Manning and Our “two-level” Justice System (2017)

 

This morning, I rose to the news that President Obama has commuted the whistle-blower sentence, Chelsea Manning. Of course, I was elated yet surprised by the announcement. This got me thinking.

Since President Gerald Ford pardoned his boss for then resigned President Nixon on his Watergate crimes, following George H.W. Bush's pardon of all those involved in the Iran-Contra scandal, including the Secretary of State Casper Weinberger, who lied several times to Congress over the arms deal with Iran, to Bush 2 pardoning those involved in illegal wiretapping of American citizens, including then Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter.” Libby, guilty of four or five felonies for which he had been indicted, reveals that those in power take care of their own.

Contrary to the Constitution, where all people, whether rich or poor, are equal under the law, there is a blatant inequality in the justice system. There is immunity and liberty for those in power, while the common man is thrown in jail on minor crimes.

This is why I was surprised at the Chelsea Manning “Pardon.” I re-read “No Place to Hide” by Glenn Greenwald, about NSA analyst, Edward Snowden, whistle-blowing about the massive surveillance by the NSA. This massive surveillance program is criminal on many levels, but you will not see one person come to justice. The only one getting punished is the messenger, Edward Snowden.

The mainstream press vilified Wikileaks for publishing the emails of HRC and her reptilian campaign manager, John Podesta, exposing several serious crimes, though no-one, no-one makes mention of their documented criminal activities.

There is two types of justice in the United States (and in other western countries, too): those for the rich elites and those for the common person. The powerful can commit crimes with no fear of retribution, while the middle class and poor are imprisoned for a simple misdemeanor.

Our governments need a reality check: You're NOT Public Rulers, but Public Servants. According to the Constitution, the Rule of Law applies to all, equal for rich and poor.

This tyrannical behavior must stop, for the sake of us all.

Mistrust in MSM Rising and Class Warfare

Although clicks and viewership of right-wing Murdoch owned Fox News is dwindling for the obvious reasons, (MAGA crowd) mistrust in mainstream media is rising, too; the latest US poll reveals over 70% of the population believe these corporate news organizations are simply spouting Fake News. A cursory examination of the last fours years particularly will give us a few reasons as to why this mistrust is spreading through the country.

Over the four years of the Trump regime, one could not switch on their phones and laptops without hearing about Trump colluding with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 presidential election. This was democratic elites and mainstream media coalescing to invalidate Trump's win. Russia-gate was a propaganda grift on the American people. Once the much-awaited Mueller Report came out, it had zero evidence of collusion between the Trump team and Russia interfering in the election. Although the investigation did uncover criminal acts from a few bad actors before and during the campaign, Russian influence and Trump's collusion was never found. Again, the Mueller investigation discovered zero evidence. However, this hasn't stopped certain mouthpieces in the DNC and the mainstream media from continuing the grift.

The mainstream media has certainly calmed down since the Mueller Report, but Russia seemingly always slithers into the news again, to pour more gas on the lie. This propaganda has further divided the country between the so-called Right and Left.

Fox News, the biggest news organization in the country, has also propagated their fair share of fake news that has widened the divide between the American people. In the latest presidential election, they pushed the lie that the election was fraudulent, creating the Stop the Steal movement which ended in an “insurrection” at the Capitol Building that considering America is surveillance and police state, this violent attack, breaching the halls of US the government, should never have happened.

I would have to lay the blame mostly on the mainstream media, president Trump and his loyal lackeys in the GOP.

Taking this all under consideration, something truly extraordinary occurred on the New York Stock Exchange. A band of people belonging to a sub-Reddit group bought shares in a bricks and mortar retail company, Game Stop, pushing the stock prices up, when a major hedge company shorted the business, betting on its failure, causing the hedge fund company to almost go bankrupt. I don't need to go into more specifics about this event (this news is worldwide), but what it has revealed is a deeply divided country between the very rich and everyone else. While these billionaires can play their market games and become extremely wealthy, when the little guy plays the same game against them, these elites cry-a- river and shout foul.

What I'm attempting to propose, is the divide between people across the US is not Right or Left, but between the rich and everyone else. This latest event on Wall Street transparently points this fact out. We shouldn't be fighting amongst ourselves over “cultural” issues but forging a government for the people.

This is class warfare, not a political one.

While America's people are starving and dying of COVID 19 more so than any other country in the world, while business has closed. Unemployment goes out the roof, the rich have gotten richer, and the poor have fallen even further into poverty. This is a broken economic system. This is an unworkable system that requires profound change.

So it is transparently clear why 70% of the people mistrust mainstream media. These elitist corporations have been bombarding us with non-stop lies, pushing us to fight between ourselves, rather than focus on the real problem: the mainstream media, the government as a whole, military, corporations and their coalescence as one: so named the Military-Industrial Complex.

 

Paul Auster – Sunset Park – Review

It's a sheer pleasure to return to a favorite author's work after a ten year respite. Aside from the love of many of the dead American writers like Faulkner, Vonnegut, Mailer, Bellow, and Twain, personally one has to include Paul Auster as one of the great 'living' writers of the 21^st century. I was working for a local newspaper at the time, around the early nineties, that a graphic artist working for the same company introduced me to The New York Trilogy by Auster, which turned me into a true believer, and I've never looked back. 

All of Auster's novels have tacit magic about them. All his characters are banal in extraordinary ways. In Sunset Park, these qualities are exemplified in the novel's character studies; their thoughts, situations and emotional depths, revolving around an abandoned house in Sunset Park, New York. Auster weaves their stories together with a profound understanding of the human psyche under the economic recession of 2008. All these people are suffering and fighting their own demons who, over time, find themselves living in a vacant house, squatting, supporting each other economically, emotionally, and otherwise over a time span of several months.

The closest person who could be called the main character is Miles Heller. The son of a distinguished publisher and famous film actress, we discover that he has exiled himself away from his family in New York, moving from state to state, working minimum wage jobs,  finally ends up in Florida. Here, he works for a company that cleans out houses that were abandoned due to the 2008 housing crisis. Strangely his hobby is to photograph the numerous chattels and “things” that have been left behind by the owners. This is a way to not allow these things to be forgotten, documenting their existence as part of our civilization narrative, our story.

Bing Nathan is the larger than life character who is the squatter mastermind of the decrepit house in Sunset Park. He is Miles Heller's best friend from high school, who owns and runs a curious shop on Fifth Avenue in Park Slope: The Hospital of Lost things. “...it is a hole-in-the-wall storefront enterprise devoted to repairing objects from an era that has all been banished from the face of the earth: manual typewriters, fountain pens...” (p.73). Bing Nathan is mostly the glue that holds these talented and interesting people together under one “homeless” roof.

When one reads an Auster novel, the characters are so real that we cannot help but to identify, sympathize and empathize as if we have been friends for many years. Paul Auster's ability to do this reveals his genius as a novelist.

Sunset Park is ultimately about human nature, our failures, dreams, and brokenness as souls attempting to survive in a difficult and, at times, cruel world. The story shows our emotional insecurities and our need for 'connection' with our fellow beings. The story is about love and the necessity to exist, living our lives in the here and now.

An exceptional novel.

New Administration...more War.

Opinion

On the exact day that Joseph Biden was sworn in as the 46^th president of the United States added American troops and weapons were deployed into Syria and Iraq. The number of troops varies depending on what source you read, but the message for the planet is quite clear, the unstoppable US War Machine will continue and perpetually move forward, despite what administration is in power. When you consider Biden's Cabinet picks, representatives of weapons manufacturers, a slew of democratic proven warmongers, tech giants, corporations and Wall Street, many of us around the world are expecting Obama 2.0, however, many are expecting a much worse administration, particularly when it comes to the US's ongoing wars around the planet.

When the US people and many around the world had their attention on the presidential election, the insurrection on the capitol in DC, and Trump and his right-wing goons spouting lies and performing sedition, Israel was illegally bombing Syria; continued US drone bombing around the planet, and 20-year-old killing spree in Afghanistan; imposing Iran and Venezuela with economic blockades, murdering thousands of innocents, preventing much needed food and medicine during a worldwide pandemic. Indeed, most of the world has recognized that the US is the largest Terrorist State on the planet.

America has been a War Nation since its inception. It began with the systematic genocide of the indigenous peoples, followed by the revolution and the Spanish American War, conquering Mexico and stealing their land. After Mexico, it was the Philippines, not to mention the numerous Latin American countries that have been at the end of the spear of American Imperialism for a century.

What is interesting is that no matter what new presidential administration comes to power, the war machine continues unabated. Since 9/11, invading foreign countries and waging war does not require Congressional approval. The president or the Pentagon makes those decisions. That's why the majority of American's have no idea how many countries their government is bombing and pillaging.

I find it even more disturbing that both major parties in the US are pro-war, allocating trillions of dollars for the war budget without debate.

In an interview with Noam Chomsky, he commented that the US has the biggest military on the planet. Their mandate is to defend the nation from enemies, both foreign and domestic. We certainly didn't see much defending on January 6^th. This, of course, begs so many questions on so many levels.

The neoliberals and their corporate mouthpieces, the MSM, has a mandate too. And that is to gain consent from the population for war. They do this by spouting lies and propaganda. For example, the New York Times has supported every war that the US has launched throughout its history. The paper supported the WMD lie for the invasion of Iraq and never apologized for spreading intended disinformation for this war. Again, the New York Times is the State Department's stenographer for the spread of propaganda supporting US illegal wars. One can name most of the corporate news outlets, spreading fake news to destroy countries overseas... What is frightening is that severe censorship is on the horizon, leaving us only a single source of news, the “Department of Truth.”

So really, in the end, I was not shocked that the new Biden administration deployed more troops and weapons into Syria and Iraq to essentially guard the oil that they have stolen by force from these countries.

Why is anyone surprised that the Biden administration has ramped up its presence in the Middle East? The US has been at war from its very beginnings and bases its economy on the death and destruction of other countries. “The greatest democracy in the world?” I don't think so, not at all.

Alain De Botton – The Art of Travel - Review

After a weekend in bed, feeling sorry for myself decided to sit on my front porch and sketch the view. I have a 'travel" journal that goes with me on every trip I've made since the turn of the century. Mostly landscapes and buildings, I write a comment about the time and place next to the sketch. The harsh sun shining through my window, dragged me out of bed this morning, "traveled " just outside my front door, and the moment was revealed as, really, I could have been anywhere!

I would recommend this book because what De Botton suggests makes sense and, when applied, works

"Philosophical Tools for Meaningful Travel..."

One of Alain De Botton's publications, ~The Art of Travel~ is a philosophical investigation, simply written, on the reasons and motivations for why we travel. The book's main thesis is that our lives are dominated by a search for that elusive and fleeting emotion or state known as happiness. Travel, he proposes, is a major activity that seeks out this state of mind. Travel can possibly show us what life is about outside our routine-filled day-to-day existence. The book examines our motives for traveling, our anticipations, and expectations using the writings of various artists, poets, and explorers, providing different and highly creative perspectives on the subject.

Personally, I found the most rewarding and instructive chapter to be, 'On eye-opening Art', using the views and paintings of Vincent van Gogh. Just as instructive, however, is the chapter, 'On Possessing Beauty,' drawing on the works of the 19th-century critic and writer, John Ruskin.

The message from both these individuals is quite similar. One of the tasks of art, specifically painting, is to provide us, the viewer, with new perspectives to view the world. Vincent van Gogh's exceedingly original style and use of color, for example, transformed, for some of us, the way we see a sunflower, a wheat field, and a Cypress tree. When viewing these works of art, or any work of art, we are inspired to travel to these places where the artist created and experience the works' subject first-hand.

John Ruskin believed that one of our primary needs in life is beauty and its possession. He suggested that the only meaningful way to possess beauty was through understanding it: '...making ourselves conscious of the factors (psychological and visual) that are responsible for it' (P.220). Indeed, to attain this understanding, he suggests, is to draw and write (word paint) those things and places we come across in the travels that strike us as beautiful. A person sitting down in front of an expansive landscape, and sketching its many features, will discover aspects about the scene that would be invisible to the casual observer. When traveling, take the time to draw and write about those places and things one sees, and the experience will be much richer as a result.

~The Art of Travel~ is a helpful philosophical guide to the budding and seasoned traveler. Where other books on the subject instruct us on where to go and what to see, Alain De Botton tells us how to approach our journeys and some useful tools for achieving a much more meaningful experience.

Streaming Consciousness – 2020-21

Only 18 days into the new year, there's no sign anything will be getting any better. COVID 19 continues to kill human beings around the globe. The US has become the world's epicenter for the virus, with a death rate of over 4000 daily. From afar, we see the US in serious political turmoil after the invasion of fanatic Trump supporters raid the nation's capital, all believing the election was “stolen.” from the president. Despite American's dropping like flies, there continues to be a sector of the population (including government officials) that refuse to wear a mask – the least one can do to prevent the spread of the disease. In Australia, the weather is all over the place: we're now in our summer months, and on some days, it feels like a typical winter's day, only to turn desperately hot the next. Our politicians, particularly our prime minister, fill the media with platitudes and rhetoric, only fighting amongst themselves rather than listening to the people's will. 2020 was a terrible year for the planet. However, in all this negativity and chaos, is there a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel?

In times like these, I always return to the Stoic philosophers. One can only do what one can do. It's necessary to self-reflect and recognize those things that are out of one's control. Simultaneously, recognizing what you can control and do positive things for oneself and others is also necessary in dire times. When I bring up the current negatives of the planet, people ask me why I care because, for the most part, it's out of my control. Indeed, I attempt to nurture my own garden before criticizing another. The French philosopher, Voltaire, communicated this notion clearly in his novel Candide.

We must cultivate our garden.

Aside from caring for ourselves, the philosopher also said:

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

This quote reminded me of the atrocities in Washington DC due to the absurd lies promulgated by the US president, Trump supporters, cult groups, and even members of Congress themselves. These violent actions by the mob were fed by lies and political antics. As the old saying goes, the fish rots from the head down and should be seriously examined: we must teach the puppets a lesson but also recognize the actions of the puppeteers in the events of January 6, 2021. And this certainly doesn't exclude actual members of the US government.

Beyond the rhetoric and outlandish conspiracies and lies, the anger of the American people go beyond “white supremacy” or “stealing the election.” It is a frustrating and angry response to an incompetent government that prefers to obey its donors' wishes than the American people's basic needs. In the US, like a grand All Star Wrestling match, most politics is pure theatre, and the people pick a team, whether Left or Right, and fight amongst each other rather than pointing their grievances towards policy, and they're elected officials. This division in American society has been planned and nurtured by the media and their masters. Most people simply want a better life, and the government prefers to coddle and pay the powerful while the rest of the population suffers.

Currently the US is a Corporation, where politicians are bought and paid for and only act to cut the oligarch's taxes, drain trillions into overseas wars, while millions of American's are dying from a virus that could have been contained, and giving them scraps while telling them to close their business while refusing to give essential aid.

The problem is corporations are above the government when it should be the other way around. Currently, corporations call all the shots when the government should apply stringent measures to contain their profits and concentrate on bettering their constituents' lives. But until the money is taken out of American politics, the wealthy will always run the country.

The incoming Biden government, for me, is a frightening prospect. Under Trump, it was scandals, racism, continued imperialism overseas, and ruthless sanctions on America's “enemies” (killing millions of women, children, and innocents). Trump believed climate change is a hoax, pulling out of the Paris Accord and tearing up the Iran nuclear deal. Under Biden, censorship will reign, particularly on most left views. I believe the Prison Industrial Complex will only expand, and knowing Biden's cabinet choices, a war with Iran can almost be assured.

Biden claimed nothing would fundamentally change under his government. Aside from anything else he claims, we should believe him on this one.

It's not all doom and gloom. After the nightmare that was the Trump presidency, climate change will be back on the table. Perhaps a more organized and effective response to COVID 19. Realistically, we don't know what this new government will do. But we should remain vigilant and stand-up and vocally criticize any new executive order or a new law that denies our basic human rights and hurts the common worker.

Sitting down to write today, I had no plan or topic. Evidently, these are the issues that currently come to mind.

Douglas Kennedy – The Heat of Betrayal - Review

 

Douglas Kennedy has published 13 novels, and the vast majority focus on themes such as troubled relationships, the human condition, our life's journey and the vagaries of existence. In The Heat of Betrayal (2015) also published under the title The Blue Hour, we find all of these themes contained in this single novel.

Our protagonist and narrator is a thirty-something woman in the midst of a deeply felt love for her second husband, twenty years her senior. A grey-streaked long-haired sketch artist who has achieved a level of notoriety and success. Only married for a few years, Robin desires to have children because her first marriage was such a disaster. According to Robin, their love-making is superb, so really, in her mind, there is no reason why they cannot have a child. This becomes the catalyst, setting off a bizarre set of events and circumstances taking place in the Sahara's heated sands and the strange marketplaces of Morocco, including the tribes of the local Bedouin.

As many critics have repeatedly stated, including me, Kennedy has an uncanny gift in understanding a woman's point of view. He has written from a woman's perspective in many of his novels, and The Heat of Betrayal is no different and a great example of this particular skill. As a man, this comment could sound dubious, but many of my female friends who have read Kennedy has remarked on this skill as well.

Robin discovers that her husband Paul has been keeping a secret throughout their apparent perfect marriage. She attempts to confront him, but he mysteriously disappears from their hotel, leaving blood and chaos in their room. The authorities move her to another room while they investigate. And the local police immediately accuse her of foul play, Robin's artist husband Paul has seemingly vanished.

The novel really picks-up momentum at this point, as Robin must navigate through the dangers of a foreign land in the pursuit of her husband.

Kennedy is an excellent storyteller. He directly places the reader in action, mind, and the central character's thoughts, bringing us along with the tale.

However, this reader found Robin to have a strong will, though the choices she makes on her rampaging quest to find her “loser” husband was irritating at best. The barriers in her search are multiple, and in one case, a single choice comes close to ending her life, only to be saved by the kindness of strangers.

The endings resolutions came close to tying up all the loose ends. But that pathological obsessiveness of the central protagonist remained.

Or was this simply love?

American Austerity and the US War Machine

 

Yesterday my Australian mother of 90 years came to me in tears because of the events in Washington DC. Despite her age, she relies on her trusty Apple phone, and receives all the 'breaking news' from the New York Times and the Washington Post. Although I've told her to take these two media institutions with a hefty grain of salt, she continues to read them. What upset her was the images of “young thugs” desecrating the sacred capital of the United States of America.

My parents are both Australian, and they both migrated to Canada to then settle in Denver, Colorado. I grew up there during the '60s and '70s, where the US was a much different country today. We lived in a working-class neighborhood where everyone had a job, a house, and families were saving money for their children to go to university. Although the Vietnam War was raging, as a family, we were behind the civil rights movement, protesting against war and looking towards a better future. The future looked positive.

As most of my American friends have told me the US is a much different place. Even before 9/11, the snake-head of neoliberalism was on the rise. The US was continuing to bully and stick their noses in foreign countries. President Clinton essentially turned the government over to corporations; he conglomerated the media giants down to five or six, ejected the Glass-Steagall legislation, separating commercial and State banking, leading to the Wall Street scam of 2008, where millions lost their homes, and the creating of NAFTA, allowing corporations to ship their industries overseas, causing millions to lose their jobs. Then, of course, 9/11 happened, turning the US into a surveillance and police state.

My old home may be a democracy on face value, but in the end, it is a corporation, where elected officials bow down to their donors, and illegal wars continue around the planet. The mask of the government and their supporters have fallen, revealing a government not for the people but wholly devoted to their corporate overlords.

Intertwined into the corporate-ruled US government is a country's economy fuelled by perpetual war. One must be legally blind not to see the trillions of dollars handed over to the Military-Industrial Complex. A country whose economy is based on war must have an on-going war to exist and continue. Thus we have US “intellectuals” blaming Putin for the thug-takeover of the US capital. The governmental corruption is so deep, and the propaganda so pervasive, that any self-analysis effort is psychologically impossible. This is a major symptom of the psychopath. Then COVID 19 hit the world stage.

While governments around the world went into lockdown mode. These countries also offered incentives for people and businesses to close. On the other hand, the US, under the guidance of a clown president and a corrupt government, floundered; thus, the US has the highest cases and deaths on the planet due to the pandemic. Added to this crime of homicidal negligence, the government continues to flail like half-dead fish on the shoreline.

One must also add that the US government is sanctioning countries around the planet, ensuring that the women and children of said US enemies die of starvation and COVID 19.

I believe nothing will change in the US until they put government over corporations. It is insidious and also blatant how corporations dominate US policy. In this corrupt system, the elite win-out, and the rest are left with nothing.

The corporate media in the US also have so much to answer for...dividing a nation over “Left-wing and Right-wing” politics. That is, pulling the population's attention away from a positive policy for the people, filling their minds with lies and contributing to the invasion of the US capital.

Although the gangster and clown that is, Donald J. Trump instigated this thuggish invasion of the US capital and the reason for this breaching is based on the lie that the US election was rigged, I believe unconsciously, these Trump lunatics represented how millions of Americans are feeling at the moment: betrayed, lost, and very angry.

One must add, too, the irony of the public invasion of the capital, when the US government and their blood-soaked spear, the CIA, have been doing this in other countries for decades.

When my mother came to me in tears over this spectacle; emotionally and sentimentally, I understood her grief. However, the US is a much a different place now, where deep-seated change is so needed... for the US people and the planet.

Michael Connelly – The Law of Innocence – Review

 

Michael Connelly's novels and the characters within these crime stories over the last 25 years have become good friends, if not family, for this reader. The LA detective, Harry Bosch, is in the same league as Chandler's Phillip Marlowe or Dashiell Hammitt's Sam Spade. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that Connelly ranks with the American crime writer and novelist James M. Cain. Over 5 novels ago, we were introduced to the Lincoln Lawyer, Micky Haller. In his latest, The Law of Innocence, our ambulant defense attorney, has been pulled over in a traffic stop, where a body of an old client is discovered in the trunk of his Lincoln. Thus the twisting and turning game begin to prove the councilor's innocence.

Micky Haller is actually Harry Bosch's half brother. When you compare the two men in terms of their demeanor and overall character, the brothers are like chalk and cheese. Haller is willing to bend the rules to get his clients off. The LA detective Bosch on the other hand, for the most part, plays it by the book. They have in common their pursuit of the truth and their uncanny ability to make some serious enemies. In The Law of Innocence, it appears that Haller has made a smart and vengeful foe, as the dead body found in his trunk, all the evidence points to him as the perpetrator. It doesn't look at all positive when Haller is thrown in the lock-up, where he has to prepare for his up-hill defense.

Connelly's writing style runs at the pace of a screenplay. The courtroom scenes are realistic and accurate, placing the reader in the gallery, following the prosecution's spoken strategies and the defense. The reader is on edge, waiting for Haller's clever cross-examinations countering the prosecution's case. We see the presiding judges surprise and, in this case, fair rulings for the defense, as the prosecution is hell-bent, even crossing legal lines to keep Haller in jail and at a disadvantage. It's fair to say that Connelly's skill for courtroom dialogue is superb. It is obvious as well that the author began his writing career as a courtroom reporter.

Harry Bosch makes an appearance in this tale, aiding as an investigator in the case. Through Harry's connections in the LA Police Department and his outside-the-box investigation method, he discovers a vast scam against the federal government. When the FBI gets involved, the tale begins to become very interesting.

Connelly is an excellent storyteller. Reading the Bosch novels since the late 90's, we follow the detective's career as an LA detective through to his retirement, now consulting on difficult cases. The Lincoln Lawyer, Mickey Haller, is also maturing as we see his daughter now attending Law School. Connelly has created a realistic world around these two characters, situated in the third greatest character of the novels, LA's streets.

If you're a long term fan of Harry Bosch and the Lincoln Lawyer, this latest novel will not disappoint. If you're a new-comer to this world, The Law of Innocence is an excellent introduction and a novel that can stand on its own.