Anyone ever hear of this?

Si, you are from an island. Got any experience?

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

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

How might this relate to contemporary religions?

I've heard the term; I know nothing about it ...
I shall read on ...

Is it still true that if a ship sinks the first salvage operation on site gets legal title to the spoils?

Wondering because I recently watched a show about superstructures and the episode was about a giant cargo ship, it might have been called Atlanta but I'm not sure about that. The point is it has over 1.5 billion in cargo at any given time. Mostly in sealed containers. My thought is, could it be intercepted by a civilian sub or some form of underwater open sea interception where there would be no way to identify the attackers. And sunk without anyone knowing what was going on, with the express purpose that your take of the loot would come through the salvage operation previously set up for just this purpose?

All communications would have to be disrupted for a period of time before the sinking, the location would have to be carefully selected to facilitate salvage of the cargo, it would have to be done in international waters. 

Her route is completely predictable, an ambush could be set up ahead of time. The small crew could be allowed to abandon ship since they could never identify anyone or really know what the fuck happened. But a communications blackout is a priority. Can't allow them to call for help.

A functional armed submarine that can run submerged long enough to get onsite, wait for the ship, torpedo said ship, AND jam its communications would be damned expensive.  Almost expensive enough to make pirating a billion-dollar freighter just break even.  That could be why no one's tried it.

Doesn't need to run submerged the whole time, very few Subs do. Only during the intercept phase. Doesn't need torpedoes, you can set out magnetic mines or use a diver to place shape charges. Disrupting communications would be the hardest part. Full spectrum jamming isn't as easy as it sounds.

Anyone else hearing the A-Team music in their head?

Anyway, I have no experience with the cult thing, but I do know that those salvage laws do still apply, at least in Antigua. My uncle used to be an on-call member of a salvage team that competed with a couple of others. But I think there are a fair number of rules in place about who's allowed to salvage ships, about what can be claimed, and under what circumstances any of this can happen. I would imagine that the idea of attacking a ship to then "salvage" it isn't a new one. I'm sure it's been done before, and no doubt sometimes successfully, but I can't imagine there not being certain rules in place to try and prevent that. Also, bear in mind that the bigger the prize, the more rules will be invented by anyone in a position to benefit from not rocking the boat, no pun intended.

Like this:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/outrageous-hsbc-settlement-proves-the-drug-war-is-a-joke-20121213

That is discouraging isn't it. I gave up on Obama a long time ago but this... wow.

In some ways Clinton & Obama have been worse than any Republicans because they're wolves in sheep's clothes.  Democrats still get a pass from unions even though Clinton signed NAFTA...Obama won a nobel peace prize and has been a war monger... 

I have to admit I didn't check out the OP links, I just tried to hijack the thread.

Cargo Cults? Never heard of it. But I see it is about material wealth for the downtrodden.

After the multi-trillion bank bail outs of bush's/Obamas first term with no accounting or requirements on how the funds were managed the post that Si recently posted on the HSBC Settlement makes the situation we are under pretty dam clear.

Recall, I have always said it was the international bankers and US corporations that created the Soviet Union AND Hitler. Eugenics wasn't a Nazi invention, it was invented in the US. Hitler may have fallen, but the Nazi's won WWII.

The more I learn, the more I wonder just why the US joined the war *against* Germany.  At that time, there were many powerful people who wanted to do to the Blacks here what Hitler did to the Jews there.  That's just never made sense to me.

Banksters and eugenics. How do you fight a wraith that vaporizes, changes shape, and disappears when you get close??

I think joining the war on the side of the nazis would probably have been ultimately unpopular. Waiting as long as the US did was probably as close to picking the other side as was feasible.

You have to really be able to step back from it and see the situation over time in context. First the Russian/soviet state was established by US support of terrorists to bring down the Royal Russian family. Pure and simple fact. Trotsky and Lenin were supported by western corporations and government. Not just the US but UK and German banks as well. First stumbling block was that Trotsky was imprisoned in Canada as an international terrorist! Then Wilson "personally" intervened and got him released to do his dirty work. The US then sent American troops to hijack the Trans-Siberian rail road to assure that the royal family could not get external support from any nation. 

The fall of the Russian Royal family ushered in the rise of fabricated communism but that is future dodging. Back to the point. This was step one, replace the Russian government with lackeys. "Thesis." Next after a few years of solidifying the thesis and antithesis needed to be manufactured. Hitler proved to be the perfect dupe. The finals syntheses allowed the US to become undisputed ruler of the world, under control of international bankers of course. And don't forget Wilson also gave us the Federal Reserve System which is neither Federal, nor has any reserves. (completely privately (mostly foreign owned))  And the IRS which is used to force Americans to pay interest on foreign loans made to the US government (now powerless to set it's own currency) 

Communism and Nazism were both fabricated to produce a syntheses that we now see as the "modern" world. Wholly fabricated regardless of how many millions it has killed.   

The best is soon to come I feel. 

Mind you I have said this before and am stoically committed to this statement, the entire "cold war" was a hoax! So that collaborators on both sides could loot their entire populations in the name of "National Security."

>>Some 60 soldiers were brought to trial in the 1950s. Twenty of them were convicted but all were later released.<<
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25656746

Operation Paper Clip protected thousands of ardent Nazis and gave them new ID's in the US, most were given high positions in US Intelligence (the newly formed CIA was fully staffed with Nazis in controlling positions)  and were made heads of research facilities in universities across the nation. 

The facts are pretty clear on this.

The US funded both sides, but threw their cards in with the British in the end.  I'd venture to guess one reason was because they liked the idea of having access to the whole of the British empire in the end, whereas the prizes out of Germany weren't nearly so attractive (and obviously they got the spoils there anyway with the German loss).

Thing is Emp, the people running things already had full access to the UK through the banks that control them. The only reason Hitler wasn't allowed to succeed is the same reason Saddam was put down illegally.

(yeah yeah talk of courts is a smoke screen) He had to be put down so that HE couldn't talk. We already know that 90% of every single news feed from the situation was faked.

You can make trillions from the conflict as long as the global conflict is managed but no outsider or trouble maker can be allowed to achieve any real local power.

Regular people in the US and elsewhere just float along in the wave of media bullshit they are fed.

I think you're overstating a bit.  American industrialists and bankers had some access, but the post-war dynamics changed such that they were at the head of the table rather than stuck at the kiddie table.  While the overall interests may be similar, there's jockeying for power that goes on at that level too. 

The US joined in on World War I for similar reasons - the DuPonts, Rockefellers, etc. were worried about getting sidelined in the post-war shake up.