The Western New Mexico Correctional Facility sits in high-desert country about seventy miles west of Albuquerque. Grants, a former uranium boomtown that depends heavily on prison work, is a few miles down the road. There's a glassed-in room at the top of the prison tower, with louvred windows and, on the ceiling, a big crank that operates a searchlight. In a box on the floor are some tear-gas shells that can be fired down into the yard should there be a riot. Below is the prison complex - a series of low six-sided buildings, divided by high hurricane fences topped with razor wire that glitters fiercely in the desert sun. To the east is the snow-covered peak of Mt. Taylor, the highest in the region; to the west, the Zuni Mountains are visible in the blue distance.

One bright morning last April, Dr. Kent Kiehl strode across the parking lot to the entrance, saying, "I guarantee that by the time we reach the gate the entire inmate population will know I'm here." Kiehl - the Doc, as the inmates call him - was dressed in a blue blazer and a yellow tie. He is tall, broad-shouldered, and barrel-chested, with neat brown hair and small ears; he looks more like a college football player, which was his first ambition, than like a cognitive neuroscientist. But when he speaks, in an unexpectedly high-pitched voice, he becomes that know-it-all kid in school who intimidated you with his combination of superior knowledge and bluster.

At thirty-eight, Kiehl is one of the world's leading younger investigators in psychopathy, the condition of moral emptiness that affects between fifteen to twenty-five per cent of the North American prison population, and is believed by some psychologists to exist in one per cent of the general adult male population. (Female psychopaths are thought to be much rarer.) Psychopaths don't exhibit the manias, hysterias, and neuroses that are present in other types of mental illness. Their main defect, what psychologists call "severe emotional detachment" - a total lack of empathy and remorse - is concealed, and harder to describe than the symptoms of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. This absence of easily readable signs has led to debate among mental-health practitioners about what qualifies as psychopathy and how to diagnose it. Psychopathy isn't identified as a disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association's canon; instead, a more general term, "antisocial personality disorder," known as A.P.D., covers the condition.

Psycho girlfriends. Toxic boyfriends. The pathological relationship. We've all heard about it or experienced it for ourselves. Even if we're not familiar with its various names or the psychological explanations behind it, we're not surprised when we hear that a friend or family member is in a physically or emotionally abusive relationship. Whether it's a girl insulted and humiliated by her boyfriend, or a man whose wife leaves him, takes his money, their kids, and his reputation after a painful divorce, these pathological relationships still seem to be a natural part of our daily experience. The pain and hopeless cycles of these relationships remind us that pathology in relationships is all too common.

Luckily there is a growing body of research on these all-too-familiar dynamics, and therapists trained in dealing with them. Sandra Brown's How To Spot a Dangerous Man and Women Who Love Psychopaths; Martha Stout's The Myth of Sanity and The Sociopath Next Door; and Robin Stern's The Gaslight Effect. These and other essential materials bring an important body of knowledge to those who need it most. Because without such knowledge, we are like Goldilocks entering a dark and unknown forest, blind to the dangers of charming yet cunning predators.

In psychiatry there is a diagnostic entity variously known as psychopath, sociopath and antisocial personality disorder. The central feature of this disorder is the failure to develop any ethical standards of social behavior, The concept of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is foreign to the psychopath. That remarkable advice is replaced by "do unto others as it pleases you regardless of consequences." We do not know for sure the cause of such behavior, whether it is genetic in origin, the result of early developmental trauma, or a combination of the two. The outstanding feature is that the psychopath has a natural talent for using and exploiting others and does so with such skill that true motives remain concealed by ingratiating ways and apparent normality. At some point the bubble bursts and the victim awakens to the reality that they have been taken.

In a democratic society government is supposed to serve the needs of every member of that society. There are two models for such societies, Both involve capitalism. The social democratic societies, such as in Scandinavia, temper the profit motive so as to restrict the massive inequities and ensure that health, education, security and opportunity is available to all. They do this by a system of taxation that succeeds in narrowing the gap between the haves and the have-nots so that a significant proportion of the population is not in trouble.

In the United States where capitalism is given a much freer rein there is the possibility of the profit motive getting so out of hand that those on top are enriched at the expense of those left behind, That is "wild capitalism". The recent run of failures of formerly very profitable corporations are a prime example of that, and how painful it is for those who are ultimately victimized by it. Victimhood is the characteristic feature of psychopathy.

YES WE CAN'T! WE ARE PUTTING OUR COUNTRY FIRST AND SUSPENDING OUR CAMPAIGN FOR GOOD!

My Friends,

Over the past few days I have come to realize that my campaign for President has devolved into a national disgrace. The negative campaign tactics I have unleashed are dangerously dividing our country while fueling religious and racial hatred along socio-economic lines. In my ruthless attempt to win the Presidency at any cost I have abandoned any principles of decency I once had and am now only a shadow of my former self to everyone who knows me or thought they knew me, or once respected me. Also I have come to realize that my unfair and disgustingly false attacks on Senator Obama's character, which were thinly disguised attempts to link him and his wife Michelle to Muslim terrorists, have been the last thing anyone who claims to be putting "Country First" would do. And worse, I may have even placed him and his family in danger from the radical and dangerous extremists who now inhabit and infect the base of my party - a group I once denounced but decided I needed to vigorously cultivate by turning myself into a "flip-flopper" in order to win this election. I encourage my fellow Senators to file ethics charges against me for having done something so disgraceful like this.

This is an excerpt from When Corporations Rule the World, 2nd Edition, by David C. Korten.

It is ironic that corporate libertarians regularly pay homage to Adam Smith as their intellectual patron saint, since it is obvious to even the most casual reader of his epic work The Wealth of Nations that Smith would have vigorously opposed most of their claims and policy positions.

For example, corporate libertarians fervently oppose any restraint on corporate size or power. Smith, on the other hand, opposed any form of economic concentration on the ground that it distorts the market's natural ability to establish a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital; to produce a satisfactory outcome for both buyers and sellers; and to optimally allocate society's resources.

Through trade agreements, corporate libertarians press governments to provide absolute protection for the intellectual property rights of corporations. Smith was strongly opposed to trade secrets as contrary to market principles and would have vigorously opposed governments enforcing a person or corporation's claim to the right to monopolize a lifesaving drug or device and to charge whatever the market would bear.

A small, newly-discovered asteroid named 2008 TC3 is approaching Earth and chances are good that it will hit. Steve Chesley of JPL estimates that atmospheric entry will occur on Oct 7th at 0246 UTC over northern Sudan [ref]. Measuring only a few meters across, the space rock poses NO THREAT to people or structures on the ground, but it should create a spectacular fireball, releasing about a kiloton of TNT in energy as it disintegrates and explodes in the atmosphere. Odds are between 99.8 and 100 percent that the object will encounter Earth, according to calculations provided by Andrea Milani of the University of Pisa. [ephemeris] [3D orbit]

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Israeli media reported that the IOF command acknowledged that one of its officers caused the death of a Palestinian preterm baby at the Hawara checkpoint near Nablus city, adding that the military court decided to send the officer to jail for only 28 days and transfer him to another military post.

The baby's father narrated the story saying that the IOF troops at the checkpoint prevented him and his pregnant wife from crossing the point in order to go to hospital despite the fact that his wife was bleeding.

"By the time Manson shifted base from Rustic Canyon to an old ranch in Chatsworth, he'd begun formulating the notion that he and his followers had to prepare themselves for a race war with Black America."
Barney Hoskyns (in Hotel California, his take on the Laurel Canyon/Sunset Strip scene)

In this outing, we will be temporarily leaving Laurel Canyon. But don't worry; we won't be traveling far, and we'll be returning soon enough.

Today we will be exploring Rustic Canyon, which lies about nine miles west of Laurel Canyon. It was there, in Lower Rustic Canyon, that Beach Boy Dennis Wilson lived in what Steven Gaines described in Heroes and Villains as "a palatial log-cabin-style house at 14400 Sunset Boulevard that had once belonged to humorist Will Rogers." The expansive home sat on three landscaped acres of gently rolling hills.

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The Floor of Upper Rustic Canyon

In the summer of 1968, as is fairly well known, Charlie Manson and various members of his entourage moved in with Wilson. "Tex" Watson, curiously enough, was already living there. As many as two-dozen members of Manson's clan spent the entire summer there, with Wilson picking up the tab for all expenses. The Mansonites (mostly nubile young women) regularly drove Wilson's expensive cars and demolished at least one of them. Dennis didn't seem to mind; he was busy recording Manson in his home studio and inviting fellow musicians, like Neil Young, over to the house to hear Charlie perform (Young was so impressed that he urged Mo Ostin to sign him).

Dennis would later claim that he had destroyed all the Manson demo tapes, that he remembered almost nothing of his time with Charlie and the Family, and that he certainly knew nothing about the Tate and LaBianca murders, which were committed in the summer of 1969, about a year after the Family had vacated the Rustic Canyon residence.

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The end of the line for the stairway leading to the floor of Rustic Canyon

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"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it." - John Lennon, before his murder by CIA mind-control subject Mark David Chapman

When Gandhi was asked his opinion of Western civilization he said it would be a good idea. But that oft-cited quote, is misleading, assuming as it does that civilization is an unmitigated blessing.

"Everybody was experimenting and taking it all the way. It opened up a negative force of energy that was almost demonic."
Frank Mazolla, editor of the film Performance

"There were a lot of weird people around. There was one guy who had a parrot called Captain Blood, and he was always scrawling real cryptic things on the inside walls of my house - Neil Young's too."
Joni Mitchell, describing the Laurel Canyon scene at the tail end of the 1960s

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Ricky Nelson