Felix Roque and Computer Crime.

March 12, 2013 at 1:32 P.M. Obstacles may prevent me from accessing the Internet tomorrow. However, if I am unable to write Wednesday, I will try even more strenuously to post a new comment before the end of the week.

Blogging is a war for me. The letter "L" is unavailable at keyboard #13, NYPL, Morningside Heights. Like many of us, the letter "L" (at this computer) is somewhat "unpredictable and fickle." Perhaps these qualities are part of her charm. ("How censorship works in America" and "What is it like to be censored in America?" then "Metaphor is Mystery.")

March 11, 2013 at 1:26 P.M. Debates in American media concerning cybercrime are seen by the global community -- especially China, South Asia and Latin America -- as hypocritical given U.S. efforts to maximize the Pentagon's offensive cyberattacking capacity, targeted cybercrimes against dissidents, content-based censorship, and psychological torture seen in these blogs over so many years.

I am grateful for the support of many persons -- incuding young Cubans, I believe -- concerned about these issues of freedom of debate on-line. ("How censorship works in America" and "Another Warm Letter From the DRB.")

Mark Landler & David E. Sanger, "U.S. Demands Chinese Block Cybercrimes," in The New York Times, March 12, 2013, at p. A1. (U.S.-sponsored cybercrime against China is necessary for our national security even as China is told to stop their cybercrimes against America.)

David Barboza, "In Wake of Cyberattacks, China Seeks New Rules," in The New York Times, March 11, 2013, at p. A10. ("China said attacks on its own computers were linked to Internet addresses in the United States." Langley, Virginia perhaps?)

David E. Sanger, "In Cyberspace, New Cold War," in The New York Times, February 25, 2013, at p. A1. (What a shock.)

Is there an explanation for the refusal to cover U.S. cybercensorship at the Times? Have journalists at that newspaper participated in censorship aimed at silencing Internet writers? Is anyone at the Times not affiliated with the C.I.A.? Does Ms. Abramson "protect" her friends, like Deborah T. Poritz or Stuart Rabner? Please see:

http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/n4225.trgly/b19814 (New York Times? "Steve Lohr"? "Steve Castle"? Lizette Alvarez?)

"S.L. Hurley On Beliefs and Reasons For Action," http://www.criticalvision.blogspot.com/2007/05/sl-hurley-on-beliefs-and-reasons-for.html

Kate Zernike, "New Jersey Mayor Hacked Opponents' Web Sites, U.S. Charges," in The New York Times, May 25, 2012, at p. A24. (West New York's "Felix Roque" may have visited my sites and -- along with others in New Jersey -- he could well be responsible for some of the cybercrime and censorship aimed against me, allegedly.)

"An insurgent political campaign in West New York, N.J." -- Hudson County, Bob Menendez territory -- "suddenly realized in February that its web site had been disabled. The campaign being run by opponents of the Mayor, Dr. Felix Roque, and the web site http://www.recallroque.com had been intended to rally support to recall [Mr. Roque] and collect information about what his critics called his rampant mismanagement."

Mr. Roque was believed to be distracted, often absent without explanation from his office, to have too much work, and not to be a very competent administrator or professional. Mr. Roque is seen by many residents of West New York, New Jersey as well as the feds as "unethical." 

"On Thursday, federal prosecutors said they had uncovered the culprit behind the hacking: The Mayor himself."

Mr. Roque claimed the support of "ex-C.I.A." operatives in "silencing his opponents."

There appears to be reason to believe that "Kimberly Salazar" and other Roque-supporters are behind many of the crimes committed at these sites and that such unsavory persons may have acted on behalf of Senator Menendez in his current troubles. Is Ms. Salazar of CCA EOS also "Patricia Enright" of Mr. Menendez's office? CCA EOS has also idenitified itself as EOS CCA. ("Manohla Dargis Strikes Again!")

Allegations that Roque is a Christie man are inaccurate. Bob Menendez may be hoping, as always, to deflect attention from his own troubles as Mr. Roque's matters return to the spotlight. ("Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes" and "Menendez Goes to Bat For a Croney.")

Menendez has been known to give the feds a "friend" (i.e., to betray supporters or mentors) in order to avoid personal indictment, as in the unseemly incidents concerning Mr. Musto. ("Menendez and New Jersey's Child Sex Crisis.")

Many self-procaimed C.I.A. agents continue to "support" Senator Menendez's "deal" for the port contracts in the Dominican Republic, possibly for their own gain. ("Menendez Must Give Up the Gavel.") 

The connections between former spies and Dr. Melgen cannot be determined at this time. These same "ex-intelligence officials" may serve the interests of Cuban-American politicians -- whether Republicans or Democrats -- for a small fee.

Allegations of connections between such persons and the Cuban American National Foundation cannot be confirmed at this time. However, the matter may interest the U.S. Senate's ethics committee along with the U.S. Attorney's office.

"Prosecutors said that[,] in February, Mayor Roque had encouraged his son to take down the web site which had been set up anonymously."

I am still denied access to my e-mail accounts, no images can be posted here, my books are suppressed in America. I continue to be plagiarized in the mainstream media. Access to MSN, Yahoo, Amazon is denied to me. I wonder whether the Cuban American National Foundation is involved in this Internet censorship effort against me? (Again: "How censorship works in America.")

Mayor Roque "threatened and intimidated" opponents: " ... 'A friend of mine, he works in the -- I can't tell you -- the letters C.I.A.,' he told one [person,] according to a conversation recorded by law enforcement officials. [Mr. Menendez may also have been recorded recently.] 'You know, that's how I get my information. So what I'm doing is not very kosher.' ..."

A list of sources detailing further corruption and incompetence in New Jersey law and politics will be attached to this essay in the days ahead.

Sources:

New York & the World:

Isabel Kerschner, "Palestinians In Prisons Refuse Meals in a Protest," in The New York Times, February 20, 2013, at p. A8. (Hunger strike among Palestinian prisoners. Human rights organizations are monitoring the situation.)

"China's Cybergames," (Editorial) in The New York Times, February 20, 2013, at p. A22. (Are the persons playing "cybergames" at my blogs being arrested?)

"Cuba: As He Prepares For a New Term, Raul Castro Reserves His Right to Retire," in The New York Times, February 25, 2013, at p. A5. (To paraphrase Richard Nixon, "the C.I.A. won't have the Castro brothers to kick around anymore." What will the Miami politicians do then?)

David E. Sanger, "In Cyberspace, a New Cold War," in The New York Times, February 25, 2013, at p. A1. (Is there an explanation for the Times' refusal to cover cybercensorship at these blogs? Have journalists participated in censorship of on-line writers? Does Ms. Abramson protect persons, like Debbie Poritz and Stuart Rabner? Is anyone at America's premier "independent" newspaper NOT a C.I.A. agent? Please see http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/n4225.trgly and other hacks into my computers from the Times?)

Adam Liptak, "Justices Legal Challenge to Surveillance," in The New York Times, February 27, 2013, at p. A1. (Government can eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mails without warrants and without any stated reason.)

Michael Wilson, "Judge Can't Play TV Bigot, New Jersey Agrees," in The New York Times, February 27, 2013, at p. A20. (In the most corrupt and racist legal system in the nation, a finding that RACIST humor by a sitting judge, VINCE A. SICARI, is improper provokes laughter. Mr. Sicari, friend of MARCANTON MACRI, ESQ., allegedly, will not be disciplined. Genuine racism from the bench is fine.)

AP, "Internet Gambling Is Allowed in New Jersey," in The New York Times, February 27, 2013, at p. A21. (Big day for the mafia. Mr. Sicari will perform, perhaps, at "Club Bene"?)

"Unbridled Secrecy: By Barring a Lawsuit, the Supreme Court Prohibits Review of Sweeping Surveillance," (Editorial) in The New York Times, February 27, 2013, at p. A24. ("The Supreme Court severely damaged the rule of law in its decision on Tuesday ...")

Scott Shane, "Soldier to Face More Serious Charges in Leak," in The New York Times, March 2, 2013, at p. A11. (Neither the Times nor The Washington Post would publish Mr. Bradley Manning's evidence of U.S. warcrimes. Wikileaks did so. This is not the Pentagon Papers-era New York Times. America's corporate media has become an adjunct of government and power in the society. "What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")

William Neuman, "Venezuelans Say It's Tracking Opposition Leader in U.S.," in The New York Times, March 4, 2013, at p. A5. (HENRIQUE CAPILES RADONSKI is the CIA's man in Carracas.)

New Jersey's Appalling Fiasco:

Herb Jackson & Linda Moss, "Fear Grows Over Risk to Sandy Aid: White House Warns of Cuts if Budget Deal Isn't Reached," in The Record, February 25, 2013, at p. A-1. (Greater fears of THEFTS and SCAMS if federal funds are given to New Jersey.)

Jeff Pillets, "Menendez Says He Felt 'Sting of Discrimination': Embattled Senator Speaks at Black Churches," in The Record, February 25, 2013, at p. A-3. (The senator's life-long silence and inaction on civil rights issues can still be remedied. Will Mr. Menendez join me in calling, publicly, for freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal? Reparations for the African-American community for the legacy of slavery? Prison and criminal justice reforms? "So Black and So Blue in Prison.")

John Petrick, "Teacher Denies Sex Charges: Allegedly Used Social Media to Lure Student," in The Record, February 28, 2013, at p. L-3. (Paterson High School teacher, THOMAS WEIR, 50 -- one of several teachers and Board of Education officials in New Jersey towns with similar charges -- offered $50 to students to have sex with him. "Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes" and "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")

Shawn Boburg, "Sandy Funds Went to Ex-Con: Cleanup Deal Worth $250,000, Records Show," in The Record, March 1, 2013, at p. A-1. (More theft of relief funds and from New Jersey victims. More on this is coming up. It's worse than it seems.)

John Brennan, "Bettor Ran Up $286,000 Debt, State Files Show: Lawsuit Targets Handling of Online Horse Wagering," in The Record, March 1, 2013, at p. A-1. (Is New Jersey ready for Internet gambling?)

Harvey Lipman, "N.J. Tells Sandy Charity to Put Funds in Escrow: Bars Bergen-Based Operation [Mafia?] From Further Collections," in The Record, March 1, 2013, at p. A-4. ($631,000 must be placed in escrow, including $13,000 already placed in the personal accounts of John Sandberg and Christina Terracino, alleged friends of DIANA LISA RICCIOLI. FBI interest is growing. I wonder why?)

Abbott-Koloff, "Man Admits Cheating Homeowners of $1.3 MILLION: Victims Included One From Rutherford," in The Record, March 1, 2013, at p. L-3. ($1.3 MILLION stolen from homeowners in the aftermath of Sandy by VITO GRIPPO, 58, and his son, FREDERICK P. GRIPPO, 32, through deceptions of homeowner(s) with poor English skills. Rumors that both men have served as lay members of the legal ethics committee cannot be confirmed.)

Zach Patberg, "Accused Firms 'Donated' to Passaic Sheriff: One Sold $4,800 in Auto Parts to Department," in The Record, March 6, 2013, at p. A-1. (Company -- already under investigation for fraud and possible bribery -- donated to local sheriff's campaign and sold "questionable" auto parts to Passaic County, kickbacks to "officials" are alleged.)

Anthony Campisi, "Rights Group Outline Voting Machine Errors: State Defends Technology in Court," in The Record, March 6, 2013, at p. A-3. (Allegations of "irregularity" in voting machines designed to allow deceased Democrats to continue participating in the electoral process. Perhaps Mr. Grippo can be placed in charge of such matters? Bob Menendez? "Is Union City, New Jersey Meyer Lansky's Whorehouse?" and "Voting in North Bergen, New Jersey" then "North Bergen, New Jersey is the Home of 'La Cosa Nostra.'")

Shawn Boburg, "Feds Are Watching Sandy Aid For [MORE!] Fraud: FBI Says Small-Time Scams Can Add Up," in The Record, March 7, 2013, at p. A-1. (Allegations of continuing frauds and scams before federal funds are distributed has forced emergency activity in Newark's FBI office. Dr. Melgen has offered to help with the problem.)

   

Crisis Prevents Menendez From Doing His Job.

March 7, 2013 at 1:26 P.M. It appears that Senator Menendez's troubles are increasing, preventing him from fulfilling his responsibilities as Chairperson of the Senate's Foreign Relations Committee.

Sabotage at Computer #13, Morningside Heights, NYPL makes use of several keyboard letters difficult today. Members of the N.Y. public are damaged by these tactics, Mr. Menendez. ("How censorship works in America.")

Did persons from your office, Senator Menendez, contact and solicit grievances against me or arrange for others to do so? Did you or persons from your office contact GLORIA PETRI,  (Univision) with regard to matters in which I represented her, without contacting her attorney first as required under ethics rules? What other contacts or relationships existed (or exist) between or among persons close to you and Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and/or any persons in my office, or attorneys acting behind my back to solicit grievances against me, Mr. Menendez? What knowledge of, or contact of any kind did you have with MARILYN STRAUS, directly or indirectly, Mr. Menendez, at any time? What contacts, if any, did persons close to you have with Ms. Straus at any time?  ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.") 

Herb Jackson, "Menendez Focuses On Israel, But Controversy Creeps In: False Smears Compete With Work On Foreign Relations," in The Record, March 6, 2013, at p. A-1.

Frances Robles, "Dominican Judge Calls For Menendez and a Campaign Donor to Appear in Court," in The New York Times, March 6, 2013, at p. A21.

Anthony Campisi & Abott-Koloff, "Child Porn Sting Nets 25: Men Allegedly Shared Videos of Graphic Sexual Abuse," in The Record, February 28, 2013, at p. A-1. (Alleged Menendez supporter, Mr. Cedeno, arrested in this operation. I will be writing more about this soon.)

"A judge in the Dominican Republic called Tuesday for Senator Menendez of New Jersey to appear in court in a legal battle as charges and counter-charges flew over the validity of allegations that the senator had patronized prostitutes in that country."

Efforts by persons hired by Mr. Menendez to obtain recantations of testimony by one alleged "prostitute" may be irrelevant since as many as 11 young women, allegedly, have been interviewed and have provided statements against Senator Menendez.

Only one of the websites featuring these statements contains videos of two women, neither of whom is the person claiming that she was "lying for a fee" and not lying for a fee in saying so now.

The websites and witnesses against Mr. Menendez are standing by their stories, despite the slant in the U.S. press.

Charges that Mr. Menendez consorts with prostitutes -- which may be nothing new in his life -- including underage prostitutes, remain "open." ("Does Senator Menendez have mafia friends?" and "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.") 

An attorney in the Dominican Republic who represented several of the women complaining against Mr. Menendez expressed the view that the witnesses "are being caused to recant their original stories." (NY Times.)

Mr. Menendez has refused, through PATRICIA ENRIGHT (Manohla Dargis?), a Cuban-American "assistant" using a false name, to appear in a Dominican courtroom because he is "above" such tribunals:

" ... The Daily Caller continued to stand by its article and suggested that the woman who claimed to have lied in the video was not one of the two who had been interviewed."

Mr. Menendez has learned that he cannot fulfill his duties as Chairperson of the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee with all of these "distractions." ("Menendez Must Give Up the Gavel!")

After a recent speech when Mr. Menendez all but claimed to be an Israeli (which is close to the truth), he was approached and asked about Dominican prostitutes. Senator Menendez responded: 

"I thought we were going to talk about the Middle East." (The Record.)

Mr. Menendez may have accepted "gifts" or "contributions" from the Israeli lobby in the past, but no free trips to Israel. The beaches near Tel Aviv are said to be beautiful.

According to Mr. Menendez, rumors of cocaine use in his past and continuing allegations of consorting with underage prostitutes " ... were never anything other than false smears." (The Record.)

The powerful position now held by Mr. Menendez cannot be discharged by a person facing months -- proceedings in the Dominican Republic have been adjourned until June with daily accusations expected! -- by a person facing charges of corruption and unethical conduct before the U.S. Senate. 

Additional accusations of abuse of authority for personal gain and favor-mongering for a fee linger in the air creating a foul aroma associated with New Jersey's junior senator. ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Senator Bob Gets Over On the Feds!")

"Apart from the prostitution allegations, Menendez faces an investigation by the Senate's ethics committee over whether two flights on Melgen's private jet he took to the Dominican Republic in 2010 violate rules governing gifts from friends and contributors." (The Record.)  

Zero Dark Thirty.

March 5, 2013 at 12:47 P.M. I experienced great difficulties accessing these blogs yesterday. I continue to emphasize that I am never certain of being able to write from one day to the next. I will struggle to write on-line every day.

Senator Menendez has noted that a single "prostitute" in the Dominican Republic has recanted her testimony claiming that she was paid to testify against N.J.'s junior senator. Presumably, the other nine women (or is it 11?) maintain the allegations against Mr. Menendez and have not been discredited. There are those who suggest that the recanted testimony is what was paid-for.

In any event, the crux of the disturbing case against Mr. Menendez concerns his selling of influence and conflicts of interest as well as gains by possible overt kickbacks to him as well as "rewards" paid, indirectly, to persons in his office or close to the senator. Please give my regards to Dr. Melgen, Mr. Menendez.

I wonder whether Dr. Melgen knows Dr. Jocelyn Estevez? Whatever happened to that check from my office that disappeared for a year in Union City, Bob? 

I can certainly appreciate the "behind-the-back" nature of these charges and loathsome "Gremlin-like" methods in the senator's office. Despicable tactics -- aren't they, Mr. Menendez? ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")

Bob Brecher, Torture and the Ticking Bomb (London: Blackwell, 2007).

Charles Fried, Right and Wrong (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1978). (Explanation of deontological ethics.)

http://hrw.org/reports/1992/israel

Samuel G. Freedman, "'Zero Dark Thirty,' Through a Theological Lens," in The New York Times, February 23, 2013, at p. A12.

Michael Wood, "At The Movies," in The London Review of Books, 21 February, 2013, at p. 19. (Reviewing Zero Dark Thirty.)

Donald L. Niewyk, The Holocaust (Boston & New York: Houghton-Mifflin, 2007), pp. 62-75.

Sanford Levinson, ed., Torture: A Collection (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2004).

John Wilson, What Philosophy Can Do (New Jersey: Barnes & Noble, 1986), pp. 41-60, pp. 60-81.

Discussions of the torture crisis and of America's recently tainted role in the struggle for human rights in the world have become difficult for policy makers and media "wiz kids" -- Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, Melissa Harris-Perry as well as the Bill O'Reilly-types -- because debators' philosophical assumptions and concepts are rarely made explicit and often conflict, even in the mind of a single writer, to say nothing of the social debate on these matters. ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")

All ethical and philosophical concepts entail logical implications just as actions have consequences. Americans tend to think of the ethics of policy decisions and government actions in strictly instrumentalist or utilitarian terms:

How do we bring about the best results (ends) through the most efficient and effective techniques (means)? 

With regard to torture, however, there is more than instrumental reasoning involved in the calculus necessary for a sound judgment. 

Deontological arguments focusing on the rights of persons and duties that are universal concerning respect for human beings render any "means-and-ends" analysis problematic or irrelevant to the ultimate issue in the discussion. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.") 

It is very difficult for lawyers and military people to think in deontological rather than teleological/consequentialist and/or utilitarian terms that are concerned with maximizing the "good result" -- in terms of self-interest -- as distinct from ensuring that the "right actions" are always taken. 

Persons merit a level of moral concern or attention, respect, that is unique, not reductive or quantifiable necessarily. (Compare "Ronald Dworkin's Jurisprudence of Interpretation" with "Richard A. Posner On Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.") 

One of the profound confusions common even to well-educated and ethically-intentioned Americans is the assumption that the "right action," by definition, is the action that brings about the optimum result for the agent. Regrettably, ethics is not only about doing what is best for us, but also what is right for all. (Again: "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "How censorship works in America.")

Many philosophers and theologians caution officials: We cannot do good through evil. We cannot do good without being good persons. ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System" and "So Black and So Blue in Prison.")

If an evil action prevents great harm, then that evil action may be undertaken by a public official, knowingly, accepting full responsibility for the action and its reasonably foreseeable consequences, without lying (even through silence) about having taken the action. ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" then "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "John McGill, Esq., the OAE, and New Jersey Corruption.")

Such a public official will then be responsible for the heinous consequences produced by a disastrously failed action, especially if the action taken -- say, torture -- makes things much worse for everyone. ("Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?" and "American Doctors and Torture" then "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.") 

Where an evil action is "successful," in the sense that the desired outcome is achieved, the evil action remains an evil to be acknowledged. Responsibility must belong to the public official or officials endorsing that action independently of its results. ("Psychological Torture in the American Legal System" and "Justice For Mumia Abu-Jamal.")

This requirement of public responsibility is most important and explicit in the case of actions such as torture or assassination outside the boundaries of law, especially where the victim is deemed "collateral damage," an innocent but foreseeable casualty of lethal or devastating action. ("Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?" and "Is Senator Menendez 'For' Human Rights?")

These distinctions have been found useful and even crucial by philosophers debating the torture and drone issues as well as secret assassinations of non-combatants which have traditionally been held to be unethical and illegal under well-established principles of international law together with "conventional understandings of the morality of war."

To lie about what we are doing as a nation or as an individual political figure, by commission or ommission, compounds the wrong or evil in torturing or killing persons not charged with or convicted of any criminal wrongdoing -- nor accused of any other offense -- including persons who are, clearly, non-combatants (like children and old people). ("America's Drone Murders" and "Decline in Humanities and Humanity.")

We have made the pain of others a matter of bureaucratic decision-making, indifference, and utterly impersonal, a subject of convenience in terms of our self-interest. We have forgotten the momentous importance of causing pain or loss of life to others, especially innocent others. 

These drastic actions -- hurting others -- are not best thought of as mere instrumental calculations of costs/benefits leading to the good result in terms of our rational interest.

These actions (like torture and murder) can only be seen as evils whose commission -- while, arguably, necessary in very few extreme and life-threatening emergencies -- change us, as individuals and as a society, if we commit them, even at the order of superiors. We are becoming a less noble or admirable society as a result of our torture, murder, and spying policies after 9/11.

Please notice the pronoun being used in this foregoing paragraph: We -- myself very much included -- are becoming less good through our complicity in the terrible actions of our ostensibly democratically-elected government. ("Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution.") 

Evil actions have the curious effect of altering the ethical merits of our objectives, the things that we wish to accomplish by doing evil -- the good result -- which becomes less good or desirable, because it is tarnished by our methods:

"In 2007, as opinion was shifting [on the torture issue,] Professor Gurshel of Mercer University helped to write 'An Evangelical Declaration Against Torture.' While condeming Al Qaeda's attacks on the United States, and while affirming the nation's right to self-defense, the Declaration stated near its end:

'When torture is employed by a state, that act communicates to the world and to one's own people that human lives are not sacred, that they are not reflective of the Creator, that they are expendable, and disposable, and that their intrinsic value can be overriden by utilitarian arguments that trump [human] value. These are claims that no one who confesses Christ as Lord can accept.' ..."

The values underlying human rights law were derived from post-Nazi Nuremberg proceedings rejecting the objectification of human beings in concentration camps. ("Dehumanization" and "Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

The value of personal dignity is celebrated by Jewish thinkers, like Martin Buber, who would be horrified, equally, by Guantanamo and Gaza policies of the Israeli state. Islamic values also focus on the dignity of persons. All of these traditions have secular counterparts. It is not only Christians who see human dignity as foundational in moral life. ("Martin Buber and Diet Judaism" then "John Rawls and Justice" and "Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom.")

Films -- like the recently popular Zero Dark Thirty -- that seem to rationalize or justify torture, or extra-judicial killings, open a dangerous door that will eventually be used by others to usher Americans through it. ("Another American Tortured On Video.")

Human beings are not chips on a gambling table, not "things" to move around without being consulted, not "toys" to play with as part of a game among the powerful -- unless you are willing to see yourself and your family members treated in the same way by others playing with their lives and welfare (or your own) while displaying identical disdain for their integrity or value as persons:

"What you see in the relationship between torturer and tortured is the absolute darkness of totalitarianism. You see one individual granted the most complete power he can hold over another. Not just confinement of his [the victim's] mobility -- [but] the abolition of his very agency. Torture uses a person's body to remove from his control, his conscience, his thoughts, his faith, his selfhood."

Andrew Sullivan, "The Abolition of Torture," in Torture: A Collection, at p. 319.

Cybercrimes at These Blogs and Law Enforcement.

March 1, 2013 at 1:42 P.M. Continuing cybercrime at these blogs -- perhaps by "Stacey Wellesley" -- have caused me to refer the matter to law enforcement agencies while persisting in my efforts to bring these matters to federal court. (Is Stacey Wellesley also Manohla Dargis? Caitlin Flanagan? Carlotta Gall? etc.?)

I have received a letter from "KIMBERLY SALAZAR" of NYC Department of Consumer Affairs, attaching a purported response from CCA EOS that is signed by "JESSICA SOUSA." The text of Ms. Sousa's letter is virtually identical to the letter from "STACEY WELLESLEY."

I am sure that Ms. Sousa can identify "Ms.Wellesley" as an employee of the same company for which Ms. Sousa works. Actually, I suspect that both of these names are fictional.

My response to this Department of Consumer Affairs letter will be directed to Jonathan Mintz, Commissioner of this Agency, because I found the envelope in which this letter arrived to have been previously opened. I also have my doubts about the name "Kimberly Salazar."

I am not overly optimistic of receiving any reponse to my requests for the truth from Mr. Rabner or the OAE, even though they may be able to shed some light on these mysteries. ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")

Telephone Calls: February 28, 2013 at 11:24 A.M. Calls were received at my home from 973-273-7847. February 27, 2013 at 8:42 A.M. Calls were received at my home, at all hours, from the same New Jersey source, allegedly, using different numbers: 2/27/13 at 8:07 P.M. call received from 718-670-0200 Time/Warner (cellphone?); 2/26/13 at 8:17 P.M. and 9:26 A.M., also from 718-670-0200, allegedly from "JAZMIN" and/or "MUHAMMAD" at Time/Warner. 2/26/13 at multiple times from 347-502-2593; again, 2/27/13 at 5:48 P.M. and numerous other times from 347-502-2583 and 303-293-2727.

It appears that most of these calls are made from automated call centers, at constant rates, by same entity or party. They are designed to disrupt sleep, harass, induce stress and enhance the effects of cyberstalking and other forms of psychological torture.

Please compare "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli" then "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System."

In response to my letters to prosecutors reponding to the harassing/bogus collection letter from CCA EOS ("Stacey Wellesley"), I have received a communication from Ms. Linda Tilley, Consumer Aid Division, South Shore Community Action Council, INC., 265 South Meadow Road, Plymouth, MA 02360, TEL. (508) 747-7575, EXT. 6226/6227, FAX (508) 746-5140. Case Number: 13-02-014.

I have provided a written response to the notice which appears below (with the case numbers that will be supplied to the authorities and may be added to this text after it is posted). ("Another Warm Letter From the DRB" and "The OAE and DRB Back Down.")

All communications pertaining to this matter will be in writing. This will make it difficult to misrepresent my remarks or for any confusion concerning my views to arise.

I am the only person authorized to speak on my behalf with regard to these or any other matters at this time. 

A copy of my response to Ms. Tilley and Ms. Salazar appears below and will be sent to the foregoing individuals and offices, with appropriate docket or case numbers, pursuant to my telephone calls, and (I assume) governmental monitoring of the "situation" at these sites for some time. Additional case numbers will be posted as they are received. 

Please feel free to follow these interesting developments in your state court systems, as members of the public or media and readers of these writings, whose rights may have been violated along with mine. This is all very educational:

Cyrus R. Vance, Esq.
New York District Attorney
(212) 335-9000
One Hogan Place
New York, N.Y. 10013
http://www.nyc.gov/da

Jonathan Mintz
Commissioner
Case Number: CD 500134247 -- Collection Company of America.
NYC Department of Consumer Affairs 
42 Broadway 9th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10004
http://www.nyc.gov/consumers

Martha Coakley, Esq.
Attorney General
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Office of the Attorney General
One Ashburton Place
Boston, MA 02108
http://www.massgov/ago 
(617) 727-2200

Bill De Blasio, Esq.
Public Advocate
1 Center Street
15th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10007
http://www.hub.nyc.gov

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (w/enclosures)
26 Federal Plaza
28th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10278
(212) 384-1000.

VIA CERTIFIED MAIL, R.R.
Ms. Linda Tilley
Consumer Division
South Shore Community Action Council, Inc.
265 South Meadow Road
Plymouth, MA 02360

Re: EOS CCA
      Case No.: 13-02-014. 

Dear Ms. Tilley:

The within matter is not a civil matter nor is it a subject for civil mediation.

EOS CCA is a bogus creditor or collection agent that admits no debt pertaining to me exists, or ever did exist, with their office. (See attached communication which is self-explanatory.)

Allegations of criminal harassment and other offenses have been made against EOS CCA and/or relevant individuals and/or entities that are under investigation by several prosecutors' offices and law enforcement agencies.

A list of some of these agencies and offices will be included with this letter to you.

I will post this letter on-line for purposes of public scrutiny and tranparency. A copy of this Internet post will also be sent to you.

Under the circumstances, there is nothing to "mediate" -- at a civil level -- that pertains to your office. 

All criminal investigations(s) will take their course in accordance with the law.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Very truly yours,

Juan Galis-Menendez

VIA CERTIFIED MAIL, R.R.
Jonathan Mintz
Commissioner
NYC Department of
Consumer Affairs
42 Broadway
9th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10004
Dial 311 (212-NEW-YORK)

Re: Case No.: CD 500134247

Dear Mr. Mintz:

The attached letters are self-explanatory. I have reason to be concerned that the so-called "response" from CCA EOS is fraudulent as is the name of the signatory to that letter.

Perhaps "Kimberly Salazar" of your office will agree. The bright orange logo on your envelope is unusual for a government agency in New York. 

This matter is under criminal investigation and has been posted on-line. (See attached copy of blog post.)

I expect that the criminal investigation will proceed to conclusion in accordance with the law.

It appears that CCA EOS has now lied to several government agencies in responding to my complaint. It also appears that several false names have been used by CCA EOS in this correspondence.

You may wish to bear these facts in mind in further dealings with the responsible person or entity.

I will keep your office informed of developments in connection with this interesting exchange of views.  

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Very truly yours,

Juan Galis-Menendez

Menendez and N.J.'s Child Sex Crisis.

February 23, 2013 at 11:40 A.M. I experienced harassments and obstructions in efforts to sign-in today at the Inwood branch of NYPL, which appears as the "Woodlawn" branch on computer number #2. Computer crime and cyberstalking continues, every day, and I have yet to hear from Mr. Vance. At any time I may be prevented from writing further at these blogs.

Raymond Hernandez & Sam Dolnick, "Amid Questions About Ethics, Battle-Scarred Senator Digs In," in The New York Times, February 21, 2013, at p. A1.

Nigel Duara, "Kids of Scout Leader Talk of Abuse at Home: Disclosed Memo Was First They Knew of Dad's Termination," in The Record, February 18, 2013, at p. A-1.

Karen Sudol, "Slowing Tide of Sex Traffic: Next Year's Super Bowl Puts Focus On Seedy Trade," in The Record, February 11, 2013, at p. A-1.

Senator Robert Menendez has hired a lawyer who has put together a crisis team in order to "deal with" proceedings before the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee as well as any legal action brought against the senator by the F.B.I. and Justice Department.

Senator Menendez, thus far, has received the enthusiastic public support of Democrats (privately, the same Democrats are waiting for the proverbial "other shoe to fall").

Having brought $129 MILLION to the party's coffers in 2010, probably more since then, generates touching affection among Bob Menendez's colleagues. ("Does Senator Menendez have mafia friends?" and "Senator Menendez Consorts With Underage Prostitutes" then "Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks.")

Favorable articles in the Times may be part of the Menendez "team effort." It is alleged that such articles may be purchased for cash-in-hand at America's newspaper of record. We may expect to see images of the senator at schools or visiting sick people in hospitals in the weeks ahead. Senator Menendez has confirmed that he is "for all the people." ("Senator Bob Loves Xanadu!" and "Is Senator Menendez 'For' Human Rights?")

The connections between Mr. Menendez and "Manohla Dargis" -- as well as other fictional names appearing as bylines at the Times -- are under investigation and may be one reason for recent hacks into the newspaper's computer records. ("All the news that's fit to print.")

Mysteriously, the Times is not covering crimes committed against me that have been public for years, despite the presence of hackers at these blogs affiliated with that newspaper, also for years. 

It is likely that the relevant "information" to be obtained from journalists at the "Gray Lady" as well as other publications, such as The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic is already in the hands of officials, that is, both U.S. and non-U.S. political leaders know the identities of cybercriminals targeting me and their employers. ("How censorship works in America" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?" then "What is it like to be censored in America?")

Mr. Menendez is developing a political defense strategy for an anticipated legal prosecution. He has retained the services of Stephen M. Ryan, Esq. -- a man who has never tried a federal criminal case, allegedly, as indeed the "battle scarred" Senator also has barely set foot in a courtroom -- and who may have read several of my writings being aware of the cybercrime and cyberstalking committed against me on a daily basis.

I do not bother with a bullet-proof vest, Senator.

Mr. Ryan seems not to be troubled by legal ethics concerns as to "complicity in criminality" as well as other possible rule infractions based on knowledge of egregious wrongdoing by "underlings" directed against me. ("Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?") 

Mr. Menendez has asked political associates -- like Albio Sires -- who expressed utter disdain and disgust for Mr. Menendez when Mr. Sires was running for Mayor of West New York, New Jersey to say nice things about the junior senator, for a small fee perhaps.

I will be happy to quote Mr. Sires concerning the character and tactics of Bob Menendez, before Mr. Sires was being "rewarded" for his support, expletives included.

Mr. Menendez has suggested that "the Cuban government" is behind his troubles. However, the Cuban government has not "consorted with underage prostitutes" (Star Ledger) nor did that government receive ...

." ... more than $300,000 in rents [from a group] at the same time as [Mr. Menendez] was helping the group obtain federal grants."

This was only one instance of the Senator's compassion for his contributors and lack of compassion for other taxpayers. ("Illegal Payments to Bob Menendez" and "Bribery in Union City, New Jersey" then "Crooked Broker Paid-Off Menendez" and "Is Menendez For Sale?" and "New Jersey's Child Sex Industry.")

Mr. Menendez views political office as an opportunity for personal financial gain, if necessary at the expense of the American people or their security, despite the best interests of the people he is supposed to represent. Mr. Menendez is an "ethical" member of the New Jersey Bar Association. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")

This conflict of interest and self-enrichment at the expense of the people is why, I believe, Mr. Menendez may well be indicted by the feds. ("Menendez Gets Over On the Feds!" and "More Problems For Menendez -- Tapes!")

In a state where the junior senator has been linked to sex parties with underage prostitutes, it should not surprise us that child sex scandals are more numerous than in any other American jurisdiction.

Child-prostitution and child-porn is practically a protected industry in New Jersey, where Cuban-American organized crime claims many friends in politics and police departments.

The Boy Scouts and several other institutions in New Jersey have been complicit in this horror for too long. The concern to shelter powerful judges and other officials, to avoid negative publicity for the courts by covering-up atrocities, allows culprits to get away with devastating the lives of men, women, and children. ("New Jersey Superior Court Judge is a Child Molester" and "New Jersey Welcomes Child Molesters.")

" ... Files from 1959 to the late 1980s came to light last year as a result of a civil law suit in Oregon; they showed that men were excluded from the scouts [N.J. included] but rarely prosecuted."

The priority continues to be to protect upper-level members of the judiciary and Office of Attorney Ethics rather than the public. ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Trenton's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest!" and "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?" then "No More Cover-Ups and Lies, Chief Justice Rabner!" and "What did you know, Mr. Rabner, and when did you know it?")

"From 100,000 to 293,000 U.S. children are in danger of sexual exploitation. ... 83% of minor sex-trafficking victims are U.S. children."

The amount of money to be made from this industry, which is dominated in several states by Cuban-American organized crime, makes it feasible to place politicians and police on the payroll of these mobs.

Nothing will be done to control this problem until these absurd levels of corruption are brought under control in "Soprano States." ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead.")

Do you speak to me of "ethics" in New Jersey, Mr. Rabner? ("Trenton's Nasty Lesbian Love-Fest" and "Jennifer Velez is a Dyke Magnet!")

Thomas Nagel's Guilt By Association.

February 21, 2013 at 1:35 P.M. Plagiarism of my writings and ideas continues to go unpunished. "Caitland Flanagan" (Larissa MacFarquhar? David Remnick?) is the byline in an article entitled: "Inventing Marilyn Monroe," in The Atlantic Monthly, March, 2013, at p. 92 which is taken from my posted essay: "'My Week With Marilyn': A Movie Review." Please see "What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review." ("Albert Florence and New Jersey's Racism.")

How much of what appears in American print media today is stolen from powerless persons (like me), whose intellectual property rights do not concern America's media "darlings" or courts? Is this an example of American journalistic "ethics"? ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "'Nice Babies' and Bad Psychologists.")

Billions of persons are stolen from in our world, often by the kinds of persons whose prose is published in American media, with some honorable exceptions among journalists. The anger generated by such unpunished thefts is bound to create an intense response. Let us hope that civilized means may be found to resolve these matters. ("How censorship works in America.") 

A lecture and film at AMC Magic Johnson Theaters, Harlem 9, March 16, 2013 at 1:00 P.M., 124th and Fredrick Douglass Blvd., Harlem, New York, N.Y. focuses on "Bob Avakian and American Socialism." You do not have to be a socialist to be interested in this topic and thinker, Mr. Avakian. I am not now nor have I ever been a member of the Communist party.  http://www.revolutionbooks.org   

Jennifer Shuessler, "An Author Attracts Unlikely Allies," in The New York Times, February 7, 2013, at p. C1.

Thomas Nagel, "Naturalism and Religion," in The Last Word (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1997), p. 131.

Thomas Nagel, "Freedom," in Gary Watson, ed., Readings in Philosophy: Free Will (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 2003), pp. 229-256. (2nd Ed.)

Thomas Nagel, "Subjective and Objective," in Mortal Questions (Cambridge U. Press, 1978), pp. 196-215.

Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (New Jersey: Princeton U. Press, 1970), pp. 90-99 ("Objective Reasons").

Mary Midgely, Science and Poetry (New York & London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 79-135.

Thomas Nagel's recent book calling into question the ideological presuppositions of American scientism -- probably without realizing or intending this as an explicit goal in the process of expressing some sensible reservations about Darwinian reductivism -- has generated a great deal of controversy.

Among the more confused reactions is "Jennifer Shuessler's" ("Caitland Flanagan's"?) comment on a book that she clearly has not read. I also have not read this most recent work by Professor Nagel. However, I have read several other texts by this author.

Ms. Shuessler appears to be making two points against Professor Nagel's position: 1). Nagel's book will have little effect on the progress of science and does not discredit Darwinian evolutionary theory; 2). Although Nagel is an "avowed atheist," his recent book has been reviewed, admiringly, by religious scholars in periodicals such as First Things.

This so-called "strange alliance" between the NYU philosopher and a few religious persons, for some reasons (at least in the mind of Ms. Shuessler), discredits Nagel's ideas.

I disagree. No author is responsible for his readers' reactions, provided that he or she has been as clear as possible in expressing controversial opinions. Professor Nagel is a good and clear writer whose texts are not difficult to understand, whether one agrees or disagrees with his arguments.

Nagel certainly has no wish to discredit Darwin. Few people question the reality of evolution. The extent, scope, and nature of evolution of organisms is a matter of continuing discussion and debate among scientists and other scholars -- scholars who also debate the implications of Darwin's theory beyond biology.

Nagel questions Darwinian reductivism, as I say, when it is applied to social phenomena. To dismiss or trivialize active philosophical controversies, on the basis of an extension of Darwin's thinking into the humanities, seems bizarre and unwarranted.

I agree that such questions and reservations about evolution are valid, as do scientists like Richard Lewontin, Steven Jay Gould, and many others.

Darwin would have been astonished to learn that his work is used to criticize theologians and literary critics. Darwinian theory was never intended to tell us what is the best art or philosophy, nor to adjudicate between or among religions.

Ms. Shuessler seems to admit the legitimacy of such limitations of Darwin and even of suggestions that teleological explanations retain some validity in what many believe to be our "meaningless universe."

If our universe truly is meaningless, then why bother to explain anything? Is any explanation possible or necessary if everything is absurd? ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "Whatever.") 

" ... even the best supported science, empirically speaking, is still emeshed in unsettled metaphysical questions." (Shuessler, p. C1.)

All of life is built on "unsettled metaphysical questions." This may be a further guarantee of human freedom. Professor Nagel's concern is not with science, but precisely with those "unsettled" metaphysical and epistemological questions.

Nagel does not attack science and accepts Darwin's importance in explaining the pattern of human evolution.

Mr. Nagel is simply asking important questions about the kinds of explanations which may be necessary in our efforts to understand a universe (or multiverse) which is more complex and protean than Charles Darwin could have imagined. I refer readers to Robert Nozick's writings on "explanation" and "explanatory schemes."

Nagel's focus is on the possibility of goal-directed (teleological) explanations for discreet phenomena in the unfolding narrative of the "living" universe. This is an entirely secular and naturalistic project which may, incidentally, be helpful to theologians and other secular humanistic scholars pursuing related projects. There should be no guilt by association in academia.

Nagel's epistemological premises are entirely consistent with the findings of scientists, biologists and physicists among them. The controversy about this book, properly, concerns only the possible interpretations of data and theories. ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

Ms. Shuessler deploys terms and concepts like "empirical" and "metaphysical" without a very clear idea of their possible meanings, also without offering a single definition of her terms. With all due respect, this person -- under whatever name they/he/she/it chooses to write -- is simply confused in dealing with these matters:

" ... ludicrous overuse of evolutionary theory," Nagel says, is made "to explain everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern culture to heave a great sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world. Instead, they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the non-teleological laws of physics on the materials of which we and our environments are composed. There might still be thought to be a religious threat in the laws of physics themselves, [bingo] and indeed in the existence of anything at all [bingo, again!] -- but it seems to be less alarming to most atheists." (The Last Word, p. 131.) 

What is Memory?

Threats to prevent me from posting or completing this work will not prevent me from at least trying to put this essay out there, on-line. I am sure that it may be helpful to persons struggling with memory issues or concerned about this area of scholarship. I am not surprised, nevertheless, that there are persons still seeking to censor my writings and to prevent you from reading them. I can only hope that, someday, this essay will be available on-line as it may help persons struggling to recover memories after great trauma. Attacks against my writings and efforts to prevent me from posting essays on-line continue to be part of my daily writing experience. 

Introduction: Issues and Definitions.

Among the most difficult issues in the philosophy of psychology and metaphysics, is a problem with important epistemological implications. This is the problem of the status and reality of memories as well as of the past. Memory's paradoxes was one theme dramatized in Christopher Nolan's Inception. ("'Inception': A Movie Review" then "'Unknown': A Movie Review.")

A useful discussion of this subject in philosophy should begin with a precise statement of the various difficulties lumped together under the most abstract philosophical issue:

When we remember the past what is it that we remember? Is the past distinct from our recollections of it? Is the past different from our so-called "objective" records of the past? Our records are always incomplete, after all, and in need of interpretation. Is it possible, for example, to compare our memories of the past with the past itself as distinct from the recollections of others who claim to have witnessed the same past? Is there, indeed, such an entity or object as the same past for any two people? Or is there a single past for the population of a nation with conflicting views of what "mattered" at any given moment in time? Does the past exist "objectively"? Or is it all "relative"? ("John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.") 

If the past exists "objectively," then where is the past located, again, in order to compare our recollections of events with what, in fact, "happened"? Is determining what happened with respect to any specific event strictly an empirical matter? Is the determination concerning what happened, historically, an empirical question exclusively? If not, then what other sorts of criteria -- besides empirical considerations -- need to be weighed by investigators of the past and/or memories? Aesthetic criteria? Logical criteria?

Are human meanings (values) distinguishable from what "really" happened (facts) on any occasion? Are such meanings "static" or "dynamic" interpretive entities? Can the meaning of a past event be determined or revealed by other or additional events occurring subsequently, or after the original event in time (or is temporal ordering among the ingredients of meaning/causation) within a narrative structure or logic? ("Richard A. Posner On Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility" and "'Total Recall': A Movie Review.") 

The answers to these difficult philosophical/jurisprudential inquiries have vital real world implications. Persons are sent to prison and may even be executed based on the testimony of witnesses as to what they remember to have occurred. Much of the world's literature and cinema is concerned with examining the mystery of memory in human life. Indeed, this romance of memory is the subject of Fitzgerald's masterpiece, The Great Gatzby. ("Erasing Painful Memories" and "Brian Greene and the Science of Memory" then "'The Matrix': A Movie Review.")

The various ways in which memories may make sense in terms of a narrative of a life's journey is also a central issue in phenomenological-hermeneutics: Merold Westfal, "Transcendence, Heteronomy, and the Birth of the Responsible Self," in William Beck Matusik & William L. McBride, eds., Calvin O. Shrag and the Task of Philosophy After Postmodernity (Illinois: Northwestern U. Press, 2002), pp. 201-226 then Calvin O. Shrag, The Resources of Rationality: A Response to the Postmodern Challenge (Indiana: Indiana U. Press, 1992), pp. 90-116 ("Narrative and the Claims of Reason") then Terry Eagleton, The Event of Literature (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 2012), pp. 106-166. ("Conversation on a Train.")

The modern philosophical tradition views questions concerning the nature of memory as interpretive of the mind so as to be distinct from neurological-mechanical questions focusing on cerebral operations. George Santayana, "The Cognitive Claims of Memory," in Skepticism and Animal Faith (New York: Dover, 1955), pp. 150-164 as contrasted with Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Idea of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983), entirety. Please see also A.J. Parkin, Memory and Amnesia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), entirety, and M. Spitzer, et als., Phenomenology, Language, and Schizophrenia (New York: Springer, 1993).

My concern in the present essay is with the philosophical issue and not the biological or mechanical questions surrounding remembering, except as they bear on the theoretical problem examined in the following discussion. Perhaps examples from literary works may make my focus clearer:

"His most sensible memories -- their few minutes in the library, the kiss in Whitehall -- were bleached colorless through overuse. He knew by heart certain passages from her letter, he had revisited their tussle with the vase by the fountain, he remembered the warmth from her arm at the dinner when the twins went missing. These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality."

Ian McEwan, Atonement (New York: Random House, 2001), p. 213 and Ian McEwan, "The God That Fails," in The New Republic, February 25, 2013, at p. 7. (Memory, translated into literature, "annotates 'the microscopic lattice work of consciousness, the small print of subjectivity.' ... I have a memory of myself as a child, caressing a detail in a novel.")

Next there is this famous passage:

"My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one gray morning of war time."

"These memories, which are my life -- for we possess nothing certainly except the past -- were always with me. Like the pidgeons of St. Mark's, they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks ... "

" ... These memories are the memorials and pledges of the vital hours of a lifetime."

Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (New York & Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1944), pp. 225-226. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")

Keeping these paragraphs in mind, I turn to a literary-philosophical definition of memory offered by existentialist novelist, Norman Mailer, fitting the assumptions (I believe) of both British authors, yet still within the phenomenological tradition that is undergoing a revolutionary transformation after the hermeneutic turn:

" ... You could even claim that memory like history is nothing but the record of all the oppositions in one's life -- war, peace, and love, hurrah. Memory is the mind's emodiment of form; therefore, memory, like the mind, is invariably more pure than the event. An event consists not only of forces which are opposed to one another but also to forces which have no relation to the event. Whereas memory has a tendency to retain the oppositions and the context."

Norman Mailer, "Interview," in Richard Poirier, ed., Norman Mailer (New York: Viking, 1972), p. 13 (emphasis added).

Mailer's notion of memory as form -- conveyed by images and/or text -- form that is only made meaningful as narrative, that is, chronicles (scientific and otherwise) of lives lived in time, time is defined by Mailer as "the river of becoming," is helpful to philosophers integrating developments in the sciences (brain science and physics as well as other areas of research) with theories of textual memory-analysis, notably in the works of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur, but also Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan are useful in this project. See Jonathan Miller, "Dialogue With Jerome Fodor: Imagery and the Language of Thought," in States of Mind (New York: Methuen, 1983), pp. 84-98 and Jerry Fodor, "Syntax and Its Discontents," in The Mind Doesn't Work That Way: The Scope and Limits of Computational Psychology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 23-32 then Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1972), entirety.

Therapeutic appropriations of this scholarship have been common for some time. The contemporary literature of hermeneutics becomes intertextual or overlaps with the works of Carl Jung and the Jungians as well as humanistic-existentialist psychologists, such as R.D. Laing, Rollo May, and many others. Carl Jung, ed., "The Process of Individuation," in Man and His Symbols (New York: Dell, 1964), pp. 157-255 and Joseph Campbell, "Introduction," in The Portable Jung (New York: Penguin, 1971), pp. vii-xxxii. It may be instructive to contrast Freud and Jung on these issues of self-narration or mythologizing history, Peter Gay, Freud: A Life For Our Time (New York: W.W. Norton, 1988), pp. 103-153 then Ronald W. Clark, Freud: The Man and the Cause (New York: Random House, 1980), pp. 100-113 and Ronald Hayman, A Life of Jung (New York & London: W.W. Norton, 1999), pp. 357-451 then B.A. Farrell's, The Standing of Psychoanalysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), a devastating analytical critique of psychoanalysis.

Before turning to recent efforts to develop what I have called a "hermeneutic theory of memory," it may be helpful to distinguish philosophical from psychoanalytic aspects of the scholarly literature concerning memory.

A. The Psychoanalytic Issue.

Psychoanalysts and psychologists tend to define memory in terms of three concepts: "1. The function involved in recalling past experience; 2. the totality of past experiences; 3. a specific past experience."

J.P. Chapin, Dictionary of Psychology (New York: Laurel, 1985), P. 275. ("Mind and Machine" and "Consciousness and Computers.")

The first and third senses of memory in psychology evolve from the empirical and realist traditions in philosophy. The second sense of memory, however, is an abstraction or synthetic a priori concept that grows out of the Kantian and all idealist and/or anti-realist traditions in philosophy. ("Immanuel Kant and the Narrative of Freedom" then "Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism.")

Compare Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), pp. 199-231 with Christopher Norris, "Free-Will, Creativity and Structural Constraint: Linguistics as a Guide to Metaphysics," in Fiction, Philosophy and Literary Theory: Will the Real Saul Kripke Please Stand Up (London: Continuum, 2007), pp. 202-261 then Kelly James Clark, "Fiction is a Kind of Philosophy," in William P. Alston, ed., Realism and Anti-Realism (Ithaca & London: Cornell U. Press, 2002), pp. 280-295. ("'The English Patient': A Movie Review" and "'Unknown': A Movie Review" also Mr. Nolan's "Memento.")

All psychology in our civilization is a product of the philosophical tradition. Foundational logical, epistemological, and metaphysical tensions between these aspects of memory -- as understood in psychology and neurology as against philosophy -- have not been sufficiently noticed or commented upon by persons working in the social sciences. ("John Searle and David Chalmers On Consciousness" then "The Galatea Scenario and the Mind/Body Problem.")

This strange silence among scholars is especially evident in America. A turn to the examination of the relation between philosophy and the human sciences has been obvious and prominent in recent European thought: Michel Foucault, The Archeology of Knowledge (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), entirety, and Michel Foucault, "The History of Sexuality," in Colin Gordon, ed., Michel Foucault: Power, Knowledge -- Selected Interviews 1972-1977 (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 180-199. Compare Ian Hacking, "Self-Improvement," in David Couzens Hoy, ed., Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), p. 235 and David Ingram, "Foucault and Habermas On the Subject of Reason," in Gary Cutting, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Foucault (Cambridge: cambridge U. Press, 1994), pp. 215-264 with Ian Hacking, "False Consciousness," in Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory (New Jersey: Princeton U. Press, 1995), pp. 258-267 and E.J. Lowe, "Time and Persistence," in The Possibility of Metaphysics: Substance, Identity and Time (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 84-105. ("Michel Foucault and the Authorship Question" and, again, "Conversation on a Train.")

At a conceptual level, the various aspects of memory incorporated into psychological definitions are bound to generate confusions and misunderstandings along with conflicts:

"The memory process is measured by recall, reproduction, [representation,] recognition and relearning; In recall the subject must demonstrate that he can remember what has been learned without the aid of stimulus clues. An essay examination measures recall. In reproduction he must show, by a drawing or by rearranging objects in their original order, that he can remember what was originally learned or perceived. In recognition the subject must demonstrate that he can remember which of several alternatives were originally learned when all are presented together. The multiple choice examination draws upon this type of memory. In relearning the amount of time or number of trials saved is measured for the relearning of a passage learned in the past."

Chaplin, pp. 274-275.

These aspects of memory are theoretical and distinct from the various understandings of amnesia or loss of memory which are usually anecdotal or context-dependent in the medical literature. This lack of theoretical foundations is an impoverishment of that literature. Owen Flanagan, "Multiple Identity, Character Transformation, and Self-Reclamation," in G. Graham & G. Lynn Stephen, eds., Philosophical Psychopathology (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), pp. 135-163.

Understanding of memory is connected to the concept of time assumed by investigators. These foundational concepts may be quite different for persons trained in science as distinct from humanistic scholars. See Peter Gallison, Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps: Empires of Time (New York & London: W.W. Norton, 2003), pp. 294-329 and Errol E. Harris, The Reality of Time (New York: SUNY, 1988), pp. 79-107. ("'In Time': A Movie Review.")

Much of the analytical philosophical scholarship focusing on memory has been rendered problematic by developments in post-quantum physics, perhaps, but much more by literary theory in the twentieth century which has taught us to regard recollection as an art form. For example, A.J. Ayer's now seemingly archaic -- or at least highly dated -- comments on memory come to mind: A.J. Ayer, "Memory," in The Problem of Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1956), pp. 134-176 and Ben Rodgers, A.J. Ayer: A Life (New York: Grove, 1999), pp. 191-205.  

Psychoanalysts postulate a distinction between "repression" of memories of trauma as against "suppression" of events recalled subconsciously -- not consciously -- on the basis of "degrees of voluntariness." Repression is involuntary; suppression is "voluntary forgetting," or "erasure of painful memories," that is sometimes also called "deliberate forgetting." ("Can you lie to yourself?")

Psychoanalysis focuses on the mechanism of repression which was understood by Freud in a steam-engine or nineteenth-century physics sense as concerned with "releasing pent-up forces from the subconscious."  

Repression of memories may be associational (or dissociational) through "connections" that are often subconscious also to a particular person or event, almost always these connections are incidental to trauma or, in the terminology of psychoanalysis, "occasions of unusual affect."

Proust's tea-soaked Madeleines, as the doorway to memory, point to the mind's ability to attach symbols or fragments of recollections to different images, linked in ways that may not be fully understood consciously, but which allow for the preservation of threatened or shattered memories. Nearly any important memory is divided and classified, creatively, in multiple ways by the mind seeking to protect them and itself.  

Loss of memory may result from physical injury to the brain, described by neurologists as a "severe insult to the brain." More ambiguously, however, loss of memory may also result for exclusively emotional reasons without physical injury or pathology of any kind.

Repressed memories may be recovered without increased harm to functional capacity (where have they been "hidden" by the mental author of the self?) provided that there is "no additional burden imposed on the psychic system" from long-term stress -- including invasions by way of hypnosis over long periods of time -- which are always detrimental and sometimes lethal to the psychic system. Kathleen V. Wilkes, "Fugues, Hypnosis, and Multiple Personality," in Daniel Kolak and Raymond Martin, eds., Self and Identity: Contemporary Philosophical Issues (New York: MacMillan, 1991), pp. 115-135 and S. Corkin, et als., "The Amnesia Patient H.M.: Clinical Observations and Test Performances 28 Years After Operations," Abstracts of the Society of Neuroscience, 80, pp. 12-35. See also Professor Wilkes' Real People (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1988) then the classic exposition of associational interpretations of the representational theory of memory: F.H. Bradley, "On Memory and Judgment," in Essays On Truth and Reality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1914), pp. 381-408. ("My mind is a leaping thing.")

It has been suggested that the subconscious is an excellent author-editor rearraging and protecting memories in terms of our life-narratives. Memory is the essential ingredient of identity. Hence, there are many narrative paths, unfolding in different time-orders, to arrive at our most important recollections. ("Hansel and Gretl" then "God is Texting Me!") 

There can be no doubt, according to experts, of the great dangers to the mind resulting from interfering with the processes of memory and/as "narration." Perhaps this explains the efforts to prevent me from writing. Ian Hacking, "False Consciousness," in Rewriting the Soul, pp. 238-267 and Paul Ricoeur, "Life in Quest of Narrative," in David Wood, ed., Narrative and Interpretation (New York & London: Routledge, 1981), pp. 20-34 then, again, E.J. Lowe, "Time and Persistence," pp. 84-105. Please compare Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Hermeneutics as Practical Philosophy," in J. Baynes, et als., eds., Philosophy: End Or Transformation? (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 325-339 with Paul Ricoeur, "On Interpretation," in Philosophy: End Or Transformation?, pp. 357-381. (Again: '''In Time': A Movie Review.")   

B. The Philosophical Issue.

" ... the philosopher is particularly troubled by the representative power of memory. That is, if I summon up a memory of some event, how do I know to interpret it as representing the past, rather than being a pure exercise of imagination? Is there a specific feeling of pastness? But if so, might I not then have the feeling, but not know to interpret that [emotion] as a feeling of pastness? Indeed, is there always a present representation or might memory be a form of direct acquaintance with the past? This might at least give us a justification of the confidence we place in memory. But is the skeptical hypothesis proposed by Russell, that the earth might have sprung into existence five minutes ago, with a population that remembers a wholly unreal past, at least logically possible? ["Dark City"] But if it is logically possible, the question of how we know that is not what has happened is set to look intractable."

Simon Blackburn, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1994), p. 239 and Ted Hondereich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1995), pp. 550-531 ("Images and Temporal Ordering in Memory"). (Those interested in scientific analogies, again, are directed to Gardner and Schacter.)

Philosophers wonder whether memory is a kind of code or "image-making" by the mind that is distinct from its objects of representation or what is captured in this code or image-making.

In aesthetic theory these concerns express themselves through the analysis of images and symbols as vessels containing deep memory-meanings or Jungian archetypes associated with individuals in public or private life. Hence, the evocative power of cinema -- cinema may be made to serve as a repository of threatened memories by a person or culture. 

With regard to memory the object of representation is distinguished from the past event. There is, accordingly, nothing outside the text of memory. This is not to deny the objective reality of events in time, but it is to emphasize that memory serves unique psychic functions as well as "recording" what happens in our lives. ("Jacques Derrida's Philosophy as Jazz.")

Among the areas of philosophical scholarship where these issues are central are not only the theory of psychology, but all philosophies of history, Marxism included. There is no fully objective historical record, yet there are real "events" that take place in the life of a nation. Compare David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. I, prt. 1, sec. iii with Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind (London: 1921), lec. ix then A.J. Ayer, "Memory," in The Problem of Knowledge, pp. 134-175. ("David Hume's Philosophical Romance.")

The way memory has been understood by philosophers divides into various categories based on the epistemological and metaphysical systems to which the particular philosopher adheres.

Representational theories of memories understand memory as the opposite of an objective record of the past, but rather as the rememberer's "work of art" or creation -- something formulated in the present tense only in the act of recollection (Gardner) -- which may nevertheless be highly accurate to the events recalled "as they occurred, in fact," whatever that may mean.

Representational theories are usually associated with various forms of idealism, rationalism, phenomenology and hermeneutics in our time, in different ways, often in combination with mediated realist-scientific theories of memory. Jerome Bruner, "The Narrative Construction of Reality," in 18 Critical Inquiry, pp.1-21 (1990) and "Symposium: Memory Transfer," Science, 153, 658-9 and discussion in "Edible Knowledge: The Chemical Transfer of Memory," in Harry Collins & Trevor Pinch, The Golem: What Everyone Should Know About Science (Cambridge: Cambridge U. Press, 1993), pp. 5-27. (Chemical "texts" of memory in a scientific hermeneutics.) Karl Pibram, Languages of the Brain (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1971). (The idea of cellular "communication" and "interpretation" has become a fruitful area of biological research. Please see my essay "The Entanglements Are Primary.")

Definitions of memory as form seek to fuse realist and anti-realist elements together in a single theory of memory. The arts are typically concerned with memory as representation and the ways by which genius may capture memory in "form" -- whether words, pigments on canvas, images in cinema, or even music -- all are ways of shaping memories into meaningful patterns. What are we losing when our culture abandons literature and the humanities in efforts to understand such phenomena as memory or the mind, history, politics, or the self? Mark Bauerlein, "POGLing Out," in First Things, February, 2013, at pp. 56-58. ("Whatever" and "Nihilists in Disneyworld.")

Human needs are not only to remember, but also to understand (make meaningful) what is recollected through the creation of patterns. Accordingly, reconstruction of memory may take place with the creation of a narrative pattern into which lost recollections may be fitted because they are needed.  Indeed, multiple threads of "emplotment" may well be created by the mind to "script" the narrative of a life's journey in order to allow for the maximum freedom of "evolution" for the self. Furthermore, this process of coding (and re-coding) memories is eternal in the psyche. Jean-Paul Sartre, "Why Write?," in What is Literature? (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1988), pp. 48-69 and George Steiner, Errata: An Examined Life (New Haven: Yale U. Press, 1997), p. 25 then Richard E. Palmer, ed., Hermeneutics (Evanston: Northwestern U. Press, 1969), pp. 256-293 and Kurt Mueller-Volmer, ed., The Hermeneutics Reader (New York: Continuum, 2006), pp. 158-275.

The relationship between story-telling and recall in the shaping of personal life-narratives is a central concern of Mr. McEwan's Atonement. William Shakespeare and Marcel Proust are classic writers fascinated by the power of memory to defeat time. Shakespeare's Sonnets, for example, seek to give verbal form to the beauty and passion associated with the poet's lover and loves, while Proust (more ambitiously) attempts in Remembrance of Things Past to recreate an entire society and manners destroyed by the First World War by drawing upon Bergson's phenomenological theory of memory as what is experienced "now" in Memory and Time (1911) as well as Flaubert's exacting demands of the French language:

"The principle thesis of [Proust's] novel is that a man's salvation consists in rescuing his past from the clutches of time."

Louis Auchincloss, The Style's the Man: Reflections On Proust, Fitzgerald, Wharton, Vidal and Others (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1994), p. 78. ("Images and Death" and "'The French Lieutenant's Woman': A Movie Review.")

Ian Hacking concludes his study of false memory with these words:

"We do have another vision of the soul and self-knowledge. What is its basis? It comes from deeply rooted convictions and sensibilities about what it is to be a fully developed human being. They are parts of the Western moral tradition -- that of Bernice, Goddard, and myself. First, there is an old sense of teleology, fostered by Aristotle, a sense of the ends for which a person exists: to grow into a complete and self-aware person. Second, there is nominalism, represented by John Locke, according to which memory is a criterion for personal identity, perhaps the essential one. Third, there is the idea of autonomy that we are responsible for constructing our own moral selves; that is perhaps the most enduring aspect of Kant's ethics. Fourth, memory-politics has recently taught us or called us to believe that a person, or in older language the soul, is constituted by memories and character. Any type of amnesia results in something being stolen from oneself; how much worse if it is replaced by deceptive memories, a nonself. ..."

Rewriting the Soul, p. 264 (emphasis added).

Orwell's nightmare of a sinister state power used to define or replace memories of public events in the age of stage-managed news now appears quaint. "Big Brother" has become a television news director or fictional byline at The New York Times. ("Manohla Dragis Strikes Again!")

In what follows I will examine the various rival philosophical theories of memory, realist and constructivist, with the proviso that there are nuanced positions between these alternatives. ("Out of the Past" and "The Allegory of the Cave.")

Skeptics, like Bertrand Russell, continue to offer challenges to memory-based theories of identity. Human freedom today -- as anticipated by Orwell and even more by Aldous Huxley -- has become the "collectivizing of memory" and the subtle usurpation by the state and other "actors" of the power to define memories and their meaning(s) for persons. I turn, finally, to current social and political issues surrounding memory.

I. Personal Memory: Is the Past Real?

A. The Representational Theory of Memory.

The focus among philosophers in the modern tradition that is shaped by the Cartesian cogito is upon the individual knowing agent, or agent of recollection, or "personal memory."

Only with the rise of totalitarianism in the twentieth century and the shaping of mass psychology by the state under fascism have philosophers become especially interested in collective or social memory. Hannah Arendt, "Walter Benjamin: 1892-1940," in Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1968), pp. 153-207.

In discussing, first, issues surrounding personal memory or individual recollection, I offer crucial distinctions between "time" and "memory" derived from phenomenology: memories of facts are opposed to experiences of recollection. This analysis leads to a clearer sense of what is meant by memory as representation.

Memories are inextricable from the human time-sense. It is also true, however, that contemporary understandings of memory transcend the limitations of linear conceptions of time dating from a pre-quantum age. Alterations in narrative possibilities that arrived with modernism are not unrelated to these richer understandings of memory.

"When" something happened in a person's life -- the arrival of an important person, for example -- is only on one level a matter of chronology. The more crucial "moment" of arrival may have to do with understanding that person's role in the drama that one is and being ready for that role to be played.  

The reality of the past is present in our appreciation of who we are or what our lives are about. What or who we remember, how we remember persons -- whose emotions (like our own) color the "affective landscape" or geography of memory -- determines what we are able to remember.

Enrichments of narrative possibilities means that what may be closed to active recollection from one direction may become knowable or liberated from the dungeon of the subconscious through the choice of a "devious narrative path" or what Ricoeur describes as the "detour." For this important French philosopher, such a detour may lead to a "truncated ontology of the self." See my earlier essay on Ricoeur's hermeneutics, Juan Galis-Menendez, Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Freedom (North Carolina: Lulu, 2004). 

A writer once advised a younger colleague to remember that, while every story has a beginning, middle, and end they are not necessarily going to appear in that order, either in life or good fiction. (Again: "'Inception': A Movie Review" and "Bernard Williams and Identity.")

We are lucky to live in an elegant universe where we may remember what will happen in the future by projecting ourselves into our past. We remember that we will die. We can also love someone today because of what we were, together, "once upon a time." What we have shared includes interpretations that we have constructed together that have shaped our identities with-others-in-the-world-towards-death:

"Memory of facts (what has been called 'factual memory') cannot be reduced to memory of events experienced or witnessed by the rememberer (what has been called 'personal memory'), and not all cases of factual memory are cases in which the remembered fact is a fact about a remembered event or action. ..."

Sydney Shoemaker, "Memory," in Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Volume 5 (New York: MacMillan, 1967), pp. 266-275, p. 266 (citing Norman Malcolm's Knowledge and Certainty.)

We "remember" that George Washington was the first president of the nation, but we have not experienced the event, as distinct from shared memories of actually experienced events, like the George W. Bush presidency. Significantly, Norman Malcolm and Elizabeth Anscombe -- leading analytical philosophers and close students of Ludwig Wittgenstein -- reacted against Russellian skepticism without accepting a positive concept of knowledge or memory:

"It is different if I think that the experience of memory is what gives me the idea of the past, and say that memory need be neither genuine nor true in order to contain this idea. Both a false and an apparent memory are of what seems to have happened. If I say this, I am holding that memory gives me the form of a representation of the past by supplying me with representations which have this form and that the distinction of apparent and genuine, and of false and true, are superior. For a sense occurs in a false representation no less than in a true. If, then, I regard my understanding of the meaning of the past time as got from my memory representation and regard these as the fundamental data for my understanding, then I regard the true and the false indifferently."

G.E.M. Anscombe, "Memory and the Past," in Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind: Collected Philosophical Papers, Volume II (Minn.: U. Minneapolis Press, 1987), pp. 106-107 (discussing Wittgenstein's "On Certainty" and Russell's "Analysis of Mind"). 

The representational theory of memory says that remembering is a present act of construction -- or re-construction through representation -- that consists of the agent's apprehending (perceiving, willing, being directly aware of, being acquainted with) something that is not past, not external to the agent, but something existing or occurring at the time at which the person/agent constructs or "has" the memory. In remembering it is always "now." 

With traumatic memory, however, the injury that has been inflicted is always a present painful phenomenon, a frozen moment in time. Howard Gardner and others concerned with the neurochemistry of memory also suggest that all remembering is a present cerebral operation, not a retrieval of a filed memory of a past event. 

All trauma is certainly a Kierkegaardian "repetition" -- through sometimes forced recollection -- of an eternal and painful "now." 

Remembering is a perpetual rebuilding of the image-based code of our life's journeys or "meanings." It follows that, under this theory, the past exists nowhere except when or as it is remembered.

This representational theory dates from a pre-technological society, without computers or cinema, when most persons could be expected to "last" only as long as the living memory of those knowing them. Current technology has changed this reality, but may only have reinforced the theory of memory as mental representation or present neurological event.

B. The Realist Theory of Memory.

The most common assumption by unreflective or "pre-philosophical" persons is a form of realism or (sometimes) "naive realism" that is aligned with a version of classical empiricism and what is regarded, falsely, as "the scientific viewpoint": 

"... What one is directly aware of in memory (what is before the mind) is the remembered event itself and not a mere representation of it." (Shoemaker, p. 270.)

Thomas Reid and other philosophers have objected that there are great difficulties in basing a claim about what occurred in the past on what is found in the mind in the present. There are, of course, equally compelling arguments that some memories imply the existence of real events and persons that could not otherwise be found in the mind.

To be told that one has fabricated a memory of a complex human being -- with all of her particularity and nuanced subjectivity -- is unlikely to be persuasive to the agent of recollection. Hence, what is found in the mind points to its source in the world. 

Persons able to describe locations and individuals on the basis of their recollections reveal, at the very least, some knowledge of the relevant locations and individuals. Denials of memory are denials of one's self, one's experience, disconfirmations of the psyche that may result in the dissolution of the self.

Objections to realist theories of memories focus on issues of reliability or accuracy to the "objective" facts that presume a real existence of these facts independently of the individual memory.

The trouble is that "facts" are recalled differently by persons in a position to remember "facts" at all. No one can hold the fact of what occurred, in one hand, and the represented event found in the mind, in the other hand, in order to make the necessary comparison. The contrast between different witnesses or persons remembering an occurrence suggests that there are as many versions of reality or truth as there are persons doing the recollecting which brings us back to literature. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")

C. Phenomenological or Hermeneutic Theories.

Phenomenological and hermeneutic theories focus on the logical plausibility of a person's memories. Many lawyers will be astonished to learn that they have been making use of such theories for years.

Plausibility is a matter of "narrative logic" or the way in which lawyers and police -- usually without knowing it -- are literary critics deciding on the believability of someone's "story." As a matter of fact, what juries often decide is which version of the truth, or "story" of what happened, is most plausible. These are judgments that we all must make every day. Common sense is often recommended to voters and jurors, rarely to politicians and judges deploying theories of the "law and facts."

The fundamental importance of what we remember to our life's journeys and goals -- to who we are or can become -- makes it clear that government denials of memory, or attempts at disconfirmation of recollections, amounts to the destruction of identity and/or history. It may be that this observation is more apt as regards social or collective rather than individual or personal memory. 

We went into Iraq because we wish "to bring democracy to the Iraqui people," not because of "weapons of mass destruction." This new "script" by our government forced us to forget the months during which we were told that Iraq actually possessed weapons of mass destruction that were about to be used against us. ("'The Adjustment Bureau': A Movie Review.")

We sheepishly obey our leaders, often subconsciously substituting the favored version of history endorsed by our politicians, for the "objective" facts. Increasingly, this process becomes subconscious at a national level. We are not even aware, consciously, that our past is being reshaped for us by powerful forces in our societies for any number of reasons that are also not shared with us.

The media's role in this process goes largely unexamined. Not surprisingly, this post-Reagan era of media manipulation and Hollywood cotton candy for the mind has generated the phenomenon on a mass scale of "false-memory syndrome." A scholarly concern with "quasi-memory" as a tool of conditioning has also emerged, notably in the Marxist tradition and in opposition to postmodernist theory as in the work of Alex Callinicos. A. Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist Critique (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990), pp. 127-172 then David L. Norton, Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (New Jersey: Princeton U. Press, 1976), pp. 158-275 ("memory" in self-realization).

Equally effective is denial of valid memories -- persuading persons not to remember -- through socially-generated pressures to recall things in a particular way. This mechanism is most effective when it can be aligned with tribal hatreds or racism of some kind. America seems to lead the world in the sophistication of these techniques of social manipulation or control of collective memory. Perhaps this phenomenon explains the popularity of the FOX News channel.

II. Time and Narrative: Memory as Form Again.

To return to the discussion of memory as form:

"Having said that 'form is the physical equivalent of memory,' [Mailer] goes on to make a distinction between memory and an event: 'an event consists not only of forces that are opposed to one another but also of forces that have no relation to the event. Whereas memory has a tendency to retain only the opposition and the context. Under this dispensation, there is no obligation to the past except as one chooses to reconstruct it. The past is the part of the self that one recognizes in the present as belonging to a dimension of time other than the future." (Poirier, pp. 51-52.)

This move elides the distinction between external and internal views of memory. Much depends on what societal concerns are associated with a particular event.

As I write this essay an Olympic athlete is accused of killing his girlfriend. He remembers shooting an "intruder." Issues of plausibility arise, immediately, as well as tensions between so-called "objective and subjective definitions of memory."

Responsibility, free will, and other difficulties emerge as conflicts arise between what an agent "recalls" and what society -- for corrupt reasons sometimes -- determines "really happened" that the actor "must have been aware of."

All such determinations can only be "conflicts of interpretation" or "narratives" offered for different purposes by different role-players in society. There may be any number of narratives. In terms of a person's life-story, however, what matters is exclusively that individual's recollection and the meanings that he or she attaches to them. In the absence of a legitimate public interest, a life's values and relationships are simply not society's business. ("Is there a gay marriage right?")

Where society has no interest, in terms of self-regarding events or emotional recollections not affecting the inner-lives of others, in other words, as regards a life's narrative, that is the "exclusive property" -- as Republicans say -- of the rememberer. Ian Hacking concludes his study of the sciences of memory with these words:

"Does it matter whether what we seem to remember really happened? ... What about seeming memories of long ago? They matter when our beliefs affect other people. That is the point of the false memory [and hypnosis] polemics. If someone cuts off all contact with her family because she wrongly has come to believe that her father has abused her and her mother knew but kept silent, then incalculable harm has been done to the family. In that case, the false beliefs" -- all males are evil, for example -- "which seem to be memories, have terrible effects ..." (Hacking, p. 258.)

The point to much of Hacking's work and a great deal of hermeneutic theory in psychology and philosophy is that the meaning of our memories and self-understandings, is only for us to determine through narrative intelligence and plausibility that are analogous to the ways in which we evaluate works of literature.

Each person is -- and must be -- the novelist of his/her inner-story. No one can be permitted to take our memories from us or to supply us with convenient (for them) "fictions" of what has happened to us. If we permit others to define public as well as private history for us, we allow them to reduce us to the status of objects or "things" used for their purporses. (Again: "Richard A. Posner on Voluntary Actions and Criminal Responsibility.")

To deny the power of our personal stories or purposes is to deny ourselves the status of protagonists in our own lives. This amounts to a kind of slavery resulting from substituting prepackaged stories or meanings ("The War on Terror") on the precious and fleeting moments of our lives. It is to allow others to tell us what our lives are about or what happened to us and why things happened.

We are easily made to live out the narratives of powerful others who do not wish us to see the ways in which we are exploited, along with most of the people on the planet, for purposes that are not our own. (See the forthcoming film, "Elysium.")

We are made "safe," turned into "docile bodies," manipulated to behave in a controlled manner that is useful for government and corporations, but dangerous to our freedoms. This awareness of the increasing prevalence of power not only in society, but within our psyches, is Foucault's animating insight.  

The reality of the past that we remember is difficult enough, but the accuracy of our memories and their authenticity is equally in question. The state has invaded so much of what was private by making it public (no area seems to be beyond legal regulation) that our inner lives are in danger of being taken from us in order to serve collective purposes. Government wishes to define our histories for us, to abolish certain narratives of our past, in order to persuade us that, say, "we are good and they are evil." (George W. Bush) 

We must be taught that we live in the best of all possible societies. Accordingly, massive global hatred directed against us in the world can only be proof of the irrationality of "inferior" peoples and civilizations as opposed to a very ugly history of oppressions that billions of persons in the world "remember" very differently than we do. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba.")

I can relate to this since my recollection of what is "unethical" or why something occurred may differ from Stuart Rabner's or Bob Menendez's views of the matter. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

We are often asked "not to remember" what we thought happened or believed motivated public actions. I can recall when the invasion of Iraq was transformed -- approximately, over 48 hours -- from a mission to seize weapons of mass destruction to an effort to bring democracy to the Iraqui people. Who won the presidential debates? ("Presidential Debates" and "Republicans Unplugged.")

The entire 18-months-long discussion of the threat posed by weapons of mass destruction, the "iron-clad" intelligence data, the presentation before the UN based on satellite photos that may have been altered -- all of this was dropped, instantly, and suddenly became a non-subject with the enthusiastic cooperation of the "free and independent media" that promptly turned to a discussion of human rights under Sadam Hussein.

Curiously, this human rights record did not trouble us when Mr. Hussein's Iraq was America's ally against Iran. Similarly, world condemnation of events in Gaza is being lost to a sudden fascination with Iran's nuclear program.

We are instructed -- and accept -- that we are not to pay too much attention to such details. America's years of friendship with Mr. Hussein, including sales of arms used in the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Kurds, were conveniently forgotten by a well-trained population. A bell rings and we salivate. ("Behaviorism is Evil" and "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.") 

"Most people want to be told what to believe!" I was told by a torturer. This applies even to individuals taught to regard only some events in our lives as significant and others as not so important, made to pretend that some things that have happened have not happened, unless the state decides that they did happen after all. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli" and "American Doctors and Torture.")

" ...the command of the totalitarians was 'Thou Shalt.' Our command is Thou Art. No one whom we bring to this place ever stands out against us. Everyone is washed clean. Even those miserable traitors in whose innocence you once believed -- Jones, Aronson, and Rutherford -- in the end we broke them down. I took part in their interrogation myself. I saw them gradually worn down, whimpering, grovelling, weeping -- and in the end it was not with pain or fear, only with penitence. By the time we had finished with them they were only the shells of men. There was nothing left in them except sorrow for what they had done, and love of Big Brother. It was touching to see how they loved him. They begged to be shot quickly, so that they could die while their minds were clean."

George Orwell, 1984 (New York: Harcourt Brace-New American Library, 1949), pp. 210-211. ("Legal Ethics Today.")

Memory has become one more field of operation for the C.I.A. and other intelligence or government agencies that are actively engaged in the process of "constructing reality" for us. The past is remembered "for us" to match current slogans of national objectives. (Again: "'Total Recall': A Movie Review" and "'Unknown': A Movie Review.")

We are made to "love Big Brother" not in the form of any Chief Executive, but in terms of particular versions of reality in which current platitudes and slogans are vindicated. Hence, we may consume all the oil that we like because climate warming is a "myth." Or the resources of the planet are sufficient for all, so that overconsumption by First World societies is not "our problem" but merely a problem for poorly-administered Third World states. The solution to global warming, according to Mr. Romney, is to "burn clean coal." It comes as a shock to many Americans that Iraq and Afghanistan are seen by the world as colossal disasters. It also shocks Americans to learn that Wall Street is detested everywhere and blamed for much of the world's current economic troubles.

Conclusion: Collective Memory -- Are our lives real?

Perhaps the most ominous example of the socializing of memory through cultural or other use of power may be found in the development of American psychological torture techniques.

These techniques are a means to control human beings in the vast Gulag Archipelago of America's prison system(s), where inmates who are seen as "subhuman" are stored, drugged against their will (often through secret insertions of narcotics into food), subjected to isolation for obscenely long periods of time, and otherwise made to accept official versions of their past and of reality in which what is done to them is "for their own good." ("Justice For Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison.")

This set of practices and the coopting of memory is also visible in the death of the independent media in America and, again, in the use of cultural power to provide images of the past and reality to a largely comatose population.

This leads to the idea of memory as a postmodern locus of revolutionary struggle (or battlefield) in the effort to "construct" personal and social identity against the power of the state. This idea is already a favorite of science fiction film-makers and popular writers using the weapons of the powerful against the powerful. Memory and reality then become whatever the "winners" say they are. 

I wish to return to Ian Hacking's crucial concluding observations by way of closing the hermeneutic circle in this essay:

"We do have another vision of the soul and self-knowledge. What is its basis? It comes from deeply rooted convictions and sensibilities about what it is to be a fully developed human being. They are parts of the Western moral tradition -- that of Bernice, Goddard, and myself. First, there is the old sense of teleology, fostered by Aristotle, a sense of the ends for which a person exists: to grow into a complete and self-aware person. Second, there is nominalism, represented by John Locke, according to which memory is a criterion for personal identity, perhaps the essential one. Third, there is the idea of autonomy, that we are responsible for constructing our own moral selves; that is perhaps the most enduring aspect of Kant's ethics. Fourth, memory-politics has recently taught us or caused us to believe that a person, or in an older language, the soul, is constituted by memory and character. Any type of amnesia results in something being stolen from us; how much worse if it is replaced by deceptive memories, a nonself." (Hacking, pp. 264-265.)

To be denied memories of any important event or person in our lives through manipulations is deeply wounding to the victim.

Political correctness or ideology -- even the interest of the state -- must not be grounds for violating the autonomy of a person's inner-life. Emotional meanings based on truthful recollections of a past that can belong to us only in memory must inhere in each of us, as persons, and should never become the property of the state. (Again: "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.") 

Memories are the only ingredients from which we can fashion the narratives of our lives -- OUR lives -- to make sense of what has happened to us. To be deprived of our memories, or to be told what they mean, or to have them replaced by a narrative created in Washington, D.C., or Hollywood, or Madison Avenue (or some combination of all three), is to be deprived of the meanings of our lives. It is to be made into objects, subhumans, slaves. We must always resist such a fate. ("Ape and Essence" and "Primates and Personhood.")