Message From a Torture Chamber.
December 2, 2010 at 11:34 A.M. "Errors" were reinserted in this text. I have now corrected those "errors" again.
September 27, 2010 at 10:42 A.M. "Errors" were inserted in this essay, again. New arrests are expected in New Jersey. I have tried to make all necessary corrections once more. ("New Jersey's Politically Connected Lawyers On the Tit.")
January 5, 2010 at 9:49 P.M. "Errors" were inserted and corrected since my previous review.
December 19, 2009 at 7:25 P.M. A previously corrected "error" was restored to the text. I have corrected it once more.
Hackers have affected the paragraph spacing in this essay. Defacements and attempts to alter this text are always expected. My Norton Security system has been damaged once again. June 24, 2007 at 5:09 P.M. I am still trying to get an ISBN number for my second Lulu text. My computer has lots of problems these days. For some reason, my second book is not available for download. I will see what I can do about that. Lulu refuses to send the book to booksellers. ("How Censorship Works in America.")
On October 10, 2007 at 1:36 P.M. I am coping with damage to one of the disks in my computer as a result of cyberattacks against my system. I am still running scans.
Drawing inspiration from George Orwell's 1984, I thought I'd take this opportunity to make some timely political points. In too many nations and in some of the worst American communities, corrupt political machines have taken over the offices of government and use them -- with the help of their "friends" in the media -- for nefarious purposes, including character assassinations of their enemies or worse. http://www.movieposterbid.com/pics/92dcp_0030.jpg
Recent examples of rampant corruption include South Africa during Apartheid, some military dictatorships in South America, and less than enlightened jurisdictions in the U.S. -- New Jersey being the worst -- also fall into this category. The recent assassination of Ms. Benazir Bhutto is a dispiriting example of what I describe. What is happening in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo defies rational comprehension or explanation, until one realizes that it has a history. My hope is that the days of such corrupt regimes, even if honest men and women must pay a great price for it, will soon be ended:
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article3746.html (self-explanatory.) For additional sources, see: http://www.nj.com/corruption/stories/021110sl_state.html (The worst political corruption in the U.S., now resulting in more than 200 convictions of lawyers, politicians, and "others" -- as of 2007 -- is found in New Jersey. Things are worse in 2010 and, probably, beyond this year.)
Former N.J. Attorney General, Zulima Farber -- and former U.S. Attorney and current Governor of New Jersey, Christopher J. Christie -- and many others are concerned to do something about the Garden State's infamous reputation as the home territory of organized crime in America. N.J. crime "families" control state government and law courts. Reprisals against critics should always be expected, no matter what seemingly unrelated form they take, including bizarre traffic incidents, or disruptions in the lives of children: http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newjersey/nj-bc-nj--newsmaker-farber0318mar18,0,6153543,...
On psychologists' and psychiatrists' obligations to refrain from and prevent all forms of torture, including torture on behalf of the State or for private clients -- for example, making use of hypnosis to extract information, illegally and secretly, that is then used against victims, directly or indirectly -- while being denied publicly -- see: http://www.apa.org/releases/pentaskforcerereportfinal.pdf
Please see also: "Psychological Torture in the American legal System" and Kate Randall, "U.S. Doctors Tied To Torture," http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/tort-j13.shtml. (Detailing use of medical training to inflict suffering on persons subjected to interrogational torture.)
How is it possible for Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli to be licensed as any kind of "therapists" anywhere in America? Protection? If I can help to make certain that neither of those two dangerous idiots gets close to any suffering human being again, I will have benefitted humanity.
Do other Tuchins and Ricciolis in the swamplands of New Jersey feel no disgust and shame at the actions of their relatives or colleagues, or at the disdain and cowardice displayed by those relatives in avoiding me now? Where are those reports, Terry? How is it possible for any Jewish person to become Dr. Mengele? ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
My family members and friends were told hideous lies about me. I welcome the opportunity to speak truths to the family members of my torturers, since those torturers continue to avoid me, as well as their responsibility for so much human suffering. How much longer will you hide from me, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli? OAE? Ms. Milgram? Ms. Dow? You are not "cooperating." ("Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")
My Love,
As my penalty was read out in court, I remember that it was "a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen." I have now accepted my penalty (aren't we all condemned to "death"?), though not the means by which that penalty was imposed. No judicial proceeding that lacks most of the essential criteria of a fair process is truly legal. I am enjoying my "afterlife" and the pleasures of "haunting" the Garden State. ("Out of the Past.")
I insist on the right to form and express my opinions and beliefs, regardless of whether they are pleasing to the authorities or others. Even if I find myself in a minority of one, I will always say what I think and why. For example, I do not believe in perfect societies. Any society may be improved by being made more free and just. Politics should be concerned with limiting the power of the State in favor of the individual.
No society or faction that engages routinely in secret information gathering from citizens or that makes use of anonymous psychiatrists and their helpers as "interrogators" -- typically PRODUCING pathologies in victims, who are then judged for their "behavior" apart from intent, even when that society prefers to call shrinks "evaluators" -- can be considered anything but totalitarian and evil. No legal system in which key decisions are made behind the scenes and off the record, as in New Jersey -- often by unelected "bosses" -- deserves legitimacy. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")
How can you, Mr. Rabner, deny me information to which I am entitled since it concerns me -- in violation of law and medical ethics -- then presume to judge me? How can the members of the N.J. Supreme Court wear judicial robes, then defecate on the Constitution they have sworn to uphold by ignoring violations of fundamental rights and crimes taking place under their noses and, ostensibly, on behalf of the institution which they serve? ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
Prohibiting smoking in public places or granting family leave rights is not "sufficiently compensatory," but only an attempt to change the subject in what is now a hopelessly disgraced and deligitimated legal system. New Jersey is known everywhere, accurately enough, as America's "shit hole." The politically- or legally-powerful inhabitants of that "hole" are not in a position to judge my ethics because they are not only lacking in ethics themselves but utterly despicable criminals and frauds. ("Neil M. Cohen, Esq. and Conduct Unbecoming to the Legislature in New Jersey" and "Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics.")
I distrust all governments. I am wary of all persons with power, whatever form that power takes. My inner life in its entirety -- the persons I love, what I believe or choose to say, how or whether I worship a God, what I find beautiful, what I think of the State or public officials -- must not be the State's business. Any invasion of my inner-life through conditioning or by any other means is an abomination. Any interference with the free expression of that inner-life in writing (or other art) is offensive to the U.S. Constitution.
This is true even if that abomination or state crime takes place in order to gather so-called "necessary" information, or based on someone's idea of what will "help" me. Secrecy is the enemy of freedom. Nothing done secretly to you and denied publicly is for your own good. Worse, such a thing is never for the good of a free society. Since 1988, I have maintained these views. I will continue to do so until the day I die. ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture" and "Jennifer Velez is a 'Dyke Magnet!'")
March 4, 2008 at 2:48 P.M. new computer attacks prevent me from accessing my own e-mail. I will continue to struggle.
I do not accept instruction on these matters from any government official, nor from any priest, nor from a self-described "therapist." I am a free human being. While the State always has the power to deprive me of my physical liberty, livelihood -- even my life -- it does not have the authority to do such things without making its real reasons public and affording me the opportunity to respond, in an unimpaired state, with due respect for my human rights and dignity. I insist on my dignity.
The claim by any president to kill an American citizen based on secret determinations of dangerousness that will not be disclosed to the victim or any tribunal, ostensibly to protect "secrecy," is what the rest of the world calls "tyranny."
Tell me, Ms. Poritz, I will continue to confront you with this question: How is it possible for a Jew to become Mengele? How is it possible for any of us, Jews or gentiles, to become indifferent to Mengele's actions? Are you a guilty bystander to psychological torture and cyberstalking? Censorship? Suppressions of speech? What are you doing about the alterations of my writings which you witness every day? To do nothing is to share in the guilt for these crimes committed against me, and many people like me, by persons affiliated with New Jersey's corrupt government. ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
"The rule 'Do no harm' is perceived by some to be a limit on scientific and technological progress, and it is intended to be exactly that. More precisely, it is a frankly moral placing of limits on what some, driven by what is aptly described as the scientific or technological imperative, deem to be progress. ... It is precisely the business of ethical and moral reason to make normative judgments regarding present and proposed measures aimed at ... ['the relief of man's estate.'] This is true with respect to the dignity of the human person and with respect to more ambitious proposals aimed not so much at relieving as at transforming 'man's estate.' ..." (Richard John Neuhaus, in First Things, November, 2007, p. 24, emphasis added, and "Guantanamo Must Be Closed," in The New York Times, December 18, 2009, at p. A42.)
The destruction of any person's relationships and self-esteem as part of an undisclosed "program" or "experiment" is worthy of Stalin. "It might have been for your own good" just does not seem like much of a response to what I am saying. Every attempted invasion of my inner life will fail, morally and spiritually, whatever success it may have physically. Whatever physical pain I suffer or acts I am forced to perform, I can transcend them, spiritually, by thinking of how much I love you and a few others in this world, also how little such torments have to do with me. No matter how much money you (NJ) have stolen from me, what has been taken from the American people is more precious. Americans' Constitutional rights have been sacrificed to an illusion of absolute security. Many of us have been raped in more ways than one by a state apparatus that is now seeking absolute sovereignty over human subjectivity. (Again: "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
The forces that would deprive me of my humanity will fail in the long run because they lack a center of value from which to cope with the moral pressure that I will bring to bear, which is simply the insistence on memory and justice, the insistence that my torturers face me as an equal, eye-to-eye, in a forum where the only recourse is to uncorrupted principles of law and not treachery, frame-ups, malice or evil, without hidden agendas and cronyism.
There are places where such legal proceedings are no longer possible. New Jersey is one of them. It is in those places that we must insist on such proceedings, even at the risk of our lives. It is time -- after so many years -- to compel my would-be "assassins" to step out from behind the curtain of their cowardice and mendacity in order to face me. I have things to say to them. ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli" and, again, "What is it like to be tortured?")
I reject any law, rule, or command from any institution, authority or person that violates my right to privacy or to my own autonomous thought processes, because such laws or rules are illegitimate and fraudulent. They will always lack the binding character of true law. No one is allowed to destroy or deface my writings.
I reject the legitimacy of any adjudicative process in which an adversary is also a judge, or in which the most important basis for decision is discussed in my absence, and never mentioned in my presence, where vital exculpatory records are hidden from me, and where their existence is denied, as is the truth concerning what has been done to me and by whom it was done. ("Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")
When one party in litigation is granted the opportunity to revise or alter the record of proceedings -- in accordance with his convenience, secretly and unilaterally -- the result is not a valid legal process but a hideous farce. No record of such slanted proceedings or "hearings" can be regarded as reliable in any way, shape, or form.
I will not permit anyone to prescribe my opinions or my values. I am not reducible to a set of behaviors to be modified by persons claiming the power to "fix" me, "for my own good." I reject all directives or judgments concerning what I "must" believe or what my private ethics should be. No one is permitted to sanitize my language, determining what I am allowed to say. No alleged threat from any quarter -- including the terrorists who are said to lurk under our beds -- is sufficient grounds for the government to violate my fundamental human rights. Any such violation renders all government actions taken pursuant to it illegitimate. It makes the government a terrorist.
Continuing to "cover up" what has been done makes it worse. Each day that the cover up continues is a renewal of the tortures. If there is some corner of New Jersey judges' souls that still contains a minute portion of decency or ethical understanding, beneath your trappings of office, then please understand that psychological torture is evil and can never be justified, do everything in your power to halt the ongoing tortures of "persons," then make amends for what you are responsible for. You will not slip or slide your way out of this little dilemma in Trenton. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey" and "Jaynee La Vecchia and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
Do New Jersey's tainted judges claim to be the ethical "superiors" of their fellow citizens? In my experience, they have done exactly that false self-aggrandizing. Is the only response that you can provide more daily defacements and destructions of this text and other writings? If so, then your views are empty and indefensible.
The foregoing paragraph that I have just revised has been corrected in the same way numerous times. The only answer that my adversaries provide to my arguments is criminal destruction of my writings. ("Time to End the Embargo Against Cuba" and "Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
How do you live with your hypocrisy as members of NJ's judiciary? How do you wear those robes, Mr. Rabner? What do you tell yourselves in Ridgewood, Clifton, or Trenton that makes it O.K. that you delight in so much unnecessary human suffering and in the violation of fundamental rights whose protection is the reason for the existence of your tribunals and offices in the first place?
I am not a laboratory animal. I am not a slave. I am not a chess piece in a game played by others. I am entitled to the truth about my own life. How many others have been tortured in New Jersey? How many more persons have been RAPED by agents of the state enjoying protection from the criminal process? ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "What is it like to be tortured?")
The need for security from external threats, which are always real enough, must not blind us to the equally real internal threat of the loss of freedom. These beliefs are endorsed by thinkers from John Locke, to Thomas Jefferson, to Martin Luther King, Jr. They are not necessarily "Jewish" beliefs, though I am proud to be associated with any group or race that is the object of hatred. Fascists assume that anyone who states such views must be a Jew. For Jews to side with such Fascists is especially hateful. Earlier versions of this letter received more than one antisemitic response. I expect more racist, anti-semitic and other hate-filled responses, perhaps from powerful officials in the Garden State. How does a Jew become Mengele? How does a Jew of all people become Eichman? How is such a horrible moral deformation possible? "We can learn from you," Terry said. Perhaps I am learning from you, Terry. I am learning of the extent to which dehumanization can alter a person. ("Dehumanization" and "Not One More Victim.")
I am running scans of my computer and coping with the usual harassment -- as I type these words, again -- in a society that claims to guarantee my freedom of expression. I fully expect words or letters to be deleted, or that this text will be altered and defaced, as it has been in the past. I will continue to revise this work and to confront the powerful in New Jersey with this message:
"You cannot prove me wrong by framing me for something, hurting, or even killing me or my family members. You only say something about yourselves by doing such things to others."
That persons from victimized minority groups may be sufficiently coopted to torture others on behalf of the State, seemingly without a qualm, is especially distressing and sad to me. I know that I have been drugged and subjected to questioning under hypnosis by persons who never identified themselves. I do not know how many persons were in the room, or where I was questioned on each occasion, nor on how many occasions in total these inquisitions took place. They occurred on numerous occasions, over a period of many years. I am sure that both men and women were involved in this activity. I may have been filmed or recorded during this questioning. I fear that this horror has become a secret part of the arsenal of American government officials depriving citizens of their civil rights with the passive acceptance of politicians who should know better. President Obama, this situation requires your attention.
So-called "ethical" New Jersey lawyers and judges witnessed or are aware of these secret and criminal torments. Perhaps these films of tortures are shown at parties. I do not know whether I was undressed during all these torture sessions or only some of them. I have no idea where these tapes or other records -- my own medical records -- if they still exist, may be found nor have I been shown them. I consented to nothing. I continue to request, publicly, that these records be turned over to me. I refuse to consent to such evil. I will not cooperate with criminals enjoying legal protection in New Jersey. Do you speak to me of "ethics," Mr. Rabner/ ("New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics" and "Jay Romano and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
January 5, 2010 at 9:28 P.M. "Error" inserted and corrected since my previous review of this essay.
I am asked to pretend that "nothing happened" by persons who are complicit in the commission of these terrible crimes against me, who then speak to me of ethics. Ethics? Whose ethics?
"Even the fetus had to be torn out of the womb," George Steiner writes, "lest there be even one Jew left to bear witness, to remember (though no one would believe him or her, a point the Nazis made with derisive logic)."
Torturers always say: "No one will believe you." I refuse to pretend that nothing happened. To the extent that you are still human, neither can you (my torturers) or those I love, believe -- for one second -- that nothing has happened. It is because you know exactly how much "happened" and that you will not escape me, that you are now frightened enough to try to silence me. You will not silence me. Character assassinations in the media should be next. I will avoid travelling in cars in New Jersey for a while. I am wearing a seat belt as I sit at my computer. (Again: "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "Law and Ethics in the Soprano State.")
I was questioned about matters that I consider humiliating, episodes of embarassment or inadequacy in my life, which produced much laughter at my expense. Humiliation, preferably sexual humiliation and laughter, insults, are favored weapons of torturers everywhere, so are sleep deprivation and emotional isolation, or social ostracism, usually achieved through the manipulation of family members and friends, who are lied to about the "subject." In destroying such relationships, for me, they were destroyed also for those innocent persons, who were made unwilling stooges, informers for and servants of state torturers -- torturers like Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli -- who are selected for their special aptitude for the infliction of mental pain.
Some family members and friends will be ignorant or stupid enough to cooperate; others will be frightened into cooperating; still others will do so in order to "get along" with the powerful group making the request. The goal is to isolate the subject, while capitalizing on his or her subconscious fears, in order to destroy a person's identity. Ideally, these tactics can be combined with high levels of stress or frustration, so as to induce total collapse. Maybe this insight has something to do with all of the tampering with my writings on a daily basis. Opportunities to steal from incapacitated victims are not wasted. What did they do to you, Marilyn Straus? What have they done to others? ("Marilyn Straus Was Right?" and "Diana's Friend Goes to Prison!")
Nothing is more convenient for totalitarians than arranging for friends and family members to spy on and inform against one another. Children may be induced, for example, to betray their parents or friends "for their own good." In his 1959 autobiography, Primo Levi writes: "... we became aware that our language lacks words to express this offense, the demolition of man."
I remember an account of Jacobo Timmerman's experience of torture in Argentina under the military dictatorship -- Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number. My experience of psychological torment has been quite similar to his. While I am certain that the information obtained as a result of these sessions was turned over to the government functionaries who served as my prosecutors, paradoxically, in a civil proceeding -- I suspect that at least one of them was present at some of these sessions -- New Jersey authorities have pretended and will continue to do so, that they do not have such information and are unaware of any torture. The liars, bribe-takers, legal whores will then "disapprove" of me. ("New Jersey is the Home of the Living Dead" and "An Unpleasant Encounter With New Jersey's State Police.")
After a while, they will probably come to believe their own lies. These liars and bag men, again, then speak to me of ethics. Laughter is not only an appropriate response, it is the best antidote to this madness. The opinions and judgments of such persons -- and of the tribunals that they "serve," to the extent that they are complicit in such evil -- can only produce defiance, never acceptance or legitimacy. They may get away with what they have done to me and others, but this does not make their actions or themselves any less evil and/or disgusting to decent people. Saying that it is "nothing personal, just a job" also changes nothing. Such a claim makes things worse. Anne Milgram should be disbarred if she has accepted these crimes or failed to take action to hold those responsible accountable for them. ("Another Mafia Sweep in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless" and "Anne Milgram Does it Again.")
Hatred is at least a human emotion. I prefer hatred to the clerical torture of persons by bored functionaries, who are seemingly amused rather than upset by the experience. The judiciary is too important to be placed in the hands of bored and moronic functionaries. I feel rage and revulsion for my torturers and their enablers in Trenton. They will never get fear or respect from me, only disdain for their unpunished criminality. (See again: "New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court"; and "Driving While Black [DWB] in New Jersey," then "America's Holocaust.")
January 5, 2010 at 9:35 P.M. Another "error" was inserted and corrected in this text.
Such evils, if they are not impossible today in America -- I fear that they are all-too possible and real -- some day soon will be impossible everywhere. Until then, we must continue to protest and to fight against the inhumanity of so-called "therapists," who sell their services -- their training in the use of hypnosis and expertise with techniques of regression -- to the highest bidders for the purposes of tormenting and torturing others, to gather information for governments, or for their own pleasure in causing pain and in raping helpless victims. These are the persons I call "protitutes." ("Abuse and Exploitation of Women in New Jersey" and "Not One More Victim.")
It is highly likely that I was beaten or choked at some point since I awoke with bruises on my arms and chest. I do not know whether a transcript of these sessions exists. If it does, then it has also not been shown to me. Sadly, "I have reason to believe" that all of these things are done to people, routinely, in some of the darker corners of the U.S., where corruption has blurred the boundary between organized crime and government. Organized crime is government and the courts in New Jersey. ("Mafia Involvement in New Jersey's State Police" and "Mafia Influence in New Jersey Courts and Politics.")
It is far less likely that you will ever be the victim of such torments living in America. If you are, then there is at least a slim chance that those responsible will be held accountable for their crimes and punished accordingly. Torturers will always insist that you are "delusional" if you confront them with their own actions, which may be a tribute to their own capacities for self-deception.
Harold Pinter's closing words in accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature must not be forgotten by America's elected officials and judges:
"When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror -- for it is on the other side of the mirror that the truth stares at us."
Mr. Pinter added:
"I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory."
Finally,
"If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us -- the dignity of man."
You are always better off in the U.S. than in most other places, or so I continue to believe. You certainly stand a much better chance of expressing your opinions in the U.S. without too many unpleasant repercussions. At least, you can usually eat regularly -- if not always well -- in America. I say this as someone who has gone for more than a week without eating out of necessity. ("Manifesto for the Unfinished American Revolution.")
I am glad for this chance to express my anger at the persons who did these terrible things to me and for any "tribunals" or "committees" (and those who sit on them), who were and are aware of torture, while continuing to do nothing to prevent such abuse against others, thereby failing to remove the foul stench of such deeds from themselves and the institutions which they claim to "serve." I ask them to think about what they have become. I am aware that in speaking so bluntly I may have sealed my fate. Yet there comes a point when one is willing to pay any price to be heard by one's oppressors. Personal and peaceful confrontation is next. (See Reinaldo Arenas, Before Night Falls and Mumia Abu-Jamal's Live From Death Row.)
I reserve special contempt for professionals -- lawyers, judges, "therapists" and other government functionaries, hypocrites and self-styled "pillars of the community" -- who are part of this evil on a daily basis in many parts of the world, including the worst parts of the U.S., even as they lecture to others about ethics. The opinions of unethical people, guilty of torture (or who permit torture), concerning our ethics should not trouble us very much. ("John McGill, Esq., the OAE, and N.J. Corruption.")
Jaynee, did you find the $300 MILLION? How's the babe, Senator Bob? Mr. Florio, how are your friends in Atlantic City? Mr. McGreevey, still studying for the priesthood? Mr. Cohen, still like the altarboys? Mr. Bergrin, is there a "special" at the brothel for St. Patrick's Day? Mr. Rabner, did you have something to do with the Prisco release? Maybe you were not paying attention? Remember, Stuart, it is always better to admit to incompetence than criminal culpability? Ms. Poritz and Ms. Milgram, you gals going out on the town? Ethics? Who will rise to proclaim his or her "ethical superiority" to the rest of us in the cesspool that is New Jersey's legal system? John McGill, Esq.? This is when you should insert additional "errors." "Appearance of impropriety" alone should preclude any of these persons from serving in the judiciary anywhere in America. ("Sybil R. Moses and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")
Family members or so-called friends of a person who cooperate with such tactics are beneath contempt, unworthy even of that much recognition, but never deserving of torture themselves. We must not become what torturers are. We must never be indifferent to the violations and torments imposed upon others. We must never be willing to assist the torturers in their tasks.
Worst of all, are those coopted government men and women living in societies that publicly disavow such tactics, like the U.S., who cope with the vestiges of a conscience and the memory of what they have done, by developing a sophisticated capacity for selective unawareness or denial. They learn to do things while pretending to be unaware of doing them. I am shocked by the men and women who live with such knowledge, every day, while pretending that they do not know about the human rights violations that take place in order to provide them with mostly useless information. They "kill two birds" with the "one stone" of their banalities -- and one of those birds is the U.S. Constitution. How do you live with your hypocrisy, Virginia? Still smoking weed, "Justice" Wallace? ("Get Rid of Wallace to Make Reforms.")
I am grateful, finally, despite our painful separation and the probability that I will never see you again, despite the agony of longing that I feel for you as I write these words, for having known and loved you. We have had so little time together; we have been together for so few moments in our lives -- moments that I relive in my imagination all the time. The loss of time together hurts and angers me more than any other torture that I have endured. I am seemingly trapped in my own version of the myth of Tantalus. Perhaps all of this is part of the torture.
There is nothing that I would not give or endure for only five minutes with you, just to say these things personally, only to tell you how much I love, respect, and admire you, also how painfully and permanently I have struggled for every recollection that I share of time with you and all of my loved-ones. I have no alternative to writing what I feel here, hoping that you will receive these words. Time is too precious now to linger over such injustices. I have fought too long and hard for each of my memories of ALL of my loved ones to give them up now, or to fail to savor them, however painful and sweet they may be. Whatever the cost, I will continue to own every nuance of my recollections of you and, again, of all of my loved-ones. I possess nothing now, except my memories. I have fought for each of those memories, every day. No one will take them from me. ("What is Memory?")
Neither of us will ever understand ourselves -- our lives -- without the presence of the other, a presence allowing us to make a shared effort to come to terms with what each must be (and is) for the other, to appreciate what has happened to us. If any of our lives are to make sense, or have meaning, we must see and speak to one another. This is true for all of us. For each of us, the other keeps -- and has become -- an essential fragment of identity. This insight is subtle and powerful and, seemingly, beyond the grasp of American "therapists" and torturers. This insight is about "family." This would be a good time to deface this text once again.
I want you to know some things while I can still say them. You are a far better person than most of those who have judged and dismissed you. You are a better human being, in every way that matters, than the majority those who sit in judgment of others. You are certainly far better than the unofficial torturers (Terry and Diana) that I have dealt with during the course of this nightmare, or their friends in judicial robes. I hope that, at my best, I have been worthy of this love I feel for you and that I have been able to communicate it to you and to each person I have loved in my life: You are what matters. You are "success."
I hope that that I have made it clear to all of those persons I love, how much I need them. Whatever other faults I have, I am not lacking in the capacity for love. There are persons I love more than I can say, certainly more than I love my own safety or welfare. And there is no one that I have ever loved more than I love you.
Not one of the people who judge you harshly would have survived half of what you have overcome in your difficult life. Most of them are worse than you, morally. If they were charged for only some the crimes that they commit, every day, most of them would also be found legally guiltier than you could ever be. Right, Senator Bob? ("Is Senator Menendez a Suspect in Mafia-Political Murder in New Jersey?" and "Senator Bob Struggles to Find His Conscience.")
If someone loves you this much, whatever you may feel, then you should know it. Despite all of my inadequacies and failures in life -- I cannot even imagine the lies that you have been told about me by now! -- it says something about you that at least one human being has cared so deeply about you from the first moment that he saw you. Believe that your mere presence in this world has had such an effect on another person. This must be a tribute to you that transcends anything to do with your physical appearance and hints at the importance (for others) of your presence in this world.
My feelings for you and my certainty about your beauty (physical and non-physical) have not changed with the passing of the years nor will they change with any alterations in your physical appearance. It will not matter whether I see you again. I will feel this way whatever your weight may be and regardless of your age, no matter what has been done to you, or what may be done to me, no matter what guilt you may feel about your actions in life. I feel the same for any woman I love and/or have ever loved in my life.
I know that there will always exist in you the moral beauty and unlimited possibilities I saw in the young woman that you once were, and that young woman will always be a part of me. That wonderful and wounded young woman will live for as long as I do, within me, and you will always find her there when you need her. To fail to understand the sincerity of these feelings, is to fail to understand me.
Whatever tortures and rapes we have endured, there is a space where we can feel safe -- a space where we are restored to an innocence and goodness that I have sheltered within me, for you. There is a part of you that has done the same for me. Whatever anyone says to you that contradicts this is a lie.
Whoever tells you that I no longer care or that I have forgotten you is lying. I will hold on to my memories of you, even at the cost of everything else, since I have paid dearly for them. I would have paid even more. I will always feel the same, as I say, for any person that I love. I do not seek and will not accept "government approval" of my loves, opinions, or thoughts.
Knowing that you are so loved makes you an object of hatred for some people. No love this intense and all-consuming, no love that ripens and matures with the passing of the years, despite physical separation or regardless of proximity -- no matter what anyone says to you -- is reducible to mere sexual desire nor can it be "only" about an act that is merely physical. It has been many years since we met, maybe it is safe to assume, at this point, that this is more than an infatuation or some "fantasy."
None of us can be captured or understood in trendy nonsense or the fortune cookie wisdom of American psychobabblers and torturers. It is not only possible, but also necessary and normal to love and REMEMBER different persons in different ways over a lifetime. All of my loves are priceless.
Perhaps the greatest mystery emerging from this experience (for me) is the discovery that there are persons for whom the reality of selfless love -- in whatever form, among any persons -- is an unbearable and odious thing to be destroyed. ("Drawing Room Comedy: A Philosophical Essay in the Form of a Film Script.")
I have loved, passionately, very few women in my life -- only two, in fact. Yet those women I will love forever, regardless of what they may feel about me, or what anyone thinks about them or me, or the judgments made about what we feel. In the end, our feelings and memories are no one's business but our own. I have no idea why it is true, but there are people who hate a love like this, as I say, detesting anyone who gives or receives it with a sick and intense loathing. Perhaps this form of hatred is the truest way of expressing envy and longing for what the hater cannot have or understand or achieve. ("The Soldier and the Ballerina.")
Maybe this is because such a love is a reminder of all that is absent from the censors' twisted and hate-filled lives. Love is no longer possible for the emotionally desiccated beings that they have become. Real love cannot be bought; it cannot be acquired through shady deals with corrupt politicians; it cannot be inherited. Such a love cannot be taken by force or faked. It cannot be stolen. It cannot be demanded of a person. It can only be given. I worry about you. I don't think that they can do too much more to me now.
I love and have always loved most of all the part of you that hurts ... because it sees the part of me that hurts just as much. I know that each of us sees -- and shares in -- all of the other's wounds and vulnerabilities. To understand the darkness, it is necessary to have experienced it. I am glad that, among all of the persons that I know and love, only you have experienced the levels of cruelty and malice at the hands of others that I have also known. Ideally, none of us would ever experience such things, but that is not the world in which we live.
As I write these words, pain at being separated from you and others I love is so overwhelming that it seems as though the room in which I sit shakes and begins to melt. Nothing compares to this agony. It is as though most of my vital organs and life-energy had left me and were with you, wherever it is that you are. It is this emptiness which makes it impossible for anyone to threaten me. Most of me is not here to be threatened, wherever it is that I am. Nobody can hurt me now. I am with you. I am somewhere else, right now, with you. I am always "with" those few people that I love.
The part of me that wanders through his day is something empty, a straw man. I withdraw more and more, getting farther away all the time from hostile people. They can't hurt me at this distance. They only shout insults and threats at me from far away. People speak to me by way of a distant telephone connection. Torture and all the insults over time -- the daily struggle against computer harassment to write -- all of these torments create their own forms of resistance and numbness, like scar tissue. I am not where they can touch me now, not anymore. I am with you. The last thing in the world that frightens me now is the possibility of death.
I admire your courage in facing honestly your wounds and faults, while struggling to overcome their effects. You -- and all of my loves -- are the best part of my life, even now, because you have made it possible for me to experience levels of emotional intensity and meaning that, without you, would have been unknown to me. You have allowed me to feel, really to feel -- and even in pain this is better than the opposite. The opposite must be the spiritual deadness that makes it possible for a person to become a torturer from nine-to-five, like Terry and Diana, without being aware of it, or caring much if they are aware of it. Encountering inserted "errors" in this work, again, after correcting them countless times does nothing to me any more, except to feed my hatred of those responsible for such tactics. ("Erasing Painful Memories.")
I don't want power or wealth. I have no interest in fame. I don't want to meet celebrities. My writing is only a way of being with you in the magic castle of this text. I will think of you and of all the children and persons that I love (loves cannot be compared, since they are always unique and equal), at the instant when I draw my final breath in this life. Even then, I will reach out for you and all of those I love. I know that the torturers of this world will never win. The human future will not be "a boot stomping on a human face forever," as a therapist happily takes notes nearby. "I'll go to bat for you," the therapist says. ("'The Adjustment Bureau': A Movie Review.")
I believe that there is always something in the human spirit that resists oppression. Never allow anyone to impose beliefs on you. No one may determine what you are "allowed" to say nor how you must say it. We must teach this to America's children. Love freely and passionately, without concern for the judgments of others; know yourself to be at least as good -- probably better -- than your self-declared "social superiors."
I will close my eyes now and picture your lovely features: your smile and laughter, your sadness, the feel of my hand as it touched your face once, your scent of shampoo and perfume. In my memory and imagination, you are always like this: beautiful and emotionally giving, yet also needy. I will think of George Santayana's words when my time comes:
"Nothing you can lose by dying is half so precious as the readiness to die, which is a man's [or a woman's] charter of nobility."
With love and gratitude, always ... "I hope that you will be."
posted by Juan Galis-Menendez @ 12:47 PM
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