April 30, 2013 at 2:05 P.M. My access to this blog and all attempts to navigate this site to reach my texts was obstructed and frozen for a few minutes. I do not know whether or how many of my writings have been violated in disregard for copyright laws and the U.S. Constitution. I will try to repair any harm done to my works. ("How censorship works in America.")
April 29, 2013 at 1:30 P.M. Hackers have altered the reservation system for computers at Morningside Heights, NYPL. As a result, reservations that are made by library patrons do not align with computer availability. My reservations were changed twice this afternoon. I have retained copies of the receipts for these reservations. No one from technical support has provided assistance. This is very unusual.
Attempts to post "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" at Philosopher's Quest continue to be obstructed, altered, or defaced by government hackers from New Jersey. I will do my best to make necessary corrections even under these circumstances.
For the time being, however, I prefer to allow readers to see what I struggle against, every day, as America's public officials call upon the global community for Internet "freedom" and "open debate." It may be useful to demonstrate the benefits of using an outline when interpreting works of art or applying philosophical ideas. ("Outline For 'Total Recall': A Movie Review" then ''Total Recall': A Movie Review.")
What follows is the outline for my forthcoming review of "Oblivion." I will also be posting an essay dealing with the continuing civil disobedience and hunger strike at Guantanamo prison which has captured global attention. "Oblivion" is ideas-based Sci-Fi and a timely political allegory that offers cultural criticisms that will appeal to Republicans as well as Democrats. The viewer is invited to "complete" the film narrative by means of his or her interpretations.
I am deeply grateful for the support of many friends from all over the world. No response to my inquiries has yet been received from the FBI or Mr. Vance's office. Anyone claiming to be from those offices should have the necessary credentials and you should be able to verify those credentials, independently of the representations of individuals claiming to be NYPD, FBI, or other U.S. officials.
Again: No one is authorized to speak on my behalf. The screen saver disrupts my writing efforts every 30 seconds or so at NYPL, Morningside Heights.
"Oblivion": A Movie Review.
Manohla Dargis, "After the Apocalypse, Things Go Downhill," (Movie Review) in The New York Times, April 19, 2013, at p. C10. (This "review" has to be read to be believed.)
Charlie Savage, "Drone Strikes Turn Allies Into Enemies, Yemeni Says," in The New York Times, April 24, 2013, at p. A9.
Andrew W. Butler, "Postmodernism and Science Fiction," in Edward James & Foral Mendelsohn, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 2003), pp. 137-149.
Simon Morden, Equations of Life (New York: Orbit, 2011).
Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2001).
Thomas Babington MaCaulay Lord MaCaulay, "The Lays of Ancient Rome," in John Wain, Ed., The Oxford Anthology of English Poetry: Blake to Heaney (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1986), pp. 301-318.
Introduction: "We won the war."
A. Politics/Drones/Resources: "Mission Accomplished"?
B. Psychology: Memory, Dreams, Selves and Time Spirals.
C. Religion/Myth/Art: "Christina's World."
I. Politics: "We're not supposed to remember, remember?"
A. Woman's Duality: "We're a great team!"
B. Eros/Caritas/Filia: "Another day in paradise."
C. A Mop-Up Operation: "I don't want to know!"
II. Psychology: "Those memories are you."
A. Memory: "Do you remember her?"
B. Dreams: "The dreams are real."
C. Landscapes of Reality: A Tale of Two Cities.
III. Myth: "Welcome home, Jack!"
A. The fruit of forbidden knowledge: Nietzsche's "Death of God" and "Eternal Return."
B. Obedience/Disobedience/Freedom: Is Sally "America"?
C. "What will you die for?": Roman Virtue and the Pax Americana.
Conclusion: "A beautiful death."
A. Return to Eden: The Lays of Ancient Rome (1842).
Monday, April 29, 2013
Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Oh, to be in India ...
G.C. Scott, His Mistress's Voice: An Erotic Novel (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1994).
At a sidewalk table filled with books, most of which were absolute junk -- Robert Ludlum, for example, or Barbara Cartland -- I found (this may surprise you) a Jamesian literary work exploring a set of triadic relations only superficially concerned with persons enjoying unusual forms of sex. In other words, this novel looks like a "dirty book" but is a lot more interesting than such books normally are.
Harriet, the "Mistress," serves as the metaphor for liberation and self-realization through self-giving or yielding of the body of the "submissive" (Tom) to be used in sexual play. Neophytes are transformed and pain inflicted is supplemented by pleasure received.
What is more -- like His Mistress's Voice -- the Satyricon dramatizes philosophical issues concerning the nature of love and power at "Trimalchio's" banquet, an obvious reference to Plato's Symposium, where the process by which the initiate learns from the Master -- not Socrates but Diotima, a woman! -- is a kind of "eros" achieved through the body contemplating the eternal forms beyond the earthly dross of matter. Dialogue is always a kind of sex. ("The Allegory of the Cave.")
Sex and philosophy are dialectics of effort and achievement, pain and pleasure, fire and ice, "Violante Placido." ("'The American': A Movie Review.")
"Truth and enlightenment at Pergamon must be enforced or tested by cruelty, torture, slavery and death. The latter are indeed necessary for the former to exist; thus even suffering and torture -- basanos -- is beautiful and must be represented as such. 'In the parts where the greatest pain is placed,' wrote Winckelman about the Laokoon, [sic.] 'he shows the greatest beauty.' ..."
Harriet, Tom, Beth are comparable to William, Lucy, Southampton. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
"When thou my music, music playest."
In fact, Shakespeare was one of the horniest poets in English literature burdened (or blessed!) with any number of erections before breakfast. Fortunate man and kindred spirit.
Upon that blessed wood [his penis] whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st [she's on top]
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, [moan]
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap [all the other idiots she screwed]
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, [not her hand!]
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, [Guess what he wants to kiss?]
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand: [yes, it does!]
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips, [they're dancing all right]
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, [let your fingers do the walking!]
Making dead wood more blessed than living lips: [a second erection?]
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. ["lips" indeed, Master Shakespeare!]
I suspect that G.C. Scott is a pseudonym used by a writer or writers (I think a woman) with feminine and masculine sides of her personality in enviable balance. One candidate to have written this book is Rupert Everett. Another may be Helen Mirren. Boris Johnson?
References to the child's imagination and play also abound in the text with allusions to Peter Pan in search of shadows and, of course, Alice in Wonderland:
Gender is play, costume, theater or a "text" that is deconstructed in this novel with a bow to Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida who would have loved the book. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory" and "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" then, again, "What you will ...")
"Normal" is transformed into another pose; sex is ballet, a "dance of the hours":
The loss of speech disconnecting readers and characters from the "world" suggests that this novel is map and territory: "There is nothing outside the text." (p. 148.)
My self or identity reflects the power to which I am drawn or which I exert.
What is rightly challenged by this author is the limitation of the power-role to the masculine "mask" while the subservient-role is necessarily "female" as in most Western erotica or porn. I like and admire the reversal of this traditional format by Scott in this novel. Derrida encounters Foucault: Christopher Norris, "Derrida and Kant," in What's Wrong With Postmodernism? Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1990), pp. 194-208 and James Miller, Michel Foucault (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 292-293, pp. 364-365:
John Stuart Mill was torn between philosophy as opposed to "tiddlywinks and pushpin" -- neither of which are sexual.
Here we see the difference between analytical and Continental thought. I am best classified as a Continental thinker among other things. ("G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism.")
Dr. June Singer's discussion of "lingam" and "phallus" is recommended for those with flashlights under your covers: June Singer, Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of Sexuality (New York: Anchor, 1977), pp. 178-179, p. 193.
I will close by trying to be clear about what this "struck nerve" or vital core of sexual meaning in contemporary America is and may yet become. Incidentally, it is sadistic cruelty or violence that is truly obscene and not passionate eroticism.
There is simply no way that America's sexism and suppression of female sexuality could not be a part of our erotica because it is part of ALL of us.
Scott's novel does exactly that. For this reason, I describe His Mistress's Voice as a feminist and revolutionary literary work which is raunchy and fun to read. ("Good Will Humping" and "Genius and Lust.")
"When to the sessions of sweet silent thought."
Among the pleasant surprises available to readers in Manhattan is discovering a good novel or fine book where one least expects to make such a discovery.
At a sidewalk table filled with books, most of which were absolute junk -- Robert Ludlum, for example, or Barbara Cartland -- I found (this may surprise you) a Jamesian literary work exploring a set of triadic relations only superficially concerned with persons enjoying unusual forms of sex. In other words, this novel looks like a "dirty book" but is a lot more interesting than such books normally are.
Please see Henry James' "The Golden Bowl" where explicit sex is repressed and moved offstage to allow for the symbolizing of eros in a "cracked" golden bowl, which is vagina and uterus, or the feminine vessel of life. See Gore Vidal's essay on "The Golden Bowl" then his novel, Myra Breckinridge and Rambling Rose by Calder Willingham. ("'The Da Vinci Code': A Movie Review.")
In James' The Tragic Muse each of "four characters begins at the farthest extremity of an 'X.' They cross. Each ends in an opposite position. One wonders: does a living pulse beat, or is it only a metronome?" Gore Vidal, "A Note on 'The Best Man,'" in Rocking the Boat: A Political, Literary and Theatrical Commentary (Boston: Little, Brown, 1962), p. 274.
Mistress's Voice is a study of power as fluctuating energy that is always political, aesthetic, religious and erotic. Plot elements are surreal and secondary to the ideas in the novel. A man, Tom, meets a woman, Beth, who initiates him into the rigors and delights of sexual play as the drama of identity forged through power-rituals unfolds. The circle is complete when Harriet enters the scene as "Lucifer" to this "Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained" drama of sexual ecstasy.
Harriet, the "Mistress," serves as the metaphor for liberation and self-realization through self-giving or yielding of the body of the "submissive" (Tom) to be used in sexual play. Neophytes are transformed and pain inflicted is supplemented by pleasure received.
John Fowles "The Collector" and "The Magus" are obvious sources for this gifted writer. Edith Wharton's "Lilly Bart" may be seen as the "submissive" subjected to sexual cruelty in The House of Mirth. Another title for Mr./Ms. Scott's novel is "The House of Mirth." ("'The French Lieutenant's Woman': A Movie Review.")
The Marquis de Sade's Justine and Philosophy in the Bedroom are works to read alongside this novel which is as good or better than much of the erotica churned out by Henry Miller in Paris during the thirties. Henry Miller, Under the Roofs of Paris (New York: Grove Press, 1983) is less well-written than Scott's novel and highly misogynistic, unlike much of Miller's other work that I like a great deal.
Scott's prose is on the same level with the best erotica of the twentieth century, Anais Nin for example, or Lawrence Durrell and D.H. Lawrence. Most of the novels reviewed recently in The New York Times are far less interesting than this erotic fiction. ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")
Erotic themes have certainly been of concern to artists since antiquity. For instance, among pagans one thinks immediately of Virgil's Ars Amoris and Petronious Satyricon is a much immitated narrative that would make a great porn movie. Mistress is a satyr play. ("This is a form of grotesque Greek play dealing with an absurd part of a myth or treating a serious part in a burlesque or [sexual] fashion.")
What is more -- like His Mistress's Voice -- the Satyricon dramatizes philosophical issues concerning the nature of love and power at "Trimalchio's" banquet, an obvious reference to Plato's Symposium, where the process by which the initiate learns from the Master -- not Socrates but Diotima, a woman! -- is a kind of "eros" achieved through the body contemplating the eternal forms beyond the earthly dross of matter. Dialogue is always a kind of sex. ("The Allegory of the Cave.")
Philosophical initiation is likened to the loss of virginity for the student, by Plato, who regards sexuality (across gender lines and sexual-orientations) as yielding secret knowledge or wisdom, just as philosophy must relate us to the eternal forms beyond the flux of earthly sensations.
Sex and philosophy are dialectics of effort and achievement, pain and pleasure, fire and ice, "Violante Placido." ("'The American': A Movie Review.")
As we have reason to know thanks to recent events (the Lewinsky scandal) sex and philosophy are always political. Pleasure and pain define the life of power and law. On one level, these literary characters are aspects of a single psyche; on another level, they symbolize the dance of power in society; on a third level, they reveal a theory of adjudication (Equity over Law) as rules are created, interpreted, applied, broken and penalties are imposed, rationally, by Harriet as chief player of the "godgame." We are obedient slaves. There is no right to appeal. Georges Bataille, L'Erotisme (Paris: Editions Minuit, 1957), then David Farrell Krell, Nietzsche: A Novel (New York: SUNY, 1996).
"As he was contemplating the uses of all this gear, her voice drifted down from above: 'Eh, la-bas! Are you getting on all right down there?" His Mistress's Voice, p. 124. (I detect a referrence to J.K. Huysman's decadent novel, La Bas.)
As Lon Fuller likened the administration of power in the home to "judicial creativity" so Harriet's judgments reveal the dialectic of politics and law in the experience of sexual pleasure which is like mystical bliss. This notion may be traced to the ancient world and, most recently, to Foucault's discussion of the "technologies of the self" in The History of Sexuality.
"Truth and enlightenment at Pergamon must be enforced or tested by cruelty, torture, slavery and death. The latter are indeed necessary for the former to exist; thus even suffering and torture -- basanos -- is beautiful and must be represented as such. 'In the parts where the greatest pain is placed,' wrote Winckelman about the Laokoon, [sic.] 'he shows the greatest beauty.' ..."
Stephen F. Eisenman, The Abu Ghraib Effect (London: Reaktion Books, 2007), pp. 52-53. (Please see Oscar Wilde's "The Nightingale and the Rose" then "The Soldier and the Ballerina" and Mel Gibson's "The Passion.")
Friedrich Nietzsche speaks of "passionate suffering" in savage rituals of Dionysian exuberance:
"It is in the region of orgiastic mass seizures that we must look for the original dye which stamps upon the memory the expressive movements of the extreme flights of emotion -- as far as they can be translated into gestural language -- with such intensity, that these 'engrams' [imprints] of the experience of passionate suffering persist as a heritage stored in the memory."
The Abu Ghraib Effect, pp.53-54 (emphasis added). ("What is Memory?")
Compare Lionel Rubinoff, The Pornography of Power: An Inquiry Into Man's Capacity for Evil (New York: Ballantine, 1967), pp. 185-216 with Agehananada Bharati, The Tantric Tradition (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 228-279.
The most frightening exploration of the will to dominance and enslavement or control of others, as the expression of a repressed sexual delight in cruelty, is found in the depiction of the psychiatrist in Patrick McGrath's brilliant novel, Asylum (New York: Vintage, 1977), p. 222. ("I had more than once imagined her in my house, as she once so frequently had been, among my furniture, my books, my art.")
I am sure that the person inserting "errors" in this review is similar to the psychiatrist-torturer in Mr. McGrath's novel. She must be consumed by a kind of insatiable desire for possession of what she cannot have. Alain Badiou, "What is Love?: The Sexes and Philosophy," in Conditions (New York & London: Continuum, 2008), pp. 179-197. ("... contemporary philosophy is, as we see every day, addressed to women. It may even be suspected, as I lay myself open to this, of engaging, as discourse, in strategies of seduction.") (Steven Corcorran, translation.)
Shakespeare's "Sonnets" enact a similar drama -- "enacting and drama," imagination and play, are key terms in appreciating these works -- where sex is a performance complete with costumes and "dance." A homoerotic text is placed by Shakespeare alongside a celebration of heterosexual lust that lapses into a lamentation at the punishments inflicted by the unfaithful lover -- "whore" is a term Shakespeare reserves for himself (quite correctly!) -- then returns to the poet's sexual appetite and energy, alternating feminine and masculine "roles" and "performances" in a manner that may well distress feminist Puritans like Catherine McKinnon. Angela Carter, The Sadean Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (New York: Pantheon, 1978), pp. 116-137. ("The School of Love: The Education of a Male Oedipus.")
Shakespeare lusts after and clearly experiences a sexual relationship with the Earl of Southampton and Lucy Dark, his prostitute-mistress and (I suspect) also Emilia Lanier who is his musician-courtesan who probably got it on with Ms. Dark together with several courtiers of both genders. Anthony Burgess entitles his chapter dealing with these matters "Mistress" and suggests an analogy between the poetic "voice" and the call of eros: Anthony Burgess, "Mistress," in Shakespeare (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1970), pp. 120-131 then Anthony Burgess, Enderby's Dark Lady (New York: McGraw Hill, 1984), entirety.
Harriet, Tom, Beth are comparable to William, Lucy, Southampton. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
"When thou my music, music playest."
I suspect that this may be a perfect "Masterpiece Theater" moment in which we may indulge in high culture by quoting an utterly filthy poem which appears entirely innocent to modern readers taught in high school that Shakespeare is, "like, really good and everything, similar to the Pope and stuff."
In fact, Shakespeare was one of the horniest poets in English literature burdened (or blessed!) with any number of erections before breakfast. Fortunate man and kindred spirit.
How oft, when thou, my music, music play'st,
Upon that blessed wood [his penis] whose motion sounds
With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently sway'st [she's on top]
The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, [moan]
Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap [all the other idiots she screwed]
To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, [not her hand!]
Whilst my poor lips, which should that harvest reap, [Guess what he wants to kiss?]
At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand: [yes, it does!]
To be so tickled, they would change their state
And situation with those dancing chips, [they're dancing all right]
O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, [let your fingers do the walking!]
Making dead wood more blessed than living lips: [a second erection?]
Since saucy jacks so happy are in this,
Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss. ["lips" indeed, Master Shakespeare!]
Burgess, Shakespeare, pp. 128-129. (Quoting from the Sonnets.)
I suggest a novel by Anthony Burgess focusing on the love triangle described in the Sonnets Nothing Like the Sun (New York: Ballantine Books, 1964).
Having disposed of the hypocrisy that says that a book about sex cannot be literature let us dwell on Mr./Ms. Scott's novel.
I suspect that G.C. Scott is a pseudonym used by a writer or writers (I think a woman) with feminine and masculine sides of her personality in enviable balance. One candidate to have written this book is Rupert Everett. Another may be Helen Mirren. Boris Johnson?
The narrative placed on the page is dream-like or surreal, as I say, so that focusing on plausibility of plot and setting is irrelevant to what the author is trying to accomplish in this story. Like Philip Pullman and Neil Geiman, this author has a genuine gift for conjuring alternative realities or dream worlds that have the "feel of the real." Scott should write more novels like this one. Distinct themes surface, converge, separate. A powerful analogy is available to the role of dominatrix (author) and slave (reader) for those into postmodernism. ("What you will ...")
References to the child's imagination and play also abound in the text with allusions to Peter Pan in search of shadows and, of course, Alice in Wonderland:
"As he spoke Tom noticed another note above Katrina's bed. It too was in Harriet's distinctive handwriting and said simply Take me. It reminded Tom of the label on the bottle Alice was adjured to drink. Katrina must have seen and understood the note already, so she knew what to expect. When Tom looked back at her she looked either alarmed or anticipatory, it was hard to be sure which."
His Mistress's Voice, p. 185 (hereafter cited by page number only). ("'Finding Neverland': A Movie Review.")
There is no child molesting of any kind described in this book. The text and textuality are analogized to "Never, Never Land" which is also the place where coitus takes place.
Gender is play, costume, theater or a "text" that is deconstructed in this novel with a bow to Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida who would have loved the book. ("Judith Butler and Gender Theory" and "Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" then, again, "What you will ...")
Feminine and masculine are parts in a story, a "philosophy of the bedroom," created by every one of us with stages for initiation, seduction, release, punishment.
"Normal" is transformed into another pose; sex is ballet, a "dance of the hours":
"He wondered briefly why Tchaikovsky had called it 'The Dance of the Hours.' They didn't dance. They merely passed. Now he was unable to measure even their passage." (p. 148.)
The measurement problem in quantum mechanics and non-linear time provide an analogy to these entangled particles -- Tom, Harriet, Beth and Katrina.
The loss of speech disconnecting readers and characters from the "world" suggests that this novel is map and territory: "There is nothing outside the text." (p. 148.)
The novel has a revolving door aspect which invites readers to rearrange the chapters to suit their interests. We are about to be instructed as we are "penetrated" by the "voice" of this author. Like partners in sexual games, or the characters in Shakespeare's Sonnets, we collapse from a happy exhaustion. My loves "enter" me; I "enter" them.
My self or identity reflects the power to which I am drawn or which I exert.
There is desire to dominance and subservience in everyone.
What is rightly challenged by this author is the limitation of the power-role to the masculine "mask" while the subservient-role is necessarily "female" as in most Western erotica or porn. I like and admire the reversal of this traditional format by Scott in this novel. Derrida encounters Foucault: Christopher Norris, "Derrida and Kant," in What's Wrong With Postmodernism? Critical Theory and the Ends of Philosophy (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1990), pp. 194-208 and James Miller, Michel Foucault (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), pp. 292-293, pp. 364-365:
"Rendering his own tribute to Asclepius, [Foucault gestures towards Socrates' "Apology"] he would then talk at last about what Beckett had called this 'wordless thing in an empty place, a hard shut dry cold black place, where nothing stirs, nothing speaks, and that I listen, and that I seek, like a caged beast born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born of caged beasts born in a cage.' ...." (Miller, p. 364.)
Tom and Beth as well as Katrina are placed in "cages" in lower floors which are the deep levels of the subconscious of our author, also of Harriet and the reader, realm of the id and Carl Jung's "collective subconscious":
"('Modern society is perverse,' writes Foucault with understandable emphasis. 'Not in spite of its puritanism, or as a consequence of its hypocrisy; it is truly and directly perverse.') The effort to outlaw certain sexual acts as unnatural has similarly backfired, producing still odder new forms of bodily delight. (As the rituals of S/M illustrate, even the most viciously repressive practices can be turned into erotically charged games, opening up unforeseen new possibilities of pleasure.)" (Miller, pp. 292-293.) ("Good Will Humping.")
Michel Foucault -- homosexual, philosopher, and man of genius -- was devoted to S/M and bondage games and would have loved this novel by G.C. Scott.
John Stuart Mill was torn between philosophy as opposed to "tiddlywinks and pushpin" -- neither of which are sexual.
Here we see the difference between analytical and Continental thought. I am best classified as a Continental thinker among other things. ("G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism.")
"And so in its measurement of sex difference, every form of passivity and aggression in sex-linked behavior is tested continuously, yet little thought is given to the causality of such phenomena, either as learned behavior, or as behavior specifically appropriate to patriarchal society. When the differentiation of roles is regarded as functional, no serious explanation of the political character of such function is given: any set of complementary roles may be called functional to the extent they promote stable operation within a system."
Kate Millett, "The Counterrevolution" in Sexual Politics (New York: Ballantine Books, 1969), pp. 310-311 then Norman Mailer, The Prisoner of Sex (New York: New American Library, 1971), p. 166. (" ... their laws would be founded on sex.")
"All's well that ends well."
" ... 'It's a heavy responsibility.' Again the ironic smile. 'You'd be surprised how many people want someone else to take responsibility, out of their hands. Actually deprive them of choice.'
Tom wasn't sure where all this was leading. It sounded like a confession or an apologia, and seemed out of place coming from someone he didn't expect to explain things needlessly. His perplexity must have showed, because Harriet abruptly changed tack.
'Yes, I imagine all this is a bit abstract. I tend to go on and on when I'm not careful. Too much philosophy and not enough practicality. [Is that me?] Perhaps I should make things more concrete.' She stood abrubtly. 'Come with me.' ..." (pp. 119-120.)
We will accompany the author down this rabbit hole not all that distant from certain social situations in the twentieth century:
"None of that now. It is a far cry from the excesses of our German friends during the war to the thoroughly scientific training regime I administer." (p. 97.)
Existentialist themes are anounced and underlined for dim-witted readers making it crystal clear that this novel is about freedom as sexual liberation in feminist terms.
"Tom wondered idly if he was becoming the 'new man' that the feminists were always on about. No, he concluded, he was pretty much the old man but was being introduced to a new mode of sexual reality." (p. 103.)
Again:
"If I were an existentialist, Tom mused, I would be pondering on the interrelationship of freedom and compulsion. But as I'm not I just have to take whatever comes, which is exactly what everyone else, whether existentialist or not, has to do." (p. 141.)
I conclude with an image that recurs in the novel and in much Western Romance literature from the troubadors to the symbolists: the rose as female icon is the "unfolding" of warm vaginal lips, "allegedly."
Dr. June Singer's discussion of "lingam" and "phallus" is recommended for those with flashlights under your covers: June Singer, Androgyny: Toward a New Theory of Sexuality (New York: Anchor, 1977), pp. 178-179, p. 193.
Curiously, this image and the central importance of oral stimulation, lips upon lips, is part of Hindu religious worship. Passages of the Kamasutra are devoted to this celebrated form of worship of feminine divinity and power that is so disturbing to some Americans:
"To lick a lotus blossom,' in Sanskrit, is to enact cunilingus; and padmachati (lotus blossom licking) is common and customary throughout India. [Oh, to be in India.] The Hindus have several words coinciding with 'licking of the lotus bud' to express the act of [female oral pleasuring]. Perhaps the most scientific are mukhamethuna (oral churning) and oparishata (mouth congress), while the literary appellation for fellatio is ambarschuti (mango fruit sucking). [What about the pit?] It is so named because the ripe mango fruit closely resembles the glans penis, which the ambarchusa (mango sucker) mouths, in both shape and color. The feminine counterpart of this word is vambhagabhachusi (sucking a bamboo sprout) or padmakompalachati (licking a lotus stamen), signifying oral excitation of the clitoris."
Allen Edwardes & R.E.L. Masters, The Cradle of Erotica: The Definitive Study of Afro-Asian Sexual Behavior (New York: Lancer Books, 1962), p. 312.
This form of worship by sexual adoration of the feminine (not just by females) is not limited to one gender in Hinduism. Men and women may celebrate and participate in female sexuality in this way. I am very interested in Hinduism.
What I find disturbing and fascinating in the rage that greets my review of this novel, probably also in the novel itself and continuing efforts to alter paragraphs and spacing of my text, to destroy or suppress, censor and deny what is obvious about human sexuality -- all of this absurd hostility on display at these blogs today is a tribute to Scott and, in a minor way, to me.
We have struck a nerve. Continuing computer crime against me is also, obviously, a sadistic sexual thrill for a sick person somewhere in New Jersey.
I will close by trying to be clear about what this "struck nerve" or vital core of sexual meaning in contemporary America is and may yet become. Incidentally, it is sadistic cruelty or violence that is truly obscene and not passionate eroticism.
The sexual behavior and (much more) the erotic imagination of every society reflects its mores and heritage.
There is simply no way that America's sexism and suppression of female sexuality could not be a part of our erotica because it is part of ALL of us.
Porn is one of the areas of the culture where people are most liberated and equal. However, even porn is made in a particular culture and reflects that culture. If you object to porn because you interpret much of the imagery in erotic films as "demeaning to women" then the answer may be to demonstrate to men and women what is objectionable by creating more porn -- your erotica -- turning some of the sexist iconography of America's sexual fantasy world upside down as it were.
Scott's novel does exactly that. For this reason, I describe His Mistress's Voice as a feminist and revolutionary literary work which is raunchy and fun to read. ("Good Will Humping" and "Genius and Lust.")
I suggest to women interested in erotica in cinema the films of the late Candida Royale. Several novels of explicit sexuality from the eighteenth century would have served as perfect subjects for Ms. Royale's canvas or cinematic imagination including Voltaire's Candide or "The Memoirs of Casanova." Has anyone "seen" Ms. Moll Flanders? (See "Quills" and, once again, "Something Wild.")
"Sadism is not a name finally given to a practice as old as Eros; it is a massive cultural fact [on display at these blogs every day!] which appeared precisely at the end of the eighteenth century, and which constitutes one of the greatest conversions of Western imagination: unreason transformed into delirium of the heart, madness of desire, the insane dialogue of love and death in the limitless presumption of appetite."
Michel Foucault, from Madness and Civilization, quoted in The Sadean Woman, at p. 3 (emphasis added).
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
Is Lindsey Graham an Enemy Combatant?
April 23, 2013 at 2:55 P.M. Theft of a bank account's PIN number is unwise given today's law enforcement techniques. Telephone calls continue to be made to my home at all hours from unusual numbers: April 16, 2013 at 2:27 P.M. from 347-502-2576; April 15, 2013 at 7:27 P.M. and April 13, 2013 at 11:22 A.M. from 323-446-0630, "Collection Tech," even though I do not have any matters in "collection." Perhaps "Collection Tech" is also "CCA EOS"?
Please direct any threats or attacks against me and not my family members.
"How to Handle a Terrorism Case: Despite Republican catcalls, the civilian legal system can best prosecute the accused bomber," (Editorial) in The New York Times, April 22, 2013, at p. A20.
"Broken Justice in the Bronx: Unconscionable delays in the borough's criminal courts require immediate action," (Editorial) in The New York Times, April 22, 2013, at p. A20.
Paul Solotaroff, "A Most American Way to Die," in Rolling Stone, April 25, 2013, at p. 58. http://www.rollingstone.com ("If you're a black teen in Florida cranking hip-hop, a heavily armed and enraged Tea Partier can gun you down in broad daylight -- and he may just get away with it." Is this an ethical legal system, Mr. Rubio?)
Patrick Doyle, "Last Days of an Iraq War Hero: After Years of Pain, Thomas Young Plans to End His Suffering," in Rolling Stone, April 25, 2013, at p. 22. (Will the government's mistreatment of this Iraq war hero be justified by classifying Mr. Young as an "enemy combatant"?)
Charlie Savage, "G.O.P. Lawmakers Push to Have Boston Suspect Questioned as Enemy Combatant," in The New York Times, April 22, 2013, at p. A8.
The absurd focus on trivial and ephemeral matters with regard to legal ethics, such as occasional tardiness by prosecutors and defense counsel -- or even judges -- as opposed to systemic delays that violate rights, is a way of avoiding the urgent ethical crisis surrounding complicity by lawyers in what can only be described as evil. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's Unethical Judiciary.")
By evil, I mean, torture and assassination outside the boundaries of law, corruption and bought and paid-for biases in a legal system. ("Legal Ethics Today" and "America's Torture Lawyers.")
Dzhorkhar Tzarnaev's dramatic arrest resulting in his current critical condition has renewed an intense debate over the resolution of competing values in dealing with accused terrorists apprehended in the United States of America -- terrorists whose alleged criminal actions take place within the nation's borders and who are properly regarded as "subjects of the law."
Can we reconcile the requirements of legality and adherence to moral principles with the need for security in a free and democratic society? The answer to this question is that we must do so. We must be safe and we will also remain free because this is America. ("John Rawls and Justice" and "Charles Fried and Legal Interpretation.")
American lawyers and judges must not behave like terrorists. Due process and equal protection of the laws cannot be sacrificed to an illusory security because these jurisprudential values and a few other political principles are America's security from dictatorship. ("Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution.")
However horrifying their criminal actions, it seems clear -- based on a thousand-year history of our laws and institutions -- that accused terrorists are entitled to respect for their human rights and even to receive from society what terrorists often deny to their victims: concern for human dignity at every stage in the proceedings against them.
No one has yet been proven guilty of any criminal action in a court of law. Assuming that Mr. Tsarnaev is guilty of these terrible crimes, he must be punished in accordance with the law and in a humane fashion. Judges must never be swayed to deviate from providing exactly such punishment as the law allows with due solemnity, rationality, proportionality and decorum as required by America's Constitution.
If America's legal system -- like every legal system in the world -- affords the worst criminals, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, due process of law, then what legally plausible reason exists for denying such protections to an accused terrorist bomber? None. We do this for any human being, however hateful that person may be, not for that person's sake alone (or primarily), but for the sake of our civilization. ("America's Legal Ethics Today" and "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")
In responding to calls from some Republicans for classifying Mr. Tsarnaev as an "enemy combatant," it may be wise to sharpen and clarify the issue and ensuing debate (or discussion) by asking whether, or to what extent, the "enemy," in the case of this defendant, is singular or plural.
Regardless of what contacts or connections may be found or proven to exist between this defendant and Al Qaeda, are there also "connections" to hostile foreign powers or governments and/or intelligence agencies not yet mentioned in the media? I suspect that such connections exist.
Dialogue and meaningful interrogation, developed from a position of mutual trust -- even with this accused person -- will always be more successful, in terms of yielding information, than the tortures at Guantanamo.
Street-level speculation has touched on the interests and actions of Russian intelligence; Israeli Mossad agents seeking to turn U.S. public opinion against Islamic terror organizations; together with several more bizarre scenarios -- none of which I find persuasive. Many people are still under the false impression that the Boston bombers are Jewish extremists.
Unspecified in this debate are the legal criteria for holding a defendant as an enemy combatant. If these undefined criteria, objective or subjective, for finding an American citizen to be an enemy combatant are satisfied, then the issue becomes: What can be done to enemy combatants? Torture? Murder? Secret detention without trial, indefinite detention, drugging, hypnosis, denial of medical treatment for suffering persons -- all of these "tactics" have been recommended, quite seriously, by persons unaware of echoing the thoughts of Adolf Eichman and other luminaries of the Third Reich.
Most of these hateful methods have been used in America's so-called "concentration camps." America's post-9/11 phase has made us a far different nation, more frightened (despite our immense power) and merciless as well as cruel than ever before in our history.
I continue to argue, along with many others, that such "get tough" tactics and our collective journey to Mr. Cheney's "Dark Side" have made us less secure and may be creating terrorism and terrorists acting against innocent civilians in this country who have been and will be injured or killed even as their counterparts are killed by U.S. drones, every day, in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, comments:
"You can't hold every person who commits a terrorist attack as an enemy combatant, I agree with that ... but you have a right, with his radical Islamist ties and the fact that Chechens are all over the world fighting with Al Qaeda -- I think you have a reasonable belief to go down that road, and it would be a big mistake not to go down that road. If we didn't hold him for intelligence gathering purposes, that would be unconscionable."
Holding him for "intelligence gathering purposes" is compatible with respect for the man's legal rights. Senator Graham's goal, arguably, seems to be to torture the suspect without a defense lawyer making annoying requests for humane conditions of confinement, bail, examination of the evidence against the accused, or instructing his client to remain silent. (Incidentally, I doubt that this wounded young man will have much to tell us, anyway, since he is probably a patsy.)
Failure to recognize what we claim to believe in, for which so many men and women have paid the ultimate price -- the same rights that we ask others in the world to observe with regard to their own citizens and any captured Americans -- makes us hypocrites and liars to the world. This we must NEVER be.
The primary reason to recognize Dzhorkhar Tsarnaev's human rights is that he is a person, a human being. Contradictions between our words and deeds deprive American public officials of credibility when they make speeches -- as Secretary of State John Kerry did recently -- anouncing our devotion and "commitment" to freedom of speech and dissidents' rights. Mr. Kerry did not limit this professed commitment to the rights of dissidents in other countries. ("How censorship works in America" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
Many lives depend upon America's moral authority which has been severely strained by Bush/Cheney policies that weaken our public officials' power to bring about humanitarian objectives and do great good in the world.
The global community NEEDS an inspiring moral example from the most powerful countries, primarily from America, but also from China and Russia as well as other nations in our increasingly multipolar world. Nations like the United Kingdom or Germany, France and, increasingly, Latin American countries -- like Brazil, Argentina, Chile -- must do more for peace internationally.
"Mr. Tsarnaev is a naturalized American citizen, an inconvenient fact for the 'pressure-him-at-Gitmo' crowd. He cannot be tried in a military commission, a legal system reserved for aliens. Even to be held by the military without trial would require a showing that he is associated with a declared enemy of the United States, such as Al Qaeda or the Taliban. So far there isn't any visible connection between the Tsarnaev brothers and anyone more malevolent. Their Islamic or Chechen heritage alone is hardly proof of jihadist intent."
Please direct any threats or attacks against me and not my family members.
"How to Handle a Terrorism Case: Despite Republican catcalls, the civilian legal system can best prosecute the accused bomber," (Editorial) in The New York Times, April 22, 2013, at p. A20.
"Broken Justice in the Bronx: Unconscionable delays in the borough's criminal courts require immediate action," (Editorial) in The New York Times, April 22, 2013, at p. A20.
Paul Solotaroff, "A Most American Way to Die," in Rolling Stone, April 25, 2013, at p. 58. http://www.rollingstone.com ("If you're a black teen in Florida cranking hip-hop, a heavily armed and enraged Tea Partier can gun you down in broad daylight -- and he may just get away with it." Is this an ethical legal system, Mr. Rubio?)
Patrick Doyle, "Last Days of an Iraq War Hero: After Years of Pain, Thomas Young Plans to End His Suffering," in Rolling Stone, April 25, 2013, at p. 22. (Will the government's mistreatment of this Iraq war hero be justified by classifying Mr. Young as an "enemy combatant"?)
Charlie Savage, "G.O.P. Lawmakers Push to Have Boston Suspect Questioned as Enemy Combatant," in The New York Times, April 22, 2013, at p. A8.
The absurd focus on trivial and ephemeral matters with regard to legal ethics, such as occasional tardiness by prosecutors and defense counsel -- or even judges -- as opposed to systemic delays that violate rights, is a way of avoiding the urgent ethical crisis surrounding complicity by lawyers in what can only be described as evil. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's Unethical Judiciary.")
By evil, I mean, torture and assassination outside the boundaries of law, corruption and bought and paid-for biases in a legal system. ("Legal Ethics Today" and "America's Torture Lawyers.")
Dzhorkhar Tzarnaev's dramatic arrest resulting in his current critical condition has renewed an intense debate over the resolution of competing values in dealing with accused terrorists apprehended in the United States of America -- terrorists whose alleged criminal actions take place within the nation's borders and who are properly regarded as "subjects of the law."
Can we reconcile the requirements of legality and adherence to moral principles with the need for security in a free and democratic society? The answer to this question is that we must do so. We must be safe and we will also remain free because this is America. ("John Rawls and Justice" and "Charles Fried and Legal Interpretation.")
American lawyers and judges must not behave like terrorists. Due process and equal protection of the laws cannot be sacrificed to an illusory security because these jurisprudential values and a few other political principles are America's security from dictatorship. ("Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution.")
However horrifying their criminal actions, it seems clear -- based on a thousand-year history of our laws and institutions -- that accused terrorists are entitled to respect for their human rights and even to receive from society what terrorists often deny to their victims: concern for human dignity at every stage in the proceedings against them.
No one has yet been proven guilty of any criminal action in a court of law. Assuming that Mr. Tsarnaev is guilty of these terrible crimes, he must be punished in accordance with the law and in a humane fashion. Judges must never be swayed to deviate from providing exactly such punishment as the law allows with due solemnity, rationality, proportionality and decorum as required by America's Constitution.
If America's legal system -- like every legal system in the world -- affords the worst criminals, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, due process of law, then what legally plausible reason exists for denying such protections to an accused terrorist bomber? None. We do this for any human being, however hateful that person may be, not for that person's sake alone (or primarily), but for the sake of our civilization. ("America's Legal Ethics Today" and "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")
In responding to calls from some Republicans for classifying Mr. Tsarnaev as an "enemy combatant," it may be wise to sharpen and clarify the issue and ensuing debate (or discussion) by asking whether, or to what extent, the "enemy," in the case of this defendant, is singular or plural.
Regardless of what contacts or connections may be found or proven to exist between this defendant and Al Qaeda, are there also "connections" to hostile foreign powers or governments and/or intelligence agencies not yet mentioned in the media? I suspect that such connections exist.
Dialogue and meaningful interrogation, developed from a position of mutual trust -- even with this accused person -- will always be more successful, in terms of yielding information, than the tortures at Guantanamo.
Street-level speculation has touched on the interests and actions of Russian intelligence; Israeli Mossad agents seeking to turn U.S. public opinion against Islamic terror organizations; together with several more bizarre scenarios -- none of which I find persuasive. Many people are still under the false impression that the Boston bombers are Jewish extremists.
Unspecified in this debate are the legal criteria for holding a defendant as an enemy combatant. If these undefined criteria, objective or subjective, for finding an American citizen to be an enemy combatant are satisfied, then the issue becomes: What can be done to enemy combatants? Torture? Murder? Secret detention without trial, indefinite detention, drugging, hypnosis, denial of medical treatment for suffering persons -- all of these "tactics" have been recommended, quite seriously, by persons unaware of echoing the thoughts of Adolf Eichman and other luminaries of the Third Reich.
Most of these hateful methods have been used in America's so-called "concentration camps." America's post-9/11 phase has made us a far different nation, more frightened (despite our immense power) and merciless as well as cruel than ever before in our history.
I continue to argue, along with many others, that such "get tough" tactics and our collective journey to Mr. Cheney's "Dark Side" have made us less secure and may be creating terrorism and terrorists acting against innocent civilians in this country who have been and will be injured or killed even as their counterparts are killed by U.S. drones, every day, in Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, comments:
"You can't hold every person who commits a terrorist attack as an enemy combatant, I agree with that ... but you have a right, with his radical Islamist ties and the fact that Chechens are all over the world fighting with Al Qaeda -- I think you have a reasonable belief to go down that road, and it would be a big mistake not to go down that road. If we didn't hold him for intelligence gathering purposes, that would be unconscionable."
Holding him for "intelligence gathering purposes" is compatible with respect for the man's legal rights. Senator Graham's goal, arguably, seems to be to torture the suspect without a defense lawyer making annoying requests for humane conditions of confinement, bail, examination of the evidence against the accused, or instructing his client to remain silent. (Incidentally, I doubt that this wounded young man will have much to tell us, anyway, since he is probably a patsy.)
Failure to recognize what we claim to believe in, for which so many men and women have paid the ultimate price -- the same rights that we ask others in the world to observe with regard to their own citizens and any captured Americans -- makes us hypocrites and liars to the world. This we must NEVER be.
The primary reason to recognize Dzhorkhar Tsarnaev's human rights is that he is a person, a human being. Contradictions between our words and deeds deprive American public officials of credibility when they make speeches -- as Secretary of State John Kerry did recently -- anouncing our devotion and "commitment" to freedom of speech and dissidents' rights. Mr. Kerry did not limit this professed commitment to the rights of dissidents in other countries. ("How censorship works in America" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
Many lives depend upon America's moral authority which has been severely strained by Bush/Cheney policies that weaken our public officials' power to bring about humanitarian objectives and do great good in the world.
The global community NEEDS an inspiring moral example from the most powerful countries, primarily from America, but also from China and Russia as well as other nations in our increasingly multipolar world. Nations like the United Kingdom or Germany, France and, increasingly, Latin American countries -- like Brazil, Argentina, Chile -- must do more for peace internationally.
"Mr. Tsarnaev is a naturalized American citizen, an inconvenient fact for the 'pressure-him-at-Gitmo' crowd. He cannot be tried in a military commission, a legal system reserved for aliens. Even to be held by the military without trial would require a showing that he is associated with a declared enemy of the United States, such as Al Qaeda or the Taliban. So far there isn't any visible connection between the Tsarnaev brothers and anyone more malevolent. Their Islamic or Chechen heritage alone is hardly proof of jihadist intent."
Monday, April 22, 2013
Massive Scams From New Jersey Schools.
April 22, 2013 at 12:59 P.M. Sabotage and hacks into computer #13, NYPL, Morningside Heights, made it difficult to access these blogs. There is always a danger that I will be unable to return to this site. I cannot send or receive e-mails, nor can I post images here.
If you have attempted to contact me (whether from the U.S. or elsewhere) and have received no response, I assure you that I am not being rude. I am denied access to my Internet mailboxes and accounts for no reason that has been explained to me. In fact, if you have sent me an e-mail, the chances are excellent that you have been communicating with the CIA, FBI, OAE or some other law enforcement agency.
Perhaps you have reached CCA EOS? Computer crime prevented me from writing much on Saturday because the words I typed were instantly deleted from my text. Efforts are, evidently, still underway to deny me access to the Internet. I will do my best to continue writing under these conditions. ("How censorship works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
Peter J. Sampson, "Two Sports Gear Sellers to Admit School Scam: Make Plea Bargain Days Before Jury Selection," in The Record, April 2, 2013, at p. L-1.
New Jersey's record for shameless and mendacious corruption continues to reach new lows.
Thefts from the state's schoolchildren, in the form of expensive and poor-quality sports equipment, is only the latest story of political bosses and judges making money from exploiting the taxpayers.
As usual, in this latest disaster, the persons supplying the outrageously expensive and inadequate equipment, may have provided kickbacks to the dirty politicians who made these deals possible:
"Two former executives in a Pennsylvania athletic equipment company decided to forego trial and were expected to plead guilty today to conspiring to defraud schools and colleges in New Jersey and 11 other states through the sale and re-conditioning of football helmets and other sports gear."
The safety of children placed in schools where the state acts in locus parentis was expendable for the very officials entrusted with protecting their welfare, but who were making self-serving deals for outrageously expensive equipment that was junk and that politicians must have known would fail to ensure the safety of young athletes. ("Cement is Gold.")
The Garden State's children were sacrificed (again) to the greed of politicians and judges as well as corrupt manufacturers making a bundle from selling sub-standard equipment, at obscene prices, with officials looking the other way for a piece of the action. ("More Mafia Influence in New Jersey" and "Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey, and Anne Milgram is Clueless.")
There is no way that such sleazy transactions would have been made and gone undetected for so long, without kickbacks to politicians and lawyers. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")
Although several states have been victimized by the same "cast and crew," the source of the scams and the deepest "connections" are with New Jersey government, where alleged "mafia affiliations" for the indicted "industrialists" and their friends may also be found:
"A plea hearing for MITCHELL KURLANDER, the former chief financial officer of Circle System Group, Inc., and his father-in-law, ALAN ABESHAUS, the company's chief executive officer and largest shareholder, was scheduled for 10:30 A.M., before District Judge William H. Walls, in Newark."
I notice that the plea deals with the U.S. Attorney's Office apparently had nothing to do with New Jersey's "underwhelming" Attorney General, James Chiesa, who was and is oblivious to this deal and to the commission of these and many similar crimes of corruption. ("New Jersey is Lucky Luciano's Havana.")
I am also surprised to learn that, at least as set forth in the press coverage of this plea bargain, there is NO requirement AT THIS TIME that the two individuals accepting the plea, Mr. Kurlander and Mr. Abeshaus, implicate any and all POLITICIANS with whom they negotiated these deals, nor will they have to place on the record whatever payments, if any, were made to public officials, anywhere, in order to "close" these transactions "promptly and efficiently."
It will be especially interesting to learn whether there were "payments not specified in the contracts" for "consultation services incidental to these transactions."
Strangely, there may be substantial prison time for these upstanding men taking this plea deal if they remain "silent." ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics.")
The amounts involved in total are in the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. The investigation that led to these arrests and that, I suspect, will involve further cooperation from these fine gentlemen with the FBI and Justice Department was brought about by a whistleblower's lawsuit.
Allegations that judges and politicians as well as lawyers (Lowenstein, Sandler -- perhaps?) negotiating these deals were in on the scams and will now escape all liability may be a trifle premature. ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" and "New Jersey's Politically-Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")
"In [only] one of these schemes, the defendants allegedly used monthly statements that looked identical to Circle's billing invoices to collect more than 500 duplicate payments totalling upward of $970,000 from schools."
CCA EOS? Were any contributions made, directly or indirectly, to Mr. Christie and Mr. Codey -- or Bob Menendez, possibly -- by this company, its employees, and/or these defendants? ("Is Menendez For Sale?" and "Crooked Broker Paid-Off Menendez.")
Is this an example of New Jersey's "ethics," Mr. Rabner?
If you have attempted to contact me (whether from the U.S. or elsewhere) and have received no response, I assure you that I am not being rude. I am denied access to my Internet mailboxes and accounts for no reason that has been explained to me. In fact, if you have sent me an e-mail, the chances are excellent that you have been communicating with the CIA, FBI, OAE or some other law enforcement agency.
Perhaps you have reached CCA EOS? Computer crime prevented me from writing much on Saturday because the words I typed were instantly deleted from my text. Efforts are, evidently, still underway to deny me access to the Internet. I will do my best to continue writing under these conditions. ("How censorship works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
Peter J. Sampson, "Two Sports Gear Sellers to Admit School Scam: Make Plea Bargain Days Before Jury Selection," in The Record, April 2, 2013, at p. L-1.
New Jersey's record for shameless and mendacious corruption continues to reach new lows.
Thefts from the state's schoolchildren, in the form of expensive and poor-quality sports equipment, is only the latest story of political bosses and judges making money from exploiting the taxpayers.
As usual, in this latest disaster, the persons supplying the outrageously expensive and inadequate equipment, may have provided kickbacks to the dirty politicians who made these deals possible:
"Two former executives in a Pennsylvania athletic equipment company decided to forego trial and were expected to plead guilty today to conspiring to defraud schools and colleges in New Jersey and 11 other states through the sale and re-conditioning of football helmets and other sports gear."
The safety of children placed in schools where the state acts in locus parentis was expendable for the very officials entrusted with protecting their welfare, but who were making self-serving deals for outrageously expensive equipment that was junk and that politicians must have known would fail to ensure the safety of young athletes. ("Cement is Gold.")
The Garden State's children were sacrificed (again) to the greed of politicians and judges as well as corrupt manufacturers making a bundle from selling sub-standard equipment, at obscene prices, with officials looking the other way for a piece of the action. ("More Mafia Influence in New Jersey" and "Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey, and Anne Milgram is Clueless.")
There is no way that such sleazy transactions would have been made and gone undetected for so long, without kickbacks to politicians and lawyers. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")
Although several states have been victimized by the same "cast and crew," the source of the scams and the deepest "connections" are with New Jersey government, where alleged "mafia affiliations" for the indicted "industrialists" and their friends may also be found:
"A plea hearing for MITCHELL KURLANDER, the former chief financial officer of Circle System Group, Inc., and his father-in-law, ALAN ABESHAUS, the company's chief executive officer and largest shareholder, was scheduled for 10:30 A.M., before District Judge William H. Walls, in Newark."
I notice that the plea deals with the U.S. Attorney's Office apparently had nothing to do with New Jersey's "underwhelming" Attorney General, James Chiesa, who was and is oblivious to this deal and to the commission of these and many similar crimes of corruption. ("New Jersey is Lucky Luciano's Havana.")
I am also surprised to learn that, at least as set forth in the press coverage of this plea bargain, there is NO requirement AT THIS TIME that the two individuals accepting the plea, Mr. Kurlander and Mr. Abeshaus, implicate any and all POLITICIANS with whom they negotiated these deals, nor will they have to place on the record whatever payments, if any, were made to public officials, anywhere, in order to "close" these transactions "promptly and efficiently."
It will be especially interesting to learn whether there were "payments not specified in the contracts" for "consultation services incidental to these transactions."
Strangely, there may be substantial prison time for these upstanding men taking this plea deal if they remain "silent." ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics.")
The amounts involved in total are in the MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. The investigation that led to these arrests and that, I suspect, will involve further cooperation from these fine gentlemen with the FBI and Justice Department was brought about by a whistleblower's lawsuit.
Allegations that judges and politicians as well as lawyers (Lowenstein, Sandler -- perhaps?) negotiating these deals were in on the scams and will now escape all liability may be a trifle premature. ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" and "New Jersey's Politically-Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")
"In [only] one of these schemes, the defendants allegedly used monthly statements that looked identical to Circle's billing invoices to collect more than 500 duplicate payments totalling upward of $970,000 from schools."
CCA EOS? Were any contributions made, directly or indirectly, to Mr. Christie and Mr. Codey -- or Bob Menendez, possibly -- by this company, its employees, and/or these defendants? ("Is Menendez For Sale?" and "Crooked Broker Paid-Off Menendez.")
Is this an example of New Jersey's "ethics," Mr. Rabner?
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Responsibility For Torture.
April 20, 2013 at 12:56 P.M. Among the shocks that flesh is heir to is recognition of the nearly infinite human capacity for malice and pleasure in cruelty, often pointless cruelty. Events in Boston this week bear me out on this point.
Witnessing the suffering imposed on our loved-ones -- how many lives have been shattered in Boston for no rational reason that I can figure out? -- is far worse that suffering ourselves. It is among the tactics of terrorists to extract obedience through sadistic evils imposed on our helpless loved-ones. We must never negotiate with or accept evil. We must struggle against evil (or terrorism) until that evil is destroyed.
The usual harassments at computer #12, NYPL, Morningside Heights. Home page changed to what purports to be MSN.
The identification of two men -- "foot soldiers" -- in the Boston bombings, has left the public pondering the forces behind these individuals and their motivations: 1) Was the goal to make it "appear" that the attackers were Middle Eastern, Muslims, Pakistanis? 2) Are there Right-wing affiliations for these individuals, ethnic and religious loyalties to another country; and 3) Was there logistical and other kinds of support provided to these persons in this conspiracy? And if so, by whom was that assistance provided? No "dark-skinned," Middle Eastern-looking men?
April 18, 2013 at 1:09 P.M. Developments in the Boston investigation seem to be following expected patterns. It is wiser to refrain from predictions or assumptions, at this time, especially racist assumptions about "dark-skinned" culprits.
I notice that, the day after the Boston bombings, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan took the lives of dozens of persons.
Efforts to prevent disclosures of crucial information pertaining to the drone, assassination, and surveillance policies will have the effect of perpetuating many evils, whose consequences for the life of the nation are only beginning to be seen. Hiding the truth will only worsen the effects of America's currently failed policies.
A new film examines this dilemma between democracy and freedom, on the one hand, and national security measures on the other hand. "War On Whistleblowers," http://www.waronwhistleblowers.com
"Indisputable Torture: A new non-partisan study confronts the legacy of brutality from the Bush years," (Editorial) in The New York Times, April 17, 2013, at p. A22.
During a week when my life as well as the much-loved city of Boston seem to be under vicious attack, it is important to come to terms with the events in our recent history that appear to be the source of this intense reaction.
Hatred comes mostly from the experience of evil. "Torture" is among the evils that need to be understood if we are to overcome and transcend such policies. Torture is among the defining evils of our time which we have not yet come to terms with and from which we are not yet free:
"A dozen years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an independent, non-partisan panel's examination of the interrogation and detention programs carried out in their aftermath by the Bush Administration may seem to be ultimate old business. But the sweeping report issued by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, provides a valuable, even necessary reckoning."
There is a danger that the crisis in Boston will drown out this important and possibly related news:
" ... the report's authoritative conclusion that 'the United States engaged in the practice of torture' is impossible to dismiss by a public that needs to know what [evil] was committed in the nation's name."
The U.S. made use of torture policies that violated international and American human rights laws without gaining useful or valuable information that would not have been otherwise obtained. ("American Doctors and Torture" and "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?" then "Legal Ethics Today.")
This is not the kind of news that can be hidden from the public or from history. Truth requires full disclosure and discussion in the media and academia. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")
Much the same is true in New Jersey, where efforts are underway to cover-up and deny what, I believe, is obvious to readers of these blogs: An American jurisdiction has targeted individuals for torture, censorship, created and perpetuated a conspiracy to violate their civil rights by using the power and technology of government to censor, suppress, or destroy political speech, also much worse. ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
The use of torture -- psychological or so-called "touchless torture techniques" are included in the relevant legal definition -- " ... had no justification and damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive."
Much the same applies to New Jersey's fiasco of abuse of government authority and corruption. Innocent persons are and will continue to be hurt. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")
The U.S. has regarded conduct by other countries that is identical to what America has done in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib -- or N.J. -- as "criminal" and prosecuted responsible individuals in U.S. courts for those crimes.
Torture is admitted to qualify as a "crime against humanity," assassination of persons -- including U.S. citizens -- without due process of law, while not discussed in this report, is also clearly illegal. This tactic will result in the assassination of Americans and others by victimized nations and groups in response to what we have done.
The "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" quality of American practices and policies during the Bush years as opposed to our rhetoric, then and now, suggests that (despite this report) the U.S. will continue to engage in torture, creating a great probability of retaliation and, frighteningly, more incidents like this week's bombings in Boston.
"The panel further details the ethical lapses of government lawyers in the Bush years who served up 'acrobatic' advice" -- Stuart Rabner? -- "to justify BRUTAL interrogations, and of medical professionals who helped oversee them. It is also rightly critical of the Obama Administration's use of expansive claims of secrecy to keep the details of rendition and torture from becoming public and to block victims' lawsuits." ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")
It is time to tell the victims the truth concerning torture, Mr. Rabner, rather than seeking to protect Ms. Poritz, Mr. Tuchin, or any other persons involved in the OAE's illegal efforts or Mr. Menendez's "shenanigans." ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" then "Is Senator Menendez 'For' Human Rights?")
... To read about torture. To this day I remember the exact time and place when, as a child, I first became aware of [torture.] ...
the detail that most sickened me. How little of this there would have to be before the living comfortably with it by others to be itself an outrage? And how much of it there is? ...
... the moral reality I attempt to encapsulate in the contract of mutual indifference is ... unbearable. These mechanisms of denial themselves say it. It is unbearable that people should be made to suffer in terrible ways. So it gets shut out. But if it is unbearable that they should be made to, it is unbearable also that they are left to. And the more it is shut out, the more they are. But the less well-placed people then are to perceive the coexistence of the evil with its adjacency to their own lives. The less well-placed they are to estimate the extent of the 'leaving to,' the wide tolerance there is towards the misery of others. ...
Theodor Adorno has put forward the view that a thinking which does not measure itself against extremity is 'in the nature of the musical accompaniment with which the SS liked to drown out the screams of its victims.' ...
Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy After the Holocaust (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 46-47.
Are you "comfortable" with the torture of innocents, Mr. Rabner? Is this torture "ethical"?
Witnessing the suffering imposed on our loved-ones -- how many lives have been shattered in Boston for no rational reason that I can figure out? -- is far worse that suffering ourselves. It is among the tactics of terrorists to extract obedience through sadistic evils imposed on our helpless loved-ones. We must never negotiate with or accept evil. We must struggle against evil (or terrorism) until that evil is destroyed.
The usual harassments at computer #12, NYPL, Morningside Heights. Home page changed to what purports to be MSN.
The identification of two men -- "foot soldiers" -- in the Boston bombings, has left the public pondering the forces behind these individuals and their motivations: 1) Was the goal to make it "appear" that the attackers were Middle Eastern, Muslims, Pakistanis? 2) Are there Right-wing affiliations for these individuals, ethnic and religious loyalties to another country; and 3) Was there logistical and other kinds of support provided to these persons in this conspiracy? And if so, by whom was that assistance provided? No "dark-skinned," Middle Eastern-looking men?
April 18, 2013 at 1:09 P.M. Developments in the Boston investigation seem to be following expected patterns. It is wiser to refrain from predictions or assumptions, at this time, especially racist assumptions about "dark-skinned" culprits.
I notice that, the day after the Boston bombings, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan took the lives of dozens of persons.
Efforts to prevent disclosures of crucial information pertaining to the drone, assassination, and surveillance policies will have the effect of perpetuating many evils, whose consequences for the life of the nation are only beginning to be seen. Hiding the truth will only worsen the effects of America's currently failed policies.
A new film examines this dilemma between democracy and freedom, on the one hand, and national security measures on the other hand. "War On Whistleblowers," http://www.waronwhistleblowers.com
"Indisputable Torture: A new non-partisan study confronts the legacy of brutality from the Bush years," (Editorial) in The New York Times, April 17, 2013, at p. A22.
During a week when my life as well as the much-loved city of Boston seem to be under vicious attack, it is important to come to terms with the events in our recent history that appear to be the source of this intense reaction.
Hatred comes mostly from the experience of evil. "Torture" is among the evils that need to be understood if we are to overcome and transcend such policies. Torture is among the defining evils of our time which we have not yet come to terms with and from which we are not yet free:
"A dozen years after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, an independent, non-partisan panel's examination of the interrogation and detention programs carried out in their aftermath by the Bush Administration may seem to be ultimate old business. But the sweeping report issued by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, provides a valuable, even necessary reckoning."
There is a danger that the crisis in Boston will drown out this important and possibly related news:
" ... the report's authoritative conclusion that 'the United States engaged in the practice of torture' is impossible to dismiss by a public that needs to know what [evil] was committed in the nation's name."
The U.S. made use of torture policies that violated international and American human rights laws without gaining useful or valuable information that would not have been otherwise obtained. ("American Doctors and Torture" and "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?" then "Legal Ethics Today.")
This is not the kind of news that can be hidden from the public or from history. Truth requires full disclosure and discussion in the media and academia. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")
Much the same is true in New Jersey, where efforts are underway to cover-up and deny what, I believe, is obvious to readers of these blogs: An American jurisdiction has targeted individuals for torture, censorship, created and perpetuated a conspiracy to violate their civil rights by using the power and technology of government to censor, suppress, or destroy political speech, also much worse. ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
The use of torture -- psychological or so-called "touchless torture techniques" are included in the relevant legal definition -- " ... had no justification and damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive."
Much the same applies to New Jersey's fiasco of abuse of government authority and corruption. Innocent persons are and will continue to be hurt. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")
The U.S. has regarded conduct by other countries that is identical to what America has done in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib -- or N.J. -- as "criminal" and prosecuted responsible individuals in U.S. courts for those crimes.
Torture is admitted to qualify as a "crime against humanity," assassination of persons -- including U.S. citizens -- without due process of law, while not discussed in this report, is also clearly illegal. This tactic will result in the assassination of Americans and others by victimized nations and groups in response to what we have done.
The "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" quality of American practices and policies during the Bush years as opposed to our rhetoric, then and now, suggests that (despite this report) the U.S. will continue to engage in torture, creating a great probability of retaliation and, frighteningly, more incidents like this week's bombings in Boston.
"The panel further details the ethical lapses of government lawyers in the Bush years who served up 'acrobatic' advice" -- Stuart Rabner? -- "to justify BRUTAL interrogations, and of medical professionals who helped oversee them. It is also rightly critical of the Obama Administration's use of expansive claims of secrecy to keep the details of rendition and torture from becoming public and to block victims' lawsuits." ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")
It is time to tell the victims the truth concerning torture, Mr. Rabner, rather than seeking to protect Ms. Poritz, Mr. Tuchin, or any other persons involved in the OAE's illegal efforts or Mr. Menendez's "shenanigans." ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" then "Is Senator Menendez 'For' Human Rights?")
... To read about torture. To this day I remember the exact time and place when, as a child, I first became aware of [torture.] ...
the detail that most sickened me. How little of this there would have to be before the living comfortably with it by others to be itself an outrage? And how much of it there is? ...
... the moral reality I attempt to encapsulate in the contract of mutual indifference is ... unbearable. These mechanisms of denial themselves say it. It is unbearable that people should be made to suffer in terrible ways. So it gets shut out. But if it is unbearable that they should be made to, it is unbearable also that they are left to. And the more it is shut out, the more they are. But the less well-placed people then are to perceive the coexistence of the evil with its adjacency to their own lives. The less well-placed they are to estimate the extent of the 'leaving to,' the wide tolerance there is towards the misery of others. ...
Theodor Adorno has put forward the view that a thinking which does not measure itself against extremity is 'in the nature of the musical accompaniment with which the SS liked to drown out the screams of its victims.' ...
Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy After the Holocaust (London: Verso, 1998), pp. 46-47.
Are you "comfortable" with the torture of innocents, Mr. Rabner? Is this torture "ethical"?
Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Boston's Tragedy and N.J.'s Corporate-Paid Judges.
April 17, 2013 at 1:11 P.M. Printing is blocked, again, and NYPL computers at Morningside Heights have been hacked-into, also again. Attacks on the health of family members will not alter my views. Intimidation efforts directed against me are also unlikely to succeed.
John Eligion & Michael Cooper, "Blasts at Boston Marathon Kill 3 and Injure 100: Panic at Finish Line," in The New York Times, April 16, 2013, at p. A1.
David Able, "Boston Marathon: Amid the Shock, A Selfless Rush to Help Others," in The Boston Globe, April 16, 2013, at p. 1.
April 16, 2013 at 1:45 P.M. The print at my sites -- at least for me -- is so tiny that writing will be difficult. I do not know whether I will be able to print my work. If I am able to print my text, the size of the text may make it difficult to read the essay. I will do my best under these circumstances.
The "Shell Oil" truck image continues to confront me at computer #3, NYPL, Morningside Heights. Hackers into the library system engage in harassments and obstructions every day. I can only hope to be able to continue writing in this situation. The letter "B" has been loosened at this computer's keyboard.
Yesterday's bombing in Boston that has taken lives and injured many persons -- injured them severely and forever in many instances -- underscores the threat to Americans from what can only be described as terrorism. ("Civilization Against Terrorism.")
Several things are obvious from an examination of the facts which have been reported, thus far, in the media. I say this as someone whose loved-one might well have been among the wounded or killed: First, this event required military knowledge, planning and execution; second, the nature and placement of the bombs used suggests an INTENT to maximize human suffering, pain, loss of life. Someone both hates Americans and America as well as wishes to drive home to U.S. politicians the effects of drones upon "collateral victims"; roadside bombs in response to the U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan; in addition to the "instrumentalizing" of human lives as "tokens" in debates about policy.
It may be that a Right-wing, disgruntled American veteran wishes people to understand the madness and horror of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Far-Right always thrives on a climate of terror or heightened risk that will allow for the seizure of even more power.
This drone-killing issue is generating heated debate among intellectuals and young people throughout the world, many of whom see the cybercrimes, censorship, harassments, and plagiarism to which I and my writings (as well as many others) are subjected. ("Zero Dark Thirty.")
The pain and rights of billions of persons in the world -- like the innocent individuals standing at the side of the road in Boston -- continue to be ignored, denied, trivialized by disdainful and racist forces in our society and in the world.
Whoever committed these terrible crimes is surely on one of the various surveillance tapes created by dozens of cameras in the area where the incident occurred. Indeed, I venture to suggest that part of the "thrill" for the culprit or culprits (more than one person is probably involved) will be "starring in this mega-hit production." It is also likely that, whether or not the facts are revealed to the public, the U.S. authorities are aware of "factions" claiming credit for this attack. The persons responsible may be home-grown terrorists. ("American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles" and "Cubanazos Pose a Threat to National Security.")
Andrew Pollack, "Justices Weigh Issue of Patents For Human Genes," in The New York Times, April 15, 2013, at p. A3.
Attempts to patent human genes will also require, biologically, that certain genetic sequencing may be "owned" or made patentable. This will allow corporations also to "own" human genes and gene-treatments as well as the organic materials associated with diseases or cures and (analogously) genes associated with, say, genius may become "private property."
Other nations will not recognize such U.S. patent-claims -- such patents, if granted, may conflict with prior binding international conventions governing various forms of intellectual property, like copyright. Potentially, a corporation -- not YOU -- would come to own your own genetic material and information. This would bear on America's anti-slavery laws; privacy and abortion rights; to say nothing of the contents of your mind. It is indeed a Brave New World.
William Glaberson, "Courts in Slow Motion, Exhibit A: One Lawyer," in The New York Times, April 15, 2013, at p. A1.
" ... the Bronx courthouse features procrastinating prosecutors, sluggish jailers and unhurried judges. But the true masters of delay are the defense lawyers. For them, muddled memories and lost witnesses -- the passage of time itself -- are the ingredients for getting their clients off."
It is often the defense lawyer's job to obstruct, delay, or make it difficult to convict defendants by ensuring that Constitutional and other procedural protections have been observed. In a state with a legal profession and judiciary complicit in so much corruption and crime, like New Jersey, this problem is much greater than it could ever be in New York. Generally, such comments about defense counsel are trivial attempts to change the subject in Trenton. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
Abbott-Koloff, "Seminar Trips by Judges Raise Some Concerns," in The Record, April 2, 2013, at p. L-1.
Is it a good idea for state and federal judges, or other public officials, to attend so-called corporate-sponsored "seminars" at locations like Las Vegas or the beaches of San Juan, Puerto Rico or to join Dr. Melgen in the Dominican Republic for a little R.&R.? ("Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes" and "Menendez Goes to Bat For a Croney.")
"Three New Jersey-based judges were among more than 185 federal judges across the nation who attended seminars sponsored by private groups, many of them companies or conservative organizations with a political agenda, according to an investigative report by the Center For Public Integrity."
David Foster-Wallace's Infinite Jest features a near-future America "brought-to-you-by" corporate sponsors. The days of the year are named for commercial products and, hypothetically, rather than celebrating Christmas or Hanukah, Americans are invited to hold holiday parties for "Scott Tissue" toilet paper or "handy wipes." Fiction seems to have become fact.
There are some public duties and responsibilities that should transcend the ethos of the marketplace. ("Richard A. Posner On Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibilities" and "Ronald Dworkin's Jurisprudence of Interpretation.")
" ... 11 percent of the nation's federal judges participated in 109 seminars over a 4&1/2 year period that were sponsored by large foundations and companies. They included the Conservative Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and Companies in the oil and pharmaceutical businesses."
Shell Oil, perhaps? Allegations that rulings by judges in matters involving these same corporations may be altered or shaped by trips and other hospitality experienced as "gifts" miss the point.
It is unlikely that most federal judges will KNOWINGLY be bribed or influenced, directly, based on corporate hospitality. Most judges are conservatives, white, upper-middle class, former prosecutors and corporate lawyers, sharing an elitist, First-World perspective on all issues. Judges' views will be even more deformed by unrealistic and self-serving corporate versions of so-called "reality." This distortion is only worsened by judges partying on the corporate dime.
Judicial education for life is essential. Judges are often poorly-informed on most non-legal matters where their decisions are crucial, like genetic engineering and bio-chemistry. They frequently fail to understand relevant and important developments in the sciences and philosophy of law as well as the humanities. Sometimes, they are equally ignorant of the law. Continuing education at the post-graduate level and at public expense is crucial for state and federal judges.
Seminars at corporate pleasure and similar invitations are much more ethically suspect. Corporate presentation of discussion and selection of experts may convey a distorted perspective concerning an academic field, especially when such distortions are convenient for corporations doing the hosting.
In several instances judges who have attended corporate-sponsored seminars have ruled in favor of the same host corporations when they have appeared as litigants in their courtrooms. This creates at least the appearance of a conflict of interest (if not the reality of such a conflict) and renders judicial proceedings "ethically suspect." All of these problems are enhanced in America's most corrupt and inept jurisdiction, New Jersey. ("New Jersey's Unethical Judiciary" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")
New Jersey's embarassing spectacle of greed, heinous incompetence (several of the judges referred to in this article did not return phone calls to reporters!), corruption among judges (who are often late for court!), as well as much worse offenses, can only be described as a sad and humiliating additional example of what is clearly a disastrously failed jurisdiction. ("New Jersey's Corrupt Judges" and "New Jersey Supreme Court's Implosion" then "New Jersey's Failed Judiciary." Sadly, a fish always stinks from the head, as it were: "Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" then "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")
John Eligion & Michael Cooper, "Blasts at Boston Marathon Kill 3 and Injure 100: Panic at Finish Line," in The New York Times, April 16, 2013, at p. A1.
David Able, "Boston Marathon: Amid the Shock, A Selfless Rush to Help Others," in The Boston Globe, April 16, 2013, at p. 1.
April 16, 2013 at 1:45 P.M. The print at my sites -- at least for me -- is so tiny that writing will be difficult. I do not know whether I will be able to print my work. If I am able to print my text, the size of the text may make it difficult to read the essay. I will do my best under these circumstances.
The "Shell Oil" truck image continues to confront me at computer #3, NYPL, Morningside Heights. Hackers into the library system engage in harassments and obstructions every day. I can only hope to be able to continue writing in this situation. The letter "B" has been loosened at this computer's keyboard.
Yesterday's bombing in Boston that has taken lives and injured many persons -- injured them severely and forever in many instances -- underscores the threat to Americans from what can only be described as terrorism. ("Civilization Against Terrorism.")
Several things are obvious from an examination of the facts which have been reported, thus far, in the media. I say this as someone whose loved-one might well have been among the wounded or killed: First, this event required military knowledge, planning and execution; second, the nature and placement of the bombs used suggests an INTENT to maximize human suffering, pain, loss of life. Someone both hates Americans and America as well as wishes to drive home to U.S. politicians the effects of drones upon "collateral victims"; roadside bombs in response to the U.S. occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan; in addition to the "instrumentalizing" of human lives as "tokens" in debates about policy.
It may be that a Right-wing, disgruntled American veteran wishes people to understand the madness and horror of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Far-Right always thrives on a climate of terror or heightened risk that will allow for the seizure of even more power.
This drone-killing issue is generating heated debate among intellectuals and young people throughout the world, many of whom see the cybercrimes, censorship, harassments, and plagiarism to which I and my writings (as well as many others) are subjected. ("Zero Dark Thirty.")
The pain and rights of billions of persons in the world -- like the innocent individuals standing at the side of the road in Boston -- continue to be ignored, denied, trivialized by disdainful and racist forces in our society and in the world.
Whoever committed these terrible crimes is surely on one of the various surveillance tapes created by dozens of cameras in the area where the incident occurred. Indeed, I venture to suggest that part of the "thrill" for the culprit or culprits (more than one person is probably involved) will be "starring in this mega-hit production." It is also likely that, whether or not the facts are revealed to the public, the U.S. authorities are aware of "factions" claiming credit for this attack. The persons responsible may be home-grown terrorists. ("American Hypocrisy and Luis Posada Carriles" and "Cubanazos Pose a Threat to National Security.")
Andrew Pollack, "Justices Weigh Issue of Patents For Human Genes," in The New York Times, April 15, 2013, at p. A3.
Attempts to patent human genes will also require, biologically, that certain genetic sequencing may be "owned" or made patentable. This will allow corporations also to "own" human genes and gene-treatments as well as the organic materials associated with diseases or cures and (analogously) genes associated with, say, genius may become "private property."
Other nations will not recognize such U.S. patent-claims -- such patents, if granted, may conflict with prior binding international conventions governing various forms of intellectual property, like copyright. Potentially, a corporation -- not YOU -- would come to own your own genetic material and information. This would bear on America's anti-slavery laws; privacy and abortion rights; to say nothing of the contents of your mind. It is indeed a Brave New World.
William Glaberson, "Courts in Slow Motion, Exhibit A: One Lawyer," in The New York Times, April 15, 2013, at p. A1.
" ... the Bronx courthouse features procrastinating prosecutors, sluggish jailers and unhurried judges. But the true masters of delay are the defense lawyers. For them, muddled memories and lost witnesses -- the passage of time itself -- are the ingredients for getting their clients off."
It is often the defense lawyer's job to obstruct, delay, or make it difficult to convict defendants by ensuring that Constitutional and other procedural protections have been observed. In a state with a legal profession and judiciary complicit in so much corruption and crime, like New Jersey, this problem is much greater than it could ever be in New York. Generally, such comments about defense counsel are trivial attempts to change the subject in Trenton. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
Abbott-Koloff, "Seminar Trips by Judges Raise Some Concerns," in The Record, April 2, 2013, at p. L-1.
Is it a good idea for state and federal judges, or other public officials, to attend so-called corporate-sponsored "seminars" at locations like Las Vegas or the beaches of San Juan, Puerto Rico or to join Dr. Melgen in the Dominican Republic for a little R.&R.? ("Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes" and "Menendez Goes to Bat For a Croney.")
"Three New Jersey-based judges were among more than 185 federal judges across the nation who attended seminars sponsored by private groups, many of them companies or conservative organizations with a political agenda, according to an investigative report by the Center For Public Integrity."
David Foster-Wallace's Infinite Jest features a near-future America "brought-to-you-by" corporate sponsors. The days of the year are named for commercial products and, hypothetically, rather than celebrating Christmas or Hanukah, Americans are invited to hold holiday parties for "Scott Tissue" toilet paper or "handy wipes." Fiction seems to have become fact.
There are some public duties and responsibilities that should transcend the ethos of the marketplace. ("Richard A. Posner On Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibilities" and "Ronald Dworkin's Jurisprudence of Interpretation.")
" ... 11 percent of the nation's federal judges participated in 109 seminars over a 4&1/2 year period that were sponsored by large foundations and companies. They included the Conservative Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation and Companies in the oil and pharmaceutical businesses."
Shell Oil, perhaps? Allegations that rulings by judges in matters involving these same corporations may be altered or shaped by trips and other hospitality experienced as "gifts" miss the point.
It is unlikely that most federal judges will KNOWINGLY be bribed or influenced, directly, based on corporate hospitality. Most judges are conservatives, white, upper-middle class, former prosecutors and corporate lawyers, sharing an elitist, First-World perspective on all issues. Judges' views will be even more deformed by unrealistic and self-serving corporate versions of so-called "reality." This distortion is only worsened by judges partying on the corporate dime.
Judicial education for life is essential. Judges are often poorly-informed on most non-legal matters where their decisions are crucial, like genetic engineering and bio-chemistry. They frequently fail to understand relevant and important developments in the sciences and philosophy of law as well as the humanities. Sometimes, they are equally ignorant of the law. Continuing education at the post-graduate level and at public expense is crucial for state and federal judges.
Seminars at corporate pleasure and similar invitations are much more ethically suspect. Corporate presentation of discussion and selection of experts may convey a distorted perspective concerning an academic field, especially when such distortions are convenient for corporations doing the hosting.
In several instances judges who have attended corporate-sponsored seminars have ruled in favor of the same host corporations when they have appeared as litigants in their courtrooms. This creates at least the appearance of a conflict of interest (if not the reality of such a conflict) and renders judicial proceedings "ethically suspect." All of these problems are enhanced in America's most corrupt and inept jurisdiction, New Jersey. ("New Jersey's Unethical Judiciary" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")
New Jersey's embarassing spectacle of greed, heinous incompetence (several of the judges referred to in this article did not return phone calls to reporters!), corruption among judges (who are often late for court!), as well as much worse offenses, can only be described as a sad and humiliating additional example of what is clearly a disastrously failed jurisdiction. ("New Jersey's Corrupt Judges" and "New Jersey Supreme Court's Implosion" then "New Jersey's Failed Judiciary." Sadly, a fish always stinks from the head, as it were: "Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" then "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")
Friday, April 12, 2013
7 Executives Indicted in New Jersey.
April 13, 2013 at 1:50 P.M. I will attempt to make corrections from the Inwood, NYPL, computer #2. The home page for this computer was altered by hackers into the public library's system. I am sure that this is merely a coincidence.
Any involuntary encounter with persons I know to have betrayed my trust by cooperating with my enemies in New Jersey will require me to communicate exactly what I think of them and why, but I will always do so "nicely." Forgiveness requires recognition, atonement, then reconciliation. Tell the truth, Mr. Rabner, it is "good for your soul." ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")
Abbott-Koloff, "Seven Indicted in Plot to Hide Political Gifts: Execs. at Engineering Firm That Held Public Contracts," in The Record, March 27, 2013, at p. A-1.
Christopher Baxter, "How Birdsall Exec's Divorce Led to Indictments: According to Affidavits Wife Secretly Taped [sic.] Details of Political Donation Scheme," in The Star Ledger, April 1, 2013, at p. 1.
Abbott-Koloff & Richard Cowen, "'He Wanted This Guy Dead' -- Police Say Manager of Diner Hired Hit On Boss, Wife's Uncle," in The Record, April 11, 2013, at p. A-1. (Clifton, New Jersey AGAIN?)
Michael Hastings, "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," in Rolling Stone, March 28, 2013, at p. 58. ("Andrew Warren," dirty C.I.A. operative, was a "star" in the War On Terror. But "Mr. Warren" -- and "Deuce Martinez"? -- is also guilty of sex crimes and, possibly, worse. Is this person friendly with Felix Roque? "Felix Roque and Computer Crime." Mr. Warren's alleged resemblance to John McGill of N.J.'s OAE is stunning.)
"Seven top executives of an engineering firm involved in numerous public and private North Jersey projects were indicted by a state grand jury Tuesday on charges that they hid political contributions while obtaining government contracts worth millions of dollars, authorities said." (emphasis added!)
This latest New Jersey corruption scandal -- one of several in the works as I type these words -- reveals the reality of New Jersey's structural governmental problems with organized crime and the culture of "pay-to-play."
It is simply taken for granted in the Garden State that bribes must be provided to get government contracts or funds, that the money will be spent "with the right people," that some of it will come back to politicians, whether directly or indirectly. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics.")
Bribes are provided, in one way or another, using various subterfuges, legally and illegally, to politicians and judges as decision makers in exchange for a little share in the wealth: If you want to "wet your beak" you gotta "share the love." ("Is Union City, New Jersey Meyer Lansky's Whore House?" then "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" and "New Jersey is Lucky Luciano's Havana.")
"The Birdsall Services Group of Monmouth County, its recently retired chief executive, Howard C. Birdsall, 69, ... and six other high-ranking employees were indicted on conspiracy and money laundering [sic.] charges, state Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa said in a statement."
Mr. Chiesa was believed by many to be in a coma. Mr. Chiesa's efforts to control or limit New Jersey's notorious corruption problems have been non-existent. ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" then "New Jersey's Politically-Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")
I am sure that Mr. Chiesa -- like Anne Milgram -- will remain "frozen" concerning my matters, or he may deny being aware of me or my on-line writings. ("Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless" and "New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court.")
It is inaccurate that Mr. Chiesa cannot speak English, although this matter is still a subject of debate for many of us. ("Bribery in Union City, New Jersey" and "Corrupt Broker Paid Off Menendez.")
Mysteriously, Mr. Chiesa is unable to shed any light on the criminal conspiracy emanating from his office and directed against my sites as well as the library's computers and other innocent victims. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
"The executives violated the state's pay-to-play [law] by making $686,000 in political donations over six years without reporting them to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission or to the government agencies that awarded them contracts, Chiesa said."
The prospective recipients of the alleged bribes have not been identified. A little careful examination of the facts that have been reported, however, suggests that we should round-up the usual suspects: Bergen County Democrats were the primary beneficiaries of this engineering firm's "public spiritedness." For instance, Democrats like JAMES CARROL, ELIZABETH CALABRESE, and JOHN HOGAN sent Christmas cards to these prosperous engineers.
These Bergen "Freeholders" approved EVERY contract resolution for the firm that came before them. The same group of Freeholders -- who have your welfare at heart -- were swept out of office in November's elections. ("Senator Bob Loves Xanadu!" and "Senator Bob Says -- 'Xanadu and You Are Perfect Together!'")
New Freeholders, bribed by different lawyers and engineers as well as architects and accountants, have come to office. When criticized, one of these novice public officials is alleged to have said: "Freeholders are not free!"
This recent unseemly episode is only one of dozens of examples during recent months of what Mr. Christie meant when, as U.S. Attorney -- as opposed to Governor -- he described New Jersey as a "culture of corruption." ("Is Governor Christie 'Mentally Deranged' and a 'Liar?'")
New Jersey's political system is saturated with political leeches who see government as a source of exploitable resources allowing shady lawyers and other loyalists to get rich in order to make politicians even richer at the people's expense.
Sadly, these "loyal" friends and supporters of crooked politicians (Dr. Melgen?) are often associated with organized crime. ("Does Senator Menendez have mafia friends?" and "Menendez Goes to Bat For a Croney.")
"Tick, Tock" diner, anyone? Take the canolis.
I can neither confirm nor deny that the so-called "hit person" contracted for the hit on the diner's owner in Clifton, New Jersey was none other than DIANA LISA RICCIOLI.
Any involuntary encounter with persons I know to have betrayed my trust by cooperating with my enemies in New Jersey will require me to communicate exactly what I think of them and why, but I will always do so "nicely." Forgiveness requires recognition, atonement, then reconciliation. Tell the truth, Mr. Rabner, it is "good for your soul." ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")
Abbott-Koloff, "Seven Indicted in Plot to Hide Political Gifts: Execs. at Engineering Firm That Held Public Contracts," in The Record, March 27, 2013, at p. A-1.
Christopher Baxter, "How Birdsall Exec's Divorce Led to Indictments: According to Affidavits Wife Secretly Taped [sic.] Details of Political Donation Scheme," in The Star Ledger, April 1, 2013, at p. 1.
Abbott-Koloff & Richard Cowen, "'He Wanted This Guy Dead' -- Police Say Manager of Diner Hired Hit On Boss, Wife's Uncle," in The Record, April 11, 2013, at p. A-1. (Clifton, New Jersey AGAIN?)
Michael Hastings, "The Spy Who Came In From the Cold," in Rolling Stone, March 28, 2013, at p. 58. ("Andrew Warren," dirty C.I.A. operative, was a "star" in the War On Terror. But "Mr. Warren" -- and "Deuce Martinez"? -- is also guilty of sex crimes and, possibly, worse. Is this person friendly with Felix Roque? "Felix Roque and Computer Crime." Mr. Warren's alleged resemblance to John McGill of N.J.'s OAE is stunning.)
"Seven top executives of an engineering firm involved in numerous public and private North Jersey projects were indicted by a state grand jury Tuesday on charges that they hid political contributions while obtaining government contracts worth millions of dollars, authorities said." (emphasis added!)
This latest New Jersey corruption scandal -- one of several in the works as I type these words -- reveals the reality of New Jersey's structural governmental problems with organized crime and the culture of "pay-to-play."
It is simply taken for granted in the Garden State that bribes must be provided to get government contracts or funds, that the money will be spent "with the right people," that some of it will come back to politicians, whether directly or indirectly. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics.")
Bribes are provided, in one way or another, using various subterfuges, legally and illegally, to politicians and judges as decision makers in exchange for a little share in the wealth: If you want to "wet your beak" you gotta "share the love." ("Is Union City, New Jersey Meyer Lansky's Whore House?" then "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" and "New Jersey is Lucky Luciano's Havana.")
"The Birdsall Services Group of Monmouth County, its recently retired chief executive, Howard C. Birdsall, 69, ... and six other high-ranking employees were indicted on conspiracy and money laundering [sic.] charges, state Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa said in a statement."
Mr. Chiesa was believed by many to be in a coma. Mr. Chiesa's efforts to control or limit New Jersey's notorious corruption problems have been non-existent. ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" then "New Jersey's Politically-Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")
I am sure that Mr. Chiesa -- like Anne Milgram -- will remain "frozen" concerning my matters, or he may deny being aware of me or my on-line writings. ("Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless" and "New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court.")
It is inaccurate that Mr. Chiesa cannot speak English, although this matter is still a subject of debate for many of us. ("Bribery in Union City, New Jersey" and "Corrupt Broker Paid Off Menendez.")
Mysteriously, Mr. Chiesa is unable to shed any light on the criminal conspiracy emanating from his office and directed against my sites as well as the library's computers and other innocent victims. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
"The executives violated the state's pay-to-play [law] by making $686,000 in political donations over six years without reporting them to the state Election Law Enforcement Commission or to the government agencies that awarded them contracts, Chiesa said."
The prospective recipients of the alleged bribes have not been identified. A little careful examination of the facts that have been reported, however, suggests that we should round-up the usual suspects: Bergen County Democrats were the primary beneficiaries of this engineering firm's "public spiritedness." For instance, Democrats like JAMES CARROL, ELIZABETH CALABRESE, and JOHN HOGAN sent Christmas cards to these prosperous engineers.
These Bergen "Freeholders" approved EVERY contract resolution for the firm that came before them. The same group of Freeholders -- who have your welfare at heart -- were swept out of office in November's elections. ("Senator Bob Loves Xanadu!" and "Senator Bob Says -- 'Xanadu and You Are Perfect Together!'")
New Freeholders, bribed by different lawyers and engineers as well as architects and accountants, have come to office. When criticized, one of these novice public officials is alleged to have said: "Freeholders are not free!"
This recent unseemly episode is only one of dozens of examples during recent months of what Mr. Christie meant when, as U.S. Attorney -- as opposed to Governor -- he described New Jersey as a "culture of corruption." ("Is Governor Christie 'Mentally Deranged' and a 'Liar?'")
New Jersey's political system is saturated with political leeches who see government as a source of exploitable resources allowing shady lawyers and other loyalists to get rich in order to make politicians even richer at the people's expense.
Sadly, these "loyal" friends and supporters of crooked politicians (Dr. Melgen?) are often associated with organized crime. ("Does Senator Menendez have mafia friends?" and "Menendez Goes to Bat For a Croney.")
"Tick, Tock" diner, anyone? Take the canolis.
I can neither confirm nor deny that the so-called "hit person" contracted for the hit on the diner's owner in Clifton, New Jersey was none other than DIANA LISA RICCIOLI.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
"Joey D" Knows How to Eat!
April 11, 2013 at 1:12 P.M. I am prevented from printing my work at the Morningside Heights branch of the NYPL. I have experienced this form of harassment before. I will have to make use of public print shops. Perhaps other branches will allow me to make use of printing services. Requests for information, such as my personal pin number on my library card in order into print items, may actually be coming from hackers to the NYPL system. I will not supply such information to a "pop-up." Threatening phone calls and other harassments are about normal.
April 10, 2013 at 1:17 P.M. Numerous difficulties today at computer #8, Morningside Heights, NYPL, cause me to worry about renewed efforts to prevent me from writing at these blogs. I will struggle to continue writing on-line, even if it is only for 45 minutes per day.
Ted Sherman, "Essex County Exec. Dined Out on Campaign's Dime," in The Star Ledger, April 9, 2013, at p. 1.
"The Essex County Executive" -- JOSEPH DI VINCENZO, a.k.a. "Joey D" -- "does not face reelection until 2014, but in the past year he has used his campaign to cover the cost of $15,222 in meals at 30 different restaurants -- all labeled campaign meetings -- according to reports filed with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission."
Mr. Di Vincenzo has been rumored to be affiliated with Newark-based organized crime families. ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless.")
Mr. Di Vincenzo has been a friendly adversary and (sometimes) an ally of Mr. Christie. The New Jersey governor has "sung the praises" of Mr. Di Vincenzo on many occasions.
One shudders to think of Mr. Christie's restaurant bill at the taxpayers' expense.
"There was the $302.86 tab at the pricey Sea Grill in Rockerfeller Center last March (along with a $47 parking fee at the West 48th Street Parking Garage). The $480 bill that the campaign covered for a February, 2012 meeting at the exclusive Palm Restaurant at the El San Juan Hotel & Casino in Carolina, Puerto Rico. And the 36 times he dined at [the aptly-named] McLoone's Boat House in West Orange last year, with his reelection campaign picking up the check each time."
Mr. Di Vincenzo's "constituents" are among the poorest residents of New Jersey. I am sure that it will be a comfort to them to know that Mr. Di Vincenzo -- who also receives a six-figure salary -- will not have to worry about paying for his own food and drinks at fancy restaurants.
One wonders how many N.J. politicians joined Joe D for a little "chow-down" party at the people's expense: Richard J. Codey? Bob Menendez? Mr. Sweeney? Corey Booker?
Mr. Di Vincenzo piled-up about $250,000 on his "personal" credit cards from 2010 to 2011, "paying the bills with his campaign account without revealing what the money went toward. More than $3,000 was spent on a political retreat in Puerto Rico during the Super Bowl. He also used his campaign fund to play dozens of rounds of golf."
Mr. Di Vincenzo is a member of the N.J. Bar Association and former member of the legal ethics committee which should DISBAR any attorney who "mishandles or misappropriates" funds for personal use. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
The significance of these discoveries is not necessarily that Joe D violated complex spending laws (I think that he clearly did), but what it reveals about the attitude of politicians in America's "Soprano State." ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's Politically-Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")
Government, campaign money, taxpayer funds, are seen as "spoils" (as they say at Lowenstein, Sandler, Stuart Rabner's old firm) to be spent by politicians, judges, politically-connected lawyers for their personal pleasure and/or gain.
New Jersey's "culture of corruption" -- to quote Mr. Christie -- has yet to be controlled. ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" then "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes.")
Money is spread among loyalists by sleazy lawyers and politicians -- like Bob Menendez, allegedly -- in exchange for "favors" and "service." I can only hope that none of these disreputable lawyers are plotting against Ashley Judd. ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")
Public service through government work, politics as the preserve of professionals concerned to SERVE the public interest, is considered naive and laughable idealism. As Bob Menendez may well explain to all of us simple folks: "Politics is about taking care of yourself and your friends."
I can recall conversations with Mr. Menendez's former partner concerning Menendez's and his first efforts to get government "legal work." I am sure Bob is still laughing about the good-old-days and those classic so-called "scams." ("Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks" and "Does Senator Menendez have mafia friends?")
"Politics is about getting rich," enjoying yourself, while grabbing the brass ring of "success" and "power." Right, Alex Booth? Howard Brownstein? ("Is Senator Menendez 'For' Human Rights?" and "Senator Bob Loves Xanadu!")
Sources:
New York & the World:
Mark Santora, "In Hours, Thieves Took $45 Million in ATM Scheme," The New York Times, May 10, 2013, p. A1. (Front-page photo of criminals posing with stolen cash will make things easy for police. "Joe D" and the Jersey Boys may have stolen more of your money than these common criminals.)
Elizabeth Malkin, "Ex-Dictator Denies Role in Guatemalan Massacre," The New York Times, May 10, 2013, p. A10. (Efrain Rios-Mont convicted, briefly, then let off the hook was the C.I.A.'s man.)
"How to Generate Distrust On Drones: A Former Administration Lawyer Secrecy on Killing Makes the Program Seem Illegal," (Editorial) The New York Times, May 10, 2013, p. A28. (They are illegal.)
Jonathan Weisman & Mathew L. Wald, "I.R.S. Focus On Conservatives Gives G.O.P. an Issue to Seize On," The New York Times, May 13, 2013, p. A1. (Use of the IRS to alter a form of payment of return or to harass political opponents is inappropriate, Mr. Menendez.)
David E. Sanger & Nicole Pelroth, "Cyberattacks on the Rise Against U.S. Corporations," The New York Times, May 13, 2013, p. A6. (Perhaps nations targeted for 'mining' of data do not like to be stolen from?)
David M. Herzenhorn & Elen Barry, "From Russia, With Wig: U.S. Says Suspect Ejected," The New York Times, May 13, 2013, p. A1. (Ryan C. Fogle, incompetent C.I.A. agent, will forever be known as "Maxwell Smart.")
Charlie Savage & Scott Shane, "Justice Department Defends Seizure of Phone Records," The New York Times, May 15, 2013, p. A16. (Privacy?)
"Spying on the Associated Press," (Editorial) The New York Times, May 13, 2013, p. A24. (First Amendment.)
Neal Gabler, "Entertainment News," (Op-Ed) The New York Times, May 15, 2013, p. A25. (The line between the serious and frivolous has been erased.)
Andrew Pollock, "Closing Is Used to Create Embryonic Stem Cells," The New York Times, May 16, 2013, p. A17. (Will patents finally be available on human embryos created as a result of scientific creativity in vitro?)
New Jersey's Humiliation:
Joe Malinconico, "Suspended Officials's Suit Alleges Stress Led to Stroke: Says Paterson ignored try to explore improprieties," The Record, June 6, 2013, p. L-1. (Paul Forsman suffered stroke for trying to expose wrongdoing against N.J.'s pattern of lying and covering-up. OAE? Mr. Rabner?)
Jenna Portnoy, "Christie Picks Close Ally for U.S. Senate Seat: A.G. Chiesa, A 'Conservative Republican,' will not run in October," The Record, June 7, 2013, p. 1. (Christie is not helping the G.O.P. in New Jersey's federal senate election because he does not want rivals in the Garden State. Mr. Christie is New Jersey's "Mr. Republican.")
AP, "Mayor's Bribery Trial Moved to January," The Star Ledger, June 7, 2013, p. 15. (Tony Mack, alleged corrupt politician, will go to trial "sometime" this year. Mr. Zisa is still sitting at home? John McGill, Esq. of the OAE may have been part of the Trenton political establishment as an African-American Republican.)
Anthony G. Alterino, "Local Official Faces Charges of Assault After Altercation," The Star Ledger, June 7, 2013, p. 15. (Ernest Feist, 54, Director of Emergency Management for Monroe Township, N.J., charged with DWI and multiple assaults has threatened to make the charges go away.)
Charles Stile, "Infighting Tears at New Jersey Democrats: Truce just deeper divide," The Record, June 13, 2013, p. A-1. (Democrat mafia machine is falling apart and will die a well-deserved death with the defeat of Ms. Buono. Has Ms. Buono visited my sites? Is Ms. Buono "connected" to Diana Lisa Riccioli? "Trenton's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest!" and "Jennifer Velez is a Dyke Magnet!")
Peter J. Sampson, "Prosecutors Seek to Deny New Trial For Bergrin: Lawyer convicted in slaying of FBI informant," The Record, June 13, 2013, p. A-4. (Paul W. Bergrin seeks a new trial after convictions.)
John Patrick, "Man Pleads Guilty in Girl's Death: Admits Sodomizing Girlfriend's Baby," The Record, June 13, 2013, p. L-1. (AKEL A. ACKIE, 37-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault and two counts of endangering a minor as well as other counts. "New Jersey Being New Jersey?")
Stephanie Akin, "Police Airing Problems in Court: Towns saddled with costs as lawsuits add up," The Record, May 28, 2013, p. A-1. (N.J. rank-and-file police, legally, earn more than $100,000 per year on the books. Many earn more in cash payments under the table for services rendered to politicians.)
"Priests Downfall Continues in Court: Fugee Accused of Violating Order to Avoid Bids," The Star Ledger, May 22, 2013, p. 1. (The Rev. Michael Fugee is charged with violating agreement to avoid all contacts with children. N.J.'s status as worst jurisdiction for children remains unchallenged.)
April 10, 2013 at 1:17 P.M. Numerous difficulties today at computer #8, Morningside Heights, NYPL, cause me to worry about renewed efforts to prevent me from writing at these blogs. I will struggle to continue writing on-line, even if it is only for 45 minutes per day.
Ted Sherman, "Essex County Exec. Dined Out on Campaign's Dime," in The Star Ledger, April 9, 2013, at p. 1.
"The Essex County Executive" -- JOSEPH DI VINCENZO, a.k.a. "Joey D" -- "does not face reelection until 2014, but in the past year he has used his campaign to cover the cost of $15,222 in meals at 30 different restaurants -- all labeled campaign meetings -- according to reports filed with the state Election Law Enforcement Commission."
Mr. Di Vincenzo has been rumored to be affiliated with Newark-based organized crime families. ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless.")
Mr. Di Vincenzo has been a friendly adversary and (sometimes) an ally of Mr. Christie. The New Jersey governor has "sung the praises" of Mr. Di Vincenzo on many occasions.
One shudders to think of Mr. Christie's restaurant bill at the taxpayers' expense.
"There was the $302.86 tab at the pricey Sea Grill in Rockerfeller Center last March (along with a $47 parking fee at the West 48th Street Parking Garage). The $480 bill that the campaign covered for a February, 2012 meeting at the exclusive Palm Restaurant at the El San Juan Hotel & Casino in Carolina, Puerto Rico. And the 36 times he dined at [the aptly-named] McLoone's Boat House in West Orange last year, with his reelection campaign picking up the check each time."
Mr. Di Vincenzo's "constituents" are among the poorest residents of New Jersey. I am sure that it will be a comfort to them to know that Mr. Di Vincenzo -- who also receives a six-figure salary -- will not have to worry about paying for his own food and drinks at fancy restaurants.
One wonders how many N.J. politicians joined Joe D for a little "chow-down" party at the people's expense: Richard J. Codey? Bob Menendez? Mr. Sweeney? Corey Booker?
Mr. Di Vincenzo piled-up about $250,000 on his "personal" credit cards from 2010 to 2011, "paying the bills with his campaign account without revealing what the money went toward. More than $3,000 was spent on a political retreat in Puerto Rico during the Super Bowl. He also used his campaign fund to play dozens of rounds of golf."
Mr. Di Vincenzo is a member of the N.J. Bar Association and former member of the legal ethics committee which should DISBAR any attorney who "mishandles or misappropriates" funds for personal use. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
The significance of these discoveries is not necessarily that Joe D violated complex spending laws (I think that he clearly did), but what it reveals about the attitude of politicians in America's "Soprano State." ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's Politically-Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")
Government, campaign money, taxpayer funds, are seen as "spoils" (as they say at Lowenstein, Sandler, Stuart Rabner's old firm) to be spent by politicians, judges, politically-connected lawyers for their personal pleasure and/or gain.
New Jersey's "culture of corruption" -- to quote Mr. Christie -- has yet to be controlled. ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" then "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes.")
Money is spread among loyalists by sleazy lawyers and politicians -- like Bob Menendez, allegedly -- in exchange for "favors" and "service." I can only hope that none of these disreputable lawyers are plotting against Ashley Judd. ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")
Public service through government work, politics as the preserve of professionals concerned to SERVE the public interest, is considered naive and laughable idealism. As Bob Menendez may well explain to all of us simple folks: "Politics is about taking care of yourself and your friends."
I can recall conversations with Mr. Menendez's former partner concerning Menendez's and his first efforts to get government "legal work." I am sure Bob is still laughing about the good-old-days and those classic so-called "scams." ("Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks" and "Does Senator Menendez have mafia friends?")
"Politics is about getting rich," enjoying yourself, while grabbing the brass ring of "success" and "power." Right, Alex Booth? Howard Brownstein? ("Is Senator Menendez 'For' Human Rights?" and "Senator Bob Loves Xanadu!")
Sources:
New York & the World:
Mark Santora, "In Hours, Thieves Took $45 Million in ATM Scheme," The New York Times, May 10, 2013, p. A1. (Front-page photo of criminals posing with stolen cash will make things easy for police. "Joe D" and the Jersey Boys may have stolen more of your money than these common criminals.)
Elizabeth Malkin, "Ex-Dictator Denies Role in Guatemalan Massacre," The New York Times, May 10, 2013, p. A10. (Efrain Rios-Mont convicted, briefly, then let off the hook was the C.I.A.'s man.)
"How to Generate Distrust On Drones: A Former Administration Lawyer Secrecy on Killing Makes the Program Seem Illegal," (Editorial) The New York Times, May 10, 2013, p. A28. (They are illegal.)
Jonathan Weisman & Mathew L. Wald, "I.R.S. Focus On Conservatives Gives G.O.P. an Issue to Seize On," The New York Times, May 13, 2013, p. A1. (Use of the IRS to alter a form of payment of return or to harass political opponents is inappropriate, Mr. Menendez.)
David E. Sanger & Nicole Pelroth, "Cyberattacks on the Rise Against U.S. Corporations," The New York Times, May 13, 2013, p. A6. (Perhaps nations targeted for 'mining' of data do not like to be stolen from?)
David M. Herzenhorn & Elen Barry, "From Russia, With Wig: U.S. Says Suspect Ejected," The New York Times, May 13, 2013, p. A1. (Ryan C. Fogle, incompetent C.I.A. agent, will forever be known as "Maxwell Smart.")
Charlie Savage & Scott Shane, "Justice Department Defends Seizure of Phone Records," The New York Times, May 15, 2013, p. A16. (Privacy?)
"Spying on the Associated Press," (Editorial) The New York Times, May 13, 2013, p. A24. (First Amendment.)
Neal Gabler, "Entertainment News," (Op-Ed) The New York Times, May 15, 2013, p. A25. (The line between the serious and frivolous has been erased.)
Andrew Pollock, "Closing Is Used to Create Embryonic Stem Cells," The New York Times, May 16, 2013, p. A17. (Will patents finally be available on human embryos created as a result of scientific creativity in vitro?)
New Jersey's Humiliation:
Joe Malinconico, "Suspended Officials's Suit Alleges Stress Led to Stroke: Says Paterson ignored try to explore improprieties," The Record, June 6, 2013, p. L-1. (Paul Forsman suffered stroke for trying to expose wrongdoing against N.J.'s pattern of lying and covering-up. OAE? Mr. Rabner?)
Jenna Portnoy, "Christie Picks Close Ally for U.S. Senate Seat: A.G. Chiesa, A 'Conservative Republican,' will not run in October," The Record, June 7, 2013, p. 1. (Christie is not helping the G.O.P. in New Jersey's federal senate election because he does not want rivals in the Garden State. Mr. Christie is New Jersey's "Mr. Republican.")
AP, "Mayor's Bribery Trial Moved to January," The Star Ledger, June 7, 2013, p. 15. (Tony Mack, alleged corrupt politician, will go to trial "sometime" this year. Mr. Zisa is still sitting at home? John McGill, Esq. of the OAE may have been part of the Trenton political establishment as an African-American Republican.)
Anthony G. Alterino, "Local Official Faces Charges of Assault After Altercation," The Star Ledger, June 7, 2013, p. 15. (Ernest Feist, 54, Director of Emergency Management for Monroe Township, N.J., charged with DWI and multiple assaults has threatened to make the charges go away.)
Charles Stile, "Infighting Tears at New Jersey Democrats: Truce just deeper divide," The Record, June 13, 2013, p. A-1. (Democrat mafia machine is falling apart and will die a well-deserved death with the defeat of Ms. Buono. Has Ms. Buono visited my sites? Is Ms. Buono "connected" to Diana Lisa Riccioli? "Trenton's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest!" and "Jennifer Velez is a Dyke Magnet!")
Peter J. Sampson, "Prosecutors Seek to Deny New Trial For Bergrin: Lawyer convicted in slaying of FBI informant," The Record, June 13, 2013, p. A-4. (Paul W. Bergrin seeks a new trial after convictions.)
John Patrick, "Man Pleads Guilty in Girl's Death: Admits Sodomizing Girlfriend's Baby," The Record, June 13, 2013, p. L-1. (AKEL A. ACKIE, 37-year sentence for aggravated sexual assault and two counts of endangering a minor as well as other counts. "New Jersey Being New Jersey?")
Stephanie Akin, "Police Airing Problems in Court: Towns saddled with costs as lawsuits add up," The Record, May 28, 2013, p. A-1. (N.J. rank-and-file police, legally, earn more than $100,000 per year on the books. Many earn more in cash payments under the table for services rendered to politicians.)
"Priests Downfall Continues in Court: Fugee Accused of Violating Order to Avoid Bids," The Star Ledger, May 22, 2013, p. 1. (The Rev. Michael Fugee is charged with violating agreement to avoid all contacts with children. N.J.'s status as worst jurisdiction for children remains unchallenged.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)