interesting exchange from email list i'm on:
FROM KAIA SAND...
Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press and has been active on social justice issues for years, recently has been organizing "whistleblowers"--trying to support people to speak out courageously from within institutions. He doesn't think "whistleblower" is a term that works (not really accurate--it really seems to indicate a quick referee-stop-to-the-action, rather than ethical-actions-with-duration), and he asked Jules to turn this over to poets for ideas, asking that we
"think of a better name for whistleblowing (better than leaking, treason, snitching, informing, etc.). Others have tried; truth-telling (or, courageous truth-telling, risk-taking truth-telling, etc.) is the best we've come up with. Is there a positive model from history or fiction for what we're talking about? (Paul Revere has been used, but it's not quite right, either)." If you have any ideas, let me know, and I'll pass it on!
Kaia •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• the tangent press poetry projects www.thetangentpress.org/ksand.html
FROM DAN BOUCHARD:
There's gotta be something. This is very exciting. Did Ellsberg really reach out to Jules personally? What manner of person would think of such a quest and also think, "let's turn to the poets..." Extraordinary!
First thought: if "whistleblower" is to be replaced, its replacement needs to be more concise and catchy. "Whistleblower" is both a person and an action. Its tie to an ethical action, or at least to an action in which there are no actual whistles, is implicit. It's like "watchdog" or "watchdog group." No dogs involved. Personally, I'm not convinced it needs to be replaced, and am certainly not convinced it CAN be replaced because some people decided to replace it.
Is there a positive model from history? Yes, Daniel Ellsberg. Can his name be turned to a representative noun or verb? " . . . the report was Ellsberged to the press last week . . . " Or, Joe Blow, an account turned Ellsbergian from Duluth . . ." No, that doesn't work.
This is where the model of a "writing workshop" could actually be useful. Who wants to workshop this assignment with me?
After reading Kaia's message I immediately thought of a situation I heard of in which someone needed assistance. Something had spilled in the person's car and fungus was growing under the seat. What to do? The advice was to expose the area to light and it would kill the fungus. What's the term by which that process works?
The idea of transparent processes/institutions tied to ethics, particularly in a democracy where such things are taken for granted (therefore more difficult to convince people something wrong is going on) needs to be at the core of the new word. Ellsberg, whose name is synonomous with the Pentagon Papers, and the action or turning documents over to the press, is an obvious place to begin.
It must contain the idea of the agent exposing a situation or document to the press / public / light for ethical purposes (that is, if people knew this was going on they would find it unacceptable, and the authors/agents of that situation or document know it).
It's got to be four syllables or less and not sound like it came out of a textbook. It could be an acronym. It's got to be able to serve as both noun and verb.
FROM DAN BOUCHARD PART TWO...
Please read this before arriving at the workshop.
Truths Worth Telling September 28, 2004
By DANIEL ELLSBERG
Kensington, Calif. - On a tape recording made in the Oval Office on June 14, 1971, H. R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon's chief of staff, can be heard citing Donald Rumsfeld, then a White House aide, on the effect of the Pentagon Papers, news of which had been published on the front page of that morning's newspaper: "Rumsfeld was making this point this morning,'' Haldeman says. "To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say, and you can't rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong." He got it exactly right. But it's a lesson that each generation of voters and each new set of leaders have to learn for themselves. Perhaps Mr. Rumsfeld - now secretary of defense, of course - has reflected on this truth recently as he has contemplated the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. According to the government's own reporting, the situation there is far bleaker than Mr. Rumsfeld has recognized or President Bush has acknowledged on the campaign trail. Understandably, the American people are reluctant to believe that their president has made errors of judgment that have cost American lives. To convince them otherwise, there is no substitute for hard evidence: documents, photographs, transcripts. Often the only way for the public to get such evidence is if a dedicated public servant decides to release it without permission. Such a leak occurred recently with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was prepared in July. Reports of the estimate's existence and overall pessimism - but not its actual conclusions - have prompted a long-overdue debate on the realities and prospects of the war. But its judgments of the relative likelihood and the strength of evidence pointing to the worst possibilities remain undisclosed. Since the White House has refused to release the full report, someone else should do so. Leakers are often accused of being partisan, and undoubtedly many of them are. But the measure of their patriotism should be the accuracy and the importance of the information they reveal. It would be a great public service to reveal a true picture of the administration's plans for Iraq - especially before this week's debate on foreign policy between Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry. The military's real estimates of the projected costs - in manpower, money and casualties - of various long-term plans for Iraq should be made public, in addition to the more immediate costs in American and Iraqi lives of the planned offensive against resistant cities in Iraq that appears scheduled for November. If military or intelligence experts within the government predict disastrous political consequences in Iraq from such urban attacks, these judgments should not remain secret. Leaks on the timing of this offensive - and on possible call-up of reserves just after the election - take me back to Election Day 1964, which I spent in an interagency working group in the State Department. The purpose of our meeting was to examine plans to expand the war - precisely the policy that voters soundly rejected at the polls that day. We couldn't wait until the next day to hold our meeting because the plan for the bombing of North Vietnam had to be ready as soon as possible. But we couldn't have held our meeting the day before because news of it might have been leaked - not by me, I'm sorry to say. And President Lyndon Johnson might not have won in a landslide had voters known he was lying when he said that his administration sought "no wider war." Seven years and almost 50,000 American deaths later, after I had leaked the Pentagon Papers, I had a conversation with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two senators who had voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution in August 1964. If I had leaked the documents then, he said, the resolution never would have passed. That was hard to hear. But in 1964 it hadn't occurred to me to break my vow of secrecy. Though I knew that the war was a mistake, my loyalties then were to the secretary of defense and the president. It took five years of war before I recognized the higher loyalty all officials owe to the Constitution, the rule of law, the soldiers in harm's way or their fellow citizens. Like Robert McNamara, under whom I served, Mr. Rumsfeld appears to inspire great loyalty among his aides. As the scandal at Abu Ghraib shows, however, there are more important principles. Mr. Rumsfeld might not have seen the damning photographs and the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba as soon as he did - just as he would never have seen the Pentagon Papers 33 years ago - if some anonymous people in his own department had not bypassed the chain of command and disclosed them, without authorization, to the news media. And without public awareness of the scandal, reforms would be less likely. A federal judge has ordered the administration to issue a list of all documents relating to the scandal by Oct. 15. Will Mr. Rumsfeld release the remaining photos, which depict treatment that he has described as even worse? It's highly unlikely, especially before Nov. 2. Meanwhile, the full Taguba report remains classified, and the findings of several other inquiries into military interrogation and detention practices have yet to be released. All administrations classify far more information than is justifiable in a democracy - and the Bush administration has been especially secretive. Information should never be classified as secret merely because it is embarrassing or incriminating. But in practice, in this as in any administration, no information is guarded more closely. Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: don't repeat my mistakes. Don't wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives. Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims. Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials. Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/opinion/28ellsberg.html?ex=1097380203&ei=1&en=a7823f529075cc48
FROM KAIA SAND...
Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press and has been active on social justice issues for years, recently has been organizing "whistleblowers"--trying to support people to speak out courageously from within institutions. He doesn't think "whistleblower" is a term that works (not really accurate--it really seems to indicate a quick referee-stop-to-the-action, rather than ethical-actions-with-duration), and he asked Jules to turn this over to poets for ideas, asking that we
"think of a better name for whistleblowing (better than leaking, treason, snitching, informing, etc.). Others have tried; truth-telling (or, courageous truth-telling, risk-taking truth-telling, etc.) is the best we've come up with. Is there a positive model from history or fiction for what we're talking about? (Paul Revere has been used, but it's not quite right, either)." If you have any ideas, let me know, and I'll pass it on!
Kaia •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• the tangent press
FROM DAN BOUCHARD:
There's gotta be something. This is very exciting. Did Ellsberg really reach out to Jules personally? What manner of person would think of such a quest and also think, "let's turn to the poets..." Extraordinary!
First thought: if "whistleblower" is to be replaced, its replacement needs to be more concise and catchy. "Whistleblower" is both a person and an action. Its tie to an ethical action, or at least to an action in which there are no actual whistles, is implicit. It's like "watchdog" or "watchdog group." No dogs involved. Personally, I'm not convinced it needs to be replaced, and am certainly not convinced it CAN be replaced because some people decided to replace it.
Is there a positive model from history? Yes, Daniel Ellsberg. Can his name be turned to a representative noun or verb? " . . . the report was Ellsberged to the press last week . . . " Or, Joe Blow, an account turned Ellsbergian from Duluth . . ." No, that doesn't work.
This is where the model of a "writing workshop" could actually be useful. Who wants to workshop this assignment with me?
After reading Kaia's message I immediately thought of a situation I heard of in which someone needed assistance. Something had spilled in the person's car and fungus was growing under the seat. What to do? The advice was to expose the area to light and it would kill the fungus. What's the term by which that process works?
The idea of transparent processes/institutions tied to ethics, particularly in a democracy where such things are taken for granted (therefore more difficult to convince people something wrong is going on) needs to be at the core of the new word. Ellsberg, whose name is synonomous with the Pentagon Papers, and the action or turning documents over to the press, is an obvious place to begin.
It must contain the idea of the agent exposing a situation or document to the press / public / light for ethical purposes (that is, if people knew this was going on they would find it unacceptable, and the authors/agents of that situation or document know it).
It's got to be four syllables or less and not sound like it came out of a textbook. It could be an acronym. It's got to be able to serve as both noun and verb.
FROM DAN BOUCHARD PART TWO...
Please read this before arriving at the workshop.
Truths Worth Telling September 28, 2004
By DANIEL ELLSBERG
Kensington, Calif. - On a tape recording made in the Oval Office on June 14, 1971, H. R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon's chief of staff, can be heard citing Donald Rumsfeld, then a White House aide, on the effect of the Pentagon Papers, news of which had been published on the front page of that morning's newspaper: "Rumsfeld was making this point this morning,'' Haldeman says. "To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say, and you can't rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong." He got it exactly right. But it's a lesson that each generation of voters and each new set of leaders have to learn for themselves. Perhaps Mr. Rumsfeld - now secretary of defense, of course - has reflected on this truth recently as he has contemplated the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. According to the government's own reporting, the situation there is far bleaker than Mr. Rumsfeld has recognized or President Bush has acknowledged on the campaign trail. Understandably, the American people are reluctant to believe that their president has made errors of judgment that have cost American lives. To convince them otherwise, there is no substitute for hard evidence: documents, photographs, transcripts. Often the only way for the public to get such evidence is if a dedicated public servant decides to release it without permission. Such a leak occurred recently with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was prepared in July. Reports of the estimate's existence and overall pessimism - but not its actual conclusions - have prompted a long-overdue debate on the realities and prospects of the war. But its judgments of the relative likelihood and the strength of evidence pointing to the worst possibilities remain undisclosed. Since the White House has refused to release the full report, someone else should do so. Leakers are often accused of being partisan, and undoubtedly many of them are. But the measure of their patriotism should be the accuracy and the importance of the information they reveal. It would be a great public service to reveal a true picture of the administration's plans for Iraq - especially before this week's debate on foreign policy between Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry. The military's real estimates of the projected costs - in manpower, money and casualties - of various long-term plans for Iraq should be made public, in addition to the more immediate costs in American and Iraqi lives of the planned offensive against resistant cities in Iraq that appears scheduled for November. If military or intelligence experts within the government predict disastrous political consequences in Iraq from such urban attacks, these judgments should not remain secret. Leaks on the timing of this offensive - and on possible call-up of reserves just after the election - take me back to Election Day 1964, which I spent in an interagency working group in the State Department. The purpose of our meeting was to examine plans to expand the war - precisely the policy that voters soundly rejected at the polls that day. We couldn't wait until the next day to hold our meeting because the plan for the bombing of North Vietnam had to be ready as soon as possible. But we couldn't have held our meeting the day before because news of it might have been leaked - not by me, I'm sorry to say. And President Lyndon Johnson might not have won in a landslide had voters known he was lying when he said that his administration sought "no wider war." Seven years and almost 50,000 American deaths later, after I had leaked the Pentagon Papers, I had a conversation with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two senators who had voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution in August 1964. If I had leaked the documents then, he said, the resolution never would have passed. That was hard to hear. But in 1964 it hadn't occurred to me to break my vow of secrecy. Though I knew that the war was a mistake, my loyalties then were to the secretary of defense and the president. It took five years of war before I recognized the higher loyalty all officials owe to the Constitution, the rule of law, the soldiers in harm's way or their fellow citizens. Like Robert McNamara, under whom I served, Mr. Rumsfeld appears to inspire great loyalty among his aides. As the scandal at Abu Ghraib shows, however, there are more important principles. Mr. Rumsfeld might not have seen the damning photographs and the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba as soon as he did - just as he would never have seen the Pentagon Papers 33 years ago - if some anonymous people in his own department had not bypassed the chain of command and disclosed them, without authorization, to the news media. And without public awareness of the scandal, reforms would be less likely. A federal judge has ordered the administration to issue a list of all documents relating to the scandal by Oct. 15. Will Mr. Rumsfeld release the remaining photos, which depict treatment that he has described as even worse? It's highly unlikely, especially before Nov. 2. Meanwhile, the full Taguba report remains classified, and the findings of several other inquiries into military interrogation and detention practices have yet to be released. All administrations classify far more information than is justifiable in a democracy - and the Bush administration has been especially secretive. Information should never be classified as secret merely because it is embarrassing or incriminating. But in practice, in this as in any administration, no information is guarded more closely. Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: don't repeat my mistakes. Don't wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives. Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims. Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials. Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/opinion/28ellsberg.html?ex=1097380203&ei=1&en=a7823f529075cc48
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