September 30, 2009 at 5:40 P.M. Numerous essays were damaged overnight. There was quite a struggle earlier today to make corrections. This is usually a good sign that new indictments will be handed down in New Jersey. ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Senator Bob Says -- 'Xanadu and You are Perfect Together!'") "El Bobo" Menendez has lots of problems these days. This would be a good time for more inserted "errors."
August 27, 2009 at 7:49 P.M. An attempt to review my essay "America's Holocaust" was prevented by attacks on my security system. Cubanoid racism. I was forced to reboot my computer, again. I am writing these words from a public computer. Rumors of pending arrests in New Jersey can neither be confirmed nor denied -- at this time. Joe ("The Enforcer") Doria, Esq.? Payback for Ms. Brown? Or part of the Xanadu disaster? How about Anthony Suarez, Esq. for New Jersey Attorney General?
August 27, 2009 at 10:20 A.M. An irremovable notice purporting to come from my security provider has appeared on my screen informing me of "updates." This is strange since I have an automatic live update service. I make use of it every day. Apparently, as a result of this attack against my security system, I am unable to back-up files. This usually means that defacements of writings may be expected. I will continue to struggle. ("'Che': A Movie Review" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
August 26, 2009 at 8:32 P.M. Access to the Internet was obstructed all day. I am now in a position to post the comment below.
Scott Shane & Mark Mazzetti, "Records Show Strict Rules For C.I.A. Interrogations: Details of Harsh Treatment Were Overseen by Managers, Lawyers and Doctors," in The New York Times, August 26, 2009, at p. A1. (The photos of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln have been blocked, probably by American public officials, access to the Internet from my home is denied to me.)
"The Torture Papers," (Editorial) in The New York Times, August 26, 2009, at p. A22. (" ... lawless and morally repugnant detention policies" OVERSEEN by American physicians, lawyers and politicians.")
David Kociniewski, "New Jersey Prosecutor Who Got Loan From Christie Quits," in The New York Times, August 26, 2009, at p. A18. (Ms. Brown -- unlike Anthony Suarez, Esq. -- resigned her office as the Democrat-Mafia machine in New Jersey "spends millions on negative attacks and play down and dirty in order to win ...")
August 26, 2009 at 9:45 A.M. I am, once again, denied access to the Internet as part of New Jersey's harassment, censorship, and silencing effort. I will do my best to find a public computer to post a warning about what has happened to me today. Censorship may happen to you. I will attempt to post this essay, part of which appeared under the title "The Long Goodbye" on a prior occasion when Trenton's state-sanctioned censorship obstructed my Internet access. If only I were a corporation -- a fictitious person with lots of money -- then my "free speech" rights would be respected.
I do not believe that China or Cuba would be worse in their treatment of writers expressing opinions than the people responsible for these tactics that are used against a person who has experienced psychological torture, financial guerrilla warfare, theft, many kinds of rape and other assaults. The control panel at the bottom of my computer is gone, after restarting my computer. Scans are impossible because updating is impossible. If I mention "Fidel Castro" new attacks are directed at my writings. Therefore, I will make it a point to mention Fidel Castro even if I happen to disagree with him. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")
Liu Xiaobo -- a Chinese dissident possibly facing criminal charges -- has not been raped, beaten, abused during his period of incarceration. He is subjected to the same legal process as other alleged offenders. A report has been prepared by police investigation. Prosecutors have the right to reject or accept a recommendation to proceed against the accused who will be notified of charges, if any, and have an opportunity to respond. Liu Xiaobo may be released, after pre-trial detention, if charges are not filed or dismissed. By any rational standard, this person is vastly better off than America's detainees and many alleged offenders in this country subjected to "secret" proceedings and psychological torture for decades. Keith Bradsher, "China: Police Send Report on Dissident," in The New York Times, December 10, 2009, at p. A20.
I express my concern and solidarity for Mr. Liu and his family members together with the hope that this gentleman may be returned to his family soon.
To speak to me of "ethics" under these circumstances, as these torture tactics continue and provide a spectacle for an audience that knows them to be criminal and unconstitutional, is absurd. YOU are the criminals, not me. I will not stop writing. I will not alter my opinions. I will continue to post writings on-line. I will not be intimidated by anyone. Your ignorance and shameful inadequacies in losing debates with me will not be changed. You will not become any smarter or any less mistaken in your views if you silence me. Philosophical and legal controversies are not settled by violence or brutality, nor by censorship. You cannot beat up ideas.
Something frightening is on display in this theater of human cruelty and intolerance of dissent. This is not the country described in America's Constitution nor in our self-presentation to the world. This is harmful to me, personally, but it is vastly more wounding to America's Constitution and to the U.S. Senate, also scary for every artist or dissident struggling to think and create his or her work in this environment. Ironically, the pattern is now clear as, almost a year ago, the same brutal censorship was implemented. America is not a Banana Republic, as I have said many times, controversial opinions may and should be expressed. Disagreements are welcome; censorship is not. ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")
The world no longer believes America's claims concerning freedom of speech and conscience. What follows was written almost a year ago today. These tactics did not work then; they will not work now. How does a Jew become Mengele, Terry Tuchin? How does a Jew become Eichman, Stuart Rabner? How can you be a part of this cybercrime and call yourself a decent human being, let alone an attorney? Whatever your ethnicity, race, sexual-orientation and whatever you feel about me -- these crimes should trouble you. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?")
It is a beautiful morning in New York. Later I will walk in the city. I felt that I should try to post these words, as a farewell of sorts. I am unable to access the Internet or my sites, again. I cannot -- as of 10:40 A.M. on August 7, 2008 -- communicate my opinions and feelings at my home computer. I will search for another computer beginning today. I suspect an illegal interference with my cable service provider, an illegal network, and other nefarious disruption of my communication efforts. What else is new?
August 21, 2008 at 11:12 P.M. Images were blocked earlier today. I do not know whether I can post images at Critique. I will try again to do so. If I am unable to attach images to these essays, then I will provide links in order for readers to view the images that I wish to associate with these essays. I will struggle to continue writing no matter what new obstacles come my way. ("Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey.")
Yesterday, once again, several of my essays were damaged, some have been altered on so many occasions that it is now impossible for me to estimate the number of times when I have been forced to make corrections. The goal of this process, which I have experienced for years and documented extensively, is to crush the spirit of a human being. The destruction of a life and mind is a means of controlling a person by transforming him into something that is less than human. After all of his tortures, Winston Smith's greatest performance was the sincere love of Big Brother. ("How Censorship Works in America.")
The mega-societies in which we live -- I am sure that the phenomenon that I describe and endure, every day, is bigger than any one country -- constrain the human spirit in order for public authority to become pervasive and total. The aim of postmodernist governments is to replace God in the human scale of values. To argue that such an ambition is unethical or evil is absurd because, we are told, governments define the scope of good and evil. When government is in bed with organized crime -- as in New Jersey -- things are even worse. China is Switzerland by comparison with New Jersey. (See "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
"Right and wrong is relative to power." There is no love. No goodness. No justice. "Money is the meaning of life." These things have been said to me by American attorneys, judges, officials. The same persons sworn to uphold freedom of speech, privacy rights, democracy are responsible for censoring a tortured dissident and intellectual whose greatest offense is to think and speak of the collective loss of our "souls." "There's no such thing as the soul," I am told. It is still my only crime to think and speak freely. Are you one of my torturers? Your silence is complicity in atrocity. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
My words are written in sand. My essays may be destroyed at any time. Each morning dozens of "errors" are inserted in writings that I have struggled to compose, with great care, sometimes for hours and days, weeks and months. The energy and resources devoted to the infliction of suffering on a person whose unforgivable crime is independence of thought and opinions as well as righteous anger at the pains of injustice reveals the depravities of power together with some people's sick need to dominate others. I understand what people in other countries mean by "imperialistic" policies aimed at denying independence and enslaving people. I will not accept enslavement or intellectual colonization. I will not endure or live with philosophical slavery. I will struggle against the embargo placed on my life.
Does this explain the pointless hostility between the U.S. and Cuba? A small nation's insistence on independence? This appetite for domination is enhanced by our newest technologies of sadism. I have no privacy when reading on-line or writing my works. Do you speak to me of ethics, Stuart Rabner? ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.") Please see Emma Graves Fitzsimmons, "4 Teenagers Charged in Youth's Beating Death," in The New York Times, September 29, 2009, at p. A27. (The culprits videotaped their exploits, perhaps as part of a class assignment in psychology.)
This is not a situation that the Chief Justice of a state riddled with legal and political corruption -- where violations of the First Amendment made possible by state action are a daily reality -- can afford to ignore or continue to cover-up. Perpetuation of gross injustice, corrupt, biased legal proceedings in so-called "ethics matters" undermines the credibility of New Jersey courts and judges in all matters. No legal system can tolerate this sort of criticism, made publicly, which sinks into the marrows of the courts and undermines all actions by that system's tainted judges.
My pain is greatest when I think of the harm to the American Constitution resulting from sanctioned government censorship. The experience of torture (I believe) at the hands of Cuban-American Fascists protected by the American legal system and its corrupt managers (in violation of the U.S. Constitution), together with American attorneys, is a graduate education in the politics of the real world. Far from discouraging or destroying my values, this nightmare has confirmed my sense of their urgency and truth. Winston Smith's greatest achievement would be to persuade Big Brother to love human freedom, respecting the DIGNITY of men and women by demonstrating that -- even when faced with enormous pain in Orwell's room 101 -- we may still affirm our humanity by asking that the worst be done to us and not to our loved-ones, while insisting on dignity, pride, and the reality of goodness. I will continue to point out to New Jersey's power-structure: This is what you are. This is what you have become. ("Babalu and Free Speech Too!" and "More Problems for Menendez -- Tapes!")
If Terry Tuchin will not respond to my requests, then perhaps Stacy Tuchin, M.D. of Paramus, New Jersey will respond to my requests for information. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")
If I am in a prison cell and torture chamber -- if I cannot exit this hell of censorship and insults -- then I will insist on my right to love a few persons freely (publicly), to think and speak as I deem best, to accept no injustice without struggle, refusing to deny what I know is true: 2 + 2 = 4. It has been said: "... man tends to achieve his being inasmuch as he develops love and reason. We could say that man is able to love and reason" -- both are forms of communication, languages -- "because he is, but also and conversely, that he is" because he is "capable of reasoning and loving." (Eric Fromm) Please see: "Is it rational to believe in God?" (As of December, 2009 this essay concerning the rationality of deism has been vandalized and censored, again.)
To deny speech, words and the ability to communicate to a person, suppressing and destroying his writings and books, deeply injuring him (deliberately!) -- for years -- in an effort at conditioning, is to dehumanize and enslave a person -- really everyone in society. Naturally, this may be less true of laboratory rats. However, since I am not a laboratory rat, I feel pretty certain that it is true of me. No alleged claim of offense concerning my statements in The Da Vinci Code essay-review justifies censorship in a free society. My statement concerning Christ and St. John was a quotation from a celebrated and unchallenged scholarly work.
Your hatred of gays in Hudson County does not alter the truth in that statement or in my position. You cannot beat up values. You cannot change truth through censorship. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.") I am not threatened or intimidated by the PROMISE to describe me as a "homosexual." Call me anything you like. ("Carlos Fuentes and Multiculturalism.")
"This is what many of the great philosophers, mystics, and theologians of the East and West have believed. For all of them there is within man [and woman] a spiritual reality that is born precisely because he can know himself and others, and that is a part of [human] life itself."
Eric Fromm & Ramon Xirau, eds., The Nature of Man: A Reader (New York: McMillan, 1968), pp. 9-10. ("Is this atheism's moment?")
We "pseudo-intellectuals" (I have been dismissed in such terms) hope to compensate for our ordinary minds with wide reading and scholarship, without any loss of originality. Perhaps respect can no longer be expected by Americans from their government officials. However, respect is still demanded by the American people -- and all others in the world -- as the first ingredient of political association. This respect is guaranteed to all persons under the American Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights. Human dignity and respect are not gifts of the State. My rights are not negotiable because they are "inherent" in my humanity. My freedom and rights are part of what I am, not merely things that I have. ("What is 'Homeland Security'?" and "Habeas Corpus," then Meditatio ad Malum et Caritas.)
My computer has been battered, repaired several times, subjected to a relentless assault. My security system has been disabled and made ineffective. My t.v. signal is regularly obstructed. But then, much the same may be said of me. I have been violated and severely damaged. My psychic "security system" has been under attack for many years, injured beyond repair perhaps. I may be denied the means to write -- like a man whose oxygen supply is cut off -- in order that "experts" may observe one person's fascinating death throes and spiritual suffering. Is it interesting for you? Can you learn from my torments? (Again: "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
Do I still live in America? What happened to the U.S. Constitution? Inducing anxiety and stress, threats to family and one's peace of mind, can force a person into himself, imprisoning the "subject" in silence. Silence and apathy are the co-conspirators of illegitimate power, as are secrecy and surveillance, economic threats and pressures. I have decided after 21 years of torture and theft against me -- noise fills my room again -- to reaffirm my commitment to this struggle to think and speak freely, ALWAYS, in opposition to all attempts to control, discipline, coopt, subjectivate or manipulate the human mind and spirit by reducing human beings to the status of things. "Objects." ("Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.")
My daily encounter with torturers is an immersion in a barrel of shit -- the shit of Cuban-American Fascism, racism, homophobia, and ethnic hatred protected and sanctioned by government in one poisonous American jurisdiction run by the mafia, New Jersey. I hope it is only one American "jerseydiction." ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")
October 29, 2009 at 4:55 P.M. "Errors" inserted in this essay since this morning have now been corrected.
For any Jewish person to lend him- or herself to such evil, after the events of the twentieth century, is tragic and discouraging. It saddens me to know that such horror is possible. I am not a slave. I am not a laboratory animal. I will not "accept" or "adjust to" such a diminished moral status. I love all of my family members -- equally. Whatever pain I feel, I will do my best to shelter all of you from my sufferings. This is especially true of one woman who needs to know that she cannot lose my love. I will love you no matter what cost I have to pay for that love. I am absolutely unconcerned with whether New Jersey's soiled judiciary "approves" of my loves, ideas, values, or opinions.
My ability to communicate may be taken from me at any time. It has been taken from me in the past at irregular intervals, illegally. It was taken away from me today, despite the provisions of the First Amendment. I cannot avoid expressing my disgust and dismay at the actions of so many members of the Cuban-American community and their friends, at corrupt judges and tribunals in the Garden State, for what they have made of the gift that is the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately, what this document says about human freedom and equality for every person under a government of limited powers cannot be destroyed or made untrue by anyone. ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")
What have we become that we remain indifferent to the public torments of any person? How can I believe in America after what I have experienced? It is my American independence that tells me that what I have suffered is evil. God (or love) is beyond the control of laws and men, as are the fundamental ethical and spiritual freedoms of human beings. This includes (I believe) the equal, spiritual love among gay men and lesbian women. If I am beaten or censored for saying this, I will repeat it -- same-sex and heterosexual love are equally "holy" (if you wish to use that word) and deserve identical public respect under our laws. You are invited to disagree with me, not to silence or censor me. Censorship from public officials (or their agents) is a criminal violation of civil rights:
"We cannot give up on utopian hope or socialism. We cannot give up on progress. They are not less apt in light of what we know about the bad side of human nature. They are more necessary."
" ... To accept the world as it (more or less) is, is to help to prolong a state of grave danger. This world, accomodating and countenancing too much of what is not to be tolerated -- plain, persistent injustice, stark, avoidable human suffering -- is a world very receptive to present and future atrocity, a world overpopulated with bystanders. It is one in which the idea is harder and harder to resist that just anything may be done to people while others look on; and there be no consequence. As long as the situation lasts, it degrades the moral culture of the planet. It poisons the conscience of humankind."
Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference (New York & London: Verso, 1998), p. 120.
"Would you have helped Catherine 'Kitty' Genovese?" and "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'"
