June 19, 2013 at 5:36 P.M. The printer at NYPL, Morningside Heights branch, was disabled. The usual harassments accompany my writing efforts today. Regrettably, many library patrons lost money and were unable to print their items. New Jersey, please note that I am not the only person using the library.
Charlie Savage & Scott Shane, "N.S.A. Leaker Denies Giving Secrets to China," The New York Times, June 18, 2013, p. A5. (Mr. Snowden may have been stage-managed by Chinese intelligence agents without his realizing it.)
Michael Powell, "After Sexual Abuse, An Abuser is Silenced, Even Indicted," The New York Times, June 18, 2013, p. A17. (Sam Knellner, 50, spoke out about Hasidic rabbi's abuse of his 16 year-old son, then tried to extort money from the abusers.)
Katherine Q. Seelye, "At Trial, Hit Man Says 'It Broke My Heart' to Learn Bulger Was an FBI Informer," The New York Times, June 18, 2013, p. A11. (Joe Martorano, mass-murderer, does not approve of "informer" on criminals revealed by another informer on police activities for the mafia.)
Rebecca Baker, "Leonia Teen Charged in Sex Assault on Child, 3; Suspect in Firehouse Case Has Disabilities," The Record, June 17, 2013, p. A-1. (D.E. Levine engaged in molestation of 3 year-old boy: "So Black and So Blue in Prison" and "N.J. Rabbi Arrested For Child Molesting.")
Gina Kolata, "Poking Holes in Genetic Privacy; Research is Steadily Eroding Scientists' Faith That DNA Can be Held Anonymously," The New York Times, Science Times, June 18, 2013, p. D3. (Don't worry about your privacy.)
Lindy Washburn, "Doctor's Long Fight Brings Win From Justices: Ruling OKs Class Suits on Insurers," The Record, June 17, 2013, p. L-1. (" ... insurance company that wouldn't approve a $20.00 test for a toddler [doctor] feared might have a life-threatening disease" was sued, successfully, by an entire class of affected customers.)
Ariel Kaminski & Alain Delaquierre, "N.Y.U. Gives Its Stars Loans For Summer Homes," The New York Times, June 18, 2013, p. A1. (I see why and how NYU people can be bribed to admit or reject candidates for graduate schools.)
Revelations during recent days of U.S. surveillance and data mining on-line are only the latest indication of the extent to which privacy rights have become a casualty of our post-9/11 National Security State and of the "progress" of technology.
Our communications are monitored, our medical histories and all other records of our lives become the illegal property of the state. The word "illegal" may simply not mean much any more.
Our preferences, tastes, values are tested and (sometimes) manufactured by marketers and advertisers. Some of us are subjected to drugging, hypnosis, and other forms of interrogational torture -- a fate that may well await Mr. Snowden! -- in the interest of something called "security."
Others are sheltered from criminal liability. ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
I am far less worried about the potential threat from so-called "terror" than about government overreaching.
It is the fear of power concentrated in the hands of state officials -- often stupid and ignorant as well as corrupt officials (as in N.J.) -- that motivated the Framers of the U.S. Constitution to enshrine protections of individual dignity in a Bill of Rights. These rights have become a quaint reminder of a more innocent time in America and are today more honored in the breach than in the observance.
We are negligible statistics in the eyes of government officials in the post-9/11 age. Our rights, concerns, feelings, or our very lives may be sacrificed to a generalized fear of ostensible "terror" threats.
Little thought is given to what motivates the hostility to the U.S. in the world or to the consequences of abandoning so many American Constitutional liberties.
Sinclair Lewis, in a novel entitled It Can't Happen Here, imagined the arrival of totalitarianism in America "with a friendly smile." Our drift into fascism is based on the absurd desire for total safety from "foreign" threats and complete control over our environment. Neither of these desires -- or fantasies -- will ever be fully realized.
We are also unwilling to take a good look at the role that America plays in the world: How are we seen by other people? What do we do to ensure control of so many of the world's resources? Can our "lifestyles" be sustained in a world of limited resources and increasing populations?
To avoid confronting these uncomfortable questions, we resort to the "war" metaphor and perpetual development of new weapons.
New Jersey is unable or unwilling to face systemic responsibility for crimes committed against me and others, probably, having devised a variety of strategies of displacement, changing the subject, lies, obfuscations, distractions in order not to acknowledge basic human rights violations, cover-ups, and continuing cybercrimes as well as censorship. This is unethical and criminal.
Cognitive dissonance allows Stuart Rabner to comment on the "ethics" of colleagues and others while ignoring his own responsibilities for these crimes, or the failure to prosecute the guilty, or to punish unethical professionals involved in my matters, not even to tell the truth to victims. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
How do we live with such contradictions that are seen by the world?
" ... liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war-footing, or even near-war footing. Permanent crises justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government. And permanent crises is what we have to expect in a world in which over-population is producing a state of things under which dictatorship ... becomes almost inevitable."
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p. 14.
