'Club Asteria' is a narcissistic fairy-tale peddled by charlatans

Shyam

As you know (as a result of my own brother falling for the'Amway/MLM' myth), for a long time, I have been rigorously observing the ongoing phenomenon of  'business opportunity' fraud, along with the wider-phenomenon of criminogenic, or pernicious, cultism. 

All cosmopolitan people readily accept that cults most-certainly exist, but, due to the prevalent style of media-coverage, we have habitually thought of them as remote, and grotesque, freak-shows. In my experience, if it is suggested that we should all be on our guard against cultism, because it is actually much closer to us than we like to think, the average person is immediately convinced that such an idea is absurd. Obviously, cults never announce themselves, but their many disguises continue to adapt to mirror the changing spirit of the times. Throughout the ages, a dangerous minority of mythomaniacs, charlatans and would-be demagogues have always been able to get their human prey to sail blindly into positions of subjection, by first bedazzling them with all manner of false beacons which seemed so welcoming and authentic that the majority of people could not have been expected to determine exactly what was lurking behind them. 

The latest 'philanthropic business opportunity' cult to appear, the so-called 'Club Asteria,' is a classic of its type. In the adult world of quantifiable reality, its self-appointed leaders are just another greedy little mob of hitherto-mediocre charlatans who have suddenly awarded themselves impressive-sounding, made-up ranks and titles. Indeed, these dangerous clowns exhibit all the diagnostic criteria of severe and inflexible Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Like all aspiring pernicious-cult leaders, the bosses of  'Club Asteria' have been steadfastly pretending moral and intellectual authority  whilst pursuing various hidden criminal objectives. The admiration of their adherents has only served to confirm and magnify, their strong sense of self-entitlement and fantasies of unlimited: wealth, success, power, brilliance, etc. 

Some of the propaganda on the Net. about, Ms. Andrea Lucas (the ostensible boss of the 'Club Asteria' mob), is so ludicrous, that it is difficult to believe that anyone could fall for it. Ms. Lucas' own proud boast that she is a 'former Director of the World Bank,' is a demonstrable lie, but this also means that she can never have 'managed  400+ projects for the International Finance Corporation' or 'negotiated funding for the governments of Russia, Sudan, Yemen, Philippines, China and Cameroon or managed joint venture projects in Hungary, Austria and the Czech Republic.' http://www.entrepreneur.com.ph/board/index.php?topic=62610.0 . Indeed, when the person called Andrea Lucas temporarily worked at the World Bank 1979-1986, Russia, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were all still part of the Soviet Empire. The Czech Republic only came into existence in 1992. Yet these narcissistic fantasies, and others, are being broadcast on the Net. as evidence that 'Club Asteria' cannot be a scam. 

It is also being claimed that : Andrea Lucas is the 'Chairperson of the Asian Development Consortium Inc.,  the President of Development Coordinators International Ltd.' and that she holds a 'PMD from the Harvard Business School. 

It will come as no surprise to your free-thinking readers to learn that, so far, I cannot find any independent reference to 'Develoment Coordinators International Ltd.' or the 'Asian Development Consortium Inc.'  Whilst the impressive-sounding 'PMD from  the Harvard Business School,' actually refers to the 'Program for Management Development.' This was nothing more than an 8-12 weeks (selective) Executive Education Program offered by the Harvard Business School in which approximately 12000 middle managers from all over the world paid to participate 1957-2005. http://www.exed.hbs.edu/programs/pmd/Pages/default.aspx . All these persons automatically received the right to use the academic-sounding title 'PMD (Harvard)' which is apparently why they were so keen to participate. These 'PMD's' were then offered access to discounts on further (open-enrollment) Executive Education Programs sold by the Harvard Business School. But then, one would have expected the boffins at the Harvard Business School to have come up with such a self-gratifying a marketing strategy.  

David Brear (copyright 2011)