Censorship is repugnant to me -- as it is to most....

Censorship is an abomination

By Frank Pitz
Online Journal Contributing Writer
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/053105Pitz/053105pitz.html

May 31, 2005—Censorship is repugnant to me—as it is to most thinking people. I was a young kid during the Second World War and heard—as well as listened to—examples of "wartime censorship" around the kitchen table. From 1950 to 1954 Joe McCarthy personified the dark side of power gone wrong. In the 60s and 70s the thought police of J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO were always skulking about.

I suppose my first brush with censorship happened in 8th grade in a Catholic school. A friend had passed on to me a well-worn copy of Dalton Trumbo's "Johnny Got His Gun." I made the mistake of doing an extemporaneous book report on it which promptly got me hauled off to the Mother Superior, coupled with a lecture from the parish priest about something to do with subversives and communists, etc. Of course this was 1950, but it still pissed me off to no end—shortly after that I left the Catholic educational system as well as the Catholic Church—much to the dismay of my mother and grandmother who felt I was condemned to a life of perdition.

In early 1985, I was writing for a small "alternative" newspaper in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. A physician friend of mine and I began writing a series of articles relating to the AIDS epidemic then being ignored by a majority of the media, as well as our federal government. Mark and I were doing articles along the lines of what most gay activist organizations and clinics were doing at that time; stuff on 'safe sex' and included in the articles were things relating to 'clean needles,' etc. All of those articles used the sexual terminology that was talked about openly within the gay community, as well as the substance abuse population and much of the language was pretty damn frank.

I believe it was the third installment of the series when our commercial—bought and paid for—printer refused to print the newspaper. He had called me a day after the galleys had been dropped at his place of business and stated that he "could not print such foul material." That was not my first professional brush with censorship. Fortunately for us, through friends at the Philadelphia Gay News, we acquired a substitute printer, and the issue went out. Unfortunately for the censoring printer our story—and newspaper—became a cause celebre throughout a wide area bringing no small amount of condemnation down on the printer-as-censor's head.

A year or so later, on October 22, 1986, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop published his now famous report on the AIDS epidemic. This report was explicit, nonjudgmental, controversial, and popular. Koop's treatment of AIDS as a public health crisis rather than a "moral issue" won him many supporters—but many, many more enemies within the Reagan administration and among Christian right-wing nuts. Oddly enough it was these same Christian fascists who supported Koop's nomination as surgeon general because of his avowed anti-abortion stance, but once he ventured into the realm of sex—particularly homosexual sex he became a pariah.

In the mid-nineties, while self-publishing a small newsletter/paper in California, a local politician took exception to something I had to say about him and sued me for $250,000. He lost, but so did I as I had to fold the paper over the legal battle. So, censorship hits damn close to home for me, and in this post 9/11 paranoid, fascist era it is rearing its ugly head like never before in my lifetime.

Since I have been submitting articles for publication on the web I have had two occasions in which an editor declined to post for fear of the USA PATRIOT Act. Though I disagreed with the decisions, I must respect them as they relate to other people's livelihoods. Given the particular anarchistic bent of the web, I had them published elsewhere. Interestingly enough, though, one of the articles which was published by DC Indy Media this past April in which I called for a real May Day celebration with strikes and blockades has since "disappeared" both from Google archives as well as the DC Indy Media site.

I recall reading an article posted on Open Democracy last May by Siva Vaidhyanathan in which he recounts removing a sign—"This Machine Kills Fascists"—from the cover of his laptop as he went through security at Newark Airport. The phrase is a quote from one which Woody Guthrie had written on his guitar—good thing we didn't have the TSA when Woody was around. Siva's article is a soul-searching exercise on his small battle with self-censorship. He leaves the security checkpoint—after removing his sign—with "pangs of guilt." Towards the end of his article he apologizes by stating: "I am not worthy of Woody Guthrie's legacy. I wonder how many of us are." Indeed, I also wonder just how many of us are worthy of Guthrie's legacy?

(Note: Siva Vaidhyanathan is assistant professor of Culture and Communication at New York State University. He is the author of "Copyrights and Copywrongs"—New York University Press, 2001; and "The Anarchist in the Library"—Best Books 2004.)

In addition to the information dissemination, and free exchange of ideas and debate that are now curtailed by the USA PATRIOT Act, there is also the matter of scientific research, science reviews, and papers published. There is perhaps no other area in which the Bush administration has enacted a more egregious structure of censorship than against the scientific community. You may debate me on that if you will, I realize that individual freedoms are threatened; I realize that the news media is subservient to the Bush cabal, but in the scientific arena from which flows so much for the common good, things don't look good, either.

Since February 2002, when the Defense Department began a policy of "pre-publication control" on scientific articles financed by the government, the Bush administration has removed some 6,500 documents and research papers. The Department of Agriculture, as well, has banned the National Academy of Sciences from publishing any studies that could be classified as "agriterrorism." One supposes that this rule does not apply to the Bush agribusiness supporters with their global proliferation of genetically modified terrorism upon the people.

The microbiological sciences are being severely hampered in that research into the production of new antibiotics has been cramped because of the Bush administration's edicts relating to "bioterror." If the fears of biological warfare—and who has a larger arsenal than the United States?—are to be believed, one would think that Führer Bush would want all the tools at his disposal to protect the populace. But not Mr. Bush, for in this case—as in many others—censorship acts as a weapon in which the prime motivator is not fear of bioterror, but control of the masses through fear.

Another chilling example related to the science front is the uproar being created by the Christian Taliban against certain science documentaries shown on big screen Imax theaters in Science and History museums. Many of these museums, particularly in the South, have brought out the frothing at the mouth Christian right wing nuts railing against such scientific documentaries as "Cosmic Voyage," a journey through the far-flung universe; "Galapagos," the islands of Darwin; and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," which depicts many of the strange creatures which inhabit areas near those hot vents in the ocean's floor. The one engendering the most contention right now is "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea" because it dares suggest that life on Earth may just have originated from such conditions. Of course we all know how the Christian Taliban feel about Darwin; and as for "Cosmic Voyage" the majority of those same folks think the Earth is it, no ifs, ands, or buts, about it.

So Big Brother is most assuredly alive and well in Führer Bush's administration. From the thought police up through and including the science police there is no thought, speech, printed word, or scientific principle that will be revealed before its time—of course Bush and his Gestapo control the time and the thoughts.

You can email your uncensored thoughts to Frank Pitz at fpitz@comcast.net .

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