Thoughts outside the box

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
4/4/2005



The thinking inside the box, or conventional wisdom of today, is Pope John Paul II or Karol Wojtyla is an exceptional and great religious leader. What would he be like if one steps outside the box:

Karol Wojtyla is as good as any human being can be, but not great as Western and Roman Catholic Church propaganda makes him. All this drama over his last moments is great catharsis to reinforce the psychological hold of the Church over its flock, good for it; but not necessarily good for Mankind. Karol Wojtyla was a conservative and preached against the political liberation of the poor. He interfered to diminish the sovereignty of states and if they tried to kill him it is because of this. He failed to deliver on a major Church theme during his watch – the Jubillee’s debt forgiveness for the poor nations.

Wojtyla worked with the CIA to break open Poland and Eastern Europe, which strengthened the old European oligarchy's power over Eurasian politics. In the Philippines he allowed Sin to play politics and restore the oligarchy with Edsa Uno. The Roman Catholic Church has always been the Church of the oligarchy and will continue to be, and that is why where this Church is dominant in Third World countries the domestic economies are exploited for a few foreign and local interests. Most religions are too political, but Buddhism is not and many in the West have turned to it for honest faith.

The Catholic Church under Wojtyla restored a great degree of worldly powers but lost a lot of moral powers. He did not have the moral courage to resolve the hypocrisy of priestly celibacy that created the scandals of priests in sex. Yet, there are pictures on the Internet of Wotyla with a woman and a child enjoying an outing privately like a family. He campaigned against population planning, which I agree with, but used the distorted moral arguments that fail to address the real issue – population and poverty is foremost a problem of distribution and control of economic resources of the earth. Wojtyla could not argue this way for he would have to go against Western and national oligarchies upon which the Vatican depends for resources.

Wojtyla was a potentate who refused to retire even when demonstrably incapacitated. Arguing reminiscent of Davide’s convoluted “constructive resignation”, Wojtyla or his hangers-on said that his incapacity served as inspiration for the suffering people. Crass Vatican politics will choose its next political leader, there is much talk that the world may be seeing the last of them. There many are priests, nuns and bishops I like and admire, but institutionalized religion is a bureaucracy with vested interests like all the others.

Here’s a beautiful piece outside the box, from Hero Vaswani: “ ….understand why interest rates were so low during the period of fixed rates of exchange and capital controls (of the 50s). There was no macroeconomic fundamentals then as now for the domestic national economy. However with liberalization , privatization and deregulation you have actually made the macroeconomic fundamentals of this country a slave to the fundamentals of the U.S. economy, through the Federal Reserve and the U.S. treasury. In effect the Philippines remains a colony of the U.S.

“Rationale for interest rates is risk and real income. Income after inflation. However here in the Philippines it is impossible to have demand side inflation as our problem has always been ‘cost push’. BOP crisis resulting in devaluation. In peso terms we have already paid out debts many times over. Look at the explosion of debt since 1997 till 2004 and you have devaluation as the major source. Hence today since 1983 Jobo started us on the road to perdition by using interest rates instead of debt repudiation to solve forex crisis.

“Result: you have the monstrous debt problem and resulting debt service problem which is more than the revenue of the national government. Those theologians from the U.P. school will never move out of their dogmatic ways. Their gospel believes that there is one world economy therefore there is one monetary system. In essence they believe that the earth is flat. You actually bleed a country that has limited savings to make sure you can access foreign savings and the result becomes you can never raise your savings as you destroy your physical productive capacities during the bloodletting.

“That my friend is what the ‘economic hit man's’ role is. They use and preach the religion of free trade and free markets and people do not realize that this will result in slavery. Debt repudiation and capital controls is what is necessary. National government debt is $37 B. We have over to $30b in forex reserves, (BSP and FCDU). We could immediately pay off all multilateral loans. The BSP reserves are all result of loans anyway. We have at least $ 10b in recurring income from OFW's We have another $8B from exports. If only we institute capital controls we can also reduce interest rates in peso levels. There would be no need to raise taxes. However we would be in violation of the Brady agreement we signed. So what!!!!”

So what too to opposition lawyers’ in-the-box legalistic reaction to the SC Poe petition decision, the people ask: is GMA legitimate? The SC junking is an admission she’s illegal. People’s Electoral Tribunal here we come! WE, the people, will be the judge.

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