June 9, 2014 at 2:02 P.M. "Errors" previously corrected in this essay were restored to the text in order to maximize frustrations. I have made the necessary corrections yet again. These "errors" corrected today are not found in print versions of this text.
April 1, 2013 at 1:01 P.M. My profile showed zero hits this morning. Perhaps this is someone's notion of a practical joke for "April Fool's Day." It must be a very witty person who could come up with such a wonderful joke. Needless to say, this constitutes a violation of my copyright and also of blogger's and Google's intellectual property rights. I have copied this altered profile page. Spacing between paragraphs and sentences may be affected by N.J. hackers and other inserted "errors" must be expected. ("How censorship works in America" then "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")
March 30, 2013 at 1:36 P.M. I am at computer #6, NYPL, Morningside Heights. This is one of three computers at this library branch which have been vandalized through the removal of keys necessary to writing for their users. Obviously, the authorities could not care less about these continuing defacements and destruction of library equipment that, I believe, is about trying to silence me. Printers are damaged, put out of service, computers are destroyed on a regular basis by "operatives" of New Jersey political bosses and politicians. The losers are the people of New York and the American Constitution. I will continue to write.
The size of letters and spacing of paragraphs is altered, regularly, by hackers making use of N.J. government computers. I cannot access my email accounts; I cannot post images at these blogs; my writings are stolen and I am plagiarized on a regular basis in leading newspapers as well as magazines in America. The authorities are aware of these crimes. Some officials have cooperated, I believe, in the continuing cover-ups of these offenses. ("How censorship works in America.")
My discussion is based on the following sources:
Periodicals:
David Amsden, "The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Aaron Schwartz," in Rolling Stone, February 28, 2013, at p. 58. http://www.rollingstone.com
Matt Taibbi, "Too Big to Fail," in Rolling Stone, February 28, 2013, at p. 58. (Wall Street greed and lack of accountability.)
Noam Cohen, "A Data Crusader, a Defendant, and Now a Cause," in The New York Times, January 14, 2013, at p. A1.
"Interview: 'Sanity From Death Row' -- Filmaker Explores the Life of Mumia Abu-Jamal," in The Indypendent, February 20-March 19, 2013, at pp. 18-19. (Interview with filmaker Stephen Vittoria by John Tarleton concerning the documentary "Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey With Mumia Abu-Jamal," First Features, 2012.)
"Assault, Battery, and Government Liability," (Editorial) in The New York Times, February 18, 2013, at p. A16. ("KIM MILLBROOK," inmate, was beaten-up, abused, forced to perform oral sex on a prison guard. "Foucault, Rose, Davis and the Meanings of Prison.")
Michael Powell, "Release Likely Today After Unjust Jailing," in The New York Times, March 21, 2013, at p. A24. (DAVID KANTA, 58, served 22 years for a crime he did not commit because police and prosecutors perpetuated a fraud and covered-up the truth. Prosecutors then lied about the cover-up for many years and continue to refuse to acknowledge their responsibility for this tragedy. "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
Jack Hanley, "Wrongfully Convicted and Seeking Restitution: Many States Don't Make Up For Years Lost," in The New York Times, March 14, 2013, at p. A18. (ROBERT DEWEY, 52, spent 18 years in prison after a wrongful conviction and is now a pariah in the society that owes him an apology.)
"About the Black Sites, and Government Liability," (Editorial) in The New York Times, February 18, 2013, at p. A16. (America's secret partners in the torture policies, publicly, deplore our actions and, privately, continue to assist in the commission of crimes for a small fee.)
Joseph Berger, "Headmistress, Jilted Lover; Killer, Then a Force for Good in Jail," in The New York Times, December 29, 2012, at p. A1. (Jean Harris's life amounts to a rebellion by a "Stepford Wife." "'The Stepford Wives': A Movie Review.")
Abbi Smith, "Undue Process: An Investigative Journalist Examines a Juvenile Justice Scandal, and A Maverick Defense Lawyer Recounts His Most Fraught Case," in The New York Times Book Review, March 31, 2013, at p. 21.
Books:
Robert Barskey, Noam Chomsky: A Life of Dissent (Cambridge: MIT, 1997).
Richard Bernstein, The Abuse of Evil (Cambridge: Polity, 2005).
Noam Chomsky, 9-11 (New York: Seven Stories, 2001).
Mark Danner, Abu Ghraib: The Politics of Torture (Berkeley: North Atlantic, 2004).
William Encenbarger, Kids For Cash: Two Judges, Thousands of Children, and a $2.8 Million Kickback Scheme (New York: The New Press, 2013).
Michael Ignatieff, The Needs of Strangers (New York: Picador, 1984).
William J. Stunz, The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 2012).
Cornel West, Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism (New York: Penguin, 2004).
On January 11, 2013, Aaron Schwartz committed suicide. This horrible act -- ending the life of a 26 year-old, brilliant scientific and social thinker -- has become symbolic of a number of issues concerning the proper scope of government power in a Constitutional democracy, rights of conscience and expression, as well as access to information and, primarily, the endangered right to political dissent.
There is no doubt in my mind that Aaron Schwartz was subjected to a politically-motivated prosecution, also that induced stress and other forms of psychological torture were deployed against Aaron's frail and beautiful mind in an effort that was finally "successful" to destroy him. We are all diminished by this thinker's death.
I will begin with a few observations about Mr. Schwartz's life and achievements. With all allegations against Aaron being duly-noted -- they will remain forever mere allegations and his character is unsullied by any criminal conviction -- nothing should obscure the reality of Aaron's originality and intellectual creativity, but also of his moral seriousness and concern for others.
Lurking under this ugly governmental torture and destruction of a young man who promised so much for the future is blatant anti-intellectualism and hostility to science as well as to persons, like Aaron, who seem to frighten those enamored of political power and addicted to domination over others.
Aaron Schwartz will be remembered by friends from all over the world (most will never have met him) as, in the deepest meaning of the word, a "successful" human being -- regardless of the amount of money, if any, that he left behind at his death. ("Shakespeare's Black Prince.")
Eventually, we will see young people wearing "Aaron Schwartz t-shirts" in many of the world's capitols -- including Havana, Cuba. This folk-hero status is well-deserved because Aaron's greatest success has nothing to do with technological innovations that made him a millionaire while he was still in his teens. The litigation against the U.S. Attorney's office consumed much of his personal wealth.
Aaron's true success and "wealth" must be the recognition -- now by millions of persons -- that he was a young man genuinely concerned with the plight of powerless persons, who are unfairly denied education and access to information, leaving them as little more than slaves in a scientific age. ("Magician's Choice.")
Aaron's vocation was to struggle in the ways that he could, based on his areas of expertise, on the side of the wretched of the earth. Not even his worst enemies suggest that Aaron's life was without meaning or importance.
Aaron tried to do something about the grotesque injustice of enforced ignorance through means that are highly ethical, but often misunderstood by technologically (and otherwise) ignorant people in power. ("Why I am not an ethical relativist" and "John Finnis and Ethical Cognitivism.")
Aaron's life was devoted, equally, to intellectual inquiry and social justice. He became a reluctant revolutionary struggling to enhance access to information on-line, freedom of expression, and the right to establish connections with fellow members of the Internet community because he saw so few others trying to do these things.
Aaron appreciated that, if knowledge is power and nearly all knowledge today requires access to technology along with increasing -- or life-long -- education, then to deprive people of information and deny them the tools to acquire that information on their own, is to disempower them, perhaps permanently.
Aaron then made a further and more disturbing discovery: powerful forces in American society are not only at peace with billions of people in the world being disempowered, but this "disempowerment for the masses" is exactly what they desire.
It is far more convenient for the powerful few if the vast bulk of the population is distracted and ignorant concerning their own rational interests.
As with other controversial figures -- Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Assata Shakur, Noam Chomsky, and so many more -- all of the government's efforts to destroy Aaron's achievements, to deny his merits, or to define Aaron Schwartz as a criminal or "unethical," have produced the opposite of the government's desired effect.
Aaron has become the world's reluctant academic "revolutionary." He is the Che of the Internet and the Woody Allen of the academic campus, who evokes our protectiveness and paternal instincts as well as our admiration. ("Bernard Williams and Identity.")
Cutting-edge young people today refuse to be told what to read, think, or say on-line. They refuse to be controlled in their opinions and, at the same time, the technology and techniques of state control -- including methods of psychological manipulation and regimentation -- have become much more subtle, sophisticated, and effective. ("What is Memory?" and "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")
Students and intellectuals in cyberspace and all over the world have realized that control of information is the power to define reality. ("'Total Recall': A Movie Review" and "'Inception': A Movie Review.")
The result of all this is the war being waged for information that allows ideas and understandings to emerge and be SHARED by all. Like fresh water and food, energy and shelter -- knowledge has become a basic necessity in our postmodernist culture. Our struggle today is a hermeneutic struggle for the freedom to interpret ourselves, for ourselves, and for the future. We refuse to be defined by governments and corporations or large institutions of any kind. ("Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory" and "Fidel Castro's 'History Will Absolve Me.'")
Aaron, like me, was offended by the ways in which innocent people are kept in the darkness of ignorance in order that they may be exploited, stolen from, enslaved, and made irrelevant by unscrupulous and powerful global interests: Children and many women become sexual toys; poor men become disposable laborers paid subminimum-wage salaries, if they are lucky, because they have been denied knowledge and have no way of extricating themselves from such nightmare-like conditions.
To see children or young people, especially, deprived of their futures (NYU?) because of corruption, greed, or to control them or their elders became as loathsome to Aaron, I am sure, as it should be to most Americans and as it is for me. For this reason, Aaron opposed the U.S. government's efforts to impose political censorship on Internet discussions and debates.
Curtailing debates limits the range of discussions and destroys long-term open-ended dialectics, thus diminishing participants in such debates to the status of apprentices or perpetual "children." America's effort at global censorship is usually obscured with Orwellian double-speak, but it is about control. ("Irony?" and "Torture.")
For Aaron, access to information leading to understanding of our shared reality, on-line, was bound to result in praxis. "Revolutionary struggle" -- meaning thinking for yourself -- leading to greater social justice that would result in enhanced information available to everyone and more education for all. ("Manifesto For the Unfinished American Revolution.")
Aaaron's vocation as an intellectual and revolutionary grew out of a very American optimism about human nature and authentic political ideals. It is important to note, again, that Aaron became a revolutionary only when he realized there was no other way to dramatize what was at stake and that not too many others were willing to do what needed to be done. Resistance and struggle are never a person's first choices in life. They are necessary responses to oppression. ("Freedom For Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "'Che': A Movie Review.")
This advocacy for the voiceless in our world brought Aaron to the attention of the U.S. government in our post-9/11 National Security State. There are forces in America that are always obsessed with control of a population that they seek to "protect" or keep safe by infantilizing it, much as they would still like to do to women. The goal of such forces is -- and always will be -- to impose a child-like condition of intellectual dependence and/or "learned helplessness" upon the bulk of the people. ('''The Adjustment Bureau': A Movie Review.")
Freedom for ordinary people is frightening to powerful forces in America. "Freedom," Norman Mailer said and Aaron would probably have agreed with him, "is worth a little risk."
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy," said a family spokesperson: "It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. The decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney's office and at the F.B.I. contributed to [Aaron's] death."
Aaron Schwartz was never a terrorist. He was not a criminal nor a thief. What he did was the equivalent of borrowing too many library books in order to share their contents with the world, especially the millions of children and young people who would otherwise never have access to necessary intellectual works -- all of which were in the public domain or public information. (Rolling Stone.)
Damaging NYPL computers and printers, Mr. Menendez, hurts many poor people in my city with no other access to this essential technology. (I type these words on computer #13 that is missing the letter "L" because of sabotage.) ("Controlling the NSA.")
Despicable tactics will not silence me or other critics of imperialism. Julian Assange is not the enemy of America. Mr. Assange is merely an information-provider. Information is a precious commodity in our world that belongs to everyone and that, like human intelligence, must be at the service of justice for all people, especially the poor, and not only at the service of rich people. ("Pieta.")
My intellectual works are copyrighted, but they are made available to the world community for "fair use" in academia and/or intellectual discussions, on-line, where we are all equals. To have others steal my texts in order to make money with them is to steal from all of us. Ideas and philosophy belong to everyone. ("Why philosophy is for everyone" then "What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review.")
Part of the difficulty in this situation is that the law is lagging behind science and technology, as usual. The federal prosecutor in Massachusetts (granting, arguendo, her good faith and absence of malice) simply failed to appreciate what Aaron was doing and why it could not be stealing.
The allegedly aggrieved party (JSTOR) did understand Aaron's motives and was not looking to press charges against this brave young man.
Lawyers -- like golfer, Tiger Woods -- assume that "winning is everything." There are times when overzealousness by prosecutors results in a loss for the system, whatever the outcome of a case may be. Unethical (if well-meaning) actions by prosecutors may even undermine the rule of law and its integrity while generating profound injustices in society as well as for particular individuals. ("Justice For Mumia Abu-Jamal.")
I have suggested that Aaron is a great success. On the other hand, his prosecution is a great failure for America's legal system. Worse, the "failure" to prosecute cybercrimes and state censorship at these blogs -- cybercrimes seen by the global Internet community -- constitute a disaster for any U.S. claims concerning the "ethics" of law practice in New Jersey or "opposing" cybercrime in the world. Hypocrisy defines us as the opposite of the people we hope to be. ("Is America's Legal Ethics a Lie?")
A frightening question is whether, as I believe, Aaron Schwartz was targeted, specifically, for intense or aggressive prosecution that included psychological tortures/pressures BECAUSE of his activism for Internet freedom and refusal to go along with censorship legislation proposed in congress. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
Such motivations for wielding the mechanisms of state prosecution are illicit and maybe criminal. Yet Aaron's death was "welcomed" by powerful forces in Washington, D.C. that would be even more pleased by my demise. Aaron said it best:
"There is a battle going on right now, a battle to define everything that happens on the Internet in terms of traditional things that the law understands." (Rolling Stone.)
As I read these words, I could not avoid speculating about what a wonderful lawyer Aaron would have made:
"Is sharing a video [online] like shoplifting from a movie store, or is it like loaning a videotape to a friend? Is the freedom to 'connect' like the freedom of speech, or like the freedom to murder?" (Ibid.)
Aaron's engagement with such issues and published internal dialogue on freedom against nihilistic power grabs by governments and corporations means that his life contains and reflects the contradictions of his time.
Aaron was among the few persons "enabled" to see and understand those contradictions. Aaron tried to share his vision of a better and more just future through technology. For that reason, government officials decided to destroy Aaron Schwartz.
Once again the forces of totalitarianism have learned the painful lesson that persons like Aaron cannot be destroyed. Aaron is now known and admired by more people than he could have met in a lifetime. He has become a living presence in public debates concerning "ownership" of ideas and freedom of thought in the continuing struggle against all forms of oppression. Aaron's struggle and mine is best summarized by Cornel West:
" ... the great dramatic battle of the twenty-first century is the dismantling of empire and the deepening of democracy. This is as much or more a colossal fight over visions and ideas as a catastrophic struggle over profits and missiles. Globalization is inescapable -- the question is whether it will be a democratic gobalization or a U.S.-led corporate globalization (with thin democratic rhetoric). This is why what we think, how we care, why we fight mean so much in democractic matters. We live in a propitious yet perilous moment in which it has become fashionable to celebrate the benefits of imperial rule and acceptable to condone the decline of democratic governance. The possible climate of opinion and the prevailing culture of consumption make it difficult for us to even imagine the revival of the deep democratizing energies of our past and conceive of making real progress in the fight against imperialism." (West, pp. 22-23.)
