“A New Social Contract for the Noble 10%”

I confess to beginning this rant as the poster boy for a diminished attention span; not mine, our Nation’s. The truth is so many bad things are happening with such vicious simultaneity that we can’t stop long enough to focus. And that is a conspiracy of its own.

This Blog was originally going to be a denunciation of the financial skullduggery surrounding Goldman Sachs scandal, the complicity of the SEC and the government’s failure to do anything demonstrative to solve this financial paradox as a symptom of the social cancer in our system. But that dropped from the public radar before I could address it…and along with it the fact that practically no one among this Hit Parade of billionaire felons will ever be charged, much less prosecuted.

After that I quickly found my energies diverted to the oil spill in our Gulf Coast and the fact that we even let shady oil companies like British Petroleum (with the worst safety record in oil-industry history) drill anywhere near our shores; but that oozed its way into our acceptance with the ease of a smoker’s cough, and along with it the hidden negotiation that the oil lobbies leveraged with our Congress and the MMS (Minerals Management Service) to drop their safety requirements so they could deep-drill on the cheap and save a couple of million dollars a rig.

Then of course there is the nasty government of Arizona and the fact that they have had the temerity to enforce immigration laws that our own INS already has on the books but has been too thoroughly gutted to pursue aggressively for fear of upsetting the Liberal Left and their backdoor promises to the Latino community to vote for amnesty when the issue finally comes to critical mass somewhere around 2020.
Two days later, I get to listen to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder denounce the Arizona Immigration Statute, only to admit to a Senate oversight committee that he hadn’t even read the twelve page document but was relying instead, “on the word-of-mouth opinions of others,” to form his decision. (And this is the first lawyer of the land?) Meanwhile, Mexican drug lords from El Paso to San Diego run cocaine and illegal aliens up through our borders, murder Arizona ranchers, and set up gangs in our “Sanctuary Cities” to extend their limitless trafficking, while we—as a member of the most gossip-driven, detail deprived people on this planet—protest a law we haven’t even had the discipline to examine.

Suddenly I realize that I am bombarded daily by outrages in legion and am left practically powerless to do anything. So I am left to share my frustration on convenient outlets such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter (as in “fritter”) which is just the kind of mind-candy devised to keep us from thinking and, more important, acting on our sense of national outrage. We do that because, at the core of our National Character, we as a people have become too fat and comfortable to want to do anything about upsetting the status-quo; except to complain vociferously but briefly over the sizzle of our charcoal grills and the back of our Barcaloungers.

A little complaint is tolerated, even applauded by the powers that be, because in reality those in power have long since come to realize that nothing changes, that all they need to do is tweak the mechanism and it will continue to function. They do so because they are members of “The Club,” and we are not. And they do so with the implicit understanding that we will put up with the corruption, because “We The People of the United States of America, in order to establish a more perfect Union…” have become unwitting accomplices to the sleaze. And as long as we are provided with enough creature comforts—enough SUVs, iPhones, Club Med vacations, credit card balance-transfers and flat screen TV’s—we’ll basically go along with any piece of crap they hand out to us. (That is what they believe, and we are daily proving them right.)

We look to our Press to be the arbiters of truth when we already know that the Fifth Estate sold out decades ago. Instead of reporting the news, they chose instead to become the news. They became addicted to sensation because, “If it bleeds it leads.” And somewhere in the process they grew intoxicated with their ability to shape public opinion rather than to respect it. It began in the 1960 Presidential Elections with the early reporting of a Kennedy victory long before the polls had closed on the West Coast, and it became progressively worse over the years, until it simply became acceptable to tell half-truths about anyone in the world of public affairs they chose not to like. (Of course, “half a truth” is also half a lie, but that little detail has somehow gotten lost in the clamor for ratings and the simple need to survive.) In the last twenty years alone the press has fallen so far out of integrity with itself that it has become the realization of Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbel’s admonition to, “Think of the Press as an instrument upon which Government can play.”

Now our news has become spin. Our minds are corrupted by ridiculous scenarios such as Tiger Woods’ mistresses and Sandra Bullock’s domestic strife and who the next casualty will be on “Dancing with the Stars.” Meantime, practically no one can tell you who the new President of Chile is, who just won the race for Prime Minister of the U.K. or who drafted the Declaration of Independence. Now, I find myself agreeing with such improbable allies as Bill Maher on the left and Shawn Hannity on the right who both have separately arrived at the same conclusion that the average American is now too lazy, ignorant and undereducated to make an informed decision about anything that happens to them. The bottom line is that we, who so influence the path of the world, are no longer citizens of the world. And because we are no longer a part of it, we no longer understand it. (We just want to be fed, comforted and cared for.)

Suddenly, I am bombarded by mainstream Liberals from the Left, 44% of whom now believe Socialism is the preferred form of government, and Conservative activists who are still under the influence of the Religious Right, thumping their the Bible Belt status quo, God and Colonel Bullmoose mantra and savaging anyone who steps one-inch away from the party line.
I have heard right wing talk show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh trumpet the fact that the average American is “Conservative” in his or her political beliefs, while I get polls from Keith Obermann and the propaganda minions from MSNBC who are somehow managing to manipulate statistics by using only their own listener base to show that more people now believe that “Big Government” is, after all, the answer to our dilemma.
Now, after having spent most of my life as a Conservative Republican, I have come to realize that I am no such thing. I am (that dreaded term) “A Moderate.” And I’m going continue this jeremiad standing on the one platform I have come to realize is a great Categorical Truth: The majority of Americans are neither Conservative nor Liberal. The majority of Americans are reasonable, moderate people who are being made to feel guilty for their moderation and common sense by the radical vocal minorities from both sides. And to be a moderate is accept the fact that we will constantly be assailed by both the extreme right and extreme left for being tepid, indecisive, ineffective and (that most damning of descriptions) “weak.” It is even more disturbing to realize that most of the time they are correct in their opinions of us. Because most people in “the radical middle” don’t have enough motivation to get their hands dirty…because we are too comfortable.

For one to find oneself somewhere in the middle is to be considered spineless and lacking in motivation. Rather than being proud of ourselves for trying to weigh each issue and its merits and letting reason prevail, we are denounced for being indifferent to the true cause of Liberalism or Conservatism because somewhere along the line we fell off the ideological train.

The penalty for this kind of independent thinking is to be reviled, denounced and otherwise manipulated by the far Right and the far Left. It is the moderates who are the very people vilified by talk-show host Mark Levin for being the problem and the cause for the “Big Tent” strategy that he is convinced will destroy the Republican Party once and for all. Of course, the Democrats and liberal strategists are way too opportunistic to spill out such ideological vitriol, because they’re convinced that if they just play it cool, lay low and disguise themselves as “compassionate conservatives,” enough moderates will take the hook at the right time to tip the balance for them.

The last Presidential election proved them to be dead right, because it wasn’t “the brothers” who got Barak Obama the Presidency in 2008. It wasn’t the Latino vote. It wasn’t even the generally naïve, hopelessly uninformed “Gen Y” vote that tipped the balance. It was the middle-of-the-road, middle-aged white American who felt betrayed by the Wizards of Wall Street, and the corrupt corporate fat cats and America’s battered image abroad and their 401Ks that had become 201Ks and the “re-fi” adjustable rate mortgages that had tripled overnight to collapse them into foreclosure. So betrayed and desperate were they that they were willing to try anything that would “change” the game for them—even if it meant abandoning logic for anything resembling hope.

So, as if on cue, up jumped the perfectly packaged, politically groomed faux populist who possessed the youth, swagger and personal charisma that star-struck media-manipulated middle class Americans held in their faint recollections of a Camelot that never really existed. His name was Barak Obama, and he was the Golden Child. He was Rock-star hot, lean, mean, articulate and the most dazzling political figure since John F. Kennedy. And to make matters even better for his handlers he was a person of color. That meant any white mainstream American voting for him could not only wash away generations of guilt, but also appear both progressive and visionary with one quick flip of the switch in their sleek new chad-free electronic voting booths.

To top off his perfectly orchestrated political strategy, this slender, glamorous grass-roots (black but not too black) Midwestern “community organizer” turned Junior Senator followed the oldest advertising trick in the world and used a strategy called Salience.

By definition, salience entails repeating the same obvious point of desire and pounding over and over again until it sinks into the otherwise numb American mindset, there to remain as a triggering point until the purchase is made; and purchase we did. What we all bought, hook-line and sinker from this street-smart, politically savvy party operative was a single word he kept repeating over and over: “Change!”

“Change!” The effect was downright Pavlovian. And the word, change, gathered every form of perception into its warm semantic embrace. Those who chose could superimpose upon it a number of other buzz words, and did. Hope, progress, repair, integrity, a new broom, a return to Camelot—all these sugar-plum fairy thoughts danced around in the mindset of a battered electorate who, especially in the last three months of the Bush Administration and the financial debacle that came with it, probably would have voted for The Bride of Chucky just to get out of where they were.

So Change it had to be. And so the electorate—driven by the road weary cryptically angry moderate middle class—said “yes” to change, and got exactly what it asked for.

As usual, however, middle-of-the-road, middle-class, reasonable Americans were too lazy and too caught up in the glamour, glitz and charisma of their new celebrity superstar Senator to read the fine print; the one that said More Big Government than they ever dreamt could take place in a two year span.

In truth, Barak Hussein Obama has done exactly what he said he would do and has brought Social Contract Socialism into our lives more than any president since Franklin Roosevelt primarily because he believed that was the reason we voted him into office. (It’s called a Mandate. And we gave it to him.)

Unfortunately, rather than have an original thought in his head, he became a pitchman for the Liberal agenda that was already in place.

Now, we’ve had our national wake-up call. The Tea Parties are in motion, and Middle America is being disabused by the minions of MSNBC, Congressional leaders and the Obama Administration itself into believing that this is some radical right wing pocket movement, filled with violent outbursts by the lunatic fringe.

Not so. Just from the feedback I have been getting, this Tea Party movement is as much from the outraged middle-class, Middle American as any movement in recent history. I’m delighted to see that the fire has reignited.

In beholding this new phenomenon, I pay tribute to William Bennett for inspiring what amounts to the counterpoint for the thrust of this article. Bennett penned a novella-sized non-fiction book called The Death of Outrage in 1996, expressing his dismay over the cavalier handling of President Bill Clinton’s sexual peccadilloes, resultant perjury and deafening silence from the liberal left. As was often the case, Bennett (Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration) was precise, articulate and given to devoting too much of his prodigious intellect to address too small a theme. Then again, that was back in the day when Conservative Republicans had a brain and a sense of direction.

Now I note hopefully that our social sense of Outrage has returned to a broader stage, but it is also my hope that it needs to be carefully understood and even more carefully directed; some of it toward ourselves and our personal complicity in this national political scam that has been going on for decades.

At last, I feel free to express a sense of outrage that enables me once again to return to the American character. By the same token it is imperative that I express it with equal force in all directions, including an arrow fired inward.

I’m outraged above all else to realize that “We the People…” in our desperation for change have elected a President of the United States who would rather play president than be president; a political rookie who has managed to surround himself with a staff of political activists who are the most paranoid and vindictive than any administration since (Dare I say it?) Nixon. In so doing, he is rapidly taking on a political strategy that has all the earmarks of a demagogue.
In fact, he is the only President who openly attacks not only the media but also a specific Network (FOX News in this case) for daring to question his glorious initiatives. He is the only President who, in a State of the Union address, openly rebukes the Supreme Court for a decision that he found not to his liking. He is the only President who denounces a State like Arizona for enacting and enforcing an immigration law that is virtually word-for-word that of the U.S. Government. (And yet he too admits that he hasn’t really read it.)

I’m outraged that we have a President who almost weekly bitch slaps Israel, our only ally in the Middle East, while he sits in silence for an entire day and accepts rebukes against America from Noriega, Hugo Chavez and some of the worst dictators in the history of the Western Hemisphere.

I’m outraged that our President shows up one week after being in office with a trillion dollar stimulus package that is Chapter and Verse a continuation of the Carte Blanche bailout issued by a Congress that has admittedly never read it. Six months later, we are presented with another life-changing document—also admittedly unexamined by the majority of legislators entrusted with its comment—to completely reshape our national Health Care in ways that will benefit only 15 million people who are not covered.

The cost of doing this entails stripping Medicare benefits by $500 billion in the next five years, an enactment symbolized by a recent 21% cut in co-pay for senior citizens (the people who really need it) that has already taken place. And why isn’t anyone asking the question that has been so carefully swept off into a corner as to appear conspiratorial: Why are all the major pharmaceuticals and health insurance companies so silent about this? Once again the issue is academic—because Big Pharma and the Insurance Majors have already cut deals with the government to guarantee that their trillion dollar franchises will be the first ones not only to be covered but also to be augmented. We’re already being gouged by rampant insurance fees and increased prescription costs so that when government does set up its health care program, we’ll be ready to embrace it just to stop the pain. “We the People…” are being set up.

I’m also infuriated that AIG, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup just to name a few commit felonies amounting to tens of billions of dollars, and we apparently have no laws among the thousands on the books to prosecute them for what is some of the most blatant conflict of interest in this country’s financial history. I’m appalled that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, former Treasury Secretaries Ron Paulson, Robert Ruben and Goldman Sachs Chairman Lloyd Craig Blankfein are all part of the same revolving door that swings between Wall Street, the FED, and the Department of Treasury.

I’m appalled that the same revolving door swings between the FDA, the AMA and the Pharmaceutical companies that have manipulated the public into becoming a “prescription drug” addicted nation, and has built our so-called Health Care Reform around this corrupt, persecutorial cadre against any kind of “wellness approach to our health.”

I’m flabbergasted that we have nominated a woman like Elena Kagen to serve on the Supreme Court when it is a fact that she used to be a bagman for Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and other chemical and genetic engineering giants who control 80% of the world’s food supply. (And yet she must adjudicate their appeals.)

I’m depressed that Conservatives no longer even know how to spell “conserve.” And that apparently none of them are committed to the conservation of our planet’s vital resources. I’m offended that I’m labeled a “tree hugger” because I believe we should be custodians of our environment and actually be responsible to the animals and plants over which we have dominion.

I’m also tired of having my intelligence insulted and my pocket-book picked by the alarmists and junk scientists who “cook the books” in reports about global warming and “greenhouse gases” (AKA CO2), when any fool with a basic education in physics knows that CO2 is plant food and a natural part of a cycle of life called photosynthesis.

I’m appalled that the best the Republicans can come up with is a Spokesperson for the Conservative agenda who was Governor of a state with a population the size of Long Beach for whopping two years before she bailed on the job, who hunts wolves from helicopters, and who apparently can’t find North Korea on a map without a personal tutor.

I’m hopelessly chagrined that the best the Republicans in California could come up with was to nominate a woman like Carly Fiorina to run against Senator Barbara Boxer—Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard who ran its stock value into the ground, fired 200,000 people after the merger with Compaq, had the phone lines of her board members bugged, and then sued HP after they fired her for, “sexual discrimination.” (Boxer’s camp must be dancing in the streets.)

Finally and somewhat fatalistically, I’m personally gutted by the realization that Government of the United States of America has proven itself to be impotent against corporate corruption. In fact, it has become part of it, owned by it, and obligated to it. In our doing so, it has helped to spawn the worst kind of false economy: Capitalism without a moral compass. And Capitalism conducted without integrity becomes the Cannibal unchained, one that will ultimately devour us all.

Most of all I turn my outrage inward and acknowledge that for the most part, “We the People…” are getting exactly the government we have bargained for. That’s because, in a social contract set generations ago, we became the collective end-users of cheap money, cheap food, cheap fuel and broad-spectrum pharmaceutical drugs that have more side-effects than a nuclear waste dump, and will kill us indirectly if not directly by stealing our quality of life. We got it because we demanded it, and we demanded it with little or no sense of responsibility for the havoc it would reap later on.

So here we are: a society whose modern economy is entirely based upon consumption and whose only hope for continuance is to get us to consume even more; and consume, we do.

We eat genetically engineered foods from strip-mined soil so laden with pesticides, chemical fertilizers and runoffs from animal slaughter that we are daily poisoning ourselves even by consuming them. The amount of cattle, sheep, swine and poultry we slaughter for our weekly consumption could feed half of Africa for a year, and yet our demand to keep it cheap has set our factory farms in motion with a killing machine that creates drug-dosed, hormone infused, manure stained, cancer-ridden, gut-rotted animals that are so abused and tortured there is nowhere for them to put the by-products of their abuse except into us every time we bite into their color-dyed, formaldehyde injected, nitrite soaked carcasses.

We are now both source and ultimate victims in an ecological chain of events so corrupted that, according to a series of EWG studies, every pregnant woman in the developing world can now expect to transfer more than 200 chemical toxins through her umbilical cord to her unborn fetus. (And we wonder why birth defects are up nearly 500% in the last twenty years alone.)

In fact, we have all become an integral part of a society that has grown, in whole or in part, to become a bunch of greedy, morbidly obese, morally corrupted, technologically pampered, self-entitled, narcissistic, sub-literate pop idol clones addicted to special effects movies, text message vocabularies and a culture of C-List celebrities who would sell out their mothers for six figure article in Us Weekly and a photo op with Angelina Jolie.

That same mentality, trust me, pours down in spades when it comes to our personal and national finances. Because we’ve taken a stance in that Mephisto Waltz of “buy now pay later.” We are in fact the most fatalistic society in the history of the world. I say that in the sense that, in the subtext of the conspicuous consumption we all embrace to keep us going, none of us believes this is going to last forever; or even for much longer. All our network marketing mantras of “win-win” scenarios notwithstanding, we remain a zero-sum society and we know—we just know—the bill is going to come due. We just didn’t think it would come to pass so quickly.

In the words of the immortal Pogo Possum: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” No words, however satirical, could be more accurate. And no democratic society has ever lost its moral compass more completely than we.

We have come to the end of our rope. We are out of time. The Devil has come to collect his Due. And we are the ones who are going to have to pay up.

Nothing brought this more to a point of Critical Mass than a headline that appeared on the front page of Pravda on May 12 announcing, “America’s abandonment of Capitalist principles and rapid descent into Marxism.” (Their turn of phrase, not mine.)
Since this came from the National Newspaper of the former late great Soviet Union (1918-1989), they should know. And they, more than any, should recognize the symptoms. Sadly, we as a nation do not. We are in fact in denial, when what we should really do is wake up.

The final blow came when the author of the article penned a new term to describe the American people: sheeple.

The fact is that is exactly what we have become: a nation of sheep…and cattle…and hogs. If you doubt that for a moment look around. As the consummate metaphor for what we’ve become, the United States of America is now the fattest nation in the history of the world. Nearly 62% of us are now officially overweight. Nearly 30% of us, including 30 million of our children, are by all medical standards morbidly obese. As such we are prime candidates for a laundry list of diseased from heart disease to type 2 diabetes. And our answer is not to lose weight, but to run to the drug companies to balance us out when we do. We are overweight, financially overextended, and addicted to consumption.

We—like the poor abused, corn-addicted feedlot animals we pen up for fattening—are now too tranquilized to take any demonstrative action. And too many of us don’t even have enough initiative to show up at the voting booth and express our outrage by actually doing something about it.

The underlying issue, when you get to the core of it, is that we no longer have faith in our system of government because we feel that we have been too often betrayed by it—by our office holders, by our elected officials, and by their “vetted” appointees.

The one redeeming factor—and our only remaining hope—lies in the fact that we still live in a republic. And in a republic, people get exactly the government they deserve. The question is what do you think you deserve…and did you read this far down to even care to be challenged?

I ask that question, because I’m relatively convinced that 90% of the people who started reading this are too intellectually lazy, ADD plagued, or sub-literate to wade down this far to finish something that might have an original thought or two.

That leaves 10% of you who have cared enough to come this far in search of some kind of answer. It also leaves me with a conclusion—an extrapolation if you like—that in every situation, there exists a small but sagacious group of people who are trying to do things the right way. Whether it is industry, politics, the environment, agriculture, health and wellness, athletics, or international finance, there are about 10% of the people involved who operate with a sense of integrity and a dedication to the future. Whether its organic farming or manufacturers such as New Balance and Apple who have managed to make a profit while keeping jobs in this country, we need to cultivate relationships with our own conscience and with people who feel as we do. My objective here is to single out these individuals and organizations and cultivate a network of people who truly want to make a difference.

At this point, I also confess to being incredibly weary of people who rant and rave while failing all the while to offer any viable solutions. So, I offer this information center as a weekly forum to deal with a broad range of issues, and to offer specific solutions for all the things that concern us. It is my opinion that if enough of us do that, we can and will make a difference…as we should.

In so doing, I welcome your input, your recommendations, and your connections to people and groups who are trying to make this world a better place. (It’s okay to unload as well, but bring some answers to the problems when you do.)

I also realize that, having said this, I’m going to scare some of you off, because this kind of exercise takes work. You have to dig deeply and become an active part of something. It is also my conviction that enough of you will want to do this…about 10%. And with that “mustard seed” contingent we can start to shake things up. And we can build a power base with a network of people willing to make a difference.

I’ll volunteer the first topic that underscores the subtext of our collective frustration: Why, more than ever, this country is ready for a viable Third Political Party. And why it is not only feasible but also essential that we have one if for no other reason than to challenge our current political power structure to reconsider their relationship with the American people. (And right now, 90% of you are thinking, “That’s a lot of work!” So is Democracy. Thanks for making my point for me.)

Meet me here in about a week. I’ll let you know when I’m up.

And thanks for making a difference.

- Robert Joseph Ahola

The man who might have been the greatest white heavyweight since Rocky Marciano was never actually a champion. He was also a near genius who ended up becoming the poster boy for pugilistic dementia. A powerful family saga of love, death and redemption and scathing portrait of the underbelly of world class boxing, this is the biography of Irish Jerry Quarry all the fighting Quarry brothers, and a powerful loving, tragic family saga.

Running time: 118 minutes (Now in Development)

- Scheduled for Production in 2010
* Running Time 115 Minutes

- Running time 92 minutes
* Written and Produced in 2007

4 M 3F. 90 Minutes. (2009)

** Being Published in 2009

1) First, I’m a true fan of Al Gore. I respect his sense of vision and his commitment to our global ecology. Yes! He’s been on the environmental path longer than most. So, have I. And yet I continue to see the same problems present themselves with uncertain answers. And if this well-intended and very intelligent film has a flaw, it is that it’s too long on complaint and too short on solutions. In truth, the solutions offered at the end of the flick were tepid, timid, and left the audience feeling powerless. Not surprising, but typical of what’s been going on forever.

2) I’ve been involved heavily with the environmental movement for at least twenty years. In the past, I helped set up an Environmental Network and two environmental health companies and watched them go down because (particularly back then) people made big talk about their commitment to environmental issues. But when it comes to practicing what they preach, it becomes (and I used the word advisedly here) “inconvenient” for them to actually take act on their initiatives.

3) I’ve also been involved with a seemingly infinite number of cause groups, and have grown weary of people going to eco fundraisers with tofu and silent auctions for environmental organizations that spend a great deal of contributor funds and yet get little done other than rant about the problem and hold occasional marches. Good intention. Insignificant result.

4) As far as the film is concerned, if my background in advertising has taught me anything, it is that the people who saw An Inconvenient Truth will feel deeply about it for about 24 hours; after which time they will go back to life as usual. (Maybe a couple of new light bulbs and get on a wait list for a hybrid car.) But no major change of consciousness. Certainly not enough to stem the tide of collective unconscious indifference.

5) I agree that greenhouse gases from emissions are at least 40% - 50% of the problem. But they are not the whole problem, and we’d better start checking our other options now. I was impressed with some of the math Mr. Gore presented, but math based on incomplete criteria engenders wrong conclusions. Even Al Gore’s experts are still being subjected to doubters and naysayers who renounce the “greenhouse gas” initiative as “theory.” So the dilemma remains in debate. It’s that simple. And I use their own quote from Mark Twain to turn toward them: “It isn’t what you don’t know that can hurt you. It’s what you’re absolutely certain about that is dead wrong.”

6) We are not going to stop the energy companies without some serious retrofitting, having proof positive through technology like thermal imaging that can actually read Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) as they occur. By doing these things, we are also “helping to set the stage for environmental commercialism”. That is simply not being done effectively because no one is networking and promoting it. The energy companies will never do anything about it, or change course, unless they are given major commercial incentives to do so.

7) What we need is Environmental Commercialism on a grand scale or nothing will ever get done.

In our upcoming Environmental/Health magazine The Invisible Quarterly … and through our connection with Thermografix Consulting Corporation (of Canada), we have both the math and the thermographic evidence that stands to prove that at least 50% of the cause of global warming comes through Urban Heat Islands (or what we can now prove are Urban Heat Generators, because they are actually building heat through inadequate compliance and over-consumption of fuel sources to keep them artificially cool. At present, there are virtually dozens of other UHI groups from South Africa to LA. Some of them are already using thermography to make their point. They know UHIs are a problem, but virtually all of them are wrong in their evaluation because they believe them to be “effect,” when we have the ability to prove that they are , in fact, “cause” and a great deal of it.

9) Neither Gore’s environmental experts nor many of the UHI groups possess the intensity of study Curtis Bennett and others have amassed with the thermal charts to verify them. But most are approaching this challenge with an intention toward solution. And I think this is where the dialogue must begin. And believe me the ranks of credible alliances to this UHG theory are growing. Some examples:

a. The Governor of Arizona is outraged by the lack of building compliance, and the havoc these violations are wreaking with Arizona’s environment. Her office is retaining the services of Curtis Bennett to make a study of and recommendations for these violent Urban Heat Generators in the city of Phoenix. Action on this and the study to follow is imminent.

b. When I presented this Urban Heat Generator (UHG) concept to Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney at a breakfast for Billionaires in Beverly Hills recently, he got it right away. Furthermore, he recalled a specific event that occurred when he took over the Winter Olympics challenges in 2002. In fact, one of the things he and his staff noticed immediately upon assuming administrative responsibilities was the incredible heat being generated from the buildings and grounds around the Olympic Village: so much so that it was — even in a cool season — visibly radiating alarming levels of UV heat into the atmosphere. So the first thing he and his staff did was to apply some “low emissivity” building materials, lower heat emissivity paints for building surfaces, and landscaping. And guess what? The temperature in and around the Olympic Village lowered dramatically.

c. Interactions with several environmental engineers have netted similar responses. Without exception, they not only acknowledge the problem, they elaborate upon it by pointing to the added fuel required to heat and cool these (billions of) buildings in violation virtually triples the effects of the felony. (And yes these may be local issues, but they number in the millions! And as such they create an entirely new body of evidence.) Very simply, in this tapestry of discovery that becomes our environment, none of us can afford to be cocksure. We need to keep the dialogue open. And we need to examine all the opportunities. We are not trying to prove anyone wrong. We know that Al Gore and his people are absolutely right as far as they go. It is just a matter of degrees. And if they may be missing some critical data to strengthen their case, then let us supply it. We are all on the same side here. And how much stronger will we all be if we just put our heads together and take a look at some new ideas.

10) That means thinking outside the box. It means enlisting some math departments in local universities to address it based on new evidence. In the past Mr. Gore’s environmental advisors have written off Urban Heat Islands (and UHGs) as local or regional issues. But understand this: in terms of practical application, all issues are local and individual. (In this case, billions of them.) And the mathematical averages that come out of them are immediately subject to intelligent multiplication.

11) The bottom line here is that we should be about solutions. That means embracing environmental commercialism. The energy companies - gas and petroleum - will never become a part of this. But, assuming this UHG theory becomes axiomatic, we not only have a sea of cars kicking out VOCs, we also have “billions” of buildings that are in violation of mandated environmental compliance. That makes “compliance” the next $trillion industry. And that embraces environmental commercialism on a grand scale.

12) While we’re at it, we strongly propose networking companies that can bring solutions to the needs of the marketplace. Some of them are being utterly ignored or countervalued by large corporations or industries who have either tried to buy them and shut them down or denounced their technologies as bogus. The good news is that, through intelligently applied thermography, we can validate many of these technologies and (in some cases) have. Some examples:

a. Companies putting out high reflective, low emissivity paints and building material and landscaping for buildings. (Before and after thermography.)

b. An organic tablet that has proven to get up to 30% better gas mileage and cut auto and truck emissions by 98%. Thermal images of VOCs, or lack of same, can corroborate visually what has already been proven in emissions tests. (Through FLIR and other technology companies, we now have thermal video cameras that can validate or disprove the effectiveness of such emission claims by revealing VOCs as they come out of source.)

c. A simple natural, organic purifying element (out of Sweden) that can reset the pH balance in polluted lakes and acid rivers and virtually clear them up. (Thermographic images to prove this as well.)

d. Before and after thermal images to show how severely exposed we all are to cell phone radiation, and the fact that certain “radiation blocking” devices actually do work to get rid of as much as 90% of it.

e. Applications of certain pure foods and GRAS approved supplements to expectant mothers to help eliminate the more than 200 environmental toxins that are fed into the fetus. (This can be shown in before and after studies of the fetus.)

f. SARS and AVIAN flu detection through thermography, plus and entire laundry list of preventives and products to preclude either. (And we can conduct the tests to prove it.)

g. All these findings and more are reported - by means of thermal imaging - in our new magazine, The Invisible Quarterly, and nowhere else.

h. It is now a fact of compiled medical research that - due primarily to environmental pollutants - the average woman in the developed world, when pregnant, passes on more than 200 umbilical chord toxins to the newborn fetus. And more than 60 of those are carcinogenic. This places a “body burden” on our next generations that present long-range and medium-range complications that are nothing short of catastrophic. The good news is that there are GRAS qualified foods and elements that these women can take that will help them cleanse their systems, and could do so exponentially. This too can be shown thermographically and will be the cover topic of our second issue of IQ.

13) Since, we’re all still learning here, we would like to suggest that it’s worth reopening the dialogue with an entirely new group of players to determine this new data and take some progressive steps forward. Only good can come of it. So what would it hurt to listen?

14) For Al Gore’s experts to dismiss these approaches is to do so at their peril.

15) The staff of The Invisible Quarterly is now working with an Emmy Award Winning Production team on a new issues oriented show It is called Critical Mass. It deals with critical issues facing this body of humankind: Global Warming, Pollution, “The Body Burden,” (including pregnant women passing 200 plus toxins to newborn fetuses in 100% of all cases studied), superviruses, drugs versus alternative health pathways, and so much more. But the show does so with a twist.

a. It gets groups together that are trying to accomplish the same objectives but with opposing points of view, and it requires them to come to resolutions, mutual accord, and positive energy only.

b. Instead of agreeing to disagree, partisans must find common ground. And broker solutions!

c. And they get to meet solutions oriented companies, products groups, individuals and organizations on the same path. So that something actually gets done.

16) Let’s begin here. And, with great respect, get with Al Gore and his experts and make something new happen out of this. Only Al Gore can do this. Only a democrat can do this. The Republicans cannot adopt this and won’t for two very good reasons: a) the party machinery has the “environment” last on its list. (I’ve experienced that cog of indifference first hand.); b) even if they were to adopt these initiatives, it would look political and they can’t afford to embrace something so foreign to their matrix.

17) Bless Al Gore for taking this long journey to get people to listen. And yes the film will help. But unless some new alternatives are explored and some bold new initiatives taken, it will be business as usual. And no one can afford that any more.

18) All this and more will be covered in The Invisible Quarterly, and we invite you to check out its website, which will go up officially soon.

Thanks for taking the time to go over this. Now let’s get something done. Let us know what the next steps will be. We stand ready to take them.

Respectfully

Robert Joseph Ahola, Editor
The Invisible Quarterly

      All other tales you’ve read about dragons are lies    and half-truths. Now, for the first time ever, is the true story of the decimation and final extinction of all the Mystic Beasts told by the 3,000 dragon who survived it.

Shartallion XII is an eighty-foot long, onyx Dragon Prince of the Kiln with a volcanic temper but with the eyes of an angel that see into other dimensions. One of the select few dragons in possession of the Diamond I, he is also a shape-shifter, able to step in and out of identities, including those of human beings (whom he finds utterly corrupted and into whose entities he sometimes becomes lost).

Anointed at an early age as “The Dragon of Destiny” Shartallion has also accidentally unlocked The Asking Prayer, a mantra through which one man has been given the power to disintegrate any Mystic Beast - dragon, gryphon, unicorn or Kohmm - that crosses his path. Shartallion’s mission: Find this man and destroy him (or change his mind) before he is recruited into darkness and annihilates the entire Mystic Clan.

But what about Shartallion himself? Is he who he seems? Does he understand his role and what it is meant to be? Is he the Emissary of Angels? Or is he the Devil’s own. The answer to his role in this, is a matter for all to see. And everyone, including him, will be the student.

Once in every 20 years, a work of fantasy is so powerful that it creates its own mythology. I, Dragon is such a book. Passionately penned as literary fiction, I, Dragon is a the first in a two-book saga that takes us on a journey to dimensions never seen before, even in the realm of Fantasy. In doing so it has already garnered a justly earned reputation as “an original.”

* New Second Edition

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Finally there’s a book that dares to ask the question: Is it possible that the animals we encounter in our lives are often angels in disguise? And answers it with a resounding, “Yes!”

Written as visionary fiction, The Return of the Hummingbird Wizard is also the first book ever that has managed to take a profoundly effective course in spiritual awareness and play it off the insanity chic that has become Hollywood. As such, it brings its readers an extraordinary combination of biting social satire and life-affirming spiritual lessons - taught by an angel in the character of a hummingbird - and weaves them into an often touching yet irreverently amusing book about the redemption of the human spirit.

Subtitled “An Angelic Encounter for Modern Times,” The Return of the Hummingbird Wizard also raises this question: Can spiritual development be taught as a crash course, especially if your life may depend upon it? And that brings us to the rest of the story.

Jonathan Vieren is a 50-something Hollywood producer on the downside of his industry cachet who, among other things, has just been hit with a terminal cancer prognosis that brings him to the end of his rope (and perhaps the end of his days). That’s when a male hummingbird on his hillside home in Malibu mysteriously weaves himself into Jonathan’s days and nights and offers him a crash course in spiritual awareness - The Ten Songs of the Hummingbird - that can quite possibly save his life.

Near his wits end, Jonathan takes the cheeky little bird up on his offer. And what follows is a journey of self-discovery filled with love and inner peace, but also nicely spiced with wit, wisdom, good common sense, and some very satirical ways of looking at the Hollywood film community with a kind of loving impatience and a strong sense of what truly matters in life.

Written poetically and yet with a driving sense of urgency, The Return of the Hummingbird Wizard takes us on a journey along the colorful corridors of jaded Tinsel Town, through the stratospheres of higher consciousness, and down to the calamity and healing of 9/11. As such it offers the reader a very original story that is a feast for the mind, candy for the wit, and healing for the heart.

* New Second Edition
AVAILABLE ONLINE AT:

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JONES HARVEST PUBLISHING | GREAT CONCEPT BOOKS