Nothing Succeeds like Excess
This article still has relevance when one considers the negative attitude changes
toward democracy that have occurred since the destruction
of the World Trade Center in New York
and the current increase in prior restraint, censorship and propaganda.
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NCTE has apparently removed the original article from their web site; therefore, the author has linked a PDF of the full text. [ACE Newsletter] Some content excerpted from Technocratic Despotism: Incognito and Safe from the Vexation of Thinking by Paul Trummel. Licensed to The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), Assembly for Computers in English (ACE) Newsletter, 10(1): (Summer 1996) 10-15. |
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Nothing Succeeds like Excess
Academic freedom, an absolute right not an abstract philosophy, should not subserve economic considerations. Moreover, information technology remains a right not a privilege despite technocratic claims to the contrary. Legislative and judicial decisions have determined the right of individuals to distribute information freely and the Bill of Rights documents the protection individuals should expect from the state.
However, these laws do not provide much protection against denial of academic freedom and due process of law by despotic university administrators who constantly frustrate both faculty members and students by withholding access to information. They repeatedly interfere with computer resources when they disagree with the content of messages: a disagreement probably based upon disclosure of their own malfeasance. They fear dissent and have an aversion to controversy. Their addiction to political correctness frequently causes them to invoke censorship of Internet activities.
Big Mama the Modern Equivalent of Big Brother
The current Big Mama role of dishonor includes presidents: Shirley Ann Jackson, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Mark A. Emmert, University of Washington; Richard L. McCormick, Rutgers University; and, Victor J. DeLeon, Seattle Jewish Mafia and continues to grow.
The term "Big Mama" describes totalitarian university presidents who censor speech protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The term previously applied to Internet censors in the People's Republic of China. The analogy seems apt in light of the politically correct behavior now common in large and prestigious US universities and as a parody on Big Brother, the omnipresent leader of a totalitarian state in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four.
Leprechauns define as mischievous, treasure-hoarding, hard-drinking, Irish intellectual dwarfs. Violent creatures, they use their Machiavellian power to harm anyone and anything that comes in between them and their precious gold obtained from academic fraud and by urinating on four-leaf clovers. Natives of Ireland (or plastic paddies and others posing as Irish), these bastard offspring of shoe-making elves, dress in emerald green with red and gold or purple and gold accouterments.
Rensselaer’s Big Mama and her seven leprechauns use counterintelligence techniques to ban or delete information they fear will expose administrative neglect to comply with laws. They not only empower their systems administrators to handle frivolous email complaints by arbitrarily removing computer access but also allow them to censor incoming mail - an outrageous invasion of personal privacy.
They act upon an irrational expectation that certain categories of email may contain something that Big Mama would not wish others to read then arbitrarily reject it. They use keywords or email addresses to bounce incoming mail despite senders addressing their message to campus residents individually and privately. Interference with email transmission not specifically proscribed by federal law classifies as a federal offense which Rensselaer and University of Washington officials commit with impunity. [Impunity]
Unethical people justify racist actions by saying: "Others indulge in racism; therefore, I may do the same". By similar faulty logic, systems administrators justify prior restraint by saying: "Others indulge in censorship; therefore, I may do the same". Ethical systems administrators do not indulge in prior restraint or censorship. They say: "Others may indulge in censorship; however, I refuse to do the same". They understand that Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. Unfortunately, administrators in the latter category number fewer and fewer.
Electronic Censorship and Prior Restraint
The term “freedom of the press” describes the right of an individual to gather and publish information or opinions without institutional control or fear of reprisal. That freedom applies to both the electronic and print media and denies censorship or prior restraint to either institutions or individuals. Moreover, academic tenure carries with it an obligation to protect the free exchange of ideas and afford equal rights and privileges to all despite heterodox opinion.
Big Mamas must not allow their leprechauns to create mischief by preventing faculty and students from publicizing their arguments. The law limits the power of any systems manager arbitrarily to deprive computer systems users of their constitutional right to indulge in two-way communication.
Regulation of content before publication classifies as prior restraint - an unprincipled action which denies rights guaranteed to every individual by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. At Rensselaer and University of Washington, Big Mamas unlawfully use electronic prior restraint and web censorship to stop the public learning about their wrongdoing. They replace censored content with propaganda.
Big Mama places a heavy legal burden upon system administrators when she allows or instructs them to bounce email or destroy Internet information. Rensselaer recently bulk rejected several hundred private, non-commercial email messages individually addressed to faculty and students. The messages merely informed recipients about this web site and provided URLs for access.
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Political Silence The RPI return message claimed: “Message rejected because of unacceptable content” which implicitly admitted censorship and violated federal regulations. How many similar acts of electronic censorship occur each week at Rensselaer? Does Big Mama censor academic work electronically when politically expedient? Evidently, Big Mama wants to absolutely control the flow of information on the Rensselaer campus by stopping faculty and students reading about administrative wrongdoing. Systems administrators probably do not realize that they implicitly condone crimes reported in the content they suppress or to which they deny access on the web. In effect, they admit that they knew about the wrongdoing before they suppressed the information which could make them accessories after the fact in a cover-up of racketeering - a much more serious federal crime than prior restraint. [Seattle Jewish Mafia] Ironically, the next generation will not have to deal with officials who advocate censorship. If technocrats continue the present way, and academic apologists continue to maintain political silence, then nobody will know that any form of censorship ever existed. [Political Silence]
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In simple terms, censors participate in a cover-up of crime when they exclude or censor material which contains statements that expose criminal activity. A US Supreme Court opinion declared that any system of prior restraint carries a heavy presumption against constitutionality and that universities must bear the heavy burden of justifying prior restraint or censorship of content protected by the First Amendment.
Political Expedience
A great difference exists between selection of a work based upon quality and selection based upon personal bias (or political correctness). Everyone has biases; however, each person has a responsibility to recognize them when reviewing the work of others. Free speech rights exist on all electronic lists and bulletin boards. Internet Service Providers (ISP) whether commercial or institutional hold no responsibility for content of email messages or postings and may not restrict the free flow of information and opinion on any of the hundreds of international networks.
In the case of email, the law allows for an opt-out procedure. If recipients do not wish to receive certain messages, then they can ask for name suppression. The service provider may not arbitrarily deny delivery of individually addressed private email without a specific request from the addressee.
Michael Godwin, formerly a lawyer with Electronic Frontier Foundation, now works as a research fellow at Yale University. He supports the civil liberties of computer users and says that the law allows discourse based upon a strong tradition of academic freedom even when some individuals may find content offensive. Godwin acted as counsel of record to challenge the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in 1996.
Godwin complained that administrators mistakenly distinguish between speech and electronic communication and wrongly apply different rules. He says that systems operators may not censor the electronic media any more than bookstore owners may censor books. US Supreme Court agreed with a similar contention on First Amendment grounds in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997).
Richard E. Depew, a medical professor at Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine, touched of an uproar when he tried to impose his own brand of order on a free and open system. Computer ethicists savagely condemned Depew for his censorship when he set himself up to decide what was proper. Depew later admitted that he should never have experimented and said "the whole exercise was a mistake" (12 May 93). Systems administrators at UW, RPI, and Council House attorneys continue to make that mistake with impunity fourteen years later. [Impunity]
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Big Mamas at Rensselaer and University of Washington |
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Big Mamas, with income in excess of a million dollars a year, should know better than to continue to maintain that the First Amendment does not apply to speech that they do not personally accept as politically correct. Neither should they practice willful blindness when their subordinates use prior restraint. Whoever knows that a subordinate has committed an offense and remains silent to hinder or prevent prosecution or punishment becomes an accessory after the fact.
Noam Chomsky has argued on many occasions that the expression of scholar's ideas, even if distasteful, may not become subject to censorship. Significance, correctness, authority, and legality of speech remain irrelevant in such cases. Excuses for censorship abound; however, guidelines for selection of material do exist and have become extensively used in the library profession. The ALA Library Bill of Rights (firmly based on the First Amendment to the Constitution) clearly defines censorship and the concept of intellectual freedom.
Apparently, university communication has not advanced much since Benjamin Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania. He hoped that students would “debate in conversation and writing” and use “the art of reasoning to discover truth . . . arguing to defend it and convince adversaries”. He did not prophesy that with the advent of electronic media decisions about debate and writing should vest in politically correct and mainly subliterate systems administrators who support conspiracies of silence by Big Mamas.
New Ways of Censorship and Prior Restraint
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Laissez-Faire means Abuse |
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University administrators charged with oversight of campus regulations adopted laissez faire policies in parallel with Seattle Jewish Mafia. They neglected to investigate elder abuse, racism, faculty and student harassment also, in the case of DeLeon, alleged homicide by abuse. They all condoned expulsion or eviction without due process of law to cover up crimes. Laissez-faire emphasizes the profit motive at the expense of those whom the law protects while university administrators and the judiciary acquiesce for political and economic expedience. |
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Mischievous technological leprechauns assume the role of absolute censors. They rely upon keywords to restrict the flow of categories of information not specific content. They consider only the writer personally or the genre, not what the writer writes which classifies as blanket censorship of the worst kind.
Potential email recipients, denied their right to receive their personal email, believe that they cannot sustain a personal initiative to effect change. They shrug their shoulders and make mild requests for the leprechauns to cease and desist. The leprechauns pass any complaints to equally indecisive policy makers who take the easy way out. They either condone or approve censorship which effectively grants wrongdoers impunity. Victims disengage themselves by insisting that politicians must decide “political problems” which allows Big Mamas to adopt political silence. They do not defend themselves as happens with many rape victims who feel so intimidated that they will not speak out against predators. [Political Silence]
Both University of Washington and Rensselaer continue to sabotage the author’s Internet Service Provider (ISP), presumably in attempts to stop future publication. A year ago Council House sabotaged Contra Cabal web site so that it crashed for over a month. However, nobody can ever fully censor the web as thousands of readers will appreciate while reading this article. There are many ways to crack systems and just as many ways to stop the cracking and expose the crackers. [Tell it to the Judge]
With delegated administrative power, Big Mamas “persuade” alleged offenders (politically incorrect deviants) to cease and desist posting controversial material. When a dissenter claims a First Amendment right to freedom of expression or academic freedom, they demand conformity imposed by an Emily Post type of etiquette dubbed “netiquette” despite laws to the contrary. [Political Correctness]
University of Washington personnel have repeatedly hacked and crashed Contra Cabal computers. Hacking or cracking computers violates both state and federal law. The current cracking (malicious damage) by Rensselaer follows a succession of similar occurrences by University of Washington since Contra Cabal first published during 1992. [Computer Crackers]
A clear and documented pattern of unlawful acts designed to prevent publication of reports about criminal activity by public officials and state actors now exists. Both Rensselaer and University of Washington use computer cracking, email rejection, and other bureaucratic ploys to censor information that exposes alleged crimes. Attorney General Christine Gregoire (now Governor) should have prosecuted UW systems administrators long ago.
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)
Intellectual rape occurs at Rensselaer, University of Washington and many other universities. This becomes more and more evident from the number of successful cases that Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has brought against university administrators during the past decade.
Reportedly, Tufts University recently punished a student publication for heterodox content. One immediately asks how a publication can harass someone and how, as an inanimate object, it can suffer punishment. Tufts found the publication (not an individual) guilty of harassment for publishing political satire.
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In another instance of censorship and prior restraint, Johns Hopkins introduced a new and broad "civility" code prohibiting "rude, disrespectful behavior" at that university stating that "tasteless" speech breaches standards of "civility". This author (now 74) suffered unlawful harassment charges, torture, and imprisonment at the hands of Seattle Jewish Mafia (which includes several straw judges) for publishing Contra Cabal under similar circumstances. All the contempt motions in his case based upon alleged violations of a flawed and unconstitutional antiharassment order which relied upon claims of "rude and abusive" content (satire) in published articles, allegations identical to those in the current Tufts and John Hopkins complaints. [Seattle Jewish Mafia]
Greg Lukianoff, FIRE President, wrote about Tufts University (11 May 07): “We now know that Tufts’ promises of free expression are hollow. By punishing political expression - the type of expression at the very core of the right to free speech - Tufts has shown that, in spite of its promises, it has no regard for its students’ fundamental rights. Such hypocrisy must not go unchallenged”. The same challenge applies to Rensselaer and University of Washington. Both universities censor student and other publications then replace free discourse with propaganda to avoid addressing important legal issues.
FIRE, a nonprofit educational foundation, claims to unite civil rights and civil liberties leaders, scholars, journalists, and public intellectuals across the political and ideological spectrum. It acts on behalf of individual rights, due process rights, freedom of expression, and rights of conscience on university campuses.
Washington Supreme Court (30 Mar 06) unanimously agreed with arguments similar to those described by Lukianoff. Five international amici curiae previously used them on appeal in the author's misuse of antiharassment law case. Trial court had prevented the author from publishing this electronic magazine which contains exposure of criminal activity.
Supreme court concluded that trial court abused its discretion in restraining the author and adding content restrictions to an antiharassment order. It also concluded that trial court erred in multiple findings of contempt of court. Those contempt findings resulted in an indeterminate sentence, torture, solitary confinement in communicado, and a 23-hour daily lock down in King County Jail, Seattle - reminiscent of the recent experience of Alan Johnston, the BBC reporter and fellow British NUJ journalist whom terrorists imprisoned in Gaza for 114 days.
Trial court denied the author his right to counsel and jailed him for 111 days (including 25 days in solitary confinement). Supreme court reversed the draconian trial and appellate decisions (30 Mar 06). That reversal did not return the four months of the author’s life spent under the most appalling conditions while deprived of medication and subject to torture. Instead of trying to mitigate the damage that it caused, Seattle Jewish Mafia has continued its harassment. The antiharassment evidence relied upon by trial court never had a discovery process and the judge denied any cross-examination of suborned witnesses in court. This allowed Council House to make disgusting accusations against the author without an opportunity for him to refute them. That evidence has still not experienced a court rebuttal. [Supreme Court Decision]
To try to preempt a pending Washington Supreme Court finding, Stephen A. Mitchell, a Council House director, continued to write and file false and misleading statements with police, government agencies, and public prosecutors. Those reports subjected the author to ever more frivolous criminal charges in Seattle Municipal Court. Warrants for the author's arrest and incarceration abounded as a result of Mitchell's nebulous complaints about “rude and abusive” communication (satire). In another case, Mitchell could neither define the term “rude” nor “abusive” when questioned under an oath. Courts must eventually hold Council House accountable for Mitchell's criminal acts. Those acts include malicious conspiracy to orchestrate frivolous and capricious complaints, multiple perjury, subornation, witness tampering, and alleged homicide by abuse. [Conspiracy 2001] [Conspiracy 2002] [Ravening Sociopath]
National Union of Journalists (NUJ) filed amicus curiae and claimed that: “Trial court’s actions in the case manifested a profound and troubling disregard for freedom of speech. Court of Appeals reasoning represented a real and direct threat to the freedom of thought and expression on which journalism depends. A free press forms an integral part of the very foundation of democratic institutions”.
According to Lukianoff, FIRE has decided to spearhead a defense of The Primary Source (TPS), a student publication, by launching a public campaign to oppose punishment for printing two articles which offended some African-American and Muslim students. FIRE claimed that despite explicit promises to protect controversial and offensive expression in campus policies, Tufts Committee on Student Life showed a profound disregard for free speech and freedom of the press. [FIRE Spotlight - Tufts University] [FIRE Spotlight - John Hopkins University]
Conditional Freedom of Expression
Politically correct ideologies require everyone to learn the same way, to teach the same way, to research the same way, to discourse the same way, and to write the same way. Subsequently, conformity destroys any vestige of individuality still left in the academe. This exclusivity forces everyone to become a clone of someone else. It enables those in power to deny academic freedom to dissenters and allows them to destroy the careers of nonconformists.
Censorship and prior restraint place exclusive conditions on freedom of expression and, consequently, academic freedom. Any type of censorship restricts, to narrowly defined criteria what people may say - discourse becomes conditional upon the opinions of non-participants.
Big Mamas and their leprechauns indulge in manipulation of new technology similar to the manipulation of radio which preceded the European Holocaust. The oligarchs of that era used radio to persuade a whole nation to use psychological and physical atrocity. Now, US and its allies use the Internet to persuade their people to commit similar atrocities in the Middle East and Guantanamo Bay using data manipulation, prior restraint, censorship, and propaganda. Universities now use cyberspace to perpetrate intellectual atrocities. Modern intellectual despots brutalize minds by psychological indoctrination in attempts to force individuals to conform to special group interests and ideologies.
Academicians can only blame themselves for their loss of academic freedom and their compliant lifestyle. For several decades they have allowed administrators arbitrarily to outlaw any behavior that they, either collectively or individually, found inappropriate. The war cries "inappropriate" and "politically correct" define synonymously in totalitarian environments.
Current university lifestyle compares with the apathy and compliance rampant among university apologists in Nazi Germany who had their modus vivendi exposed by Martin Niemöller's statement. This parody applies today.
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Modus Vivendi of Academic Apologists Officials first deprived undergraduates of their freedom of expression. That did not concern me because I strictly conformed to a politically correct ideology. Then they deprived graduate students. That did not concern me because I held a faculty position. Then they deprived untenured professors. That did not concern me because I held tenure. Then they deprived tenured professors. That did not concern me because I held a department chair. Then they deprived me and that concerned me. I soon discovered that the politically correct ideology to which I had given my academic life had paid only lip service to academic freedom. I cried out to my colleagues for help but they had all adopted politically silent attitudes. I desperately turned toward my former students but they also remained silent in the way that they had learned from their mentors. They had all lost their freedom of expression and, consequently, could not speak out for me.
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Conclusion
Attorney General Christine O. Gregoire (now Governor, State of Washington) relies upon willful myopia. She has neglected to mount an investigation on evidence available to her for more than eight years and has ignored repeated requests for an independent inquiry. University officials, faculty members, and attorneys general have broken laws, framed evidence to support sham disciplinary proceedings, and covered up kangaroo court findings. Only an independent investigator can fairly examine the voluminous documents which support these contentions. [Sherking Responsibility]
In Washington state, the Attorney General must arrange for the Superior Court to call a grand jury or petition the Supreme Court for an order appointing a special inquiry judge as recommended by former Washington Governor Gary Locke. This could include the organized crime advisory board naming a special prosecutor to investigate both Rensselaer and University of Washington. Instead, of heeding Locke’s advice, Gregoire used assistant attorneys general to assist in a cover-up of myriad crimes at UW.
An American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) cooperating attorney spent nine months investigating denial of due process of law on the arbitrary removal of the author's computer access, also expropriation of his editorial and research databases. The ACLU legal committee made a finding of reasonable and probable cause and appointed an independent attorney to prosecute the case. University of Washington lawyers evidently thwarted the prosecution with an unlawful trade-off. They politically manipulated an ACLU employee to drop the case then covered up malfeasance by university officials.
Legislative and judicial decisions have determined the right of individuals to distribute information freely and the Bill of Rights documents the protection individuals may expect from the state. However, those laws do not now provide much protection against denial of academic freedom and due process of law by despotic university administrators and their ilk who constantly frustrate writers by attacking them instead of addressing the issues about which they write.
UW systems administrators repeatedly covered up evidence that exposed arbitrarily destruction or return of email and deletion or withholding of academic databases - the same procedures that Rensselaer currently employs. Big Mamas at Rensselaer, University of Washington, and Council House have outrageously conducted a campaign of harassment through technological interference in the dissemination of information. They persist in that behavior despite the unanimous decision by Washington Supreme Court that affirmed the author’s right to publish. [Supreme Court Decision]
The court found unlawful the arrest, torture, and imprisonment of the author without benefit of counsel for publication of Contra Cabal. That caused a furor that still reverberates on the international journalism scene yet all three organizations continue the harassment despite those findings.
Mark A. Emmert, Shirley Ann Jackson, and Victor J. DeLeon, principals of the three organizations involved, have ultimate responsibility for what their employees do yet practice willful blindness. They apparently disagree with the content of messages or published articles. Instead of addressing the issues, they grant their employees impunity to violate federal law. Seattle Jewish Mafia continues to terrorize senior citizens who insist upon their First Amendment rights.
Subordinates repeatedly interfere with computer services to invoke censorship through Internet cracking. They fail to realize that they can never censor the worldwide web by interference with Internet operation. They create a minor irritation at a personal level and reveal their identity which gives cause for legal action predicated upon malice in the future.
Despite the hyperbole about freedom of expression which university presidents and their administrators frequently disseminate, they generally do not contribute to the tenets of true academic freedom. When one examines their overall record, one comprehends the magnitude of their hypocrisy. They concern themselves more with liaison between institutions, government, and industry than the accumulation of knowledge. They have become institutional pickpockets. If one wishes to expose their corruption, then one quite simply follows the money trail.
Economic considerations do not apply to freedom of expression in cyberspace; consequently, exclusionist actions derive from political expediency. Free expression, the traditional lifeblood of universities, has now become an economic and political pawn. Moreover, the time has come for a reversal of policies that allow technocrats to control information flow absolutely. The tail must stop wagging the dog. Oversight and supervision, through traditional, ethical, information science procedures, need to replace the extant propagandist anarchy.
See Portable Document File (PDF) for citations.
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Paul Trummel PhD (RPI ABD), PhD (UW ABD), MS (RPI), MSc (UK), BSc (UK) Associate Professor, Communication and Rhetoric (Retired) International Federation of Journalists, Brussels (International Press Card)
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© Copyright 1996 by Paul Trummel |
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