What is it like to be censored in America?

May 11, 2010 at 3:55 P.M. "Error" inserted in my review of the "Alice" t.v. show. The title of my essay on John Searle and David Chalmers philosophies of consciousness was altered, again. The more things change, the more they stay the same. ("Does Senator Menendez have Mafia Friends?" and "Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?")

May 7, 2010 at 9:57 P.M. Access to blogger was blocked today from a public computer, strangely enough before I could sign-in. Luckily, I was able to access my blogs from another computer to correct inserted "errors." In the words of Teofilo Stevenson, "I am not a piece of merchandise." I am not a slave. I am not a laboratory animal. ("Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

April 26, 2010 at 11:24 A.M. An attempt to scan my security system is obstructed by interference with my ability to update my protection. This usually means that essays will be vandalized, or altered, "errors" will be inserted in copyright- and Constitutionally-protected writings. Additional damage may be done to my computer and other programs, which have been damaged for many years. It will take some time for me to discover how many essays have been disfigured in this way in order to make necessary corrections.

I am sure that this intrusion into my computer, obstructions of my security system, tampering with my writings, censorship and suppressions of my works is illegal as well as politically-motivated. Furthermore, I am sure that these unethical and criminal methods are only possible because of the cooperation of corrupt politicians and police officers, also other legal officials from the Garden State. OAE? The goal of hackers is not only to damage my computer and writings, but also to further harm me. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "Jim Florio and the Mafia in Atlantic City.")

I will continue to struggle against these tactics. I will try to find a public computer later today from which to continue writing. Please notify any authorities that you can of these tactics. International attention to these blogs and this process of continuing "error"-insertions is most welcome. Much of the hostility to my essays is content-based and involves abuse of governmental authority. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey" as well as, again, "What is it like to be tortured?")

As I write this sentence, hackers are still interfering with my security system, probably altering my writings, doing their best to prevent me from writing further, adding more induced-frustrations and emotional harm to a substantial burden of both in an effort to CONTROL a person who is feared for his truth-telling powers and not because he is lying about anything. I leave the lying to Stuart Rabner. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

Censorship is only necessary for those who speak "truth to power." My efforts to cope with the pains of torture and rape depends on writing. I do not know how else to make sense of this nightmarish suffering in a nation that claims to prohibit and criminalize exactly what I experience, publicly, every day. The silence of observers of torture is participation in torture. I can only hope that witnesses in Cuba, China, the Middle East and other parts of the world will know that, they may not be counted when reading these blogs, but they are deeply appreciated by me:

"A crucial question for them, indeed, one challenging their humanity, is the question addressed to the spectator at the scene of evil. How [to] continue life as normal after having seen that? How, if you are not a stone or pile of dead wood or a cadaver? How, in other terms, without disappearing into the insentient natural cosmos? The victim and survivor of the Holocaust thus puts his question, embodied in the literary form, so as to say, of a prayer. To be indifferent is to stand condemned."

Norman Geras, The Contract of Mutual Indifference: Political Philosophy After the Holocaust (London: Verso, 1998), at p. 15.

How does a Jew become Mengele? How does a Jew become Eichman? How can any journalist assist in censorship and suppressions of speech? I live with the uneasy sense of having stepped through a looking-glass to glimpse America's machinery of surveillance, oppression, and torture from the inside. As someone who has always believed in America's Constitution and promises to the world concerning human dignity and freedom -- promises for which so many men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice -- this situation can only be called "surreal and evil."

You cannot censor speech that you dislike in America. Perhaps it is no coincidence that persons from all over the world will protest the continued imprisonment of Mumia Abu-Jamal today, as new attacks against my security system seek to deprive me of the means by which to express my continuing protest against this evil as well as Mr. Abu-Jamal imprisonment after being subjected psychological tortures that are condemned by the world. ("Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Unconstitutionality of the Death Penalty.")

I am unable to convey the sadness and horror that I feel in realizing that America has come to this. Our promises of freedom of speech and the dignity of dissent, at least among some officials, has become a hideous lie. How do you live with your role and inaction in this farce, Mr. Rabner? Ms. Dow? Mr. Christie? Do you claim not to be aware of the situation? Each day that the cover-up and censorship continues is a renewal of the suffering of many people and further defecation on the Bill of Rights on the part of N.J. officials. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.") Real change is desperately needed in America. "Dan La Botz, Socialist Party Candidate for U.S. Senate from Ohio." http://www.danlabotz.com/

Censorship is always a totalitarian expression of fear of truth and truth-telling. America was never before afraid of truth. I am expressing opinions based on public sources, journals, books, films. All of my writings are supported by solid research and logical argumentation. The freedom of expression that we protect -- especially for political speech and ideas -- is essential to our democracy and identity as a free people. If you can take away that freedom, secretly, without legal acknowledgment, from anyone, then there is very little left of Americans' civil rights whatever our laws may say. This is to be very "insecure" indeed.

Government by a strong state apparatus and military-industrial elite is government for a weak people. Government for a strong people respects the rule of law. My writings are Constitutionally-protected and copyrighted. I have to keep saying this. Yes, the copyright at this blog is valid. You cannot continue to interfere with someone's life and creative works in this way. This secret government intervention in the life of any person is wrong, illegal, evil and very harmful. You are not welcome in my life. New Jersey's labels of me are absurd and laughable in a state covered with the feces of corruption and mafia criminality. ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "New Jersey Judicial and Political Whores" and "New Jersey's Legal System is a Whore House.")

I infer that police or other authorities from New Jersey are behind this new effort to harass me and/or prevent postings at these blogs, to alter or destroy my writings, to censor and suppress speech because they do not like me, disapprove of what I say, or both. Defendant Ken Zisa, perhaps, or the allegedly soiled Hackensack Police Department. I will not condone nor will I legitimate rape or censorship, regardless of how much cybercrime you commit against me. ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court.")

New Jersey's responsibility for torturing me and so many others must be acknowledged. Some effort of atonement should be made. As with torturers everywhere, N.J. persons responsible for these great crimes, detailed in numerous posts, wish to be legitimated or exonerated for their actions. This will not happen. We will go to federal court to examine these matters soon. I hope. Three words come to mind as I ponder this continuing concentration camp-like evil: 1) powerlessness; 2) hypocrisy; 3) ominousness. I will examine each of these words in turn.

Powerlessness of persons -- perhaps billions in our world are subjected to robot bombs, embargoes, sanctions, starvation and warfare -- making exploitation or disregard for such persons permissible for many American self-described "superiors" of the so-called "unwashed masses." I am one of the "unwashed masses." I am sure that, at least some of the persons violating my rights, believe (sincerely) that what they are doing, publicly, is O.K. because they are "entitled" to decide whose rights merit recognition or because they have decided that I am a "bad person." Perhaps they have decided to call me "unethical." I would describe New Jersey's legal system as corrupt, incompetent, and (at best) "unethical." You decide who is right on that issue. (Again: "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

This is a conclusion ("you are unethical!") made possible by chosen cognitive dissonance. An Orwellian ability to "doublethink" permits N.J. lawyers and cops to commit crimes because they disapprove of the "ethics" of victims. Dehumanization is an ingredient of torture or enslavement everywhere. The others are "gooks," "detainees," "towelheads," "rug merchants," subhumans, "unethical" and, hence, it is just fine to ignore their rights. Not only is it permissible to violate "their" rights, in fact, but violations may take place publicly with impunity. Why should anyone object to "our" visits to the dark side? No reason. ("Maurice J. Gallipoli and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

Hypocrisy allows Americans -- often the same Americans committing these crimes against me -- to criticize the human rights records and moral failures of other societies, prescribing lists of improvements to be made by others in order to meet with our approval, even as we are criticized by the world for operating concentration camps at which persons are tortured and murdered without being charged or tried for any legal offenses. I fervently hope that persons in the Middle East are reading these entries. I am told that there are readers of these posts in Egypt. ("China Rebukes America for Hypocrisy and Cyberhegemony" and "Embargo Against Cuba Rejected by the World" then "Is Senator Bob 'For' Human Rights?")

Hypocrisy deprives us of the right to such judgments concerning the actions of others by denying legitimacy to our own actions as well as the institutions of our government. We betray and corrupt our fundamental values when we commit public crimes -- like violations of the civil rights of dissidents -- as American government officials wielding public power. Finally, this public censorship and torture precedent is ominous for our future as a democratic society. We insult the memory of those who have died for freedom and in defense of the rule of law in all of our wars. Writers, artists, thinkers must be frightened by what they are seeing at these blogs. Today, I am censored; tomorrow, it will be you. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?")

I am sure that my father -- if he were alive today -- would be fighting against what I deplore: the totalitarian impulse to control the minds of others who disagree with you, wherever they are and for whatever reasons, and no matter who is responsible for this totalitarianism. Again: I am not a slave. I am not a laboratory animal. I will not legitimate your crimes in New Jersey. This is how democracies perish, guiltily, with the torturing and silencing of dissidents in an effort to remold their personalities to fit an absurd concept of normality and "adjustment." There are actions by government to which we should never adjust:

" ... evil must be dedicated to taking ... freedom away. If we are Pelagians, we accept that man has total liberty of moral choice. To remove that choice is to dehumanize. Evil is at its most spectacular when it enjoys turning a living soul into a manipulable object. To confer death is evil enough, but torture has always been regarded as worse. The State has a considerable interest in dehumanizing. It tends to arrogate to itself all matters of moral choice, and it does not care much to see the individual making up his own mind. It is essential that men in power maintain a distinction between the will of the ruler and the will of the ruled. The will of the ruler must, ideally, be totally free; that of the ruled of a greater or lesser freedom, according to the greater or lesser autocratic nature of the state. [Government by a strong man or group is government for a weak people and not for the free citizens of a Republic. The "ruler" in America is the Constitution and laws of the land which are the product of our revolution.] The State is the instrument whereby the ruler manifests power over the ruled. In so far as this instrument must meet as little opposition as possible in performing its function, it may be said that evil as manifested in the State can never be wholly disinterested. But Orwell represents the establishment of an authority so sure of itself that it can afford to find its chief delight in committing evil for its own sake -- that is to say, slowly, deliberately, systematically reducing men and women to gibbering subhuman creatures screaming under torture."

Anthony Burgess, 1985 (London: Arrow Books, 1978), pp. 59-60. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

I will continue to write.