If you’re still looking for something new and exciting to do with last year’s federal tax rebate, The Washington Post has a flight of fancy for you to consider. The Post reported on Thursday that the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, an Indian mystic best known for bamboozling the Beatles and pushing organic-only food orthodoxy, wants your money for a bizarre plan to bring about world peace.
The “Maha,” you see, is selling “peace bonds,” which will be issued by his own “country” — a fictional, borderless, landless stroke of imagination that now has its own currency (according to a recent Forbes article) but, alas, no democracy. “The Democratic system is so cruel, so cruel,” the Maharishi told the Post last week. He calls it “damn democracy,” preferring a political system with a single, appointed ruler as its head of state.
Promoters of the “Global Country of World Peace” — including the Natural Law Party of the United States and its activist-controlled group Mothers for Natural Law — plan to spend funds raised from the Maharishi’s bond issue to build 3,000 “peace palaces, and to hire 40,000 full-time meditators” (who will somehow, we are told, alter the world’s consciousness and make us all a little bit less nasty to each other).
Pressed to explain how he can promise to pay between 6 and 7 percent interest to bond-holders, the Maharishi added that the funds would also go toward buying “agricultural lands.” Maharishi follower Sam Katz tells the Post that all 3,000 “peace palaces” will be surrounded by organic-only farms whose profits will cover the bonds’ financial obligations.
In late 2000, a landmark Center for Consumer Freedom report shed considerable light on the Maharishi’s use of organic agriculture flim-flammery to fund his multi-billion dollar international empire. If you haven’t read it yet, click here for additional details on the Maharishi’s dangerous organic-only doctrine.
