13-05-06 Tycoon Nochi Dankner and self-immolated Moshe Silman - two sided of the same coin - judicial corruption in Israel

Both Tycoon Nochi Dankner and self-immolated, social protest activist Moshe Silman had their fates determined by the Tel Aviv District Court.  In both cases, judges of the Court, as described by Silman 'violated the law with impunity'.  In the case of Tycoon Nochi Dankner the outcome was leaving him at the helm of his fraudulent corporate pyramid scheme with no recourse to bond holders and banking regulators.  In the case of Moshe Silman the outcome was leaving him with nothing at all...  Addressing corruption of the courts should be one of the primary objectives of the Israeli social protest movement.

  

 

Judge Hagai Brenner (Tel Aviv District Court) engaged in fraud on the court in the case of Moshe Silman. Judge Eitan Orenstein (Tel Aviv District Court) engaged in fraud on the court in the case of Nochi Dankner. Integrity of conduct of Judges Esther Hayut and Asher Grunis (Supreme Court) in a petition addressing judicial corruption remains questionable...

May 6, Occupy Tel-Aviv - papers filed in the Supreme Court yesterday, document the conduct of simulated litigation - fraud on the court - by Judge Eitan Orenstein in the IDB default case in the Tel Aviv District Court last week.  In the largest financial institution default case in the history of the State of Israel, debt holders, who are financial institutions were allowed to participate in the charade, but representatives of bond holders and the Regulator of Financial Markets in the Ministry of Treasury were excluded. In such proceedings,  no summonses were issued or executed, no attorney filed certificate of power of attorney, the case was terminated with no judgment or dispositive order, and public access to court records is unlawfully denied. At the end, tycoon Nochi Dankner was permitted to continue managing his fraudulent corporate pyramid scheme. [1]

The case of the IDB default and Judge Eitan Orenstein is the latest in a series of cases, filed with the Supreme Court in a petition, which documents unprecedented judicial corruption of the Israeli courts over the past decade.  Another notable case of simulated litigation - fraud on the court - which was filed with the Supreme Court in the same petition, is the case of self-immolated, social protest activist Moshe Silman. Silman too was subjected to a charade in the Tel Aviv District Court - by Judge Hagai Brenner. In litigation against the Social Security administration, Attorney (retired judge) Sarah Frisch, who appeared on behalf of the Social Security, and the Social Security administration refuse to answer - who was attorney of record for Social Security in the case. Magistrate Hagai Brenner denied Silman's complaint against Social Security, and Pro Tem District Judge Hagai Brenner denied Silman's appeal from Brenner's own decision.  In Silman's case as well, the Tel Aviv District Court unlawfully denies public access to court records.  [2]

In the opening lines of his last letter, Silman correctly described such conduct as denial of access to justice and violation of the law with impunity.

Together, the two cases, of Nochi Dankner and Moshe Silman, both in the Tel Aviv District Court, vividly document the central role of judicial corruption in the socio-economic changes seen in Israel over the past decade, including dramatic increase in poverty and widening economic gaps. 

The petition in the Supreme Court, details the two above cases ans others. The petition was filed with the Supreme Court on April 15, 2013, and names Minister of Justice Tzipi Livni and Director of the Courts Michael Spitzer as respondents.  The petition claims that the Ministry of Justice and the Administration of the Courts colluded over the past decade in the  implementation of fraudulent computerized record systems in the courts, which are central instruments in enabling such conduct.  [2]

The protest letters were directly addressed to Presiding Justice Asher Grunis, since for over a decade there is no lawfully appointed Chief Clerk in the Supreme Court of the State of Israel (the same is true for the Tel Aviv District Court, where there is no lawfully appointed Chief Clerk for over two years).

Beyond documenting individual cases of judicial corruption in various courts, the petition shows that starting in 2004, the Administration of the Courts was permitted by then Minister of Justice Tommy Lapid, to alter the Regulations of the Courts in an unspecified manner, as part of implementation of the new generation of computerized system in the courts, with no public notice.  Today, the Regulations of the Courts in Israel are confidential...

The petition also documents that with the implementation of the latest generation of computerized systems of the courts, the duties and obligations of the Chief Clerks, relative to integrity of courts records, was undermined. Today, falsification of of court records by judges is a widespread problem, widely reported in the cases of Judge Vardah AlSheikh and former Judge Hilah Cohen, and also noted in the latest report of the Ombudsman of the Judiciary.

By now, there is perhaps no Chief Clerk in any of the Israeli courts (including the Supreme Court), who holds a lawful appointment record.  At the same time, the Chief Clerks refuse to certify any court records, or authenticate the service of court decisions.

Whether the petition in the Supreme Court would be accorded due process, remains questionable: [3,4]

•  The Supreme Court has used its own computerized system to undermine the integrity of the records in the petition - the court refuses to register the filing of the petition opening record. 
• Supreme Court Justice Esther Hayut "released" a decision on a request that the office of the clerk of the Supreme Court refused to accept.
• After two letters to Supreme Court Presiding Justice Asher Grunis  over the past tow weeks, asking that he ensure honest registration of records in the petition, the Supreme Court continues to engage in false and deliberately misleading registration of the records.

In short, in dealing with a petition, which documents widespread judicial corruption in the Israeli courts through falsification of court records and conduct of simulated proceedings, the Supreme Court itself is resorting to the same conduct...

Conduct of the Supreme Court in the petition also demonstrates that Israeli judges (like their counterparts in the US and elsewhere) are not ready, willing, able to address their own corruption.

Reform must be imposed on the courts.  Addressing judicial corruption should be one of the primary objectives of the Israeli social protest movement.

Joseph Zernik, PhD
Human Rights Alert (NGO)
Occupy Tel Aviv Encampment
_______
* The Human Rights Alert submission was incorporated into the 2010 Periodic Report of the UN regarding Human Rights in the United States with a note: "Corruption of the courts and the legal profession in California".
* The Human Rights Alert submission was incorporated into the 2013 Periodic Report of the UN regarding Human Rights in Israel with a note: "Lack of integrity in the electronic records of the Supreme Court, the district courts and the detainees courts in Israel".
_______

LINKS:
[1] 13-05-05 Zernik v Minister of Justice and Director of the Courts (2689/13) in the Israeli Supreme Court – additional evidence of corruption in the Tel Aviv District Court – Hermatic v IDB (36681-04-13) (Hebrew and English translation)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/139550208/
[2]  13-04-15 Dr Zernik v Justice Minister Livni and Director of Administration of the Courts Spitzer (2689/13) – Petition in the  High Court of Justice of the State of Israel (Hebrew with English translation))
http://www.scribd.com/doc/136215148/
[3]  13-04-18 Zernik v Minister of Justice et al (2689/13) in the Israeli Supreme Court – letter No 1 to Presiding Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court
http://www.scribd.com/doc/136732687/
[4] 13-05-02 Zernik v Minister of Justice et al (2689/13) in the Israeli Supreme Court – Request No 2 to Presiding Justice - for honest registration, alternatively - refund of filing fees
http://www.scribd.com/doc/139556302/

13-05-05 Remember Kent State - May 4, 1970

MAY 4, 1970: REMEMBERING KENT STATE AND ITS AFTERMATH -- Worden

REMEMBERING KENT STATE AND ITS AFTERMATH

Carl F. Worden

May 4, 2013

 

 

On May 4, 1970 I was traveling all over the United States doing promotional work with Circus Vargas.  The Vietnam War was in full tilt as were the many anti-war demonstrations being held on college campuses across the nation.  The news that National Guardsmen had opened fire on demonstrators at Kent State University didn't surprise me at all -- in fact, I was predicting exactly that -- but I just didn't know when or where.  I simply knew it was going to happen because I am a student of human nature, and human nature is entirely predictable.

 

As anti-war protesters became more and more frustrated with the Nixon Administration's failure to address any of their concerns, their demonstrations became more and more violent, finally culminating in the Kent State Massacre.  The National Guard was often used in crowd control at these demonstrations, and many National Guardsmen had been injured, some severely, by demonstrators throwing chunks of concrete, bricks, rocks and bottles.  All the while as these demonstrations became more violent, the National Guard showed uncommon restraint.  That restraint ended that day at Kent State.

 

We cannot reanimate the dead and we cannot un-wound the wounded, but we can at least learn from the incident.  One thing we learned, but nobody seemed to notice, was that the anti-war demonstrations suddenly became totally non-violent unless deliberately goaded to violence in response to government and police infiltrators whose job it was to incite violence, even if they had to do it all by themselves.  Once they succeeded, it provided the excuse for the police and National Guard to use force to disperse the crowds with tear gas and batons, and once the police initiated their attacks, the demonstrators just ran for their lives.  That generally worked to control and disperse the otherwise peaceful demonstrators, but then the unintended consequences manifested themselves in the form of violent sub-cells calling themselves the Weathermen, otherwise known as the Weather Underground, who began a campaign of bombings, robberies and murders, often targeting just anyone who might be unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Had those morons known the rules of guerrilla warfare, they'd have won a great deal of support by targeting only those responsible for continuing the war -- and I'm not referring to the drafted soldiers who were literally forced to fight.  Whatever those idiots thought they were accomplishing by protesting and abusing the soldiers and their families has always been a mystery to me, because those drafted citizens were far more victimized by the Vietnam War than anyone except the Vietnamese themselves.

 

In truth, the anti-war movement was correct:.  The Vietnam War was, like the Korean War, a war never declared by Congress, and that was an obvious violation of our Constitution.  Whether it was called a police action or an intervention to prevent the spread of Communism, the Vietnam War was an illegal military action by our government, and it was also the most blatant violation of our trust by the United States Government up to that time.  The Bay of Tonkin incident was a false flag action and we all soon knew it.  We were bombarded with one government lie after another in support of the effort, and in the meantime, kids we went to high school with were arriving home boxed or disfigured, kids who were drafted into military service mostly against their will to fight what turned out to be a political war against a nation that posed no national security threats to defend against.

 

Right after the Vietnam War ended, the draft was replaced by a volunteer military because our government malcontents knew they couldn't keep fighting undeclared wars with draftees.  Now they just send our troops to fight wherever they want with a clear conscience, because after all, these new fighting men had volunteered to serve and they knew or should have known what they were getting into, right?  To this day, I cannot understand why anyone volunteers to serve in the armed forces of the Unites States.  They will use you and abuse you, and then after they've consumed you, they seldom fully keep the promises they made to get you to enlist in the first place.  If you are a complete fool, enlist in the armed forces of the United States!

 

Presently, we no longer consider Communism to be the bogeyman.  We have full trade relations with Communist China, which holds a huge amount of our debt, and the largest private employer in Communist Vietnam is Nike Shoes of Oregon.  All those kids we went to school with died and were maimed for absolutely nothing, just as all the volunteers who were killed and maimed in Iraq, which is currently embroiled in a continuing civil war we never completely defeated before our troops were withdrawn.  I have little doubt that Iraq will eventually be overtaken by another dictator just as bad or worse than Saddam Hussein ever was.

 

The Worden Rule of Guerrilla Warfare holds that it is impossible for a conventional military force to defeat a guerrilla force that is largely supported by the general population, and nothing I have witnessed since the Vietnam War and every other guerrilla war we've gotten ourselves into, places that rule into dispute.  The IRA proved the validity of that rule as well.  I will go so far as to confidently predict that if a guerrilla war breaks out between the people of the United States and the Government of the United States, the government of the United States will be defeated.  It will be bloody and horrific, but the outcome will be the end of this nation as we know it.

 

All the ingredients for a second American Revolution are in place.  Our Christian religion is under constant attack, our right to keep and bear small arms similar to those carried by police, National Guard and our military is being directly threatened by both national and state governments, our right to free speech is being dampened by political correctness, our unborn babies are being slaughtered wholesale, our nation has been invaded by illegal aliens using up our dwindling services and entitlements and the independent and free American way of life has been overtaken by creeping Socialism that is constantly infringing on our most basic civil rights.  Just recently in Sacramento, a family took their sick child to a hospital where the parents were told the child needed surgery, so they took the child to another hospital for a second opinion, only to have their child forcibly taken from them by police and Child Protective Services!  Near Boston, heavily armed police searched all homes in a large area without search warrants looking for an alleged terrorist!  The civil rights violations against private citizens are stacking up at an ever increasing rate with no end in sight, and I have to ask you this question:  When the hell are we going to stop protesting and start shooting those bastards?

 

The murdered and wounded students at Kent State were right to protest, but their brethren had also begun using more and more violence to force the government to obey their oaths.  What they got in return was overwhelming violence, whether intended or not, and they still didn't force the government to tow the constitutional line.  All they did was continue to protest peacefully after May 4, 1970, accomplishing nothing.  Our government finally ended the Vietnam War on their own terms and when they themselves had had enough, and not because so many of our citizens demanded it.  Think about that for a moment.

 

John F. Kennedy correctly stated that those who make peaceful resolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable.  The Government of the United States has stopped listening to the people, preferring the counsel of corporations, bankers and elitist socialist revolutionaries.  They maintain the general right of free speech and free expression only because it serves as a means to prevent violent revolution because so many Americans still think they can accomplish something by demonstrating, protesting and whatnot.  If our people keep writing letters, speaking out and joining groups like the NRA and the Tea Party, the government knows they aren't preparing for war because they still think peaceful resolution is possible.  It is not!

 

What I am going to tell you is this:  Don't waste another minute writing letters trying to persuade your politicians to do the right and legal thing because they are no longer listening to you.  They will answer your letters & write nice things just to bullshit you along, but they are intent upon doing what they are doing, and the Constitution be damned!  Your freedom, your civil rights and your Constitution are over.  What I'm telling you is that it is way past time to get together and shoot the bastards, and we'd better do it soon before they shoot us all down separately like they did those students at Kent State.

 

Carl F. Worden     

From: Carl Worden

13-05-05 May Day at Occupy Wall Street and beyond...

Watch these ‘Vines’ for Visuals of OWS at #MayDayNYC

A taste of OWS May Day activities in Union Square

https://vine.co/v/bQmQLMwFewV

Sandy Survivors and Occupy Sandy leading a chant

https://vine.co/v/bQm0wDV79O9

The People’s Puppets march down Broadway

https://vine.co/v/bQKptAOKiig

May Day in the News

May Day Protests: Occupy Sandy's Fight to Restore New York is Still Going Strong
Occupy Wall Street, Immigration Rights Activists Carry Messages To City Hall

May Day Protests Hit Greece, Spain, Turkey, Bangladesh And Tokyo

13-05-05 London: Austerity Art …because art is just more sexy when it's angry

The Flaming Armchair

…because art is just more sexy when it's angry

kennardphillipps at the Hang-Up Gallery

Posted on May 3, 2013

The face of a ‘democratically’-elected politician of high standing is always a curious phenomenon. To appease the electorate it is imperative they appear benign, benevolent and sagacious at all times. A dictator isn’t hindered in any such way, not only do they not have to hide their prejudices, spite and greed, some even make a feature of it, a luxury that the likes of Tony Blair and Barack Obama can only ever dream about. Actors have nothing on politicians, as a politician can never let the mask drop; it’s an intensity of performance even Daniel Day Lewis would baulk at. It is a phenomenon – this discrepancy between public and private personas – that kennardphillipps (a collaboration consisting of Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps) have always enjoyed riffing on; in their iconic 2005 anti-war image Photo Op, for example, they offered a vital response to the butter-wouldn’t-melt image of Tony Blair we were all so accustomed to.

In their new exhibition, Blue Murder, in the Hang-Up Gallery in Stoke Newington, they turn their attention to the malevolence that lies at the heart of David Cameron and the onslaught of misery-inducing spending cuts that have characterised his Premiership. The exhibition is made up of a series of prints all featuring the same official image of David Cameron looking at his most sincere and caring. These images are printed onto various share index pages of the Financial Times (pointing towards the intimate relationship that he, and all politicians, must maintain with big business), and then images of his real legacy and achievements are set where his facial features would normally be. In one is an eviction notice, another has a disintegrating NHS logo, another a riot scene, and so on.

kennardphillipps
Study of a Head VII
2013
pigment ink and mixed media on newspaper, 36 x 68 cm

It’s an exhibition that couldn’t be more topical. It opened at the end of April, the month that saw Cameron and Osborne’s latest (but certainly not the last) round of public spending cuts unleashed on the UK’s poor and disabled (while thousands of millionaires will see their net pay swell by an average of £100,000 a year as a result of the reduction of the top rate of tax). Many of these cuts were launched on April 1, but, as many commentators wryly pointed out, this was, alas, no April Fools’ Day joke.

Then, as if finally convinced by this latest attack on the UK’s most vulnerable that her work was successfully being continued, Margaret Thatcher deemed it a fitting time to bow out. The spending cuts launched prior to her passing had led to a flurry of political debates in the media of the left vs right variety; with Thatcher’s passing these now multiplied tenfold, as her legacy was passionately argued, not just throughout the length and breadth of this country, but even around the globe. Indeed, Peter Kennard himself was interviewed on Sky News in the immediate aftermath of Thatcher’s death to give his thoughts on her legacy. This interview can be seenhere, and is worth watching till the end for Kennard’s depressing but convincing view on the way in which corporations and governments are both managing to kill off political dissent in the arts.

It is in this milieu of intense political controversy and heated debates that Blue Murder opened. It’s an angry show, and understandably so, with austerity measures in a time of recession being such a self-defeating and insane policy to adopt. But don’t take my word for it; one doesn’t have to search hard to come across an abundance of informed opinion all saying the same thing against austerity. For a start, Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winning economist, has called for George Osborne to ‘call of this mad austerity. No large economy has ever recovered from a downturn as a result of austerity. It is a certain recipe for exacerbating the recession and inflicting unnecessary pain on the economy.’ Or Paul Krugman, another Nobel prize winning economist, who calls for George Osborne to ‘undo that austerity… This is a time for the UK government to be borrowing and spending. Boost the economy and give the private sector time to de-leverage.’ Or read this open letter co-signed by over 60 leading economists and academics from across the UK, all urging the government to halt austerity. Even the IMF has warned Osborne to ease-up on his austerity programme.

From what I can gather, informed opinion speaks with a single voice on this matter, and yet mainstream media (all owned by the 1% who will gain the most from these austerity measures) are more interested in whipping up mass hysteria about benefit fraud amongst Britian’s most needy and destitute than discussing these sound economic arguments. Fortunately the arts can offer an important corrective to such a media, something kennardphillipps have themselves acknowledged: ‘Art workers, artists, writers and musicians have the means through their work to rip through the onslaught of lies and be a part of the movement against this marching inhumanity’, and with Blue Murder they back these words up with deeds.

-Blue Murder runs from 27th April to 6th June 2013 at the Hang-Up Gallery, 56 Stoke Newington High Street, London N16 7PB
SOURCE:
http://flamingarmchair.co.uk/