October 7, 2008 at 9:38 A.M. As of this time, all efforts to reach my MSN group have been prevented by cyberstalkers and obstacles of one sort or another, I will spend the rest of the day struggling to get to my sites. I am running scans at this time. I will attempt to repair any damage done to writings at Critique at my earliest opportunity. (See "One of New Jersey's Highly Ethical Attorneys Has a Problem" and "New Jersey's Legal System is a Whore House.")
October 6, 2008 at 7:08 P.M. A massive attack against my security system makes it impossible for me to update my system or to apply updates. I am attempting to back up files. I will then try to run a comprehensive scan, again, even if I cannot update my system at all.
The goal of this effort is to prevent accessing my sites, in order to allow for new attacks and defacements or vandalism of my writings in a society that CRIMINALIZES interference with free speech rights. This is part of the cyberstalking I deal with every day, emanating from New Jersey's government computers, usually just before the indictment of prominent members of the bar and judiciary.
Tell your friends in law enforcement about this fascinating spectacle. I will try to protect my writings and to make all corrections of inserted "errors," as quickly as possible. I will continue to search for public computers in order to write. Any assistance that can be provided will be appreciated. (See "The Long Goodbye" and "What is it like to be tortured?") Anne Milgram? Shame on you.
October 5, 2008 at 8:30 P.M. The past half hour has been spent seeking to access my essays at Critique. At this time, I am unable to do so. I will try again later. Then again tomorrow and the next day, from this computer and other computers, until I can continue to write at my MSN group. If I am unable to write at MSN, then I will create another blog elsewhere. Unfortunately, I cannot control or determine what damage may be done to my writings at MSN tonight. I will correct any harm done to my work at such time as I am able to return to that site, if I am ever able to do so. Otherwise, I will reproduce every essay at that site elsewhere on the Internet. Most of them are available at these blogs.
October 5, 2008 at 7:56 P.M. A new computer virus or other form of cyberstalking has resulted in slowing down and otherwise obstructing my access to my sites. As a result, I am unable to reach Critique at this time. I will try again tomorrow. I will focus on more profiles of corrupt or questionable N.J. judges. I will examine allegations of cash payoffs for public services in New Jersey's Municipalities, using "objective" published sources. I will also make a trip to the Garden State to research legal issues pertaining to MORE allegations against members of the bar and judiciary. If I am unable to post essays at Critique, I will create a new blog from another computer. I am unable to back-up files at this time.
October 5, 2008 at 5:56 P.M. Due to cyberstalking and harassment, no images can be posted at this blog. Call received from 818-663-9452 at 5:51 P.M. on October 5, 2008. Probably just a coincidence. Numerous essays have been vandalized at Critique. I will do my best to make corrections at the earliest opportunity. (See "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
Efforts to obstruct my Internet access or opportunities to reach my sites are a daily experience for me. I will do my best to continue writing. (See "How Censorship Works in America.")
October 3, 2008 at 3:05 P.M. I am unable to post this essay-review at Critique. My efforts during most of the day to post this essay -- or even to reach my sites -- have been frustrated by N.J. hackers and obstacles that I can only describe as cyber-crimes and -warfare. I am deeply saddened and hurt by these experiences, not so much for myself as for the U.S. Constitution. I am concerned about the society in which my child will live her life. I hope that you are also concerned. I do not know whether I will be able to reach my MSN group again. I cannot say what damage has been done to my MSN essays. I will struggle every day to reach my sites and continue writing.
Eagle Eye (2008), Dream Works, Steven Spielberg (Producer), D.J. Caruso (Director), John Glenn & D.J. Caruso (Script), Shia LeBeouf (Jerry), Michelle Monaghan (Rachel), Rosario Dawson (Agent Perez), Billy Bob Thornton (F.B.I. Agent to the Stars).
I am the perfect audience for this biting and perceptive Swiftian satire of America under the Bush Administration's "War on the Constitution." New Jersey's Democrat-Mafia machine is way ahead of the feds in this effort to curtail our civil liberties. Trenton has already eliminated most of our rights, secretly, while proclaiming (publicly) continued adherence to the rule of law.
Jerry is a struggling "copy associate" who has decided to take a leave of absence from Stanford University in order to travel and "explore himself." This alone makes him suspicious to the feds. Why would anyone wish to see Asia? Anybody who goes to a foreign country is already a potential terrorist. Guys impressed by the discussion among rocket scientists playing poker with Jerry early in this film should note: Do not take that special gal to "Red Lobster" or "The Olive Garden." Either it's McDonald's -- so she'll know you care -- or you bite the bullet and spring for some chi-chi bistro in your town where you'll cough up $100.00 for lettuce bearing a French name. The French name for you -- as the much-sought patron of such an establishment -- is "asshole." Women like to see you suffer for love. So do fancy French restaurant owners.
Jerry's foreign adventure results in the all-too familiar struggle against poverty in America's demoralized urban centers. The hunt for rent money briefly transforms our hero into yet another minority male, a "white negro," looking forward to a pleasant encounter with the police. Suddenly, Jerry "encounters" a large deposit of cash that has materialized in his bank account. I almost never have that problem. He then withdraws some of this cash, receiving the first of several calls from a mysterious female voice urging him to escape the premises before the arrival of the F.B.I. The Morpheus-like calls in the Matrix are obviously invoked in this gesture of recognition for the Watchowski brothers of Chicago. All I can say is "Whoa ..." (See "'The Matrix': A Movie Review.")
The buzz surrounding the Leonardo Di Caprio vehicle, "Inception," is intense. Di Caprio is in a James Bond-Matrix concoction that is supposed to be both a date movie and edge-of-your-seat thriller with ideas for the geeks thrown in -- like butter on your popcorn cupercombo, plus twizzlers. Mega awesome.
Jerry finds himself brutally arrested in his own apartment. Can you imagine that? Security forces entering a person's home without a warrant, probably, just like in those totalitarian countries that we read about? It can't happen here, right?
Jerry's apartment is suddenly filled with what looks like the inventory from a local Home Depo that turns out to be the ingredients for building a bomb. This immediately makes our friend, Jerry, a "terrorist" to the F.B.I. man, played with efficiency and professional zeal by Mr. Thornton of Arkansas. Hey, "Billy Bob" what are you doing in this movie? Making money?
Rachel is a divorced single mom who receives an equally puzzling call from the same female voice threatening her child's life if she fails to cooperate. Government officials engaged in these clandestine social control efforts -- which are always denied publicly by other government officials -- are ruthless and sadistic, savoring the opportunity to cause pain and destroy lives as signs of their "thoroughness." I wonder why there is so much anti-Americanism in the world today? (Feel free to write "antiamericanism" or "anti-Americanism," both are correct.)
Probably the hostility to us is coming from irrational little brown people, who do not attend Smith College, even as they envy us our precious bounty. Thanksgiving is coming up. Don't forget to say "thank you" to President Bush for all that he has done for you.
Billy Bob Thornton is unrecognizable in the role of an F.B.I. "fancy-cop" with a sense of humor and very little trust in human goodness. He doubts our hero's explanations and is annoyed by distractions, like the 6th and 4th Amendments' requirement of a Miranda warning -- requirements which are ignored in this movie as they are, routinely, in American life. Suspects are subjected to custodial questioning without issuing any warnings, also in denial of 6th Amendment rights to counsel and 5th Amendment rights to silence. What the hell? Aren't you against terrorism?
If Jerry's skin were a little darker, he'd be tortured by our boys in blue. I suggest that Jerry sue the U.S. government. Of course, these days, they'd throw out the law suit and execute Jerry, clandestinely, at least they would -- and probably do all the time -- in New Jersey. (See "Why U.S. Courts Must Not Condone Torture" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
Did I mention that I cannot access my MSN group today? Hackers are preventing me from posting essays at MSN -- again. (See "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey" and "What is it like to be tortured?") The movie turns into a mega-chase sequence -- as Jerry gets out of jail unfree -- with tributes to great predecessor films, such as The Fugitive and The Matrix.
The tongue-in-cheek irony is on display in phone calls warning of forthcoming effects and crashes as, more ironically, Spielberg's masterpiece A.I. gets a nod in the junkyard scene. Machines pick up and destroy other machines, all orchestrated by a mechanical intelligence that is both unfeeling and out of control. Metaphor? Or grim realism? I'm dealing with a very stupid human version of that computer that suffers from the same lack of affect. Diana?
The absence of affect makes the supercomputer in this movie idiotic, blind to the moral consequences of "her" actions, including the human suffering that she produces. This artificial intelligence is an autistic version of Kubrick's HAL in 2001, A Space Odyssey: "Open the pod bay door, Hal ..."
The computer "defense system" -- in a nice ironic touch worthy of Aldous Huxley or George Orwell -- has decided to assassinate the President of the United States (disappointingly depicted as a gray-haired generic white male), because "he" has undermined American security and the Constitution. The point being made is that our hyper security-minded culture and all of the new legislation of "surveillance and control" (Michel Foucault) may be creating the very horror they were designed to protect against.
Calls received from 610-915-5214 (Trenton? D.C.?) at 1:08 P.M. on October 3, 2008. Coincidence? More calls. More harassment. More viruses, spyware, intrusion into my computer. I am so surprised at these tactics. Somebody must be getting indicted in New Jersey. Keep your fingers crossed.
Maybe, if I am lucky, tomorrow I will be able to reach my sites despite all the new obstacles. The allusion to the Declaration of Independence is meant to remind audience members of what government in a free society should be concerned with -- protecting civil liberties and enforcing your rights to privacy, freedom of speech and autonomy, while ensuring that no action is taken upon your life by any of the mechanisms of the State without due process of law.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men [persons] are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with CERTAIN [inherent and] inalienable rights; that among these rights are life, liberty" -- LIBERTY! -- "and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that wherever any form of government BECOMES DESTRUCTIVE OF THESE ENDS, IT IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR ABOLISH IT, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles ..."
Thomas Jefferson, "The Declaration of Independence," in Merrill D. Peterson, ed., The Portable Thomas Jefferson (New York: The Viking Press, 1975), p. 236 (July 4, 1776).
Was Thomas Jefferson a "terrorist"? Did Jefferson fail to "adjust"?
Dr. Strangelove is another source for this suggestion of security mechanisms and operatives out of control and confused concerning the identity of the real enemy. No one seems to give a second thought to the planned assassination of an alleged "terrorist" and whoever accompanied him at the start of the film, despite the fact that this person (let alone the others with him) has, evidently, never been tried and found guilty of anything, even as the officials involved in this operation may be mistaken about what this person has done or who he is. "Mistakes make themselves" when it comes to security forces and State terrorists. New Jersey?
Mr. Caruso is clearly a Spielberg and Kubrick fan. Me too. I am also a fan of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights that once guaranteed all of us freedom of expression as well as access to controversial ideas and those who create them. Denial of my right to free speech is also obstruction of your right of access to what I say.
Mr. Caruso's bitter finale before the "Committee" where he acknowledges the deaths of so many good people resulting from "mistakes," little "boo-boos" made by government officials, is an insistence on accountability and apologies from those responsible for destroying so many brave American men and women, along with millions of others in poorly defined and failed military actions, or as a result of pointless imprisonment and torture. No wonder I cannot reach my MSN group or post essays today. These are dangerous thoughts.
In October, 2009 the death count in Iraq and Afghanistan has passed the 5,000 mark; the total number of American and non-American deaths, military and civilian, has been placed at the one million mark, after the two Iraq wars.
Denial of access to my own work in violation of my right to speak, publicly, of such issues is a way of "protecting" my civil liberties, allegedly, or for my "own good." Orwell explained it so well in Goldstein's Manual in Nineteen Eighty-Four: "Freedom is slavery." Huxley concurred when he saw the uses to which technology might be put. Foucault defined "Panopticism" as the "principle of surveillance upon which contemporary totalitarian nations would thrive." Arriving at the same response to this horror that we live with, every day, are Kurt Vonnegut in Harrison Bergeron and Yevgeny Zamyatin in the classic dystopian novel, We:
" ... Zamyatin says: This is where we are going. Stop while there is still time. Throughout the poetry and the mockery, there is great warmth -- for Russia, for man -- and profound grief over the particularly insane ordeals they were to suffer in our century of terror, so uncannily foreseen in the novel, [as they are in this allegorical film, which is not to be taken literally concerning what is technologically feasible] and so profoundly faced. For Zamyatin, himself to such an extreme degree a victim of these ordeals, is remarkable in his utter lack of cynicism or bitterness. Anger, mockery, rebellion -- but no self-pity and no bitterness, [directed at] all who attempt to force life into a rigid mold: You will not, you cannot prevail. Man will not be destroyed."
" ... We is a warning, and a challenge, and a call to action. It is perhaps the fullest statement of Zamyatin's intellectual philosophy and emotional concerns. [The novel is a protest against] the totally controlled society ... where emotion is banished (yet survives), where every moment is lived according to schedule in a glass-enclosed city of glass houses and absolute straight lines, where even lovemaking is done on scheduled days and scheduled hours. ...
Mirra Ginsburg, "Introduction," in Yevgeny Zamyatin, We (New York: Anchor, 1972), pp. v-xx.
Zamyatin would have been horrified at the nihilism and torture that has been accepted in U.S. law under the impression that these things liberate us from intolerance and dogmatism in society, when they are merely the latest example of both, as well as an absolutist rejection of the Absolute or God, together with abandonment of basic human values and dignity -- values which must be rooted in "nature and nature's God" (Thomas Jefferson).
Censorship, secrecy, government paternalism are steps in the direction of the gulag -- even when they are rationalized with talk of "security needs." Compare Richard Condon, The Manchurian Candidate (New York: Pocket Books, 1987) with John Marks, The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control -- The Secret History of the Behavioral Sciences (New York: Dell, 1988). See also Ian I. Mitroff & Warren Bennis, The Unreality Industry: The Deliberate Manufacturing of Falsehood and What it is Doing to Our Lives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) and Stephen Labaton, "Agency's '04 Rule Let Banks Pile Up New Debt, and Risk," in The New York Times, October 3, 2008, at p. A1. (Wall Street has been America's greatest "unreality industry.")
These anxieties have found expression in several recent films where insecurity is given imaginative form: See, for example, Tell No One (2008). France is picking up on many of these themes and adding a philosophical twist. Also recommended is Richard Matheson's 7 Steps to Midnight (New York: Tom Doherty, 1993). Matheson's masterpiece anticipates Eagle Eye by more than a decade and must be considered prophetic after 9/11 gave birth to the "National Security State."
Michelle Monaghan's charm always captures my heart. If you are being chased by the F.B.I. and other mysterious and dark powers, then Michelle's "Rachel" is definitely the gal to have with you. She doesn't mind getting her hair messed up. If she is asked by a supercomputer to murder you, she'll feel really "terrible about it." Plus Michelle is definitely a babe. Mr. Le Beouf is a pleasant "Jerry" who seems to have his heart in the right place. Wounded and bloodied but unbowed, Jerry is nice to children and promises to return to Stanford in order to attend law school, thus becoming "responsible" at last.
Jerry gets the Congressional Medal of Honor. Rachel gets Jerry. Spielberg and Caruso get your money. The cash will allow these men to open a fancy French restaurant to which you can imagine taking Michelle Monaghan for an expensive dinner -- where she will laugh at all of your jokes while wearing a low cut black dress and that exploding crystal necklace to increase the danger during your evening of seduction.
The movie rocks with plenty of explosions for those who do not wish to think too much, usually because they are (happily) incapable of much thought. In other words, I am referring to men. The invasive camera angles (derived from recent Russian cinema) adds to the "coolness" factor. I gotta see this movie in IMAX. A few more moments lingering over Rosario Dawson's "Agent Perez" -- who would have been fascinating in the lead! -- would not hurt.
Also, I would prefer that Billy Bob Thorton's F.B.I. official not die. Thornton's character should be nominated for the Presidency in a possible sequel, where he debates the supercomputer on ethics and political issues. Melanie Griffith as the supercomputer debating the protagonist concerning the logic of utopia would have been fascinating. Let actors be the ultimate "special effect."
Thumbs up for this fun-filled action-romance-thriller that is number one in the box office this week. Very cool.
