tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6851578517872251953.post2735016536950166584..comments2023-10-10T05:07:13.577-07:00Comments on En Tequila Es Verdad: In Answer to AnnieDana Hunterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00890312745525306991noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6851578517872251953.post-84517179612516336982008-12-16T08:37:00.000-08:002008-12-16T08:37:00.000-08:00In response to Annie (in her comments on the earli...In response to Annie (in her comments on the <A HREF="http://entequilaesverdad.blogspot.com/2008/12/thank-you-for-blowing-that-whistle-mr.html" REL="nofollow">earlier post</A>):<BR/><BR/><B>[ on the issue of praising whistleblowers ]</B><BR/><BR/>Not everyone gets the <I>opportunity</I> to blow a whistle, so it's not really fair to say "if you haven't done it yourself, don't encourage others". While I might consider it a duty for myself (depending on the crime involved), I would certainly not <I>expect</I> it of someone else; it's impossible to judge someone else's situation from outside and make what you rightly point out could be a life-threatening decision.<BR/><BR/>For myself, given the opportunity to either sit back or make a fuss, I have twice been given the opportunity and twice chosen to make a fuss. I walked out with the staff of <I>The Athens Observer</I> (GA) in 1993. I sent email to the upper management at Pierce Manufacturing in 1998 when it became clear that the project I was working on for them was being mismanaged; my contract wasn't terminated for that, but when I later tried to explain to their VP that due to his lack of technical understanding of our project (which he ended up running after a series of management shifts) he essentially <I>had</I> to trust the judgment of his programmers (of which I was one), that was apparently too much and I was escorted out of the building.<BR/><BR/>Furthermore, I've been spending all my available free time (and then some) running a web site whose mission includes making firm statements against the powerful and unprincipled. It's a <A HREF="http://issuepedia.org" REL="nofollow">fairly obscure site</A>, so I was probably never in any real danger -- but during the height of Bushocracy, when "dissent is treason" seemed to be an obvious truth to way too many people, it often felt like quite a dangerous path to be pursuing.<BR/><BR/><B>[ on the issue of <I>helping</I> whistleblowers ]</B><BR/><BR/>I have tried several times to work out support systems for people who don't fit into the mainstream, including people who are unemployable for political reasons. (I consider myself somewhat unemployable at this point, more because of the large gaps in my history than because of the incidents mentioned above... and also due to the time constraints of helping to raise an nonverbal autistic teen, but I expect that situation to be resolved within the foreseeable future.)<BR/><BR/>If you're interested, I can go into some ideas for how this might work in general or how it might benefit you specifically, but I should probably do so elsewhere.<BR/><BR/>However, it sounds like you're probably too angry and discouraged to be interested in anything that isn't an immediate solution. I understand that feeling if it's an accurate description of you right now, then I can only make sympathetic noises, because I don't have any immediate solutions... just long-term ones and ideas which need to be worked through before anything can be done with them.<BR/><BR/>This isn't to say "keep swimming", then, but "what can I do to help?". My resources are limited -- but somewhat nonstandard, as well.Woozlehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17948248776908775080noreply@blogger.com