Contents
Introduction
Your Brain Is the Battleground
Virtual America, Where Delusion Reigns
Here's How it All Came About
Manifesto for the Millennium
Torture, American Style -- The Wave of the Future?
Hard Realities ( "Asylum" in Europe ) A new Iron Curtain! Persecuted Americans cannot escape! Europe sent me back here three times against my will. I'm a non-person with whom nobody will cooperate, for whom nobody will advocate. Absolute corruption. Absolute coverup.
A Nation In Denial A whistleblower's life -- insults, excuses, rejections from non-governmental organizations mandated to support his rights. The apostasy of the Left and the human rights establishment.
Introduction
Humanity faces a crisis of law and conscience that few can recognize, still fewer will acknowledge, and none will remedy -- a crisis that jeopardizes the very future of human civilization. The essential concepts of human rights and human dignity are under assault as never before.Corruption and discrimination abound. Standards are slipping. The media wallow in denial and the people revel in insouciance. Compassion and decency are fast disappearing from the human behavioral repertoire. Victims of gross defamation and governmental cruelty become "non-persons" -- anathematized, ridiculed, rejected, suspected. Too often, the aggrieved enjoy no recourse, the persecuted find no refuge, the abused and degraded are denied all hope of escape or rescue. The system is broken -- not just the law enforcement system, but the advocacy system as well.
Governments absurdly rationalize their own crimes and deny the equal protection of their laws. Advocates and non-governmental organizations corruptly abdicate their responsibility. In treachery or in trepidation, they discriminate against certain persons, refuse to acknowledge certain issues, and refuse to confront certain oppressors. They make exceptions. They make excuses. They consult an invisible rule book that tells them how far they may go, what and whom to ignore.
To a great extent, Armageddon is within. It is a struggle for the liberty and integrity of the human mind, for the preservation of human dignity, for the very meaning of human existence, for the restoration of the Rule of Law, for the very continuance of civilization in any acceptable form.
1984 is long past. Big Brother is raping you, and nobody much cares.
This is the web site of James Henry Graf, who will see the truth exposed or die trying.
Your Brain is the Battleground
Copyright © James Henry Graf, 1998
The October, 1981 Science Digest featured an article by Gary Selden titled "Machines That Read Minds." Toward the end, Mr. Selden noted that the CIA was following brain wave research closely, much the way that agency followed LSD research in the 1950s. He described a proposal by Robert Thatcher of the University of Maryland for the development of a "true thought scanner" that might, among other purposes, be used for "internal surveillance of dissidents."
The human body emits an electromagnetic field that modern technology can detect and analyze in a process somewhat like the creation of holograms. Holographers record the interference patterns introduced into a beam of coordinated light by the surface features of a material object, creating thereby a three-dimensional image. It is similarly possible to detect and record the ever-changing pattern of electromagnetic potentials produced by the human nervous system. This makes possible the development of devices that can record human thoughts and other physiological states.
This is essentially the same technology described brilliantly by John St. Clair Akwei in the document he submitted in support of his 1992 lawsuit against the US National Security Agency, published in the April-May, 1996 issue of Nexus magazine (Volume 3, Number 3) under the title "Covert Operations of the US National Security Agency." It appears to have developed from Robert Malech's 1976 technology for remote electromagnetic detection of brain waves (US Patent Number 3,951,134). As Mr. Akwei attests, it is also possible to broadcast "voices" into the human brain. Most persons are not aware that this was accomplished as early as 1974 by Dr. Joseph C. Sharp.
Mind-reading devices, machines that make people hear voices, and weapons that disrupt or control the functioning of mind and body are present realities. Tragically, instead of the many positive applications possible, these technologies are, indeed, being used as torture weapons against dissidents.
Imagine being exposed all day every day to the twenty most vicious, sleaziest, most obnoxious persons you have ever met. Imagine not being able to get away from them, having them monitor your thoughts, impulses, physiological processes, dreams, fantasies, memories, and all the events of your daily life. Imagine that they confront, interrogate, threaten, degrade, and torment you day and night. Imagine their contemptuous jibes as they obstruct your every earnest effort. Imagine the humiliation, the frustration, the fury. The closest parallel is that of demonic possession. These are not demons, however. They are real human criminals whom no-one will arrest or prosecute.
The struggle for liberty, dignity, and decency, the war that will determine the fate of human civilization, is not in a far-off desert or a steaming jungle. The battle is within the boundaries of your own skin. It is a contest for ownership of your mind and body.
As knowledge is power, ignorance is impotence. Denial and insouciance have carried the world to the brink of slavery. Freedom is only for the brave and the wise. Face reality. Live and be free.
Virtual America
Copyright © James Henry Graf, 1996
I am James Henry Graf, a virtual prisoner in a virtual democracy, a hostage trapped in a land that has strayed far from reality. This is my statement and a small part of my story.
An American whistleblower and an advocate for the human rights of all, I have never used or advocated violence, nor has any state or nation ever charged me with a crime. Nevertheless, because of what I believe, say, and write, what I know and have tried to communicate, I have seen more than seven thousand days of surveillance, defamation, persecution, terrorism, mental torture, and more, for which society denies recourse and law provides no remedy.
In 1984 and 1985, I blew the whistle on civil liberties violations involving persons at my workplace and corrupt police, prosecutors, and intelligence agents. The gangsters, government and "private," whose crimes I had tried to reveal invaded my privacy, slanderously attacked my character and reputation, impugned my sanity, assaulted me with radiation and bio-chemical weapons, killed my dog, and tortured me with electromagnetic weapons. They forced me out of my job without due process, wrecked my car, broke up my marriage, drove me into exile, violated my rights abroad, and thrice conspired to coerce my return to this benighted nation. Thrust from prosperity to poverty, from health to disability, from dignity to disgrace, I am left alone in the company of hard, sad, frightening truth.
Yes, this happens here in the birthplace of modern democracy. Behind an angelic facade lurks a satanic reality, an America that pursues its critics with a fanaticism unsurpassed by any Iranian mullah, mobilizing the community in such harassment of targeted persons as the Chinese experienced in their Cultural Revolution, aping the defunct Soviet Union in its use of psychiatric evaluations as instruments of intimidation and discreditation, circumventing due process with a disregard of Constitutional liberty and human dignity frighteningly reminiscent of Germany's Third Reich.
Many have warned that the marriage of fascist mentality and Twenty-first Century technology may produce a monster most hideous. The perspicacious Dave Emory, an American researcher and broadcaster, has stated that in the absence of positive change we may soon face "the total world triumph of absolute evil, forever." From the deep virtual dungeon of my personal experience, I thoroughly agree and boldly bear witness.
The mock democracy that has cheated, persecuted, humiliated, terrorized, and tortured me is really a "national security" dictatorship, a land surreptitiously controlled by an insolent overclass contemptuous of Law and Constitution, using astounding technology to advance an essentially fascist agenda. It is a vicious, capricious empire, the domain of drooling Caligulas and snarling Torquemadas whose unchecked malevolence enlists the aid of legions of cowards, crooks, liars, and fools. It is a culture of contempt, where personal attack supplants rational debate, where artificial distinctions abound while valid ones are ignored. All is arbitrary here. Everything is relative. Law, ethics, and very reality are defined to suit the nefarious purposes of those in power.
My America is holographic, virtual. The faces that pretend to rule, the stentorian voices that speak to and for the people, the flags that flutter so high above our heads, are just as unreal and unreachable as those guiding principles now buried beneath heaps of self-interested rhetoric and pervasive apathy. The pretty, pithy phrases that so enthralled me in my youth -- "a government of laws, not of men," " the equal protection of the laws, " inalienable rights," "government of the people, by the people, and for the people" -- echo hollowly now in my ears.
An intangible Berlin Wall surrounds my America, an invisible Iron Curtain. I left my native land three times, seeking political asylum in the Netherlands, Denmark, and Belgium. In corruption and cowardice, those enlightened nations thrust me three times back into a virtual hell from which I can no longer even hope to escape. Virtual America, through its very palpable power, has spawned Virtual World.
I am a non-person, ignored or rejected by all, frustrated in my every earnest effort to obtain effective advocacy and justice under law. Define me now as an anti-American American citizen. I have become an enemy of the United States, not by any primal intent or plan of mine, but by the inhuman designs and machinations of my government these many years. One cannot love a government that abuses the human rights of its people and assiduously avoids accountability, that rewards selfishness over service, that abandons principle and enshrines expediency.
I see my government now attacking the poor as it has attacked me, stealing the liberties of others as it has mine, punishing victims while rewarding scoundrels. I see the people unaware, numbed, somnambulating. Hobbled as I am, there is little I can do to help. So isolated am I that I cannot even obtain information about United Nations human rights complaints that date back to 1991. I have voted three times with my feet. There is nothing here that makes me want to stay. Were I well enough and wealthy enough, I would surely shake from my soles the dust of this cosmically disappointing and dangerous place.
As an individual, I am no more important than all the other brave souls of earth -- most of them enduring far greater pain than I -- who may be considered Prisoners of Conscience. The significance of my circumstance lies in the power, contumacious attitude, and tyrannical intent of those who oppress me, and, as well, in my utter abandonment by those persons, organizations, and governments who carry the standard of decency and humanitarian concern. My experiences bespeak a serious breakdown of those systems -- state, national, and international, public and private -- that are supposed to control abuse of public power.
The sad reality is this: in practical terms, there is no United States Constitution. Those who really rule here are not elected by or accountable to the people. The Bill of Rights is contingent, circumstantial, virtual. What has happened to me -- much more than there is room here to tell -- can happen to anyone. Human rights, human liberty, security of mind and body, and the very concepts of dignity and decency may be lost forever.
I appeal to all who read this to hold my nation, as well as the European states against whom I have a cause of action, fully accountable under the international human rights agreements to which they have freely assented. Throw open the curtain. Let in the light. I have dignity, integrity, and intellect. Let them be recognized. I have charges to make. Let them be accepted and investigated. I have truth to tell. Let it be heard and understood. Let Virtual America actualize itself. Let Virtual World come to its senses, while there is still time.
Here's How It All Came About
Copyright © James Henry Graf, 1998
We like to think of the United States as a nation of honor and decency. Confronted with the unethical bio-chemical and radiation experiments of earlier decades, we ascribe their inhumanity to prevailing racism and Cold War anxiety that we now must surely have outgrown. An apology from the President (the former President, at least) creates an illusion of reform, then it's business as usual. Present practices, especially those occurring under color of "national security," go undisclosed and unexamined.Like the People's Republic of China, the United States stands, in fact, on what former President Clinton called "the wrong side of history." This nation does nothing to comply with -- and contumaciously violates -- the international human rights treaties to which it has become a state party.
Here's how it happened. In the early years of the Reagan Administration, when "fighting terrorism" and the "war on drugs" superseded human rights as priorities in both foreign and domestic policy, personnel were shifted among agencies, blurring the boundaries of authority and accountability. This permitted domestic law enforcement agents to exercise powers not constitutionally theirs in the name of "national security." Police, on or off duty, within or outside their jurisdictions, began to think and act like intelligence agents on a secret spy mission or a military operation. Conversely, military and intelligence agents were able to carry out illegitimate "covert ops," justified as "police business," against civilian Americans. Citizens became subjects. Subjects became suspects. Suspects became enemies.
The most abusive, anti-democratic elements in the military, intelligence, and law enforcement communities came to the fore. Outrageous violations of individual rights such as those documented in Ross Gelbspan's Break-Ins, Death Threats, and the FBI and Brian Glick's War At Home were the inevitable, and intentional, result. The age of "any old excuse will do" was born, and has continued to this day.
Privatization and community mobilization, moreover, provided a degree of deniability, relieving the perpetrators of government repression -- in their own minds, at least -- of any sense of responsibility under the Constitution. Suddenly, two-bit private investigators were dropping names and claiming "national security" as they violated the privacy, dignity, and constitutional rights of their fellow citizens. High-tech surveillance devices and secret files fell into the hands of vigilante lynch-mob fanatics bent on "social cleansing," determined to "get something on" people they didn't like.
Though participation and coverup are bipartisan, the Republican Party's involvement in America's persecution-and-torture agenda is deep and deplorable. The problem seems to have begun with "Nixon's Nazis," East-European fascists, many of them active Third Reich collaborators, whom the Republican Party imported during the 1950s and 1960s as political organizers in the "ethnic community" to counteract the heavily Democratic Jewish vote (see The Secret War Against the Jews by John Loftus -- an official of the US Department of Justice -- and Mark Aarons). As Linda Hunt revealed in her book Secret Agenda, this was one aspect of a larger phenomenon that included the use of Nazi intelligence agents and scientists by the US military and the fledgling CIA. For many years, some of the most powerful persons in America, exercising authority and possessing knowledge inaccessible to the average citizen, or even the average congressman, have displayed an ideology and code of conduct directly descended from Nazi Germany.
What we have here is semi-privatized state-terrorism, just as practiced in El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Colombia, and elsewhere. The United States of America, the world's oldest democracy, the world's pre-eminent military and economic power, is waging war against its own people.
My own personal experience is illustrative. In March, 1975, I became an employee of the New York State Department of Mental Hygiene. A year later, partly in response to scandals regarding events at Willowbrook State School, the State reorganized my department, separating the Office of Mental Health, dealing with psychiatric patients, from the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, for whom I worked.
The State of New York has a long history of experimenting on human subjects under conditions that fall short of informed consent, with results that are sometimes painful and occasionally fatal (see "New York Court Order Halts Some Research in Psychiatry," The New York Times, December 27, 1996, p. A1). The experimentation frequently has sinister overtones. Constitution, laws, and rules notwithstanding, those who conduct these experiments seem often to consider the "mentally incompetent" devoid of any rights that they are bound to respect. Though I have no access, God knows, to the records, I suspect multiple atrocities, involving chemical, bacteriological, and electromagnetic weapons testing.
Over the years, my former employers enjoyed frequent contact with law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including the military. My workplace in the 1980s became a hotbed of covert intelligence activity. In alignment with Reagan Administration policies, these forces concerned themselves primarily with "fighting terrorism" and the "war on drugs." Their definition of "terrorism" was loose, to say the least (see Break-Ins, Death Threats, and the FBI by retired Pulitzer-Prize-winning reporter Ross Gelbspan). The broad umbrella of "terrorism" covered peaceful, humanitarian activities like those of the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES). The Sanctuary Movement, whose efforts to save El Salvadoran refugees from involuntary repatriation and almost certain death, likewise fell under suspicion.
The Reagan Administration's persecution of persons and organizations opposing its policies in Central America seems, at one point, to have involved considerable scrutiny of Catholic University of America graduates from the 60s (I am a member of the Class of 1964). Jack Elder of the Sanctuary Movement, who had been a friend and Sigma Pi Delta fraternity brother of mine, was among those prosecuted for trying to help refugees. Pages 186 and 187 of the paperback edition of Break-ins, Death Threats, and the FBI tell of a right-wing private investigator and former CIA agent from Texas, Philip Mabry, who kept files on people opposed to American policies in Central America. His organization was named (note the irony) Americans for Human Rights and Social Justice!
In 1984, at the suggestion of Colonel Oliver North (of Contragate notoriety), Mabry wrote a letter to FBI Director William Webster in which he accused a number of groups and individuals of having Communist connections. Among those named in this McCarthyite witch hunt were the actresses Susan Anspach (a classmate of mine whom I knew) and Susan Sarandon (who went to Catholic University after we graduated, but who had grown up in my home state of New Jersey).
According to Ross Gelbspan, the letter was taken seriously. On December 27, 1984, Mabry received a reply from Assistant FBI Director Buck Revell that assured him "your concerns and comments will be carefully reviewed."
Though I was not a member of CISPES or Sanctuary, my employers, wishing to rid themselves of this troublesome "left-leaning" speech therapist, used their contacts in federal agencies to focus attention on me. In 1982, I had participated in a Jersey City, New Jersey demonstration opposing US military aid to El Salvador sponsored by CISPES. I had signed a petition opposing US policy against Nicaragua. I was also on the mailing list of the All Peoples Congress, an organization that Phil Mabry wouldn't like very much at all. When that demonstration took place, I was a member of a Hudson County, New Jersey grand jury that heard charges against at least two New York police officers apprehended in my state. Thomas Duffy, New York State Special Prosecutor, presented these police misconduct cases to my panel.
My workplace at 75 Morton Street in Manhattan's Greenwich Village served as a staging area for early actions in the "war on drugs." Administrators there consorted frequently with law enforcement officials. In 1985, Sergeant Richard Pike and Officer Jeffrey Gilbert of New York's 106th Precinct in Queens were charged with having used electric stun-guns to torture a marijuana suspect twelve years earlier (see "Two N.Y. cops arrested in stun gun torture of teenager," Newark, NJ Star-Ledger, April 23, 1985, p. 10). Hearing that Special Prosecutor William Dowling was planning to look into the matter, I wrote him a letter on May 15, 1985, reporting that I had seen both of the suspects outside their own precinct at my workplace, associating with Director of Education and Training Rocco Menta. Mssrs. Pike and Gilbert were later convicted of assault and coercion.
Throughout the 1980s, my agency's egregiously unscrupulous administrators used all the power and influence at their disposal to eliminate employees they didn't like. Obscenely intrusive, unbelievably extensive "lifestyle" investigations became a powerful administrative tool for staff reduction through intimidation -- blackmailing, blackballing, and blacklisting. When they could not unearth real evidence, the "evaluators" simply invented it. Claims of "national security" and "police business" assured universal cooperation and secrecy.
The process is practically identical to the system of psychiatric discreditation that prevailed in the last days of the Soviet Union (see "When Justice Is Just Another Form of Insanity: Case Histories in Soviet Psychiatry," The New York Times, January 24, 1988). In secret, non-adversarial "evaluations," personal information, usually contrived or criminally-obtained, is presented to a panel of "authorities" by way of building a case for mental incompetency or moral turpitude. These "Star Chamber" proceedings are not merely extrajudicial. They are criminally malicious.
There is no semblance of due process. Planted evidence, falsified documents, morphed photographs, and perjured testimony are more the rule than the exception. The "subjects" of such "evaluations" are not informed, before or after the fact, get no opportunity to present evidence, question witnesses, or make a statement, and cannot examine, obtain, or correct the records, which are nevertheless indiscriminately and illegally disclosed to many persons and agencies for malicious purposes.
Those who participate in this process are supremely sanctimonious -- smug, arrogant hypocrites. To them, our rights are crimes, their crimes are rights. They display a satanic consciousness that revels in obscene injustice and strives for maximum possible evil, setting about deliberately to punish the innocent, reward the guilty, make fools of the wise, corrupt the upright, and turn the very law itself into an instrument of criminality. Like the tripartite "process" cult from the 1960s that Maury Terry described in his book The Ultimate Evil, they seem to be synthetic multiple personalities, capable of anything, contemptuously lording it over those they consider inferior while themselves immersed in perversion. Though their technology is twenty-first century, they would be more at home in the thirteenth. Playing on Maury Terry's title, I have called them The Ultimate Medieval.
My resistance to, and whistleblowing regarding, these unconstitutional practices raised my status from "nuisance" to "enemy" in the eyes of my employers. At the instigation of New York State officials and their associates, the United States of America has waged war against me -- "low-intensity conflict," if you will -- since at least 1984. A surveillance device that emits ionizing radiation has become a weapon for destruction of my immune and reproductive systems. Subject to innumerable break-ins for which no legal recourse is available, I appear to have been poisoned over the years with chemical and biological weapons. Persons associated with my employers stabbed my dog in my own back yard in 1987. The next year, the State discharged me from my job after an improper ex parte disciplinary arbitration hearing that I was too sick to attend and that my union refused to attend on my behalf. On the same day, the Office for Civil Rights of the US Department of Health and Human Services dismissed my complaint of illegal retaliation, blaming everything on my alleged negative attitude toward my superiors. OCR denied my appeal of this decision.
In 1989, the New York State Public Employment Relations Board dismissed without a formal hearing my Improper Practice charge against the State and the union, then dismissed my appeal, also without a hearing. In October of that year, a suspicious "accident" destroyed my car while it sat in a legal parking space. The insurance adjuster tried to coerce my signature on a "power of attorney" form that incorrectly stated the car's serial number. Doing so could have sent me to jail for two years. When I provided him with the correct number, the adjuster sent me a second form with the same incorrect serial number. I continued to refuse. Then he sent a third form, with a different incorrect serial number. The New Jersey Department of Insurance found nothing improper in this.
Sporadically since 1985, and continuously since September, 1987, government agents and their associates have subjected me to the hell on earth of "Marlin Fitzwater's Private Purgatory" -- electromagnetic tracking, surveillance, and mind-reading technologies. Repulsive, anonymous "voices" torment and degrade me incessantly. Bio-chemical poisons weaken me and "biological process control" weapons disrupt somatic functions.
There is no recourse under law -- no escape, no rescue, no relief. My own Democratic Party has done nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to help. New Jersey officials of both parties have repeatedly denied me the equal protection of my native state's laws and will do nothing to secure my rights under federal law. Congressman Robert Menendez, who went to school with my niece's husband and knows my sister by her first name, will not even answer my letters! Non-governmental organizations ignore or insult me. This is a nation in denial, where hypocrisy and insouciance reign supreme.
This is intolerable. Human rights, based on the inherent dignity of the human person, apply to all individuals, without distinction. There's a Nigerian saying: "Not to know is bad; not to want to know is worse; not to hope is unthinkable; not to care is unforgivable."
- Let's all be willing to know.
- Let's all dare to hope.
- Let's all care -- about everyone.
Manifesto for the Millennium
Copyright © James Henry Graf, 1998
Adoption of bioethical standards is a meaningless exercise in a nation whose government has gone mad, a nation where secrecy provides cover for atrocities. In the United States of America, arbitrary power has supplanted due process. Those who really rule here have nothing but contempt for Law, Constitution, and the common concepts of human rights and human dignity.
Devices exist that can read people's thoughts, broadcast "voices" into their personal space, plant ideas in their heads, monitor their dreams, subject them to dreams that are not theirs, and interfere in distressing and degrading ways with their bodily functions and emotions. Such devices are available as torture implements for use by degenerate criminals. These are facts that we all have a "need to know."
The safety of society depends on the rule of law. All persons of good will must demand that the Executive Branch of the United States Government disclose without delay the existence and nature of these electromagnetic anti-personnel weapons, and submit the use of these devices to strict legal regulation and oversight. Chemical and biological weapons, moreover, should be banned outright, as they are in international law.
Once and for all, this nation must establish that no-one is above the law, that nothing supersedes the Bill of Rights, that national security is, first and foremost, the security of the nation's people, and that human rights apply to all individuals, without distinction.
I offer for the consideration of all persons of good will the following manifesto, setting forth self-evident rights whose clear delineation has become a sad necessity.
- Freedom of thought is, and must forever remain, absolute. People may think anything they want, any time or place they wish.
- Thoughts are not actions. One cannot be held responsible for one's thoughts, be they intentional, random, or imposed. There can be no law against thinking, nor does thinking violate any law that exists.
- Thoughts are, and must forever remain, private. No-one may know another's thoughts, probe another's memory, examine another's conscience, or monitor another's dreams, unless the other chooses to share them. This applies as well to all those bodily sensations, emissions, reflexes or functions not ordinarily observable from a public place. They are private and personal. To intrude upon them is to violate the dignity of the human person.
- No-one may impose thoughts, images, sensations, responses, or physiological functions on another individual without that person's express and continuing consent. No-one is entitled to poison anyone else. These are unconscionable assaults upon human dignity and personal integrity.
- Electromagnetic violation of privacy, disruption of mental or somatic integrity, and deprivation of personal autonomy clearly constitute cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment, mounting frequently to the level of torture. The same is true of chemical and biological poisoning. The human rights treaties that embody humanity's highest standards of compassionate justice demand objective investigation of all such violations and the provision of effective remedies and appropriate compensation to those so abused.
- We are human beings, not horses to be ridden, cows to be milked, rats to be run through mazes or lambs to be sacrificed. We are not toys, not tools, not weapons. We are persons, free and equal. We are the people, not a hostile foreign army. We demand -- and all should demand -- full recognition and effective protection of our dignity and our rights, full liberty under law, and the promise of perpetual respect for ourselves and the generations to come.
Torture, American Style -- The Wave of the Future?
The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment defines torture as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions."This definition makes no distinction between mental torture and physical torture, nor is it restricted to acts inflicted on persons in prison or held under conditions of physical custody or control. Nevertheless, advocates and authorities consistently make such distinctions.
Amnesty International has assumed a dominant role among non-governmental organizations, especially in its influence at the UN. Amnesty's prisoner-oriented mandate, however, creates a blind spot, reducing or eliminating any possible focus on cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment inflicted on persons not physically confined or controlled.
The Initial Report of the United States of America to the UN Committee Against Torture, submitted four years late, reflects the "understandings" imposed by the US Senate in its ratification of the Convention. These provide a very convenient loophole for certain forms of torture and state terrorism. The Clinton Administration's justification for these "understandings" is posted in Part II of the Report, from which I quote here.
"U.S. Understandings. In order to clarify the meaning of `torture' and to delineate the scope of application of the Convention with the greater precision required under U.S. domestic law, the United States conditioned its ratification upon several understandings related to Article 1. ..."
[JH Graf's comment: Greater precision, or deliberate evasion and obfuscation?]
"a. ... assessment of mental pain and suffering can be a very subjective undertaking. There was some concern within the U.S. criminal justice community that in this respect the Convention's definition regrettably fell short of the constitutionally required precision for defining criminal offenses. To provide the requisite clarity for purposes of domestic law, the United States therefore conditioned its ratification upon an understanding that, in order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from:
- (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
- (2) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
- (3) the threat of imminent death; or
- (4) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality."
[JH Graf's comment: This excludes from the definition of mental torture the deliberate exploitation of the victim's anxieties or phobias. It also excludes such mental terrorism as the torture of animals and intense, frequent, malicious, organized interference with computers.]
"b. For similar reasons of clarity and specificity, United States adherence was conditioned on the understanding that the definition of `torture' in Article 1 is intended to apply `only to acts directed against persons in the offender's custody or physical control' in order to clarify the relationship of the Convention to normal military and law enforcement operations."
[JH Graf's comment: This excludes all torture inflicted on persons not in custody, such as that involving terrorism and the use of electromagnetic or bio-chemical weapons. See "John Akwei vs. NSA" and "Marks of Torture."]
" ... d. The United States further stated its view that the term `acquiescence,' as used in Article 1, requires that a `public official, prior to the activity constituting torture, have awareness of such activity and thereafter breach his legal responsibility to intervene to prevent such activity.' The purpose of this condition was to make it clear that both actual knowledge and `willful blindness' fall within the definition of `acquiescence' in Article 1."
[JH Graf's comment: This conveniently limits the definition of "acquiescence" to circumstances involving prior knowledge, thus excusing Presidents George W. Bush, William J. Clinton, and George H.W. Bush, for instance, of responsibility for programs and actions begun under President Reagan, even if they had knowledge of them and did nothing to stop them.]
Torture by means of electromagnetic weapons, bio-chemical weapons, and organized terrorism frequently occurs outside the bounds of physical custody. Its victims usually cannot identify the perpetrators, may not even understand the nature of their experiences, may consider themselves mentally ill or be regarded as such by others. Amnesty International is not interested in such victims because we are not in prison cells.
Other non-governmental organizations likewise turn their backs. Advocates can "handle" such abuses as electric shock, mutilation, rape, and other physical attacks. These are graphic, documentable, attributable to particular individuals in particular places. State terrorism and mental torture, however, are inflicted from a distance, through surreptitious intrusion by nameless, faceless perpetrators using classified technologies and bio-chemical weapons. These abuses are hard to document, hard to prove, easy to rationalize as symptoms of mental disorder. We victims are routinely ignored, disbelieved, dismissed. Thus, society at large makes itself an accomplice to the torture.
America's torture agenda threatens everyone. There's certainly no lack of torture in the world, and ordinary materials suffice to inflict suffering, but the forms of torture embraced by the United States of America are the wave of the future, since, of their very nature, they tend to discredit the victim. The world must come to terms with this awful reality, before it's too late, for us victims and for the very continuance of civilization.
Whether a conspiracy of silence is a conspiracy of complicity, of cowardice, of stupidity, or of apathy is an academic consideration in the long run. Nothing but the truth will do. Nothing but justice under law will save the world.
James Henry Graf's Angelfire Home Page
Psychotronics Victim James Henry Graf's well done Web Site is written in a beautifully literate fashion. It not only covers his predicament, but also the organizations behind it, some of which he ran into at work before being disabled.Throughout James Graf's writings is a thread of justice and human decency.
JH Graf's Human Rights Forum
From James Henry Graf:
From: James Henry Graf (JHGRAF)
To: ALL March. 22, 2002
I suppose the time has come for a formal announcement.
The future of Delphi is dubious. We should all be considering contingency plans.
Strange things have been happening, moreover, with respect to me and this forum. In the past few days, we have had an astounding number of "guest" visits. From just four of such visits on March 15, we jumped to 420 the next day. There were 126 on March 17, 110 on March 18,50 on March 19, 51 on the 20th, and 33 yesterday.
At first, I took this for a positive sign. Since it coincided with the convening of the UN Human Rights Committee in New York, I hoped that somebody might be considering my complaints before that committee.
Apparently, that was not the case. It now seems that somebody has mobilized a large group of individuals for the purpose of trying to "get something on" this forum, as was suggested in the past.
According to a post on the "Wit's End" forum, the increase of guest visits here resulted from action taken by the person who posted that discussion, whose title is "Wacky Delphi Forums!". Starting with the lead message of that discussion, the poster and his cohorts defamed me, subjected me to brutal ridicule, demeaned my personal dignity,called me out of my name, mocked my pain and the pain of innocentothers, lampooned my physical disability, and behaved in a manner than no decent person could support. They also contumaciously flaunted Delphi's Terms of Service. =20
Delphi's response, however, to my TOS (Terms of Service)complaint was so unsatisfactory as to cause me to wonder whether the fix is in. It could be that somebody intends to make this forum disappear,as others have.
Well, the port in a storm is already established. It is my great pleasure to announce the Human Rights Community on EZ .
It's a class operation -- better, in some respects, than Delphi. The platform is fast and attractive. The system is very flexible. Basic access is free. For the next couple of weeks (for the life of the board if I can cough up $12.00 a month), our community willhave no pop-up ads. Check out my Welcome message at Ezboard.com
EZ calls its boards communities. Within each community, the Administrator can create a number of forums (like the category folders here). It's possible to give a member administrative authority over one or more forums. Nice system. Whatever happens, we're ready.
James Henry Graf
Please Make the UN Do Its Job!
James Graf has created the Human Rights Forum, a fancy message board for mind control victims.
this may be closing soon so use the one above. ThanksE-mail: jhgraf2@earthlink.net
Or jhgraf@delphiforums.com