Land of the Free - Seattle, Washington

Circumstances Surrounding Publication

An article on technoSpeak, originally written in 1996 then censored by technocrats, has since developed a truism. It had prophetic significance when written and now describes a decadent condition that pervades American society generally and the academe in particular.

University of Washington officials and Washington Superior Court judges have three times destroyed various forms of Contra Cabal - this electronic journal first published in 1992. They based their decisions entirely upon content perceived as politically incorrect. They used censorship, sanctioned prior restraint, and held kangaroo courts to destroy a career.

Washington Superior Court granted impunity to landlords who inserted an unlawful clause in leases that prohibited “rudeness” without defining the term. The landlords then considered any speech with which they disagreed as rudeness and cause for eviction.

Encouraged by City of Seattle and HUD¹ laissez faire policies and dereliction, Council House landlords (directors) destroyed the author’s home, excluded him from a large area of Seattle, and had him jailed including solitary confinement. [Metamorphosis]

For three years the directors have tried to have him returned to jail with false claims of contempt violations. Oversight authorities and Seattle police continue to withhold or destroy documents with impunity while the directors use those same documents to prefer frivolous charges.
[HUD-Seattle and Bremerton Contract Administrator] [City of Seattle] [Silent Withholding]

The judicial decisions have now become subject to a petition for review in Washington Supreme Court supported by journalism unions, the American Civil Liberties Union, and a Seattle newspaper. [Washington Supreme Court]

Compromised principles for personal gain and academic privilege without merit.

Political Correctness and technoSpeak

George Orwell claimed that every past utterance becomes baffling to those who have succumbed to Newspeak (pC speech). His hypothesis required a definitive break with the past to allow the projection of the present into the future and to perpetuate it.

Although his premise still holds, Orwell confused semantics with syntax - he confused the writing of a dictionary with its organization. In a modern sense, political correctness provides the new dictionary and technology provides the organization.

Technological convolution and confusion within pC results in “technoSpeak” (tS) which provides the semantics while technology provides the syntax to disseminate propaganda. [Propaganda]

Neither political correctness (pC) nor technoSpeak (tS) allows freedom of expression. They both control argument and allow those in authority to exercise an unrighteous technological domain. [Political Correctness]

US First Amendment protects non-controversial pC speech. However, it primarily protects the ideas and beliefs contained in controversial or fringe expression. Laws to restrict speech and movement show symptoms of a decaying society and pose a threat to democracy.

Government has no right to control speech or to interfere with the media (including the Internet) that disseminate ideas and information. That type of control undermines liberty by trying to make individuals conform to moral norms. Government must confine itself only to ethical standards based in law.

Cruel and oppressive dictators for time immemorial used pC techniques to set moral standards. Having established an illusion of morality they used arbitrary zero-tolerance policies to abuse and vilify others in order to achieve power and wealth. To further that pursuit they have traditionally purloined media to further their goals.

Joseph Goebbels exemplified this with his brilliant yet vile misuse of a new medium in a different era - radio. Nazis and Soviets totally controlled political and religious views through use of technology. In so doing, with other ideological regimes, they caused the deaths of hundreds of millions of people in the twentieth-century alone.

Today, tolerance for dissent has evaporated and a systematic and steady erosion of freedom of speech continues using pC as an excuse. Interference with media has now reached proportions that have created international concern among free speech advocates. technoSpeak now supports pC and interferes with dissemination of heterodox information by using a “technological prior restraint” to deny access to audiences.

Political correctness defines as the technocratic, apolitical, corruption of language where expression conforms to the absolutism of a privileged oligarchy and supports a totalitarian ideology. technoSpeak supports that ideology by manipulating or denying access to media.

A totally controlled society, with a self-perpetuating technocratic elite, now rules much of cyberspace. Through technological control it carries out a perverse ideology designed for individual financial gain rather than learning and research. It creates an aura that no longer strikes one as either a dim horror or the projection of a paranoid mind.

The status quo no longer surprises those who live under partly Orwellian and partly Kafkaesque regimes. Manipulated communication exists as a deeply unnerving fact of this era. Paradoxically, Internet communication appears so ordinary, so plausible, and so familiar that it finds ready acceptance. Under the control of an oligarchy it exists as a separate reality.² To quote Orwell:

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face: for ever.

Principles of technoSpeak

Politically correct governments try to control the language and technocrats try to control the technology. However, they cannot control ordinary conversation or absolutely control the Internet. They cannot gain absolute control through linguistic means without resorting to violence.

Orwellian Newspeak comparisons with technoSpeak do not adequately describe the absolute control required by modern totalitarian rule which can only succeed through social and political means. These means include the control of language in all environments and the monitoring and blocking of telephone and voice mail conversation, email, web sites, and research databases.

Federal law prohibits any of these practices, yet administrators at both Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and the University of Washington (UW), also many other US universities, arbitrarily promote these practices.

States tend to grant their universities autonomy which leads to a totalitarian environment where administrators (state employees) act as their own judge and jury. They have no consideration for academic freedom or legal precedent. Despite established law, they disavow the traditional ethics associated with freedom of speech and legal precedent. Anarchy allows them to advance an ideology which cannot succeed without absolute linguistic and technological control. If they lose that control then totalitarian rule fails.

technoThink (holding contradictory beliefs and simultaneously accepting both of them) does not relate to Orwell's simultaneous knowing and not-knowing. Rather, it relates to performing in a certain way while denigrating that performance: a coexistence of opportunism and contempt. This does not equate with the kind of political mobilization or messianic zeal described by the early theorists of totalitarianism.

In contrast, it represents an acceptance of social and technological control that evades the appearance of absolute control - cultism with all its negativity. It establishes a religion that has no theology.

technoSpeak has rapidly gained ground. Its purpose as a mode of expression for the totalitarian political view makes all other modes of thought impossible. Technocrats have now expanded tS rhetorical and technological constructs to everyday expression.

technoSpeak vocabulary, subtly constructed to give expression to pC views, now excludes all other meanings. Cutting the range of words through tS effectively controls dissenting opinion. technoSpeak proper nouns form a separate dictionary. This causes a diminution of the general vocabulary and insures that only pC terms have common use. Those terms have the ability to indoctrinate the minds of people suffering from chronic naivety.

tS words and phrases obscure the meaning of many other words and replace them with composite terms. Then words gradually disappear from language. When everyone has forgotten them, the pC meaning of the composite term supersedes the true meaning of the words that have disappeared.

With only technocratic elite in control of generally accepted tS then other languages die. With that death, freedom (and the culture that it supports) also dies.

History does repeat itself. The condensing of words and phrases has become a predominant characteristic of political language and the rhetoric of propaganda. This occurred markedly in totalitarian countries during the early decades of the twentieth century and now happens frequently in modern tS society. [Propaganda]

Expression of heterodox views in politically correct environments becomes impossible because controlled systems do not allow dissent. Consequently, freedom of speech and academic freedom cannot survive in absolutist situations.

Popular pC pedagogy provides an often superficial, philosophical encounter with the nature of language. It supports intimidation through silence, or Coventry (a state of ostracism or communication exile imposed upon Royalist prisoners during the English civil war) now used in US prisons and government subsidized housing for elderly people. This pernicious practice has existed for centuries as an effective method of mind control.

Many administrators in the academe use this type of political silence to both demean and adversely affect the psyches of the individuals whom they have made pariahs. This adversely affects the community at large. Many students say things that they do not believe so that they may conform to the accepted ideology and graduate. However, most people retain a degree of honesty and cannot live comfortably with contrived dishonesty.

Only despots can achieve such a dysfunctional detachment. However, those who accept indoctrination, and succumb to the material rewards, do become part of the oligarchical system and, unfortunately, perpetuate it.

Cogent Evidence

To move from hypothesis to reality one must consider the review of issues now taking place in Geneva. A preparatory meeting for the World Summit on the Information Society took place (17 Feb 05). At that meeting a delegation of cyber-dissidents and web site publishers appeared and put a face on the repression against Internet users and publishers in countries that will attend the summit.

Reporters Without Borders published five recommendations for online free expression:

1. Any law about the flow of information online must be anchored in freedom of expression as defined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

2. Internet users alone must decide what material they can and wish to access online. Automatic filtering of online content, by governments or private firms, is unacceptable. Filters must only be installed by Internet users themselves and only on their personal connection. Any policy of higher-level (national or even local) filtering conflicts with the principle of the free flow of information.

3. A decision to shut down a web site, even an illegal one, must not in any circumstances be taken by the site's host or any other technical provider of Internet services. Only a judge can ban an online publication. A technical service provider cannot therefore be held criminally or civilly responsible for any illegal material posted on a hosted website unless the service provider refuses to obey a ruling by an impartial and independent court.

4. A government's civil or criminal powers are limited to content hosted on its territory or specifically aimed at the country's Internet users.

5. The editors of online publications, including bloggers and those running personal sites, must have the same protection and be shown the same consideration as professional journalists since, like them, they exercise a basic freedom, that of freedom of expression.
[Reporters Without Borders]

Robert Ménard, Secretary-General, Reporters Without Borders, worries about the distrust of the Internet among the “solid democracies” of Europe and North America. He says that United States, France, and United Kingdom, take their place alongside the thugs quick to lock up opponents and that calls for an explanation.

Ménard says that authorities cannot and should not ignore child-porn, xenophobia, and racism although that type of communication forms only a small part of Internet traffic - less than 3 per cent according to some experts. He claims that government must consider those sites even if it offends purists who advocate an Internet free of all monitoring and interference.

Democratically run countries commonly cite terrorism as a justification for Internet surveillance and imposition of repressive controls. Ménard says that sites which call for violence and appeal to hatred should bear close inspection with adequate respect for civil liberties and avoidance of abuse.

Understandably, the price of safety includes some encroachment on freedom but only when parliaments or congress approve such measures. This does not happen as one can see from the following examples.³

Police must only act at the behest of judges. Those judges must only decide on the basis of law and the public must see that they have acted beyond reproach. The following abstracts show how judges and government officials act without consideration for law:

Jay Bakht (35) (Iran), a founding member of Penlog, a group of Iranian web writers, lives in Britain, where he fights for the release of imprisoned writers and campaigns against the Iranian government's Internet filtering policies. [Jay Bakht]

Cai Chongguo (50) (China), a philosophy professor and political dissident, fled his country after the Tiananmen Square massacres. France granted him asylum where he studies the Chinese system of online censorship. [Cai Chongguo]

Ibrahim Lutfy (40) (Maldives), arrested (Jan 02) for helping to produce Sandhaanu, an electronic newsletter about President Gayoom's human rights violations, escaped from prison (May 03) and has since lived in Switzerland which has granted him political asylum. [Ibrahim Lutfy]

Paul Trummel (71) (USA), a British retired professor and journalist, jailed (27 Feb 01 through 17 Jun 01) 111 days including 25 days in solitary confinement, satirized the manager of a residence for senior citizens to draw attention to elder abuse and misappropriation of government funds. [Paul Trummel]

Zouhair Yahyaoui (38) (Tunisia) imprisoned (04 Jun 02 through 18 Nov 03) for lampooning President Ben Ali on his web site Tunezine.com. He continues to write to encourage progress towards democracy and freedom of expression. [Zouhair Yahyaoui]

Jay Bakht (35) (Iran). A founding member of Penlog, a group of Iranian web writers lives in Britain, where he fights for the release of imprisoned writers and campaigns against the Iranian government's Internet filtering policies.

The Iranian government has systematically denied citizens the right to speak freely. It spies on them and blocks communications at home and abroad. It listens to their phone calls, gags the media, and censors the Internet.

Iranians cherish freedom of expression as a basic human right. Countless Internet sites have been blocked by the authorities that have installed a filtering system on most ISPs and blocked access inside the country to most political sites.

More than 30,000 Iranian web logs exist. The government recently blocked Orkut web site which had about 3.5 million members - 8 % of them in Iran. This means 280,000 Iranians are being deprived of their rights. The site is not political or pornographic but just a way for friends to find each other after many years. Bakht condemns all efforts by governments and telecommunications firms in Iran and elsewhere to restrict the free flow of news and ideas.
[Jay Bakht] [JayLondoner] [Penlog]

Cai Chongguo (50) (China). A philosophy professor and political dissident, fled his country after the Tiananmen Square massacres (1989). France granted him asylum where he studies the Chinese system of online censorship.

Internet service in China has boomed during the past decade. At the end of 2004, approaching 100,000,000 users surfed the 500,000 or so web sites based in China which has about 100,000 cybercafés.

Online activity boosts economic progress, so the government encourages it. It has also found it an effective way to spread communist party propaganda. The difficulty of keeping control of Internet traffic has become a constant threat to authorities. They have spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of euros over the past 10 years in trying to maintain control by training 100,000 Internet police and buying the latest technology named the Golden Shield.

About 100 Chinese cyber-dissidents are currently in prison and the government shuts down more web sites every day. The authorities have managed to impose a state of fear and timidity among Internet users.

Chinese government controls must have their own reporters and broadcast their own news derived from the government news agency Xinhua or risk immediate closure. They may not mention countless topics which include democracy, freedom of the press and association, independent trade unions, public demonstrations, corruption, and politics in Taiwan and other foreign countries.

They may not connect to web sites that criticize the government. Consequently, about 100,000 Chinese-language sites operate from abroad with many links to online publications based in China. Moreover, the rules strictly forbid Chinese citizens to post articles or news items on foreign web sites. [Cai Chongguo]

Ibrahim Lutfy (40) (Maldives). Arrested (Jan 02) for helping to produce Sandhaanu, an electronic newsletter about President Gayoom's human rights violations. He escaped from prison (May 03) and has since lived in Switzerland which has granted him political asylum. He has since relaunched Sandhaanu online.

Sandhaanu made history in Maldivian journalism by creating the first publication in the local language. At the time of the launch, the publishers did not expect nationwide support. However, a variety of people including famous dissident journalists sent them material to publish.

They investigated, cross-checked, and exposed the reality of the elected family regime that suppresses freedom of expression. Historically, the geography of the Maldivian archipelago, has prevented print media from reaching the out-islands.

Sandhaanu reached out-island inhabitants in real-time. It reached every island of the Maldives. Even the places where the three government-controlled dailies could not reach. They believe that if dissident journalists and intellectuals had not supported publication it would not have succeeded.

The government continues its campaign to block independent and opposition web sites. The national telecommunication company Dhiraagu had the exclusive right to provide Internet services until May 2003. Jointly owned by the government of the Maldives and Cable & Wireless of Great Britain, Dhiraagu had a monopoly as the only Internet service provider until December 2003.

The government opened up Internet to competition and Focus Computers, a privately-owned ISP with its own international gateway via satellite, began operating. It followed the Internet censorship policy. The government then set up a special Internet surveillance unit (2000) at police headquarters which the publisher believes the president fully controls.

The police department sent Internet surveillance unit staff abroad on cyber criminology education and training. Some completed training and have gone back to work at the unit.

At various times, the government has hired foreign experts and invested in expensive equipment to monitor email. They do not respect a privacy law meant to protect e-mail confidentiality.

No law can protect privacy of Internet users in the Maldives. The Internet remains under constant surveillance from sophisticated equipment and software. Dissidents receive severe punishment for expressing their views. After an interruption of nearly two years, Sandhaanu relaunched its operation from Europe (11 Mar 04). Its subscribers increased to 5,350 in 20 days. [Ibrahim Lutfy]

Paul Trummel (71) (British, Permanent Resident USA for 40 years). A retired associate professor (rhetoric and communication) and journalist who has published for more than sixty years. He lives in Seattle, Washington where he continues to fight for the rights of senior citizens, his First Amendment rights, and his right of assembly, abrogated for more than four years by politically and judicially connected directors of Council House, Seattle.

Judge James A. Doerty, without due process of law and to deliberately effect prior restraint and censorship, imprisoned him (27 Feb 01 through 17 Jun 01) 111 days that included 25 days in solitary confinement sua sponte (at the whim of the judge). [Metamorphosis]

Doerty then withheld transcripts to cover up the fact that he initiated a counterclaim to an antiharassment order from the bench without a motion (a decision since confirmed in writing by the respondent). At a later hearing, he entered misleading statements into the court record to cover up his actions. He now spends his time in juvenile court.

Trummel satirized the manager of a senior citizen residence to draw attention to elder abuse and misappropriation of government funds. Instead of addressing the issues, the directors attacked the messenger by committing multiple perjury and making ex parte arrangements with the judge to have him jailed. They then had him sent to solitary confinement with 23-hour lock-down incommunicado.

Council House has never challenged the veracity of what he has published on the Internet since 1992, instead they tried to force him to take down the site. They have made false representations to his US Internet Service Provider (ISP) to try to persuade them to remove the site. They have also obtained court orders from a tame judge to try to force the removal of a site in Holland. They have since used a thug to assault him several times once with a metal stick in a public place and to issue death threats.

The directors continue to file false police reports claiming harassment and stalking which ranks as a felony. Judge Doerty, intent upon deportation, needs a felony to make that happen. He has also filed (ex parte) unsubstantiated documents vilifying the writer with US Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS) to harass him every time he enters the country and British Consul General to dissuade them from assisting him. Court of Appeals stonewalled an appeal for more than three years then in kafkaesque fashion affirmed the trial court decision.
[Washington Supreme Court Review]

By unanimous decision (30 Mar 06), Washington Supreme Court concluded that the trial court abused its discretion in restraining the author from contacting nonparties and in adding content restrictions to an antiharassment order. It also concluded that the trial court erred in multiple findings of contempt of court. It reversed draconian trial and appellate decisions which resulted in the author spending time in jail. [Washington Supreme Court - Decision]

All the contempt motions based upon alleged violations of an original flawed and unconstitutional anti-harassment order. The trial court denied the author his right to counsel and jailed him for 111 days (including 25 days in solitary confinement).

Supreme court found that trial court had absolutely no justification for refusing a continuance and neglecting to provide legal counsel. By failing to address that neglect, the appellate court concurred with a draconian trial court order - prior restraint, constructive eviction from a residence, and jail time, without considering constitutional rights.

International Federation of Journalists (Brussels), National Union of Journalists (London), American Civil Liberties Union (Seattle), American Society of Journalists and Editors (New York), and Seattle Weekly (Seattle), all filed amicus curiae in support of the successful challenge to the lower court decisions. [Amicus Curiae]

Zouhair Yahyaoui (38) (Tunisia). Imprisoned (04 Jun 02 through 18 Nov 03) for lampooning President Ben Ali on his web site Tunezine.com. He continues to write to encourage progress towards democracy and freedom of expression.

He discovered the Internet in the summer of 2000. Until then, it cost a days wages for the average Tunisian to go online for an hour. He did not have a job so it was even further out of reach. The Internet meant freedom and diversity for him until he found that the dictator had contaminated it by his misdeeds.

He found censorship and blocked access to some sites when he tried to get information about the government opposition and human rights violations in Tunisia. The government’s Internet agency routinely blocked and censored foreign web sites.

Despite the censorship and online filtering, he managed to get an idea of what had happened in his country. Then he created his own website to centralize the news that he had gathered to inform others Tunisians. The regime quickly censored it like similar sites.

This only made him more determined and he started to lampoon the dictator and his henchmen. The fierce crackdown on opposition only spurred him to ridicule the regime and especially the president. This lasted a year before the government arrested and threw him into prison on the pretext of inaccurate reporting and fraudulent use of telephone lines.

He continues to write for his web site because he cannot see any progress towards democracy and freedom of expression. Tunisian society, just like its media, remains gagged without freedom of expression. [Zouhair Yahyaoui] [Tunezine-com]

Perhaps it bodes well to become a "sanitary disposal inspector and coordinator" rather than an academician. At least one receives payment for one's labor and in that mindless environment can apply one's mind: probably to lampoon one's predicament.

From the future and from the past;
To the age of uniformity.
From freedom of expression;
To technoSpeak and technoThink.
From life without political correctness;
To Big Brothers and Big Sisters.
From a time when truth existed.
To the big academic lie.
Greetings!⁴

[Nmesis]

© Copyright 2005 by Paul Trummel
All Rights Reserved: 02 Mar 05/13:03 GMT
Edition: #809-03-00/07-0612-06:28
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