Evolution & Darwinism

The April 25, 2009 edition of The Remnant (volume 42, number 6) contains an article titled, "The Darwin Delusion?" by Peter Wilders.  The author cogently describes the effect on the Church from being sympathetic to evolution.  This article deserves the widest possible circulation.

Swine Flu Update II

Most everyone has heard a variant of the one about the guy standing in his yard with a bazooka. A passer-by asks, "What are you doing?"  He replies, "I'm making sure wild elephants don't rampage in my yard."  To which the passer-by states, "There are no wild elephants within thousands of miles of here!"  The guy with the bazooka replies, "See how effective my action is." 

The World Health Organization would have you believe that their campaign on swine flu was effective in preventing world-wide disaster.  The truth, however, is their hysterical efforts were about as effective as the guy with the bazooka.  If there had been wild elephants or a genuine health risk, the respective efforts may have had some effect.

But there was no threat.  Swine flu is no more dangerous than ordinary flu. The reported deaths from swine flu is in the range of 100.  The annual death toll from garden variety typhus on a world scale is 30,000.

In the two daily papers received here, one has dropped the swine flu story entirely and the other put the story on about page 20.  

And so the WHO's big campaign comes to a whimpering end.  Do you think they will offer an apology for needlessly causing so much distress?

Don't count on it.  The reality is that the swine flu extravaganza is just the latest in a series of similar scares.  There was the 'mad cow' scare in the 1990s which was predicted to kill as many as 500,000 people.  So far 150 have died.

Then there was the SARS panic of 2002-2003.  Total deaths: 774.  And then there was the avian flu panic of 2005.  Total deaths:  257.

You would think the WHO would be chagrined by all these mis-steps.  But no, they have no shame.  In fact their mentors in the cryptocracy view these efforts not as mistakes at all.  They consider them key achievements.  Why?

From the cryptocracy's point of view a nice world-wide scare every few years is very useful.   Such campaigns engender fear.  And a fearful world population is a population that can be more easily manipulated.

What do the Church spokesmen have to say about all this?  Very little.  Jesus said when His disciples saw him walk on water, "Fear not."  Gabriel also said this to Zechariah and Marys.  Vatican spokesmen also sometimes speak of not having fear.  But their exhortations seem to ring hollow or lacking relevance. Why is that? 

When Jesus made his statement it was in direct response to actual concrete fears he saw in front of him.  He said not to fear when the disciples thought they might be seeing a fearsome ghost.   Gabriel also made this statement when his unexpected appearance caused fright.

The Vatican-type statements on fear are of a different quality.  Their appeal to not fear is abstract and individualized and not tuned to a concrete fear.  Such appeals are not worth very much.  Fear is usually very direct and concrete.  There is such a thing as generalized fear, which is a dreadful malady.  But a call to willfully stop having fear is no help to such a person.  There fear is rooted in trauma(s) in the past that must be worked through.

The fear in the world's population stems from not knowing where all the momentous economic, social and political changes of our epoch are taking us.  It would seem that the Church spokesmen need to speak to this character of this fear.  Someone ought to tell the truth about what is happening in the world, why it is occurring, what it's place in history is, where it is going, and what the faithful need to do.  Further that all these big changes are fully known by God, who will make use of them to bring about in the end the Kingdom of God on earth.  Faith in God, the Church, and prayer are the appropriate answers to fear.

The Church spokesmen obviously don't do this.  Their preferred response to the big changes in the world, is to naively appeal that everyone be reasonable, and remember the poor.  The influence of the Church will continue to weaken with such a response. And as a result, fear in the world will continue to grow, making the faithful and everyone else vulnerable to manipulation and panic.

What Did Jesus Say about the Rabbis' Predecessors? Part One: Why Did Jesus Appear?

The Old Testament records several statements by God about the place of the descendants of Abraham in the world.  Perhaps the quote that best tells us what God expected is found in Exodus 19:5-6:  “If therefore you will hear my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my peculiar possession above all people:  for all the earth is mine.  And you shall be to me a priestly kingdom, and a holy nation…”

The message seems clear.  If the Israelites would listen to God and do His will, they would be His chosen ones who would have the mission to be priests to all peoples.  The Israelites were given the awesome responsibility to lead humanity to holiness and to God Himself.

God made this statement when the world was mired in paganism and various forms of Satanism.  Only a certain segment of the Israelites had a rudimentary comprehension of the nature of God.  He expected the Israelites to continue to develop their understanding by listening to Him and His prophets.  Doing so they would become the teachers and religious leaders of all other peoples.  The goal was to bring humanity step by step away from its diabolic post-fall past.

The Israelites’ mission was thus paramount:  to prepare the Kingdom of God on earth by making believers of its inhabitants.

The Israelites needed help, of course, because they too already had experienced excursions into paganism, notably during their exile in Egypt.  Other deviations into paganism were to come.  Our compassionate God stood by the Israelites, though.  He gave them the Ten Commandments and a body of rules to overcome temptation.  God preferred, however, that the Israelites live by faith and not to rely on laws and rules.  The prophets repeated this desire, Jesus expressed the same thought throughout his ministry, and  St. Paul elaborated on it in his letters.

Despite God’s generous efforts, the spiritual leaders of the Israelites were recalcitrant in absorbing and implementing the mission given to them.  They detoured into legalisms.  They accepted God’s gift of divine commandments and then incredibly became legalists, lawyers, who lived by the rules devoid of the compassion and love that God is. This detour grew more and more serious until the Pharisees at the time of Christ had developed a whole catalog of man-made rules that took precedence over God’s intentions and word.  The Lord was to comment bitterly and often on this priority of rules ahead of piety.

The Israelites under the leadership of the Pharisees failed to be the priests to the rest of the world.  Instead the Pharisees led them into an attitude of exclusiveness.  The Israelites (who evolved into the members of the tribe of Judah) saw themselves as the holy ones and scorned everyone else.  Instead of setting an example to others to help them to understand God, the Judaic leaders saw themselves as the God-chosen ones and saw non-Judaic peoples as unclean and to be avoided, even shunned.

Thus, God’s mission to the children of Abraham was perverted into its very opposite.  Instead of priests to the world, the Pharisees and their descendants made themselves into an legalistic arrogant elite who deplored those to whom they were supposed to be ministering.  In short, they became racial and theological supremacists.

God had repeatedly urged the Israelites to remain separated to maintain their holy purity.  He pushed in this direction not just for the sake of purity.  He wanted them to  be pure so that they could be more effective priests.  God intended for purity to lead to the development of authoritative and powerful leaders who could set an example that humanity would not miss.  The Israelites led by the Pharisees, however, separated themselves and lost sight of the reason for the separation.  They became only purists in the formality of the law.  They even took upon themselves ‘to improve upon’ the rules that God had provided,.  They developed a whole body of laws, rules, and oral traditions that contradicted God's desires and had little to do with His intentions.

Jesus’ incarnation was undoubtedly prompted by the Israelites’ perversion of their God-given mission.  Jesus came to try to save them from disaster.  He wanted to show them once again what their mission really entailed.  God had invested centuries of work in His chosen people and now Jesus came to make a last ditch effort to save them and return them to God’s favor.  

Jesus' statements indicate that He knew that the Pharisees had already evolved so far from God’s will that trying to save them was hopeless during His ministry.  Jesus therefore went over the Pharisee’s heads directly to the Israelites (Judaics) to offer them the opportunity to piously respond.

Jesus continually set an example for how the Pharisees should act, but He also simultaneously began developing an alternate pathway to the Kingdom of God.  He set about to form the nucleus of His future church that would have to take over the mission betrayed by the Pharisees.  Jesus spent three intense years teaching his disciples and followers what they would have to know to carry out this new task.

The four Gospels of the New Testament record what Jesus taught in these three years.  That teaching has at least two levels of meaning.  His words and example contain a universal meaning in faith and devotion to God that was designed to aid His followers over the centuries in building His church.  But, also, those words and example were meant to show the Pharisees what they were doing wrong.  Jesus’ entire ministry was in a way directed to the Pharisees and their followers to try to get through their hard heads and hearts to show them how a priestly nation ought to act. 

In his final words in Matthew 28:19-20 Jesus spelled out what a priestly people ought to do, “Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you…”   This entreaty set the church into being.

The Pharisees did not fail to see Jesus’ purpose.  They understood clearly that everything Jesus said and did challenged their privileged position and (erroneous) ideas.  The Pharisees refused to see who Jesus was and to learn from Him.  They tried without success to tempt, corrupt and refute Jesus.  Unable to disprove or assimilate Him, they decided that their only course of action was to get rid of Him.  And so they turned Jesus over to the Romans where they denounced Him to enable the crucifixion.

When the Pharisees arranged the killing of the Son of God, they definitively set themselves on a path of supreme diabolic evil.  Jesus, of course, foresaw their destiny.   A review of what Jesus said about them can help us learn today what He foresaw long ago about the Talmud and its Judaic believers.  Subsequent chapters will examine this topic. 

Swine Flu Update

The World Health Organization sneezes and the world gets a cold.  The cryptocracy must be very satisfied with how the swine flu extravaganza played out.  The WHO issues a warning (based on little evidence) and the machinery goes into action.  The media becomes hysterical, medical groups wring their hands, nations take extraordinary actions, 'experts' set up media events to tell us how awful it could be, etc, etc, etc.

From the cryptocracy's point of view things have worked out very nicely.  Their world apparatus proved that once again it can mobilize (read: panic) the world's population in a few days.  The machinery worked in a well-oiled manner.

Left unsaid is the fact that is gradually coming to light that swine flu is probably no worse than regular flu.  

The problem is that the WHO and its relative, the Center for Disease Control, are highly political organizations with a very definite political agenda.  So, when a few anomalous health results pop up that can be useful to advance their agenda, all caution is thrown to the wind and a gigantic campaign is initiated.  

The discouraging part is the gullibility of the public.  There is a long way to go before the public develops a natural suspicion of these organizations that are more political than medical.  Even people who I know to have common sense were saying the most ridiculous things about swine flu.

Of course, the public would be a lot more educated if the Church leaders had a natural suspicion.  But, no, for some decades now the Church hierarchy has put its faith in the cryptocracy world leaders and spokesmen, leaving the faithful vulnerable to the machinations of the cryptocracy.

The Transformation of the Practice of Medicine

The Obama administration's new order has brought central government planning and control to the banking, auto, and insurance industries, and undoubtedly others to come.  The medical profession, however, has been on the road to transformation to government control for some time.

Ask almost any doctor in a candid moment and he/she will tell you that they are slaves to requirements to prevent malpractice suits.  Patients complain that medical personnel are impersonal and treat the patients as little better than a file folder. All this is indicative of the qualitative change that has occurred in the last couple of decades in the medical world. 

The new medical practice is now dictated by a series of protocals, quality metrics, and blueprints issued by the government, insurance carriers, and professional associations.  These glorified checklists now predominate in all phases of the treatment of illness.  As a consequence doctors and other medical staff are trained to think formalistically and less analytically. The art of diagnoses is now more and more subordinated to simply watching for a certain series of symptoms which then triggers a predetermined response plan.

Doctors no longer treat patients.  Instead they are treating symptoms under a program that has been dictated to them by Medicare, the government, or the insurance industry.  Thus doctors are being gradually transformed into pavlovian response mechanisms  -- if a certain symptomatic stimulus is given, they respond in the programmed manner.

Patients in this arrangement become little more than pieces of meat.  Their individuality and history have minimal importance.  What matters is whether they fit the profile for whatever ails them.  In many cases the recovery program is simply dictated.

The robot-ization of medicine is proceeding apace.  The next stage, however, is already clear.  Very soon doctors will be punished if they do not follow the prescribed action plans.  Already in some states (Massachusetts for example) doctors are evaluated and ranked according to a statistical survey of their patients' "progress" as envisaged by the plans for the illnesses.  Doctors who have a 'bad' record can be downgraded in their ranking and have their reputation smeared.

The patient will fare no better.  Soon, patients who don't toe the line will face greately increased treatment costs.  For example, if a patient is unable to follow the dictated recovery plan, say because of family problems, when he lands in the hospital again, the treatment costs will escalate.  Similarly, someone who is obese may have to pay more to treat diabetes.  Etc, etc.

The overall new idea is instituting accountability in patient care.  Doctors will be held to specific formal standards.  Patients will be expected to be responsible for their health.  Treatment costs will depend on the patient's life style.  And who will determine if the life style is 'health affirmative'?  Why the government of course through profiles relating to prevention of certain diseases, ailments, etc.

This centralization and robotization of medicine is not just another stage of the evolution of the practice of medicine. Instead, we are witnessing the deliberate and planned transformation of medicine to a cost-efficient, no-guesswork, no thinking industry. We will soon see an industry completely dominated and directed by the insurance giants and by government commissions, who in turn are directed by "experts" who just so happen to have the same long-term financial goals as the rich elite.

One might ask where is the charity in this system?  The answer is that it will not exist.  All the human-ness and basic human solidarity is being boiled out of the system and replaced with the dictatorship of cold cash and cost efficiency.  At best one can expect a depersonalized charity where patients are bureaucratically referred to a bureaucratized agency that deals with a particular need. 

What is described here is beginning.  Certainly it does not exist full-blown yet.  One can now still find charity-a-plenty in most medical establishments.  And the dedication and conscientiousness of medical personnel is palpable.  But beware!!!! Change is occurring, and the new world is coming faster than may be thought.  It is being implemented step by step.

What does all this have to do with the Church?  As usual the Church has nothing to say about these developments, even though the changes most directly effect the Church faithful.

Perhaps the Church should not be saying anything.  From a certain point of view, that case can be made.  But, if so, why is the voice of the Catholic doctors and nurses, the medical associations, the administrators, the Priests and Nuns who devote their lives to the ill not encouraged to speak out? Is the whole Catholic world going to sit by while one of the most charitable of human activities is transformed, in effect destroyed?

Where is the Catholic leader who will stand up and tell what is occurring, why it is occurring, who is responsible, and what can be done about it?  Where is the weight of billions of Catholics being felt?  Where are the appeals for world-wide prayer campaigns to stay the hand of these crazed, money-hungry dictators to be.

To say and do nothing means a historic defeat for the faithful in one of their basic human needs.  Surely that has to mean something to even the self-satisfied and complacent bureaucracy that dominates the Church.  

Bank of America

One of the goals of those producing the current economic crisis has been to force the Bank of America to better toe the line set by the cryptocracy.  Part of this project has been to get rid of BoA chairman Kenneth Lewis.  Why the cryptocracy wants this is best known by them, but it is apparent that Lewis was not fully a member of the 'club'.  His maverick ways were upsetting to the central owners of the economy.  (Most recently, Lewis had the temerity to publicly attack Treasury Secretary and central economic planner Geithner.)

Lewis saw the drive to get him coming.  He took pre-emptive action by firing cryptocracy golden boy, John Thane, a former Goldman Sachs executive who came to BoA through the Merrill Lynch merger.  Lewis, no dummy, saw that Thane was being primed to replace him as the chief officer of BoA.  So, Lewis dumped him before momentum could start building.

The firing set the central planners back a bit.  It took them a little time to regroup. This week we are seeing a renewal of the campaign to get Lewis.  First, Thane had a highly featured interview with the Wall Street Journal where he called Lewis a liar.  Next, today, an effort is being mounted at the BoA stockholders meeting to force Lewis out as Chairman of BoA.  The effort will probably fall short, but Lewis can't help but see the handwriting on the wall.

What the cryptocracy wants is pretty clear in today's WSJ.  A commentary by one Peter Eavis today spells it out:  "Mr. Lewis's star rose during a long era of consolidation and excess in banking.  Now BoA needs an operator who can successfully and profitably run a giant financial firm in a more sober, regulated environment."

In other words, 'we now have a government-run banking industry and you ain't the one we want in this key position.'

If anyone doubts that cryptocracy pays very close attention to its domain, think again. 

100 Days

A fit example of what Obama's first 100 days has meant is shown by Citibank today pleading hat if hand with the government to please, oh please, let Citibank pay bonuses to some key employees.

And so that's how far we have come.  The Obama effect on the economy has been to take the first step toward a government-run economy, or state capitalism, if you prefer.  Some of the central pillars of the American economy (banking, auto, insurance) are now joint efforts with the federal government.  Government intervention that would have been hard to imagine less than a year ago is now common practice.

The cryptocracy is risk-adverse.  The centralization of the economy under government direction is a logical development given the cryptocracy's drive to ensure their continued profit-making ways.  They want strict control.  No more funny business that can jeopardize wealth production. 

What the Obama era has meant so far is the consolidation and centralization of control over the economy by the cryptocracy.  And they are not done yet, by a long ways.