The following quote from the conclusion to Kai Bird’s book on the most powerful man in America from 1940-1975 partially defines our present problem, though the book on John McCloy was published in 1992:

“The costs of building this military and intelligence apparatus have been staggering; the end of the Cold War has left America with an uncompetitive economy burdened with debt, high unemployment, low growth, and income levels more unevenly divided at any time since the beginning of the Cold War.”

Bird’s book, “The Chairman”, read along with “The Wise Men” by Walter Isaacson and Evan Thomas (published in1986), will begin to give one adequate insight into the present mess that is impacting upon every American. “The Wise Men” is a group biography of McCloy and five of his friends: men whose actions created the structure of events that produced the results described in the quote above.
Sixteen years on the problems are much greater and are greatly exacerbated by environmental problems that both limit our options and the time frame in which we can act.

We live in a world of instant information conveyed by a worldwide media web maintained by advertisement that is interested in only one thing: your attention, and will subvert facts on behalf of sensation to achieve it, thus the news will spend 15 seconds on the war between Russia and Georgia and 15 minutes on the sexual behaviour of John Edwards.
Such distraction has become the norm: “and what the net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation.” (Nicholas Carr, Atlantic, July/August 2008)

The problems we face are enormous. They require long range thinking, quiet and deep contemplation. They will not be solved by those who have their faces pressed to a screen or afraid to turn off their cell phones, and alas the possible solutions will not even be grasped by those who have been conditioned by our media to diffuse their concentration.

Since my return to the United States seven years ago, I have been struck by many things as twenty years absence has deeply deconditioned my habitual responses to register impressions that are invisible to others.
What has impressed me the most is the almost pathological inability of most Americans to think quietly about their situation. Peace and quiet seems to threaten and be quickly filled with noise. This kind of behaviour is inimical to deep thought and concentration.

“Soon after the publication of Structure, Kuhn received a letter from Ira Einhorn, a 24 year-old English instructor at Temple University, in Philadelphia. ‘A book such as yours,’ Einhorn began, ‘makes one realize that there are still a few bright lights burning in the wasteland of modern Humanistic thought.’ Einhorn’s 4 page letter continued: ‘A few books are leading the men of thought to accept the consequences of the revolution started by Nietzsche and continued by modern art and science – your book must be placed in the forefront.’ Einhorn also offered suggestions for Kuhn’s future investigations.

Kuhn replied that Einhorn’s letter was ‘by all odds the most perceptive response I have yet received to my book, and it helped my morale immeasurably.’

‘For what it is worth,’ Kuhn continued, ‘I thoroughly agree that the concept of ‘paradigm’ needs all sorts of additional work. I began to se vaguely how some of it must be done, but though I firmly intend to get on with it, I have not yet got clear ideas, much less publishable work on the subject. When there is some, I shall do my best to make sure that you see it.’ Kuhn (who was writing to Einhorn from Berkeley) suggested that they get together when he reached the East coast: and they did.”
Keay Davidson, letter, 10/14/2005

Philip Coppens has dealt most directly with an aspect of my life that 1000s of articles have neglected and so-called friends have refused to speak about, for the taint of pariah might rub off.

The cowardice of those refusing to speak even the simple truth of my network activity has made me aware that I live in a country that has lost its soul, for so many have lied or just remained silent out of fear of association, though anyone with an overview of the tangled web of my relationship to most would say: they owed him a few.

But forgetting is foremost in this country devoted to celebrity and TV sports.

Certainly information wants to be free and wants to be circulated, for unlike soap it does not degrade when others use it, for it does not live under the aegis of the second law of thermodynamics, though how it functions and its law are just as opaque today as they were 40 years ago when I realised that information was more powerful than money and set out to prove such an assertion by living a life dedicated to information not money.

By 1979, when the powers that be decided to cut short my experiment, I was surrounded by the most intelligent people on the planet and had access to scads of the wealthy and powerful.

The network I created to service an end: paradigm change, had grown out of all proportion to its original intent: a theory group to aid those working on the data that Uri Geller was generating in the lab.

Work that I had first seen in Andrija Puharich’s Beyond Telepathy. It is a book that heralds a yet to be achieved change. I convinced my Doubleday editor and now dead friend Bill Whitehead to republish it along with Andrija Puharich’s first book: The Sacred Mushroom.

It is the seminal book in a still outré area of human knowledge, now including the quest for consciousness, that physics refuses to acknowledge, continuing to build ever more expensive matter smashers, though the future was offered to the discipline on a plate or should I say a spoon.

That failure has reduced it to a minor layer in the knowledge arena, for the excitement, genius and the money has gone elsewhere and the house of cards called string theory appears to be the Iraq of physics.

I’m an oceanic intuitive able to espy the entire whale from a tooth, but unlike most oceanic intuitives, I hack up my vision with extensive reading and consultation, so when I envisioned the environmental disaster, now unfolding before our eyes, in 1971 I began to think about how to bring about a massive paradigm shift – something I had been discussing with Tom Kuhn since our first meeting.

When Andrija Puharich tumbled into my life with Uri in tow, soon after, I immediately shifted my energies in that direction, much to the consternation of most of my ecological friends who didn’t understand.

I still lectured extensively on ecology but my focus had shifted for I saw that physics and Uri equalled a paradigm change that would rival Copernicus, opening up technological possibilities that would solve our energy/pollution problem.

Andrija and I began spending more time together, talking through many nights; Ossining became a second home. Ed Mitchell had been promised mucho dinero that never materialized, but he did help finance the SRI work that freaked the intelligence community when Uri turned out to be real and to be able to wipe computer screens.

Disinformation took over; a full spectrum of doubters arose as wiping computer screens implied that nukes wouldn’t function.

The entire tale should be told one day, as an object lesson for social change agents.

Suffice it to say that Uri did his very potent demos for enough top people to produce data that should have changed physics, but the doubters also freaked and letters (some begging) were written that if published, even today, would shock.

I always played fair witness, so my desk became a mare’s nest of explosive information, I found hard to believe.

Uri got tired of being disbelieved.

The story was very powerful, so I put Andrija under house arrest, took over the phone and the mail, held visits to a minimum (we were constantly briefing a host of heavies) and put a pen in his hand.

What emerged was a tale that dwarfed the wildest of sci-fi novels for Uri had put Andrija back into contact with forces whose strange effects were an integral part of our context, but to me were secondary to the paradigm change that I saw as totally necessary for species survival. Andrija, however, had been taken over by the need to save the world, so the forces became his focus, even after Bill Whitehead and I cut the book in half. Andrija was adamant, so Bill and I gave in, as it was Andrija’s tale, I had seen much to confirm the phenomenal side of the tale and the public agreed: Uri was an international bestseller.

But scientists freaked and Andrija became a laughing stock as I found out the next time I was in London and went to see Arthur Koestler with whom I had become quite friendly. His upset communicated deeply, making me aware that a phase of the work was over.

The question of why Andrija suddenly sabotaged his life’s work is complex. We had been warned and spied upon – that is not at issue.

It is also clear to me that Andrija had been taken over by a series of experiences that had become his truth and his telling of that truth was as integral to his on-going survival as was Leary’s relationship to LSD or McKenna’s to DMT.

I had seen it with LSD and wit so many who shaved their heads or started to wear orange: it was a conversion experience and had to damp itself out.

Yet upon deep reconsideration of The Stargate Conundrum, there is obviously more to the story.

The network continued in much enhanced form spreading out to 28 countries including a number that were behind the Iron Curtain.

Tesla, mind control, P.K. Dick and psychotronic weapons became my daily bread (not nourishing). I found myself courted by intel from both sides and given explosive information that few were capable of evaluating. Information I shared with almost no-one.

In the midst of all this Holly Maddux disappeared. I mourned for months and got deeper into matters that required more backup than I had.

The Rockefeller circle tried to recruit me directly, but public office was not of interest and I was too busy to give it even a second thought.

Then the Institute of Politics – a Kennedy organization – located at Harvard – offered me a position.

I spent three months meeting the people who run our politics and being courted by the CIA.
I was asked by the Prince of Iran (the shah’s nephew) to run his soon to be established satellite network; I refused for political reasons.

I went off to Yugoslavia and found myself (in retrospect) in the middle of a complex cold war game, though Tesla was my focus.

I was asked to help write and act in a high level soap about the gods. Omni began a major interview. Etc. Then my first life ended.

The issue of the separation of powers and its unconstitutional violation by the passing of the Einhorn Law looms largely in my case.

It is also in the news at present as a result of the FBI’s invasion of the office of a member of the House of Representatives.

Thus it is worth taking some time to explain the concept which lies at the very basis of our form of government.

The modern history of the development of our form of government emerged from the desire to restrain the power of the rule of one, or in or most immediate history: the king. This attempt to restrain the king has a long history in England and reaches a climax with the actual trial and beheading of a king during the mid 17th century.

That action is as exemplary an act as one can find in recent annals of western political thought, for it asserts the right to question authority at the deepest level and must be seen as a precursor to both the American and French Revolutions.

It also stirred up much discussion about the nature and type of government that would be adequate in a society that was slowly leaving the remnants of its feudal ways and entering the industrial revolution.

Two concepts come up again and again in this discussion as it was held among political thinkers during the 17th and 18th century in England and Europe and then those gathered in Philadelphia to turn a confederacy of states into a more perfect union: A great concern to limit the power of the executive, as the ‘tyranny’ of King George was paramount in everyone’s mind; a way to maintain the separation of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the envisioned government, as a means of providing a check on all three branches by limiting each to a particular limited realm of power.

The debate both before and after the constitutional convention, held during a hot Philadelphia summer, is unequaled in the quality of discussion about how propertied free white men can best live together in freedom and tranquility.

It was a positive movement in spite of its neglect of the majority of people (Blacks, Indians, Women) who shared the space of the discussers.

The principle of the separation of powers was basic to the political construction that our founders created. It has remained so to this day. The principle has been protected again and again by both the federal and Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The case law is clear: A law that violates the separation of powers is unconstitutional.

The Philadelphia DA’s office knew this when they proposed the Einhorn Law and the Pennsylvania Legislature knew this when they passed the law, but mob rule prevailed as it has prevailed since 9/11 in issue after issue as a frightened polity was stampeded into an egregious war and a Patriot Act that demeans the very basis of what this country has attempted to stand for before W and his neo-con crew took over.

We don’t do torture. We don’t spy on innocent citizens. We don’t massacre civilians. We respect the Geneva Convention.

WE BELIEVE IN A RULE OF LAW

Or we used to until W took over.

The reason for maintaining the separation of powers is easy to maintain on a practical level:

1. I was tried in absentia for reasons that were never explained.

2. My court decision became final.

3. Only a court can overturn a final decision.

4. If the legislature is allowed to do so that would allow someone who has lost a civil suit to go to the legislature and have a law passed that would overturn the losing decision.

5. But then the original winner could have another law passed, and

6. There would never be any closure.

That is why the Einhorn Law is unconstitutional: It attempts to overturn a final judicial decision with a legislative act.

By doing so it tramples all over the separation of powers and grinds judicial prerogatives into the dust.

Any honest judge would react in horror, as has every lawyer who has looked at the situation.

The law is a very formal enterprise. It is based upon precedent and accepted principles. It should be blind in the application of its principles. Ira Einhorn should not be treated differently than anyone else, publicity (most of it factually inaccurate) notwithstanding.

The law not the mob should rule.

Both the law and our legal tradition must be maintained.

The Einhorn Law flaunts these principles and casts distain upon the law just as W and his minions have brought distain to our history by lying about Iraq and fostering a context in which torture, massacre and denial of any due process can take place.

Our system has been placed under great strain by people who have traded expediency for honor, and usurped power that is not theirs.

We must have the courage to rid ourselves of these traitors to our heritage, just as the founders had the courage to rid themselves of King George.

What has been done in our name has demeaned our past; we must not allow it to demean our future.

Due process in legal matters is what separates barbarity from civility. It along with the concept of Habeas Corpus form cornerstones upon which our law used to be built.

Then along came W. Nero Bush who has destroyed the American constitution, with much complicity from our elected representatives, during the last 5 years.

What has happened at the national level is echoed in Pennsylvania wherein many innocent men and women are doing hard time for crimes they did not commit and suffering egregious violations of due process as the basic foundations of our law disappear in a concerted effort to strip protection from those fighting for their freedom.

I can illustrate this process from my own case, for it is the one I know best.

My original prosecutor, Barbara Christie, withheld Brady (exculpatory) material from us under discovery, employing a subterfuge to do so.

She took a private report (paid for by the Maddux Family), generated by two ex-FBI agents, reduced the size of the pages, thus allowing her to disappear the page numbers and remove five sightings of my supposed victim, made six months to a year after the prosecution claimed Holly Maddux was killed. A claim that they maintained for 23 years thus fixing the date in stone.
It took many court hearings to uncover the exculpatory material due to us, BUT, two of the reported sightings (made by two Philadelphia police detectives) were withheld until 2002.

Ms. Christie also refused to allow forensic results to stand on their own merits as twice (the FBI and Toxicon Associates) failed to produce results that supported her contentions. The man skipped over, Dr. Tumosa, to allow the more prestigious outside labs to have their say, did the 3rd round of testing. He achieved some partial results, BUT, the results came from a procedure (a new test he invented) that no honest court of law could accept as the procedure was never published or peer reviewed, which violates both standards that rule in our courts: Frye and Daubert.

I did not kill Holly Maddux, but the continuing due process violations made me aware that I would not receive a fair trial, so I left.

While I was away, the DA handed over 60 volumes of my journals to a writer, Steven Levy, who used stolen material for his own profit while writing a damning one-sided book about me. Of course such tainted evidence should have been excluded from the trial.
The journals had been seized under warrant as evidence; the act of their being given to a journalist for publication is unique in American case law as is the unconstitutional Einhorn Law which DA Lynn Abraham caused to be passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in order to trick the French into sending me back to the USA.

My appointed closet prosecutors, Strutin and Cannon, were loathe to challenge Judge William Mazzola in any way, so they placidly allowed him to forego pre-trial testimony on the Journal Issue as he knew how explosive it was, then failed to challenge the use of the journals on two other very solid grounds: chain of custody and the DA’s allowing pre trial publication of evidence seized under warrant, thus tainting the evidence and exposing the defendant to unprecedented pre-trial publicity generated by the prosecution.

“And what has happened in this case – and I challenge defense counsel or anybody else to site any case ever – and I really do mean that – ever in the state of Pennsylvania – possibly the whole country – that has so personalized and so sensationalized not just the case but a defendant.”

NOTES OF TESTIMONY 9/10/2002, Joel Rosen, prosecutor

My closet prosecutors also failed to challenge Dr. Tumosa’s obviously bogus test.
If they had done correct legal work, most of the prosecution evidenced would have been excluded from the courtroom.

Judge Mazzola also functioned as a prosecutor: while I was testifying Asst. DA Carmen Lineberger held up a 12X4 inch bag with the letters “Bullshit Bag” inscribed on it. That is what my counsel was told. When they complained about this and asked her to be questioned under oath, the judge refused as it was obvious grounds for dismissal.

In my defense, we presented 3 of the people who saw Holly, alive, long after her supposed death. One had died. Then we presented women who had spent nights and weekends with me while the body of the deceased supposedly lay within 10 feet of us, producing a smell that the medical examiner, Halbert Fillinger, described to the jury as being impossible to sustain for 10 minutes. No one smelled anything.

It had to be obvious to the jury that Holly was not killed on the date that the prosecution insisted on, but all of their case upon and that all of our defense was predicted upon. It was also obvious to Judge Mazzola, so in his charge to the jury, changing the indictment, he told them that the date of death was not an essential element of the crime.

This destroyed my defense.

After my conviction, he broke all law and precedent by reseating the jury in its box and invited microphones and TV cameras into the courtroom. Cannon and Strutin were shocked, but I’m a pariah and thus fair game. There is no law that applied to me in Pennsylvania. Anything can be done.

By statute Judge Mazzola was supposed to file his 1925(a) statement “forthwith”. He took 29 months. He assumed the role of a second prosecutor. Strutin and Cannon were silent, so I filed 9 motions. The judge was six months is contempt of court re: 2 court orders to file, when his untimely brief was finally filed it should not have been considered by the Superior Court. In the history of the case both Judge Mazzola and my closet prosecutors lied about the 9 docketed motions I filed.

The superior court decision was politics not law, based upon a tissue of lies and fallacious reasoning. I will parse it in another article.

My case is an emblem of what American behavior has become both inside and outside of court. The following quote from the New York Review Of Books, January 11, 2007 describes rendition in action, rendering American justice oxymoronic. It is what Good Americans are allowing their government to do.

“One of them took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony, crying, trying desperately to suppress myself, but I was screaming…They must have done this 20 or 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over.”

That I did not kill Holly Maddux on September 11, 1977, as alleged by the prosecution for twenty-three years and steadfastly maintained through two trials, was demonstrated so strongly by the defense at my trial that Judge Mazzola was forced by his obvious bias to tell the jury to ignore the date, though the date was integral to what both the prosecution and the defense did at the trial.

His actions at the end of my trial as demonstrated in the enclosed two pages (Section II) taken from my Superior Court Appeal, made a mockery of the trial and violated the very nature of Due Process, the foundation of American Law.

His “aside” (there are no asides in law) deprived me of a defense, for he changed what I was charged with after the trial was over, rendering the entire process a ludicrous and expensive farce.

His shameful behavior intensified by his ignorant attack on me at the end of the trial is in direct violation of the principles enunciated by Chief Justice Roberts in his confirmation hearing who made one thing clear: A judge at a trial must remain a referee no matter what his personal feelings.

Judge Mazzola was not a referee, but a second prosecutor during the entire trial bending over backwards to accommodate the prosecution by making conscious judicial error after judicial error that did away with any possibility of a fair trial.

His behavior was reprehensible.

What journalist has the courage to call his kangaroo court into question?

What Journalist has the courage to bring Mazzola’s actions into the cleansing light of the sun?

SECTION II

X. APPELLANT IS ENTITLED TO A NEW TRIAL AS A RESULT OF THE TRIAL COURT’S ERROR IN INSTRUCTING THE JURY THAT IN ASSESSING APPELLANT’S GUILT, IT WAS NOT BOUND BY THE DATE OF THE KILLING OF THE VICTIM THAT WAS ALLEGED IN THE INFORMATION, SEPTEMBER 11, 1977

The trial court erred when it instructed the jury that in assessing appellant’s guilt, it was not bound by the date of the killing of the victim that was alleged in the Information, September 11, 1977. As a result, appellant is entitled to a new trial.

The trial court instructed the jury as follows:

“As an aside, I would also advise you that you are not necessarily bound by the date alleged in the indictment in this case. The date of the death is not an essential element of the crime.

You may find the defendant guilty if you are satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the crime charged even though you’re not satisfied that it occurred precisely on the specific date mentioned on the bill of indictment.” (NT 10/16/02 p. 184).

Appellant submits that the trial court erred when it instructed the jury that in assessing appellant’s guilt, it was not bound by the date of the killing of the victim that was alleged in the Information, September 11, 1977.

In Commonwealth v. Groff, 378 Pa/ Super. 353, 548 A.2d 1237 (1988), citing Commonwealth v. Devlin, 460 Pa 508, 333 A.2d 888 (1975), “the prosecution must fix the date when an alleged offense occurred with reasonable certainty.” The doctrine that the Commonwealth is allowed a reasonable measure of flexibility applies only in cases in which an assault on a child is involved. Id.

A variance in the date of the offense charged is fatal where it misleads the defendant at a trial, involves an element of surprise prejudicial to the defendant’s efforts to prepare his defense, precludes the defendant from anticipating the prosecution’s proof or impairs a substantial right. See Commonwealth v. Ohle, 503 Pa. 566, 470 A.2d 61 (1983), quoting Commonwealth v. Pope, 455 Pa. 384, 317 A.2d 887 (1974).

Herein, during appellant’s first trial, which was held in absentia, and his second trial the Commonwealth never wavered in its claim that Ms. Maddux was killed on September 11, 1977. Appellant’s defense against the charges was premised upon the fact that the commonwealth alleged that the killing occurred on September 11, 1977. Appellant presented a number of witnesses, including people who stayed in his apartment soon after the day on which the victim was killed, and people who saw the victim months after the date of the offense charged based upon the Commonwealth’s firm allegation that the victim met her death on September 11, 1977 (N.T. 10/9/02 p. 67-76, 97-110, 122, 145-156, 161-162, 165-167, 171-186). Had appellant known that the trial court intended to instruct the jury in this manner, he either would not have presented these witnesses or would have presented additional witnesses to cover a broader period of time.

The trial court’s instruction had the impact of significantly defeating or diminishing appellant’s defense. In view of the Commonwealth’s continued claim with regard to the date of death, it was not entitled to a jury instruction that had the effect of varying the date on which the victim met her death.

Under these circumstances, the trial court erred when it instructed the jury that in assessing appellant’s guilt, it was not bound by the date of the killing of the victim that was alleged in the Information, September 11, 1977. Accordingly, appellant is entitled to a new trial.

The right to express an opinion is a precious right protected by the first amendment. That amendment and the nine others that form the Bill of Rights was given to our nation very early in its existence by the assiduous work done by James Madison; a man who is finally being given his historical due. Our other rights enumerated in the first ten amendments to the constitution, are slowly being rendered null buy the fear mongering that W and his ilk had been using to destroy our 230 year old experiment in democracy.

These freedoms form the very basis of our way of life, consumption or should I say over-consumption notwithstanding. Our ancestors died to give us those freedoms that Turks, Chinese or some Europeans don’t fully have. The time may come and shortly, alas, when some of us may again have to bleed to protect such rights.

Yet so many of the opinions expressed today are based upon ideology or incorrect facts. Our media and blogs are often filled with sheer bluster producing a clash of opinions that does not produce clarity, but confusion and chaos instead.

Any discussion that leads to greater understanding must be based upon a grasp of the facts that underlie the situation under discussion.

Iraq is a good case in point. It is now costing us $338,000 a minute. Its final bill will probably reach two trillion dollars. Over 15,000 dead and seriously injured. Many lives disrupted and destroyed. Our reputation in taters. And worse, what we have done to the Iraqis and their environment. Shame is all I can feel as the images flicker in my mind.

All based upon lies and years of using ideology instead of facts to understand the situation in Iraq. We’ve made an unholy mess that will haunt us and the suffering Iraqis for decades.

W and his team must be held to account. The reason for our making such an egregious mistake brought carefully to light, so that such behavior is seen for what it is – contemptuous – and that we can continue to protect that first amendment from that produced the criticism that lead to the election defeat that will allow the democrats to expose the secret decisions that underlie the empirical presidency of W.

It will cause dissension and great opposition.

W wants to hide his mistakes, but they must be exposed if we are to survive as a nation and to find a way to provide some recompense for destroying people and a land that is over 5,000 years old.

Controversy over the attacks on 9/11 continues. Despite UNITED 93, a film I found very compelling, there are those who think that crash and whatever hit the Pentagon were both fabrications. Even though there is no question that something hit the twin towers, a lot more people suspect the government had a hand in the collapse of the towers and neighboring WTC 7.

But those numbers pale in comparison to those who distrust the reasons given for attacking Iraq. Was Colin Powell misled or misleading is his presentation to the United Nations? Did the administration honestly think there were WMDs posing a nuclear threat to the region, or were we lied to in an attempt to get us to accept an action we never would have accepted otherwise?

After all, this administration has always operated in secrecy and doubt. Did polling officials in Florida and Ohio rig the results that favored Bush over Gore and then Kerry? Was the Diebold Corporation, which manufactured many of the voting machines, complicit? After all, the president of Diebold “promised” the state of Ohio to Bush.

After election, the administration established a pattern of secrecy. Documents that had been de-classified were re-classified. Wiretaps were ordered and first legitimized with claims of warrants. Then, even the pretense of warrants was dropped. Cheney, with close ties to big oil, formed an energy task force, refusing to release the identities of the participants. We do know that environmentalists, conservationists, and alternative fuel folks did not need to apply. Is it any wonder that the public feels bamboozled by the explanations for soaring fuel costs?

Halliburton, still doling out deferred payment to Cheney, wins no-bid contracts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and even when those contracts are executed with shabby accountability, they are renewed.

Bush told us he is a “compassionate conservative.” His compassion apparently extends only to big business and the rich, the primary beneficiaries of his tax cuts. The poor need not apply. He tried to privatize Social Security in the name of rescuing it, like rescuing a drowning man with a large, heavy rock. The Medicare Prescription Drug program? Tailored to the needs of the pharmaceutical industry, and if you can’t figure it out, you must have Alzheimer’s, for which you need an expensive medication.

It seems like we’ve added a fourth branch of government, i.e., the Great American Lobby, headquartered on K Street, de facto president Jack Abramoff. The speaker of the House resigns in a flurry of charges of corruption. A congressman is caught on tape accepting bribes, the money is found in his freezer, and he has the audacity to complain about the F.B.I.’s intrusion. The Democrats and Republicans alike issue statements denouncing the F.B.I’s intrusion. Is that chutzpah or what?

Actually, that’s small potatoes. We got our knickers in a knot over the awarding of port security to Dubai Ports World, yet nobody even noticed that Treasury Secretary John Snow, under whose aegis the deal was awarded, is a former executive of CSX, a container shipping firm with links to Dubai Ports World and the Carlysle Corporation, which you learned about if you saw FAHRENHEIT 9/11. The revolving door of cronyism between government and industry spins again.

One after another corporation is exposed as running a shell game. The executives at Krispy Kreme were misleading their investors and employees right out of the Enron playbook both of which went belly-up after their executive officers reaped millions. Turns out the high and noble institution, the University of California, has been handing out bonus packages right and left, in blatant violation of its rules and procedures, hoodwinking the Regents, and the President of the University hardly seems ashamed. The lid is about to blow on Fannie Mae, the largest facilitator of mortgage lending in the country. Turns out the Army Corps of Engineers may have bungled the job in rebuilding the levees and floodwalls of New Orleans, not just now but in the past, but of course the Corps denies it. At least the President of the University of California had the decency to admit his wrongdoing. “Taking responsibility” has become rare and as ineffectual as taking umbrage.

Or perhaps taking confession. Instead of taking responsibility for its pedophilic priests and putting them out of the harm’s way of children, the RC Church simply rotated them from one parish to another, all the while denying any wrong-doing, until victims began collecting millions. Then something had to be done.

Before the threat of avian flu appeared to subside, our government had purchased millions of doses of Tamiflu, manufactured by Roche from a formula owned by Gilead. Who was the former chairman of Gilead before he became Secretary of Defense? You got it. Is it any wonder that bird flu is now being spoken of as a hoax?

Same with global warming. I happen to believe it is a reality, but I’m waiting for the next conspiracy theory to allege that the administration is doing it on purpose to facilitate drilling in Alaska.

Last but not least, our sports and entertainment industries. Barry Bonds is booed as he breaks Babe Ruth’s record. Was it skill or steroids? The last two contestants make it to the finals of “American Idol.” Was it votes or manipulation?

I was inspired to compose this essay by rumors circulating about “American Idol.” Did Reuben win over Clay Aiken because the producers suspected Clay might be gay? Are the judges’ comments a not-very-subtle attempt to influence voters? Are the phone lines rigged (like voting machines) to give votes cast for one contestant to another contestant (a notion I would seriously consider if I found out Diebold makes the equipment)?

If you add up all the above aspects of life in which trust is at a minimum, corruption seemingly can’t get any more rampant, and the notion of “truth” is beginning to seem like a cruel joke, the mental state of America is somewhere between utter cynicism and blatant paranoia. The motto seems to be, or seems that it ought to be, “Trust no one.”

When I was growing up, i.e., until day before yesterday, it was during and after WWII. We were “good guys,” fighting for the “right” causes, not just for self-interest (at least until Pearl Harbor). Just about everybody did his or her part to support the war effort. The notion that FDR had links to industries that might be profiting from the war would have been unthinkable, and I don’t recall that notion ever being entertained.

Then it was perhaps Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex that brought the sobering awareness that something could begin to stink in the state of Denmark. The film, WHY WE FIGHT, spells out that thesis. In America, we hold history in low regard and scarcely remember our own. If it were otherwise, we would “remember” many periods in our history when government and various industries conspired against “the people.”

The next glass of cold water, as I recall, came when Spiro Agnew was exposed as a sleazy, two-bit crook, and I wondered how in the world Nixon came to pick him. Watergate answered that question for me.

Kennedy was my hero, but I’ll have to admit that my unmitigated admiration took a blow when I learned what a womanizer he was and the first “conspiracy” theory I can remember, that Marilyn Monroe had been offed because she knew too much.

The second conspiracy theory I remember lives on, namely that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby were not isolated nut cases, acting alone, that perhaps our president had been assassinated by our government.

And then there were the lies about Viet Nam. As Robert McNamara relates in FOG OF WAR, Gen. Westmoreland once speculated that if we hadn’t “won” the war, he and McNamara would have been tried as war criminals for crimes against humanity. And they all lied, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, asking us not to believe our eyes as we watched the 6:00 news, asking us not to puke when the National Guard shot the students at Kent State.

That’s it, I think, the extent of lying, so prevalent that is has become the expectation. Maybe not even lying, more the Art of the Dodgeful Answer, “I did not have sex with that woman”…unless you count fellatio as sex. Forget “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” It’s more like “the parts of the truth that make me look good.”

“Integrity” is a quaint term that used to mean something in American society, a term that Webster defines as “steadfast adherence to a strict moral and ethical code.” It’s as though collectively, we have decided to abandon the code of honesty, in our commerce, our government and other higher institutions, even in our sports and entertainment. Not just caveat emptor, buyer beware, but citizen beware. That, my friends, to borrow terms from construction and real estate, is dry rot of the infrastructure of our character. Our piers and joists have been eaten away by the termites and beetles of greed and self-interest, unabated by compassionate enlightenment. Any house like that is bound to fall down, and there is no homeowners insurance for such losses.

If I am to believe the consensus of the letters and communication that I have received of late from those I most respect, time has run out on us and we are doomed as a civilization.

But: having led and participated in mass movements that changed the rhythms of my society, I cannot accept defeat so easily, though data overwhelms and that data, collected by others, is supported by my daily experience of abrupt climate change happening before my eyes.

It is January 4, 2007 in the mountains of West Central Pennsylvania as I write this.

January here is normally frost, snow, chilling wind and cloud covered sky.

Yet all I have experienced since the end of summer – usually in early September – has been more summer and a perpetual spring that has brought almost no ground frost, no frost to speak of, balmy days, blue sky, a six day period after Thanksgiving filled with dandelions, flies, butterflies and bees and now in January mornings filled with bird song, for the birds seem to be nesting and think that spring has come.

These changes are happening much faster than the models predict as the situation we are attempting to map is non-linear, in extreme perturbation and probably broken as the best informed thinker, James Lovelock, has recently declared.

Terrorism, Iraq and the other headlines are minor compared to the threat we are facing, yet we are spending trillions ($1012) on such flea bites and almost nothing on the impending and ever accelerating disaster that threatens.

The failure of leadership defies description.

We need to create a planetary situation room that has a broadcast facility with satellite and internet links that slowly gears up to real-time coverage.

We need to get the best on the planet involved in operation energy transformation.

We need a global Manhattan Project directed toward perfecting new clean energy sources with a practical adjunct that produces new working models of everything that uses energy.

We need thinkers focused on ecological economics, so that we can replace our present system manned by a blind priesthood. We need to replace more the only value capitalism honors, with a broad measure of personal and ecological well-being.

The concentration on survival, if done with calmness and determination, could provide a new focus for the present madness of consumption that is eating the planet alive.

But, the time is very limited, for the human response to the coming environmental destruction will be far worse than the actual destruction itself.

Once it gets going our civilization and our future will dissolve before our eyes.

We built a bomb in a very short time.

Surely we can mobilize to change our energy use when the threat is greater and the stakes are higher.

Can’t we? Or are my friends correct?

The following brief comment is a response to: “The Megacity: Decoding the Chaos of Lagos,” by George Parker, New Yorker, November 13, 2006

Note: George Parker’s first hand reports from Iraq were a model of informative journalism and an adumbration the debacle that we have brought upon ourselves and the Iraqis. His book The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq is now in paperback.

I picked up the above titled article while rereading Dante.

Packer’s description of present day Lagos chilled me as much as Dante’s. Contemporary Lagos is indeed hell on earth and Packer’s article is full of descriptions that would not be out of place in Dante’s Inferno.

Worse, however, are the western intellectuals who are now feeding off of Lagos and other megacities without any real on the ground knowledge. A ‘perverse” phenomenon that I wish to note as the problems of a declining America increasingly need the attention and concern that Africa and other parts of the world are now receiving.

Stuart Brand, the founder of the Whole Earth Catalogue is quoted as follows: “Squatter cities are vibrant .. each narrow street is one bustling market.” He seems to think that the horrors that Packer describes is a “cure for third world poverty and an extraordinary profit making opportunity.,” [Packer’s worlds].

I found Brand’s enthusiasm ridiculous in light of Packer’s description from the actual experience of Lagos.

Rem Koolhaas, a leading designer/architect is worse: he and his team were so intimidated by Lagos that they were afraid to leave their car on their first visit. They then rented the president’s helicopter. Things obviously looked better from the air:

“From the air, the apparently burning garbage head turned out to be, in fact, a village, an urban phenomenon with a highly organized community living on it s crust…what seemed from above an accumulation of dysfunctional movements, seemed from above an impressive performance, evidence of how well Lagos might perform if it were the third largest city in the world.” [Rem Koolhaas]

Packer’s comment on this idiocy: “The impulse to look at an “apparently burning garbage heap/’ and see an “urban phenomenon,’ and then make it the raw material of an elaborate aesthetic construct, is not so different from the more common impulse not to look at all.”

An impulse that seems to be rampant in the world as the data from global warming piles up and the wave of destruction that it is ushering in gathers strength.

Think I’m exaggerating; see for yourself.

Google: The Revenge of Gaia by James Lovelock and then perhaps read the book.

The New Brain, Richard Restak, Rodale Press, 2003

“The dumbing-down, lowest common-denominator dynamic that cable and internet and tabloid culture have brought means that anything that is big and exclusive and legitimate is quickly turned into something trivial, tawdry, and dumded-down. If we had the most consequential scoop of all times about wrongdoing in the Bush Administration, it would quickly turn into “how’s it polling? What are they saying about it on Drudge? What are they saying about it on “Hannity and Colmes”?’ And it would be reduced to its cheapest most ephemeral essence.”
Mark Halperin, New Yorker, October 25, 2004

Richard Restak has written a small book that very deftly and gracefully provides the general reader with easily understandable information from the edge of neuroscience.

Its small package contains information that will eventually dwarf two major public interest issues that have occupied headlines for a while: tobacco and fast food.

Restak’s presentation of the research brings closer to scientific validity the intuitive awareness that many socially concerned people have shared for decades: presentation of violence in the media is a serious problem that effects us all, children in particular.

Restak’s 212 page book contains: a short overview introduction; an opening chapter on the plasticity of the brain; 7 chapters on research that will effect how all of us think about ourselves and live in the world; a concluding overview chapter that talks very directly about both the opportunities that the new knowledge opens up and the ethical dilemmas that our greater knowledge will force us to face.

New tools are now able to monitor the brain in both a safe and non evasive way. The information abstracted by these tools and massaged by computer programs enables researchers to formulate hypotheses and make predictions that are testable.

The correlation between watching violent action on TV and committing acts of violence is now established.

Restak talks with great sensitivity about loss and how TV violence is causing our inability to react to the pain of others. We are becoming desensitized to a whole spectrum of negative behavior.

He shows us what doing two or more things at once is producing. Multi-tasking is ineffective and costs us both in time and accuracy. Faster, faster, faster is the theme of an increasingly superficial age (read the head quote to this review slowly and ponder it.) that is characterized by increasing slippage.

He looks at what this frantic pace of processing is doing to our lives and the fact that ADD/ADHD may be classified as diseases, but is actually a lifestyle now being forced on people if they wish to survive.

He provides a number of moving anecdotes about what this lifestyle is doing to personal relationships.

Our frantic rush is overseen and controlled by an economic system that is ruled by one linear variable and can be simply defined as more. Anyone who has studied systems theory knows that the sad anecdotes that Restak presents are examples of sub optimization: the destructive output of an increasingly mad socioeconomic system that has avoided Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety.

There are positive fruits to the knowledge gained by the research, but they will be but noise in the system, if we don’t pay attention and be more mindful of the wrong pathway that our system-as-a-whole is now perusing.

Our too concentrated linear economic behavior is rapidly making the planet unlivable. What Restak writes about is reflective of the total situation.

If we fail to heed the mirror he holds up, we are looking at species extinction.