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Chapter 27
Elizabeth Clare Prophet - July 2, 1989

     ... for the Spiritual and Physical Defense of America

     Will America fulfill Option the First or Option the Second?

     In order for a civilization to sustain itself - yea, to transcend itself - it must be able to transmit its ideals and principles to the next generation.

     We have seen how far America has strayed from our Founding Fathers' blueprint for religious freedom. A primary reason her freedoms are being eroded one by one is that her people have lost their spine, their backbone, and their fervor for the spirit of Liberty. Why?

     A Five-Pronged Attack on Our Youth

     In this century we have seen a five-pronged attack on our youth which has blunted the ability of generations to defend freedom. This attack, supported by the media and the educational system, comes through drugs, alcohol, nicotine, sugar, and rock music.

     If current trends continue, the next generation may not even be capable of bearing the flame of freedom in America. God forbid!

     In 1962 less than 1 percent of our 12-to 17-year-olds smoked pot; by 1982 nearly 30 percent did.¹ A 1987 study found that one in 25 high-school seniors uses marijuana daily and half of them have tried it.² Cocaine use has doubled among high-school seniors over the past 10 years.³ Today 15.2 percent have tried the drug.⁴

     Drug abuse by pregnant mothers is a growing problem. A study of 36 U.S. hospitals found that "at least 11% of 155,000 pregnant women surveyed had exposed their unborn babies to illegal drugs, with cocaine by far the most common." In 1988 20 percent of all babies born at Oakland's (inner city) Highland General Hospital were contaminated with crack cocaine.⁵

     Tobacco is the largest single cause of premature death in the United States.⁶ Three hundred and fifty thousand Americans a year die from tobacco-related illnesses.⁷ Seventy percent of all teenagers try cigarettes and 20 percent end up as daily smokers.⁸

     Today nearly five million adolescents have drinking problems.⁹ One hundred thousand elementary school children get drunk at least once a week. One out of 10 12-to 13-year-olds currently drinks alcoholic beverages. And seven out of 10 high-school seniors drink. As early as the fourth grade, one out of three children reports pressure from classmates to try "wine coolers."¹⁰ Alcohol is the second largest cause after tobacco of premature death in the United States. There are 100,000 alcohol-related deaths each year, 25 times more than from cocaine, heroin, and other illegal drugs combined.¹¹

     Sugar is the largest single element in the American diet - 20 percent. The average five-year-old will consume 43 pounds in one year. The average yearly adult intake of sugar and other sweeteners is about 130 pounds.¹²

     And the average teenager spends from four to six hours a day being surfeited in rock music.¹³

     Drugs, alcohol, nicotine, sugar, and rock music - the five villains - are all self-destructive in that they impede the development of the five spiritual senses of the soul; more-over, they have led the way to a vast increase in the final act of self-destructivity, suicide. In 1962, about 650 teenagers killed themselves in the United States.¹⁴ Last year 10 times that number - five to seven thousand teenagers - killed themselves. A teenager attempts suicide every nine minutes. Every 90 minutes one succeeds.¹⁵

     The five-pronged attack on our youth has had a devastating impact on the moral and intellectual development of our children. By our failure to challenge the five villains, we have also failed to meet the twentieth-century demands to educate this generation to maintain a continuity of the American way of life and to assume their future role in world leadership. American public schools have shown themselves incapable of passing on our heritage to the next generation. Despite the fact that per capita federal spending for elementary and secondary education grew by 43 percent between 1982 and 1988,¹⁶ pupils' performance has not improved.

     How can we expect to raise up leaders with the courage to "sign that document" when one-third of 17-year-old history students tested did not even know what that document was? That's right. A nationwide 1986 survey of 17-year-olds, 80 percent of whom were enrolled in history classes, found that 30 percent of them didn't know that the Declaration of Independence signaled the American colonists' break from England. Nearly half of them didn't know who said, "Give me liberty, or give me death."¹⁷

     Do you want to know one of our biggest problems in education? It's that our schools don't require children to master a basic body of knowledge in order to graduate. And it shows.

     American 18-to 24-year-olds ranked last among the industrialized nations in geography awareness. Barbara Walters reported that "American kids are at or near the bottom in an international survey measuring scientific achievement; ninth out of thirteen countries in physics; eleventh out of thirteen countries in chemistry; and thirteenth, dead last, in biology."¹⁸ American 13-year-olds also came out last among foreign students in mathematics.

     Poor training in elementary schools and high schools has a major impact on colleges where, says Chester Finn of Vanderbilt University, "all that most of [the students] are getting is the high-school education they missed."¹⁹ Tough college courses are reserved for the kids who managed to get a high-school education and foreigners. Columnist Thomas Sowell reports that "most of the people who receive Ph.D.s in engineering in the United States are foreigners. More foreigners than Americans also receive Ph.D.s in mathematics." Why? Sowell says it's because "so many Americans don't want to study this hard stuff."²⁰

     If we want to have a generation who is even remotely capable of carrying on the tradition of freedom, we've got to do something now! And what we've got to do is get the government out of education and let the schools and teachers that know how to teach children go for it! [13-second applause]

     A Declaration of Independence for Our Schools

     America, we are going to institute a voucher system in education. [7-second applause] We as parents have the right to send our children to the best school we can find whether it's public or not. Why should private education be reserved for the wealthy?

     The government spends $4,300 a year per pupil to educate our children.²¹ But is your child getting $4,300 out of the system? What if you got a voucher from the government every year for that amount which you could then apply to the school of your choice? [11-second applause] That would be the fastest way not only to restore excellence but also to democratize education.

     Whoever said that only the wealthy should be able to give their children a decent education?

     You wouldn't think an idea like this would find much opposition, but the education establishment has dug in its heels and screamed bloody murder. They say it will hurt the inner city schools because most of the students will leave them. And the kids who are left will suffer because their parents aren't smart enough to take advantage of the new system.

     Well, we'll inform them, won't we? [Audience response: "Yes!" 7-second applause] Are we going to let another generation be ruined by drug-infested schools because of arguments like these? Maybe the worst of the public schools should be closed down. Or be forced to compete with the best of public and private schools.

     How about survival of the fittest? How about competition? How about excellence? [6-second applause]

     They say a voucher system will hurt poor people because the money they would get from the voucher wouldn't be enough to pay private school tuition. That's sheer fabrication! Only the most expensive private schools cost more than public schools cost the government. There are plenty of reasonably priced private schools.

     The National Education Association (NEA) says that a voucher system will interfere with freedom of religion because some people will take their vouchers to church-sponsored schools.²² They are so concerned that private religious schools will be getting federal money that they would deny the voucher system to everybody.

     How would it interfere with freedom of religion to allow parents to choose the kind of school and the kind of education they want for their children?

     First of all, there seems to be an assumption (and one that I deem false) that federal monies going to a church school would be used to support the sponsoring church. Church schools must meet the same payroll and overhead as public and private schools, therefore we would expect them to use the vouchers to run their schools, not their churches.

     But if the bellyachers want to be sure the churches don't rob Peter to pay Paul, they can have the church schools' books audited to satisfy themselves that voucher money doesn't find its way into the pastors' pockets. Church schools are among the best in the nation and always have been; they should have the same fair treatment that private as well as public schools would be getting under the voucher system.

     The bottom line is parents should be free to choose what kind of an education their children are going to have - wherever and under whomever they decide. And their ability to pay or not for private schools must no longer be the basis of a class society that separates the rich kids from the poor kids for the rest of their lives. And this is precisely what the opponents of the voucher system make themselves a party to.

     Secondly, the First Amendment was designed to prevent the establishment of a state-sponsored, tax-supported religion (i.e., preferential treatment of any one religion), not to bias federal aid to private or parochial schools. But the NEA and those who oppose the voucher system with their elitist attitude willfully misconstrue the First Amendment to mean that no federal money can go to any parochial school, even if the school is fulfilling a function the state desires (education) and even if the money isn't administered in a manner that would favor the schools of one church over those of any other. By their willful ignoring of the Founding Fathers' intent, the opponents of the voucher system would deprive millions of children of a better education.

     And the name of the game of the power elite who have entered our schoolhouses is control. They can't stand the idea of losing control of our children, whom they have turned into guinea pigs for their deluded educational experiments and drugs like Ritalin and Cylert²³ that they foist upon them to keep them sedated.

     Why should we trust the public schools with our children when they have turned out over 13.5 million illiterates in the last 50 years?²⁴ Why should we trust them? Why should we turn our children over to them? - Only to have them sent back to us labeled "educationally handicapped" or "learning disabled" or "dyslexic" or having an "attention deficit disorder," "perceptual handicaps," or "minimal brain dysfunction."

     These labels are a crutch for schools and teachers alike who have lost the art of conveying knowledge and, more importantly, self-knowledge. Why, we can teach our children better ourselves. And that's exactly why I founded Montessori International in Colorado Springs in 1970.

     A voucher system would force the public schools to raise their standards and to compete in the marketplace. But what the power elite do to stay in control once they take control is to eliminate the very competition that makes for excellence in all areas of life and prepares our children for the real world. They can't beat the competition of the common people so they use government money and regulation to protect themselves from it. That's what monopolies do! [9-second applause]

     People of America, it's time to declare our independence from government control of our children's education. [5-second applause] It's time to take the future into our own hands and vest it in our own children. Our future is our children and it's time we were able to decide what they will learn and who will teach them. [6-second applause]

     Today we have two choices. We can enter a golden age or we can go down into a dark age worse than any in recorded history. Doesn't what happens in these two alternative visions of America's future depend a lot on what our children learn about their heritage of freedom, not only in the United States but in the Judeo-Christian tradition and in all of the world movements for individual freedom and equal opportunity that have brought us to this unique point in history when we finally have in hand our hard-won freedoms?

     Is not our children's education - how they're able to read and write and how they're able to organize and analyze information and how they're able to think and reason creatively, logically, and independently - going to determine whether they choose to bring in a golden age or move in the downward spiral of socialist, Communist state control of our lives?

     It makes all the difference and it has everything to do with what America's future will be! Our children are becoming who they are from the moment they are born, from the moment they are conceived - from the earliest beginnings when we first speak to them in the womb and tell them what life is all about and the joy we will have together in working for the victory of God's light on earth. [8-second applause]

     If we don't rescue our youth from the five-pronged attack of the fallen angels and if we don't stop aborting the Lightbearers who should be bringing in the New Age - 1.6 million souls a year in America, 22 million since Roe v. Wade - we're going to lose the greatest nation on earth and God's divine plan for us for a golden age of Aquarius.

     In order to successfully challenge the forces opposing our youth, we have to have the same courage of the Founding Fathers who signed that document. Keepers of the Flame, will you sign that document? ["Yes!" 25-second applause]

     The Spiritual Mandate for Self-Defense

     But even if we solve all the problems afflicting our youth, we will not be fulfilling our or their reason for being if we don't solve the single greatest problem we face as a nation: our spiritual and physical defense. And though they may have the finest education in the world, the healthiest diets, the best of the world's culture, art and music, and the purest stream of consciousness, our children may not have a future to defend.

     We can give our children all things, but if we do not begin at the beginning with a spiritual defense and a physical defense, then all of our efforts will have been in vain (at least in this round) and all else we have given them will count for naught - except that by experience the soul will have increased in wisdom and in the practicality of self-mastery and in stature before God. This learning the soul may take to other planes or planets in life's continuing journey, but the most important lesson of all - to put self-defense before all else - will have come too little, too late for this generation.

     We have a dharma, a duty, to defend our platform of evolution and the integrity of our souls that we might fulfill the calling of our nation to bear the torch of liberty on behalf of oppressed peoples at home and abroad.

     The story of Krishna and Arjuna is well known to you as told in the Bhagavad-Gita, the 2,400-year-old Hindu text. As you know, Arjuna is of the warrior caste but he rejects his duty to go to war. It is the eve of the battle and his kinsmen are on both sides. He will have to kill his own relatives. He says, "Better I deem it, if my kinsmen strike, to face them weaponless, and bare my breast to shaft and spear."²⁵

     Arjuna would rather die than fight.

     Krishna, a Hindu deity who figures as Arjuna's teacher and charioteer, first teaches him about the continuity of life and the indestructibility of the soul. It is one of the greatest passages in all of the world's literature because unless we have life as a premise and the continuity of life as a premise, we will not make the correct moral decisions in our lifetime. Our decisions are always made because we know that we live forever and that we live forever in God. And we want that accountability from the beginning unto the ending of our lives because we are a continuity of consciousness.

     And so, the great Cosmic Christ says to him:

     Never the spirit was born;
The spirit shall cease to be never;
Never was time it was not;
End and Beginning are dreams!
Birthless and deathless and changeless
remaineth the spirit forever;
Death hath not touched it at all,
Dead though the house of it seems!"²⁶

     Having so demonstrated the unreality of death and the all-inclusiveness of life, Krishna tells Arjuna that he must fulfill his dharma. "Arise, thou Son of Kunti! brace thine arm for conflict, ... gird thee to the fight, for so thou shalt not sin!"²⁷

     The point is well taken by Paul, "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."²⁸

     Dharma is our reason for being, the calling of the soul. The law of God says it is a sin to fail to defend one's dharma. Nations and individuals must fulfill their reason for being in God. America needs to heed the command of Krishna and fulfill her dharma. America must realize that she will end war only when she understands the mandate of God to defend the principle of freedom and all who embody it.

     When Siddhartha Gautama sat in meditation beneath the Bo tree, Mara, the Evil One, confronted him with temptations and he had to defend his right to be, and to be doing what he was doing; for he had vowed to remain in his place until he should attain enlightenment.

     First Mara said, "Why do you struggle? Hard is struggle, hard to struggle all the time."²⁹ He continued his attack by parading voluptuous goddesses and dancing girls before Gautama. Then he assailed him with hurricanes, torrential rains, flaming rocks, boiling mud, fierce soldiers, beasts, and finally darkness. As a last resort, Mara challenged his right to be doing what he was doing.

     Gautama tapped the earth with the bhumisparsa (earth-touching) mudra,³⁰ and the earth thundered her answer: "I bear you witness!" Whereupon Mara fled.

     The American people must defend their right to fulfill their dharma. The only way they can attain enlightenment, the only way they can attain Christhood, is if they have a place prepared where there is a guaranteed opportunity to be free to walk the spiritual path. Therefore, America must defend her freedom. And to do that, she needs physical as well as spiritual defenses! [10-second applause] And let us not neglect the mental, emotional, and psychological defenses as well.

     Meeting the Challenges of History

     History has shown that passivity will never overcome evil. Pacifism has seldom, if ever, achieved peace. Often the opposite results. It is this history and the sense of their destiny in its moving stream that our children must be taught at elementary levels in the schools of our choice.

     Rome's destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C. is an important lesson for our time. It shows the result of negotiating for peace without adequate military strength to back it up. Carthage attempted to meet the Roman threat with appeasement. Perhaps her leaders said, "We will secure a place for ourselves in history."

     Carthage was a prosperous city in North Africa on the Mediterranean, between Libya and Algeria, near the site of modern Tunis. Carthage, once Rome's rival, had been defeated, disarmed, and forced to pay tribute to the empire. Despite this the city had become too prosperous for the tastes of the Romans.

     Cato, presiding over the Roman Senate, advocated its total destruction. He ended every speech he gave in the Senate, on whatever subject, with the words: "Besides, I think that Carthage must be destroyed."³¹

     The imperialists in the Senate agreed with him. They needed only a pretext to carry out their plan. It came as a result of an attempt by Carthage to defend herself against the repeated raids of Masinissa, king of Numidia, modern Algeria.

     Carthage was bound by treaty to make no war without Rome's consent. She sent ambassadors to Rome to protest Masinissa's many invasions. The Romans told them that since the Carthaginians had come from Phoenicia (which corresponds to modern Lebanon) they were interlopers in Africa and well-armed nations were not required to respect their rights. This was a sentence to slow death by raids and invasion.

     In 151 B.C., Carthage declared war on Numidia in an effort to protect herself. Rome declared war on Carthage. Carthage, though wealthy, was unprepared for war with Rome. She had a small army and navy and no mercenaries or allies.

     Will Durant records how Carthage's attempts at negotiation led to her utter annihilation:

     An embassy [from Carthage] hastened to Rome with authority to meet all demands. The Senate promised that if Carthage would turn over to the Roman consuls in Sicily 300 children of the noblest families as hostages, and would obey whatever orders the consuls would give, the freedom and territorial integrity of Carthage would be preserved. Secretly the Senate bade the consuls carry out the instructions that they had already received.

     The Carthaginians gave up their children with forebodings and laments; the relatives crowded the shores in a despondent farewell; at the last moment the mothers tried by force to prevent the ships from sailing; and some swam out to sea to catch a last glimpse of their children.

     The consuls sent the hostages to Rome, crossed to Utica [a neighbor of Carthage] with army and fleet, summoned the Carthaginian ambassadors, and required of Carthage the surrender of her remaining ships, a great quantity of grain, and all her engines and weapons of war. When these conditions had been fulfilled, the consuls further demanded that the population of Carthage should retire to ten miles from the city, which was then to be burned to the ground.

     The ambassadors argued in vain that the destruction of a city which had surrendered hostages and its arms without striking a blow was a treacherous atrocity unknown to history. They offered their own lives as a vicarious atonement; they flung themselves upon the ground and beat the earth with their heads. The consuls replied that the terms were those of the [Roman] Senate and could not be changed.

     When the people of Carthage heard what was demanded of them they lost their sanity. Parents mad with grief tore limb from limb the leaders who had advised surrendering the child hostages; others killed those who had counseled the surrender of arms; some dragged the returning ambassadors through the streets and stoned them; some killed whatever Italians could be found in the city; some stood in the empty arsenals and wept.

     The Carthaginian Senate declared war against Rome and called all adults - men and women, slave or free - to form a new army, and to forge anew the weapons of defense. Fury gave them resolution. Public buildings were demolished to provide metal and timber; the statues of cherished gods were melted down to make swords, and the hair of the women was shorn to make ropes. In two months the beleaguered city produced 8,000 shields, 18,000 swords, 30,000 spears, 60,000 catapult missiles, and built in its inner harbor a fleet of 120 ships.

     Three years the city stood siege by land and sea. Again and again the consuls led their armies against the walls, but always they were repulsed; only Scipio Aemilianus, one of the military tribunes, proved resourceful and brave. Late in 147 [B.C.] the Roman Senate and Assembly made him consul and commander, and all men approved.

     Soon afterward Laelius succeeded in scaling the walls. The Carthaginians, though weakened and decimated by starvation, fought for their city street by street, through six days of slaughter without quarter. Harassed by snipers, Scipio ordered all captured streets to be fired and leveled to the ground. Hundreds of concealed Carthaginians perished in the conflagration.

     At last the population, reduced from 500,000 to 55,000, surrendered. Hasdrubal, their general, pleaded for his life, which Scipio granted, but his wife, denouncing his cowardice, plunged with her sons into the flames. The survivors were sold as slaves, and the city was turned over to the legions for pillage.

     Reluctant to raze it, Scipio sent to Rome for final instructions; the Senate replied that not only Carthage, but all such of her dependencies as had stood by her were to be completely destroyed, that the soil should be plowed and sown with salt, and a formal curse laid upon any man who should attempt to build upon the site. For seventeen days the city burned.³²

     Rome wanted to teach the world a lesson. And she did.

     We need to study and understand the lessons of Carthage. Or else we shall come to know the truth of George Santayana's statement, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."³³

     Great civilizations come to an end when they cease to defend themselves against external challenges. Our bodies come to an end when we can no longer defend them against the external challenges of disease, the last plagues and death. If you are vulnerable to an invading virus against which you have no defense, you may cease to occupy your body temple and lose this physical platform of your soul's evolution.

     That's why you need to build a mind and a body that can withstand foreign invaders. That's why you need to call forth the light of your I AM Presence and raise up the sacred fire - so that the power of God in you will consume the karmic cause and core of your vulnerability to disease as well as its manifestation.

     You need to put on the mind of God which was in Christ Jesus - "who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God. ..."³⁴ You need to put on "the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil": aggressive mental suggestion, sinister forces of suicide, pacificism, fear, self-doubt, depression, and death and the five assailants who would have you sell your soul and give up your spiritual birthright for the paltry pleasures of the senses.³⁵

     And in this our time we know that the Inner Light must be magnified by the LORD Our Righteousness to deflect and consume those invaders that seek to overtake our consciousness, cell by cell. This is the law of integrity (i.e., the soul's inner integration with the Spirit Most Holy) which is the foundation of existence. Each one of us must be able to defeat any and every type of invading force that seeks to cross the line - the circle - of our integral selfhood, as Above, so below, in heaven and on earth.

     People establish communities and nation states because as individuals they cannot deal effectively with the challenges to their identity, and so they achieve integrity as a group and a group karmic pattern and mandala. And as the lesser units of our planetary evolution establish harmony with themselves, so we will one day see one world, free and at peace in the golden age of Aquarius.

     But this will not come about because we close our senses to the warring elements within the individual and collective psyche. Until these are defeated within and without there is neither integrity nor integration of opposing factions crying, "Peace, peace!" when there is no inner peace and therefore can be no outer peace.

     Failing to achieve that peace, the Romans also failed the tests of history. Their "eternal city" was destroyed by "barbarians," but not until the end would they believe that it could happen to them. Like Americans today, they thought their civilization was immortal.

     When Baghdad fell to the Mongols in 1258 A.D., the subjects of the Arab Caliphate were shocked. The Ottoman Empire, the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Hindus, the Chinese and others in their turn were destroyed by barbarian invaders when they least expected it. These peoples considered themselves to be above the barbarians who conquered them. They, too, failed the tests of history.

     Historian Arnold Toynbee found that the ability of a nation to defend itself against external challenges depends on comparable spiritual development, or "etherialization" as he calls it.

     "Real progress is found to consist in a process defined as 'etherialization', an overcoming of material obstacles which releases the energies of the society to make responses to challenges which henceforth are internal rather than external, spiritual rather than material," he writes.³⁶ Furthermore, he says, growth is dependent upon "perpetual flexibility and spontaneity."³⁷ In other words, as a civilization progresses it will not be able to deal with external challenges unless it also learns to deal with increasing internal challenges.

     "One of the perennial infirmities of human beings is to ascribe their own failure to forces that are entirely beyond their control," says Toynbee. "The most that an alien enemy has achieved has been to give an expiring suicide his coup de grâce."³⁸ When the spirit and the soul of a nation are in a state of malaise, that nation cannot defend its territorial or psychological integrity.

     Toynbee found that the character of a nation's leadership is crucial to the survival of the civilization. He says that if those who lead a civilization, the "creative minority," lose their ability to creatively meet successive challenges and become a "dominant minority," then the majority of that society will withdraw their allegiance from the leaders, and the civilization itself will stop growing and enter a "time of troubles" leading to its ultimate collapse.

     This is because the spiritual fire is itself the great bonding of community. It is the love of God that bonds the cells of the body and the body politic, that engenders in them the properties of self-healing and enables them to replace themselves. This process is the prime example of the law of self-transcendence that operates in mankind and society if and when there is a conscious cooperation with this law.

     Each and every day that we recite our prayers we should be transcending yesterday's lesser state in the alchemy of the Holy Spirit that is engendered by religious ritual. We should become a renewed creature in Christ, old things passing away, all things becoming new.³⁹ We should be carrying more of his Light, day by day, by our exercise of the sacred science of the Word. We should be girding up the loins of our minds and in sobriety hoping to the end for grace through the revelation of Jesus Christ present with us in our members.⁴⁰

     However, there are several conditions of consciousness which impede the transforming Power, Wisdom and Love of God from operating within self and society. These must be squarely dealt with if one is to inherit eternal life:

     1) The lack of desire to serve and affinitize oneself with the Light and to become the Light, and in its place the desire for pleasure and the expending of the life-force in pleasure's pursuits.

     2) The absence of the merciful heart and forgiveness. Unless people pray "forgive us our debts, as [i.e., in the same manner as] we forgive our debtors,"⁴¹ they will never self-transcend their yesterdays or anyone else's.

     3) The spirit of vengeance that carries over from lifetime to lifetime - seething resentment for personal injury that will never forgive or forget nor place all matters in God's hands for divine retribution, but rather craves revenge against neighbor and neighboring states and will take it in time or eternity. Those who are of this state of mind do not partake of the communion cup of the law of self-transcendence, and they are not of Christ's universal Body and Blood.

     4) The absence of compassion, tolerance and charity in the giving of oneself to any part of Life, which is God.

     5) The failure to submit one's life to the Holy Will of God and to "seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness"⁴² whereby all things necessary to the joyous fulfillment of one's reason for being are added by the Spirit of the LORD.

     The law of self-transcendence must be experienced by peoples and nations if they are to survive as a healthy, integrated unit of identity. When for the above reasons the integration spiral of their collective oneness no longer has the momentum to self-sustain, the nation loses its centripetal (or integrating) force, a disintegration spiral sets in, and its centrifugal force (without the balance of the centripetal) will ultimately cause dissolution.

     Therefore, if the Light is not embraced by a people, and the Light that was once in them is turned to Darkness, then that Darkness, self-willed and self-created, becomes the irreversible cause and effect of disintegration and death. These ensue because only the Light at the nucleus of a body, cell or atom can hold together the components of life. And only those who love the Light and serve the Light can truly possess the Light.

     Today America has arrived at that moment in history which Toynbee speaks of, the moment when, for her own survival, she must transcend herself. And her leaders must rise to the occasion. Throughout history, the creative minority who have had the extraordinary courage to "sign that document" have made all the difference.

     We all know about Leonidas and the 300 Spartans who held the pass at Thermopylae against the great army of Persians in the most heroic resistance in history. It was 480 B.C. The Spartans lost 300 men, the Persians 20,000. Although Leonidas fell in the battle, he protected the Greek fleet from being outflanked by the Persians. And Greece lived to enter a brief but brilliant golden age. Remember the heroism at Thermopylae. Remember the integrity of 300 men. Golden ages come because peoples and societies are self-sustained by their inner sense of wholeness. And by their wholeness they are willing to stand against all odds for the principles of absolute Freedom, Peace, Truth and Universal Enlightenment.

     In 1775 Patrick Henry uttered the words that are spelled out of freedom's flame that yet burns in our hearts today. With a realism not now heard in the land, he said, "There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free ... we must fight! ... Gentlemen may cry peace, peace - but there is no peace. The war has actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field!"⁴³

     Yes, our brethren, the Afghans. Yes, our brethren, the freedom fighters throughout the world. They are being oppressed by their governments, some are being massacred by the forces of Communism or right-wing dictatorship, others are condemned to death by disease, hunger, and starvation engineered by tyrants and the toilers Right and Left. Yes, it is our brethren who are already in the field.

     Therefore, "Why stand we here idle? What is it the gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"⁴⁴ [33-second applause]

     Upon those words and that stand the American Revolution was fought and won and upon that platform Americans today have the freedom they enjoy to agree and to disagree.

     George Washington said, "We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die."⁴⁵ Our choices are no different yesterday, today, or forever. If we do not resolve to conquer here and now where it is given to us by Providence to take our stand, life and death will not be choices - neither for ourselves nor for our posterity.

     Why We Must Provide for the Common Defense

     The Preamble to the Constitution declares that one of the principal reasons the people of the United States established their government was to "provide for the common defence." Securing "the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity" came next on the list.

     We cannot enjoy liberty and its blessings without establishing defense. And today, my fellow Americans, we do not enjoy a common defense. We don't have a common civil defense. We don't have a common anti-ballistic missile system. We don't have a common defense of our military bases here or abroad. We don't even have a common surface-to-air missile defense to stop a single enemy bomber from flying across our borders and bombing our cities!

     What will you tell your child or your children's children? What will you say when the Soviet Union launches its surprise first-strike attack on the United States?

     What will we say in the last half hour that we might spend with our children? Will we say, "There is nothing we can do"? And when they ask, "Why?" will we tell them, "We didn't think it was necessary to be prepared for war. We didn't demand that our leaders spend our tax dollars on the defense of America because our leaders told us it would never happen. We didn't want to spend the money to defend our nation, our souls, our liberty, and our birthright to fulfill our reason for being on earth in the twentieth century. It simply wasn't our priority."

     How do you make a child understand such logic?

     Americans have been told by experts that a Soviet first strike against our nation is impossible because the Soviets would risk annihilation if they attacked us. But that is not the case. The Soviets are prepared to wage nuclear war and to survive!

     Saint Germain warned us of this almost two years ago. On Thanksgiving 1986 he said, "You have every reason to believe, to be concerned, and to be prepared for a first strike by the Soviet Union upon these United States." He said, "Even as I speak meetings unending take place. The enemy is prepared to survive a nuclear war - the United States is not."⁴⁶

     "But how did it happen, Daddy, Mommy?" our children will ask us in those thirty minutes. "Why can't we stop the missiles?" Indeed, why can't we? And since Thanksgiving 1986 our leaders have made it their business to reassure the Soviets that they can indeed survive a nuclear war - not our children, not America, but the Soviets.

     If things continue as they have in the past year, we will have no answers for our children. The fact is, America, we are failing to meet the Soviet threat. Like all great civilizations we have come to the point at which we must either transcend ourselves or be destroyed.

     Somerset Maugham wrote, "If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is, that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that, too."⁴⁷

     The nations of the West have not learned the lessons of history. They have chosen cowardice and appeasement. And the prophecy of the handwriting on the wall has come to pass.

     Today the United States of America is vulnerable to destruction. We have seen this prophesied by the Ascended Masters, by Nostradamus, by beloved Mother Mary at Fátima and at Medjugorje, by our reading of the signs of karma written in our astrology and by George Washington's third vision.

     How could that third vision come to pass? What could bring about war and devastation on our own soil? What could prevent us from exercising our first option of bringing in a golden age of Aquarius?

     As we examine world conditions today, we see that our nation is indeed vulnerable to a Soviet first strike and to foreign invasion. The Soviets don't think like us. They believe it's possible to fight a nuclear war using relatively small weapons that destroy the enemy's weapons, and to win. They believe they can surgically remove most of our weapons in a surprise first strike, leaving our cities largely intact.⁴⁸

     You might not think that's sane. You might think no one would ever do anything like that. Well, what you think doesn't make any difference. It's what the Soviets think that makes all the difference. If we want to keep a nuclear war from ever happening, we must keep the Soviets from ever pushing the button. [11-second applause]

     America spends $300 billion a year on defense. So how did we get into a position of zero defense against nuclear weapons? Well, I'll tell you, it wasn't easy. It's not for a lack of money or technology. We have no defense against nuclear weapons today because of the logic of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) that prevails in our defense community.

     The nuclear strategy of the United States is deterrence - "Let's avoid nuclear war by making the consequences of an attack by either nation too great." We live under MAD which says that neither side will start a nuclear war because after a first strike both sides would retain the capacity to destroy large segments of the other's population.⁴⁹

     According to MAD, weapons that kill people are good, weapons that kill weapons are bad and defenses which stop nuclear warheads are "destabilizing." That is, they are likely to cause war since the side that has them can attack without fear of being annihilated in retaliation. So defenses are not inherently threatening but they have become so in the context of our nuclear strategy.

     For MAD to work, both sides must abide by it. But they haven't. The Soviets are building a defense for their country and people and the United States is not. Furthermore, based on MAD, in the mid-sixties we unilaterally froze our force of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at 1,054, virtually dismantled our extensive and formidable air defense against enemy bombers, and pretty much gave up on civil defense.

     This giving up, this surrender to the enemy without a shot being fired, this national suicide has everything to do with the five villains that have invaded the temple of the mind and the spirit of a once great nation. It has everything to do with drugs, alcohol, nicotine, sugar, and rock music, all of which drive the life-force down the spine.

     These abuses of our bodies and our souls we passively suffer do not allow the sacred fire of the Divine Mother to rise naturally from the base-of-the-spine chakra to meet the light of the Universal Christ in the thousand-petaled lotus of the crown chakra. And so the spinelessness, the absence of will to be and to live and therefore to defend one's integral reason for being - one's integrity, or integration in God - is at the root of the malaise of our time.

     Rock music is the greatest single factor that brought about the changing of the national consciousness toward the psychology of the nondefense of self and society. But it alone would have had no power over the minds and souls of our people. Flanked by the demons of drugs - marijuana, hashish, cocaine, crack, heroin, PCP - escorted by the multibillion dollar sugar, alcohol and cigarette industries, and guaranteed safe passage by the pharmaceuticals drugging the nation to death, the false hierarchy of rock music and its hellions has in three decades made America the pushover and the patsy for this conspiracy of the Dark Forces against the Lightbearers of the world!

     Yes, rock music was the pulling of the rip cord. It signaled the loss of national conscience and national virginity. Rock music is the gateway to Death and Hell through which the pied pipers, reincarnated fallen Atlanteans, have led our youth, our babies, the old and the middle-aged alike. Even the pastors in their pulpits have sanctioned Christian rock in the name of Jesus Christ. Shame on them!

     Before this attack on youth by the five poisons (the five oppositions to the five Dhyani Buddhas who direct the inner development of the soul within us) we saw that America defended herself "against all enemies," never lost a war, sustained her leadership role among the nations and felt good about herself.

     But not any more. While we and our allies have surfeited in our indulgences and preoccupations with self and psyche, the Soviet Union has built an ICBM force which is powerful and accurate enough to destroy our military targets; and, as I said, they also began covertly building themselves a defense system and talking us out of building our own.

     Not only have the Soviets been moving ever toward the goal of a nuclear first strike against Uncle Sam, but they have also been quietly saturating the brains and bodies of our youth with drugs in order to increase their cash supply and weaken our national resolve.

     Enter Jan Sejna, former general major in the Czechoslovakian army and the highest-ranking member of the Communist military apparatus ever to defect. He had a working relationship with Nikita Khrushchev and was privy to the Soviets' strategy for global conquest. He was present at a meeting in 1962 when Khrushchev told key Eastern European leaders that the Soviet Union was going to wage drug warfare against the United States. Khrushchev saw drug warfare as a form of chemical warfare.⁵⁰

     Khrushchev was impressed by the Chinese Communist techniques. Starting in 1928, Mao had used drugs against the Chinese and later against United States forces in Korea. Khrushchev told the Eastern European leaders that with drugs they could destroy the United States from within while bringing in cash for Soviet espionage activities.⁵¹ It is our weakness for drugs that is destroying us. And there is persuasive evidence that not only the Soviets but also the United States government has been involved in drug trafficking.⁵² If we had the spine and the inner strength to resist these drugs, we would not be in the danger we are in today. But, America, we have lost our equilibrium - the internal balance of the yin and yang forces of life.

     Our destruction by the enemy within was predicted by Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago:

     At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant to step the ocean and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest, with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

     At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.⁵³

     Following the Khrushchev meeting, the Soviets organized the East-bloc intelligence services into a vast network which smuggled drugs into the United States.⁵⁴ General Sejna was present in Prague when the Czechs, acting on behalf of the Soviets, made a deal with Raul Castro to integrate Cuba into the Soviet Union's drug-smuggling network.⁵⁵ In 1968 the Soviets were selling drugs to U.S. servicemen in Europe through KINTEX, a Bulgarian corporation. Since then, the Cuban and East European intelligence services have smuggled huge quantities of heroin, cocaine, marijuana, hashish and other drugs into the United States.⁵⁶

     The United States government refuses to acknowledge that the Soviet Union has an official policy of drug smuggling to undermine and destroy the United States. Perhaps that's because if they admitted the realpolitik of Soviet strategy and the drug war the Soviets are winning against the U.S. hands down, they would have to take a stand and engage in a spiritual and physical warfare to save the soul of a nation - something the U.S. has never had the nerve to do since the Bolshevik revolution, always crying "Peace, peace ..." when there was and is and can be no peace with the Soviet system or leadership.

     This is the psychology of nihilism that I call SAD - Self-Assured Destruction - that saturates the non-souls and the non-strategy of our representatives in Congress.

     A new law passed by Congress on May 15, 1988, gets the U.S. military involved in stopping drugs.⁵⁷ But it's only a token effort which will never be successful until we challenge the Soviet government directly and use enough military force to stop them. No treaty should be signed with the Soviet Union until this International Capitalist/Communist Conspiracy drug network is disbanded. [11-second applause]

     There is no way the Soviet Union could have carried on this war against our youth since the days of Khrushchev without full cooperation of agents in the West. There is no way they could have been carrying out this operation without our intelligence community and our military establishment being fully aware of it as a strategy. Therefore, I say it is an International Capitalist/Communist Conspiracy of the power elite in every nation on earth moving against the Lightbearers of the world who are our sons and daughters.

     General Sejna also says the Soviets plan a first strike against the United States. And believe me, this man knows what he's talking about! I interviewed him on Summit University Forum and this is what he said:

     Until 1963 everything was prepared for defense because they thought they were not strong enough for offense. They were behind in nuclear weapons and these things.

     Marshal Malinovsky, who was at that time minister of defense, visited Czechoslovakia and other satellites. And he said, "Comrades, we have to change our preparation. We have to change our tactic from defense to offense. For the next war, we have three possibilities. First, the NATO missiles will be first in the air. Second, our missiles and NATO's will meet in the air. And third, our missiles will be first in the air. The first two possibilities are not acceptable for us."

     Since then, ladies and gentlemen, everything was prepared for a surprise attack.⁵⁸

     General Sejna says that after a Soviet nuclear first strike on the United States, Western Europe would either surrender or be overrun by conventional, chemical, and biological forces.⁵⁹

     It's not chic to talk about a surprise attack in the era of glasnost. Military officials assure us it's not possible. They say we would have adequate warning based on satellite detection of increased troop movements, mobile missile movements, and bombers being put on alert. Therefore they do not even consider the possibility.

     The fact is, the United States and NATO assume they will receive adequate warning of a Soviet attack allowing them time to prepare. NATO is counting on at least several days of warning during which they would disperse their forces, man their defense positions, and receive reinforcements from the United States. The United States believes it will have at least several hours' warning during which bombers could be loaded and alerted and submarines in port could put to sea. This is folly for four reasons:

     1) Surprise attack is an integral part of Soviet strategy.

     History shows that Soviet military strategy is characterized by preemptive, surprise attacks, often in peacetime and often accompanied by deception (such as military exercises or ongoing negotiations) to disguise their activities. They achieved surprise in their invasions of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Afghanistan.

     Military strategist William R. Van Cleave has researched surprise in Soviet strategy which he discusses in an article, "Surprise Nuclear Attack," published in an anthology entitled Soviet Strategic Deception. In it he notes that "Soviet military literature indicates that the Soviets believe that surprise attack could be the determinative event of a nuclear war; that a surprise attack could strategically disrupt and even forestall the enemy's use of nuclear weapons; and that surprise attack is feasible."⁶⁰

     2) The United States has a history of being surprised because it is unwilling to believe the warning signals.

     The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor at dawn, December 7, 1941, is a prime example of America's unwillingness to accept and act on data that indicates a surprise attack. The Japanese achieved complete surprise, catching the bulk of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in harbor.

     The story unfolds in At Dawn We Slept, a comprehensive study of Pearl Harbor by historian Gordon W. Prange. The first set of data indicating a Japanese surprise attack was received by U.S. Intelligence in Washington, D.C., which had broken the Japanese diplomatic codes. The messages they intercepted would have been of primary interest to Lt. Gen. Walter C. Short, the Army's commanding general in Hawaii, and Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. But they never received them. Explanations range from the Intelligence services' desire to limit access to the messages for fear the Japanese would discover they had cracked their codes to a belief by some officers that Short and Kimmel were already receiving the messages.

     In any case, a September 24 message from Tokyo to its Honolulu consulate requesting precise locations of ships in Pearl Harbor was deciphered by Army Intelligence but never reached the Hawaiian command.

     The Office of Naval Intelligence later received notice that the Japanese embassies and consulates were destroying their codes and ciphers and burning confidential documents. This was a sure sign of war. But when the information reached Kimmel, it had been so diluted that he failed to grasp its significance and later claimed he did not consider it "of any vital importance."⁶¹

     Before 9 a.m. Washington time, December 7 (3:30 a.m. Hawaii time), U.S. Intelligence intercepted a message from Japanese Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo to his Ambassador in Washington, Kichisaburo Nomura. It read, "Will the Ambassador please submit to the United States Government (if possible to the Secretary of State) our reply to the United States at 1:00 p.m. on the 7th, your time."⁶² That would be 7:30 a.m. Hawaii time. He was referring to a fourteen-part message replying to American diplomatic proposals.

     The intercept convinced Brigadier General Sherman Miles, assistant chief of staff for Intelligence, "that war is very likely because of the language used by the Japanese, and ... something is going to happen coincident with 1 o'clock Washington time."⁶³ He and his staff attempted to relay a warning to the Pacific commanders but by the time he informed Gen. George C. Marshall (who had been out horseback riding) and Marshall wrote the warning message, it was 11:40 a.m. Washington time.

     The message had to be sent by Western Union since atmospheric conditions interfered with radio transmissions. The RCA office in Honolulu received the message at 1:03 p.m. Washington time or 7:33 a.m. Hawaii time. Since it was not marked priority or urgent, a telegram boy on a motorcycle picked it up and began his normal deliveries. The message reached General Short at 2:58 p.m. Hawaii time, nearly seven hours after the attack began.

     In spite of the messages they never received, the Hawaiian command was warned that some kind of Japanese attack on American assets somewhere was imminent. On November 27, 1941, General Marshall, chief of staff of the U.S. Army, sent a message to them. It read in part:

     Negotiations with Japan appear to be terminated to all practical purposes. ... Hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot, repeat cannot be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act. ... Prior to hostile Japanese action you are directed to undertake such reconnaissance and other measures as you deem necessary but these measures should be carried out so as not, repeat not, to alarm civil population or disclose intent.⁶⁴

     Short later said that he received the impression "that the avoidance of war was paramount and the greatest fear of the War Department was that some international incident might occur in Hawaii and be regarded by Japan as an overt act."⁶⁵

     Consequently, when reports of Japanese fleet movements off of Indo-China came in, Kimmel did not order his ships to sea. Prange remarks, "the Army's 'war warning' message had specifically directed Short not to alarm the civilian population. The sudden departure of the bulk of the Fleet at a weekend could scarcely fail to do so. The admiral therefore decided to keep his ships in harbor."⁶⁶

     During the hours and minutes leading up to the attack, vital evidence was ignored and misinterpreted. A U.S. mine sweeper saw a Japanese submarine periscope in the waters off Pearl Harbor at 3:57 a.m. on December 7. It reported the sighting to a nearby destroyer, the Ward, which searched for the sub on sonar. Since it failed to pick up a contact, the destroyer did not report the sighting and neither did the mine sweeper. "The evidence was slim enough," Prange writes, "and mistaken sightings were far from rarities in Hawaiian waters."⁶⁷ The mine sweeper, having finished its duties, returned to Pearl Harbor. The undetected submarine most likely followed the mine sweeper into the harbor after the protective underwater net across the harbor mouth was opened.

     At about 6:40 a.m., the Ward destroyed a Japanese sub near the entrance to Pearl Harbor. The Ward reported the action immediately but Kimmel was "not at all certain that this was a real attack."⁶⁸ His officers decided to "wait further developments."⁶⁹

     At 7:02 a.m., Privates Joseph L. Lockard and George E. Elliott, manning the Opana Mobile Radar Station on Oahu, picked up an incredible message on their oscilloscope. "Lockard thought something must be wrong with the set, but a quick check proved otherwise," Prange reports. It was a fleet of "probably more than 50" planes. Elliott reported the sighting but neglected to mention that it contained more than 50 planes. The officer receiving the report decided it was an expected flight of 12 B-17 bombers flying in from the mainland and told Elliott and Lockard, "Well, don't worry about it."⁷⁰ It was 7:20.

     At 7:55 a.m., the first Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor. The attack came in two waves. The first consisted of 185 planes; the second, which came at 8:50, consisted of 167 planes. By 10:00 a.m. it was over. The Japanese planes returned to their aircraft carriers which soon headed northwest. Three battleships had been sunk, 15 other ships damaged, 164 planes destroyed and 128 damaged. Worst of all, 2,403 Americans had been killed and 1,178 wounded.

     The U.S. was also surprised in Korea, despite ample warning. Harvey DeWeerd's study, quoted by Van Cleave in his article on surprise attack, concludes:

     We were surprised twice in Korea in spite of multiple indications of coming events and an abundance of intelligence data. ... It was not the absence of intelligence which led us into trouble, but our unwillingness to draw unpleasant conclusions from it. We refused to believe what our intelligence told us was in fact happening, because it was at variance with the prevailing climate of opinion in Washington and Tokyo. We also refused to believe our intelligence because it would have been very inconvenient if we had; we would have had to do something about it.⁷¹

     A Soviet surprise attack would doubtless contain as many ambiguities as or more than the Japanese and Chinese attacks on Pearl Harbor and Korea. It doesn't take much imagination to see American decision makers of the 1990s engaging in the same kind of wishful thinking as American officers did at Pearl Harbor.

     In order for the United States to successfully launch its ICBMs and bombers on warning of a Soviet attack, the president would need to receive that warning, correctly interpret it, and act on it in less than 20 minutes.

     In reality, Van Cleave argues,

the information available ... would probably be partial and questionable. It could well be obscured in a fog of Soviet disinformation and deception; it could come after a period of Soviet conditioning and political deception, and during acts of Soviet operational and technical deception. ...

     Warning is apt to be inherently ambiguous until too late. Signals indicating the possibility (perhaps even the fact) of a surprise nuclear attack would be those most resisted by U.S. leadership. The realization that an attack is imminent, or underway, would come slowly and reluctantly. The strong disbelief in a surprise nuclear attack makes it likely that warning signals of such an attack would also be disbelieved as long as possible. For NATO, all of these encumbrances would be multiplied.⁷²

     3) The Soviets have a big incentive to pull off a surprise attack.

     U.S. nuclear forces are based in such a way that a surprise attack would be highly advantageous to the Soviets. In 1987 Van Cleave did a study which showed that in a surprise attack the Soviets could destroy 7,500 U.S. warheads and 3,140 equivalent megatons by catching U.S. ICBMs and bombers on the ground and our submarines in port. In an attack following a period of generated alert, they could only destroy 3,700 warheads and 1,250 equivalent megatons since more of our submarines would be at sea and decision makers would be ready to launch our ICBMs and bombers.⁷³ The incentive for surprise is 3,800 warheads and 1,890 equivalent megatons.

     Concerning the argument that Soviet preparations would warn us of a surprise attack, Van Cleave says, "The Soviets probably would forego attack preparations that might improve their military strength if those preparations would also deny them the element of surprise. At the very least, the Soviets should be expected to conceal or obscure such preparations by a combination of political and military deception."⁷⁴

     4) The United States is not prepared for a surprise attack.

     Our military leaders think that a surprise attack would be too complicated for the Soviets. A report by the Scowcroft Commission, headed by Brent Scowcroft [today President Bush's national security adviser], argued that a coordinated Soviet surprise attack on U.S. bombers and ICBMs would be too difficult due to timing problems. Former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, a member of the Scowcroft Commission, later said, "It is equally important to acknowledge, however, that the coordination of a successful attack is not impossible, and that the 'rubbish heap of history' is filled with authorities who said something reckless could not or would not be done."⁷⁵

     Nevertheless, we do operate on the assumption that it cannot be done. As Van Cleave reported in an article in Global Affairs:

     Throughout most of the strategic ballistic missile era, and certainly after the Soviet strategic nuclear forces had grown, the adequacy of U.S. strategic nuclear forces was judged on the basis of their ability to survive a "well-executed surprise attack" and still accomplish all of their missions. Yet, as Soviet capabilities have improved to the point that a well-executed, highly disarming surprise attack is feasible, the tendency to discount its possibility has grown. ... The assumptions that we would receive, recognize, and react effectively to strategic warning [a warning that an attack was imminent], and be able to launch ICBMs as well as bombers on timely tactical warning [a warning that an attack has begun], now dominate most evaluations of U.S. strategic nuclear forces."⁷⁶

     Since Reagan's two-trillion-dollar defense buildup, many Americans think we're in good shape. Unfortunately, nothing could be farther from the truth. We spent a lot of money but we didn't spend it on what we really needed to solve our defense problems: (1) making our ICBMs mobile so they could not be destroyed in their silos, (2) storing our bombers and submarines in hardened hangars and berths, (3) improving early warning radar and command, control, and communications, and (4) defending our weapons with anti-ballistic missiles.

     John Collins, a noted defense expert with the Library of Congress who is quoted by liberals and conservatives, commented on our state of nuclear preparedness in a recent telephone interview: "In many respects we're no better off than we were when we started [in 1979] and in some additional respects we're worse off than we were when we started. And the reason is that the Soviets had had a modernization program going since 1962; we began to think about turning trends around in the last year of the Carter administration."

     Collins pointed out that while we have begun cutting our defense budget, the Soviets haven't.

     Now you've got Gorbachev who's running rings around us with his glasnost and his perestroika and a lot of people saying that the cold war is over and let's forget about it. But they haven't stopped as far as I can determine. I haven't got any evidence that they've slowed down significantly their production lines with regard to major equipment. Now, they may do that. They've got bureaucratic problems like we do. It takes time to shut faucets off. But it hasn't happened yet.

     And so ... we're not a hell of a lot better off [today] in a lot of regards than we were before.⁷⁷

     While tanks and ships and aircraft carriers and troops are important, what will make the difference in the next war are nuclear forces. If the Soviets could get rid of our strategic forces or render them largely ineffective by a defense network, our conventional forces could not stop them from invading our country.

     As I have demonstrated, a surprise attack is far more likely than an attack preceded by a period of escalation. Therefore, we have no right to gamble our lives and our children's lives on the slim chance that when the Soviets decide to attack, it will not be a surprise.

     Let's take a closer look at what could happen in a first strike. I've updated it June 1989 to make sure you have the latest information.

     The Soviets think they can win a nuclear war for three reasons. First: in a surprise first strike they can destroy almost two-thirds of our warheads. Second: they are rapidly completing a defense network to stop the rest of our missiles from hitting them.⁷⁸ Third: they already have civil defense for their leadership as well as for the majority of their urban population.⁷⁹

     So how could they destroy two-thirds of our warheads? Our strategic (i.e., long-range) nuclear forces consist of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs), and bombers. They carry a total of 12,390 warheads.

     The situation is more complex than each of us having enough weapons to incinerate the other several times over - the overkill argument. Since most of our warheads are vulnerable to a surprise first strike because of the way they are deployed, they aren't really a deterrent. In short, a weapon that cannot survive cannot deter.

     There are 1,000 missiles carrying 2,450 warheads in our ICBM force: 50 MX Peacekeepers carrying 10 warheads each, 450 Minuteman IIs carrying 1 warhead each and 500 Minuteman IIIs carrying 3 warheads each. The Soviets could destroy 90 percent of these missiles in a surprise first strike using roughly 50 percent of their warheads.⁸⁰ Assuming they were destroyed in equal proportions, about 245 ICBM warheads on 100 missiles would survive.

     Our strategic bomber force contains 290 planes capable of carrying 4,436 warheads. There are 193 B-52s and 97 B-1s. At any given time, about 30 percent are "on alert," meaning they are loaded and their pilots are on the military base where the bombers are stationed. Soviet warheads launched from submarines off our coasts could reach most bomber bases in six to eight minutes. It is debatable whether these 30 percent could get off the ground before they were destroyed, especially if our command, control, and communications network were destroyed first. The other 70 percent certainly would be destroyed. Assuming that the bombers on alert did escape, after the first strike the United States would have the capability of delivering 1,331 warheads via 87 bombers.

     Our 35 SSBNs carry 5,504 warheads. This includes 9 new Ohio-class submarines carrying Trident missiles and 26 Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, and Lafayette-class subs - 12 carrying Trident missiles and 14 carrying Poseidon missiles. About 40 percent (or 14) of our SSBNs are in port at any given time. These could be destroyed by a surprise attack since it would take them several hours to put to sea. The Soviets, using attack subs and anti-submarine warfare techniques, could destroy at least 2 to 4 additional submarines at sea.⁸¹ Approximately 5 Ohio and 13 Franklin, Madison, and Lafayette SSBNs would be left. Assuming they were destroyed in equal proportions, 2,848 warheads would survive.

     Therefore a total of 4,424 warheads would survive a first strike. That is a 64 percent reduction - about two-thirds. In addition, according to Van Cleave's study, a surprise attack would reduce our total equivalent megatonnage (EMT) from 3,600 EMT to 460 EMT - that's 87 percent.⁸² This is because most of the surviving warheads would be on Trident and Poseidon missiles based on submarines. These yield 100 kilotons and 40 kilotons respectively as opposed to 1 to 2 megatons on Minuteman II missiles.

     After such an attack, what would our options be? The 87 surviving U.S. bombers would still have to outmaneuver the Soviet air defense. Defense experts William C. Martel and Paul L. Savage estimate that only 30 percent of the bombers that escape a Soviet first strike would be able to deliver their weapons to targets in the Soviet Union.⁸³ Therefore 26 bombers would survive with the capability of delivering about 413 warheads. The weapons on the 18 surviving submarines would not be useful to attack Soviet military targets such as hardened ICBM silos. This is because they are smaller and less accurate than land-based ICBMs. They could only be used against Soviet cities. Furthermore, an undetermined number of SLBM warheads could be stopped by Soviet SA-X-12 SAMs expected to be widely deployed around the Soviet Union in the next few years.⁸⁴

     What do all these figures boil down to? Quite simply, following a first strike the president of the United States would have the choice either of surrendering or of retaliating by destroying innocent Soviet civilians and submitting to Soviet retaliation on U.S. cities. If he attacked Soviet cities, the Soviets would still have over 5,000 warheads in reserve with which to annihilate undefended U.S. cities. The country would be worse off if he retaliated than if he did nothing. If the president surrendered, the Soviets could invade and rule these United States. In addition, Soviet defenses may soon be able to shoot down our missiles and a second strike by the United States would be virtually worthless.

     Soviet Defenses

     Because of the twisted nature of MAD and the reality of Soviet nuclear strategy, the closer the Soviets get to completing their defenses, the closer they are to launching their first strike. And that may not be too far in the future. The Pentagon concluded in its publication Soviet Military Power 1988 that the Soviets' strategic defense efforts "suggest that the USSR may be preparing an ABM defense of its national territory."⁸⁵ This would consist of anti-ballistic missiles, surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) which are capable of shooting down tactical ballistic and cruise missiles, and a vast radar system.

     The Soviets already have the world's only ABM system; it consists of 100 nuclear-tipped missiles that can shoot down warheads before they reach Moscow. It is currently being modernized and will be fully operational by 1989.⁸⁶ As I mentioned, the Soviets also have a huge civil defense network which they could count on to defend their leadership against any missiles that leak through their defense.⁸⁷

     (U.S. citizens have no civil defense. After a first strike such as that described above, between 10 million and 40 million Americans would die.⁸⁸ But fallout shelters could reduce the death toll to 1 million.⁸⁹)

     The Soviet Union is moving ahead with its strategic defense system. On November 25, 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev admitted for the first time that "practically, the Soviet Union is doing all that the United States is doing, and I guess we are engaged in research, basic research, which relates to these aspects which are covered by the SDI of the United States."⁹⁰

     But, as we know, they are doing far more than we are. The Soviets are spending $20 billion a year on their strategic defense system⁹¹ while this year we are spending $3.9 billion on ours.

     Furthermore, it is now generally known that they are winning the race for space. But most people don't know that 90 percent of Soviet space operations are for military purposes and that a number of Soviet space achievements are necessary components to a space-based defense.⁹²

     Thomas Krebs, who worked as the Pentagon's expert on Soviet space warfare capabilities, says that their immediate goal is to put up a space-based missile defense system. And they are rapidly developing the prerequisites. The new Soviet Energia rocket is capable of carrying large numbers of satellites, a key component of a Star Wars system.⁹³

     Not only do the Soviets have the world's only operational space-based anti-satellite weapon, capable of destroying our early-warning and reconnaissance satellites in orbit, but they also have a ground-based laser at Sary Shagan in south central Russia that may be able to damage U.S. satellites.⁹⁴ The Soviets have another laser weapons site at a base on a mountaintop in the remote Nurek region of the Soviet Union near their border with Afghanistan.⁹⁵

     The Soviet ground-based defense system is moving forward as well. On February 25, 1988, the Wall Street Journal said in an editorial, "We hear that Air Force Intelligence has officially concluded the Soviets have rolled production lines to break out of the ABM treaty and deploy a nationwide anti-missile system, which possibly could be in place by next year. That Maj. Gen. Schuyler Bissell, head of Air Force Intelligence, briefed the CIA on this conclusion late last week."

     The Journal said the Air Force based its finding on two new pieces of evidence:

     First, the Soviets are "internetting" their early-warning radars. ... They have conducted "hand-off exercises" in which the large phased-array radars, like the controversial one at Krasnoyarsk, pick up targets and alert the Flat Twin and Pawn Shop mobile radars that guide their [ABMs]. This is the key "battle management" function of an anti-missile system.

     Second, the Soviets are mass producing the Flat Twin and Pawn Shop radars, though the ABM treaty limits them to two locations. Similarly, they are mass producing the SH-08, a relatively new supersonic [anti-ballistic] missile that intercepts warheads within the atmosphere, with 500 such missiles already produced and 3,000 ultimately projected.⁹⁶

     Government officials denied the Wall Street Journal story. Air Force Secretary Edward Aldridge said the reports were "just flat wrong," although he acknowledged that the Soviets had been working on an ABM system for years. "They've got a massive program," he said. "But there's no evidence that would support the allegation that they're prepared to break out of the ABM Treaty."⁹⁷ Whether or not the government is prepared to admit that the Soviets are breaking out, mass production of ABMs is a breakout.

     It is difficult to determine if the Soviets are mass producing ABMs. A well-placed source in the intelligence community says that if they were, the United States would know, but probably not immediately. One piece of evidence, which comes from another intelligence source, is that they have recently doubled the floor space at their plant at Gomel, which produces ABM components. Since they already have the 100 ABMs that the treaty allows in place around Moscow, the only reason they would need more floor space is if they were going to start mass production.⁹⁸

     Commenting on Secretary Aldridge's denial of a Soviet breakout, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., former deputy assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, said that "it is certainly the party line here in Washington that at most there are some worrisome developments but it doesn't amount to a breakout. But this is unfortunately a grey area and a lot of what we see and know is going on is entirely consistent with a breakout."⁹⁹ In a later interview, Gaffney said, "I have concluded that they are actively breaking out based upon the evidence that's available to me."¹⁰⁰

     On February 26 Archangel Gabriel, dictating through me in Lisbon, Portugal, said:

     The movement is accelerated on the part of the Soviets to move against Europe and to take the United States as well by a first-strike attack. This is what is on the drawing board and this is the only reason negotiations are continuing. ...

     Blessed ones, the acceleration is at hand and El Morya has declared it and it has not changed: Unless the United States change her course and defend the peace of the world, you will see an encounter as early as twenty-four months from October last.¹⁰¹

     "October last" was precisely October 2, 1987, and twenty-four months equals October 2, 1989! That's the earliest you could see an encounter between the superpowers.

     MAD depends upon both the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. being undefended. Since the Soviets are defending their country and people and we are not defending ours, we are the ones who are vulnerable.

     So the question is, If they have a first-strike capability, do they have the intent?

     We know that the Soviets do not value the lives of their citizens. They've killed no less than 39.5 million of them since 1917.¹⁰² This was in order to consolidate and maintain power. If the Soviets would kill untold millions of souls of their countrymen to get control of the heart and lifeblood of Mother Russia, how many would they sacrifice to get control of America and then the world?

     For the Soviet leadership (not the Russian people), a first strike against the United States, while highly dangerous, is undoubtably preferable to watching their empire disintegrate when they are at the pinnacle of military power.

     And their empire could very well disintegrate. Economic forces and internal unrest are driving the Soviets to war. Everybody agrees that the Soviet economy is a mess. Economic difficulties amplify internal tensions in the Soviet empire. We see riots and demonstrations in the Ukraine, the Moslem states, and Eastern Europe. Food shortages are worse than normal, even in Moscow.¹⁰³ Historically, the Soviets attack nations in order to divert attention from internal problems and to draw off wealth to bolster their economy.

     Today Western loans are keeping the Soviet economy afloat. The U.S. and Western banks lend the U.S.S.R. and Eastern bloc $1 billion dollars a month.¹⁰⁴ It's outrageous! And, as I've discussed in my prophecy and astrology lectures, if the Western economies collapse, the Soviets will have to either face disintegration or go to war.¹⁰⁵

     The Real Gorbachev

     And Mikhail Gorbachev, hailed as a reformer, hasn't changed things and won't be able to unless he and the ruling elite plan to give up their power. He is a creature of the system, the same system which murdered 10 to 15 million Russian peasants under Stalin's dekulakization programs alone¹⁰⁶ and under Brezhnev and Andropov murdered 1 to 2 million Afghans.¹⁰⁷

     Gorbachev's power rests on the power of the Soviet state. If the state falls, he falls. And the state can survive only through economic and political central control, which has been achieved and maintained through 70 years of bloodshed and repression. Glasnost and perestroika are an illusion.

     Let's have a look at the real Mikhail Gorbachev. It was he, the student at Moscow University, who eagerly took part in Stalin's anti-Semitic policies. According to Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova, Soviet journalists who defected to the West, "At Komsomol and later at Party meetings, [Gorbachev] 'exposed' professors and students of Jewish origin and demanded their expulsion from the university. ... Gorbachev also looked into the personnel files of other students and professors of non-Jewish origin and exposed as 'enemies of the people' those who, from his point of view, were lacking in Stalinist orthodoxy."

     One of his classmates recalls, "He was really the plague of the law school. We feared Misha like the devil himself. When he walked by, everybody stopped talking."¹⁰⁸ Gorbachev's classmates recall that at the funeral of Stalin he gave forth genuine sobs and was overcome with grief.¹⁰⁹

     We must see Gorbachev as the product of the Soviet system, not Gorbachev as he would like us to see him. Gorbachev has no human face.

     On June 28, 1988, he announced a program for the redistribution of power in the Soviet Union. He proposed the creation of a new Congress of Deputies that would elect a president. The Associated Press reported that "he called for a country which would be ruled by law and guarantee individual rights. He said farmers should become the 'true masters' of their land."¹¹⁰

     Why shouldn't we believe him?

     Remember, Stalin killed 10 to 15 million Russian peasants in the 1930s for the very purpose of getting control of the land. Given the nature of the Communist beast, he simply could not allow the peasants to control food since they would thereby control an important section of the economy and be able to challenge the power of the state.

     The Soviet state exists because agriculture is collectivized. For Gorbachev to change that, Russia would no longer be Communist and the nomenklatura (the Soviet ruling class) could no longer enjoy power and privilege. For Russia to be ruled by law, the biggest criminals of all would have to be arrested, the members of the party. [9-second applause] Gorbachev cannot reform the Soviet economy. He cannot change Soviet military goals.

     When the Soviet defense system is complete it will mean they are more likely to launch a nuclear attack against us since they will be able to stop most of our retaliatory missiles. In combination with their countrywide civil defense already in place, it will give them a decisive advantage. And when the Soviets invade America, Gorbachev will not be smiling and nostalgically singing "Moscow Nights" on American television.

     How can we expect a fate different from that of the Afghans, who have been subjected to a policy of genocide? A fate different from the Hungarian teenagers who were crushed by Soviet tanks as they rolled through the streets of Budapest?

     Atrocities have been continuing in Afghanistan throughout Gorbachev's rule. Italian journalist Fausto Biloslavo was imprisoned in Afghanistan from November 1987 to May 1988 after being captured by the Soviet-backed Afghan army and being turned over to the KGB for questioning. During the period from Gorbachev and Reagan's Washington summit to their Moscow summit he was in jail, and this is what he saw.

     He found prisoners who had been subjected to electric shocks under their tongues, armpits or genitals. "I was surrounded by human wreckage," he wrote, "people with their backs smashed to pieces, dislocated jaws, twisted nasal septa, their bodies covered with scars of every description and bearing the hallmarks of cigarettes stubbed out against their skin."¹¹¹

     November 1987 to May 1988! Stop and think of it. These atrocities have been going on during the entire period of the Reagan-Gorbachev negotiations. This is what the Soviets have been doing in Afghanistan, and so much much more that is heinous and hellish; and the nations have turned their heads and looked the other way.

     Mark you well, their karma shall be upon them for their neglect to be their brothers' keepers!

     This journalist met a 28-year-old Pakistani shepherd named Khudadad who had accidentally crossed the border into Afghanistan and been captured. Khudadad said, "I was taken to Kabul, where they started to beat me to a pulp to try and force me to say that I was a Pakistani spy. The Afghans showed me no mercy and beat me pitilessly. One particularly violent kick caused one of my testicles to explode, and I fainted."¹¹² Khudadad eventually confessed to being a spy and was sentenced to 20 years in jail.

     "I'm no longer a man," he said. "I can't even take a wife. Dogs live in chains and food is the only thing on their minds ... and now I'm just like them. ... I just know that I'll be punished after making these statements to you, but I'm not afraid because I'm not worth a damn thing anymore."¹¹³

     I'm sure you realize that this is the effect that the Communist system has upon all of its subjects, the sense of the worthlessness of the human soul. They are masterminds at breaking the will and the spirit of men and nations. I say it's time for the United States to link arms control agreements to human rights reform in and out of the Soviet Union! [12-second applause]

     If Gorbachev is a reformer let him prove it with actions, not words. In the meantime, America, let's get on with defending ourselves against the Soviets and make sure that Afghanistan's fate does not become our own.

     Strategic Defense Now!

     Americans don't even know the threat of Soviet defenses or the sorry state of our defense. A 1982 poll showed that 65 percent of Americans were not "aware that the U.S now has no means of defending itself from incoming ballistic missiles." Eighty-six percent said "if the U.S. had the capability of changing this situation by deploying an anti-ballistic missile defense," they would favor it.¹¹⁴

     Many Americans think that Ronald Reagan's SDI program is taking care of our defense problem. In fact, it hasn't even put a dent in it. All Reagan did is to start a research program.

     In his March 23, 1983 speech which launched the initiative, he said, "I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles."¹¹⁵ Reagan is not planning on deploying anything in his term of office. And when the START treaty is made public we may find that any future president's right to deploy anything has been bargained away.

     Reagan's program has focused on long-term, high-technology systems to the detriment of the systems that have already been invented and are ready to deploy. Work on strategic defense had been going on in the United States for a long time before Reagan gave his speech. Following are just a few of the systems we could deploy starting immediately if we had a president with the courage to sign the right document.

     The most important thing to do right away is to defend our missile silos since those are what the Soviets target. If we defend them, it would most likely discourage a first strike since almost all of our ICBMs would remain intact, ready to retaliate.

     The easiest to deploy is the GAU-8 Gatling-type 30-millimeter machine gun already developed by General Electric. According to Gen. Daniel Graham of High Frontier, an organization promoting near-term deployment of strategic defense, "the GAU-8 has been tested, with astonishing results, against a simulated Soviet reentry vehicle." A reentry vehicle is the part of an ICBM which reenters the atmosphere carrying the warhead. Graham continues, "If one slug from this gun hits a reentry vehicle at any spot, it destroys it. A pair of these guns firing at a reentry vehicle provides an almost one-hundred percent assurance of destruction."¹¹⁶ This system could defend our ICBM silos for a cost of $10 billion.¹¹⁷

     That's a price tag of forty bucks a person to save America!

     What's your self-worth, America? Is there any price you're willing to pay to save yourself?

     By starting out right now with GAU-8 guns, we would lower the degree of confidence the Soviets have in pulling off a first strike. And that is significant because it would alter their perceptions. Any defense we put up could mean the difference between war and peace and between freedom and slavery.

     After we quickly deployed the GAU-8 guns, we could deploy more sophisticated ground-based systems that could protect ICBM fields, military bases, and even cities. HEDI, the High Endoatmospheric Defense Interceptor, is a non-nuclear, heat-seeking missile which intercepts warheads after they reenter the atmosphere. It can be incorporated into a small, mobile defense for cities and military bases.¹¹⁸ ERIS, the Exoatmospheric Reentry Vehicle Interceptor Subsystem, could defend much of North America from a single site. The cost for ERIS is $32 billion and the cost for HEDI is $18 billion.¹¹⁹

     At the same time, we could begin deploying a space-based defense. The most promising space-based system is called "Brilliant Pebbles." It would consist of thousands of small, non-nuclear missiles about three feet long and weighing about five pounds which would orbit the earth and spring into action upon detecting the launch of an ICBM. They would home in on the ICBM and knock a hole in it solely by kinetic energy. The missile would disintegrate.¹²⁰

     Another space-based system that has been proposed is the Space-Based Interceptor (SBI). It would consist of a series of satellites ringing the globe which carry "smart rocks," rockets with a homing device and/or a gun which fires a cloud of pellets into the path of the ICBM.¹²¹ Brilliant Pebbles are superior to SBI in that they are cheaper and each "pebble" would be autonomous and not dependent on satellites for instructions.

     The cost for Brilliant Pebbles? About $100,000 per "pebble" - and that includes launch into orbit. A system of 100,000 pebbles in orbit would cost only about $10 billion.¹²²

     The total system of GAU-8 machine guns, ERIS, HEDI and Brilliant Pebbles would cost about $85 billion - a pittance when you consider that Americans spend $100 billion a year buying "recreational" drugs!

     Going over the facts and figures of our defense and what needs to be done and the logic of our posture today, researching and studying what we have and what we don't have and what the Soviets have, what you are left with after you consider all the angles is that you honestly wonder in your heart how the Lord is going to divinely intervene to save us when we have nothing in hand through which the heavenly host can anchor their protection in a physical way.

     It goes along with "the Lord helps those who help themselves." Short of the miraculous or apocalyptic event (which we shouldn't count on) in the face of an oncoming enemy as formidable as this, what real deterrence does America have today that could possibly be the instrument of the alchemy of Divine Intervention?

     I find it a gloomy affair to try to answer that question, and because I cannot answer it, I can only cast myself upon the Rock of Christ and enter more deeply and profoundly into the spiritual path of the inner walk with God, into our dynamic decrees for the spiritual and physical defense of our nation which must be kept up by all of us and ask you to join me in delivering a mandate to our representatives in Congress to put America's defenses in place. [14-second applause]

     Strategic Defense: The Current Picture

     The answer we get from every inside source we know of is always that nobody has any intention of deploying any low-tech defenses anytime in the near future and certainly not before October 2, 1989. And few if any at all in Washington who are involved in defense sense any threat from the Soviet Union until well into the 1990s, almost to the end of the century.

     Even those who are promoting such solutions as High Frontier don't have the sense of urgency that the Brotherhood has given to us. So what doors can you knock upon? Who can you mobilize? Who is left who will raise his voice and put his political reputation or his job on the line by coming out for a strategic defense now? What elected representative is going to risk his seat to stand for a comprehensive defense program and budget that the experts and the taxpayers don't think is necessary?

     People I know and people who are trying their very best to turn things around have come up with the conclusion that there aren't any more doors to knock on. You can keep on lecturing and keep on giving this message but who of the leadership is responding?

     All the more do we go to the altar of God to offer our invocations for Divine Intercession and to invoke the Light that will enlighten our people and our leadership. You have to realize that this is why there isn't anything better to say about the progress that has been made in the last two years than there was two years ago. In other words, the United States government hasn't moved forward to implement a single plan or program that Saint Germain or our Summit University Forum guests have put forward.¹²³ In fact, we may have even retrogressed, if what I hear is true, in promising the Soviets not to deploy SDI as a part of the INF or START agreements.

     So it's very difficult to speak about gains. And the gains, if there are any to be spoken about, I trust will be spoken of by Saint Germain because since they are not apparent in a military sense, then they must be apparent at the level of the All-Seeing Eye of God to the Ascended Masters and hopefully they will tell us so. But this is the vantage I have from where I sit in my analysis of the current defense posture of this nation. Except for the vision of the hosts of the Lord, the outlook day by day is indeed discouraging.

     In his July 5 address in the Heart of the Inner Retreat last year, Alpha made a proposal to the Cosmic Council to lend himself to us and, "upon seeing the victory of the deployment of the defense of Freedom, to press on for other dispensations. Whether or not this is accomplished, together with the turning back and diminishing day by day of the power of World Communism, will determine the future of planet earth. There is no question about it."¹²⁴

     Well, freedom isn't any more defended today and it is certainly less defended than it was when Alpha made that statement one year ago. So where are we and what can we do?

     This year, Keepers of the Flame have rallied around strategic defense, starting grass-roots groups around the country. But the fact is that we are still in the same position today that we were in a year ago, only it appears to have worsened.

     Strategic defense is, my friends, to put it bluntly, dead in the water. If any systems are put up, they will most likely be too little too late. The string of failures in our space program from 1985 to 1987 as well as the lack of a heavy-duty booster has caused a 10-year delay in the putting up of a space-based strategic defense. That's right. Ten years' delay.¹²⁵

     And we strongly suspect that this string of failures was sabotage.¹²⁶ The Soviets are at war with the United States of America and sabotage is another aspect of their strategy that our government appears to be ignoring. At least, if they suspect it, they're not telling us!

     We need to examine this situation in greater detail. We need to know the facts in order to give our daily decrees - even when we would rather not be decreeing but we know that we absolutely must. If we are going to say, "Give me liberty, or give me death!" then when all else fails - when our countrymen have failed to heed the Inner Voice and our call to arms year after year - know that the flame of liberty can be sustained only by our dynamic decrees. [13-second applause]

     So what's happened to strategic defense since we gathered in the Heart a year ago on the Fourth of July to hear Gen. Danny Graham and Dr. Dmitry Mikheyev speak?

     Well, the budget for SDI has been cut and testing for HEDI and other near-term systems has been scaled back.¹²⁷ The Pentagon's Defense Acquisition Board placed a restriction on the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization which said that they could develop low-tech systems such as ABMs only if they continued to develop high-tech systems such as particle beam weapons at the same rate.¹²⁸ This has had the effect of cutting in half the amount of money available for near-term systems.

     There is one glimmer of hope in the strategic defense picture. Since last year, the media and defense experts have begun focusing on near-term deployment of systems like ERIS and HEDI which are based on existing technology.

     On January 19, 1988, Senator Sam Nunn said that the United States should consider deployment of an Accidental Launch Protection System (ALPS) to counter accidental or unauthorized missile launches.¹²⁹ The system he proposed would probably defend Washington, D.C., with 100 ERIS missiles and necessary radar. It could be in place by 1992 or 1993. Nunn said that the system would be tailored to abide by the 1972 ABM Treaty with the Soviet Union.¹³⁰

     Sam Nunn has been an outspoken opponent of strategic defense and his proposal is an about-face. But in reality, it may cause the deployment of a far smaller system than we need and cause other promising systems to be delayed far into the future. Even to defend against an accidental launch would require much more than the single 100-missile site Nunn supports.

     A study by McDonnell Douglas found that "successfully defending against an unauthorized multimissile attack" by a renegade Soviet sub captain, for example, would require "the U.S. to construct five additional ABM sites."¹³¹ This would violate the treaty.

     ALPS could defend our command, control, and communications headquarters in Washington, D.C., from Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missiles and cruise missiles and thus increase stability. But it would not be enough.

     If someone wanted to channel the forward momentum for strategic defense into a permanent backwater, he might go about it in the same way as Sam Nunn did. He has created a strategic defense system that politicians can support which could insure that we never have the defense we really need.

     Apart from Nunn's proposal, the prospects for early deployment of a defense are dim. President Reagan's START talks and cuts in the defense budget are two big reasons why. Although Reagan continues to give lip service to SDI, he has clearly bought the Soviet line.

     He said on March 14, 1988, that the United States will "continue to research SDI, to develop and test it. And, as it becomes ready, we will deploy it."¹³² He knows very well that we have systems ready or nearly ready to deploy. General Graham met with him on April 12 and told him that "all we're waiting for is a decision to deploy."

     Furthermore, both the United States and Soviet versions of the START agreement contain provisions for abiding by the ABM Treaty. The Soviets want both sides to commit not to withdraw from the ABM Treaty for 10 years; the U.S. proposal is for an unspecified period of time to be negotiated.¹³³ Agreeing to abide by the ABM Treaty when the Soviets have torn it to shreds is tantamount to treason! And that's just what our president is committing - treason - by his refusal to break that ABM Treaty with the Soviets who have broken that treaty again and again.¹³⁴ Thus President Reagan has bound the nation, hence the world, to a Soviet takeover.

     And we can't look to either Michael Dukakis or George Bush to defend America either. "We don't want Star Wars, we don't need Star Wars. It's a fraud, a fantasy," said Michael Dukakis.¹³⁵ Vice president George Bush has so far endorsed only more research with possible deployment well into the future.¹³⁶

     If the "radical anti-Communist" Ronald Reagan has done nothing for strategic defense in eight years, we can't expect much more from his establishment, big-business vice president.

     If the politicians had more guts, they could galvanize the country to support defense. Seven out of 10 Americans favor continuing research and development on SDI and 58 percent think we should deploy it once it has been developed. This is not a Right and Left issue. Sixty-seven percent of Republicans, 53 percent of Democrats support deployment.¹³⁷ But none of the presidential candidates has the courage to sign the right document right now!

     Lack of support by our leadership class has frozen strategic defense. There are plenty of politicians who support continuing research but almost none who want to even think about deploying anything before 1993. Nineteen ninety-three? It's too late! It's absolutely too late.

     Last year I said that the United States could have a three-layer defense system, composed of ERIS, HEDI, and a space-based kinetic-kill vehicle that would be 93 percent effective against a full-scale ICBM attack in place by 1994 and that it would cost $121 billion.¹³⁸ But this was only if Reagan gave the go-ahead to deploy last year. And we all know he didn't.

     Budget cuts mandated by Secretary of Defense Carlucci forced the cancellation of certain strategic defense tests and the scaling back of others.¹³⁹ On June 2 members of the Pentagon's Defense Acquisition Board "informed SDI Director Lt. Gen. James Abrahamson that a major retrenchment and downscoping of SDI programs was necessary in light of overall Defense budget problems."¹⁴⁰ In fact, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) now says that they will not even be ready for a decision to begin deploying until 1993.¹⁴¹ And by that time, my friends, the Soviet ground-based defense system will most likely be fully operational.

     At what position of full operation in defense, et cetera, et cetera, will it become advantageous for the Soviets to blackmail the West? They have just about everything they need right now. They just need to be sure. They just need to fasten it down. They just need to play their cards right.

     The third layer of our strategic defense, consisting of either Brilliant Pebbles or the Space-Based Interceptor program has been pushed even farther into the future since our space program does not have enough lift capacity to put thousands of satellites in space. The Pentagon's current answer to the problem is the Advanced Launch System (ALS). ALS is a heavy-lift booster being discussed which will not be operational until 1998.¹⁴²

     It's too late! America - you're too late!

     We could build a heavy-lift booster now if we wanted to. The discontinued Saturn 5 would work just fine. But the Pentagon wants to create a whole new system.

     If current trends continue, we can say good-bye to a space-based defense system. Last year Congress issued a directive to the SDIO which prohibited funds for either full-scale engineering development or deployment of kinetic kill vehicles.¹⁴³

     While the Soviets build their ABM system, the START talks have probably killed SDI. As Aviation Week & Space Technology reported, "Future SDIO priorities are expected to focus on sensors and [an ABM] treaty-compliant ground-based interceptor system. ... Changing priorities are driven in part by a desire to shape SDI into a program the Soviet Union will accept, thereby conceivably allowing a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty to be completed in the near future."¹⁴⁴

     Who's Afraid of INF?

     What is this sacred cow, this START treaty for which President Reagan is sacrificing our only hope to defend our land and our liberty?

     To understand the beast (the genetically engineered beast of the International Capitalist/Communist Conspiracy), we have to consider Reagan's other arms control achievement, the INF Treaty ratified by our Senate on May 27. Not only is the treaty conceptually and strategically flawed, but it has more holes in it than a fishnet. And it would be a bad idea even if it were leakproof.

     The INF agreement is being presented as a step towards a safer world. But it gives the Soviets an unequal advantage and thus is likely to trigger a Soviet invasion of Europe and with it a global war. The Soviets are giving up 650 SS-20 missiles, as well as 1,121 other intermediate-range missiles, mostly old and obsolete. The United States is removing 380 brand-new Pershing IIs, 309 ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) and 170 older Pershing IAs.¹⁴⁵

     The Reagan administration claims that since an entire class of nuclear weapons has been eliminated, the chance of nuclear war has been reduced. That's just like saying that if we eliminate all the .22-caliber rifles in the world, less people will get shot.

     The Soviets still have 553 bombers devoted to Europe. And they have 1,400 ICBMs and nearly 1,000 SLBMs which can hit Hamburg as easily as New York.¹⁴⁶

     Furthermore, in giving up the SS-20 the Soviets were only giving up an outdated missile they couldn't use since its warheads were so large that fallout would drift back onto Soviet territory if they launched a strike on Europe.¹⁴⁷

     But the missiles we are removing threaten military targets in the Soviet Union. They were the only weapons we possessed that could take out Soviet command centers in 10 to 12 minutes. They directly threatened Soviet territory. And that's why the Soviets were so anxious to get rid of them.¹⁴⁸ They were no threat to the Soviet population. It was their command centers, their military targets that could be knocked out. These missiles have deterred the Soviets from crossing Europe in a land war ever since they've been in place.

     The Pershings IIs and IAs and the GLCMs were all that prevented the Soviet conventional forces from concentrating along the border to invade Europe. The Warsaw Pact outnumbers NATO three to one in tanks and artillery and they can take Europe in a matter of days or weeks. Rather than spend the money to match the Soviet armies, since 1945 NATO has chosen to rely on nuclear weapons. Therefore, once U.S. intermediate-range nuclear forces are removed, there will be nothing to deter a Soviet invasion of Europe. My conclusion is that the INF Treaty will make Europe safe for conventional war - and for the Soviets that war is also a chemical/biological war.

     The Pershing IIs accomplished a mission that would take hundreds of billions of dollars to replace. And neither the United States nor our allies are willing to spend the money to match Soviet armies with conventional weapons, which are far more expensive than nuclear weapons.

     The retired French general Pierre Gallois said that no amount of spending can match the 200 Soviet divisions facing Europe: "If we eliminate nuclear weapons [in Europe], as Reagan wants, we will be contributing to elevating the Soviet Union to the rank of the world's strongest military power."¹⁴⁹ Everyone admits that American troops in Europe are only a trip wire and that they could not hold the Soviets back. And so George Shultz and Ronald Reagan have decided that they are willing to have our 326,000 fighting men and women in Europe slaughtered by conventional weapons on the altar of arms control.

     However distasteful the idea of nuclear war may be, there is nothing romantic about conventional war. World War II killed 41 to 49 million people.¹⁵⁰

     The INF Treaty does nothing about the chemical and biological (C/B) weapons that the Soviets are prepared to use in Europe. Why didn't our negotiators demand that these be destroyed? By 1963 the Soviets had concluded that these weapons are the best means to seize Western Europe since nuclear weapons would destroy the prize. The Soviets have made extensive preparations for chemical warfare. There are 45,000 to 60,000 chemical troops in the Soviet ground forces. They have acknowledged that they have up to 50,000 tons of poisonous substances which the Pentagon calls "the world's largest known chemical warfare agent stockpile."¹⁵¹

     The United States has practically no offensive C/B capability and little defensive capability. President Nixon nixed U.S. C/B warfare programs in the early 1970s in the interest of détente,¹⁵² and our recently begun modernization program doesn't even begin to address the problem.

     All in all, the INF Treaty will leave the Soviets with a decisive advantage in conventional, chemical, biological, and nuclear forces even if they don't cheat on the agreement. There are any number of ways they could cheat but they don't even have to since we left a number of questions unresolved.

     First of all, no American has ever even seen a Soviet SS-20. We've only seen a Soviet-supplied photograph.¹⁵³ How can we really tell if they're cheating? We can't even trust their estimate of how many SS-20 missiles they have. They told us they had 650. This was higher than the lowest U.S. estimate but lower than the State Department's May 1987 estimate of 840, the January 1988 Defense Intelligence Agency estimate of 1,200 and the 2,250 that intelligence experts have privately estimated.¹⁵⁴

     There is virtually no way we can tell if they violate the treaty because the SS-25, supposedly a long-range missile, was not banned under the treaty and looks virtually identical to the SS-20.¹⁵⁵ Shultz and company did not force this issue with the Soviets. They let it slide by. But the Soviets made sure that we agreed to give up our conventionally armed ground-launched cruise missiles since they appear identical to nuclear cruise missiles.

     Congress, the military, and the Reagan administration acknowledged that the Soviets were likely to cheat on the INF Treaty. Air Force chief of staff Gen. Larry Welch spoke for the majority when he said that even though the Soviets would cheat, he didn't believe they could achieve a militarily significant advantage by cheating.¹⁵⁶

     I mean, so now you know they cheat and you let them cheat! And Larry Welch has welched on his responsibility to the American people to stand guard for our common defense.

     Our leaders seem to have an attitude that we are invulnerable and can afford a little Soviet cheating. Roberta Wohlstetter points out that in sociological terms

     "I am in no danger whatsoever" is an example of a self-annihilating proposition. According to sociologist Robert Merton, "this mechanism, picturesquely termed the `suicidal prophecy' by the nineteenth century logician John Venn, involves beliefs which prevent fulfillment of the very circumstance which would otherwise come to pass. Examples of this are plentiful and familiar. Confident that they will win a game or a war or a cherished prize, groups become complacent, their complacency leads to lethargy, and lethargy to eventual defeat."¹⁵⁷

     If America continues to believe she is invulnerable, she will go the way of the Romans, the Hindus, and the Chinese.

     The INF Treaty's on-site inspection provisions are supposed to prevent Soviet cheating. But, as defense expert Frank Gaffney points out, these involve the "right to visit only those places where Soviet cheating is unlikely."¹⁵⁸ Gaffney notes that the Soviets could easily continue to deploy SS-20s in the same manner as they deployed the SS-16s which were outlawed under SALT II. They deployed them in garages or other hidden shelters. If these were out of the range of the areas in which U.S. inspection teams are permitted to go, the SS-20s could remain hidden indefinitely.¹⁵⁹ In fact, we did not discover the SS-16 until several years after it was deployed.

     Another problem with the INF Treaty is that the provisions for inspection are skewed in favor of the Russians. The Soviet facility at Votkinsk where U.S. teams will be stationed does not even produce SS-20s. They are produced elsewhere and shipped to Votkinsk for final assembly. Nevertheless, the United States facility at Magna, Utah, where the Soviets can inspect, is currently used to actually produce ballistic missiles.

     Since the Pershing IIs and SS-20s are assembled differently, different inspection procedures apply for the two missiles. The SS-20 is assembled in a plant while the Pershing exits the plant in stages and is assembled on site. Therefore, the U.S. can only inspect objects as large as a completed SS-20 missile, 63.4 feet, while the Soviets can inspect anything leaving the U.S. plant that is larger than 12.1 feet.¹⁶⁰ Thus the treaty gives the Soviets ample opportunity to inspect valuable U.S. technology.

     A final, fatal flaw in this ridiculous treaty is that it allows continued production of the modern, mobile SS-25. National security expert James Hackett asks, "Why ban SS-20s when Moscow is building SS-25s that can strike the same targets? The small mobile missiles covered by this agreement can be hidden or camouflaged and not be seen by satellites."¹⁶¹

     The entire United States Senate acted like the blind men and the elephant when they ratified the INF Treaty. Each saw in it exactly what they wanted to see and ignored everything else. And with their eyes wide open these blind leaders of the blind are leading us into an extremely vulnerable position.

     The treaty provides that all of the INF weapons are to be destroyed within three years after the treaty enters into force,¹⁶² which happened on June 1. But I don't believe the United States will wait that long to remove them from operational capability. To show our good faith, we will most likely remove them from operational status immediately. As soon as they are gone it is only a matter of time before the Soviets invade Europe.

     What makes Reagan and the Senate think that a piece of paper will solve our problems with the Soviets? Not only have the Soviets broken every arms control agreement that they have ever signed with us, but they have also had a peace agreement with nearly every country they have ever invaded.

     They had peace treaties with the Georgian Republic, which they absorbed in 1921; the Ukraine, which they absorbed in 1922. They had peace treaties with Czechoslovakia. Then they forced them to cede territory and to set up a cabinet of men loyal to Moscow. Finally, in 1968, they invaded Czechoslovakia. They had nonaggression pacts with Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia, which they invaded and absorbed in the 1940s; with Poland, which they reduced to a puppet state at the end of World War II; with Finland, which they overran in 1940 but which managed to remain independent. They had a nonaggression pact with Afghanistan which they invaded in 1979 and have brutally occupied ever since.

     There's something psychologically wrong with the West. Watching this happen year in, year out, we see that every succeeding nation has fallen for it. And now the government of the United States of America has fallen for it.

     The next agreement in line is START, the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. A 50 percent across-the-board cut in nuclear weapons. Sounds like a good deal, doesn't it? But because of the way U.S. forces are structured, it is far more dangerous for the United States than it is for the U.S.S.R. Even if the treaty doesn't have loopholes and is properly negotiated, it will still be a bad deal.

     The U.S. land-based missile force consists of 1,000 ICBMs. After START, the Soviets will have 3,210 warheads on 699 land-based ICBMs¹⁶³ with which to attack our much-reduced ICBM force of 500 missiles.

     START will have an even worse effect on our submarine and bomber forces. It cuts them in half but does nothing about the Soviet defensive forces designed to defeat them. START will cut the American force of ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) from 37 to about 18. Only 10 or 11 will be at sea at any one time. But the Soviets will still have 270 attack submarines with which to destroy the SSBN force.

     START will cut the American bomber force of 290 planes in half but will do nothing about 2,000 dedicated strategic defense interceptor aircraft, 7,000 strategic air defense radars, and 9,000 Soviet SAMs deployed to stop them.¹⁶⁴ Furthermore, the Soviet civil defense system and ABM system will instantaneously become twice as effective because they will need to defend against only half as many U.S. weapons.

     START is a bad idea from start to finish. It will make a Soviet first strike more likely. And if Reagan or a future president signs it, he will be signing the nation's death warrant.

     I can only turn back to the heart of Saint Germain and invite you to ponder his words. These are from his February 27, 1988 dictation.

     Therefore, beloved, know that that intent is on the drawing boards in Moscow and in the Kremlin and has ever been. It is not new. And therefore, I tell you, glasnost is a propaganda sham! I tell you, the prince out of the Soviet Union is a sham and a liar and a betrayer of the people!

     And I say this directly to the heart of Mikhail Gorbachev:

     "You may fool the people but you have not fooled the ascended hosts of Light and you have not fooled the hearts of the Lightbearers in the earth! And you, Ronald Reagan, are a sham and betrayer of my sponsorship and you also shall know your karma for this betrayal of Europe and the European states!

     "And everyone who has gone after these liars, in the United States Senate and in the nation-states of Europe, know that I, Saint Germain, do stand and my angels with me and you shall not pass and you shall know the judgment of your karma and you shall know it all too late, too late therefore! And you shall have caused, therefore, the downfall of nations, and in so doing you shall have incurred a karma so vast as to be practically impossible to balance in aeons of the future.

     "Therefore I sound the warning and I sound it with Archangel Gabriel! And I announce to you fallen ones, though you may think you are the instruments of the karma of the people, let it be known that if you so become those instruments, the sword of Damocles shall be upon your own heads and your victory shall be short-lived and your triumphs and your celebrations shall be exposed as the very conflagration of hell surrounds you!"¹⁶⁵

     On February 13, 1988, Saint Germain said:

     One does not rest one's case on a hope that enough souls of Light on a planet will deliver the mandate of the violet flame that can be received by the Karmic Board to turn the tide of world history. There is more than violet flame involved, beloved. There is free will.

     And there are many in positions of power this day who have amassed power and wealth and armaments and technology whose free will is committed to world destruction. I should not trust my fate to their hands, nor should you. Therefore, the wise will remove themselves to that point in time and space which they discover by meditation and unerring guidance of my angels is the correct place for them to be.

     Do not consider, then, that you who have not attained to the levels of an Ascended Master may turn the world around merely by the raising of the right hand. If it were so, beloved, we should long ago have done this through you. What you ultimately can do and must do, in all of the promises you have heard, is to invoke that violet flame and to continue to invoke it and use Archangel Michael's Rosary for Armageddon.

     For much will change, much will be set aside. Entire kingdoms may come to their judgment. Yet you must be found out of the way. For this very process to occur, world chemicalization is in order! ...

     Blessed hearts, I trust that I make myself clear. The preparedness at a personal and national level has never been more paramount. Your preparedness in your life can be complete in a matter of months. When you are fully prepared and determined to survive physically in the earth, come what may in all of these predictions and those you have heard elsewhere, you are then a free agent of Saint Germain and you may give your life and heart to this very cause of stopping those conditions in their tracks before they are outpictured, therefore rendering your preparations only a safety valve, a security net, a lifeboat, if you will.¹⁶⁶

     On November 29, 1987, Saint Germain stood in Washington, D.C., and said,

     When all the world has gone mad or asleep around you, beloved, you do not despair, you come into the awareness, truly the direct apprehension of your Godhood. You kindle a sun in a dying world! That is your mission! You kindle a sun and you adore Helios and Vesta, Alpha and Omega, the one true God manifest in all the beauty and glory of His Light emanations! You become a sun! You are the sun, and you will let no Darkness defeat it, put it out or cast a shadow.¹⁶⁷

     Thank you. [1-minute 10-second applause]

     It's always a privilege to address you. And it is profoundly comforting to me and I know it is to the Ascended Masters to have such a wonderful group of souls such as you who desire to hear and ponder in your hearts this message of Saint Germain as he has stumped America and the nations in the past year. But most comforting of all is the reality that you are not only hearers but doers of the Word and the Work of the LORD. Therefore I know you will heed the prophecy and the warning and act in time, in space to Be Prepared!

     God bless you!

     An address by Elizabeth Clare Prophet delivered on Monday, July 4, 1988, at FREEDOM 1988 in the Heart of the Inner Retreat at the Royal Teton Ranch, Park County, Montana, updated for print as this week's Pearl. Note: Throughout these notes PoW is the abbreviation for Pearls of Wisdom.

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