"In Time": A Movie Review.

April 5, 2012 at 1:50 P.M. I was forced to copy this text from a public copy shop. Regrettably, several "errors" were inserted in the text before I could do so. I will attempt to correct these "errors" and to copy the essay again.

April 4, 2012 at 1:00 P.M. As a result of what, I believe, is obvious sabotage, the printer at my local NYPL (Inwood) branch has been disabled, possibly on a permanent basis. I will continue to copy my texts from other locations around the city and at various branches of the library which, sadly, may then be subjected to similar sabotage efforts. I hope not. I will also make use of print shops scattered throughout Manhattan. The greatest victims of these illegal tactics are poor New Yorkers whose only access to the Internet or printing services are associated with this library branch. Evidently, New York's public officials are unable to control this situation. My plans and opinions have not changed. I can never be certain of being able to write from one day to the next. Obstructions and cybercrime are a daily reality. I will continue to struggle to write as much as I possibly can under very difficult conditions. ("How censorship works in America" and "Why I am not an ethical relativist.")

April 2, 2012 at 1:45 P.M. A card was deliberately jammed into the copying machine at my local NYPL branch. This is designed to prevent the use of this copier. I am not the only person using the public library. Many persons in Manhattan have no other access to the Internet or to a copying machine, Mr. Menendez. ("How censorship works in America.")

Theodore Sider, "Time," in Earl Conee & Theodore Sider, Riddles of Existence: A Guided Tour of Metaphysics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005), pp. 44-61.

Peter Gallison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires of Time (New York: Vintage, 2003).

Errol E. Harris, The Reality of Time (New York: SUNY Press, 1988).

Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) (2nd Ed. of a work that first appeared in 1989).

Roger Penrose, Cycles of Time (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011).

Alexander Nehamas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985).

Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra ("Thus Spoke Zarathustra") (1885).

Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit ("Being and Time") (1927).

Charles Maturin, Melmoth the Wanderer (London: Folio Society, 1993). (1st Ed. 1820).

Richard Ellman, Oscar Wilde (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988). ("Sebastian Melmoth" was the name taken by Wilde during his final Parisian exile.)

Mark C. Taylor, The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).

"The poor die and the rich don't really live."

"In Time" is an ideas-based science fiction movie that features a subtle and ironic performance by Amanda Seyfried. Ms. Seyfried is an intelligent actor with a sly wit and, seemingly, genuine interest in ideas, who understands the black comedy as well as political subtexts in an excellent script based on the writings of Philip K. Dick. As I recall, the script is attributed to the film's director, Andrew Niccol.

Justin Timberlake is best or most generously described as "adequate" in a classic leading man/action hero role which may be his first acting experience on the big screen.

Olivia Wilde in a brief supporting role is touching and shockingly beautiful. The camera lingers, lovingly, over her delicate features. Ms. Wilde plays the mother of the Timberlake character in a wicked comment on Hollywood's fascination with youth and continuing refusal to allow women actors, like all other human beings, to age on-screen. It would be most fitting if Ms. Wilde were related to Oscar Wilde.

The premise of the film is that in a near-future dystopia the minutes and hours of a person's life become currency. At age twenty-five persons stop growing physically older, but have only a year to acquire the additional "time" of their lives.

This bizarre situation results in great amounts of time falling into the hands of a few persons while very little time is left for most others. Time can be given or taken -- usually, taken involuntarily or unjustly. Human lives are literally "stolen" by wealthy persons who may exist for centuries. The thought of, say, Donald Trump living forever in New York may bring us less than total joy.

Something similar to this grim conceit is already possible in America. The movie is saying that, in a literal sense, "time is money." People's lives -- their "time" -- is certainly currency in our criminal justice system. ("So Black and So Blue in Prison" and "Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

Disparities in wealth ("It's nobody's fault what they're born with!") produce shorter life-spans for billions of persons; also much longer life-spans for the wealthy 1% in First World states. Genetics?

Issues of global justice are dramatized in the finale of the film as the "poor in time" invade -- or "occupy"? -- the equivalent of Wall Street. This movie and several others that have appeared recently reveal American anxieties about terrorism and immigration. It is also clear that there is intense hatred for the rich in America at the moment, especially for "elites" in the financial community.

Poor people today have shorter life-spans everywhere in the world. In parts of the Third World, for instance, average persons are lucky to live into their late forties. Many poor persons can also expect "reduced quality of life" in everything from education to health care and/or nutrition during their fewer years of life. Not very fair, is it? ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

The primary theme of the movie is the quality versus quantity of life dilemma. This troubling question is faced, every day, by many persons who struggle against terminal illnesses, like cancer and AIDS.

As Heidegger suggests in "Being and Time," human life simply is the resolution of this dilemma no matter how healthy any of us happen to be when we discover ourselves as "travellers in time." The narrative presents us with the unavoidable question: "How should we live in time?" ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")

For today's audiences this question has become even more poignant with the transition from a Newtonian understanding of time, as strictly linear, to the postmodern understanding of time as a spiral, individual, biological, chemical and social, as distinct from something merely mechanical. We live in a quantum universe where "effects" may, in some sense, precede their "causes":

"The 'interval' creating this opening involves a spacing that insinuates time into every structure and system constructed to exclude it. Attempting to clarify his best-known and most notorious undecidable, Derrida writes that differance is the 'becoming-time of space and the becoming-space of time.' Since there can be no structural organization without the timely interval of this spacing, systems and structures are neither static nor eternal[,] but emerge historically and are always changing. Such change is not prefigured or programmed but is subject to the uncertainty and unpredictability of chance. In the space-time of the interval, the aleatory emerges and what emerges is aleatory. The ceaceless play of chance in the gaps of systems eventually upsets every equillibrium [and] makes homeostasis finally impossible." (Taylor, p. 97, emphasis added.)

The space where human beings can "be," in time, is between change and stasis. This space has become a shrinking sliver of reality in postmodernist cultures. Hence, paradoxes surrounding entanglement relations at the subatomic realm may be dissolved with multidimensional understandings of time that complicate the notion of "locality." ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz" and "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Author" then my forthcoming essay: "Double Fantasy: Entanglement, Dialectics, Postmodernity.")

At the outset of our story, a youthful, Byronic figure, reminiscent of Goethe's Faust or Charles Maturin's "Sebastian Melmoth" ("Sebastian Melmoth" was the name taken by Oscar Wilde in his Parisian exile) -- perhaps a cinematic version of Wagner's "Flying Dutchman" -- weary of life, sighs about the existential mystery in the opposition between living forever versus eternally.

Our challenge in life and this movie -- possibly in all art -- is to live NOW, fully and intensely, if only for a little while, or a moment or two. Like a colorful butterfly (whose life is a matter of minutes), it may be better to live beautifully, if fleetingly, than to linger in mediocrity forever. It may be impossible to hold the minutes and hours of our days frozen, forever, but it is not impossible to live the minutes and hours eternally by dwelling in our time so completely that we would wish every second to be exactly and only what it is.

For those entranced by this Romantic notion, I prescribe Keats and Shelley -- in small doses -- also Shubert's music and any good recording of Puccini's "Madam Butterfly." ("'The American': A Movie Review.")

"How old are you in real time?"

This mysterious Faustian figure ("Neil Caffrey" in the t.v. show "White Collar"), played by Matt Bomer, provides our hero with the gift of centuries of life, then presents him with the curse of "making it count." This is the challenge we face in life: Affirm the moment. Nietzsche says: "Become one of the Eternal Ones!"

The bulk of the movie is about how one lives "eternally," in the moment, for others. Albert Camus remarks that "it may be shameful" -- if not impossible -- "to be happy by oneself." ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script" then "'The English Patient': A Movie Review" and "'The Reader': A Movie Review.")

Each of us lives with a "clock" set to stop at a particular hour. We exist within networks of different temporal orders in a quantum universe that provides increasingly briefer "histories of time." Therefore, opportunities for genuine "connections" with others are also fewer and fleeting. Every death is personal, to paraphrase J.M. Barrie's "Peter Pan," another myth referenced in this film, where death is a "crocodile" that will devour each of us "in turn." ("'Finding Neverland': A Movie Review" and "Stephen Hawking is Right On Time.")

Perhaps this is "Sylvia's" discovery in the story: True wealth is authenticity, moral action, praxis and love, as her unique affirmation of the shared and fleeting moment ticking away that is made meaningful and poignant only by its very transitoriness. ("God is Texting Me!")

It is not time that passes. We pass. We die. We also leave something of ourselves behind in the lives of others affected by what we have felt and done, or created. This is how we really "give" time to others. Sylvia's Patty Hearst-like rebellion is about self-becoming. Like Rose in Titanic, Sylvia rejects her golden prison. ("Bernard Williams and Identity.")

Sylvia chooses freedom over safety and comfort, preferring revolution to centuries of boredom. She prefers justice to wealth. Accusations of anti-semitism in the form of Mr. Weiss, Sylvia's father, ignore his daughter's "crusading' (as it were) for the poor. Sylvia (Ms. Seyfried clearly enjoys herself in this role!) takes over the movie about half-way through the narrative with a pretty pout and a stamp of her foot: "Is it really stealing," Sylvia asks, "if it is already stolen?" ("Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" and "'Che': A Movie Review.")

Dostoevsky's comment that "all wealth is theft" comes to mind. Mr. Timberlake is simply blown off the screen, in a manner of speaking, by the women in the movie. Ms. Seyfried makes her spoiled little rich girl droll and ironic as well as far too interesting for her earnest companion.

I suspect that Sylvia will soon dump her proletarian boyfried in order to take over dad's bank then go into the movie business.

"I don't have time!"

Greed is questioned in this movie as a motive for lasting commitment or action, even with regard to true wealth, which is equated with youth. Eternal youth, the movie says, is something everyone has a "shot at" and not only the characters in this movie. Youth is a spiritual state. How old are you in your real time? ("Magician's Choice" then, again, "God is Texting Me!")

This insight about greed is not concerned with the ostensible age of the characters nor with how many riches they have accumulated. Authenticity is about "being-in-the-moment" that is vanishing into the past as we project ourselves into the future. ("Out of the Past" and "The Wanderer and His Shadow.")

The opposite of greed is letting go of "things" in order to "be." We must relinquish the desire to possess objects in order to own ourselves. "It is better to be," Eric Fromm argues, "than to have." ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" then "New Jersey's Politically Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")

With all of the time that anyone would wish to have safely in his vault, Mr. Weiss is only another kind of slave. Mr. Madoff is a target of this criticism. The film gestures at distinguished predecessors -- Logan's Run, The Fugitive, even the Matrix films and Inception receive subtle hommages.

The director, Mr. Niccol, is mindful that his film is also a trajectory in time and underlines this point by weaving different temporal signatures into the imagery of key scenes. Action sequences and jump cuts alternate with slower camera movement and classic over-the-shoulder shots. ("'Inception': A Movie Review" and "'The Matrix': A Movie Review.")

An excellent performance is offered by Cillian Murphy as the archetypal "pursuer" who is usually representative of guilt in psychoanalytic terms. Mr. Murphy's character embodies the law in all of its blindness and stupidity, but with meticulous memory and always dutiful. Les Miserables becomes a Noir sci-fi thriller. Justice is always particular; the law is always universal. ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory.")

Youth, we are told by Mr. Niccol (our clever director), is a metaphysical state that some fortunate persons inhabit for a lifetime, a spiritual bliss, a kind of grace. Almost all creative artists are youthful in this important sense. Others are born old. ("Serendipity, III" and "The Northanger Arms on Park Avenue.")

We meet Sylvia, as an old woman at the start of the film -- despite her chronological age -- before her meeting with the ostensible hero of our story. By the end of the movie, Sylvia has become "young," loving, passionate, purposeful and fascinating beyond her physical beauty. ("'The French Lieutenant's Woman': A Movie Review.")

Mr. Timberlake's character, like most men, begins with a boyish fascination with himself (gambling, preening, spending), then grows into a socially and politically responsible person. Ironically, our society does everything possible to prevent men from making this transition. Several refrences to Friedrich Nietzsche make this point obvious. Accordingly, I will give this German philosopher the last word:

"All joy wants eternity!"

Nietzsche proclaims the relation between joy and "eternal recurrence" as he "philosophizes with a hammer":

"Pain, too, is a joy. ... Have you ever said 'Yes' to a single joy? ... Then you have said yes, too, to all woe. All things are entangled, ensnared, enamored. If ever you wanted one thing twice, if ever you said, 'You please me happiness! Abide Moment!' then you wanted back all. All anew, all eternally, all entangled, ensnared, enamored -- oh, then you loved the world. Eternal ones, love it eternally and evermore; and to woe, too, you say: go, but return! For all joy wants eternity! ..." (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Bk. IV, 19.)

Trayvon Martin is Another Murdered Child.

March 27, 2012 at 1:50 P.M. Yesterday all computers used to access the NYPL catalogue at my local library branch were disabled by hackers. I hope that repairs have now been made. I am not the only person using this library, Senator. "Errors" inserted overnight and not found in my print version of this essay will now be corrected. ("Torture.")

March 23, 2012 at 11:10 A.M. Curiously, the printer at my library branch has been disabled. I will be moving to different branches of the library on alternate days during the forthcoming week and hereafter. I am looking forward to posting sources for my two most recent essays dealing with New Jersey corruption. I have completed a long essay entitled "What is memory?" I hope to find a place to post the work on to the Internet. I have also returned to a short story, "Hansel and Gretl." Later this week I hope to post a review of "In Time" from some computer in the city. I will continue to do my best to stay a step or two ahead of New Jersey's hackers. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "How censorship works in America.")

I am grateful for any and all international readers and attention. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

The horrifying spectacle of Trayvon Martin's murder requires a response from persons of conscience.

It is not simply the number of times that we have seen this crime committed against African-American children nor the certain knowledge that one of every three African-American children is likely to end in prison -- or dead -- under circumstances like those that took the life of this brave young man in Florida that offends or disgusts persons from all over the world. ("I Am Sean Bell!" and "Driving While Black [DWB] in New Jersey" then "Give Us Free!")

Perhaps the most offensive aspect of this tragedy is the insult to our intelligence and denial in claims that Mr. Zimmerman was engaged in "self-defense" or took "appropriate action" in killing this innocent child.

Worse is the unseemly post-mortem staining of the victim's character by police leaks concerning the reasons for the boy's suspension from school. To my knowledge, there is no jurisdiction -- not even Florida! -- where suspension from school may result in a death penalty.

The African-American population, or America as a whole, and persons of conscience everywhere are not so stupid or ignorant of this nation's ways to believe for a single moment such lies about "self-defense." ("So Black and So Blue in Prison" and "America's Holocaust.")

Racism is simply part of what America is and must deal with. ("Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison" and "Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

Most disappointing and sad is the failure by the local police in Florida to appreciate the insanity of calling themselves "officers of the law" when they see their task not as a matter of protecting all law-abiding citizens, but as conducting a war against the African-American community and/or others resembling or sympathetic to that community.

There may be occasional isolated incidents where this is not true, but New York's Police Department is a vastly more professional and a better force than any I have seen in Florida, including Miami's police.

Not to arrest the culprit, Mr. Zimmerman, is an unforgivable (if revealing) dereliction of duty on the part of a former police chief who seems not to understand what is meant by law "enforcement." Among the laws which should be enforced are those that prohibit the murder of unarmed children.

Mr. Obama's comments were welcome. Even more welcome is a civil rights investigation which is also desperately needed in my matters involving the corrupt and similar governmental structure in New Jersey. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "New Jersey's Unethical Judges" then "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

The failure of America's -- not just Florida's -- legal system uncovered in this hideous crime of murder and social indifference is one that I have seen repeated many times. It is a failure that causes a loss of talent and genius for America that is impossible to make up or compensate for: we are bleeding to death on the sidewalks of this nation alongside of thousands and even millions of young African-American men and women whose talents are needed by this country. ("America's Holocaust.")

The pain we feel cannot be obscured with the usual distractions and nonsense from Conservative politicians. This matter is not about the right to "self-defense," Mr. Gingrich, and it certainly has to do with race.

RACIST evil resulting in the murder of innocent children must be faced, dealt with, and stopped, today and forever.

P.A. Corruption Results in $63 Million Lost.

March 28, 2012 at 1:45 P.M. Yesterday my profile page was altered to indicate that there were "zero visitors" to my blogs or profile since 2004. Earlier and (again) today, the number of visitors was about 14,000. The correct number, I believe, is over 100,000. I have copied my profile showing these different numbers. No doubt this is a coincidence.

Shawn Boburg, "Bi-State Agency Owes $63 MILLION: Internet Rate Gamble Fell Flat," in The Record, March 10, 2012, at p. A-1.

Jennifer Fermino, "Mob Pals Work Part-Time: Cushy 'Low-Show' Jobs For Mafia Kin and Friends Pay $400G a Year," in The New York Post, March 5, 2012, at p. 7.

Richard Cowen, "Fired Official Got $56,000 Payout After Drug Arrest: Passaic Struck Deal as Workers Lost Jobs," in The Record, March 10, 2012, at p. A-1.

"The Port Authority is set to take a $63 MILLION hit" -- and could lose even more money! -- "on a set of risky and complex investments that agency officials on Friday called an example of ... mismanagement."

"The loss is equal to what the agency spent on infrastructure upgrades to the Lincoln and Holland tunnels last year and comes months after steep toll increases on Hudson River crossings and a scathing audit that branded the [Port Authority] 'dysfunctional.' ..."

This level of incompetence and corruption, allegedly, is forcing taxpayers to pay for all of the mismanagement, waste, and theft. The psychobabble terminology is not fooling anybody.

Worse, none of this theft and waste of public funds would be possible without the assistance of corrupt law firms and attorneys who are politically connected in New Jersey so as to be beyond reach by the imbeciles at the tainted -- or bribed -- Office of Attorney Ethics (OAE). ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" and "New Jersey's Politically Connected Lawyers On the Tit" then "Virginia Long's Departure.")

"A small band of longshoremen [and others] -- including relatives of famous mobsters -- were paid for working MORE than 24 hours a day, every day, at the ports of New York and New Jersey. ("Herbert Klitzner, Esq.'s Greed and New Jersey's Hypocrisy" and "44 New Jersey Officials Arrested in Latest Corruption Scandal!")

Allegations of similar "shenanigans" at the Port Authority are still under investigation. No wonder Richard J. Codey, Esq.'s cousin -- as opposed to his indicted brother -- is no longer at the P.A.'s legal department. ("Richard J. Codey, Esq. Immortalized On Canvas at Taxpayer Expense" and "Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless.")

"Many of the top earners raked in over $400,000 -- a seemingly impossible-to-achieve amount considering most earn around $30 an hour."

Think of the hundreds of hours per day these "family men" were devoting to their "employment." These dedicated workers often put in hundreds of hours of overtime after these many hours of regular work time. ("New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" and "Cement is Gold" then "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")

True, wise guy expenses may include payments to judges, like Stuart Rabner or Debbie Poritz, and year-round Christmas "gifts" for Bob Menenedez. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "New Jersey Supreme Court's Implosion.")

"Ralph Gigante -- a union shop steward who is supposed to 'make' $36 an hour -- [brought] home $406,659 last year in salary, overtime and bonuses, according to Waterfront Commission records ..."

Amazingly, many of his coworkers and others in the area had never seen or met the man -- allegedly.

"Joseph Colona -- the son-in-law of [Vincent] 'the Chin' Gigante -- is also a top earner. ... "

I bet he is. Colona "makes $401,105 at APM Terminals in New Jersey as a mechanics foreman, according to payroll records."

It is unconfirmed whether Mr. Gigante served as "Godfather" for Diana Lisa Riccioli. ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Cement is Gold" then "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

"A former Passaic County official who was fired the day after his arrest on drug and drunken-driving charges got a $56,000 severance check from the city."

The Official, Anthony ("Hot Hands") Iacono, will be working as a longshoreman at the Port of Elizabeth in New Jersey on a part-time basis, allegedly, for about $500,000 per year. None of these persons are African-American. ("So Black and So Blue in Prison" and "America's Holocaust.")

A list of sources detailing further judicial corruption, theft, incompetence will be attached to this essay in the days ahead.

Sources:

New York & the World:

Rod Nordland, et als., "Karzai insisting on U.S. Pullback to Bases by 2013: Rift Follows Massacre," in The New York Times, March 16, 2012, at p. A1. (Even Karzai is asking us to leave. Let's take him up on that request.)

"The Abuse of Solitary Confinement: More States Must End This Ineffective, Cruel and Common Form of Punishment," (Editorial) in The New York Times, March 16, 2012, at p. A26. (Solitary confinement, chemical lobotomies, psychological manipulations are common inmate control techniques that may be used, secretly, with members of the civilian population targeted for "monitoring and control." "Torture" and "Is Senator Menendez 'For' Human Rights?")

Declan Walsh, et als., "Drones at Issue as U.S. Rebuilds Ties to Pakistan," in The New York Times, March 19, 2012, at p. A1. (Continuing outrage and anti-American hatred in Pakistan, including hostility from elected officials, creates a dangerous situation for the entire region. Has the robot bomb policy worked?)

"Justice After Senator Stevens," (Editorial) in The New York Times, March 19, 2012, at p. A20. ("The Department of Justice has acknowledged PERVASIVE PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT ..." Please see: "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

New Jersey's Disaster:

James Quirk & John C. Ensslin, "Words Fueling Bergen Fued: Escalating Skirmish Not Hurting County, GOP Officials Say," in The Record, March 20, 2012, at p. A-1. ("Capo Regime" Michael Saudino involved in a war with Kathleen Donovan and Brian Higgins for the spoils in Bergen County. Chris Christie says he "don't know from nothing.")

Melissa Hayes, "A $50,000 Theft, But a $360 Penalty: Woman Won't Have to Repay Kid's [sic.] Fund," in The Record, March 20, 2012, at p. A-1. ("A former Englewood employee who stole more than $50,000 from the city Fire Department" gets to keep the money, but will be slapped on the wrist to the tune of $10.00 per month. ANTOINETTE GALLUZO must have "friends' in high places. Who is her godfather? Friend of Diana Lisa Riccioli? Allegations of Columbo family affiliations are denied.)

Matt Friedman, "Biden Stumps For Menendez at Fund Raiser: Event Expected to Net $400,000," in The Record, March 20, 2012, at p. A-4. ("Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "Is Menendez For Sale?" then "Menendez Gets Over On the Feds!" and "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")

"Top of the Heap: New Jersey is Not So Corrupt After All," (Editorial) in The Record, March 20, 2012, at p. A-10. (Democrat "watchdog groups" describe New Jersey as essentially "corruption free" even though the state leads the union in the number of indicted and imprisoned ex-officials: "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Is New Jersey Lucky Luciano's Havana?")

Peter J. Sampson, "Ex-Agency Chief's Bail Bid Denied: Sought to Remain Free During Appeal," in The Record, March 20, 2012, at p. L-2. (Ronald O'Malley, Esq., former ethics committee member, seeks bail while appealing a sentence in a mortgage fraud case -- how are Garcia & Kricko? -- as former Chairman of Bergen County's public finance agency.)

Rebecca D. O'Brien & Karen Sudal, "Ravi Case Could bring Change to Bias Law: Original Author Says It's Time to Revisit," in The Record, March 16, 2012, at p. A-1. (Cybercrime, computer spying, censorship through abuse of governmental authority, terroristic threats, invasions of privacy, and so much more require criminal prosecution, Mr. Chiesa and Mr. Fishman. "How censorship works in America" and "What is it like to be censored in America?")

John Reitmeyer, "Assembly Gives Panel Power to Subpoena PA: Move Follows Audit Calling Agency Dysfunctional," in The Record, March 16, 2012, at p. A-3. (More thefts are alleged at Port Authority and abuse of overtime payments. Not only is this agency "dysfunctional," but it is in "denial." The investigation will require long hours and overtime by attorneys and others. Several PA lawyers have sought employment at the ports of Elizabeth and Newark. New Jersey continues to be classified as the "most corrupt state in the union" and the "Soprano State.")

Bribery in Union City, New Jersey.

John Petrick, "Clifton Man Faces Charges of Bribery: Contractor Alleged Union City Go-Between," in The Record, March 17, 2012, at p. L-1.

One of the aspects of legal practice for which a law school education does not prepare anyone is the ubiquity of corruption.

The presence of money everywhere in the legal system and what filthy lucre does to people and institutions is not a subject that can be analyzed until one has witnessed the phenomenon up close and personal. Not offering bribes makes one unethical in New Jersey.

I do not mean simply the obvious cash-in-an-envelope for the judge or mayor kind of bribe. The official making a decision affecting one's client -- an official who may be bribed by the opposing side rendering all of one's most effective and valid legal arguments, or the law itself for that matter, pointless -- that official may "belong" to a local politician who must be "taken care of." ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics.")

Setting aside these unique wrinkles to law practice in New Jersey, there is the acid-like effect of money used to provide one side in litigation with unfair advantages over the other side. The inequalities between litigants are the proverbial elephants in American courtrooms. No one will mention what everyone knows is going on: Money buys outcomes in cases. ("So Black and So Blue in Prison" and "Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

It is sometimes necessary to "trash" legal proceedings that have become grotesquely unfair in order to avoid giving such proceedings any patina of legitimacy. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")

"A Clifton man appeared in federal court on a charge that he agreed to give bribes in connection with a zoning board matter." ("Cement is Gold!" and "Jennifer Velez is a Dyke Magnet!")

Any bribes coming to Union City's zoning board or other agencies make their way up the chain of command to Brian Stack, allegedly, and/or to Senator Menendez, who gets to dip his finger in any pies, also allegedly.

Rumors are that prices to purchase a zoning variance that violates the law are a little higher in North Bergen than in Union City. (Again: "Jennifer Velez is a Dyke Magnet!" and "North Bergen, New Jersey is the Home of La Cosa Nostra.")

"BRYANT VENEGAS, 26, a Union City contractor, is charged in a federal complaint with one count of knowingly and corruptly agreeing to give a bribe. Venegas surrendered to the FBI and appeared later that day before U.S. District judge Joseph A. Dickson in Newark on the charge. He was released on $50,000 bond."

I have reason to believe that Federal District Judge Jose Linares will not seek reappointment. Otherwise, I am sure that Senator Menendez would attempt to arrange for his fellow Cuban-American, Mr. Linares, to hear this matter. Cuban American National Foundation, Jose? Doing any favors for the boys? ("Anthony Suarez Goes On Trial" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")

"Venegas was RECORDED by investigators" -- unlike the OAE, the FBI does not alter surreptitious recordings! -- "about his plans to pass cash and other benefits to contacts in Union City government." ("Is Union City, New Jersey Lansky's Whore House?" and "Is New Jersey Lucky Luciano's Havana?")

Will these people in Union City ever be ethical and competent legal professionals? I doubt it.

A list of additional examples of corruption and incompetence in New Jersey's legal and political system will be attached to this essay in the days ahead -- if New Jersey-based cybercrime permits me to continue writing.

Sources:

New York & the World:

Michael S. Schmidt, "New Interest in Hacking as Threat to Security," in The New York Times, March 14, 2012, at p. A16. (International cybercrime as a weapon in people's struggles for democracy or for criminals. It is rumored that New Jersey has been subjected to a wave of cyberattacks.)

Israel Kerschner & Fares Akrams, "In Gaza, Fight is Familiar, But Commissions Have Changed," March 13, 2012, at p. A4. (The effects of rocket attacks are depicted in a photograph of terrified Palestinian schoolgirls forced to exit a bus. Among the people Israel is trying to protect from these attacks are such children.)

Taimoor Shah & Graham Bowley, "G.I. Kills Afghan Villagers; Children Among 16 Dead," in The New York Times, March 12, 2012, at p. A1. (Regardless of compensation, this catastrophe will delay U.S. departure efforts.)

"A Way Forward on Judicial Ethics: Why the Supreme Court Must Change How it Handles Requests for Recusal," (Editorial) in The New York Times, March 13, 2012, at p. A20. (Virginia Long, Stuart Rabner, Jaynee LaVecchia and others must adopt new judicial ethics standards, at the state level, to preserve some integrity in America's "Soprano State" and most soiled appellate court. No more favors for the Democrat machine, Stuart. "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!")

Declan Walsh & Salman Masood, "Pakistan Picks New Director For Spy Agency," in The New York Times, March 10, 2012, at p. A4. (Lt. Gen. Zahir al-Islam leads effort to respond to civilian deaths in his country by terminating U.S. alliance over robot bombs and issues of territorial integrity.)

Andrew Delbanco, "A Smug Education," (Op-Ed) in The New York Times, March 9, 2012, at p. A21. (What a "snob," Mr. Santorum!)

Adam Liptak, "Supreme Court Seeks Clarification in a Human Rights Case," in The New York Times, March 16, 2012, at p. A15. (What are the boundaries on universal jurisdiction?)

"Judge Cuvell's Racist 'Joke,'" (Editorial) in The New York Times, March 6, 2012, at p. A26. (Conservatives are calling for Federal District Judge Cuvell's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court -- if a Republican is elected President -- after the judge's racist slur of Mr. Obama.)

New Jersey's Fiasco:

James Barron, "In a Spat With a Law Student, a Governor's Tongue Is, Once Again, Too Sharp to Hold," in The New York Times, March 14, 2012, at p. A25. (A set-up heckler was probably sent by the governor's New Jersey Democrat opposition, but we only saw the end of their exchange on the news. Who was paying the law student, Codey or Sweeney? Menendez or Norcross?)

John Reitmeyer & Juliet Fletcher, "Balance of High Court Caught Up in Politics," in The Record, March 24, 2012, at p. A-1. (Democrats fighting Christie's efforts to bring balance to the Trenton Supreme Court by reducing the number of Democrat "Machine-made" judges on that court. "George E. Norcross, III is the Boss of New Jersey's Politics and Law.")

Phil Mattingly & Sheila Bush, "MF Global Executive Says Corzine OK'd Transfer of Funds," in The Record, March 24, 2012, at p. A-3. (Mr. Corzine seems to have known both what he was doing and what has happening to client funds. Mr. Corzine is not African-American. The total amount that is "missing" is now $1.8 BILLION. "So Black and So Blue in Prison.")

"Political Justice: Phillip Kwon Never Had a Chance," (Editorial) in The Record, March 24, 2012, at p. A-15. (This is what is wrong with politicizing the bench in New Jersey: talented, apolitical candidates for the judiciary are rejected for loyal and much more mediocre soldiers of the Democrat machine.)

Hannan Adeley, "Clifton Library Board to Lay Off Two: Arts, Culture Employees May Be On Payroll Illegally," in The Record, March 24, 2012, at p. L-1. (Mismanagement and corruption is producing loss of jobs for people and a diminution in the quality of life for all New Jersey residents. Talk of corruption being "worse in other states" is simply absurd.)

Juliet Fletcher, "Nominees for Court Face Heavy Scrutiny: Dems Won't Hold Back at Hearing," in The Record, March 22, 2012, at p. A-1. (The use of judges as puppets and political footsoldiers is the death of a legal system.)

Jeff Pillets, "Political Insider Can't Recall Details of En-Cap Deal," in The Record, February 22, 2012, at p. A-4. ("A Trenton insider who got $12,000 per month from En-Cap's corporate parent testified Tuesday that he could not remember any meetings ..." nor why he was receiving all that money? Is this man related to Jon Corzine? Amnesia, gentlemen?)

Jeff Pillets, "Ex-State Official Says She Balked at En-Cap Risks: Testifies in Bryant Bribery Trial," in The Record, February 23, 2012, at p. A-5. (Scam that resulted in $1 BILLION Meadowlands Golf Project -- "playing through," Senator Bob? -- defended by former N.J. official claiming she was "deceived" into allowing for expenditures. "Eric Wisler, Esq. is an Ethical New Jersey Attorney.")

Richard Cowen, "Report Confirms Overtime Abuses: Paterson Mayor, 7 Aides Targeted," in The Record, February 22, 2012, at p. L-1. (More theft from the taxpayers by attorneys and public officials: "New Jersey's Politically Connected Lawyers On the Tit" and "Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics." Do you speak to me of "ethics," Mr. Rabner?)

John Petrick, "Judge Thwarts Council's OT Probe," in The Record, February 25, 2012, at p. L-1. (Democrat-appointed judge obstructs efforts to indict Democrat officials for corruption and waste of public funds.)

Linh Tat, "Municipal Court Employee Accused of Theft," in The Record, March 10, 2012, at p. L-3. (MARIA A. BARBARA is accused of stealing from Municipal Court and other local fees as clerk. Accusations that court clerks in Fort Lee and other Bergen and Hudson towns have stolen fees that are shared with local officials have been common for years and are now said to be subject to a federal investigation. I am sure that these thefts have, in fact, been common for years. What happened to that money in the Estevez matter, Senator Bob? "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?" and "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")

What is Enlightenment?

Jonathan I. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

David Bell, "Where do we come from?," in The New Republic, March 2, 2012, at p. 28.

Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), Franz Fritz, C.A. Kallen and John Pattergrove, trans.

Immanuel Kant, "What is Enlightenment?," in Berliner Monatschrift (1784).

Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1973).

Christopher Norris, "What is Enlightenment?: Foucault on Kant," in The Trouble With Postmodernism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 27-99.

Stuart Hampshire, Spinoza and Spinozism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005).

Marjorie Grene, ed., Spinoza: A Collection of Critical Essays (Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979).

The Rationalists: Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz (New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1960).

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of Modern Age (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983).

Richard Rorty, "Review of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age," in The London Review of Books, 1983.

Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Francisco: City Lights, 1988). (Postmodern Spinoza.)

Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), F.G. Lawrence, trans.

Stephen Hawking, God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs That Changed History (London: Running Press, 2005). (Gauss to Cantor to Godel and Turing.) ("Is the universe only a numbers game?")

F.L. Baumer, Modern European Thought: Continuity and Change in Ideas, 1600-1950 (New York: MacMillan, 1977).

I. Difficulties and Confusions in This Review.

David A. Bell's review of Professor Israel's examination of the Enlightenment is well-written and cautious, but suffers from some astonishing errors that lead me to conclude that the reviewer did not read this book. Perhaps Mr. Bell -- or whoever wrote this essay -- did not read all of the book. ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!" and "Derek Parfit's Ethics.")

It is curious, for example, that in discussing the Enlightenment and its aftermath there is no mention of Hans Blumenberg's masterpiece, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, nor a detailed treatment of Jurgen Habermas defense of "The Enlightenment Project" in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Despite not having read Professor Israel's book, I am sure that both of these texts by German philosophers were discussed in Democratic Enlightenment.

This reviewer claims that Professor Israel attributes the Enlightenment to the influence of Baruch Spinoza. This is strange since the book's title suggests a focus on the period from 1750 to 1790. Spinoza lived and wrote during the seventeenth century (1632-1677), remaining an esoteric and mostly forgotten philosopher until his rediscovery by the German inventors of the Enlightenment.

If this issue concerning chronology and the "anxiety of influence" is discussed by Professor Israel -- it must have been analyzed extensively! -- the analysis has escaped Mr. Bell's notice. Several more serious errors and confusions detract from this essay or review: For example, no effort is made to distinguish Enlightenment from Modernity. Spinoza is a Rationalist with a capital "R" and hardly a "radical materialist" nor an "empiricist." To suggest that Spinoza is the central figure for the "radical materialists" is absurd. This is especially true since "materialism" and "radical materialism" are not defined in Bell's review. (Bell, p. 32.)

Did "Andrew Ferguson" contribute in any way to this review that is, ostensibly, written by David A. Bell? ("Book Chats and Chits.")

If Spinoza (and not Kant) is the founding father for the Enlightenment -- the same Immanuel Kant whose essay "What is Enlightenment?" is usually said to define the movement -- then why is there no mention in this review of the Jewish Enlightenment or Haskallah, or of Spinoza's contribution to that phenomenon?

No explanation is given. I am sure that Professor Israel has also discussed these issues.

This reviewer -- whoever he or she may be -- is doing a great disservice to David Bell and to Professor Israel, as well as to the readers of TNR. Borrowing comments from other reviewers of this book in France will not obscure the facts for intelligent readers. This scholarly work by Professor Israel is clearly the culmination of years of effort meriting a more serious response in the pages of an important journal of ideas and opinions. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld" and "Whatever!" then "What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")

As I say, there is a failure to distinguish Modernity from Enlightenment in this review. Although the words are sometimes used synonymously in popular discussions, they refer to partly overlapping (if also separable) entities.

What is more, the history of philosophy is not distinguished from the history of ideas by "Mr. Bell." I suspect that the history of ideas is Professor Israel's primary concern in this book. Ideas lead to revolutions. This error by the reviewer compounds the confusions surrounding Spinoza's philosophy leaving us entirely "unenlightened."

Spinoza's contribution to the break with the medieval worldview and championing of what would be called "Modernity" in The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and Ethics is misunderstood by the reviewer's curious alignment of this thinker with Lyotard's Report On the Postmodern Condition (presumably) as opposed to the so-called "Postmodern-Spinozist," Gilles Deleuze, who is not mentioned at all, see Deleuze's Spinoza: Practical Philosophy.

The final chapter of Deleuze's book makes clear Spinoza's importance to the German creators of the Enlightenment -- Kant and Hegel -- who reinvented Spinoza's geometrical method for an age of commerce.

Spinoza identified "bodies" or objects not with "radical materialism," by the way, but with systematic relations in a coherence rather than a correspondence model of truth.

Spinoza was mostly forgotten for about 100 years after his death. Germany's Aufklarung and all of the Romantics (Samuel Taylor Coleridge in England) appropriated Spinoza's work for purposes that would have seemed bizarre to the Spanish-Dutch Jew.

What mattered to the Enlightenment was not Spinoza's metaphysics nor his epistemology, but Spinoza's championing of the free-thinking individual in a new "Age of Reason."

An error repeated, constantly, by my adversaries in debate which reappears in TNR's review of Derek Parfit's ethics and, once more, in this review of Professor Israel's book is the bizarre assumption that idealism is opposed to empiricism. Since these terms are not defined by Mr. Bell, I cannot say what motivates this strange assumption. Idealism is not the same thing as Rationalism. Idealism is NOT opposed to empiricism. Nor is idealism an enemy of science. Empiricism -- especially today -- is not the same as materialism or radical materialism. ("David Stove's Critique of Idealism" and "G.E. Moore's Critique of Idealism.")

After the Kantian "Copernican Revolution" in philosophy, "transcendental idealism" was made fully compatible with empiricism thereby contributing greatly to developments in science. ("John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness.")

Einstein's relativity theory is the third so-called "Copernican Revolution" in Western civilization that is directly connected to Kant's achievement. It is no coincidence that the "revolution" in physics dating from the late nineteenth century and into our own era was largely a German cultural development from the premises of philosophical idealism.

The scientific revolution (17th century) should not be confused with positivism (19th century) or logical positivism (20th century). It is particularly ludicrous to discuss Cassirer's volumes on the Enlightenment as, somehow, opposed to science because they concluded with the observation: "one of the greatest achievements of the human mind [is] German idealism." (Bell, p. 28.)

Again: Rationalism (Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz) is not "the same as" modern idealism (Kant, Hegel). Rationalism is a position in epistemology which may be aligned either with realism in its sophisticated forms or anti-realism in metaphysics. The same may be said of empiricism today because of our much more complex understanding of what is laughingly called "reality." Matter is now seen as "energy." Empiricism may be seen as more than compatible with -- even essential to -- what today is called "constructivism."

The conceptual landscape changed forever with the Kantian Critical Theory which is seen as the heart of the "German Enlightenment" linking the English-American intellectual revolutions in politics and law, industry and commerce with philosophical ideas as befits a "practical people" engaged in the important business of creating a global empire and running the world.

ALL forms of realism today or the so-called "new realism" or "speculative realism" or "object-oriented ontology" or "scientific realism" are "mediated" forms of realism as opposed to "naive realism" and are, therefore, directly derived from Kantian philosophy.

Thomas Jefferson is no less impressive than Immanuel Kant or Baruch Spinoza. The American Enlightenment "instantiates" and realizes the promise of European philosophers. This claim concerning the intellectual roots of the French and American Revolutions may be part of the argument offered by Professor Israel. If so, I concur.

II. Definitions and Distinctions Clarified.

Among the confusions in what purports to be Mr. Bell's review is the assumption that the history of ideas is the history of philosophy. This is not necessarily the case: The history of philosophy focuses on great names (Spinoza, Kant) and upon a highly technical academic subject called "philosophy." The history of ideas has to do with the dissemination and influence of ideas originally formulated in elite settings that are transported to the messy public square of politics and law.

Ideas belong to everyone. Ideas are not merely the property of esoteric philosophers. In fact, the most influential ideas tend to be popularizations or corruptions of profound philosophical speculations. Revolutions, for example, are the products of powerful ideas inspired by "felt necessities," as Marx said, after reading Rousseau:

"Obviously, the history of ideas, unlike the history of philosophy, tries to get beyond private into public thought, beyond the unique to idiosyncratic to shared ideas, to collective states of mind."

F.L. Baumer, Modern European Thought, pp. 6-11 (emphasis added).

Modernity (15th to 17th century) is the movement that rejects Medieval Aristoteleanism, centralized hierarchical power in religious institutions, a landed aristocracy or feudalism, in favor of secularized reason or what Spinoza's system describes as "the intellectual love of God."

Reason replaces God in the history of authority which culminates with the Enlightenment (18th century) in the writings of Immanuel Kant and the English, American and French philosophers of liberty. Reason and what is still our orderly universe may be part of what is meant by "God," say religious persons of the Romantic generation. ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" and "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")

The various philosophical and political movements at the end of the eighteenth century were united by a demand for individual rather than collective reason on behalf of an abstraction called: "humanity." This demand for the dignity of persons was crystalized in the American and French revolutions enshrining of the "rights" of wealthy white men and (eventually) of women and all others. ("William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft" and "Master and Commander.")

Marx saw these bourgeois revolutions as requiring the correctives of social justice reforms. A corrective that was anticipated by the American framers whose balancing of liberty with "happiness" (Declaration of Independence) or equality (Bill of Rights) obviated the need for proletarian revolutions if not for a civil war to end slavery. ("Is Western Philosophy Racist?" and "John Rawls and Justice.")

Crucial distinctions and conceptual clarifications elude this reviewer, as I say -- who is clearly not Mr. Bell -- as he/she stumbles by identifying the rationalism and modern project of Spinoza with radical materialism or the scientific materialism (August Compte) of a much later positivism.

III. What is Enlightenment?

Sapere Aude ("Dare to use your own reason!") is Kant's summary of the Enlightenment.

No authority except that of the individual intellect in the Protestant tradition, especially, commands respect. Hence, the First Amendment of the United States Constitution ensures that matters of conscience for each person are not the province of the government. ("Is there a gay marriage right?") 

This slogan means that the individual's right to think freely -- especially about political matters -- cannot be altered by the state which recognizes, but does not confer rights, as Mr. Jefferson explained with greater eloquence than any writer that I know of anywhere in the world. It is "nature [secular] and nature's God [religious]" alone in the American realization of the Enlightenment that confers "rights" upon persons.

That's what I call a radical or revolutionary idea.

Rights are humanity's ontological endowment or what it means to be a person. To be a person, in the American understanding of the word, means to claim the status of a subject in a world of objects. ("A Doll's Aria" and "Magician's Choice.")

A person has a material body, but is also a locus of rights and responsibilities by nature, as a matter of natural law, and therefore may not be deprived of those rights by anyone, not by any king or Pope, not by a legislature or judge, not by any group of rich men, nor by thugs from Miami or Union City. (Compare "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me'" with "Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")

It follows from this logic that no person can be a slave. Just government is the rule of law and not of individuals. Mr. Jefferson got more than he bargained for: "We have the wolf" -- slavery -- "by the ears!"

The trouble is that reason has proven to be a blunt instrument. Reason certainly led to science's achievements (antibiotics) but also to science's disasters (Auschwitz, Hiroshima).

We want the bonus without the onus. We want reason without the deformations of reason in dehumanization, mechanization, bureaucratic law, and/or the coldness of instrumental reason in the ethical realm.

The exclusion of all values from the province of reason (fact/value) has deprived us, pointlessly, of intellectual resources against the enemies of humanity, men drawing on science's neutrality in a hideous twentieth-century project of enslavement and barbarism that none of the philosophers of "progress through Enlightenment" could have imagined.

Nazi concentration camps as well as all similar movements and places, including every form of behaviorist conditioning and torture, used by anyone, to deprive persons of autonomy and other fundamental rights constitutes a betrayal of the humanism of the Enlightenment and America's Constitution. ("America's Holocaust" and "Give Us Free!")

The Romantic reaction to the Enlightenment insists that reason -- as understood by the Enlightenment -- must be supplemented with love or the altruistic emotions that Kant identifies with aesthetic faculties in The Critique of Judgment. (Also known as "The Critique of Judgement" for our British friends.)  

For if Kant is the philosopher of reason, he is also and no less the philosopher of the wisdom of aesthetic feeling and religious insight in his final works.

Kant is indeed the source for the idealists, but also for the positivists as he provides one inspiration for the physics revolution that culminates his work in the intellectual life of our civilization.

With all due respect to Professor Israel -- if this is indeed his view -- it is not Spinoza, but Immanuel Kant who must be credited with ushering in our "Age of Reason and Enlightenment."

Whoever is responsible for this review owes an apology to Professor Israel and to readers of TNR.

Virginia Long's Departure.

March 13, 2012 at 2:10 P.M. Alterations in the spacing of paragraphs and other vandalism may be expected in response to this essay as more arrests take place in New Jersey.

Mary Ann Spoto, "Courtroom Trailblazer Steps Down: [Ms.] Long Among N.J.'s First Female Judges," in The Star Ledger, March 5, 2012, at p. 1.

After commenting on Judge Posner's unusual "reservations" concerning racism in American criminal justice and prisons, it seems fitting to comment on Garden State Supreme Court Justice Virginia Long's "departure" from the bench. ("So Black and So Blue in Prison.")

Ms. Long is approaching age 70, the mandatory retirement age for judges in New Jersey, including Supreme Court justices. Several justices -- including Ms. Long's mentors, Mr. Wilentz and Ms. Poritz -- were granted waivers that allowed them to remain on the bench for additional terms.

Ms. Long opposes the mandatory retirement age and sought such a waiver for herself. In fact, she fought mightlity to remain on the court, only losing the battle at the eleventh hour.

The rumor is that Ms. Long was, politely, shown to the door by Governor Christie. Whether Ms. Long's departure had anything to do with my humble efforts and the growing stench of scandal surrounding my matters and/or "Trenton's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest," is an open question. ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "New Jersey's Political and Judicial Whores" then "New Jersey's Politically Connected Lawyers On the Tit" and "Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics.")

It may be that persons of an earlier generation found it difficult to acknowledge certain sexual tendencies that are more readily discussed, publicly, today. I certainly understand anger about violations of privacy, but not hypocrisy or sanctimony from self-righteous frauds. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

Ms. Long, a Republican in Democrat's clothing, has not been a favorite among minority males in the legal profession because she has been plagued throughout her career by allegations of racism as well as anti-immigrant views. ("Racism in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Driving While Black [DWB] in New Jersey" then "Give Us Free!")

Regrettably, I am not the sort of person Ms. Long would "deem" to be an intellectual equal. Losing an argument against a "person" like me must not be permitted by the universe, in her judgment, even when it becomes clear that this may indeed have occurred. ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism" then "Derek Parfit's Ethics.")

I am sure that Ms. Long is very nice on a personal level and has a lovely suburban home. No doubt her "manor house" is cared for by gardners, or other servants, with names like mine. Ms. Long's mistake in debating me -- if she, unwisely, attempted such a thing -- is understandable. ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" then "Jennifer Velez is a Dyke Magnet!")

The obligatory nice speeches notwithstanding, Ms. Long will never be regarded as a civil libertarian nor a crusader for racial justice. I am sure that Ms. Long has been responsive to "political pressures" on the bench. Furthermore, I have reason to believe that Ms. Long has been part of the stonewalling effort aimed at denying me the truth in my matters in violation of basic principles of law that she claimed to champion from the bench. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "How censorship works in America" and "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

Perhaps the cover-ups in Trenton are about protecting Ms. Long's friends or (more likely) herself. The Constitutional and statutory requirements concerning disclosure have been ignored in New Jersey for "self-interested" reasons. This self-interest is the opposite of the judicial task of fairness and neutrality designed to result in the application of the same laws and principles to all, equally or alike, regardless of status, wealth, or power. Self-interest may also preclude the just administration of laws envisioned by the federal Constitution. ("New Jersey's Unethical Judiciary" and "Christie Attacks New Jersey's Corrupt Judges.")

Ms. Long has "long" known of and may have cooperated with Trenton's cybercrime and censorship efforts aimed against my blogs and books. This is a more serious issue than failure in debate. For any judge to indulge in criminality -- however sub-human or "object-like" the victim may seem to that judge -- is a betrayal of his or her judicial oath. ("Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility" and "Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution" then "How censorship works in America.")

A Supreme Court Justice's fondness for censorship may conflict with her stated views on the First Amendment to the Constitution. How much of what ALL judges write is fiction for public consumption when their private beliefs and secret actions are distant from their so-called legal opinions? Plenty, it seems. ("The Critical Legal Studies Movement" and "Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" and "Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison" then "America's Holocaust.")

Ms. Long's shameful inconsistencies, apparently, may not affect the journalistic as well as professional tributes that will now pour-in. (""Hypocrisy" and "The Arrogance of Power.")

If the old saying "a fish stinks from the head" is accurate, then Virginia Long, Jaynee LaVecchia, and Stuart Rabner -- hoping to protect Ms. Poritz, possibly -- may bear much of the blame for the tragic and disgusting failures of New Jersey's court system. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!" then "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Jaynee LaVecchia and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

This catastrophe that is the state's legal reality is evident from a casual perusal of the hundreds of essays posted at these blogs that are supported by thousands of sources. (Again: "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics.")

A list of sources detailing unethical and corrupt developments in New Jersey politics and law will be attached to this essay in the days ahead. ("Neil M. Cohen, Esq. and Conduct unbecoming to the Legislature in New Jersey" and "New Jersey's Child Sex Industry.")

Have you no shame about your complicity in New Jersey's dismal "legal culture of corruption," Ms. Long?

Sources:

New York & the World:

Taimoor Shah & Graham Bowley, "G.I. Kills Afghan Villagers; Children Among 16 Dead," in The New York Times, March 12, 2012, at p. A1. (Please bring the troops home.)

Taimoor Shah & Alissa J. Rubin, "6 British Soldiers Are Killed in Afghanistan," in The New York Times, March 8, 2012, at p. A11. (There are no safe zones in Afghanistan. With the burning of Korans and yesterday's indiscriminate killing of civilians by American soldiers, hostilities have escalated throughout the country.)

Mathew Rosenberg & Graham Bowley, "Intractable Afghan Graft Hampering U.S. Strategy," in The New York Times, March 8, 2012, at p. A1. (Afghanistan -- like Iraq -- is "imploding." Graft and corruption, as in New Jersey, may prevent necessary changes in Afghanistan.)

Michael S. Schmidt, "F.B.I. Director Warns Congress About Terrorist Hackers," in The New York Times, March 8, 2012, at p. A17. ("Cyberwarfare" is an increasing reality targeting states or failed jurisdictions, like Syria and New Jersey.)

Alissa J. Rubin, "2 G.I.'s Killed Amid Protests Over Burning of Holy Book," in The New York Times, February 24, 2012, at p. A4. (Afghanistan's troubles are making our departure MORE, not less necessary.)

Mathew Rosenberg, "Afghan Uproar Casts Shadows on U.S. Pullout," in The New York Times, February 27, 2012, at p. A1. (Mr. Panetta changes his mind about the U.S. departure.)

"Justice and Open Files: It's Time to Change the Government's Rule on Disclosure in Criminal Cases," (Editorial) in The New York Times, February 27, 2012, at p. A18. (Lying, covering-up, manufacturing evidence by prosecutors and ethics officials in New Jersey is criminal, Mr. Rabner: "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "Jennifer Velez is a Dyke Magnet!" then "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")

MJ Lee, "Judge Apologizes to Obama, Regrets Investigation," in Politico, March 5, 2012, at p. 13. (Federal District Judge Richard Cebelle wrote a letter to President Obama over a racist e-mail "joke" that the judge forwarded from his government computer: "Anthony Suarez Goes On Trial" and "So Black and So Blue in Prison.")

Adam Liptak, "Supreme Court Seeks Clarification on Jurisdiction in a Human Rights Case," in The New York Times, March 6, 2012, at p. A15. (Universal jurisdiction finally reaches the U.S. Supreme Court with regard to "crimes against humanity.")

Charlie Savage, "U.S. Law May Allow Killings, Holder Says," in The New York Times, March 6, 2012, at p. A18. (According to the U.S. Attorney General, America may assassinate even U.S. citizens -- along with any other persons -- wherever they may be, for undisclosed reasons, and without judicial proceedings of any kind, or any opportunity for the victim to respond. Allegedly, this satisfies due process under the federal Constitution. This power "constitutes" a violation of fundamental human rights or "crime against humanity" that may give rise, in other countries, to universal jurisdiction over the formulators of the policy -- including Mr. Holder. This is a quite a dilemma.)

New Jersey's Calamity:

Denisa R. Superville, "Council Outlaws Hiring of Relatives: Elected Officials Also Banned From Jobs," in The Record, March 17, 2012, at p. L-1. (Bogota, New Jersey is outraged that nepotism may be illegal, for once, in Bergen County.)

John Petrick, "Clifton Man Faces Charge of Bribery: Contractor Alleged Union City Go-Between," in The Record, March 17, 2012, at p. L-1. (Allegations that Clifton-based Diana Lisa Riccioli promised young females as sexual partners as part of the "package deal" cannot be confirmed. Ms. Riccioli is an alleged "former lover" of New Jersey's one-time Chief Justice Deborah T. Poritz and, perhaps, of Virginia Long. When was the last time you saw Marilyn Straus, Diana? I will be writing separately about this on-going investigation: "An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli" and "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")

Jennifer Fermino, "Mob-Pals Work Part Time," in The New York Post, March 5, 2012, at p. 6. (Cushy, no- or low-show jobs, some PUBLIC or quasi-public -- including, allegedly, at the Port Authority, overtime? -- for mafia guys making several salaries in exchange for "a little something we don't know what." For instance, PAUL BUGLIOLI, of Edison, New Jersey -- who is allegedly affiliated with the, equally alleged, capo of the Genovese crime family, NICOLAS PURDINA -- "earned" $474,947 working part-time as a "time-keeper." Several of these gentlemen are said to be candidates for the judiciary, one of them may be a member of local government in New Jersey. "New Jersey's Politically Connected Lawyers On the Tit" and "Herbert Klitzner. Esq.'s Greed and New Jersey's Hypocrisy.")

John C. Ensslin, "State Website Has a Situation to Deal With: Link Goes to 'Jersey Shore' Page," in The Record, February 22, 2012, at p. A-1. (Cybercrime directed against New Jersey's judiciary and Supreme Court will continue to cost millions. Allegations of theft of information from court computers cannot be confirmed. Some computers attached to the Jersey courts link to child porn, allegedly, others to "Jersey Shore" or "The Sopranos.")

Matt Friedman, "Lobbyists Pour Millions Into the State's Battlefields: NJEA, Verizon, AARP Spend Big on 2011 Legislation," in The Star Ledger, March 8, 2012, at p. 25. ($73 MILLION spent by lobbyists in N.J. politics -- bribes? -- how much comes back to lobbyists and their clients? This is how corruption happens. "Is Menendez For Sale?" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends? then "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")

Amy Kuprinsky, "We kid You Not," in The Star Ledger, March 8, 2012, at p. 29. (Nicole "Snookie" Polizzi may be getting married. Will Celeste Carpiano be the maid of honor? "Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Celeste Carpiano Likes Da' Shore.")

Kibret Marcos & Monsy Alvarado, "Not Guilty Plea in Firebombing: At Lodi High [School,] Suspect Ran Afoul of Officials," in The Record, March 6, 2012, at p. L-7. (More anti-semitic and Neo-Nazi incidents are expected in N.J. and N.Y. "Give Us Free!" and "So Black and So Blue in Prison.")

Peter J. Sampson, "Ridgewood Woman Sentenced [For] ID Theft: Among 53 Arrested When Ring Was Busted," in The Record, March 6, 2012, at p. L-3. (Computer crime and falsifying documents resulted in 31/2 year sentence in federal court for a woman ordered to pay $124,000 restitution, who must have had state political and police protection to have enjoyed such a long run. Need a driver's license, "George Clooney"?)

James O'Neill, "EPA Puts Cleanup Ahead of Schedule: Fears New Risks to Meadowlands," in The Record, March 4, 2012, at p. L-1. (New Jersey is America's cancer alley thanks to years of corruption among health and other inspectors who often permit illegal waste for a small fee.)

Richard Cowen, "Poet and Activist Amiri Baraka Speaks at Passaic Event," in The Record, March 1, 2012, at p. L-1. (Amiri Baraka speaks of African-American oppression as the only poet silenced by a Legislature that failed to understand the non-literal meanings of poetry. "America's Holocaust.")

Jenna Portnoy, "Sweeney, Christie Hug It Out in Statehouse," in The Star Ledger, February 20, 2012, at p. 1. (Christie's and Sweeney's "romance," as it were, may lead the N.J. governor to change his mind on gay marriage. "Is There a Gay Marriage Right?")

Joel Schectman, "Downtown Vision Hinges On Clean-Up: Pompton Lakes Debates Priorities and Future," in The Record, February 21, 2012, at p. L-1. (Revamping downtown area obstructed by possible toxic waste -- or other "unknown" waste material -- in an area with unusually high cancer rates. I wonder what happened? Corruption?)

So Black and So Blue in Prison.

April 7, 2012 at 11:46 A.M. "Errors" not found in print copies of this text have suddenly appeared in the essay. I have done my best to correct them and will copy the essay from a public location. Spacing between paragraphs may continue to be altered by hackers.

March 10, 2012 at 12:55 P.M. Several of my copy cards at the NYPL were disabled yesterday because of "Error E-8 and E-9." Regrettably, I had spent money on those cards. Luckily, I try to have several extra cards in case of such vandalism. I am sure that this was only a coincidence. ("Censorship and Cruelty in New Jersey" and "More Censorship and Cybercrime" then "How censorship works in America" then "The Invicta Watch Company" and "The Invicta Watch Company Caper.")

March 7, 2012 at 12:35 P.M. I was unable to sign-in at computer number #7 at NYPL (Inwood) for about fifteen minutes due to vandalism of this computer. Finally, I was able to overcome the problem. I continue to receive threats that I will not be able to sign-in, again, at these blogs. If I cannot return to write at these blogs, I will try to create new locations from which to write on-line. I regret that this vandalism damages not only me, but also many members of the N.Y. public using these computers, also those seeking to read my writings. An attempt to print this essay was obstructed by hackers yesterday. I can not say what other damage has been done to my writings overnight. I simply can not know whether I will be able to write at these blogs from one day to the next. An essay examining Virginia Long's departure from the judiciary could not be posted today due to these tactics. ("Torture" and "How censorship works in America" then "More in Sadness Than in Anger.")

March 6, 2012 at 1:00 P.M. The resignation in disgrace of Virginia Long from the New Jersey Supreme Court seems to confirm that both Stuart Rabner and Jaynee LaVecchia may be next to "step down" from the bench. No one leaves such a position voluntarily. Many justices have received extensions of the mandatory retirement rule at age 70, including Ms. Poritz and Mr. Wilentz. I have reason to believe that Ms. Long may have visited my sites, including "The Philosophy Cafe," at MSN. 

What did Ms. Long know about my matters -- or the cybercrime to which I have been subjected -- and when did she know it? 

Leaving the bench will not make the issues go away. Efforts to prevent me from writing on-line continue to go unpunished. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "Trenton's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest!")

William J. Stunz, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).

Richard A. Posner, "Incarceration Blues," in The New Republic, November 17, 2011, at p. 36.

John Paul Stevens, "Our Brown System of Criminal Justice," in The New York Review of Books, November 10, 2011, at p. 56.

Robert Kagan, "Not Fade Away: Against the Myth of American Decline," in The New Republic, February 2, 2012, at p. 19.

James Barron, "Deadline Past, Portugal Says It Won't Send Killer to U.S.," in The New York Times, March 2, 2012, at p. A19.

Phil Angelides, "Will Wall Street Ever Face Justice?," in The New York Times, March 2, 2012, at p. A25.

Raymond Bonner, "When Innocence Isn't Enough," (Op-Ed) in The New York Times, Sunday, March 4, 2012, at p. 8 (Week in Review).

Tamar Lewin, "Black Students Punished More, Data Suggests," in The New York Times, March 6, 2012, at p. A11.

John Marzulli, "'I Carry Scars of Torture': Victim Rails at Monster in Court," in The Daily News, March 6, 2012, at p. 6.

Richard A. Posner, a Circuit Court judge from Chicago and the leading representative of "Law and Economics" in American jurisprudence, reviews Professor William J. Stunz's controversial book, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice. ("Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.")

Judge Posner believes that the American criminal justice system is not in a state of collapse because "the system is costly in human terms but not in budgetary terms." (Posner, p. 36.)

Curiously, however, Judge Posner does not provide the crucial financial figures which must be at his finger tips: Americans will spend about $70 BILLION on federal and state prisons; several billion more dollars may be added to these costs when all local jail expenses are combined with national prison costs.

At the moment, the U.S. faces a $3-to-$4 TRILLION deficit in the federal budget alone, much of that debt is being held by China and Japan. There is a national security issue for you, a debt that we owe to the Bush/Cheney administration.

To spend $70 to $100 BILLION on making about 2 million people economically unproductive, while destroying the lives of another 2 million or so who are subjected to some form of monitoring, or other legal stigmatizing of some kind, is indeed a budgetary crisis. It is also a crisis of legitimacy for the system because racism, obviously, defines the court system at every stage in the process of criminal prosecution and incarceration. ("Foucault, Rose, Davis, and the Meanings of Prison.")

In the words of Justice John Paul Stevens: "racism" is a "systemic" problem in the American courts because " ... blacks are nine times more likely than whites to serve prison sentences [for the indentical] drug crimes. And the same system that discriminates against black drug defendants also discriminates against black victims of criminal violence." (Stevens, p. 56.)

We cannot afford the world's most expensive and massive penal system. If we could afford it, the issue of injustice would still arise since the system is designed, in the words of Roberto Unger, to "confine violent members of the underclass" who happen to be minority males, especially African-Americans and Latinos. Also, persons who "appear" violent may be sent to prison. In other words, dark-skinned persons of all genders. ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" and "Justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal" then "Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Unconstitutionality of the Death Penalty" and "Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

I suspect that Judge Posner knows this fact, but that he struggles to convince himself otherwise. Mr. Posner is even more aware, I believe, of the validity of the deepest criticisms in this book -- which are not economic at all -- to the effect that our laws and judicial determinations are unjust and a betrayal of America's guarantee of equal protection of the laws and due process for all litigants. ("Give Us Free!" and "Driving While Black [DWB] in New Jersey.")

This book under review by Mr. Posner offers a moral critique of American law, not (primarily) a criticism of economic inefficiency or excessive cost in the judicial system.

African-Americans are discriminated against at every level in the system: In terms of the uses of "negative discretion" to arrest, prosecute, and seek or impose harsher sentences when defendants are African-Americans, for example, especially when victims are white.

Greater leniency and "positive discretion" are available to white defendants, especially if they are well educated or members of ethnic and/or religious groups that are disproportionately represented in the legal profession and judiciary.

Jewish defendants do very well, for instance, in comparison with African-Americans, including Jewish defendants charged with theft offenses, like Bernie Madoff, who are punished (generally) less severely than their dark-skinned fellow Americans. ("Neil M. Cohen, Esq. and Conduct Unbecoming to the Legislature in New Jersey" then "Paul Bergrin, Esq. is an Ethical New Jersey Attorney" and "Herbert Klitzner, Esq.'s Greed and New Jersey's Hypocrisy!" and "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "Stuart Rabner's Selective Sense of Justice.")

Wall Street crime has left "24 million people jobless or underemployed." Not one of the Wall Street financiers -- who made billions of dollars "disappear" -- will go to prison nor will Mr. Corzine who "did not know what happened to $1.2 BILLION of [his] clients' money."

Few African-Americans have stolen $1.2 billion. Fewer still have committed the frauds attributed to Wall Street financiers -- usually Republicans, like Judge Posner -- frauds that have caused great suffering to children and old people alike. A tiny number of those financiers are African-Americans, none of whom (to my knowledge) are implicated in criminal investigations. Nevertheless, if anybody from Wall Street goes to prison, I suspect that it will be a low-level African-American functionary trapped in a system of greed. ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")

Perhaps we can persuade Judge Posner that these Wall Street financiers are all African-Americans (or "blacks" as Judge Posner insists), so that prosecution will be deemed appropriate and necessary. ("America's Holocaust.")

Judge Posner wonders about the "abnormal crime rate among blacks, which translates into abnormal percentages of black inmates." (Posner, p. 36.)

I wonder whether the crime rate among "blacks" is what "translates into" the higher number of incarcerated African-Americans or whether racism has a little something to do with the grotesque injustice of race-based imprisonment. Judges and juries seem to have different attitudes to offenses committed by persons of color, for some strange reason, as compared with the crimes of lighter-skinned "others."

Differential treatment may be one consequence of television or cinematic images which depict persons of color, overwhelmingly, as criminals as distinct from other persons likely to live in Posner's neighborhood, for instance, who are (usually) represented as victims.

Most African-Americans are convicted before they get to the courthouse.

There is clearly something that Judge Posner does not see -- or wish to see -- in the reality of American courts and prisons. This blindness may result from looking for causes in statistics that should be interpreted for what they "mean" or the ugly truths that they reveal about us.

What we do not acknowledge is precisely what other nations see all too clearly: We are a racist society. This fact about America is not altered by the election of any single public official. Portugal, for example, does not extradict African-American persons easily to a legal system perceived (correctly) as racist and slanted in favor of the rich. ("New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" and "Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics.")

Much the same is true in France, not just Cuba. Cuba has -- again, correctly -- granted asylum to Assata Shakur. ("The FBI Wants Assata Shakur.")

This growing international disapproval of the U.S. legal system is especially directed against New Jersey's appallingly corrupt legal fiasco. ("American Doctors and Torture" and "America's Torture Lawyers" then "Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?" then "Legal Ethics Today" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")

Grim facts lead to an obvious response on the question of America's decline. The issue is not about economic "ups-and-downs"; but rather, whether the nation is estranged from its core values and decadent in an intellectual or aesthetic sense. ("Nihilists in Disneyworld" and "Whatever!")

The moral crisis in our prison-industrial complex and society revealed by Professor Stunz is the authentic decline discussed by scholars. America's enduring Habermasian "crisis of legitimacy" is institutional as well as cultural. This crisis includes universities and the media. It is a crisis aggravated by 9/11 and the so-called "War on Terror." America's real decline -- that is still reversible -- is moral as evidenced by recent writings at these blogs. ("Derek Parfit's Ethics" and "Give Us Free!" then "Whatever!")

Perhaps one symptom of decline may be the continuing popularity or "success" of Richard A. Posner and his bizarre "Law and Economics."