To: chomsky@mit.edu, f130smith@mindspring.com
Cc: silence63@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: Censorship in Academia
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 00:15:00 -0400

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Dear Prof. Chomsky :

Since you are a concerned academic and citizen, who has fought for years against injustice, I would like to bring to your attention the level of corruption and hypocrisy that has plagued the world of science, Physics in particular, in recent years . No wonder why this country ( USA ) is spiraling into Fascism.

There is an illicit and unfortunate censorship going on at the Los Alamos-Cornell electronic preprint archives. Such electronic archives are the *bloodline* of Physics research nowadays which has replaced journals in the dissemination of novel ideas.

It appears that there could be *hundreds* of scientists in the archives Black-List ( Cornell professor Paul Ginsparg's black-list ) reminiscent of the McCarthy era. Electronic-preprints from this black-list of scientists are being removed automatically and/or manually before they appear in the daily listings, irrespective of form, content, correctness and without a peer-review analysis.

What is very disturbing about this illicit censorship is that it seems to originate from complaints mailed to the archives ( Paul Ginsparg ) from *unknown* sources about some particular individual resulting in the black-listing of that particular scientist.
Even more disturbing is that the scientist is found guilty without ever knowing WHO the accuser was, nor WHAT is the thing he is being accused of, and without any chances of defending himself. Kafka himself would have been amazed at the efficiency in which this censorship is attained. Once your name is in the black-list, all FUTURE papers, irrespective of form and content are removed without any peer-reviewed study whatsoever.

Due to this horrendous Scientific-Gulag practices, there are suggestions being proposed for an UNESCO take-over of the Los Alamos-Cornell archives . I hope this happens.  In the meantime, I urge you to please raise this situation to the attention of other concerned citizens, colleagues and professionals to bring an end to this illicit censorship that undermines creative freedom, destroys careers and robs humanity of potential important discoveries.

There are several lawsuits filed against Los Alamos-Cornell ( Paul Ginsparg ) but this does not seem to have changed nor deterred these censorship policies. On the contrary, they ( Ginsparg ) have reinforced those censorship policies even stronger in blatant violation and defiance of the USA law.  If you wish to have information about the lawsuits and other specific details of this censorship you may contact Tony Smith ( an attorney and scientist ) to this e-mail : f130smith@mindspring.com

Thank you very much

Best wishes

Dr. Carlos Castro Perelman

( I was an MIT student, under the supervision of Prof. Phillip Morrison)

From: Noam Chomsky <chomsky@MIT.EDU>
To: "carlos castro" <czarlosromanov@hotmail.com> (by
way of Noam Chomsky
<chomsky@mit.edu>)
Subject: Re: Censorship in Academia
Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 13:22:32 -0400

Dear Dr. Castro Perelman,

A very ugly story indeed, and surprising. I wouldn't
have guessed that physicists would allow them to get
away with this. That's the community within which
the issue should be addressed, and I hope it will be.

Noam Chomsky