This is a book about the humanoid's forward march into Cosmic Oblivion. The problem turned out to be how to do this cheerfully, with a dash of science judgments, together with the interviews of strategically placed persons, and, of course, the author's own emotional opinions to tie everything together.
The first four chapters deal with the up-to-date condition of ozone, the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide, our unpredictable comets, and the status and state of potential warfare. Also covered, in passing, are lower case nuisances such as acid rain.
You see at once, with a glance at the remaining eleven chapters, more threatening dangers, each quite different, but with one thing in common: Each is crammed with humanoids. How does terrorism fit into our picture? Is it one movement, or hundreds of movements? Does it have one head, or hundreds of heads? Can we survive if we go on redoubling our population every fifteen years? Corporations were virtually unknown and inconsequential, two hundred years ago; today, what is their status, ideology and, most of all, how big can they get?
Hardly anyone criticizes judges; hardly anyone is looking in the right places. We're talking about extinction — is the crusading newspaper editor already extinct? What edged him out? Presidents and Congressmen are called politicians, and what are politicians called? Economics is made to look tough, but we figured it out; what role do economists play, for the role's the thing.
We were surprised at what we found out about religion, and almost cried at what we found out about education. We met the Rich and spent some time with them. Later we shuddered, for, like Midas, they hold the golden key, but refuse to see the lock.
We, the people, study the emotions of others, but avoid the torment of self-analysis. One question is, when does the neocortex back off and submit to a two billion year old reptilian brain, and what happens then? Aggressiveness, hatred, gluttony: Are we ever really in charge?
This book is about the growth of Capitalism and the death of Democracy. It's about speed, onward and upward to some, but a sinking regression to others. It's about extinction, the extinction of Homo sapiens. Homo neanderthalis is extinct, Homo habilis is extinct. Extinction is not so unique.
It's about "time" — the tick of the clock.
As we read this book, we are humanoids with developing brains that may very well be unique throughout the cycle of all time. Some will end wishing desperately to know our potential, others will harbor a feeling of serenity — God's Will be Done — while others will have read a book.
USEC, they call it. USEC; rhymes with music. The U.S. Environmental Crusade. Fourteen men and women on the podium, all experts.
The discussion about timber and trees seemed to go pretty well. The benefits of clear-cutting were discussed without any clear-cut decision. Accelerated cutting was deplored.
Someone from the audience volunteered "what a beautiful pleasure it is to drive along the highways in the Pacific Northwest; how healthy all the trees look". Then some dissident from the audience claimed that he and his family had "stopped the car and walked a few hundred yards through the trees and had found nothing beyond but barren land and stumps". But then, someone on the podium, a U.S. Senator, pointed out that we cut our trees, true, but with careful planning, and when he laughed and said "check our computer, every tree is counted", the crowd relaxed, and everybody laughed approvingly. Then some idiot jumped up and pointed out that the Earth as a whole loses a hundred thousand acres of timber every day, and everybody got unsettled and agitated again.
Next a plain-looking man stood up and walked to one of the aisle microphones and waited. When his turn came, he directed his question to the handsome Senator and this verbatim exchange took place.
Plain Man: Senator, I want to address this question to you.
Handsome Senator: (smiling) I'd be pleased to help.
Plain Man: Scientists warned us, back in the late '70's that we are losing our ozone. I don't read much about that anymore. Will you kindly tell us something about the ozone and whether or not it's still a problem?
Handsome Senator: The ozone is a layer, a sort of blanket that envelopes the Earth. It's part of the atmosphere. The ozone layer dampens the effect of ultraviolet rays. Does that help?
Plain Man: What is the present status of the ozone problem, Sir?
Handsome Senator: (smiling) In the late '70's, a public conference was held on this very problem, brought about through the efforts of our United States. By then much work had been done by scientists, so we had no difficulty identifying the cause of ozone depletion. As I recall, the dangerous element was chlorine which got into the atmosphere, and devoured countless numbers of ozone components. The conference led to a pledge on the part of us and other signatory nations who were present, to withdraw the manufacture of those products responsible for this chlorine menace. Okay?
Plain Man: Thank you, Senator. What is the present status of the ozone problem, if any?
Handsome Senator: Well, nobody's been pounding on my desk, so I'm pretty sure it's under control. (laughter) But let me get your name and check on that. (Senator signals one of his people, who walks down into audience and confers with Plain Man.)
The meeting continued.
Ozone never came up again.
Ozone (O3), a form of ozygen in which there are three atoms in each molecule, instead of two, occurs naturally in the stratosphere or "ozone layer". Our ozone layer protects us from ultraviolet radiation coming from the sun, which, in pure form, can kill. There was no life on the surface of the earth until the ozone layer materialized. Without ozone, to filter out most of the radiation, life could not exist.
The ozone layer is being rapidly thinned, as waste products rise skyward, at an ever increasing pace. The hole in the sky is now the size of the United States. The miscreant is a chemical compound known as CFC, widely used in everything from propellants in spray cans, to fast food cartons, to the manufacture of refrigerators and microchips. Scientists identified the ozone- depletion potential of CFC's as far back as 1974, twenty years ago.
Chlorofluorcarbon (CFC) is an unnatural substance, created by human chemistry, a combination of chlorine, fluorine, and carbon. This chemical combination floats upward, into the atmosphere, where chlorine atoms destroy the ozone layer. CFCs are used extensively now: They also keep hamburgers warm, they make the bubbles in lightweight foam plastic cartons; CFC's are used in dozens of different spray can products, and in building and automobile air- conditioning.
Of the usual amount of protective ozone floating above Antarctica, more than half was destroyed in the spring of one year, 1987. Is there any problem with that? Well, everyone knows that unfiltered sunlight will cause a tremendous rise in skin cancer; ultraviolet also kills the basic nucleic acid, DNA; then mutations arise in our wild animals, and in us. Ozone depletion could also alter the heat balance of the Earth, and change weather, wind and rainfall patterns. After that, the effects become too complex to predict.
When all this became obvious at last, there were high level political discussions, and a global meeting of governments, followed by a treaty, which pledged countries to quit using CFCs by the year 2000. Which may be too late. The United States signed up, and banned CFCs from 1978 onward, but international pacts are punctually ignored, and we ignored this pact along with most other nations.
Ten years later, in 1988, DuPont, of Agent Orange fame, promised to definitely phase out its CFC-11 and CFC-12 within the course of the decade. Have they invented a substitute that won't destroy the ozone? Doubtful — no hullabaloo so far. Will they stop in 1998? Will it matter by 1998?
Special note: Scientists concerned with the problem say that regardless of what European and other nations do now, the worldwide depletion of stratospheric ozone will get worse before it gets better.
Ozone is necessary to life. It is not oxygen. It is a gas that, up close, is poisonous to human life, even in small concentrations. It is created by lightning flashes, and also by high voltage electrical equipment functioning on the Earth. It is not odorless; indeed, it has a strange penetrating odor. Ozone is used on Earth, in controlled amounts, for bleaching, and for sterilizing drinking water, and swimming pool water. But its main function is in blanketing the Earth; if it disappears, all life on Earth will cease. Oxygen contains two atoms, ozone contains three. They have different functions entirely. Ozone breaks down easily and dissipates, unlike the stable oxygen molecule.
The British/French supersonic airplane, Concorde, flies at nine miles and higher. Be thankful we avoided this transportation competition, because a fleet of Concordes would seriously and irreparably damage the ozone layer. Before the Concorde, U.S. experiments indicated that when hydrogen chloride was pumped into the atmosphere, ozone deterioration took place immediately. That prompted NASA to scrap the idea of U.S. supersonic transports.
It takes from 75 to 120 years for chlorine in the ozone to break down. CFC's, present now, will still be there in 2100, gobbling up ozone. And there is no way to get rid of it. You can't vacuum-clean the atmosphere. Because of the way the atomic system works, odd electrons seek to combine into even numbered atoms, and because of unpredicted molecular attractions between ozone (O3) and chlorine, a single atom of chlorine can destroy a hundred thousand molecules of ozone. And in spite of our ban in the 1970's, CFC's multiply and ozone continues to vanish.
A sudden loss of ozone is now being reexamined as a possible cause of dinosaur extinction on land. Paleontologists point out that the fossil evidence in the seas shows that creatures living largely in the water remained relatively unaffected during the dinosaur wipe-out. If dinosaur extinction was caused by ozone depletion, ultraviolet waves would have killed all land animals, but left those in the sea relatively unharmed because of their immersion.
Supernova explosions have also been considered in dinosaur extinction, since an exploding star would send out such a flood of cosmic rays that much of our ozone would be destroyed. Again, theory has it that underwater creatures might miss supernova radiation by staying immersed, and avoid its ultra-violet rays.
The hole in the sky that we mentioned earlier, which is as big as the United States, is over the continent of Antarctica. There is also a small hole over the Arctic Circle.
Natural phenomena cause some erosion of ozone, volcanic activity, and such. Even wind currents, to a certain extent. But we have never before been faced with such persistent depletion as was started by the release of CFC's.
If anyone were to tell you that this problem has been solved by an agreement amongst world powers, forget it. The first informal agreement made was purely voluntary, and was approved by the United States, only because our American scientists and experts were knowledgeable and convincing and warned of serious danger — i.e. certain death. It's just unfortunate that the President of the United States wasn't lucky enough to get the cooperation of the big corporations which manufacture the stuff.
I can imagine this conversation:
Pres. of U.S.: I thought you agreed to stop manufacturing and selling those CFC's that are depleting our ozone supply?
Pres. of Big Corp.: Thank you for calling, Mr. President. You've got to understand that when we commit ourselves to a product, we manufacture a great deal of it.
Pres. of U.S.: I see.
Pres. of Big Corp.: And we also project a certain profit.
Pres. of U.S.: I suppose you do.
Pres. of Big Corp.: And we haven't reached those profit projections yet. But we have slowed production. We recognize that we have a duty to the United States, Mr. President.
Pres. of U.S.: A duty?
Pres. of Big Corp.: Yes, sir. To protect her and keep our country strong, and to honor our obligations to our shareholders, and to protect the jobs of our thousands of employees.
Pres. of U.S.: Uh — I see.
Pres. of Big Corp.: Thank you for calling, Mr. President. You will be at Mrs. Framingham's ball this weekend, I'm sure?
Pres. of U.S.: Why, yes, we will.
Pres. of Big Corp.: I'll see you there, then. I'm flying in a party of friends.
Pres. of U.S.: I see.
Pres. of Big Corp.: Wonderful, Mr. President, we'll see you there. Thank you again for calling.
Other countries have promised to reduce the CFC concentration allowed to drift into the atmosphere, but compliance is still insufficient to call it a solved problem.
So often, decisions are based less on science than on politics. The only reason that CFC emission was brought under control in Britain, which has a miserable environmental record, was because the effort to control CFCs was so much easier than the effort to control the much neglected industrial acid rain, which would entail a monumental fight to force big corporations to spend billions. The British government ducked the acid rain problem by attacking the CFC problem.
Anyway — and here's the bad news — the ozone hole is not like a hole in a sock that you can sew up; scientists aren't sure that the hole won't widen on its own now, and, over the decades, we may lose entirely that protective layer of ozone. Although we in the United States had a lot of those spray cans, our percentage wasn't as much as you might think. Eighty-five percent of estimated global production is elsewhere!
Skin cancer by increased exposure to ultraviolet rays is not the only problem. There's the problem of increased ultraviolet on the water surfaces of the world, begetting an added hazard to small creatures such as phytoplankton. Phytoplankton are very necessary to our food chain. Break that chain, and our problems may be insoluble.
September 8, 1992: An item called "Ozone, Our Nation's Most Significant Air Pollution Problem", pointed out that many people do not yet know the hazards of ozone loss, because the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) refuses to say anything except that air quality currently meets federal standards.
Under the Clean Air Act (1978), the EPA is ordered to review air quality standards every five years.
The American Lung Association filed a lawsuit and forced the EPA to review said standards for ozone, which EPA had neglected for more than ten years; EPA refused to make any changes in standards despite repeated requests from numerous scientists.
October 18, 1992: Without being able to say precisely why, the Worldwatch Institute noted that there has been a worldwide slide in grain production while population continues to grow at record rates; and that fish catches have fallen off, that there have been rising temperatures at the same time, that rain forests are being depleted, and that bird species have been disappearing. But, happily, there has been some reduction in the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's), at least in the U.S.A.
November 26, 1992: At the Copenhagen Environmental Conference in Denmark, environmental officials from 93 countries agreed to eliminate use of ozone-depleting chemicals and to do it in the next four to nine years. Scientists were exuberant, because statistics show that the ozone is disappearing faster than previously forecast. For the same reasons, others were gloomy, because this is an indication that, once started, ozone depletion may be unmanageable, pointing out that some increase in skin cancer, blindness, vulnerability to disease, and damage to marine food chains is now inevitable.
CFC's, the main offender, have now been joined by Halogenated hydrocarbon (HALON), and by Methyl chloroform, and by Carbon tetrachloride (cleaning fluid), as depletion chemicals.
April 15, 1993: Scientists have been using satellites to measure the abundance of ozone-destroying chemicals in the atmosphere. There seems to be more ozone loss over heavily populated parts of the world than ever before.
And ozone levels seem to have also shrunk by about ten percent over parts of Canada, Scandinavia, Russia and Europe.
Chlorine, which destroys ozone, was unusually high above the Arctic areas. In the Arctic Circle, ozone concentrations, at a level of about twelve miles high, decreased by 0.7% per day from mid-February through early March, 1993, a NASA researcher reported, adding that levels of ozone in this part of the atmosphere normally increase this time of the year rather than decrease. This decrease in the protective ozone layer has many scientists worried.
July 1, 1993: ABC-TV, Prime Time Live, ran an ozone segment. At the end of South America, there is a Chilean town called Punta Arenas, which, because of its proximity to Antarctica, is directly under the ozone hole.
The TV segment referred to an April 8, 1993, voyage of Discovery, into the atmosphere to measure the ozone. The numbers that Discovery brought back were startling: We now have a gaping hole in the ozone, measuring nine million square miles. Instead of being as large as the United States, the hole is now three times the size of the United States.
There are 100,000 people living in Punta Arenas. Many of them were interviewed, including some local scientists. Protective creams, and sun glasses are sold in every store in town. Effects are worse in wintertime, where, fifteen miles up into the ozone, winds are strong, and ultraviolet radiation is noticeably greater. In nearby Patagonia, one rancher showed TV viewers the ultraviolet eye infection that has developed in his sheep, forcing the slaughter of six hundred of them.
Radio broadcasts start each day with data on sunshine strength and exposure warnings (also being done in Australia).
In the U.S., CFC's are still widely used in refrigerators and air conditioners for autos, homes and buildings.
We've talked about ozone in terms of CFC almost exclusively. We have not talked about the effect of hydrogen bombs bursting at two hundred thousand feet in the atmosphere, spewing out a dozen kinds of radiation fallout, and its effect upon the ozone. Because we don't know. We do know that ozone (O3) is unstable and collapses easily, we know that CFC's are unbelievably stable and last for over a hundred years, and one atom of CFC will gulp up one hundred thousand molecules of ozone (O3).
Ozone (O3) was unstable to begin with, and we should never have gone near it.
We demand a big bomb from the scientists, and they create it and warn us of Armageddon. Next, scientists discover and warn us of the fragility of ozone. We let ourselves get into the position where the big corporations are making the decisions, not scientists. The motives of ozone scientists and CFC manufacturers are opposite: Science wants to save the world; CFC manufacturers want to make money. In the U.S.A., money wins most arguments.
Volcanic eruptions in the past have caused some ozone depletion. But lightning and man-made electrical activity, and nature's own formulas, have kept a steady balance, up until the introduction of this new non-natural self-destruct money maker. Violent volcanic activity, some new non-natural chemicals like CFC's, more supersonic airplanes: It takes very little to disrupt an unstable molecule of ozone. Science agrees it will get worse before it gets better, and saying their say, can say no more.
Incidentally, you may have seen that news item which showed the President at Mrs. Framingham's party. I didn't know the bright young executive type (BYET) talking with the President, but those of us who can read lips watched carefully once we discovered they were talking about the ozone problem. Here's what we heard:
The Pres.: Then you say that ozone isn't that much of a problem?
BYET: Oh, it can be a very serious problem, but the problem disappears if you have a saleable solution.
The Pres.: Go on, I'm listening.
BYET: Our people are working on something right now that will pump O3 — that's ozone — back into the atmosphere.
The Pres.: Can you do that at ground level?
BYET: That's a very good question, Mr. President. We can do it at ground level and do it very steadily, but, and this is the good news, we can take it into the atmosphere by plane, if we need to.
The Pres.: That will cost a lot of money.
BYET: Oh, yes, we've got millions already into this research.
The Pres.: And you want to be paid for that?
BYET: Yes, sir, of course.
The Pres.: And make a profit?
BYET: Yes, sir.
The Pres.: Isn't that like selling me a poisoned hot dog, and then charging me to pump my stomach?
BYET: (Laughs uproariously) Mr. President, you say the darndest things!
Note: No one has announced any research to restore ozone.
8-7-93: Congress has passed some new environmental laws, aimed at the consumer. It can cost you up to $25,000.00 if you knowingly release CFC's into the atmosphere. Car air conditioning fluid is a CFC, so is Freon. But, believe it or not, the big corporations are allowed to go on manufacturing it until 1996.
We consumers find a leak and don't have it repaired; we are fined up to $25,000.00. The profit makers get three years to phase out CFC's for a better substitute, while suffering no penalty at all if they carelessly spill a railroad-tank or a silo of the stuff. One might say that Washington, D.C., keeps two sets of books, (1) democracy in theory (Fourth of July speeches), and (2) democracy in action. (A set of books audited by the Rich).
January "94: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a new buzz word, "ozone friendly". A government laboratory claims that newly developed chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) will not destroy the ozone layer in the atmosphere as do chlorofluorcarbons (CFCs), that HFCs are "ozone friendly" and have a shorter life than CFCs.
We must keep in mind EPA's reluctance to follow the law in the past. Presidents decide what EPA's enthusiasms shall be.
Then, last year a group of scientists at Oxford University in England speculated that some HFCs might actually do more harm to the ozone than CFCs.
3-1-94: A disturbing new clue to the mysterious disappearances of frogs and toads all over the world points to the Earth's tattered ozone layer. Scientists report that the species which are surviving seem to be blessed with higher concentrations of an enzyme that helps them withstand ultraviolet radiation.
3-10-94: A spokesman for the Sierra Club states that there is no longer room for debate on phasing out chlorine items that drift into the atmosphere, but only how to do it and do it quickly. But it turns out that the chemical industry vigorously and vehemently disagrees; these good people point out that about half of all chemistry involves chlorine, worth an estimated $70 billion annually in sales.
The strength of the chemical industry's argument seemed to be confined to the one point — profit. Everyone else apparently failed to communicate.
Throughout the 20th Century, global scientists have added luster to a multitude of scientific specialties: cosmology, global oceanography, plate tectonics, earthquake predictions, hurricane analysis, and sun spots; they figured out what thousands of years an ice age will last, and what thousands it will recede, and what thousands we will lie on the beach and soak up the sun.
Mother Earth, under the GAIA self-regulating theory, continued to do a super job of balancing environment, climate, oxygen, and food-chains, up to the 1950's or so. Oh, we had a few earthquakes, tectonic movements, and hurricanes, but nothing new. Some quirky days in London and Los Angeles, you couldn't see your hood ornament at high noon, but nothing new there, either.
What we didn't know was that GAIA was fighting for her life. The crisis was already here, but we didn't know. We suspect that this conversation will take place somewhere, not far into the future.
Mom, I put the baby in the guest room, but it's very warm in there.
Thanks, dear. The power company claims that it just doesn't have the power to give everyone full air conditioning. The allotments are all the same.
Is that true, Mom?
I don't know, dear. I don't know.
I just checked, and it's 88 degrees in there.
Well, that's about average. Where's Rebecca?
She's outside playing under the wide canopy. Did they sell wide canopies like that when you were young?
No. No use for them. She knows enough not to look up at the sun. Or to leave the canopy.
I tied her sunglasses on with an elastic band. When you were young —
Please, dear. I've told you so often. The heat came, but not all at once. Long ago, when grandma was a child, days were hot through July and August, but if you made a pitcher of lemonade, you were actually glad. It wasn't this kind of heat. I understand it was 120 degrees someplace in Arizona yesterday.
They say the ozone's half gone now, and that makes it worse, doesn't it?
Yes. Most people are working at night, now. That increases electrical use, which decreases air conditioning, Honey, wouldn't you rather talk about dinosaurs, or dolls, or root beer floats?
(That conversation is not far away, the year 2050.)
As everyone knows, when the weather is foul, and you talk about it, it seems to get worse. So Mom was right, it might be reassuring to talk about dinosaurs, for example. They're the record holders. They were here for 160 million years, and then unaccountably disappeared 65 million years ago. Two species of humanoids, Neanderthal, and Homo habilis (defunct versions of the modern model) might each have lasted no more than two or three hundred thousand years. They advanced slowly, and left no written record of their life on Earth.
The theory called GAIA, the Greek word for Mother Earth, fosters the idea that GAIA has built-in controls, controls which hustle up a hurricane, or a three hundred year "Little Ice Age", such as the one that ended about 1500, or a prolonged rain, or an uncommon amount of sunshine, or what-have-you, to stabilize and correct awkward imbalances.
There are still those who believe that GAIA might induce unprecedented numbers of lightning storms, creating new ozone (O3), thereby repairing the ozone layer that is being eaten by chlorofluorocarbons; or conjure up some magic formula to correct the super-heat nightmare which is just beginning.
GAIA's supposed jurisdiction does not include the sun, so those rays will be pouring in at the same intensity as before. Perhaps somehow (no one can even guess) Mother Earth can clean the carbon dioxide out of her stratosphere (rain won't help; the pollution is high above rain clouds). Most scientists say no.
Most scientists do not accept the GAIA theory; they rather believe that we humanoids are in charge, and that the Earth is overheating because of us. Earth's temperature has risen one degree in the last sixty years, and if it rises as much as two more degrees, we are in deep, deep trouble. In fact, there's enough pollution up there in the stratosphere already, that a rise of two more degrees is already inevitable, no matter what we do. The Earth heats at day and cools at night, but from now on, it will heat up too much in the daytime, and not cool enough at night.
Dinosaurs lived through all sorts of ages, for millions of years, but Homo neanderthalis did not make it through the last ice age. Ice ages come and go every ten or twenty thousand years. The next one is due to commence in about five thousand years. It is doubtful if we will be here; it is doubtful that Homo sapiens will ever make a written record, to leave behind, of any ice age.
If it does arrive in another five thousand years, if we are here, we will have switched our lives to solar power almost exclusively. That, or die.
The present trick is to avoid fouling up the environment irremediably, by continuing to use gasoline, gas, and oil. We must forfeit the Oil Age, and forge ahead to the acceptance of the Solar Age. And we must do it now!
About thirty years ago, climatology and ecology specialists compiled some interesting information: The Earth seemed to be getting warmer, overall. There followed, over the next fifteen years, a lot of observation, deduction, and verification. It shocked scientists to discover they were right; they could tell, without doubt, that mankind's toys were the cause — automobiles and factories — by emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere.
We had always assumed that Earth was its own boss and that nothing we could do would ever disturb the fundamental nature of things. What a shock it would be for those ancients who worshiped the Earth to discover that its beauty has been so compromised by mere man.
And it isn't as though our disruption is trivial. We are about to roast ourselves.
Everyone knows that if you thicken the local atmosphere, it will bite you, like fog in London or smog in Los Angeles. Breathing becomes difficult, and those with respiratory diseases sometimes collapse and die. That's a result of the industrial revolution, and shouldn't have surprised anyone. Places like Los Angeles have air inversions to match their sea level placement, and having built a city in a particular location, have to put up with a particular nuisance.
In 1963, Congress got busy and passed the Clean Air Act, and later strengthened it in 1970, and again in 1978. That ought to do it, but it didn't. For Los Angeles, or anyone else. The Clean Air Act talks about atmosphere, and that, of course, includes the troposphere and all those spheres that surround and blanket the earth. But these environmental laws don't mean a thing if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) doesn't enforce them.
So, the CO2 that is part of the down draft that hugs Los Angeles, is also the CO2 that rises into the stratosphere: hundreds of billions of tons of pollution.
The balance of life (before the industrial revolution started pumping waste into the stratosphere) included a simple oxygen/carbon-dioxide exchange, to-wit: plants and trees eat carbon dioxide, and then emit oxygen into the air. We breathe oxygen. It was a great partnership.
On a warm day, if you sit under a leafy tree, and imagine that you feel cooler, you really do. You are getting a little more oxygen than you normally get, and that refreshes you. An ice cream cone will cool you too, but oxygen is better.
When plants and trees die, or are cut, an oxygen factory is destroyed. A rotting or burning tree is converted to carbon dioxide (CO2), that drifts upward to become part of the atmosphere and further heat up the Earth. There are other gasses, like methane and nitrous oxide, that clog up the stratosphere, but none with the volume of carbon dioxide.
What happens is very simple. The pollution in the stratosphere, above our clouds, has formed a barrier to the retreat of Earth's heat. That's why it is so often referred to as the greenhouse effect. The pollution in the stratosphere thickens, and, like a greenhouse, holds heat, trapped at the surface of the Earth.
We have double trouble, what with poisonous ultraviolet rays giving us cancer because our ozone is destroyed, as well as this intense heat piling up because it can't get back up through a thickened layer of carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution.
We are forced, finally, to confront a very serious problem: population. Five hundred years ago, no one dreamed we could fly. One hundred years ago, no one dreamed we could send one of our flying objects to the moon, or direct space ships to circle other planets, photographing and sending back data. And certainly no one dreamed that we could tamper with the sensitive balance of the Earth, so as to endanger all life on it. Malthus knew that there is a limit to the population of the Earth. We know it, too. More population means more automobiles, it means overwhelming waste in the atmosphere, the cutting of more trees, the invention and use of more chemicals; it means that if we don't start phasing down right now, we're gone, because there is a lagtime in diminishing the green house effect.
You can't suddenly stop loading up the atmosphere and hold the temperature at that point. It will continue to go up because of that lagtime.
The first automobile was invented by a Belgian. It did not run on gasoline. Steam cars were in use, and electric cars, too, before Henry Ford came along with his inexpensive, light-weight but dirty gasoline engine. Gas engines must now be phased out, or we all will smother in heat; the grandchildren and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren of the poor, and the middle class, will have to learn how to deal with sunstroke and heat exhaustion, because they won't have enough money to buy anything resembling comfort. Earth will literally resemble a living hell.
Photovoltaic cells have been researched in this country for many years; it's time to use them. It's time to use the sun to drive our cars and our factories. And it's being done.
In Phoenix, Arizona, for two days, March 19 and 20, 1994, at the Phoenix International Raceway, about 70 young people, including 35 high school teams, are racing electric cars. At least four different countries are entered. No WHROOM WHROOM, no stifling exhaust, only the silent whirr of electric cars. No Richaholics trying to make a buck, just young kids talking about batteries, weight ratios, amperes, and energy density.
CO2 phase-out is necessary from that rich one percent of the population who own a third of the wealth of this country, or, better still, that ten percent who own over three-quarters. They have all the power. The rest of us are helpless.
Fuel from oxygen or hydrogen might solve the problem, anything except gasoline carbon.
Solar energy has been unlucky so far: President Reagan killed every effort to develop solar energy during his two terms. The "owners" of the country will have to save us, and in doing so, may be obliged to violate their most demanding commandment: "Thou shalt always make a profit".
It's important to stay calm. To not panic. After all, how bad can a few more degrees be? Well, stateside mountain glaciers have been measured lately, and they have become smaller. They're melting. Abandon your skis and get a new hobby, like frying eggs on the sidewalk. If the Arctics melt, the rise of the sea levels will cover countries like Bangladesh. Rivers like the Nile, the Mississippi, the Yangtse in China will broaden their banks and swallow up all villages and towns that border them. Every climate in the world will undergo changes; grain belts will become deserts, swamps will appear out of nowhere, the total usable land space of the world may diminish by twenty to thirty percent.
Hard evidence has been presented by knowledgeable ecologists and climatologists, who have measured gas bubbles trapped in polar ice; they are able to show that the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) trapped over milleniums was about 270 parts per million, compared to an increase to 350 parts per million today. Further computation showed a rise in the last 31 years of 11% CO2 floating up into the atmosphere. If CO2 reaches a level between 500 and 700 parts per million by the year 2050, that will represent a doubling of CO2 within 200 years.
The heating that is taking place ought to take thousands of years, allowing time for forests to move northward or southward, eastward or westward to adaptive climates.
Convincing evidence of what is happening has been presented before committees representing the national governments of dozens of countries. Heads of state were, of course, at the time, quite concerned. That was six years ago. Nothing much has been done since. We still have acid rain, we still have hurricanes of greater strength than ever before, all directly related to global warming.
The Earth, daily, endures a buildup of carbon dioxide and other gasses, accumulated as a result of human activity. This doesn't mean that the summers will be 130 degrees in the shade and that there will be no freeze throughout the winter — not yet. There are over 2,000 recording stations worldwide, systematically keeping data on temperature, and they all report that the period of the 1980's represents the warmest decade ever recorded, as measured by our most sensitive instruments.
Anticipating the rise in temperature, experts calculated future rainfall patterns, which have proven to be right; changes have occurred in exactly the fashion predicted. Take Africa, for example. In the northern part of that continent, rainfall should have declined. And it did. We've seen the tragic evidence on our TV screens, drought, and starving children. The expert body of science in this field agrees that by the year 2000, agriculture will have made enormous shifts all over the globe, and the best planting areas may be where cities and urban suburbs now stand, whereas vast sections of once bountiful harvest land will be barren and arid. A short distance into the approaching 2lst century will find Bangladesh under water, Venice probably abandoned; Alexandria, with a population over three million, will be inundated, parts of France reduced to swamp land; the Netherlands is threatened; one-fourth of the State of Florida will be under water, and many cities on both coasts gone forever.
For the last one hundred years, we've run this world like we invented it. Now, suddenly, everyone feels helpless, reminiscent of Columbus starting out to sail off the edge of the earth. For example, greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere can have powerful effects on climate, but no one can predict exactly what effects. These gasses, which heat up the Earth, also heat up the oceans; we know that weather in North America is influenced by the temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean. What happens when the Pacific heats up even more in one or two hundred years? No one knows.
We do everything too fast. Nature proceeds at a much slower pace. In one year, 1977, Brazil burned enough timber in the Amazon to contribute one-fifth of all the upward-bound CO2 that year. Nature can't handle that kind of lightning-like super change. Something's got to give.
Humans, it's true, need some "green house effect" in order to survive. The danger lies in the approaching "super" green house effect. The earth and its moon, and all of the other planets get their heat from the sun. Only a blanket can hold and regulate that heat. The earth has such a blanket, the atmosphere. The moon has no such blanket of air surrounding it, and on the moon, it is unbearably hot where the sun's rays hit, and unbearably cold on the opposite side where there is no sunlight.
The effects of a carbon dioxide atmosphere can best be appreciated by pointing to our neighboring planet, Venus, almost the same size as Earth. Venus has a thick blanket of carbon dioxide, super heating the surface of the planet to 870 degrees F., and making it far too hot for any sort of known life. That can be us, someday.
It should again be emphasized that the research, calculations, data, analyses and charts predicting a global warming, are the work of scientists just as expert in their fields as any lawyer or doctor is expert in his or her field. Science tracks the details of history for hundreds of years back, and even thousands of years back to whatever information happens to be available. Published documents invite the scrutiny of the entire scientific community. For example, in 1975, Broecker predicted that the carbon dioxide content would rise significantly, driving temperatures up. His 1975 predictions have been closely followed, and are astonishingly close to his forecasts.
Considering all the cold climates we have in the world, it's very likely if you took a world vote, you might find that many people favor some climatic warming. But, that becomes almost a bad joke when you consider that the warming we're getting now, because of all the exhaust we're pouring into the atmosphere, is too too high, and can be computed into the future; without some drastic change in our way of life, the world is going to be uncomfortably hot to live in — in less than a hundred years.
We have an interesting phenomenon here. We have come to define democracy in terms of production, or competitive capitalism. As it turns out, that might be inconsistent with survival. Democracy allows us Liberty, untrammeled by restrictive rules. But Constitutional Democracy is an American invention, moral and God-fearing, yet no laws exist, so far, that prevent the Rich from dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The control of carbon dioxide requires world-wide cooperative efforts by all the Rich. Are we likely to get it? Third World countries, just being developed, point out that it's our problem. We created it, we must correct it.
The 1988 Montreal Protocol was signed by the delegates of 27 nations. Six refused to sign. We know that the more global the problem, the longer everything takes. The signatories agreed, from 1989 onward, to reduce sending poisons into the atmosphere, which destroyed the ozone. Not one of the 27 nations has complied.
This meeting dealt with ozone, and said nothing about the greenhouse effect of CO2, the main reason, I suppose, being that no one knows what to do about CO2. Be without factories? Be without automobiles? They didn't want to talk about it.
Of course, the coterie of brilliant scientists at the Canadian conferences attracted the serious attention of world leaders. And they followed up by having their own conferences in London and the United States, by recognizing the problems, by speeches, and then by doing very little after that. In fact, the two countries with the liveliest population expansion, China and India, pointed out again that it is our problem, we created it, and they refuse to curtail their development and punish their citizens because we have created a problem that is difficult for us to solve.
The role of the United Nations, in the past, has been to enlist member countries to supply troops for mutual participation in crushing obvious acts of aggression. That's all volunteer stuff. How are you going to get all the nations of the world, particularly developing nations, to shut down the mills, plants, the machinery, and to walk away from CO2 emitting automobiles? No country will deputize the U.N. to act for it on these kinds of issues.
Put that question of U.N. autonomy to a U.S. Congressman, and he'll assume the fetal position and start whimpering.
How could you ever get the big corporations to agree to such a drastic step? If we found ways to control the CO2, like shutting down the plants, who would support the out-of-work families? The problem is a real choker, and involves changing the face of the Earth, and still feeding billions in the process.
The Rich will want to make money in the changeover process. That may take time. Then more time for Congress to act. Plus years composing and debating international treaties.
But who's going to get rid of CO2, or control its future growth? Our patent laws protect a person who invents something. If a patent is filed on some gadget that happens to spew out a by-product called carbon dioxide, the car patent will be protected because we encourage inventiveness. And progress! We're crazy for progress.
What we need is a gadget designed to reduce CO2. But, so far, no such invention. Cars and industrialization create carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide. Forests and mountain greenery give off oxygen, while consuming carbon dioxide; the only trouble here is everybody is cutting down their trees; Brazil has denuded about 25% of her forests, largely through the encouragement of its central government. Worldwide, we lose 100,000 acres of prime timber every day of the year.
It's an eerie kind of trap: we protect everyone who drives a carbon dioxide producing automobile, and we encourage anyone to invent a large-scale carbon dioxide eater, but we will fight anyone who forbids car driving, because that would shut down America. It's going to be close. No wonder all the politicians have gone into hiding.
What about the immediate future? All of the data and work done by science indicates that the world is moving into a very warm period, too warm for us to control. The atmosphere not only contains man-made carbon dioxide, but has added a significant amount of other gasses, all of them designed to further thicken the air. Reversing the trend would require a titanic effort, and may even be impossible. Consider the broad range of variables, such as rationing the consumption of energy, worldwide, over the next twenty years or more, in the use of oil, gasoline, gas, coal, and timber.
The only central agency we have in this world is the United Nations, a powerless organization. The World Court has no real power. Any member nation can resign from the United Nations. Countries have never been willing to give up their own autonomy to the World Court or the United Nations. The only thing left would seem to be a world treaty, with as many nations as possible participating in a slow down of atmospheric contamination. India and China have already said no. Such a treaty between so many different languages and cultures is virtually impossible. Almost certainly, the United States recognizes that a world treaty is hopeless, and the lack of publicity on the subject is proof enough. There will be no international treaty on saving the planet. In the United States, we have business as usual, while we last.
The Rich know that if the climate gets uncomfortable, they can spend millions on special housing and food, and stay comfortable. Our indifference to the present problem will reward us with blistering heat and various brands of shortages.
For sure, the CO2 figure will accelerate, consistent with rapidly increasing world population, and the industrialization of third world countries. The present rate at which carbon dioxide from oil, gas, coal and wood, is fed into the atmosphere, increases an additional 1.5% per year. Other gasses which clog up the atmosphere are methane, and nitrous oxide. Methane is important in agriculture, and with the increase in human population, there is more methane going into the atmosphere. All population increases aggravate the "hothouse" effect.
Something not mentioned yet are the CFC's. These are the chlorofluorocarbons. Unfortunately adding one single molecule of a CFC is like adding ten thousand molecules of carbon dioxide. The CFC's, a modern invention, have very long atmospheric lifetimes, and although some of their dangers have been recognized and partially outlawed in the United States, most other countries still allow them. CFC's are the fluid contained in refrigerators, the propellants in spray cans. As mentioned, they are very stable, and their buildup in the atmosphere is more permanent than anything we have mentioned so far, often lasting over 100 years before breakup. CFC's are powerful agents for not only destroying ozone, but for capturing the heat and holding it on the Earth's surface.
What are the numbers? Well, by the year 2050, the carbon dioxide will have doubled, and that will commit the world to global warming of at least 3.5 degrees C., 6.3 F., overall. And rising. Incidentally, nothing can be changed in the near future, only in the long term.
On Venus, there's very little oxygen, but a lot of sulfur dioxide. Acid rain is sulfur dioxide. It eats buildings, destroys fish, and weakens the forests, making them more susceptible to disease and pest attacks. Its effects are all negative, global losses running into the billions every year. Acid rain is not merely stratospheric, it can be held in place close to the surface of the Earth by smog or fog. Forty years ago, in the '50's, acid rain killed four thousand people in London, in one week.
Because of its chemical composition, acid rain can leach other chemicals out of the ground, combining to create poisons out of theretofore harmless nutrients. Unlike CO2, already in place in the atmosphere, acid rain can be reversed by switching to low-sulfur fuels.
We have no law that forbids dumping concentrations of metals like lead and mercury into the soil, our rivers, and the oceans. The EPA is too timid, and lacks the personnel to examine and test all these combinations of chemicals and metals that are combined almost on a daily basis. Our assumption has been that our scientists and inventors have created technological wonders for us, that all of them are wonderful. We have missed the point. Most of these drugs and medicines and insect killers all need to be tested over long periods of time that may vary, according to the danger involved, with prison sentences for those who ignore the laws and the admonitions of the experts. We also forget that all these new conceptions were spun, first and foremost, from dreams of profit, not the foremost needs of humanity.
In Utah, Mormons hesitate to eat their own produce. Around the Great Lakes, fish are shipped to other areas; local people won't eat them. Contamination has made them fearful to eat their own food.
The Environmental Protection Agency reports that 2.5 billion pounds of toxic materials are released into the atmosphere each year, all done quite legally.
Offend our national pride, and we'll go to war. In Vietnam, we lost 58,000 soldiers (plus 16,000 more poisoned by the dioxin in Agent Orange), and citizens fight tears and shame for these 58 thousand service people. Now we sit and wait for a slow grinding death for everyone. And there's nothing 90% of us can do.
Let's take an example. Assume the head of EPA writes a letter to Eastman Kodak, the largest emitter of poisons into our air (nine million pounds of methylene chloride which is classified as a "probable human carcinogen"), and tells Kodak they have ninety days to correct this problem, or, on behalf of the American people, EPA will shut them down. EPA knows what would happen. The guy who wrote the letter will have endangered his job. Fifty Congressmen, sent by fifty Rich men, will descend on the EPA, whose members will be investigated, probed, accused, and threatened.
Asthma and respiratory diseases in children are approaching epidemic proportions in big cities.
The Grand Canyon now has a haze hanging over it. It's been tested — dirty air.
The climatic changes on our planet (warming for example) are not something new. Past sudden changes in climate are indicative of periods of "extinction" over some hundreds of millions of years. Earth has experienced changing water currents like El Nino along the South American coast, glaciation, sun spots, wind changes; they all play their complex roles, as does the concept of GAIA (the self-correcting robotics of Mother Earth herself); none of these cancel out the automatic effect of continued warming.
Cap the oil wells? Bury all the cars? Forbid the use of coal? Ask the U.N. to pressure Brazil to cease all tree cutting and burning? Shut down most factories?
Develop power from wind, water and sun?
Of the five billion or so people in the world, half of them live on the coast somewhere. As we pour more carbon dioxide and industrial gasses into the atmosphere, the temperature rises, and our mountain glaciers, as well as the arctic glaciers, melt; then the oceans rise.
There go your beaches, and if you want to keep title to your land, your house will have to go up on stilts.
We seem to measure everything in terms of money, and if we continue that invariable practice, the cost will be stunning. Take London's flood protection system just completed. The cost runs to multimillions of pounds, and the entire system may, at this instant, be obsolete. London, in fact, may become another Venice in the next fifty years. Speaking of Venice, the gondolas may soon be making their last trips, mass evacuation. Vaya con Dios.
More Earth heat will melt more ice, raise the ocean to the point where all the people in all coastal cities will have been displaced.
During the last hundred years, sea levels have risen about five inches. But that doesn't mean that it will be only five inches in the next one hundred years. Quite the contrary, the pile up of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the production of more ground heat, will hasten the melting of ice, and the water will rise very rapidly. Another 40 inches of water will inundate most of the cities of the world, perhaps during the lifetime of your children, or your grandchildren.
Scientists have a tendency to be cautious; like doctors, they seek to avoid giving you the worst scenario. After an afternoon at the computer, they may walk away hesitant to talk with anyone, except their own brethren: for example, one possibility that isn't proven, but might happen, is that though one degree celsius may produce a rise in sea level of 10 centimeters, a warming of 3 degrees C. may very well cause a rise in sea level six times as high! Why? Because of the thermal expansion of sea water. Mere speculation, they quickly assure us, but then they will admit that the overall water rise does seem to be speeding up.
This is not something you can take to Congress for a fix-it law; Nature doesn't pay that much attention to Congress.
If the global warming continues, how high will the oceans rise as a result of glacial melting? We don't see glaciers; they are not within our immediate vision. But, over the decades glaciers have all been measured and remeasured, and it turns out that they own about three quarters of all the fresh water in the world; and they cover 12% of the land area of the Earth. If all this ice were to melt, the sea level would be raised by 75 meters (246.6 feet).
If the planet continues to heat up (as projected) and the glaciers start melting (inevitable) and the seas rise (inevitable) and, because of the heat, there are only a few places left where anyone would care to live, and the population continues to grow to 8.5 billion by 2025 (as projected)......what will happen? The rich and powerful will rush in, and refuse to draw straws for the most select locations because they will have bought them. The mass of mankind will be relegated to the most miserable land. Next, committees, secret meetings (labelled clandestine and illegal), demands and refusals, curfews, rebellion, vigilantism and terror.
Let's take a look at some practical examples of a 5 meter (16+ feet) rise of water. Keep in mind that it is the tendency all over the globe to build the biggest cities near the coast or near some large river. At 4 meters, one quarter of Florida, including all of its big cities, would disappear from the map. New York, Atlantic City and Boston would be under water. In some places in the world, Bangladesh for example, the entire country would disappear.
It's danger...danger...danger...now. Meteorologists agree that the heating process is consistent and cumulative. They only disagree as to how fast heating will occur, when they extrapolate their data mathematically. Those who believe that a doubling of the carbon dioxide will occur by the year 2050, figure the rise in global temperature to be as much as 5.2 degrees C., or 9 degrees Fahrenheit!
The speed of climatic change is very important: a mere 5 degrees changes the growing period, and hardiness of most growing things. How do you transport a tree that matures in a hundred years to a new climate? How do you resettle a city of 12 million population in a new inland location? How do you dig up sidewalks and raze buildings to find the soil you need? Micro-organisms are a part of the life of many animals, including ourselves. How do you advise micro- organisms that they should relocate north, or south, or east or west? Melting snow is a problem, it may be acidic or alkaline, according to when it melts. All living things are somehow linked, and affected.
If you like figures, here are some more. If there is a rise in global temperatures by the year 2030, here's what might happen: rice grown in Japan would be over-produced, effecting great hardship upon the Japanese economy, because the price would drop sharply, which could not be prevented by the Japanese government, in spite of its habit of supporting and stabilizing its industries and farmers. In other areas, particularly in Canada and the U.S. where wheat is grown, a rise in the temperature would suggest drought conditions and something close to famine. Here are two effects of the condition worldwide: all climates would change, all crops would fail, the growth of timber would decline, which means less photosynthesis, which means less oxygen, which means more carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide, methane, other gasses, created artificially by industrial burning, will pile up in the atmosphere. The sun can get through, but can't get back out, just the way a green house works, holding heat in and raising the temperature inside.
With the increase in heat comes air stagnation, and immediate health disfunction.
It takes about 10,000 years for the Earth to recover from an ice age, though the global average temperature has been changed only by a degree or two celsius. Scientists aren't certain what happens when you overheat the Earth, since it's never occurred in a human time frame.
Hotter means drier, drier means fire in our forests and crops. Smoke and soot means air pollution. Normally, the average surface temperature of the Earth is 57 degrees F. If this went up to 68 degrees F., it would have an enormous impact, including species extinction. At our present rate of warming, an impact of unknown magnitude will strike us during the next fifty years.
As it turns out, carbon dioxide has increased by 25% over the 100 years, while methane (determined by borings taken from glaciers) has shot upward over the last two centuries. This adds up to more monsoons, shifting climates, more heat waves, and fires, and a rise in sea level of several feet over the next 100 years.
One small example of melting ice: If all the ice on Greenland melted, it could raise sea levels around the world about 20 feet (6 meters); and a melted Antarctica, which has considerably more ice than Greenland, would raise sea level 225 feet (70 meters). We are somewhat protected from Antarctic melting by the fact that it is so very cold there; melting will be slow and take many centuries.
Important parts of the picture include soil erosion, water logged soils, the obsolescence of water controls such as canals, purification plants and allotment meters. Of course, agricultural adaptation ought to be much faster than timber adaptation. Trees take twenty to sixty years to grow. Disrupted by CO2 heat, then rising waters, then ecological changes, trees might all die out before they could adapt or be replanted in a proper environment. The ability to migrate quickly becomes impossible for trees. Human transplant teams become a necessity.
Brazil and other developing countries seemed to have picked this moment to replace trees with people and cities. The world loses 100,000 acres of trees every day; as a result of cutting, and acid rain, one species of tree becomes extinct every week.
Insect populations will increase dramatically.
So, it's true. We are about to enter the greenhouse century, though politicians refuse to admit it. Let's hope it doesn't take more than another decade of rising heat, fires, droughts, and protests from GAIA (hurricanes, earthquakes, techtonics), before our crisis gets some attention. If it isn't conceded soon, cool Alaska and Siberia, in a hundred years, will have populations of hundreds of millions of people.
In the 1970's, a number of experts were working on the greenhouse problem, and on the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. The figures were a surprising match, indicating the doubling, from a couple of decades before, of carbon dioxide; and a warming of about 3.5 degrees F. This led to the following formula: for each ten percent increase in CO2, there would be a rise in global temperatures of one-half degree F. Computer calculations show that when the whole Earth warms one or two degrees, peculiar things happen: The equator warms the least; the high latitudes warm the most, which means there is more warm air near the poles.
There are fitful changes in rainfall and wind. Storms are likely to become more common. The lives of all living things can expect to be dramatically changed, in exactly what way is unknown. A rising global temperature affects ice and water in two ways: thermal expansion causes water to rise; glaciers melt, and the water rises some more.
Scientists point out to those who depend on GAIA to save us, that GAIA is not functioning on behalf of mankind, but is functioning on behalf of GAIA, and might well decide that humankind is a nuisance, and a foe. GAIA has been here through some billions of years, and her brief experience with Homo sapiens has not been pleasant.
Conferences in the hallways of universities and laboratories are occurring almost hourly all over the world. But conferences concerning a crisis this size are rarely confined to the scientists and politicians of one country alone. An overheated Earth is an international crisis, to be dignified by international conferencing and planning. The nightmare is that no two of us can agree.
One such conference was held in The Hague under the leadership of Holland, France and Norway, in 1989. The committee did little more than any other committee has ever done, submit concurring evidence of the greenhouse effect. But this committee, in desperation, issued an unusual document called "Declaration of The Hague", which in a few paragraphs recognizes Earth's impending disaster, authorizes additional study, and then states that future function should be within the framework of the United Nations and that "decisions made will be subject to control by the International Court of Justice".
If your thumb is hovering over that little red button marked "panic", go ahead and push, because the world leaders are confessing their desperation. They know, and you and I both know that the World Court has no such authority, even if we wish it did.
When conferences ordinarily convene, members discuss options, which means they have at least two choices. But when conferences meet to discuss pollution of the atmosphere, there are no options, and only one solution: Shut down atmospheric pollution.
All world leaders know. There is need for more "warning" conferences.
The past 2,000 years of history talk about partnerships between rich men and kings to finance wars and explorations for gold, and other regal frivolities. Today, we still have rich men, and their corporations who more or less own the government, and determine its decisions and strategy. But these favored few have never before (black plague excepted) faced extinction along with the rest of us, and may not believe it can happen to them.
There are automobiles that run on photo-voltaic cells, that catch and store sunlight, cars that ran successfully on steam for years (almost zero atmospheric damage), and vehicles that run on storage batteries. But who's going to make the big corporations use one of those systems in next year's cars and factories and plants? No one. No U.S. President, no GAIA, no Zeus, not even Superman.
So here we've sat, for thirty years, since passage of the 1963 Clean Air Act, while the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ignores the warnings and urgings of public-spirited scientists, because corporations haven't yet decided what to do. Dirty business! Dirty, dirty business.
On 11-19-92, some 1,500 scientists from around the world signed a four page document entitled "Warning to Humanity".
One of the primary assets of this letter is to point out that if something is not done in the next decade or two, the prospects for humanity's survival is "immeasurably diminished". The appeal criticized the internal-combustion gasoline motor and called for action to:
Of the 1,500 who signed, 101 were Nobel Prize winners. 160 world leaders were sent copies of this document.
12-20-92: Scientists are trying to zero in on a tighter estimate of just how much the Earth's climate stands to be warmed by industrial waste gasses that trap the sun's heat.
The new analysis, computer-aided, guessed that if the atmospheric carbon-dioxide doubles from its present level, the average global climate will become four to six degrees F. warmer.
If nothing is done over the next 100 years, scientists estimate the Earth will have the highest temperature levels in a million years.
10-13-93: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency got sued again, this time by the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest. This isn't the first time EPA has been sued by a citizen group trying to force EPA to do its job. EPA acts as if it belonged to somebody else, not the citizens.
10-18-93: President Clinton announced that he has a plan to ask industry to trim atmospheric pollution emissions "voluntarily". If all the suggestions were followed, there would be a reduction of a hundred million tons of greenhouse gasses by the year 2000, an 8% reduction. Not a very blistering demand, since it's all voluntary. Only one hang-up there: Who can ever remember when industry voluntarily stopped making a profit.
On 11-17-93, these two government bulletins were issued: Illinois has cut its estimate of this year's corn and soybean crops to almost a third smaller than last year's crop. In Wisconsin, it was announced that for the second year in a row, there will be a below-normal yield for most Wisconsin crops, driving many farmers from the land. The problem was too much rain. Excessive moisture cut corn yields in Outagamie County by 70%, and the hay crop by 85%.
Is it just a "bad year", or are the scientific predictions coming true, of changes in wind, rain, temperatures, and climate.
On 2-18-94, a report, by the world's leading biodiversity expert, Alwyn Gentry, indicates that as a result of rising carbon-dioxide levels in the Earth's atmosphere, there has been a change in the type of trees growing in the tropical jungles, presenting a dramatic transformation of these forests. The replacement trees are of light wood, and absorb much less carbon dioxide than the former hard wood tropical trees. In other words, the trees that are replacing the tropical deforestation do not do as good a job in absorbing carbon dioxide, and emitting oxygen. Our nightmare is getting better all the time.
Comets are very big and mostly ice. Meteors are small and mostly rock and metal. Amateurs love comets, and discover most of them.
A comet's orbit is elliptical, and the farther out it stays from the sun, the more chance it has remaining in its pristine state without deterioration.
Science still does not know a lot about comets, but they're watching them very carefully, now that one of them is in danger of colliding with the Earth.
One of the dangers of comets is their orbital eccentricity, promoted by two forces, gravitation and the solar wind.
The most famous comet is Halley's Comet. Each pass-by of Halley's is a little different from the one before. Between 1835 and 1910, pass-by was regularly at 74.4 years, but before that from 451 AD to 530, pass-by was 79.6 years. Astronomers are able to predict these differences; positional changes in the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn cause variances in the trajectory of Halley's. Such mathematical charting allows astronomers to predict when a comet will reappear. One recently discovered comet will not return for about 500 thousand years. Most comets vaporize when they hit the Earth's atmosphere, and dissipate some 50 miles up.
Theorists like to point out that the appearance of Halley's Comet every 74 to 79 years is correlated to a series of dire happenings throughout the world, and that there may exist a "Halley's Disaster Syndrome". Some disasters simultaneous to Halley's appearance in 1985 were a giant earthquake in Mexico City leaving 20 thousand dead, an extremely harsh winter in Europe, fires blazing in Australia under 60 mile winds, a hurricane in Bangladesh, a sudden series of flash floods in the Sudan which had suffered bitter famine for seven years, a sudden series of hurricanes in the United States, and typhoons in China. Meanwhile, the natives were restless: football riots in Britain and other countries, greater activity in terrorism, more aircraft hijackings, the PEMEX fires in Mexico, the Bhopal poison gas disaster in India, airplane crashes worldwide, and increasing and shocking figures on the AIDS epidemic.
Those who find a connection between Halley's and disaster have gone back 75 years, and 75 years before that, and so forth, to chart disasters accompanying prior appearances of Halley's. They also point out that Halley's passes close enough to Earth to have salted us with a hundred billion billion particles of one thing or another, including bacteria and viruses we may know nothing about. It's not impossible, they say, that one of these fly-by comets can wipe us out, via disease or some alien force, without an actual collision.
Meteorites and comets are second cousins, and a meteorite may often be a piece of a comet.
The Tunguska Meteorite that struck in Siberia in 1908 had the power of a medium sized Hydrogen bomb. It is believed that some very large comets strike the Earth about four times in each million years, with an explosive force thousands of times greater than a Hydrogen bomb, equal to all the nuclear bombs that have ever been exploded; and strong theory persists that a major comet struck us some 65 million years ago, resulting in the extinction of the dinosaurs.
In 1992, at a conference in San Francisco, scientists stunned their colleagues by claiming evidence that a big asteroid slugged the Earth so hard 250 million years ago that it broke a once-huge land mass into Africa, Australia and other continents. This one raised havoc, cracking the planet's crust, causing flood-like eruptions of lava, as well as triggering the aforementioned breakup of a super-continent.
Scientists are pretty well agreed that most comets come from the Oort Cloud, a cloud that is very, very old and seems to be in orbit with our planetary system, as we move through the galaxy. How many comets are believed to reside in or near the Oort Cloud? One hundred to two hundred trillion. This trail of comets is as old as the Earth, four to five billion years.
One scientist, Dr. Louis A. Frank, noticed blips on a screen which would ordinarily not be visible to the naked eye. Their persistence caused him to study in detail and finally to theorize that they were small comets, about the size of a house, and that they fell to the Earth with such frequency as to quantify them at one million per year. He could not see how they could be anything except small comets. His computer screen was spotting them high in the atmosphere, and of course by the time they got through, they were greatly changed. His discovery, which is treated with great respect, would go to show that this barrage of ice-filled comets, over eons of time, could very well be the original source of water on Earth.
In 1993, a new look at an old crater at the southern edge of the Gulf of Mexico, probably caused by a large meteor which measured about ten miles in diameter, raised estimates of the force of the impact to about eight times more powerful than previously thought. The collision would be difficult to estimate in measurements of hydrogen bomb force, but may have been responsible for creating the Gulf of Mexico. If it was a comet, it would have been travelling at about 100,000 miles per hour; if an asteroid, about one-third that speed.
Geologists know that something happened 65 million years ago, which wiped out hundreds of species, and this may have been the culprit. Clouds of dust would have interfered with photosynthesis, initiating extinction.
One comet that scientists have been studying carefully for several years is Swift-Tuttle, called the "Killer Comet".
Circle this date on your calendar: August 13, 2126, about 130 years from now.
If Swift-Tuttle hits us, it will leave a "tourist-event" hole, create devastating earthquakes and tidal waves, and block out the Sun for decades, thus eliminating humanoids and most other species. What are the odds? One in ten thousand, shrugs one scientist.
Swift-Tuttle's hit will be a bigger hit than the one that did it to the dinosaurs. You see, Swift-Tuttle does something most comets don't do, it cuts across the Earth's orbit and, to quote the scientists, "sooner or later, it will get us".
Swift-Tuttle has been computed by more than one scientist; it misses us — unless it gets here 15 days later than scheduled. If it's late, and the collision seems inevitable, we will find ourselves trying something that several of our movie producers have already depicted, deflecting a comet with atomic missiles. Wouldn't it be ironic if one of those atomic bombs did something worthwhile for a change?
The recent discovery of Swift-Tuttle, and other comets, in the past few hundred years, serves to highlight how little we know about their size, their speeds, their appearance frequencies, and their orbits. We know that one shows up every half million years, while Halley's drops by every 74 to 79 years.
What about the ones that show up only every 6,000 to 200,000 years? We would have no written or mythical record that mentions them. A dozen of them may be rounding a corner out in space right now, on orbits that cross ours. That's not many out of two hundred trillion. Some of them may be as big as the Earth, headed for us, and we don't even know if they exist.
To people who don't like to travel alone, here's a comfort: The 100 to 200 trillion comets in the Oort Cloud are with us all the time, because the Oort Cloud travels with our galaxy.
So that's it: Some dozens of large comets, that come back to circle us once every few thousand years, may show up, and like Swift-Tuttle, cut across our orbit.
Warfare is one of our most entertaining diversions. Wars of some kind have been in progress, across the world, for the past 3,000 years. Tribe against tribe, clan against clan, religion against religion, nation against nation, we are never too busy to take up the sword. War has its trade-offs: Hatred, resentment, the will to kill, are not pretty emotions to see in anyone; yet, the trade-offs present us with mutual feelings we rarely feel — group togetherness, comradeship, the softening of class barriers. Psychologists say the human male, like most animal species, because of male competition and envy, cannot claim to have other male friends. "Buddies", but not friends. That psychological insight may be wrong for warfare. In battle, bravery and sacrifice can become more powerful than life. Friendships, for those who survive, last forever. That's one of the reasons for the weeping at the black marble wall in Washington, D.C. The names are there. You can reach out and touch your lost comrade. No one weeps at the flame of the unknown soldier; you can't touch your friend.
In the last 100 years, there have been as many as 20 wars going on at one time. And Americans have attended many of these gala affairs.
It is reported that Saddam Hussein has directed Iraqi's to seek out and assassinate former President Bush; as a result, President Clinton bombed Iraq's intelligence headquarters; Saddam issued a statement that the Iraqis have "good memories". In Sudan, Africa, a civil war has successfully completed its tenth year. All of Africa, over the last fifty years, has been a cauldron, dictators coming and going like tourists. The latest hot spot is in South Africa, three thousand miles south of Sudan, where conflicts occur almost daily, as blacks give their lives hoping for recognition as human beings. This one will become another civil war, in spite of the peace-oriented Mandella, if the blacks ever obtain arms and an effective leader.
In a recent tough speech, President Clinton sternly warned North Korea not to develop nuclear weapons and vowed that U.S. forces will remain in Asia indefinitely, to keep the peace.
The U.S., like it or not, has assumed a role as the world's policeman. We get tongue-in-cheek authority from the United Nations, which has no power to grant such authority, and force our way into a country that resents our presence. All international law is embarrassed by such illegal invasions. Yet most nations agree that they do not want to see further development of atomic bombs, particularly by small unsophisticated nations.
On March 17, 1994, North Korea refused to let inspectors into a nuclear reprocessing plant, thereby thwarting any search for atomic bombs. North Korea has been threatened with economic sanctions if she does not cooperate. North Korea has also thwarted the U.S. suggestion of an exchange of high-level envoys.
Two days later, angry North Korean delegates walked out of a crucial border meeting. They refused to shake hands with South Korean delegates. North Korea's chief delegate threatened that his country will go to war if the world community keeps pressing for nuclear inspections.
Four days later, North Korea, in an official broadcast, claimed that the United States and South Korea had "pushed the situation...to a very dangerous brink of war".
This is the first serious atomic-bomb incident, since the U.S. and Russia slowed preparation for atomic war. It's serious, as you can see. If this incident is typical, we have learned that small, economically backward nations are capable of having unquenchable desires to build Earth-destroying bombs. If the world had a body of international law, together with a United Nations and a World Court, possessed of some power, a vote might challenge North Korea's right to claim the status of "nation", and face worldwide ostracism and punishment. As it is, we have no realistic way of crossing the border into North Korea, and they know that. The NATO Treaty gives us no such power.
The U.S. has troops in 40 or 50 nations around the world, including Yugosalvia. U.S. soldiers are there, but like Vietnam, they don't know why. Our interference is equally resented, by both sides, as if they were saying, "We Serbs and Muslims have always hated each other, so let us fight to the death". (Reminiscent of the classic, "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh", where the Muslims had the upper hand.)
Which brings up the question of whether retarded old world countries should any longer be allowed to fight anything so obsolete and wicked as a religious war. Territorial wars: perhaps. Oil wars: of course.
The history of warfare was once filled with prizes for the winner. When Alexander, with his phalanxes of long spears, curved shields, discipline, and personal leadership, sent two million Persians into panicky flight, his new methodology changed the face of warfare. If you put your life on the line, and won against such odds, slaves, women, gold, silver and other trinkets might have made it seem worthwhile.
The Romans made war a successful enterprise by using discipline, professionalism and severe punishment to all those who resisted. The Muslims, who, in the end, outdistanced the Roman Empire, left one alternative to a conquered enemy: adopt our faith or die. This had the effect of converting the enemy, or getting rid of him. This rigid requirement was eased in later centuries, when Arabs ruled, more than they fought. At Agincourt, in 1415, the British, outnumbered five to one, by the French, came up with a new gimmick in the ever-changing tactics of warfare. The two forces faced each other across a broad field and while evening fires burned before the next day's battle, the British planted rows of spiked wooden stakes behind which their bowmen would stand. When the French charged the next morning, the bowmen could not be reached, and the new English longbow badly defeated the French.
Napoleon nearly conquered Europe, because of his superior knowledge of artillery. Hitler's generals wrapped their victories around new weapons called speed, planes and tanks, and used the "blitzkrieg" to conquer an entire nation in a day or so. Hitler died, and probably the use for field commanders and generals died with him, as well as splendid uniforms and parades, and all the other razz-ma-tazz of war, phalanxes, discipline, longbows and even the blitzkrieg. When the Bomb, available to all, can destroy the world — well, there goes your glory, and your speechifying generals. War just ain't no fun anymore.
In Los Alamos, New Mexico, scientists, overnight, became the owners of the final phase of warfare. The atomic bomb has been used only twice in battle, and in each instance, decisions surrounding its use were made by the Commander in Chief, a civilian. Good-bye generals. Good-bye parades. How can you have a parade down Fifth Avenue in New York City, throwing out tons of confetti, for the dozen soldiers across the country who pushed the buttons. Do they paint their thumbs red and hold them up to the crowd?
War-worshipers will have to live with the memory of Sgt. York and Audie Murphy. The Brits can tell stories of great great grandfathers who led famous charges in India against natives with spears; in America, the white man can boast of his Winchester cutting down the Indian armed with a bow. We may still need generals and soldiers to handle "conflicts", U.N. sponsored interference, mopping up and clean-up, gathering up the wounded, and transporting medical supplies and food to civilian populations. But parades may be gone forever.
An atomic bomb is not that difficult to make; literally hundreds of scientists around the world can do it at the present time. What happens when one country after another is discovered to have bomb capability? We inherit a horrible new problem. Will the citizens of any country be willing to wait for a first strike by a pledged enemy? The nightmare gets worse. Mightn't each country, or alliance, demand action while action is still possible? When only two countries (USSR and USA) had the power, the entire world lived in a state of anxiety, neurosis and paranoia, but weren't we safer then than we are now?
In his book "Has Man a Future?", Bertrand Russell said, "Social organization is required to conquer others, and the constant struggles of the past make it all too obvious that this desire to conquer is deeply bred in man."
This respected philosopher's comments prompts the question: Can man's desire to conquer be halted, just like that? What psychological treatment must be employed to curb, overnight, the desire to bully, conquer, and enslave others? This male characteristic is deeply embedded in man's psyche. The desire to conquer must constitute a compelling force in the personalities of such people as Kadafi, Hussein, and some other power-mads we haven't heard from yet.
The theory of splitting the atom existed long before WWII. Called upon to put theory into practice, in the shape of an explosive device, American scientists formed a team in the state of New Mexico, and did it fairly quickly, with remarkably less difficulty than they supposed. "The bomb" became available. In fact, an American college student almost put the thing together, in his spare time, until the FBI got wind of his ambition, and confiscated his materials, including the almost completed atomic bomb. What I'm saying is, you don't need a high tech laboratory with optical equipment, and a series of highly secret formulas. There exists enough written theory in libraries to figure it out.
In fact, so far as a laboratory is concerned, you don't need one at all, only a place to keep the rain out. Your location could be a gray block building, or a two story house of seven gables, or a hollowed-out hole in the side of a hill. All the nuts in the world who want a bomb can pick from millions of undetectable locations to build it.
Who wants the bomb? Look for guys in fancy uniforms, like Hussein, or Kadafi. If we could measure their DNA patterns, we would find exaggerated passions not existing in other men. Saddam's sadism and brutality are well known: he pulled a pistol and killed one of his generals in the presence of all the others. Kadafi's tie with munitions-minded terrorists, who blow up busses of children, has immunized him against guilt for any terrorist act, however ferocious. The world nourishes aberrant people in high places, dictators with shoulder epaulets, who mesmerize the masses with childlike phrases: "our divine destiny..."
Can we afford not to have a United Nations, possessed of a great deal of power overriding our own precious national autonomy? Isn't it valid to surrender some of our power, to avoid the demise of humankind? And to share the policing expense?
It may already be too late. We need innovative, active, imaginative, even daring Congressmen, Presidents, and Judges to get us out of this one. Progress is not likely to suddenly bless a conservative generation of status quo, laissez faire politicos, people who don't want to fix it "if it ain't broke". Let's change, and adapt, and face future shock, let's "roll with the punches", before all our grandchildren disappear in a burst of radiation.
Right now Congress appears to worry more about the next election than our environment. Will our still-conservative population be here just long enough to see it happen, in this generation? The next? Will the corporations still be trying to make money? In spite of so plain and so expectant a scenario, we hesitate, when to do so is death at worst, a wasting misery at best.
This appears to be another of those vicious ethnic/religious wars. Each side is determined to cleanse the other: "My religion is better than your religion".
Because this "conflict" is so chaotic, the United Nations Security Council convened and wrote up some ground rules. People are starving in Bosnia, so try to get the supplies to them on time. Another U.N. rule demands that all sides give the Red Cross, et al, access to detention camps. These two resolutions, No's. 770 and 771, do not sanction military aid and do not condemn anyone. The U.N. is trying to diminish the savagery of an ugly little war, but has no power to go any further. The U.N. itself needs to be awarded more power.
Meanwhile, two ex-prisoners report that the Serbs slaughtered 3,000 Muslim men, women and children, in the town of Breko in June of 1992. They did it 50 prisoners at a time (easier to keep count that way). General Powell stated that this could produce a Vietnam-like quagmire for the United States. Thanks, general.
By October, planes were dropping clusters and napalm bombs produced by U.S. corporations, which, have become the world's leading war merchants, exporting up to 14 billion dollars worth in 1991, an increase of 10 billion over 1986 (Congressional Research Service). The U.S. now supplies more than half of all arms sold to the Third World. The Rich get richer, and the poor get shot with American bullets.
The Soviet Union, not to be entirely outdone by the U.S., has high-tech weapons for sale; don't push, plenty for everyone.
It's awkward, isn't it? The Christian Serbs are winning; they are also the ones doing the raping, the ones doing the ethnic cleansing.
In Somalia, it's a question of which came first, the war or the drought. I think we can say the drought, which may have been helped by the heating up of the earth.
In Somalia, we have a country in the throes of a civil war between various clans. We also have starvation, with the ditches alongside roadways crowded with the dead and dying. You've got to praise the United Nations which, at the end of 1992 voted to deliver supplies to starving Somalia, and voted a limited use of military force. This action was protested by warlord Aidid whose corkscrew logic claimed the right to loot our supplies to insure the loyalty of his soldiers. It's heartening to see greater U.N. involvement.
In 1993, there was another nuclear accident in Russia, this time in Siberia, at a nuclear-weapons complex. It was three times larger than first reported and the worst since the 1986 Chernobyl event. Hundreds of square miles were contaminated. Meanwhile, back in Munich, German investigators have discovered elicit smuggling and sale of radioactive materials on a growing scale. Tiny flakes of plutonium, to pounds of lightly enriched uranium, have been seized.
"The Bomb", being the ultimate weapon, gets most of our attention. But we continue to develop other weapons of great potency.
Laser beams the military has developed have power density greater than the intensity of light at the surface of the sun (more than 10,000 degrees). Another laser that they don't tell us too much about yet is called the eximer laser, which means "excited dimer". So that you will know what that means, a dimer is a molecule which is made of an inert gas such as krypton, and a halogen such as fluorine. They don't want us to know any more than that.
I can see them trying to teach this exotic, impossible technology to a technician, while at the same time failing to advise him of all the secret details. He sits there waiting to push a button and slowly goes crazy. For which he gets a medal.
Most of the weapons mentioned, like the particle beam, can, with cross-hair precision, turn large targets to rubble, almost as soon as you pull the trigger; several varieties of them are still in various stages of development. Vague estimates are made by Air Force and Pentagon sources as to when they will be completed, sometime in the year 2000 but before 2100. Ready for what?
When scientists talk about a "chain reaction", basically they're talking about how many reactions take place in one atom, multiplied by billions of others. The bigger the atom, the greater the action. In fact, the bigger the atom, the more flavors you can get, like hobo stew. Hydrogen has one proton, one neutron and one electron, not much action there. Uranium is a natural element, like hydrogen; but uranium is the heaviest of all elements. An atom of uranium contains — hold onto your hat — 92 protons, 92 electrons, and 146 neutrons, bringing the grand total to a mass of 238 units altogether, Uranium 238. To propel 238 units in one atom, multiplied by millions or billions of such atoms, in the 20 pounds of material used in the first bomb, moving at near the speed of light, would disintegrate most anything in its path. If something escaped destruction, it would likely be permanently useless because of its radiation taint.
But U-238, being a tightly bound atom, needed something to make it less stable and easier to explode. Dr. Dempster, a Canadian scientist, led the way and soon, by finding a substance with three neutrons less, reduced U-238 to U-235, a bit more unstable, and more susceptible to outside neutrons. U-235 is scarce, but scientists found a way to isolate the unstable 235, for better explosive use.
Scientists, continuously experimenting with U-238 and U-235, discovered two new man-made "elements", numbers 93 and 94. Consensus held that the man-made element 94 was more fissile (explosive) than U-235. They called it Plutonium, a foreboding name, but better still might have been "Satanium".
Concentrating on U-235, they discovered that one single gram of 235, suddenly smashed apart, was equivalent to 10,000 kilograms of nitroglycerin, and that about a thirtieth of an ounce would emit radiation and gamma waves equivalent to 20,000 million roentgens. 10,000 roentgens is fatal, 100 would cause quick illness. It had become clear that, emanating from uranium, marched a new angry radioactive world, formerly passive and dormant.
There followed the Einstein letter to the President, a massive petition asking the President to issue an executive order, banning further use or experimentation of all these elements.
The natural extenuation of the A-bomb would include broader areas of destruction, suggesting that mankind's unconscious ambition lies in the direction of self-annihilation. Thus, after the A-bomb, the hydrogen bomb was a natural progression.
The atomic bomb releases energy through the process of fission, the breaking apart of heavy atoms such as uranium 238 and 235. But the mathematics of the atomic bomb requires what is called a critical mass of material, in order to create the chain reaction that causes an explosion of the nucleus. This "critical mass" limits the size of the atomic bomb, but not the size of the hydrogen bomb. The two bombs have in common the splitting of the atom, but nothing else in common. The hydrogen bomb's energy comes from fusion of lighter elements into heavier ones, and requires enormously high temperatures, between 10 million and 100 million degrees to explode it. There is no "critical mass" such as is required in an atomic bomb, so a hydrogen bomb can be built for any size of destructive power.
The A-bomb is the hydrogen bomb's fuse. When the U-235 atom bomb explodes, the explosion causes the fusion of a supply of hydrogen into helium. The millions of degrees supplied by the U-235 fission ignites a shell of ordinary uranium in the H-bomb, creating and spreading a much greater path of destruction. Radioactive particles are hurled a great height into the air, from which they spread over the world and gradually descend. This poisonous descent is called "Fallout". In an H-bomb war, hundreds of millions would die from the explosion. There is no agreement on "fallout", which could run into the billions. Experts talk about wind factors, but eventually when you have to come out for water and food, you are exposed. The after effects of an H-bomb explosion and fallout would be so bizarre that those still alive might prefer not to be. Mass depression would be more common than the common cold.
The radioactive dust might hang in the atmosphere for months, even years.
Everyone in the world now harbors in his/her body small amounts of radioactive material from past H-bomb tests, "Hot" strontium in bones and teeth, "Hot" iodine in thyroid glands.
Even when H-bomb fallout completes its descent, it may contaminate the Earth for generations and then still poison a latter-day great grandson. The Earth is smaller than it used to be, or, put another way, if an H-bomb falls, a "mutant" Earth is a lot smaller.
Fusion of hydrogen isotopes (deuterium and tritium) could liberate many times the energy compared to the fission of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
Thus, came the partnership of the atomic fission bomb to create the millions of degrees of heat necessary to insure the explosion of the hydrogen fusion bomb, and here's what happened: The Marshall Islands are a chain of small atolls, coral islands, of reefs and sleepy lagoons. Scientific calculation wasn't enough; the Pentagon had to see it happen. In 1952, one of these islands completely disappeared. It took about one second. The force of the explosion was equivalent to five million tons of TNT. The island was gone; the crater where it had once been was so deep and so wide, it could hold a dozen sky-scrapers.
When scientists split the atom of U-235 and created the first atomic bomb, and our warriors dropped it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all sense and sensibility were lost forever. Hiroshima and Nagasaki seemed unavoidable; but neither can be explained or rationalized satisfactorily. Every use of the nuclear bomb will always remain just such a paradox.
The hydrogen bomb is too diabolic for the human mind to comprehend. In the 1940's, many philosophers, scientists and national leaders looked upon the bomb as the savior of mankind, and rationalized it as a weapon so horrifying as to end all future conflict (some still say that). There is, of course, no more apocalyptic force that could ever be released on Earth, or if there is, what does it matter. The force, the power, the violence, remains deeply troubling, and overwhelming.
Or does it? Maybe the question is, how long does the destructive power of the nuclear bomb, bully and paralyze us? If we look at the history of the humanoid, the answer is: not for long. In the past, nature submitted to our druthers. Today, ego and arrogance drive us to do whatever we want, curiosity prods us on; we have in the past and will continue in the future to use our intelligence to rationalize everything. Our passion for life and the certainty of eventual death reduces our vulnerability, and at the same time, quickens the pulse. We are no longer afraid of "The Bomb".
On November 1, 1952, the world's first hydrogen bomb was detonated, with an explosive force 350 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima seven years before.
In WWII, German soldiers, in their efforts to "purify", killed hordes of Slavs, Jews, Poles, and Russians. Machine guns were used. These non- combatants, helpless defenseless creatures, men, women and children, died in mass graves, while German soldiers watched them die and became physically ill, some unfit for duty. Others had to be conditioned, a few went mad; only the natural sadists were unaffected. What happens now that we have taken the personal touch out of warfare? Dropping nukes becomes little more than a war game played on a computer. There's the peculiar irony: The more horrifying the weapon, the more fanciful the war.
It is a deadly curse, in any war, to see the eyes of your victim. This "finnicky" problem has now been removed by our new-generation system of warfare. Now,we will be doing everything from a distance, hurling shells from warships, dropping bombs from airplanes, projecting missiles from submarines. Does this grant us a new "comfort zone" for holocausts?
There are no humbling lessons to learn from war if everything is done from a distance. History seems to prove that indoctrination of a nation to the "holy war" syndrome is easy to put across, if accompanied by propaganda, speeches, and a brass band.
How much easier it will be if we can't see their faces.
Youth training is the simplest part of the formula. Sociologists and psychologists have pointed out that, over a long period of time, a training program directed at the young and impressionable, lasts forever. Thus, the Hitler youth, Catholicism, and elitist prep schools for the young. Note that these three examples have in common that the youth stay with the mind-bending system for several years.
And David put Uriah, who was a mighty warrior, in the forefront of the battle, where the fighting was heaviest.
Warfare is dramatically changed. A 250 pound warrior with an 18 inch arm is no longer as valuable as a 127 pound kid wearing glasses, who can operate a computer. The soldier of yesteryear will still occupy his place, but be more of a sacrificial lamb than anything else. He will test for poison gas, camouflaged laser machines, and other unknown dangers. We've already seen it in Vietnam when 16,000 soldiers returned home, smitten with Dioxin poison. Dioxin is known to affect future generations. So we have 16,000 poisoned soldiers, and other thousands to categorize after the next round of births. In August, 1992, a two-headed baby was born in Kishinyov, Russia, which doctors said resulted from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. From the Gulf War, we have another 80,000 front-line soldiers, many with rectal bleeding and cancer, and other problems, caused by chemical agents in Iraq "Scud" missiles.
These are the "new" soldiers, the expendables. No amount of training can protect them, no warnings will suffice, no foxholes can hide them. And they likely will never see their enemy.
After the Gulf War, the Defense Department reported six or seven people killed. But it turns out that war isn't that simple anymore. Veterans started feeling sick as soon as they returned, and now two or three years later, symptoms reported include nausea, fevers, diarrhea, inflamed joints, memory loss, fatigue, and vision problems, in addition to something called multiple- chemical sensitivity. It seems that oil-rig fires set by Iraqi troops, pesticide contact, and contact with enemy "Scud" missiles have all produced serious and lasting symptoms. In the last two years, symptoms have worsened. Now, a very high percentage of babies, born to veterans, are turning up with birth defects.
So, we've learned another lesson: that, without using the bomb, any army will find it impossible to either avoid or detect disabling chemical warfare.
But right now, good fortune allows us to introduce you to a man who has agreed to go through a question and answer session with us, a man who worked for many, many years for the U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare. He prefers to remain anonymous, so let's just call him Mr. Hew.
Interviewer: Mr. Hew, we're curious why our government seems to endorse nuclear power so enthusiastically, yet very little has been done to develop other types of power such as solar energy?
Mr. Hew: You're right. Efforts to develop solar energy, wind power, biomass power, have been all but abandoned. President R was very partial to nuclear power.
Interviewer: Why was that?
Mr. Hew: Well, as you probably know, his background brought him in close contact with both electrical power and nuclear power as a source of energy.
Interviewer: I don't understand.
Mr. Hew: President R worked for General Electric Corporation for ten years, touring America. His political career largely grew out of his work with G.E.
Interviewer: Mr. Hew, how do you feel about the near melt-down at Three Mile Island, or the Chernobyl disaster with radiation drifting all the way to Italy?
Mr. Hew: I feel that when our scientists have invented something, and no one can predict the disasters that might occur, we ought to agree that it's an experiment, and that if it doesn't work, (shrugs and shakes head) turn away from it. Invent a tractor, a steam engine, a gas engine or a harvester, and something goes wrong, usually only one person is hurt. Nuclear power (mumbles)—
Interviewer: I didn't catch that, Mr. Hew.
Mr. Hew: Well, I don't want to bad mouth anybody.
Interviewer: And we don't want you to. Did President R say anything in any of his speeches that led you to believe he was so partial to nuclear energy?
Mr. Hew: Well, in one statement, in 1981, he said that "nuclear energy should receive priority attention, and that the long term policies of the United States should be to eliminate regulatory impediments to commercial interests in this technology".
Interviewer: Did everyone in the government agree with him?
Mr. Hew: Well — not in our department.
Interviewer: I suppose that everyone at General Electric agreed with him?
Mr. Hew: Well — as a matter of fact, no.
Interviewer: Can you elaborate on that?
Mr. Hew: Well, three top nuclear engineering supervisors resigned from General Electric Corp. as a matter of conscience, and told the U.S. Congress that "we did so because we could no longer justify devoting our life energies to the continued development and expansion of nuclear fission power — a system we believe to be so dangerous that it now threatens the very existence of life on this planet". But that's them talking, not necessarily anyone else.
Interviewer: Is that a fact! What else did they say?
Mr. Hew: I don't remember their exact language, but they feared a radiation active legacy for their families that would last hundreds of thousands of years. They feared the use of Plutonium by G.E. which causes cancer and produces genetic defects, and they feared atomic weapons.
Interviewer: What did President R say about that?
Mr. Hew: I don't know, we didn't talk.
Interviewer: Well, Mr. Hew, that's your own department. What about other governmental departments? What did they think?
Mr. Hew: I cannot speak directly for other departments, but I do know that, just through idle conversation, though not before Congress, they and we were fearful of the effects. For example, what do you do with the residue when you've used it? Is the Earth to become one big radiated garbage dump?
Interviewer: Did you consider long range nuclear use?
Mr. Hew: Oh, yes, that was the real bugaboo. You can't get rid of it when you put it under ground, or at the bottom of the ocean, or up in the air. It hangs on like a visiting relative.
Interviewer: Mr. Hew, what are the effects of radiation poisoning?
Mr. Hew: (unenthusiastically) I've seen pictures of the results at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Radiation alters cells. It causes the brain cells to swell, to press against the skull and hemorrhage; it causes fever, delirium, psychosis, loss of muscle control, and of course, death. The human body, with not a very large dose, becomes disfunctional; cells refuse to divide, skin ulcerates, hair falls out, white blood cells are destroyed. We don't have any of the usual protections, in the human body, to combat this kind of poisoning. We never will have. The horror of radiation poisoning was never anticipated by God.
Interviewer: Thank you, Mr. Hew, for answering our questions.
A fascinating book called "Cover Up", by Karl Grossman, explains every aspect of nuclear plants and the politics that guides them. Accidents can come from so many different directions that it's stupefying. Not just local accidents, but far-reaching global accidents. A "melt down" can occur if there is a failure to react to the emergency within fifteen to thirty seconds. Seconds, not minutes, seconds. Another accident, when the molten core and cold water combine, can create steam explosions which release a thousand times more radioactivity than the Hiroshima explosion. There are 30 to 40 thousand Zirconium rods in an average reactor, which have the disadvantage of being highly volatile, when hot; these rods may explode on contact with air or water or steam.
If you recall, on the way to Uranium 238 and Uranium 235, a new man-made element was invented, called Plutonium. Worse than Dioxin, Plutonium is the most toxic substance known in the Universe. Assume a pound of Plutonium dust, carried up to the atmosphere, and released. Such a fallout would cause fatal lung cancer in nine billion people, almost twice today's population! Plutonium is the darling of nuclear plant owners (utilities, for the most part) because it has the added advantage of breeding; that is, it can be captured and reused as fuel. In the years to come, we will run out of Uranium, particularly U-235, and the utility companies will woo Congressmen for the right to use Plutonium.
Update: 12-13-93: From Washington, D.C., we are assured by (then) Secretary of Defense Aspin, on NBC's "Meet the Press", that the situation in North Korea (forbidden by us to build nuclear weapons) has not deteriorated. That though the North Koreans are experimenting with Plutonium, they are "not developing more Plutonium in order to make more nuclear bombs". One wonders why people, given government titles for a few months or a few years, suddenly fall into the habit of trying to reassure us when disaster is inches away? American officials have perverse ideas about legal demarcations. North Korea is to be allowed to fool around with Plutonium, but we can "inspect them" and control the use thereof!? We might as well allow cobras in a baby crib, matches in a powder factory. What twisted reasoning. One pound of Plutonium can wipe out the entire human population twice, and they are allowed to "play" with it, like a spoiled child.
Meanwhile, some nut, Zhirinovsky, is running for office in Russia, who has accused the Jews of starting both World Wars, and, if elected, will drop one hundred nuclear bombs on any country making territorial claims on Russia, and has demanded the return of Alaska, Finland and Poland to Russia, and promises to terrorize Lithuanians by burying waste at her borders, blown over by powerful fans; this jingoistic humbug is actually gaining support.
12-26-93: Pentagon officials are considering preemptive strikes against North Korea's nuclear installations. Our government "estimates" that North Korea could have extracted as much as 26 pounds of Plutonium, enough for two bombs. It is not known where this Plutonium is hidden. We have moved too fast in one direction, and too slow in another. We try to hide the fact from our own people that we are the world's policemen, an impossible task, while we refuse to give up our own autonomy to the United Nations (other countries feel the same way). The U.N., with appropriate power, could criminalize the very ownership of Plutonium. Meanwhile, death-dealing Plutonium can kill us all. We need an effective U.N., and an effective World Court.
Imagine the Earth, finally at peace, dotted with nuclear reactors in the year 2010, a hundred of which use Plutonium, and that some of them are large breeders, and others are small breeders. Speaking conservatively, if just one of these nuclear breeders suffered a catastrophe and the explosion spread a thousand pounds of radioactive substance into the air, it would kill every person in the world six thousand times over. And leave behind radioactive poison in the atmosphere that would last at least a hundred thousand years.
When you consider that Uranium 235 and U-238 will be gone before long, and that the corporate Rich may start using Plutonium, you can go to sleep every night, remembering that Plutonium breeders are even more unstable than regular nuclear plants.
The question is, will the corporations subdue their competitive passion, refusing to use Plutonium, and be willing to wait until tritium/deuterium clean energy becomes a fact? In December, 1993, there was a tritium/deuterium break-through, after six or seven years of work. How much longer it will take to get tritium/deuterium clean energy is anybody's guess. Meanwhile, pray that madmen, dictators, terrorists and the opportunistic Rich don't use Plutonium. Remember, chips of it are being sold in Russia.
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission has performed controlled experiments on all nuclear failures and accidents that might occur; following are some names of these accidents: Nuclear Excursion, Nuclear Runaway, Loss-of-Coolant Accident, Power-Cooling Mismatch, Reactor-Vessel-Rupture.
Using pinch-amounts of material, to limit the danger, government experimenters duplicated all these potential accidents, with outcomes as anticipated. The results were a mind-boggle of danger. When you consider that the careless utility owners did not bother to make these tests themselves, despite the apocryphal danger involved, you've got yourself a double boggle. Now, that's important because there are two or three senators who will listen to a double boggle.
Nuclear plants, in the U.S., so far, have not exploded. There may be an occasional breakdown of some sort, and minor disruptions may cast some radiation into the sky and kill a hundred people, or start a chain of cancers, but this doesn't mean they won't explode. There have already been two serious explosions in Russia, Chernobyl and a second big one.
What is the plant service life of a Plutonium breeder plant? Probably not even thirty years, because experts fear they are more dangerous than U-235 plants, with an earlier explosion prediction than other types. All you need is for one of these Plutonium reactors to go up, and you'll be seeing your friends on the other side.
What do you do with a nuclear plant when it wears out, and when does it wear it? That's a good question. When they wear out, you don't go near them again. I don't mean you "never" go near them again. Maybe after a hundred thousand years. They only last thirty years, anyway. A nuclear plant only lasts thirty years, after which it becomes so filled with radioactive substance that it might go off in an unsolicited reaction. So it is abandoned, and isolated as an off-limits eyesore.
A well-meaning committee has published a book dealing with the future of arms control. The committee has a paragraph that begins as follows: "Treaties in force obviously involve the strictest obligations for compliance." The paragraph goes on to point out that the purpose of a treaty is to build, over time, "a set of norms for international conduct". The book goes on to cite reasons why the treaty must be kept.
Unfortunately, the history of "treaties" is not very bright. Treaties have never captured the strength of a contract; before treaties are signed, the nations involved do not post a billion dollars in the World Bank, lost as a forfeiture in liquidated damages if the treaty is broken. Not at all; treaties are broken for so many reasons, it would be difficult to list them all. A nation may say the treaty is no longer viable; we withdraw from it. Or, the facts have changed with a change of borders, or a change in population, or a change of any monetary use of the treaty, or a change in currency. There is no one to enforce a treaty, unless both parties agree to an international court in advance. A treaty merely temporizes, and then vaporizes; it is anybody's guess how long it will last. It is a victory if a treaty survives a change in either governments' leadership.
It ought to be on the agenda of every nation to relinquish some autonomy to the United Nations, on the theory that some issues, such as nuclear arms scrutiny, have become global issues.
In "Cover Up", Mr. Grossman uncovered documents detailing radiation leaks at the Hanford plant in Washington which were not reported, as legally required.
We were lucky enough to get John Doe (we promised not to reveal his real name), a former employee of the Office of the Inspector General. He agreed to an interview on the subject of the disposition of waste material from nuclear plants.
Interviewer: Mr. Doe, how much of a problem is waste material from nuclear plants?
Mr. Doe: It's very serious.
Interviewer: After the plant uses the nuclear material, it has to be disposed of?
Mr. Doe: Well, it has to be gotten out of the way. It's active for about a half million years so you don't really "dispose" of it.
Interviewer: What do you do with it?
Mr. Doe: We put it in tanks, but it erodes and leaks through the tanks. We tried dumping it in a salt mine, but, believe it or not, salt crystals still contain enough water that corrosion was present there too. The waste material, which is still very hot, induces water, even steam.
Interviewer: Can you bury it under ground?
Mr. Doe: Yes, but it emits radon, which can kill. We tried enclosing it in glass, but the material quickly melts the glass, and is loose again.
Interviewer: Where do you put it?
Mr. Doe: No one wants it; each state tries to send it to some other state. It just piles up, and I'm not at liberty to say exactly what that means. But I'll tell you this —
Interviewer: What?
Mr. Doe: There is no safe method known to dispose of radio-active wastes.
Interviewer: Is this just speculation?
Mr. Doe: No — no — In 1958, it was noted that a certain area in Russia had a high number of cancer cases. Investigation brought out that nuclear waste had been buried nearby. A town was cut off, and no one was allowed to visit it, and some other towns nearby were off limits. As a matter of fact, when the next map was published of this area, thirty Russian communities were no longer listed.
Interviewer: That's eerie. Is there no safe answer?
Mr. Doe: Perhaps. I think it's being tested now. According to the Atomic Industrial Forum, Inc., the nuclear industry's trade group, a canister made of concrete that sits above the ground would contain the waste material.
Interviewer: Well, that sounds like something. How many canisters would we need?
Mr. Doe: (smiles) 25 to 75 million canisters —
Interviewer: Wow!
Mr. Doe: — in an area that would occupy the same space as one of our average sized states.
Interviewer: Made of concrete, huh? Concrete may be the answer?
Mr. Doe: The concrete needed will be approximately the amount contained in all the superhighways in the United States. Interviewer: I didn't know we had that many nuclear plants.
Mr. Doe: Today we are dealing with thirty tons of waste from each plant each year, on average. If we get more plants, we'll need more of these concrete silos, and maybe another state. (Smiles sadly.)
Interviewer: You're not serious. Why don't we use solar energy? How did we get in this mess?
Mr. Doe: That's politics. so I can't get into that. But everyone knows that corporate profits are in nuclear plants, not solar energy, which could become a do-it-yourself project.
Interviewer: What could we do with all our nuclear plants if we decided to abandon nuclear energy?
Mr. Doe: Nothing, because they would be deadly poisonous. Besides, all nuclear plants have a life expectancy of only thirty years before they must be abandoned anyway. By the end of thirty years, they are so saturated with radiation that they can trigger an event, or kill, or cause cancer, you name it.
Interviewer: You mean that every nuclear plant has to be abandoned at the end of thirty years?
Mr. Doe: It ought to be. Alas, no one has even come up with a way of getting rid of them. They'll just blight the landscape, and beware the child that breaks into one of them.
Interviewer: One last question. Who owns the nuclear plants?
Mr. Doe: Utilities, for the most part.
Interviewer: Who owns and controls the utilities?
Mr. Doe: The rich people. The Rich own most of the utility stocks and bonds, and the utilities own the nuclear plants.
Interviewer: Thank you, Mr. Doe.
Near Needles, California, there is a totally useless tract of land, about 1,000 acres of federal land in the Mojave Desert. It has been proposed to use this 1,000 acres as a dump site for used nuclear waste. The newspaper article is not explicit; the media does not make it clear that the waste material will be poisonous, and can kill for 100,000 years or more; that if stored in concrete silos, which is the only material that can contain nuclear waste without container-meltdown, will still not be enough if hunters, for example, started taking pot-shots at the silos. Nor did the article explain that this is only a drop in the bucket, that it would take all the land in a normal sized state to contain the nuclear waste that we already have. And no one ever stops to explain that there are about 375,000 nuclear dumps in America already, their locations carefully hidden from the public.
In October, 1993, it was reported from Copenhagen, Denmark, that radioactive contamination disposal is out of control in the former Soviet Union, and that nuclear waste is being secretly dumped, that the authorities are impotent, and the dumping out of control.
In August, 1993, it was reported from Seoul, North Korea, that hundreds of people died in a nuclear accident, not in any explosion, but simply from an effort to hide the reactor from international inspectors. North Koreans are not supposed to become nuclear-involved. This proves two things, first, that no one in the world knows how to get along with nuclear devices and nuclear poisons, and second, that everyone is going to try anyway.
Nuclear "waste" is a left-over product from the heating and cooking of uranium 235 or U-238. The "waste" kills humans thoroughly and quickly, or slowly and thoroughly, depending upon the dosage. What about abandoned uranium mining "sites"? This ground material has never been cooked, so is it safe? No. It is fairly safe — for cockroaches — but humans have no business going near uranium, in any form.
In the United States, we have many scenic paradises, but none more breathtaking than the area around Moab, Utah. Moab is the cowboy movie capital of the world. Hollywood has made more outdoor movies around Moab, than any other location. New York City is known as the financial capital of the world, and has a big place in the sun. Moab is known for its beauty. Unfortunately, it is also the uranium capital of the world.
Three miles out of town, spread across the flat lands of an abandoned uranium milling site, lie 11 million tons of uranium tailings. They are dangerous to human life. Atlas Corporation wants to cover them, and got the government to go along, but the townspeople protested that, in the past, at other sites, such tailings had been removed. Atlas Corp. protests that the cost would throw Atlas into bankruptcy (which they would have always known), usually an effective "love 'em and leave 'em" argument.
Now the government is reconsidering. Surprise us, and make a "people" decision.
Only Russia and Ukraine have regulatory bodies for radiation protection. Radiation readings in the Caspian Sea are one hundred times above normal.
Radioactive material was found in the vault of a Lithuanian bank, as collateral for a private loan! We live in a new mad world. If this radioactive material is removed, and walked through the bank, it can contaminate, on the way, three or four bank employees, altering their cell structure; and they will know nothing about it until two years later they all turn up with cancer.
Nowadays, there are lots of points of view. We're all entitled. One point of view lets us use that numbing process the Germans and the scientists learned to use. The more we talk about it, the more numb we get, the more numb we get, the more stoical we become, and the more stoical we get, the more we forget.
Nuclear wars are quick; no standing in trenches, facing the enemy for three months. It would go something like this: assuming that Russia or a country with an arsenal were to become our opponent. Every town and city with a population 10,000 people and larger would be targeted, with probably sixty-plus bombs on New York alone, and twenty to forty on each of our largest cities. The war would be over in less than an hour, the missiles traveling at us twenty times the speed of sound, with almost pinpoint accuracy. Meanwhile, the attacker has triggered various signals that make retaliation automatic. As a result, almost comically, the missiles would cross in midspace. Part of our warning system, figured out by a trusting idiot at the Whitehouse, would broadcast radio and TV warnings just in time to allow us ten minutes to say good-bye.
If you survive for a few days, you might go around and visit your neighbors, who would point out where some of your other friends were vaporized. Most of the body is water, and when exposed to great heat, we turn into gas. Shadows on concrete steps show where people were sitting. A direct hit on a town with a circumference of twelve miles would destroy everything within that twelve mile circumference, but kill everything within a forty mile circumference. Items not dissolved, bricks and such, would be propelled at a speed of a hundred miles an hour. Even if you're twenty miles past the twelve mile circumference, your clothes would instantaneously ignite, and you would become a torch. If you look toward the flash from as far away as forty miles, you might be instantly blinded. Because of the speed such an explosion creates, a fire storm would develop instantly, sucking all the oxygen out of you, to leave you dead of asphyxiation. The heat would make crematoria of all brick or stone buildings, including fallout shelters.
It is now considered medically unethical for anyone in civil defense to talk about civil defense, since there is none.
It would be a miracle if there were a ten percent survival rate. Those countries or people not engaged in the war would have to submit to the radiation fallout; if a plutonium bomb had been used, the entire globe would be dead in a week or two. But not the cockroaches. They are 400 times more resistant to radiation than humans. The birds will be gone, so the cockroaches will multiply by the trillions. The bomb drop will be followed by epidemics of the Black Plague, of typhoid, poliomyelitis, hepatitis, and other diseases. The ozone will be gone, and every creature on Earth will be blinded by ultraviolet radiation.
Did you know that 5,000 men who handle nuclear weapons are discharged from the military every year because of alcohol, drugs, or mental instability?
Don't worry; our people are on top of this. It's true that flights of birds have been mistaken for Russian missiles, but no one pushed the button. And once, the moon put us into a counter attack modum.
We built the first bomb. The USSR had one by the 50's. Great Britain shortly afterward. Then France. Then China. Several countries in the volatile Middle East have been working on it for years.
An atomic bomb is limited in size by what is called a "critical mass" requirement. A hydrogen bomb is not. That's why a hydrogen bomb can be made that is one thousand times more powerful than an atomic bomb. One thousand times more powerful! It doesn't seem possible, yet there it is.
The numbers accumulated in our frenzied race with Russia are such that every city in the world could be killed 25 times over, from the bombs that have been stockpiled. Each submarine carrying these atomic missiles is capable of destroying 200 cities. Altogether, there are over 60,000 nuclear missiles in the world. But enough.
Interviewer: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to introduce to you Mr. L. Granville Huntington III, who will tell you something about the precautions that have been taken, and the things you must do in the case of a nuclear strike against our country. (applause) Mr. Huntington, may I begin with this: Can we tell in advance how big a strike it would be?
Huntington III: No, not really. If it were a terrorist strike, it would probably be planned against a large city for maximum effect. If it were a nuclear bomb, the body count could go up to several million, a hydrogen bomb might go up to many millions. If it were an all out strike from a crazy dictator, large scale that is, 300 million to a billion people could be killed and another billion suffer serious injuries, of which half might die. (Smiles.)
Interviewer: That's everyone. Our population is 250 million.
Huntington III: Oh — I see what you mean.
Interviewer: What sort of action should we take, in case we had some forewarning?
Huntington III: It is absolutely necessary to get down as low as you can and to have some protection over your head, perhaps something like a table. That should give you a good chance.
Interviewer: It seems to me that I've read that these bombs dig a pretty deep hole; how many stories underground do we have to be?
Huntington III: Oh, three or four stories ought to do.
Interviewer: I've read that they dig holes six or seven stories even when the bomb burst is above ground.
Huntington III: Oh, that could be on an immediate hit. But an immediate hit is not likely.
Interviewer: Is there anything else we can do?
Huntington III: Well, not really, a nuclear device — and you may have heard this — is nature out of control, and the people who drop them have no regard for human life.
Interviewer: I see. What if you heard the warning at the time you were in the middle of a big city; wouldn't there be chaos?
Huntington III: That is a good question. Don't try to leave the city. You are more likely to be killed if you are above ground, by either the bomb, or the hysteria of the crowd.
Interviewer: I see. Has provision been made for our leaders to avoid being killed?
Huntington III: That's another good question. Yes, plans have been made for selected individuals to be escorted to caverns where they will be relatively safe.
Interviewer: Where's that?
Huntington III: (smiles indulgently) Oh, I can't reveal that. It would invite a concentration of nuclear devices on an area reserved for future planning, and for the safety of a very important nucleus of people.
Interviewer: What leaders are we talking about?
Huntington III: Well, I really can't reveal that either.
Interviewer: Statesmen, Senators, the President?
Huntington III: Well, I suppose I can answer that question "yes" because the answer's so obvious.
Interviewer: Besides the statesmen, will there be scientists, rich families, lawyers, doctors?
Huntington III: (somewhat cowed) Well, yes, of course, that's true, people we need.
Interviewer: (angrily) A few plumbers, longshoremen, laborers to do the work? Women, how about women?
Huntington III: Well, yes, some, but I really can't —
Interviewer: Maybe some pretty girls for these special families, maybe some servants, or even slaves —
Huntington III: You seem to know...I won't answer any more questions.
Interviewer: Tell me where in the Constitution it says —
A voice: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the studio head. I regret that we are having some transmission difficulties. A little music for your enjoyment, until we come back shortly.
Note: Huntington III was a dim bulb. Missiles would come with pinpoint accuracy, and if they're aimed at you, you can't dig deep enough to escape. The only chance are the shafts of deep, deep mines, where you would be buried alive, or die of old age; unless you came up to the surface, and then you would die earlier.
Bombs, 1,000 times the power that leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would cause vast fires all over the world, produce a sooty smoke, an enormous cloud of fine dust, and nuclear fallout which would block out the sun. Those who survived the bomb drop would have to undergo the indignity of having to avoid the fallout. And if CO2 had begun to heat up the Earth uncomfortably, there would be a period of comfort as it cooled down, a period that would soon vanish as the temperatures dropped below freezing, introducing us to nuclear winter, and darkness.
Nuclear winter could drop the average temperature by 20 to 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the darkness could last for years. Forever.
The sun could not reach plants, so photosynthesis would cease. Plants would die. The food chain would be broken. Even those bright enough to store up some food would be hungry in a year or two, riding a burnt-out cinder hurtling through space.
There are other, different scenarios. The soot might lift before the plants all died. But then the returning sunlight would bring along ultraviolet light, unfiltered by a bombed-out ozone layer. The ozone layer would not be there, destroyed by CFC's and nuclear fire-balls in the stratosphere. We knew about the sensitivity of the ozone as far back as the 1970's, but those responsible, in spite of scientific warning, did nothing. Without ozone, there's nothing; no life can exist.
I believe it was Carl Sagan who coined the phrase "Nuclear Winter". We should talk a scientist into the Presidency someday. It would be so refreshing just to have someone who didn't deliberately mislead you. In his book co-authored with Mr. Turco, Carl points out that soot is one of the blackest materials nature is able to manufacture, a soot that could hover close to the earth for months or years, despite the cleansing effects of rain. Nuclear winter would leave us with a temperature a few degrees below zero (Fahrenheit).
The world has more bombs than it could ever use on Earth, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. It is safe to believe, relying on the usual nationalism and the propaganda that goes with it, that if a nuclear war starts — with strike, retaliation, strike, retaliation — it will stop when one side can claim victory by counting heads: "We've got 52 people left, and you've only got six, so we win." Or, it's possible that belated humility, or catatonic shock will prompt all sides to quit.
In WWII, the Americans decimated Munich with fire bombs; a wind-fire developed, sucking people, and anything not nailed down, into its intensity. Burning is a toxic process, discharging a vast variety of poisons. A nuclear fire is worse, of course. Forests would burn all over the globe. Soot and black smoke would shut out the sun. The details are vivid, but no longer entertaining. Anyone who lived through a nuclear war would soon die, and leave no one to take care of the babies that had been born in the meantime.
The death of those who survive a nuclear war would be varied, with nuclear winter: typhoid, typhus, malnutrition, starvation, and cold. Most deaths would be hastened by a paralyzing depression.
We don't wish to neglect complimenting those talented people who have supplied the Pentagon with its line of special items. We can now drop as bombs, or hurl as missiles almost any disease, including chemical disease. Our scientists have invented poisons of almost every flavor and potency, including odorless tasteless invisible nerve gas. The latter can be secreted in populous areas, and released by a radio signal.
We have deadly optical systems, laser systems, particle beam weapons, huge cannons that hurl projectiles too fast for any defense system. We have a number of satellites in orbit for guidance purposes, complex battle computers and communications systems, and battle management systems, together with various jamming systems, infrared sensors, shortwaves, ultraviolet machines, x-ray and gamma ray and cosmic ray weapons; finally, kinetic energy weapons which simply destroy their targets by impact rather than explosion (like the old Roman rock being hurled against the defendants' wall).
In the capitol of our country, supervised by the Executive Branch of government, we have a whole series of departments, each jealously guarding its own precious secrets, each trembling in fear that some busybody citizen will walk in, brandishing a copy of the Freedom of Information Law, demanding to see a public file. Even if it is a public file, owned by the public, individuals are not well received because of fear that they will disturb the monster.
The "monster" is us, of course, the American people. Secret agents from other countries may know everything in the file, but that's not intolerable, because secret agents remain quiet about what they find. But American citizens might read a file, become indignant, raise a little hell, and take it to censor-free small town newspapers, maybe march on Washington. Okay. Aren't the essences of Democracy honesty, knowledge, discussion, and even debate? Aren't they? Then why are we whispering?
Is this what they mean by the "continued erosion of Democracy"? We can't be trusted, anymore. Our opinions aren't wanted. We're the tiniest Democracy, though we're the first. Scandinavian countries seek out their citizens, advise them of political issues, and turn out about 90 percent of the population to vote, while 53 percent is the highest mark we can make in the United States.
We don't know anything about what is going on in our country. Our soldiers were used as guinea pigs in Vietnam, when they handled deadly poisons. There are a dozen other examples where Americans have been treated as guinea pigs. Our prisons used prisoners to test the various stages of syphilis. Our soldiers were deliberately exposed to atomic fallout. And drug companies, ugh. Our government has divorced us, and we are now the "monster". The government has become so perverse and complex that we know little of what is going on. And they won't tell us, because we still believe in Democracy.
How many people know that the U.S. Army is intensively engaged in DNA experimentation? By segregating and engrafting DNA cells, they have been able to produce a disease that does not kill, but cripples an opposing army. They have another one that kills. I hope when they decide to spray a herd of sheep, that they get the right bottle, and I hope that the good shepherd is not with his flock.
They really don't want us to know that they have viruses, bacteria, poisonous fungi, nerve and blister agents (lung blisters), herbicides that kill plants and starve the enemy. When questioned, they insist that ownership of these items is theirs exclusively, and will be used to protect us.
We are the "monsters" who can't be told. We are become guinea pigs and livestock waiting for experiment or slaughter. We are 80,000 American troops, returned from Iraq with anal bleeding and cancer. We are the protector of the Rich man's oil, our lives are his profit.
The bomb build-up has come under temporary unilateral control due to the breakup of the Soviet Union. The truth is that 60,000 atomic bombs and missiles, enough to kill humanity many times over, is in the grip of a nation in the grip of paranoia. This being so, why do we allow the Army and other agencies to continue to fool around with dozens more of these apocalyptic weapons? Because the "monster" has no knowledge, and being kept ignorant, has no voice.
We seem to be in the grip of technological hysteria. We have discovered and perfected so much technology and science that we can't stop. We can't turn our backs on it, and say "enough". We invented Plutonium, Element 94, as a result of atomic experimentation, an element so destructive that one pound can wipe out the entire human race twice. Pharmaceutical houses will tell you that they discover all sorts of things just by poking around, combining substances. DNA comprises a whole new field that can be tested with — well — Plutonium for example, or Dioxin, or any one of a thousand chemical combinations. The Food and Drug Administration has examined 500 new drugs in recent years; that only leaves a 149,500 not examined. We could go on like this forever, because technology will never end, it will only become broader and more complex, and more horrifying. Why this fascination for inventing pain and suffering?
The Armed Forces, if allowed, will naturally start tinkering with the tools of their trade. Maybe even the President can't stop it. We don't want any more death weapons, any super-viruses that might escape, any runaway nerve gas, any more bombs, any more hi-tech killers. We apply to CSP, the Committee on Saturation Points. "Enough. Help!"
Our advice: Every time those Army scientists start getting restless, take them on a full pack, twenty mile hike.
And how about that C.I.A.! In 1975, in hearings before a Senate committee, the C.I.A. admitted willful violation of President Nixon's order to get rid of a major supply of poisonous toxins.
So we don't need any more deadly toxins to poison 16,000 of our Vietnam troops, and their subsequently born children.
We also know that the Army has Anthrax and bubonic plague, among a closetful of horrifying diseases, and can make them stronger, or weaker, with DNA synthesis. We know that they can poison crops, and leave a land totally wasted. Americans don't deal in death and starvation of innocents, or of hard working peasants, people who have nothing to do with war.
We don't need any more nuclear testing. Naturally, the Army would like to go on testing forever. Testing is hard on the fallout victims; they have a tendency to waste away and die. Carole Gallagher proved all this, and detailed it in her valuable book "American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War". Between 1951 and 1962, the Atomic Energy Commission detonated nuclear bombs in the Nevada desert to the tune of permanent radiation damage to Mormon farm communities, and Mormon citizens. The explosions were secret, and of no danger to people in Washington, D.C. Sacred government documents proved much of her case. The Nevada blasts reached into New England, South Dakota, Virginia and the Great Lakes, to spread its poisons.
Is it un-American for Americans to be annoyed when Americans become victims of other Americans? Has our government embraced the "psychic numbing syndrome", or are the Army and the C.I.A. on a "higher purpose mission"? Our rights have become reduced, but we refuse to give up the right to discuss our own lingering radiation deaths.
The Mormon experiment might have been more tuned in to "Democracy" if the law had mandated that the experimenters stay in the area for a year or two following up on their tests, just as exposed as the local inhabitants. No more surreptitious moves on us, no secret experiments. We're citizens, not lab rats.
We Americans have never dilly-dallied when it comes to war. We're there. And there is no doubt that war is more tolerable when only one out of twenty gets wounded or killed. Years later, our wisest statesmen cannot see what alternative we had. It's a strain when you can look backward and still can't see how you could have avoided the damn thing. Under all those circumstances, the survivors deserve their parades down Fifth Avenue, and in home town, U.S.A. They have a right to the uniforms, the regalia and the medals. It's little enough. They also have the right to tell us war is putrid. Avoid it.
But former wars were cakewalks compared to the future.
How charismatic are these awful devices? Are we mesmerized by the apocalyptic power of the bomb? Our morbid curiosity has been satisfied — we know what it can do. Why can't we get it so far away from us that we can talk about it in the past tense? Who will have the courage to give the order to scrap all nuclear plants — plants that only last thirty years, and then stay on forever, like an unburied corpse. Who will pass a law that Plutonium can never be used in any way, shape or form, and make it illegal to manufacture it or sell it? Or mention it in any sentence that starts with "Suppose we..."
We, the people, all ninety percent of us, can't do a thing. We don't have the power. It's nonsense to believe that letter writing will get any of this done. It would show how some of us think, but it wouldn't get the job done. The President and his Cabinet might come close, but the Congress is weak, and beholden to the greedaholics. Maybe a Congress, suddenly endowed with a conscience, and the President, working together, could. The wealthy ten percent will never do anything, never, unless they make money at it. If we wait too long, some nut, some enemy, some bomb afficionado might find access and push something, and cinderize us all.
And stop building those contaminated blights, those nuclear power plants. As those already operating reach age 30, abandon them. That way, you can stop sneaking around and hiding each one of those 375,000 nuclear waste dumps — yes, we know about them — that you've got secreted all over the country. Then you can start working on getting us to believe, again.
A year or so ago, some neighborhood guys met, late at night. They had discussed the matter with others in the neighborhood, and now they talked secretly among themselves, only four of them. One stood at the window, staring down the block at a vacant house, old, and run down. The conversation of Al, Bert, Chuck and Dave went something like this:
Bert: "The traffic over there is getting heavier all the time."
Al: (glumly) "Kids are curious, they're flocking over there like geese."
Dave: "Are we going to have a neighborhood or not?"
Al: (wearily) "We can't do anything about it. We've called the cops again and again. We've notified the owner by registered mail. I don't know what to do unless we follow Chuck's idea."
Chuck: "It's got to be our idea, fellows. If I'm all alone, I'm in jail for sure, and like you guys, I've got a wife and kids, too."
Al: "Right; we're all agreed on that."
Dave: "Let's do it."
Bert: "When?"
Al: "Monday midnight, twelve fifteen, when there's not much goin' on. Okay?"
Bert, Chuck & Dave (in unison): "Okay."
Al: "We'll do it."
They stood up and looked at each other solemnly, and then advanced to shake hands in the middle of the room.
Tuesday's newspapers told of the fire. The house on Madison Street had burned to the ground, an old house, vacant and run down. It was believed that arson had been committed by persons in the neighborhood. The house had been occupied recently, it was thought, by drug dealers. A poll of the neighborhood showed that no one regretted its loss; everyone knew that drugs were being sold to young people. How young? As young as had the money to pay for the coke, the smack, the pot. Police were investigating.
The police bullied about for a few days, reminding people not to get involved in police business, and then discovered the names of the arsonists. The district attorney felt that it was his duty to prosecute, but the jury refused to convict.
Very few people realize that the jury was fully within its rights. The Supreme Court of the United States has said on at least two occasions that the jury has not only the right to decide what the true facts are, but can decide that the law, as it exists, is wrong. When this first happened here in America (I believe it was the Zenner libel case), the judge who was presiding was furious, but the U.S. Supreme Court held that the American jury was not bound by the law as read to it by the judge, but only bound to do the right thing.
This episode is about vigilantism, how it solved a problem that was destroying a good middle class neighborhood. The drug dealers disappeared.
We claim, proudly, a history of vigilantism in this country, particularly in the settlement of the West.
Guardian Angels can only roam and report. The clothes they wear, especially their berets, identify them, and, in spite of the fact they usually travel in pairs, some of them have been manhandled and beaten. They do not appeal for money.
Of course, the Angels have no right to judge criminal activity unless it is obvious (a man in a subway beating up an old lady might draw them into the fray), and they take great pains to avoid any vigilante activity. They do not function as vigilantes.
Such do-it-yourself justice (burning down the "drug" house) has never been seriously criticized in this country, because there is nothing to criticize. Vigilantes are not desperadoes, but represent a momentary, inevitable banding together of respectable citizens to rid a society of intolerable on-going criminality.
But, before acting, it must be obvious that "vigilantism" is the only possible choice. Vigilantism cannot be performed by a chaotic mob, or young hotheads on a tear, or town bullies, or hirelings with nothing to lose. Respectable citizens, rising to the rescue of endangered families, constitutes the best scenario. And there must be a societal breakdown, most likely an inadequately staffed police force, or a criminal police force, or no police force.
Police officers occasionally have been exposed as bribe-takers, and bold syndicalism has crept into police departments. Such invite vigilantism.
Citizens, at the same time, have been moving closer to vigilantism, limited so far to neighborhood watches, and the patrolling of streets during certain high crime hours. Men and women are taking more interest in the martial arts as appropriate defensive action in community cleansing. But, with the overall increase in crime, increased sexual assault, child molestation and robbery, vigilantism is likely to surface from time to time. And juries will condone it.
The law of this country used to be that any man who pushed his way across your threshold could be resisted by using the force needed to stop him. If you were a woman or very old, you could get out the shot gun, particularly if the assailant was enraged, or armed. That, sweet and simply, was the law.
Most police officers, today, advise against this. They say "do not resist". Officers can twist a guy's arms off while they read him his Miranda rights, but the public rule is Gandhi-like non-resistance. "Be calm, try to reason with the criminal, don't antagonize him, keep smiling, until the police learn about the crime and rescue you."
The police are not great rescuers. Sometimes they kill innocent people, they shoot each other, and they get shot by the criminals themselves. The old rule is best: "Take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing, end them;" yet the police do not want the average citizen to carry a weapon, not a gun, not a knife, or even a hat-pin. As a result, no one goes out after dark except criminals looking for victims, or Charles Bronson looking for criminals.
When this country was young, when it still had the right to be proud, and the nearest Marshall was three days' ride, frontier justice was acceptable and necessary. Citizens were forced to be judge, jury and executioner, always a distasteful task. In American law, there is nothing on the books condemning any act of frontier vigilantism, invariably directed against some sadistic bully who had committed consecutive crimes of increasing violence. Vigilantism is part of the American Common Law, and should not be abandoned; vigilantism also resembles the Common Law right of Self-Help, and, as outlined here, bears none of the insignia of terrorism.
Another typical example of vigilantism occurs in late-night grocery stores. If a robber comes in with a gun, a store owner has the right to shoot and ask questions later. That's self-defense. If a store owner is robbed and then grabs his gun and pursues the robber out-of-doors, that's vigilantism. And it's happening more and more, particularly with store owners who are frequently robbed. Enough is enough.
In August of 1993, a young man was shot dead for endangering others by firing a semiautomatic rifle in a crowded neighborhood. The right solution? A close call. The user of the semiautomatic had been drinking, and may have endangered children.
In September of 1992, rebels killed a policeman in Lima, Peru, and set off a bomb that injured eight innocent commuters. The rebels claimed that the policeman was a ruthless gangster, but the eight innocent people makes quite a difference. Not vigilantism, but terrorism.
"Crime Strike", a division of the National Rifle Association, in a three inch by two inch newspaper advertisement, invited citizens to call a given number, and to join Crime Strike for a fight against criminals. This goes pretty far. This solicitation, which appeared in April of 1993, can, at best, be called a "vigilante corporation". Certainly there is no sanction by the police or any governmental agency, and vigilante status is compromised by a political effort to strengthen a powerful lobby that resents gun control.
Here's a strange one: Some of the toughest members of the Mexican Mafia have issued an edict from within the walls of California's toughest prisons, that there will be no more drive-by shootings by any gang members, or they will be killed. The fight goes on between gangs and among gangs, but innocents are not to be harmed. This is another one that doesn't fit the usual definition. Let's call it "vigi-revenge".
The numbers on crime in the United States are kept by the FBI and reported in their yearly publication, Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). These lists cover every crime that you can think of, except computer crime, organized crime, white collar crime, and federal offenses. They get those numbers by reviewing police files in our fifty states.
Other sources are the National Crime Survey (NCS) from the Bureau of Justice statistics, with data on rape, robbery, assault, household burglary, household larceny, and motor vehicle theft. Statistics show a steady unidirectional rise in the U.S. crime picture. Do not be lulled into thinking that we don't have a massive crime wave in America. We do. Women are more fearful than they have ever been. Corporate crime, much of it internal, has increased, which is not unexpected. High corporate officers have learned that they, personally, might expect no punishment for crimes against the public, so they have become bolder.
Crime, of course, goes up when workers are laid off, and hungry, a normal sociological effect of desperation. There are a multitude of other reasons, genetic, neurological, endocrinological, and at least one other: The "poor" develop psychological and related physical dysfunction, just like everyone else, but no government employee wants to concede that fact. We discuss employment dilemmas of the poor in a later chapter.
You can hit the "tank" for a couple of years and learn crime from the pros; or you can sit in front of your television set and learn it while you have a beer.
A U.S. appointed committee studying pornography concluded that "...exposure to sexually violent materials has indicated an increase in the likelihood of aggression", and recommended that the prosecution of legally obscene material be placed at the top of state and federal obscenity prosecution priorities. Increasing periods of incarceration were recommended for repeat obscenity violators. TERRORISM
"Terrorism is politically planned violence. "Terrorism" includes rebellion and civil war against any legitimate government. It includes for-profit acts, acts of retaliation, and acts of revenge. The more serious acts thus far, are acts of pure political terrorism. Violence may be used to promote freedom, or to overcome and dominate, or to perpetuate a condition, or to destroy a condition.
Terrorism is not historically new, it is merely different: Today, terrorism is sponsored by governments, as well as by secret societies. It is a haven for zealots, is worldwide, is growing, and claims weaponry unheard of before.
Today's "terrorism" techniques include the innocent. There, its advantage is significant, as it displays a callous indifference to all life not associated with it. Warfare has always had rules; that sounds ridiculous, until you compare it to terrorism. The French and Russian Revolutions both had their terrorism, but temporarily; nothing like the brutality we see today. The numbers keep getting bigger, and the territory spreads. In Ireland, where terrorism has been raging for years, Irish Catholics divide the issues between religion and home rule. The targets are usually British policemen, unlucky enough to be sent to Ireland.
Muslim terrorism is nearly always associated with religion. The unforgiving nature of terrorism is that so many native born innocents are killed in a militant, meaningless way, polarizing the parties forever; there can be no forgiveness, as there is in war.
We can look forward to decades more of terrorism, and no one can predict the eventual outcome.
Terrorist groups are trained by professionals. It has been psychologically proven that the human mind can become benumbed to sadistic and uncivilized behavior. It happened at the German concentration camps. Soldiers who watched the mass executions and became ill, were given errant, divided assignments, until they became horror-hardened.
Terrorist training must be something like that, but the terrorist soldier has a distinct advantage. The Nazi soldier could never detach himself completely from the uncivilized horror of his experience, but the terrorist soldier is on a holy crusade, and his vision is fixed on his ultimate goal, which overrides everything else.
For example, in the United States, the Irish enthusiasm for "Home Rule", and the Arab ambition to own land on the "Left Bank", seem a little deranged. To an American, all life should revolve around "money". A life spent hiding in caves and broken down shacks, making explosives, and grasping hands in an oath of undying fealty, seems to us insane. But, when you read about our Revolutionary War, that's exactly what we did. But it's true, it's impossible to be a money grubber and a zealot at the same time.
The Red Brigade terrorists operate in Italy. And in Spain, there is the ever-present hate-fed set of differences between the Spanish government and the Basques, loyal to their terrorist groups.
Author Brian Crozier emphasized a contagion effect in terrorism. He may be right. Terrorism has more sponsors than a Hollywood ingenue. Terrorist groups have money for training and money for weapons in great quantity.
It would be difficult to guess how many zealots want to be included in the march to the American continent. Kadafi certainly is a player. Likely Arrafat. Likely Hussein. Likely a dozen millionaires and bigshots from the Near East. Maybe someone from Colombia. We've made so many friends in the last thirty years.
We've helped create this age of weaponry, to where, sometime in the near future, if not armed with at least a hand gun, you may have robbed yourself of a chance to stay alive. Those are the predictions of experts in terrorism.
There seems to be a lot of resentment in the world, and terrorists have a way of multiplying; a Yale University computer scientist received a bomb in the mail; a professor at Berkeley received his bomb the week before. And that, like the poisoned headache pills of a few years back, might be the start of a trend, because the F.B.I. admits to investigating a series of mail bombings, fourteen in all. In July of 1993, a group at a seven-nation economic summit, condemned Iran for exporting terrorism and accumulating weapons of mass destruction. Kadafi, in July 1993, predicted the United States will see "a lot more terrorism". In July 1993, the news was that many American airports are boosting their security as terrorists target America. The blind Muslim fundamentalist, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, has been ordered to be deported from the U.S.; he is the suspected leader of the bombed World Trade Center. In a speech last year, Abdel-Rahman said: "Muslims must kill the enemies of Allah, in every way and everywhere, in order to liberate themselves from the grandchildren of the pigs and apes who are educated at the table of Zionists, the Communists and the Imperialists". No one ever said that you couldn't be a terrorist and hate everyone at the same time.
Terrorism can cause a lot of pain, but it strengthens rather than weakens a government. The entire citizenry tends to forget party differences, in drawing together to fight such a bestial enemy.
Terrorist groups have always had two important advantages: surprise, and a religious fanaticism only they understand. And now a third important advantage: Terrorists have the same authoritative weaponry possessed by the military.
In 1974, an international agreement mandated that all airports inspect luggage more carefully. Complex electronic equipment was used to pick up anything metallic before plane boarding. Air piracy slowed immediately, although it still occasionally happens. Then the 1985 TWA flight from Athens to Rome was diverted to Beirut, engineered by two fanatics, one with a submachine gun, the other with a hand grenade. Weapons still get on the planes.
We are obliged to assume that numbers of them are capable of Kamikaze fanaticism, simply because it's part of their religion; killing infidels is a religious mandate. Arabic fanaticism is a proven computation: driving trucks loaded with explosives into a crowded area, and touching themselves off. All they ever found of one man, that could be identified, was a hand. His fingerprints were available and on file. Terrorists can not debate intelligently on the why's and wherefore's of their violent acts — their leaders have mesmerized them into a reawakening, a Holy War against capitalistic perversions.
Their numbers cannot be ignored. There are so many groups, or Movements, among the Palestinians, that practically every Palestinian alive, belongs to one or more of them. There are a dozen such Movements in Lebanon, and more in Kadafi's Syria. It is difficult to keep track of all these Movements. One thing is certain, they all have a seething hatred of Western people and their capitalism. They admire us for our Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution, but hate us for "capitalism's" greed, hedonism, and corruption. Maybe we should have stuck to our Democracy. Or maybe eating camel meat in 110 degrees, without air-conditioning, gets them peevish once in awhile.
We might have saved ourselves a lot of pain if we had leased Vietnam, then sublet it to Hollywood for movies. The producers could have used the locals for crowd scenes; TV sets and air conditioning would creep in, and there goes your communist fanaticism. We could still try that in the Near East. If we starred Kadafi in "The Life of Valentino", he might be a pussy cat afterward.
Terrorist group sizes vary from as small as five or six, to as high as three or four thousand.
Terrorism's fourth advantage: They strike, and then melt back into the country of origin, where sympathy for them is almost one hundred percent, and reprisal for helping the enemy is swift and deadly. When a terrorist group plans an attack, it first isolates those zealots who are to be involved, pumping them up on kill ratios and white hot hate. They plan carefully, and go over plans until every move is second nature. They are willing to give up their own lives, even hopeful of it, since it ensures going to Arab Heaven.
Iran, Iraq, Libya, and the other far Eastern countries already mentioned, are not the only countries housing terrorist groups. In Belgium, there is the C.C.C., a disruptive Communist cell. Athens is a hotbed of "terrorism". In Italy, the government must contend not only with the Mafia, but with strong terrorist groups, violently opposed to some of the decisions and coalitions formed by the government. One faction of the Red Brigades wanted to intensify the armed assault along the lines of a long war. Another faction within that group felt that military action would not succeed against so strong an opponent and that insurrection should be encouraged among the masses, a more peaceful approach. The warrior faction prevailed and executed Ezio Tarantelli, an economist, because his theories did not favor the working class. The Red Brigades have executed other upper class elite (judges), concentrating on victims whose economic or social ideas differ from their own. In many respects, in Italy, terrorism resembles a social revolution, class discontent bidding for a share of the good life. America, please note.
It's amazing how the movement has spread. Sri Lanka has its terrorists. So does India. And in South America, there's Uruguay, and Bolivia, and Brazil, Argentina, and Colombia. Also Chile, Nicaragua and Peru.
When terrorism has spread to that many countries, so quickly, we have a phenomenon on our hands. What is going on?
The nations of the world have a tendency to identify violent activities elsewhere as terrorism, and their own activities as anti-terrorist. In 1983, the U.S. Congress passed a bill called the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Act, and allotted this newly created agency some millions of dollars. We had a love affair going with El Salvador at the time, and they got a lot of the funds. Reporters in El Salvador brought back stories of thousands of rapes, torture, and murder victims by police, using our funds to combat so-called "international terrorism".
Another example: Sound authority insists that the Guatamalan army, another country using our funds, killed many more unarmed civilians in the 1980's than did the PLO, Red Brigade, Meinhof Gang, and Kadafi terrorists combined.
When Major General Arthur McArthur, Doug's father, invaded the Philippines, on behalf of the U.S.A. in 1900, the tendency was to label the "resistance movement" as "bandits", which means that there must have been about one million bandits in the Philippines, because that's how many we claim we killed. These "bandits" wanted to be left alone to run their own government.
We killed the same number in the Caribbean when we saved the Dominican Republic. The fact that the Dominicans were using their country's flag and wearing uniforms didn't diminish the fact that U.S. propagandists called them bandits, or terrorists.
The point is that the label "terrorist" serves to condemn the other guy's methods (like our hit-run "terrorist" methods during the Revolutionary War).
History shows the Dominican and Philippine "bandidos" were patriots, and we were immoral bullies.
We managed to interview a retiree from the State Department who, deathly afraid of the CIA, insisted on keeping his identify secret:
Interviewer: Well, sir, in order to honor your request for secrecy, shall I call you Mr. X?
Mr. X: That's fine.
Interviewer: Do I understand that you have some good things to say for terrorism?
Mr. X: Well, I don't want to say they're good things; I'm a God-fearing man who cannot do that. Some people in the government appreciate "foreign terrorism".
Interviewer: How's that?
Mr. X: Everyone hates terrorism, so in the government, we call everything we don't like a "terrorist activity".
Interviewer: And what good does that do?
Mr. X: It's very simple, really. It allows our agents to interfere in any activity in almost any country in the world, in any way they like.
Interviewer: I don't understand.
Mr. X: Anything that goes wrong, we can blame on their terrorist groups. And sometimes, it's our terrorist group, or one sponsored by us, that made the strike.
Interviewer: My God!
Mr. X: Well, I had to tell someone. My conscience kept bearing down on me, so I had to tell someone.
Interviewer: One last question. What part, if any, does oil play in terrorism?
Mr. X: Oh, you know about that: It can hardly be denied that oil plays an important role anywhere in the world, particularly in the Near East. If the country has oil, we are very active there, with our top diplomatic people. Iraq is never called a terrorist state by us, because of its oil, though many terrorist groups emerge from Iraq.
Interviewer: Thank you, Mr. X.
Terrorist groups exist in every country of the Near East. There are so many groups in the PLO that almost everyone must be a member. Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, all have groups. The largest group has about four thousand members. Sometimes the country (Argentina) is more terroristic than the terrorists. Almost every country in South America has active terrorists. South Africa has terrorists. Consumed by threats and challenges, many governments are using terrorist killers to re-map political vistas. The U.S. "buys" its terrorism by pumping dollars into other governments.
In Phoenix, Arizona, one hundred Islamic extremists met in December, 1991, to plan terrorist acts in the United States, but the FBI warned that they could not be investigated without some evidence of criminal activity. Cultural differences make the U.S. a target of the East; they don't like our movies, our pornography, the equality of women, our hedonism. On February 26, 1993, a bomb planted in the World Trade Center killed seven and injured three hundred and left a huge crater. Eight Muslim fundamentalists were arrested, importation proceedings started, but resisted. The Muslim leader has not been indicted.
Some Muslim fundamentalists were arrested in plans to blow up the Holland and Lincoln tunnels; eight suspects have been arrested and are being held without bail.
On July 6, 1993, Libya's Kadafi promised more terrorism ahead.
Ministers at the seven nation economic summit meeting in Tokyo, on July 8, 1993, warned that Iran is exporting terrorism and accumulating weapons of mass destruction. On July 11, 1993, a number of key airports announced that they were boosting their security as terrorists target America.
Sometimes, a so-called "terrorist" will point out that he's no such thing, but is a "freedom fighter". For example, freedom fighters won the Revolutionary War of 1776, everybody knows that. The British called them something else. And in Vietnam, those little kids and skinny adults carrying grenades in their pockets turned out to be freedom fighters, not terrorists. It's easy to figure out why they won. Opposing governments call them terrorists, suicide units, whatever is politically advantageous. There's no time to identify them. They come silently, and like shadows, they go.
We have dozens of committees and study groups, and book writers, trying to figure out what is going on. Hundreds of terrorist groups throughout the globe. Why?
No one would go to Las Vegas if there was no air conditioning. There are a lot of places like that on Earth, the Near East, for example. Air conditioning in the Near East is top quality, actually some of the best in the world, but all of it is crowded into mansions owned by one-half of one percent of the population. 99.44% have no air conditioning at all; some people don't even know what it is.
We asked WHY TERRORISM? Maybe we can find some clues.
Twenty years ago, the wealthy Shah of Iran was kicked out of his country. The people who forced him out were unhappy about education, poverty, social status, housing, working conditions, and probably air conditioning. It was a populist revolt. Many of the billions that the Shah had pocketed, left with him. Nothing much improved after the Shah was gone and "the people" took over.
During his rule, the Shah had taken in billions of dollars, in pound sterling and yen. Nothing "dribbled" down to the people. It seems to be an invariable rule that rich people are always tight-fisted. It seems strange that none of them seem to derive any pleasure out of helping the unfortunate.
Terrorism is a political complaint; and though we now have terrorism for hire, it used to be a complaint that would hopefully turn into a revolution — such as occurred in Iran. Terrorism always seems to arise due to indifferent treatment by the ruler, or active persecution.
It's more difficult to be a suicidal zealot if you have a beautiful wife, a lovely home, happy children, and a well paying job that is challenging but not pressure-packed. It's even better if the country club has accepted your application form and is only a mile or so from your house. If all you have to worry about is the kids' grades, or finding a conscientious baby sitter, you are not a good terrorist candidate.
Now in the Near East, with none of these niceties, plus no air conditioning, you could feel pretty high and dry. The rich Shah has just left town with a billion dollars in oil money paid to him by the Americans. The other rich guys in town don't want the people sore at them, so they do the usual thing: They own the newspapers and the printing presses, so they start pumping out propaganda to the people denouncing the hedonistic capitalism of America, call the fleeing Shah America's puppet, and propose a religious war against America. Why do they do this? To divert attention away from themselves and against the Americans. The propaganda machine tells the people that the Shah is probably paying off the Americans right now, and that if they had that money, they would see to it that everyone in town had air-conditioning. The people fall for it and organize their first "terrorist groups", not realizing their own rich have outmaneuvered them again.
So what do the United States Departments of Defense and Foreign Affairs do? Their position is awkward, (1) staying on good terms with the millionaire oil sheiks, and (2) at the same time fighting off terrorists whom the oil sheiks have taught to hate us. U.S. diplomats can't even tell the terrorists that their own Rich are stealing them blind.
Did I hear somebody say there's something funny goin' on? Not really. These little intricacies outline the typical way that money is made, throughout the world. The Rich create diversion and blind alleys to camouflage their own self-oriented activities.
Terrorist groups can be dedicated, sincere, brave and well armed, but badly informed, or betrayed from within.
Nevertheless, the terrorist group is tough and tightly-knit. No one is alone. They run on hatred and religious commitment. They have in common the same training. Their lives have a purpose. And their numbers grow, like an epidemic.
They are aware of a superiority over the enemy because their religious/cultural ideals are superior to hedonistic, decaying, money-grubbing capitalism. They do not see it as a contest over material wealth, the haves versus the have-nots. "No", they would say, "we do not envy you, we despise you." If you want to view it from their point of view — the problem being serious — you ought to know that these groups are not made up of a bunch of ruffians. Terrorist groups are more likely to include the intelligentsia of a country. Intelligentsia is an invariable rule in terrorism.
They choose terrorism because they are idealists, who hope to awaken the people to insurrection and revolution.
Terrorism nearly always arises in an effort to correct an oppressive form of government. It happened in Spain in 1800. It's been a growing device ever since, much more serious, now that terrorists can arm themselves to the teeth, stalk their quarry silently, and disappear. Terrorists successfully trigger a revolution, only if people are already on the edge of a revolution. Otherwise, they fail.
No one is ever prepared for a terrorist attack. Ignition is unexpected, in the middle of peace and order. The attack is well planned, the victim is anyone who can be captured or reached by a bullet. Terrorists believe they are not in the same class with governments that lie, connive, show favoritism, and make promises that won't be kept, administrations that delude the populace into miserable submission; terrorists believe that they must first awaken the populace, prior to political overthrow of a government.
Terrorists propagandize their strikes, theory demanding that they prove they can succeed, can create enormous fear, and deserve subsequent cooperation. On the other hand, very often a counter-strike is made by a government group. The national government of Argentina has its own terrorist groups. The U.S.A. involves itself by giving money to a particular group, to make a U.S.A. preferred strike. There now being hundreds of terrorist groups, sometimes more than one claims credit for the same strike.
An interesting phenomena among terrorists is that they have a tendency to be sympathetic to each other, even if they are opposed ideologically; rightist groups will cooperate and assist leftist groups, and vice versa, if their conflict is not direct. This well-regarded fact is a shocker, and tends to confute the primary ideology that is claimed in the birth of any group.
Rightist groups are trained to destroy mass organizations like labor unions and peasant associations. Methods are straightforward — torture, then death — this discourages others, terrifies villages.
Leftist groups, on the other hand, target office holders, police, industrialists, some judges, and the rich.
It is not easy to understand, but religious ideology may be the conviction that enlists a fanatic, whereas political conviction selects a target.
Blame cannot be laid on the poor or the lower classes of society for supporting a social revolution. Terrorism, led by the intelligentsia, can be an effective method of drawing them in.
Having said all that, the uneasy question still remains, why would terrorists kill all stand-by pedestrians, large and small, when they might be killing some sympathizers? The answer is, as a rule, they don't. Propaganda usually shapes patriotism, and that's the sort of thing that governments, and the Rich to some extent (see Foundations) publish. Disregarding for the moment the thin line between vigilantism, freedom fighters, and terrorism, please recall that Dominican patriots, dressed in full uniform, died in an American invasion and were referred to by the American State Department as bandidos, or terrorists. The same was true in our invasion of the Philippines. In 1776, King George called us thieves and cutthroats, and we referred to ourselves as freedom fighters or patriots.
Obviously, so-called terrorists do not massacre their own sympathizers. Ask the peasants in Vietnam, who hid fighters at great risk to their own lives.
Why then, do terrorists blow up children's busses? Because religious wars have always been the most vicious. A dead Israeli is a good Israeli; a dead Arab is a good Arab. Religious wars are pretty well confined to the Far East, and do not represent the main thrust of terrorism.
Nevertheless, the terrorist hopes to force issues, to leave behind some examples of ruthlessness, and where weak governments are involved, to frighten recruits into the terrorist camp. Still, terrorism's weakness is that such ruthlessness does not appeal to the masses, and does not build a revolutionary nucleus. You can't win a revolution that isn't a people's revolution.
History seems to document that terrorism may not win a revolution, but does aid guerrilla forces, and very often lends brains to the undertaking. In Nicaragua, in the late seventies, Somoza was overthrown by a ferocious civil war, that involved almost the entire population. It is impossible to credit terrorists' activities with that victory, but fear of terrorists may have played a triggering role.
For the most part, terrorist movements have local roots, not subject to outside influence.
On the other hand, successful terrorist groups that are to the right, and are hired to suppress social change, often have better financing from conservative sources, and are generally more successful in repressing long sought after change.
Rightist groups hired to maintain the status quo, and to deny needed reform, is something new to the thinking of most people, who had always supposed that terrorists were always on the left. No, some groups serve the conservative right.
Such specialist groups raise the specter of a new phenomenon, hundreds, perhaps thousands of wars raging everywhere in the world, undeclared wars, fought by left-thinking terrorist groups financed by one faction, versus right- thinking terrorist groups financed by wealthy factions. Governments would be actively involved, of course, meanwhile lying glibly to its own citizens.
Blame is everywhere, it's nowhere. All governments will soon have their own terrorist groups, squadrons of double-oh-sevens, with "license to kill", or, in an effort to be discreet, they might just "buy" terrorist activity. An amazing addition to culture, terrorism is a way of life in many parts of the world, and on its way to the United States. There must be "terrorism" training camps everywhere. Will "Methodology of Terrorism" find its way into the high school curricula of Near East schools? U.S. schools?
Some "terrorist" groups are very well financed. Perhaps a Near East financier will tell one of his friends in America to sell his stock in General Motors, and buy Terrorist Red, Inc., on the Iraqi Stock Market? "There's going to be a big hit. Terrorist Red is all set to kidnap some very wealthy people, and the stock ought to take a big run upward."
Wouldn't that be "insider" trading, and illegal? What if the rich family members who were kidnapped were friends of the guy who bought Terrorist Red, Inc., stock? What if it turned out to be his own kids? Would his market winnings be enough to pay his kids' ransom? Do we live in a world that allows such ghoulish humor? Almost.
Right now, Near East terrorism may have the advantage. We don't hate them, they hate us. We want their oil, but little else, a camel ride, and some pictures of the Pyramids; they threaten to change our culture and our moral values. They're the have-nots, but in the light weaponry department, they match us. So far, they're just a nuisance, but any win over us is a glorious triumph to them, and they insist that God is with them. Meanwhile, we're paying higher taxes, which will get even higher, so that the U.S. Treasurer can pay over our taxes to the Rich, who own the Treasury Bonds that sent our indebtedness to four trillion dollars. A lot of people might agree to trade them even-up, country for country, except they don't have air conditioning over there. Air conditioning really is important.
Why choose terrorism? It turns out to be a pretty good deal for a terrorist. Goals are all mapped out, and the whole endeavor has been elevated to the status of a "Holy War", with no "conscience" problems, thus making everyone either a hero or a martyr.
They own the element of surprise. The life is adventurous, better than being a nobody, and revenge can be rationalized as a "holy" punishment, against a sybaritic sinner.
The brilliant Arthur Koestler said in "The Ghost in the Machine" as follows: "When one contemplates the streak of insanity running through human history, it appears highly probable that Homo sapiens is a biological freak, the result of some remarkable mistake in the evolutionary process."
Much of history supports Mr. Koestler's statement. We took great pride in winning all our wars, where men strained to kill other men they had never seen before. Our casualties were high in World War I and World War II, and highest during the Civil War, where brother often fought against brother. The survivors had parades, medals, and boasted of the exploits and bravery of their buddies. But the war which has evoked the deepest, most tangled emotions was the one in Vietnam where the losses were only 58,000, far less than any other of our other conflicts or wars. We have our own weeping wall in Washington, where there's never a dry eye. Most of the veterans of that war don't know themselves what the losses were on the other side. The Vietnamese lost 600,000, the Cambodians lost 2 million. There were no parades for that war, and the soldiers who fought it were as good as any who ever lived, but they lost, because our State Department pulled out. Some of those tears are because we lost. And the Vietnamese, man, woman and child, were defending a fatherland, and they won, because of their bravery and patriotism.
Psychologically, our soldiers didn't know it, but our government was wrong. Our soldiers were left without pride or glory. They cry at the wall for their buddies, and also because we were wrong, and we lost.
We are a biological freak, all right, and we don't make sense. Evolution is trial and error. Those biological freaks, Neanderthal and Homo habilis, didn't make it. Neither did ninety percent of everything that has ever lived make it. Perhaps "life" doesn't work.
Koestler points out that there are many of these evolutionary freaks that have developed, exist now, and cannot possibly survive. The brains of some crustacea are located near the alimentary canal, and brain growth is forbidden because it would constrict and block the canal. Marsupials must eventually succumb to such enemies as the fox, the cat and the dog, because the brains of marsupials are not only smaller, but of inferior construction. And so it goes throughout the animal kingdom, mankind not being without some of the same problems; but mental rather than physical. Consciousness, pride, and aggressiveness, may mark our eventual Waterloo.
Scientists point out that humanoids have three different brains, the oldest brain being basically reptilian, the other two, the neocortex, having developed over eons of time after the first brain. All three brains connect, and the reptilian brain plays a fundamental role in emotional behavior. But here's the rub: Evolution superimposed a new, superior structure on the old reptilian brain, with partly overlapping functions, but without providing the new brain with clear-cut control over the old. What happens, is that upon certain occasions and under certain stress, the old primitive survival brain takes control, abandoning the neocortex, and drifts back to responses that are archaic, defensive, and murderous.
There are certain people in our society of whom we approve, and others that do not quite get our approval. We fantasize about Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe. The athletic prowess of our athletes is a successful blend of neocortex and primitive brain. Competition, however, draws most of its juices from our primitive/reptilian/limbic brain.
Alfie Kohn, in his intriguing and original book "The Case Against Competition", makes the point that competition is not particularly normal or desirable, but is counter-productive, both personally and for national purpose; and is psychologically poisonous. He points out that competition has almost become our state religion, and that the staggering obsession with victory breeds resentment, discontent, and antagonism, all negative passions. Our movies are geared to this obsession. In nature, competition is not the rule. Symbiosis and mutualism are cooperative, not competitive. In Africa, birds prune the backs of animals; fish do favors for each other, or live unharmed midst the tentacles of poisonous plants, in joint cooperation. Indian tribes, the Zuni, and the Bathonga, live highly cooperative non-competitive lives, with absolutely no emphasis on super-stars. The same exists in many other societies: In rural Mexico, the Inuit of Canada, Australian aborigines, Norwegians, the Japanese. Chinese students prefer cooperative activities to competitive ones.
If Americans have a passion for accumulation, greed, and selfishness, the motor that drives it all is "competition". Tests on athletes seem to suggest the very opposite of what coaches, particularly coach Vince Lombardi, would have guessed. Superior performance does not require competition; in fact, intensive competition damages performance. Football players who can't eat for hours before a game, others who tend to throw up before a game, over-reach the limits of mental tension, and do not perform as well. And, they are more susceptible to injury. Intense concentration on winning tends to precipitate unethical conduct, followed by anxiety and shame.
Business competition can be vicious by efforts to gain monopolies, drive others out of business, sell products of poor quality, and provide unsafe working conditions. The failure of paternalism and loyalty between employer and employee is a heavy price to pay.
One matter alone, verified by the world of psychiatry, ought to be enough for us to take a long look at our out-of-control competitiveness: The most pervasive occasion for "anxiety" in our culture is — you guessed it — "competition".
A primitive brain still guides much of our activity, and in some people seems to be in command, when prodded by competition.
Darwin discovered that all creatures, great and small, are struggling to survive. Food chain analyses tell us that A eats B who eats C who eats D, on through the alphabet. Killing is a common, everyday affair, occurring hundreds of times per second. You can't say "that's life", without also wondering how long it will last.
All life has that competitive ring of death, and it could be that this little "life" experiment, here on Earth, doesn't work.
Our separate brains can be distinguished in an autopsy. The modern brain and the primitive brain know and consult each other. We may have even reached an apex where the neocortex, in its continued growth, has begun to take charge of the reptilian brain. Complete control might take awhile, and, in another 100,000 years could make us worth keeping.
Genes don't know what the law is, so there can be no genetic predisposition to violate the law. You can't be "born to be bad". "Bad" comes from bitter environment. That's why the Rich don't browse in the Ghetto.
Racism, or poverty, or social rejection, are all easier explanations. The Kamikaze persuasion, the Muslim hatred, the "Holy War" fixation, may all be easier to prove in the light of Koestler's "primitive brain". For example, the "Holy War" syndrome may nurse a feeling of conquest, a touch of hatred, along with stalking preparations of pure aggression.
Such a study would require a detailed investigation of the childhood, parents, siblings of the suspect, and submission to psychological analysis. I suppose the point is that anybody who engages in terrorist activities ought to be studied. Have we arrived at our present breathtaking technological climax too soon? What caused the two or three other humanoid types to exist for some tens of thousands of years, and one type for over a million, to be suddenly snuffed out? Was it acceptance of a new tribalism, called "Terrorism"? Doesn't Aristocracy and Elitism go yet a step further, by, in addition to mass murder (see chapters ahead), imposing servitude and slavery?
Our neocortex has brought us to this point, but the reptilian brain has tagged along, a brain that is savage, desperately self-oriented in order to stay alive, a curious, hating, hungry brain. You might just as well ask why we have one hundred or two hundred levels of culture in this country, from the biker culture, with its nomadic existence and tough machismo, as compared to the moneyed penthouse effete. Incidentally, these two outrageously different types surprisingly have one thing in common: They both ignore the law. When the biker does it, it is often a gaudy tavern brawl, or an orgiastic contempt for the rights and bodies of women; when the rich effete ignores the law, it is usually more serious, perhaps a mass-produced product that leaves behind hundreds and thousands of crippled and dead.
One last comment about the uneasy reptilian/neocortex brain partnership: Studies have been made more than once where a confessed rapist insists that what he did was beyond his own control, that drives which he does not understand forced his deviant behavior. The second type says that he felt no great compulsion to do so but saw no reason not to do so. Both explanations sound like the primitive brain talking.
Finally, to try to comprehend terrorist activity, there is the "benumbing" effect. Professional killers who have been interviewed in prison explain that the first killing is a mind-wrenching experience, whereas the second and all the others are casual and matter of fact, the only reaction a cold indifference, except rare occasions when one might feel a bit of sympathy or a bit of sadness. Terrorists make the same comments.
Terrorism is on its way to the United States. Terrorists who are caught and interviewed will talk about the greatness of their cause. All such conversations, all of them, mention a great dissatisfaction with government, and emphasize that all government is corrupt. Those interviewed talk bitterly about the misdistribution of wealth. Terrorists pride themselves in their ability to give up their lives. Anyone captured and incarcerated is still a living danger. Recruiting the down-and-outer is not difficult, and for every one taken out, two replacements are available.
The methods of terrorism over the past one hundred years have been charted by many writers. They have captured plane loads of people, and diverted destinations to other airports. They have seized whole groups of people, hidden and imprisoned them, and patiently waited for an opportune and beneficial exchange. Others they have simply killed as enemies and violators of the faith. Their numbers have doubled and tripled and quadrupled. Governments prefer to call detainees hostages, and their captors terrorists or kidnappers. Terrorists have shamed the U.S. Government on several occasions, ignoring our protocol, haggling like street merchants, and even forcing our officials and their staffs to break the law.
"Kidnapping" is a bad word. The Rich hate it. On 1-10-94, it was reported from Hermosillo, Mexico, that a gang of proficient kidnappers had taken for ransom at least nine wealthy Sonoran Mexicans, during the past nine months, securing nine ransom payments, one as high as three million dollars. One person is still being held, the grandson of two wealthy families, and it is not known how much his abductors are demanding.
Sometimes terrorists demand arms, sometimes the release of an imprisoned hero, sometimes money; terrorists need not depend upon anyone for funds, and have now begun to attack capitalists through their families, the point of greatest weakness. They can be persuasive: In the Getty case, years ago, terrorists were stalled by the rich man's family, and cruelly displayed their impatience. In the Hearst case, Patty's kidnappers demanded something in seven figures for the poor, and got it.
If terrorists decide this as their method of financing themselves, and their idealism, and their war on corrupt governments, and as contribution to the poor, the greedy Rich are thereby presented with their toughest equation.
And where will the sympathy be? The Rich have seized power and wealth for the last hundred years, in fatiguing repetition of past historical precedent. We know that the Rich are miserly, and always have been. If kidnappers distribute funds for the food, shelter and clothing of the poor, in place of the reluctant Rich, sociologists will have a field day watching Rich propaganda locked in deadly embrace with terrorist altruism.
It's impossible to see which way it will go; but I would urge the Rich to not count on propaganda, or control of the police, or rewriting the law; terrorists have already proven that these are the very strictures of government that irritate them the most. Most terrorist groups are warring against government and the Rich, so the more dogmatic the government and the more persecutorial the government, the more inflamed the terrorist crusade.
It is difficult to argue with terrorists on philosophical grounds. Heretofore, most governments have all eventually divorced themselves from the people, and accepted rule by a tiny minority of Aristocrats and Rich Elite.
Recently, the English gained a strong Labor Party; Labor, for awhile, ran the country. The same is true of France. Sweden has adopted a socialistic government, emphasizing equality, and other Scandinavian nations lean in the same direction. No world power can any longer claim a ruling czar or king; terrorist activities are minimal to nothing in those countries. Italy has dishonest judges and dishonest politicians. One politician's court defense was "everybody does it"; terrorists are very active in Italy. These examples go on and on. A pattern has formed. This seems to be the nature of mankind, that while Newton is making tremendous strides in optics, simultaneously some of his work is being duplicated in another part of the world, the same with Darwin and Leibnitz. Even Einstein's relativity was being duplicated. DNA had its near duplicator in Linus Pauling.
What I am suggesting is that the sudden appearance all over the world of terrorist groups, taking fierce stands against elitist governments, may not be a coincidence, but may mark the decline of Aristocracy. It may just be that the statute of limitations is running out on elitist governments: a coincidental, "simultaneous" effort to discard greed and recognize the dignity of all humankind. In a hundred years, "greedaholics" may only be a memory.
Terrorists (Freedom Fighters, in later history books?) say, "We are not deviants." Deviants are governments that lie, propagandize, favor the Rich, favor big corporations, sell out, and deviate rather obviously from the standards they have legal obligations to follow. Terrorists believe they have most of the advantages, to-wit: (1) the advantage of being on the side of right, (2) dedication, (3) mobility, (4) pervasiveness, (5) training, (6) armed, (7) heavily armed, (8) comradeship, (9) a message for the unenlightened, (10) friends, (11) surprise, (12) camouflage, and (13) intelligent personnel.
At the end of WWII, millions of G.I.s returned home, and millions of boys and girls got married. Between 1946 and 1961, seventy million children were born, far and away the largest generation in American history. An outburst of population is really not very unusual, since populations all over the world wax and wane, due to such oscillators as war, prosperity, and disease. But in the absence of some extraordinary catastrophe like an atomic war, or the outbreak of some new plague-like disease, population demographics can be computed for the long term.
The U.S. Census, taken every ten years, is our best overall data-machine, in the determination of population. In fact, the Census Bureau publishes more statistical information than any other federal agency.
Global statistics are gathered through the International Statistical Institute, organized in 1972, and working in close cooperation with the United Nations and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.
The first great leap in population came when hunters switched to agriculture. In 3500 B.C., agricultural Egypt was the great empire of the world, and total world population was thirty million. Thirty-five hundred years later, at the birth of Christ, world population was about two hundred forty million. Of that total number, the Roman Empire claimed about sixty million. By 1800 A.D., the figure had reached one billion. The conquest of disease and less stressful living conditions, doubled the population to two billion by 1930, a period of one hundred thirty years. Thirty years later, in 1960, world population was three billion, and in sixteen more years was four billion. And in eleven years after that had reached five billion!
In about 1776, the population of the United States numbered four million; two hundred years later, the population had risen more than fifty times.
Population has a direct effect upon the poverty level; as population increases, so does poverty. Today, one in every five people in the world languishes in abject poverty while the richest twenty percent take in one hundred fifty times the income of the poorest twenty percent. Even more startling than that statistic is the fact that about twenty percent of people living in the United States live below the poverty level.
In December of 1992, the Census Bureau projections indicated that population would soar in the 1990's.
When Desmond Morris wrote "The Naked Ape" in 1967, one of his points was that by comparing instinct and reaction, humankind and animals use much the same basic primer. If animals become overcrowded, they become neurotic, angry, irritable, even homicidal. Humans react in precisely the same way; add a low standard of living, and you have a potential explosion looking for a lighted match. Los Angeles is a good example, but the rising crime rate in Phoenix and other large cities is likewise anarchic and misery-oriented. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in September of 1992 the poverty levels in all our states. In Mississippi, it was almost twenty-four percent, New Mexico twenty-two and a half, a number of states over seventeen percent, many, many states at fifteen plus to fourteen plus percent. And in the year since that report, the poverty level has risen.
At the start of the year 2000, forty percent of the world's people will be living in cities, says the United Nations Population Fund. Mexico City will have a population of over twenty-five million, Sao Paulo over twenty-two million, Tokyo over nineteen million, Shanghai over seventeen million, New York almost seventeen million, Calcutta almost sixteen million, Bombay over fifteen million, Beijing fourteen million, Los Angeles fourteen million, Jakarta almost fourteen million.
The population in the world is five and a half billion, with over one billion living in poverty. The population fifty-six years from now, 2050, will be fourteen billion. Of course, poverty breeds poverty, ignorance breeds ignorance, and the poorer and more uneducated the country is, the more certain will be the population binge. The world's land is all gone. There's no "go west..." anymore. A new child born in Bangladesh, India, Rio or Bolivia, is not awarded fifty acres and a mule by the government. The new baby has to crowd into a manger with his brothers and sisters.
Population is never evenly distributed. Fifty percent of the Earth's population lives on a mere five percent of its land. Of course, that's because of climate and access to water, building materials, and good soil. No one wants to live on a frozen mountain top or in a swamp. And only a few people want to live in the desert. In tropical areas, there can be too much rain, and in other areas, too little. Slum build-ups occur when squatters would rather live near a habitable city than do their starving in uninhabitable surroundings.
Epidemic diseases are all but gone. Smallpox decimated the world, but it's now been eradicated. Inoculation wiped out polio. But lately, we've been getting some new virulence, not quite identified, mutant perhaps, and not yet controlled. Eradication of virulent diseases invites new ones. One "disease" has been growing stronger. Overpopulation.
We can control population. Right now, there are forty million abortions performed throughout the world every year. Low cost contraceptives are available throughout most of the world (a backward country like China is one of our leaders in population control), and after some adverse experimentation, a variety of low cost contraceptives are available; and consumer costs will continue to drop. The Catholic Church, which opposes any kind of birth control, has been overruled, because the removal of an embryo is less painful to the world than the slow starvation of a child. Other reasons abound, and one suspects that the stiff mind-bending program of the Catholic Church is tied, somehow, to that church's devotion to large Catholic families.
Interviewer: Ladies and gentlemen, we have Dr. Tatosorn with us today from the Department of Agriculture. He will stay awhile after the interview, so please save your questions until then. Welcome, Doctor. We are most interested in knowing if agriculture can keep up with the growing population.
Dr. Tatosorn: Do you believe that if the population of the world continues to double every decade or so, farmers can continue to feed this doubling population?
Interviewer: Well, I don't see how —
Dr. Tatosorn: Neither do I. Every year farmers have to grow food for ninety- five million more people —
Interviewer: Wow!
Dr. Tatosorn: With twenty-six billion tons less top soil.
Interviewer: You're kidding! Dr. Tatosorn: That's about the amount of top soil that covers Australia's broad wheat lands. And at best, the world wheat production will increase by only about one percent each year in the future, and we're working like hell to get that.
Interviewer: What is top soil, exactly?
Dr. Tatosorn: (After a long stare.) Top soil is what we grow everything in. You can't grow anything worth eating in the mountains, or in sand, or in swamps.
Interviewer: Are we using all the land we can to grow food?
Dr. Tatosorn: Yes. We're using it, and we're losing it.
Interviewer: What do you mean?
Dr. Tatosorn: What the world doesn't know is that we have been fighting soil exhaustion ever since the Egyptians started growing food in the Nile River Deltas.
Interviewer: I thought we replenished the soil.
Dr. Tatosorn: We do, sometimes. Large agribusiness corporations are not concerned about the long term, so the soil gets depleted. Another problem is dealing with the salts that come in with the water. Flushing out these salts is very expensive. We have no laws that force anyone to leave the soil as good as they found it. Look around you — the upper Rio Grande Valley was once a rich grassland. Look at it now. Have you ever heard of desertification?
Interviewer: No, sir.
Dr. Tatosorn: The United Nations keeps figures on these things. They say that about thirteen million square miles in the world — that's four times the area of the fifty United States — have been reduced to semi-arid land with a tremendous loss of productivity.
Interviewer: How much of the grain we grow goes to feed animals?
Dr. Tatosorn: Good question. About one-third.
Interviewer: That much?
Dr. Tatosorn: Yes. We could feed more people if beefsteak wasn't so popular. The time will come when T-bones, and prime cuts, any red meat in fact, will be illegal to eat.
Interviewer: Could we sustain a population of twenty billion people?
Dr. Tatosorn: No. Absolutely not.
Interviewer: How about ten billion?
Dr. Tatosorn: (Lowers his head in deep thought.) Maybe, if we had complete world cooperation...but it wouldn't be easy. (Looks up.) You see, by any standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly over-populated. Africa's soils and forests are being depleted. Brazil is cutting new lands out of its wildernesses, but in doing so, they, and all the other tree cutters in the world, are playing games with growing patterns.
Interviewer: Are there other countries where the soil is being depleted?
Dr. Tatosorn: It's not always depletion. Take India; two-thirds of India's land is threatened by erosion, and India has a short supply of water, with too much salinity in it, plus constant problems with pollution, because there are too many people there. And one last discouraging thought on India — India must somehow feed sixteen million more people each year.
Interviewer: Thank you, Doctor. Now I'm going to allow the audience to ask a few questions. You, sir, go ahead. Identify yourself, please.
Col. Bullhorn: Doctor, I am Colonel Al Bullhorn. It seems to me we should keep in mind that as the percentage of population goes up, so does the percentage of poverty. I wouldn't call that unusual.
Dr. Tatosorn: I wish it were so (sadly). Of the five billion people in the world, one billion live in nations where the standard of living has improved dramatically. But four billion don't. They live in nations where the average per capita wealth is only about a fifteenth of that of the rich nations. Their babies have up to twenty times the death rate of the wealthy nations. That is the greatest percentage of poverty the world has ever known in its history. Poverty is the greatest public health problem in the world today. Here in this wealthy nation, the United States has a greater percentage of poverty than it has ever had in its entire history. Population growth is greatest among the poor. Why? Because the poor often don't know how not to have babies. Lack of education is the hand-maiden of poverty.
Interviewer: You, ma'am, in the fourth row with your hand up.
Woman: My name is Ella Jones, and my question is as follows: I can see we have some serious problems in raising food. But couldn't we live more off the sea, the oceans, until we can readjust?
Dr. Tatosorn: That's a sensible question, ma'am, and a little out of my specialty, but my colleagues tell me that taking fish from the oceans is approaching the maximum yield, and some of them say it has already passed it; that means that we are taking more fish yearly than can be replaced yearly. In effect, they're saying that if our population were to double by the year 2030, we would be taking many more fish out than can be replaced, and that in a few decades, the seas would be almost empty. That's what they tell me. I can say, with absolute certainty, that there have been so many land areas in the world that have been totally exhausted, it would take decades of effort to try to replenish them, without any guarantee of success.
Interviewer: Another question?
Woman: My name is Kathleen Fitzpatrick, and my question is in two parts: First, how fast is population growing today, and second, don't we need to encourage population in the United States, for our own protection?
Dr. Tatosorn: Thank you. World population is growing at the fastest pace ever, and virtually all such growth is in the Third World, according to the Population Reference Bureau, in Washington, D.C. World population will reach 5.5 billion this year, forty percent of it in China and India, and we now have a new figure of ninety million, worldwide, per year. That figure will increase next year, of course. The population will be 8.5 billion by the year 2025. The United States growth is 0.8 percent a year. This is very high for the U.S. Europe's population is virtually stagnant, with a growth of 0.2 percent a year. Africa is high, at three percent, followed closely by Latin America.
As to the second part of your question, we have our own problems here in the United States, with more poverty than we've ever seen. The U.S. poverty may very well be due to other causes, like an unbalanced distribution of wealth, but for whatever reason, we would be better off with no gain at all. Any more questions?
Interviewer: The gentleman in the back, wearing the light suit.
Gentleman: My name is A. Tom Epideria, and my question is: Is there any relationship between the corruption of our rivers and oceans and population?
Dr. Tatosorn: Another good question. Humankind has dumped sewage into its streams and rivers for thousands of years without serious effects. But because of the doubling again and again of our populations around the world, this sewage has begun to cause illness and disease. In the last fifty years, it has been more than just sewage. Thousands of poisons have been dumped into waterways and the oceans, including dioxin and other chemical combinations almost as bad. If you increase the population and increase the dumpage, you're doubling up on yourself. Like a snake trying to swallow its own tail. You can get a stew of bacteria and poison that is unusable, and too noxious to even clean up.
The poisons drop to the river bed, and no fish can live long in that kind of environment. If you abandon the area and redirect the river, you haven't solved very much, because wind will pick up the poisons and blow them about. For example, tourism to Mexico City has declined because of the "fecal snow" that often falls on the city; winds pick up dried excrement and other poisons and then re-drop them. Another city with the same problem is Sao Paulo, Brazil. In other words, a thousand or two thousand years ago, we could ignore pollution, but because of two things, our burdensome population, and the increasing waste material of an increasing population, it is becoming increasingly embarrassing. Any other questions?
Interviewer: Any other questions? (waits)
Dr. Tatosorn: There being no other questions, let me tell you something else that occurs to me, not about food for these big growing populations, but about some of the side effects. I call them the "lemming effect". You know about lemmings; they get over-populated, then they get so agitated that they swim out to sea, and if it happens to be a body of water that's very broad, like the ocean, they drown. This irritation, excitation and neuroticism occurs with all animals when they get too crowded. We're no different. Take unemployment, crowded and expensive colleges, and racial crowding. With these things, you have bitterness, animosity, and explosions. Over-population doesn't just result in the mass starvation of children and some of their parents, but is a direct cause of crime and unhappiness. Any other questions?
Interviewer: (Looks at audience) I don't see any other questions. All right, thank you, Doctor, very much. Thank you for being here.
Congress cannot be unaware of the global fear of over-population. Hirelings of the gun lobby debate whether or not children should be allowed to buy handguns, and adults machine guns (a ridiculously simple decision), without once, in 1993, debating or even polling their membership on over-population. That's what happens when we make a Representative run every two years and a Senator every six years, and a President every four years. Congressmen ought to be elected for at least a six year term, and perhaps eight. All our Presidents ought to have the White House for an eight year term, with the option to run for another eight year term. It is ridiculous to make a Representative fight for his job every two years, and spend a fortune to keep it. He gets funded by a sponsor, which compromises him, and compromises Democracy as well. Congressmen become timid about raising real issues, for fear of offending financial sponsors.
But here we are, with big problems, being dodged by all of our duly elected Congress people, who fear offending a fund raiser, by going on the attack. Scream about ozone depletion, and you attack a gross of big manufacturers; on carbon dioxide, you attack the whole automobile industry and every smoke stack in the United States; if you attack nuclear plants, you attack a dozen or two wealthy men who own the public utilities, and if you attack TV violence and sex, you slap millionaire advertisers in the face. Abortion turns out to be a big issue, so must also be avoided, too, while in an all-Catholic country, Italy, the Italian parliament, in 1978, passed a law allowing abortions on demand, free; and in 1981 Italian voters upheld the law by a two to one ratio. Apparently, Italian legislators have more courage than ours. Imagine: free abortions in Italy, paid for by the government!
The deepest instinct in a woman is to have a baby, and the deepest instinct in a man is to have a woman. And nothing can, or ought to be, done about these romantic notions. To illustrate my point, here is an off-beat conversation that might have taken place.
Scene: Small remote island in the Pacific Ocean, shared by Mr. and Mrs. Rogers, their son Steve and daughter Carol. Mrs. R: Keith, I want to have another child.
Mr. R.: You've been eating that purple shell fish again, haven't you? There's hardly enough room on this island for the four of us.
Mrs. R.: I can't help it; I've always wanted four children. Please?
Mr. R.: Dear, we haven't had a decent meal since the shipwreck. I've got so much iodine in me from eating kelp that my cuts heal before I have a chance to bleed.
Mrs. R.: Keith, honey, huh, huh, just one more, huh?
Mr. R.: How big do you think this island is?
Mrs. R.: It is small, isn't it?
Mr. R.: If we run the one hundred yard dash, the last ten we'll be swimming.
Mrs. R.: That's an exaggeration. Hmmm. But I see what you mean, dear. When we get back to the mainland, I want to have twins.
When we talk about "free enterprise", or "opportunity in America", or "business acumen", we're taking exploitation for granted. Exploitation in one century might be synonymous with growth, and in another century synonymous with theft. There will come a time when progress must be looked at, and measured with a different set of instruments. Our water, our air, our topsoil is not limitless, and in a few years, we will have other billions of people to accommodate. In spite of all humankind's ingenuity, you can't plant corn in the antarctic, or the desert, or the mountains.
In fact, the world is already overpopulated. A hundred and fifty thousand people perish in Bangladesh from a storm, one storm. In Africa, because of a drought and just too many people, children are dying in their mothers' arms, too weak to brush the flies from their own faces. Our cities' populations have changed from a couple of millions to twelve, fourteen, sixteen million. The world is becoming miserable for everyone except the very wealthy. In India, there are two and a half million people living in the streets. Hundreds of thousands of Americans are homeless, and millions will never know the dream of living in their own home. New York, other cities, have no place to put their garbage; some make deals to have it trucked out of town to other states. The sky is dirty, our rivers, lakes and oceans sewers, and our land one huge nuclear dump.
People are changing. If a wealthy person feels upset about egg futures, he can take his problem to an expensive psychiatrist. But there are millions of Americans with really serious problems, hiding, looking, begging, alone, dying, who cannot afford a psychiatrist, or any doctor. (M.D.'s don't do pro bono medicine.) And their numbers are growing. Fifty percent of the world's poor population lives on five percent of the world's land, much of which lacks water. Many live on earthquake faults, or under the shadow of an active volcano.
The largest cities around the world accept extremes of heat and cold and humidity, excess garbage, rats and insects, and shanty towns, as a result of their size; and these miseries are hard to avoid even if you're only driving between workplace and home, or to a friend's house. Urban traffic difficulties make the misery complete. Think about it; if you were the planner, would you suggest or even allow people to live in this world, the way they do?
So, is there an increasingly serious population problem in our world, or isn't there?
If there does exist such a problem, why can't we depend upon our elected representatives and our president to fix it? So far, nothing from them. So, no harm in us doing a "just suppose".
Just suppose that God came to you in the middle of the night and said, "This population problem is getting serious. Do something about it." You awaken in a pure sweat, God had never bothered to talk to you this frankly before, and you can't get back to sleep. In the morning, you get the newspaper and learn that a lot of people phoned in about the same dream. The next day, the newspapers in Italy print that the Pope had the dream too, and God suggested to him that the world do some serious family planning, and that control of the birth rate was absolutely necessary. The Pope calls you and puts you in charge. Having supposed all this, what methods would you use, or reject to stabilize population?
Or would you tell the Pope he had the wrong number?
Pulling fish out of the ocean has reached the maximum point. From now on, as the population continues to increase, there will be more fish taken than will have been born. Some fishermen and canneries believe there's been a fifty percent decrease in the last twenty years, counting pollution deaths. Jacques Cousteau agrees.
U.S. Government officials have been examining the 17 principal fishing zones used by American fishermen. Atlantic fishermen have applied to the government for financial help, on the same basis as earthquake victims. In March of 1994, fishermen in Boston Harbor gathered and honked their boat horns to draw attention to their plight. In 13 of these 17 zones, fish are all but gone. Pacific salmon and steelhead are gone; haddock are almost gone, cod and flounder also, where there were great swarms of these fish a hundred years ago. In Chesapeake Bay, oyster men are fading like the fog, and in the Gulf of Mexico, grouper and red snapper are largely a memory. The lack of salmon in the Pacific Northwest and three commercial species in New England are threatening to wipe not just whole industries, but cultures and communities.
Water: the mighty Colorado River flows down toward Los Angeles and the sea, but it never reaches the sea — it's gone by then. Adding more people to the world won't add more water. In the future, water may be a big item in your monthly budget. But only the rich can afford to bathe.
Every year farmers have to grow food for ninety-five million more people, with twenty-six billion tons of top soil less.
In the past, the Earth seemed to be self-placating, that is, seemed to have a way of healing her own wounds and neutralizing the adverse effects, if any, of plate tectonics, earthquakes or floods.
Take our dustbowl in the 1930's, where depleted soil forced thousands of people to migrate. Under the GAIA theory, the problem would eventually be cured by Mother Earth. But how long would it take? Thousands of years? From the GAIA point of view, it might be a blessing if humankind, after doing so badly, got out. Then, in three or four million years, GAIA might make this a garden of Eden again.
The Vatican, in Italy, says the Earth can grow enough food to accommodate forty billion people! Eight times the poisonous gasses in the atmosphere, eight times the fresh water supply needed, eight times the food needed from a sea already fish-diminished, eight times as many people cutting forests, eight times the waste, eight times the crowding, in a world with diminished water, and less garden land, and reduced topsoil, while facing the greenhouse effect with its melting glaciers that take away even more of the usable land. Perhaps, some of the beautiful people in luxurious Vatican City would like to show us their equations, their math, their numbers...
The Pharaoh's ministers kept close track of the grain production in Egypt. So did the Romans, throughout their empire, for purposes of taxation. Records from then to the present day show the overall growth figures of grain, compared to the population, counting the years of deficits, and the years of bounty. Based on such statistics, patterns emerge worldwide, and it can be predicted from these statistical patterns how many millions of people will die of starvation.
These deaths still occur with severe regularity, and, applied to the entire world, become barometers of how many millions will die of starvation in the future. Other global problems, such as acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer, the embarrassing business of piled-up garbage, the destroyed wild life flight-stops, the burning of fossil fuels, the depopulation of all wild creatures, all are to be sacrificed in order to crowd the Earth with humanoids!?
All this — yes, all this — and you can take your child to the museum to see a flower.
On 2-22-94, newspapers reported that Mr. David Pimentel, an ecologist at Cornell University in New York, warned that the world population must be slashed to 2 billion or less people by 2100. The alternative is a population of 12 to 15 billion, and a world filled with "absolute misery, poverty, disease, and starvation". Even today — right now — the world population of 5 1/2 billion is three times what the Earth's battered natural resources and depleted energy reserves will be able to comfortably support comes 2100. He goes on to say that if world population dropped to 2 billion, most people's standard of living would improve. A decline to 1 or 2 billion people sounds impossible, but it could be accomplished by limiting family size throughout the world to an average of 1.5 children.
Sandra Postel of the Worldwatch Institute said that since 1978, population growth has outstripped the rate of growth of irrigated land, and that water supply is lagging, as well.
Hiding in a remote corner of France, a disorderly jumble of rolling hills hardly catches the eye. There is no challenge here for a mountain climber, and the terrain is too uneven for picnics. An occasional hiker wanders through, but milleniums have rolled by, leaving them unnoticed and untouched. Not long ago, someone stopped long enough to scratch away at a rocky cover, recently exposed by erosion. Curiosity took over, and when the rock was removed, a hole led to an underground cavern. Archaeologists who were called were stunned by what they saw.
The rocky caves inside contained no living creature, not even an insect. But the dead were there, human mounds, as remote and pure as an Egyptian tomb. Scientific tests would reveal that the graves were over fourteen thousand years old. But the most astounding part of the discovery was that on one of them lay a still-identifiable flower. To the experts who saw it, the flower proved not only that humankind solemnly buried their dead, and mourned the loss, but also felt the presence of a Supreme Being.
Other evidence had been found before, but not this ancient, of the most basic psychological need of humankind.
In his book, "A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History", Michael H. Hart, lists Muhammad, born 570 AD, as number one. He does not say Muhammad was the holiest, or the greatest warrior, or the best speaker, or most personable, but that he was the most influential.
In second place, he lists Isaac Newton, born 1642. Almost a total recluse, Newton possessed astounding abilities to solve very complex problems.
Hart lists Jesus Christ as third, and goes on to list ninety-seven other influential people. He lists Buddha as fourth, Confucius as fifth and Saint Paul as sixth. Ts'ai Lun, the inventor of paper, is seventh.
The Muslims are satisfied, but the Christians wonder why Muhammad is listed first? And Jesus third. And even Christians might be surprised about Saint Paul's selection as the sixth most influential person in the history of the world.
The author gives his reasons. Muhammad founded one of the world's great religions and during his lifetime became an immensely effective political leader. Today, his influence is still powerful and enduring. Although Arabs were at that time pagan, Muhammad redirected them into the monotheism of the Jews and Christians, preached, gained converts, and became a nuisance to the powers that be (as did Jesus to the Jewish Sanhedrin). Muhammad regrouped; but Jesus stayed, and died. Muhammad's power and influence grew. War between two cities, Medina and Mecca, ended with Muhammad in control and eventually the ruler of all southern Arabia. He left a war machine that continued to conquer and convert.
Although today there are only four-fifths as many Muslims in the world as Christians, Mr. Hart felt Muhammad played a far more complete role in the development of his religion than did any other religious leader; Muhammad also authored the Muslim holy scriptures, called the Koran, insights revealed to him by Allah (God). Jesus wrote nothing, and Christianity has compiled only bits and pieces of his teachings.
Muhammad's proselytizing military conquests were unique; there is no reason to believe that the independent Arabian states and cities could ever have occurred without him. The Arabic language was kept intact in lieu of a series of unintelligible dialects. Eventually the Muslim empire outdistanced in size even the Roman Empire.
If we were comparing "religion" instead of men, Jesus might rank first, since there are more Christians than Muslims, but author Hart points out that Christianity was founded by two people, Jesus and Saint Paul, whereas Muhammad did the whole thing alone. Whereas Jesus suggested turning the other cheek, Muhammad picked up the sword — which is always "influential" — and used it to proselytize and create new Muslims, and broaden Arabic influence.
What Jesus did do was to form the basic ethical ideas of Christianity, its spiritual outlook, and the proposed patterns of daily conduct. Jesus was young when he died, and left only a few disciples behind. Famous men — some of whom were historians — Seneca, Martial, Juvenal, Epictetus, Plotinus, Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, Philo, Plutarch, Livy, and Tacitus, all lived at the birth and death of Christ, but never heard of him. He is mentioned in no book of history at all, perhaps because his life was so short.
In spite of statements in the New Testament, some of which were written one or two hundred years after his death, the information we have about Jesus' life is uncertain, even his name. The Gospels in the New Testament are often contradictory: For example, Matthew and Luke give completely different versions of Jesus' last words.
Jesus had an extraordinarily impressive personality, leaving a lasting impression on anyone he met. He was charismatic in the fullest sense of the word. He had no influence on political developments, nor any political ambition. His teachings were appealing — -love, patience, and the Golden Rule, though not all of it original. Rabbi Hillel taught the Golden Rule in 100 BC, Confucius in 500 BC.
Still, Jesus preached new, unheard-of and radical moral ideas: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse thee...."
Perhaps it was Jesus who made these new moral ideas meaningful; they are surely the most remarkable ethic ever suggested. But never followed or accepted, then or today.
Jesus was never quoted as having proposed any system of punishment for criminal behavior. The Old Testament proposed private revenge, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. In the Old Testament, a God of Vengeance is more memorable than a God of Mercy. The jealous and wrathful god of the Jewish Testament makes Jesus seem almost effeminate. Jesus must have known that his message — turn the other cheek — was impossible, and that to treat your enemy as your friend was sheer madness. It was as if he were leading us toward a new way of thinking, to begin now, because millenia might be required to test its promise.
No one asked Jesus about criminal punishment; all he left us was "Do unto others....", which in effect would have you treat kindly any barbarian who murdered your family. Only the remarkable Amish are capable of following that command, probably making them the only real Christians in the world.
How could you go to work, letting everyone know that you were going to turn the other cheek, love your neighbor, and treat your enemies as your friends? Your watch would be gone, and your lunch bucket pilfered by the time you got out of the elevator.
Paul was born about the time that Jesus died. He says — in those days of miracles — that he met Jesus on the road to Damascus, where Jesus appeared as a blinding light.
Paul was not as successful a preacher as were other disciples of Jesus. In fact, his manner aroused antagonism and several times his life was in danger. He was most successful in preaching to non-Jews, and was willing to shift a position if it meant enlisting converts; so he struck down the requirement of circumcision, which made Paul's church much more attractive to Gentiles, and may be as good a reason as any why Gentiles came to dominate the Christian faith.
Paul's master stroke was in insisting that Jesus was actually divine, that he died for our sins and that his suffering can redeem us. This kind of belief, once fixed in the mind, builds an enormous conscience. Paul also preached that eventual salvation requires accepting Christ completely. Add to this the idea of "Original Sin", invented by Paul, and you have in Paul the most innovative religious hustler who ever lived.
When reading the New Testament, one must be careful and keep track of who is speaking. There is a good rule of thumb: Man is the one with the conscience, Jesus is the one who forgives.
In Michael Hart's book, the number four most influential person in history is Buddha who was born 563 BC in Nepal. He was a prince, who moved out of his luxurious royal palace because he observed that most human beings were poor, and in want; that even those in the palace were frequently unhappy, and that everybody died, anyway. First he studied with holy men, then tried self mortification. Next he tried asceticism, which he abandoned because it clouded his thinking. One evening he sat beneath a giant fig tree until dawn and by morning, he had experienced "enlightenment".
He was thirty-five, and spent the remaining forty-five years of his life travelling constantly, preaching his philosophy.
He developed these Four Noble Truths: life is an unhappy experience; caused by selfishness and desire; rid yourself of all selfishness and desire; follow the Eightfold Path.
The Eightfold Path: right views, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation.
In reading the life of Buddha, it is nowhere made clear that Buddha ever experienced "enlightenment" more than that one time under the fig tree.
There are 200 million Buddhists in the world, 800 million Moslems, one billion Christians.
Though Buddhism's stronghold used to be India, it no longer is — so it would seem. But the fact is that Hinduism has adopted and absorbed many of the ideas and principles of Buddhism, and retains them under the Hindu name.
Did Buddha believe in a life hereafter? No. But, as happens with so many religious innovators, their ideas are remolded to fit the needs of humankind, after the leader dies. And that's what happened here, where today, Buddhism now pledges a delightful "Hereafter". Many Buddhists remain loyal to the Master's original indifference to "Hereafter".
Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered belief in God, are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, and Secular Humanism.
How much do the world's religions help us or — dare I say it — hurt us? There are only 200 or 300 different religions, sects and cults, in the United States, but since there are 5,000 living languages around the world, primal religions must number in the thousands.
There are many modern accounts of both religious and non-religious individuals who have undergone this experience of "Satori", which contains the following qualities: a feeling of deep serenity, devoid of any suggestion of fear, and a joyful feeling of total knowledge and understanding of all things in the universe. The experience rarely comes but once.
Weight lifters describe an exhilaration they get from a workout or "pump". Runners describe a "second wind" whose reward is a feeling of exhilaration. Athletes can win a contest, and lawyers and doctors both have their triumphs, as everyone does on a "job well done". But these feelings are nothing when compared to the experience, variously called Enlightenment, Satori, Cosmic Revelation, and Ecstasy. "Satori" (we'll use this word, because the Eastern ascetic was the first to experience the feeling, and the first to search for it) is rarely described the same way, from one person to the next.
Serenity, an oceanic feeling, total knowledge, the presence of God, bodilessness, a sense of timelessness, are some of the ways of describing Satori. Although Satori had been experienced before Jesus was born, some churches have sought to disallow the genuineness of the feeling if not religious-related. Yet, church attempts to induce the feeling by communal prayer have always failed; and ecstasies induced by private prayer are not common. So often, the feeling is entirely spontaneous, taking over the individual at quiet times in quiet and picturesque settings. Watching a sunset, looking at water or waves, or working in a garden, may do it. The feeling is usually sudden and comes most often unexpectedly.
Many books have been written on this subject about the overwhelming effect upon the subject. Reported experiences are unusual and startling: a dazzling light that floods the brain, emotions of supercharged joy, a pure ecstasy, intellectual illumination, awareness of the meaning and drift of the Universe, transcendental love and compassion, an instant reappraisal of all life, a quickening of the intellect and discovery of latent genius, a sense of mission, a charismatic change in personality that lasts 'til death. Sometimes, there is a development of extraordinary psychic gifts such as extra sensory perception, telepathy and healing power.
Mentally disturbed states like schizophrenia and manic-depression have often been responsible for mystical experiences. The experiences are significant because their frequency has increased in the last few hundred years, and may be a new chapter to an expanded use of the brain. To date, no entirely satisfactory explanation has been offered for this phenomenon.
Sometimes the experience has been brought on by some totally unpredictable incident: a solo airplane flight, successfully finishing an unusual problem, a sudden insight, the reading of a poem.
Our efforts to ponder the catastrophe of humanoid extinction would be incomplete if we did not examine the role of religion's institutions, today and in the future.
Humankind, conscious of its own life and death, has, for some time, sought interaction with higher deities, to solve this lonely problem.
There is no evidence acceptable in a court of law to prove the existence of God, but on the other hand, there is no difficulty proving, in a court of law, that humankind's gut feeling about God goes back 14,000 years and farther.
Humankind's entreaties to a Supreme Being is not the proof we need, so much as proof of some response. There are great masses of data, testimonials, visions, books, stories and myths, but these all fail as proof. There is no "history" of God.
Archaeologists can write history based on known facts, but religionists cannot, because humankind's supplications have never produced any proof of a Supreme Being. Church theorists can do little more than to place emphasis on "faith", and insist that God has reasons for denying us explanations.
The sophisticated church hierarchy of the West must take note of primitives living today on Earth, whose people still worship animals, or the sun, or exalted ancestors, or totems. These people were us, yesterday. These changes in what and who we worship constitute our only religious history.
Ironically, the rich man can argue that his choice of church (it's Anglican) employs the simplest ceremony, which most closely resembles the simplicity of Christ.
Black Americans have the happiest approach to religion. They get into it, fill it with warmth and good fellowship, appreciation without cynicism, joy without jealousy.
The Baptists feel a genuine effort to experience their religion, concentrating on closeness, groping for participation with the Almighty.
Methodists and Presbyterians are quiet church-goers; their involvement is not emotional so much as participatory. Church is more of a social event than a religious rite. They often listen to sermons taken from Biblical quotations, sermons that are often too enigmatic to comprehend. They sit very quietly though, pretending to take it all in. These two church groups, much like the rich, have lost sight of Jesus' favorite child, the poor. Instead of fostering programs to help the poor with their ever-present problems of food, shelter and clothing, they add on new additions to their churches so they can have back- slapping "get-togethers". Before "potluck" dinners, they say a humble, head- bowed prayer asking Jesus to remember the poor.
The Mormon Church did not have an easy time getting started. The Church of Latter Day Saints did not claim to be a splinter group of Christianity, but picked directions that were challenging to other churches, and non-doctrinaire. Its originator, Joseph Smith, claimed it as the only "true church", which might ruffle some feathers; he also looked with favor on polygamy, which would cause some earthquakes. Mormons accept the Bibles in part, and reject them in part. Their beliefs angered people in Missouri and Illinois, and finally they walked a long laborious trek to Salt Lake City, pulling their own carts.
Their proselytizing work extends all around the world.
Shortly after their organization in 1830, Mormons advocated polygamy, but resentment ran so high, that by 1890, polygamy was relinquished, though the practice is believed to still have life.
Mormons are a most industrious people, and are expected to tithe. The leaders of the church work their private businesses, but their hours on Church affairs are donated without pay.
Probably the most outstanding feature of a Mormon is his/her complete devotion to the church.
The church fathers have seen the wisdom of investment, and the Mormon Church owns farms, canneries, and agricultural enterprises throughout the nation. Members are never on welfare; the church helps its people to stay employed, and that perhaps is the secret of their loyalty.
Religion may not be able to see into the future, but can see into the past very easily. Primitives in Australia and Africa, and even Eskimos, have religious approaches that the rest of us abandoned centuries ago. Religion changes as often as the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age; Religious worship changed when wandering tribes switched from hunters to agriculturists; religion flips and flops, as it travels through the Dark Ages, the Reformation, and the Industrial Revolution.
Jesus spoke as the Son of God, and brought God's message to Earth, a message of love, even of your enemies. After the crucifixion, a new church formed, and Jesus' followers used the Old Testament to guide them, an Old Testament that speaks of an angry God, a God of vengeance, vengeance so terrible that it will be visited not only on the sinner, but the sinner's children. Later, Jesus' followers turned to the New Testament, as it was being written, seventy to two hundred years after Jesus died. Christians today still use both Testaments.
The Paradox is: The two Testaments have Gods of diametrically opposite temperaments. Two different Gods perhaps? Or only one God, but reformed in the New Testament? Or only one God, with unfathomable reasons for temperament changes?
The Greeks had a multitude of gods, so did the Romans, Babylonians, and Egyptians; and they were all shaped in man's image; statues of the gods looked in every respect like living men and women. Today, most of the world has gone monotheistic, just one god. Worshiping sticks and totems and rocks and animals and the sun and then multiple gods, the first forty thousand years humans spent on Earth turns out to be wrong, but now we've got it right, with monotheism. Haven't we? But then why monotheism? Did all that jumping around make us neurotic? Did we cure that with monotheism?
Does God have a sex? Or a color? Michaelangelo drew God on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as a white male, which was not artistic privilege; he had Leo, the Warrior Pope, telling him what to do. Bibliophiles talk about God making man in his own image, but agree that God can assume any image. So isn't the "in God's image" not only demeaning to God, but a starkly egotistical remark by "man"?
Matthew 1:2 traces ancestors of Jesus. Luke 3:23 does the same thing. Ancestor names are totally different in each chapter. so one of the disciples must have been wrong. Which one? The answer is moot. How could Jesus have ancestors? Or, to put it another way, how could God's son have earthly ancestors?
Another example: One part of the Bible recommends that one should drink wine, another verse forbids it. Which is right?
All of these people were writing without the advantage of instant copy shorthand machines. They made mistakes.
As a matter of fact, there are literally dozens of contradictions in the two Bibles. But what does it prove but the fallibility of men, something we already suspected. God didn't dictate any of those mistakes and contradictions.
The New Testament (New T.) is still being edited and changed. The one I am reading is the King James version, published in 1611 after seven years of toil by forty-seven scholars selected by King James I of England. The King James version was revised in 1881, and revised again in 1900.
The New T. first came out written in Greek, next Hebrew. Then came the King James translation of the Greek version. One year after the King James 1901 revision, the American Standard version was published, which was itself a revision of the 1881-1885 edition of the Amercan Standard version. These translators also followed the original Greek translation. Other recent translations of the New T. have been the New American Standard Bible of 1963, In The Language Of The People, 1937, and In The Language Of Today, 1963-1964.
Why so many translations? Because of the difficulty in matching Greek tenses with modern tenses (present, imperfect, and aorist). There can never be total agreement.
The 1900 Version was handled by a group called The New Testament Members of the American Revision Committee. Try to find out something about this committee. You won't. As so often happens, these committees do not tape their meetings, or offer abstracts of their discussions. Why did they meet in the first place? What were they unhappy about? The committee-people would answer, "to clarify". To clarify what? And why? The Greek Bible was the first one printed. Did they compare all these versions? Did they look at the Greek? The Hebrew? And King James: Forty-seven scholars spent seven years. If there was a plan, what was it? Why don't we know?
Meanwhile, not satisfied with the dozen or so versions of the Bible to date, members of a group called the Jesus Seminar, claiming several hundred New T. scholars, met in Phoenix at the end of October, 1993; they promise a radically new New T., which they already have worked on for eight years. The most shocking change is to attribute to Jesus only about twenty percent of the speeches claimed for Him, by Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. Another clarification claims that Jesus healed only psychosomatic illnesses. Interesting.
There are more unanswered questions in religion than answered ones. We're very lucky that Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad and the Jewish Old T. kept their messages simple and direct.
No serious modern scholar believes that the speeches appearing in the New T. are verbatim records of what the speaker said. That guides us to an interesting truth: that nothing in the Bibles should force us into a mesmeric, unnecessarily judicious interpretation. The Bible surely must be an allegory. The Acts were written more than sixty years after the crucifixion of Jesus; Mark, seventy-five years; Revelations ninety-five years; Paul over fifty years; and the Gospels of Peter, Thomas, etc., a hundred and fifty years.
One of the authors, Luke, was a Greek. Until the publications appeared that would be bound together as the Christian Bible, the new-born Christian faith used the Old T. and took it as the Bible; they had no way of knowing that the stories of Jesus would someday appear. When the New Testament came together, each writer told the story in his own way. One might go into detail concerning Jesus' suffering and death, another might not mention it at all. Some copied from others, but edited as they saw fit. Mark tells the story of Jesus saying to Peter "Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou mindest not the things of God but the things of men". Luke apparently didn't care for this, because he left it out; he wishes to present a serene Messiah. Mark details the vigorous affair where Jesus overturned the money changers' benches at the temple, but again Luke leaves this out of his description of Jesus. Matthew has an earthquake taking place at Jesus' tomb, while Luke speaks only of two "men in dazzling apparel". Luke, who wrote Acts, created the ascension, and later improves on it by keeping Jesus at or near Jerusalem for "forty days", instructing his disciples in their future mission. Only then does he allow Jesus to ascend. One of the others had him ascend three days after the crucifixion.
Isn't God embarrassed by all the groveling we do? God cannot be jealous, or envious, or insecure, or egotistical. Is it better to suck up to God, or go out and do something nice, especially for the poor?
Why would God want to be worshiped? We're the ones with the egos, not God.
Why would God want to judge us? Of what value is that to God, or anything, or anyone?
Finally, why throw bones on a table, or drink grape juice and eat a piece of bread or wafer, or recite a poem over a tribal kill, or bow in a certain direction, or carve painted totems, other than it breaks the monotony and eases the boredom of life.
What about prayer? Ministers have pet projects that call for their flock to put forth their strongest prayers, and many ministers believe that large numbers of people beseeching God for something, praying simultaneously, offers the best chance of success — a sort of quantitative begging. And certainly an ungracious form of competition. The Lord's Prayer has poetic beauty, but it is one solicitation after another, for mercy, daily bread, and forgiveness. Wouldn't it be better to have a simple conversation, at night, with God, without any personal solicitation at all? Doesn't such self-orientation divert the Christian away from the compassion necessary to love others? Why not do something precious; hold a door, smile, forgive.
In the Old T., everyone talked with God; Moses, in particular had an almost continuous conversation going. In fact, they conspired together: God told Moses he would bring a plague upon Egypt and the Pharaoh, and Moses said that he would go out about midnight into the midst of Egypt, whereupon God said that all the first born in the land of Egypt shall die, including the first born of the Pharaoh, and the first born of beasts, as well. And then God smote all the first born Egyptians, just as he said! He and Moses talked almost every day. I hope that Moses didn't have any "first born", because Sigmund Freud made a good case, in his book entitled "Moses Was an Egyptian"!
The Old Testament is purely an allegory, part history, part Beowulf, part tradition, and part nationalism.
Do priests have more power than God? In some superstitious communities, particularly in Africa, the village people have been preconditioned to believe that they will die if a witch doctor casts a spell, sticks pins in a doll, and drones out a death incantation. When the priest does all this, in public, midst much publicity, sure enough, the native who has offended the priest thereupon dies! Americans and Europeans bear witness to having seen this kind of death. The terrified offender dies sometimes within hours, never more than three or four days, such is the power of "preconditioning". These villages have kings, who pay no attention to the priests, but encourage everyone else to believe in his power. This proves to be a great combination, like a Mafia chief and his hit man, and it all happens as the result of religious preconditioning.
In Deuteronomy, God and Moses conspired to utterly destroy six other cultures, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites. And the conspiracy agreed that "thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth". The question that rises is how God and Moses first got together, passed the law that "thou shalt not kill", and then later wiped out entire cultures with bloodthirsty zeal.
The real question is, if you are trying to lead an enslaved people out of Egypt, and you have enemies on every side, and you are proceeding into a strange land, do you have the right to exaggerate a little? Travel conditions like that could cut pretty deeply into morale. We know that God didn't tell Moses to utterly wipe out six ancient cultures, because God is completely good, and not a blood-thirsty barbarian. But it would be a great morale booster to be able to brag that your leader talked with God every day and had passed on the good news that you were his chosen people, even if you were a grubby, unsophisticated wandering tribe, compared to those big city slickers in Egypt.
One of the most beloved figures in the Bible is King David. They loved him when the little guy came out with his slingshot and dumped big Goliath, which turned the tide of battle. But later, as King, David coveted the beauteous Bathsheba, Uriah's wife. David was in such pain he would wake up in a sweat; he could not overcome his longing for Bathsheba. Uriah was a warrior, and loved to fight. So David accommodated him. He put Uriah at the front of the battle line of a local war, which made Uriah immensely proud and very dead. He probably died with a smile on his lips, praising his King. And David got Bathsheba.
There are so many paradoxes here, it is hard to begin. First, is the Old Testament a religious book, or is it a history book? If it is a religious book, is this a lesson that passion supersedes religious doctrine? Or that murder is A-Okay, if you're King, or a wealthy Elite? Is it to demonstrate "cherchez la femme" as a way of staying close to the big goings on? Or is it to show that slyness is good? Or bad?
But that's enough on David; let's turn to his son Solomon. Solomon had one thousand wives and concubines, lived in a glorious palace, and killed his own brother. I am still puzzled; am I reading a book on religion, or a history book, or "The Confessions of Kings", to be made into a future Hollywood extravaganza?
The Book of Job is praised as a magnificent allegory of life itself. There are many such allegories, Voltaire's "Candide", Heywood Broun's "Gandel Follows His Nose", all tales of unrelenting travail. The travails of Job, Candide or Gandel, are no more than the travails of any one of us. Of the three, Job surpasses the other two in gloominess.
Jesus talked to the multitude and asked them to follow his teachings of love and turn-the-other-cheek. Jesus did not form a committee to build a church, and none of his disciples ever mentioned that Jesus talked about any kind of organization, nor did he ever speak of a church.
Paul, on the other hand, was absolutely obsessed with the idea of putting together an organized system, with lots of rules and regulations. Jesus might have been horrified at the idea.
In his efforts, Paul must have been the best traveled man of those times. Paul went to Antioch to conscript new church members, then to Cyprus and Asia Minor, then into the Aegean Sea area. He was in Greece, Jerusalem, and Rome. All this, in about ten years. He would stay a year to three years sometimes in one area.
He carried with him a shrewd formula for the fast sell. He placed his emphasis on salvation by blind faith. This formula has the advantage of building a church, but it says almost nothing about the teachings of Jesus, and it takes away the right to a personal opinion when one acts only through a church hierarchy. That is the very thing that the Epistle of James condemned when he said "What does it profit if a man say he hath faith but hath not works? Can that faith save him?"; and again in Romans 2:19, "O vain man, faith apart from works is barren."
The Old T. is more than twice as long as the New T., and one might say that the Old T.'s plot is stronger. It traces, with Genesis, the very beginning of the Earth and the cosmos. The Ten Commandments, religion's basic laws, are found in Exodus. Many of the Old T. stories are blatantly plagiarized, which is not to deny that they tell a great story, and highlight important points of morality. The story of the Ark and the Great Flood has been told in hundreds of civilizations, hundreds of times and hundreds of years before it showed up in our Bible. Samson pulling down the pillars is an ancient myth. These stories were first told by the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Egyptians. Isaac's sacrifice was an ancient legend in many lands.
It's interesting that, at about the same time, thousands of miles away, the Aztec and Mayan civilizations developed some of the same myths, absent contact from outside civilizations.
Some of the Old T. gets a little dreary at times. And most of us find Job, a spoiled rich man, to be a little whiney; but probably the rich would always groan after a little bad luck, whereas the persevering poor would shrug and hope for some kind of shelter to spend the night.
Who were the Jews? They were a small semi-barbaric tribe in Nomadic maneuver around Egypt and Babylon, nations which had existed around three thousand years without ever hearing about Jewish tribes. But the Jews, who craved freedom, got it and lost it, as they looked for a place to settle. Unhappy, under the iron fist of Rome, the Jews were also looking for a Messiah, a warrior leader, to take them out of Roman captivity and find them land, and a new life of dignity and freedom.
Who was Jesus? It seems impossible to think that Christ thought he was the Warrior/Messiah sent to lead the Jews out of captivity, yet writers have said that Christ felt this was his raison d'etre. He seems too gentle for this role, and, in fact, if he brought anything new to the world, it was the idea of love, not war.
Confucius and Hillel had said "Do unto others as ye would have others do unto you". Buddha brought a simple formula of an eightfold path, that, if followed, would have welded the world into one nation. Jesus' message reversed the Old Testament message of revenge, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth — -. The old jealous, egotistical and vengeful God was dismissed by the Christians, and it was suggested instead to turn the other cheek and offer love.
Jesus may have wanted to remain a part of Judaism, but his "love thine enemy" philosophy produced nothing but instant suspicion among other Jews.
It is difficult to believe that Christ did not exist, even if he is never mentioned by the prominent historians or scholars that ought to have known about him. He was just too unusual to invent.
If they had only been alerted, historians could have recorded some sensational events in human history — immaculate conception, virgin birth, resurrection and ascension. Pliny the Elder 22-79 A.D. makes no mention of Jesus, but Pliny the Younger 62-110 A.D. wrote a letter of the Christians, where he refers to Christ as a moralistic teacher. That's all. Leaving us a puzzle we can never solve. It could be that neither Jesus, the Jews, or the Jewish ruling body (Sanhedrin) rated high enough in the Roman Empire to be much noticed. The Jews may have been just another tax target. Jesus may never have addressed a crowd of more than fifty or sixty people; he represented a very small cult amongst the Jews, and an irritant to the high-power Jewish governing body. And, finally, he lived only a short time.
Before Jesus, virgin birth was not new in mythology; there were prior resurrections and ascensions.
Stattis, son of Cybele, was acclaimed a great "savior", and Horus-Osiris was adored as a "risen lord". "Adonis" was a dying savior. And several saviors named Christ had already died. Cyrus, the savior-god, is killed by Set, and though his body is broken apart, he is resurrected and becomes ruler of the world beyond death. Those thus resurrected include Attis, Tammuz and Adonis, each celebrated later by pretty much the same ceremony, a ritualistic incantation by priests, while the populous shouts out "He is risen, He is risen, He is risen."
Each of these three men, in his own way, was extraordinary; each one an enigma.
But the most attractive thing about any comparison of the three are their differences. Let's look at them sequentially, as they appeared on the Earth. Buddha was born 563 B.C. Christ was born 6 B.C. Muhammad was born 570 A.D. About 600 years between births.
The "enlightened one", the Buddha (his name was Gautama), was the son of a ruler of one of the districts in India, and a member of the warrior caste. He married at the age of sixteen and lived in luxury and comfort. No doubt he was exceedingly bright; he became aware, though surrounded by luxury, that men and women everywhere, even inside the palace, were unhappy, and ruled by the passions within them. The lack of serenity, the lack of peace, stirred him deeply.
He must have been terrified as he left his young family and all his possessions, and faced the world as a virtual beggar. He followed teachers, tried asceticism, and self mortification for six years. Finally alone, and by himself, he had a transcendental experience while sitting beneath a tree, which changed his life forever.
Even as a child, he had been found seated cross-legged, absorbed in a trance, which pleased his father, the King, who encouraged meditation. But the sudden departure from the palace and his family did not please his father.
He spent the rest of his life traveling throughout India, in poverty, teaching a mental approach to life that was simple and to the point (previously outlined under RELIGIOUS GIANTS).
Coming as he did, from an affluent life, his fight for serenity and self- conquest was near unbelievable. After years of self mortification, he was so starved and emaciated that his backbone protruded like a string of balls, his eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, his scalp seemed shriveled, his lips were knotted, and all his ribs showed.
The "enlightenment" must have been an ineffable, liberating experience, because, continuing to teach the rest of his life, there is no report that he was not at complete peace, and totally satisfied with what he had become.
It's interesting to note that an effort so difficult to finalize, pursued for such a tediously long period of time, should evolve into a religion with two million devotees. There must be some triumph in the effort itself, some inner withdrawal and serenity that makes it worthwhile.
This type of contemplative state is rare, not recommended for impatient western man, who has too much to do, too many worlds to conquer, too many places to rush to and fro to, too many competitors to do it to.
Whereas Buddha enlarged the conquest of his own mind into a religion, the approach of Christ was entirely different. Christ's ideas crystallized the difference between good and evil. Christ changed the definition of God. Christ said to love thine enemies, to turn the other cheek..., to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, to love all creatures; and said that his words were God's words. In effect, Jesus discarded that part of the Old Testament which talks of an angry and jealous god, who would vengefully punish the sons for their fathers' sins. Christ never tried to be the Warrior/Messiah that the Jews were looking for, nor does he resemble anyone in the Old Testament.
Jesus, based upon his teachings, would be horrified at America's dog-eat- dog, competitive, commercial life, so distant from the contemplative, cooperative life encouraged by him.
It seems impossible that Christ could have thought he was the warrior/Messiah promised to the Jews; it seems equally impossible that he could have seriously thought that his teachings would, or even could, be followed. The tough world he lived in, and the tough world we live in, does not allow us to love our enemies, or turn the other cheek, or to love everyone. Only teenagers living in a commune can love everyone, and then it's not love, it's sex.
Why, then, did Christ say these things? It is one of the deepest mysteries in all of history. But one thing is certain, he planted the idea. Will we be ready to embrace His pure spiritual love, His "Love thine enemies", His optimism, His compassion, in the 21st or 22nd Centuries? No, of course not. We're becoming more selfish, not less selfish.
But it is clear that Christ had something very special in his mind when he suggested these impossible ways of thought and conduct; it's critical to know how much time we have. The question is, what did he see for the future? How far into the future? Why couldn't he tell us?
Muhammad was as different from Buddha and Christ as they were from each other and from him. While still a baby, his father died. He came under the care of a grandfather, who died when he was eight; at six he lost his mother. When he came of age, he married and raised a large family. Early on, it was noted that his nature was reflective and he developed a habit of spending nights in a hill cave near Mecca. He received revelations from God, which he recorded, and which were collected in book form at about 650 A.D. Arabs take the position that these revelations cannot be translated into another language, but must be read in the Arabic, any claimed translation amounting to little more than a paraphrase.
He won nearly all of his battles, leading troops who were convinced that to kill an infidel is to be blessed by Allah. I suppose this has happened before, on both sides, during the Crusades, and other wars in the past.
Muhammad must have been one of the busiest men in history. More important, however, was his versatility, and his intelligence. He lived in the desert in his early life, he married, had a large family, he conducted and led a series of conquests at different locations, and he wrote the Koran.
His faith believes the Koran is too beautiful to be blemished by translation, since it is composed of revelations coming directly from God. He conquered the world with a sword in one hand and the Koran in the other; no one but Muhammad has ever done that.
The Koran is as influential and complex a text as the Jewish or Christian Testaments. It is written for the Eastern, not the Western mind. The Koran is very, very long, much longer than either Bible. It is rhythmic verse, and to a large extent is rhymed, largely to the beat of the heart; and is meant to be sung, to changing notes, something a Westerner would likely call a chant. Easterners, and many Westerners who have made a study of the Koran, and love it, say that there is nothing more beautiful than the bliss of hearing the Koran.
The Koran is quite long, and from page to page, hardly a line goes by without some reference to God or what God says. The document is both divine and pragmatic; The division of estates receives attention, and the percentages to be used. Conduct that pleases God is outlined. The Koran is threatening, and forgiving at the same time. It teaches that freeing a slave is a pious act and, shortly afterward, describes the horrible tortures death brings to the wicked.
The Koran refers to persons the Bibles talk about, mentioning Christ upon occasion, but more often places and personages in the Old Testament: Joseph, Abraham, Jacob, Mary, Adam, Noah, Jonah, David, Solomon, Lot, the Garden of Eden, and the Psalms. The Koran speaks warmly of these people, and treats than as part of its own heritage, at the same time warning its people not to befriend the Jews or the Christians! Moses is mentioned again and again.
The Koran is repetitious, but for a reason — to emphasize the mystical tone supplied through the Koran rhetoric.
Westerners, raised on story telling, carry that habit over into their theological texts, but the Koran, in spite of its great length, is not for story telling. The Koran is written to be intoned, to be appreciated for its repetitive obeisance to God (Allah), not for its story, but for its contact with the Almighty.
How extraordinary and different were these three men! Christ and Muhammad were in touch with God. Muhammad wrote the Koran, from conversations with God. Buddha, in his own way too, was quite different, having entered into a remarkable state of tranquility without knowing or experiencing God.
Mythology and religion are full of stories about humans who were forbidden to look back at sin and corruption, and had to return to the netherworld, or were turned to salt, or to stone.
Mythology and religion apart, ninety percent of all life that has ever lived on this Earth is now extinct. That includes at least two humanoid species that we know of, Neanderthal and Homo habilis. The reasons for extinction? We don't have a clue. Did creatures develop fast enough? Or perhaps they developed too fast, like us. It's hard to be perfect.
Paul, who organized the church, and its doctrine, emphasized salvation by faith; man could never be saved by good works but only by blind faith.
Paul was not well liked among the Christian parishioners. He was argumentative, domineering and a workaholic. It seems perfectly natural that he should emphasize "faith", because faith turns your mind and your judgment over to somebody else, in this case, a church committee. He was building a membership, first last and always, and felt obliged to use the gimmicks guaranteed to keep the flock captive: conscience, fear, a faith blindly dependent on the church, but with the promise of a beautiful hereafter. Instinctively, Paul was a priest, and like all priests and ministers, whether it be the African jungle, or Park Avenue, he sought ways to influence his parishioners, and to — it's hard to resist — scare them. It's all instinctive; members question and resist; he controls by recounting his meeting with a Blinding Light, on the road to Damascus, by visions since, by invention (Original Sin), by fear, and by repetition. Slowly but surely, he seals his authority.
The method is called "preconditioning", and is exactly the same psychologic duress used by the witch doctor, to kill a disobedient native.
St. James the Epistle was not tuned in to big church memberships. The church was strictly Paul's idea, who was born about the time Jesus died. James was more interested in what Jesus had taught about love, goodness and the brotherhood of humanity, and knew that Jesus scorned the dependence on "blind faith", but emphasized "good works". "Blind faith" was the opposite of what Jesus taught. If Jesus walked into one of our politically operated church board meetings, with its emphasis on church decision-making, rather than individual decision-making, he would start tipping over tables again. Loving thine enemy is a personal commitment, not a corporate board resolution.
Jesus would be distraught if he attended any church on any holy day. Several times he deplored wealth, its accumulation, and its pretensions. If Christ reappeared on Earth, He might be wearing jeans, dressed down, just as he did when he lived; and the Easter bonnet show every Sunday, with all the frills upon it, would leave him disgusted. "Doing good works" was His thesis, and if he had to put up with churches, the changes He would make would be awesome.
Paul composed a formula of the Sacrament and the Lord's Supper, saying it had been given him by special communication or vision. He made claims like this throughout his life, furthering ritual, earnestly imploring obedience, and implying punishment to those who strayed or disobeyed. Thus fear crept into the new religion, and stayed . Paul tried to explain that resurrection is composed of two bodies, one terrestrial and one celestial (Corinthians). The flat failure of this explanation is attested by its briefness. His explanation is mumbly, incomprehensible, and no one has ever understood it.
Paul taught himself to preach different sermons to different congregations, according to their confidence with the new religion. He learned to keep his concepts simple when addressing acolytes, more demanding for recent members, and binding ritual to those who were solid captives. He was not this smooth at first, when his demands and impatience made enemies instead of friends.
A lot of people argue, very seriously, that it is easier to acknowledge a god of limited power than a monotheistic god with unlimited power. Zeus used thunderbolts and had enough other powers to be the acknowledged ruler on Mount Olympus; he was the chief god, and assigned duties to the multitude of other gods.
Today, our best examples are the dozens of Hindu gods, each with different assortments of powers. One particular god may be attractive to one person and unattractive to another. As a result, Hindus select as many as they need, psychologically making their gods more approachable, and more available. Hindu homes have a sacred corner, with statuettes of gods and goddesses, making each god almost a family member.
Moses did not invent monotheism. The Egyptian pharaoh, Akhenaton, created a state-sponsored worship of the one god, Aton, about 1400 B.C. The new religion lasted through his reign amidst growing dissent, and, after his death, was suppressed by the priests of the old multi-god religion. The people agreed, because they were used to viewing their pharaoh also as a god and protector. They needed to worship someone known to them personally.
This suggests that in 1400 B.C., the Egyptians were comfortable worshiping another human being, but uncomfortable with the worship of a single abstraction. Of course, the priests were the real power in returning to multiple gods; it was the way they had done business for years, and they liked it. Perhaps they too were not yet ready for the abstraction.
Later on, the Jews would flesh out the abstraction, as would the Christians, and the Muslims. God would be endowed with fantastic qualities, he would part the seas, heal the sick, walk across water, bring the dead back to life. He would get angry and would tilt over the money changers' tables at the temple. (Jesus may have been wrong here, since the "money changers" were only exchanging Hebrew coins for the unworthy Roman coins, which were tainted and could not be used; only Hebrew coins were acceptable in the offering. The money changers were performing a religious service.)
The Paradox: Since a monotheistic god would have to have total, infinite power, and is infinitely good, why does said god allow such evil as surrounds us, and allow suffering and starvation of babies and little children?
If our monotheistic god created us, how can the Evil around us be derived from total Goodness?
God cannot be allowing us to work out our own destiny, since he knows what it is already. Does our misery amuse him? No, that would conflict with Infinite Goodness. Was Thoreau right: Is our real destiny to lead lives of quiet desperation?
Can God assume any form? Certainly. Can God travel faster than the speed of light? Of course. E=MC2 then does have this one exception.
Laurel and Hardy do, Neil Simon does, but does God have a sense of humor? Does God have any passions or feelings? (Not the Old Testament God, but our new God.) Does God mourn for us? Does God attend all our funerals?
Does God have a "master plan"? Not for the Neanderthal, he's been eradicated. Nor for Homo habilis, another extinction. Neither made it. For us, then? We're certainly not worthy, on the basis of what we've done to the land, sea, and air. And why have a "master plan" when you already know the result?
What if God is shaped by "our" decisions? Then, by adopting monotheism, we have taken away all the other gods, and left our one god totally alone. We have thoughtlessly endowed him with the power to know every answer of every equation that may arise, and to even know the equation before it arises. We have made him no better than a prisoner in horrifying isolation. Tonight, I think I shall pray for God.
In 1992, a study by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies reported that the top nine religious denominations, based on the 1990 census and other sources, were the Roman Catholic 53 million, Southern Baptist Convention 19 million, United Methodist 11 million, Black Baptist 9 million, Jewish 6 million, Lutheran 8 million, Presbyterian 3 million, Church of Latter Day Saints 3 million, and Episcopal 2 million (numbers rounded off).
The Catholic Church demands our special attention, not because of size, but because this church is different from the others, in its ceremony, in its proselytizing methodology, and in its priesthood. The Vatican State in Italy has been involved in organizing bloody crusades, and a sadistic Inquisition, using excommunication like a blackjack against King and commoner alike, selecting a horde of unvirtuous Popes, and equally unvirtuous monks who were often hated by their parishioners, and in protecting sinful priests who, today, spend much of their free time not in prayer or helping the poor, but playing with the genitalia of young people. Sounds harsh, but I'm sure the Pope and the Italian Cardinals admire the truth wherever it can be found.
Pope John Paul II, on August 15, 1993, delivered, at Denver, a speech on sexuality and euthanasia. One might safely assume that the part devoted to sexuality would include some planned solution for priests who have been sexually abusing young people, but he stopped short of mentioning their unsolicited liberties. He said only that "Nevertheless, at a time when institutions are suspect, the church herself has not escaped reproach." Thousands of young lives have been damaged by horny priests, and the Polish Pope remains aloof, pompous and pedantic.
Incidentally, if you were not aware of it, Catholicism is singularly different in admittedly putting church doctrine, and the pronouncements of the church ahead of written scripture. The Vatican teaches that the Church not only existed before the New Testament, but was mother to it. Another Vatican power pull.
The Pope does not mention the Vatican efforts to hide child abuse in many other cities and towns where money settlements are paid in exchange for silence. So, double or triple the number of children violated.
The Pope's pretended humility does not wash. He also said "Sad situations such as these invite us anew to look at the mystery of the church with the eyes of faith." Thus, he returns to Paul's position, that if you offer yourself as a blind believer, confess and keep the faith, that is enough to keep you wholly protected and loved by God. What bosh! One side of the mouth admits that God is about goodness, while the other side of the mouth says that flattering loyalty is automatic forgiveness since God's ego is subject to flattery. God is not burdened with an ego.
The "Mystery of the church" part of the Pope's speech sounds like an attempt to implant some sort of boogy boogy superstition, or to reemphasize the old idea of "blind faith".
Catholicism is looking down the barrel of a shotgun. The Vatican transfers child-molesting priests to different churches, and allows them to start all over again, molesting new children. You can't convince anyone, particularly in a democracy, to grant "blind faith" to a church loaded with pedophiliac priests. Treat that conduct casually around an American father, and the shotgun's liable to go off.
The Pope lives in an immense palace. The Vatican owns stores, and, because they have no taxes to pay, undercuts all the other merchants. Surrounding his palace is a city of his own, which the Pope commands. His city is an oasis during a war, and is not touched. He wears beautiful clothing, eats the best food, and travels with first class accommodations in his own airplane. He is, in fact, an elite millionaire. His only job seems to be to show up somewhere and make a speech, or charge a fortune for a "togetherness" photo. The speech has two purposes, which the Pope would not deny: to strengthen and solidify loyalty to the Vatican and what it commands, and to solicit more people to join up.
Catholicism encourages tithing, and does not exempt poor people below the poverty level. Jesus, the guy whom the Pope is supposed to be emulating, talked a lot about helping the poor. Jesus was humble, and wore the simplest clothing. The Pope wears princely clothing, which ought to have been abandoned by now. And, finally, when he spoke in Denver, he was deliberately devious, and showed no remorse for his priests' conduct.
Someone has said that religion is guilt with different holidays. The remark does not apply to Buddhism, nor does it seem to apply to the Muslim faith. "Original sin" and the "crucifixion" leave Christians with plenty of guilt; but you can also add "fear", of various flavors. Paul started the "fear syndrome", and the Catholic church has strengthened it. You walk into a confession booth and are forgiven when you perform some trivial task; and this little vignette strengthens the church's hold on you. In effect, you have accepted an addiction which is satisfied by a church prelate, who forgives what can only be forgiven by God, both now and in the final accounting.
The "booth" is not only cynical, it is subversive and wicked. Subversive because it substitutes the church for God. Wicked because it substitutes man's forgiveness for God's forgiveness. In the world of religion, only God can forgive. Priests are not God's emissaries or archangels. Archangels don't diddle children and scar them for life.
The early proselytizing of little children so that they are beholden to the Catholic corporate Italian empire is indeed an unusual ownership, a sort of religious slavery by Vatican City, its King and Cardinals.
This is "blind faith" working at fever pitch, whose ambition is to grow bigger and more wealthy every day, employing mind-bending routines for years until church members are walking, living, conditioned reflexes. Just contribute, keep the faith, and let the church decide everything. Criticize, offer suggestions, and you face the threat of excommunication.
A poll of the wisest leaders in the world shows that most of them consider excess population to be the world's number one problem, not in the future, but right now. It is important that every church member be allowed to express his/her opinion, because allowing conservative self-oriented rich Vatican City to speak for our millions of Catholics in the world means almost certain death to any beneficial reforms that might be proposed.
Don't tie yourself to a system that proselytizes little children and holds them, through fear and conscience, to an Italianate Prince who seems to show more interest in the size of a membership and a commercial empire than in anything taught by Jesus. Jesus and James shrink in horror at the "blind faith" training of Paul, and the Vatican.
Unlike the Pope, it's impossible for most people to ignore conduct of the Catholic priests. There is one priest who kept ledgers on his child conquests, and twelve of the minors actually appeared on his video tapes. Here's another Catholic priest who has admitted having sex with ten teenagers, and told his Bishop about it in 1986; his Bishop let him stay on, without treatment. When asked why, the Bishop responded "He was remorseful and embarrassed about the situation." Here's a priest who kept a detailed log and card files and hundreds of video tapes of nearly two thousand sex acts with youths and men. Here's a Roman Catholic priest who was accused of molesting thirty-two children and his response was to threaten them, "that God would punish them". Here's another one who also kept records that will be used in trial against him. This one is a priest of a small church, who has been sentenced to ten years in prison for sexual abuse and lewd acts with young people. Here's a Catholic priest who, driving along the highway, picked up a youth and furnished indecent reading matter to him and then exposed himself in the church rectory. Three men from New Jersey brought cases against the Roman Catholic Church under the Federal Racketeering Act, claiming they were abused by a church-tolerated "sex ring", run by two priests. One of the men suing is now a minister. In July, 1993, a former altar boy in an Arizona church claims that he was sexually abused, molested and raped for years by three different priests, which has left him mentally ill. In Minnesota, a former priest, accused of sexually abusing dozens of children in three states, was sentenced to six months in jail and ten years probation. The priest showed no sign of remorse, only denial, reported the judge. The same priest has also been indicted in Massachusetts on forty-six counts of molesting children, and named in other lawsuits in New Mexico and Minnesota. On November 13, 1993, in Albuquerque, Vatican City, acting through one of its corporate groups, agreed to pay a total of eight million dollars to some one hundred youths molested by a Catholic priest, who had served the church in Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Mexico. On the same date, the newspaper made note of a lawsuit brought by a young man against Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin, America's most visible prelate. In Los Angeles, an independent inquiry commissioned by the Franciscan Order of the Roman Catholic Church has determined that eleven friars at a seminary in Santa Barbara sexually molested at least thirty-four pupils over the course of some twenty years. For the second time this year, a former Catholic priest from Phoenix has been accused of sexual misconduct with a male parishioner.
The Vatican is reactionary, and centuries behind the times. For example, when the church was first organized, priests were allowed to have wives. Why not? No answer. The Catholic Church is unwilling to discuss or debate anything. Without wives, priests turned to peasant girls and boys for carnal satisfaction. In Europe, peasants objected to saying their confessions before profligate monks, and petitioned the church for the right to confess before churchmen of their own choice. The Italian Pope denied them, and forced them to accept the assigned monks. Why? Correspondence of those times provides us the answer: fear of additional expense, loss of control, and a drop in membership.
Meanwhile, on November 19, 1992, nine years of debate over the ordination of women priests ended as the United States Roman Catholic Bishops rejected a controversial statement on the role of women in society and the church. These guys are living in the 6th Century.
Fifty-three million good Catholics in the United States, who have a closer kinship to Eskimos than to the Vatican, must vow some day to break away from the murder and sadism and amoral corporate thinking that links them to these foreign strangers. When will it happen?
Here's an article that will stretch back two thousand years: A tiny relic of Christ's cross, authenticated by the Vatican, was auctioned Wednesday in a sale denounced by the French Roman Catholic church (May 13, 1993). The buyer must know nothing about history. This "artifact selling" was one of the crimes listed on his church door, that drove Martin Luther out of his skull. Some people would spend the grocery money to buy these so-called "relics" from unscrupulous monks. Historians will laugh: Christ's cross has already been "sold", piece by piece, at least a thousand times already. Sort of an on-going deja vu. Authenticated by the Vatican, indeed!
On or about September 23, 1992, Vatican City published its new guide on modern sins. Listed were: "Thou shalt avoid astrologers and fortune tellers", and "Thou shall avoid prostitution and suicide unless thou art desperate" (and American Catholics take orders from these people).
Religion is very important to the world because of the latitude of its influence. Religion, primitive or modern, has always been necessary to humankind, making it the most enduring of all our beliefs.
Any one religion is as difficult to define as the culture it represents. Catholic hierarchy chains its people to a prattle that is six hundred years behind the times. Superstition remains a Vatican specialty. Mass is an almost meaningless mumble, leaving you feeling uneasy and cheated, rather than serene.
Other churches have moved along, emphasizing kindness and community spirit. The best ones remember the poor, and apply hands-on help.
Cults spring up almost daily: the Bagwhan in Eastern Oregon, Jonestown, the Koresh colony in Waco, Texas, isolating themselves, turning away from the blur of an America that no longer satisfies the hunger for affection and comradeship. It's troubling when you see all three groups of people embrace tragedy so willingly, rather than be thrust back into the mainstream of American society.
The ancient religions were not complex. Only a little ceremony crept into worship of the Sun, and the worship of ancestors.
Modern religions change constantly with time, taking on a fuller content, and greater complexity. Japanese Shinto, for example, is jammed with ritual, and, over the centuries, Shinto has become even more ostentatious and complex.
Many religions have gone through the standard myths: the creation myth, the specific peoples myth, the flood myth, redemption, liberation, salvation, release from bondage, incarnations, divinity in human form, death and rebirth. These stages come about as the religion evolves. The same myths overlap hundreds of religions, all part of religion's overall evolution. The first myths, almost simultaneously, began about 3000 B.C., in Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Akkadia and Sumeria.
Perhaps the best example of the convoluted complexity a religion can attain is Hindu. Eighty-five percent of all Indians declare themselves to be Hindu, along with some of the population of Bangladesh, and small pockets in Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Fiji, Africa, Great Britain and the Americas. This puts them in the millions. They started off simply, as an isolated and agricultural sub- continent, connected to the soil, to fertility, and to the changing attitudes of nature. Reaching out for inner peace, Hinduism found Yoga. Farming people developed an appreciation for animals and now, though their families are starving, certain animals cannot be killed for any reason. Next, the four Vedas were composed, and at first set to memory. The Rigveda is made up of 1,028 hymns organized in ten divisions or books. Next came samans, or songs, in 1200 B.C. Then ceremonial sacrifices.
Hinduism, in three thousand years plus, has developed into a religion of elaborate rites. Caste now is a part of Hinduism. The Laws of Manu, started in 200 B.C., and composed by the Brahmans, established the public norms of classical Hindu society, including caste. The Upanishads are advanced teachings, meant to be secret, except to people especially selected. The Bhagavadgita is a poem about a warrior prince seeking advice, longer than Milton's Paradise Lost, and about as interesting.
Meanwhile, India had two invasions, Alexander in about 200 B.C., and the Muslims about 600 A.D. Alexander didn't stay long enough to make much of an impression, but the conquering Muslims introduced their own religion, and partial adoption further added to the confusion.
Buddhism, once a power in India, is still respected, though reabsorbed by Hinduism.
From beginning to end, Hinduism has effortlessly enlarged ceremony, writings, secret documents, to become a wandering, mutant polyglot. And this is not unusual. Buddhism started out with the simplest doctrine: the Four Noble Truths, which boiled down to ridding yourself of selfishness and desire, and following the Eightfold Path.
Buddhism has since been divided into three different schools, each with a different teaching approach. A blissful Heaven is a new goal, accepted by some, rejected by others. Lesser schools have bound together Confucionism, Taoism, and Buddhism. As that literary master Luis Borges says, in his lecture on Buddha, "...the elements (of Buddha) have remained the same, but the religion has become encrusted with mythology, astronomy, extraneous beliefs, magic...".
The Jewish Old Testament is a compilation of fascinating stories that had been around for centuries in other civilizations. Genesis combines these stories in fairy-tale fashion, harboring no pretense that the stories are anything but a humanoid non-scientific version of the creation. God creates the Earth in seven days, then creates man, then extracts a rib from man to create woman (that's why men have an uneven number of ribs), and has a talking snake that strikes up a conversation with woman, who, unlike most women today, is not afraid of snakes; then God created a temptation in the garden, warning them against it; eating fruit from the forbidden tree prompted God to promise Eve future childbirth pains, and Adam's life would also be dotted with unpleasantness. Which is okay, since the Old Testament refers to him again and again as a cruel God. The Garden of Eden was a Babylonian myth, predating the Jewish version by two hundred years.
There's a murder in the second generation of humankind, when Cain kills Abel; a bad start. Jehovah soon noticed that there was much sin going on, but Jehovah liked the six hundred year old Noah, who was instructed to build an ark. You must have an ark/flood story to be considered Religious-ready.
The whole story is told in such a personal way that you might believe that the people mentioned therein were the only ones alive, and that God was completely neglectful to everyone else.
The Old Testament moves right along. Abraham makes his appearance, then Moses floating in a basket, the Egyptians, a famine, Esau, Jacob, and Isaac, Rachael, and Leah, the land of Canaan, then Joseph and a little temptation, followed by some advice from Jehovah, the land of Egypt and the land of Goshen. No one could ever claim that Genesis is dull.
Exodus is very busy, but the main plot centers around Moses and the Ten Commandments. Exodus also had been upstaged by prior history when various religious zealots, in other civilizations, walked off alone to have a conversation with God, then returned with a set of tablets, or warnings of future disasters. They don't always come back with the same set of tablets. In the Ten Commandments, three of the rules protect the jealous, angry and cruel God of the Jews; don't take the name of Jehovah in vain, remember the Sabbath, and don't worship images. Jehovah recommended an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, which is troubling, because if someone killed a member of your family, then you "shalt not kill", but you must kill anyway.
The first five books of the Old Testament, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, continue this close and personal conversation between Jehovah and Moses, and include instruction upon how to deal with cleanliness, leprosy, ceremonial items, general housekeeping, ritual, incest, religious festivals and circumcision. The Jews call these first five chapters the Penteteuch, or the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses. Throughout, Jehovah and his pal Moses conspire and plan to scourge from the Earth certain tribes and cultures, like Murder, Incorporated. There is none of the mildness of the Bhagavadgita here, but deep resentment, and ruthlessness.
With the adoption of more ceremony, addition of some more religious days, the bar mitzvah, and the Talmud (oral law annotations), and the legend of the expected messiah, Judaism has followed the rule of expansion and complexity.
Christianity, when represented by the Catholic Church, rapidly expanded its liturgy, ostentation, and ritual, and early on, predicted a second coming of Christ. Mass is in Latin, religious holidays abound, religious leaders costume themselves. Before the entrance of Protestantism, Catholicism continued an intricate system of ceremony, often difficult to understand, complex and mystical, and picked up the cult of the Virgin Mary at about 500 A.D.
With Protestantism, the mysticism continued, but with less force, each church going off in its slightly different direction. Christianity, like the others, has likewise evolved toward complexity.
Religion's evolution, therefore, is schism and complexity. It's nothing unusual; it happened even under the Romans, where at one time there were 150 holidays per year, most of them religious.
Many religions predict the miraculous return of a god or a god-like leader. Hebraic people still believe in a Messiah, the Christians in the second coming of Christ. Jesus' disciples believed he would return during their lifetime. In India, there are one or two gods who have actually come back. This is not an uncommon conviction, but it would require some alert sidestepping, if they all showed up on the same day. During the thousand years when religions were being born, we can be grateful there were no psychiatrists running loose, trying to shut down humankind's biggest attraction ever.
Sigmund Freud wrote of the similarity of religious ritual to the compulsive acts of the neurotic patient. If Christ ventured into a second coming, he would be hospitalized for paranoid delusions (talking to God, destroying the world). The problems of the Jewish Messiah might be even greater, if he insisted on "setting my people free".
Even definitions might get you into trouble. Religion is concededly a highly ritualized, repetitive, communally satisfying relationship between nature, God, and humans; so a new prophet might say, "I will not leave until the world is one united community." He would hit the psych ward, too.
It is a matter of record in dozens of hospitals all over the country that an occasional patient, over the years, has declared that he is the second coming of Christ. The thing is, they never let those kinds of patients get too close to the front door, and one keeps wondering if one has missed the "second coming"?
It seems a pity that original doctrines, so simple and healthy, should be diverted into ceremonial mumbo-jumbo, and made the subject of pedantic threat, all in the name of ambitious priests and zanies, who want to "shine the light on me".
We're after simplicity, we get complication. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." Do we need priests and pastors to tell us any more than that?
The aims of religion and the aims of culture are discordant. Each seeks to highlight values that the other spurns. Culture reaches out for the best in art, but popular taste is obliged to accept what is available affordable. Culture extols certain carved African masks, but is affronted by the superstition, squalor and disease of the artist. Culture cannot accept any of the superstitions or symbolic rites of churches, but can gasp at the beauty of the great cathedrals.
Many of the rites and practices of religion and its churches, mosques and synagogues are peopled by the poor and lower middle-class, whose tastes run to what they can afford, falling short of the prizes claimed by culture. Churches do not claim memberships of culture-lovers. The minions of churchdom live in small corners of the world, and do not have the perspective owned by the manufacturers of culture.
And finally, culture is persuasive but not aggressive; religion is more aggressive, but, because of its pedantry and superstition, is less persuasive in any duel of wit or fact.
Competition runs the world, especially in the U.S.A.. "Competition" is always in high gear. Competition's evolution moves cyclically, at an ever demanding pace: speed, production, improvement, inventiveness, obsolescence. Then speed, production....
Churches may not know it, but they are afflicted. Churches are becoming obsolete. Sermons are uninspired and repetitive. Ceremony is meant to be comforting, but is dull, and does nothing to magnify the soul.
On the other hand, people enjoy and benefit from peer group conversational therapy. Small groups "talk it out", and come away with something positive and enduring. They "share" with each other, and learn to appreciate each other. No church does that.
Two hundred years from now, if we last that long, conversational groups will gather in homes, with or without a therapist. With a therapist, they can pass the hat, like they do in church. Conversational therapy groups have a series of advantages: The group is small; members participate; being small, the social class will probably have a better "fit"; age mixtures, music, Zen, can be decided in advance or resolved by class poll. All the freedoms are there that you don't have in church, where you sit like a lump beside people you don't know or wouldn't care to know, and listen to a narrowly educated man in the pulpit earn a dull living.
Who would you rather have as a group leader (1) a religious person (minister), or (2) a peer-host who is trained in psychology and sympathy, and who encourages every individual present to become involved?
Churches confine themselves to addressing the soul. It is hard to imagine how that could be done in a continuing, interesting way. The truth is, most people know about God, and Jesus, and other religious leaders. People do not go to church to hear the same thing over and over again, and very few religious leaders have the dynamism to stand in the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, and inspire parishioners to lead serene, holy lives until they doth meet again.
Church goers should take note that most of America does not go to church, and church attendance is declining. Non-attenders are gracious, compassionate, understanding, intelligent, presentable and sympathetic people. They devote time and money to well chosen charities and solicit the good will of God. But they find church to be dull, the membership to be a potpouri, the church routine to be boring, midst boring people, and the total effect a depressing enemy to inspiration.
So — everything works out for the best; those people who enjoy going to church, should go to church, and those people who don't go to church, shouldn't.
The unvarnished truth is that God doesn't get involved at all, in anything we do. Centuries of death and starvation and the suffering of millions and millions of innocents, across the width and breadth of the globe teach us so. If God were actively involved with us, God could not allow innocent children to suffer.
Furthermore, God is absolute Good, and could not take sides, one group against another, because that would not be absolute Goodness; nor could God show favoritism for begging sycophants, even if their cross were forty feet high with flashing colored lights.
With an atmosphere filled with billions of tons of soot and waste, with a depleted ozone, with comets that don't come often, but too close, with flaky managers of deadly nuclear explosives, and fallout, with a population that will double itself in a few years, and with four thousand years of proof that God does not interfere, we must concede that we are irrevocably bound to each other, until death do us part.
When Edward Fitzgerald translated the pithy maxims of Omar Khayyam into poetry, was he offering us hope, or mere consolation?
I sent my soul into the Invisible,
Some Vision of this Afterlife to spell;
And by and by my Soul returned,
And said I myself am Heaven and Hell.
Ninety percent of us can do nothing. We have no wealth, no power, no influence. We can't stop the dumping of waste into our oceans and streams, our Earth and atmosphere. Commanding no wealth and no influence, we ninety percent are impotent to fix the stratosphere, to stabilize the population, to discourage warfare and terrorism.
We ninety percent are infirm, weak, and helpless. Will the Rich put survival above worship of wealth?
Hello. Hello?
Religion's Voices are many, each one often claiming to be the exclusive agent of Heaven. To the sensitive individual, this could be interpreted as another of Humankind's egotistical insults against God. Any thoughtful person must know that God could not plan a Heaven of different classes and castes.
Each of our many Voices adopts its own solemn liturgy, each a little different from the others, to hold the loyalty of its worshipers. Some of it is beautiful. Muslims use the Koran to sing praises to Allah, while Christians and Mormons assemble large groups of voices, so melodious as to take your breath away, especially during Jesus/Santa Claus week.
These many, many voices, viewed individually, soothe us, reassure us, and give us temporary warmth against a workaday world that has become more and more brutal and uncaring. For this, Religion fills us with appreciation and thankfulness.
But taken together, these many voices form a cacophony of abrasive discord. For example, claims of exclusivity is querulous and sophmoric. Humankind worshiped sticks and totems with the same fervor that mankind worships today. Turning from the worship of totems to the worship of ancestors, to the worship of animals, to the worship of the Sun, to the worship of idols, to the worship of King Kong, or the Pharaoh, or Zeus and his pals, to a vengeful God, then to a compassionate God who had one son, then an immaculate Mother, then Saints, to the single god Allah, is pretty good evidence, in the end, that all religions tend to show that they evolve as creations of Humankind, not of God.
The Old Testament has nothing to say about salvation of the soul or even the existence of an afterlife. The triumph of the Old Testament is "Thou shalt not kill", an injunction that protests the bloody rituals and human sacrifices of that time. The evolution of religion is toward the compassion and love contained in the New Testament.
Unfortunately, war has proven to be part of the growth of religion. When St. Francis died, seven Italian cities went to war for the possession of the body of the man who had called himself the "Prince of Peace". After Buddha's death, militant Buddhist kings carried on one thousand years of petty wars. Christianity had its many crusades, as well as power plays pitting popes against kings. Hinduism has been involved in wars so often they are hard to count. The Pharaoh has done battle, as has the Emperor of Japan, and Mohammed. Any innocuous religious change always seems to call for a new round of warfare. The fact that Zoroastrianism, about 1500 B.C., was the first religion to abandon human sacrifice, and reject warfare, but then die out as the ancient religion of Iran, is an enigma for others to ponder. Must religion be tempered by battle in order to survive?? Does Darwin's "survival of the fittest theory" encompass every institution we have? Or is any institution, even organized religion, just a cellophane-wrapped rag doll to be chewed on by the still primitive brain of man?
Note: In the following interview, this corporate officer could allow us only a couple of minutes:
Interviewer: Does a corporation have a morality?
Corporate VIP: Of course, it does.
Interviewer: What is its morality?
Corp. VIP: It lives by its charter. Its purpose is to make money for its shareholders. That's its only morality.
Interviewer: Why is that?
Corp. VIP: If shareholders catch you giving corporate money to the poor, rather than declaring a cash dividend for the shareholders, they might not like that. Our job is simple, to make money for our shareholders.
Interviewer: Should corporations compete, and make money any way they can?
Corp. VIP: Right. That's what makes this country great!
There are over three million corporations in America, handling ninety percent of all business receipts. The three hundred biggest ones claim seventy percent of all corporate assets. The other two million, nine hundred ninety- nine thousand, seven hundred corporations add their assets to partnership businesses, and individual proprietorships, to come up with the remaining thirty percent. We are a country of big corporations.
They are sometimes characterized as monoliths without souls. Do they exercise any control over our lives? Let's take a look.
Corporations are not new. They go all the way back to the Romans. We learned to fashion our corporations after the British model. The British East India Corporation, circa 1600, set the example for all corporations to follow. East India's charter, from the King of England, granted a business monopoly for all of India. But East India was also given political power, backed by the throne, to punish, to discipline, to imprison. Engaged in the spice trade, then cotton and silk, the company broadened its base into other consumer goods, and reigned, representing the British government in India for over 250 years.
America noted what was going on, but decided that the East India experiment had gone too far. Corporations should not dabble in politics; corporations should have no control whatever over public policy; so we rejected the East India political power corporation. We neglected, however, to make the corporation beholden to the public in any way. We cut the pattern for the rest of the world.
Corporate empires would grow, and grow rapidly, as a competitive link to the mass production system.
We failed to see any danger in the compound growth of the corporation. Meanwhile, business entities, individuals, partnerships, and most corporations, remain answerable for their misdeeds and bad judgment. But not so Big corporations, which get special breaks, legally and illegally. (See Bankruptcy Act, Chap. 11).
Interviewer: May I ask you some questions about your compensation and liability?
Corp. VIP: As I told you in the beginning, I have nothing to hide. Ask away.
Interviewer: There are a number of financial publications that have listed your income and bonuses this year as well over eight million dollars.
Corp. VIP: That's true.
Interviewer: At the same time, there have been reports that your company is having a distressingly bad year, that 10,000 workers have been laid off, and that the corporation is about to go into bankruptcy. If so, will the stock fall?
Corp. VIP: Oh, I imagine it would go down a little. Interviewer: Do you feel, in case of bankruptcy, that your personal earnings, bonuses, and perks should be paid ahead of everyone else?
Corp. VIP: Why, yes. That's the law.
Interviewer: Let's talk about corporation breaches of the law? If, for example, you knowingly release a product that tests have indicated is dangerous to the health, and you know about it, and said product poisons or hurts a number of people, shouldn't the officers who knew about such risks be held accountable for a criminal violation?
Corp. VIP: (chuckling) Well, you've got me there. I'm not a lawyer. But I don't know of any such cases.
Interviewer: Have you ever been obliged to fire any employees?
Corp. VIP: Well — yes. A painful job.
Interviewer: Are the workers considered part of the corporate family?
Corp. VIP: Well — I don't see my workers too often. I'm very busy. The family is more the first, second and third tier of management.
Interviewer: I read in the paper that you had to let 10,000 employees go?
Corp. VIP: Well, you have to do that sometimes —
Interviewer: Why?
Corp. VIP: Why? There is no job for them.
Interviewer: What caused ten thousand people to lose their jobs? Did they do ten thousand things wrong?
Corp. VIP: No — no. The economy. The economy forced us to cut back.
Interviewer: Doesn't that happen all the time in the American economy?
Corp. VIP: (irritated) Yes — sure. But we can't pay ten thousand men if they're not working.
Interviewer: Do you know of any plan in your company, any formula, any program that is being considered to ease the shock of a ten thousand person lay-off? This was just an economy slow-down, wasn't it?
Corp. VIP: Yes.
Interviewer: None of these people had done anything wrong, none of them were incompetent, they could all do their jobs, couldn't they?
Corp. VIP: Yes, they were competent people, so far as I know.
Interviewer: Well, do you have any work liaison desk to help them find new jobs?
Corp. VIP: Well — no. When the economy gets better, they're here so they can be employed again.
Interviewer: So they have to wait until the economy gets better, and then they would go back to work for you?
Corp. VIP: Yes, if they want.
Interviewer: If the economy jumps up and down like that, and people are employed on the up side and then fired on the down side, with no provision for filling the unemployment gap, don't you think that's pretty unfair to the worker?
Corp. VIP: Don't ask me, I'm not the government. The government pays them workmens' compensation.
Interviewer: That's not much, is it? And is that really the taxpayers' job?
Corp. VIP: I don't know. Those are things I've never thought much about.
Interviewer: Thank you for talking with us.
Pharmaceutical corporations are almost part of the medical profession. We can depend upon them to police their chemicals carefully, and be sure that the ones that are released will not be harmful, can't we? Of course we can. Anyway, the federal judge will side with us dumb-headed, uninformed victims, won't he? Won't he? Huh? Huh?
During our last "conflict" abroad, chemical corporations sold the Pentagon the world's most deadly man-made poison: Dioxin. Dioxin was part of Agent Orange. It was more deadly than other defoliants that we had developed. The chemical companies that introduced Dioxin into Agent Orange made millions. The thing about Dioxin and Agent Orange is that you can't use them without getting close to them. Not until our soldiers came home, were they told anything about the nightmarish depth of Dioxin's taint. Our gallant lads married, had children. One child had two heads, others had muscle problems, atrophy, missing digits; some had holes in their hearts, you name it. Dioxin is a poisonous time bomb, whose effects may show up years later, or generations later. And it is known that over l6,000 returned veterans had Dioxin poisoning. Dioxin's known dangers were hidden from the service man. No one was ever punished. In past wars, soldiers risked their lives for their country and loved ones in America. Now, they serve as guinea pigs in nuclear blasts, or Dioxin tolerance, and stumble home to waste away and die, and no one seems to care. And after the soldier/husband dies, his pregnant wife carries on the family line with a child that is born with gills. Why weren't corporate people, who knew of the dangers, punished? Sixteen thousand of our soldiers, their babies, and still counting.
Sometimes chemists at chemical companies and at drug corporations will combine various drugs and put them through processes simply to see what will happen. Maybe that's how a chemical, whose initials are MIC, was developed and used at the Union Carbide Company in Bhopal, India. Water seeped its way into one of the storage tanks and triggered off a chain reaction of poison gas that killed between 2,000 and 5,000 people and injured another 200,000 of which 40,000 were serious. No indictment, not even a serious investigation.
Union Carbide is huge. Three million little corporations in America, but three hundred big ones control seventy percent of all business assets. Big has more rights than little, right?
For decades, corporate owners fought legislators who wanted to add safety laws to to protect workers from the dust that accumulates in coal mines (Black Lung disease) and the dust that accumulates in cotton mill's (Brown Lung disease), and the deadly sting of asbestos that accumulates in asbestos plants and slips through the cracks in people's homes.
Laws could have required all coal mine operators to control the coal dust. No one operator would have any sort of competitive edge; the law would apply to all companies. That's fair. The same law would have applied to cotton plants where they make towels and washcloths. The executive officers of all of the big corporations chose to fight safety protection when they knew their plants were exacting a death toll and a lung disease count that was shocking. They could have cleaned up their work places and passed the cost along to the consumer. Unless — unless they suspected that the creation of a safe work place would set a bad safety precedent? They knew what was happening, and their decisions were greedy and murderous.
These cases involve thousands of employees who lived out miserable lives and died miserable deaths, needing only a little clean air. But the company made a profit.
Why didn't these corporations jointly cooperate in protecting their own family of employees from deadly diseases that they had known about for decades? No matter how hard you search, you have trouble finding any answer, except personal greed and a pathological contempt for all their own people.
Corporate size buys you immunity from punishment.
The point is, it's not only pharmaceutical corporations, or asbestos corporations, or people who make towels, or hire mining personnel. Most corporations, as a biproduct of their manufacturing process, dump chemicals and poisons where ever it's convenient, thousands of tons of it. For this kind of conduct, you only need to be "big".
You would never know by reading the newspapers, but there are now more than 375,000 hazardous waste sites across the United States, of which 10,000, so far, pose an immediate threat to public health.
Over a period of five years, 1980 to 1985, ignoring numerous U.S. citizen complaints, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered improvements in only six of the most serious sites. It can be safely announced that for the monetary profit of a few, American has mortgaged the health of future generations.
In 1981, on the TV program "Sixty Minutes", a Mr. Walter Hang told interviewer Mike Wallace of his findings on the problem of "dumping".
Hang: I've looked at seventy-seven permits that have been issued to all the industries along the river, and not one of those permits provides comprehensive controls for organics. As a result, the industries are free to discharge thousands and thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals into the Niagara.
Wallace: Mr. Hang, you're calling the roll on some of the biggest chemical names in America — Hooker Chemical, Olin, Carborundum, Union Carbide, DuPont.
Hang: These industries are knowingly discharging vast amounts of toxic chemicals into the Niagara....with the blessings of the state and federal agencies.
Wallace: The blessings of?
Hang: ...these permits do not place restrictions on the toxic chemicals...known to be discharging are among the most toxic chemicals known to science. And they're extremely persistent in the environment. (They)...accumulate in the fish and wild life...and also accumulate in the consumers of the drinking water drawn from the river...we're talking about a long term hazard...
Take the automobile manufacturers. We had the Corvair, which got confused when you put on your brakes, the Pinto which turned rear-enders into the fourth of July, and a G.M. pickup truck whose gas tanks ignite on impact. The honesty of these companies is totally subservient to a mad search for profits. Their own records invariably show that they know of the defects but go onto the market with them, anyway. The Corvair flipped off the road. The Pinto became a fiery coffin. Boxes of microfilmed complaints from Corvair owners were discovered when two junk dealers, realizing what they had, sold them back to G.M. for $20,000; but the story leaked out, and they were used in lawsuits, frustrating G.M. efforts to suppress them.
No officer or board member was ever punished, though they knew the dangers. If you walk into a crowded theater and yell FIRE!, you will be arrested and sent to jail, though you may not have realized that your conduct was dangerous, but these automobiles have skidded off the road, and blown up. "Big" is immune to punishment.
There are ugly drugs, like DBCP, which causes sterility. This one kills animals, kills grain, and spreads over the land like a plague, leaving it barren. The stuff gets inside the body, and damages the liver, the kidneys, and various other tissues. It causes nausea and headaches. It also kills bugs on fruit trees, but by now, who cares.
Federal standards govern the safe use of 500 chemicals. That only leaves 249,500 chemicals not under Federal standards. The reason that rats are used to test these little gems is because they breed so fast that you discover the chemical effect across several rat generations in a few months; corporations can thus condense time; but still they hustle to market too soon, such is the psychopathic fear of missing a day's profit.
Where profits are concerned, the pharmaceutical industry can go deaf, dumb and blind. Take DES, for example. The companies cannot claim that they spent millions inventing DES, because it was discovered by a doctor in l938, who gave it to the world. All it needed was testing, lots of testing. DES was the world's first synthetic female hormone. The companies found many uses for it. The only trouble was that the mother can handle it a lot easier than her future child can. The babies get cancer. As a matter of fact, the companies knew this! But the lure of profits was too great. Pregnant women and their babies were deliberately abused. It's in the record. Thousands of American married couples went into early mourning. All the big companies made nice profits.
DES was taken by hundreds of thousands of pregnant women between 1940 and 1971. We will wait awhile yet, maybe for several generations, to see its total sinister effects.
You have a degree in chemistry. You become a pharmacist, and invent your own arthritis cure. You sell it, and it backfires. You are immediately arrested, tried, and sent to jail. Although you did not know of any adverse effects, the federal judge says you "should have known". The judge also says "what kind of society do you think this is, that you can experiment on people". Your real sin is that you are small.
Another pharmaceutical beauty was MER/29. This was a drug which was tested on various animals and then the results deliberately misrepresented in the reports to the Federal drug agency, cataracts, for example. The drug was used on human volunteers. Over 150,000 physicians received promotional packets for use on patients. Reports began coming back of thinning hair and gradual loss of eye sight, but the company discounted these complaints, aware that "Marketing and Sales" enthusiastically reported that MER/29 had a greater potential than all of the company's other products combined. 400,000 people used this product, and at least 5,000 were seriously injured by MER/29. The company reported a nice profit that year.
The same judge who glowered at the pharmacist will compliment MERCK for getting its product off the market.
These corporations leap to manufacture pesticides, because they're money makers. They're scattered so finely across fields that the company is willing to "bet" there will be no ill effects if a little of it is ingested by humans.
Take Kepone, for example. The only trouble with Kepone is that anyone helping manufacture it can be poisoned. Employees lose weight, suffer from the shakes, develop rashes, grow weak and listless, suffer from headaches, and stiff joints, and sterility; later they are unable to stand up. If some do manage to have children, what will their problems be? Nobody knows yet.
The employees handling Kepone were all on workmens' compensation. Work comp payments are very modest, so the company has consistently reported good profits.
These corporations dump poisons into streams for hundreds of miles; and into the ground where, like a vaporous ghoul, poison seeps back up to claim the living.
Sometimes poisons come in bunches, called "toxic wastes". That's the story of Love Canal.
Once upon a time, a big oil company owned a smaller chemical company. Oil is the base for a great number of compounds. The chemical company's researchers experimented and found a number of useful products. They sold these products to people, and the company made a lot of money, and everybody was happy. But the chemical company needed someplace nearby to dump its residue of chemical waste products. So, in 1947, the company bought Love Canal, drained it of its water, gave the canal a clay lining, and dumped drums of chemical waste into it. Then they covered it over lightly with earth upon which grass and weeds grew. Their next move was to sell the dump to a nearby school district; the kids were told to use this big beautiful field to play in. One rainy day, a child's leg went through a muddy ditch and when they pulled him out, he had oily goo all over himself. There were no warnings posted, and none of the children knew that they were playing above 20,000 tons of more than 200 different chemical substances, substances that cause leukemia, anemia, nervous and respiratory problems, gastro-intestinal problems, convulsions, white blood cell imbalances, genetic and liver problems, and death. The 200 chemicals included Benzene, Lindane and others. And yet another: Dioxin, the most poisonous small molecule known to man. There is no dosage of Dioxin that is so small that it can be called safe.
You know the rest of the story. The chemicals seeped through the clay barrier, into the homes of residents. This black poisonous fluid oozed through cracks into their basements. They pumped it out into the street. Soon the hardware stores sold out of sump pumps. The smell gagged you, the fumes burned your eyes. Investigation revealed that the school district owned the playground, had bought it from the chemical company. All those homes had to be abandoned.
We were lucky enough to get a conversation going with a young man who had just made junior partner in a large law firm that advises and defends some of the biggest corporations in the country. He's young, so we'll call him Junior Attorney.
Interviewer: I understand you're with the firm of Stall, Fib, and Charge?
Jr Atty: Yes.
Interviewer: That's one of the most prestigious firms in the country, isn't it?
Jr Atty: Thank you. We think so.
Interviewer: I know that you, yourself, have been instrumental on some very important cases, and that you're now a partner in that firm.
Jr Atty: Yes, and thank you again.
Interviewer: You people must be awfully good, because your client list reads like a page of who's who in corporate America. All these complex production companies, including pharmaceutical firms, computer-oriented technology. It must keep you awfully busy studying the complex nature of your clients' businesses.
Jr Atty: (Warming to the conversation) Yes, but that's a lot of fun. You get to know about so many things that are going on in America.
Interviewer: If one of your clients is so large that it has plants and factories and distribution centers all over the world, doesn't that keep you busy? I understand that you're a trial lawyer.
Jr Atty: Oh yes, when you're big, litigation is unavoidable.
Interviewer: How do you advise a client, a pharmaceutical house, for example, when a product, after a time on the market, turns against you and starts harming the people using it?
Jr Atty: How do you mean?
Interviewer: Well, reassuring your client. Doesn't he get panicky, and concerned with criminal prosecution?
Jr Atty: Oh no, that never happens. (Chuckles)
Interviewer: What if he admits to you, confidentially, that the company's records will show some adverse reactions, but they went ahead and sold it anyway? Aren't the chairman of the board and the president of the company really scared that they will be prosecuted?
Jr Atty: (Seriously) Well, I've researched that point; it just doesn't happen. I tell them to buck up, and not worry about it. In our office, we have documented, very carefully, all the punishments ever meted out, in such situations, and, except for a few hours of community work, and that's rare, no officer, or board member has ever been punished.
Interviewer: In the history of the United States?
Jr Atty: That's right.
Interviewer: Even if the product was known to be poisonous, and killed thousands?
Jr Atty: (Upset) Well, I can't litigate each of these cases. But, we don't admit that.
Interviewer: You just admitted it in the questions I asked you.
Jr Atty: I most assuredly did not.
Interviewer: Don't you think these murderers and profit-pimps should be punished?
Jr Atty: Just a minute; this has gone far enough.
Interviewer: Anybody else would be punished. Do big corporations live by a different set of laws?
Junior Attorney is walking out as Interviewer says: Have a good day, if you have no conscience.
Interviewer: Ladies and gentlemen, our brave advocate has left the field to us. I thought I heard him say just before he closed the door that he was just doing his job. If asked, I could not say what the difference would be between him and a high class hit-man.
This is not the only town in America that is now off limits forever. In 1983, the entire town of Times Beach, Missouri, had to be abandoned because oil contaminated with Dioxin had been sprayed on its roads.
We have people in America — all of them are rich people — who are at the throats of the rest of us. How many people have to die or be mutiliated before it is a war: 100,000, 300,000, half a million? We have bar fights, gang fights, neighborhood outbreaks, border skirmishes, food riots, ethnic explosions, but no great body count until the rich entrepeneur foists upon us his untested drugs and experiments and his deadly production wastes. Imagine spraying a road with Dioxin! You walk across the road, and you are a cancer victim by the time you reach the other side.
More and more, our government seems to be willing to experiment with the lives of humans. Soldiers placed near an atomic explosion in the New Mexico desert are all dead now, and it's just been a few years. Most of them died of cancer, such a pleasant way to go.
A few decades back, syphilis experiments were done on prisoners at a federal penitentiary, without providing them with a full explanation, with disastrous results. Many of them were American Blacks who knew nothing of the contents of the inoculation.
In the Vietnam War, it was experimental to let our G.I.s handle Agent Orange. Who knew what the effects might be? Makers of dioxin knew. They knew. Another disaster. How many children will be born with gills on their hips, digits missing, genitals missing? For how many generations?
Once-secret documents, stored at the University of California-Berkeley's Bancroft Library, reveal that, in an effort to know more about radiation sickness, doctors were paid by the U.S. Government to inject citizens with radioactive substances. These were not volunteers, they did not know the contents of the syringe. Some children with cancer were injected with twenty times more radiation than the average person receives in a lifetime. Many of them died within a few months. The thing is, they didn't know, nor did their parents. Nineteen retarded boys were fed radioactive cereal without their parents' knowledge.
Dr. Mengele, where are you?
The following human experiment, sanctioned by the National Institute of Health, was labeled by the Institute's Doctor Hoofnagle as a "Catastrophe". Twenty-four people volunteered in 1992 to test the experimental drug, Fialuridine, which doctors hoped would cure Hepatitis B. A man from Phoenix survived with a painful nerve disorder, but considers himself lucky. Five other people who tested the drug are dead.
From official experimentation, let's return for a moment to unofficial experimentation at Love Canal: miscarriages, birth defects, spontaneous abortions. The defects? Heart murmurs, a baby with three ears, another with deformed ears, drowsiness, depression, liver disorders.
The children who grew up on this playground, moved away, and had their own children, born blind. Will future generations be normal? What do corporate executives say? Let's find out:
Interviewer: What would you say?
Corp. VIP: That's the price we pay for progress. (He hurried away, anxious to get to an important meeting.)
Chemical dumping stories occur in other countries as well. In the 50's near a small fishing village in Japan, a petrochemical company built a plant. Soon it was dumping 60 different poisons into the sea daily. Every living thing within a hundred miles was affected. Flying birds wavered, then fell into the water. Cats convulsed violently and jumped into the ocean; soon there was not a cat anywhere. A five year old child was hospitalized, incoherent, with brain damage. A few days later, her sister would join her. Then hundreds of others. The corporation concealed its waste dumping activity, and forbade a high ranking company official from disclosing his cruel findings. The devastation continued. Finally, threatened by lawsuits, the corporation found a way out: It began establishing subsidiaries and disconnecting them. Bankruptcy is planned for the original corporation, a shell now, to avoid paying anything to these invalids.
Sometimes it's provident for a corporation to open out of town before going directly to Broadway. Take the drug "Opren". Early flyers boasted of its miraculous effects fighting rheumatoid arthritis. It opened in England, but unfortunately didn't have much success, so when it came back to the United States, its name was changed to "Oraflex". In England, patients vomited blood, had abdominal pain, and kidney failure. They even died, which was inconsiderate of them. Back home in the U.S., the corporation launched a 12 million dollar campaign to sell Oraflex, knowing full well about its dismal record in England! Letters went out to the doctors, ads to the newspapers, commercials to the television stations. No mention was made of its two year record in Great Britain, and the human lives that had been lost. By 1982, the British government suspended sales of the drug, but sales continued to poison users in the U.S., for some time.
If big corporate decision makers are immune from criminal prosecution, for the deliberate killing of thousands of U.S. citizens, won't their callous practices continue?
Some people suggest that our society is too litigious; happiness is to remain mute, and die for the profiteers of a big corporation? As a result, this drug company was given a small fine. Twenty-nine people in the U.S. died as a result of using Oraflex. No one was charged with premeditated murder, or murder 2, or manslaughter, or negligent homicide, or jaywalking.
Some of these chemical combinations are so deadly that you wonder how they could ever be released for any reason. There is one called PBB that worked its way into a farmer's feed silo, by accident, and killed all the field mice, all the rats, rabbits, and grasshoppers on his farm. Unfortunately, it also killed all his cattle, all the cats and dogs on the farm. Some of the animals didn't die peaceably; they went crazy. Bees were found dead in their hives, frogs in all the streams were dead. PBB's use was as a fire retardant. But if it gets into the human system, it will cross over and enter a developing fetus of a pregnant woman. When it gets into human or animal fat, it is almost impossible to purgate. It is as dangerous as military apocalyptic poisons, either to touch, or to inhale.
Then there's another one called PCB. One of America's largest corporations dumps used PCB into the Hudson River, estimated to be 500,000 pounds by now — it was known that PCB was a toxic substance that would endanger the health of animal life — but they dumped it anyway. Here, as happens so often, letters, pleas went out to various agencies by people who just can't sit still and see this sort of deliberate carnage; and here, as happens so often, letters were ignored, phone calls dismissed. It seems that 50 letters and 50 phone calls from people suffering from a poison does not equal one quiet reassurance from a corporate P.R. man.
By checking with doctors in 1980, the drug corporations discovered that there existed a market for a drug that would reduce high blood pressure. One company introduced a drug called "Selacryn", which possessed the additional advantage of lowering uric acid levels and thus avoiding kidney problems. With the usual hoop-de-la, they sent it out to various doctors who then prescribed it for their patients. Selacryn did just the opposite of what had been advertised; it almost devoured the liver. The Food and Drug Administration finally forced it off the market. The Selacryn script, like an old cowboy movie, was the same: the drug company had obtained Selacryn from a French company which frankly advised the U.S. company of adverse results; but the U.S. company sold it anyway; three of their executives had to do 200 hours of community service, and the company was fined $100,000. The company made more than that the first week of sales.
Will big corporations, with criminal immunity, sell dangerous drugs for profit? Yes, unequivocally.
"Clioquinol" was marketed as a diarrhea control drug. The Japanese seem to have many digestive disorders, and the drug went over very big in Japan. The scenario was the same: doctors, having been told that the drug had been properly tested and accepted, prescribed it for their patients. The doctors are the goats that lead the sheep into the slaughter room, because everyone trusts his doctor. Victims of Clioquinol's poisonous effects on humans started with loss of sensation and then paralysis of the feet and legs. There were disturbances of the vision, and gastro-intestinal symptoms, including severe abdominal pain and, of all things, more diarrhea. By the late 1960's, it had taken on epidemic proportions in major cities worldwide. Still, it wasn't until 1985 that all sales of Clioquinol were at last suspended. Then it was learned that the mother company had known all along that animal experiments showed many deaths, but these were not made fully known to the doctors who would prescribe it, or the humans who would use it. And so it goes. Incidentally, Clioquinol turned nice profits for the corporations that sold it.
Even if they kill people? Yes, unequivocally.
"Thalidomyde" was such a horror because it destroyed so many little ones. In Britain, there were 8,000 Thalidomyde babies: malformed shortened arms with a hand but no thumb or several fingers missing, another hand with an extra finger, a palate with a hole in it, a face paralyzed on one side, no legs or no arms at all, one ear missing and the other deformed, a damaged brain, a deaf mute, poor vision, no genitals, no bowel opening, malformed kidneys, other parts missing or deformed. Some had flippers, or digits emerging from the pelvis. The drug was marketed in the '50's and '60's for expectant mothers as completely non- poisonous, safe, fully harmless. This German product was first manufactured under the trade name Contergan. It does not seem to be an unusual practice to start or market test a drug under one name and then mass produce it worldwide under a second name. The second name is rarely identified with the problems that have arisen under the first name. This was a big marketing campaign: fifty major medical journals, 200,000 circulars to doctors worldwide, 50,000 to pharmacists. At that moment, there was already substantial evidence, known to the company, that Thalidomyde was anything but harmless. Some doctors had experimentally tried one pill on themselves and become sick.
Even if it deforms babies?? Yes, unequivocally.
For a creative and more interesting treatment of these topics, read "Corporate Crime and Violence" by Russell Mokhiber. A great book.
Then there's tobacco. The Surgeon General has condemned cigarettes because of their health hazard, cancer and respiratory diseases. Yet sales of cigarettes have actually increased. It is estimated that 300,000 people die from cigarette poisoning every year (in 1994, that figure was up to 419,000 yearly), but the tobacco companies have remained veritably untouched by compensation efforts. Conservative judges throw cases out of court because of the Surgeon General's message on the package, holding this to be a warning, rather than doing something positive like reversing the burden of proof or urging the legislature to do so, or treating cigarettes as a deliberately imposed addictive poisoning. Judges shamefully turn from the law's promise that "for every wrong, there is a remedy". Cowards all.
Tobacco companies' advertising goes like this: "not a cough in a carload", "not a single case of throat irritation...", "the Throat Tested Cigarette...", "...stimulates the flow of digestive juices...", "no throat or other adverse effects...". The point is that corporations are driven by only one rule: say anything that will sell the addictive product. The truth? Truth is irrelevant.
Here's another quote from the Attorney General's office, concerning our young people: "We know that young people who smoke are far more likely to abuse marijuana, cocaine, alcohol or heroin. They're far more likely to have unprotected sexual intercourse."
All this is very interesting, a lot of it is already known. U.S. Corporations are ruthless, but what has that to do with humankind's place in the cosmos?
Answer: I want you to meet the people who will be making all the decisions in our new string of crises.
Nothing has changed over the entire evolution of the industrial revolution, except corporations have become giants, with giant powers. With that kind of a history, perhaps now, if an emergency arises, we can check out what "they" do.
All of our lives have to do with the inherent character of corporations, whose only function is as profiteer. No code of conduct binds any of them in their articles of incorporation. And they love it! And their owners and controllers, the Rich, love it!
Occasionally you will find a rare exception; Robert Owen in England improved the working conditions of his employees, built them habitable houses nearby, and charged them a tiny rate of interest while they paid for them. I do not know of another such example.
Today's corporations insist that they function under a mandate to make money and that they possess no right to give away money or any part of the profits to their own workers, or non-shareholders, and claim they can't write off pro bono help, or higher wages. Nonsense! Even small companies do all those things. But "size" pays expensive lobbyists to soothe the feathers of ruffled legislators, writes large checks toward campaign slush funds (in one campaign, Nixon received a contribution of $2 million from one Rich man), and goes on polluting rivers and oceans and streams, the air and atmosphere, poisoning everything in sight, at will. Just to make some more money that the big corporate owners can't use and won't spend.
Even if it kills four hundred thousand people, every single year? Yes, unequivocally, with apparent relish.
But what have we got ourselves into here? In a democracy such as ours, all corporations have the same rights as citizens, or of other corporations. Thus, if there are no obligations attached to one charter, there need be no obligations attached to other charters. It comes down to the fact that they're all engaged in grinding out profit (they love this "tunnel-visioned" simplification), with no obligation to share with the workers who made it possible, nor make any pro bono contribution to public welfare. Is this total self-orientation healthy? Is this Democracy? Is "size" to be congratulated for its utter ruthlessness?
We may have been painted into a corner. The Rich, owners of the big corporations, have tremendous power. There are 535 Congressmen in Washington, and the Rich, buffered by a stable of more than 30,000 corporate lobbyists, and ownership of all the big corporations, are constantly picking at our bones.
The corporate system (capitalism) may, by now, be carved in marble. Its linear, unchanging development has, for 200 years, supplied us with a diverse consumer economy and raised our standard of living by leaps and bounds; in fact, we don't know any other system; and who is prepared to break with this one, or even risk a major change? Yet our lives have slowly come to be based upon corporate decision makers, who feel free to lie to us, experiment on us, buy our Congressmen, and ignore our law. Newspapers, magazines and TV belong to the corporations; thus, they own all the tools of propaganda. The Rich own the big corporations.
Today, the most important concentration of corporate power resides with the oil people. Here we find the world's largest corporations. Oil serves dozens of purposes, including chemicals and transportation. Depletion allowance laws were manufactured especially for oil companies. When tax time comes around, they may have taken from the ground oil whose value is greater than the tax they owe, in which case they pay nothing in taxes. This fraud is so patent as to be comical. Other companies are not allowed to exhaust their inventory and then take its value off their tax bill. But, that's what the oil companies do!
Five American oil companies,together with two European ones, are called the Seven Sisters. One could argue that these seven companies are more powerful than the United States Federal Government, since the Attorney General of the United States makes no effort to enforce anti-trust laws against them, though they have obviously developed some sort of understanding related to the division of known oil fields. Oil companies control the supply of oil, they control the price of oil and gasoline. They do this with more decisiveness, and in a smoother way, than the operation of any government in the world. The Government of the U.S. had a beautiful case for criminal prosecution of the companies in the l950's, backed up by a Federal Trade Commission investigative report. But no. Oil is just too strong.
They can even talk us into abandoning natural and healthy provisions of nature.
Human breast milk is the most wholesome and most nutritious food that a baby can have. But the corporations wanted us to use their formulae, instead. And we did. Millions of mothers were made to believe that breast-feeding was not a good idea, thereby proving that corporate advertising can score brilliant victories, even against babies. I guess the point is, the corporate system works! It works! We are its pawns, for better or worse.
The asbestos companies have known privately, for decades, for d-e-c-a-d-e- s, that their product is cancer-deadly. At last, when the proof was decisive, and the lawsuits came tumbling in, they still had an Ace in the hole. They filed for "reorganization" under Chapter 11 of the Federal Bankruptcy Law, and stopped various of the hundreds of lawsuits. They did this in spite of the fact that asbestosis has already infected thousands and will continue to destroy the lungs of people for decades to come. Many buildings were asbestos-insulated, when the dangers were known, and they won't tear them down. With all the extra legal advantages that corporations have, they rarely see fit to give up. Regardless of the damage they've done, they have legal exits no one else has, and they take them without a pang of conscience.
In their sick corrosive version of competition, would huge corporations stoop to bribery? Do I surprise you if I tell you the answer is yes. The multi-national corporations that operate in the South American banana belt systematically pay bribes to have their way over the local government. Airplane manufacturers are masters at this high-stakes game. Prince Bernhard was exposed as a bribe taker involving the sale of airplanes to his country. These aren't thousand dollar bribes; they very often go into seven figures.
On 10-30-92, Hughes Aircraft Co. was convicted of conspiring to defraud the U.S. Government by skipping required tests on military components.
On 9-3-92, Sears, Roebuck and Co., paid an undisclosed but sizable sum of money, pursuant to allegations of fraud in the repair of automobiles.
On 11-24-92, Ernst and Young, one of the "Big 8" accounting firms, agreed to pay a record 400 million dollars on charges of fraud in the auditing of Western Savings and Loan Association.
National Health Laboratories, Inc., agreed, on 12-19-92, to pay 100 million dollars, and pleaded guilty to presenting false and fraudulent claims to the U.S. Government.
On 6-19-93, McDonnell Douglas Helicopter Co. will pay 1.4 million dollars to settle claims that it defrauded the U.S. Government on a contract.
United Technologies Corp. pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy, and agreed to pay 6 million dollars in penalties for getting inside information on contract bids.
On 10-16-93, the Justice Department and the Food and Drug Administration, announced that C. R. Bard, Inc., had agreed to plead guilty to selling faulty heart catheters, and will pay a 61 million dollar fine. Half the fine is for civil liability settlements for various patients, the other half for criminal conduct. This company, in order to "maximize profits", ignored laws passed for the health and safety of patients.
On 10-22-93, Prudential Securities, Inc., agreed to pay 371 million dollars, which will be used to repay thousands of investors defrauded in limited-partnership deals during the 1980's. Citizens were seriously misled in a number of different ways.
It should be noted that fraud law requires a high degree of proof, i.e., "clear and convincing" proof.
Price fixing is against the law. A number of companies have been caught, and fined. But it is rare as fireflies in December to see a personal conviction. Although it is a criminal offense, and although there is clear proof that certain individual officers of the company knew and participated in the crime, not one of them spends even a night in jail. The fine assessed is trivial compared to the profits that were made, when the "fix" was on. Big corporations display no public incentive whatever to deny the prime command to make profits, no matter how, no matter why, no matter what. And prosecutors don't prosecute corporate big-wigs. History proves that.
On 4-13-93, United Airlines and U.S. Air agreed to sign a consent decree, and end the practice of communicating proposed fare hikes through the computerized system. This practice was viewed by the Government as a subtle way of agreeing on fares, and not competing.
On 8-24-93, witnesses were testifying in a lawsuit against Wal Mart Stores, Inc., to claims that Wal Mart fixed prices lower than cost, in an effort to drive smaller competitors out of business. On 10-13-93, an Arkansas judge found Wal Mart Stores indeed had used predatory pricing to force competitors out of business, and awarded a money judgment to the plaintiffs.
On 10-1-93, The Federal Trade Commission accused five of the nation's largest commercial diet programs of engaging in deceptive advertising, accusing them of making unsubstantiated weight-loss claims and of using consumer testimonials without any evidence that they represent typical experiences of dieters; weight-loss time frames were misleading.
So often, corporate officers deliberately make decisions against the law that kill thousands of people. Tire manufacturers, for example, failed to recall tires that were known to be defective. After comparing the costs of notice, tire replacement costs, loss of reputation, legal and administrative fees, measured against the expense of claims, company statisticians informed management that it would be profit-wise not to recall the dangerous tires.
You can see that corporations no longer treat people as living creatures with homes and families, but only as a statistic, one of the numbers, here as a cost of doing business: On this defective tire, how many blow-outs will there be? how serious? how many will absorb the loss or claim a new tire? how many will claim injuries? how serious will they be? It no longer is a matter of whether or not human life will be lost or someone maimed (it is known that will happen), but the decision is that, if the damage to the human body and the subsequent claims will cost less than the recall, we'll accept the mayhem as a statistical cost of doing business.
Another practice that has become customary, is to dump the bad product in foreign countries after it has been seriously attacked in the mother country. The intra-uterine device known as the Dalkon Shield, for example. Or DDT. Or numerous pesticides, or vegetables treated with poison (mercury). These are experiments in countries which don't know any better, or have bribable politicians.
So, we see that ninety percent of the people, everyone except the corporate hierarchy and the rich, can be victims. These poisons are in our streams, our oceans, they seep through the ground, they befoul our air, are incorporated into our lower-priced cars, poison our babies, poison our babies' babies, all in the name of profit and competition, and the unchallenged corporate will.
And why isn't anyone punished? Because this is progress. And employment. "Would you shut down our plant and leave all these poor people unemployed?"
Corporations have the judges on their side. Judges dislike the faces of the criminal type — disgusting little cretins who need haircuts, and wear cheap suits — standing before them. But, here's a gentleman in a $700 suit who has wasted an entire community, including children, and the judge thinks, "I'm sure he didn't mean it." A shifty eyed thief, who has stolen a television set, gets five years, while the mass murderer gets 100 hours of public service on weekends and has to rearrange his Saturday golf game.
Corporations are two-faced. They plead "nolo contendere", which is a way of avoiding a guilty admission. Then they pay for 940 counts of water pollution, which costs five million dollars. But if you looked at their books, they will have made forty or fifty million dollars during the same period of the pollution. They almost never lose money in the long run, and aware their officers won't go to jail, are motivated and encouraged to continue crime and corruption for profit. Laws (easy to draft) are not being passed to curtail such crimes. For example, the failure to report "known dangers" and possible injury from the use of a new product, should be a serious crime, with minimum- maximum jail terms prescribed, plus heavy fines.
By failing to write such law — and the drafting is child's play — the government seems to be approving elitism, and acquiescing in human experimentation.
When Fortune, or Forbes, or other magazines, select America's wealthiest people, they do it largely by evaluating ownership of stocks and bonds. As it turns out, the Rich do not fill their portfolios with risky purchases. They buy the highest grade securities they can find. They do it for at least three good reasons: The corporations they buy are too powerful to have financial problems; the 300 top corporations in America have enornous power, both in the market place, and with the government; when they buy these securities, they buy that power. The big corporations in America are owned by the Rich, almost exclusively.
As we have shown, "size" has so many advantages and attractions for corporations that mergers have begun to occur more frequently.
Recently, Martin Marietta Corp. has agreed to buy Grumman Corp. in a $2 billion deal that would merge two of the nation's best known defense contractors.
The 42 owners of newspaper chains are now reduced to a mere 26 chains, through mergers.
There are three standards of proof for surveying conduct. Our form of government believes that almost certain proof should be required to find a person guilty of a crime: "beyond a reasonable doubt". To find a person guilty of fraud, the proof is still demanding, "clear and convincing proof".
The largest percentage of cases are civil cases, and the proof required there is "what a reasonably prudent person would do in the same or similar circumstances". If the conduct is "reckless or wanton", punitive damages should be assessed to deter such conduct against the public in the future.
We have laws covering every possible act of an individual, and they are sternly enforced. Corporations function as paper entities, shielding executives, who are hiding in the wings, and Rich owners who are playing and partying somewhere. We need Congressional coercion and stronger laws that force judges to punish obvious "crimes" of corporate officers and directors.
The Federal U.S. Attorney, and the State Attorney General often have upward moving political ambitions, and are acutely aware that their careers fall within the compromised world of politics. For this reason, they often seem more inclined to prosecute drug dealers, small-time hoods, and passion murderers (this kind of mayhem is devotedly covered by the media), than to tackle powerful corporations that have killed or destroyed the lives of thousands. The despicable criminal from Povertyville draws everybody's contempt and is fair game for an ambitious prosecutor; whereas those nice people in corporations could fund a guy in next year's election, when one might run for governor; or write a recommendation to a high-paying job with a big law firm.
There is another high office holder who is a product of politics and influence, an appointee whose duty is to follow and administer the law impartially, though partiality is responsible for his own appointment. His title is U.S. District Court Judge. Under the present appointment system, you have about a 50-50 chance of getting a competent one. If he is corrupt and takes bribes, or is biased and makes no effort to neutralize it, you've got a lemon, and he can do things almost too cruel to mention. We'll talk about him later.
In the last fifty years, corporate crime has increased dramatically, climaxed by the 1980's where it became almost an epidemic. Most of the corporate crimes listed herein are recent.
One giant corporation admitted guilt on four criminal counts to defense procurement fraud from the U.S. Government and paid a fine of 115 million dollars. No one was prosecuted. A Wall Street firm blatantly violated the rules dealing with the purchase of government bonds, and paid almost 400 million dollars in fines. No one was prosecuted.
Recently, on Wall Street, the laws forbidding insider trading were contemptuously ignored, the parties were caught, and monstrous fines were paid; when the culprit was non-corporate, he nearly always was sent to jail for a short term. Individuals are disciplined, but not corporations. One rent-a-car corporation defrauded all its customers by sending them inflated repair bills, and false billings. When discovered, the corporation was fined several million dollars, but no one was indicted for this systematic and deliberate fraud. Unbelievable!
It no longer is difficult to figure out why "equal rights under the law" is being subverted. It's very simple, really: Corporations that are successful, become immense. Size has become the ambition amongst corporations because the bigger you are, the more immune you are, the more the law is made to work for you, and never against you. When you are big, you have money, power and influence. A "free enterprise system" is another way of saying, "Grow huge and prosper".
And we have that big American hero — competition — which forces mergers and consolidations on other companies. If you're not growing up fast enough, and your board isn't important enough to be "interlocked" with other friendly boards, your only solution is to become bigger over night. Thus, there has been a surge of mergers in 1993. In one such, two hospitals in Phoenix and a ninety- four bed hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, have merged with a ninety-six bed hospital group in Nashville, Tennessee.
This is the first of a series of sections to prove that the law has her favorites. John Doe works half his life to put together enough money to open a small stereo shop. A burglar breaks in and steals three stereos. John Doe carries insurance with a very large insurance company, which reimburses him for his loss; then, later, raises his premium.
Meanwhile, John Doe is secretly pleased when he learns that his chief competitor, a huge corporation with over a hundred stereo shops, one of them only a block away, has been accused of price fixing, false advertising, and bid rigging on spare parts. He notices that the local newspaper doesn't seem to take much interest in follow-up on the story, but he checks out of town papers at the library and learns that his competitor has filed a document called Nolo Contendere (no contest, but a denial of guilt). He continues to follow the story, and learns that his competitor has paid a fine (not very big), and has just advertised a new model that will revolutionize his product. In other words, his competitor, a large corporation, has committed a serious crime, violated various heavy statutes, and paid a small fine, and that's it. The"bad" publicity may even help since no one knows what "nolo contendere" means. That, plus a new product. He wonders to himself if the government is encouraging his competitors to try again, but to be more careful about getting caught. As he is mulling over this lesson in doing business, the police call and inform him that the burglar who took his three stereos has been captured. He appears in court to identify the three stereos, and stays long enough to hear the judge explain that no one was mistreated, and since this is a victimless crime, the burglar's sentence will only be three years in prison.
He leaves the courthouse, his head in a whirl. Victim crime, victimless crime? Then he begins to understand: if a robber, instead of a burglar, had committed the crime, and confronted him with a gun or had tied him up or struck him, that would be a victim crime, subject to a greater penalty and a longer sentence in jail. But wait, what about his competitor, guilty of price fixing, false advertising, and bid rigging? True, that sounds like a victimless crime, but he didn't get three years in jail, he got no jail time at all.
And then, what about some of the things he reads in the paper, like those corporations that go on selling and putting asbestos in houses and buildings after they've known for ten or twenty years that it is dangerous and affects the ability to breathe, the respiratory organs, and lungs. That couldn't be a victimless crime, because there were thousands upon thousands of victims. He can't be sure — the newspapers seem to suddenly stop talking about it — he can't recall reading anything about even the suggestion of any jail sentence, or anybody being sent to prison for life, or executed. And here, in his own case, his competitor's name appeared in the paper just that once; then the competitor's big ad about a revolutionary new product. A big ad, people would remember it. Funny how the paper showed so little interest in the crime, except that his competitor was a big advertiser in that newspaper.
While still puzzling over these contradictions in American justice and equality, he strays from the crossing lane just as a police officer comes by. He receives a ticket for jaywalking. He must pay a fine and lose one of his TV evenings while attending a pedestrian school. He was only a few feet out of the crossing lane, but there was a lecture, and he felt put down and humiliated. It was pointed out to him that his was almost a victim crime, since he was the potential victim. He went home and, digging among old newspapers, found the one about asbestosis. The cases were being settled for small amounts, it now being illegal to file a lawsuit. The journalist who wrote the story pointed out that there's too much litigation nowadays, and that the lawyers' fees were outrageous, but made no mention about the posh owners of the company whose good life was sucked from lungless, coughing skeletons. That night he talked with his wife, reviewing all the beautiful things he has learned in the last few days, and they decided that there were two different kinds of people on Earth, victims and victimless. They understand now. They're victims. They want to move to a Democracy, if they can find one.
This crime, also penalized by fines and jail time, has never bothered corporations, regardless of the law's application. In fact, payments to Congressmen became so prevalent, and judges became so embarrassed dealing with these responsible, good looking, smiling, ingratiating, sincere, well dressed contributors, that the embarrassment was only relieved when the law was changed so that they could make contributions more easily. Even so, corporations are constantly being caught going too far.
This is probably the favorite white collar crime of the '70's and '80's, and promises to be even more popular in the '90's.
After the market crash of 1929, a team of experts were assembled to research and recommend laws that would prevent the repeat of such a disaster. The committee's earliest conclusions struck at corporate boards and officers who had been allowed to make secret money while ignoring weak laws, allegedly passed to protect the public. In fact, as committee research continued, it became more and more apparent that the cause of the crash should be pinned on the maledictions of high-ranking personnel in corporations. After completion of the study, strong laws were passed imposing strict conduct upon corporations, for the protection of the public.
Findings indicated that the bigger the corporation, the more rigidly it was controlled by a handful of people. That handful included the CEO (chief executive officer) and some of the board members, plus blocks of stock controlled by extraordinarily wealthy people who usually also own some of the board members. These rich and powerful shareholders, who have information that no one else possesses, tend to use that information to help themselves, without disclosure to other shareholders or to the public. (Big corporations get big by selling their stock to the public, so the public has the right to know and the right to act on important information about the corporation at the same time as anyone else, including these big-block "insiders".)
The study resulted in the formation of the Securities Exchange Commission, and the passage of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934; these acts are supplemented by detailed rules and regulations, outlining in detail what a public corporation can and cannot do.
Among other rules, disclosures must be made of important corporate affairs to everyone at once. Also, you cannot act on inside information. Giving the information to your wife or your cousin or a dear friend was tantamount to making the "insider" purchase yourself!
The effort to take away the advantage of being a corporate "insider" rests on the theory that any shareholder with ten, or a hundred, or a thousand shares has the right to know the corporate news at the same moment as a holder of 200,000 shares. And the public as well!
That's fair, of course. But does it work? Ten percent of the population, wealthy, powerful people, don't want it to work. So — does it work?
Well, here's what has happened. In the sixty years since the passage of the '33 and '34 Acts, many hundreds of cases have come before the courts. Nearly all these cases appear in the Federal court, before Federal judges, and for whatever reason, sociological, spiritual, or moon-phase, the law has been eroded. Irreparable damage has been done to the concept of "knowledge". The original Act (see 10 b-5) made it clear that a complainant against a corporation need not be obliged to prove knowledge; he need only prove that it happened, whatever it was, and need not prove that the corporation or any of its officers had knowledge of it. Otherwise, there would be this passing the buck business. The president would say "well, I didn't know that my people were doing that", and the business manager would say "well, I didn't know they were doing that", and so forth down the line. "Knowledge need not be proved" was the clear intent of the original law — but Federal judges have slowly reinterpreted The Securities Acts in favor of big corporations. As hundreds of decisions show up, from other states, it is easy enough for a Federal judge to take some phrase or some sentence and interpret it in such a way as to change the law slightly. And that's what has happened. The protection of this law has been subverted.
Let's presume a government with an executive branch, a legislative branch and a judicial branch. The legislature passes laws, the executive branch recommends laws and stays moderately involved with the president's rights of executive fiat. And an active economy moves us ahead at such a pace that we require constant study, and committees to advise us. A committee studies a problem backed by top experts and makes certain recommendations. The legislature nods its head, sees that these are good laws and enacts them. They go on the books and appear in dozens of legal journals. Then an era like the 1980's descends upon us where every rich "insider" and his uncle is involved in insider trading. Investigative forces based upon good suspicion are set in motion, and these insider traders are tracked down one by one until we have a jail full of them. Someone pleads guilty, to help collar the others. He pays a fine of millions of dollars (which means he's kept a few million for himself), and spends a few months in a minimum security prison midst all the comforts of home. He plays basketball, goes to the gym, and tends his garden; he discovers that imports of books, good food, and other comforts are up to him. That's it. The next one comes along and gets a short sentence. Another one comes along and is treated as handsomely. Each is there just long enough to lower his hypertension level and improve his tennis game. It's almost a country club. All these people have appeared before Federal judges and all were sentenced by Federal judges. Some of us "outsiders" would like to know how to volunteer for such irresistible incarceration.
If the Securities Exchange Commissioner notices that there is a lot of activity in a company, he will wonder why; an investigation begins. But in the most common scenario, the S.E.C. misses the insider trading, because a smart insider will keep his trading modest (l00,000 here, 100,000 there). It's when thieves get immodest and boast to their friends, or get greedy and go for big millions, that they get caught. The best insiders are tight lipped, circuitous, and involved in trading that will not attract attention. One last point: insider trading goes on each day, every day, constantly. The S.E.C. is diligent, but cannot possibly cover all those millions of traded shares.
Corporations must make quarterly and yearly filings with the S.E.C., answering a series of specific questions posed by that agency, so the S.E.C. undoubtedly knows the names of all officers and all board members of every publicly owned corporation in the country, but what can they do when an insider tips one of his golf partners to buy 100 thousand shares. Golf partner buys. The purchase was made by an outsider and is undetectable. A friend has made a killing on insider information, and the two have become bosom buddies as a result of their triumph. The best friendships in America are made when two men share a secret killing in the stock market.
Corporations are not ashamed to try a little skimming, particularly those in the restaurant business. Of course, difficulties arise when you decide to sell the business and try to convince the potential buyer that the business actually makes more than the books show.
Did you know that I.R.S. audits bring in more money than they cost? In other words, every man/woman that the I.R.S. hires to audit suspicious returns brings more money into the coffers than is paid as salary. Every new auditor hired guarantees the United States a sizeable profit, that goes to pay for roads, education, and emergency disaster aid for U.S. citizens.
In spite of this information, the last two administrations chose to go into debt another trillion or two or three and refused to expand the I.R.S. audit system, thereby denying U.S. citizens a big revenue gain. Why is that? Audits are directed at wealthy people with higher incomes. Does "elitist power" reach so high as the Presidency?
Financial ambition is always upward. Nobody tries to make less money, although most of America is content not to make more money. Likewise, social ambition is always upward. Consider: A President can never spend more than eight years in his high office, sometimes only four. To a sophisticated man, aware of his life expectancy at around seventy-five years, and that he can be President for only four or eight years at the most, might often be aware that both financial advancement and social advancement are his for the taking. Is ambition about anything else? It may be about something else if you are a composer, or an artist, or an athlete, or a great actor. But in politics? Conservatives chum around with other conservatives. The most notorious conservatives are the rich. A President who discourages audits of the rich, is ambitious socially, and is denying his country the taxes that are owed.
In 1991, the I.R.S., proceeding on its own in spite of executive resistance, collected almost two billion dollars more in additional revenue, by concentrating more attention on the larger corporations. Think what they could have accomplished if allowed a larger staff for audits of both individuals and corporations.
Nor has the I.R.S. been encouraged by the last two administrations to popularize the reward money for disclosing a tax cheat. It is undoubtedly a useful program, particularly at the corporation level. In 1986, 258 million dollars was recovered from one tax cheat. Why does our Executive branch turn away from encouraging such citizen cooperation? Why is it that honest citizens are called upon to pay the debts of public thieves? It's all very strange.
We've already learned that no one wants to endow a truly efficient I.R.S. with the personnel to collect a great deal more money by investigating the rich, and their big corporations. We've also learned that corporations can pollute water, air and soil at will, and can murder at will, by knowingly exposing public users to inadequately tested devices, poisons and medications (and even hyping them on radio and T.V., extolling the virtues of something they already know has harmed other people). We've talked about fraud once already. Once again, because Corporations feel they have the right to commit fraud, a "right".
Corporations can't seem to resist fraud if it looks like it will work. One nationwide brokerage firm rigged a massive overdraft system and stole millions of dollars from its banks. The top rent-a-car corporation cheated its customers out of 15 million dollars with phony automobile repair bills; these auto repair defrauders involved a horde of employees, at least 50, who were all willing to participate. Chrysler Motors drove its cars as demonstrators and test machines, then turned back odometers and sold them as new cars. This went on for decades. Capitalism!
Any used car salesman who turns back one odometer goes to jail.
Another large corporation sold its apple juice as a pure product, when actually it was laced with so much sugar syrup that it could no longer qualify as any kind of juice. Many employees knew about it, but chose jobs and corporate loyalty over baby nutrition.
One of our two or three largest airplane builders falsified test results on parts for the cruise missile and a jet being built for the United States.
Another huge corporation admitted its guilt for fraud of the United States, admitted filing false statements, admitted bribery. A corporate colleague, very big, pled guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States, and other felonies. All of the above pleaded guilty, and each paid millions of dollars in fines, but not one executive went to jail for as much as one day. Corporate executives have complete immunity from serving time. Federal judges send smugglers, thieves, individual tax evaders and bookies to prison every day, but never well-groomed seven hundred dollar suited executives.
In addition to the crimes already listed, corporations have violated the False Crimes Act; the violation count sometimes runs to between two hundred and three hundred items. Corporations have been caught in numbers of conspiracies and rings, particularly price-fixing rings. Bid-rigging, misleading stock prospectuses, and illegal political contributions, naturally.
On the criminal side of the law, many states have adopted the "Habitual Criminal Act". Simply put, an individual who has committed three felonies (four in some states) is automatically adjudged to be incurable, and an habitual criminal. In TV dramas, a criminal type will say something like "I gotta beat this rap; one more felony, and I'm in for good". He knows his penalty may be life imprisonment. Now, let's compare this individual to corporations. We've given you a few examples, but we haven't given you any idea of how often corporations are found guilty of criminal activity. General Electric has been guilty of more than sixty crimes, Westinghouse dozens. The bigger the corporation, the more the criminal activity. It's damn near unbelievable the number of corporate criminals we have in this country, and the number of repeaters we have. Rampant corporate criminal activity is rewarded, as always, by Federal Judge forgiveness. Jail time, however, is customary against little people who commit a crime, but never against big people who commit multiple crimes.
The rule of punishment for the poor and freedom for the wealthy is so well documented, over thousands and thousands of cases, that one can't help but wonder what happened to our "Democracy"?
What does it mean being "created equal"? People aren't remotely equal under the law. It clearly appears that courts treat "high class" people better than "low class" people. Somebody tell me, since it isn't under the law, in what category is everyone created equal?
Our Constitution (Art. 1, sec. 10) forbids titles, because they smack of elitism, and of interference with the doctrines of democracy. Nevertheless, Mr. Reagan and Mr. Bush both accepted knighthood from the Queen of England. With Reagan, synaptic deficiencies make it almost forgivable, but Bush knows better. Historically, these are the very clothes of class and caste.
During its lifetime, the Roman Empire was many things. It was an oligarchy, a dictatorship, and at times claimed many of the qualities of a democracy. Always, there were slaves. Sometimes it was more advantageous to be a slave than to be a freeman. In those times when there was an over-abundance of slaves, a freeman could not find work; as a solution, he would offer himself in slavery to a rich man. Now he could be well fed, find some free time (discreetly, of course), eat from the best table and drink the best wine.
This year, an American economist won the Nobel Prize for proving that "slavery" is an efficient economic system. If given the opportunity, many families in America, today, might run to the rich, and work without pay in exchange for food, shelter and clothing. The difficulty is that the rich might not have them, for fear of that burning love of independence planted by Jefferson, John Hancock, and Patrick Henry. So they starve.
Keep in mind that Congress and our last two conservative Presidents had no luck in helping the lower quarter of our starving population. Perhaps it's the way they went about it. The plan was as follows: Give the rich and their big corporations huge tax breaks, and as many other monetary benefits as could be reasoned into existence. The rich, having all this extra money, could start up factories and plants, plunge into new enterprises, all of which would create a need for millions of jobs, whereupon the poor could pay the rent, buy nice groceries, make a down payment on that new fourteen hundred square foot house. It didn't work that way. The rich weren't ready to invest, so they pocketed all these benefits given them, and went to one of their many clubs where they drank toasts to conservatism.
Ten percent of the population owns seventy-six percent of all the wealth in America. More than fifty percent of that wealthy ten percent is parasitic, that is, it is inherited wealth. Forget the picture of the hard-working, hard- driving, scalawag. Over fifty percent of the wealthy people were born rich, surrounded by a dozen or so trust funds, impenetrable except upon certain highly protective legal situations. One of these "born rich" gentlemen started a brokerage business, got into trouble, and took bankruptcy successfully, without anyone able to tap the almost three hundred trusts in his name. He took personal bankruptcy, then regained his millionaire status as soon as one of the trustees decided to release trust funds to him.
These big defense contractors seem to feel that they have some sort of obligation to try to cheat citizens of the United States on big contracts. So many of them do it. Why? Why are they so sure it's worth the risk? They must figure out the chances of getting caught, and the top fine if they do get caught. Voila! It's all worthwhile! I'm sure their lawyers point out that no one is going to go to jail; and that if a fine drives them into bankruptcy, they will always be rehabilitated by Chapter 11. It's like playing stud poker with an ace in the hole on every hand.
All this happens in spite of the Truth in Negotiations Act of 1986 and 1987, which requires contractors to supply detailed cost and pricing data and to certify that it is accurate, complete and current. There is also the False Claims Act which criminalizes mail fraud, and material fact concealment. In other words, the law is in place, and available, but no effort is made to use it in a criminal context, though it's a criminal law. Gutless federal judges are encouraging illegal criminal acts.
What's the difference between the Federal court appearance of a businessman and a high school dropout (HSD)? The HSD would appear before the judge in common, albeit clean clothing. He would be scared, resentful, and inarticulate. The businessman (BM) would appear before the judge in a conservative suit. The BM would be confident; he would be humble, contrite, and in spite of the obviousness of his guilt, he would present (through his lawyer) a bifurcated, labyrinthine story of a series of misunderstandings which led him to believe ABC when he should have believed ABL. Incidentally, if the HSD has a lawyer, it will be a new lawyer, just sworn in, and appointed by the Federal court (the system used for many years for those without lawyers), and worthless. Hardly seems fair, does it? Particularly since the lawyer used by the businessman will be a "political lawyer", a lawyer highly placed in a big firm, with many, many connections. The young man's newly-admitted lawyer is a "public conscience" lawyer, absolutely useless, the court's pretense at justice.
To claim that corporate crime is a natural concession to the pressures of business is nonsense. Such an excuse could be offered in mitigation, just as an individual might plead that he stole because he was out of work, but it doesn't change the criminality involved. If it did, everyone would go free with only a warning. Not stopping at such excuses, big corporations have all sorts of cheap-shot threats they throw at the economy. "To put us out of business will leave X-thousands of workers unemployed" is one; "we have to cheat and steal, fix prices, etc., in order to compete and keep our workers in jobs" is another; or "To keep Americans employed is why we cheat on our taxes". In 1992, two big corporations laid off 40 thousand and 25 thousand workers at one time, proving once again how highly they regard their employees. If you investigate, you will discover that when they load the market with some new destructive poison, they raise their own salaries and have a big office party.
And they're going to go on doing it their way so long as they can get away with it. Until federal judges start giving them at least a year or two behind bars, nothing will change. A year or two behind bars might not affect the habitual prisoner, but wearing a loose fitting uniform, not eating at the Ritz, a single one-room cell, a deadly routine, time to think, would make one hell of a difference to a pampered white collar criminal, and that turns out to be true: that's what all the books on sociology and psychology insist is true.
Jail time may only embitter a young, uneducated, unemployed man; he may even adopt a criminal life while in jail. But "jail time" for a white collar criminal is the best thing that can happen to him; he has options outside, and will never do "time" again. But only judges can do any good here. Usually, only a Federal District Judge, because big corporate enterprises nearly always end up in the Federal Court.
But what if the federal judge thinks of himself as Elitist, too?
Greater funding of the government agencies is not necessary. White collar crime would drop precipitously if more of these people went to a non-country- club prison, even if only for a short time.
In the U.S.A., we have a Federal Bankruptcy Law (there are no state bankruptcy laws) which comes under the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court. A bankruptcy Referee handles the little stuff, while reorganizations get the attention of one of the several Federal District Court Judges.
The bankrupt individual and small corporations fall under Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Act, which usually wipes out the individual, except for the tools of his trade, his car if needed in his trade, his clothes, perhaps a homestead right; and he gets to keep his wife and children. The idea is to apportion what few assets he has amongst his creditors, but to give him a fresh, but penniless, start in becoming a worthwhile and respected citizen again. The small corporation is dissolved and sold off piecemeal. That's Chapter 7.
Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Act allows for a "reorganization" of the company, and so all large corporations use it. As we read on, we will discover that unlike Chapter 7, Chapter 11 is very beneficial to corporations; they always come out stronger than when they went in, and corporate crimes, brought to light during the bankruptcy investigation, are hardly noticed by many Federal District Court Judges, thereby obliquely encouraging corporations to lie, steal, cheat, to ignore wholesale the public health and welfare, and make a dive for Chapter 11 if their gambles don't pay off. Chapter 7 leaves you broke, and does not forgive you for any breaches of the law that may be uncovered. Chapter 11 reorganizes you, and penalizes everybody you have been associated with, your creditors, employee unions, and all your suppliers. You were beginning to fail and couldn't make your corporation go, you have taken a lot of shortcuts and broken a multitude of laws. All is known by the federal judge. And all is forgiven. Imagine, your crimes are forgiven. To the big corporation, it's like taking a bath, getting a haircut, then a pomade, a manicure, and a new suit with the pockets filled with other people's money. It's amazing!
A District Court Judge, though appointed for life, has the obligation of any other officer of the court to bring to the attention of the federal prosecutor any corporate misdeeds, particularly if they are flagrant. It turns out that laws have nearly always been violated, laws that carry fines and prison terms. But Federal Courts, acting under Chapter 11, are unidirectional, and want to do only one thing, take the same corporation, with the same personnel, and get it back on its feet. What happens: The Court ignores criminal violations, brushes them aside, and proceeds to do everything that will breathe life and a new existence into this corporation.
When a corporation asks the Federal Court for Chapter 11 protection, it is asking for approval of some sort of plan of reorganization. It turns out to be very important who draws up that plan of reorganization. Will it be the creditors or the corporation or an appointed expert, or the old corporate officers. There will be sharp competition for this major role in the Reorganization Plan. More often than not, it goes to the same corporate officers who let the company drift into trouble.
Whoever is assigned by the Judge to submit a plan must submit one that will secure the Federal Judge's approval. He can turn down the whole plan, or parts of it, or mandate changes in any part of it he wishes. He knows that his decision will rarely be overturned on appeal. At any rate, creditors cannot offer a plan for 120 days during which period the organization plan is up to the bankrupt. The Bankruptcy Act does not say that this 120 day period can be extended, but courts have repeatedly allowed the extension, meanwhile suspending the rights of creditors, and the rights of employees.
The "plan" does not include any effort to examine the competence of the corporate officers, but is designed merely to cut down on some of the corporate debt, reorganize the corporation in some way and nearly always to cut out and leave unpaid many creditors, bond holders, and unsecured creditors, anything to keep the corporation viable, even though done at the expense of honest people to whom the corporation owes money. The fear, I guess, is that to auction off the corporation or sell its assets will hurt the American economy (it might help it), or mean a loss of jobs to working people (jobs might increase under better management).
Chapter 11 provides corporations special rights no one else has, the protection of the United States itself.
No one dare deny that this country has drifted far to the right, toward favoritism, as exemplified in Bankruptcy Chapter 11. A court appointed trustee was always used to prepare the report to the Trustee in Bankruptcy, until the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978 allowed the same management to remain on and run the corporation. Here's a corporation that has voluntarily filed under Chapter 11, and yet the same failed team is to be allowed to go on improperly running the corporation that it is responsible for improperly running.
The dead wood and incompetence in some corporations is horrendous. To keep losers on can only mean that honest creditors are going to be hurt, just so the dead wood can prevail. And here's how they do it: Federal District Judges have displayed innovation by adding to the Bankruptcy Act a number of rights that empower them to extend the life of the corporation and to avoid some creditors and to ignore other creditors, in order to help the large corporate elitists rule on in timeless perpetuity, as before. Judges suspend the accumulation of interest payments on corporate debts; they quickly grant a "temporary cash collateral order" which provides that the Chapter 11 corporation need not make any payments on the secured loans during the period of bankruptcy; they take pains to see that it continues to function so it will not lose its good name; if it's a bank they help avoid a panic run and withdrawal of assets, and they help it retain operational room on what may be a meager present cash collateral. Federal judges seem to view their role as one of "complete healer" at any cost. Keeping alive some of these failing dinosaurs at the expense of good people whose bills haven't been paid is spitting in the face of fair play. These outrageous judicial decisions punish deserving people, and worse, keep incompetent executives in place, secondarily promoting parasitism, nepotism, and elitism.
It's a wrong-headed scheme, and Chapter 11 should be amended. Chapter 11 punishes the wrong people, and rewards the wrong people. And it discourages innovative consortiums from buying a dying corporation and turning it around.
Chapter 11 was passed by corporate lobbyists, and how the Reform Act of 1978 ever got by Congress, an act that allows the corporation to break contracts with buyers and small suppliers, and to suspend union contracts, is a crime. If we agree that our entire Congress can't be that stupid, and that our entire Congress can't be too lazy to read the bill, then there's only one last question: Who sold out, and for how much? No matter what the Rich paid for the Reform Act of 1978, they got much more than their money's worth. For instance, the Rich got an open door and approval to elitism. They got a law that guarantees rich nepotism, and features the prolongation of incompetence, whose bills are paid off by the little people. They got a law that holds in situ the rich ownership and domination of our three hundred biggest corporations (seventy percent of all assets), since the "incompetents" stay in power, do the reorganizing, and continue to run the company. When they die, their sons will take over, and now the three hundred largest corporations remain family owned from now on. This 1978 law picked, as the new Aristocracy, the owners and their families of the three hundred biggest corporations, starting in 1978, 'til time doth bring an end to us all. 1978's Chapter 11 has frozen ownership of every big business in the U.S.A.
The Mafia is beginning to look pretty good, and so are the terrorists.
Some Congressmen have always been for sale, and others have been forced to compromise because of the high cost of running for reelection. But judges know better. These outrageous judicial decisions punish deserving people, keep incompetent executives in place, and promote parasitism, nepotism and elitism.
It's a wrong-headed scheme, and Chapter 11 should be amended.
Johns Manville (now simply Manville, to gain a better public image), was one of those companies that used Chapter 11 to great effect.
Millions of people, estimated at about 20 million, have been exposed regularly to asbestos dust. This is deadly stuff, which blocks the lungs and leads to bronchial cancer, and mesothelioma, a chest cancer. Both are fatal. Death-causing asbestosis has been around and known since the early 1900's. The first "detailed" study on it was done in 1930 in England, where a law was quickly passed, requiring better ventilation to combat its deadly effects. And in that same decade, U.S. manufacturers were made aware of these studies.
By the 1960's, American asbestos corporations had accumulated file cabinets filled with case studies of asbestos-injured people. That they could ignore this data and keep on manufacturing this death-dealing product seems impossible, but profit won out over cancer and death. Then, in 1961, a brave lawyer in a small Texas town did his own research and brought a case, outside of workmen's compensation law, for asbestos injury. He dedicated his whole energy to this project, and it turned out to be his life's work. He and his client won, after eight years of litigation, not a big victory, but they won. And that was the beginning. Now doctors and researchists took a hard look at asbestosis. Cases continued to accumulate. It turned out that asbestosis knows no boundaries; the entire country is involved.
In the 1930's and 1940's, researchers and lawyers found that the asbestos manufacturers had indeed investigated their product and that documents lay in their files warning them that asbestos was a very harmful substance. A great many people were so infirm and emaciated that they never made it to trial, but verdicts began coming in against Manville and others. Because of corporation knowledge of the awful effects of asbestos and corporation failure to warn or protect the public, many juries held that the asbestos companies were guilty of a wanton disregard for the users of its product, and a reckless disregard for human life. Judges agreed that appeals to the juries for punitive damages were appropriate, so as to restrain such cruel and indifferent conduct toward the public in the future.
Manville had the gall to blame the Federal Government, and even sued the U.S.A., but was quickly denied at all court levels. Other lawsuits poured in from dying and damaged claimants, so it was time for Manville's defense counsel to try something really bold. First, they tried the intervention of two Congressmen who introduced a bill that would kill the lawsuits, that is remove all the claims from the court system, and compensate victims from a Federal fund, to be paid out of the Federal treasury by taxpayers, us, rather than the wrong-doer! But the bill never made it out of committee.
U.S. citizens, too weak to work, learned from their doctors that their cancer was caused by asbestos and submitted claim forms to the asbestos corporations. Maybe they, out of work, could get something, maybe even a little money to buy morphine, and die in comfort. Others turned to lawyers.
And what about the asbestos corporations? They found their answer. They ran to Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Act. Adding the British research to their own research, they had known for seventy years they were selling death, a horrible, wasting death to countless thousands of their fellow citizens. For what? For profit, gay parties, an extra home with an ocean view, present-filled Christmases, laughter, security.
About three hundred lawyers were involved, most of them representing the dead or dying. The question was: What would the federal judge do for them these faultless unfortunates?
Here's a company which has deliberately turned loose a poisonous product on the public for two generations. If it's a "big" company, no matter how sinful, it must be perpetuated, an idea absolutely foreign to justice and to those brilliant statesmen-philosophers who started us off in 1776.
The court held that the asbestos companies were not proceeding in "bad faith". The judge issued an order that enjoined creditors from filing suits to collect their bills for materials delivered. But the big fight was over future health claimants. The asbestos corporations wanted an order that would deny them any recourse. Lawyers on the other side believed this was a horrifying affront to the law and of course unfair to people who were not yet sick enough to have found out why.
Meanwhile, the Federal Judge was moving undeviatingly to one goal, to reorganize the asbestos corporations under Chapter 11. His opinions, criticizing anyone who interfered with this goal, became more and more scathing; but he failed to chastise corporations that had knowingly destroyed the lives of thousands and thousands of U.S. citizens. What is going on?!
By now, thousands of little children had stood around and watched their robust fathers lose weight, become shells, gasp for air, and die. Working people did not know why daddy had died. The asbestos companies knew, but those files were under tight security. Mothers and children too, were condemned, if the house had asbestos insulation. And of those not already dead, some 25,000 of the dying had filed claims before the Bankruptcy Court now handling the matter.
Tort law has long contained actions for punitive damages, for a very good reason. Some conduct can be so indifferent, or so malicious, or so cruel, that it ought to be punished by a punishment verdict, because very often that's the only way to deter such conduct — hit 'em in the pocketbook, where it hurts 'em. When the judge instructs the jury, he tells them that such punitive damages are designed to hurt the purse and make the wanton wrongdoer think carefully about such indifference in the future. That's the law, and it has worked effectively for hundreds of years, to protect the public. One might ask, how else would you stop someone from doing something vicious if the only damages were compensatory, perhaps doctor bills and a small verdict. This case was obviously a punitive damages case, and there were many awards for punitive damages from irate juries who felt lucky they hadn't got caught in the asbestos trap.
The Federal Judge made a holding that no future claimant can get a verdict for punitive damages. Future claims could be made, but never in the future could the asbestos companies be told that wanton conduct warrants punitive damages. The guy suspended a thousand year old law, and sold out nine-tenths of America to the Elite.
Other curiosities in this case: The judge ordered that a legal representative be appointed for all of the asbestos claimants, but he selected none of the plaintiff's lawyers; he shut them out by picking an outsider, and at the end of the case when the outside lawyer submitted his bill in the amount of 2.3 million dollars for his work in the bankruptcy case, the judge voluntarily doubled his bill, and awarded him another 2.3 million dollars as a bonus! Sometimes Federal Judges appoint law school friends for these fat referee jobs, but here the voluntary doubling of a fee to a total of 4.6 million dollars is astonishing, and serves only to demonstrate the unbelievable power of a Federal District Judge. The guy wanted 2.3 million. The other 2.3 million could have gone to ease the final days of some of the dying rabble and "future" asbestos rabble.
A foreign substance in a woman's uterus may very well prevent pregnancy; nothing new about that, it's been known for centuries. It's also been known that such a foreign substance in such a sensitive receptacle can cause all sorts of trouble, including perforation and migration.
In 1967, a medical doctor from an eminent medical school invented a device that he thought would work. Others may have worked on it, that part is cloudy. But it became known as the Dalkon Shield. It was touted as being effective in preventing pregnancy in almost 99 percent of the cases. It cost about 25 cents to manufacture, and would be sold for around $4.35. Being a "device", rather than a substance, it was not subject to F.D.A. approval. The drug company selling it initiated a huge promotional campaign, disseminating about 5 million pieces of promotional literature, and the doctor who had helped create it wrote several articles in well known magazines, extolling its advantages, without alerting readers that he would personally benefit from its sales. One ridiculous folder even claimed the Shield improved sexual relations.
By 1972, 800,000 women were wearing the Dalkon Shield. But complaints were already coming in. Bleeding. Vaginal inflammation. And now other studies which placed the pregnancy rate much higher: one at 4.7 percent, another at 10.1 percent, another as high as 26.4 percent. Before long the Dalkon Shield was a known flop. Then came lawsuits, where, in spite of the drug corporation's pretended amnesia and efforts to hide evidence, enough documentation of brutal injury came out to enrage juries into using punitive damages in an effort to punish a company for knowingly selling a product that was defective and dangerous. Women with infected uteruses, often disallowing future children, crowded into courthouses, bringing with them evidence that shocked juries, apprised of the indifference of the drug corporation. By 1984, there were 14,000 known victims.
The drug corporation ran to the umbrella-like safety of bankruptcy, Chapter 11. The bankruptcy judge would turn out to be very helpful. First, he forbade any lawsuits to be filed, anywhere in the country, complaining of injury or death or infertility via the Dalkon Shield. Next, he set aside all payments by the drug corporation to its creditors. Next, he set aside all payments that had already been promised to injured women. Next, he set up a complex system of making claims; injured women had to file a "notice of claim" in the courthouse at Richmond, Virginia, by a certain date, then a more detailed final claim on another form by a date just 30 days later. (This is out of his own head, since the Bankruptcy Code requires only one simple one-page form in order to become a creditor of record.) Next, he allowed the drug corporation the right to object to these forms for one reason or another. He knew what he was doing: 5,000 claims that were filed would be disqualified by the court for typographical or signature errors. (The same regressive rule that takes away the right to vote of hordes of poor people who are semi-literate). By requiring these filings, he nullified the statute of limitations, usually two years, accorded to citizens by the statutes of their states. And he got away with it. Why did he do it? God only knows.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Attorney's office was obliged to show some interest in the evidence showing up in this case. So an assistant U.S. Attorney was appointed to follow the case. About this time, the I.R.S. made a claim that the drug corporation owed it some money. The Assistant U.S. Attorney began checking up and discovered that the drug corporation had illegally paid out huge sums of money to favored creditors, forbidden by the Bankruptcy Act. He brought it to the judge's attention, that the corporation was cheating. It appears unclear why, but the judge seemed to ignore this feature of the case. There is no evidence that Robins was punished for a clear breech of the Bankruptcy Law.
Then the U.S. Attorney recommended that a trustee be appointed to control the company rather than leave control to its own officers, which had been the judge's method. That recommendation was never followed; control remained with the drug corporation's officers. The offense in violation of the Act is defined as a criminal act under the law, but this Federal Judge failed to penalize anyone, failed to find anyone in civil contempt, failed to find anyone guilty of a crime; instead he allowed the drug corporation to go on what lawyers call a "fishing expedition" by granting it the right to ask the female claimants about their sexual practices. This was the very thing that had been forbidden by the judge handling the Shield cases before their transfer to Bankruptcy Court.
This judge, by his own singular methods, had reduced the Dalkon claims by half! Here's how he did it: more than 300,000 "notices of claim" were filed (this filing is sufficient under the Bankruptcy Law, but 152,000 of these women failed to file the follow up form (not required by the law but required by the judge), and so they were out. We'll talk about this later, in our chapter on judges.
The drug corporation had been provided with a bankruptcy made in heaven. The federal judge, with a stroke of the pen (creating new "temporary law" for this Robins case only) had knocked out more than half of the claimants without any idea of their damages, of their pain, of their destroyed lives, and had left the drug corporation (family controlled) in sound operating condition, with no fear of a bank foreclosure, enjoying the elite preferences of a judicial nut. The judge arranged for a fund to be set aside and that without any litigation, each claimant could pick up a check for $725.00. More than 70,000 women, after years of waiting, agonizing and thinking about the damned thing, gave up.
The judge's decisions, all of them, were upheld by a like-thinking group of men, on appeal, which doesn't make any of it sound any better.
Do you suppose it will ever happen again? It's been shown again and again and again that if the law goes soft, the bad guys will be back. Punitive damages: an integral part of our law, designed to inhibit cruelty or callous indifference, gone with a finger snap. "The public be damned." Together with special on-the-spot hand-carved corporate law. Yes, the bad guys will be back.
We have had "interlocks" for two hundred years in America. Democratic administrations tend to enforce laws against interlocks, just as they are strict about obedience to the Sherman/Clayton Acts and the SEC "insider" rules. Interlocks place board members of one corporation on a couple dozen other corporations, and vice versa. Banks like to have many representatives of corporations on their boards.
This tends to allow big corporations to make oral monopolistic deals with members of other corporations, and at the same time to make sly arrangements to freeze out and destroy small corporations.
Conservatives, another name for the Rich man, hate any kind of law that forbids them to run rough shod over the smaller corporation. They know that "a good big man can always whip a good small man".
Chapter 11 also allows the big corporation to terminate pension plans of its employees and to terminate and renegotiate labor agreements with the union. The rich get richer, and the poor get children.
Consider the industrial revolution, at the very start, when corporations hired women and children to work in their factories at miniscule wages under conditions that were brutal and so shocking to the conscience that legislators were offended, and passed remedial laws. Humankind labels such conduct ruthless, but it's always been that way, down through history. Corporations call it competitive. Corporations are the same people who break unions, weaken safety and work-place laws, and have recently invented contract employment so as to avoid workmen's compensation and retirement benefits.
A huge airline company, one of the biggest oil companies around, and many other large companies that get into one sort of trouble or another, have dived into Chapter 11 Bankruptcy. Not because they want to go bankrupt, but because they want to suspend all their problems while they reorganize. So they take the reorganization "bath". This breather is enough to get unions out of the way temporarily, postpone creditor payments, dictate personnel problems, cancel contracts, permanently destroy injury claims, and terminate entirely many legitimate creditor claims.
Please keep in mind that the Rich have controlling interests in all — I mean all — the three hundred largest and most influential corporations in America. Let's assume — because it's true — that the Rich were responsible for the new 1978 Chapter 11 corporate bonanza. How did they do it? All over the country, they get together in their exclusive clubs. They talk. They talk about very little except business. In 1978, when they learned about the effects, from their lawyers, of the proposed changes in Chapter 11, they talked some more. And then they made phone calls, lots of them. Long distance calls. To many, many, many Congressmen. The new law in '78 was more than enough to pay for all those earlier campaign contributions. And then some. The 1978 Chapter 11 maintains the status quo. It makes potential victims of any supplier, when the corporation takes its "reorganizational "bath". Everyone loses, except the big corporation, which comes out completely rejuvenated. It even suspends tort law, whose history goes back much further than bankruptcy law. It is the biggest Rich coup in Rich history, with the possible exception of the Foundation scam.
In those early factories, men, women and children worked a fourteen hour day. Shortening hours, even for the children, had always been resisted by the rich owners. "They don't have to work here, they don't like it", say the Rich. That's not true. The industrial revolution changed our world to "Capitalism", a radically new innovation just achieved in the last 150 years. Most of our laws, and certainly our Constitution did not anticipate Capitalism, and so it has been up to Congress to control this aggressive, unscrupulous way of doing business. Consider the fact, for example, that Capitalism wiped out nearly all need for the skilled craftsman, forcing everyone to look for a steady job. Under Capitalism, everyone must work for a Capitalist. The working man's options are down to one.
Capitalism's structure is to give the worker a slave-like status, and to create great wealth for the banks and owners at the top. The worker, with no options anymore, hopes to work with dignity, at a fair wage, and at least be assured a steady job. Since capitalism cannot function without the worker, the worker has a vested interest in the finished product, though the Rich man gains all the wealth. Workers, to a man, would be satisfied in their "vested interest", by guarantee of a steady job. Is that so much to ask?
When workers resisted, the Corporate Rich responded fiercely. Their goons blew up soup kitchens, kidnapped activists, murdered organizers, fired on crowds of people, used governors to break up strikes and broke up newspapers sympathetic to workers.
The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 sought to prohibit combinations and resulting price fixing. The Sherman Act and the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, and the Federal Trade Commissions Acts strengthened anti-trust legislation, forbade monopoly, restraint of trade, and tried to guarantee competition and free enterprise. The Corporate Rich bribed, and manipulated people in high places, fighting to avoid any and all protective legislation. They do so to this day.
Incidentally, the legislation in American history which was more opposed by corporate America than any other was the Social Security Act.
Today, corporations do not fear workers. Workers have been methodically emasculated by corporate directors, and brought to their knees in the last twenty years.
To combat the ugly idea of worker freedom, the Corporate Rich have devised new ways to keep workers off-balance and passive. In the new technologies, they hire a worker, then apologetically let him go because of the "business slow down". Later they rehire some on a contract basis, deftly avoiding workmens' compensation contributions, Social Security and retirement fund benefits.
Another system is to prepare the corporation for a cyclical economy. Workers are hired at regular wage, then laid off by thousands, rehired, laid off again, and so it goes. This keeps the worker nervous and pliable, weakens the union at the same time, and maintains a full work pool. The corporate owners claim that "cyclical" is unavoidable. It isn't. It's a corporate manipulative device.
Hatchetmen for the Corporate Rich now include hot-shot lawyers, and hot- shot economists. Corporate economists invariably treat the worker as one of the tools, or part of the overhead of production, but never as one of the producers. Nor does Congress. Congress isn't needed to protect the metal robots that work in a plant, but history indicates very clearly that the worker, his wife, and even his children will be treated like slaves by the Rich, unless Congress intervenes with appropriate legislation, again and again. In a Capitalist society, the worker must work for the capitalist, at capitalist-controlled wages. In the McCulloch case, Chief Justice Marshall stated "The Government proceeds directly from the people; is ordained and established in the name of the people;...in form and substance emanates from the people. Its powers are granted by them, and are to be exercised directly on them and for their benefit...".
Trade and manufacturing in the U.S.A. is unstructured and undisciplined, perfect for a business culture that insists on maintaining an obsolete economic system. The attitude of "laissez faire" is: Leave big business alone, to claw and scratch and compete, and monopolize — against little business. Meanwhile, the Japanese and German businessmen have abandoned a lot of the fang and claw of competition in favor of cooperation. These two countries almost have a partnership with their central governments. The American businessman is so in love with his independence and personal power that he treats his own government with suspicion. When the Japanese and German corporations have their board meetings, multi-millionaires may be sitting next to worker representatives and two or three government people. It's not the elitist millionaire's club of a U.S. board meeting. American millionaires own enough of America right now, that they can easily own the rest, if our government doesn't step in with more control, new tax schedules, and more law without delay. Japan is a democracy, Germany is a democracy, the U.S. is not.
In business, the tendency is to grow. Sometimes a company will decide it has reached as much growth as it desires; but that often changes, when the company discovers that it has to go on growing in order to survive.
Ancient Greek cities sometimes adopted a code of ethics for its citizens. Nothing like that ever happened in America.
The bid for supremacy has included religion against religion, and religion against state, fathering great distortions of history.
General George Patton once mused that Americans love a winner and won't tolerate a loser. Dr. Richard Herrnstein, a Harvard Psychology Professor, says "It's not so much the desire to win that's changed, but the loss of civility". He believes that the change in our society "...is not knowing how to lose, the notion of being a good loser and having some sportsmanship". Good or bad examples start early. Recently a brawl broke out at a Little League game in California leaving one boy dead and another seriously injured. Competition comes at varying degrees of heat, and, at white hot heat, is akin to warfare.
In the 1600's, in England, there was a chief judge, who deemed himself so righteous, and everyone else so wicked, that he hanged all of the people who appeared before him. This "hanging judge" became so infamous that mothers used to frighten their mischievous children: "If you don't behave, Judge Scroggs will get you." It is said his name became so chilling and unpopular that it disappeared. Soon, the name "Scroggs" could not be found anywhere in the London telephone directory. The judge's name died completely out, and no one in England would confess to the name of Scroggs.
He was self-righteous, as many judges are, but he knew nothing of justice, and little of the law.
There are all kinds of judges, from the lowly Justice of the Peace to the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Judges often arise out of necessity: Judge Roy Bean, "the law west of the Pecos", was in no sense of the word a real judge, but might very well have qualified as Justice of the Peace, since J.P.s need have no legal training. J.P. appointments were necessary, in the early settlement of the West, for the lack of judges.
Judges need prisons to house their customers, but in the history of the world, prisons turn out to be a surprisingly new invention, not being widely used until the 19th and 20th centuries. Before that, corporal punishment was popular. Stocks put you on public exhibition. There were public floggings, or involuntary enlistments, as civilians suddenly awoke as soldiers sentenced to some unpleasant post in India. Just before prison became the new standard, men were sent to a House of Reform and Correction where the discipline was strict and the work was hard. Of course, nothing could be tougher than the Roman system which brought punishment down to about four things: banishment, death, slavery, oarsman on a combat vessel.
Before prisons, many wrongs were settled by revenge, based on an unwritten code of honor. This code sprang from pride, and followed a strict set of rules, particularly in dueling procedure. Some supposed insult, or a breach of local courtesy, might find the two contestants up at dawn. Seconds accompanied the duelists, to insure fair play, and in some instances, seconds engaged in their own sword fight. Fortunately, most duels were not fatal to either party, but they occurred so frequently that they were banned by the several monarchs in Europe. A few hundred years ago, it was an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and along came prisons and spoiled all the fun.
In our U.S.A., crimes within the borders of a state come within the jurisdiction of a state court. The accused enters a plea and is tried. If dissatisfied, an appeal can be taken to a higher court. But sometimes a state matter gets transferred to a federal court. A federal question may be involved, or there may be a diversity of citizenship (parties from different states). Many matters get into the federal court when one of the parties has operated in several states. Finally, federal district courts handle matters where federal law is involved.
One simple example of diversity: Many corporations incorporate in the States of Delaware or New Jersey, because these states have built a body of law favorable to corporations. You can still sue in your state court, but the other side may transfer you to the local federal court. Then you will be before a federal district judge. Federal courts handle most suits involving corporations.
Federal district judges have more power than the President of the United States; they are the untouchables of the United States government structure. Why? Well, state judges must run for office every few years, but federal district judges are appointed for life, and, unless they expose themselves in public or kill someone, it is impossible to get rid of them. They hang on like dried-up Methuselahs. And sometimes it shows: Some of them get lost in their own court rooms and have to be led to the bench by a clerk.
At retirement age, they retire, but that doesn't mean much. They draw retirement pay and then sit on as "Senior Judges", on and on, drawing two checks. Why do they go on working? Because they have nothing better to do, and perhaps there is nothing better to do than sit on that elevated bench, issuing orders, and watching everyone tremble.
Federal judges are well aware of their power. Kings, queens, popes, presidents, emperors and czars, have all been there, and apart from Marcus Aurelius and a few other philosopher-statesmen, most find it impossible not to baby themselves a little, and add on more power. It's humankind's fate to suffer from these little self-indulgences.
Federal judges, for example, enlarge their power by changing the record! What I just said is absolutely true. In the federal halls of justice, where every word in the record should be sacrosanct, federal judges have adorned themselves, unilaterally, with the privilege of changing the books, including trial records that go up on appeal. Is this important? You bet it is. If a judge chances to make an ethnic remark, or angrily accuses an officer of the court of some shocking ethical breach in front of the jury, or says something that clearly shows his bias, and then afterward orders the court reporter to his chambers, where he reviews the record, and dictates a new one, he has, indeed, taken the law into his own hands! Only the revised record goes up on appeal, so that appeal judges cannot review and consider the judge's obvious bias, in the light of objections and questionable rulings throughout the trial.
Do competent, intelligent federal judges indulge in this questionable practice? No, and therein lies a story.
How are federal judges selected? First, by demonstrating an unswerving loyalty to one political party. A judge may have served as a precinct chairman or a party chairman, or contributed to his party in some other way. In short, the appointment is political, a reward for party loyalty.
The selection process is done elsewhere, beginning and ending in Washington, D.C. The actual selection is always a surprise to local lawyers, and sometimes a shock.
Some federal judge appointments go to men and women who are sincere, cool- headed and fair, hard working and intelligent. Others go to dummies, men of pride, arrogance and vindictiveness, which so often seem to be attributes auguring incompetence. Some have drinking problems, and a lawyer who recognizes one in his cups is expected to pour him into a cab and send him directly home. Lawyers tell of one such man who virtually disappeared from the bench, making only an occasional appearance; but he went on collecting his yearly hundred thousand dollar salary.
Lawyers seem to agree that this is a bad system; you need near-geniuses sitting as federal district judges, but all the judges selected come from small nondescript firms, and do not represent the brightest legal minds in the community. One older lawyer who had known ten or twelve of them said that he never saw one chosen who was a distinguished lawyer. Never.
Under the state system, a judge who runs for office must submit to a poll from all the lawyers in the state, and lawyers insist the selections be outstanding men and women. No lawyer will ever vote for an incompetent lawyer, because it is just too painful to appear before someone who is incompetent. Incompetent judges become defensive and sarcastic, and turn simple litigation into a lifetime of pain and expense for litigants. What irony: State judges are excellent; federal judges who handle exceedingly complex matters are not.
There are many brilliant lawyers from large firms as well as small firms who would consider a federal judgeship, and would welcome a preferential poll from colleagues. Certainly the political spoils system, a system that requires no serious examination of qualifications, a furtive, secret selection, smelling of concealment, is not the way to pick a federal judge.
Judges, of any sort, are rarely convicted of corruption. In the early '90's, a federal district judge was found guilty of accepting a substantial sum of money, as a bribe, a rare occurrence. During World War II, the Nuremberg trials found a number of German judges guilty of corrupting the law by condemning altogether innocent Jews, and by condoning the cleansing efforts of the Nazi Party. In Italy, from 1990 forward, Italian judges have been found guilty of accepting kick-backs and bribes. In Italy, judges are under unusual pressure, because of Mafia and terrorist activity and control. Since terrorists kill philosophers, scientists, governmental officials, and judges, and anyone else whose opinion infuriates them, the sort of anarchy which is threatening Italy is a pattern that can threaten any country where terrorism gains a secure foothold.
A federal district judge handles matters of the gravest nature; decisions often deal with federal law that affects all the other states.
By impetuous, elitist or stupid decisions, they have proved that they can damage and change the tenor of good laws. If anyone needs examples, it has been suggested that the reader look at the eroded laws that once gave labor a voice, at RICO (Racketeering Act), the two Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934, and acts concerned with monopoly, and infringement of patent rights. A very scary list, since these are all "people rights", laws.
Make them throw their hats in the center of the ring, and submit to a lawyers' poll.
It's not pretty: The Executive branch is hog-tied with a four trillion dollar debt; its Administrative branches are overworked and bureaucratic, letting millions of dollars slip through the cracks every year; Congressmen are preoccupied with getting reelected, and repaying the generous gifts that got them there; and if they stay awake at night, it's not to worry about the environment of an abused Earth, but how to get free TV exposure; and finally, where we need our best people, we find federal judges who really don't understand class action suit concepts, or the justiciable use of the Bankruptcy Act, judges who so often find the easiest, simplest way out, when the problem may require a closer, brighter examination.
When a citizen discovers that his liabilities are greater than his assets, and wants a new start, he can apply to Bankruptcy Court. All the creditors are notified so that they can object, there are two or three hearings, and the federal court (which handles all bankruptcies) declares the petitioner bankrupt, allows him to keep the tools of his trade, plus a homestead exemption, plus some other minor items, and then distributes what is left on an equal basis to his creditors. That's Chapter 7 of the Bankruptcy Act.
Bankruptcy is painful. Individuals, or business people have failed to make a go of it. They owe money to other legitimate businesses, which have their own debts, families, and problems; so the law does only what is absolutely just, strips the bankrupt of his remaining assets and pays out equally to his creditors, but leaves enough, tools of his trade, perhaps a vehicle to make deliveries, clothes, homestead rights, and the right to a new start. That's the best that can be done.
Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Act shouldn't even be there. It has nothing to do with bankruptcy. In fact, it's called "reorganization". Its effect is to encourage large corporations to take high risks, to gamble, to flirt with mass unemployment of their workers, and the mass crippling of their suppliers, since they know they can go into "reorganization", and come out a new, thriving business, at the expense of all these little people just mentioned. "Reorganization" means that wages, creditors bills, contracts of all sorts, including union contracts, can be cancelled. The half billion dollars gained by "reorganization" is taken out of the pockets of these thousands of employees and small companies.
Chapter 11 is tailor-made for the big corporation only. Even the court- appointed trustee of the "reorganization" is selected from corporate management. Before 1978, an objective outside trustee was appointed.
When I suggest that the little people have the privilege of getting beat out of something near a half billion dollars to keep the big, badly-managed corporation in business, I'm not kidding. It goes that high.
The new 1978 law is so framed, that the top secured creditor is not, as you might suspect, the Internal Revenue Service, but is a bank, or series of banks. This new elitist rule is hard to believe. Banks come ahead of U.S. tax claims!
The seamy partnership between Chapter 11, "Reorganization", and our current raft of Federal Judges, is such that when creditors' representatives discover and present petitions that ask for a dissolution and sale of the corporation, which might give them fifteen cents on the dollar instead of three cents on the dollar, they are ignored.
Perhaps corporate America would agree to postpone the $300 billion per year interest on the national debt, while the U.S. reorganizes. Isn't it the same moratorium they use in the federal court for all the suppliers, creditors and contract holders?
"Size" works like this: In the same city, on May 25, 1993, Show-Tronics, Inc., applied for reorganization, listing liabilities of two million dollars and assets of 458 thousand dollars. The other applicant sought liquidation under Chapter 7, listing assets of 144 thousand dollars and liabilities of 338 thousand dollars. The little corporation has liabilities a bit over twice the amount of assets. The bigger corporation, asking for reorganization, has liabilities almost four times its assets. Taking pains to save a "big" corporation is irrational. It's about as rational as saving all the sick gorillas, because they're big, and letting all the sick chimpanzees die.
One reason big corporations file for reorganization is that they can afford the high expense of such an action; another reason is that they know they will be well received in Bankruptcy Court. That's because the Bankruptcy Court, like the government, shows marked favoritism to "size". In fact, if you get big enough, you cannot go bankrupt. (Witness Chrysler Corporation.)
In 1993, Circle K Corporation came out of Chapter 11 reorganization, after three years, a recovered and revived corporation, on a strong footing. But, this revival of size is done at a heavy cost to little people. The newspaper never tells you about all those little supply businesses, who had to wait for payment for three years, without interest on their money, or their legitimate lawsuits that were set aside, or the suppliers who were paid ten cents on the dollar, or the suspension of union contracts, and other employee benefits. In the Circle K reorganization, stock held by fifteen thousand people is now worthless. Bond holders, who held about 740 million dollars will receive nothing. Circle K got bailed out because some big private money came in. The millionaires all made money, and the little people all lost money, to keep the big corporation in business.
Chapter 11 allows a big corporation to go about its routine, absent the obligation to pay bills or pay interest or honor contracts. Chapter 11 has become almost a craze amongst corporations. Texaco and Continental Airlines have undergone reorganization. America West Airlines applied for reorganization in 1991 and was approved for it, and then allowed seven extensions. The federal judge denied the right of creditors to submit their own proposals. Continental Airlines has emerged safely from Chapter 11, and Wang Laboratories, Inc., is out now and back in business. Small suppliers and small corporations tread water, sometimes for three and four years, often getting nothing, their own organizations collapsing, while the big one is protected by the federal judge. It's hard to figure out why right and wrong suddenly depends upon one's size.
America West Airlines has been in reorganization for about three years. America West is about to come out again, a brand new company, much healthier now after "reorganization". "Reorganization" is a badly chosen word, since it implies a change away from old management, structural reorganization, and new financing. The company may have shuffled people around a bit, but it will be the same old management. The banks, and financing may very well be the same. The company will be stronger because any creditor, supplier, contract claimant, tort claimant, union contract, or bond holder, will have been chucked out of the airplane without a parachute. Their claims, adding up to multi-millions of dollars, will have been summarily dismissed.
Traders, knowing how Chapter 11 works and being certain of the recovery of America West, have been buying its rising stock. In fact, trading had to be halted.
We need to be big for Chapter 11, right? Let's take a sick company and merge it with another sick company. Keep merging and consolidating until you have one huge sick company. Now, this is important: Raise all the first tier salaries and some second tier salaries, and for a year or so bleed it white. When liabilities are four or five times assets, run to the Bankruptcy Court for Reorganization. A federal judge will make you comfortable, then hail all the creditors into court, and chew them out for being obstreperous. He will cancel all your debts, and keep you under his protective wing for a year, two years, three years, whatever it takes, throwing out all your obligations, and make you well again. While he is cancelling out your hundred million dollar bond indebtedness, and giving your creditors three cents on the dollar, without interest, you are over at the brokerage house buying up your own shares which — heh, heh — will be going back up in a few weeks. Right? It's stealing; taking the money of your bond holders and suppliers is like burglarizing your neighbor's home. But it comports with modern Capitalism, that if you can ruin others while you steal a bundle, that's a double win!
Professor Jeremy Rabkin points out in JUDICIAL COMPULSIONS, "Pious talk about 'law' does nothing to change the underlying reality." His point is that under the Constitution, the province of the court is to decide the rights of the individual, not to decide public policy, which is what happens when judges are selected to serve as amateur managers of regulatory agencies while, as Professor Rabkin says, "acting at the behest of organized interest groups". (Large corporations, for example.)
As has already been seen, District Court judges have taken over, under the guise of pursuing the legislative demands of Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Law, certain administrative authority that does not belong to them.
The administrative system can be seriously violated by federal judges. When the heavy hand of the federal court judge suspends all tort rights, as happened in the asbestosis and the Dalkon Shield cases, turning out of doors thousands of injured and permanently damaged U.S. citizens, in order to keep a conscienceless corporation alive, something is happening to Democracy that was never meant to happen; it could not happen in any of the state courts of all fifty states, but only in the federal court system. The federal appeals courts have a two hundred year old habit of approving the decisions of the District Judges, apart from a blushingly obvious legal lapse. When a federal judge selects Chapter 11 over the state tort rights of thousands of people, he is making a choice of law; he can't do that. It's patently unconstitutional. He is sitting as a judge to resolve disputes between two parties, not to give us his own personal ideas about public policy. Public policy is none of his business.
If there is a conflict of laws, no federal judge can arbitrarily select federal law over state tort laws. The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution says "The powers not delegated to the United States...are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." The citizens of each state select their own tort laws which nowhere, no how, can be set aside by a federal court judge.
There are a whole series of cases that deny the right of Federal attempts to supercede the Common Law and statutory law of a state. In other words, there is no automatic right existing in American law that allows the U.S. Code to nullify any tort laws of a state. There is no "dictatorship" of federal law.
In the Dalkon Shield case, in chemical, asbestos, water and ground pollution, and many other case categories, the defendant corporations knew precisely that dangers existed, but went ahead and exposed the public anyway. Asbestosis brought cancerous lungs to literally thousands of victims. The Dalkon Shield shifted in the woman's body and destroyed her right to ever have a baby. Was she a harlot because she wanted to wait until marriage to have her child; did the federal judge bestow upon her his God-like wrath because she was not a virgin? Perhaps the judge has grandchildren entering puberty; studies show that over fifty percent of our little ladies have lost their virginity by the time they are age fourteen. One can go crazy just trying to imagine his reasoning.
Think of all the chemicals that have been sold to us by pharmaceutical houses that knew, absolutely knew that mere contact might poison us. The cases are legion. In Washington, D.C., we have a black marble wall with the names of 58 thousand servicemen. Those were brave young people, often charging at an enemy that they couldn't see, always puzzled by a war they didn't understand. But the black marble wall should bear 74 thousand names, not 58 thousand. The other 16 thousand are dying all around us, slowly, painfully, and quietly; these are 16 thousand returned veterans who got Dioxin poisoning from our own weaponry.
Can we ignore 16 thousand returned G.I.s who used and were exposed to Agent Orange (Dioxin); or the Dalkon Shield, when women all over the country, about 300 thousand, were damaged, many critically? Or over a million who will die prematurely of asbestosis cancer? Federal District judges did.
So, avoid asbestos, Dioxin, DBCP, DES, MER/29, Benzene, Lindane, PBB, PCB, Selacryn, Clioquinol, but why go on; some poisons are "throwaways" that were used in the production of a saleable product. These "throwaway" poisons are dumped in streams, lakes, and the oceans. "Throwaways" number in the thousands; we have no way of knowing because corporations don't boast of their contamination. They don't even tell us the location of their 375,000 poison dumps.
Juries in the asbestos and Dalkon Shield lawsuits, enraged at the "guinea pig" status of the public, awarded punitive damages, as the trial judge instructed they might, to deter callous corporate indifference, and these verdicts held up.
But the big corporations find that when they are severely besieged, they can avoid punitive damages, and even avoid compensatory damages, by fleeing to the Bankruptcy Act, and appealing for a reorganization under Chapter 11. These Federal Bankruptcy judges immediately set in motion a series of orders that knock out or cripple all lawsuits, suspend punitive damages, and baby big corporations back to prosperity, while forcing their small, "good faith" creditors into Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
America is no longer the land of opportunity. The opportunists have already landed and established a beachhead that can't be broken. The same guys that got the corporation into trouble get all sorts of VIP treatment while they reorganize. If there are any young opportunists out there, forget it; you won't get a chance to buy in and run it right. The elitists have already been selected, and urged to stay, no matter what their crimes are.
How can this happen in America? Well, the federal trial judge, for life, is not responsible to the voters, ever, and isn't even required to answer to the President of the United States, and of course cannot be removed by the President even if a decision is harmful to the President's goals.
These judges have slowly amassed greater and greater power legally, and procedurally. You may not think " procedure" is important, but it is sometimes more important than the law. Remember the Dalkon Shield bankruptcy, where the federal judge required one form to be filed and signed without error, and then another thirty days later. The law states that only one form need be prepared, not two. The ones who missed the second form were summarily kicked out of court, thousands of women, because the judge added his own personal unpublicized requirement. Unbelievable! This is not an isolated example of the power displayed by these judges, some of whom are boneheads, psychiatric candidates, or elitists.
Federal courts have continued a process of awarding themselves more and more power in areas treated by the founding fathers as executive or administrative. In the beginning, Chief Justice John Marshall defined the province of the court as "solely to decide on the rights of individuals". Apparently not aware of demarcation lines among the three branches of government, federal district judges have been burdening the administrative bodies with decisions that set public policy. They have simply trampled underfoot Justice Marshall's admonition and have accepted jurisdiction over situations that set policy and cripple the proper functioning of the Executive/Administrative branch of government, and install a biased, judiciary, to boot.
The Court of Appeals claims to be crowded with cases; it takes two or three years to get to some of them. The U.S. Supreme Court makes the same outcry. Perhaps that's the reason, crowded dockets, that cause appellate courts to affirm the quixotic decisions of the lower district courts. It's an excuse anyway.
But it is a fatal flaw, and it will be shown that it bears directly on our future as a Democracy. To expand judicial jurisdiction beyond Constitutional confines, to change the plain meaning of the Securities Laws, to override tort law in favor of corporate reorganization, to weaken and ignore laws passed to curb corporate excesses, is to undermine Democracy in favor of some brand of elitism.
And worst of all, it is wicked to encourage so much inequality, under the law, by adding to the already obvious advantages of "size". Federal judges, with all their power, have shown themselves willing to approve the 1978 reorganization act, which they know is a "Rich man's law", but disappoint us with their wimpy acceptance of an intolerable law, which is in conflict with state laws. So far, no strong judge has refused to enforce the 1978 act, which proves my point, we're losing the best legal minds, by using the "spoils system" to make judicial selections.
The instructions of the Constitution's Preamble are clear: To provide for the general Welfare, to allow for the pursuit of Happiness and Liberty. Happiness doesn't mean dancing around the Maypole; it means doing an honest day's work, and going to the federal court as a creditor, and not coming out broke, while ensconced Elitists of a dirty corporation begin a new and beautiful life at everyone else's expense and misery.
In round numbers, there are seventeen hundred daily newspapers in the United States, eleven thousand magazines, nine thousand radio stations, one thousand television stations, twenty-five hundred book publishers, and seven movie studios. One hundred years ago when the U.S. population was one-fourth today's population, the newspaper count was double today's count. There's a reason for that.
Ben H. Bagdikian has written a book on this subject, called The Media Monopoly (Beacon Press, Boston) that is most revealing, and copies ought to be in every library in the country.
The predominant source of mass advertising belongs to the newspaper industry. TV color commercials have an enormous impact, of course; but the newspaper carries an ad that stays with you, to stare at as long as you like. Newspapers employ a straight