From oneb!cs.ubc.ca!utcsri!torn!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!uunet!ccs!covici Thu Jan 28 09:53:06 PST 1993

The following series is taken from Executive Intelligence Review V20, 
#5 and is the cover story of that issue.  For further information on 
EIR, please contact me by Email.


LaRouche defines a science
of Christian economy against usury

{Lyndon LaRouche's 1991 book, }The Science of
Christian Economy,{ develops the principled basis for the
compatibility of Christian teachings and economic science.
We reprint excerpts from the preface here, so as to
highlight the distance from the anti-Christian doctrines
of Michael Novak and company:} 

   During the course of these next several pages, we
shall come to the point at which we shall turn the
attention of our ecumenical readership to numbered section
72, of the famous 1891 encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, {Rerum
Novarum.} We shall then focus upon the concluding sentence
of that section, and also upon the passage from Thomas
Aquinas's {Summa Theologica} which the author of the
encyclical has footnoted there. The referenced sentence of
the encyclical's text reads thus: ``For laws are to be
obeyed only insofar as they conform with right reason and
thus with the eternal law of God.'' 
   The footnoted passage from St. Thomas Aquinas's
{Summa Theologica} reads: ``Human law is law only in
virtue of its accordance with right reason; and, thus it
is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And
insofar as it [man-made law--LHL] deviates from right
reason it is called an unjust law; in such case it is not
law at all, but rather a species of violence.'' 
   A hundred years ago, {Rerum Novarum} treated the
remedying of the evil then being run by a ``devouring
usury,'' which, ``although often condemned by the Church,
but practiced nevertheless under another form by
avaricious and grasping men, has increased the evil''
effected by the handing over of workers, ``each alone and
defenseless, to the inhumanity of employers and the
unbridled greed of competitors.'' 
   At the time of the assassination of U.S. President
John F. Kennedy at the end of 1963, approximately
three-quarters of a century had passed. It appeared to
most observers then, that the pleas for economic justice
in {Rerum Novarum,} if not yet successful, were assuredly
on the way to becoming so. 
   In the so-called ``industrialized capitalist''
sectors of this planet, the trade-union movement and other
meliorist agencies had won, and were continuing to win
cumulatively invaluable, and putatively permanent gains in
human rights for most strata of the populations. Although
a vicious form of neo-colonialism had been established at
the end of the 1939-45 World War, the spirit of the United
Nations Organization's First Development Decade Project,
and the U.S. Kennedy administration's Alliance For
Progress, suggested a commitment to global justice
paralleling, and perhaps echoing the rise of the civil
rights movement inside the U.S.A. itself. 
   During the middle of the 1960s, that hopeful
direction of development was reversed. During the recent
quarter-century, social conditions in most parts of the
world are far worse, on the average, than during the
1960s, and threaten to become soon far worse than one
hundred years ago. 
   The impulses for evil which have caused this recent
calamity are not altogether new. A conspicuously leading
cause of the greatly increased immiseration and
endangerment of the human species, during the past
quarter-century, has been the willful murderousness with
which such forms of the old ``devouring usury'' as
so-called ``International Monetary Fund (IMF)
conditionalities'' have been so widely, so murderously, so
shamelessly applied to the precalculable effect of rapid
and large-scale increases of death rates by means of
malnutrition, disease, and related mechanisms. 
   The most striking of the various included features of
the new evil, is the dominant influence of the so-called
``New Age.'' This feature includes such presently pandemic
expressions of this as the ``rock-drug-sex
counterculture,'' and increasingly irrationalist
mass-murderous expressions of self-styled ``ecologism,''
or ``neo-malthusianism.'' 
   The ``New Age'' is not itself an entirely new form of
evil. It is as old an evil as the pagan roots of
gnosticism. Prior to the 1963 launching of the ``New Age''
as a mass movement within the United States, this form of
New Age satanism was an endemic cancer in such forms as
the theosophical existentialism of the followers of the
proto-Nazi Friedrich Nietzsche, and the pro-freemasonic
satanists of Aleister Crowley's networks. 
   What is notable on these accounts is the increasingly
emboldened way in which the two evils, the ``New Age'' and
usury, have exhibited their natural affinities for one
another, combining their forces in even the highest places
of Anglo-American power, to demand, in the misused name of
``freedom'' and ``ecology,'' the rapid extermination and
global outlawing of every scientific and moral barrier
which has hitherto existed as impediments to rampaging
immiseration and dictatorial oppression of mankind. 
   Such are the leading characteristic distinctions
between the problems immediately addressed one hundred
years ago, and today. 
   The former hegemony of scientific and technological
progress, upon whose continuation the existence of our
populations depends, is being suppressed by both the loss
of simple rationality in the education of the young, and
by the spread of the paganist cults of anti-science,
irrationalist ``ecologism.'' As a concomitant of such
specific, catastrophic effects as this one, those European
and American forces which are committed to calculated
mass-murder of populations of all developing nations, and
which are committed to the extermination of the Christian
faith and conscience, have come plainly into the
ascendancy in the policy-making processes of most of the
governing international and national governmental
institutions which have gained leadership and dominance
over this planet today. 

              - The ecumenical standpoint -
   We propose that it is necessary, but not sufficient
to view the referenced state of affairs from a Christian
standpoint; for practical reasons, it is essential that
even the Christian standpoint itself be presented here
from an ecumenical standpoint as {ecumenical} is typified
by Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa's dialogue, {De Pace
Fidei.}...
   Faith may read those writings it deems sacred, or
authoritative commentaries on such writings. Or, faith may
``read the bare book of universal nature,'' a book which
plainly has been written directly by none other than the
Creator himself. It is certain to all men and women of
ecumenical good will, that the two kinds of books--the
written ones, and the book of nature--cannot contradict
one another, on condition that the written one be true,
and that both the written and the natural one be read by
means of the inner eye of true reason. 
   So, where doctrinal writings differ, we may turn the
eye of ecumenical reason to the common book of nature. 
   Let us argue the point in the following, twofold way.
We emphasize, on the one side, the ecumenical notion of
{intelligible representation} of a principle of knowledge
of cause-effect in our universe, a means by which all men
and women, despite differences in profession of
monotheistic faith, may be brought by their own powers of
reason to agreement upon a common principle of law.
Second, we emphasize the importance of stressing
{Christian} principles of Christian civilization as
{Christian,} even within the framework of a monotheistic
ecumenicism.... 
        
                  - Physical Economy -
   By the nature of the case, there is no field of
inquiry which unites all subjects of human reason--law,
science, art--as directly, as immediately, as the science
of Physical Economy which was founded by Gottfried
Leibniz. That is a special standpoint of the work we
preface here. 
   As is to be seen in summary in the appended document,
{Physical Economy} is the science of {successful change,}
a study of the dependency of the continued existence of a
society upon {successful} forms of successive generation,
transmission, and efficient assimilation of fundamental
scientific progress. The measure of that effective
progress is an increase in what Physical Economy defines
as the rate of increase of the potential
population-density of that society as a whole. That
thus serves as an efficient empirical measurement of both
the appropriateness of the society's way of changing its
method of reasoning, and, therefore, the appropriateness
of the principle of change adopted for that practice. 
   Any society which defies those considerations, is
threatening its own continued existence, and, a society
implicitly becoming an abomination in God's eye, a society
which is not only losing the moral fitness to survive, but
which, by God's clock, will not long survive in its
present form. 
   Historically, to date, the closest approximation of a
form of political economy consistent with Christian
principles is the so-called {mercantilist} form growing
out of {Colbertisme} in France, and the far-reaching
influence of Leibniz. This outgrowth came to be known by
the name given to it officially by U.S. Treasury Secretary
Alexander Hamilton, ``the American System of Political
Economy.'' This name came to be associated with the
work of the U.S. economists Mathew and Henry Carey and of
Germany's Friedrich List. 
   The deadly adversaries of the so-called
``mercantilist,'' or ``American'' system, were the
Anglo-French-Swiss known in the early eighteenth century
as the ``Venetian Party.'' This was the political
faction allied against Leibniz and his friends, and allied
with the first Duke of Marlborough, allied with the
networks of Voltaire, with the Physiocrats, and with
so-called eighteenth century ``British liberalism'' of
Hugh Walpole, David Hume, Shelburne, Adam Smith, Jeremy
Bentham, and Thomas Malthus generally. These Physiocrats
and liberals were the chief guise for the pro-usury
faction of that century. 
   That issue of the eighteenth century is more
efficiently understood by emphasizing that the liberals
and {illuminati} of Voltaire's eighteenth century were
committed to a return to the model of a pagan imperial
Rome. Hence we call them ``romantics.'' These romantics
were dedicated to the overthrow of Christianity for the
purpose of advancing their {romantic imperial utopianism.}
That is the root of the structures of sin in Western
European and North American civilization today. 
These were then, and are still today both the pro-usury
faction, and the utopian cultural form from which the
present-day satanic ``New Age'' utopianisms have sprung....


----
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com



From oneb!cs.ubc.ca!utcsri!torn!cs.utexas.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!spool.mu.edu!olivea!uunet!ccs!covici Thu Jan 28 09:53:08 PST 1993

The following series is taken from Executive Intelligence Review V20, 
#5 and is the cover story of that issue.  For further information on 
EIR, please contact me by Email.

Neuhaus: doing evil and calling it
good
by William F. Wertz, Jr.
                                                  
Doing Well and Doing Good, The Challenge to the
Christian Capitalist
by Richard John Neuhaus
Doubleday, New York, 1992 312 pages, hardbound,
$22. 

{This review will also appear in the Feb. 1, 1993 issue
of }New Federalist{ newspaper. Because of its exceptional
importance to the subject of our report, the newspaper and
author have granted us permission to reprint it here in
full.} 

   On May 2, 1991, the day after Pope John Paul II's
encyclical {Centesimus Annus} celebrating the hundredth
anniversary of Pope Leo XIII's encyclical {Rerum Novarum}
was officially released, an article by Richard John
Neuhaus, entitled ``The Pope Affirms the `New
Capitalism,'|'' appeared in the {Wall Street Journal}.
{Doing Well and Doing Good, The Challenge to the Christian
Capitalist} is a book-length elaboration of the thesis
proclaimed in that article, i.e., that {Centesimus Annus}
was ``very likely'' shaped by the work of Neuhaus's fellow
liberal capitalist Catholic, Michael Novak, and as such is
an endorsement of Novak's concept of ``democratic
capitalism.'' 
   Neuhaus, a former Lutheran minister who converted to
Catholicism and was then ordained as a Catholic priest,
bases his argument not only on an erroneous history of
capitalism, but more disconcertingly, on an unconscionably
selective reading of both this encyclical and other
encyclicals written by Pope John Paul II. His self-serving
interpretation is further bolstered by the inclusion at
the end of his book of a ``condensation'' of {Centesimus
Annus}, which when compared to the original text reveals a
thoroughly dishonest censorship of Pope John Paul II's   
words. 
   To most succinctly indicate the fraud which underlies
Neuhaus's book, one must merely point to the fact that not
once does Neuhaus mention the problem of Third World
foreign debt in the entirety of the text of his book,
although he does include an abridged four sentences on
this subject from the pope's text in his attached
condensation. This omission of what the pope has
repeatedly identified as one of the primary causes of both
poverty and war in the world today, is related to
Neuhaus's attempt both to portray {Centesimus Annus} as a
significant break from Pope Paul VI's {Populorum
Progressio} and to isolate it from the pope's other
encyclicals, such as {Sollicitudo Rei Socialis}, which was
written in 1987 on the 20th anniversary of {Populorum
Progressio}. 

                 - `Structures of sin' -
   What Neuhaus and Novak want us to ignore from
{Sollicitudo Rei Socialis} is the pope's explicit
denunciation of the existence of the ``evil mechanisms''
and ``structures of sin'' which are thwarting the
development of the less developed countries. The pope
argues that ``In the West there exists a system which is
historically inspired by the principles of the liberal
capitalism which developed with industrialization during
the last century.'' Neuhaus correctly points out the
pope's opposition to socialism, but he would have us
believe that after 1989 the pope has literally endorsed
Adam Smith, the father of liberal capitalism in the West. 
   In {Sollicitudo Rei Socialis} the pope says that both
liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism are ``in need
of radical correction.'' He says, ``Each of the two blocs
harbors in its own way a tendency towards imperialism, as
it is usually called, or towards forms of
new-colonialism.'' He argues that ``misguided
mechanisms'' or ``structures of sin'' arise from the
``all-consuming desire for profit'' and from the ``thirst
for power.'' Therefore, certain forms of modern
``imperialism'' are ``real forms of idolatry.'' He
explicitly calls for reform of the international trade
system and reform of the world monetary and financial
system which are the very ``structures of sin'' which he
has identified. 
   A comparison of Neuhaus's condensation of {Centesimus
Annus} with the pope's text shows that he has
systematically eliminated all those statements by the pope
which, as in {Sollicitudo Rei Socialis}, call for
intervention on an international level. For example, the
pope writes: ``In the developing countries, tragic crises
loom on the horizon unless internationally coordinated
measures are taken before it is too late.'' Neuhaus's
condensation reads: ``In the developing counties, tragic
crises loom on the horizon.'' There is not even an
ellipsis! The sentences in section 58 which call for
reform of the international monetary system are all
omitted. Therefore, in Neuhaus's condensation we do not
read that development ``requires above all a change of
lifestyles, of models of production and consumption and of
the established structures of power which today govern
societies.'' We do not read that ``There is a growing
feeling, however, that this increasing
internationalization of the economy ought to be
accompanied by effective international agencies which will
oversee and direct the economy to the common good,
something that an individual state, even if it were the
most powerful on earth, would not be in a position to
do.'' We do not read in section 52 that ``Just as within
individual societies it is possible and right to organize
a solid economy which will direct the functioning of the
market to the common good, so too there is a similar need
for adequate interventions on the international level.''
In section 34 we do not read that ``In Third World
contexts, certain objectives stated in {Rerum Novarum}
remain valid, and, in some cases, still constitute a goal
yet to be reached, if a person's work and very being are
not to be reduced to the level of a mere commodity. These
objectives include a sufficient wage for the support of
the family, social insurance for old age and unemployment,
and adequate protection for the conditions of
employment.'' 
   Neuhaus goes so far in his whitewash of the
``structures of sin'' as to suggest that the nations of
the Third World are primarily responsible for their own
misery, and that their problems would be solved over time
if they were merely integrated into the ``new
capitalism.'' Thus Neuhaus writes: ``It simply will not do
for them to blame their plight on colonialism,
neocolonialism, imperialism, and the such. While foreign
states and corporations have taken and do take unjust
advantage, Third World leaders are firmly told to put
their own houses in order.'' 

        - The pope does not endorse junk bonds -
   One of the most outrageous arguments in Neuhaus's
book is his defense of ``junk bonds'' and Michael Milken.
Neuhaus has the audacity to suggest that only the ``more
ideologically minded'' have no doubt that a Michael Milken
is engaged in ``illicit speculation.'' Neuhaus argues that
the ``defenders of the trade in high-risk bonds claim that
they make available billions of dollars to capitalize
entrepreneurial ventures that would otherwise languish.
While many criticize the corporate takeovers financed by
junk bonds, others contend that such takeovers typically
improve management and make corporations more accountable
to stockholders.'' Then he writes, ``Is what such people
do an instance of `illicit speculation'? It would appear
that the only answer {in principle} proposed by John Paul
is that property and economic activity `is just and
legitimate if it serves useful work.'|'' 
   Does the pope really endorse junk bonds? Then why
does Neuhaus omit the following statement by the pope in
section 48: ``The absence of stability, together with the
corruption of public officials and the spread of improper
sources of growing rich and of easy profits deriving from
illegal or purely speculative activities, constitutes one
of the chief obstacles to development and to the economic
order.'' 

              - Economics apart from God -
   The source of Neuhaus's fraudulent representation of
the arguments of {Centesimus Annus} stems from his
severing economics from Christian theology. The book
starts by stating that ``The Latin word {oeconomicus}
refers to divine dispensations or the general arrangement
of everything that is. Christian theologians, for example,
refer to the `divine economy,' meaning both the internal
life of God--Father, Son, and Holy Spirit--and the
external way in which God has arranged the whole
creation.'' However, Neuhaus rejects this theological
definition of economics and instead follows Adam Smith in
reducing economics to the ``considerably more modest''
concept of household ``stewardship.'' Moreover, he is not
unaware of what he is doing. Therefore, he adds
parenthetically for the benefit of his Christian
readership: ``(Although, to be sure, Christians would
insist that what we are discussing cannot be understood
fully apart from the life and purposes of God.)'' 
   In so doing, Neuhaus rejects the rooting of economics
either in natural law or in the Trinitarian concept of
equality. He then argues unashamedly that the pope agrees
with this approach to economics: ``The almost complete
absence of any explicit reference to natural law in
{Centesimus}, and its very limited place in the pope's
other writings, is noteworthy.'' Moreover, after falsely
arguing that the Christian concept of equality is derived
from the {Egalite@aa} of the French Revolution, he insists
that equality ``is the name of the dog that does not bark
in {Centesimus}.'' 
   The Christian concept of equality is derived by St.
Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Nicolaus of Cusa from
the concept of Christ, the second person of the Trinity.
As St. Augustine wrote in {On Christian Doctrine}: ``Unity
is in the Father, equality in the Son, and in the Holy
Spirit is the concord of equality and unity.'' 
   As Pope John Paul II writes in {Sollicitudo Rei
Socialis}: ``One's neighbor is then not only a human being
with his or her own rights and a fundamental equality with
everyone else, but becomes the living image of God the
Father, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and placed
under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit.'' He
further writes: ``Surmounting every type of {imperialism}
and determination to preserve their {own hegemony}, the
stronger and richer nations must have a sense of more
{responsibility} for the other nations, so that a {real
international system} may be established, which will rest
on the foundation of the {equality} of all peoples and on
the necessary respect for their legitimate differences.''
In {Centesimus} itself, where John Paul argues that a free
economy ``presumes a certain equality between the parties,
such that one party would not be so powerful as
practically to reduce the other to subservience,'' Neuhaus
says ``here we encounter a rare reference to
equality''--as if this were not an essential principle of
the pope's message. 
   The brotherhood of all in Christ, ``children in the
Son,'' is the essence of the principle of Solidarity
espoused by the pope. In denying the Christian concept of
equality, Neuhaus is literally denying Christ. Instead of
Christ being the Lord of economics, Neuhaus would transform
Christ be into Adam Smith's ``Invisible Hand''
of the marketplace. 
   This is no exaggeration. Neuhaus literally claims
that Pope John Paul II has come around to the thinking of
the father of liberal capitalism, Adam Smith. Neuhaus
writes: ``When we speak of property and ownership, John
Paul says, we must give our attention to `the possession
of know-how, technology, and skill.' And then this: `The
wealth of the industrialized nations is based much more on
this kind of ownership than on natural resources.' Fans of
Adam Smith are no doubt warranted in drawing some
satisfaction from the implied reference in that sentence
to {The Wealth of Nations.} (It seems unlikely that it is
an accident.) At the very time the American Founders were
launching this experiment in political and cultural
freedom, Smith was laying out the rationale for a free
economy that could benefit all. As becomes evident in John
Paul's treatment of global poverty, his hope, like
Smith's, is that `the wealth of the industrialized
nations' will indeed become, through expanding the circle
of exchange and productivity, the wealth of all nations.''
In another location Neuhaus argues that Adam Smith ``was
first of all a moral philosopher and he insisted adamantly
that the free economy depends upon the cultivation of
virtue and the `moral sentiments' of a free people.'' 
   Now you may ask, how is it that Neuhaus can honestly
maintain that he and Novak are not advocating the very
liberal capitalism which is denounced by every pope since
Leo XIII, including John Paul in this encyclical? Honestly
they can't. Therefore, they must rely both on a false
history of the development of capitalism and of the
American System of political economy in particular and
construct a false notion of liberal capitalism in order to
counterpose it to their own liberalism, which they
disguise as the free economy espoused by the pope. 
   The way the latter is accomplished is to define
liberal capitalism as libertarianism. Then, by definition,
any form of capitalism which is not absolutely
libertarian, can be represented as the other, non-liberal
form of capitalism. This is precisely what Neuhaus does in
order to say that Novak's democratic capitalism based on
Adam Smith is the alternative form of capitalism advocated
by the pope. 
   Neuhaus is correct in maintaining that there are two
forms of capitalism. However, either out of ignorance or
design, he and Novak have explicitly adopted the
Calvinistic, liberal version of capitalism correctly
rejected by the Catholic Church. Therefore they maintain
that Max Weber was right when he argued that capitalism
arose based upon Calvinism and the Protestant work ethic:
``There is little doubt that what we now call democratic
capitalism was shaped in a Protestant, and usually
Calvinist, milieu.'' 
   He makes this argument without a single critical
reference to British imperialism, let alone any reference
to the fact that the American Revolution was fought
against Great Britain and against the imperialist economic
policies which are the core of Neuhaus and Novak's dearly
beloved ``moral philosopher,'' Adam Smith. 
 
          - Adam Smith and the British System -
   Adam Smith's ``moral philosophy'' has nothing to do
with Christian love for one's fellow man and has
everything to do with ``moral indifference.'' That is
clear from the following quote from his 1759 {Theory of
Moral Sentiments}: ``The administration of the great
system of the universe ... the care of the universal
happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the
business of God and not of man.... Hunger, thirst, the
passion which unites the two sexes, the love of pleasure,
and the dread of pain, prompt us to apply those means for
their own sakes, and without any consideration of their
tendency to those beneficent ends which the great Director
of nature intended to produce by them.'' So much for the
principle of Solidarity! 
   The economic policy which flows from this reduction
of man to an animal dominated by ``original and immediate
instincts'' is the colonial policy of enforced
backwardness against which the American colonies revolted.
The policy advocated by Adam Smith in {The Wealth of
Nations} under the guise of free trade was that the
American colonies not develop their own manufacturing
capability and that they not impose any restriction on the
importation of British goods. The colonies were to be
maintained as an agrarian protectorate. Their produce,
from timber to tobacco, was to be taxed so as to pay the
British national debt. 
   This is in essence the same imperialist system which
insists today upon ``free trade'' as the means by which
Third World nations are denied the right to develop their
manufacturing capability, maintained in a state of being
raw materials producers, and taxed to death in the form of
foreign debt payments. Neuhaus and Novak would have us
believe that the pope, who has raised his voice precisely
against these ``evil mechanisms,'' has joined with them in
bowing down in worship of Adam Smith's ``Invisible Hand.''
This is the message which they are currently peddling
throughout Latin America to gain support from the Catholic
Church for the ``adjustment'' programs of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF). 

          - The American System of economics -
   What then was the American Revolution about in terms
of philosophy and economic policy? 
   First of all, it was definitely not what Neuhaus
asserts it to have been, i.e., ``a Puritan-Lockean
Synthesis.'' Although it is commonplace among liberal
ideologues to assert that the American Revolution was
inspired by John Locke, who certainly had influence and
advocates in America, anyone who looks for the positive
kernel of the American Revolution will not find it there,
but rather in the Christian philosophy of Gottfried
Wilhelm Leibniz and ultimately in the Renaissance
tradition of Nicolaus of Cusa, who first espoused the idea
that government must be based upon the consent of the
governed in his work {On Catholic Concordance}. 
   Secondly, in respect to economic policy, it is
irrefutable that the United States based its economic
policy not on Adam Smith, but rather upon mercantilism.
Beginning with the establishment of the First National
Bank of the United States by U.S. Treasury Secretary
Alexander Hamilton, U.S. economic policy was what later
became known as the American System of political economy.
After Alexander Hamilton, the economists of this school
included Mathew Carey, Henry C. Carey, who was the adviser
of Abraham Lincoln, and Friedrich List. 
   It is this American System of political economy,
conveniently ignored by Neuhaus and Novak, which
represents the real capitalist alternative to the British
imperial system of liberal capitalism. Unfortunately this
form of Christian economy, which opposed the British
System slave trade and opium wars, is no longer the
economic policy of the United States. Rather the United
States has adopted the British system, which Neuhaus and
Novak now recommend the Catholic Church adopt as its own. 
   Even though Neuhaus knows very well that the pope
opposed the Gulf war, which President Bush and Margaret
Thatcher spearheaded in the name of a ``new world order,''
he cannot refrain from suggesting that ``something like a
new world order is afoot'' and from arguing that the
``free economy,'' as he and Novak define it, ``is
apparently the order of the future in this post-socialist
world.'' Therefore, even though the pope criticizes both
``national security'' states and ``the affluent society or
consumer society,'' Neuhaus advises that it is ``unseemly
for Americans to be excessively defensive.'' 
   According to Neuhaus, even though the pope writes
``that it is unacceptable to say that the defeat of `real
socialism' leaves capitalism as the only model of economic
organization ... in the real world to which the pope
directs our attention, it would seem that despite his
disclaimer, capitalism is `the only model of economic
organization.'|'' And of course that means Adam Smith's
``Invisible Hand'' of the marketplace reincarnated as
Michael Novak's ``democratic capitalism.'' 
   Neuhaus ends his book by saying that ``God loveth
adverbs.'' This is a reference to the title of the book:
``Doing Well and Doing Good.'' As he says earlier in the
book, ``The only thing some people know how to do really
well is to make money. It is not an unworthy thing to
offer up.'' But to whom? While it is absolutely true that
profit is not in itself illegitimate, but rather a
positive good insofar as it is earned morally and
reinvested productively, in equating making money well
with doing good Neuhaus contradicts Christ's teaching that
one cannot worship both God and mammon. 
   As Pope John Paul II writes in {Sollicitudo Rei
Socialis}, solidarity is ``a {firm and persevering
determination} to commit oneself to the {common good};
that is to say to the good of all and of each individual,
because we are {all} really responsible {for all}. This
determination is based on the {solid} conviction that what
is hindering full development is that desire for profit
and that thirst for power already mentioned. These
attitudes and `structures of sin' are only
conquered--presupposing the help of divine grace--by a
{diametrically opposed attitude}: a commitment to the good
of one's neighbor with the readiness, in the gospel sense,
to `lose oneself' for the sake of the other instead of
exploiting him, and to `serve him' instead of oppressing
him for one's own advantage.'' 
   Neuhaus's attitude is just the opposite--to portray
the pope as endorsing the very ``structures of sin'' he in
fact denounces, in order to render the nations of the
Third World and the former Soviet sector, especially the
Catholic nations of Ibero-America and eastern Europe,
defenseless before the genocidal policies of the
International Monetary Fund. He is doing evil and calling
it good. 



----
         John Covici
          covici@ccs.covici.com


From oneb!cs.ubc.ca!destroyer!gatech!concert!uvaarpa!murdoch!hopper!jad Thu Jan 28 09:53:09 PST 1993

        I made the following transcript from a tape recording 
        of a broadcast by Pacifica Radio Network station
               WBAI-FM (99.5)
               505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl.
               New York, NY 10018       (212) 279-0707

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
                        (continuation)
PAUL DeRIENZO:
How did you wind up doing these foreign operations?

MICHAEL LEVINE:
Well, I began working undercover in Southeast Asia in 1970 and `71.
Just being really good at what I do, I was asked to do different
assignments.

PAUL DeRIENZO:
I spoke to Alfred McCoy, and he mentioned that he talked to you
afterwards and told you about his book, and that that book 
influenced the way you thought about the work you were doing in 
Southeast Asia.
     
    [JD: "THE POLITICS OF HEROIN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA", by Alfred McCoy,
     has been the bible on U.S. drug trafficking. However, I understand
     that its sequel, "THE POLITICS OF HEROIN: C.I.A. COMPLICITY IN
     THE GLOBAL DRUG TRADE" is even better.]

MICHAEL LEVINE:
Well, what happened was, the first time that I ran into CIA and
other U.S. influences in this "War on Drugs" was on an undercover
case that I did into Bangkok, Thailand in 1971, going into 1972.
There's no way I can tell you the whole story, but let it end with
this:  I successfully conned the hell out of Chinese drug dealers
who were also the source of an investigation of drug dealers on a
case titled, "the Herman Jackson Organization."  In essence, Herman
Jackson and a bunch of G.I.s from Vietnam were buying heroin in
Thailand and putting the heroin into dead bodies of G.I.s killed 
in Vietnam, and the bodies were being funneled through Thailand and
then home to the United States. And they were using the bodies of
our 19- and 20-year-old young men, killed in that "holy war", as 
conduits for heroin.

Now, at that time, young Michael Levine, young undercover agent --
I'm dealing with the same people who are supplying that [Herman
Jackson] group. The Chinese drug dealers, who really bought my act,
wanted to invite me to a laboratory in Chang Mai where they were
producing hundreds of kilos. Now, this was at a time in our history
when the biggest heroin seizure was "the French Connection", 
sixty-five or sixty-seven kilos of heroin. Now here are people
inviting me to a factory that produces hundreds of kilos of    
heroin A WEEK!                                                     

Mysteriously -- strangely, I was instructed that:             
"You're not going!"  The case was ended right at the point I had 
gone to; that is, at the Chinese dealers in Bangkok itself. Arrests
were made. A lot of publicity. The United States Government told 
the American Public: "Another great Drug War victory."  I was told:
"There are a lot of things you don't understand. You see, there  
are priorities."   And, of course, I accepted that because I was,
again, the "GOOD soldier".

Now, Al McCoy's book came out around the same time. Now -- when I 
look back, when I talk about Al McCoy's book and my experience, 
what I point out is that even if I had Al McCoy's book in my hands
in 1971 and `72 -- a book that pointed out CLEARLY why I was not
allowed to go to Chang Mai .... WHAT an incredible thing that is to
accept! That my OWN government could protect people who were using
our DEAD G.I.s -- dead young Americans as heroin conduits!
HOW could I accept that?!    It was just too MUCH!
What can I give you as a comparison?  It's a man who's been married
to a wife who doted on him for twenty years (well, at that point in
my career it was seven or eight years) whose fidelity he never
questioned; and then suddenly coming in and finding her in bed with,
not just the postman, but the postman, the butcher, the dogcatcher,
..... It's just too much for you to accept as real. Had I had 
Al McCoy's book in my hands, I would've considered it an Un-AMERICAN
thing to read. That's why I can UNDERSTAND what happens to young 
men who are in law enforcement -- why they refuse to look at the
reality of this situation. It's just TOO MUCH for Americans to
accept.   It's too much for young narcotics agents to accept. 
You don't TAKE a job like this for civil service security. 
You take it because you BELIEVE in it!  And most of these guys DO.
And then, when these events happen, and they're told:  "This is a
priority that you don't understand. You just go ahead about your
business" .... and when they see, around them, things like Oliver
North, who ..... It's really funny; he's got a book out. I don't
even want to say the title -- but I looked in the index and he's 
got three pages devoted to drug trafficking; yet, in his OWN
notebooks (he's got twenty-six-hundred-page notebooks) he's got
FIVE HUNDRED pages of NOTATIONS about drug trafficking.  There's
something he's not TELLING us. You know?   So, when young agents
see things like this .... when young agents see that people like
Oliver North and Lewis Tams were banned from Costa Rica for DRUG
running, it's HARD for them to accept. They consider this like:
"Well this is a plot. We don't want to believe this."       
Because, to accept it and to believe it is to accept that your
career is a LIE!   Your chosen goal in life is a total lie.
                        (to be continued)
*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   

    As you can see, this story is one of the most
    appalling, infuriating, explosive and vital expose`s that 
    could ever be brought before the eyes of the American People.
    Don't let these episodes go by the boards without saving them,
    because we have a patriotic duty to disseminate, circulate, 
    deliver, pass on this information in the cause of millions of
    people on the American Continent, including those in the 
    United States, who are or who will become victims of the 
    CIA-sponsored War FOR Drugs which is resulting in wholesale, 
    continent-wide murder, torture, imprisonment, street crime, 
    life-destroying addiction, and even the takeover of governments
    by fascist drug barons, further intensifying the poverty, misery  
    and suffering that is rampant among entire national populations. 

    Please post the episodes of this series to computer bulletin 
    boards, and post hardcopies in public places, both on and 
    off campus.  The dial-in numbers of many BBSs can be found
    in the Usenet newsgroup "alt.bbs.lists".

           John DiNardo

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