Contingency for World Economic Disaster

It seems that the entire World was caught flatfooted by the 2008 Economic Crisis. It makes me wonder whether it forced anybody to do any serious thinking as to what to do for the next round. And there will be a next round. The way such cycles work is that the swings become more frequent and more severe until it hits a bottom. Capitalists are famous for claiming that every Painful Recession is just a ‘Necessary Correction’. Well, the ‘correction’ for Capitalism, as a World Economic and Political System, may be about to hit ‘bottom’.

The big problem, as I see it, is the Growth Factor that seems necessary to Capitalism. Now, one can either have stability and equilibrium, or one can have Growth. And then Growth is only possible in an Open Ended Non-Saturated System. What is an Open Ended Non-Saturated System? Well, I shall provide an example in reverse and describe a Closed System. Imagine that instead of many Capitalist Banks, it is all just one Big Bank. It has ALL the money. Now it lends out it money expecting 6% interest on the principal. Well, where is this 6% extra money supposed to come from? In a closed System there is no extra money. The same goes in regards to Profits. Suppose there is One Big Factory that makes Everything and employs Everybody. Its Customers would also be its Employees. They would only have as much Purchasing Power as the same money that was paid to them to build what they are about to buy. There would be nothing left over for Profits. So both Interest and Profit are impossible in a Closed System. But Capitalism has not yet ever been ‘closed’. Capitalism always has sought its Growth in Foreign Markets. And then Capitalism also cheats by constantly expanding the Money Supply. Theoretically, some companies are supposed to make profits while other companies go bust. But imagine how happy the World would be if 6% of the Companies went bankrupt every year… it’d always be like it is now… and that’s a big problem. This is because Globalization is becoming a Closed Saturated System.

So far Capitalism had only been lucky. The discovery and opening up of the American and Australian Continents provided an escape valve for European Overpopulation, and then the discovery of Arabian Oil relieved for a while price saturation in the Energy Markets. America benefited by the Wars which virtually wiped out the rest of the World’s advanced economic powers. And the Wars also ‘corrected’ the population somewhat – the survivors after the War not only had their own jobs back, but the jobs of their Dead Buddies also… they had their pick and wages were high.

But now with One Global Economy, with no new open Continents, no new Energy Supplies, and with Machinery, Technology, Robotics and Automation taking over more and more of Labor’s Productivity; well, Commodity Prices will skyrocket just as 99 percent of the population lose their jobs and thus their Purchasing Power. Profits, Growth and Interest will be satisfied with the Cheating of the constant expansion of the Money Supply, but combined with increasing demand and scarcity of Food and Energy Commodities, it will all lead to a Hyper-Inflation and the Death of the American Dollar.

Does anybody have a plan?

Right now things are very touchy. Everybody seems to forget that just two short years ago the World was experiencing the beginnings of such a Commodity Price driven Inflationary Crunch. Indeed, that is what precipitated the Economic Downturn – so many Americans had to stop paying their mortgages because they needed the money they were earning for Food and Gas. The Downturn cut off the big demand for Commodities. But what will happen IMMEDIATELY after the mildest Recovery? The Commodities Crunch will pick up exactly where it left off. And the Swing will be worst because Prices will go far higher… all that New Money will go into circulation to buy the same limited supply of Stuff, leaving the Poor further behind than every before.

And it looks like everybody is just going to let it happen.

I suspect that China has some kind of a Secret Contingency drawn up. It doesn’t make sense that China lend America more money than America provides in payment for goods and services. It is as though China is both sending America goods and services AND they money to pay for them. In the short-term this may be necessary for China. China is holding so many trillions of American Dollars, that it thinks it necessary to jump into the breach to protect their value. But the continuous throwing away of its Wealth in order to float America can not continue forever. China must know that it is bankrupting itself by such a policy. Therefore, it is necessary to believe that such intelligent people as the Chinese must have decided on a point where they will Bail Out – where they will Cash Out on what dollars they have left, and use Emergency Powers to immediately transform over to a Planned Economy. We might be able to discern hints about such a move in the way China allocates funding for its Economic Infrastructure. When we see preparations for increased Domestic Consumption, large scale agriculture and transportation projects, then we can guess that China is about to Pull the Plug on the Dollar and weather the storm with its saved resources.

Europe, with absolutely no Leadership or resources, will simply collapse into another Dark Age, but this time with no Church to bail it out.

America also has no plans. Really, there should be Report to Work drills, where it is made clear to people that Employed or Not, people simply can’t just ‘stay home’. If the police ‘stayed home’… if the truck drivers who transport all the food ‘stayed home’… if the utility workers who provide electricity and water ‘stayed home’, well, the East and West Coast Urban Population Centers would collapse into starvation and food riots. The flow of refugees would be met by the Armed Resistance of all those American Gun Nuts. When it would be over not two out of a hundred Americans would still be alive.

But maybe THAT is the Plan. I’ve always said that Capitalism is Barbarism and Barbarism requires a low population density. Once 98% of everybody is dead, Capitalism will work just fine again. Don’t you just love these ‘healthy corrections’ that Capitalism is so famous for?

Heaven on Earth and Gov as God

Heaven on Earth and Gov as God

There is a long-standing paradox regarding Civilization and Barbarism, familiar to Historians and Sociologists alike, that Civilizations rise out of war-torn and troubled zones of Barbarism, because the peoples pull together and create institutions and develop attitudes that foster Social Cooperation. Once there is a significant level of Social Cooperation, then everything is set for the creation, development, storage and distribution of Wealth. Civilization rises up. The other side of the Paradox is that Civilizations fall into Barbarism. Once the Times of Trouble are passed, and all the Enemies lay dead, then the Institutions and Attitudes of Cooperation are allowed to decline. Ideas that had pulled Society together are now cast in the light of holding back the Individual. Next, institutions are redrawn to favor Individuality and to effectively punish Cooperation. The Social Economy becomes a free fire zone of competitive hoarding and opportunistic pillaging. Of course, Civilization minus the Institutions and Attitudes of Cooperation, is unsustainable. The last gasp before a Civilization collapses back into the Troubled Times of perpetual War of every Man against all others, that is, the last Words written on the Wall just before the bonafide Return to Barbarism is, and we’ve all heard it a thousand times by now – “nice guys finish last”.

Civilization is the rise of the Collective over the Individual, and Barbarism is the Triumph of the Individual. It is sort of like Angels and Demons… you know, how the ancient legends bespeak of the Fallen Angels becoming Demons because of their Pride of Individuality. Heaven, with all of Its collective institutions really had no room for Individuality, or perhaps God had the sense to know where Individuality would take Heaven. You see, Lucifer was the first Free Enterprise Growth Capitalist, actually more Greedy than Proud. Exploiting the Poor, Hoarding Wealth, massive unemployment and chronically repetitive ‘Crashes’ would have to be an Earthly problem since God had decided to forbid such goings on in Heaven.

Anyway, well-studied and capable Social Planners have stood puzzled by this Paradox of Civilization – that as soon as things get ‘Good’, the People, or rather the succeeding Generations of People, want to forget all about the Good Things that got them to a Good Place, and they want to go back to the very same Bad Things that had caused all of the previous Badness. They forget that once you ‘burn down the Cathedral to steal a Candlestick’, that the Cathedral is gone, and likewise the candlestick.

Some perceptive Intellectuals have even noticed that some Moments of Social Crisis seem to be deliberately engineered in order to arouse some momentary Social Cohesion so that Special Interests can take advantage of the temporary spirit of political consensus to order to push through their self- seeking agendas. You see, although it seems necessary to have some sort of Big Problem for the People to face in order for them to maintain the Spirit of Unity and Cooperation, still, most responsible Social Planners are loath about deliberately engineering such Big Problems, and they are very cynical about it when they see it being done.

But, then I was thinking about the ‘Heaven on Earth’ essay I wanted to write and I was turning in my mind how I would deploy the notion that Heaven’s Virtues were being treated like the World’s Vices, that is, that God being All Knowing is a good thing, but that if Government were All Knowing then it would be a bad thing. The same in regards to being All Powerful – Good for God, but Bad for Government.

Then I remembered the old Biblical Quote, “the Beginning of Wisdom is the Fear of God”. Well, THAT’S IT! People don’t like God and never did! All the Love and Worship was a front for their Fear – that God would be somewhat less Terrible if they pretended to Love and Respect Him.

Nowadays everybody hates Government just as they used to hate God, but Democracy has given them the tools to actually be able to destroy Government. Popular Government becomes the dismantling of Government – a School without Teachers, a Prison without Guards, an Insane Asylum turned over to the Lunatics. Popular Government is Chaos – Civilization in its Last Stage – Dead but still to fall down.

Myself and other Social Planners had been stuck on trying to figure out how to make Government seem appealing… just as Theologians worry about making God seem appealing. But the Big Answer seems to be to LET Government be the Bad Guy. If the People need to face a Common Problem before they will willingly adopt and maintain Institutions of Social Cohesion and Attitudes of Cooperation, then set it up so that their Worst Nightmares will be all about Their Government.

Really, once Absolute Government is established, it would not take much effort in order to make it People’s Biggest Problem. Just think about it… if everything in your Life – residence, job, status – depended on what the Government knew about you, and you knew for a fact that the Government really did know Everything, then it would definitely have your attention, wouldn’t it?

The Trick for Government would be to hit Individuality very hard while promoting everything that is Collective and Cooperative. It’s like herding wild animals by beating the bushes where you DON’T want them to be. Beat on Areas of Individuality and people will take refuge in Cooperation.

Yes, I know that as a sheer matter of form, that such a Government would exercise every propaganda in order to be Universally Loved, and so they should, as that would certainly appeal to a wide enough demographic to make it well worth their trouble. Indeed, such a Government would require a Cadre of Bureaucrats and Functionaries who could be enlisted from the ranks of those who can be convinced that Government is actually a Good Thing (the Highest of Esoteric Teaching, as it turns out). But for most of the People, the Fear that Power inspires will be enough to keep them on the Straight and Narrow.

Yes, modern political sensitivities would cry out that the People would rise up against such tyranny. But I would argue back that I am speaking of a Government which tracks all movements, all transactions, and has every house, room, car, sidewalk or park wired for Sound. To make the first twitch of a Revolt would be tantamount to losing all Status as a Respected Citizen and being shipped to some Labor Intensive Re-Education Camp. As long as Absolute Government STAYED Absolute, it would have no problem in maintaining itself within its established Jurisdictions.

Oh, but people would certainly ague the old clique “Absolute Power corrupts absolutely” – that I should not want the only thing that could save us because it might be abused. Well, I’d answer that Power is either collected or it is dispersed. We can remember what Louis the IVX had said, that “One Big Tyrant is better than a thousand Petty Tyrants”. That Caste of Thinkers who have held with “Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely”, only managed to replace Effective Government with a Regime of dirty little Petty Tyrants – Corporations, Employers, Special Interests making all the Rules and collecting all the Wealth.

Really, we need something approaching Absolute Power just to contain all the Selfish Barbarism we see all about us in the World today. It is probably why God had to be All Powerful. Lucifer and the other Evil Angels could not have been sufficiently dealt with God had confined Himself merely to Political Compromise and Election Campaigns that would appeal the Center.

The Capacity of Saints Messiahs and Avatars

I once saw an interesting argument put forward by Jews attempting to defend themselves from the members of the “Jews For Jesus” Organization. They pointed out that Jesus could not have been the Messiah because he was not a successful Messiah, that is, a Messiah can only be defined in the context of some rather convincing Messianic results. But in the case of Jesus we find that he was executed as a subversive troublemaker on his very first official visit to the Jewish Capital. This was thought to represent a clear and convincing rebuke to any of his Messianic pretensions. If God had sent him then he would not have failed so dismally.

At first this Argument seems logical enough, but it troubles me for two reasons.

First, the argument rests on an implied premise that God is All-Powerful and All-Knowing, even to the extent of knowing the Future in all of its details. Of course, this is not surprising to any Westerner versed in the Philosophies and Theologies after the Greek Hellenistic model, where all things Divine are defined in terms of Quasi-Mathematical Absolutes – Omni-This and All-of-That. But the Argument is being used by Jews. Jewish Theology as well as the Zoroastrianism upon which it was based never imagined that God was ALL powerful. Indeed, the Moral Innovation of Zoroastrianism was to posit the existence of Evil and to deduce from that the possibility that Heaven Itself was contested between Divine and Demonic Principalities. There was a Fair and Square Universal Battle between Good and Evil. And nowhere was there any guarantee that Good would triumph… at least not in the short term. Failure and Defeat are always a possibility. Just ask Joan of Arc – ‘Smokin Joan’, who had a wonderfully blessed career up to the point where she was burned at the stake… by the English of course.

Now, our Jewish Logicians must have already known this, that is, their own Theological Backgrounds. Besides, in their perspective how else could the rather bumpy History of the Jewish Diaspora be explained otherwise than by supposing that the Forces that favor the Chosen People are countered by opposing Forces that almost at times seem to be the superior of the Two? Up until very recently the Jews had not been so well known for their invincibility.

The Second reason why the Argument for Messianic Effect troubles me is that it equates Success in Worldly Conquest with Divinity and Divine Blessing. It alls sounds so much more like John Calvin than Maimonides. God chooses Winners because they Win, and he doesn’t care about the details. So we would have Messiahs confirmed entirely on the basis of their Military Power or their ability to extort or demand obedience or compliance. Such an Argument would make a perfectly good Messiah out of Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan or Bill Gates.

Most of us would have a hard time wrapping our heads around the idea of an Evil but Effective “Messiah”. But most of us, at least tacitly, support our Winner Take All Society. Really, what choice do we have?

But we as Spiritualists take upon ourselves certain Moral and Ethical boundaries. Triumph BY Evil is the same as the triumph OF Evil. Any Real Messiah should come to save us FROM such events – to put the whirlwind of Evil into a jar and bury it forever – not just to wield Evil better than all the other Competition for whatever Ethnic or Territorial Agenda the Messiah sees as worthy of his attention.

But unfortunately we are left wondering why God seems to do so next to nothing for the sake of the Good. Even after acknowledging that God has no Absolute Powers to completely and instantly conquer Evil, we would still expect some kind of a Token Gesture of Moral Support. We can legitimately be puzzled that God did so little to support the Messianic Candidacy of Jesus. There were some Miracles and some Protections early in his Career, but it was all just suddenly withdrawn before he was even 40 year old… not even really an adult yet. It was “Jesus meet Joan of Arc. Thank you so much for your dedicated Service, and now here is your Reward.”

So what is missing?

In the Bhagavad Gita it is said “by Sacrifice you will nourish the Gods, and then the Gods will nourish you”. Then, in our Modern Era we have nearly all of the Divine Marian Apparitions over the last 500 years, seeming to be speaking characteristically in one Voice, saying that Divine Grace can only be delivered down to Humanity in some determined proportion as the Prayers, and Penances that come up from Humanity. No Prayers, No Fasting, No Messiah… or at least no very effective Messiah.

There is one very amazing instance in History of the conjunction of Prayer and Penance to Divine Potency. Saint Vincent Ferrer traveled about Latin Europe with what was estimated to be “10,000” Flagellants – people who traveled from town to town, city to city, with Vincent Ferrer, bare foot, flogging themselves the entire way, fasting, and going without sleep. And in the History of the World there has never been recorded a greater Saint. One feel uncomfortable saying it, but objectively speaking, Jesus was almost nothing compared to Vincent Ferrer. It was said of him that any day without 10,000 Miracles would have had to have been a miracle, that is, miracles became the common place thing and everybody began to forget what Reality had been like. Vincent Ferrer emptied entire urban hospitals, curing everybody… and those were the Plague Years.

Vincent Ferrer would speak with pride of his 10,000 Flagellants. He would observe that even with the extreme fasting, the daily marches, and the constant flogging, not a single man or woman among the 10,000 ever became ill. Nobody slowed down. Nobody dropped out.

These People were the Power Battery behind this greatest Campaign of Miracles in History. Nowadays people wonder what it was all good for. Well, it is true that when the Protestant Rebellion fired up in the next Century, the districts where Vincent Ferrer had gone on Tour were to remain Catholic, that is the Barons and Aristocrats in the Vincent Zone foreswore murdering every Priest, Monk and Nun in their district in order to confiscate their Monastic Estates and Church Properties. In Germany and England we simply had Blood Baths and Land Grabs. Where Vincent Ferrer and his Righteous 10,000 had trod, even 3 or 4 generations prior, Morality and Ethical Self Restraint was able to hold sway over Predatory Self Interest.

It’s a shame that Vincent Ferrer had not been better traveled. A few more miles might have saved our Civilization.

A Dangerous Economic Cycle

A Dangerous Economic Cycle

Does anybody remember how bad it was BEFORE the present economic collapse?

The World Economy had been so overheated that commodities prices were shooting above the range of a great many people to even be able to afford ordinary food. With Wars raging in the World’s Oil Zones, and with new demands for Oil coming from the growing Economies of India and China, it was understandable that Petroleum prices would sky-rocket. But then it was learned that grains and other foodstuffs could be boiled down and fomented into Bio-fuels, effectively linking Oil Prices to Food Prices, which would henceforth until forever rise or fall in tandem.

Some experts had projected that if Oil hit just $200 (and it had gotten as high as $150) a barrel, then over half of the World Population would be priced out of being able to eat a bare 800 calories a day. Combined with petrol-driven soaring transportation costs, some depressed areas of the Globe would not even see Relief Supplies – too expensive to buy and too expensive to deliver. Starvation would be massive.

The Financial Crisis rescued us from these hyper-inflating commodities prices, but at the cost of the loss of millions of jobs. With the collapse of production and employment commodities again became affordable, for those who still had jobs…Or the Capitalists who still had plenty of leisure savings.

We hear very little anymore about how the one crisis had sparked the other – how the Financial Crisis followed causally from the Commodities Crunch. With the upwardly spiraling food and energy costs, a lot of people could no longer afford to pay their mortgages… not with also being able to drive to work and eat food. People were driven to impossible choices. And for many people, paying off the Banks was not their top priority. Eating food or heating their homes was… while they still had homes.

So the Banks fell. Western Capitalism collapsed. The People of the World took on a crippling debt so that Capitalists could write themselves huge bonus checks and go back to business as usual. And it could all happen again tomorrow, albeit with so far fewer resources than we had the first time.

Now, the News Media, so concentrated in the hands of one or two of the World’s wealthiest Capitalists, is entirely behind Capitalism and never fails to present an optimistic view to our Future. We are told the World Economy is in the process of Recovery. But Recovery from what?

As soon as the Production and Employment picture improves, the commodity prices will begin to soar again. Millions of people still need to drive a great distance to work. These people still need to eat food. A lot of these same people have adjustable mortgages, so as soon as the Economies reach some real level of Recovery, then the adjustable Interest Rates will go up at the same time as fuel and food prices. The World Bankers automatically raise interest rates to suppress Inflationary trends. Recovery will inevitably trigger its own Recession. The Financial Crisis will simply repeat. It’s Cyclic! As long as none of the Variables are changed… as long as the basic factors remain in place, then we will all effectively be Damned if we Do and Damned if we Don’t.

Rule of Law the Non-Ideal

People tend to assume that Western Political Values are unquestionably virtuous and stand as the highest achievements possible for their or anybody’s Civilization. In proportion as anything is different from Western Values, so it is considered by that same degree to be inferior, even Barbarian. But all of this is done under the spell of hundreds of years of propaganda, from minds clouded with nationalistic and ethnic pride, and from simply never having ever been exposed to anything else. Small educations make for small minds.

Rule by Law was not always and everywhere held up to be one of the highest Ideals. In Classical China there was quite an argument for and against it. Confucius lined up against Rule of Law, what was referred to then as Legalism, and not because he was some kind of an Anarchist, but because he recognized the limitations of Legalism and the tricks that could played with the Law.

You see, the Legalists claimed that everybody had a different sense of what was right and wrong and so in order to preclude the possibility of any misunderstandings, then everything should simply be spelled out in the Law. Just tell people what is permitted and what is not permitted. What could be simpler then that?

Well, Games have rules, but Life isn’t a Game. Unless one is a Player and wishes to be the Winner to everybody else’s Loser.

You see, once Legalism, or Rule of Law, is established then the Legalists, what we call Lawyers nowadays, can set to work creating all the loopholes, or ways to engage in ethically shady dealings without precisely crossing the exact letter of the Law. Indeed, this was all the agenda that the Legalists must have had in mind or cared about, because the other result of Legalism, or Rule of Law, serves nobody, and that is when somebody by force of circumstances happens to violate the law, but only because of overwhelmingly compelling reasons. But the problem here is that Rule of Law recognizes no mitigations, no exceptions. Unless a lawyer authorizes a well plotted Loophole, then breaking the Law is breaking the law. So it is that in a Legalistic Society a CEO of major Bank can bilk millions of people out of their fortunes and toss them out of their homes, while sending entire Economies and Nations into ruin, all while laughing in everybody’s face because no legislature had the foresight to craft exactly the right Law to forbid every conceivable financial trick and slight of hand. But if one of the victims were to accost such a Banker and punch him in the face for what he had done, although it could be counted as only the smallest token of what would really be deserved, then this poor Victim would be sent off to prison for assault – you know, there are Laws against such things.

What Confucius believed was that people, that is, most well-bred and brought up people know the difference between Right and Wrong, and should be held to that standard which all decent people know perfectly well without ever having to explain it or itemize it point by point against every conceivable situation. The advantage here is that there are no loopholes in such a Morality based system. And mitigating circumstances would be allowed, where actions are a salt and pepper mix of Good and Bad, as long as the prevailing intentions were mostly for the Good.

In the West, a certain concession used to be made for Morality within the Legal System. This was the Jury. The Law was the Law, but the Jury would add their own Moral Awareness to the legal equation. But now this function of the Jury System is being strangled away by the Legalistic Judiciary. Juries are being instructed to regard only the facts and to apply only the Law. Dissenting Jurors are thrown out, and some even imprisoned for contempt. Legalism is now entirely pure. Its untouched by any trace of Morality.

Really, it is the Legalistic Judges that need to go. The Law Books need to be tossed. We need to return to the appreciation and application of simple Right and Wrong.

Yes, it can seem almost comical sometimes, when humans guide their social and political actions by what they ‘feel’ is Right. I remember an instance from Greek History. A certain popular Politician gave a rousing speech for War, and nearly everybody voted in favor of the belligerent proposal. But when the war ended in disaster, the same group of politicians voted, again almost unanimously, to have the rascal executed. They didn’t blame themselves. The way they saw it, they had been successfully manipulated. They were made fools of, and so they had their revenge.

Growing up being indoctrinated in the niceties of Rule of Law, the instance from Greek History appears shocking. But if we only give ourselves a minute to think about it, wasn’t the outcome back then better then what we could expect now?

Is the Rule of Law really an Ideal, or is it just another scheme for protecting the scoundrels that run the show? Really, wouldn’t it provide so much more incentive for Responsibility if the rascals worried about being hanged by the people they trick and fool.

At a very basic and practical level the difference between Right and Wrong is that Right works out for most peoples’ advantage and Wrong screws things up and ends badly. When Success can pay off so well for People in High Position, then it would only be reasonable to expect them to assume some Risk for when things end badly. But in our Legalistic Society, there never is any real risk. Yes, it is a gamble, but they gamble with Other People’s Money.

Then there is the not so secret Secret that it is the Rich that mostly write the Laws and they largely exempt themselves from them. Only in the Moral Society, liberated from Legalisms, can the people demand Responsibility, and need no better reason then that they are outraged.

Not everything needs to be Rational. Sometimes Rewards or Punishments can simply be Poetic.

Garabandal vs Medjugorje vs Kibeho Rwanda

Physiological Proof of Religious Visionary Experiences

Garabandal vs Medjugorje vs Kibeho Rwanda


The Catholic Church goes through its own processes for affirming or denying Religious Visionaries, and some of these procedures are troubling and stupid. First among the stupid things is that they have this extreme emphasis on protecting Catholic Orthodoxy. They are pretending that in any disagreement between Heaven and the Vatican, that the Vatican must always be right. What this leads to is a situation where even if there were any slight imperfections in the Catholic Church, then they would be absolutely uncorrectable, as even the very Voice of God, if He were to speak in order to point out such error, would be immediately discredited because, of course, every single Bishop who knows the letter of the Catechism would know better than God Himself. Yes, suddenly Tradition and the Absolute Truth of how Catholicism has always understood things can be tossed aside easily enough if the Bishops decide to have a kind of Political Convention and vote one way or another on things that they treat merely as policy issues. Such political haggling and horse trade, they call that the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is okay as long as it works politically and in the basest materialistic channels, where the Bishops do all their work. But certainly it can never be said that the Bishops of the Catholic Church have ever been influenced by anything Religious or Spiritual. That is simply not the Holy Spirit as they have grown from time immemorial to understand it.

But why should there ever be a Visionary? If the Church had everything absolutely correct, then God would have no need for sending any Visionaries, isn’t that so? So Visionaries are inherently a Corrective. Yes, the Church has no trouble approving Visionaries when the Visionaries speak in regards to correcting the people, the Laity or the Religious Orders, but the Church bristles when their own Fat Cat Bishops receive Heaven’s Scrutinizing Gaze. The only thing the Bishops need help with is their legal strategies for protecting their sexual lifestyle choices with children and such.

Another problem with Church review of the Visionaries is that there does not seem to have been an effort to arrive at some expected physiological baseline for genuine Religious Experiences, and this some 40 years after the publication of Charles Tart’s “Altered States of Consciousness”.

What brings this to mind is that I have been reading “Our Lady of Kibeho” by Immaculée Ilibagiza of Rwanda in Africa. Her description of the trance states of the Kibeho Visionaries reminded me of what I had read concerning the Garabandal Visionaries in Spain. Unfortunately, the physiological descriptions from Spain and Africa have only the most marginal similarities with those of the more famous Visionaries from Medjugorje in Croatia.

In Garabandal Spain it was obvious to everybody that at least something supernatural was going on, and the only choice was between whether the God or the Devil were responsible. The Visionaries would become impervious to their surroundings, their dissociation was so complete that they wouldn’t flinch in the least even under the most extreme tortures – driving nails into their arms, needles up the fingernails and applying flames to hands and feet while the Visionaries were in trance. And the Visionaries seemed capable of the impossible (which is what they mean by ‘supernatural’, isn’t it?), for instance, dashing about on the mountain side amidst the roughest terrain almost as if by levitation. In Kibeho Rwanda the seers would collapse and then assume the characteristic of being un-moveable – six strong men could not pick up a small teenaged waif. Also, in the African case there had been some rather extreme trances in which the seers had appeared death-like for longer than a day at a time. Finally, trained medical personnel detected something like an hourly breath and heartbeat. Ordinarily we shouldn’t expect teenagers to be able to fake such things.

But in Medjugorje the famous Seers only had to stop paying attention to the crowd, they only needed to all look up in approximately the same direction, and then they only had to agree upon telling about the same story afterwards. They brought in Medical Examiners who treated the Medjugorje Visionaries as authentic only because they blinked only half so often during their trances as at other times. Now, if they had not blinked at all…

In both Rwanda and Spain there was a certain vicious sadism applied to testing the Subjects for complete dissociation during the Trance States. We could certainly deplore such cruelty, had the seers felt anything, but what was generally conceded was that the children felt nothing at the time and had no experience of discomfort later – no open bleeding sores or third degree burns to treat. Why were the Medjugorje Seers let off so easy? Well, probably because they flinched at the first slightest tickle. They were given the Test, only they didn’t pass it. After that they were only measured on their ability to play pretend. Then Wishful Thinkers gave them the go ahead. Also, there may have been something of a material agenda behind Medjugorje. What all the books seem to say is that the Franciscan Religious Order in Croatia put together the entire Visionary ploy in order to draw tourist dollars to the area, so they could buy up weapons cashes in preparation for all the Ethnic Cleansing they would soon be engaged in. And it all seems to be born out by the subsequent facts. When one checks the Ethnic Demographic Map before the Civil War and then after, one finds that the Medjugorje District was perhaps the most successful at almost entirely becoming Ethnically Homogenous, that is the nice People of Medjugorje were successfully able to either chase away or kill nearly every single Serb and Muslim in the district. Mostly from the profits they made from Rosary Bead sales.

Anyway, the Catholic Church needs stop insisting on Doctrinal Purity. After all, nobody applied any such Tests to Paul who made up most of these Doctrines that they now must so stubbornly protect against so many attacks from Spiritual and Theological Common Sense and the dictates of Ordinary Morals. The Bishops conveniently forget that at the Height of Catholic Civilization most of Paulist Doctrine was ignored, and that the recognition and implementation of Paulist Doctrine, far from helping anything, in fact went hand in hand with the Decline and Fall of Catholic Civilization. So why protect something that is at best dubious in the first place?

It would be better to define exactly what one should expect physiologically from a true Visionary, and then just learn to live with whatever these True Visionaries bring with them from Heaven. The Jews had called them Prophets, and look at how well it worked out for them.

Alternatives to Costly Wars of Occupation

Military Planners in the United States will probably not spend too many more years combing over History before they discover an alternative to the costly wars of occupation. Eventually they will take note of the Mongolian Experience. You see, beginning at about the turn of the First Millennium, about a thousand years ago, the Mongolians struck out from their bleak dry horse lands and established the largest Empire of Military Conquest that the World had ever seen, and they managed to do so without the debilitating expenses involving Occupations and Nation Building. They preferred implementing strategies of what we would call today “genocide”. Then they would utilize colonization and resettlement of friendly ethnic groups to once again return vacant areas to some economic usefulness.

It was puzzling for me to reconcile such historical facts of mass genocides in the regions of Mongolian Conquest with the modern demographic facts that not everybody in the Euro-Asian Continent between Vienna and Mongolian is pure blooded Mongolian. It is clear that a great many ethnic populations survived enough to be well represented later after the Mongolian Empire had receded. It was probably like with all of our Holocaust Survivors. So what exactly happened during these Genocidal Wars and Invasions?

Well, my guess is that all Populations that were directly encountered by the Mongolian Forces were annihilated, but that escaping hordes of refugees were allowed to flee almost non-molested – as long as you fled in front of the advancing Armies you would be okay, that is, until you starved or died of exposure or some such thing. In a way, it almost served to help their Strategy, as the refugees would flee into Countries not yet invaded, and would serve to destabilize those regions and weaken them ahead of the Mongolian onslaught.

One might ask about Resistance Fighters, what we nowadays call “terrorists”. Certainly the Mongols must have had problems with such insurgencies. But, no, not necessarilly. You see, Resistance Fighters are a product of attempting to coexist with an existing Population. Resistance Fighters can hide within the Host Population, or perhaps hide out in the Hills and Jungles, while being re-supplied and supported by the Host Population. It was this Support Population that the Mongols destroyed with their targeted Genocides. As it says in that famous Treatise on War, “if one kills the snakes body, the head automatically dies”. Once the Mongols burned the cities and then burned the farms, then the remaining elements of Population, living in the most abject poverty as vagabond refugees, would have more pressing matters to cling to than worrying about fighting back.

American Military Planners had already seen this model in action. Look at the American Civil War. Lincoln and the North had been at an impasse until General Sherman decided to burn Atlanta and every farm around it to a circumference of a hundred miles, thus completely ‘pacifying’ the region. It was this ‘Scorched Earth’ strategy that finally brought the South to the Peace Table.

This brings us to an expected Tipping Point of Genocide… well, at least the Mongols had not expected it. You see, once a certain number of Nations are completely leveled by genocidal slaughter, then at least some Nations next in line for invasion will utterly and entirely submit, using their own resources to assure that there is no ‘trouble’, and they will beg for survival on any terms.

It is interesting the first time that the Mongols had realized this dynamic. They had been slow to catch on – a few cities that had offered only the barest resistance were totally destroyed simply out of the inertia of consistent habit. But finally this one City made a strong impression which caused a Mongolians to do a Re-Think. You see, from the very first the Mongolians had the stated policy of Destroying any City that offered even the least resistance, but they never had to worry about NOT destroying a City because there had always been some resistance somewhere. But finally they came to this one City that welcomed them with flowers and banquets and wagons of loot, indeed, anything of any value that was not nailed down was already packed up and ready for shipment to Mongolia. And then one single idiot shot an arrow over the wall. Just when everything had been going almost unbelievably smooth. Did they really wish to mess it all up because of that hobgoblin ‘consistency’ ( “consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds” ).

Well, the General sent one of his Officers back to Mongolia to confer with Genghis Khan and his High Council to determine just how strictly they were to interpret their own nominal rules, of killing everybody for the least resistance. What happened in the Council was that it reminded a great many of them that a good many such instances had been occurring, where resistance to their Invasion had become almost completely insignificant and that their Commanders in the Field were complaining that would be cheaper NOT to kill everybody. Once over the Tipping Point, then Occupying the Enemies would be the easier way to go.

That particular Tipping Point still comes into play. There are probably many variables involves – whether a People as a whole are rational, peace-loving, foregoing and tolerant, or whether they are possessed by some semi-suicidal rage that gets the better of their common sense and instinct for survival. Remember a few years ago when the Chechen Resistance was being so troublesome for the Russian Army and for Russia itself, with the Chechen’s setting off bombs in Russia blowing up entire Apartment Buildings full of people. Well, the Russians let it out through discretely leaked information that they were planning to completely annihilate the population of Chechnya and resettle the place with ethnic Russians. Screw International Opinion. The World would yell and scream, whine and cry, and Russia would not get to host the Olympics for a couple of decades. But Russia’s problem with Chechnya would finally be solved. But guess what happened. Chechnya IMMEDIATELY decided to police itself and so it is that they staved off their absolute punishment.

What if American Planners did come to see the utility of genocide and resettlement in place of the old policies of occupation. Well, there would be certain new kinds of cost involved. For the Mongols, maybe because they conquered so much so quickly, it required nearly all of their available Man Power. Every able bodied man in Mongolia was expected to be a Warrior. They would bring in “slaves” to do all the other necessary work. For instance, Marco Polo the Italian, who had simply been traveling around at the time, was recruited to be such a “slave” for the Mongols, handling bank accounts in China for the Mongolian Invaders. Well, does America have that kind of a Military Culture where every able-bodied man would feel honor-bound to be an Officer in some Genocidal Army? Not at the moment, it doesn’t.

But Technology can be made to jump into the breach. Winning People’s Hearts and Minds may be a tricky and elusive goal, when it comes to occupying invaded Nations, but killing everybody might turn out to be a snap. One can envision relatively low-cost technologies for killing off populations, even one person at a time, putting just enough filtering into the Systems so that American and Allied Forces would not be targeted. One immediately thinks of the ‘Terminator’ series of movies, but the mistake there is in over-estimating the ability of humans to survive against even rather simple Artificial Intelligence Weapons. We would not need expensive Terminator Robots, when a little model airplane with a silent electric motor can kill somebody with a single small 22 caliber bullet to the brain. And we can assure that such weapons will never miss – we can simply make it a point of buying them from Japan.

And then there are biological weapons. While Genocidal War would still come with so many recriminations from ‘Civilized’ Peoples everywhere, a War using Biological Agents to spread Plagues and Diseases among specifically targeted genetic Groups, would seem, well, just like any ordinary Epidemic. The Nation under Biological Attack would be quarantined off by the International Disease Control Authorities and nearly everybody would die, and nobody would ever realize it had all been a Military Operation. Just like Aids had been in Africa. People had once worried that Africa would be the hub of the World’s worries over Over-Population. Not since Aids. Do we really think that was all a happy coincidence? A Disease that targets an ingrained habit among nearly all Sub-Saharan African Peoples, which after 3 decades still doesn’t have a cure. And that nobody suspects any Government of designing such a clever Disease simply proves the point of how useful it would be for Governments to exploit the use such Bio-Weapons.

Anyway, I do not suppose the World has very long before Genocidal War makes its comeback. Right now America is reviewing the Utility of War in the light of its recent failures to successfully occupy Iraq and Afghanistan, where it had been so expensive and politically damaging – where the worst people seem to win all of the subsequent local elections, unlike in America, of course. Anyway, soon America will realize that there are other possible Strategies available, even with all the allure of being Historically rather successful. They even have a phrase for it. Kill them all and let God sort them out.