and has vacated a room in his mind ever since.

He had travelled to Nigeria, supposedly to tell his family all about me and the fact we were expecting a baby – but that was another lie. He had travelled there for his own reasons, reasons that just demonstrated the man he was. The man he really was., the man he is.  On the day I expected him back – he hadn’t arrived. I telephone the Vicarage where he lived – another reason it was so easy for me to be captivated by him., he lived in a house with the Vicar of his church – how perfect!  His friend and house-mate answered the phone, and when I asked for him - his friend told me that he was very sorry to tell me the news that (to my absolute horror) he had been arrested at the airport.

BAKERSFIELD, CA — Kern County deputies beat an intoxicated man to death in the street Tuesday night, then detained and intimidated witnesses, confiscated video evidence, and arrested another man who spoke out. David Silva was beaten with batons, left in a pool of blood until an ambulance finally arrived after he was already dead.

A female 9-1-1 caller named Selena told the dispatcher, “There’s a man laying on the floor, and your police officers beat the (expletive) out of him and killed him.” She said that she witnessed the victim do nothing wrong to cause 8 officers to bludgeon him to death. “These cops had no reason to do this to this man.”

A 19-year-old male witness, Ruben Ceballos, was awakened around midnight by screams and loud banging noises outside his home. He said he ran to the left side of his house to find out who was causing the ruckus.”When I got outside I saw two officers beating a man with batons and they were hitting his head so every time they would swing, I could hear the blows to his head.” He said that Silva was on the ground screaming for help, but officers continued to beat him After several minutes, Silva stopped screaming and was no longer responsive, according to Ceballos.

Another witness, Jason Land, said that he witnessed the beating of David Silva. “They jumped out, reached for their bats, and beat that man until they killed him,” he said, “right in front of my face.” Land spoke up about what he saw and was arrested as retaliation. The witness was on probation and says police responded to his eyewitness report by claiming he was high on PCP and arrested him without any proof.

Witnesses also say that the victim’s body was left to bleed out in the street for a prolonged period without any medical attention, wasting crucial minutes before the ambulance arrived. By that point, it was too late and CPR attempts were futile.

Other witnesses, including Melissa Quair, were harassed and told that they must surrender their cell phones as “evidence.” Their houses were even searched as a crime scene in order to confiscate the video evidence.

The victim’s brother, Christopher Silva, says his brother was murdered and wants justice. He is demanding that his brother’s body be released so that he can see the result of the beating. He wants the confiscated videos to be released. “My brother spent the last eight minutes of his life pleading, begging for his life. The true evidence is in those phone witnesses that apparently the sheriff deputies already took. But I know the truth will come out and my brother’s voice will be heard.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyd_NldNSiM