October 21, 2003

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  “Although they are 
  Only breath, words 
  Which I command 
  Are immortal.”
  —Sappho of Lesbos 

  
  

  I wouldn’t be surprised if versions of or references to this were to show up on some other Xanga sites.  The link at the bottom of this entry came in an email to me and a bunch of other “unspecified buddies” of my Anam Cara, Sarah oOMisfitOo.  I suppose some of you who read this here were on that list, too.

  
  

  Sara Paretsky, the mystery writer, concerned at the threats to our Constitution posed by the Patriot Act, has been delivering to various audiences a lecture, Truth, Lies and Duct Tape: Writing in an Age of Silence.

  
  

  Here’s an excerpt:

  
  

  
  

  We have today a government that mixes silence with lies. 

  
  

  We have a government that has by fiat sealed presidential papers from public view. We have a government that will not reveal the names of the people who created America’s energy policy — your policy and mine — because they claim that naming their advisors will undermine national security. We have a government that is trying to set up a Soviet style system of citizens spying and reporting on each other — whose first consequence was to shut down the Interstate highway to trap three medical students. 

  
  

  We have a government that in the past winter tapped the home phones and e-mails of UN delegates from Chile, Mexico, Pakistan and Cameroon, to see how they might vote in the UN on invading Iraq. 

  
  

  We have a government that is setting up an office called Information Operations, designed to plant false stories in foreign news outlets to help sway world opinion in favor of its actions. This operation was shot down a year ago and Donald Rumsfeld promised it was gone for good. It’s back now under a new name, with a promise of $250 million in funding from Illinois’s own representative Henry Hyde. 

  
  

  We have a government that instituted a Global Gag Rule, forbidding foreign governments to discuss abortion with their own citizens – a rule, by the way, which directly caused the death of 9500 women and 154,000 infants in third world countries in the two years since the Gag rule was implemented. 

  
  

  We have a government that released forged documents to make its case that Iraq has nuclear weapons. 

  
  

  We have a government that has ordered libraries to destroy a whole series of public reports that it doesn’t want the public to read. 

  
  

  And we have a U.S. press is acquiescing easily with the government’s desire for silence in all these arenas.

  
  

  …and another:

  
  

  
  

  When I enter a library, when I enter the world of books, I feel the ghosts of the past on my shoulders, urging me to courage. I hear Patrick Henry cry to the Burgesses, “Is Life so dear, or Peace so sweet, to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?” I hear Sojourner Truth tell me that the hand that rocks the cradle can also rock the boat, and Horace Greeley say, “I am in earnest, I will not be silenced.” 

  
  

  It is my only hope, that against those forces which seek to silence us, to rob us of our voices and our precious freedoms, that my words, Sappho’s words, Sojourner Truth’s words, indeed, our Constitution’s words, that all these words which are only breath will not only endure, but triumph.

  
  

  Do your species and the planet (yourself and this benighted nation included) a favor.  Open the link below and read the entire text of that speech.  Let Ms. Paretsky work her rabble-rousing magic on you.  Pass it on.  Don’t let the fools and villains scare you into silence.

  
  

  Sara Paretsky: What’s New

  

  • 7:15 pm
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