The Torture of Persons.

August 12, 2009 at 9:10 A.M. Attacks on these writings have been accelerated over the past several days. Harassment is continuous. I will be equally unrelenting in my attacks against New Jersey's corrupt legal system.

June 26, 2009 at 10:37 A.M. Images accompanying this essay cannot be posted at blogger. See this work at http://www.Critique@groups.msn.com/ If that site at MSN still exists, then please see the "General" section with all images attached. All images are blocked at blogger. I believe that my ability to post images was blocked after my protests against Israel's actions in Gaza. I am happy to say that Israel agreed with many criticisms by Israelis and others, held trials and investigations, and has attempted to deal with what happened in Gaza. That's what democracies do to deal with such crises.

December 21, 2008 at 5:52 P.M. New "errors" inserted in this text. I will try to keep up with the attacks on my work. No massive cybercrime effort unfolding over many years can take place without the cooperation of government in at least one American jurisdiction.

Benedict Carey, "Mental Activity Seen in a Brain Gravely Injured," in The New York Times, September 8, 2006, at p. A1. (Scientists cannot explain the actions of persons with damaged brains which should preclude their learning efforts.)
Adam Liptak, "Justices Rule Crime Analysts Must Testify on Lab Results," in The New York Times, June 26, 2009, at p. A1. (No testimony from "experts" is immune to the 6th Amendment.)
Scott Shane, "2 U.S. Architects of Harsh Tactics in 9/11's Wake," in The New York Times, August 12, 2009, at p. A1. (6th Amendmnent and other provisions may apply to torture proponents.)
Eric Lichtblau & Eric Lipton, "E-Mail Reveals Rove's Key Role in '06 Dismisslas," in The New York Times, August 12, 2009, at p. A1. (U.S. attorneys are not political footballs.)
Philippe Sands, Torture Team: Rumsfeld Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (New York: Macmillan, 2009), pp.122-129. ("Mike Gelles" and other American forensic psychiatrists specialize in psychological torture techniques designed to produce life-long emotional injury in victims in order to extract information at Guantanamo and in New Jersey.)

A damaged brain seems to allow for mental activity comparable to functions in undamaged brains, though scientists can neither explain how this is possible nor can they "see" the nature of the mental activity of this patient, despite brain scans showing all neural or cerebral activity. ("Where are thoughts located?" and "Are you trying to make a monkey out of me?")

My discussion is based on the following sources:

Jane Mayer, "The Torture Reckoning," The New Yorker, June 22, 2009, at p. 50.
Jane Mayer, "The Torture Papers," The New Yorker, February 17, 2006, p. 32.
Atul Gawande, "Ordinary Torture," The New Yorker, March 30, 2009, at p. 36.
Kathryn Schulz, "Brave Neuro World: The New Ethics of Brain Science," The Nation, January 9/16, 2005, at p. 11.
John MacMurray, The Self as Agent (New York: Humanity Books, 1999), pp. 84-104.
Hassan M. Fattah, "Symbol of Abu Ghraib Seeks to Spare Others His Nightmare," in The New York Times, March 11, 2006, at p. A1. (Controversial and challenged account by alleged "hooded man.")
Kirk Semple, "Captors Tortured American Then Killed Him," in The New York Times, March 12, 2006, at p. A10. (One of an increasing number of accounts of captured and tortured Americans, some using "hands off" torture techniques created by the C.I.A. and videotaped for public display against American soldiers.)

Several additional accounts of revenge tortures and killings of Americans that "mirror" the events at Abu Ghraib will (very likely) appear in the media in the months and weeks ahead. It is also likely that more such incidents may be expected within the United States. There may well be reason to fear that revenge efforts will focus on residents of my city. I hope that Bush's torture lawyers considered this possibility. For good and ill, the U.S. sets a standard. The standard we have now set will come back to haunt us. Those engaging in cybercrime, censorship, suppressions of my writings and harassment in response to my peaceful communication efforts should take note of this fact because the world sees what is happening at these sites.

Colin McGinn, Ethics, Evil and Fiction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

Numerous "errors" not found in my printed copy of this essay have appeared in the text, after the recent wave of hackings into my computer emanating from New Jersey. I will now revise this essay yet again. I will also post it elsewhere on the Internet. I believe that these hackers are affiliated with the power structure in Trenton.

On November 7, 2007 at 10:42 A.M., after spending several hours working on a draft of a text compiling authorities from very diverse fields -- reflecting on the subjects of time, temporality and eternity -- my draft was deleted and destroyed by hackers from New Jersey. Once again, I am blocking:

http://view.atmt.com/iview/msnnkhac001728x90WBCBRB00110msn/direct;wi.728;hi.90/01 (NJ)

The image that appears below (it may be blocked) -- and the chuckles with which this image has been greeted in some courtrooms in New Jersey -- explains my experiences in a torture chamber. (See "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

The blocked image depicts a child in a Halloween "costume" as the "Hooded Man" at Abu Ghraib. This "merry" image seems to capture the lack of feeling and celebration of cruelty associated with too many Americans' reaction to the nation's tortures of "little brown persons." Attacks on my sites may reflect a similar lack of concern with the rights of "others." This image has already spread beyond America's national boundaries. Aside from a few public comments from prominent politicians, few American celebrities have absorbed the power of these images in the world and the need for a response from the authorities in this country, especially from famous people.

One of the subjects that I plan to address, repeatedly, in these essays is the torture debate. Along with a few other controversies -- such as abortion, right to die, death penalty and genetic engineering dilemmas -- the debate concerning the permissibility of torture transcends disciplinary and other boundaries, raising closely related legal, ethical and political issues. What is particularly fascinating about all of these controversies, especially the torture debate, is that they focus on the underlying question: "What is a person?"

For present purposes, I define torture as "deliberate infliction of mental or physical suffering upon a person for purposes that do not belong to the victim and are not in the victim's self-determined interests, especially suffering that is intended to serve the interests of the torturer and/or of his/her employers or superiors." This usually means secret information-gathering for the State or on behalf of un-named "others," together with the cover-up of such practices. This definition is found in a number of international conventions to which the United States of America is a signatory. For example, it is substantially identical to the provisions of the International Human Rights conventions and Geneva agreements governing prisoners of war. ("Crimes Against Humanity in New Jersey.")

Secrecy alone makes ALL questioning by "therapists" unethical -- probably criminal -- because it is a form of torture. Torture is a forensic specialty in New Jersey, where persons like Ridgewood's own Terry A. Tuchin and Clifton's Diana Lisa Riccioli crawl through their hideous lives. No doubt both of these "persons" (I use the word "person" loosely) are responsible for or complicit in some of the hacking that I struggle against every day. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry A. Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")

Once you have decided on the criteria for the moral category of "persons," there will be consequences in terms of what you may not do to someone who qualifies as a person. The moral and political status of persons are quite distinct, since both concepts are different from what we mean by a human being in biology or by a person in the legal system. Corporations are legal persons, for example, but not necessarily moral persons. In fact, far from it. ("Is there a gay marriage right?")

I believe that a "person" is a being occupying a unique moral category, first of all, so as to be accorded legal protections and rights along with responsibilities. A person is an agent, a being "acting" intentionally in the world, with or upon others. This definition requires analysis not only in terms of causes leading to effects, but also in terms of that mysterious concept of "intentionality," meaning the measuring of actions in terms of motives and purposes in their social directedness or teleology and not only in terms of empirical causality. ("A Doll's Aria" and "S.L. Hurley on Beliefs and Reasons for Action.")

A person has MOTIVES for his or her actions that are not reducible to material causal determinations. Thus, the causal explanation, in terms of brain science, for moving my hand to cut a piece of bread with my knife is the same as the identical gesture or movement when I deliberately cut not bread, but someone's hand off. Yet the meaning of the action is entirely different in each instance. Meaning and intention are words used, properly, only with regard to persons or groups of persons.

Richard Burton described a meeting with Humphrey Bogart at which the men engaged in a mock quarrel about the respective merits of British versus American acting methods: "You just behave before the camera," Burton said, "you do not act." Bogart was speechless, rose from his chair, went to his closet, then returned with his Oscar award. Placing the Oscar before Richard Burton, Bogey said: "Here, kid. You argue with my Oscar."

A useful distinction is drawn in this anecdote between "behaving" and "acting." A person is a self-legislating "actor," choosing his or her actions in the world, accepting their consequences, being responsible for those self-chosen actions. A person is a social actor. Yes, there are persons who may be impaired in their capacity to act on their intentions, limited in responsibility, and judged accordingly as merely "behaving." What is crucial in assessing responsibility is the capacity or potential to formulate intentions, to be motivated to act, to be more than an empirical object moved about by external forces.

A person must decide on the meaning(s) of his or her actions, choosing to reject the interpretations of others so as to construct, freely, his or her own interpretations of those life-actions. Among the most heinous violations of the humanity of others is the use of hypnosis techniques to deprive persons of their autonomous decision-making. Unconsented invasions of human privacy through hypnosis or drugging are forms of barbarism condemned in every civilized society, especially when they result in sexual violations or other assaults. A new "error" inserted in this essay has now been corrected. This process will be constant.

"[The] victim was a secretary whom [the hypnotist] put into a deep trance and told to keep sleeping until he ordered otherwise. He then hypnotized a second secretary and told her that if she could not wake up her friend, 'her rage would be so great that she would not hesitate to kill.' [The hypnotist] left a pistol nearby, which the secretary had no way of knowing was unloaded. Even though she had earlier expressed a fear of firearms of any kind, she picked up the gun and 'shot' her sleeping friend. After [the hypnotist] brought the 'killer' out of the trance, [the victim] had apparent amnesia for the event denying she would ever shoot anyone."

Robert Marks, "Hypnosis," in The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The C.I.A. and Mind Control (New York: Dell, 1988), p. 195. (Jane Mayer's writings update much of this material in the context of America's "crimes against humanity" in 2009.)

Legal analysis of this simple fact pattern could easily run into a book-length treatment. Neither of these "secretaries" -- notice that no "person" in this scenario is described as a "woman" or "human being" only as "secretaries" -- consented to this experiment. George P. Fletcher, Rethinking Criminal Law (Boston: Little & Brown, 1978), p. 763. (Judge Posner would call them "objects.")

Suppose that I am an actor on stage, I turn my back to the audience and comb my hair as I make a great speech ("to be or not to be") in Hamlet. After the performance, I comb my hair before the same mirror once again, performing identical physical behaviors or movements -- not the same actions -- for very different "reasons" from those "choices" made on stage. That difference in the MEANING of the physically identical gestures is not observable in any brain scan and never will be. Brain scans will only detect the same neurons firing and blood vessel activity. Any action -- scratching my nose, for example -- is different performed on stage than in "real life." The stage is a space of heightened meanings or communication where "actions" must resonate with meanings connected to the work being performed. Every good actor knows this and makes every gesture or silences count on stage.

"Not so," you say, "all of the new technology will show ever-finer gradations and subtleties." This is irrelevant to the question of meaning which is essentially cultural, linguistic and (therefore) social, having as much to do with factors outside (an audience, the director, other actors, interpretations of the text) as with those inside the brain of the actor, though both are important. Like minds, meaning and culture are not items that have a single, narrowly-specified physical location. Hence, the protean selves or minds that emerge in cyberspace, free of gender, ethnicity, nationality may be persons and yet not be limited to a single physical location or bodily identity. John MacMurray explains:

"A behaviorism which ... denies consciousness is self-refuting. It proposes to describe behavior by excluding all elements which cannot be observed or inferred from observation. But 'observing' and 'inferring' cannot be observed; and no theory, not even even a behaviorist theory is then possible. Secondly, there is no way, in theory, from an organic consciousness to a personal consciousness involving knowledge and action."

In a recent article containing numerous logical errors and category mistakes -- undetected by the author -- probably resulting from a failure to apply these philosophical distinctions and also many others crucial to the metaphysics of mind/body debates, Kathryn Schulz writes:

"In transforming Gage from the amiable and responsible person he had been before the accident [a brain injury] to the temperamental and bawdy one he became after, the iron bar also drilled a hole in Cartesian dualism, the intuitive distinction we all make between our minds and our brains."

I don't know about Ms. Schulz, but a brain injury has a way of ruining my mood, too. Getting my cable bill has the same effect. This has no bearing on the validity of dualism. I say this as a monist or dual aspect theorist. Descartes was well aware of the connection between mind and brain. His error was in supposing that this connection could be "located" in the pineal gland. Descartes understood that brain and mind are mutually dependent, for us, but he also believed that minds and/or souls were conceptually or philosophically distinct entities, which (he thought) might exist independently of physical organisms. Stuart Hampshire updates this thinking:

"But it is not likely that this structural correspondence" -- between brain and mind -- "will be discovered, if only because mental operations have hitherto been distinguished and identified by a set of criteria [culture?] which are unconnected with the operations of the brain."

"Parts of the Soul," in Innocence and Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 36.

Descartes often used the analogy of a ship's pilot (mind) and the ship (body) sailing on the high seas. This is something which computer scientists today -- who are seeking to transfer human brain states to "chips" to be inserted in computers -- also believe, that minds may be separated, some day, from organic bodies. If the contents of minds are merely "information" and all information turns out to be reducible to "bits" of data stored on chips, then the contents of minds may some day be kept in chips inserted in computers. (Cherry 2000 and "The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")

Like MacMurray, I am NOT a dualist, but a personalist and compatibilist. On the mind/body issue, I am what philosophers describe as a "dual aspect theorist." I like that better than Donald Davidson's term "anomalous monism." I am anomalous enough, thank you. I believe that minds and brains do not act in the world, only persons do that. Persons tend to have both minds and brains or bodies -- which are mutually dependent, to be sure -- but neither one of these concepts or entities (mind or brain) can be reduced to the other, no matter how much they need each other to exist. (See "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

When Ms. Schulz says that neuroscience "brooks no distinction between me and the physical processes of my brain," I wonder what she means by "me"? Does she think of her American nationality, sexual preference and drive, vocabulary, religious tradition, and family as "located" inside her brain? All of those factors make up or contribute to what -- logically speaking -- she must mean by "me," yet they are not reducible to the contents of any single person's brain.

Did you invent the English language? Where did it come from? Doesn't it take two to tango, or to communicate, or to do lots of fun things that are defining of identity? We are not obligated to accept Ms. Schultz's grim conclusion: "I have no 'will' above and beyond the neurochemical reactions that make me tick."

Relax, kid, and keep "ticking." You can choose to reject the confused neurochemical determinism contained in your article (were you "determined" to adopt that view?), while remaining scientific and fully up to date, so that your friends at the lab or at your university will approve. Newton's deterministic "crystal ball" is now said to be severely damaged. Mark Buchanan, "Quantum Un-Entanglement," in New Scientist, November 3, 2007, at p. 36 and http://www.newscientist.com/

True, there is no distinction between "me" thinking, apart from "me" walking and talking, or having a cheeseburger. There is a conceptual distinction between the different aspects of me that think (mind), or eat (brain, stomach, digestion), or desire (mind, brain, and other parts of me), love (mind, brain, filtered through culture). Some of these aspects of me are meaningful socially, others are more individual; some are best studied in a laboratory; others are best examined psychologically or socially, through art or religion, or simple dialogue. All of these aspects of me are certainly "real." Persons are (get ready for a shock) "complicated." The exception to this principle of human complexity may be behaviorist psychologists -- like Diana Lisa Riccioli or shrinks like Terry Tuchin -- and their self-described human "specimens." I refuse to be anyone's "specimen."

Are most of your victims African-Americans, Latinos and Latinas, or Palestinians perhaps, Terry? Are your victims "sub-humans" in your estimation, Terry? If not, then why do you refuse to respect their human rights to autonomy, privacy, notice and full disclosure, Terry? Are you not required by medical ethics and criminal laws to respect the rights of persons rendered helpless by you for a small fee, Terry? Do you engage in sexual intercourse with woman you have rendered uncosncious, Terry? Or is it only Diana that does such things, Terry? How does a Jew become Mengele, Terry? Ms. Poritz, how does a Jew become Eichman? Did I seem to be a promising animal for psychological experimentation? Was the dismantling of my life "interesting" for you "ladies and gentlemen"? Is this how America sees the "little brown people" of the world? Are billions of our fellow human beings merely "guiny pigs" for America's geopolitical experiments or slaves?

The most illuminating insights into the nature of mind will not come from reductivists, denying the mind's reality by focusing only on the brain, but from "complexity theory" and the mathematics of "emergent phenomena." It is quite possible that science will never solve the puzzle of consciousness, since science is concerned with empirical reality and consciousness -- though natural -- is not "locatable" empirically, even if the brain certainly is locatable.

"One of [Pythagoras'] insights is that ... perfection was closely linked to 'twoness.' The numbers 4 (2 x 2), 8 (2 x 2 x 2), 16 (2 x 2 x 2 x 2), etc., are known as powers of two ..."

Simon Singh, Fermat's Enigma: The Epic Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem (New York: Walker & Co., 1997), p. 12. ("This is called dialectics.")

Two persons in a relationship may be able to accomplish what neither can do alone. Loss of such relationships may be a lethal harm suffered by individuals. ("The 'Galatea Scenario' and the Mind/Body Problem.")

Deep-structure analysis being pioneered in physics laboratories and philosophy departments -- usually not communicating with each other -- promises to bring together a connecting perspective, or Deus Principle, a missing third movement in the dialectic on mind/brain relations, which is likely to prove highly useful in understanding the universe, notably regarding time and time-warping as a shaper of consciousness. Scientists exploring these questions and systems- as well as networks-thinking would do well to examine the literature of structuralism and poststructuralist analysis. No one that I know of has made these associations. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

"The realization is gradually won that society is always based on some form of social lie" -- this includes societies of scientists or lawyers -- "or vital myth; indeed that myths, however barbarous in content, serve the same purpose in their society as the classics in ours. [Cinema?] Borrowing a term from biology, one can say that all myths [scientific theories or "pictures"] are analogous, that they show a correspondence of function if not of structure."

Geoffrey Hartman, "Structuralism: The Anglo-American Adventure," in Jacques Ehrman, ed., Structuralism (New York: Anchor Books, 1970), pp. 142-143.

Mental life may require narrative capacity. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.") I was writing on this very theme when my text was deleted by hackers. I will continue to struggle to express my thoughts on this subject. Why are people not sufficiently culturally aware to sense associations between developments in cultural theory, theology, philosophy, jurisprudence, physics, genetic biology, aesthetics? Why are some people frightened by emerging patterns shifting our views of the universe and one another? Do persons become comfortable in their prejudices? Are you too scared to think about your worldview in a critical fashion? Is mind/brain identity theory only another "myth" that is wearing a little thin on the basis of the latest science and philosophy?

You are in contact with my mind as you read these words, but where is my mind? It is not "on" your computer screen. It is with my brain or me, wherever I am, when you read this. My mind may also be "elsewhere" or at a place different from my physical location at the same time as it is "with" me. The location of my mind -- like that of a minute particle in the quatum realm -- is a matter of uncertainty. Where is the English language "located"? Who "owns" the English language? Is it possible for the English language to be in more than one place at the same "time"? If so, then is it not possible for you also to be in more than one place at any single moment?

I can sit in my home and read a book set in the nineteenth century, being totally lost in the narrative, so that it is reasonable to wonder where "I" was during my reading experience. If you are an actor or film director, then you may create a set of illusions which are captured on film forever; then, like Elvis, you leave the building. Persons who are in touch with those illusions, as they see your film, are experiencing the "products" of your mind. Where is that mind or your self? On screen? Or with your physical body at the Beverly Hills Hotel where you like to stay to promote the movie? ("What the hell, the studio is paying for it.") Or "at home" with the family? Or working on the next project? Where is "Harrison Ford," the movie star, as opposed to the human being who is called Harrison Ford? Where is Elvis? Marilyn Monroe? How "old" are any of those people? If you happen to be someone like, say, Harrison Ford, do you wonder what "Harrison Ford's" life is like? Wouldn't it be great to be that guy on screen? Is "Michael Jackson" really dead? Which version of Michael Jackson is "alive"? The cultural icon as opposed to the flesh and blood person? Is "Leonardo Di Caprio" -- movie star -- "real"? This is a question which Leonardo Di Caprio would leave for the audience to decide.

A person is a "freedom in the world" (Sartre), a self-choosing agent, responsible for his or her actions, if unimpaired. A person always has a moral command on my concern, a right to be treated with respect as a subject and not an object. A person who has committed no crime is not something to be acted upon by another, without his or her informed and unimpaired consent, regardless of who that other may be or what ostensibly altruistic reasons are offered for that "acting upon" another. Any violation of another's autonomy is worse if it is done secretly, then covered up. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

Do you speak to me of "ethics," Anne Milgram, Esq.? Stuart Rabner? Goethe said that when he heard the word "culture" he reached for his revolver. Whenever I hear the words "this is for your own good," I reach for my non-metalic baseball bat. Torture reduces a person to the ontological and moral status of an object. It is manipulation, an illicit attempt at alteration. Torture is a kind of slavery. It is always immoral. Torture happens to be illegal under American and international law. ("Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility" and "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")

Are you an "object" (as Richard Posner suggests) to be manipulated or altered by government employees? Are you a "thing" whose life can be destroyed and rebuilt as part of an experiment?

With all due respect to our Republican friends hoping to create an issue by suggesting that Judge Sotomayor agrees (horrors!) with the current justices who approve of international law as a source for the Supreme Court's decisions, it should be noted that much international law is American domestic law already. International laws -- like treaty obligations -- are adopted into federal statutory law. Furthermore, judges are required to apply provisions of international conventions in interpreting global commercial transactions and other cases. I urge readers to study the Filartega decision by American federal courts concerning our once mandatory view of torture. Internationalism will increase in the future with globalization whether our Republican friends like it or not.

To the extent that the current administration or any other, anywhere, authorized torture, that administration and those persons -- even if they wear black robes -- have acted illegally and should be held accountable. I am not persuaded (yet!) that this flawed decision to torture Iraqui detainees was made at the highest levels of the government, at the level of policy. Although it is clear that some amazingly awful legal reasoning seems to have been adopted by the Bush administration, making the hateful abuse of detainees possible. There was either deliberate malice or grotesque incompetence on the part of the Bush/Cheney administration. Sadly, this is especially likely regarding Mr. Rumsfeld.

New Jersey has been and still is guilty of much worse than the Bush administration, every day, and victims are typically American citizens. These defacements of my texts and the inability to measure the number of hits at these blogs by readers/witnesses to censorship and torture are helping to prove much of what I am saying. Let us hope that my adversaries in New Jersey will remain as stupid as they are evil.

Many or most of the best legal minds in the world are in the United States of America. As the President of the United States, Mr. Bush, why ask a person with a few years of experience and no knowledge of applicable laws to decide or advise by way of a memo on the legality of a complex question of policy? Phillipe Sands, Torture Team: Rumfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values (New York: Macmillan, 2009), pp. 52-87. (American forensic psychiatrists objected to some tortures not because they are crimes against humanity, but because they produce "unreliable information.")

Much the same government criminality has been routine in New Jersey for many years. Secret torture and public lies as well as cover-ups of atrocities. New Jersey is a state controlled by Democrats. In a state with the colorful history of New Jersey -- which has earned the world record for theft of public funds -- is it any wonder that residents may expect a $1 BILLION tax increase in the budget for 2009-2010? I am not surprised. I wonder how much of that will be paid to Terry Tuchin? Diana? More job losses are expected in New Jersey as well as additional federal indictments of government and legal officials, very soon. David W. Chen, "New Jersey Passes Budget Fueled by $1 Billion in Tax Increases," in The New York Times, June 26, 2009, at p. A18 and John Schwartz, "Judge Allows Civil Law Suit Over Claims of Torture," in The New York Times, June 14, 2009, at p. 16.

New Jersey Democrats, allegedly, have responded with attempts to smear former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie in order to intimidate his successors. Thus far, the "untouchable" Republican candidate for governor of the Garden State (Mr. Christie) has not been intimidated. David Kocieniewski, "In a Testy Exchange in Congress, Christie Defends His Record as a Prosecutor," in The New York Times, June 26, 2009, at p. A19.

Mr. Holder, as U.S. Attorney, will you allow for these "revenge" attempts against your prosecutors because they are successful in going after New Jersey mafia-political figures? ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")

Will Senator Bob's peccadillos be forgiven because he is a Democrat, allegedly? Jane Mayer's article about the brave actions of former General Counsel for the U.S. Navy, Alberto Mora, suggests that this heroic attorney understood the heinousness in any policy of torture -- including psychological torture -- long before anyone else did, boiling it down to essentials. Mora's public statement of these views seems to have resulted in his sudden "departure" from his employment.

Mora will probably face professional ethics charges eventually. Mr. Mora will probably be disbarred. Mora is just not enough of a "team player" to remain an attorney in the U.S. for long. This is to his credit. Nevertheless, Mora is quite correct. Persons may not be tortured. Persons may not be enslaved, raped, or killed, and for the same reason: because they are persons, entitled to dignity and respect. Even in New Jersey, there must be a few people who have figured out this much. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "America's Holocaust.")

"A human being is a person possessed of a dignity we are obliged to respect at every point of development, debilitation, or decline by virtue of being created in the image and likeness of God. Endowed with the spiritual principle of the soul, with reason and with free will, the destiny of the person who acts in accord with moral conscience in obedience to the truth is nothing less than eternal union with God. [Absolute] This is the dignity of the human person that is to be respected, defended, and indeed revered."

Richard John Neuhaus, "The Politics of Bioethics," in First Things, November, 2007, at p. 23.

What are you eliminating when you "get rid of" God? You sure it's a good idea to dispense with all religions? Most of the lawyers who researched the issue for the Bush administration had no problem with rationalizing and seeking to justify torture or rape, probably. OAE "walking turds" in New Jersey legitimate atrocities to extract information from helpless victims in civil cases. (It was "nothing personal.") Ethics? Use of the word "ethics" in association with the corrupt practices of the OAE is absurd. Obscene insults and threats over a period of years may have to be experienced by their proponents if I am to communicate what I have undergone. ("What is it like to be tortured?")

If you are not religious -- I am an agnostic -- then there are natural rights arguments based on reason and the ontological status of persons supporting essentially this view of the special moral status of persons. This is a view of human dignity found in all of the great religions, East and West. In the context of American law, sources include Locke, Blackstone, Kant all the way to Fuller, Rawls, Dworkin and Fried. Only two new "errors" since yesterday? Come on, New Jersey -- you're letting me down. John, good luck with your legal troubles. I hope and expect to add to those troubles, John.

Psychologists and other "therapists" knowingly argued for or implemented techniques designed to inflict torments on men not charged with crimes, much less convicted of any offense. They referred to victims as "objects of torture." None of these distinguished professionals will face ethics charges. They are the sort of "politically connected" people appointed to elite committees and panels to judge the ethics of others, eventually some of them will serve as judges. Stuart Rabner? Nydia Hernandez? Jay Romano? Jose Ginarte? Raymond Gonzales? Jose Linares? Let us make sure that we pay for their portraits to be painted. ("American Doctors and Torture" and "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.") What is "therapeutic theft," Diana?

Despite my poverty and struggling writer's life, despite my many failures and flaws, I do not envy such legal eagles their "success" or their precious and oh-so false ethics. Hypocrisy? Time to delete another letter from this essay, boys and girls? Would you care to own a portrait of one such group of judicial "vermin"? After all, they have taught us that talk of the dignity of persons is unscientific and sentimental. Hence, referring to these "subjects" in the terms they reserve for so-called "inferior" others should be no problem:

http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/supreme/images/justices.jpg ("How does a Latino assist in the violations of the rights of immigrants and members of other minority groups?")

New Jersey's Supreme Court may block its own image as they are called upon to enforce the First Amendment. Philosophers concerned with the concept of disgust may wish to focus on torturers, who are uniquely capable of producing disgust in normal persons, like me, especially when those torturers are lawyers, psychologists or psychiatrists commenting on one's ethics. Is it possible that the capacity for self-deception in such persons, the Tuchins and Ricciolis of this world -- or lesbian judges, like Moses and Poritz -- allows them to escape genuine self-assessments by judging others? How else can one understand the rapist who judges the ethics of others as her partner -- who steals items from homes belonging to others -- does the same? Mr. Mora states:

"If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that [a person] has an inherent right, not bestowed by the State or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America -- even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles. It's a transformative issue.' ..."

Perhaps even "little brown persons" may be entitled to respect, Terry Tuchin? There are jurisdictions within the United States where cruelty is allowed, so long as psychological torture is done secretly and "persons" do not discover that they have been tortured or raped, stolen from and slandered, therapeutically, of course. Lupe? Mary Anne? How are tricks, "girls"?

Courts and agencies can pretend that nothing happened. Sometimes these jurisdictions are controlled by one of the national political parties -- often not the one that you might expect -- but the issue is ignored by the powerful. Torturers get away with it, possibly after making a political contribution. Right, Senator Bob? "Slim Jim" McGreevey? How are the studies for the priesthood going, Jim? Hey, Jimbo, have you met any Israeli sailors lately? Does New Jersey's legal establishment still wish to "evaluate" my love life? ("Debbie Poritz Likes the Ladies!" and "Jaynee LaVecchia and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

State judges are often more concerned about lobbying for pay increases -- which they probably deserve, especially when they actually do their jobs, which is rarely -- than about coping with this reality of torture in the legal system. Organized crime has become influential in local governments in too many jurisdictions -- New Jersey being the prime example -- controlling the appointment of judges and other officials. It is often difficult to distinguish criminals from judges in the Garden State. $5-10,000 still fixes law suits in New Jersey Superior Court, allegedly, right boys?

See "Same Old, Same Old" and "An Unpleasant Encounter With New Jersey's State Police," also David Kocieniewski, "Ex-Prosecutors in Trenton Respond to U.S. Scolding," in The New York Times, January 27, 2006, at p. B2. The custom among the various New Jersey Attorney Generals and prosecutors of protecting organized crime figures and their "paid-for" corrupt politicians is not admired by the feds. Bob Ingle & Sandy McLure, The Soprano State: New Jersey's Culture of Corruption (New York: St. Martin's, 2008), entirety.

I am suggesting, along with Mr. Mora, that a choice to ignore "crimes against humanity" or violations of the integrity of persons, when they are committed by the politically or otherwise "connected," is a tragic mistake. Unpunished criminality by the State results in the loss of the very freedoms for which American men and women are said to be dying now, as I write, in Iraq. This loss of freedom further undermines of the credibility of the American legal system by leading observers to conclude that Constitutional principles are given lip service publicly, but are ignored in practice. I continue to hope that this is not true. New Jersey is deemed a "shit hole" even by Americans. The judges identified in these posts is what you will find at the bottom of that hole. (Ms. Tolentino, right Luisa?)

It should be noted that sadists and torturers (Alex and John, Terry and Diana), victimizers of all sorts, grow addicted to their activities, usually deriving sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on others, preferably others who are rendered helpless in some manner. Time for another inserted "error," boys and girls? Professor Colin McGinn explains:

"[The sadist's] governing impulse is about as repulsive as any could be -- to make another person not want to live. This is a good deal more heinous than merely wanting to make one's mark on the world or reduce the other to fleshly existence. What the sadist is primarily aiming at is the desire system of the victim -- he wants to alter it from being pro-life to being anti-life. He does not primarily seek the death of the victim, only the victim's desire for his own death. The victim's suicide is the logical extension of the sadist's aim ["jump off the Empire State building!" -- has been whispered by torturers to victims, as I can attest,] but this has the disadvantage that the victim will no longer exist in a state of complete value-turnaround. The death of the victim is always a matter for complete ambivalence on the part of the sadist: it is both consummation and failure. ... The evil character is moved by something more than the mere absence of virtue. If we wish to understand and eradicate evil, we need to start by acknowledging how good it feels [to the evil-doers]."

Ethics, Evil and Fiction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 81, p. 91.

Professor McGinn is suggesting that doing evil "feels good" to torturers and evil-doers. Diana certainly relishes in a sexual way the opportunity to produce pain in others. Just the opposite is the case for the rest of us, who will never do evil because we find the very idea of such actions -- along with the persons capable of them -- disgusting and repellent. Speaking of disgusting and repellent, how are things with Debbie, Diana? Do you two have a romantic thing going on? Was there ever a "relationship" between Diana Lisa Riccioli and Deborah T. Poritz? ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

I am asking judges everywhere to honor the robes that they wear by doing what is required by law and morality. Punish the torturers. Stop the evil. Recognize that victims are persons. Persons who are entitled to respect and acknowledgment in their pain and suffering. End the stonewalling and cover ups. Do not allow torturers to destroy anyone's creative writing that is protected by copyright laws -- which the U.S. asks others to respect -- or any efforts by persons to express their pain. Tell people who have been tortured the truth about what has been done to them and who has done it. South Africa's peace, after years of torture and oppression, was only made possible by a process of "Truth and Reconciliation." Mr. Mora will provide the last word: "The debate here isn't only how to protect the country. It's how to protect our values."