John Clark Pro Se Blog

But is this a rant? He decided to end his life in a rather spectacular way (flew his little plane into a building housing offices of the federal government.)  He believed there was no other way to be heard, and certainly got our attention.

He makes this final statement.  It should be read and considered - the least we can do - before passing judgment as to his state of mind. Click here so you can read it too.

George Burns said it best.

"Sincerity is everything. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made!"

Listen to it.

The media's intent to embarrass him has ricocheted to the detriment of big business, the attraction of the public to the game of golf, and the loss of millions of dollars.

Thus, TMZ,  the National Enquirer, Mail online, Page 6, and its ilk, are the ones who should apologize, for they have together damaged the American economy.  The law of unintended consequences?  I know all about that.

Meanwhile, one continues to wonder at this society's appetite for unremitting hypocrisy. The airwaves' No. 1 popular show continues to be 2 1/2 Men, starring Charlie Sheen, which is all about his sexual exploits.

So, Tiger, stay with it and don't feel depressed. Just think of media whore lawyer Gloria Allred sitting with her porn star client, demanding an apology too.  Frankly, I think you should employ a lawyer to demand apologies from these pretty ones, for the crime of shamelessly hawking their wares in front of you, knowing you would fall victim to their charms. I think it's called sexual entrapment.

Funny funny. Says it all, and the humor of it will give you perspective, help you get back on your game, and us LOL. 

Message to Lynn:

Hey Lynn,

I've been reading some of the terrific notices after your opening last night on Broadway.  I saw the play last year in L.A. but now I see that with the aid of your canny director (hi, Joe) you've added references to our 32 year marriage which, you now say, was for you filled with loneliness and lovelessness.  Linda Winer of Newsday says your tales of our marriage teeter uncomfortably close to revenge.

Why didn't you let me know? You misled me all along, it seems. I pulled out a book we put together a few years ago, This Is Living.  I wanted to check the dedication you surprised me with when it went to the publishers. It says "For John.  Who has opened my eyes to myself, has been a part of every good thing that has ever happened to me, and has loved me through fat and through thin."  So you lied? Now I feel uncomfortable, and wish you had saved me from your years of perdition.  I could have gone elsewhere, created my own career, and saved myself from being demonized and alienated by you and our children.

Well, carry on, anything for a successful show, and the critics DID spell my name right. We know that you have the performing talent to make the phone book sound interesting (there's an idea.) 

LATER

Vanity Fair has recorded a clip from your show. Reader fans may want to hear this.

Investigative reporter Lucy Komisar saw it. This is what she has to say about it, click here for her review.

You've made everyone aware Nightingale may be your swan song, and I don't want to rain on your parade (yet. My warehouse, which you stocked, is still full of good family memories, and all I need for my book which keeps me busy. Also my own solo show. which I may call Canary.)

Meanwhile, say hi to my kids for me, wish them a Happy Christmas, and treat yourselves to a read of A Christmas Carol.

Spent the day before the long Labor Day weekend in traffic court. I had received in the mail a picture of me at an intersection at the wheel of my car, from the front and rear, showing the license plate number. There I was, stopped behind the line, as the light had turned red. Next picture was of me making a right hand turn, (from Sunset on to Cahuenga, which was permitted). This was witnessed, and the fine was $436, send it in by (date). The witness? 2, maybe 3, video cameras.

I spent half a day in the line down at the courthouse giving them a check, and a demand that I wanted to go to trial on this. I felt, and continue to feel strongly, that we do not (yet) live in a police state. If it's ok to put its citizens under surveillance, I'm not so sure I wish to continue to live here. 

AUGUST 1, 2009

I feel bad that here it is, over 2 years since the previous entry on the subject. The reasons are 2-fold:

1. I have had an extended health problem, heart attack, atrial fibrilation, pace-maker, and the side effects of powerful medication to keep the blood flowing and the ticker ticking. And ever-present feelings of depression and failure, due to the lack of closure on my past marriages (only 2) and connected relationships, which others sort to benefit from, and did but really didn't, and the weird action of the real estate and stock market. I began to feel like the victim in a Priestley play.

2. On the bright side, I couldn't get justice then, given the players and tools which they used to such unfair advantage. Enforced patience took place, and behold, a whole new ball game is in play. The old actors are retired out of the picture, dead, gone, or disabled, and a new President is throwing in the air all the old precepts and practises, and we are watching where the pieces are falling. Many people don't like it, don't like it at all.

Me, I say give it a chance; the government is now getting into private enterprise, becoming the agency of last resort. Bleeding but leading. Making many entrepeneurs uncomfortable for good reason, claiming traditional first rights to that turf. But I don't think what he's doing should be confused with what many are calling creeping Socialism. That word, as I intimately knew it, meant Nationalisation British style after the 2nd World War. He's no Clement Atlee, or Harold Wilson, and it goes without saying that industries will be able to buy themselves back when they clean up their act.

In this country, there are certain flagship enterprises that should not be allowed to fail, notwithstanding the incompetency of their operators. The Auto industry comes to mind, as does the Defense industry, the Aircraft industry, and the Airline industry (Pan Am, where are you, they saved Lockheed, didn't they?) The Banking industry? Well, they were not just incompetent, they were to say the least, dishonest and corrupt in ways we'll never know. Why? Because of the Regulatory industry, possibly partners in crime. And because of the Judicial industry, which is where I come in.

The Web has changed the conditions of blogging very swiftly, giving the public access to information in ways that make my efforts look like snail mail vs. email. Moreover, many old links have become dead links. Most newspapers are expecting us to pay for archived information.. What we need now is the original publishing entrepeneur, Benjamin Franklin. He'd have found a way. The L.A. Times? Bye Bye.

But Information, and transparency, is the most urgent need now, and from now on, I am going to pass along links and sites that ought to get the public interested and involved. I do believe that there is a groundswell of discontent in the land that in past years would have led to the thunder of revolution, rebellion, or civil war. Can't do that any more. Check your History channel.

The upholding of the Constitution (the pursuit of... remember?) under Government Guarantees is soon upon us. Voices are being heard, and they should, must, be listened to. Enough from those who would say "let it pass. Get on with your life. It's over now. Trust justice to take care of us. Everyone deserves what they get. Look in the mirror." Well, I do. It's my mirror, not yours, and I like what I see.

So, I give you links that may open your eyes, and get you involved. Let's start with a lady who writes with clarity, flair, and elegance. I'm looking forward to meeting her.

Melinda Pillsbury-Foster (great name, grand-daughter of the famous photographer Arthur Pillsbury.) She advocates the return of Common Law Courts, the way it started back when. When judges were elected by you and me, and did not need to be trained liars, sorry, lawyers. It's about returning the power to the people. She wrote this over a year ago. How to form Common Law Courts

MAY 18, 2007

This endless search is in grave peril in California.

We got a rare glimpse of what goes on, reading about yesterday's celebrity-lawyer-filled training session held for Loyola law students in their legal lab. The program is named for Judge Larry Fidler who attended, and is otherwise currently presiding in the Phil Spector trial. In the interests of letting a little light into a tangled web of tactical deceit and see how it's practiced, and at the cost of bestowing free publicity, let's try to examine these much admired industry players; Gods, heroes, necessary evils or pond lives, depending on your courtroom experiences (if any) with them:

The celebrity attorney mentors of this new crop of law students included Paris Hilton's drunk driving specialist Richard Hutton. Then there was Thomas Mesereau Jr. who stood up for Michael Jackson in his famous molestaton case; Mark Geragos, who repped Scott Peterson and Gary Condit and Susan McDougal and Winona Ryder.

Harland Braun, who (for a while) worked for actor Robert Blake and director John Landis, and for a police officer accused of beating Rodney King, and at present Lane Garrison. Prosecutors included John Hueston who worked for the team against the Enron corp. Included too was K.C. Maxwell (a female), a rep for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and Richard Gabriel, a jury consultant in many high-profile trials. Oft-quoted Loyola Law School professors Laurie Levenson and Stanley Goldman were also on hand to throw in a few cent's worth of observation.

I am unaware of any pro se's being invited to sit in.

Braun made a stunning pronouncement. He said that as a general rule, it is better to keep your client off the stand and away from questions, for fear the truth might come out and destroy all the damage a skillful attorney may have done to the prosecution's case.

So it's now out in the open; we learn that TRUTH is not concomitant with JUSTICE!

Would that a few members of the public, prospective jurors and self-representing pro pers had been present to keep them honest with a few hard questions for the benefit of the students. But of course, they would not have been allowed in to monitor this clubby conference of celebrity's highest paid beauts.

They might have been able to point out that ordinary middle-class members of the public would probably face bankruptcy were they to become clients and put themselves entirely in the hands of lawyers, none of whom are required to disclose their huge fees. But perhaps that is part of the attraction of a career in U.S. civil and criminal law.

READ ALL ABOUT IT!

It goes without saying that a defendant has the right to expect a judge will keep all the participants straight and in line when they are under his eye. But will it happen? I could not help hearing the ringing of a bell and recalling my own experience when I observed the mentoring of a bunch of Loyola law students by the judge presiding at my wife's divorce trial against me. Actually in the courtroom, and it led to my pressing a 170.1 disqualification motion against Judge Arnold Gold (which was disallowed and failed - by him, of course.) Here's how I did it:

My Motion to Disqualify

I don't know Mr. Marciano, never met him, and I don't wear Guess jeans.  I also have no interest (yet) in his run for governor of California.  So why do I bring him up here?

Because, folks, what he's doing will be of enormous help to pro pers and pro ses everywhere, so pay attention.

He was in, and because of the heavy-handed actions of another gorilla judge in Los Angeles Superior Court, is now out, of a lawsuit, and it's costing him a default judgment of millions of dollars which includes punitive damages. And by the way, I have no feelings about the merits of the case he got involved with one way or another, because it hasn't come to trial, and I can't examine it.

Unlike most self-represented defendants, he is a multi-millionaire (he and his brothers founded Guess? Jeans), so he uses powerful lawyers who smell his money and will work hard for him (maybe). Here's what I know:

1. He is Jewish, not a wannabe jew like me, and like Madoff, not afraid to attack other jews. By that I mean that Madoff treated everyone as equals.

2. He is not a celebrity, so the celebrity factor is absent.

3. When he writes to Governor Schwartzenegger, he gets a reply, unlike me who was ignored.

4. Judge White will not dare send him to the Twin Towers to prevent him showing up for his court date, unlike what Gold did to me. On my birthday, too. Judicial abuse. Elder abuse. Terrorism run amok in Family Court, tolerated by the authorities. Unless you're profiled as part of a socio-economic minority.

5. I couldn't afford to sue Judge Arnold Gold. My lawyers took all my cash (over $600,000), and Gold evicted me from my mortgage free home to raise more cash which he then gave to the other side's lawyers. He left me with less than three thousand dollars as my community property share of the proceeds, after looting my family's inheritance. Read all about it on this site.

My life is too short, and besides, he already gave me a heart attack. And as a pro se, I would have continued to be treated with contempt by the American justice system, the media, and the L.A. Times.  I would have been thrown out of court, possibly to spend what's left of my life on the sidewalk.

Marciano is suing judge Elizabeth White in Federal Court, and also accusing California Supreme Court Justice Ronald George of ignoring Constitutional guarantees. Ron George must be taking notice, and getting a little nervous, especially as Marciano hired Ron George's son as his lawyer. Brilliant move. Hope it doesn't backfire at the California Supreme Court level, George would have to recuse himself. Too obvious a conflict of interest.  Same goes for the Judicial Council, who oversee the ethics of not yet "retired" judges.  Stay tuned for this, could be a lot of fun.

So, read all about his Constitutional case on Marciano's website.  It's full of really useful information. Put it in your Favorites folder.  And remember, he's paying millions to his lawyers, and the other side's lawyers.  It won't cost us a cent! We'll be intellectual piggy-backers!

We applaud what he's doing, and we support his cause. Let him know that we do, he supplies his personal contact numbers.  Let's hope he's successful with his appeals, reverses judge Elizabeth White, and gets into court so his case can be heard.  And if he's still up for Governor, we might even vote for him. For sure he'd check new judge applications closely for their mental health, job suitability, and worthiness to be paid out of our tax dollars.

GEORGES MARCIANO

Filed paperwork

I have one message for Mr. Marciano. THIS IS RIVETING.  GO FOR IT!  WE'RE WITH YOU AND WE'RE WATCHING THIS FASCINATING POWER PLAY... AND WAITING FOR OBAMA TO GET INVOLVED ...

1. Teaching Math in 1970
A logger sells a truckload of timber for $100.
His cost of production is 4/5 of the price.
What is his profit?

2. Teaching Math In 1980
A logger sells a truckload of timber for $100.
His cost of production is 80% of the price.
What is his profit?

3. Teaching Math In 1990
A logger sells a truckload of timber for $100.
His cost of production is $80.
How much was his profit?

4. Teaching Math In 2000
A logger sells a truckload of timber for $100.
His cost of production is $80 and his profit is $20.
Your assignment: Underline the number 20.

5. Teaching Math In 2005
A logger cuts down a beautiful forest because he is selfish and inconsiderate and cares nothing for the habitat of animals or the preservation of our woodlands. Your assignment:  Discuss how the birds and squirrels might feel as the logger cut down their homes for a measly profit of $20.

6. Teaching Math In 2009
A logger is arrested for trying to cut down a tree in case it may be offensive to Muslims or other religious groups not consulted in the procuring of the licence to fell. He is also fined $100 as his chainsaw is in breach of Health and Safety legislation as it is deemed dangerous and could cut something. He has used the chainsaw for over 20 years without incident; however he does not have the correct certificate of competence and is therefore considered to be an habitual criminal. His DNA is sampled and his details circulated throughout all government agencies. He protests and is taken to court and fined another $100 because the judge was upset because he represented himself. When he is released from his 1 day detention, he returns to find gypsies have cut down half his wood to build a camp on his land.  He tries to evict them but is arrested, prosecuted for harassing an ethnic minority, imprisoned and fined a further $500.  While he was in jail, the gypsies cut down the rest of his lumber and sold it on the black market for $100 cash. They also enjoyed a barbecue of squirrel and pheasant, and departed, leaving behind several tons of rubbish and asbestos sheeting. The forester, upon release, is warned that failure to clear the rubbish immediately at his own cost is an offence. He complains, and is arrested for environmental pollution, breach of the peace and invoiced for $12,000 for safe disposal costs by a regulated government contractor.

Your assignment:  How many times is the logger going to have to be arrested and fined before he realizes that he is never going to make $20 profit by hard work, and instead will give up, sign on for public assistance, and live off the state for the rest of his life?

7. Teaching Math In 2010
A logger doesn’t sell a truckload of timber because he can’t get a loan to buy a new truck.  His bank has spent all his - all of their money in fact - on a derivative of securitized debt related to sub-prime mortgages in Alabama. They sold this to Japan, and they and the Japanese have lost the lot, except for some borrowed government money left to pay a few million dollar bonuses to their senior directors, and the traders who made the biggest losses.

The logger struggles to pay the $1,200 road tax on his old truck, however, as it was built in the 1970s, it no longer meets the emissions regulations and he is forced to scrap it.

Some Bulgarian loggers buy the truck from the scrap merchant and put it back on the road. They undercut everyone on price for haulage and send their cash back home, while claiming unemployment for themselves and their relatives. If questioned, they speak no English, and it is easier to deport them at the government's expense. Following a vacation in their homeland, they return to the US with different names and different girls and start again. The logger protests loudly, and is accused in Federal Court of being a racist in violation of U.S. Constitutional law.  Meantime, while awaiting trial, he is forced to pay $1,500 in registration fees, as his name is still on the side of the truck.
The Government is forced to borrow more money in order to pay extra money to the bankers: bonuses are not cheap. Members of Congress in Committee hearings are sore and feel they are missing out on something. They claim the difference on expenses for their second homes, and allowances. Tax paid trips to the Caribbean to study the effects of Global Warming helps them to feel a little better.
(You do the math.)

8. Teaching Math In 2017
   أ المسجل تبيع حموله شاحنة من الخشب من اجل 100 دولار. صا ب تكلفة الانتاج من
 الثمن. ما هو الربح له؟
 

On Saturday, thousands marched in the streets of Hollywood (and elsewhere), protesting the continued involvement of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He's a suicide risk. The authorities are mishandling this situation, just as they did with Lee Harvey Oswald. There, we lost forever the possibility that he would reveal important information.

Same situation here.  We want Madoff to reveal what he did with the money, where it is, how it bloomed under the watchful eye of a government agency, and whether any of it is recoverable. He needs to be in jail, under 24 hour suicide watch.

One explanation is that the government wants him to kill himself, or be available to be killed, ostensibly and believably by some disgruntled investor.  He would take some very tricky questions and answers with him.  Sorry to be so cynical, but monitor this.  Another rumor-fed legend may be in the making, and fifty billion dollars is a lot of money.

Today the New York Times printed an op-ed article with the headline The End of the Financial World as We Know It.

It tells the story of how a gentleman by the name of Harry Markopolos, a savvy expert on the workings of the stock market and hedge funds, an investor himself, and having nothing to gain except perhaps an unwanted label, figured out that the now infamous Bernard Madoff, ex head of NASDAQ, could not possibly claim such consistently high returns for his clients.  The promised profits have revealed themselves to be losses, perhaps as high as fifty billion dollars. But too many people were making money, and nobody seemed interested in helping to bring the good times to an end. Meanwhile, what had been preoccupying the country's legislators in Washington, where regulatory solutions lie, appears to be how best to vote themselves a raise.

It's much like the U.S. Civil Justice system, which is what this site attempts to probe, where the public can't afford to hire a lawyer.  Conflicts of Interest are similarly embedded in a system where supposedly neutral judges are drawn from the ranks of highly biased and profit-motivated lawyers. Again, the ol' boys network.  It's time a sea change took place there too. Judges are judges and lawyers are lawyers, they have different mind-sets, and they should be kept apart and trained differently from the very beginning of their careers. Judicial regulation is lacking there too. And again, the Chief Justice in Washington's preoccupation appears to be how best to vote raises for judges.

Peter Bart, that wise old owl who sits atop Variety, nails it this week when he leads off his column with this resonating world view:

    "Clearly we are not witnessing a 'normal' recession.  This downturn is global and gut-wrenching. It's as though the bountiful 1920s have just collapsed and we've all been plunged yet again into the grim '30s.  That upheaval took a decade to unravel.  Also a world war.

    The emotional response to the present economic debacle varies by generation.  The 20 and 30-year-olds tend to be in total denial. They've never gone through anything like this and can't believe it's happening.

    The baby boomers are in disbelief for another reason:  Most smugly believed that governments were too smart and that the science of economics was too sophisticated to permit a disaster like this.  Globalism would save us:  The Arabs and Chinese would prove resilient: The Russians would kick in their energy billions.

    Now all of us are standing at the abyss asking:  Whatever happened to the survival instincts of the CEOs?  Why do the gurus of fiscal and monetary policy suddenly look shell-shocked?

    The kids still believe that somehow, somewhere, Big Daddy will save us. He will - if anyone can find him."

By Andreas Hippin, Globe & Mail, Canada

   November 20 (Bloomberg) -- The Somali pirates, renegade Somalis known for hijacking ships for ransom in the Gulf of Aden, are negotiating a purchase of Citigroup.

   The pirates would buy Citigroup with new debt and their existing cash stockpiles, earned most recently from hijacking numerous ships, including most recently a $200 million Saudi Arabian oil tanker. The Somali pirates are offering up to $0.10 per share for Citigroup, pirate spokesman Sugule Ali said earlier today. The negotiations have entered the final stage, Ali said.

   "You may not like our price, but we do not usually pay anything.  Be happy we are in the mood to
offer the shareholders something," said Ali.

   The pirates will finance part of the purchase by selling new Pirate Ransom Backed Securities.  The PRBS's are backed by the cash flows from future ransom payments from hijackings in the Gulf of Aden.  Moody's and S&P have already issued their top investment grade ratings for the PRBS's.

   Head pirate, Ubu Kalid Shandu, said: "We need a bank so that we have a place to keep all of our ransom money. Thankfully, the dislocations in the capital markets has allowed us to purchase Citigroup at an attractive valuation and to take advantage of TARP capital to grow the business even faster."

   Shandu added, "Furthermore, we don't call ourselves pirates. We are coastguards and this will allow us to guard our coasts better."

*CITI IN TALKS WITH SOMALI PIRATES FOR POSSIBLE CAPITAL INFUSION

*WILL REQUIRE ALL CITI EMPLOYEES TO WEAR PATCH OVER ONE EYE

*SOMALIAN PIRATES APPLY TO BECOME BANK TO ACCESS TARP

*PAULSON: TARP PIRATE EQUITY IS AN `INVESTMENT,' WILL PAY OFF

*KASHKARI SAYS `SOMALI PIRATES ARE 'FUNDAMENTALLY SOUND' '

*HUD SAYS SOMALI DHOW FORECLOSURE PROGRAM HAD `VERY LOW'  PARTICIPATION                                                
         
*FED OFFICIALS: AGGRESSIVE EASING WOULD CUT SOMALI PIRATE RISK

* FED AGREED OCT. 29 TO TAKE `WHATEVER STEPS' NEEDED FOR SOMALI PIRATES

I'm still trying to figure out how they get on board the pirated vessels without any help.  My merchant navy days taught me that the only way to climb aboard while at sea was up a Jacob's Ladder, thrown by a crew member.  If grappling hooks are used, well, a heavy squirt from a fire hose would take care of that.  Or boiling oil if all else fails.

As it is, the answer may be to travel in convoy, and pray that the enemy doesn't go submersible.  North Atlantic all over again?  Where's Winston when you need him!

Canada's Maclean's Magazine, in their June 11 issue, tells us that England is ROTTING, especially at the grass roots level, and why, and backs it up with facts and figures.

I have a daughter and grandchildren living there in the Midlands, so I care to know whether this is true.

Maybe it's a Conservative (read Republican) missive, the writer tossing fizzlers into Blair's Labour record, now that that party is waiting in the wings. Or maybe not. I wish I knew.

Anyway, read it for yourself HERE.

My friends in England, please email this expat at

john@johnclarkprose.com

and tell me that it ain't true.

I'll pass on what I hear.

"The media hunts in a pack. It tears people and reputations to bits. Accuracy and objectivity are abandoned in favor of scandal and controversy on an overwhelming scale. News is rarely news these days unless it generates more heat than light."

Read more about what Tony Blair has to say as he departs his office. He's a brave fellow indeed, and speaks up for himself, not through a lawyer or an underling, which is unusual over here. Powerful words. Now the "We have the last word!" media wolves are mad and snapping at his heels.

Fathers everywhere are often denied their proper introduction into nature's scheme of things, and next Sunday will be a chance for our partners to show some appreciation - Father's Day.

It's no wonder that we guys need some recovery time off to recharge!

Never mind a sinking Iraq, a sinking Wall Street, a sinking real estate market, rising interest rates, the Group of Eight Summit, and several other petty annoyances. This all comes to a head today.

Miss Showbiz, Paris Hilton vs. The Law His Honor Judge Michael T. Sauer.

Who will win? It's early in the Pacific time of day. Stay tuned . . .

Midday. (This site, first with the news!)

After spending a few days at home wearing an ankle security bracelet courtesy of law enforcement second-guessing her prison sentence, she was driven to the courthouse OJ style on the freeway to appear in court, and now she's been ordered back to jail for the full term, screaming "It's not right . . . Mom . . . Mom . . ." while being hauled out of the courtroom.

Acting meets a show of reality. Sad. But it was never a contest. There will be an appeal, probably, (where they "shoot the wounded"). She can blame her handlers, that is, her lawyers, her parents, her doctors, and the sheriff Lee Baca, aka law enforcement. This litigant should have gone pro se in court this morning after first firing her lawyers and explained for herself that she's not the maker of these moves, she's old enough (26). But it would have required a level of maturity. Hopefully, she'll avoid tragedy and acquire some while serving out her time.

Late afternoon. It's not over by any means. We now see a full-blown war which is reaching far beyond the confines of Paris Hilton and Judge Sauer and Hollywood. What we are witnessing is the beginning of a long drawn-out affair between the courts and the sheriff's department and the media and the public and the chief who denies being a celebrity lover, Sheriff Baca. And who knows, her stock may yet get a sympathetic pop. I'm delighted. Through her, a spotlight will shine on the disfunctionality of the justice system hereabouts, and people and the press are PAYING ATTENTION!

She was taken directly to the Twin Towers for processing in, which is where I start to relate to what's happening to her. Because this happened to me on my sixty-eighth birthday, a never-to-be-forgotten 24 hours in my life, after which I was let out to permit me to hurry to the divorce court to represent myself Pro Se in front of Judge Gold. Read of my experience. As part of the processing-in procedure, she will experience what I experienced, all the makings of a bad sex video (get naked, bend over, spread buttocks, cavity search) along with the discomfort of sitting still in stale prison clothes on a cold narrow stainless steel bench for several hours with the privilege of going to the bathroom in front of willing onlookers. And then, a segregated inmate as I was, alone in a cell where the temperature is deliberately kept shiveringly low. Humiliation is the name of their game.

Sat. June 9
The city attorney, Rocky Delgadillo, who went after Peewee Herman in his Waterloo, felt that Paris should be punished and went after her too. So it was interesting to read today of his wife's brush with the law, when she too was caught driving with a suspended licence See what happened to her. It became evident that other inmates exiting prison were not given special treatment and resented Paris's. See what happened to other inmates.

Then this morning we read this in a Los Angeles Times unusually mealy-mouthed editorial which deliberately left out all of the larger issues.

So late today it was reported that Paris, whether alone or with the aid of damage control advisors, has decided that she would instruct her attorneys to drop any idea of an appeal, and that she would brave it out, and asked her fans for support.

Good for her. A smart move, and may she have the strength to get through it with minimal damage, physical and mental as well as financial and image-wise. Perhaps she should look to Martha Stewart as her patron saint, and emerge as a better and more interesting person and for sure a better actress.

The Los Angeles Times's Timothy Rutten, self-appointed guardian-of-the-morals-and-ethics of our Fourth Estate, today writes a biased piece concerning the perceived chutzpa of Rupert Murdoch, taking him to task for talking to the Bancroft family with a view to buying the Wall Street Journal. Read it here.

Now I have little sympathy for Murdoch, ever since his esteemed London Times organ ran the original story planted by my ex-wife Lynn Redgrave "outing" me after a 32 year marriage, and ran a Page 6 style article with no warning. I was assuaged somewhat ever since discovering that he too got divorced after a 32 year marriage and subsequently married a much younger Asian, just like me (although I don't think he publicly outed himself.)

But methinks one detects the deadly sin of envy. Murdoch (a U.S. citizen, not just a resident as Rutten misinforms) makes a profit. The L.A. Times does not. Instead, to cut mounting costs, we coincidentally read today that a large contingent of their best and brightest were shown the door, leaving a residual guard fearful no doubt of being pink-slipped in the shrinking world of legacy newsgathering.

And so one should re-read Rutten's piece, substituting his own paper's name for the WSJ. Perhaps he's wishing that Murdoch had made a sooner approach to the family Chandler. After all, there is a fit, a similar Page 6 covey awaiting under the assumed name Calendar.

Is there a link, a connection, between what is going on in Iraq, Afghanistan and other areas of U.S. involved combat, and what is going on in the French Open?

Tennis is my favorite game and I follow it. What has just happened in the men's singles is a disaster for America. In the worst day since the 1968 open era began, 9 of the 10 U.S. entrants were immediately defeated in the FIRST ROUND, and the one remaining had to retire as darkness set in, to finish the match tomorrow (yeah, he lost too).

And don't look to the American women to bail us out either. By round 3 (next day) they were all gone too except for Serena Williams, ousted later in the quarter-finals. As were the last of the U.S. reps in the men's doubles, the women's doubles and mixed doubles. A rout, to put it mildly.

Report from Paris

Tennis, or any athletic contest with warrior winners and losers, is a game of combat, whose very raison d'etre is that it is not a blood sport, like war, but a safety valve and a substitute for war. The will to win, however, is precisely the same.

Something seems to be happening with the U.S. view of itself. This is not a good sign.

A private protective curtain was pulled aside today revealing (some of) the candidates' income and assets, thanks to the government's Federal Election rules.

There can be no doubt that money links directly to moral, as well as net, worth, so let's see what grabs our attention.

First we need to discount Hilary Clinton (D), John McCain (R), and Mitt Romney (R) who pleaded for more time. They were given 45 day extensions - so more about them later.

We learn that Rudolph Giuliani (R), ex mayor of New York City, charges up to $300,000 for a single speaking fee - in the year ending February '07 he billed $11.39 million for speaking up. He must have amazing stories to tell of the heroism he observed during the 9/11 attacks. Apart from more millions earned in other ways, he received $496 in residuals for his appearances on Saturday Night Live, and a movie "The Out-of-Towners".

Senator John Edwards' (D) speaking engagements are more modest, earning him from $12,000 to $55,000 a time. But his investments are noteworthy, $29 million in assets, not including his home, this year netting him $5.9 million of investment income.

To understand Edwards, one should bear in mind that he was trained to be a trial attorney. He should reveal the names of the cases and the clients he represented in court which earned him his treasure. I would love to read transcripts of his arguments which led to his success. They would uniquely reveal the scope of his moral compass, more so than whatever he may wish to communicate to our ears these days. For more on this subject, read an opinion piece from the L.A. Times here.

And for more detail on all of the worthies from the Associated Press, check this out.

June 14 update
Hilary's announced her wealth, and because their spouse's is brought in too under the disclosure rules, we learn that Bill was paid 10 million in speaking fees last year, including one in London for $450,000 - which beats them all! news report

Royalty comes to Jamestown this week, to help celebrate exactly 400 years since its founding. It has been exactly 50 years since her last visit to this seat of American democracy, which connects to the form as we know it today.

As it happens, today is also exactly 62 years since I, as a child actor, had the heady experience of meeting her and her parents.

Personal memories

One takes the occasion to reflect on the importance of their continuing existence as a going concern, which for misguided reasons has taken on the shadow of controversy, and is very subjective and hard to pin down.

Royalty is, or should be, a standard and symbol reflecting non-political involvement in the affairs of a country, a neutral permanent statement of leadership that everyone can look up to and, yes, bow (or curtsy, depending on your God-given bent.) Here in America, nothing fills that bill of neutrality, not even the Supreme Court as we've come to find out. Perhaps "Speaker of the House" could do it, were it not for the fact that Nancy Pelosi, the current Democratic speaker, is anything but.

Leader Bush and leader Blair are on their way out, impatiently hurried along, to be replaced by other temporary political figures.

And so Queen Elizabeth becomes a borrowed permanent figure over here, looked up to with awkward envy. Long may the alliance last between the United States and the United Kingdom, because we really need each other.

There is something quite thrilling when you observe how somebody is fighting the legal system by playing it at its own game. Never mind the truth, as I have found out to my considerable cost as a pro se; Justice is not too interested in that.

Deborah Jeane was smart. She started out her life in American Business with 1 year of legal training to gain sophistication, and now continues in her current problem, which is huge, with a fiercely loyal attorney to help her strategize (no pro se she!).

Her American business? Why, she ran an escort service for 13 years in the nation's capital that may have been utilized by members of the nation's Capitol. And therein lies her problem. Oh, she's already been dubbed the "D.C. Madam".

Her girls, around 130 of them aged 23 to 55, escorted clients for a fee of up to $300 an hour, and worked under contract with Deborah Jeane as subcontractors, not employees.

The girls have been deemed, some of them anyway, to be prostitutes, much like her clients, some of them anyway, who were lawyers and lawyer-trained politicians. About the same hourly rate, I'd say.

The government doesn't like the exposure, and has handed down an indictment. And made a big BLUNDER. They froze her assets, just like Family Court!

This means that she lacks the means, very expensive means, to try and prove that her "associates" (as she calls them) offered only escort services and not sexual services. So she needs clients to come forward as witnesses, and swear UNDER OATH that they only received non-sexual services. And Americans take their oaths very seriously in court, so seriously in fact that none will come forward ("Scooter" Libby might have a comment on this!)

Subpoenaed documents include phone records of the clients. She has revealed them, which will of course lead fascinated members of the public to check out the owners of the phone numbers. One already has been revealed, and he, amazingly, whilst denying that any sexual activity took place, resigned his office in the government where he was a deputy secretary of State, and as part of his job was required to enforce a provision of the government's HIV/AIDS prevention federal funds program which required receiving groups to sign a pledge denouncing prostitution and sex trafficking.

Disney-owned ABC television has the phone lists, and on their late night 20/20 program this Friday will deal with it in some way (it's sweeps week!). Guess they will first examine the expense records of staff members who spent time in DC "on assignment" before deciding how far they'll go.

Smile, chuckle, and stay tuned.

Later
The ABC-promised revelatory ratings-rich show was a scam and a bust. It set out to show that Deborah Jeane was to be despised and belittled, assumed her guilt, and not one of the customers was identified or approached for an interview, phone records notwithstanding. Which serves to underscore the fact that American media will distort the news to fit its agenda and cannot be trusted. Staying up late was a complete waste of this viewer's time.

Alec Baldwin appeared on THE VIEW yesterday, for an interesting and controversy-free interview.

The LA Times reviewed it - controversially. Times staff writer's notebook

It is clear that the powers that determine such things at the LA Times have decided that Alec Baldwin shall be one of the celebrities to condemn, and so he is delivered to critic Paul Brownfield to cherry-pick, and then be dealt with along party lines.

It is hard to believe that he saw the same show that I and the rest of us saw. It is worth examining for their methods.

For starters, it wasn't "live" as stated by Barbara Walters? Big deal! At least there weren't suggestive chiron banners scrolling across the screen, as I had to endure in Larry King's treatment of me on his similarly "live" show. Baldwin talked about how family lawyers and family courts drive wedges and are helping to bring about alienation in divorcing families, and how his frustration had led to his illegally leaked message (to attorney Harvey Levin and his TMZ/AOL Time-Warner subsidiary scandal site) left on his daughter's voicemail.

The opposing arguments offered by Brownfield to distort Baldwin's POV are of the hearsay type, much favored by gossips, which would not see much daylight in a court of law.

Baldwin's forceful "temper"? As far as one can see, he exercises it for good reason, doesn't suffer fools gladly, and has the industry standing to be heard, and the money to see things through and work for change. A noble calling. And the heck, even, with his situation comedy, a sentiment that so irked this critic who happens to like the series.

Baldwin disparaged media gossips? Well, this estimable critic has now decidedly put himself in their camp. Perhaps the comment that such people are filled with "self-hatred and shame" touched a nerve in Brownfield. He asks whether a study should be commissioned. Please yes, and host it, Mr. Brownfield?

Meanwhile, hear and evaluate for yourself the message left on his daughter's voicemail, because for the umpteenth time she had turned off her phone, thus leaving her own message for her father. And hear him say that he always stops whatever he's doing to call her at the prescribed and court-ordered time. Sanctions, anyone?

Alec Baldwin's message left on his daughter's turned off telephone

The media is awash with this story of the aspiring student playwright turned killer. It appears that he had a good family, a bright and loving sister, and parents who came to America from poverty in Korea, to seek a new life and become part of the American dream.

LA Times family narrative

Wiki entry

He said his piece which is shot through with rage, and pain, and completed his awful deed by killing himself for closure.

Comments have ranged from the banality of the ignorant to the banality of the expert. One Hollywood wag wondered whether he had a deal with underdog NBC as the network of choice to send his package of photos, videos and 1800 word message that took beloved fictionalized violence (Friday the 13th et al) to a new level of reality show.

People should button the lip, hold up on the written word, and gaze in solitary silence at Cho's image as if it were a mirror.

John Donne, the English seventeenth century poet, said it best.

Do not ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee

It may be that Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes is a true American hero, with the character and power to force an official inquiry into corruption in political seats of power using the backup of law enforcement, and with the courage to use it.

As part of the continuing events reported below, today's Times reports on this story.

Judgeships for sale?

Good luck Mr. Hynes. May you provide the template for jurisdictions in other United States of America, and may they take notice. . .

The New York Times is to be commended for following up and reporting on the events in Brooklyn fully, and the jury is to be commended for doing what was right based on the damning evidence against a sitting judge that was placed before it. Americans nationwide deserve nothing less.

Read this and take heart, all you pro se's and pro per's out there. It is possible for Justice to trump the intimidating legal thickets which embolden lawyers and judges to befuddle and keep the public away while they socialize. Dinners and cigars, indeed!

Download N.Y. Times story

Notice how the placing of surveillance recording devices where it counted probably clinched it. And notice how the emperor will be wearing very new robes after his sentencing in June.

Over a five year period, 74 year old Judge Garson presided in nearly 1100 cases which involved splitting families; children, custody and money matters were entrusted to him. As a result of the thorough investigation, old divorce cases may be reopened, and civil suits may be filed.

Now that the illegal activities in the Anthony Pellicano case is winding its way to a California trial, would that the Los Angeles district attorney had the stomach to look into the goings-on in the Los Angeles Family court, and that the Los Angeles Times had the stomach to editorially insist upon it. They managed it in a series on nearby Las Vegas and Nevada, they should focus nearer my Hollywood home.

A Prosecuting attorney, yet. This is headline news, of course.

I make no secret of my disdain for attorneys. Apart from their possible usefulness in going over contracts and arranging legal documents (which can now be done on a do-it-yourself basis with lots of online help), most of my contempt for these miserable creatures is reserved for trial attorneys.

In fact I go so far as to say, (my opinion based on my experience of course), that a lawyer is an officially protected trained professional liar, and anything he or she says may or may not be true, and may or may not be his or her own thoughts, and that as a class they are totally compromised and not real people, thinking they occupy some kind of higher parallel universe.

I do not believe that trial attorneys have any meaningful identity absent a client. I've yet to meet a lawyer who will work on or spend time on any social matter for which there is no personal gain of some kind. As such, they should be ignored and avoided by all sensible, wholesome, decent, well-meaning, non-lawyer people, who, some say, are rapidly becoming a minority in the Western world, but are however voters. Wonder if any trial attorneys will be running for U.S. president in '09? But I digress.

So it was with great pleasure that I read of the current news concerning the 3 boys of Duke University's lacrosse team and their adventures with a stripper at a party who sued them for rape. They were close to major jail time, with the assistance of the press, and the public prosecutor of Durham County, State of North Carolina; but have now been exonerated, after millions of dollars have been spent in legal fees and costs.

Now a Prosecuting attorney, representing as he does we the people - that's you and me - has a special duty to tell the truth. They are supposed to seek their victory based on it, or as near as it ever gets, by what are called verifiable facts, not just by canny courtroom gymnastics like a defense attorney where anything goes (although they too are "officers of the court".) We know what a lie is, but is the tactic of withholding truth also a lie? Of course, because it obscures the truth.

Here we find that D.A. Mike Nifong is accused of withholding DNA evidence that would have served to free the defendants, under indictment for a year. And to make matters worse, he defamed them in his public pronouncements to the press before trial, and of course the media ate it up. Why did he want to do this? It is thought that this was part of his re-election campaign.

The judge stepped in, stopped everything in its tracks, his boss the attorney general dropped the charges, and Nifong apologized.

But a million lawyers' feathers got ruffled. There will be a trial, this time of the D.A., before the secret court of the ethics committee of his own bar association. Studded with a few Duke U. graduates perhaps. And he may lose his license to practice law.

He will plead neither guilty nor innocent. He will plead immunity.

June 15, 2007
Boy, was I wrong! The hearing was not secret, was televised, and he has owned up and will resign. Shows what law societies will do when there is enough public outcry. In fact, enough to have him disbarred for "deceit". That's a laugh. If he was a defense lawyer, he would be deemed to be hugely successful, but too late now to switch sides.

Never mind for him, he can go back to being a "real person", a rich entrepreneur perhaps.

"That's some rough girls from Rutgers . . . Man, they got tattoos . . . That's some nappy-headed hos there, I'm going to tell you that now."

So said girly headed Don Imus about the Rutgers University basketball team consisting of 8 black and 2 white women in his televised radio show last Wednesday.

Now he faces being kicked off the air by none other than ratings challenged MSNBC, the TV network owned by NBC, and the radio station owned by CBS.

Is this nothing but a storm in a teacup? Not at all. This is about promotion of a show, 2 networks, and hundreds of personalities, including Imus and the Rev. Al Sharpton, cartoonlike, all spilling over the edges of the bandwagon together. To get us excited, and make them all more watchable, and change the subject from eternal politics or maybe not.

I have written before about the divide between funny and serious in a related situation where things got turned around.

2005 Knievel case decision

I pointed out that what is amusing is to observe how actors and other public people and yes the unpredictable courts constantly straddle the fence of this divide, hoping to get the best of both worlds. We say something in a kidding fashion, and the target decides to treat the remark as serious. And yet sometimes we say the funny bit in order to be taken seriously and get ignored (like Al Franken). Note that the 9th. Circuit did exactly that in the Knievel case, the majority finding humor and denying his claim against a network.

No fair, Larry David dares to do jokes about minorities, so does Mel Brooks, so does Robin Williams, so does Howard Stern, so does Ricky Gervais, so do the Monty Pythons, well, sort of. "Fun with gays!" The trick is to do a knowing wink, a nudge nudge, a "just kidding" sign. And black comedians don't even bother with that.

Perhaps the lesson here is that unless you are a card carrying comedian, stay away! Comedy is hard.

Next day
It's over. No sponsors = No TV and no radio. R.I.P, Donald. The hardest part is having to listen to the wailing of the holier high priests of NBC and CBS. Well, now Don can at last get a haircut.

The sea has always been a part of my personal history, thanks to 2 years of British National Service causing me to choose to ship out on the Silverwalnut for Silver Line back in the days and the waters of the Korean War prior to emigrating to the New World.

I was on the last voyage of the Queen Mary from New York to Southampton, and on the first voyage of the QEII (yes, as a passenger.)

So the sinking of the Sea Diamond held a special fascination for me. It has eerie echoes of the Titanic disaster nearly a century ago, hitting a rock instead of an iceberg, but with a better outcome.

It is instructive that, hungry for details, one learns to go to Wikipedia, because within a day there was more information there than any newspaper has been able to provide. And, one suspects, with more knowledgeable reporters behind the reporting, maybe some merchant navy types.

The story of Sea Diamond

Only time will tell, of course, but can we get a clue from the mouth of Sam Zell, the new out-of-town owner? He gave a talk yesterday called " 'Make Me An Offer': Sam Zell and the $39-Billion Buyout of Equity Office Properties" to a class of Stanford University law students.

He made a fortune worth an estimated $4 1/2 billion by turning around distressed assets. It's a well-known fact that in February Zell sold the real estate firm he built into the nation's largest collection of office buildings.

Told that many people didn't think newspapers were a good business because of declining circulation and falling ad revenues, he said:

"A lot of people didn't think the railcar business was a good investment. I made a quarter-billion dollars. A lot of people didn't think container leasing was a good investment. I made a half-billion. Should I go on?"

I think not, we get the point. The Chicago company's holdings include the Los Angeles Times, KTLA-TV Channel 5 and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

His privatization plan, about to be concluded, put him in the driver's seat for a mere $315 million of financing making him chairman, with the right to buy up to 40% of the company later if he so wishes.

Meanwhile, he will be taking care of 38 top executives from a cash bonus pool of $6 1/2 million. Apart from the Chief Executive, who chose not to participate, one notes that the company's current finance chief would receive $600,000, the head of the newspaper division $400,000, and the head of the broadcasting division $350,000.

read SEC Form 8-K for TRIBUNE CO filed April 5, 2007

The Chandler family, the largest shareholder, would depart the board, where 3 members have been sitting since they sold out to the Chicago Tribune in year 2000 for around 8 billion dollars.

What about the employees, the reporters and columnists and editors (and one presumes the printers and truck drivers and other support personnel), will they be happy?

Consider, for this is how it works for failing companies whose profits are declining, like Delta Airlines, emerging from bankruptcy (see below).

The new private company will be partly employee-owned, functioning in a profit-sharing plan. Note the word "profit". If there aren't any, tough. They'll have to take salary cuts to avoid going out of business.

Is this Capitalism's answer to Socialism? Employee part ownership? Can one look for equality with other owners, seats on the board, no strings attached? Don't ask.

Well, perhaps we should give Sam Zell a break. We admit that based on the available evidence he is a brilliant negotiator. And he admitted that because he had been in the news business for less than a week, he wasn't a genius at that. Yet.

My son Ben flies for Delta. He took a pay cut to help his airline survive. Meanwhile, as a loyal father, I had bought some feelgood Delta stock, and put it in my pension fund.

When word came out that Delta would emerge from Chapter 11 (a reorganization) having become profitable again, in early May, I was horrified to learn that my stock would be "cancelled". Just like that, kaput. I thought that a stockholder would retain some interest; after all, stockholders are creditors too, albeit at the bottom of the heap, but just look at accounting principles. Residual value in the name Delta perhaps?. While I now understand why, having read the following download, I don't understand the logic or the law.

see Chapter 11 bankruptcy info

Meanwhile, there will be a new board, a new stock exchange listing, and new stock, some of which will be owned for profit sharing by the pilots. Wonder how the older retired pilots who may have held the older stock feel. I guess they are discovering the true meaning of bailing out (without a parachute, golden or otherwise - see above).

April 3, 2007
Veteran journalist Tim Rutten comes down hard on his alma mater, the Los Angeles Times, today. The future of the newspaper is on the brink of sale to yet another out-of-towner, and one suspects that his is the voice of the entire editorial staff.

The paper is about to go private, to the tune of around 12 billion dollars, submitting to the demands of stockholders, says Rutten, putting the new company basically in the position of a college student who has achieved financial independence from Mom and Dad by maxing out a Visa card.

He then goes after the founding family:

"After more than 120 years, the Chandler family will be out of the newspaper business. Good riddance.

"One does not speak of emotions like gratitude or loyalty when discussing the Chandlers, any more than one would ascribe those qualities to wolves. It simply is part of their nature to acquire and consume. They eat because that's what they do."

We are told that the Chandler family trusts own 20% of Tribune, the current Chicago based publishers, by selling (out?) the paper and the rest of the Times Mirror company for $8 billion, nearly as much as is now being proposed to take the company private. The Chandlers' share will come to about $1.6 billion, if it goes through.

"Talk about clasping an asp to your bosom" he goes on.

"This newspaper now has been sold twice in five years, to accomplish the impossible -- satiating the Chandlers' greed.

"Take it from somebody who spent a lot of years working for them: If these people thought there was another nickel to be made off the Los Angeles Times by selling it to the North Koreans, Kim Jong Il would be running this newspaper's editorial policy the next day. The Los Angeles Times' readers deserve better than that."

It may be that the inmates have taken over. One can only guess that the publisher either lacks control over its employees, or that this is a remarkable case of self-flagellation.

Today is April 2, 2007. What is special to me first, is that this is the 40th anniversary of my marriage to Lynn Redgrave in 1967, which she ended in 2000.

The second reason is that this is the date 6 years ago that I met for the first time my wife-to-be stepping off a plane from Tokyo at LAX. To be, that is, if we liked each other. We did.

The third reason is that today I am restarting this blogsite, which has been asleep for 4 1/2 months because 4 1/2 months ago I was racing off to a hospital in an ambulance, with a heart attack. It happened just the day after I received notice of summary dismissal of my suit against Larry King by the Ninth Circuit, on appeal. (I THINK there was a connection!) Anyway, angioplasty surgery seems to have fixed things and given me a new lease on life, and new energy.

I spent part of my recovery time checking out the open encyclopedia Wikipedia in general and my page in particular.

Download file

Now I find that this freely available and free of advertising site is part of my daily life; there is so much to learn, and so much one can contribute by making new entries and editing.

Wikipedia.

What stays with me is their insistence on the NPOV (Neutral Point Of View). One gets so tired of the unending pitch of ego at all levels, personal and corporate, in all walks of life today. If mankind is to survive, the future of the world lies in this concept of NPOV.

I follow the careers of the Redgrave family with interest, although it's none of my business any more. I note that Vanessa is the latest toast of Broadway having just opened in Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING. I'm about to read the book. I want to find out whether a loss to death for a family or person is worse than a loss, AS IN DEATH, to a family or person when the subject is STILL ALIVE.

Still alive, as in the countless Family Court decisions to carve up families and spouses and children separating loved ones and dooming them to a lifetime of silence, as in death. I think I already know the answer, which is tied up with the idea of lack of closure. More on this later.

So stick around. I'm still here, and won't go away.

Today, Christmas Day, is the second anniversary of my Blog.

I'm in bed nursing a heart attack, and to all you lawyers out there, especially James R. Eliaser Esq. and Emily Shappell Edelman Esq. and Judge for Hire Arnold H Gold, and supervising judge of the L.A. family court Aviva Bobb, in the spirit of Christmas - or should I say Hannukah in your cases - as Whoopi Goldberg (being Sister Mary Clarence) says to Harvey Keitel (being arch villain Vince LaRocca) at the end of Sister Act . . . . BLESS YOU!

And now, hit it and sing along with me as I lie

DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS

This is easy. ATTORNEYS AT WORK.

The AP reports today that Anna Nicole Smith's lead attorney in the Bahamas, Michael Scott, Esq., has withdrawn as her counsel, citing disagreements on matters of strategy and concerns about her conduct.

He said he was unsettled by her decision to exchange vows with her boyfriend, Howard K. Stern, Esq. even before she made funeral arrangements for Daniel Smith, her 20-year-old son who just died, in a not legal marriage ceremony on a boat off Nassau, selling the pictures to Time/Warner's People Magazine.

Stern says he's the father of her new baby. And so does someone called Larry Birkhead. He's gone to L.A. Family court, demanding that mother and daughter return to California for DNA paternity testing.

I just wonder what this has to do with fighting to get back her multimillion dollar inheritance from Texas oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall II, whom she married in 1994 when she was 26 and he was 89, dying one year later. His son blocked the transfer under state law, then he died recently. Now the United States Supreme Court has solemnly given her permission to go after the loot, because her bankruptcy is federal law. Now this has given her a really big problem, how to pay the legal fees this entails (no, I don't think this is a pro se type situation). Well, she's nothing if not creative in finding solutions.

There is a public benefit, however. The American public will have its attention diverted from really silly problems like getting zapped by North Korea.

What in blazes was Cory Lidle low time pilot doing flying his plane where he was flying it? I've many a time taken friends for a sightseeing trip in my plane around there. The corridor was famous. Take off from Teterboro, over the George Washington Bridge, slowly down the Hudson, keep right, 1000 feet, circle the Statue of Liberty, stare diners at Windows on the World in the eye, wave, then fly back the same way. And that was BEFORE!

The thought of flying North up the East river, and messing with the rapid talk of controllers busy with the traffic pattern into La Guardia, and helicopters and seaplanes makes no sense at all. Besides, a glance at the local chart reveals that it's a box canyon ending with the wall of restricted air space, and that a 180 is very tricky, and not possible to maintain regulation altitude. Why the FAA doesn't keep out VFR lightplane traffic is hard to understand, ESPECIALLY NOW!

Something's missing here. No flight instructer worthy of the licence would sanction such a trip. And whoever was flying the plane doesn't matter, for there are dual controls, the instructor always ready to jump in.

Smack into a condo, my first thought was that this was a child custody issue. Now I think it was, "Hey Guys, guess who I've got up here with me . . . Oops, Mayday! Mayday!"

Aside from the sheer unprofessionalism, and the breaking of severe FAA rules, must we now expect a cover-up of some kind? Will we get to hear the tapes of ATC controllers maybe breaking the rules for a celebrity? Can we know? Will the tapes disappear?

They certainly did not help the cause of AOPA and the private pilot, struggling in today's environment to keep flying and be accepted. (Me, no more plane, bless its heart.)

Accident? Please! Ask the right questions, reporters, it's not about the parachute, its about breaking the rules and reckless flying. Stop mollifying the fans!

And for the hundreds down below who survived, just thank your lucky stars. The real ones, high up in the heavens. And be angry.

The first of these two items was filed by the A.P., and run by CNN "The Most Trusted Name In News" [or at least, that is, the news we can trust them to give us]

DISTRICT ATTORNEY: KARR'S CHAMPAGNE FLIGHT COST $6K

An outline of expenses shows the 15-hour flight from Thailand, on which Karr sipped champagne, dined on fried king prawns and roast duck, cost the county $5,925.

[blah blah blah]

Now let's check out what the Cincinnati Enquirer reported today, in the commencement of courtroom action to find justice for little Marcus Fiesel.

COUPLE'S DEFENSE LAWYERS BICKERING. DAVID CARROLL'S REP SAYS LIZ'S IS BAD-MOUTHING HIM

Rubenstein filed a motion in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court on Thursday asking the court's presiding judge to stop Liz Carroll's attorney, Adam Bleile, from interfering in his case. He also asked for an investigation into his actions.

[Blah blah]

Rubenstein was appointed by the Hamilton County Public Defender's Office to represent David Carroll Jr., while Bleile was retained privately by Liz Carroll.

Bleile is accused of calling David Carroll Jr.'s mother, Debra Hounshell, in which he questioned the integrity of Rubenstein, the prosecutor, the judge and the proceedings in general.

[Blah]

Between Aug. 28 and Aug. 31, Hounshell wrote, Bleile called her several times and told her he was representing Liz Carroll for free; that Rubenstein, the prosecutor's office and the judge were "all like family" and would work together to ensure that David Carroll Jr. would not get a fair trial; and that the attorneys were handpicked by the judge, so she should question their integrity.

Hounshell added that Bleile "caused her to question the integrity of her son's counsel, engendered great emotional distress and created a distraction to both her and (Rubenstein)."

Now I ask you, which item is of more concern to the public? The first is just stupid, to be ignored, but the second should be a cause for alarm, for it sets the beginning stage of the money grubbing trivialization of the issues. I hope this is a strong judge.

We can expect that the free appointed attorneys will be fired by their respective clients, who will then hire powerful free attorneys looking for professional credits, and maybe a book deal. Followed by jury members on the same track. So, if/when the media starts to spotlight the case - which cannot be before the trial starts - will it be just a question of time before Gloria Allred shows up? The one obstacle to this scenario is that there is not a single participant to the drama who could by any stretch be called "sympathetic". The only one of those is dead.

Both stories should have a notice attached.

CAUTION: LAWYERS AT PLAY

Yes, you heard it right. This is not identity THEFT.

It's done for Celebrities, who willingly pay a lot of money to professional writers on condition they remain anonymous.

They're called "Ghosts".

You would be forgiven if you thought that the best-selling book "Fatherhood" was written by Bill Cosby. You'd be wrong. It was written by Ralph Schoenstein. He was quite a guy.

He also wrote "Time Flies" for Bill, published in 1988. And he wrote "Here's Johnny!" for Ed McMahon, published just last year, and which Ed is busy promoting on the usual circuit as we speak.

The thing is, if you bought any of these books, you would not find his name appearing anywhere. I guess that does add a premium to his take-home, because otherwise he'd be a lesser paid "co-writer".

Autobiographies make big money for their celebrity subjects for very little work, they just have to sit still for a few hours, as though having their portraits painted, and mouth off.

As for Ralph, sorry to report that he died last week. Perhaps his headstone will remain blank too.

MARCUS. Think about it. Anything hidden? What can you find?

I changed the "C" to a "K", then I separated the syllables.

I came up with MARK US. Can this be his statement from beyond the grave? I know that sounds eerie, weird even, but I want to believe that it is.

What that says to me is that he had a destiny and a role to play in his short life, much as Terri Schiavo had a destiny and a role to play in her life (which I've gone into extensively elsewhere.)

The death and life of Marcus, much like Terri, bookended within its boundaries a message for all of us, about the plight of the helpless and the unrepresented and the unprotected and the defenseless and the dispossessed and the abandoned.

There was a play by J.B. Priestley about such a person, a girl who was so helpless she killed herself. I was in it once. He called it "An Inspector Calls" (the inspector was played by Sir Cedric Hardwicke in my production). It dealt with how, in the death of this person (she too was not a relative, but a worker for a family), every person who knew her denied involvement in her death. And Priestley set out to show how it was NOT so. How everyone she knew was very much a part of her death.

And so it is with Marcus - and Terri - and the society in which we live. We all had a part in it, and it is for all of us, in our quiet moments when we look inward instead of outward, to examine our consciences. Where does our responsibility lie? Is there anything we could have done that we didn't do, or did NOT do that we could or should have done?

Most people are on the fringes of involvement, and shrug off true involvement by volunteering money or labor to charitable causes because it makes them feel better. Among those that are not, that work and interact daily in the front line, are the lawyers and the judges and the justices. They are the ones who can actually, with rigorous determination, DO something. And the final determinant of whether they are effective and fair is to be found among the legions of their "victims", a word I choose to use with some insight based upon my experiences with the non-criminal courts. They are the truly abandoned ones.

The idea of the feeling of abandonment is something that has haunted me all my life, ever since I was left in an English boarding school hundreds of miles from my parents and my London home without the capacity to understand that they were helpless to do otherwise due to the blitz and the war in Europe (the fate of wartime evacuees in England in '39/40, deep into mass enuresis, and a circumstance that was stupidly ignored by the makers of The Chronicles of Narnia that could have set up the movie and given the escapism some meaning.)

Little three year old Marcus was REALLY, LITERALLY, abandoned. Much worse, he was left in isolation, hands bound behind his back, only the sounds of people and traffic outside, a whirring fan, unbearable crushing heat, hunger, and thirst. Truly forsaken, with no power to consider the meaning of his fate because of his age. Just raw suffering and sheer terror. And with his last gasp, came his merciful death.

We cannot ignore the message, HIS message. DO something for some helpless ones, big and little; don't just TALK about it. We need to let him know that we hear him, hear his cry, which speaks to us like the ghost of Hamlet's father.

Never mind John Mark Karr, there are other more important stories going on in this country of ours, and unbelievably, they are not getting the NATIONAL ATTENTION they should be getting. The story of Marcus Fiesel was pitched to Fox News, CNN and all the networks and got little or no play. No national coverage, thanks to John Mark Karr
This miserable yet riveting story must not be allowed to slip under the radar. People need to know, and must know.

It's the truly shocking narrative of a three year old disabled little boy, bound with tape and covered in a blanket and left alone in a hot closet without food and water, just an electric fan blowing, for almost 2 days while his foster parents, their four kids, and a house mate, drove off to the next state about fifty miles away, to enjoy a family reunion.

When they returned, he was dead. The foster parents concocted a story about a missing kid, and went on television to ask for help so that the police and thousands of their neighbors in the community diligently searched for him. Days went by. Meanwhile, they took his body and burned it to cover up their deed.

This is the coverage I found on the Cincinatti Enquirer website:

The crime
The search
On Butler County Children's Services
How the case unfolded
The Warrant
The Agency
The Family Reunion
Background, "Be Outraged"
Readers' thoughts

On that last thread of thoughts, I found this poem posted by someone called Sharon, imagining what might have been the last words of the toddler. Read the above first, then the poem. Tears may flow.

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Attention must be paid.
One last thought. Although a little late, something should be done to remember Marcus and what he stands for. Let his name ring out and be preserved, a memorial in a park, perhaps a label on a piece of national legislation. It will help to give his senseless death some meaning.

LATER
Many people seem to feel that the child's natural mother should not be able to sue, and should not "make any money" out of this tragedy, since she seemed to be unable to take care of Marcus in the first place.

From a legal perspective, she needs to be the one to sue. Yes, "the people" can and will sue for a crime, perhaps even murder, perceived to have been committed.

But the natural mother was the "real party in interest", she had not lost her parental rights. And she can go after any and all defendants, not just the foster family, but the agency and the social worker employees and maybe even the State of Ohio. Defendants they all are not in a criminal suit. And they all have to answer, if justice and a better system is to be achieved. And remember, she might have won back her child if her circumstances improved. I say wish her luck.

Closing update
An overview and update can be found HERE with the trial result and entries as of 21 April, 2007.

With all of the swashbuckling fury of a drunken Topanga plumber, this other force of nature makes its way up the spine of Cuba, towards the spine of Florida. And presents a TIMELY opportunity that should not be missed.

TIME for George W. Bush to think on the fact that as our president, he is not just a politician and a leader - both of which he has demonstrated with alarming regularity - but he is also a STATESMAN.

Using the stick and carrot analogy, we know how the stick is used, but we see little of the carrot.

Here, we face a common enemy.

Mr. President, pick up a phone, and put a call through to Fidel.

Tell him that this is not a political call (although it really is!), but a HUMANITARIAN call.

Say that we are ready to send aid, and would he kindly do the same when the hurricane hits Florida.

Then sit back and see what happens. If nothing happens, then you'll have scored an important PR point, which will not go unnoticed everywhere in the world.

Why NOW? This is just my opinion of course, but I think what is about to happen will show I am correct.

The event is emerging now because a British immigrant, Professor Michael Tracy, on the faculty of The U. of Colorado (my son's alma mater), has spent the last 4 years making a study of the JonBenet Ramsey case, and filming 3, count 'em, 3, documentaries about it, and now he's ready to place and sell them for showing.

Being a professor of "Journalism" (wow, what are they TEACHING nowadays?), he especially knows the REAL problem: How to get exposure to titillate the public's appetite to want to see his documentaries!

Answer: Ploy. Reveal to the authorities the contents of his e-mailing contributor, superfan John Mark Karr, with whom he has had correspondence for four years.

They fell for it, of course, and went scurrying off to find him. In Thailand, of all places.

The fact that Tracy is succeeding in spades of Pulitzer Prize proportions is apparent on all of the news media everywhere, who are getting bored with the Middle East. And it's a welcome distraction for the Administration.

Tracy has the brass to say "I don't regard JonBenet's murder as an important story. It raises questions about what the role of journalism is in a democratic culture." I watched him doing an interview, in which he stated that he will NOT be questioned any more.

Yes, following the path of Ann Coulter and other 15 days of fame ilk, the Brits have learned well how to practice the skills of American chutzpah and PR for a financial advantage.

I repeat, just my opinion.

Later
John Mark Karr's just arrived in Los Angeles, and ready to be transferred over to Colorado, for indictment and trial.

Seeing his face as he sat in the dock, one is reminded of the unforgettable character created by Bill Murray in "Little Shop of Horrors", sitting in the dentist's chair of nasty Steve Martin, barely able to contain his excitement at the pleasures to come.

And another, similar, character, must be his attorney, who can't wait to remind a court that his client cannot possibly obtain a fair trial given the media attention.

Later still
Oh tush, the D.A. declines to prosecute! Once again, we see how the cynical media WANTS to be duped if the results can hold the possibility of public obsession, viewers, ratings, and an interview with Larry Ziegler Live on CNN, the "All the News You Can Trust" station.

Well, I think they should pay Mr. Karr for the material, for he provided many hours of their programming. Wonder if he could sue. Misappropriation? Misrepresentation? Unfair Competition? Or how about Unfair Business Practices! Or Interference with Business Advantage!

And don't forget to share it with your true love, Mr. Karr. But first, find a "good" lawyer. They're out there.

October 5
Just in today, fresh from Santa Rosa: A judge dismissed child pornography charges against former JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John Mark Karr. Prosecutors, having lost his original computer files, dropped the case, said they didn't have enough evidence to take it to trial. Karr was released immediately.

My question is, any reflection or repercussion on Professor Michael Tracy? Perhaps all we can say or do is mock him in class (nudge to his students). His videos may have lost considerable value now. Poor guy.

We know who paid the prosecuting attorneys, you and me, but who paid for his defense? Perhaps his lawyers worked Pro Bono, seeking a rapidly receding Holy Grail.

[He wrote this essay, which reverberates today, a hundred years ago, and it was published after his death in 1910 (his daughter didn't like his comments on religion). I've edited and shortened it for clarity, impact, and to get you thinking, but please, if you have a mind, I urge you to click and download his glorious original text, provided below)]

1. Man, the human race, is one distinct species. It exhibits slight variations in color, stature, mental capacity and food preferences due to climate and environment, but it is a species by itself, and SHOULD NOT BE CONFUSED WITH ANY OTHER.

2. Warm-blooded animals (dogs, cats, horses, monkeys etc.) make up a separate distinct family, but also exhibit variations in color, size, and food preferences.

3. As for the other families (birds, fishes, insects, reptiles, etc.) they are distinct, and also links in the chain which stretches down from the HIGHER animals to Man - AT THE BOTTOM.

HOW IS THIS?
The higher animals do engage in individual fights, yes, but never in organized masses.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, WAR. He is the only one that gathers his friends about him and marches forth in cold blood, and with calm pulse, to exterminate his own kind.

Man is the only animal that robs others of their country, takes possession of it, and drives them out or destroys them. Man has always done this.

There is not an acre of ground on the planet that is in possession of its rightful owner. It has been taken away from owner after owner and cycle after cycle by force and bloodshed.

Too, man is the only slave, and the only animal who EN�slaves. He has always been a slave in one form or another, and has always held other slaves in bondage under him in one way or another. In our day he is always some man's slave for wages and does that man's work; and this slave has other slaves under him for minor wages, and they do his work. The higher animals (not Man) are the only ones who exclusively do their own work and provide their own living.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, sneers at other nations, and keeps uniformed assassins on hand at heavy ex�pense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his.

And in the intervals between cam�paigns, he washes the blood off his hands and then works for the "universal brotherhood of man". With his MOUTH.

Man is the Religious animal and is the only Religious ani�mal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, in fact several of them.

He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself, and cuts his throat if his theology isn't the same as his. He has made a graveyard of the planet in trying his honest best to smooth his brother's path to happiness and heaven.

The higher animals have no religion, so we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. It seems questionable taste.

Man claims himself to be the Reasoning animal. But his record is the record of a maniac. He calmly sets himself up as the Head animal, whereas he is the bottom one BY HIS OWN STANDARDS.

Proof - My Scientific Experiment:
Man claims to be the reasoning animal but he is incurably foolish; he is incapable of learning simple things which all other animals easily learn.

In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit, and in the course of two more days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace; even affectionately.

Next, in another cage, I confined an Irish Catholic from Tipperary, and as soon as he seemed tame I added a Scottish Presbyterian from Aberdeen.

Next a Turk from Constantinople, a Greek Christian from Crete, an Armenian, a Methodist from the wilds of Arkansas, a Buddhist from China, a Brahman from Benares, and finally a Salvation Army Colonel from the English suburb of Wapping.

Then I stayed away two whole days.

When I came back to note the results, the cage of my higher animals was fine, but in the other there was a chaos of gory turbans and fezzes and plaids and bones and flesh - not a specimen left alive. Why?

These Reasoning animals had disagreed on a theological detail.

One is forced to concede that in terms of true loftiness of character, Man is nowhere near even the meanest of the higher animals. It is clear that he is constitutionally incapable of ap�proaching that height, because he has a defect which makes such an approach forever impossible; it is permanent in him, indestructible, and ineradicable. What is it?

It is the MORAL SENSE, and he is the only animal that has it. It is the quality which allows and ENABLES him to do wrong, and has no other purpose. It is incapable of performing any other function, and was never intended to.

Since the Moral Sense has only one purpose, the capacity to do wrong, it is as valueless to him as is disease. In fact, it is a disease. Let's look at one.

Rabies
Rabies makes a man mad and able to do something which he could not do when in a healthy state, which is to kill his neighbor with a poisonous bite. But, of course, it makes no sense to call him a better man for having rabies.

Rabies is an innocent disease, compared to the Moral Sense. No one can be a better man for having the Moral Sense.

The Primal Curse
So what do we find the Primal Curse to have been in the Beginning? It was the infliction upon man of the Moral Sense; the ability to distinguish good from evil; and with it, necessarily, the ability to DO evil. For there can be no evil act without the presence of CONSCIOUSNESS of it in the doer of it.

And so my scientific conclusion is that we have descended and degenerated from some long ago ancestor insect by insect, reptile by reptile, animal by animal, till we have reached the bottom stage of development, namable as the Human Being.

Below us, nothing.

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This is from a British born citizen of the United States, and I'm sure only one of many thousands in this country who would also wish you well, but are aware that it is not politically correct to do so, and don't have the guts to say so. You probably won't find other messages saluting you like this one. Here, people either want to condemn you out of hand for mostly anecdotal reasons, or do it the safe way, make fun of you, and in a few cases want you to open your borders so they can come over from Florida and kill you.

It is easy to ignore the fact that you are in charge of a sovereign nation of around 11 million people, around the population of an extended London, or Tokyo, or New York, or Los Angeles. And in an area less than that of Pennsylvania. And that the notion of diversity may not sit well if such a small number is to be contained for the general good.

I praise you because you had a vision way back, and have been true to it, and the result is that you have a politically stable country, and an orderly society. I don't think the same can be said for some other meaningful Caribbean countries, and one might say the same for America, which is becoming more divided by the day. (Read this criticism of America)

Seriously now, on this your anniversary, it is time for a fresh assessment, and review of your life. Here are the events, as we know them.

You were born in 1926, survived a Jesuit boarding school, and later obtained a law degree. You got married at 24, and were divorced six years later, and had one son.

You were an early critic of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Your political ideas were nationalistic, anti-imperialist, and reformist. You were not a member of the Communist party then. In 1953 you attacked Batista, unsuccessfully, were caught, tried, and sentenced to 15 years in prison, but released 2 years later; at which time you went into exile in Mexico vowing to continue the fight.

Just over a year later, you and a band of guerillas including the Argentinean physician Che Guevara, returned to Cuba and succeeded in the fight. Batista fled on Jan. 1, 1959, finding no support from the United States.

Thus you became the new hero to your countrymen. Early on, you formed a government that included moderate democratic politicians.

Your reasons for changing from that democratic beginning are not clear, but you did improve the living conditions of your people, and for that they rallied behind you.

Of course, we are all aware that you later embraced Communism, and looked to the Soviet Union for material support.

This the United States did not like, of course, and they cut imports of sugar, your main crop, and you in turn nationalized U.S. businesses in Cuba.

On April 14, 1961, you announced to the world that your society was Socialist.

The next day, U.S. planes bombed your airfields.

Two days later, a bunch of expatriates, trained by the CIA, landed on your shores hoping to foment an uprising. The U.S. failed to back them up, and you captured them all.

Thus, the "Bay of Pigs", your fear of invasion, and your turn to the Soviet Union for protection. which suited Khrushchev just fine.

In February 1962, the U.S. created its first embargo, hoping to force you to your knees.

In October, U.S. spyplanes were observed in your airspace, and you shot one of them down. But the planes found evidence of Soviet missile sites being placed, aimed of course to the North, and then found ships bearing missiles headed your way.

Our President Kennedy acted immediately, and the people of the world saw the onset of the third world war looming, this time with a nuclear arsenal between America and the USSR, with Europe right in the middle, or, perhaps, the Far East. We all held our collective breath.

After much tense negotiation, Khrushchev agreed to withdraw his missiles from Cuba. In return, the United States agreed not to invade Cuba, and to remove its missiles from Turkey.

That's when your legal training came into play, very smart of you. To this day, the treaty has protected you.

By Dec 1965, a disgruntled U.S. (they hate to be foiled) began airlifting some of your residents who wanted to leave and live in America.

The following year, our President Johnson granted permanent residency to Cuban immigrants who arrived in this country after Jan. 1, 1959. The airlift ended after some years, and by then, over a quarter of a million Cubans had arrived.

Oct. 9, 1967. Che Guevera, who had left your side 2 years earlier to spread non Soviet Marxist dogma elsewhere, had been detained in Bolivia by a CIA/U.S. Special Forces military operation, and was executed without trial, according to testimony.

In 1975, U.S. Intelligence admitted to more than eight attempts on your life by the CIA.

The next year, the Cuban Communist party adopted a new constitution, and so Socialism was institutionalized, and you assumed the presidency. And, of course, to ensure your country's viability, you kept up your ties with the Soviet Union, without which your economy would have foundered.

But some sixteen years later, the USSR went under, withdrew their support, and your economy fell into recession.

Sept. 9, 1994: Cuba and the United States agree to cap the number of Cuban refugees admitted into the United States at 20,000 per year.

There were hundreds of thousands of relocated Cubans living in Florida by now, and they decided to bombard your country with leaflets urging revolt.

You shot down two of these planes that were violating your airspace, and in response, the United States made its trade embargo permanent.

And so you were ignored at this side of the water, except we were prepared to let Cubans in if they were able to successfully complete a sea crossing by boat. The rule was, if anybody was stopped before setting foot on dry shore, they would be returned to you.

Europe and the rest of the world watched, and did not desert you, however. January 1998, you and your people welcomed Pope John Paul II on a state visit.

Then a dramatic personalizing thing happened in real time that electrified everybody.

In November, 1999, a little boy, one of your people, by pure chance was found floating on a rubber inner tube, out in the Atlantic. Investigation showed that his mother had secretly left her husband, and attempted the dangerous crossing with her boyfriend and a few others. Little five year old Elian watched them arguing as the water got rough, fell asleep, and woke up alone and adrift. Funny how anecdotal family trouble gets attention. Finally. Real people with real names and faces and problems. To that, we can all relate.

Did our Coast Guard turn his inner tube around, wish him luck, and push him back out to sea? Of course not. He was brought ashore, and left with his uncles and aunts somewhere in Miami, and everyone was supposed to think that that was an American "happy ending" to his story.

Not so. Your voice and his father's voice were heard loud and clear, there were legal ramifications, and America was embarrassed enough to find its human side, follow its own family laws by the book (not by the judge), and Elian was forcibly returned to his father.

I was among the millions who watched his interview last year on CBS's Sixty Minutes, and it was clear that the right thing had been done. We saw an impressive little boy, met his father, and saw his school chums in their school uniforms.

Attitudes began to change here. In October 2000, the U.S. House of Representatives approved limited sale of food and medicine to Cuba, revising the Cuban trade embargo.

But taking the high road, through the United Nations, in April 2004 we censured Cuba over recent human rights abuses, including the detention of more than 75 political dissidents, held in inhuman conditions. (I'll trade that with the thousands held here similarly, in places like California's Pelican Bay high security prison), and also you were accused of some sort of sin that you were worth $550,000,000, a paltry sum by American standards. You claimed, believably, that you did not benefit from state owned enterprises.

Then just last month we heard that you were ill following a bad fall, witnessed on television, and that you were in the hospital with internal bleeding. Already, the media here were almost gleeful in quoting rumors that you were dead. You were very smart, and simply disappeared to be out of touch, which brings us to today.

I have written several times about Cuba before on this site.

Freedom of Speech; Elian Gonzalez; Richard Branson

You have shown yourself to have a very human side, and a great sense of humor and irony.

Your legacy is that you stood up to the great Goliath to the North, and have survived in your role as David, remained true to yourself, and hopefully everybody will draw their own fair conclusions from your story.

To close, again, a very Happy Birthday to you.

NEXT DAY

The New York Times invited readers to send in their brief comments on this subject, and here is the list, all 741 of them (including mine). It is incredible that the result was almost 100% in favor of letting the Cubans decide what should happen next. In fact, most were very much in sympathy with Castro and the Cubans. Bravo!

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People have often asked me this question. They say "Look what the Jews did to you, Judge Arnold Gold put you in prison the day before you had to appear in court to start your case, then kicked you out of your house to sell it and pay for the fees of opposing counsel (who sued you in the first place) who were 1. your wife's attorney Emily Shappell Edelman, who is Jewish, and 2. Nicolette Hannah's attorney, James R. Eliaser, who is Jewish - who I discovered used to work for the judge's law firm. By ordering this, he effectively created the loss of my small son to me and me to him, and the exodus of the entire Clark family, less me, to the East Coast.

Then there was Family Court Supervising Judge Aviva Bobb, who I believe is Jewish, who backed Gold up, kept awarding new fees to Eliaser, and then refused to let me buy my guest house so that I could continue to live in Topanga, keep my dogs, and not store my belongings and not live in a trailer. Just a reminder here of my expectations that celebrity pandering could not happen in Hollywood's hallowed halls of justice: View image

An Appeal to the Second Circuit got me a negative review from Justice Miriam Vogel, also Jewish.

An Appeal to the Supreme Court, after I had written to Chief Justice Ronald George, who I believe is also Jewish, was turned down.

And the media, which wouldn't stop, appeared to get more fodder from the site of Hebrew University, where one of their professors made me the anecdotal target setting out to prove her totally inapposite use of me in a legal paper. Her name was Hila Keren, and to this day, I have received no response from her.

And then of course, there was Lew Wasserman, the top Jew in Hollywood, from the old House Calls case.

Well, my answer to this all-important question is that far from being anti-Semitic, I am, perhaps surprisingly, PRO-Semitic, and HUGELY ENVIOUS of them.

I have always respected the culture of the Jews, and their education, which certainly exceeds mine. I look up to them. Always an outsider, I even believe I have the soul of a Jew. I have made a point of making close friends with Jewish people. (In fact, more than one of my girlfriends was Jewish.)

I WANT TO BECOME JEWISH, so that I could be completely like them, recognizably the same, but without their religious beliefs, a secular Jew.

I believe that there is the APPEARANCE of networking and mutual backscratching taking place. Of course, business is all about mutual backscratching, nothing wrong with that, but if I am right, I want to be a part of THAT network.

It is absolutely no coincidence that I believe I could then enter the places where Jewish mingling and socializing take place. Clubs, temples, agents' offices and so forth, where right now I would be unwelcome and refused entry. Perhaps because I am no longer attached to a celebrity.

It was Adolph Zukor, that originator of things Hollywood, founder of Paramount Pictures, who ages ago gave this deathless advice to newcomers to the Hollywood scene: "Talk British but think Yiddish!" That was right up my tree.

To this end, I have entertained the thought of taking a hint from Careen Johnson, a struggling black bricklayer and funeral parlor assistant who, dying to become successful as an actress, changed her name to Whoopee Goldberg. She was smart, it got her an Emmy, an Oscar, a Tony and a Grammy. And of course she had the great talent to back it up.

Now me, I could change my name to Clarkstein or Clarkberg, but would it help? Not bloody likely! If I became a Jew aspiring to become successful as an actor or a celebrity, I would surely be advised to change it back to Clark.

Don't think so? Look at Emmanuel Goldenberg, Muni Weisenfreund, Julius Garfinkle, David Kaminsky, Bernard Schwartz, Jacob Cohen, Joyce Frankenberg, Aaron Chwatt and Ephraim Goldberg. They changed their monikers to Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, John Garfield, Danny Kaye, Tony Curtis, Rodney Dangerfield, Jane Seymour, Red Buttons and Frank Gehry respectively. And then there was Larry King (interesting choice, but what is wrong with "Larry Zeiger Live"?)

No, I'm afraid that that can only be my fantasy.

But getting back to the law, I did make a point of hiring Jewish lawyers, who always keep their original names perhaps as a badge of office, oh, and a Jewish press agent, thinking that would help.

The first to defend me was Melvin S. Goldsman, and Marci Levine, Esqs. of Freid & Goldsman, their names giving them away.

I fired them when I found that my Mel allowed his Jewish adversary to write a time sensitive stipulation to Nicolette that could have led to the cessation of hostilities, didn't read it because he was out of the office and there's no money in ceased hostilities, and told his secretary to tell me to sign it, which I did. Boy, was I green at the beginning. Perhaps they were old friends. Perhaps they performed regularly for the Beverly Hills Bar Association.

My next was Steve Mindell, Esq. I fired him because he was about as aggressive as my little son's kindergarten teacher. When I asked him to get Lynn to open a joint bank account with me so that she could pay her share of the upkeep of our joint property during the three years of my lone occupation, he simply told me she wouldn't agree. When I asked him to get our joint stock portfolo released from the freeze put on it at the height of the dotcom bubble so we could cash out, again, he wouldn't do it. It would have meant getting a court order, and he wouldn't go to court for it. Nothing appeared to be happening, other than his endless bills.

So then I hired hit man Mike Kelly, Esq., a referral from a Topanga millionaire divorcee lady friend. Of course, he's Irish, (the worst kind, I hear someone shout - but that's a joke).

My last lawyer (apart from my Appeal lawyers, also Jewish) was a Cy Schaffer (also a Jew), to whom I paid $50,000. In court, Judge Gold said he had made an order that I was not to use funds from a tax refund to pay this lawyer, and he should immediately refund it to me. Schaffer protested. Gold hunted for his order, then said he couldn't find it, and told him he could keep the money.

I fired Mike Kelly after stretched out months when he alleged I was trying to get Nicolette evicted from her little house by not paying the property taxes, and it was going to be sold by the taxing authorities. He didn't read the 1-page notice, which had been sent over to him by her tricky attorney Eliaser, who I'm sure had read it. It wasn't for me, it belonged to another John Clark, on a foreclosing property in South Central Los Angeles!

So now I was out of lawyers because I stopped believing in them, lost six hundred thousand dollars to them, and had no more money. That's how I came to represent myself in court, and had to learn what it is to be a PRO SE.

Having wised up, my first appearance before Judge Gold was over the unread by my attorney property tax inquiry. There was Eliaser, sputtering to the judge that I was trying to get his client evicted. I showed the court the 1-page notice showing it didn't belong to me. Judge Gold just smiled, and thanked me for being smart enough to catch it. I asked for a sanction against Eliaser for wasting the court's time. Not granted.

As for my Jewish press agent, a gentleman named Michael Levine, a self-styled media expert, I hired him to give me advice on handling the media now that I was suing Larry Zeiger -sorry, King. I got no advice at all; he refused to visit me at my house, but I did find that my money, about thirteen thousand dollars, went towards starting his new wannabe Drudge Report, aimed at bringing down the likes of Mel Gibson and Michael Jackson and maybe me and others who APPEAR to be breaking his moral code (chuckle chuckle). Networking again, is my opinion. But unlike Red Buttons, I did get a dinner, several actually. It wasn't until after I had dropped him that I discovered that he used to be married to King's current wife by whom he had a child. I think he should have told me about that before I paid him a penny.

If I ever get as drunk as Mel Gibson, I'm told that I tend to act out my Jewish fantasy while singing the freedom chorus of the Hebrew slaves in their banishment.

But when I sober up, I get to thinking more about what "they" did to me. Here I am, my possessions lost or stolen, alienated by my kids and my family (I face back East to see them), removed from my house and my wealth by quasi-military enforcers, and exiled from Topanga, my Homeland. Then these words come to me.

As long as deep in the heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
. . . . . . . . . .
Our hope is not yet lost.

And Barbra comes to my rescue in song.

July 22, 2006
The LA Times, praise G*d, has become quite funny and readable lately.

An editorial today approvingly reports that an open microphone at the dinner table at last Monday's Group of 8 summit in St. Petersburg was responsible for revealing the REAL George Bush,

He was heard to say that politicians "talk too damn long", that China and Russia are both "really big countries", and was heard to thank Blair for his nice birthday sweater, (wonder if it was from Marks and Sparks).

But the biggie was when he used the word "shit" to describe Hezbollah's recent adventures in the Middle East.

This was not, of course, as shockworthy as V/P Dick Cheney, a few months ago, overheard telling Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat, to go f*ck himself, sorry, I got caught up in the game, I mean fuck himself.

Maybe these open mikes are deliberate governmental plants to get the news out that our executives are startlingly human, just like the rest of us, which is comforting to know. At least we are discovering what's really going on in their minds.

From the particular (that's you and me) to the general (that's large groups of people, crowds, states, countries), deductive/inductive reasoning brings them all together.

It is no news that individuals declare war on each other, either politely or perhaps in (civil?) court.

To plead that there would be no war if only nations were sensible and settled their differences by negotiation is a waste of breath.

To argue that the solution lies in world federalism, well, that's not going to happen. A friend just back from a visit to his homeland tells me that even in the United Kingdom today, you will not see the Union Jack being proudly flown outside homes any more. (The Union flag comprised the individual flags of England, Scotland and Ireland superimposed. Wales was never represented, but do have their own flag.) Instead, the flag you see will depend upon where you are in the U.K. I was quite shocked!

So, countries don't want to merge, and individuals love to fight, and if you don't agree, spend a little time observing behavior in family courts across the land, or your nearest bar, and nothing will change that. It is in our nature.

Another useful argument is that we should ignore leaders who bring about war. The problem with that argument is that leaders have followers who obey unquestioningly. If only the followers had personal consciences and morals, and would refuse to fight. Nice thought, won't happen.

I've already written on the theme of war and how history shows that fought to a conclusion, it is a healthy part of human development and brings about life changes that are accepted by all combatants, unlike a negotiated peace (check the Treaty of Paris, or the first Gulf war).

So, I believe that combatants should be allowed to have at each other under watchful eyes. That current fierce combatants should be allowed to declare open war on each other.

Weapons of Mass Destruction would be banned. Defined as any weapon that can have an effect on the rest of the world's population. Didn't that happen already, with mustard gas during WWI? Wasn't it banned under the Geneva Convention?

As for suicide bombers - did that change the rules? No, that's nothing new. Both sides were happy to exercise that choice, and did, during WWII.

The answer is that the rest of the world could join together, armed with strong, superior, punitive measures to target all sides. The U.N. could but won't be that union. They prefer words.

Perhaps this solution is happening now, even as we speak. Just so long as the big powers who possess the superior weapons stay out of it.

And now, let us pray . . . .

Events in the Middle East are escalating rapidly. The latest spark was the involvement of one Gilad Shalit, a lone Israeli soldier, on June 25, abducted by agents of the militant Hezbollah fighters, who hold seats in the Lebanese government.

Let's revisit a time 92 years ago, two years after the Titanic went down. You might want to compare the dates, then, and now as they unfold; the similarity is unavoidable.

1914
June 28, one Gavrilo Princip, another lone individual and a Bosnian Serb, was captured by law enforcers of the Empire of Austria-Hungary for assassinating their Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife.

The military was mostly on leave at the time, and three weeks were allowed to go by during behind-the-scenes activity. The Empire was looking for justice for this insult to their sovereignty, and obtained the support of a powerful ally, Germany.

July 23. The Empire sent an ultimatum to Serbia, which demanded, among other things, that Austrian agents would take part in the investigation of the murder, but that Serbia would take responsibility for it.

The Serbian government obtained the support of Russia. They said no problem about the inquiry, but no way would they allow the participation of Austrian agents on Serbia's territory. So far, sounds reasonable, sort of.

Then see what happened.

Diplomatic relations fell apart, and they all decided to play hardball with each other.

July 28. The Empire declared war on Serbia.

July 29. The Empire bombarded Serbia's capital city Belgrade, and ordered general mobilization. So that same day, Russia ordered general mobilization.

July 31. The Germans, having pledged support to Austria-Hungary, sent Russia an ultimatum to stop mobilization within 12 hours.

August 1, with the ultimatum expired, Germany declared war on Russia.

August 2, Germany with warlike ambitions to the West, saw this as an opportunity. Germany wanted free passage through Belgium, on its way to France, to make faces at England, ignoring the neutrality of Luxembourg and Belgium.

August 3, Germany declared war on France.

August 4, Germany invaded Belgium, and England, guaranteeing Belgian neutrality, declared war on Germany.

The deeds were done. Millions lost their lives.

The difference between then and now? The size and effectiveness of the weapons. Casualties, then millions now billions.

The difference between the belligerents' mindsets?

None. None.

As everybody must know by now, Star Jones left ABC's "The View" on June 26. She announced her departure on the show BEFORE the PTB (Powers That Be) had given her permission, and it certainly wasn't in that day's script. She caused Barbara Walters to be publicly embarrassed (a cardinal sin), who herself then made things worse by attempting a cover up by lying to the press. What a mess!

Star has made clear that she feels used and abused. Which is fine, just don't expect to ever work again.

ABC has stated that they didn't renew her contract because of her "highly publicized wedding" and because of "her extreme weight loss".

Tom O'Neil, senior editor at In Touch Weekly, says "If she taps what made her successful before, she can become successful again."

What? Get married again and put the weight back on?

He also says that CNN and Fox News Channel have approached her with offers, but both networks officially deny that they've had any contact with her whatsoever.

Here's wishing Star good luck in her future endeavors. A lawyer, she's finding out that Showbiz has its own Constitution (unwritten), and she may actually have to go back to lawyering (but keep the showbiz out of the courtroom, leave that to the judge.)

Meanwhile, In Touch shows itself to be not in touch. Perhaps they need to get a new life too.

If you read the entry down below of April 2, 2006 ("Placido Domingo, Where Were You?"), you will be familiar with that sorry story.

I am here to tell you that it's going to have a happy ending.

I consulted with what's called hereabouts a "personal injury" attorney, the kind that works for free and a hefty chunk of the proceeds. I was assured that we had a case and a right to quiet enjoyment pertaining to the show, and it would cost us nothing.

But I decided to hold off, and wait for a reply to my letter.

I can now report that I have received a gracious letter of apology and regret from LA Opera, with the notation that they are not responsible for operating the house, L.A. County does that, and also provides the front-of-house staff. It came with an invitation to attend any future performance as their guests.

Then I got a letter from the County. They investigated the matter and rendered their apology too, and a note suggesting that in today's employment climate, it can be difficult to take the kind of action that perhaps ought to be taken.

I have responded by saying that we have decided to accept their apologies, and expressed the hope that perhaps our unfortunate experience will be used for the benefit of future training classes for house and security staff. Audiences ought to be able to go to the bathroom without running the risk of being assaulted by security on their way back to their seats, between, or even dare one say, during arias.

I have asked LA Opera if we might attend the first performance of their upcoming LA TRAVIATA, by Giuseppe Verdi, on June 7th and they are pleased to do this for us. They asked me to erase the posting, but I said no, it needs to remain as a cautionary tale for the good of LA Opera and all future patrons. I said it should never happen again to anybody.

I said goodbye to the lawyer chap, who sounded quite sad, and instead we are making plans for the June 7th opening, dress-up time, black tie, and Miyuki wants to wear her classic summer Kimono outfit.

I don't know if Maestro Domingo had a hand in this, but I hope so. I like to believe that art wins out in the end.

LATER
So we got dressed up again, kimono and all, and off we went.

La Traviata is an easier to follow story, and of interest was that this production was put together by The Maestro's wife Marta, (and came under some criticism from the buffs.)

The sweet sad melody of the prelude sets the tone for the entire opera, and we came out with beautiful arias ringing in our heads. We did enjoy ourselves, but I noticed that nobody came to greet us. Dinner was being set up after the show, for the big donors I guess. But not invited.

We went home by way of our new favorite neighborhood seafood and oyster bar - the Hungry Cat at Sunset and Vine.

And plan to attend Andre Rieu's next concert hereabouts next December. Not for serious music snobs, I guess, but he can certainly teach producers of the classics a thing or two about infecting an audience with enthusiasm and goodwill.

Andre Rieu

After the fiasco at the opera, we went further, South of downtown, to our warehouse where all of our belongings are stored. I needed to lie down on my old comfy red Topanga sofa with a cup of tea. But outside the building, there was some kind of police activity going on, and we couldn't get near. But I did see our always cheerful concierge, Nelson, in the distance being interviewed by Channel Four News. I had to wait to find out what was going on.

What I found out was that a Korean father of two young children had put them in his SUV, doused the vehicle with gasoline, climbed in, and tried to burn themselves all up. He succeeded in crisping his kids, but he was rescued by firemen half burned, and may recover.

I didn't need to hear that this was a custody case, another botched example from L.A's Family Court system, I was sure.

Will they ever learn that anything short of shared, unmonitored, parenting cannot work? Please read, again, what I have written in my sidebar "The plight of the Pro se", at the bottom.

There are otherwise normal rational honest people who will say, o.k., if I cannot have access to my children then neither can you, because they won't exist any more. And if I go too, I don't care.

This is not rocket science.

And meanwhile, in the space of one short hideous day, I discovered that where Los Angeles is concerned, the movie "CRASH" is not so far off after all.

LATER
This morning's newspaper provided some details. The kids were a boy 10 and a girl 11, both unhappy, according to neighbors. A divorce suit had been filed by the wife, there were custody issues, but of course, the court record will be sealed.

But here's the interesting bit. He was a lawyer, qualified in Argentina, before immigrating. He married his wife, a real estate agent, in 1993.

They went entrepeneurial, opening a very successful business manufacturing and retailing tank tops and T-shirts. A Mercedes and a house in Hancock Park, and good schools for the kids, was the life style. Until business went bad.

A proud man, he worked hard doing grunt work, ironing and folding at the shop, borrowing money to pay the rent. There were incidents of his sometimes violent temper, and apparently his wife moved away, took the kids, and he was living in his car. He closed the business just 2 weeks ago.

He was seen arguing with his daughter outside the car, who may have said something to trigger his helpless rage. Then he acted out.

The lesson here is that where human emotions and behavior go, there are no class lines.

Like the medics who can fix a broken bone but not a case of flu, the Courts and police have the solution. Mr. Yun will be charged with homicide when his condition improves.

This actually happened yesterday to me and my wife Miyuki. We went to LA Opera!

LA Opera

Sunday being April 2, and its being the fifth anniversary of the day I first met my wife-to-be stepping off the plane from Tokyo, I decided to surprise her with two tickets to the matinee of Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro, conducted by Kent Nagano giving his farewell at the baton, curtain being at 2pm. I'd seen it years before, at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston.

We arrived at the Music Center dressed up for the occasion at what we thought was nearly an hour early, and passed the time taking refreshments outside the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion on the terrace, snapping pictures of each other.

View image View image

I wondered why there was no sign of a crowd going in, and we soon found out. We were unaware the clocks had gone forward one hour!

So in we hurriedly went, to take our back row seats in the loge section, 95 bucks apiece, the last two in the sold out house.

Another couple, in the same fix, were waiting with a young girl usher at the upstairs outer door, told to wait for the applause after the next aria when we would all be seated. Fair enough. A quick trip to the men's room, back to join my wife, only to find that the other couple had gone in and now we would have to wait some more. Ok, fine, but then the usher said we couldn't go in until the intermission at the end of the second act, 45 minutes later, and we could watch on a monitor in the lobby. What? Why the difference? We're not donors? My wife was in tears, not helped by the sounds of choral singing and cheers emanating from the inner sanctum of the theatre, and wanted to go home. The usher refused to discuss it, she was obviously planning to join the other staff members in the upper lobby for their tea break whom we'd passed on the way in, I guess, so I said to Miyuki, come along, this is ridiculous, and we opened the entrance behind the usher, and quietly walked to the far end of a corridor that led to the inner door and our seats in the back row. At the next applause, I quietly opened the door to our aisle, and we sat on the top step in the dark for a moment, just one seat away from our seats to the right, not wanting to disturb the lady on the aisle until after the next aria was over.

We sat there enthralled watching this wonderful show, when suddenly the door behind us was quietly opened and we were whisperingly asked to leave. My wife, being Japanese and startled, and wedded to polite form, did so immediately. I did not. A few minutes later I felt a pair of hands clamped on to my shoulders. A hefty security guard was trying to lift me up bodily. Being well over 200 lbs, this was not easy for him to do. He then tried to steal my binoculars from around my neck, nearly cutting off my air supply. Unsuccessful, he left, and I slipped into my seat at the invitation of the intervening elderly lady who had witnessed it all.

HOUSE OF PAYNE

What happened next was unbelievable. At the intermission the house manager, one Jim Payne whom I will not easily forget, appeared with their beefy security guards, and ordered me out of my seat and out of the theatre, or he would call the police. He did not know who I was and I wasn't about to tell him, but I did say I was from London England, and there, in his position at the Royal Opera, a house manager, apprized of the situation, would exercise discretion. He informed me he was Canadian and cited house policy. My wife then appeared in a state of hysterics, they'd been working on her, and said I would be taken off to prison. Nonsense, I said. People around were staring. I stayed put and refused to budge, thinking to myself I wonder which camp gave him his training, and how did he manage to slip across the border, and where are the Feds from homeland security, but I said nothing.

The house manager then told me he was calling the police to have me arrested and evicted. This pushed all of my buttons as you can imagine. I produced my DGA membership card, but for all he knew it could have been my Ralph's Club discount card. So I told him, as calmly as I could manage, to all go away and leave us alone, we would not have our afternoon at the opera ruined.

As the lights went down and the curtain went up, singers onstage, orchestra, I assured Miyuki that they would think better of it, and we'd hear no more, and so we managed to settle down and enjoy the third act. This was maestro Kent Nagano's farewell at the baton as I said, and the performances were there to be relished. The ineffable duet between the Countess and Susanna brings tears to my eyes every time.
Cosa Mi Narri

There WAS more to come, however.

I could not believe that at the next intermission (yes, it's a long opera), Mr. Payne suddenly reappeared with security and 2 policemen. They ordered me to stand and leave. I refused. One of them said they would arrest me. I asked what for? He said that the management said I was trespassing. I held up my ticket, and said this is a misunderstanding, we have paid for our seats, we are sitting in them, and we are not trespassing, nor are we making a disturbance; if anyone was, it was them. Their answer was that we were being ejected at the request of the theatre, had no further right to our seats, and therefore we were trespassing, and don't make further trouble.

I said are you going to handcuff me here? One of the cops said loudly, yes, produced the handcuffs, and said you will be taken to the downtown jail and there you will be booked for trespass and for resisting arrest, and you will be incarcerated with dozens of criminals and prostitutes and prisoners with Aids. They then leaned in to take me bodily away.

It was too much for me. My heart started to pound. I'm 73, I have a dodgy heart, and I thought I would die there and then in my seat. I have always hoped that when the time came it would be in a theatre, but front of house to the merry strains of a Mozart chorus and guns pointing at me was not part of my plan.

My wife tells me that they all left at this point, and I became vaguely aware of a tap on my left shoulder with a medical person asking me if I wanted a stretcher. I shook my head, and we sat it out until the end of the show, although for us any further enjoyment of Mozart's magic was over.

Then, leaving our seats with everybody else, Miyuki noticed that the policemen were still there waiting with Payne and the security guards!

I remember limping unrepentant, arm around my wife for support, as they cleared a way for us to the elevator, to be summarily escorted to the exit with a loud warning never ever to return to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion again, that we were marked people, and they knew where we lived.

I wonder if Placido remembers meeting me in Chicago back in 1998, when I arranged for my then wife to work with him and Renee Fleming to co-host an evening special for PBS, "Star-crossed Lovers", under the baton of Daniel Barenboim? I wonder if Placido will do something when he hears about this misadventure?

As a Broadway producer and director and actor, with a Tony nomination yet, I know that the front of house staff is a theatre company's direct interface with the public. The same public that hopefully buys tickets and season subscriptions and makes donations to the performing arts.

Support LA Opera

What happened to us was truly shocking, and it is hard to believe that CEO Mark Stern and President Carol Henry might try to justify what happened, and maintain that their staff behaved appropriately. Fortunately, we have witnesses who I know would be happy to provide affidavits, if it becomes necessary.

Well, I got checked out by my doctor today, and am now checking out my next move.

I sure hope they have no influence over at the Ahmanson. We've adjusted our watches, and we're planning to see Dame Edna tomorrow evening. Something for her to comment on, she'd have loved it, I'm sure.

This time not mine. This time, Aaron Spelling's, producer and actor, shaping up for lawsuits including defamation by probably a penniless nurse.

I want to give him some advice.

No, not legal advice, I'm not an attorney, but advice he might want to pass on to his attorney. I'm quite sure he is not a pro per prospect, because he's rich. Verrrry rich.

I read today in the Los Angeles Times, my homey newspaper (yeah, sure!) that they have filed a motion that his what they are about to call "seamy" private life be made public because they have 1st Amendment rights, and he's a public figure.

We read that he had a nurse who signed a confidentiality agreement, and breached it by talking to the tabloids about his and his family's private life, and he's suing her for the breach, and also for defamation. Of course, now the low-lifes are baying at the window, and I mean her old boyfriend, and the lawyers, and the flacks and the newshounds formerly known as journalists.

So she is counter-suing him for "sexual harassment", and her female attorney has gone so far as to circulate a letter entitled "Survey on Sexual Harassment by Aaron Spelling" to hundreds of actresses with whom he has worked on his acclaimed television productions of Dynasty, Melrose Place, Charlie's Angels, Love Boat and Fantasy Island. Stirring it up letters of intimidation to actresses like Jessica Lange, Michelle Pfeiffer, Teri Hatcher and Cheryl Ladd.

Picture him lying in bed making remarks she alleges he made, like "Give me my Viagra, let's have sex!", and "Dress like a hooker!"

He's 82, she's 56.

She, and he, should be so lucky. They should both curb their enthusiasm, and leave it to Larry David. Nursey just doesn't understand Jewish humor.

Aaron, stop it. Stop it right there. Because what's going to happen will outlive you, and your outstanding legacy will become fouled. Learn from me!

And next time, make sure your Confidentiality Agreement contains a "Confession of Judgment" clause.

And be thankful you are not faced with a judge planning on "retirement" (aka going the Celebrity Private Judge route.)

Your judge Highberger, quite sensibly, encourages settlement by April 12 "if anyone is rational." He should order it.

Later
Well, Settlement orders came from above, and there will be no "Next Time".

Aaron Spelling died June 23, 2006. May he now Rest In Peace.

IF ONLY the Justice Department found that Anthony Pellicano was tapping my phone line back in 2001 when I was in trials presided over by Judge Arnold H. Gold. Trials presenting sworn defenses to the onslaughts of my wife, and to what Larry King referred to as my "other woman".

IF ONLY Judicial Watch had paid more attention to my cases and followed through. They sent a monitor to a few of my days only. Then faded, too busy I guess with their political ambitions in Washington over the Clinton affair.

These people could serve more of their stated mission by helping the truly needy. See here what they said about "Corrupt Judges", including Judge Gold.

Judicial Watch

They saw this happen to me: I never heard from them again.

I have started populating this folder with evidence of what I know to be true, and can document that truth (look to the left, My folder on Judge Gold).

And why am I doing it?

Because I truly believe that we have reached a point, thanks largely to the Feds and the situation in Iraq, where the States are being more closely looked at by Washington. Does one think that the Pellicano case would have surfaced as a result of an inquiry by the California legal system? Huh! Powerful law firms were using and paying for his services for years, and he continued to flourish in his business as a private eye illegally spying on the weak to aid the strong through the tapping of telephones. Yet nothing happened. It took a federal case to make it happen.

(I am also doing it to open up the court record of my trial, so that the public can go beyond what was reported about me in the media. The record that was ignored by the most trusted name in news.)

Yes, the California judicial system has dirty secrets. This is Chief Justice Ronald George's turf, and he holds that buck, and it stops with him.

In the same way that Cardinal Roger Mahoney held the buck over the priest child abuse scandal, and the press finally got wise to it, and ran stories about it. Now his eminence is paying more attention to his turf.

The time is now very ripe for the same kind of press attention to be paid to how our legal system is being run here in California (do you care, Los Angeles Times and Daily Journal?).

The big difference being that Mahoney is NOT subject to reelection and George is.

And speaking of reelections, doesn't our Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger know of the tool of Special Investigative Commissions, designed to find out where corruption lies?

And hasn't our Chief Justice heard of the tool sua sponte? And how this can be used per curiam without waiting for lawyer challenges?

Res Ipsa Loquitur!

You're a celebrity and/or you're just rich, and you don't want to deal in open court where the pro pers, pro ses, and other poor folk go, and you don't want the whole world to know your business - especially if you have a lawyer who is known to have hired the alleged and indicted wire-tapping spy Anthony Pellicano. You want to be able to control the outcome, that is if you can persuade the other party to go with you, like by paying the cost.

So what do you do?

Why, you go to "Rent-a-Judge", where you can get a legally enforceable judgment.

And who might that judge be, and where will you find him?

Alternative Resolution Centers, a Limited Liability Company, is one such place, here in California (ADR Services, even bigger, is another). There you will find around 38 retired judges, like my old judge, Arnold Gold, for example. You will pay maybe 7 hundred dollars an hour for his services, and if your private judge violates state judicial rules and bends the public court system to your personal ends, what's so bad about that, could you or the judge get into trouble from some oversight board? The answer to that is no, because there is no oversight over private judges.

The State of California (probably typical of all states) maintains such a public body (the Commission on Judicial Performance), and guess what, privately hired judges are totally immune and safe from their scrutiny.

And if you go to the District Attorney with a complaint, chances are you will receive the curt reply that they don't get involved in private disputes, especially those involving divorce and custody matters.

Of course, if you, the underdog, feel you have been manipulated, you are free to sue in the court you should have insisted upon in the first place. Sue who? Perhaps the judge, who cannot plead judicial immunity, perhaps even the alternative resolution center for providing tainted services (is that a consumer problem? Don't know.) If you forfeited your right to sue, then perhaps your only course is to allege fraud.

And who are typical litigants in this system? Try Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston; Charlie Sheen and Denise Richards; Michael Jackson and his custody fight with ex-wife Debbie Rowe. Billionaire Ronald Burkle and his wife Janet. But since it's all kept private, you won't always know who else went that route. [An aside here, I tried to disqualify Judge Gold with a Motion during my trial, because in a slip, he revealed his intentions to retire and make lots of money from celebrities, as a retired judge for hire - unbelievable! Denied, by him, of course. Download file]

April 2
Reassuring letter in today's paper from Terry B. Friedman, President, California Judges Association, in response to a sweeping article on the subject by Michael Hiltzik in the L.A. Times who said there is no oversight of private judge's behavior.

He says Hiltzik is quite wrong with his information, that because retired judges and justices are lawyers, they are subject to the disciplinary powers of the ABA, as are temporary judges.

I believe I am right in saying that Chief Justice Ronald George last year issued an order that Judges active on the bench can't have it both ways. That they cannot "retire", and then come back in as a temp. to earn even more money, this time public money. Surely Friedman knows that.

As for the enlightening news that private judges abusing their position are subject to discipline, O.K. not by the Commission on Judicial Performance, but by the California Bar Association, the ABA, well, that news deserves a good, tears in the eyes, belly-aching, laugh. We live in the real world, and Friedman should not try and mislead the public.

You left the hospital today, and you, a Bush-Cheney campaign donor, made a statement about the hunting accident, and took no questions.

You should not have been walking behind the Vice President, and we need to hear you say "IT WAS MY FAULT!" Because then everyone will breathe easier, especially we-all-know-who.

On the other hand . . .

You are a lawyer and there's the matter of liability. Cheney should not have fired behind him, a sweep no more than abeam of himself was standard practice...and the numerous other people present didn't call a warning...and then there's the manufacturer of the gun to consider...as well as the weather forecaster for that day...and the owner of the property...the insurance company, was there any?...whose insurance?...among many other things.

Republican Larry King might want to probe this on CNN so we can hear about it from all sides. On the other hand . . .

Later - "Shooting Victim Apologizes to Vice President"

A CNN headline, of course. Let's examine the apology.

What Wittington said, actually, was

"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week."

Thank you allthenewsyoucantrust CNN.

Stay tuned.

Here we go again! This is what just happened:

In a speech on January 14, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said "Iran has the right to nuclear energy". Well, that sounds fair enough, France has used it for years, as do many countries around the world, although this country doesn't currently embrace that peaceful use.

But CNN processed the translation of the speech, and in their own inimitable way, this is what they told the world that the president said:

"The use of nuclear weapons is Iran's right."

It would be interesting if, as this country's self-appointed allthenewsyoucantrust voice of America, they precipitated Nuclear War.

THAT sure would beat Fox and MSNBC for sheer chutzpa.

CNN claims to maintain a Standards & Practices department. Is this their standard? Is that their practice?

Well, such activity has its own rewards.

CNN's "mistake" (as they put it) has been deemed a "violation of professional ethics" and CNN journalists have been banned from working in Iran until further notice.

"A courthouse is by definition a place where people lie; not to lie is to invite confinement in what one superior court judge calls 'a structured setting.'

"It is a totally hermetic world, a world in which the most rancid view of human behavior prevails, and I find it mezmerizing"

I did not write that. These were the words of the late John Gregory Dunne, married to Joan Didion, and brother to Dominick Dunne.

I would add this amendment. Not so in a court where pro se/pro per litigants are involved. For this reason: The instant that a pro se/pro per litigant is shown to be deliberately lying, the judge will rapidly close down the case, and not in their favor. This does not apply to an attorney. His license allows him to lie, and if this is pointed out by the judge, he will quickly change his tune to something else. No risk at all either to him or to his client.

Read my "The Plight of the Pro se" at the left.

Anybody want to counteract his observation? Lawyers? Judges?

The media stands exposed with egg all over its face, having once again published unverified news as "facts", in the West Virginia trapped miners story.

The propensity of the media to publish what it thinks the public wants to hear, (presumably in the service of gaining readership or viewers), has never before been so much laid bare in all of its stark awfulness as it was last night. Herein the Ultimate Spin.

We watched breathlessly as CNN on the Larry King Live hour, and the rest of the pack (FOX News, MSNBC, etc.) report breathlessly to us that 12 miners had been found alive. Miracles! Glory be!

And a scant 3 hours later, they reported that they had got it wrong, sorry, actually it was 1 miner, the rest were dead.

The scenario of what goes on behind the scenes is not guesswork. The field producer would have called in to the program director with the rumor. The program director would have asked if there was corroboration. The field guy would have said no. The question then became how to run the story. The decision would have been made that the upbeat story should be run as fact and not rumor. If later proved to be false, well, then there's two stories for the price of one.

They blamed "miscommunication". But what they really did was willfully repeat what was only ever a rumor derived from outsiders listening in to rescuers' communications, borne by a wildly excited unnamed enthusiast rushing into the church where the families were waiting and praying for the safe deliverance of their loved ones. Whoever this person was, only heard that the miners had been found, and the throng of relatives quite naturally assumed the best because they wanted to. And the news media took up their cry and rushed to publish without even a caveat, or disclaimer, that the report had yet to be confirmed.

This unverified news appeared next morning in papers such as the New York Times and USA Today as fact. Only West Coast papers had the time to make a corrected report. The L.A. Times had to recall its delivery trucks and destroy thousands of copies, and run a new headline.

Who's at fault here? The mining company? The search and rescue teams? But these official sources did not release this false news.

No. The media, who got it wrong, cynically betrayed a trust to their readers and viewers, and are solely responsible for the grief it brought to countless people.

Today, Christmas Day, is the first anniversary of my Blog.

Love to all, and to all you lawyers out there, especially James R. Eliaser Esq. and Emily Shappell Edelman Esq. and Judge for Hire Arnold H Gold, and supervising judge of the L.A. family court Aviva Bobb. In the spirit of Christmas - or should I say Hannukah in your cases - as Whoopi Goldberg (being Sister Mary Clarence) says to Harvey Keitel (being arch villain Vince LaRocca) at the end of "Sister Act" . . . . BLESS YOU!

And now, hit it and sing along with me!

I'M DREAMING OF A WHITE CHRISTMAS

from

John Clark

Following the fortunes of two innocent cows as they serve your needs, under the multi-cultural/political world systems we have formed.

DEMOCRATIC
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICAN
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and gone off.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and make a herd.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pours the milk down the drain.

CORPORATION, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one.
You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the new-style analysts (aka Mad Money's Jim Cramer) stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock soars.

FRANCE
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPAN
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

BRITAIN
You have two cows. You want to eat them. You can't, they're still being tested . . .

GERMANY
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALY
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

INDIA
You have two cows. They think they are safe and untouchable.
So you send them elsewhere via the internet.
They multiply. Peter Norton zaps them.

NEW RUSSIA
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts.
You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQ
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They have blue hooves.
They send tapes of their mooing.

POLAND
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIUM
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks she's French, other times she's Flemish.
The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

BEVERLY HILLS
You have two cows.
They don't taste good, they don't look good, and they are too expensive.
You send them back to be made over.

FLORIDA
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some of the people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tells you which one you think is the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA
You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegals.
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

It was this day sixty-four years ago when a foreign power sneaked an unprovoked attack upon us.

It is worth remembering that about the same number of people were killed at that event as at another event sixty years later, at New York's World Trade Center.

The difference is that four years on from 1941, we knew better who we were and what we stood for and what we could be proud of.

Now, four years on from 9/11, can we say the same?

We need to realize that we are our own worst enemies, and that times have changed and we haven't.

Who are we, and who are they? And why? One answer, please.

Oh for those simpler days of "us" 'n "them".

Sorry folks, I've been out of it for a bit, but now I'm back!

Reason: Kidney stones!

Probably no greater form of punishment has ever been visited upon an otherwise healthy individual on Medicare - the unremitting pain is quite appalling.

My inconsequential hospital stays in the ER made me feel very embarrassed, that is when I was able to think clearly as I lay in my gurney.

To my right, a wisp of a 100 year old toothless crone, deposited without ceremony by three burly Hollywood firemen. Her last lonely breaths I am sure, and so so sobering.

Further down, a man in agony moaning endlessly in a way that elsewhere would have meant an inch from a grand orgasm, but here meant an inch from death.

Apart from hard work, the nurses, the doctors, the technicians, the help, the staff, all seemed to have one thing in common. None of them were what we have come to recognize as White Republican Americans.

Instead, Filipinos, Malayans, Indians, Koreans, Russians, Mexicans, Brazilians, Indonesians, Armenians, and oh yes, Middle Easterners.

And as I got to know them, what a fine bunch of real people they were.

So where have the others gone?

Why, to better paying jobs, like 200 to 1000 dollar an hour Legal Practitioners.

And not one of those could hold their heads up to my new-found friends.

And worse, not one of those contributing to the capital value, health, and success of this country's industry.

It's my birthday today, and I've lived for 73 years.

Today it came flooding back to me, how I spent my birthday exactly five years ago. Yes, it's time to review.

I was self-represented in court (pro per), defending myself from the onslaughts of my wife and her female (I think) attorney Emily Edelman, Esq.

I had delivered to her all of the documents she required, and her trial against me was due to start the next day.

Out of nowhere, Judge Arnold H. Gold decided that I had been "slow" in my responses to their myriad demands for more and more documents (while not ordering them to supply any to me, despite my demands), and sentenced me there and then to a night in jail.

I pointed out that trial was about to start, protested that I didn't know why I deserved this treatment, and then told him that also it was my birthday and I had friends waiting for me at a restaurant after this pre-trial session was over.

Unmoved, the judge's eyes glittered as he called over the bailiff, and I was led away to the Twin Towers to be stripped of my clothes and my self-esteem, and body cavity searched. The incident is recalled in my topic to the left, "What's a Pro se to do?"

Well after the trial, ordered to pay my opponents' fees under the disguise of "sanctions", well after my eviction from my beloved home took place 2 days after 9/11, I came to know that my wife Lynn Redgrave had committed a gigantic fraud upon me, and upon the court, and that she hired a hit man attorney to maliciously prosecute me for her own secret ends, using the court and the media as her tools. I will never forget how she obtained a restraining order against me for no reason at all, and then had me very publicly evicted from the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Independent Spirit Awards. I didn't dare attempt to use my ticket for the Academy Awards.

I know now that her actions against me were motivated by her plans for herself and her lover, who was that atypical actor phenom, the marriage poacher Brandon Maggart, who had come in to her life, it turns out to stay, back in 1977 when the two were out on tour together with Jerry Lewis, and later she got him cast in her ABC series Chicken Soup to be with her.

I go into some of this at the topic on the left "MY EVICTION PICTURES".

This epic and very personal event has caused the loss to me of my home (I was paid just $2,616,03 as my share of the community property home), several million dollars worth of investments that had been frozen by the court at the top of the market boom, my other real estate investments sold in the dip right after 9/11 by the court, financial support awarded to me in the princely sum of $3,000 a month, and the alienation from me of my adult children, who are too blind to see what their mother has done to them and to their future.

I dumped the miserable support when I advertised and found a wife on the internet; I don't think I could have survived without somebody in my life.

Mother Nature (my God) looked after me, and found the wondrous Miyuki from Japan, who has been able to make me settled and happy.

And why do I do this blog, and maintain this website?

Because America and its citizens need to know what can happen in American Courts, when what I choose to call a rogue judge (according to Merriam Webster, rogue means "of an animal, vicious and destructive") is allowed to be installed in the sensitive area of family and probate law by the Chief Justice, work for reform, and hopefully lead a recall effort towards California Chief Justice Ronald George who in full knowledge of these events as they unfolded, allowed this kind of thing to continue under his watch.

You will read here what you are unlikely to read in newspapers, magazines, and other non-blog media.

It's about illegally taped phone calls.

Now this could turn out to be an embarrassment, not only for Tim Russert of NBC, but Matthew Cooper, White House correspondent for Time Magazine, and New York Times reporter Judith Miller. They have all been questioned by the FBI and testified before the Grand Jury in the "let's get Libby (and then Bush)" matter, contradicting him under oath, and exposing him to charges of obstructing justice, making false statements, and perjury.

But they themselves may not be clean. Anyone who has been interviewed by the print press will know that the first thing a journalist does is to produce a tape recorder and plunk it down on a table in front of you, or perhaps it remains held in their hand with a microphone attached. No problem, it is there for all to see. The journalist is not only using it as a reference for a written article, but also to make sure that the quotes are exact, and not least to protect themselves from lawsuits in case the interviewee later claims that he or she has been misquoted. Permission is implied.

But telephone calls?

Of course of course, the same motive holds even more true, because people will be more likely to speak off their guard.

And so, just about every professional writer in that position will tape a phone call, and almost always without informing the person at the other end. And there are clever little machines, made by foreign companies such as TakaCom from Japan, that don't give out the giveaway beep signal that the call is being taped. (Yes, I have one.)

This method also allows one to write with easy access to the material, and is a useful note taker too, and is almost always not used for any sinister purpose.

But I found out the hard way when you want to use it in a court of law.

If you read my Topic "Housecalls" on the left, you will see where I "secretly" taped a conversation I had with Universal lawyers in a discussion over a settlement of our lawsuit over Lynn's firing from her very successful CBS television series (yes, the famous breast-feeding case, which she insisted on bringing).

That conversation, the court ruled, was an enforceable contract, and we were held to it, and the case was dismissed. But was I able to play it in court, to have the court hear the transcript to prove that any contract was subject to a written and signed agreement? No, the court ruled, I had broken the law, and it was not to be used. I waved the tape in front of the judge (no jury, unfortunately). I said that if the court ruled that this was a contract, then it had legitimized the taped conversation. It made as much sense not to listen to it, as it would be to not be allowed to read a written contract. Of course, I did not then realize that we were up against and further victimized by Hollywood's recognized overlord, Lew Wasserman, who, it was said, could not be defeated in a Los Angeles court of law. We were also (mis)represented by the notorious outlaw firm of Finley Kumble & Associates.

So here we have multiple journalists, and other important witnesses, who will be caught up in the legal net thrown by prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

And Libby's attorneys will of course proclaim that the evidence presented by the media was either hearsay, or of the "he said, she said" variety, inherently untrustworthy, or that their evidence is tainted, coming from people who routinely break the law.

And Fitzgerald, if he hasn't already, or some other prosecuting team at a later trial, will have the problem over secretly taped phone calls. Of course they are proof positive and best evidence of what was really said, like a video tape is so often best evidence these days, but still, illegal.

And the journalists will risk jail if they admit to secretly taping phone calls, and jail if they falsely deny it, and the judge will have to consider whether they should be disallowed in open court but maybe in chambers, and the prosecutor will look like he is using his discretion to selectively prosecute, even though his own witnesses have broken the law, and his witnesses will want to plead the Fifth Amendment if pushed.

The law is a tangled rope of idiocies, and this lawyer-run land has hoisted itself with it, and there will be no easy solution, or satisfactory resolution.

Except that the lawyers WILL be paid.

Libby, a life-long lawyer and in bed with those who run this country, was indicted today by a grand jury on five counts; obstruction of justice, 2 for perjury, and 2 for making false statements to FBI agents. The Indictment.

He immediately resigned his office.

What interested me is that here we have a lawyer, who went to the usual lie school, learned how to dodge ethics and lie with impunity before a court, and then tried it on in front of a bunch of pro per/pro se jocks, as well as the FBI seeking information.

Trouble with lying before a grand jury, is that the jury is composed of between 16 and 23 people (this had 18) chosen from usually older, perhaps retired people with time on their hands and an interest in the law, and they are, every one of them, ordinary people, not judges or lawyers or politicians, and none of them make their conclusions standing behind advice from "professionals".

And Libby the lawyer, giving his evidence before them, tried to lie, possibly relying on some kind of protection from the judge, and on his ability to manipulate the jury using the time-honored doctrine of "plausible deniability". And the prosecutor, a lawyer himself, spotted it and according to his mandate, went after him. Successfully it seems, although the outcome remains to be seen.

Check out on Wikipedia what has happened to the use of the doctrine of plausible deniability over the years in connection with Kennedy, Johnson, Eisenhower, Clinton, Nixon, Reagan, and how those in top government have tried to use it, and see where it went for them.

The implications of today's indictments are enormous, and the fall-out may get totally out of hand.

Because there are links from Libby, to Rove, to the Vice President, to the President, to the media, to the United Nations, and to the war in Iraq.

Because we the people are prepared to lay down our lives in the defense of our fellow citizens and our country in our president's call to arms, because we believe in the integrity and veracity and true word of our leaders.

No question, most other countries will be viewing these events with glee, and there will be huge repercussions. For they too depend upon, and some suffer from, the United States Government exercising its might.

Gosh, I wish I had his talent for handling his oppressors, and his guts and his fortitude. We unrepresented citizens confronting the courts or any other official body could learn a lot from him. OK, so, like many, he hates Bush and the war in Iraq.

His troubles are about supposedly receiving money in some form derived from the Oil-For-Food program.

Now, I don't know what is true and what isn't true, and frankly I don't care one way or the other.

He was brought before a Senate committee headed by Republican Senator Norm Coleman last May, for questioning.

But they weren't happy with his answers.

The committee has revealed that they got some of their evidence from - wait for it - Tariq Aziz, former rep and publicist for Saddam Hussein, and others of his ilk.

Listen to Mr. Galloway's responses and comments, and simply relish them for what they are and how he says them. And remember, he had no lawyer or publicist or other spokesperson speak for him - the well-known and much used refuge of the cowardly. He just used the English language memorably. Actors, and pro ses (pro pers) take heed.

Upon his arrival in this country, he told Reuters "I have no expectation of justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neo-con George Bush." Galloway described Senator Coleman as a "pro-war, neo-con hawk and the lickspittle of George W. Bush," who, he said, "sought revenge against anyone who did not support the invasion of Iraq."

At the hearing, he said "Senator, I am not now, nor have I ever been, an oil trader, and neither has anyone on my behalf. I have never seen a barrel of oil, owned one, bought one, sold one - and neither has anyone on my behalf.

"Now, I know that standards have slipped in the last few years in Washington, but for a lawyer you are remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice. I am here today, but last week you already found me guilty. You traduced my name around the world without ever having asked me a single question, without ever having contacted me, without ever having written to me or telephoned me, without any attempt to contact me whatsoever. And you call that justice."

[A necessary aside here; Me too, so I know how he feels!!]

It came out that senior Iraqi members of the deposed regime have made statements to the committee, including Tariq Aziz, Taha Yasin Ramadan, the former vice-president of the country, and Amer Rashid, the former oil minister, so he questioned the reliability of evidence given by former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, stating that the circumstances of his captivity by American forces calls into question the authenticity of his remarks.

Listen to Galloway some more.

"I've never met Ramadan or Rashid but I do know that they are facing charges which may carry a death sentence. As is Tariq Aziz. He has been held incommunicado for two years - and we know what goes on in US-controlled prisons in Iraq - and we also know from his lawyers that he has been offered a deal to testify," said Galloway. "On the one hand the US government accuses these men of being homicidal maniacs, on the other they assert that their coerced testimony is utterly trustworthy. Well, let Senator Coleman bring them and his unnamed sources to court in a case against me, and we'll see what the world concludes."

After the hearing was over, and he was back in England, the Senate committee claimed to have found fresh evidence that Galloway had lied in his testimony. They claimed to have found �85,000 in Iraqi oil money in the bank account of his now ex-wife Dr Armineh Abu-Zayyad. Galloway reiterated his denial of the charges and challenged the US Senate committee to charge him with perjury, and said he was willing to come to Washington to face a trial which he believes would clear his name.

And he accused Senator Coleman with using congressional privilege to attack and smear him.

He said: "I've already comprehensively dealt with these allegations -- under oath in the High Court and the US Senate -- to the Charity Commission and in innumerable media inquiries."

And so member of parliament George Galloway has thrown down a challenge to the US Senate homeland security committee to charge him with perjury and added "I'll see you in court".

Galloway said that he was prepared to fly out immediately to the United States if Senator Norm Coleman was prepared to bring charges. The MP had just seen a press release from the committee which alleges that he gave "false and misleading testimony" on May 17.

"I deny that absolutely. As I've said a thousand times, I've never benefited personally. Let Coleman bring these charges and I'll rebut them totally."

Galloway denies soliciting oil allocations or receiving "one thin dime" from the oil-for-food program. He also denies any knowledge that his estranged wife received approximately $150,000 in connection with oil allocations. "I understand she has made a statement denying this and it certainly came as news to me because it has never been raised."

He added "It's Groundhog Day. I've already comprehensively dealt with these allegations - under oath in the High Court and the US Senate . . . and in innumerable media inquiries. It seems that Senator Coleman, raising them yet again, is suffering from acute attention deficit disorder. Hell clearly hath no fury than a US senator humiliated. It's a sneak revenge attack of the most contemptible kind."

"He has not had the decency to let me know the conclusions he and his cohorts have reached, nor even that he was holding a press conference to smear me. For a lawyer he has a strange concept of justice."

Galloway continued: "Let me once again repeat. I have never benefited from any oil deal and I have never asked anyone to act on my behalf. I have not made a penny out of oil deals with Iraq or indeed any other kind of deal. This ought to be dead, yet Norm Coleman parrots it once more, from 3000 miles away and protected by privilege.

"These attacks are being mounted against me as a sideshow to divert attention from the real grand larceny - $1.3bn missing from the defence department and $8.8bn from the oil accounts. All of which occurred under the US administration."

He also said "It is still the case that, despite Senator Coleman promising to do so, I have still not been furnished with the originals or been able to have them independently forensically examined. If you can call them originals, because I understand these are mere photocopies. But even it these are genuine papers the fact remains that anyone's name can be written on a document. It does not mean that I received anything. How many more times must I say - I did not."

And finally, he said "The specific allegation against me is that I lied under oath in front of a senate committee. In which case the remedy is clear - they must charge me with perjury and I am ready to fly to the US today, if necessary, to face such a charge because it is simply false."

Perjury in the US carries a penalty of up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

The MP representing Bethnal Green and Bow also launched an attack on the senate investigators.

"They have been cavalier with any idea of process and justice so far, but I am still willing to go to the US and I am still willing to face any charge of perjury before the senate committee," he said.

Process and Justice. Yup.

But don't try it in L.A. Family Court. You'd get put in jail the day before your trial was due to start. I know.

Delicious stuff!

They may have been watching too much of our television, perhaps CNN's channel "All the News You Can Trust", (the new Voice of America.)

They may have been transfixed, as were we, by the OJ Simpson case, and the Michael Jackson case, and the Robert Blake case, and of course soon they will be watching the Phil Spector case. And any number of Corporate America's cases of financial wrongdoing.

They need to know that American lawyers make spirited defenses of their clients hoping to get them off, and hoping to pocket huge, never revealed, amounts of bonus cash.

But. The trial of Saddam Hussein needs to proceed in a civilized manner, and the defense lawyers should not be in fear for their lives.

Defense lawyer Saadoun Janabi was merely trying to do his job, which was to defend Judge Awad Hamed Bandar, head of Saddam's Revolutionary Court, against charges that he unjustly convicted Shiite Muslim residents in the town of Dujayl and then sentenced them to death. (His client Judge Bandar, along with Hussein and six other defendants, face possible death by hanging sentences in a 1982 massacre in Dujayl.)

But to kidnap Saaduun, tie him up, and shoot him, was going a bit far.

OK, so our revered and time-honored William Shakespeare did actually say, famously, "Let's kill all the lawyers". But I think he was just kidding!

I think he was kidding! I think he was kidding!

I think he was kidding. I think . . .

The differences between a courtroom setting administering justice through truth and the hearing room setting of a Congressional Committee seeking just simple truth (but not justice) became glaringly obvious as we watched the hearings on the FEMA response, or lack thereof, in New Orleans over hurricane Katrina. Both places share one essential ingredient, the swearing to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth".

The fact is that at a hearing, lawyers are kept out, so the witness cannot hide behind attorneys prepared either to lie, or to attempt to keep out truth they see as harmful to their client's case. Also there is no judge who, as I found in my cases representing myself in a courtroom setting before Judge Arnold Gold, kept out evidence dozens of times by uttering the contemptible words "Not probative to these proceedings."

Consider. In sworn testimony yesterday, Marty Bahamonde stated he was the only FEMA staffer in New Orleans that morning of Monday August 29 when the disaster hit. He took refuge at the Superdome along with 30,000 others. He noted the lack of all supplies essential to the continuation of life, and became one with the rest, whom he described sardonically as "close friends".

His statements contrasted with those of Bush appointee Michael D. Brown, the FEMA boss, who gave sworn testimony before a house panel in late September. Then and there he stated under oath that he had sent a dozen FEMA staffers including a medical team to the city before Katrina struck. He also said that Bahamonde was sent as FEMA's liaison to Mayor C. Ray Nagin.

Not so, said Bahamonde yesterday. He was the only FEMA staffer sent, and it was not as a liaison to anybody. He said that he kept sending urgent messages for food, water, and medical supplies by e-mail for Brown's attention, but his press secretary responded that he was far too busy waiting to eat his dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant.

Bahamonde read his emails at the request of the panel, and with breaking voice said "I can't get out of my head the vision of children and babies I saw helpless, looking at me, and hoping I could make a difference."

A true whistleblower is he.

Meanwhile, the public will see that a panel asking straightforward questions of a witness unshielded by an attorney and "constitutional protections" (aka Rules of Court), will every time reveal where lies are hidden. Let our system of justice take note.

Fellow Writer/Director/Performer Luis Moro informs us that he is being targeted by the U.S. Government because he made a film in Cuba, and thus runs afoul of the ongoing and toughening embargo on trade with Cuba.

He says "the U.S. Government is using the U.S. Embargo on Cuba to squelch my Freedom of Speech. The embargo is being used to stop me from showing my movie LOVE & SUICIDE. The reason: The movie was filmed in Cuba. Because of this embargo, I'm being threatened with civil and criminal penalties.

"Let's transform the duplicity of some politicians claiming to want freedom for everyone, yet preventing us from expressing ourselves freely, and from traveling in, and doing business with Cuba. It's now time for them to rethink and change their positions and get in step with current global conditions, especially as we trade with China, Russia and other former enemies.

"Thirteen years in a row The United Nations has voted overwhelmingly, in favor of lifting the U.S. Embargo on Cuba. In 2004, The UN voted against the embargo 179 to 4.

"The majority of the American people favor trade, travel and commerce with Cuba. I ask that we speak out directly and address these hypocritical politicians who receive donations and votes to keep the embargo on Cuba in place."

It would be nice to see the DGA, a highly political and vocal organization steeped in the game of international communications, speak up on this very emotional subject!

Today's Los Angeles Times brings us Xeni Jardin a remarkable serious journalist and contributor to the blog BoingBoing.

She comments on the efforts of Internet giants such as Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and Nortel to become even bigger businesses in their quest to gain a large share of the Chinese mainland Internet market, and their claims of First Amendment rights of Freedom of the Press, and their tendency to see war news as a form of entertainment.

What they conveniently forget, she points out, is the impact that can have in a country that practices the opposite, if care is not taken. China frowns upon their home-based bloggers divulging state secrets abroad.

Yahoo published a report about an upcoming Tiananmen Square massacre put out by a Chinese resident reporter who published under a pseudonym, but whose secrecy is now irrelevant. Shi Tao is his name, and he has a family. Obviously, there was great risk to his personal safety.

China asked Yahoo officials at their Hong Kong based agency to identify the source. No problem, they did so, and now this reporter is serving a ten year jail sentence for "divulging state secrets abroad".

Yes, war, hot or cold, is serious business. So much for the Shield Law we hear a lot about these days in Washington and at the New York Times.

Which brings me to the L.A. Times front page news reporting in the very same edition, on the war in Iraq, where the headline cries "[A] Central Pillar of Iraq Policy is Crumbling".

The pillar here being, according to them, that Bush and the rest of the West's argument that Iraq, under its new Constitution and with a new government in place, will be able to take over and control the running of their country. A fallacy and not so, say the contributors to this report.

My eyes opened wide and my jaw dropped when I saw the name of the news reporter assigned to The Times' Baghdad office. None other than their precious piece of immigrant Danish pastry, the ambitious blonde Louise Roug, who was assigned to cover my divorce trial on a daily basis, whom I filled in about the true situation over lunch - see my sidebar "What's a Pro se to do?" - and practiced her art of biased gossip, possibly under orders from the Entertainments Editor above, and refused to report on it objectively.

Here's how she opened her report:

Sunday, April 4, 2001
Home Edition
Section: Southern California Living

Actress Lynn Redgrave was on the witness stand in Los Angeles, hating every minute of it. She was being questioned by her ex-husband in one of the nastiest Hollywood divorce trials in years. John Clark, acting as his own attorney, drew close to show her a document. Redgrave flinched. "Please, I would rather he didn't," she implored the judge.

Redgrave, her clipped English voice dripping with indignation and disbelief, replied, "Not only did I discover you had fathered a child with someone I had considered my friend, you had planned it. . . . You said I was unattractive."

Although the trial is about the mundane--the division of money, property and possessions, it's also about something much more dramatic: the private betrayal and public humiliation of the daughter of a famous acting dynasty by a man who doesn't feel he's wronged her.

In court, Redgrave was demure and wore black. Clark was rumpled, often removing his jacket and complaining of the heat. Outside court, Clark explained that impregnating the friend--who later became the family's secretary--was "an act of kindness on my part." She was depressed, he said, and a child would "take her mind off herself."

Times staff writers Louise Roug and Gina Piccalo contributed to this column.

All I can say here at this point in disbelief is that the shameless editors of the Los Angeles Times feel it is appropriate to place a shallow and one of their least trustworthy entertainment editors to report from this hotspot of human conflict, where people actually die for their beliefs. Readers expect spin-free fair comment.

And if Bush Bashing is their goal, better to use real, serious, and believable journalists.

Did you know that if you're planning a refi on your house, you will be forced to pay off those liens that were lined up?

How can that be, you say, you are not selling your house, you are merely changing the terms of your mortage?

What they won't tell you is that you will be forced to swallow your pride, and pay off those bastards whose chances, you swore, were those of a snowball in hell.

They'll get paid, if you're the one in four with a past legal history, and got a bad judgment.

If you re-fi.

In this country, all judges must be licensed lawyers. There are no colleges where the graduates aspire to the high office of a JUDGESHIP.

Which is a pity, because as this site has pointed out many times, a lawyer's brain is simply trained to be different from what is required of a judge. Lawschools, where they train RAM - Random Access Memory (untrained minds)- to become ROM - Read Only Memory (highly trained hard-wired advocates).

Now we have something new and really scary.

President George Bush has nominated a lawyer with NO JUDGE EXPERIENCE of any kind, to be elevated to the highest court of the land.

Harriet Miers, exercising the brains of an advocate, may be learning how to be a judge while delivering swing votes in legal decisions effecting every citizen of this country.

I would rather see an educated person of great proven integrity and character with NO LAW DEGREE be nominated, just good common sense, and a sense of what is right, moral and just (assistants can take care of the law details, wherein lurks the devil). The president has the power to do that. Innovative, different, stunning, and amazing.

No chance.

This will have new meaning after the NTSB examination of the tragic sinking of the Ethan Allen in a calm lake on a late summer's Sunday outing.

Seniors, just like me except many were infirm, were presumably happily sitting in their chairs on the deck yesterday, enjoying the country air and observing the scenery over the pure waters of Lake George, in upstate New York.

The small tour-boat turned, not for an iceberg, but probably to avoid traffic. Another boat's wake was sufficient to threaten a roll-over, exacerbated by the fact that the chairs WERE NOT BOLTED TO THE DECK! Causing these 49 trusting folk to slip and slide to the same side, which changed its metacentric height, and reversed the center of flotation (yes, I learned seamanship in the British merchant navy).

The NTSB will find that this is what caused the loss of 20 souls in fresh water. No mystery, except who is liable, and do they have money? Personal injury lawyers are even now flocking to the area to find out.

And Mother Nature did it again, this time just a skirmish. If she is found to be a person, she (or he) had better have deep pockets!

Little Elian - Attaboy!

I cannot wait to tune in to CBS's 60 Minutes on Sunday evening October 2, to see the interview of young Elian, now 11 years old, which took place in Cuba 3 weeks ago.

It is not hard to remember that he was the little boy who was found floating on an inner tube in the waters off Florida back in 1999, his mother, who was fleeing her husband and Cuba, had drowned, and everybody from the boat had perished.

When he was rescued, he was given asylum, and placed with relatives in Miami. And later there was a seven month custody battle, and a ruling that he should be with his father in Cuba.

And, to our government's everlasting credit, Elian was later removed forcibly from these relatives in an armed federal raid, and returned to his father.

The interview took place at his home town for over an hour with his father present, but without attorneys, without officials of any kind, and no ground rules were set!

There was no attorney or "section 730 evaluator " court ordered report to inspire acrimony and division, as my long gone little boy Zachary received from L.A. Family Court.

We're told that he referred to his Miami relatives, said they were wrong to keep him there, but averred he would like to see them again because they are "my uncles, my family".

He said he views Castro as not only a friend, but as a father.

I would like to make a forecast. That boy has character, and will grow up to be a happy well adjusted human being. Which is what it's all about.

Isn't it?

Later, October 2

Just watched. One's heart goes out to him.

The subject's demeanor is what matters most in this type of interview, where his scattered family is politically polarized.

To have him questioned to satisfy the curiosity of millions of TV viewers about his so far life, at that age is quite obviously not ethical, and to draw conclusions from his answers is unfair.

One learned from him that he was taken down to the beach by his mother and "her boyfriend" (this from the interviewer), for an evening of fishing. Instead he found himself in a boat with 19 others, bound for America, all of five years old. He was asked to remember details, and he said that the boat overturned in a storm, he was put on an inner tube, and watched as his mother "got in a fight" with someone, but he fell asleep, and awoke to find himself quite alone, where he floated on the waves for many hours. Passing Florida fishermen saw what they thought was a toy in the water and passed it by, but thankfully came back a half-hour later, and seeing a hand move, realized that this was something else.

Having been the center of a nation's media attention at the age of eleven myself, I recall vividly how I felt back then. The successful child aims to please, no matter the demands or whose they are, and respectfully serve the wishes of one's controlling elders. At least, that's what happens in a highly structured society like the England of yesterday or the Cuba of today.

I thought that Elian seemed sad, as though he had not yet come to terms with his life's conditions, and of course why not. One hopes that he will be given the space and freedom to look for who he is in time, away from everybody.

One couldn't help noticing the chattering school children in their pretty uniforms, straight out of a 1950's movie. Propaganda? Sure, and what isn't these days?

But can't this country be glad to have a stable sovereign country like Cuba nearby? Would it prefer another corruptly volatile and disorganized capitalistic government of a Haiti?

I think viewers will wonder whether our government would have done the right thing without the political pressure from Castro, whose personal outrage at Washington back then was palpable.

Again, "get over it" is the message to our government, and knock off the petty, mind-numbingly cruel sanctions aimed at Castro and his people.

October 13

A heart-breaking post-script.

A 33-foot speedboat was spotted by the U.S. Coastguard about 45 miles south of Key West aiming for U.S. waters. Chase was given.

The pursuers lost sight of the boat but caught up a short time later. It had capsized. Thirty people were clinging to the hull. The body of a boy was found under the boat. He was six years old. No name was released.

Under the U.S. "wet foot/dry foot" immigration policy, Cubans stopped at sea are returned to Cuba. But, those who succeed in their quest get a prize. They can stay.

If that's our policy, a question hangs in the air. Why discriminate against Mexicans? And an even bigger question.

Whatever happened to our humanity?

Thomas Hobson, who died in 1631, was an English liveryman who required his customers to choose the horse that stood nearest the door.

Two offerings of news in today's Los Angeles Times brings him to mind, startling in their juxtaposition.

On page 5 we are told that China is clamping down on internet news and blogs. They were created, they say, to foster "healthy and civilized" news. They may not disseminate anything that is deemed to endanger the constitution, state security, or the nation's dignity, nor anything that threatens the social order. So, they require licenses from media sites, and as for their print media, their newspapers, they must be run by the state for full control, freedom to choose not being available in their system.

Turn to page 16, and we read about what WE have. Our trusted Western style media effort, as it applied to the Katrina saga, contained widely disseminated rumors and lies pertaining to the 5 days when people were cooped up at the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans. We were told by the media that sharks from Lake Pontchartrain were swimming around the streets of the business district, that a baby's body was found stuffed in a trash can, that hundreds of bodies were stacked in the basement of the Convention Center and the Superdome.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune was bold enough to come out with some facts concerning what really went on at these places, during those days in the aftermath of the hurricane.

That paper informs us that the rapes were unverified, the body count was inflated (the actual count was just 6, plus 2 from elsewhere, at the Superdome, and 4 at the Convention Center), and the "sniper attacks" were unconfirmed.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin and his police chief went on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and told the nation that for 5 days his people were there, "watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, and watching people raping people."

Fox News went on the air to reiterate reports of robberies, rapes, carjackings, riots and murders. Violent gangs roamed the streets at night hidden under the cover of darkness.

The London Evening Standard, not to be outdone, likened the events to scenes from the movies "Mad Max" and "Lord of the Flies".

We all remember the reports of looting, and how cops were out with "shoot to kill" orders, and in fact did just that. But I heard one announcer, returned to Los Angeles and overwhelmed by his experience in the waterlogged city, too overcome with the truth of what he saw to allow it to continue without comment, make the point that a person without food or water will steal not just food or water, but anything tangible that will convert to money to buy food and water, a completely different interpretation.

This is not a cry for the kind of centralized governmental control exercised in China, or in Cuba for that matter, which here would be unthinkable. But it is worth noting that under Castro, there is no such thing as the government ignoring the cries of its underprivileged, and that they long ago instituted an evacuation drill in the case of natural disasters, and that not a single life has been lost for the same reason that we lost lives in New Orleans and its environs. They also have free health-care.

Personal and corporate responsibility, within the freedom that we cherish. For we have no choice either.

Something to think about.

The British Journal of Psychiatry this month publishes a report of a study from the University of Southern California that researches and comes up with findings on compulsive deception, exhibited by large groups of people, whom we generally refer to as Pathological Liars.

An identifiable physical cause has been identified in the brain. Apparently, pathological liars have much more white matter (which SPEEDS communication between neurons) in the prefrontal cortex, than normal people, and have FEWER actual neurons.

This part of the brain, located just behind the forehead, is the part where people learn moral behavior, plan complex strategies, and feel remorse.

Researchers pointed out that lying is hard work and these types of brains may be better equipped to handle it.

Adrian Raine, the senior scientist on the research project, says "To our knowledge, it is the first imaging study on people who lie, cheat and deceive as a group".

Which explains why some such people become very successful lawyers. And it is somewhat frightening to note that under the American system, a career on the bench is limited to lawyers only.

For Iraqis friendly to us, we created a new sovereign country, with a new Western style Constitution, and of course the power to make its own laws.

Great and grand! So now what just happened?

Last Monday, 2 British citizens, in plain clothes, were arrested by "new" Iraq after allegedly shooting two "new" Iraqi policemen who tried to detain them. One of the policemen reportedly was killed.

Ah, said the Brits, they are our soldiers, and they were operating under cover.

Later that day, British armored vehicles crashed through the prison walls of the new Iraq and rescued them. They were subsequently found in a nearby house in the custody of militiamen, Britain said.

Now the AP reports that Iraqi judge Raghib al-Mudhafar, chief of the Basra Anti-Terrorism Court, renewed the homicide arrest warrants.

Basra authorities understandably say the operation violated new Iraqi sovereignty, and the governor has ordered all government employees to stop cooperating with the British, who have 8,500 troops in the Shiite Muslim-dominated region. A true tu quoque response.

The British government said they are not binding on the disguised British soldiers. "There is no legal basis for the issue of this arrest warrant. Rather, we have a legal obligation to investigate the allegations ourselves. That is being done as we speak," a spokesman at the British defense ministry said in London on Saturday.

Oh really?

Let some foreign militiamen try to get away with murder in Britain or the USA, and see what would happen.

We must have forgotten to teach the new Iraq one of the qualities that the West is especially well known for.

The power of hypocrisy.

Katrina and her younger sister Rita are venomous and hate-filled actresses.

And they're putting on a melodramatic show. Yes, another show with awful violence, dead people, and a cast of millions - no computer graphics here!

A million human interest stories, with an underlying theme of that old Southern racial segregation displaying both poverty and wealth to hold it all together.

And a budget of 200 billion dollars!

Katrina took care of the dress rehearsal, and we'll see the ultimate show in less than 48 hours, and it will leave audiences talking for a long long time.

Yes, it's O.K. to hold your breath.

The liberals made argument during the Terri Schiavo case that Bush and the Feds were putting their noses where they didn't belong, and that the state of Florida, through their so-called justice system, should make the rulings.

And during the national election of Bush, same thing, except now the Supremes were doing it too, making them an illegal function of government.

Interesting that in the Katrina Hurricane case, these arguments are stood on their heads.

Now Constitutional attorney specialists can have a field day. I want to hear them argue that the Feds did not belong in New Orleans either, and that they had no right to send in the army, and that people should have been left to die rather than become reasons to insult the memory of our Founding Fathers. The reputations and pocketbooks of constitutional attorneys are at stake here!

And so the United States of America, a law-abiding country, remains to be seen by outsiders as a source of amusement because of the banality of decisions made by its lawyers and politicians.

Such a waste of time and money.

Fascinating.

Many countries have generously offered to send truckloads of water, food, doctors and medicine to assist victims in New Orleans and other Gulf port areas effected by Hurricane Katrina's legacy.

Problem is, there are almost no live people left there. They sensibly moved out.

Only the dead remain.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was created in 1979 in response to criticism about Washington's uncoordinated reactions to a series of disasters, including Hurricane Camille, which devastated the Mississippi coast 10 years earlier.

As a result of 9/11, the agency lost its Cabinet-level status and was folded into the newly formed Department of Homeland Security, and FEMA was no longer an independent agency with a mission.

DHS chief honcho is Secretary Michael Chertoff, the contours of whose face reminds me of my ex-wife's attorney Emily Edelman. Mr. Chertoff conceded in interviews yesterday that Washington was insufficiently prepared for the hurricane that laid waste New Orleans and surrounding areas.

But he argued that the primary responsibility for handling emergencies rested with state and local, not federal, officials.

Under the law, he added, state and local officials must direct initial emergency operations. "The federal government comes in and supports those officials."

I smiled when I read this, because I was reminded of the time divide that separates local, state and federal levels of responsibility, and the similarity of the experience in the halls of justice.

In a lawsuit, if you wish to appeal from the local level, you will do so in the state Court of Appeal, and you will wait months, but they will consider. If not satisfied there, you will appeal to the Supreme Court of your state, and in less time, you will receive a 95% chance of not being considered ever again. And if you then go to the Supreme Court of the United States, you will receive a 99.9% chance in 2 words of being told to go away.

Yes, the United States is an 800 lb gorilla, and sometimes exhibits the lumbering brains of such a creature.

The public's expectation of having its cries heard, whether in a Super Convention room, or in a Court room, is huge, and the time sensitive result is almost always a terrible let-down.

Little wonder that some members of the public take the law into their own hands, even at the risk of annihilation by the enforcers. No doubt looters and crazed litigants are easier to control.

There was a post 9/11 Commission of Inquiry, to find out where the government let us down, despite warning clues. There should be a post 10/29 commission formed for the exact same purpose.

One hundred and fifteen years ago much of Seattle burned to the ground, and in the rebuilding of the city it was decided to build parts of it at a higher level, thus avoiding the plague of constant tidal flooding. Basements were left to rot, and new front entrances were constructed up above. Storefronts and sidewalks were left as much as 35 feet below ground.

To this day you can see what it once was by taking the "Underground Tour", which I did a few years ago. You can see where back then they had to install their toilets up on the top floor, for obvious reasons during the incoming tide.

New Orleans, which was arguably the most beautiful city in this country, might be able to retain what is left of many of its fine old houses by employing this as a viable solution, at least for the older part of town. I read that there were plans to demolish many buildings in the old quarter, and to do that would be a great shame.

Meanwhile, New Orleans needs to make its surrounding walls higher and stronger if it's to remain below sea level, but not just of earthen levees - surely these days not an impossible feat? We built the Panama Canal, which still stands impervious to all of nature's fury.

It has already been proposed that a central section of the city be rebuilt on walled high ground, and that essential services, such as government and hospitals, be rebuilt with this protection. Unfortunately, that suggestion, made years ago, was ignored.

And it is well to remember that the Dutch began tackling their watery North Sea elements two thousand years ago, and, given that about a third of their country is below sea level, with windmills, hydraulics, pumps, and steel and concrete pilings in their levees, they've been there, done that, and have plenty of wet tee shirts to show for it, and a treasure house of stored experience. We don't need to learn as we go.

Please Mr. President, invite them over with a team of experts to help solve the New Orleans problem. (And speaking of wet tee shirts, tell them to bring my old friend Xaviera Hollander along with them as their cheery mascot.)

Nudge nudge.

At least we all can see that we have something in common right now, even if it's only hurricanes.

Publicly and genuinely offer humanitarian aid to the United States in its Katrina tragedy currently being acted out in the New Orleans area, with no strings attached.

And make sure it is in an amount of value (not just money) generously exceeding that offered to you by the United States when you had your own Dennis catastrophe a few weeks ago (I believe we offered $50,000!). I know you pridefully said you didn't need our help.

Embarrass the hell out of us, please! Opportunities to save face and heal wounds come but rarely.

It could work wonders, it would be welcomed, it would bring our two countries closer together, and it could be the start of something worthwhile.

And mother nature has been speaking to the entire planet very loudly this past year.

Katrina. The Great Leveler.

Update!

9/3/05
I see that President Fidel Castro has offered 1,100 doctors and 26 tons of medical supplies to help in the New Orleans debacle. He was among the countries that helped in the Tsunami tragedy. Bravo!

And is it being accepted? Or turned down because they may all be spies? We want to know. This will demonstrate that elusive quality in humans known as character, which we can equally apply to countries, their governments and leaders.

9/5/05
I was wrong.

Castro says his offer is 1586 physicians and 27lbs of medicine to go with each doctor. He has waited 48 hours. Silence.

OK, we saw the efforts of black New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to look after his people with the "Mandatory Evacuation" from his city taking place outside the Superdome and Convention Center. We saw thousands of cars seeking to escape the coming wrath. Poor black people don't necessarily own or drive cars. So, were they full, did they pick up fellow citizens?

But more important, we didn't see any buses! The schools were out, there must have been hundreds of school and city buses available to undertake the vast exit. Where were they? Not yet under water, that's for sure.

One wonders about this oversight. There will be much to answer for.

Today, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a speech at California's Chapman University, blasted what he called "judge moralists" and the infusion of politics into judicial appointments, while commenting on moral issues not addressed in the Constitution, such as abortion, gay rights, the death penalty, and he might have added assisted suicide. He said such questions should be settled by Congress or state legislatures beholden to the people.

What's missing here is the absence of any reference to the people's settled holders of morality, that is, the established religions, and the holders of non-religious beliefs, and we all know what, who and where they are.

The Constitution keeps Church and State separate. As they should and must.

But why does government not concede to the aforementioned holders their right to decide their moral issues individually, case by case, and have their decisions upheld by Government law, (provided the public interest is not threatened, a necessary loophole)?

The issues he discussed would be taken care of by these holders within the cases, and immediately coming to mind is the case of Terri Schiavo, whose family were holders of Roman Catholic beliefs.

The Government and the courts should have indicated their disinterest, and held that the decision would be made lawfully by the girl and the family's own religion, and stayed out of it other than by upholding their right to do this, but there is no law allowing that.

So, government would not only keep Church separate, but would actually allow religion to have a place in the larger concept of government, lawfully. And so an individual would be able to turn to their spiritual beliefs to decide certain problems, and not to government, which has continually shown itself to be inadequate to settle such questions of morality.

And furthermore, one is inclined to believe that the Founding Fathers intended that result when drafting the Constitution, using terms such as "Under God".

This report in the press has kept the City of Angels (aka the City of Angles) holding its breath the last week or so, and a huge search for this man took place when he disappeared. Now we can all relax.

Topanga resident Christian Julian Irwin, a Grammy-nominated music producer who vanished six days ago, has now been found. He was hospitalized after authorities said they discovered him sitting naked in a backyard creek in rugged Topanga Canyon. He disappeared before dawn last Sunday after making a frantic phone call to a friend in which he said he believed he was being pursued by Nigerians who had contacted him as part of an Internet scam, and sent him a worthless check. A fellow resident of Topanga Canyon saw him washing his jeans in the creek Friday afternoon and contacted authorities, said sheriff's Captain Ray Peavy. Irwin was hungry and distraught, but otherwise appeared to be in good health. Authorities said there was no evidence that anyone was pursuing him.

This is NOT news, this is just normal Topanga Canyon behavior. It will probably not be reported in Ian Brodie's local rag "The Messenger", which proves it. Thank God I'm outta there!

Stephen Hunter, in the Washington Post, makes comment on the movie "The Aristocrats" with the description "The Dirty Secret Behind a Classic Dirty Joke".

I haven't seen this movie, although I intend to. Its take is on a classic dirty joke by about 100 of today's hip and not so hip comedians, who are, nowadays, not just entertainers, but movie stars.

It is filled with their humorous comments on the human condition through the sexual and scatological destruction of a family unit.

It was his concluding remarks that rang bells for me, because it reminded me how it was that I foreswore the actor's life yet still a child star, in the hope that there was more to life, and so I set out pseudonymously to find it, and indeed I did.

What Mr. Hunter said was,

"[This] is actually a confession of their own failures to inhabit real life, and makes them all losers.

"What a nightmare! For the comics, life is lived onstage, in the limelight, to the love and applause of anonymous crowds. It involves a great deal of travel, friendships with other gifted, crazed people but just as frequently, bitter rivalries, endless feuds, treachery and betrayal. If you win, you win the power of fame, which after the second day gets you nothing but good tables in restaurants where rubes bother you for autographs, the right to fail with a better class of woman and, of course, the emptiness of being unconnected to anything larger than the self."

I would not quarrel with any of this.

I think the same can be applied to many, but not all, of today's actor and rock star celebrities. Except I would add that their removal from real life is aided and abetted by their managers, their attorneys, their agents, their publicists, and their assistants in common search of self enrichment and reflected indentity.

For me, I had hoped to retire to a life of quiet contentment in the home that I built in the Santa Monica Mountains, but the Hollywood courts made sure that this was not to be.

I enjoy watching Bob Costas commenting on this nation's obsession with golf, and I enjoyed watching his intelligent interview with my ex sister-in-law Vanessa Redgrave as guest host on Larry King Live.

I am looking forward to his taking over Larry King's seat permanently on CNN, and I hope it will be called "Bob Costas Live".

What brings this observation about?

Because I just read that Bob Costas told CNN and their sensationalizing senior executive producer Wendy Walker that he would NOT, repeat NOT serve as substitute host on Larry King Live in a program that would be reporting for a drawn out hour on the sentencing of BTK ("Bind them Torture them Kill them") serial killer Dennis Rader, and also more milked non-news in the Natalee Holloway teenager missing-in-Aruba case.

Good for him. Perhaps he could also run a refurbished Department of Standards and Practices over at CNN, which now appears to be quite moribund.

Meanwhile, "All the News You Can Trust" (Time Warner's) has been beaten consistently, unashamedly, and without hypocricy, by "The Most Powerful Name In News" (Fox).

And in this country, Winner Takes All, as we know.

Somebody asked me that the other day, and frankly, I never had thought about me or this site in that way.

It started out as a means, the only means it seemed, to get my story out, to clear up my name, which had been trashed in the media. Because it mattered to me, still matters, that I don't go to my grave with a shadow hanging over me. I don't deserve it, and I want my children to be proud, one day, of their father.

I employed 5 sets of attorneys to do this for me. I employed a press agent to do this for me, a self-styled "media expert and author" yet. Hundreds of thousands of my dollars went into their pockets.

They all failed to do this, I think because their eyes remained dazzled by the celebrity factor, each one of them wishing they were representing her, my ex-wife the famous celebrity, instead of me. It was an unusual situation, peculiar to Hollywood, and I was expected to slink off into the shadow. Well, none of them knew who they were dealing with.

This site has developed since I opened it last Christmas Day, and I've found my voice since going out on my own.

To be up there in the search engines, it is necessary to make frequent entries, and I have come to enjoy keeping up with the news, and commenting on what goes on in the world, through my eyes only.

I continue to have no use for lawyers, to dislike most judges, and to scorn the American system of justice for not doing its job, which is to oversee people's problems hopefully by getting them to settle before trial, and send them on their way with the sense that they can move on with their lives.

Because of my personal journey through the system, I'm worth listening to. I have no axe to grind, I don't adhere to one point of view, neither his nor hers; I have no formal religious beliefs, nor any adherence to a political party. In fact, I have deliberately never voted in my life.

I don't believe in the polarizing of views, either for or against, except in the one arena where there is no middle ground. And that is the stock market, where you are either all right or all wrong every day (although, eventually, you will probably be found to be right).

I believe that it is in the middle parts of the extremes advocated by attorneys and others where the good and true life exists, and where reconciliation can take place and relationships saved.

I do like the law, it is fascinating. I recently tested at a school where they train wannabe lawyers thinking it would be a useful education. They loved me, but I decided not to follow through, I felt it would taint me.

If there were a school for judges, where you learn the law, and where you can hold on to your self, your independence, and your sense of personal identity and ethics, I would go there. I think I would make a good judge. But that's not allowed in this country; by law, one must be a lawyer first, before becoming a judge! And the brain, created as RAM, becomes ROM.

So, in answer to my first question, yes I am a whistle-blower, and can afford to be since I don't have to brownnose my way into the favors of any person running a work environment any more.

And a Federal Judge has just taught me the rules of engagement for blowing whistles. More about that later.

So there! And to certain people out there, be afraid.

I see that the enterprising Steven Botchco (Hill Street Blues) is turning to Civil Court as a source of material for a new as yet untitled drama series for Fox.

He says that the series will revolve around an ongoing, high-profile civil court case. He says his new project will emphasize "the personal lives of all the principals involved, including the defendants, the plaintiffs, the lawyers and the judge, and the way in which their private lives may be at variance with the high ideals and ethics of the profession they represent."

To my mind, that's already been done to great effect in the "Night Court" series, except there I never did see that ethics was a problem, always they were just human, and very very funny, and judicially flexible but straight and honest and no dark side.

I'd like to suggest that the series would do better to concentrate on a single ongoing case in Los Angeles Family or Probate Court. No laughs there.

Now THAT would be a real wake-up service to the community. The hero or heroine might even be a pro se.

Early this morning I was wakened by the double sonic boom overhead Los Angeles, as the Discovery was coming in to land at Edwards Air Force Base. I immediately tuned in to watch the successful landing, with the nose-cone of the ship eerily lit up with the bright glow from the heat of entry visible only because of the darkness (I thought it was their landing light!). As a pilot myself, I could only marvel at the dead-stick landing, a one shot try.

Just now, I watched on my dedicated NASA channel as the crew sat down to field questions from the press, uninterrupted by commercials and "helpful" announcers. And that they had the willingness to share their thoughts and feelings before they could be expected to have gathered them, was spectacular.

Here are my reactions:

- The commander was this comely woman, Eileen Collins, married, two children, not pushy, modest and even humble, and obviously respected by her crew. A shock right there to many of the world's population, but hopefully not to our children. Her incisive and personal reflections as she looked out the window at our earth were riveting. She's sensational. What a spokesperson! What a role model!

- The other four crew members, equally articulate (two were not there, undergoing tests and de-briefing still), gave us their impressions too. The Japanese member caught my special attention, because at one point he spoke at length in his native language to his audience in Japan, and Miyuki interpreted for me. She was very proud that he was along.

- What I took away with me, listening to them, was that they were, as one, altered by the experience, viewing our common home as a single very vulnerable place being subjected to visible unfair strains, as they could see from the green to brown transformations between political territories, the man-made changes in coloration of the land and the oceans, and the upper layer of the atmosphere.

- When they finished, I found myself pondering that we need to be thinking of this space-vehicle as a tool for a sea change in all of our attitudes, our traditional and historic mindsets.

I believe the way to take advantage of this opportunity, with all possible speed, is to open up the training and crewing of astronauts to all members of the human race so that they may participate in the brotherhood of future space adventurers. It's almost a responsibilty, and it falls to us to use it.

Of the necessary seven crew members, four should be U.S. citizens, but the other three should be conscripted from assorted qualified foreigners. And not just those from "friendly" countries - among those we have already brought in I can think of Japanese and Russians and Mexicans and Canadians and Brits - but we should also conscript from places we currently view as our enemies.

They would be carefully chosen representatives of course (we have our methods to make sure!) and they too will speak to their fellow-countrymen in ways that we cannot hope to. Chinese communists, Cubans, North Koreans, Afghans, and yes, Iranians and Iraqis. One and all should be welcome, and religious affiliation is unimportant.

Let all of our eyes be opened by the mutual sharing of these planetary trips into the final frontier, never before exploited in this way for this purpose. Perhaps others too will become transfigured and spread the word.

This is about cooperation and the power of allegory.

The Brits helped the Russians, with the assistance of the United States and Japan, to save the lives of their seven unfortunate sailors. They were near death for lack of air in their mini submarine sunk and trapped amid snagged military paraphernalia on the sea-bottom off the Kamchatka Peninsula.

The hand of friendship was offered by these countries, it was gladly accepted no questions asked, and so the rescue cut through the political nonsense we live by today.

It's hard to believe that this took place amid the vast military defense measures of the Russians in that area, near the scene of the shooting down of the Korean Airlines Jumbo jet Flt. 007 back in 1983.

Meanwhile, our shuttle space adventurers due back tomorrow report that there are observable signs of the mother planet's approaching distress to do with degradation of the thin layer of air by which we all live and breathe.

The world's entire population is at risk, and right now future generations can look forward to a very lengthy demise.

So who will come to our rescue? Can warring parties emerge from their differences and overcome mental limitations worthy of cavemen (sorry, cavemen, wherever you are!)

Our lawyers, who later become all of our judges and nearly all of our politicians and leaders, are at the bottom of our ills, because it is their training that says solutions lie in the corners of the winners and the losers.

Instead of where life exists which is in the much more interesting and fertile but little explored middle bit belonging to the formerly herdable masses.

Whatever force caused the demise of all life 250 million years ago, and the 100 million year life span of the dinosaurs ending in a celestial bomb about 65 million years ago - well, yesterday was the anniversary of the atomic bomb and the demise of 140,000 humans at Hiroshima. . . . . . . .

Are we smart enough to connect the dots?

Is Mother Nature getting impatient?

Can we have a global epiphany?

One is pleased to see that our leader is taking steps to smooth relationships with the United Nations. Like a good repair mechanic, it's just a matter of getting down to small details. Click here to find out more.

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No Date
Married as I am now to a lovely Japanese lady, I have come to meet many of her friends, and to visit many Japanese shopping centers (and sushi bars) in and around Los Angeles.

I have visited, dined, and shopped with Miyuki at locations within a stone's throw of Hollywood where I live, suburbs like Torrance, Gardena, Costa Mesa, Tustin and of course close-by Little Tokyo, and on the West Side the Sawtelle area.

At retail businesses I've been to, such as Nijiya, Marukai, Mitsua, and Weller Court (among many) can be found any and all imaginable Japanese-made goods.

Occasionally, we visit other places of ethnicity. China Town comes to mind, and Korea Town, and Thai Town and Monterey Park. And in fact Sweden (Town?) in Burbank with its estimable Ikea store, huge.

What brings on this post is that today I got mad when I read in the Los Angeles Times several separate articles recounting the hilarity, quaintness, eccentricity and oddness of we Brits, and, frankly, it pisses me off, and in a way they are correct.

Readers here are told in these articles that in California we go "outwardly native", are "fiercely competitive cricketers batting sixers" (sic), in small quaint groups playing the "stultifyingly dull" British game before no interested spectators just for our own pleasure, and the downing of numerous glasses of Gin and Tonic with the sun high up in the sky.

It says we make lush water-thirsty oases of English Gardens in the middle of the desert, good only for a couple of spring months of flowering (mad dogs of Englishmen of course!).

Here in America, my adopted country, the press creates worshipful icons of British media stars. The newspaper refers to that, says "Michael Caine - that's Sir Michael to you", and the thoroughly British David Hockney, who painted the bottom of the pool at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel. Patronizingly, in general, we amusing plebes "deserve our place in the sun. Why? Two words. The Beatles."

Another article today headlines "THERE WILL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND as long as the beer doesn't run out." Then, we are all "expats", gathering at watering holes such as Santa Monica's King's Head pub to watch the football.

Now, I'm all for poking fun at anybody who deserves it, including Brits, and including shallow Americans (they hate this, especially Jewish shallow Americans, which is not acceptable unless you're Jewish). As a director, I've always maintained it is important to not take oneself too seriously, but that the work is what matters, is in fact everything.

But there is an undercurrent of seriousness to this post.

What's missing - in that all important work department - is the complete absence of a serious British presence. Sure, there are scattered cottage type enterprises; Rolls Royce and sports auto dealerships, struggling British and Irish boutique import shops which usually go belly up in a couple of years, the Virgin establishments, British pubs which abound, and the British Consulate, many of whose parties I attended for the questionable pleasure of shaking the likes of Prince Charles by the hand.

Meanwhile, what do I do when I want to buy an English pork sausage that bursts when you fry it, or a can of straight Ginger Beer, or Somerset hard cider, or Devonshire Cream, or Tate & Lyle treacle or Bovril, or a batch of wine gums, or liquorice allsorts, or a proper kipper, or a spotted dick, or the British inflected versions of Heinz mayonnaise and tomato sauce, or a British woolly cardigan, or a video of Black Adder, or some drinkable tea, all of which can be loaded on to a 747 VA cargo flight, a mere 12 hours away?

Well, for the tea, I will go to Rose Tree Cottage in Pasadena, whose owner will serve me in full butler dress and white gloves. For my favorite Idris Ginger Beer I will go to the tiny Irish Shop importer on Vine. For a decent banger, they are really not obtainable the way I remember them from back home (here made with a rusk binder instead of bread - ingredient problems with the inspectors of such things), and as for smoked kippers, I might get a poor frozen copy imported from Canada, and the same for the only candy that's edible, in my opinion, again from Canada, but not the right flavor by any means. As for my English videos, I can hang around to tape them from the BBC America channel. For an English vegetable marrow, or purple edible gooseberries, or red currents, or commercially packaged suet to make those wondrous puddings, just blank stares. For a spotted dick, you'll get sent to West Hollywood (joke).

Very very occasionally, I will get the real thing from the old country, sneaked past customs at LAX by some brave enterprising break-the-law friend.

So, in a way, the expats get what they deserve.

What I am saying is that it is not enough for me to know that in fact Great Britain is the biggest investor in American industry of any foreign country, underground and well disguised, as though ashamed to be recognized.

It is time that the mother country took its head out of the sand, stopped acting so damned superior whilst feigning modesty, stopped acting the court fool, and proudly built one or more centers of British Businesses and retail shops, and tell the world that the British Isles boasts superior flavors in many of their foods, superior quality in much of their clothing and furniture design, the best original household antiques, and fly atop the Union Jack.

I mean, where are the Sainsbury's? The Harrods? The Marks and Spencer's? The Lyons Corner House? The Simpson's in the Strand? The Cook's Travel Services? And you name any number more. All content to sit by while the Americans make faux copies while we just smile and nod knowingly in our maddeningly aloof way?

They're online you say? Well, screw you. Last time I tried to buy a cardigan from Marks & Spencer's, I was told (by computer default) it was not available.

At the very least, it would be a bunch of well spaced three-story malls with parking below, elevators, and a host of British shops under one roof. If the Japanese can do it, if the South Koreans can do it, if the Chinese can do it, if the Swedes can do it, so can we. We might even let in the Irish and others from our days of empire.

What we need is a British pro-active entrepreneur with a broad world view, answerable to no boardroom executives, sailing against the wind, and not a figure of fun. He would form a new independant company, and plunk down a few million dollars, and start this thing off with an invitation to get others to join.

And who comes to mind?

Why, the ultimate British internationalist leader, billionaire Richard Branson, of course. That is if his attention can be got, between his world ranging journeys of eccentrically intrepid adventure.

February 10, 2006
Today I read that TESCO, Britain's largest supermaket chain, is venturing into the California arena, with a business model they are keeping under wraps for now, but which they say will be "different", and "unexpected". They will open it next year.

Dare we hope they will come up with something along the lines of my previous post?

Hidee ho. Such bad taste, letting Mr. Bush's favorite nickname for his best political friend get out to the media.

"Turd Blossom" is actually quite a loving name. And he does look a little like South Park's Mr. Hanky, with his bald head and all, except for his color. He is not a man of color.

I see that Jane Fonda will be taking a cross country book - sorry - bus tour to call for a withdrawal and an end to U.S. military operations in Iraq.

Is this an illusion, a retro experience, or what?

My God, she is so brave.

To be true to her history and our memory, this will take place in Iraq?

Yes?

From Larry Williams in Stone Mountain, Georgia:

As London is hit by the second wave of bombings in two
weeks, the Government has raised the terror warning
level from 'miffed' to 'peeved'.

Whilst many people commented with respect at the
stoical attitude of Londoners to the first wave of
attacks, Londoners are losing their traditional reserve
and may soon require the terror level warning to be
raised to 'irritated' or even 'a bit cross'.

A government spokesman commented upon the
seriousness of the situation. "London has not been a
bit cross since the height of the Blitz in 1940 when
supplies of tea ran out for almost three weeks".

And a representative of British Security Services said "It is
as a mark of the seriousness with which Londoners
are taking the situation that we have recently been
forced to recategorise suicide bombers from
'tiresome' to 'a bloody nuisance'. The last time we
had a 'bloody nuisance' warning level was during
the great fire of 1666."

On the streets, Londoners reacted with uncharacteristic
anger to news of the latest attacks, with some members
of the public delivering harsh language to the news
that they might be delayed on their homeward trips by
up to twenty minutes.

"It really is the absolute limit," said Reginald Boggis, 42,
of East Ham. "These terrorists. Not content with blowing
things up, they then have to spoil the day for everyone.
That's very upsetting, that is. If they wanted to get things
changed, they should write an angry letter to Points of
View. That's what my wife and I always do."

Tony Blair is expected to make political capital out of the
situation as soon as his focus groups report on the mood
of the nation.

Congratulations Roman Polanski, you won your libel case against certain media people about the incident in Elaine's over your murdered wife.

You only got 50,000 pounds, and I bet your legal fees were many times that, but you made your point, and in my view the American approach which is to cut and run fast away from insult problems involving the expenditure of money is wrong, just plain wrong. Which explains and sums up many American's definition and evaluation as an index of their own self-worth. It used to be good for at least a duel, but that was more than a hundred years ago. For us here in the USA, now it's just about saving money, always the bottom line.

As for my libel case against Larry King and CNN, guess what? The Federal Judge was supposed to make a ruling over CNN'S motion to dismiss, so I might go forward in very early January of this year. He has made no ruling at all, still "under submission", so I am still waiting. Six months. Is that the court's message, to stop me from doing what is right? I have many times been almost ordered to stop fighting for my good name here in American courts, to cut and run, and by my own former lawyers too, but my core is British and the way is clear, and I have to go forward.

And, Roman, you were right to stay away from this country. The judge who wanted to put you away behind bars all those years ago is now dead, but believe me, you would not find any sympathetic jurists over here, they stick together like good Rampart Division cops, even when they are wrong, because they have the last word, and like the proverbial gorilla who sits on your favorite couch, they do it because they can.

I hope your enemies will pay your legal fees, that's the British system for losers, one of whom was ex-patriot Canadian Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair. And as a sore loser, he made the astonishing post-verdict comment, "As a father of four children, one of whom is a 12-year-old daughter, I find it ... outrageous that this story is considered defamatory to a man who can't be here because he slept with a 13-year-old-girl and has been a fugitive from justice for more than a quarter of a century."

Thanks, Mr. Carter, for revealing to us the "holier than thou" mind-leaping attitude of a narrow cheap media gossip. More important, you helped us learn that the media does not always have the last word, although you just made another cheap try.

So sleep well, Roman, and good luck in your future life.

That was unwieldy, and certainly could lead to confusion. Now we have clarity, according to Microsoft today, and I'm looking forward to getting my new version next year of Windows Mastercard.

In Britain, the idea that extremists would want to establish secret hideaways to make bombs and develop death-dealing plans against fellow citizens is fairly inconceivable, and yet it happened.

Over here, the papers are saying what do you expect when so much openness exists in the U.K. To that I would answer that it is because of that very openness that authorities were able to quickly track down and identify the perpetrators of the London bombings.

That is partly because they don't look like us (unlike the Irish) and because inquisitive neighbors are all too willing to cooperate with law enforcement. It is also because of the proliferation of cameras positioned watchfully in public places.

Here in security alert America, cameras don't get much play on the streets, because of privacy laws, lawyers, judges and a written constitution. And, there is so much moving around in urban areas, that people could care less what their neighbors, whom they usually don't know, are up to.

Meanwhile, Britain is struggling to come to terms with the thought that any of its own citizens would wish to carry out the wishes of al Qaeda.

In his latest speech Prime Minister Blair spoke of Muslims and Islam.

"This", he said, "is a religious ideology, a strain within the worldwide religion of Islam, as far removed from its essential decency and truth as Protestant gunmen who kill Catholics or vice versa are from Christianity."

He said that the propaganda generated by extremists "plays on our tolerance and our good nature. It exploits the tendency to guilt of the developed world, as if it is our behavior that should change, that if only we tried to work out and act on their grievances we could lift this evil, that if we changed our behavior they would change theirs."

He went on "I have to say this is a misunderstanding of a catastrophic order. Their cause is not founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such that it cannot be moderated, it can't be remedied, it has to be stood up to."

He believes that extremist threats can be fought with "the power of argument, debate, true religious faith, and true legitimate politics." and "That means not just arguing against their terrorism, but their politics and their perversion of religious faith. It means exposing as the rubbish it is the propaganda about America and its allies wanting to punish Muslims or eradicate Islam.

"It means championing our values of freedom, tolerance, and respect for others. It means explaining why the suppression of women and the disdain for democracy are wrong."

This argument is presented as though it were a subject up for debate in privileged Oxford/Cambridge circles, and is not the way to go about it. Any proposed dialog cannot be created by the sort of closed minds typically found in such places.

Blair spoke of their grievances, but we don't really know what they are, although they are apparently known by young converts who become their willing disciples and bombers. Is this a revolution in the making?

If there is any hope of finding out, then it is necessary to mingle with them, with open minds and closed mouths, ready to listen. Their acts of terrorism are trying to say something, and we need to find out what it is in their words, instead of in their deeds.

And in terms of "us" versus "them", well, they are picking us off at the rate of one of theirs (the suicide bomber) sacrificed in order to take out more than a few of ours every time. In terms of classic warfare casualties, that's a terrible record.

There needs to be a very very serious inquiry leading up to the possibility of negotiation, exchange, and compromise.

At last one of our leaders, Blair, has said something that begins to make sense and ventures beyond the usual rhetoric.

It took the realization that the London bomb attacks came from within, from people who were BORN IN THE U.K.

Blair said yesterday (in the House of Commons) that "Muslims are overwhelmingly law-abiding, decent members of our society."

He stated that the British Government has a four-point plan, and the stand-out item was this:

To start discussions immediately with Muslim leaders on combating "the perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of Islam" which lay behind the attacks, and to talk to other nations on how to "mobilize the moderate and true voice of Islam."

However, he did not go far enough, this is mere preaching to the choir.

He should add to this the voices of the enemy in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere, and invite them to come to the table too.

Nobody has so far seemed interested in trying to listen to Muslim and other hostile voices from the other half of the world, on the basis that our bombs are bigger than their bombs.

We have to hope that a dialogue will be started in recognizing all of them as fellow human beings who also want to live in peace on our planet.

Blair should gladly risk being seen as a "Peace in our time" Neville Chamberlain. The world is now completely different, and can never go back to the old ways. Blame bigger bombs, the internet, and the cries of a fed-up public inhabiting what is now a global village. A Churchill and a Truman are not required in our time.

Truce and a re-think could lead to a good beginning to a good end.

The following was reported by the A.P. this morning.

LOS ANGELES, California

A toddler was shot in the head and killed when her enraged father used her as a shield in a gunbattle with police last night. He also was shot and killed after an hours-long standoff, and an officer, one of 40 who fired off nearly 90 bullets, was wounded in the shoulder and was expected to recover.

The man, owner of a small used car lot, was identified as Jose Raul Pena, and the girl, about 19 months old, was his daughter Suzy, police said. "He was using the baby as a shield," Assistant Police Chief Jim McDonnell complained.

"We showed a tremendous amount of restraint, but unfortunately the suspect's actions dictated this." he added.

The child's mother Lorena Lopez, estranged from her husband, and his 17 year old step daughter, had called 911 with a domestic threat report, leading to the arrival of the police and this incident.

She said she first pleaded with officers to hold their fire. "He had problems with depression, his business was not doing well, I told them that he needed help, he needs a psychologist, but please don't shoot.

"They didn't understand, and the police fired, like, 300 shots." she told KNBC-TV.

Sounds to me like another failure on the part of the L.A. Family Court dispute resolution system, prior to the escalation of events.

[See the last paragraphs of my side bar topic "The Plight of the Pro se"]

And I guess the baby then became a partner in her crazed father's "crime", and deserved what she got.

And for you freeway drivers, next time you see police cars chasing armed fleeing criminals, everybody firing guns, duck or pull over, you too could become victims listed officially as unfortunate "collateral damage".

It is my wish that Hurricane Dennis caused serious devastation on Cuba, and that Bush does the "right thing" by offering humanitarian aid to that country, and I don't mean the rattling of small change.

THAT would be a step in the right direction, leading to who knows what mutual face-saving accommodations.

Meanwhile, let's watch Sir Richard Branson clean up, no, not the mess. He has just launched a twice a week Virgin Air service from London to Havana, putting us in, it might be said, a Branson Pickle.

Bragging to reporters on arrival in Havana last week, he said "I think there are billions of people who'd like to come to Cuba. I think this will be enormously successful. We'll make it so."

Our friends to the North known as Canadians currently top the list of tourists coming to Cuba, followed by our friends the Italians and our sometimes friends the French. Our very best friends, the Great Brits, are happily sending their tourists who currently hit No. 7 on the list.

Last year more than 160,000 British tourists came to Cuba, up from 46,000 in 1997, Cuba's Tourism Ministry said. That's an annual growth rate of 19.5 percent over the past eight years.

Note to Bush (no, not brother Jeb, Governor of Florida): We know that America signed a pact over the Bay of Pigs fiasco promising never to invade Cuba with military force (smart deal-making lawyer, that Castro, unlike Sadam!). But that did not apply to an invasion by American tourists.

We are laughing at Communism now, because we showed it didn't work.

The rest of the world is laughing at us now over our fear of Cuba, marked by our sanctions.

Time to move on.

You did the "right thing" with little Elian when he was returned from Florida to his father in Cuba. (You could have helped rule that he had "legal rights" to stay here in the U.S.A, but commendably you didn't.)

Let's swallow our pride, and bury the hatchet! There's good money to be made!

The Group of Eight leaders solemnly lined up with British Prime Minister Tony Blair today, and their joint statement read

"We condemn utterly these barbaric attacks."

"All of our countries have suffered from the impact of terrorism."

"We will not allow violence to change our societies or our values."

"We are united in our resolve to defeat terrorism that is an attack not on one nation, but on all nations."

"Those responsible have no respect for human life."

"The terrorists will not succeed."

"We shall prevail, and they shall not".

And thus the lines of war are drawn . . . again!

It is time for our leaders to take a brand new and completely different approach.

Because this is about, not our side "winning" and their side "losing", but about our joint survival.

That is, the survival of ALL of the world's people, the species called homo sapiens, on the joint assumption that it is worth saving.

We need to seek accommodation with the "terrorists". Because they are giving their lives too, for an agenda that has no end.

We need to listen, to be receptive to their voices, and get past the obvious knee-jerk reactions.

The lives of our people and the lives of their people depend upon it.

ALL of the world's people now depend upon the wisdom of our leaders.

Did you know that my website, my "blog" (actually more of an E-book) goes out to the world, and most of the world wants to read it? I am so proud that I can do my bit to show what the American legal experience was for me, based upon my adventures in the court system as a "Pro Se", and the 2-tier system tolerated by the highest courts of the land. I hope it is a huge embarrassment to certain of the participants, especially my alienated family, and some members of our judicial system, and lawyers.

The legal paraphernalia we have can do its best to inform people, as can the government, with their propaganda, but I will bet that one person's adventures will have more impact on the sensibilities of non-Americans.

Americans I don't know, they are so much under the influence of American media persuaders, and I am not at all sure that they get it, or care, at least most of them. What they do get they deserve. Meanwhile, I shall continue to give my personal insights to the rest of the world's ordinary people, in legal, media, and celebrity matters. And legal, media, and celebrity professionals log on too, just so's you, and they, know I know.

And where is the rest of the world, who are they? Read the following, for it is a list made available by my server. It tells me where the hits are coming from, and how many pages they download, even how long they spend reading it, measured in megabytes. And in some cases, I can spot who is reading the material.

This is just the list for June, in order of volume:

Japan.jp

Germany.de

Switzerland.ch

Brazil.br

Canada.ca

Netherlands.nl

USA Educational.edu

United Kingdom.uk

Mexico.mx

USA Government.gov

Australia.au

Czech Republic.cz

France.fr

United States.us

USA Military.mil

Italy.it

Taiwan.tw

South Africa.za

Norway.no

New Zealand.nz

Belgium.be

Hong Kong.hk

Seychelles.sc

Hungary.hu

Israel.il

Non-Profit Organizations.org

Austria.at

Denmark.dk

Sweden.se

Trinidad and Tobago.tt

Colombia.co

Thailand.th

Malaysia.my

Turkey.tr

Slovenia.si

Romania.ro

Croatia.hr

Former USSR.su

Venezuela.ve

Finland.fi

Russian Federation.ru

Pakistan.pk

Poland.pl

Bulgaria.bg

Morocco.ma

China.cn

Uruguay.uy

Available on the internet is a ranked list of the sizes of the world's religions (including no religion), and while somewhat approximate, the proportions are startling.

Christianity: 2.1 billion

Islam: 1.3 billion

Secular/Nonreligious/Agnostic/Atheist: 1.1 billion

Hinduism: 900 million

Chinese traditional religion: 394 million

Buddhism: 376 million

primal-indigenous: 300 million

African Traditional & Diasporic: 100 million

Sikhism: 23 million

Juche: 19 million

Spiritism: 15 million

Judaism: 14 million

Baha'i: 7 million

Jainism: 4.2 million

Shinto: 4 million

Cao Dai: 4 million

Zoroastrianism: 2.6 million

Tenrikyo: 2 million

Neo-Paganism: 1 million

Unitarian-Universalism: 800 thousand

Rastafarianism: 600 thousand

Scientology: 500 thousand

SO WHAT?

Let's think about this in terms of the future of civilization, of the continuation of life itself on this planet.

If we continue along the same paths of war, if we continue the same win/lose model, we have to ask whether those concepts continue to have any meaning.

"Win" and "Lose" means there is an end goal of closure, it's always been that way. But closure is no longer possible.

Not now that a huge maybe equal chunk of the world's population is prepared to give their lives as patriotic guerillas in their refusal to accept the West's demands, armed as the West is with the enforcement threat of nuclear weaponry. It is just a matter of time before ALL countries have nuclear weaponry, and they will inevitably all have our current mindset.

So what's the answer?

NEW RULES

Human competition, which is part of the survival makeup mandated by Mother Nature, must be confined, under global law, to sporting games, and to the virtual fantasy life we now have (video games, cinema, theatre, and so forth). These endeavors are an accepted form of simulated real life, life displaced as it were, universally and enthusiastically practiced by everyone.

Any attempt at group violence should be seen as group "acting out", and that is a concept widely known and condemned since the days of Freud.

And THAT is what should be outlawed. And the world can enjoy a peaceful existence forever, or at least until we get hit by a stray celestial body, instead of a not so stray nuclear missile.

As I go way downtown to visit my warehouse and my 3,000 square feet of space which houses the junk awarded to me by Judge Arnold Gold three years ago (and which consists about 98 % of my ex's and my children's unwanted belongings and all of my memories), I usually stop at a Starbucks to fortify myself, and inevitably am pan-handled on the way in and on the way out by surprisingly energetic homeless people.

And of course, like everyone else, the thought crosses my mind why don't they do some sort of work?

I am reminded of a very old story about the work ethic, possibly started some time after the First World War.

At the Chelsea Pensioners' Hospital next to the Royal Borough of Kensington, Queen Mary (the one with the hat) was making her usual rounds, reviewing and bringing comfort and words of encouragement to the elderly wounded bemedalled old soldiers lining the walls on crutches, some in wheelchairs, and some restricted to their beds, many missing a limb or two.

Without fail, she would always ask and always be told that every single one of them did some kind of work, simple but honest work.

On this particular day, she was being brought out of the premises to leave in her carriage, when off to the side she noticed a small curtained-off room, and asked what was in there. The Colonel escorting her explained that a rather special case was kept isolated from the rest, and it was better if royal eyes did not see him.

This piqued her curiosity no end, and her host explained that the reason was that he was very badly wounded, disfigured, blind, and extremely deaf, and there was no point.

So she demanded to meet him, and they drew the curtain, and square in the middle of a sheet lay a man with no arms and no legs, no ears, nose, mouth or hair, wearing the remains of a uniform and a single medal.

She was overcome, and leant in close to shout in his earhole that she was terribly pleased to meet him, and wished to give him encouragement, particularly since he was obviously unable to work, and thus keep up with his fellow patients.

His face crumpled. "Oh, you're quite wrong" he whispered back to her majesty.

"My goodness", said the Queen, "What kind of work do you do?"

"Ma'am", he explained with pride, "I'm a paperweight".

So President Bush collided with a Scottish police officer while he was out on his bike.

Thank God this did not happen at home in Washington, he and the government would have immediately been sued by an American Personal Injury lawyer.

Blair, meanwhile, displays his joy at his contribution to help the London case for the 2012 Olympic Games.

And then there's the French president insulting Haggises and British food.

All good clean fun, but let's hope they spare a thought for the business at hand with Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia.

It's called the Group of 8 meeting. There's a tiger roaring at the gates.

Fast Company Magazine is a magazine for fast rising business executives. They did us all a service in their July issue no. 96, by running a feature for business executives about a little known 71 year old professor emeritus from the University of British Columbia named Robert Hare. The FBI and the British justice system have long relied on his advice, for his field is criminal psychology, and psychopathic behavior.

What are psychopaths? Here, for those who aren't too sure (and I was one of them) he gives a description:

Psychopaths have a profound lack of empathy. They use other people callously and remorselessly for their own ends. They seduce victims with a hypnotic charm that masks their true nature as pathological liars, master con artists, and heartless manipulators. Easily bored, they crave constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life "games" they can win -- and take pleasure from their power over other people.

Professor Hare was not just describing Mafia hit men and sex offenders. He was referring to top executives from the business world, executives from world renowned companies such as WorldCom, which had just declared bankruptcy, and Enron, which imploded. The securities frauds would eventually lead to long prison sentences for WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers, Enron CFO Andrew Fastow, Adelphia Cable's founder John Rigas, and there will be others currently on criminal (and impending civil) trials. He said "These are callous, cold-blooded individuals. They don't care that you have thoughts and feelings. They have no sense of guilt or remorse."

He talked about the pain and suffering the corporate rogues had inflicted on thousands of people who had lost their jobs, or their life savings. "Some of those victims would succumb to heart attacks or commit suicide", he said.

He is then quoted as saying that these recent corporate scandals could have been prevented if CEOs had been screened for psychopathic behavior. "Why wouldn't we want to screen them?" he asked. "We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?"

To which he might have added lawyers and, yes, judges.

This is where I left off with my own thoughts, based on my own empirical knowledge of both flavors in America's judicial system, especially the system in use today in California's Family Courts under the watchful eye of our Chief Justice Ronald George, and details of my experiences which are dotted throughout this website.

Well, 25 years ago, Professor Hare created what is now used as a standard test for psychopathic traits. It is called the "Psychopathic Checklist", and is commonly used for making clinical diagnoses of suspected psychopaths.

Firmly based on his list, the magazine customized it somewhat, with the disclaimer that it should be ignored by professional shrinks (wonder why?). I have customized it a little further, where it is obvious I have changed the word "boss" to the word "Lawyer" or "Judge", and placed this quiz into a legal context. All of the questions remain, and if the reader wishes, he or she can insert a familiar name, and run it for each individual:

QUIZ: IS YOUR LAWYER OR JUDGE A PSYCHOPATH?

"He" can also mean "she", and for each question, score two points for "yes," one point for "somewhat" or "maybe," and zero points for "no."

[1] Is he glib and superficially charming?
Is he a likable personality and a terrific talker -- entertaining, persuasive, but maybe a bit too smooth and slick? Can he pass himself off as a supposed expert in legal matters even though he really doesn't seem to know or care much about the topic? Is he a flatterer? Seductive, but insincere? Does he sign his emails or letters "warmly", when he is anythng but? Does he tell amusing but unlikely anecdotes celebrating his own past? Can he support a certain position this week -- and then argue with equal conviction and persuasiveness for the opposite position next week? Can he appear on TV and somehow get away without answering the interviewer's direct questions or saying anything truly substantive?
SCORE__

[2] Does he have a grandiose sense of self-worth?
Does he brag? Is he arrogant? Superior? Domineering? Does he feel he's above the rules that apply to "little people" such as "pro pers and pro ses"? Does he act as though everything revolves around him?
SCORE__

[3] Is he a pathological liar?
Has he reinvented his own past in a more positive light -- for example, claiming that he rose from a tough, poor background even though he really grew up middle class? Does he lie habitually even though he can easily be found out? When he's exposed, does he still act unconcerned because he thinks he can weasel out of it? Does he enjoy lying? Is he proud of his knack for deceit? Is it hard to tell whether he knows he's a liar or whether he deceives himself and believes his own b/s?
SCORE__

[4] Is he a con artist or master manipulator?
Does he use his skill at lying to cheat or manipulate other people in his quest for money, power, status, and sex? Does he "use" people brilliantly? Does he engage in dishonest schemes such as cooking the books by making unsupported claims of billable hours?
SCORE__

[5] When he harms other people, does he feel a lack of remorse or guilt?
Is he concerned about himself rather than the wreckage he inflicts on others or society at large? Does he say he feels bad but acts as though he really doesn't? Even if he has had a complaint filed at his law society, does he accept blame for what he did? Does he blame others for the trouble he causes? Does he have a conflict of interest, and did he try to conceal it? When you found out, did he deal with it in a professional manner, such as by offering to give up the brief or recusing himself?
SCORE__

[6] Does he have a shallow affect?
Is he cold and detached? Does he make brief, dramatic displays of emotion that are nothing more than putting on a theatrical mask and play-acting for effect? Does he claim to be your friend but rarely or never ask about the details of your life or your emotional state? Is he one of those tough-guy lawyers who brag about how emotions are for whiners and losers?
SCORE__

[7] Is he callous and lacking in empathy?
Does he not give a damn about the feelings or well-being of other people? Is he profoundly selfish? Does he cruelly mock others? Is he emotionally or verbally abusive toward courtroom or office employees? Can he make rulings without concern for how they'll get by in their new life? Can he profit from the unfair taking of funds by overcharging clients without concern for the harm he's doing to them or their children and other family members, or their retirement lives?
SCORE__

[8] Does he fail to accept responsibility for his own actions?
Does he always cook up some excuse? Does he blame others for what he's done? If he's under investigation by his law society, or the Commission on Judicial Ethics, will he tell you? Does he refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing even when there is hard rebuttable evidence not allowed in? Does he say "The Appeals Court will take care of it."
SCORE__

Total____
If your judgement scores:
1-4 | Be frustrated
5-7 | Be cautious
8-12 | Be afraid
13-16 | Be very afraid

Finally, if you have completed this test, you might want to apply it to others (O.K., other than your unfavorite politician) that you know through personal contact, whether in your profession (your agent, your manager, your press agent, your accountant, your director, your producer, your star), your personal life (your spouse, your partner, your children, your boss, your friends)

or last, but not least, YOURSELF!!

My old friend, the excellent writer Dr. Susan Block, has much to say about Adelphia Cable, how it began and where Rigas, the founder, is now. And for insights into the hypocrisy and greed behind much of the American Dream, and the world of communications, and prison, especially for the elderly. Her views, based on her experiences, are worth repeating, so here is what she says, unedited.

"Once upon a time, there was a wonderful little local cable TV company called Century Cable that serviced the liberal, cosmopolitan, Blue State community of West Los Angeles, California. Its public access station featured a wide and wacky array of free expressionists, political activists, wannabe TV stars, crazy kids, eccentric exhibitionists, controversial poets, videographic artists, never-ready-for primetime players, and horny housewives (like me). My show, like others, ran for several years, without censorship, happily broadcasting sex education to the good, famously open-minded people of Santa Monica, West Hollywood and surrounding neighborhoods who, if they didn't like it, could always change the channel.

"Then one day, sometime in the late 1990s, the Charles Keating of Cable TV, John J. Rigas, known for turning a $300 investment into cable behemoth Adelphia Communications Corp., swooped down like a hawk on a lamb and snatched up Century, as well as several other cable stations in Southern California and dozens more all over America.

"He came, he bought, he censored. Not violence, just sex. A man used to getting what he wanted if he tried hard enough, John Rigas tried mightily to make all of his newly acquired cable stations over into his image, or at least, the image he liked to portray, that of a "Family Values" man, a conservative, God-fearing paragon of Christian virtue. In that effort, he censored or took off the air Playboy, Spice, and any other shows that included nudity (except those on HBO and Showtime--money talks, of course), even the programs on Public Access TV, including mine.

"So, what's the big deal? Stuff is censored all the time on commercial TV. Since when does a horny housewife like me have a "right" to produce my own TV show uncensored by the station? The big deal is that THIS is Public Access. And yes, I do have a right. And so do you. Public Access is the lowly but precious alternative to commercial TV in America. It is not the voice of the community. It is the voices of individuals in the community. Public Access is the People's Broadcasting System, and the People have different points of view. According to law, when a company like Adelphia owns a cable station, they owe it to the community to provide access to the airwaves, so you and I and our neighbors can express ourselves and air our views through television. This is part of any cable company's broadcast license. According to the US Supreme Court's 1996 decision, Public Access programming must not be edited or censored by the cable station. That's the LAW.

"But the law never stopped John J. Rigas & Sons from doing whatever they wanted. This pious, Church-going, Family Values family followed their conscience--not the law--and it was their conscience that told them to cover up the sex on my show, as they masturbated their figures in their accounting office.

"Now, I didn't actually see them masturbate. I didn't even hear them. They wouldn't even return my phone calls when I wanted an explanation for their censorship of my programs.. But I do know one thing: Everybody masturbates. "If God had intended us not to masturbate, he would have made our arms shorter" is my favorite George Carlin maxim. Anyway, everyone does it; it's just a question of how and with what. There's the kind you do with your fingers...and then there's the kind you do with figures. Financial figures. The books...

"But I am getting ahead of my Adelphia Story. At the time John Rigas and his boys were covering up various body parts on my show, I didn't know that they were also covering up the fact that they used Adelphia balance sheets as their personal piggy bank.

"Still, when I was handed my "censored" slips, calling my show "indecent" and "obscene," I knew I had to fight back. Unlike Playboy and most other content providers, I just couldn't slink away with my tail between my legs. Though John Rigas wouldn't let me show my tail or anybody else's on his recently acquired public access stations, he couldn't stop me from airing shows that had nothing but white letters on a black screen, saying stuff like:

"THIS IS WHAT CENSORSHIP LOOKS LIKE
WELCOME TO FASCISM IN AMERICA
JOHN J. RIGAS, CEO of ADELPHIA, IS ILLEGALLY CENSORING THIS SHOW
THE BLOCK CURSE IS UPON JOHN J. RIGAS
DUMP ADELPHIA STOCK NOW!

"That last exhortation proved to be what the Wall Street Journal would later tout as my "prescient financial advice," even though I didn't know that the Rigases were not only covering up my bottom; they were covering up their own bottom - line.

"But what about the Block Curse? I'm no Harry Potter, but I must say that The Curse has done some pretty serious damage to various enemies of liberty. Though, in the case of John J. Rigas & Sons, the sheer force of its cursedness even amazed me, when Adelphia stock (which I told you to dump!) plummeted into the muck as John J. Rigas & Sons were forced to admit that they were under investigation by the Securities & Exchange Commission, and then taken away in handcuffs, because they failed to report that they had used Adelphia to guarantee as much as $2.7 billion in their own private family-incurred debts. Yes, $2.7 billion, stolen from their stockholders and, indirectly, their subscribers. Now that's obscene.

"It's also Family Values at work. Family Values means family first, and the Rigases certainly did put family first. The Rigas Family, that is, and screw the community. Screw the community of stockholders they screwed out of their life savings. Screw the community of cable subscribers they screwed out of their right to watch the TV shows of their choice. Screw the community of their fellow Americans that they and their counterpart CEO-banditos at Enron, WorldCom, Halliburton, Imclone, etc. screwed out of multiple billions.

"Ironically, the Rigas Boys labeled my shows "indecent." They were big on morality and small on ethics. Morality--Family Values or Taliban Tradition--really has no place in business (like religion has no place in government), especially not in big business, which is supposed to serve lots of different people, many diverse families, many varied communities. Ethics has a vital place in business. But not morality, and certainly not moralizing. Fundamentalism is fundamentally bad for business.

"Censors aren't all fundamentalists. Censors come in many colors, from the Right, and the Left. But one thing they all have in common is that they try to HIDE THE TRUTH from YOU. Whether it's flesh or finances, censors don't want you to see it. Thus, it is not surprising when the biggest moral censors turn out to be the biggest fiscal frauds. Take Charles Keating, founder of Citizens for Decency through Law before he turned into the Citizen-Poster Boy for the American Savings & Loan Disaster. Then there were the Hunt Brothers, those Texas oil-rich, John Bircher Billionaires who went from being one of the wealthiest, most right-wing, Born-Again Christian families in America to declaring bankruptcy and being convicted of conspiring to corner the silver market. Now come the Rigas Boys, the sanctimonious swindlers. Censorship is one kind of cover-up; deceptive accounting is another. It's all about covering up figures. In my case, it was about covering up breasts, butts, vulvas and the occasional penis. They said they were cleaning up cable TV. Guess that explains the money laundering.

"The moral of My Adelphia Story is: Beware of Those Who are Holier than Thou, For Often They Are Fleecers of their Own Flocks.

"In this story, unlike so many stories, the criminals actually got caught and punished for their crimes. Last week, after a jury had found John Rigas guilty of bank fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy, U.S. District Judge Leonard Sand sentenced him to 15 years in prison (his son Timothy got 20 years). So goes the Fall of the House of Rigas. A Greek tragedy of hubris, avarice and hypocrisy, with my show as comic-erotic relief.

"But I'm of two minds about the ending of this Adelphia Story. Is it happy or sad? While a part of me is celebrating the final finish to the Fall of the House of Rigas (and the fact that I'm back on the air--without censorship--on several Adelphia stations), another part of me is wondering what good it will do our society to put an 80-year-old, cancer-racked human into prison for the rest of his life.

"Oh, I chortled along with Jimmy Breslin, over the internationally broadcast image of the hoary old hypocrite, having censored my TV shows on bondage, being handcuffed himself. And I gasped, along with the jury, at the tales of the Rigas Family heists, involving hoodwinking stockholders and stealing corporate funds to pay for fleets of fancy cars, private golf courses, plane trips, Manhattan apartments, vacations, Christmas trees flown from Coudersport to New York, and 100 pairs of the same bedroom slippers. I despise John J. Rigas for his greed and his sanctimony. But I wonder what good it will do anybody to put the old fart in jail now.

"In Italy, there is a law against imprisoning anyone over 80 years old. Why? Because a) it would probably kill them, b) they're not likely to commit crimes at that age, c) they're probably not going to be "reformed" in prison at that age, d) they're only going to cost the taxpayers money with all their physical ailments that would need to be taken care of in prison, and e) it's just unseemly (to the Italians) to lock up great grandpapa.

"To most Americans, this is a horrifying, immoral practice. How can you let a guilty person not go to prison just because he's old? But then, America doesn't mind locking up people for no good reason, helping to create a situation in which we have more folks in prison than any other country in the world. Our huge, burgeoning prison system is built on principles of revenge and punishment (and, increasingly, torture), rather than anything to do with reforming the prisoner or what's best for society.

"Revenge can be emotionally satisfying, but has no tangible social benefits. What would be best for society would be to strip John Rigas of his wealth, give his money to the poor, and then make the old hypocrite do "community service" in a lowly job at one of Adelphia's public access stations for the remainder of his days, scheduling shows like mine."

I see my ex. is returning to Los Angeles next year, to appear in the play.

That will be almost 5 years after she snuck out in the middle of the surprise divorce case that she filed against me, during trial, with the assistance of an unscrupulous lawyer [oxymoron?] and the permission of an accommodating about-to-retire judge looking for future showbiz biz as a private judge-for-hire.

And then got me evicted and her b/f into possession of my home which was then looted of many of my possessions, and secretly took our children with her to the East Coast, to live in my New York apartment, which I apparently no longer own.

I'll be ready for her. The missing piece.

Well, I missed it again this year, so I'll say it again for myself and for my three sons, two of whom have children of their own.

And my two daughters? Who knows. I have a feeling, at least, that they can't help but think about me every one of their days.

And I say it for all fathers everywhere, stripped of their children by forces beyond their control.

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!

LATER

Maybe somebody read this. Anyway, I heard from my son Benjy who had stopped somewhere in his Delta MD-80, and phoned me a happy father's day. Hadn't heard from him in over a year, but it made me feel good. Thanks, Benjy.

I watched Vanessa tonight on CNN, fending off Bob Costas, the new heir apparent being groomed to succeed Larry King (note to CNN management: Please hurry.)

Dear old Vanessa. My favorite controversial sister-in-law.

She is all tangled up in her view of U.S. actions in Iraq resulting in the mis-treatment of Iraqi prisoners at Gitmo which she doesn't approve of, because it's "unlawful". And, unfortunately, she didn't have brother Corin with her to keep her arguments straight and clear (he has always been the political leader in that axis).

What she fails to understand is that in times of war, emergency measures are necessary, and this was one of them, and the last thing our government wants or needs is U.S. style "Law" and "Lawyers" to step in. Because they know where it will lead.

Vanessa has foolish courage, as she proved on the steps of the Academy prior to accepting her Oscar (her "Zionist Hoodlums" speech of acceptance, condemned or celebrated depending upon where you come from). Far better and less futile time would have been spent in her bravely arguing for the end of all wars, and the beginning of a civilization where we could all happily co-exist.

To point out that in uniform good people become murderers. That American and British "Heroes" are Iraqi's "Terrorists". That Iraqi "Terrorists" are their "Heroes". That Mother Nature seems to have built into our species, the top of the food chain with no senior predators, a desire to kill each other, to wipe us all out like the dinosaurs, perhaps to make way for a higher level of intelligence.

To suggest that to survive, we have to find a way out of this blind and endless cycle which has continued through all the ages, and that now, with the internet's homogenization of humanity, and the invention of ultimate weapons of mass destruction inevitably available to all, civilization has a chance.

To show that with international commerce and the rise of unstoppable free expression, each individual person now has the ability to no longer unquestioningly follow the dictates of national and world leaders into their chosen paths of war. We need to be asked first, and we, the people of the world, can say together a resounding NO THANK YOU.

And that there should be a rule of law, not ours of the Western World, not that of any one group, but at the top, a coalition of all countries (the United Nations with balls?) with a system of justice enforced out of The Hague, to which the United States and all others will submit.

[And, speaking of humanity, on a personal level, if she has a personal level, why she is unable to communicate with me about my daughter Kelly, whom she housed with her in London for a couple of years, and perhaps get involved meaningfully in her sister Lynn's and our children's misguided efforts to erase me in the Auschwitz of Los Angeles Family Court, who at least left me with my gold teeth intact.]

They are in total conflict. In an editorial today, the NY Times thought there was closure already, provided by the autopsy and the law of the land.

They seem to think that litigation and the autopsy provides closure, and accuse Jeb Bush of going down a "terrible road", and doing "heart-breaking" things to the public mind. For them, the episode was a "terrible lesson" in what "government should and should not do".

Losing no time, Governor Bush had already written to the Times in a pre-emptive move, perhaps guessing what they were about to say. At least they had the decency to print it on the same page.

And what he said was, to sum up, "government has a duty to protect the weak, the disabled and the vulnerable." And of course, before the autopsy, it was a guessing game as to whether Terri was even a functioning life, let alone weak and disabled and vulnerable.

A Dr. D'Angio wrote a letter from Mt. Vernon, NY, to say the following:

"We did not need an autopsy to know that Terri Schiavo had hopeless brain damage, or to know that many of her body's systems were normal. Her family loved what was left of her and asked only to be permitted to care for her at their own expense."

The sheer idiocy of the court's position was this. "If Terri is a person she has rights, and the court will defend those rights and decide what to do." And what the court found was that she was not a person within the usual meaning of the word because she had no functionality (and therefore no rights?), and therefore should be put to death by "natural" means. And so Justice got trapped within its own circular reasoning.

My view, already stated elsewhere, was that government did not belong here, and should never have stuck its nose into it. Separation of Church and State, indeed. Here was a situation where the problem and the decision properly belonged within the boundaries of the religion embraced by the victim and the victim's parents. And that religion was the Roman Catholic Church.

This case remains open, there was no closure, and Bush is right to do whatever it takes to keep it open. And let it continue to fester in the public mind.

I'm more interested here in the Times's assertion that the law provides closure. That is the thinking of most citizens, or should be, if the law could do that. But it cannot, even though that is what the framers of the Constitution had in mind when they invented and wrote out our system.

A case is brought looking for closure, and resolved by a judge in the lower court. And if the judge doesn't provide the closure sought, it goes to the Court of Appeal. And if they don't manage it, then to the State Supreme Court (who probably will decline to rule), and then the U.S. Supreme Court, who will even more likely do the same thing.

No, the courts do not provide closure, which is why many seek to do it for themselves, with sometimes shocking results. And we don't know how to answer these people, other than to say "lock 'em up!", without parole if necessary.

That is the great conundrum facing this country today.

The advocacy system ("my lawyer's better than your lawyer!") needs to be changed in a big, big way, by Congress and by legislatures, a lawmaking system which, ironically, is peopled by and with lawyers.

And Terri Schiavo is helping to bring that about. We must not forget her, for she stands as a symbol of the Great Moral Failure of our age.

The case remains open.

Acres and acres of professional media coverage on the result of the trial, but for me, three letters from ordinary folks in today's L.A. Times said it all.

First, "The only thing that Jackson is guilty of is being weird. Fortunately, being weird is not a crime or half the population of California would be in prison."

Second, "There are three basic rules of parenting: (1) Feed your child daily. (2) Don't let your child play in heavy traffic. (3) Don't let your child spend the night with Michael Jackson. Any parent who breaks these rules should be charged and convicted of endangering their child and, in the case of the third rule, exploiting their child. "

And third, "The Jackson trial was an example of prosecutorial misconduct. The motive was for the prosecutor to harass an individual with values and a lifestyle antithetical to his own. I believe an investigation of the prosecutor's office is in order. "

To that, I would include members of the fourth estate pressed by their publishers, not against their will, into service.

And those looking for book deals.

There's more. In my opinion half of the proceeds of any book deals should go to Jackson, to help write off his expenses at trial, and all lawyers should be forced to reveal their money interest in the cases in which they participate. At least 30% of settlements usually go to lawyers, and it is clear that they are motivated to stir up trouble in a celebrity's camp, and then jump in to create huge settlements, or failing that, huge billable hours.

If Jackson had lost and received prison time, he would have been held in a special place apart from other prisoners, under suicide watch. I believe that certain members of the press and certain legal people should then have been incarcerated with him, because they were all in it together, to keep that watch.

Fat chance!

I am sorry to see that Lynn's brother, Corin Redgrave, suffered a heart attack today, even while making yet another political action speech. I've always admired the fact that he puts his heart into what comes out of his mouth.

I have no quarrel with Lynn's family, even though I have heard nothing from any of them since she kicked me out of our Topanga home two days after 9/11, recounted elsewhere. This is the home where Vanessa would visit us, where we entertained Liam Neeson and his wife Natasha Richardson, her daughter, and where their mother Rachel Kempson, who died last year, came to live with us.

Regardless, I send my heartfelt sympathy to Kika Markham, Corin's long-suffering wife, who still stands by him in this hour of need, and their children. They ask for privacy, and the press will give that to them, one hopes.

A tight family. Which is as it should be.

Have George W. and his wife Laura for one minute stopped to think of the world crisis they would cause were either one, or both, of them to be assassinated overseas, where they are beyond our jurisdiction and secure protection?

Their appearances in those parts of the world that think nothing of throwing a grenade, or crashing a bomb-laden car into the crowd, is high risk behavior, and only luck has saved our president so far.

Oh sure, they might go down in history as martyrs of a kind, and their efforts are well meant certainly, but too great a price lies waiting in the wings. The enraged reaction of this country would be entirely unpredictable.

They should stop that kind of world travel. It does not contribute to world peace, only to world anxiety.

So tonight we are being urged to watch Ken Jennings do battle with Brad Rutter and Jerome Vered for the Ultimate Title, Fame and Fortune, in the Tournament of Champions and $2,000,000.

We are told that we'll be kept on the edge of our seats for the next three days, cheering them on.

Are the producers out of their minds?

Jennings already won $2,520,700, and now performs in commercials. He got a "bye" into the final of the current contest. And now Comedy Central is developing a game show in which he would star.

Rutter took home $1,155,102, and now hosts a local quiz show. In the present tournament he has already earned another $100,000.

Vered, a writer, made a mere $96,801 originally, way back (gee!).

If these past winners, "earning" their way into celebrity circles, were to play for charity in the same way that celebrity contestants play for charity, there might be some point.

"Millionaire" ran a repeat of former contestants, but their's was of losers, those who had been knocked out in the first round and won nothing.

Well, as it is, one hopes that these obviously right wing producers will learn their lesson by seeing ratings that suggest the audience is feeling just a little bit insulted.

The Associated Press reports that Texas leads the nation in putting to death 344 inmates since 1982, the most of any state, and 8 so far this year.

Now Republican Governor Rick Perry may soon be signing a bill that would allow Texas courts to bestow a lifelong punishment of prison without parole instead of death. (At the moment, the only option instead of the death penalty is life with parole possible in 40 years.) The session considering the bill is set to end next week, May 30.

Tony Goolsby, a Republican sponsor of the bill, said "If you want to punish a person who violated the law, you let them go to bed every night and wake up and see steel bars, a cold concrete floor and a stainless steel potty. That's their life until they die." Well done, Tony.

But many lawmakers and prosecutors are skeptical of life without parole, saying it would decrease the number of death sentences and their ability to deter crime. They want death.

"If you take away the ultimate penalty, maybe it's not enough of an incentive to stay out of trouble," said Representative Beverly Woolley, a Houston female Republican. Well said, Beverly. A pat on your backs! The purity of your lives is an example for us all!

Now let's look at some statistics from the Bureau of Justice:

In 2003, 6.9 million people were on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole at yearend 2003 -- 3.2% of all U.S. adult residents or 1 in every 32 adults.

State and Federal prison authorities had under their jurisdiction 1,470,045 inmates at yearend 2003: 1,296,986 under State jurisdiction and 173,059 under Federal jurisdiction.

Local jails held or supervised 762,672 persons awaiting trial or serving a sentence at midyear 2003. About 71,400 of these were persons serving their sentence in the community.

California, Texas and the federal system contributed 1 in 3. And all of the prisons were operating at full or over capacity.

These facts are nothing to be proud of, the numbers are increasing, and more to the point, it just doesn't work. A clue for a solution is to be found in the term "correctional facilities".

The reasons a person would perpetrate a crime are many and complex, and who in our society can say they would have acted differently given the same start in life, the same parents, the same foster homes, the same education, the same relatives, the same treatment from the courts, and the same set of other circumstances?

This site contains the last words of the about to die on death row, together with their crimes. One is struck by the sobering dignity with which they depart this earth.

The founding fathers, in the creation of this country, chose to continue the British system of justice, but nobody would claim that it is static. It's ever evolving, and can be changed to fit the times in which we live, and that time has come. It is now!

All Wrong. New Solution

This is my opinion, but I believe they've all got it all wrong.

Prison time and the death sentence have always been approached as punishment, and therefore, presumably, ample motivation to stay out of trouble. The opposite should be the case.

The motivation to stay out of trouble should be the chance to make a new life.

And death, if it happens, should not be seen as punishment, but rather as the forfeiture of a life from this earth, without acrimony, and without ceremony.

To be very specific, my way it would work like this:

The word "punishment" would be banished from the language, and replaced with "penalty" and "forfeited opportunity".

1. Prison terms would be up to and capped at ten years, easily renewable, in all cases.

2. The standard of guilt would be that used at present for civil trials, that is "Preponderance of the Evidence" to persuade the judge or jury that facts are probably more one way than the other.

3. Juries would need only ten members out of twelve to convict, making room for those with an agenda.

4. Death as an option would be administered to prisoners who have simply given up and refuse to avail themselves of new opportunity to change. But the method of death would be quiet and without ceremony, administered during a sleep from which they never wake, and without any sense of vengeance. An admission of failure on the part of the prisoner and society to rescue a life.

5. Defending lawyers would be held to the same standard currently charged only to prosecutors, that is, to seek justice instead of a "not guilty" verdict.

In my system, then, convicted criminals would be imprisoned for up to ten years, with the chance to turn their lives around and start over, upon a signed statement at their request, and a promise. This is important, that the process for help and change would be initiated by them, and not by the authorities offering it to them.

Their case would come up for reconsideration before a panel at the end of their sentence, and in the absence of positive proof of their real effort to improve themselves, they would easily remain incarcerated for up to another ten years. It could go on this way for their entire lives. Their choice, not ours.

The point is, it would be much easier to convict, and there would be no more Robert Blakes or O. J. Simpsons getting off scot free under the present win all/lose all system (and follow along with the current Phil Spector murder case, comes in threes?).

The distance between all black guilt and all white innocence would be covered by a considerable grey scale of many shades of guilt, which would have appropriate penalties attached to them.

If a person has decided on a life of crime, then they could be incarcerated their entire lives, or choose death. Their choice.

But this writer believes that everyone is born into this world with a desire to belong, to be loved, and to succeed. Their circumstances bring about the changes that can lead to robbery, rape, murder and other crimes. They will pay for this, and will have the chance to start again, to earn a new life. Their choice. And if mistakes are made, then the truly innocent can still look forward to a life of freedom. And no longer would we see victims of rape or robbery being killed because of the perpetrator's fear of being identified and receiving society's ultimate punishment.

Of course, the educated crazies, the mass murderers, the spree killers, the bombers, perhaps many of the sexual predators, with their unalterable mindsets, would not be let out, and would be the first to agree that they cannot be redeemed. Perhaps they would do us the favor of requesting to end their own lives. They should have that option.

In concluding this discussion, one might look to Joan of Arc, who said it best at her trial nearly six hundred years ago. Her words were carefully preserved for us in the transcripts, and we can learn from them as they echo down through the centuries.

At first she settled with the court for her immediate freedom, on their terms, which meant sacrificing her beliefs.

But then the court reneged, and she was given life in prison without the possibility of parole. The well-known atheist, George Bernard Shaw, wrote a play about this which I got to know well, because I directed it for Broadway. Listen to her words to the magistrate:

"You think that life is nothing but not being dead? It is not the bread and water I fear. I can live on bread. It is no hardship to drink water if the water be clean. But to shut me from the light of the sky and the sight of the fields and flowers; to chain my feet so that I can never again climb the hills. To make me breathe foul damp darkness, without these things I cannot live. And by your wanting to take them away from me, or from any human creature, I know that your council is of the devil."

In response, her judges cried "Light your fire, to the stake with her."

And so she chose the death penalty. Her reasons, and her choice.

I believe that our prisons would begin to empty, and the number of prisoner deaths might even increase, and society would be relieved of guilt.

If the legislatures who make the laws want further convincing, think of the bottom line, the billions of dollars that would be saved, both in prison costs and by the contributions to the common good of those properly released back to society. And the lawyers too, may of whom would be returned to society to do an honest day's work in some other field of labor.

And as a bonus, we would become a truly civilized and maybe gentler society worthy of improved world opinion.

Mary Kay Letourneau, 43, and Vili Fualaau, 22, got married and exchanged vows they had written themselves, today.

The couple's two daughters, Audrey, 8, and Alexis Georgia, 7,
were flower girls.

Letourneau's teenage daughter, Mary Claire, from her earlier marriage, was maid of honor.

This news should make us all feel good. Bravo to all of them, and especially to Mary Claire, who had the good sense to think as an independent person, free from her father's influence.

I have written a piece elsewhere about the meaning of the words "Bright Line".

Of course, bright lines are needed in a confusing world to bring a semblance of order to it. Obviously, teachers and young students should not be having sex together.

But we look to judges with their limitless powers to exercise wisdom and divine guidance to know how to "do the right thing", so that their findings may go outside the margins of the bright line rules. A judicial option sadly found to be ignored in most courtrooms of the land, where the personal biases of most judges tend to rule in the garb of their black robes, (and has very occasionally led to the tragedy of wrong-headed retribution from aggrieved combatants).

That is how Mary Kay and Vili and their babies lost many years, a huge percentage, of their productive lives together.

We should all wish them the best of the best as they go forward.

And if the Media offers them bundles of cash to tell their story, they should take every cent they are offered without blame for doing so, for it may be that this will be their only future source of income. My advice to them would be to keep attorneys out of their lives. They will contaminate their union, and their sense of themselves. Save the money, and learn how to manage it.

2/14/2005

I see that Mary Kay is going to marry her sweetheart Vili.

Good for her, good for both of them. Now the real test begins!

He was too young when first they met, and he wanted to make love to her. She should've said no, but the force of nature was too strong.

So she spent 7 1/2 years in jail with a restraining order to keep them apart, also from their 2 children.

My only question is, does the law, court, judge and law enforcement now have egg on its collective face?

I've never met, nor do I wish to, Dr. Laura Schlessinger.

On the other hand, I did know Dr. Toni Grant, and she actually became my very dear friend.

Alas, Dr. Toni seems to be away from the airwaves these days, whilst Dr. Laura is all too present. Giving? Offering? No, ORDERING advice that fits in with the agenda of her sea-changed self.

I was listening to her today in my car on one of our local talk radio stations, and I have come to the conclusion that she is actually a dangerous person.

A woman called in, her two boys, 7 and 9, were armed with toy pellet guns, and she wanted to know whether they ought to be wearing some kind of protective body armor, just in case one or the other would put someone's eye out.

Her answer was, absolutely! She was in favor of guns, and insisted that all kids should grow up with a knowledge of how to use them.

Sure. In a few years they should be ready to do another one of those North Hollywood bank robberies, and if they're up to scratch with their homework, they will know how to outgun the cops!

The next call was from another woman, she'd recently married, and after six months learned that her new husband had a girlfriend from before their marriage and was secretly e-mailing her.

Dr. Laura put her on hold while she went into her really sincere and heartfelt advice on why it would be beneficial to her listeners to buy Fresh Air Purifiers, then came back and told the caller to quit the marriage without wasting another minute.

Before we leave her, let me just say that if people come to you to bare their souls with questions, they deserve to be not cut off impatiently mid-question, in order for Dr. Laura's simplistic and unswerving agenda to be somehow inserted. The answer just might have to be adjusted, if the caller is to be helped. There's a responsibility that comes with the job, so here's one word of advice for Dr. Laura: LISTEN.

She should re-visit her past when she did real things with herself and her boyfriend, and hadn't become every woman's idiot idol, a time when she was making love and not war, and actually bared her self. You can check out her nude pictures if you wish, they are available on Wikipedia, but beware if you are very sensitive. Aw heck, here they are: Dr. Laura bared

Now, about Toni. I first became aware of her years ago (she was the original) when I was listening to a female caller on KABC complaining that her problem was that all men seemed to want, when she went out with them, was to get her into bed, and she was tired of it, and turned off to the dating game.

Toni first suggested that her nasal voice was very boring and off-putting, and maybe she should go out and get some voice and other self-improvement lessons in the hope of becoming a more interesting person, so the date could maybe think of something else. But she then added that men should never be put down for wanting to get a woman into bed, because that's what they do, it's a part of their function in life, and the human race wouldn't exist without this call of nature. I liked that.

Later I got to meet Toni at an industry party, she was divorced, and she became a close friend of me and my family, her kids and my kids.

It was through her that I met, and became close friends with, Dr. Susan Block, a hugely talented writer, who later became a kind of link between Toni and Laura. Toni employed Susan to write her book Being a Woman, actually to ghost it for her. The book featured the concept of the necessity for a wise wife/partner to be able to play the dual and not easily compatible roles of a madonna and a prostitute, to make for a happy husband. Sound advice I would say. When it was published, Toni claimed that Susan was no more than the typist, which led to a very fractious relationship between the two. Much much later, Susan had changed her career somewhat, becoming a hard-core feminist of a different kind, and got into a one-on-one with Dr. Laura; here's Susan's website giving the details; lots of fun you'll have reading this (but I warn you, it's strong stuff, you might wish to skip it!) Dr. Susan Block diaries.

[See what others are saying about Dr. Laura.]

But to get back to Toni, Lynn and I were going out one evening to check out a bright, soon to be famous, up and coming young performer trying out her one-woman show at the Wilshire Ebell whose name was Whoopi Goldberg. We wanted to cull her performance for solo show tips.

It so happened that a friend had just called from New York to say he was coming in that night, and wanted to take us out for a late dinner. We said fine, but why not join us first at the show. He said o.k., but please fix him up with a date. The pitiful man couldn't do it for himself, it seemed, so in a fit of mischievousness I called Toni, and that was how Screw Magazine's porn publisher Al Goldstein, who Lynn had interviewed for our book "This is Living" (written over the objections of her employer WeightWatchers, a bit before Lynn was replaced by the effervescent amateur Princess Fergie at double the salary) came to meet Dr. Toni Grant.

Over dinner, it transpired that Toni got intrigued by him, and came to allow Al to move in with her. But that's a whole other (very interesting, somewhat disturbing) story, and, well, enough said.

So I knew Toni to be a vulnerable, complicated, and all too human person, who let unmanageable problems enter her own life, and thus her offerings to her listeners were liberal, understanding, imaginative, and always sympathetic. And the callers could always finish their sentences.

There's a lot more to the Toni Grant/Al Goldstein story that I don't particularly want to tell, at least not now. Perhaps we became soul-mates. I am only sorry that she is another person who ignores me these days - but I wish her well. I know she got married again, and lives somewhere in Texas.

May 25, 2007
Interesting item in today's LA Times, where we learn that Dr. Laura's soldier son, 21 year old Deryk, may be the author of a lurid MySpace site featuring obscenities and racial epithets. Or he may be a victim of phishing. The army is investigating, and meanwhile this kid's mom issued through her publicist a call for her son's privacy. Oh yum yum, and read more about it HERE.

Thanks to the redoubtable Tim Rutten and his "Regarding Media" column in the Los Angeles Times, I can come up with more evidence that CNN's proud if misguided "All the News You Can Trust" label should be forever dispensed with.

He just did a piece on Nancy Grace, an ex-prosecuting attorney, who can be seen for an hour every evening, in prime time, on CNN's Headline News channel, with her comments on the trusted legal news of the day.

It should be noted that unlike defense attorneys, prosecuting attorneys have an ethical duty to seek justice and not simply to win cases. Which is a good start if one is to expect balance, fairness and independent judgment (like what we're getting in the Michael Jackson trial?).

Let's examine her record, according to Rutten's independent research.

"On three occasions involving three separate cases, appellate courts have cited Grace for unethical behavior while she was a Fulton County prosecutor.

"The most recent of those admonitions came last week, when a published opinion from the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals concurred with lower court findings that Grace had "played fast and loose" with her ethical duties as a prosecutor in a 1990 triple-murder case. The lower courts had admonished Grace for failing to disclose the existence of other suspects in the case and for knowingly allowing a police detective to testify falsely regarding the matter. The appeals court, however, also concurred that Grace's misconduct did not affect the outcome of the case.

"Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Justice William H. Pryor Jr. wrote that the lower courts were right to uphold the defendant's conviction "despite the failure of the prosecutor to fulfill her responsibilities."

"The 11th Circuit is the nation's most conservative, and Pryor, a former Alabama attorney general, is sitting as a recess appointment because his is one of President Bush's nominations to the federal court that Senate Democrats are threatening to block. Hardly, in other words, a court likely to be "soft on crime."

"In 1997, the Georgia State Supreme Court overturned a conviction Grace had won in the case of a man accused of arson and murder. Although the reversal turned on other issues, the court found that she had withheld evidence to which the defense was entitled and had made improper opening and closing statements. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Robert Benham noted that Grace's conduct "in this case demonstrated her disregard of the notions of due process and fairness and was inexcusable."

"In 1994, a 6-1 majority of Georgia's highest court also overturned the conviction of a heroin trafficker Grace had prosecuted, again citing her for making an improper final argument."

How many citations of ethical misconduct will it take before CNN feels some obligation to at least inform its viewers of these facts concerning its star commentator's credentials?

This blogger, for one, feels that it is a conflict of interest for any practicing attorney to be given the airwaves in this way at all for other than occasional commentary and obviously slanted opinion concerning the legal news of the day, to include contrary opinion from other attorneys (always available). The working history of any single attorney is murky at best.

An ex-practitioner she is not. We are told that she had prosecuted more than 100 jury trials during her nine years in Atlanta. Some considerable number of those verdicts must still be under appeal.

In the year 2004, the Lord came unto Noah, who was now living in Florida, and said, "Once again, the earth has become wicked and over-populated and I see the end of all flesh before me. Go thou, and build another Ark and save two of every living thing and you may include a few good humans if you can find them."

He gave Noah the blueprints, and said "You have six months to build the Ark before I start the unending rain."

Six months passed, and then the Lord looked down again and saw Noah weeping in his yard.... but no ark, just a keel.

"Noah", He thundered, "I'm about to start the rain! Where is the Ark?"

"Forgive me, Lord," begged Noah. "But things have changed.

"How so?" asked the Lord.

And Noah explained thuswise:

"-First, I needed a building permit.
-Then my neighbors claimed that I violated the neighborhood zoning laws by trying to build the Ark in my driveway, and I will exceed height limitations. They're suing me in court.
-I hired a lawyer, but after our first appearance, I found out that their lawyer was related to the judge, but my lawyer didn't recuse him.
-I fired my lawyer. I'm now pro se. I had to teach myself the law.
-I decided to apply to the Development Appeal Board for a decision, my delaying tactics. I thought I was being smart. It angered the judge.
-Then the Department of Transportation demanded a bond be posted for the future costs of moving power lines and other overhead obstructions, to clear a passage for the Ark's move to the sea. I argued that the sea would be coming to us, but they would hear nothing of it, and I don't have the money.
-I've been to the local Council about the need for a sprinkler system, and asked for help with funds. It was denied.
-Getting the wood was a huge problem. There's a ban on cutting local trees in order to save the spotted owl. I tried to convince the environmentalists that I needed the wood to save the owls, but they wouldn't listen!
-When I started gathering the animals, I got sued by an animal rights group called PETA. They insisted that I would be confining wild animals against their will.
-Then they argued the accommodations were too restrictive and it was cruel and inhumane to put so many animals in a confined space.
-The EPA ruled that I couldn't build the Ark until they'd conducted an environmental impact study on your proposed flood.
-One of my neighbors I didn't know was a Constitutional lawyer. He is filing a brief with the court to say I am trying to flout the Constitution by combining Church and State. He says there is no place for You.
-I got a complaint from the Human Rights Commission about minorities. I'm supposed to hire them for my building crew.
-The trades unions say I can't use my sons, as they are non-union, and insist I have to hire only union workers with Ark building experience.
-The Government is demanding proof that I am not sailing to Cuba.
-Now the IRS is trying to seize all my assets, such as they are, claiming I'm leaving the country illegally with endangered species.
-Finally, my wife has gone to Family Court claiming that these actions of mine are a form of spousal abuse, and refuses to be a part of the Plan.

"So you see, Lord, I have tried my best to do your bidding. Please forgive me, but I don't see how I am to continue with this."

Suddenly the skies cleared, the sun began to shine, and a rainbow stretched across the sky.

Noah looked up in wonder and asked, "You mean, You're not going to destroy the world?".

"No," said the Lord. "It is not necessary. Your government beat me to it. They have created their own Gods. Now you are on your own."

One reads today with shock that theatre critic John Simon has been "offed" by New York Magazine, a publication for which he helped get recognition when it was launched back in 1968. Apparently his marching orders came without any warning with no good reason, and I can identify with what that feels like.

What can Editor-in-Chief Adam Moss, who looks to be less than half Simon's age, be thinking of? He's why I subscribed, and now I shall have to cancel as my small protest!

I do believe that John Simon, an icon among reviewers, represents what theatre criticism is and should be about; the theatre's values and standards, and the two should not be confused.

"Values" has dollar signs attached to it, and relates to the present. "Standards" does not, it goes back forever, and requires knowledge, integrity, culture and a long memory.

Simon did not compromise his measure of what constitutes good theatre, and one always had the feeling that if the show lacked standards, he got angry, and said so in a way that hurt the offender by letting the air out of inflated egos as a form of contempt. I see little wrong with that. Actors are supposed to have thick skins, and anyway, it made for must reading, and did get everyone's attention.

I don't think he cares about values, because they have their own upholders.

I have never met Simon, but I have a very special reason to remember him.

If you look at my posting on the left about Lynn Redgrave's CBS television series "House Calls", you will see where Alan Schwartz's bankrupt lawfirm Finley Kumble & Associates came after us for three quarters of a million dollars in courtroom sanctions payable to themselves, because we refused to open up our books to those figurative bastards. Well there's a story attached to this event, which I will tell here for the first time.

Instead of throwing what assets we had at a bankuptcy court to give to a bunch of shady bankrupt lawyers, I mounted Lynn's one woman show "Shakespeare For My Father" on Broadway. It had been on the college circuit, and Columbia Artist's Management, the sponsors, when asked, said they had no stomach to underwrite it for Broadway.

That's why I decided to do what only a fool would do. It was a gesture of contempt for the American legal system, and a lesser contempt for the values of Broadway. I booked the show into a little theatre next to Sardi's restaurant, the Helen Hayes, on West 44th Street, squeezed between the hit musical "The Who's Tommy" at the St. James's, and the hit musical "Kiss of the Spider Woman", playing opposite at the Shubert.

And I put up all and only our money.

People laughed at us. People said "Who cares about your feelings of rejection from your father, Shakespeare not withstanding?".

I personally expected that we might be laughed off the stage by critics likening us to "Springtime for Hitler", at best a tax write-off, at worst, thrown out after a week by the theatre owner for lack of business.

After a few previews, opening night came and went, and we adjourned next door to Sardi's, and waited for the reviews. Which weren't bad, considering, but they would not sell many tickets.

Then came Simon in New York Magazine a couple of days later.

An extraordinary dream of a review. He praised the show to the sky, he praised Lynn to the sky, but most of all, he used our downright chutzpa as a cudgel to beat on the commercial theatre. Wow. (Footnote, he didn't say much about me. These things don't just happen, I directed, co-wrote, and produced it, but I don't hold that against him, Lynn's successes were mine too.)

Afterwards, we became a big hit. We ran for almost a year, 266 performances, a record, then, and a Tony nomination. I think that we were kept going by women theatre-goers who, while the rest of their families took in a musical, sneaked in to see our little show.

I attribute our success on Broadway to John Simon. And I think he did it by noticing what we were trying to do, believed in it, and championed it. And as a result, we went on to play Canada, Australia, and the Haymarket in London, to wondrous reviews.

So to John Simon, who is a little older than me but occupies the same decade of life, I say don't go away, the theatre needs you more than ever. You, it is obvious, were never bought. It needs your education, your humor, and your fearlessness of crazy mad actresses like Sylvia Miles, who threw a cheap plate of spaghetti on your head. You might want to consider the same treatment for editor Moss, along with a glass of good Chianti.

Your next job is just around the corner, so take a cue from Clive and hang in.

Our local majestic L.A. Times informs us that they are losing circulation. They must be hurting real bad, with a 6.5% fall in Monday through Saturday circulation and 7.9% for Sundays.

Executive Vice President Jeff Johnson, who will become publisher of the paper next month, tells us that to help close that gap, the paper will spend $10 million on advertising this year, including direct mail, television and radio campaigns.

Somebody needs to tell them "up there" that the money would be better spent to help create another newspaper.

Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country, has a population of 16 million, and can boast of only one newspaper. Voice-wise this is a one horse town, and that is a shameful, shocking, fact.

San Francisco comes up with the Examiner and the Chronicle (population 7 million).

Seattle has its Post-Intelligencer and Times (3.5 million).

San Diego has The Globe and the Union Tribune (1.24 million).

The Times' stagnating and boring methods have brought it to the point where it doesn't just print the news, it "proclaims" the news. After all, why otherwise, since there is no one around to challenge the system.

One cannot help but notice that their news is spread by a myriad of editorializing reporters and journalists, under their own names. If you want to get their ear, well, you probably can. What they practice is a form of wanking.

And for the more readable and arresting voices of dissenters, arguers and debaters, we have to look elsewhere.

The voices that truly challenge the status quo of local government and law enforcers and the courts (and the Los Angeles Times) are to be found in small local publications, such as the Los Angeles Daily News, which covers the Valley.

And to prove my point, their circulation rose slightly, 0.1% for Mondays through Fridays and a small drop of 0.5% on Sundays.

It wasn't always this way. The old Evening Herald and Express merged with the Los Angeles Examiner back in 1961, and became the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, and this Hearst flagship disappeared in 1989, and one wonders why. It should be reborn or reinvented.

One thinks of a lone lawyer, trying to invigorate a community, and not succeeding. Bring in another lawyer in opposition, and sparks can fly.

If the Los Angeles Times is smart and cares about its own health and the health of this city, it will donate the earmarked $10 million to help find a building and fund another newspaper. No, not as an act of pure altruism, but in its own self interest. And they should not retain any ownership whatsoever, just the opposite. They should either GIVE or LOAN the money, and attract independent investors.

The interest of potential readers should not be underestimated, and I have a hunch that Los Angeles citizens will respond with enthusiasm.

Microsoft's Bill Gates made some solid comments the other day in a speech addressing the need for modernizing the High School curriculum offered forcibly to our young kids at 9th grade level. He noted a government study that here in America, out of every 100 school-kids at 9th grade, only 68 will graduate on time, only 18 will make it through college on time, and that at 4 year college, one in four have to take at least one remedial course to master what they should already know.

He said that it wasn't just a case of kids not working hard enough, but that today's schools working as designed are obsolete, and cannot teach our kids what they need to know to function well in the outside world.

And I say Hear! Hear! to that, and also that I've always known that to be true!

At the age of 72, I am trying to teach myself to touch type on what is now referred to as a "keyboard". I know that it will be an uphill job, and I will never achieve a decent WPM rate.

I am largely a self-taught person in most things I know, and I don't credit my schooling (England's Watford Grammar School, and a lot of later private tuition as a child actor) for much, other than that they caused me to think for myself, and fed my curiosity.

But I have always wondered why my early childhood education did not include the learning of, not just knowledge, but of incorporating functions which use the synapses of the brain to become automatic. The chances start at a very early age, some say baby-hood, even, and it doesn't re-emerge later, and the time, once past, is lost forever.

If I had had my way, my kids would have been started on this course even before they could stand.

First, how to visually recognize number patterns and systems including the magic "x" of algebra, words, symbols, and at least one other language.

Then, how to read music, how to touch type, mime and verbal improvisation with others, how to take pictures, how to organize data, and at least one ball game.

Then, how to cook, how to tend a garden, how to use a sewing machine, how to ride a horse, how to use tools for construction, how to paint in oils, how to edit pictures, how to build a computer, how to debate, how to read poetry, how to write a song, and how to manage money including investment and book-keeping, and finally, how to sail a boat and fly a plane.

That's a minimum for everyone, no exceptions.

Because, as a basis for life, enough foundation would be laid for the age of "specialization" to emerge in the late teen years. And they will spend the rest of their lives thankful for getting all that stuff behind them at an early age. From that other stuff, everything missing will flow, and be a lot easier to master, and a lot faster to process toward goals.

I believe that the problem has always been that while lessons are devised to develop agility of the mind, they are created in ways that remain academic, and thus largely pointless and therefore boring to the bewildered child. Perhaps the educators themselves failed at "doing", which is why they became teachers.

Students today should be learning and applying practical and useful knowledge for later use in the real world. It is not only productive, but is much much much more fun. And I can't see anyone wanting to become a lawyer. Maybe a judge.

Oh well, now let me see, eyes closed, QWERTYUIOP[] 2nd row, ASDFGHJKL;' 3rd row ZXCVBNM,./ . . . .

Irony of Extraordinary Events Conjoined
4/3/2005

As the pope lies in state, honored by the leaders of the entire world, now is the exact point in time, with the facts riveted in the front of our minds, to reflect on the fact that, at the holiest time of the year, two enormously important events took place which should impact upon the thinking of these leaders, and particularly the thinking of this nation.

1. Terri Schindler Schiavo died March 31, 2005

2. Karol Joseph Wojtyla died April 2, 2005

We have to hope (or pray depending on your belief system) that those who run this country, whoever they may be, will not allow the glaring irony to escape their notice.

If it makes its proper effect, it could change the course of world events. And these individuals, the lowliest and the highest, will have their places forever in history, in their own way.

Death was ordained for today
4/2/2005

Now, at last, Pope John Paul can take his curtain call! Let us actors not forget that he was once an actor. And a playwrite. And continued as a poet. He remembered, and wrote the following when he was a parish priest, not far into his chosen career.

Actor

So many grew round me, through me,
from my self, as it were.
I became a channel, unleashing a force
called man.
Did not the others crowding in, distort
the man that I am?
Being each of them, always imperfect,
myself to myself too near,
he who survives in me, can he ever
look at himself without fear?

But not for him, the life of an actor, "melted into thin air, leaving not a rack behind."

Shakespeare's Cleopatra fantasized her hero in this way:

"His legs bestrid the ocean.....In his livery walk'd crowns and crownets; realms and islands were as plates dropp'd from his pocket. Think you there might be such a man?"

There is and now was, and he wasn't a dream.

And now, may his "life be rounded with a sleep. . . "

HE'S NOT DEAD YET!
4/1/2005

There they were all night long, CNN, Fox News, NBC, CBS, ABC, giving him his obituary. His sense of humor is still with him. He cheated the media! Check the date!

I love this man. I do not share his religion, but I do share his philosophy, as I hope my site illustrates throughout.

And I find it interesting that his teachings illustrate over and over again that it is love that makes the world go round, and not violence in any form, nor revenge, nor the law. And as though to prove this thesis, the terrorists of that other religion, with a perfect bombing target in Rome, have done nothing to interfere with his example (touch wood, it's not over yet, I know). We should remember how he treated the terrorist who tried to kill him in 1981. He visited him in prison, and forgave him, and afterwards befriended and took care of the would-be assassin's family. Mehmet Ali Agca is now a changed man.

He lived an extraordinary life, his character sparked no doubt by the early deaths of his mother and role model father, and his brother and sister. He had intimate knowledge of what it was to be poor and rich, and drawing on his own early life experience, including confrontation with Nazi terror, was able to work every side of the street, and every level of society. And remember, he was once an actor, and we actors do that too, especially celebrities, we are able to walk freely in society at every level. It's what we do with that ability that matters. (Celebrity websites for the glorification of their own careers? Is that all?)

I do not believe that John Paul should be elevated to sainthood in our time. That would put his example out of reach for all of us. It took Joan over five hundred years to inspire the modern woman with her sainthood - a slight case of overdoing it - but sainthood now would remove his influence in today's world politics. We need to continue the example of the real man if he is to be an effective icon.

Blood is thinner than water

She died this morning, a metaphor for the ages. So the media's hot story is concluded (maybe!)

Her blood family was excluded from her deathbed at the last few minutes so her "husband" could be with her. At least his behavior is consistent. And his live-in girlfriend cried when he called to tell her, according to her brother. I wonder why.

My concluding thoughts on this subject can best be expressed by telling you how this would have been handled in England, from the very beginning.

Upon a family member appearing to be brain dead, one would consult with one's family doctor, who would no doubt suggest a second opinion. Upon confirmation, the doctor would ask what the family wanted him to do next. If the family did not wish to keep the patient alive, a 99.9% chance, they would ask the doctor to do whatever he felt was appropriate. The doctor would administer morphine "just in case she was in pain". He would overdo the dose. The patient would pass on. Not a word would be spoken of this, certainly not a wink wink, not even, and especially, between the doctor and the family.

If the husband had not already handed his young vegetable wife back to her receptive blood family with great relief to be rid of the responsibility, and was stupid enough to go to court after several years had passed seeking to have the court order the withholding of food and water to end her life, which he would claim she had once said to him, the judge (not a trained lawyer in England, just a trained judge) would throw him out of court, and perhaps even angrily sanction the lawyer, who cannot cite any Constitutional rights, as the Brits were smart enough not to write one. End of a very private story, wouldn't get a mention in the papers.

My footnote here is that President George Bush leaps to the head of the class. He tried to do the right thing, with tied hands. But he did set the right tone after the news of her death came out, when he said "The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be in favor of life."

He also said, of Terri's relatives, "I appreciate the example of grace and dignity they have displayed at a difficult time. I urge all those who honor Terri Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life where all Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially those who live at the mercy of others."

By contrast, the high-profile "intervention" from Washington drew criticism from the public, a majority of which was shown in media taken polls to think it was inappropriate. I thought that Congress made the laws, even last minute ones, the President signed them, and the judiciary was supposed to uphold them. Silly me.

Thanks to the media generally, Americans these days seem to want to be governed under the same rules used on the TV game show Family Feud. "And the top answer given by the majority of 100 randomly chosen pollsters was . . . Cheese!"

STOP PRESS - GOODBYE TERRI
March 30, 2005

Terri really is at the end now, turned away for the last time.

So the United States Government, as representatives of all of us, having alienated much of the rest of the civilized world politically, feels it is O.K. to alienate all of the rest of the entire world religiously. And, unbelievably, it means well!

The Pope is nearing his end too, and in a few days will be on a feeding tube permanently. Will our government advocate that now his life is shutting down, we should educate him on the subject, have him change his living will from I want to live to I want to die, and have his guardians remove it because we know best? Nudge nudge?

This is a sad day, it creates a legal precedent, actions speak louder than words, and there will be repercussions from the fringe, wait and see.

TERRI'S FORGOTTEN DIVORCE
March 30, 2005

Oh Terri Schiavo, why didn't you get a divorce from Family Court (real quick and easy my wife found) and become Terri Schindler a long time ago? It could have been so simple. Was your attorney brain dead? I don't think so.

There's a joke describing the workings of a lawyer's brain, and it goes like this:
Q. What's the difference between a good lawyer and a bad lawyer?
A. A bad lawyer can let a case drag out for several years. A good lawyer can make it last even longer.

Attorneys above all know that once a ruling has been made and affirmed by a higher court, then it becomes Holy Writ, and etched in stone. "Just following (Court) Orders", is all you hear for ever after, almost with the German accent intact, and logic is out the window.

Shakespeare met this situation exactly in Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be speech.

"The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin?]

[contumely = insults; quietus = death; bodkin = a stiletto]

Update Easter Weekend
March 25, 2005

Message for the Schindlers-Be Comforted

No, not comforted by George Felos, the husband's attorney, who is now the messenger bringing on-camera news to us, the public, of Terri's physical appearance with his reports of how beautiful she looks as she nears death, starving from thirst and hunger.

(We are certainly teaching the third world what it is to be a civilized nation with a respect for life. Now they must think we are playing by their rules.)

I'm not religious. I was born and baptized into the Church of England, but while I believe in creation, I don't think we yet know how this came to be (probably we are inventions of another intelligence from another place which I guess makes me an agnostic, although I'm aware that a Catholic would say that is a proof of God's existence) - but no matter, for my purposes here.

As you should know by now, I am ever the observer and the inquirer, and now the watchdog, and the point of this post is that it cannot be ignored that today is Good Friday, and today is the day that Terri is headed for her tomb.

I searched the web under the search words "Story of Easter", and immediately came up with a site telling the Easter story, and there I just read the following:

"Some of the Jewish leaders hated Jesus because He condemned their sins. They did not want to believe the truth He preached, as He urged them to repent and turn back to God. They became jealous of the great crowds that followed Him and believed in Him, and finally decided to get rid of Him by having Him killed.

"Since the Jews did not have the right to have a man killed without the approval of the Roman governor, they had to take Jesus to Pilate. At the trial they had no evidence of wrong-doing by Jesus, but put enough pressure on Pilate that he finally agreed to have the soldiers kill Jesus by crucifying Him."

WOW!! Is this coincidence or what? That's the historically accurate story from 2000 years ago! And should we read anything into this?

Can we recast the characters?

Well, Terri is obviously Jesus, the defendant at trial, and the Romans, the most powerful political force in the world - headed into decline one might add - is obviously the United States. Then who is the Governor? Why, George W. of course. And Pilate? Florida Circuit Judge George Greer, having his 15 minutes of fame.

Then we have the Jews, well that's easy, them's the lawyers. We might add that her unfaithful husband Michael Schiavo will be well cast as Judas Iscariot.

Jesus was crucified, a slow form of death which involved the withholding of food and water. And the parallel is clear.

The doctors at that time didn't believe in miracles - until a few days later - just as today doctors in their thousands are unable to explain how it is that there are hundreds of recorded cases where apparently dead people have suddenly come alive, even in their coffins about to be buried, and when asked, these same two tongued physicians will vaguely point out from their lofty height "Modern medicine cannot explain it, we must put it down to a miracle."

Before you think I am not being deadly serious about this, I wish to say that given that Terri's parents are church-going Catholics, they should whole-heartedly believe in the significance of the act that bears down upon Terri their daughter on this day, Good Friday, causing her imminent demise. Her death may well be a watershed event that will be long remembered, and she will be revered by a huge section of the world community forever, and there will be consequences, the nature of which we cannot know at this time.

As for all of the participants in her death, they will be remembered too, and they will pay for it in ways that are not yet apparent, but the Piper will be paid.

For one, Bush will wonder why he didn't make an Executive Order to have Terri turned over to her parents immediately. Of course such a forceful act would have been inevitably challenged in the courts s-l-o-w-l-y (no emergency), but as a strategy time would have been gained, time for the whole problem to most probably go away.

This case has become a touchstone for the morally bankrupt American legal system, and provides an example revealing why it is time for the United States written Constitution to be scrapped. It just doesn't work! Great Britain was smart enough to keep theirs always not written, thus giving the government at all times the authority to do the fast "right thing", instead of the time-consuming, expensive, and self-defeating "legal thing". But more on that another time.

Meanwhile, Bob and Mary Schindler, may your God be with you in this hour of your need, and may you find solace and closure by your faith, which all people of good will can respect.

And may Terri rest in peace. She did not know that she had an earth-shaking purpose in her life. Take comfort in that.

And try repeating Christ's penultimate words as a mantra, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do".

Update
March 21, 2005

The Pope, through the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, did indeed get into the act today.

It said very reasonably that no person can claim the right to decide whether a human being lives or dies. It asks who, and under what criterea, in the name of God and humanity, can claim the right to bestow the privilege of life?

"Who can decide to pull the plug as if we were talking about a broken or out of order household appliance?"

These are strong and meaningful words, no matter one's religion or lack of it.

What the courts should narrowly decide, and only decide, is designating this case a question belonging to the Church, and should be left alone on the basis of the separation of Church and State.

This is not a story that should be fomented for the benefit of talk show hosts and their media agendas.

However, this is America, and legal strategy rules, so let's talk about the paucity of the Schindler's legal strategy.

My own experience says that the Schindler's attorney should get this case removed to where it truly belongs, into Family Court (new rules, new moral standards!).

They could hire a different lawyer to represent her interests, to plead for her to get divorced from her husband immediately on the grounds that he committed adultery (2 kids by another woman during their marriage) and is slowly killing her. And then this lawyer could plead in Family Court that she wishes for her father to become her legal guardian for all purposes. (My friend Idelle Clarke, seeing her daughter reach the age of eighteen, just saw the Family Court grant conservatorship to the girl's father on his pleading, thus we will never know whether he sexually abused the girl, because he still won't allow her to speak for herself, and all this with the court's approval).

Then, her father steps in and takes over as conservator, and presto! Problem solved, and we can all go away and mind our own business.

Yes, the law is sometimes an ASS, and you have to deal with it on its terms.

Terri Schiavo
March 20, 2005

Surely this is one of those easy problems, is it not?

As usual, the media is not asking the right questions, and so manipulates the answers, and their answers smell of money and circulation and ratings.

We are told that it is her husband and his lawyer who want her to really die, by removing the feeding tube (and why, one wonders, is it necessary to remove it - just stop feeding through it one would have thought.)

- Her husband Michael Schiavo, is he still her husband? Why?

- Doesn't he want to get remarried, and why hasn't he divorced her, she's not much use as a wife? Grounds are no problem any more.

- Does he have a financial interest in ending her life (life insurance, community funds, other)? And should we believe the answers, coming as they do through a lawyer?

- Her parents, and her brother and sister, want to keep her "alive".

- The U.S. Constitution guarantees "Life, Liberty . . . " etc. (There is no "or" between those terms.)

- The legal guys backed by the doctors seem to think that she is not alive in the usual sense, so it's o.k. to kill her by withholding water and food. So if somebody were to walk into her bedroom and shoot her, would that be murder? Would he go to jail? The absurdity of the court's action stands exposed.

- Shouldn't the legal system of the United States make its first priority to be that its citizens RESPECT the law, and not hold it in CONTEMPT? To hear President Bush and his brother the Governor of Florida say that they disagree with the law, and yet are powerless to take action, is to teach us that this country's laws are skewed and incapable of charting the right course, while at the same time disabling its leaders from doing so. This makes for a dysfunctional country, and may explain why so many people take the law into their own hands, and the terrible violence that we hear taking place somewhere every single day, and the corruption in the courts themselves bending to illegal pressure.

- This particular situation belongs anyway, not in a legal forum, nor in a political forum, but in a SPIRITUAL forum. (Yes, priests, that is their function, actually.) At last, a question dealing with the after-life, a subject we all admit to knowing very little about, even though we are all headed that way.

- If anybody could and should be giving input and guidance into this highly personal and private problem, it is any high priest of any established religion. Try a petition to the Pope, except there are those today who would like food and water withheld from him, they say he is devoid of proper function due to illness.

- The answer is a foregone conclusion. If the Schindler family is willing and able to take care of this soul, then that is where she should be, in their loving arms, surrounded by their love, to be dealt with as they wish. This list does not include the husband, nor the government, nor the lawcourts, nor me, nor you. It's Schindler's list!

FOR GOD'S SAKE!

I've said elsewhere that at my age (72), I have a "been there done that" approach to most of today's problems, and this one is no exception.

Back in 1989, my mother lay immobile in a nursing home at Henley-on-Thames, outside London, England. She'd had a final massive stroke, and was not responding to anything, and was medically deemed to be a vegetable, and the diagnosis prepared us for the inevitable.

My sister, who lived nearby, made the decisions, and I trusted her to do the right thing. She decided that the right thing was to instruct the nurses to withhold nutrition and water, and let nature take its course.

It so happened that my wife was finishing up her ("Getting it Right") work on a film in London at the time, and I asked her if she and my daughter Kelly would go there, and report to me by telephone in California whether there was any point in my coming over. A few years before, I had flown to London to see my father, also felled by a stroke, only to be told at Heathrow on arrival that there was no point in going to the hospital, he was gone. My sister had called and said it wasn't serious, and so I had waited for further word. When it came, it was too late. I didn't want to put myself through that again.

Lynn called me from the bedside. She said that Mother was lying immobile, and had not moved for several days, and there seemed to be no point any more, and probably I should stay where I was.

I said "Put the phone to her ear, let me speak to her." Lynn did so, and I talked softly into the phone in words that I knew would be close to her heart.

I had always been the "apple of her eye", as she used to say. Remember, she was a stage mother, and as a child star I had become the target and fruition of her life's ambition, at least that's how I came to think of it.

Lynn immediately took over. She said excitedly that there was movement in mother's face as she struggled to respond. From somewhere deep within her - perhaps her brain stem had taken over certain upper level functions - came a response, and it was an attempt to communicate with a smile.

With an overnight bag I caught the next plane over, and went straight to the hospice, armed with a video camera.

And there I caught the most moving afternoon of my life, as I witnessed mother's last hours. We talked to her of our happy times together when she visited us in California, of her grandchildren, our memories of the past, her Danish family before she emigrated to England, our plans for our future, and now her face looked relaxed and peaceful.

But it became time for us all to leave for the airport, mandated by contractual obligations back home, and I have on camera the record of mother's huge physical effort to raise her hand in a final wave and a silent smile. And we had to abandon her to her fate, perhaps a week or two, we reasoned.

But mother had the last laugh. On arrival home, I called the hospice to be told that she had just died. I am sure she willed herself to her final sleep.

For a description of the scene at her funeral, look up the heading "Alienation - the good sort" under the topic A Space for Reflection, at the left.

So Stan Katz, Ph.D, Family Court child evaluator for the Los Angeles Superior Court, is giving evidence today for the prosecution.

Well, I have personal experience of Dr. Katz in my case, Nicolette Hannah vs. John Clark, and also my friend Idelle Clarke has personal experience of him in her case Idelle Clarke vs. Ovando Cowles.

By court order, Dr. Katz evaluated me, Nicolette, and Zachary.

It is due to his report on me that I don't see Zachary any more, and more important for his life, he doesn't see me - he's been hidden away on the advice of her attorney, which is illegal. In his report, Katz said I was eccentric. I took baths with the little boy (yeah, he was 3, and we played boats in my Savoy Hotel size tub). I also took him and all my family to Elysium, the family oriented nudist retreat in Topanga where I was a member. We all loved the place. He said I needed many hours of psychotherapy. I'm English. We call it normal. Americans call it sick and in need of expensive psychotherapy from people like himself.

Now, let's talk about the rules of his engagement, as set by the California legislature and the Courts themselves, and ignored by him.

According to the rules, when making his report, Katz should have given me a copy of what Nicolette was saying about me for my comments, just as I gave Nicolette a copy of what I said about her for her comments. But he failed to do this, even on my demand. And he filed his report with the court. Nicolette, by now involved with her plumber friend who has now taken over my fatherly duties to Zachary, obviously loaded her report against me. And Katz incorporated her remarks in his report to the court, which I believe was hugely biased.

So I subpoenaed him to show up in court as a percipient witness, to verify to the court quite simply that he had not given me a copy of what Nicolette was saying about me, and that the court should disregard the report. Katz called and said he would only appear as an "expert witness", and would need to be paid, I think it was $2,500, by me. I said I needed him for one question to be answered, he said didn't matter, I said I would have him arrested if he didn't come to court. Well, he didn't show up, and Family Court Judge Arnold Gold could care less.

Before this, when I had sat in Katz's Beverly Hills office with young Zachary, his mother outside the door, Zachary cried and trembled, and reached out to me. I tried to hug him. Katz said "Get away from the child, you may not touch him."

In Idelle Clarke's case, the court ruled that her going public with the story that her husband had sexually molested their daughter was more of a negative influence on the welfare of their daughter, than the possibility (twice verified by Children's Services) that he had in fact done so.

She had gone public when the court wouldn't do the right thing, in an attempt to harness public opinion.

The result was that Idelle has been kept from her daughter for the last ten years, on pain of arrest if she comes within 100 yards. Networking with others receiving similar treatment at the court's hands, she researched Katz's bottom line profit driven business setup, and has much to say about this in her opinion of him, as do I.

Dr. Stan J. Katz has a history of his ties to showbusiness dating back to 1984, when he was technical advisor to the TV show "Something About Amelia" and now appears on the highly successful "Starting Over" TV series, where he acts as himself. Here is part of what NBC's bio says about him:

"Bringing more than 25 years of clinical expertise to STARTING OVER, Dr. Stan J. Katz is also the only man on a show created for and populated by women. He brings a healthy, male emotional perspective to the house. With his extensive clinical background, Dr. Katz is ideally suited to speak to the women of STARTING OVER on a level that illuminates the causes of their past behavior, even as the life coaches encourage them to make changes to their present. - - - - - - Over the years, Dr. Katz has been called on by a number of national television and radio programs to serve as an advisor on various psychological issues and topics. He was the Technical Advisor for, among others, the Emmy� Award-winning ABC Theater presentation, "Something About Amelia" which started Ted Danson and Glenn Close, and was [involved with] the network television's first dramatic film on the subject of incest. He also served as Advisor on the film 'Skeezer,' NBC's Peabody Award-winning film on emotionally disturbed children, "Don't Hit Me Mom" an ABC After School Special, and HBO's Emmy-winning "The Indictment: The McMartin Case." "

In my opinion, Dr. Katz is in this Michael Jackson case purely for personal gain, and to benefit his business and his show-business career. His obvious clinical agenda and findings reveals his bias towards what Michael Jackson stands for. In my opinion, Katz created and promoted the Jackson case from the beginning for his own ends.

I believe that the publicity surrounding the media circus of this trial is profoundly damaging to the future welfare and mental health of all of the children Jackson has helped and, yes, has simply been with. But Katz speaks out of both sides of his mouth, and in my opinion, his analysis of Jackson should be disregarded.

Ph.D, indeed. Piled high and Deep

Miyuki Designs

My wife, Miyuki, is from Niigata, in a Northern prefecture which was recently struck by an earthquake. Her home was badly damaged, and she sends money to her family in the best of Japanese traditions.

She recently decided to spread her wings as a designer, and what she does is to break up old kimonos, and turn them into enchanting examples of the Japanese culture for the American market.

I would like her to get recognition, and also make some money. And she promises to contribute to this website.

So, if you people out there have an interest in buying something for a gift, or perhaps for yourself, please log on to her site at

Miyuki Designs

It is in the process of being populated by pictures of her creations.

So Robert Blake was today found not guilty.

One witness said Blake offered him $10,000 to "pop" his wife. Another testified that Blake proposed several ways to kill her, testifying that one possible location for the crime could be near Vitello's, Blake's favorite Italian restaurant in the Valley. He told jurors that when he told Blake he wanted no part of the scheme, the actor responded: "Well, if you're not going to do it, then I sure as hell am." Whoever did do it, well, it was near Vitello's.

Blake himself reported that he'd spent 10 million dollars on his defense with 3 sets of attorneys, over 5 years.

Deputy District Attorney Shellie Samuels, a career prosecutor who has won 48 of 49 murder cases before this one, said she was "blown away" by the verdict. "I can't believe a jury would not convict on this," she said. She was wondering what effect Blake's celebrity had on the case.

What's to wonder?

We had O.J. and now we have this, and soon there'll be Jackson. There's a lesson to be learned here, still alive and well. Money plus celebrity delivers!

But there is an upside for the victims. Think on this.

If you are unfortunate enough to be touched - read popped - by a celebrity, at least you'll have your eternity's worth of fame.

Just make sure to make a note of it on your tombstone.

Ever wonder how much money gets to be contributed to politicians by individuals considered to be celebrities? And how much they contributed, and to whom, and their party affiliation, over the past 25 years?

You'll find hundreds of names here, click on some, many will surprise you. The way I was surprised to see Lynn gave $2,000 to the Kerry outfit last year. And I tried to teach her not to be a loser!

celeb contributions

We are told that under French criminal law, a court of inquiry has been set up which may find that Continental will be held responsible for the crash of the beautiful Concorde, for the reason that a Continental DC10 shed a strip of titanium on to the runway at Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris prior to Concorde's takeoff roll, which exploded a tire.

This hearing may boomerang on the French.

Airlines expect to find a clear runway at all times, and the control tower folk are expected to inspect the runway with a pair of binoculars before all takeoffs. They will ultimately be held responsible, and should be. Millions of dollars are involved.

It is sad that this incident led directly to the demise of the French and British fleets, and to the marque itself, and to the end of an unforgettable flying experience.

It's actually quite depressing to discover that the most insightfully relevant political and social commentary on today's society is to be found watching HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, and Comedy Central's South Park with Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

To appreciate that fact, one has to put one's prejudices on hold, open up one's mind, allow one's sensibilities to be assaulted, and dare to watch. It is very refreshing to find numerous gems of sanity there, and you will also mine many laughs between the multiple wincing shudders of the latter offering.

Of course, the mass public, not having cable, will never know about these shows, as it is parentally protected by the FCC. Those unfortunate people will never know how unlucky they are. Well, at least they have The Simpsons, which compares only palely, and is deemed to be harmless.

Meanwhile, here's a Maher quote, which resonated with me!

"Men understand even less about women than dogs do about the bond market".

If the latest news proves to be true, then here we have another story of a pro se seeking revenge.

This is a breaking story of the tragic murder of a Federal Judge's husband and mother, in her home, by a man who litigated before judges, and according to notes he left, believed himself to have received rulings that left him with no place to go. He was stopped by police in Wisconsin, and shot himself as he had planned.

We have to ask ourselves whether this had to happen.

These people do not start out as lost causes. And if that is a true statement, where is the effort to save them before it's too late?

Of course there are mentally "unbalanced" people out there.

But one wonders what the pressures were that they encountered, leaving them with nothing to live for, that may have caused them to "cross the line", and become unbalanced.

We are all responsible in some way.

J. B. Priestley wrote a play on this very theme, "An Inspector Calls".

So Chairman Lew Platt, having brought in Harry Stonecipher as his CEO just over a year ago, is now pushing him out on the basis that he has broken some sort of Boeing moral code. Interesting, there was a French farce of a movie with links to that code, starring Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, "Boeing, Boeing" (1965), banging doors and all.

Stonecipher, 68, a grandfather, was declared out of order for pursuing a relationship with a female executive while at the same time being married, and successfully running his company. What a guy! Nevertheless, he was asked to resign and forfeit some retirement benefits.

What some people need to know is that a healthy affair 1. can save what may have been a stagnating marriage (and it cuts both ways of course, goose/gander recipe) and 2. can contribute to saving a company going through hard times, because it might be said that it enables rather than hurts good performance in the work place.

President Clinton recognized the synergy, and could speak well on this topic. He knew how to start his day, and it wasn't just with a cup of coffee.

UPDATE March 13: Oh dear, his wife, Joan, 68, just filed for divorce, a month short of their 50th wedding anniversary, which means they got married at 18. Was that due to the media poking fun? Was all this entirely necessary? We want to know more. We want to see a Happy Ending. This is America.

Bright Line

This term, bright line, is coming more and more into use, but what does it mean?

It means that where society cannot find an exact point of demarcation in an evolving human activity, it will make one up.

For example, when does life begin? Well, that starts during pregnancy, at the beginning of the third trimester.

Now the Supreme Court has just decided that youths may not be executed. But what is a youth? A youth is a person under the age of eighteen.

How about nature's call, wanting to have sex? Again, eighteen.

And fighting in a war to the death? Again, eighteen.

You get the idea.

What this says is that "bright lines" are inventions for the convenience of man, admissions that the law actually is at a loss to know the answers.

It is time for the truth to be known, that each person after birth is an individual with a right to be considered on his or her own worth and readiness, or lack thereof.

Fossett's Faulty Fuel Foiling Flight?

Funny. 2,600 pounds short? Whenever I had my plane refueled, they never charged me by the reading off my fuel gage, but rather from the tanker's fuel gage. We're all holding our breath hoping Fossett will make this a successful trip around the world solo on a tank of gas. But if he fails due to lack of gas, then someone wasn't applying due diligence. Shame on all of them. Now I'm wondering, if this plane was re-fueled in the air, would it count for record purposes? Perhaps this was just an invention to hype the event.

UPDATE: March 3. The little plane could, did, and landed safely. Well done everybody, and it was nice to see the backing of Brit Richard Branson. He certainly puts his money where his heart is, and I only wish he'd been given a Concorde to play with.

The FCC Hays Office

"Private Ryan" is ruled by the FCC to be "not obscene", and clears their standards.

Will Hays is back! Although, come to think of it, the Hays office production code of 1930 was trying to cut back on violence. Perhaps we are actually back to the Catholic Legion of Decency period starting in 1934, which concerned itself more with smut.

And now, with the threat of fines, broadcast companies will want to be running borderline films past the faceless FCC before showing them.

Why not be done with it? Let the FCC create a unit to censor films, and identify the censors.

Besides, with a ruling that "This film would get a fine if shown on a station using the public airwaves", the film would be sure to get a following on a cable station, or on video, and could proudly boast that it had failed the FCC standards.

Same old same old.

Gonzo

Dictionary meaning, according to Merriam-Webster's Unabridged: "of or relating to a style of journalism that is a mixture of fact and fiction and is held to be produced under the effect of drugs."

We read of yesterday's death of penman Hunter S. Thompson, by his own hand by gunshot, who admitted that he was a happy practitioner of the art (gonzo, not suicide).

Unfortunately, much of what we read these days, laced as it is with efforts to bring humor into our lives, especially in blogs on the internet, could be placed in that category, and, sensing it, readers do not take in much of what they read.

So this writer takes this opportunity to state here and now that what you find here is serious, and should not be taken in as gonzo, although the legal content might lead one to that conclusion.

Multi-Nation Think Tanks Needed Now, Urgent

The news that North Korea is boldly stating that it has nuclear weaponry, and that Iran has probably similar plans, is terrifying. Could be just their toe in the water, could be not.

History teaches us that world-shaking events seldom happen in one huge leap, but rather in slow increments, a dynamic we are all too familiar with at the personal level of litigant revelations in civil and criminal courts.

Faced with the idea that so-called "third world" countries (a term here used for convenience only) may well either develop their own nuclear arsenals, or become part of a bloc where such knowledge is shared and the weapons moved around, could be argued by them as a means to keep borders where they are now. In other words, that such weapons would only be used as a means of defense, but not as a means of aggression.

The problem with that thought, which pacifists may say could lead to world peace, is what happens when a new and charismatic third world unifying leader appears, and can wield the weapons as terrifying threats to mankind itself to achieve ends of global domination? The terrorist movement so far can be seen as mere mind conditioning skirmishes for a battle to come.

Nobody should doubt that Germany and Japan would have used such weapons if they'd got there first, in the closing stages of WWII. Nobody should doubt that we wouldn't have used them against the Soviet Union if they hadn't withdrawn their missiles from Cuba.

But this country should wait for the threats to become more real, and then for the activation of pre-arranged and whole-hearted unity under the United Nations.

Something has to happen, an event, to bring about a major attempt to disarm the "third world". Prince Charles marrying Camilla Parker Bowles is not it.

The U.S.A and the U.K. should not attempt to go it alone with only symbolic assistance, and have the rest of the world criticize these efforts while saving their own treasuries. That is the modus operandi of clever politicians, as we have seen so far.

We must wait for proof from solid evidence, and then be ready to move swiftly in unison.

Scott Peterson

Well, he did some good.

He laid the foundation for stories to be written about his case.

He enabled his lover Amber, and her attorney Gloria Allred to make a bundle with a book.

And now I see his half-sister too has a book at her publishers, about why he's guilty.

One wonders if these books were contingent upon a conviction, and whether somewhere there isn't a lurking conflict of interest.

And one wonders too, who, and how many, are waiting in the wings in Michael Jackson's case?

And I wonder to what extent justice is profit driven. Yes, even involving the lawyers.

ABA, where are you?

Update 3/22/05:

According to (self-styled) media expert and author Michael Levine's newspage, "Gloria Allred is such a full-service lawyer that she even took care of her client Amber Frey's baby on a flight back to Los Angeles on Saturday. The feminist firebrand was spotted in the first-class cabin, while Frey -- the ex-girlfriend of wife-killer Scott Peterson -- flew coach. But witnesses say Allred kindly sent back some of her fancy first-class food and champagne to her client."

Wow, that was some book deal! But did Amber have a different attorney go over her book contract? How coach?

President Bush and Lawsuits

President Bush is to be commended in his efforts to bring down the number of frivolous lawsuits filed in this country, and to limit the fees paid to lawyers. So far he seems to limit himself to so-called "class action" law-suits, and makes comments about the frequency of them, and the small pay-offs to the parties who bring the suits, and the large fees paid to attorneys who represent the litigants.

I hope he will go further in his quest to stamp out this proliferation, and perhaps thereby dampen the enthusiasm of so many of our youth into careers connected with courtroom tactics.

Thus far, the attraction would seem to be for the large amounts of money that can be earned in such paths to success.

Other countries seem to get along very well in their lower ratio of lawyers to population, and therefore lawsuits. Perhaps they realize that legal services do not contribute to the wealth of a nation. They are not a capital resource, although they certainly are a renewable resource.

State of the Union speech, rated

That speech was a masterful display of how to play an audience, and on that basis was successful.

He had his audience in his lap, and played them to the hilt, and I have no problem with that.

He spoke of dreams, how we all have them, obviously him included. And of course we all wish ourselves the best of luck.

But now it's down to the business of the day, the week, the month, the year, and those wretched obstacles to the fruition of our dreams.

As a discouraging footnote, however, let it be noted that the overnight ratings on ALL of the combined networks carrying the two hour speech were BELOW the ratings for the frivolous one hour of "American Idol" on one network.

It would be nice to think that most average people actually care about how this country is being run, who's in power, and whether they are doing their jobs.

It's supposed to be about democracy and freedom. Freedom to think about something else?

Everybody is urged to get around to viewing it or reading it, or the result will be unanimous. We will all get what we deserve.

Bird-Brains

I like this story, reported today by Reuters, because it bears out what my wife and I have observed in our budding hobby of breeding canaries.

We already knew that birds are not bird-brained, meaning stupid, and now scientists are finding that this is indeed true.

One hundred years ago, it was established by science that a bird's brain is mostly basal ganglia, which controls primitive brain function and behavioral instinct.

Now scientists are saying that birds' brains more closely resemble those of humans, and have evolved cognitive abilities far more complex than in many mammals.

Studies and tests have shown that birds, according to their grouping, can

Use tools, use songs, and imitate human language to communicate.

They can also count, and they can lie, too - a pigeon can be taught to do something that will cause another pigeon to get food for a reward (are these accountant and lawyer birds?).

This study, we are told, will give us more insight into the functioning of the human brain, and there is interest in using birds as models for learning and development, and travel, and social behavior.

"A lot went into trying to support the idea of a human's place in the evolutionary scheme of animals. They didn't follow Darwin's view that evolution was a tree," one scientist said.

"They tried to link it to religion -- a linear system where God created one creature, not good enough, then created another creature, not good enough, and then created humans -- perfect," he added.

"It was a beautiful story but it wasn't true."

I think most of us knew this already.

Vote over in Iraq

Well, it's done, and the result we'll see.

But as an extension to the last paragraph in the previous post, it would fit well if the "bad" as well as the "good" citizens of Iraq were to all have their fore fingers stained blue. By executive order.

Voters and voting in Iraq

The would-be voters may not come out, for reasons of intimidation and fear from the guerrilla/terrorists who may number in the tens of thousands, we are told.

The coalition should understand the real dilemma of the voters, and not be misled by the large turnout of the non-resident voters, who do not face the same threats.

The answer may be found in the subpoena system of bringing people to court. How many citizens in the West have been faced with the problem of appearing in court to give evidence. Does one come voluntarily? No. If it's your friend or neighbor on trial, what you say to the court is "Give me a subpoena, and I'll come, force me. I need to show that I had no choice. I still have to live with my neighbor."

The people running this election, and the military, should consider rounding up the ordinary citizens of Iraq, and transport them to voting booths behind a secure place, and then let them decide what to do.

It needs to be seen that they had no choice, and the citizens of Iraq will be forced to go. Whether they vote or not is up to them, but the important thing is that it will be their secret. They can never be identified.

There is even an example of a variation of this strategy being effective.

In occupied Europe early in the Second World War, there was a Nazi order that all jews should wear yellow armbands for purposes of quick identification. Of course, that made it easy to round them up, and send them off to the extermination camps.

Legend has it that King Christian X of Denmark responded by riding through the streets of Copenhagen on horseback wearing the dreaded yellow band, and was followed by large numbers of Danes also wearing the band. And thus the Nazi purpose was frustrated.

Years ago, at the Army Pictorial Center in Queens, New York, an actor would go in for a day's pay and be a soldier. He'd go first to wardrobe, where a gruff army type would ask "U.S or AGGRESSOR?" before thrusting the appropriate uniform across the counter. Being English, I asked what the difference was, and he told me that I must be crazy, the U.S was always the defender, and the aggressor was always the other side.

That memory got me to thinking about what is happening now.

A classic war of aggression always ends satisfyingly with a winner and a loser. The best example of what happens then is World War II.

The winners (us as in U.S.) were generous because we could afford to be, and the loser aggressors, Germany, Japan and Italy, abandoned their reasons for fighting, accepting that a new and challenging reinvention was an option.

What did they do in defeat? As one, they reconstituted their political philosophy completely, and looked forward, and not backward. Nor did they stew in the present. (Unlike WWI which ended in armistice, not unconditional surrender. Then, Germany was treated unjustly by the Western powers that behaved as though they had won, and no one will argue that that myopic event did not begin the next war just 21 years later.)

All-out war, then, can be seen as a healthy tool for change. It is no longer available and the irony is inescapable.

The winners invented "Weapons of Mass Destruction".

This means that any country, big or small, IF in the possession of such weapons, can threaten anyone else, and as we now see, can and will forfeit their lives in their pursuit of what they perceive as the attainable.

Iraq is what we focus on now. Neglecting to push for decisive victory against aggression a decade ago, a guerilla style resistance has sprung up, and the guerillas, unmindful of their own lives, won't be stamped out. They reappear, like unwanted ants at a miserable picnic.

And now, we "victors" are about to supervise polls that will bring about a new way of life for them. And the U.S. is about to raise another 80 billion dollars to make sure the rabbit can be produced from the hat.

Not helping this process is the fact that we need to be sure that the new government gets in with the votes of a huge majority of the Iraqi population. But will they show up? Don't hold your breath. At these polls, the guerillas will be watching, photographing, remembering, and. . . . waiting.

Regardless of the outcome, the Western coalition powers can't stay forever, and will have to withdraw by and by, and the country will be left to its own devices, and it doesn't take much imagination to see that it will go back to its old ways governed by its culture.

The answer to these questions, fundamental for the future of mankind's very existence, is yet to be found. Shear power no longer means very much, and time takes its toll, and the balance of power can shift.

The durable answer probably will not be found in this generation, and possibly not even the next. Eventually, it will be found outside long memories, within the idea of world homogenation and world federalism, and an event in the shape of global response to a common threat, or joint effort towards a common goal. Inner and outer space comes to mind.

Meanwhile, we need to try and survive each earth-bound crisis as it arises, through improved surveillance technology and effective shared police action.

I personally am glad I am not one of my children, nor my grand-children.

Johnny Carson 1925-2005

A shining beacon, he will be mourned by us in our showbiz world, mostly because he wore his mantle of celebrity with good taste and honor.

He was not afraid to bring on new talent, and to share his comedic throne with others, and to challenge the prevailing powers who control our industry, sucking up to no one.

And then he retired gracefully and privately, and just enjoyed life with his tennis and his boat and his wife.

He knew who he was.

The Cassini-Huygens mission to study Saturn's rings and moons was launched in 1997 and is named after two 17th-century European astronomers: Christiaan Huygens, who discovered Saturn's rings and Titan, and Jean-Dominique Cassini, who discovered the planet's other four major moons.

Please, make a law to say that no way can objects in near space be named for the man or woman of the hour, or even the century.

How about a gap of a century or three?

Inauguration Day

Surely, a time for reflection for us all. A time to look at the present in the context of the past. A moment for history, placed on the record.

But right now, a time to examine the speech of President Bush which I just watched, and see if it addresses the global questions on people's minds.

The test of a good Presidential speech at defining moments such as this, is a speech that few can argue with, shows a quality of leadership, and offends as little as possible. But a great speech will go further. It will echo for all time, in memorable, inspiring, all-embracing terms. Lincoln did it, Kennedy did it, and Churchill did it too.

How did this one match up? My opinion, of course.

2 main questions were raised before the world, and the whole world was watching knowing that it is deeply effected by the will of this president.

First, as a given, it claimed that Freedom = Democracy, and I don't think that is true. A huge case can be made that if a society has a leader it thinks is forceful, and effective, and has the interests of its subjects at heart, then it will feel it should be left alone, and its patriots will fight to the death to preserve its independence.

Oh sure, that fits the description of a dictator such as Castro, and while there are great dangers in that political philosophy, it can be left alone, and any argument against it will be ignored by the people who believe they are benefitting from it.

However, conditioning his statement, he did say ". . .the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands." Which, if you think about it, is loaded.

Here's the other issue:

I felt it was just plain stupid, or careless maybe, to make the proclamation that America exists under one God, defined to be the Christian God.

"From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this Earth has rights and dignity and matchless value because they bear the image of the Maker of Heaven and Earth." (O.K, my cap initials, but indistinguishable in orations.)

That kind of comment will be offensive to every thinking non-Christian in the world, and they outnumber Christians by a few billion.

The damage was done, even if contradicted but not dismissed later in the speech with "That edifice of character is built in families, . . . and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran and the varied faiths of our people."

And anyway, even then it was denied in the sign-off with "May God bless you, and may he watch over the United States of America." (Can we know if the "he" possessed an upper case "H"?). And then the benediction from a Christian priest, a kind of religious stamp of approval.

However, having said all that, for me as an American with Brit beginnings and many of the old country's values, and accepting that democracy works for me given the choices available today, I will take the face of Bush who wears his feelings on it, a WYSIWYG face, and not that other kind which tells you nothing.

I feel I can trust that what I see in that countenance is what is actually happening, and, kind of, go from there, knowing that democracy will eventually save us if need be and it's not too late.

Having lived through a lot of history myself on both sides of the Atlantic, maybe, just maybe, what Bush is doing is very timely, and I'm prepared to risk being in his corner.

Prince Harry's or Mel Brooks's Booboo?

Well, everybody's explained for Prince Harry. He's dumb, he's stupid, he has no taste, he is making a mockery of the seriousness of the holocaust, he's not fit to be a king, and so on and so on. And we all know he can't speak for himself.

What is conveniently left out is --

The number one hit on the West End stage today (as well as Broadway) is a musical, conceived, written, and directed by Melvin Kaminsky (aka Mel Brooks), a jew. It's called "The Producers".

Because, family-wise, Harry appears to be spoken for only by his WeightWatchers speak-for Aunt Fergie, he is obviously disadvantaged. If he could speak up, he might say:

"I saw The Producers. I was appalled at the fact that people were actually laughing at the actors sporting the feared uniform and insignia of the Nazi Party.

"And so I resolved to draw attention to this outrage. I wore the same costume at a fancy dress party, like many others today. I wanted to see the reaction. Funny, it is exactly the opposite of what Mel Brooks experienced, but it worked. I hope this will make people think. If they do reflect a little more deeply about what it is OK to make fun of, and what it is not OK to make fun of, then I will have succeeded.

"It will also draw serious attention to the upcoming 60th anniversary remembrances at Auschwitz."

For the media to suppress the link between "The Producers", and the fact that possibly thousands of British and American youngsters may have become taken with the idea that it is cool and trendy to dress up in Nazi uniforms is journalistic dishonesty, you might even go so far as to call it journalistic fraud, in my opinion.

The media has a duty to report all of the news, not just the part of the news that supports its editorial slant.

I am sure that Mel is soiling his pants at the thought that this story could get out of hand and take off to places unknowable and uncontrollable, and that it will become politically incorrect to see The Producers, and his profits will vanish. That dividing line between comedy and tragedy is once again disappearing.

And I am sure that Rabbi Marvin Hier is a fair-minded person, unlike the dozens of self-appointed plummy-voiced Brit spokespersons currently appearing on all the U.S. networks pandering to the demands of their rates and ratings divisions, who are also having a field day. Perhaps he will speak up on this subject, to good effect.

As for the overwhelmed and much intimidated young Prince Harry, c'mon, give him a break!

Dan Rather and Memogate

Millions of words have already been written providing a haze surrounding this subject. Let's try to clarify.

The argument boils down to "Should the on-camera personality (read anchor) be in charge of what we see and hear?", with the news departments and producers relegated to being mere functionaries of the anchor?

Or should it be the other way around?

The BBC and the CBC seem to still do it the old-fashioned way, the talent is paid to present the news only. In personality-driven America, we viewers are led to believe that the talent actually drives the news wagon. Rather, Couric, Lauer, Williams, Russert, Brokaw, Sawyer, Gibson, Jennings, Smith, Zahn, King, King, Dobbs, Blitzer, O'Reilly, are names that immediately come to mind.

We are told that they arrive at the studio and sift through the incoming emails, faxes, wire services, memos, and one presumes fan letters, to decide what we should be hearing and seeing before going on the air.

And if that is the case, whom do we blame when the news appears to be false or biased?

What is bias in news reporting, anyway, and where are the limits?

If the reported news is untruthful, the answer is clear, and it is not bias. It may be propaganda, though, which one assumes is ok, but only if it comes from a reliable government source, like Condaleezza Rice (but not if produced under contract with a government source.)

What about reporting only part of the news, the part you wish to release which supports the bias, and withholding the part that tends to not support it?

The air needs to be cleared on these questions. The tail should stop wagging the dog. And the FCC might be the oversight government agency which ought to get themselves involved and help provide some answers.