Friday, July 27, 2012

Out of prison

Three weeks ago I was arrested while jogging and charged with incitement based on opinions expressed on this blog. I was imprisoned and faced up to 8 years. However, now an appellate court (Gulating lagmannsrett) has ruled that my blog is actually legal, so assuming the Supreme Court upholds this decision next week, the entire case stands to collapse for the prosecution and I am completely exonerated. Some of my utterances may have been infelicitous (and won't be repeated), but they are not illegal under current law.

It has been quite an adventure being treated as an extremely dangerous enemy of the state, and I will have lots more to say about my prison experience later. Now I must try to piece my life back together, which is difficult because the cops stole all my computers and storage media etc. and made a mess of all the rest of my belongings. Of course, with my controversial opinions I know better than having anything illegal at home, but that does not stop the cops from dreaming up conspiracy theories based on whatever everyday items they find. Among the things seized are normal books bought at Amazon, notebooks, calendars and papers, even printouts of newspaper articles. They also later returned and stole all my perfectly legal cactuses, which amounts to sheer bullying. They impounded a folder labeled "The Harlem Renaissance," which contained my notes and articles (from when I was a grad student in English in 2002-4) about that literary movement. In the documents provided to my lawyer this has become "The Harlem Resistance." Apparently they think this is evidence of terrorist plans or whatever. Textbooks about explosives handed to me by the Army when I was conscripted back in 1997 were also presented by the cops to the courts and media as evidence that I am seriously dangerous and need to be imprisoned. When this nonsense was exposed, they started attacking my mental health, portraying me as mentally unstable before I talked to a psychiatrist who reached the opposite conclusion and found me sane. These are just some examples of the incredible turns of events in this case. And if it doesn't end in the Supreme Court next week, I have a hell of a trial to look forward to, which I will take full advantage of as a pulpit for men's rights activism.