Do we still believe in human rights?

February 27, 2010 at 12:12 P.M. An advertisement was posted at this blog, without my consent and against my will, as a response to the disclosure that the U.S. Department of Justice will investigate C.I.A. tortures and (possibly) events described by me occurring in New Jersey:

"ACLU Torture Petition. Help Get the Truth. Tell A.G. Holder: Conduct a Thorough Investigation! http://www.aclu.org/ "

I doubt that this advertisement originated with the ACLU.

February 25, 2010 at 11:29 P.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected. One letter was removed; two letters were alternated in a word. Two full scans of my computer were necessary today. 22 security risks in total were removed.

February 25, 2010 at 9:39 P.M. A single letter was removed from a word since my review of this essay in the morning. I have now corrected that inserted "error."

February 25, 2010 at 8:32 A.M. "Errors" inserted overnight and corrected. There was less damage than I expected.

Scott Horton, "The Guantanamo 'Suicides,'" in Harper's Magazine, March, 2010, at p. 27.
Scott Shane, "Destroying C.I.A. Tapes Wasn't Opposed, Memos Say," in The New York Times, February 23, 2010, at p. A16.
Walter Lipman, The Public Interest (New York: New American Library, 1955). (Mr. Lipman studied with George Santayana at Harvard University.)
Stephen F. Eisenman, The Abu Ghraib Effect (London: Reaktion Books, 2007).

There was a time when America symbolized commitment to the rule of law for the world. This is no longer true. We now embody the contradictions of our ethically suspect, postmodernist era, when cynicism rules and (as I was told by an attorney who is now a judge) "it is all about power." ("Why I am not an ethical relativist.")

It has been alleged -- to the indifference of major media outlets and the national electorate -- that an American Vice President, Dick Cheney, encouraged or advised the C.I.A. to be "less than candid" (i.e., to lie) to the U.S. Congress concerning the tortures and murders of detainees. ("Why do they hate us?")

This American politician is affiliated with a political party outraged that Mr. Clinton was less than forthcoming about a sexual indiscretion with a consenting adult woman where no public interest was involved. The nation experienced a multimillion dollar, bitterly divisive ordeal called the "Clinton/Lewisnky" scandal that left unhealed scars.

Lying about a policy of torture that has produced public murders of detainees, crimes against humanity at the hands of American personnel, global harm to America's image, also undermining our Constitution, seems not to concern our Republican friends. Young men and women of every racial and ethnic group will die, be tortured, and many will suffer life-long injuries in retribution for these torture decisions made by American officials from the safety of their plush and comfy Washington offices. America's young men and women will pay for your political rationalizations in the Bush/Cheney administration and for our national failure to recognize what is at issue in this controversy. New Jersey still has time to make amends for the disastrous failures of previous governments. I hope that Governor Christie gets the message.

These torture decisions -- often rationalized by lawyers for a hefty fee -- will not expose their proponents to any sanctions or penalties, not even civil penalties in the American legal system. Critics of these decisions, like me, and of the actions of their often corrupt political supporters denying responsibility for those decisions will be classified as "unethical." You decide who is unethical. ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" and "New Jersey's Mafia Culture in Law and Politics," then "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")

Worse, as a result of that Clinton/Lewinsky nightmare, we lost something vital in the national character and spirit -- a sense of commitment to fundamental principles found in our Constitution that are transcendent of fleeting political expediency and of an ultimate as well as shared "national interest." Respect for privacy may fall under this category of the "expendable."

All of this concern with decency seems quaint and absurd now. I will do my best to speak the language of New Jersey's lawyers and political operatives. To speak of the "national interest" is to be naive and idealistic as opposed to "practical" and "successful." Let us be practical. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

The worst insult directed at writers examining public questions today is to suggest that the person -- however critical of government actions -- is in any way "romantic" about America. Well, I think we should be idealistic and (young people especially) ought to be romantic about the Constitution of the United States of America. That endangered document is the greatest charter of government ever developed by anybody, anywhere. The Constitution must not become irrelevant to America's political reality. (Again: "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")

This is how "democracies perish," in the words of Jean Francois Revel, through a loss of nerve and will, as Gilbert Murray alleged that the Greeks had lost to the Romans, and as we may succumb to China in this century. This is not the despair widely felt in the late seventies with President Carter's talk of "malaise" and Christopher Lash's "culture of narcissism," not the depression that gripped the nation before the rise of Reagan which I wrote about as an undergraduate at age seventeen.

There is still time for America to take the necessary steps to remain the world leader in any number of areas of endeavor. Indeed, this is what President Obama's administration is seeking to do against the increasingly disloyal opposition of Republican "super-patriots." ("What a man's gotta do.")

We are experiencing a decades-long process of decline in industries as vital as aerospace, technologies of computation and cutting edge physics (the superconductor should be in America and not in Berne, Switzerland), producing the atrophy of imagination and deterioration of linguistic skills ("whatever!") that we are seeing all around us. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld.")

Feminists, gays and lesbians, minorities and poor people will lose when America loses. We cannot remain indifferent to our government's "crimes against humanity" because these are our criminal actions as a people responsible for their Constitutional Republic's actions on the world stage. John Le Carre speaks of this era as one of America's periodic "seasons of madness." The warnings concerning this decades-old process may be traced at least to Walter Lipman's despair:

"Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West."

"The Obscure Revolution," in The Public Interest, at p. 19.

The fall of Greece and rise of Rome occurred over a 150 year time-span. The nightmare in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan may bring about our collapse a little sooner than expected. The torture scandal is about America's moral collapse and increasing distance from our legal ideals:

"At a closed briefing in 2003, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee raised no objection to a C.I.A. plan to destroy videotapes of brutal interrogations, according to secret documents released Monday."

Mr. Rabner, when may I expect those reports, records and documents? Still covering up, Stuart? No ethics sanctions for Mr. Yoo, Judge Bybee, Jaynee LaVecchia, Stuart Rabner -- nor, for the most part, when it comes to the other "attorneys" in New Jersey whose exploits are chronicled in this blog. They are now joined by lawyers for the C.I.A. obstructing justice and lying to Congress, allegedly. No big deal. This is a good time to delete a letter or word from this essay, again. ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics.")

"The Senator, Pat Roberts of Kansas, also rejected a proposal to have his committee conduct its own assessment of the agency's harsh interrogation methods, [lethal tortures,] which included wall-slamming and waterboarding, the documents say."

"According to the memorandum prepared after the Feb. 4, 2003, briefing by the C.I.A.'s director of Congressional affairs, Stanley M. Moscowitz, Scott Muller, then the agency's general counsel, explained that the interrogations were reported in detailed agency cables and that officials intended to destroy the videotapes as soon as the inspector general completed review of them." (emphasis added)

Obstruction of justice? Conspiracy? Accessory liability? What the hell. ("Havana Nights and C.I.A. Tapes.")

" ... 'Senator Roberts listened carefully and gave his assent,' the C.I.A. memo says."
A U.S. Senator agreed to the destruction of vital records that could form part of a future investigation by the full Senate:

"In November 2005, after nearly three years of internal debate, the agency destroyed 92 videotapes" -- government lawyers participated in these debates and decisions, knowing of the planned destruction of this material -- "[depicting] interrogations of two people suspected of being terrorists, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri." (emphasis added)

The men tortured and raped, sometimes killed, were not charged with or convicted of any crimes at the time. Others may have been tortured -- even tortured to death -- since these events occurred. Over 1,000 photographs of these hideous tortures and homicides, possibly, have not been released to the public by the Obama administration. There may be additional videotapes of these tortures and sexual assaults upon detainees hidden somewhere in the C.I.A.'s vaults. (Again: "Havana Nights and C.I.A. Tapes.")

My writings have been subjected to daily alterations and defacements over a ten-year period, I am sure, with the cooperation of law enforcement officials from New jersey who were and are fully aware of violating federal criminal laws by engaging in these "frustration-inducement" tactics aimed aagainst me and/or my family members in order to disturb me.

" ... a prosecutor John H. Durham, is trying to determine whether [the C.I.A.] violated court orders to preserve evidence related to detention and interrogation or violated any laws."

I believe that destroying these videotapes may have violated an original order to preserve the record. The underlying actions captured on tape may have also violated criminal statutes, both federal and state criminal laws as well as international criminal laws may have been infringed.

"Last August, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. directed Mr. Durham to expand his inquiry to consider whether the interrogations themselves broke any law. Mr. Holder noted that in at least a few instances, interrogators went beyond methods authorized by the Justice Department, including threatening Mr. Nashiri with a pistol and a power drill."

An investigation of murders paralleling these developments in Guantanamo reveals a culture of covering-up and lying about these issues among government functionaries and military personnel, that is routine in New Jersey where tribunals may have been incorporated into conspiracies to provide "ass cover" for criminal actions of officials through court orders based on criminal frauds and perjury. This pattern of activity is called "state criminality":

"All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners' deaths." (Horton, p. 28.) ("U.S. Courts Must Not Condone Torture.")

Were persons interviewed or threatened into cooperating with the OAE in New Jersey -- including family members and friends of a victim -- warned to remain silent about their conversations on penalty of reprimands or worse? Were interviewee's encouraged to lie about me? Were reports of statements by prospective witnesses obtained prior to the existence of any grievance against me reported "accurately and faithfully" by the OAE? Did this "reporting" occur after that agency generated complaints against me based on Tuchin's information derived from torture sessions? Were transcripts altered by, or with the knowledge of, the OAE? Were persons enlisted, through threats, in efforts to target me, or my writings, for civil rights violations or witness tampering before or after my departure from the state of New Jersey? Were members of the judiciary (or OAE) aware of the actions of Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli, including any possible involvement in alleged sexual assaults, thefts, battery and other crimes by these persons or others on their behalf? Were N.J. officials or judges aware of censorship and other harassment efforts against me after my departure from New Jersey? Is there a connection between the state of N.J. and/or OAE and the destruction of the "Philosophy Cafe" at MSN? Hacking and cybercrime against me over a period of years? Lulu? Publish America? Is censorship, plagiarism, destruction of my copyright-protected writings content-based and involving government power? ("How Censorship Works in America" and "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me."")

Stephen F. Eisenman comments of the Abu Ghraib scandal and also of the increasingly pervasive culture of torture and hypocrisy, illegality and disdain for due process of law or legal ethics by government functionaries in American jurisdictions and in our notorious concentration camps:

"The extrajudicial seizure, imprisonment, torture and murder of people shocks and horrifies any vital conscience. The contravention of international agreements on the treatment of prisoners of war, as well as the wanton violation of US civil and military regulation -- without check by legislative or judicial branches of government -- shatters one of the most basic and sustaining tenets of US constitutional democracy: the separation of powers and the vulnerability of the executive to sanctions provided by the rule of law. ... The marshalling of crude stereotypes of women, homosexuals and animals" -- "Latinos are not smart enough to be philosophers," "your book is shit and you are shit," "superiors," etc. -- "apparent when Muslim men are made to wear women's underwear, mime gay orgies, and be led on leashes -- signals the presence among military and civilian authorities of a vicious sexism and homophobia. ... [The torture] is frightening ... because of what [it] discloses about the current political scene: the autodemolition of the ideal of democracy." (Eisenman, pp. 18-19.) ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

Do you speak to me of "ethics," Mr. Rabner? ("Maurice J. Gallipoli and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")