Denials of Access to My Blogs.

June 14, 2011 at 3:55 P.M. An attempt to access these blogs from New York's Public Library computers at the 42nd Street branch was blocked and prevented, either by hackers or someone on the inside, acting without the permission of the authorities at the library.

This public institution -- New York's people's library -- is a monument to freedom of inquiry and speech that is violated by any form of censorship and cybercrime, as I am violated, hurt, and offended by these Nazi tactics.

You cannot disprove a rival point of view by suppressing speech or beating up the proponent of the view that you dislike. Insults are not refutations or denials of what the world sees all-too-clearly -- we have become torturers and totalitarian in our new-found intolerance of dissent. I will continue to write and struggle to post my words on-line.

After so many years of dissent, I have come to expect certain tactics. Denials of access to my blogs is no surprise. In a recent review of David K. Shipler's book, The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011), Jonathan Mahler comments:

"From the 1798 assault on free speech known as the Alien and Sedition Acts, designed to squelch criticism during America's undeclared naval war with France, to the infamous cold-war-era investigations of the House Un-American Activities Committee, the specter of conflict has invariably brought with it a panacea of internal subversion. As Shipler writes: 'In practically every war, it seems, those wielding the authority of state were gripped with a galvanizing fear, not just of the enemy abroad but of an imagined virus of resistance and subversion at home.' ... "

Jonathan Mahler, "Alienable Rights: David K. Shipler Laments the State of the Constitution in the Aftermath of 9/11," in The New York Times, June 12, 2011, at p. 26.

Many of our fundamental freedoms -- including my privacy and freedom of expression -- have been taken, secretly, by government officials in an Orwellian gesture at total control of the electronic and physical public square that is incompatible with Americans' freedoms or democracy. It seems that most people are too frightened or ignorant (by design of the system) to speak out about this gradual usurpation of our rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights. Lewis Lapham explains why this may be true:

"Among eligible voters in their twenties, only 13 percent cast ballots in the 2000 presidential election; no more than 50 percent believed that voting was important; 60 percent didn't know how or when or by whom the United States had been brought into existence. The official estimate of illiterate American citizens now stands at 40 million, but because the statistics measure little except the capacity to read road signs and restaurant menus, the number is optimistically low. Complicate the proceedings by one or two degrees of further comprehension (an acquaintance with a minimal number of standard texts, the capacity to recognize a tone of irony) and the number of people impaired by a lack of literary intelligence probably comes nearer to 100 million."

The latest facts are even more depressing:

"As many as six out of ten million American adults have never read a book of any kind, and the bulletins from the nation's educational frontiers read like the casualty reports from a lost war. The witnesses [are] the mournful stories about polls showing that one quarter of the adults interviewed were ignorant of the news that -- the earth revolves around the sun, about the majority of college freshmen (68 percent) who have trouble finding California on a map, about the high school girl who thought the Holocaust was a Jewish holiday."

Lewis Lapham, Gap Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and the Stifling of Democracy (New York: The Penguin Press, 2004), p. 121. ("Whatever!" and "Nihilists in Disneyworld.")

Has Jill Abransom of the Times visited my sites? If so, at whose request and when did Ms. Abransom visited my sites? Has Ms. Abransom been aware of the censorship at these blogs, including violations of copyright law and First Amendment rights? Has any effort been made to suppress reports or coverage of this spectacle by journalists at the Times (or elsewhere) to the best of Ms. Abransom's knowledge? If so, by whom have such efforts been made, if Ms. Abransom knows? ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")