<nettime> It's the law!

["Ivo Skoric" <ivo@reporters.net>]

Just as oppressive...

Often we hear the phrase how our objectives should be achieving 
stable societies based on the rule of law. At the beginning of his 
reign, Russian president Putin came up with the sarcastic mockery 
saying how he would introduce to Russia not merely the rule of 
law, but rather the dictatorship of law. The enormous increase in 
building inspections, fire code inspections, financial police 
inspections, etc. - that followed this Putin’s decree, started to 
threaten the so-far undisputed unofficial supremacy of various 
branches and layers of U.S. bureaucracy in the meticulous job of 
writing summonses.

Wait a minute. Isn’t what we have here in the U.S. the best of all 
possible worlds? The one that its patrician castes feel not only 
entitled but also called upon in a higher moral duty to proselytize 
and spread around the barbaric post-communist and post-non-
aligned world? All world’s societies under this master central plan 
should look the same: they should all embrace free market, 
representative democracy, and enshrine it in the rule of law - 
Western, U.S. law, that means, of course.

Bur for all the talk about the “rule of law” I often find it just as 
oppressive as any other rule. Freedom cannot be guaranteed. 
Particular rights can be protected. But liberty cannot be simply 
legislated into existence. It has to be desired, fought for and lived 
as such. Which often, unfortunately, entails breaking the law.

The law breaking, in this service oriented society, for your 
convenience, is made easier. The speed limits are sufficiently low 
, and the drinking age is sufficiently high, so that every citizen, as 
it befits a democracy, can achieve the unparalleled thrill of 
breaking the law. The police officers are paid well enough so that 
it would be counter-productive for them to take bribes. And most 
of the fines, again, for your convenience, you may pay, for a small 
fee, by your credit card.

On July 4th an American friend of mine suggested that we watch 
the fireworks from kayaks that we should paddle up the East 
River from a certain point in Brooklyn. Police, however, didn’t let 
public near the river, much less in the river. Something that 
independent could happen only in some Hollywood production 
starring Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks, perhaps, aptly named The 
Independence Day.

In real life, car traffic was blocked two blocks East from the river 
in Wiliamsburg area and the FDR highway on Manhattan side 
was, naturally, closed. Hordes of tourists were admitted to FDR 
highway and given little paper flags, for free, can you imagine, to 
wave in exhilaration before the Macy’s fireworks commenced. 
>From the other river bank they looked like we used to look during 
compulsory mass outings for dear comrade Tito’s arrival in 
Yugoslavia, when I was a kid, that was before that country 
acquired the sad adjective ‘former.’

Macy’s did a splendid job with the fireworks and all that. But 
what did the independence had to do with that? What is 
‘independent’ about the largest holiday being owned by a retail 
giant? And the only people espousing truly American spirit 
appeared to have been those that I saw from the roof driving 
around police barricades, thus breaking the law.

Six days later a replica of fireworks was put on display for 
president Bush who happened to miss the original one on the 
fourth. By Macy’s, maybe, again, I don’t know. ‘Dear leader’ 
should have his fireworks, shouldn’t he? I was in the Central 
Park, when that happened. I was walking with Max, my dog, 
around North Meadows area, acquainting myself for the first time 
with the real meaning of the year-long renovation of that area. 
They built fences around fields. They installed locks on those 
fences, too. Now, your feet can get off the asphalt and onto the 
grass by permit only, before dusk, and dogs are verboten. It’s the 
law! Max learned to run, catch and fetch there. Now, those nights 
seem to be gone forever.

Land of the free is the land of gated communities and fenced-off 
fields. It is also the land of the largest prison population on the 
planet. To protect that freedom, the U.S. spends on defense as 
much as 12 subsequent countries - including Russia and China - 
together. Because, home of the brave is the home of the military 
that cannot stomach to see its soldiers die in wars it likes to wage. 
So it has to win wars just by sheer threat of overwhelming power. 
61 military bases in 19 countries, yet the entire formidable Gulf 
fleet leaves ports when Osama Bin Laden utters a mere verbal 
threat.

Wherever the white man showed up with his law and with his 
progress, the local, indigenous population starved and neighbors 
massacred each other. Incorrectly, the white man then placed the 
blame on “obviously” inferior savages for such bad behavior, 
sending in more ‘help’ in shape of missionaries, or, more recently, 
NGO-s to teach barbarians their law. This path is unbroken since 
the days of Roman Republic. The sea-going Europeans and their 
offspring destroyed local economies and societies in Africa, Asia 
and Americas and replaced them with their economies and 
societies, forcing the surviving indigenous people to play according 
to their, white man rules. NATO’s current job of establishing the 
‘rule of law’ in Macedonia is nothing new in that respect.
			
Indeed, there are racial riots in Los Angeles and Cincinnati and 
there are Asian riots in England and there is Northern Ireland and 
there is Basque country and there are anti-globalist protests. Of 
course, none of that resembles the instability on scale of Bosnia 
and Rwanda. But is the ‘rule of law’ that makes that difference? 
Was the rule of law that crushed the L.A. riots? No, it was the 
tear gas, rubber bullets and the truncheons of an enormously large 
and well paid police force. Just as it would be in China. Ok, they 
did act within the limitations of the law, well, at least, mostly 
within those limitations. But so did the Chinese in the Tien-An-
Men square. What does make one country a ‘police state’ and the 
other not?

By default, the West denies legitimacy to laws that are not the 
product of the same political system that governs their societies, 
that is the representative democracy. If the country is not a 
representative democracy, then its laws are invalid and can be 
broken with impunity. But does the representative democracy 
ensures that laws serve the justice better than the dictatorship 
would do? In theory, a system where everyone has the right to 
express their view, to vote and to be voted for, must bring about 
better laws than a system where laws are decided by a single, 
privileged caste.

In praxis, however, in the U.S. barely half of the eligible (over 18) 
citizens votes, and only those, who can raise hundreds of 
thousands of dollars necessary for political campaigning, i.e. those 
who are either rich or in the pockets of the rich, get voted for. 
And while everybody has the right to express their view, few 
choose to do so - because nobody has time to listen. To pay the 
bills for the things they are taught that they need, people in big 
urban areas spend on average 10 hours a day on their jobs and 3 
hours a day stuck in traffic commuting to and from their jobs. 
There is not much time for activism here. Also, just a few 
decades ago more than 10% of citizens were actively prevented 
from voting due to the color of their skin. Slavery was a law, 
once, too. And a law declared by this very same representative 
democracy.

There is no reason to go that far in the past: the present day U.S. 
president was not exactly elected, but rather appointed by a 
narrow decision (5:4) of a body that in the average age, scope of 
powers and cultural views of its members more closely resembles 
the Council of Guardians around Ali Khamenei in Iran than an 
institution in the world’s first democracy. That is hardly a 
coincidence. Under the rule of law the lawyers caste permeates 
all pores of society just as under the rule of Communist Party in 
former Yugoslavia the party members did it. It is always 
dangerous for democracy if one group of people assume such all-
encompassing power (like imams and mullahs in Iran, Catholic 
priests in medieval Europe or Communist Party in Soviet Union).

Just as under the rule of party, where the correct dispensing of 
justice was implicit by the historic right, that the party claimed for 
itself, based on the “scientific facts” from Marx’s books, under 
the rule of law, the correct dispensing of justice is implicit by the 
proposition that laws are passed as the will of the people and 
enforced by a guild of professionals. But increasingly, the people 
who pass the laws belong to that very same guild - most of the 
Senators and Congressmen are lawyers - the entire Clinton’s first 
cabinet consisted of lawyers, and both him and Bush are lawyers 
(although Clinton is banned from practice now because of his 
perjured statement in connection with his relationship with Monica 
Levinsky, poor sinner). And the ‘ordinary’ people don’t bother to 
vote.

To admit that rule of law in the U.S. is nothing more but a rule of 
an oligarchy of rich people’s attorneys, who go through the 
revolving doors between corporate world and the world of so-
called public service, would make it look not very different from 
the rule of Communist Party, therefore taking away its political 
legitimacy as representative democracy. Without being a political 
representative democracy, the U.S. would be just another ‘police 
state’ protecting the rich and powerful from the hungry world. In 
any case, that ends up as a terror of summonses for the poor that 
do not have the resources to comply with all the rules and 
regulations that the rich voted into laws to keep them at bay.

Connecticut State Representative Michael P. Lawlor, a Democrat 
who is chairman of the Connecticut House judiciary committee, 
found out that 9 out of 10 people in jail and prison in Connecticut 
for drug offenses are black or Hispanic, but that half of those 
arrested on drug charges are white. Part of the problem, he said, 
is a Connecticut law that established a mandatory sentence for 
selling or possessing drugs within twothirds of a mile of a school, 
day care center or public housing project. The result, Mr. Lawlor 
said, is that 90 percent of cities like Hartford or New Haven are 
within these areas, and so poor and minority people who, unlike 
whites, live in public housing projects in these areas end up in 
prison for any drug charge. This is a clear case of how the law 
indirectly discriminates against the lower income people.
						
Enforcement without compassion makes the rule of law in its 
appearance, if not in its substance, no different than a dictatorship. 
I found out that I feel just as persecuted here in the U.S. as I felt 
in former Yugoslavia. Yet, I understand that there is no 
conspiracy at hand here. The rule of law is nondiscriminatory in 
its direct application, yet it can be just as oppressive. I am not 
persecuted as a victim of the police state. I am persecuted 
because it’s the law. But it makes no difference to me at the 
receiving end of the stick. The fees and fines passed out as 
penalties for breaking the law are easier on the rich - as O.J. 
Simpson’s case showed, a lot can be done with enough money - 
so the consequences of the rule of law are indirectly 
discriminatory to lower income individuals. Breaking the same 
laws puts higher burden on the poor than on the rich, making law-
breaking one of the privileges of rich & famous who can afford it. 
Just as it was in the communist societies for those in power and 
well-connected.

And, indeed, I fear police more than thieves in New York city. Of 
five times I thought my car was stolen, each of the five times it 
was taken away by the sheriff of the police for either a parking 
violation or previously unpaid parking violations, i.e. for being 
found breaking the law. On the other hand, when I was attacked 
once by two muggers armed by a small handgun inside a 
Citibank’s ATM, detectives at the precinct let me look through 
two thick albums of pictures of potential suspects, explaining to 
me how it would be difficult and most probably impossible to track 
and find my attackers. My conclusion is that police is here to 
annoy us, not to protect us.
			
In June two 19 year old girls were caught ordering an alcoholic 
drink in Texas. This was their second offence in the state that 
imposes mandatory prison sentences for third such offence. In the 
U.S. it is illegal to drink alcoholic beverages if you are younger 
than 21. Of course, everybody drinks, because this is just a stupid 
law. Just as everybody speeds on highways where the speed limit 
is 55 mph (90 km/h). Those laws seem to be invented to raise 
revenue for States. ‘Duchess’ Elizabeth Dole was particularly 
damaging to the American concept of freedom by forcing States 
to accept raising legal drinking age to 21 by linking federal 
highway grants to that “law.” The American lawyer caste makes 
most money on what The Economist calls “two dominant currents 
in American life: petty puritanism and a pathological obsession 
with safety.” 

Four years ago I used to work at the swimming pool in Fort Lee, 
NJ. There were two springboards at the 13 feet deep end of the 
pool, but the bigger was closed for safety reasons. There were no 
incidents ever, but the lawyers from the insurance company at 
one point decided that they would not insure the pool otherwise. 
Last year the smaller springboard was also taken away. In the 
name of safety, all fun will soon be prohibited in the U.S. More 
people will earn law degrees and pass more laws so they can 
make more money on the ever deepening gap between the 
puritanic nature of the dominant culture of guilt and the real, 
hidden desires of poor sinners to live free - or die, as the New 
Hampshire license plates say in yet another great American 
propaganda ploy... ...oh, by the way, those two girls are daughters 
of George W. Bush, so we 
shall see whether they would do prison time, should they be 
caught the third time, or would daddy the emperor pardon them.
												
Ivo Skoric
    
Ivo Skoric
1773 Lexington Ave
New York NY 10029
212.369.9197
ivo@balkansnet.org
http://balkansnet.org

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