By DAN VALENTI

A nation and a society of laws must always address justice undone.

It is not a stretch to say that the underpinnings of the Bernie Baran case relate in more than a tangential way to several relatively recent events involving public figures in Pittsfield. Over time, these relationships may become apparent as dots become connected. That will take time. For now, though, we must ask ourselves, in light of the recent troubles in the state and local probation departments, how a society that claims to live by rule of law can allow any hint of corruption in the courts.

Speaking today with one high-ranking jurist, it becomes clear that the troubles with probation began in the mid-90s and coincide with the reign of the now dismissed (with pay, the last we heard) Mr. O’Brien.

It is also clear that (a) judicial corruption can be understood as political in nature (despite the so-called separation of powers), meaning that the courts aren’t immune to the gravitational pull of venal people in the other two branches. Judges, for examples, are lawyers first, and are often appointed based on who they know instead of what are their principles. It’s also clear that (b) when the courts go bad, a free society should never lose interest in healing the ills and reconciling injustice whenever it can.

Bernard Baran around the time of his false arrest. A trumped up conviction and a life sentence was in his future.

If we have factual evidence that officials and employees of the probation department at any level have been engaged in what the Ware Report essentially called a criminal enterprise, they must be removed immediately. THE PLANET hopes the investigation by Attorney General Martha Coakley moves along these lines, sparing no local jurisdiction. Moreover, if we have reason to believe that miscarriages of justice have taken place in the criminal justice system, we must address that. To victims, we owe restoration and therapy — not that we can change the past, but that we can face the past, admit the systemic mistakes, see that justice is done to those who willingly and knowingly allowed injustice to prosper, and move forward from there.

Facing the truth about any situation not only can help bring peace of mind to those who have been abused, it can also see that lies will not go unchallenged in public discourse. As always, intelligence can be defined as the capacity to see things as they are.

The case of Bernard Baran, for example, would apply here: We need a fundamental reevaluation of the dispensation of justice in Berkshire County. We need this not only for Bernie Baran. We need it so that we can close a wound to the body politic that’s still oozing.

What are the suppressed memories in the Baran case? What are the hidden facts?What needs to be brought into the light of day that presently remains hidden in the dark? What can a contemporary reckoning of the Baran case do to help restore public confidence in the criminal justice system?

This isn’t only about Baran. There’s a much larger issue at stake. Once the cause for justice begins (the Ware Report, Coakley’s probe, revisiting cases such as Baran’s), it can create an impetus for the good that moves from the ground up. Once We The People, that is, The Little Guy, can believe the system can face itself, a new optimism can percolate upward and bring all of our systems, especially political and judicial, into the a more equitable working. It won’t be perfect and human nature dictates that shall never be, but it can be much better.

Tom Bowler: He aims to tear down Massimiano's empire and have the jail audited from top to bottom.

Along these lines, in January, Berkshire County will see the dawning of a new judicial era when Tom Bowler succeeds Carmen Massimiano as sheriff. This is a long overdue change. The most striking thing Bowler said in the campaign, which he personally expressed more forcefully when we met with him in person, is that he would not seek to build an empire. This was a tacit criticism of the imperial style of the self-important Massimiano. Bowler also says he intends to have a top-down audit of the Berkshire County House of Corrections. THE PLANET applauds these moves.

Democracy rests upon several foundational blocks. One of them is a fair and impartial judiciary. Addressing corruption in the courts on any level is one of the most noble causes anyone can undertake.

One-Sided Views Always Distort Reality

In trying to assess the security situation on the Korean peninsula, a reasonable person must first study history. The modern history of Korean began, as author Bruce Cumings points out in his brilliant analysis The Korean War: A History (Modern Library Chronicles), when “Dean Rusk consulted a map around midnight on the day after we obliterated Nagasaki with an atomic bomb and etched a border no one had ever noticed before, at the 38th parallel. When will we ever learn?”

The view is clear, but the U.S. portrayal of North Korea is a poorly drawn cartoon.

As historian Cumings says, in all of our accounts (that is, those of the U.S. and South Korea), the North Korean perspective is completely lacking. It wasn’t there in contemporary reportage and analysis of the Korean occupation (1950-53) and it is not there today: “Indeed, in our media, North Korea has no perspective and no interests worthy of respect; it just functions as a universal and all-purpose menace.”

Going online and reading various accounts of the present-day situation in Korea (the North’s retaliation for what it sees as a deliberately provocative act by the South, and the subsequent U.S. participation in military exercises in the seas to the west of Inchon), one can read the almost-comical cartoon-like portrayals of the North as an irrational, 100 percent evil, subhuman presence.

The North — its government, its leaders, its people — are nothing like that at all.

North Korean President Kim Jong Il

North Korea is the result of the cynical decision by the American government following WWII to engage a previously unthinkable expansion of its foreign entanglements. We split the country in two, fostering a successful and wealthy South and forcing the North to create a military-first attitude of self defense. We set up North Korea as the excuse to engage the Red Menace under many different guises, all self created, thus bringing about the dreadful National Security State of America and the Cold War. The latter is no more (thank God, as war mongers might say, for “the war on terrorism”); the former is with us still.

These are the issues at state on the Korean peninsula. We never learned the lessons of history there, and are now repeating them again in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and that is precisely what the Military-Industrial Complex wants. Bush fell for it and so has Obama. Meanwhile, so many ordinary Americans have opted out of politics in apathy or disgust that we have given the bad guys the power to act wrongly in our name.

Ah, but that’s why we have Wii and Lady Gaga. The superficialities of culture are today’s equivalent of keeping Americans blissfully bare-foot and sterile.