DISUNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Controversy over the attacks on 9/11 continues. Despite UNITED 93, a film I found very compelling, there are those who think that crash and whatever hit the Pentagon were both fabrications. Even though there is no question that something hit the twin towers, a lot more people suspect the government had a hand in the collapse of the towers and neighboring WTC 7.

But those numbers pale in comparison to those who distrust the reasons given for attacking Iraq. Was Colin Powell misled or misleading is his presentation to the United Nations? Did the administration honestly think there were WMDs posing a nuclear threat to the region, or were we lied to in an attempt to get us to accept an action we never would have accepted otherwise?

After all, this administration has always operated in secrecy and doubt. Did polling officials in Florida and Ohio rig the results that favored Bush over Gore and then Kerry? Was the Diebold Corporation, which manufactured many of the voting machines, complicit? After all, the president of Diebold “promised” the state of Ohio to Bush.

After election, the administration established a pattern of secrecy. Documents that had been de-classified were re-classified. Wiretaps were ordered and first legitimized with claims of warrants. Then, even the pretense of warrants was dropped. Cheney, with close ties to big oil, formed an energy task force, refusing to release the identities of the participants. We do know that environmentalists, conservationists, and alternative fuel folks did not need to apply. Is it any wonder that the public feels bamboozled by the explanations for soaring fuel costs?

Halliburton, still doling out deferred payment to Cheney, wins no-bid contracts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and even when those contracts are executed with shabby accountability, they are renewed.

Bush told us he is a “compassionate conservative.” His compassion apparently extends only to big business and the rich, the primary beneficiaries of his tax cuts. The poor need not apply. He tried to privatize Social Security in the name of rescuing it, like rescuing a drowning man with a large, heavy rock. The Medicare Prescription Drug program? Tailored to the needs of the pharmaceutical industry, and if you can’t figure it out, you must have Alzheimer’s, for which you need an expensive medication.

It seems like we’ve added a fourth branch of government, i.e., the Great American Lobby, headquartered on K Street, de facto president Jack Abramoff. The speaker of the House resigns in a flurry of charges of corruption. A congressman is caught on tape accepting bribes, the money is found in his freezer, and he has the audacity to complain about the F.B.I.’s intrusion. The Democrats and Republicans alike issue statements denouncing the F.B.I’s intrusion. Is that chutzpah or what?

Actually, that’s small potatoes. We got our knickers in a knot over the awarding of port security to Dubai Ports World, yet nobody even noticed that Treasury Secretary John Snow, under whose aegis the deal was awarded, is a former executive of CSX, a container shipping firm with links to Dubai Ports World and the Carlysle Corporation, which you learned about if you saw FAHRENHEIT 9/11. The revolving door of cronyism between government and industry spins again.

One after another corporation is exposed as running a shell game. The executives at Krispy Kreme were misleading their investors and employees right out of the Enron playbook both of which went belly-up after their executive officers reaped millions. Turns out the high and noble institution, the University of California, has been handing out bonus packages right and left, in blatant violation of its rules and procedures, hoodwinking the Regents, and the President of the University hardly seems ashamed. The lid is about to blow on Fannie Mae, the largest facilitator of mortgage lending in the country. Turns out the Army Corps of Engineers may have bungled the job in rebuilding the levees and floodwalls of New Orleans, not just now but in the past, but of course the Corps denies it. At least the President of the University of California had the decency to admit his wrongdoing. “Taking responsibility” has become rare and as ineffectual as taking umbrage.

Or perhaps taking confession. Instead of taking responsibility for its pedophilic priests and putting them out of the harm’s way of children, the RC Church simply rotated them from one parish to another, all the while denying any wrong-doing, until victims began collecting millions. Then something had to be done.

Before the threat of avian flu appeared to subside, our government had purchased millions of doses of Tamiflu, manufactured by Roche from a formula owned by Gilead. Who was the former chairman of Gilead before he became Secretary of Defense? You got it. Is it any wonder that bird flu is now being spoken of as a hoax?

Same with global warming. I happen to believe it is a reality, but I’m waiting for the next conspiracy theory to allege that the administration is doing it on purpose to facilitate drilling in Alaska.

Last but not least, our sports and entertainment industries. Barry Bonds is booed as he breaks Babe Ruth’s record. Was it skill or steroids? The last two contestants make it to the finals of “American Idol.” Was it votes or manipulation?

I was inspired to compose this essay by rumors circulating about “American Idol.” Did Reuben win over Clay Aiken because the producers suspected Clay might be gay? Are the judges’ comments a not-very-subtle attempt to influence voters? Are the phone lines rigged (like voting machines) to give votes cast for one contestant to another contestant (a notion I would seriously consider if I found out Diebold makes the equipment)?

If you add up all the above aspects of life in which trust is at a minimum, corruption seemingly can’t get any more rampant, and the notion of “truth” is beginning to seem like a cruel joke, the mental state of America is somewhere between utter cynicism and blatant paranoia. The motto seems to be, or seems that it ought to be, “Trust no one.”

When I was growing up, i.e., until day before yesterday, it was during and after WWII. We were “good guys,” fighting for the “right” causes, not just for self-interest (at least until Pearl Harbor). Just about everybody did his or her part to support the war effort. The notion that FDR had links to industries that might be profiting from the war would have been unthinkable, and I don’t recall that notion ever being entertained.

Then it was perhaps Eisenhower’s warnings about the military-industrial complex that brought the sobering awareness that something could begin to stink in the state of Denmark. The film, WHY WE FIGHT, spells out that thesis. In America, we hold history in low regard and scarcely remember our own. If it were otherwise, we would “remember” many periods in our history when government and various industries conspired against “the people.”

The next glass of cold water, as I recall, came when Spiro Agnew was exposed as a sleazy, two-bit crook, and I wondered how in the world Nixon came to pick him. Watergate answered that question for me.

Kennedy was my hero, but I’ll have to admit that my unmitigated admiration took a blow when I learned what a womanizer he was and the first “conspiracy” theory I can remember, that Marilyn Monroe had been offed because she knew too much.

The second conspiracy theory I remember lives on, namely that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby were not isolated nut cases, acting alone, that perhaps our president had been assassinated by our government.

And then there were the lies about Viet Nam. As Robert McNamara relates in FOG OF WAR, Gen. Westmoreland once speculated that if we hadn’t “won” the war, he and McNamara would have been tried as war criminals for crimes against humanity. And they all lied, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, asking us not to believe our eyes as we watched the 6:00 news, asking us not to puke when the National Guard shot the students at Kent State.

That’s it, I think, the extent of lying, so prevalent that is has become the expectation. Maybe not even lying, more the Art of the Dodgeful Answer, “I did not have sex with that woman”…unless you count fellatio as sex. Forget “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” It’s more like “the parts of the truth that make me look good.”

“Integrity” is a quaint term that used to mean something in American society, a term that Webster defines as “steadfast adherence to a strict moral and ethical code.” It’s as though collectively, we have decided to abandon the code of honesty, in our commerce, our government and other higher institutions, even in our sports and entertainment. Not just caveat emptor, buyer beware, but citizen beware. That, my friends, to borrow terms from construction and real estate, is dry rot of the infrastructure of our character. Our piers and joists have been eaten away by the termites and beetles of greed and self-interest, unabated by compassionate enlightenment. Any house like that is bound to fall down, and there is no homeowners insurance for such losses.

SEPARATION OF POWERS

The issue of the separation of powers and its unconstitutional violation by the passing of the Einhorn Law looms largely in my case.

It is also in the news at present as a result of the FBI’s invasion of the office of a member of the House of Representatives.

Thus it is worth taking some time to explain the concept which lies at the very basis of our form of government.

The modern history of the development of our form of government emerged from the desire to restrain the power of the rule of one, or in or most immediate history: the king. This attempt to restrain the king has a long history in England and reaches a climax with the actual trial and beheading of a king during the mid 17th century.

That action is as exemplary an act as one can find in recent annals of western political thought, for it asserts the right to question authority at the deepest level and must be seen as a precursor to both the American and French Revolutions.

It also stirred up much discussion about the nature and type of government that would be adequate in a society that was slowly leaving the remnants of its feudal ways and entering the industrial revolution.

Two concepts come up again and again in this discussion as it was held among political thinkers during the 17th and 18th century in England and Europe and then those gathered in Philadelphia to turn a confederacy of states into a more perfect union: A great concern to limit the power of the executive, as the ‘tyranny’ of King George was paramount in everyone’s mind; a way to maintain the separation of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the envisioned government, as a means of providing a check on all three branches by limiting each to a particular limited realm of power.

The debate both before and after the constitutional convention, held during a hot Philadelphia summer, is unequaled in the quality of discussion about how propertied free white men can best live together in freedom and tranquility.

It was a positive movement in spite of its neglect of the majority of people (Blacks, Indians, Women) who shared the space of the discussers.

The principle of the separation of powers was basic to the political construction that our founders created. It has remained so to this day. The principle has been protected again and again by both the federal and Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

The case law is clear: A law that violates the separation of powers is unconstitutional.

The Philadelphia DA’s office knew this when they proposed the Einhorn Law and the Pennsylvania Legislature knew this when they passed the law, but mob rule prevailed as it has prevailed since 9/11 in issue after issue as a frightened polity was stampeded into an egregious war and a Patriot Act that demeans the very basis of what this country has attempted to stand for before W and his neo-con crew took over.

We don’t do torture. We don’t spy on innocent citizens. We don’t massacre civilians. We respect the Geneva Convention.

WE BELIEVE IN A RULE OF LAW

Or we used to until W took over.

The reason for maintaining the separation of powers is easy to maintain on a practical level:

1. I was tried in absentia for reasons that were never explained.

2. My court decision became final.

3. Only a court can overturn a final decision.

4. If the legislature is allowed to do so that would allow someone who has lost a civil suit to go to the legislature and have a law passed that would overturn the losing decision.

5. But then the original winner could have another law passed, and

6. There would never be any closure.

That is why the Einhorn Law is unconstitutional: It attempts to overturn a final judicial decision with a legislative act.

By doing so it tramples all over the separation of powers and grinds judicial prerogatives into the dust.

Any honest judge would react in horror, as has every lawyer who has looked at the situation.

The law is a very formal enterprise. It is based upon precedent and accepted principles. It should be blind in the application of its principles. Ira Einhorn should not be treated differently than anyone else, publicity (most of it factually inaccurate) notwithstanding.

The law not the mob should rule.

Both the law and our legal tradition must be maintained.

The Einhorn Law flaunts these principles and casts distain upon the law just as W and his minions have brought distain to our history by lying about Iraq and fostering a context in which torture, massacre and denial of any due process can take place.

Our system has been placed under great strain by people who have traded expediency for honor, and usurped power that is not theirs.

We must have the courage to rid ourselves of these traitors to our heritage, just as the founders had the courage to rid themselves of King George.

What has been done in our name has demeaned our past; we must not allow it to demean our future.

Ira Einhorn
June, 2006

What Smell? By Ira Einhorn

In dealing with my case, the media in the United States have rarely reported the ‘facts’ or questioned them. What they have done is parrot the DA, as I dared to challenge a system that has become a political pathway, on the backs of defendants, often innocent, for aspiring DAs.

This short note is an attempt to clarify a particular aspect of my case: the smell that was associated with my apartment building, NOT MY APARTMENT, during the fall of 1977.

I have no idea what the smell was. One hypothesis was that of a dead animal trapped under the floor.

If Holly Maddux had been killed when the DA insisted she was killed for over twenty years and put into a trunk that was then stored in a closet just ten feet from my bed no one would have been able to live in that apartment while the body was decaying, as the smell of a dead body – human or animal – is overwhelming and permeates everything.

Yet, during that time period there were people in my apartment for long periods of time.

I counted eleven people, mentioned in my diary, who spent at least a number of hours with me.

Two women who slept overnight in the apartment, one for a weekend, shortly after the purported death, testified at my trial.

They smelled nothing, as there was no smell.

Holly was seen alive, on at least five separate occasions, months after her supposed death. Information that the DA tried to suppress.

She was supposedly killed in a manner that would have sprayed blood everywhere. No blood was found in the apartment.

No blood was found on her clothes which were conveniently lost.

So the SMELL is a red herring, and the judicial authorities know it to be so, for after hearing all the evidence, Judge Mazzola very pointedly told the jury to ignore the time of death.

An outrageous act given the fact of two decades of DA insistence on the date of death and a defense totally based on such an insistence.

June 2006
Ira Einhorn

American Theocracy - Multitude

AMERICAN THEOCRACY, KEVIN PHILLIPS, VIKING, 2006, 462 PP.



MULTITUDE: WAR AND DEMOCRACY IN THE AGE OF THE EMPIRE, MICHAEL HARDT AND ANTONIO NEGRI, VIKING (PAPER), 2005, 426 PP

PREFERENCE

Denigration, deterioration, degradation and a whole host of other negative words clearly describe the world I see reflected in most of what I read and experience.

The legal system in which I am entangled has little to do with justice and each day presents me with a new more egregious example of its failure.

Yesterday, I was given more information about one of the cases that I have been following for awhile. A case filled with a lot of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, ignoring of the basic rules of procedure and finally such contradiction that all I could do was laugh.

The facts are simple in the latest twist: after having a motion for a retrial denied, the defendant made a request for a transcript, so he could file an appeal. The request is pro forma and there is no reason that it should not be granted, but it was, as the hearing contains prima facie evidence of judicial and prosecutorial misconduct.

My friend hollered loudly in a legal matter.

A transcript arrived, but it was doctored and neither certified by the court reporter or signed by the judge.

He hollered some more to the Justice Department and other higher powers. He then received pounds of documents (no certified transcript) that included the judge’s order for the transcript.
The two orders (one denying the order for the transcript, the other granting it) were signed by the judge at exactly the same time and on the same day.

So my friend now has two orders from his judge in his possession that are exactly similar: one granting him what he needs to file his appeal, the other denying it. And of course a useless transcript as it is neither certified nor signed.

Such behavior is emblematic of the behavior I see everyplace I look in American society and what I have experienced under the color of law since my return to the USA in July of 2001.
The legal system is bankrupt and anyone denying that assertion must be classed with those who still deny global warming through the conversions in that area are coming thicker and faster as the glaciers and ice caps melt at ever increasing rates and our daily weather seems to be produced by an erratic roulette wheel rather than by the ‘seasons’ I grew up with.

In May, I have experienced mainly October for most of the month, then 900 heat (rare) for a few days, then a thunderstorm that would have frightened Thor. Anyone who is older and with some semblance of memory knows that the weather is changing before their eyes.

REVIEW

The two books under review both address problems I and the friend mentioned above, face as we struggle to reclaim our lives in a system that has gone mad.

The Phillips book is totally focused on the USA, providing over 450 pages of evidence for his thesis that reflects my preface above. It could easily be entitled: ‘We’ve Lost It’ or ‘The Decline of the USA.’

Anyone reading my letters written during the past 5 years would not be surprised by any of it. I have lived through the recent degradation and described it as honestly as I am able to do.
Phillips concentrates on three areas:

1. The coming oil shock – we re running out of oil, the petroleum age is over, habits run deep and those in charge of our government are deaf, dumb and blind wherein the needed changes are concerned.

2. The religious takeover of the Republican party by born again fundamentalists who, under the aegis of W , have pushed an agenda on the American people that is alien to both our founders and most of our history. An agenda based on ideology that is an inadequate way to handle our problems and that can’t begin to deal with them for biblical hand waving can’t solve complex 21st Century problems.

“Ideology is a lot easier, because you don’t have to know anything or search for anything. You already know the answer to everything. It’s not penetrable by facts.” (page 235, Ex-Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O’Neil)

The main criticism I have of W and his cohort of fumblers has little to do with politics per se. What I object to most is the continual lying, the almost total incompetence and a pride in ignorance that is a horrible model in a society that increasingly requires a lifetime of learning to survive.

Phillips has great expertise in polling and getting people elected. His discussion of religion and voting patterns is packed with data and a must read for anyone concerned with what has happened to the USA.

3. Debt is the third issue which Phillips and a few courageous others think is the most frightening factor in the current American situation. We are now the largest debtor nation in history and so beholden to others that if one debt holder panics and begins selling $s or a big oil nation insists on denominating oil in euros, the slide of the $ could land the nation in the territory of 1923 Germany.

“Debt, directly or indirectly, as decayed the very soul of America.” (265), James Medoff & Andres Harless, The Indebted Society.

We are borrowing close to three billion dollars a day just to survive.

In essence the world produces products and we print $s to buy those products. A scam of gigantic proportions. The USA is now borrowing and spending most of the world’s savings and our own savings are now in negative territory.

Phillips goes into the debt crunch at length. It is the best popular discussion of the matter I have read.

Those who can step back from our present context and overview it dispassionately are rare, as money usually generates immense passion.

The essence of what Phillips is saying about American decline is based on previous models of past imperial and financial powers: Roman, Spanish, Dutch and British.

I’ve read some of the scholarship and agree with what Phillips is saying about how indicative the present state of our economy is: We now make money from money, not products. Finance not manufacturing is in control. In the past that has always indicated decline, end time.

Combine that with American dependence on oil from without, our religious imperial fanaticism and the recipe is a perfect match up with past declines.

W is to Phillips a know-nothing leader who is exacerbating all these trends and literally leading the country off a cliff.

Alas, I agree.

Hardt and Negri are all well aware of the American debacle, but their focus is planetary and what they are selling is hope.

Now without hope, we are lost. No argument about that. As a prisoner, I am doubly aware of that

BUT

That hope requires a tad more facts to function for me and though Hardt and Negri are astute theoreticians and have read through libraries of leading edge material their practical suggestions are very flat.

If you are short on hope, Multitude may juice your mind and help you breathe more easily – a necessary function – but its admitted practical paucity will make the reader aware of just how dire our situation is.

And the elephant in everyone’s living room is not adequately discussed in either book.

The books on global warming and its most dangerous consequence are flooding out. We are back in 1969 waiting for the equivalent of Earth Day to happen, but on a planetary level. That event will focus our minds and subsume the concerns of both Phillips and Hardt and Negri, for what we are headed for will force a rethink of everything we are doing, since the human actions of the past 250 years have set loose a series of changes that will require a reorganization of human life, as the very parameters that define the air bowl in which we live are transmuting before our relatively unaware eyes.

Ira Einhorn
May 2006

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