The Case Against Broad Government Surveillance

For a while I thought I might be coming at the matter of government surveillance from a different perspective then a lot of people. I read comments from others who say they are a little concerned but they say they just always figure the government is listening in anyway.

I'm a product of the Vietnam generation and we came to learn that President Nixon had agents going to peace rallies and document participants. Of course their efforts were remedial by surveillance standards today but the fact is they kept file on people they considered a threat to this country because they exercised their constitutional right to assembly to protest our involvement in Vietnam. Think what he could have done with the technology available today? I'm relatively confident that Nixon was so paranoid of average Americans that he would be salivating over what the government is doing today to you and I.

I was both encouraged and discouraged by a PEN America survey of American writers that found 85% are worried about government surveillance and 73% have never been more worried about privacy rights and freedom of the press as they are today. The encouraging part is writers are paying attention. This is a good thing.  Of course the concern doesn't alleviate the erosion of privacy. And beside from the concern there is another down side... it is impacting how writers conduct themselves.

The PEN survey indicates the 28% or nearly a third have curtailed or avoided social media activities and another 12% have seriously considered doing the same, all because of the threat of surveillance. And nearly one quarter (24%) have deliberately  avoided certain topics in phone and email conversations. Another 9% have seriously considered this avenue.

One chilling effect this is having on writers is 16%  have avoided writing or speaking  about a particular topic. Another 11% seriously considered it.

The report goes on....

• 16% refrained from conducting searches on the Internet or visiting websites on topics they consider controversial.
• 13% have taken steps to disguise or cover their digital footprints. 
• 3% have actually declined opportunities to meet in person or electronically with persons how might be deemed security threats by the government. 

In each of these instances there were measurable numbers who seriously considered taking these same drastic steps.

It troubles me that writers, be they journalists or or in the literary arts are finding themselves self-censoring over fear from our own government.

The 4th Amendment, freedom of the press is necessary to assure the survival of the republic against the kinds controls the brought to power fascist governments in Germany, the Soviet Union and China in years past. These are some of the same kinds of extremes we are seeing in many middle-eastern countries as well.

I am not convinced that a more secure America is one in which we are all under the watchful eyes of the government. That is an awesome power and one that can very easily lead to dangers in our democracy right here at home.

The press, the arts were all under watchful eyes in  Nazi Germany. The government controlled the flow of information and yes even the arts. Knowledge is a powerful freedom for people. The control of knowledge too is powerful but in subverts the liberties of people.

Banned Book Week - Thought for the day

What progress we are making.  In the Middle Ages they would have burned me.  Now they are content with burning my books.  ~Sigmund Freud, 1933

Another Quote for Banned Book Week

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.  For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.  ~John F. Kennedy


       

Monday Mentions

A few things in no particular order of importance...

• It's banned Book Week and in recognition thereof, the following quote by Justice Potter Stewart - Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself.  It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. 
• I was delighted to get my copy of Letters From The Emily Dickinson Room in the mail Saturday. It was in the quiet of the afternoon that I read it through completely the first time. I will have more to say about it later this week, but I was so impressed by it I could not out it down.
• The Top Ten Ludicrous Reasons To Ban A Book
• The Ten Muses of Poetry
• I find the following both a disheartening and frightening aspect of the President's position on privacy.
• TAKE A POEM - LEAVE A POEM

It's Not All Academic in Tehran

Among the many debates the occur frequently around poetry, there is the well worn question of what can poetry do… what is it good for anyway? Academics are not the only ones with a view in this question. Evidently Iranian authorities have one too and apparently are fearful of the power of the poetic word. Last week they stopped Simin Behbahani, an 82 year old woman who is nearly blind, from boarding a flight to Paris. Behbahani, is a poet, and known to some as the Lioness of Iran. She was taken away from the airport, interrogated throughout the night, then sent home without her passport.

Behbahani has written poetry in Iran for decades…through the reign of Iran’s Shah, during the Islamic Revolution, and the reign of the ayatollahs. She has been twice nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. She’s been outspoken for women’s rights. It has not however been easy for her to publish work in the past few years. The government has become more repressive in years towards writers in general. Her last work of poetry published required the removal of 40 poems or fragments thereof once the government censors finished with it.

After the disputed presidential election last summer and hundreds of thousands hit the streets in protest, prompting government crackdown and violence, Behbahani wrote a poem, “Stop Throwing My Country to the Wind.” People who have followed her for many years now have considered her as untouchable. There will be a lot of eyes on Tehran watching how she is treated from here on.

Banned Books Week

A reminder to everyone that this

is Banned Book Awareness week

“Censorship reflects a society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”—Potter Stewart, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court

The 10 Most Challenged Books of 2007

1. And Tango Makes Three, by Justin Richardson/Peter Parnell
2. The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
3. Olive’s Ocean, by Kevin Henkes
4. The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
6. The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
7. TTYL, by Lauren Myracle
8. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
9. It’s Perfectly Normal, by Robie Harris
10. The Perks of Being A Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky

The reasons for the challenges varies. In some instances it's religious viewpoints, in others it may be language, sexuality, racism. Between 2000 and 2007 some frequently challenged titles have included:

• Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
• Of Mice and Men - John Stinebeck
• Forever - Judy Blume
• The Giver - Lois Lowry
• We All Fall Down - Robert Cromier
• To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
• Slaughterhouse Five - Kurt Vonnegut
• Brave New World - Aldous Huley
• One Flew Over The Cuck00's Nest -Ken Kesey
• Anastasia Again - Lois Lowry
• Are You There God? It's Me Margaret - Judy Blume
• Freaky Friday - Mary Rodgers

Be alert and aware of efforts in your own community to ban books in Schools, Libraries and Universities. Don't be silent!

Exploring the revision before you write anything down

While reading yesterday I discovered an interesting sentence attributed to the poet William Stafford from his journal writings. The entry in question reads: “I must explore the revision that happens before you write anything down.” Disappointingly, there weren't any added lines of his exploration on this subject.

What Stafford is alluding to can be considered in two different categories. One is the process of selecting exactly what you want to say and choosing the best words at that moment (certainly subject to change) before you actually write the complete thought upon a page. But there is another aspect that touches upon something I have blogged upon in the past that continues to confound me. It is what I refer to as “self censorship” and while it can be very controlled and directed by the writer, I wonder about the less obvious possibilities as they might relate to the revision that takes place in the mind before reaching the page.

When driving and approaching an intersection with traffic signal, the mind makes decisions that are split second and we don’t seem to be totally cognizant of the process. We know for example what the color signals of the light mean, but coming upon a yellow light there is something that happens quickly to inform us of our decision ahead of applying the breaks or perhaps more gas. It all happens so quickly there seems not the internal banter going on in the brain that you might experience in writing a first line upon a page, where there may be significant forethought that is very transparent. Afterwards, you may be able to recount to another, “I chose this word over that because…” The process of reaching your decision seems retraceable.

Going through the yellow signal or not is likely tied to some internal understanding if fear. Fear of what might or might not happen. I assume there is an assessment of perceived risk, but it happens so quickly we don’t seem to be aware of the data-in and the data-out that makes up the final decision.

I think all writers have safe zones and danger zones to their writing. It may be subjects or it may be images we don’t feel comfortable putting into words. Staying within our comfort zones is of course very limiting. We may find our subject matter tends to repeat. Our choice of vocabulary could become so common that all our work starts to fall into the same tone.

If we perceive danger and make split second decisions on the road, do we do the same with word or subject choices before we commit those thoughts to the page based upon our own preconceived notions as what is safe to write and what is not safe? Do we self censor without real cognitive choice?

Writing reveals us to readers in ways that become exceedingly personal. There is some degree of risk associated with everything we write. The risk we'll look silly. The rick we'll me misunderstood. The risk that everything we write suggests that we've experienced what we've written or that what we write is how we feel about something. Keep in mind that we are the first readers of our own work. Sometimes we may be startled by our own writing. I have no idea if any of this occurred to William Stafford in pondering the mental revision before we commit to page but it is a discussion I would love to have had with him.

To Read or Not To Read

Jan Beatty writes sexually explicit poems. At least that's what I've been lead to believe. I haven't read any of them but I like her already. Poetic erotica is not my normal read, but I am impressed with anyone who is good at it, and by that I don't mean just writing poetry filled with the seven words that we are not supposed to say on the airwaves. To be good at writing erotic poetry I believe one must be able to deal with the intricate nuances of our sensory perceptions. It's like a painter capturing the shading and texture not just the shape. I don't try such poetry often myself because I don't do it well, though I wish I could. I think anyone that can do this well can likely do any subject justice on the page.

What I like about Jan Beatty is her spunk. Joseph-Beth Booksellers turned Beatty away from a reading because her latest book was too erotic for their family-friendly store atmosphere. On the surface I could accept that, but this is a store who has featured porno-film actors at events.
Beatty has appeared at the store to read from her work before but they believed there were poems from her new poetry collection, "Red Sugar" that were too hot to handle.

Alternatively, the store later agreed to allow Beatty a reading if the store chose the poems for her to read. Censorship? No way! The poet would have nothing to do with it. Then the store offered two other suggestions. A book signing without a reading or a reading with the sound system turned off. For Jan Beatty none of these suggestions is an option. She believes she is behave in a professional enough to be able to select what she reads without being told.

I have to give Jan Beatty kudos for her decision and sticking by it. I may have to even check out her work and see if writing is deserving of kudos too.

A Few Thoughts this Thursday Night

After a very intense day at work I came home, had dinner, watched a bit of TV and had a glass of wine and now have sit down to collect my thoughts.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is heavy on my mind. I suppose in part, because I always find political assassination to be particularly distasteful. It is so contrary to the order of society and political discourse. Another reason I think it hits home with me is that I have been thinking a lot lately about the role of arts in society the past few days and how democratic nations where free speech is tolerated is a place where arts should by all rights flourish and those nations that are controlled by a strong government of censorship and repression of ideas should be free of such artistic expression.

I look at China and Burma for example and am amazed at the courage it takes to be an artist outside the control of the government in these places. Still, we see evidence of courageous individuals who risk much under harsh conditions. Then I think how in our own country so many of us sit back and watch quietly as so many elements of our freedom are challenged from within.

The Pakistani people are truly at a critical juncture and it seems obvious there is a very fine line between the existence of a presumed democratic state and a military controlled one and just how tenuous democracy has become there.

It’s funny that political discourse and artistic expression can both provoke strong reactions from people. So here I am tonight, not listening to any music that I can share with you, but instead considering just how much alike the arts and political discourse are. How both need a positive nurturing environment to remain healthy.

The people of Pakistan tonight must surely recognize how delicate the order to their society is.
The rest of us wait, and watch to see how it responds to the challenges it is presented with. What kind of order and society will survive.

Meanwhile, I think about poetry, music, and other fine arts and realize they aren’t just art, but expressions and reflections of who we are. We need to stop treating them as “just” arts, like in the educational process they are less than. Less than science or math or history. They are after all, who we are as a people. When art is restricted, our expressions are muffled. When that happens, freedom and democracy are on the line.

Political assassinations not only kill people, but the expression of ideas. Suppression of the arts
will kill them too.

The explosive possibility of mixing coffee with books

Iran is a country that is enormously literate. Iranians love for poetry spans centuries, but reading of all types of material is serious business in Iran and is evidenced by the vast numbers of book shops that are available to the public. In recent times, books and coffee shops have seen an increasing union in this country and that combination which allows for intellectual discussions between people milling around these shops have become a concern for an Iranian government that has a notable bent on suppression of the press and Internet traffic. So it probably should come as no surprise that the commingling coffee shops and book stores have been targeted by a new rule against the “mixing of trades.”

The possibility of people engaging in thought provoking discussion in groups where there is a presence of literature that could influence thought, evidently is a frightening thing to this otherwise repressive government. I guess you can just never be to careful of what might happen when thinking people put their heads together.

The power of words against oppression.

It's always amazing to me the lengths many under oppression will go to by contrast to the relative apathetic nature of many in America. (see A war on words)

When Burmese officials use military force to crack down on pro-democracy advocates, it is the military against words. The opposition to oppression in Burma has little to offer but the burning desire to be free and the courage not to be silenced. Journalists and poets as well as the monks in rebellion against the government have been the target of officials who fear them to the point of imprisonment. These will be the historians of Burma. The officials do have cause to fear their words because they tell the story of oppression - a history the government can only change by changing itself.

Poet Harassed by China Government

Reporters without boarders reports on the harassment by Chinese police of human rights poet Tao Jun after interview for US newspaper. China is increasing its repressive attitude to individuals and reporting of information. This is a sad commentary given the insistence that China is becoming more open and free, something they would have the west believe in advance of the 2008 Olympics.

This blog for example will not pass the scrutiny of the Chinese government censors. Will yours? Find out by using this test site: click

Mind Policing in America

In spite of the Constitutionally protected freedom of speech, mind policing in America has been going on for a long time. This week, we celebrate Banned Books week. Each year libraries remind us that even today there are those who are vigilant in exercising their discretionary view of what you and I should be able to read.

Who are these mind police? Often they are simply mothers and other busybodies who for the most part are afraid of what might happen if one of their children, or God forbid, you or I happen to read something they disapprove of. Some of the books they target for reasons that seem quite silly on the surface. Still, their assault on this protected liberty (freedom of expression) is not silly at all. Here is a statical overview between 2000 - 2005.

• Most Challenged Books of 21st Century (2000-2005)
• Initiator of challenges 2000-2005
• Types of Challenges 2000-2005

In another stroke of irony, it's the 50th anniversary of the legal action surrounding poet Allen Ginsberg's "Howl." The publisher of Ginsberg's poet was put on trial contending the work contained obscene language, but a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's Beat-era poem was not obscene. Still, half a century later, a New York listener-supported radio station WBAI decided not to air the poem because program director Bernard White fears that the FCC will fine the station $325,000 for every one of Ginsberg's dirty-word bombs. This concern was based upon recent actions by the FCC in numerous other imposition of fines to broadcast outlets. Instead, WBAI will include a reading of the poem in a special online-only program called "Howl Against Censorship." It will be posted on www.pacifica.org, the Internet home of the Berkeley-based Pacifica Foundation, because online sites do not fall under the FCC's purview.

Half a century later and the battle over such censorship continues in America. In fact, in many ways the issue is even greater today and the Government has sought library records of individuals under the Patriots Act to see what we are reading, so they can make subjective decisions if we might be terrorists or who knows whatever else they may fear we are?

Books On Trial

Last night I attended a event at the Kansas City Public Library in with authors Shirley & Wayne Wiegand presented a factual account of a historic 1940 incident in which Oklahoma County officials confiscated the entire contents of a local bookstore then put the proprietors and patrons of the store on trial not for anything they did, but for the contents of the books on their store shelves.

The story of their arrest, conviction and the battle for some three years to get their convictions overturned is an interesting and chilling one. The implications of this care are far reaching when considered against some of our government's actions today. Not only were these individuals victims of the governments fear of communists, but the basic fundamental rights of our constitution were victims as well.

I was especially surprised how significant racial overtones were in the prosecution of this case. I know Oklahoma is a southern state, but not the deep south, and none of the defendants were black. It was their association with civil rights issues that were paraded before the jury.

Over the next three years, the public outcry as news of this case spread throughout the U.S. ultimately sent this matter to a appellate court and the convictions were overturned. Libraries and Universities throughout the country cited that they were likely equally guilty based on the fact that many of the books the prosecution cited in their case were on their shelves as well. No evidence of any subversive or violent actions by the defendants to overthrow the government were ever presented. It was all purely based on the contents of the bookstore and the inflammatory suggestions that these individuals would dare suggest that blacks and whites have equal rights.

It is a story worth reading. The book: Books on Trial - Red Scare in the Heartland - authors Shirley & Wayne Wiegand

2 < 33

When tragedy strikes, there are often words that follow. Words of sorrow, of anger, frustration or guilt. There also comes a silence or at least the ineptitude to adequately verbalize.

Kelli yesterday posted a link to an article from the Roanoke Times about a poem by Bob Hicok, poet, and Virginia Tech English professor. In the poem, Hicok writes about shooter Seung-Hui Cho and the professor's feelings of guilt for not doing something to stop his former student who on April 16 took 33 lives including his own at Virginia Tech. Hicok was of several professors in the department to voice concerns about Cho after reading a play the student wrote in Spring 2006 about a student who plans a mass school shooting. Nothing came of their expressed concerns.

This and other incidents and in some cases non-incidents have sparked a debate about where one crosses the line in writing literature between artistic expression and cause for concern.

Paradoxically I see this in Hicok's own poem with a painful examination. In a most powerful twist, these words ring out of his poem titled "So I Know"

Maybe we exist as language and when someone dies
they are unworded. Maybe I should have shot the kid
and then myself given the math. 2 < 33
I was good at math. Numbers are polite, carefree
if you ask the random number generators.
Mom, I don't mean the killing above.
It's something I write like "I put my arms
around the moon."

There is something to be said for putting our arms around the moon.

words

Bush hails freedom, but can he handle a lousy T-shirt?

President Bush's speech at the state capitol in Charleston, W.Va., on Independence Day in 2004, invoked the nation's highest ideals: "On this Fourth of July, we confirm our love of freedom, the freedom for people to speak their minds. ... Free thought, free expression, that's what we believe," Bush told the crowd.

Ringing words. Unfortunately, the White House advance team didn't get the memo. Or the message. But the taxpayer got a bill for $80,000. Click here to here about the $80,000.

at&t altering content & collecting personal data around the globe

AT&T moves from carrier to censor (story here)

Porous poison

There are times when I allow myself to write in a free flowing manner that tolerates what I would imagine is my subconscious influence upon the written product. While I recognize the term subconscious is perhaps passe in many academic settings, I am referring to an influence by that part of one's mind that one cannot be entirely aware of, yet still exerts some influence upon one's actions without concentrated efforts at thought.

The outcome of such writing will often produce some interesting word combinations. A small example for instance might be something that came out on the page last night, in a line that that contained these two words together: porous poison. Now in reality, I don't imagine poison as being porous. I can see poison seeping into porous cracks - perhaps an insecticide. That is a perfectly clear picture.

Still, I find allowing myself this broad freedom of expression in writing a liberating experience because it certainly seems to negate self imposed censorship. Such censorship I believe to be a great source of obstruction to the risk taking necessary to advance any form of art.

The question I still must deal with at some point, is deciding how much of such abstraction to allow into a poem. It is something which I do not presently have an answer for, though I remain devoted to some rational answer.

Guantanamo Poetry - five commentaries

This past week I received an e-mail from Jeff Charis-Carlson, Opinion Editor for the Iowa City Press-Citizen. He noted an earlier post in which I referenced the book, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak that UI Press has published and brought to my attention a series of op-ed pieces on the subject that have appeared in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. I promised him I would take a look at them and I did. There were some interesting point offered in these editorials.

Jeff Charis-Carlson himself writes of his reactions to reading these poems and relates it to the haunting feelings that surface from reading Psalm 137, a song of exile in which the psalmist denounces those who captured him.

Shams Ghoneim, in another op-ed writes about the contrasting values on which America was founded and the code we are operating on with respect to the detainees at Guantanamo. She writes of Moazzam Begg's poem, "Homeward Bound," in which she can sense his hopelessness and sorrow. Begg received a letter from his 7-year-old daughter in which the only line that avoided the censor's pen was, "I love you, Daddy."

Joseph Parsons noted the poet Adrienne Rich has expressed that poetry can remind us of what we are forbidden to see. Parsons believes"Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak," is not about these accusations of maltreatment... "Its only ambition is to provide a glimpse into the lives, hearts and minds of the men held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo -- something we have been forbidden to see....as they pine for their families, their homes and all they hold dear."

Spring Ulmer writes, that words are dangerous things and "Poems from Guantánamo," had to be liberated from the Pentagon's "secure facilities," where most detainee writing remains in confinement, as it is considered "a security risk." I was struck by Ulmer's story where a year ago, after reading detainee Jumah Al Dossari's descriptions of torture (smuggled out and published online), she began writing letters to Dossari, only to have them returned by the military, marked and brutally ripped open as if to frighten her.

Tung Yin is a law professor at the University of Iowa, specializes in constitutional law and national security law. He writes of the poems giving human voice to the problems caused by applying the war model to non-state actors. He distinguishes the differences between traditional wars between nations, and that between the United States and al Qaida/Taliban. In traditional war, the enemy easily is identified, whereas in this conflict, the enemy hides among civilians. Because al Qaida members deliberately conceal themselves and because even the Taliban fighters did not wear traditional uniforms, there's higher likelihood that the United States would have incorrectly identified a person as the enemy. And in traditional war, it may be unknown what date the war will end, but it is known that the war can end when there is an armistice. In this conflict, it is unlikely the United States would negotiate with al Qaida, and we never may know if we have succeeded in destroying it as a threat to this country extending indefinitely the detention of these individuals without any due process.

I applaud the Iowa City Press-Citizen for dialogue it has contributed to the discussion of the Guantanamo poems.

Monday Meanderings

Excellent editorial by George Wallace, former Suffolk poet laureate & my appreciation to Jilly - I have to give her credit as my source for finding it. By the way congratulations for her nomination for Thinking Blogger Award.

Few notes about some poetry I read this weekend [here]

VALPARAISO The spring/summer edition of the Valparaiso Poetry Review, Valparaiso University's online journal of contemporary poetry, is now available online

Powell Calls for Closure of Military Prison at Guantanamo

And finally, I find Sen. Joe Lieberman more than a little disturbing these days.