Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal.

April 5, 2010 at 1:45 P.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected.

January 7, 2010 at 7:20 P.M. "Errors" inserted and corrected, once more. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "How Censorship Works in America.")

January 5, 2010 at 3:54 P.M. This previously corrected essay was again subjected to vandalism and insertions of "errors." I have done my best to correct these inserted "errors." For a sample of the process to which these writings are subjected, please see "The Heidegger Controversy."

January 5, 2010 at 2:31 P.M. I posted this essay earlier this morning. Upon reviewing it this afternoon, I find that letters were deleted from the text. I have restored all missing letters (for now) and corrected the inserted "errors." ("Debbie Poritz Likes the Ladies!" and "Neil M. Cohen, Esq. and Conduct Unbecoming to the Legislature in New Jersey.")

For a discussion of induced frustration techniques as a method of censorship in America, see "Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory."

"Yes, It Was Torture, and Illegal," in The New York Times, January 4, 2010, at p. A20. ("American Courts Must Not Condone Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
Ronnie Chan, "The West's Preaching to the East Must Stop," in Financial Times, January 4, 2010, at p. 11. (Excellent article establishing the shift in economic power and center of gravity to Asia and resentments at America's hypocritical human rights preaching in the face of atrocities and censorship, such as you are witnessing and as I have described in these blogs.)

"Bush administration officials came up with all kinds of ridiculously offensive rationalizations for torturing prisoners. It's not torture if you don't mean it to be. It's not torture if you don't nearly kill the victim. It's not torture if the president says it's not torture."

Sounds like New Jersey's OAE. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

"It was deeply distressing to watch the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sink to that standard in April when it dismissed a civil case brought by our former Guantanamo detainees NEVER CHARGED WITH ANY OFFENSE. The court said former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the senior military officers charged in the complaint could not be held responsible for violating the plaintiffs' rights because at the time of their detention, between 2002 and 2004, it was not 'clearly established' that torture was illegal." (emphasis added)

Well, it was indeed "clearly established" both in international law and domestic statutes that torture was (and is) illegal and criminal well before 2002. Furthermore, the U.S. crusaded for adoption of such provisions criminalizing torture after the Second World War, as part of international conventions concerning human rights, and (again) in response to the atrocities in Cambodia and Vietnam's POW crisis. Besides, holding persons without charges was also deemed "criminal."

American officials -- including Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld -- insisted that the U.S. "does not torture." I am sorry to say that these officials lied ("misspoke") about this practice and that we have tortured people, as a matter of policy, despite my hope that we would not do such a thing. Remember Watergate? I greatly fear that we are still torturing detainees held in a legal twilight zone and censoring writers, like myself, who are denied the truth concerning their lives and crimes committed against them by state officials.

It is not a response to these concerns to generate conduct on the part of tortured victims that can be labelled, say, "unethical" or "inappropriate" in order to provide "ass cover." The Filartega decision, for example, committed the U.S. not to return victims of torture to any country condoning the practice on the grounds that torture is a "crime against humanity," regardless of whether a "non-state actor" indulges in the practice. To indulge in torture is to become a terrorist. ("Crimes Against Humanity in New Jersey.")

Have we become "state terrorists"? Noam Chomsky's recent work addresses this issue. Under the circumstances, our expressions of concern for dissidents in Cuba, Korea, or China seem absurd to intelligent people all over the world. For a different view, see Geoff Dyer, "China's Push for Soft Power Runs Up Against Hard Absolutes," in Financial Times, January 4, 2010, at p. 2. (Criticizing China's human rights record.)

"The Supreme Court could have corrected that outlandish reading of the Constitution, legal precedent, and domestic and international statutes and treaties. Instead, last month, the justices abdicated their legal and moral duty and declined to review the case."

America's Supreme Court is sharply divided at the moment. This division makes the justices less effective as a force for legality and civilization than they might be:
"A denial of certiorari" -- this means that the court decided not to hear the case -- "is not a ruling on the merits. But the justices surely understood that their failure to accept the case would FURTHER UNDERMINE THE RULE OF LAW." (emphasis added)

The rule of law is a fragile thing. Torture and hypocrisy as well as indulgence in secrecy and activities outside the scope of law -- like censorship -- creates a Star Chamber-like horror in American jurisprudence that merely confirms what some of us have known for years. As Gore Vidal remarked on the Charlie Rose show recently, "the Constitution has simply been thrown away." (Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")

"Governmentality" is out of control, secret abuse of government power by anonymous functionaries is what the Framers feared as the essence of tyrany. I concur. (Judith Butler)

"In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government immunity for subjecting people in its custody to terrible mistreatment."

When government officials lie about what they've done, ignore legal obligations to disclose the truth, engage in stonewalling and denial, they will have reached New Jersey's disgusting level of judicial criminality that is usually combined with hypocritical pronouncements concerning the "ethics" of victims. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Mafia Culture in Law and Politics.")

"[The Supreme Court] has deprived victims of a remedy and Americans of government accountability, while further damaging the country's standing in the world."

We have, deservedly, lost credibility on human rights issues. All of those observers aware of my struggle against public censorship and suppressions of speech, sanctioned criminality, violations of the same intellectual property and free speech as well as privacy laws that we ask others, like China, to obey -- these observers will regard America's public pronouncements on such questions to be mere rhetoric for public consumption concealing a reality of cynical betrayals of legal standards for the sake of convenience or advantage.

Do you speak to me of ethics, Mr. Rabner? Did you trade favors for lesbian sex, Ms. Poritz? Was there a sexual relationship between Ms. Poritz and Diana Lisa Riccioli at any time from 1988 to today? Are you people in Trenton still in cover-up mode? ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Jennifer Velez is a 'Dyke Magnet!'" then "New Jersey's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest!")

America's indulgence in torture when victims are "little brown people" or foreigners is indicative of our still thriving xenophobia and fear of death, as evidenced in our "youth culture." Brittany Murphy's recent death is not unrelated to this nonsense. Terry Eagleton comments:

"A society which is shy of death is also likely to be rattled by foreigners."

This will cause us to bring death to others as surrogates for ourselves:

"Both [death and foreigners] mark out the limits of our own lives, relativizing them in unpalatable ways. But in one sense all others are foreigners. My identity lies in the keeping of others, and this -- because they perceive me through the thick mesh of their own interests and desires -- can never be an entirely safe keeping. The self I receive back from others is always rather shopsoiled. It is mauled by their own desires -- which is not to say their desire for me. But it remains the case that I can know who I am or what I am feeling only by belonging to a language which is never my personal possession. [Wittgenstein teaches us that there are no private languages.] It is others who are the custodians of my selfhood. 'I borrow myself from others,' as the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty remarks. It is only in the speech I share with them that I can come to mean anything."

After Theory (New York: Perseus, 2003), p. 212. Eagleton cites Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Signs (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1964), p. 159. Marjorie Grene has developed these ideas most fully in the American context.

What vision of ourselves are we seeing reflected back to us today from the world? Do we admire this reflection of ourselves? Do you admire the reflection of New Jersey seen in these essays or in the state's continuing efforts at censorship?

"President Obama, much to his credit, has forsworn the use of torture, but politics and policy makers change and democracy cannot rely merely on the good will of one president and his aides. Such good will did not exist in the last administration. And the inhumane and illegal treatment of detainees could make a return in a future administration unless the Supreme Court sends a firm message that ordering torture is a grievous violation of fundamental rights."

An ex-CIA operative in covert matters recently expressed the opinion in a televised interview that the adminstration's error is to view the conflict through a "legal" perspective as opposed to seeing it as a "war" situation. Actually, we are involved in several "wars" -- to make use of a much-loved metaphor -- among the most important of these struggles is a battle of ideas and juridical principles that will determine the world in which our children will live their lives.

At the moment, the future being prepared for your child includes payback from billions of tortured, starved, robot-bombed brown people in the world whose loathing for well-fed Americans will be easily manipulated by "entities" who do not wish us well. ("Little Brown Men Are Only Objects for Us.")

A world of sanctioned torture/terrorism by wealthy superpowers killing children in Pakistani villages and tormenting "uncharged" combatants or detainees -- who are called "the worst of the worst" according to undefined criteria -- does not promise a peaceful future for any of us. The relationship which our Constitution envisions between all PERSONS and the State is one of respectful regard for the dignity of human beings on the part of the powerful. ("Is there a gay marriage right?")

You decide based on what you see at these blogs how serious America is about that Constitutional commitment to human dignity and freedom of speech. ("Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")

The vision of the Framers was based on a regard for the moral worth of persons and concern about the corruptions of power -- especially, power wielded secretly and (allegedly) "benevolently." We are at center stage in terms of world opinion. All the lights are on us, right now. Our behavior will shape the moral reality that our children will know in years to come. We are fostering and nurturing hatreds that will return to us in amplified form in decades to come. We are detested by BILLIONS of persons in the world who see us, often with good reason, as the source of much of the world's suffering. ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

During a typical two month period strikes in Pakistan resulted in killing 24, then 17 persons. Among those persons, there were (perhaps) two Al Qaeda or Taliban leaders, we are told, so that these very "precise" robot weapons resulted in what we regard as "acceptable collateral damage." This is not very comforting to those who lost a daughter or spouse. In one drone attack last year 48 persons were killed. One of these persons was probably an upper-level Al Qaeda operative. We are not at war with Pakistan.

Those who lost family members on 9/11 based on determinations by others concerning the "acceptable level of collateral damage" to make a point against America or for a strategic reason will, perhaps, understand the rage and bitterness of those Pakistani civilians. Explain to that man in Pakistan, who feels unprotected by his American puppet government, why his seven year-old daughter's death is hunky-dory. That Pakistani father -- and his relatives in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, India and elsewhere in the Middle East -- believe (wrongly) that America feels disdain for their humanity and religion. Who is making our case to the people of the Middle East? Tell these people of the difference between our Pentagon's policies and the nation's values in this crisis as well as the various perspectives within America's political conversation.

Intelligence agencies -- often in countries claiming to be "with us rather than against us" -- are providing assistance, secretly, to our enemies to redress the balance of deaths. This "war" will be coming home to us in the city where I live in the form of "payback strikes" against civilians -- civilians who will be tortured and killed on video for the entertainment pleasure of Internet and t.v. audiences around the world anxious to see Americans get their "just deserts." In addition to all of this tension, there are structural features of our global economic predicament and the deleterious effects of globalization to be noticed:

"The global market has undermined the ability of [poor] states and welfare systems to protect their way of life. In a global economy they compete with men and women abroad, of equal qualifications but paid a fraction of the Western pay packet, and at home living standards are under pressure from the globalization of What Marx called 'the reserve army of labor' -- immigrants from the villages of the great global zones of poverty. Situations such as this do not promise an era of political and social stability."

Eric Hobsbawn, On Empire: America, War, and Global Supremacy (New York: Pantheon, 2008), pp. x-xi. (emphasis added)

The wars, terrorist attacks, crises of various kinds that are expected in the next decade will devastate our children's lives. We must deal now not only with military threats, but with the contest of ideas and cultures where we have so much to contribute. I do not believe that we are doing a very good job of communicating our values and identity to the world today.