"Because you drowned others, they drowned you; and ultimately those who drowned you will themselves be drowned." -Hillel, Jewish Rabbi

I'm a big believer in karma. You know: What goes around comes around. Good deeds spawn good and evil actions breeds evil. Like in a Hollywood movie when the greedy developer builds his sprawling complex over an Indian burial ground after being forewarned about the consequences. Karma always seems to have the last word. Or, as a character in my recent novel about crime and redemption said: "Karma comes around and kicks us all in the ass."

Indeed it does. And I have been watching the effects of bad karma on New York City for over five years now.

Ever since the Greatest Unsolved Crime of The Century happened more than five years ago, I have watched karma in action. New York City is that huge glistening development being built over that Indian graveyard by greedy developers. Karma is the invisible watchman, the troubled spirit of thousand who were murdered that day. Karma is the shadow who murmurs: "My time will come; my irony surpasses all others." Not surprisingly, karma hates to be ignored.

We have seen the WTC site scraped clean and more bones unearthed. We have heard the plaintive pleas of family members ignored. Clamoring for a new investigation, their pleas fall on deaf ears of city officials.

We have seen three stout skyscrapers, built to survive a jumbo jet strike, collapse inexplicably. We have seen professionals and respected academics lie about the intense heat while a pair of brave women stood in the actual hole, stood upon the allegedly superheated, steel beams, waiting for a rescue that never came. We have seen with our own eyes. We have witnessed city officials do nothing about a super sensitive office building that appears to have spontaneously combusted (Bursting into flame out of sadness or sympathy?) hours after the twin Towers fell. We have seen three buildings fall at near gravitational speed. We have seen a New York attorney general, a US Senator representing New York state, and a New York mayor, all ignore the obvious. Behind every great crime lies a great fortune and a greater power to cover it up.

Karma, angry and slighted however, refuses to remain docile.

Not surprisingly, the first responders are dying due to a great lie. Told to breathe the toxic air by a so-called government expert, they ignored their better judgment. Karma comes around to collect from folks who trust their government too damn much. Sometimes the innocent are claimed before the guilty in the karmic scheme of things. But those who drowned (suffocated) the first responders will one day be drowned themselves.

We have seen this immense burial ground continue to breed bad vibes, while the crime is ignored. Amazingly, this once proud city, filled with world champion sports teams, continues to collapse inexplicably. And why not? One after another, the pro sports teams collapse in embarrassing fashion, ever since 911, as if karma enjoyed twisting the mindset of millions of New York City fans who focus on diversion, on entertainment, on fake heroes rather than their fallen heroes. Season after season passes and, without exception, EVERY pro sports team affiliated with New York City continues to collapse in embarrassing fashion. How else to explain the phenomena but that karma smears the faces of sports fans in the long-simmering injustice. Your true heroes are dead and dying and thus your fake heroes must be disgraced, and so too your city, karma seems to say.

New York has become a laughingstock, an embarassment, a sham; a city of pimps and wimps only concerned with money. A city filled with dying heroes but concerned with fake heroes like Giuliani. A city filled with millions of media words concerning her collapsing sports teams but none concerning her oddly collapsing skyscrapers.

More than five years later, the burial site has been scraped clean and the fallen profaned for a series of fraudulent wars and the enrichment of a few. But karma remembers. Karma, like a slumbering volcano, tends to follow an unpredictable timetable, all the while sending out signals that justice may be delayed but rarely denied. Signals like a methane gas release in the new York vicinity, or a fatal plane crash by a professional athlete, that terrorize a Pompeian populace while a more Vesuvian eruption awaits.

The great Jewish teacher, Jesus, foretold the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem forty years before it happened. Karma had accrued against years of corruption and injustice in the so-called Holy City and finally the debt was overdue.

Likewise the great Jewish teacher, Hillel, rebukes the fake modern Jews, "neocons," who lied about their involvement in the New York City Massacre, lied about their national loyalties, lied about their involvement in US foreign policy and war plans. They will drown, Hillel suggests, as they drowned others, perhaps suffocating in smoke and ashes as did their victims.

FOOTNOTE: Who knows how karma works? Can someone accrue good karma? Certainly. Just as someone can accrue bad karma. One example. After reading Rick Reilly's column, "Nothing But Nets," (see link below) I asked my friends and family to send a donation to www.nothingbutnets.com rather than waste any money on me for Christmas. A week later I sold a painting I had forgotten I owned; I got a decent parttime job, and I found $100 I misplaced. Reilly followed up his first column with a second, reporting the spread of good karma. Thousands of people had done one small deed during the day to save thousands of kids they would never meet. Good things come from good and, obviously, bad things come from bad. The war in Iraq is a textbook example of spreading bad karma.

Okay. Another weird example of karma. Can someone please explain to me How or Why Florida has won seven, SEVEN championship teams since 2001 and New York has won NONE? Could it be because so many "Truthers" live down here? We have Kaminski, and Daniel Hopsicker, and Bob Bowman and Charley Reese and myself and scads of others. Unlike NYC we don't sit around meekly accepting shitty lies about 911 or the war in Iraq. Of course you may rightly ask: What does sport have to do with karma? Sometimes karma is like a petulant Greek goddess, rewarding some city states with her favor and cursing other city states--like NYC--with her supreme disfavor. All I can say is that karmic energy manifests itself in weird ways and karma seems to be a sports fan.

Oh, and by the way, the University of Rutgers, RUTGERS, after decades of being a doormat, won a major bowl game. Anyone notice Rutgers is in New Jersey, home of those original 911 Truthers, the Jersey Girls?

SI.com - Writers - Rick Reilly: Nothing But Nets - Tuesday April ...

Douglas Herman writes regularly for Rense on a wide range of weird topics. He lives and works in Florida part of the year and is an observer of the effects of karma. He wrote the crime novel, The Guns of Dallas, set here in Florida.