I Am Your Mirror Iraq

By Ira Einhorn:

‘I am your mirror,’ said Nico, a Buddhist technique that Eliot Weinberger has applied twice now in devastating articles in the London Review of Books: ‘What I Heard About Iraq’, February, 2004 and ‘What I Heard About Iraq In 2005’, 5 January 2006.

In the most recent piece, one is presented with C. 200 short quotes about the Iraqi War from Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and others that indicate such transparent lying that one quickly becomes aware that time and thus memory are no longer a relevant social component.

We are living in the pure present of discourse: “Truth” created by and for the moment, to be discarded and forgotten as soon as the moment is over.

To explain, some would turn to Baudrillard and his idea of simulation wherein the referent for any statement has disappeared and the only things signs refer to are other signs in a continuous round of self enclosed meaning that has no reference to any reality at all.

Others would turn to Guy Debord’s Society Of The Spectacle whose prescience illuminates the more one reflects on what the media in the United States has become.

Those with some historical sense of the first great outbursts of Dada and Surrealism, during and immediately after World War I, will appreciate the slippage, the parataxis, the non-rational, non-temporal sense which the reading of Weinberger quickly invokes. One constantly has to stifle a scream, bridle a mouth stuck in the rictus of laughter or brush a tear aside from a moment of micro-compassion.

Then there is a rush of awareness that the mode of addressing reality, that this brilliant string of quotes illustrates, is akin to the daily reality that is now that of America: A constant breathless, amphetamine jag that barely addresses the moment except to consume more than its fair share of planetary resources as obesity, inattention and despair quicken, New Orleans fades, species die and fires and floods ravage in a January surprise as the president says goodbye to 2005 and welcomes 2006 as if 2005 no longer exists in any way: rip off the calendar page and face a Tabula Rasa, a Lockean new day longing for a fresh untroubled imprint that has nothing of the mess of 2005 about it.

Then, alas, reality somehow managed to elude the best efforts of that ring of fire around the president: a helicopter crashed, Iraqis in large numbers were shredded, Abramoff decided to save his skin and sacrifice our exterminator-in-chief and others like him as “Kenny-Boy’ slowly makes his way towards prison.

And now that 2006 is upon us, the jag must continue though reality is intruding and the forgotten kids are hungry and complaining; the house is dirty and the fridge is empty. It feels as if the reality that Munch prefigured in ‘the scream’ is upon us as I think upon an old long dead friend Bernard Aaronson who did a series of hypnotic experiments that have an uncanny resemblance to our present: while subjects were in a hypnotic state, he altered the space/time parameters of the subjects.

When he removed their past their emotions flat lined and despair set in.

Perhaps an adumbration unless we shut-off the media for a while and learn to focus on what is in front of us again.

Slow down, listen to our breath, eat, even dine instead of fueling up and re-experience the disappearing world that every unnecessary car journey is bringing one moment closer to extinction.

Ira Einhorn
February 2006

Trial Of Ira Einhorn - Kangaroos Everywhere

This evaluation of his case was written by wrongfully convicted author Ira Einhorn, free energy advocate and environmentalist, from his prison cell, ES6859, P.O. Box 1000, Houtzdale, PA 16698-1000:

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

Prosecutor Joel Rosen, Notes Of Testimony.

1. I was arrested in late March of 1979 for the murder of Holly Maddux whose bloodless body was discovered in a trunk in a closet on the back porch of my small apartment.

2. The original prosecutor, Barbara Christie, blew down a report, due to us under normal discovery procedures, so that she could remove the page numbers. This allowed her to disappear certain pages containing exculpatory (Brady) material.

The report, done by two ex-FBI agents, hired by the family of the deceased, formed the basis of my arrest.

A. She removed five sightings of the deceased that took place up to nine months after the prosecution has insisted, for 27 years, that the murder took place.

Two of the sightings made by police detectives who knew me well and were assigned to my neighborhood, for an extensive period of time during the first MOVE disturbance, were withheld from us until 2002, thus were not available during my in absentia trial.

B. She removed a statement by these two FBI agents that began: “If we are going to pin this on Einhorn...”

C. Other material, that for reasons unknown, I have never seen.

3. It required five court hearings to get some of the material mentioned in 1.(A) and (B), but the DA’s office continued to withhold two of the sightings until 2002.

4. The DA’s office did not use the normal procedure for the forensics whose results form the basis for any conviction. First, they sent all the material to the FBI Laboratory; when they came up empty: no blood, no human protein and fingerprints that were neither mine nor that of the deceased, they did not bother to ask to be identified, they sat on the results.

It took a court order to get the results.

5. The same procedure was tried again with Toxicon Associates, the same laboratory that later did the O. J. case. They came up with the same results.

6. So in a quandary, they turned to the local man that they had by-passed twice. He invented a new test: never repeated by anyone, never published and never peer reviewed.

He got a possible positive for protein: this new untested procedure is a violation of the Frye/Daubert standard which governs the admissibility of evidence allowed in court. It never should have been allowed in the court room.

Dr. Tumosa, the man who did the original testing for Toxicon Laboratory, made that clear during the trial: You can’t use an untested procedure when a man’s life is at stake.

But Judge Mazzola wanted a conviction, not justice.


N.B.: The untested fingerprints were conveniently lost, as were the bloodless clothes that the deceased was wearing.

As the 2002 trial made clear, blood would have sprayed everywhere.

NO BLOOD was found in the body, in the fluids inside or outside the trunk or anyplace else in the alleged murder scene.

7. After my first lawyer, now U.S. Senator, Arlen Spector and I parted company, a young lawyer, Norris Gelman, took over the case. He made it clear that I was not about to get a fair trial.

“They are changing the rules as they go along!”

8. Thus I went underground in January of 1981.

9. In the mid 80s, 67 volumes of my diaries, supposedly taken as evidence after my arrest, were turned over illegally to a journalist; he used them to write a totally sensational, damning book about the case. 13 TV specials, innumerable other media tales and a two part TV mini-series – now available on video all over the world – were to follow. All based on material plagiarized from my journals, as for almost twenty years, I spoke to no journalists.

10. The bias in the book was made clear by Stafford Beer and others who were horrified by what the author did with their interviews.

11. In 1993, an unprecedented in absentia murder trial was held. My lawyer was coerced into defending me. I was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

12. By early 1997 my decision was final.

13. In June of 1997, I was discovered in France.

14. In early December of 1997, the French refused to extradite me as a retrial was impossible.

15. In response, under the auspices of the Philadelphia DA’s office, the Pennsylvania legislature passed the Einhorn Law. All jurists who have written about the law, in any serious manner, have declared it unconstitutional as it violates a basic American political/constitutional principle: The separation of powers. (For those readers who have some legal training, 24 Suffolk Transnat’l L. Rev 353 is an extensive discussion of the issue.) A number of legal experts filed affidavits with the French court explaining the above.

The court granted the 2nd extradition request and allowed me to remain free. The politicians, however, initially refused to execute the request as I had enormous political support across the entire spectrum of French political life and they knew that the law was a ploy.

Prime Minister Jospin just let the order molder on his desk.

He gave way only when President Clinton called.

16. The media commotion that Joel Rosen mentioned felt unprecedented as the battle raged. It certainly continued during and after my return to the United States in July of 2001. There were 565 local newspaper articles.

17. On September 28, 2001, I was compared to Osama Bin Laden in a local paper, complete with a picture. A tomato throwing contest sponsored by local media was presided over by the Commissioner Of Police.

Under these circumstances a fair trial in Philadelphia was not possible.

18. Handing evidence, taken with a search warrant, over to a journalist for his own use is unprecedented in the case law I and a number of others have examined. It is such egregious prosecutorial misconduct that it would produce a mistrial or dismissal in an honest court, but Judge Mazzola did not even allow it to be discussed during the pre trial motion about it. He was blatantly protecting the prosecution, as he did throughout the trial. He acted as a second prosecutor throughout the trial.

Some examples follow:

A. He did not permit my wife to testify at the trial. Her absence totally unbalanced the court room.

B. He allowed 15 year old defamatory evidence to be presented. Material that took up the majority of the cross examination of my testimony.

C. While I was testifying about prosecutorial misconduct, he interrupted me to question me about how I had been treated during the trial. A question that was totally out of context and only posed as an attempt to confuse the jury.

D. While I was testifying, the assistant DA held up a 4” by 12” bag which had ‘Bullshit Bag’ inscribed on it. My lawyer insisted she be questioned about the matter (obvious grounds for a mistrial or a dismissal). Judge Mazzola refused.

E. At the end of the trial he insulted me on the basis of a word I had used while testifying. He insisted it didn’t exist in his dictionary. An international society bearing such a name has existed since at least 1975. At the time of the trial google.com produced 4,000 hits with 3 articles about me in the top 20.

F. In violation of Pennsylvania rules of court, he reseated the jury in the box after the trial was concluded and allowed TV into the courtroom. My lawyers could not believe their eyes.

G. His worst and most flagrant act of bias was his telling the jury that they could ignore the time of death when deciding upon my guilt or innocence, thus doing away with the very basis of the trial as both the prosecution and the defense focused most of their arguments upon the date that the prosecution had insisted upon for over two decades.

He effectively did away with my defense.

19. He then delayed my appeal for 28 months.

20. My lawyers refused to act.

21. I filed three pro se motions with the superior court about these delays. Twice the court ordered the judge to file. He finally did after 28 months when he had been in contempt of court for six months.

22. My lawyers ignored the first filing date for over a month; the court could have dismissed the appeal.

23. I have done two years of intense work on the issues, but my lawyers refused to communicate or share a draft of the brief.

24. They did not brief all the issues as I asked.

25. The judge’s 218 page submission (most are a few pages) is an abomination and full of outright lies.

26. Both the judge and my lawyers lie about the history of the case in their respective briefs; both omit my three docketed and responded to motions.

27. Judge Mazzola defends my lawyers a number of times in his brief – hardly his function – and asks the court to close out all further appeals – hardly his prerogative – and rule on matters that were not raised in the appeal.

His bias screams as loudly as Caesar’s wounds.

28. My lawyers continue to refuse all communication.

29. I have filed three pro se motions asking the court to dismiss them and appoint a new lawyer. The court denied my motions and failed to follow their own procedures as laid down in the case law for such matters.

30. I filed a 4th pro se motion reminding them of their own procedures. I await their response.

31. During this recent period: November 05 – February 06, my lawyers have not sent me any of the papers filed with the court relevant to my case.

32. Thus, I have effectively no counsel, a direct violation of my 6th Amendment rights.

33. The DA was given a Final Notice to file his brief by January 24, 06. On January 23, he filed for a continuance, contrary to court order and a motion to correct the record in the case.

34. I could oppose neither motion for my lawyers did not send me a copy and the court has not responded to my requests, both formal and informal, to send me copies of motions filed in my case.

35. On February 14, 2006 the DA filed his brief. I have two weeks to file a rebuttal, but I can’t do so as I have not been sent a copy of the brief.

36. Seven year old TV specials, play again and again, month after month, reiterating my ‘obvious’ guilt based upon facts that my trial blew away.

37. A two part TV mini-series, 50% fantasy, is on video in many languages. It is televised quite often in the USA. Ms. King Kong, Naomi Watts, play my supposed victim.

Above I have described in a series of numbered statements, 27 years of judicial, legislative and media misconduct in my on-going case. Due to spatial limitations, I have been very selective, and made very few comments. As Sgt. Friday said: “Just the facts ma’am.”

I now have a documented case that any prominent lawyer or honest journalist could use as a powerful example of how flimsy our ‘rule of law’ has become.

A case that a law school class could learn from.

An example of how the lower courts have made a mockery of justice and become a shadow of a judicial system I used to take pride in, as I have now looked at numerous cases in which similar shameless behavior has been enacted under the color of law.

Ira Einhorn
2/20/06

P. S: I almost forgot: an untimely civil suit was prosecuted, in absentia. I now owe $1,000,000,000.

I DID NOT KILL HOLLY MADDUX