The Navy's dirty linen

An academic dean once advised me to avoid airing the school's dirty linen in public. It's an old phrase that originally referred to keeping one's business to oneself.

In today's institutional environment it means, "For God's sake don't let anyone know what's going on here." Or its short form, "Don't tell the truth."

U. S. Navy Captain Brett Crozier allegedly broke that rule by publicizing a memo to his superior officers begging for medical assistance for 100 members of his crew stricken with COVID-19, and protection for their unprotected crewmates. Because the memo found its way to the media, Capt. Crozier was removed from his post as commanding officer of the U. S. S. Theodore Roosevelt, one of the Navy's most powerful and important ships.

This is no small boat we're talking about. The Roosevelt has the population equivalent of a small city, carrying 5,600 souls including its air wing. If a community of that size on land was threatened by disease that could easily overwhelm its medical resources the mayor would very publicly be doing her best to bring attention to the problem by whatever means necessary, and be commended for it.

But in the Navy? You get canned.

The person responsible for dismissing Capt. Crozier is Thomas B. Modly, Acting Secretary of the Navy. Modly did happen to graduate from the U. S. Naval Academy, and spent seven years in active duty as a helicopter pilot. But his education and experience are all about business, making him a good Trump buddy. Here's a link to his official bio: https://www.defense.gov/Our-Story/Biographies/Biography/Article/1905292/thomas-b-modly/

Modly has no military command experience, yet he was appointed to sit in judgment of a proven commander with decorations for exemplary and meritorious service whose only mistake was to tell the truth.

It's irrelevant how Capt. Crozier's memo got to the media; the point is, it had to, and it did, and it probably saved a lot of lives when the naval high command couldn't be bothered to take care of its own service personnel.

All Americans should pay attention to this and make noise about it. We honor those who serve; why don't their bosses?

We have an alleged Commander-in-Chief. He needs to make this right by reinstating Capt. Crozier and paying more than lip service to his duty.

--Diogenes

Magical thinking

Magical thinking is the belief that if a person wishes for something ardently enough the wish will be granted. In a child wishing for a pony it's cute. In a chief executive wishing publicly for a quick end to the COVID-19 pandemic, it's worrisome.

In a televised Fox News "town hall" meeting March 24, saying Americans are full of "vim and vigor" (when was the last time you heard that phrase?), the Great Pretender, in the face of all medical evidence to the contrary, all but predicted that COVID-19 would run its course in just a couple of weeks, so Americans could enjoy Easter, saying, "I would love to have it [America] open by Easter. . . It’s such an important day for other reasons, but I’ll make it an important day for this too. I would love to have the country opened up and they’re just raring to go by Easter."*

That may be a nice thought, but one has to ask "why Easter?" If he's suggesting Easter as a target because it's the most important day in the Christian calendar and getting everybody back into church would be nice, he might at least give lip service to the first day of Passover (April 8) and the beginning of Ramadan (April 23), respectively acknowledging America's approximately 7 million Jews and 4 million Muslims, who are also subject to illness.

But that's not Trump's vision. He wants Easter with happy families and springtime and new hats for the girls, egg hunts and chocolate bunnies. Oh, sure, Easter is important for other reasons--like the Resurrection, duh--but in Trump's mind it's his act of making it the day of the country's back-to-work "opening" that's going to make it a real big-time whoop-ti-do all-American celebration.

Two days into this ludicrous timeline, with a one-day increase of 15,000 cases, the United States gained the dubious distinction of having the most cases of COVID-19 in the world. And suddenly the Easter "opening" is forgotten, replaced with a can-do, all-hands-on-deck response, including invocation of the Defense Production Act to increase dramatically the manufacture of ventilators.

In a fluid situation such mid-course corrections can be necessary, but in the March 23 meeting the Great Pretender downplayed the severity of COVID-19, comparing it to garden-variety types of flu at least 20 times during the approximately 21 minutes that he actually spoke. And on March 27 he mocked state governors for overstating the need for equipment even as he ordered the building of ventilators to be accelerated.**

Magical thinking in an adult is not an indication of mental instability in and of itself, but in a person known to have a volatile temperament it should be of concern, especially when he is responsible for our nation's welfare.

-----Diogenes
 

*https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-town-hall-transcript-march-24-trump-wants-to-restart-the-economy-by-easter

**https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/489909-trump-uses-defense-production-act-to-require-gm-to-make-ventilators 

Out With the Yobs!

It was neither the Russians nor Trump’s thuggish yobs that put the Great Pretender undeservedly in the White House. 

 

It was the Democratic National Committee who, with their pc-at-any-cost corporate mentality, sabotaged their own goal by brushing aside Bernie Sanders,  the one candidate who could have beaten Trump. Instead they quixotically backed Hillary Clinton, not because she was the better candidate, but because she reflected their naive and narcissistic belief that given the choice, Americans would vote for a woman because, well, because she's a woman.

 

Wrong. The electorate, sad to say, responds to raised-voice blood-and-guts emotion. And the Trump steamroller--us vs. them rhetoric, strong-arm tactics to keep "enemies" at bay and out of rallies, impossible promises, emphasis on "real" Americans, the marginalizing of minorities, open bigotry, especially the demonizing of Barack Obama, and the threat of terrorists and rapists behind every tree--was nothing if not bloody and emotional.

Speaking of all those promises, whatever became of most of them? You can find that out at https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-promise-tracker/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ecdfc0995e08.

 

I have often said the biggest problem the DNC has is that it won’t fight dirty often enough, and when it does it shoots itself in the foot--witness the Sanders debacle. America's first  best hope for the 2020 election is likely the upcoming midterm election this Tuesday (11/6) in which the DNC isn't directly involved. If enough seats, especially in Congress, can be turned blue, the Yob-in-Chief will face some much-deserved comeuppance.

 

Up for grabs in Tuesday's election: The entire House of Representatives; one-third of the Senate; and more than half the gubernatorial seats in the Union. Several of those seats are considered safe for the incumbent or are uncontested. However, there are enough contested seats to change the balance of power in Congress and in the leadership of a majority of states. If you're undecided about voting, check the following links to see if you're in a battleground area. If you are, get out there and make a difference.         https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Congress_elections,_2018 and https://ballotpedia.org/Gubernatorial_elections,_2018

In 2016 we turned into what H. L. Mencken called a "boobocracy." Let's redeem ourselves in 2018. God bless America.

 

-- Diogenes

The 561

561: If you're an American you should remember this number, because just as 666 is the number of the Beast, 561 is the number of your government--the number of people who have the ability to change your life and the destiny of this country.

There are 535 people in Congress, 9 on the Supreme Court, 15 in the Cabinet and two executive officers. I include the justices of the Supreme Court because, at least since the Citizens United decision, if not the 2000 presidential election, they have made themselves arbiters of power. The vice president is included for his role as president of the Senate, not as understudy to the president.

To put that number in perspective, consider this: Right now there are approximately 327 million Americans who are governed in one way or another by that 561. The term 1 percent is frequently used to refer to the elite financial class. That's nothing. We are overseen by less that 1 percent of 1 percent of 1 percent of our fellow Americans. The specific number is .0000017, or seventeen ten-millionths of the population.

Put in a different way, each of those 561 has power over about 583,000 individuals--about the population of Wyoming. Going further, we could say that each of us is governed by 17 ten-millionths of a person: an earlobe, perhaps, or a toenail?

Absurd? Ridiculous? Of course. But the point is that not only is the United States not a democracy, it is no longer even a republic. It is an oligarchy; and given that more than half the members of Congress are millionaires and that the White House is occupied by an obscenely wealthy person, it is a financial oligarchy. The very rich are in power and everyone else gets screwed.

Now the money-laden Congress has allowed the government to close down and seems in no hurry to get it running again--never mind how many hundreds of thousands of government employees go without paychecks and are unable to make their mortgage or rent payments or feed their kids.

Government shutdowns are neither new nor unique to this administration. But those misguided souls who voted the Grand Poobah into the presidency in the belief that as a businessman he could make the government run efficiently and avoid such problems are surely now seeing the error of their ways.

The 2018 midterm election will be of exceptional importance. In it we will have the opportunity to clean the rot and corruption out of Congress; or we can maintain the status quo and allow the tiniest, most unworthy fraction of  the American population to continue to lead us like the sheep we have become.

--Diogenes

J'Accuse

A classic description of insanity is the continual repetition of an action in the expectation of a different outcome.

Thus the various governments of the United States, federal state and local, exhibit insanity by continuing untrammeled access to firearms and ever-widening degrees of carry permits, in the apparent and irrational belief that such actions will somehow put an end to gun violence and mass shootings, such as that just seen in Las Vegas, with at least 50 people dead.

The same excuses for the shooter will be heard: "He's old; he didn't know what he was doing." But we've heard it all, haven't we? Just change the descriptor: young, Marxist, mentally ill, extremist Muslim, extremist Christian, disgruntled employee, PTSD victim, jilted lover, neo-Nazi, etc. Ultimately no one knows what they're doing, it seems--especially when they're holding a gun.

Or the victims are blamed: "They're just African Americans," or white, or Baptist, or Sikhs, or criminals, or mentally ill, or women, or police officers, or office workers--fill in the blank.

So is the entire nation insane? Some would say so, but I do not. There are those who foment this violence and know exactly what they are doing.

Therefore, I accuse:

• The president and vice president of the United States and the entire Congress of being complicit in mass murder and worthy of mass impeachment for gross malfeasance in office for their refusal to enact gun control legislation, thereby endangering the citizenry at large;
• The governors, lieutenant governors and legislatures of those states that allow easy access to firearms and carry permits, of the same crimes stated above;
• The board of directors and officers of the National Rifle Association of complicity in manslaughter and attempted murder of hundreds of American citizens for no reason other than to continue lining their pockets with membership fees and kickbacks from the firearms industry;
• The nationwide membership of the National Rifle Association of being accomplices in the crimes listed above and knowingly supporting an organization that has no moral compass when it comes to public safety;
• The Federal Bureau of Investigation of endangering public safety by failing to name the directors and officers of the National Rifle Association as public enemies for their continued endangerment of the American people;
• The firearms manufacturers based in the United States of public endangerment by their unwillingness to support rational gun legislation; and
• Every American citizen who has a conscience and a voice but has not raised either against gun violence of failure to act responsibly for the good of the country.

I do not care whom I offend. In fact, if you are offended by reading this, then shame, shame, deepest shame be upon you.

--Diogenes, 10/2/17

Hearing vs. Listening

When I was urged by Rinpoche Dorje to direct my messages to "those who have ears to hear," I did my best to follow his advice, as I have always done. However, both the Master and I are forced to acknowledge that those who hear do not always listen, and few of those who listen actually take up the struggle for justice.

I turn to the Judaeo-Christian Bible frequently because I believe it references, describes and dissects virtually the full range of human behavior and psychology. John 8:32 is a passage that I have always held to strongly, but I have been learning the truth of Mark 6:4.

I am therefore taking indefinite leave of this venue and associated Facebook and Twitter postings. This will please some more than it might others; but Diogenes is not gone and will neither be forgotten. La lutte continue sans cesse.

Starve the children

Here again is evidence, if anyone needs it, of the importance of a free press as a bulwark against injustice and oppression.

I was all set to publish a piece about our oleaginous "leader" when I came across the following editorial in today's Newport News Daily Press.

This is a story about a city school board denying food to students. It may not be a big earth-shattering bit of news, but the writer references federal programs, which suggests this kind of outrageous behavior may happen in places other than Virginia.

Whether the actions outlined in this story stemmed from ignorance or a dislike of federal policy that led to a school corporation cutting off its nose to spite its face, it's something that must be fought--especially if other school boards across the country might contemplate similar action.

Please read it.

The phrase "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch" has been used for many decades to reflect that there is always some sort of price tag, even when something is nominally free of charge. In recent years, it has come to be used as a cultural mantra by those decrying welfare, unemployment benefits or anything else perceived to be an entitlement.

Sometimes however, the phrase can be taken literally.

Take, for example, Hampton's public school cafeterias.

Families put funds into a student's meal account. One lunch is $1.85 for elementary school students, and $2.05 for high school students — unless the family qualifies for a discount. A breakfast is 90 cents. If a student comes through the line with a meal but is found to have insufficient funds in that account, he or she is given some time to scramble around the room in an attempt to scare up some quick cash.

If that fails, the meal is taken away and thrown in the trash.

This had been Hampton's informal practice for high school students in recent years. This spring, however, the decision was made to establish a formal policy to be in line with requirements from the federal Department of Agriculture and the state Department of Education. The policy review committee, comprised of school division employees, was apparently in a magnanimous mood: It recommended high school students be allowed to "charge" one breakfast and one lunch to an insufficient account before the cafeteria staff begins taking food away and throwing it into the trash. 

Younger students can charge up to 10, which is in keeping with the previous practice for that age.

This policy, even with the update that allows a limited number of meals on credit, is unthinkable. It is unnecessarily cruel and doesn't even have the benefit of saving money.

This last detail was apparently lost on the members of the Hampton School Board when they approved this policy. It was Macayla Smith, a Kecoughtan High School senior at the time and a nonvoting student representative on the board, who offered some food for thought: "I just have a question. ... If you're throwing it away, at the end of the day, aren't you still paying for that meal?"

The answer: Yes, of course. Food costs just as much in the trash can as it does in a student's belly.

Is there a reason that a teenager should be the only one to raise this rather obvious question? (Perhaps one or more parents could have raised it, but none stood to address the issue before the School Board. Whether this reflects disinterest or tacit approval is not clear.) Some of the School Board members appeared to be as offended by this detail as the student rep was, but that did not stop them from unanimously approving the policy.

Let's state this clearly and unequivocally: Under no circumstances should a school's policy involve throwing a student's food away. Frankly, it is astonishing that anyone should have to establish this ground rule, but apparently we do. It makes no economic sense, and it is counterproductive to educational goals, since a hungry student is likely to be distracted and lethargic by the end of the school day.

There are obvious alternatives that are not so unnecessarily wasteful and inefficient. Alternatives that do not call to mind unfortunate comparisons to Oliver Twist, bowl in hand, trembling before a scowling Mr. Bumble.

Take, for example, the current practice in Newport News schools. If a student's cafeteria account has run out, he or she can receive a certain number of meals on credit (depending on the student's age). Once the limit is reached, the student is instead given an alternate meal consisting of a cheese sandwich, a piece of fruit and a serving of milk – a smaller, less expensive plate that provides some sustenance and nutrition to a growing body and an active mind. The Newport News procedures specifically state: "Food trays will not be taken away from students."

There are any number of reasons why a family might let a student's cafeteria account run dry. They range from the sympathetic (poverty) to the understandable (forgetfulness) to the callous (don't care). Not one of those is the fault of the child, and not one should be used as a rationale for making a student go hungry.

Yes, letters and/or phone calls go out to parents informing them of the deficient account. Sometimes those notifications go out immediately, and sometimes after a period of several days. In the interim, more hungry students and more discarded meals.

It's hard to see who actually benefits from this. Not the students or their teachers. Not even the school district, which still pays for the food that gets tossed. Under the Newport News policy, yes, there are a certain number of "free lunches" given away — but the cost is minimal, and it is still a better option. It would be a great day if the biggest waste in a city's budget was supplying sandwiches and milk to students who would otherwise go hungry.

 The School Board should change this policy before the next school year begins. Parents and students should speak up.

Young minds should not be distracted by hunger when there are resources available. Not in our schools.

The Newport News Daily Press, 25 June 2017  www.dailypress.com

--Richard Brown

Killing Kim

"Thank you," Diogenes said to me as I came in this morning.

"For what?"

"For being patient with my recent catharsis. I truly had not understood how the proximity to VX had traumatized me until the episode of Kim Jong-nam arose. And thank you for your patience with my putting you off regarding that unfortunate gentleman. I am now ready to discuss his case."

I sat, all ears.       

"As you know, Kim Jong-nam was accosted in the Kuala Lumpur International Airport on February 13 of this year by a woman who approached him from behind and smeared a substance which is believed to have been VX nerve agent on his face. He requested medical attention and was taken to the airport clinic. An ambulance was called but Kim died en route to hospital.

"Let me remind you briefly of the qualities of VX. It is odorless, tasteless and ranges in color from clear to light brown. It can be mistaken for many innocuous substances--mineral oil, for example. One of the alleged assassins said she thought she was putting baby oil on Mr. Kim's face.

"The lethal dose of VX is estimated to be approximately 10 milligrams, absorbed through the skin. There's no good way to translate that into more familiar terms, but here's an extreme approximation: If the assassin applied approximately a half-teaspoon of the agent to Mr. Kim's face, he received more than 2,000 times the lethal dose. Put another way, had that amount of VX been spread throughout the airport, on seats, door handles and vending machine buttons, for example, it would have been sufficient to kill more than 2,000 people.

"Why attack this particular person? It's known that his half brother, the North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, has had a "hit" out on him for years. Perhaps the killing was a means of fulfilling that contract. But there is good evidence that this assassination was carried out by agents of North Korea. Such an operation could have been undertaken at almost any time, so another question that must be asked is, 'Why now?'


"It's possible that Kim Jong-un simply wanted to remind the world that he has effective means of killing people even if his long-range missiles don't seem to work very well. His estranged half-brother, who had no presence on the world stage, may well have been a simple demonstration piece--a way to put North Korea temporarily back into the spotlight.

"If that was the case, then why not simply disperse enough of the material to kill dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of people? Kim Jong-un probably has no scruples about doing so, but he is not stupid. He knows there are lines that, if crossed, would bring the wrath of many nations, including his ally China, down on him. So he rids himself of a disliked relative and raises the specter of chemical warfare without doing enough harm to bring about retribution.

"The Chemical Weapons Convention, which went into force in 1997, banned the use of chemical weapons and called on the world's nations who had stockpiles of such weapons to destroy them. A handful of U.N. member nations, including North Korea, have not signed the treaty, and even considering those who have, one has to question whether the 100% destruction they claim is factual.

"VX was not conceived of as an anti-personnel weapon, but its effectiveness as such has now been demonstrated, and the fact that neither of the alleged assassins nor anyone else at the airport was seriously affected makes it clear that safe handling is possible, if risky. Having seen the efficacy of a small dose on a selected target has surely put the idea of using it into a number of heads--not all of them necessarily terrorists.

"VX is not difficult to make in a well-equipped chemistry laboratory, especially if one is indifferent to the health of the technicians, as tyrants tend to be. In state-of-the-art labs with NIOSH Level A protection--such as those operated by a number of federal agencies--production would be a snap.

"Some time ago* I suggested that in Trump some tyrants might have 'met their match in stubbornness, hardheadedness and unreasoning assurance of being in the right.' I did not include Kim Jong-un in the list because the post was about the Middle East, but he certainly belongs on it.

"The Great Pretender has shown disregard for more political and social norms than I can name. His only interests are himself and his agenda. He has set aside treaties, agreements, conventions and other presidents' executive orders and sought to overthrow laws because they are not consistent with his vision of Trumpland. With his obsessive need to have his own way and to accomplish goals as expeditiously as possible, who's to say he might not look on VX as a convenient tool for doing away with evildoers? Might the thought of infiltrating a CIA agent with a small amount of VX into Bashar Assad's household already crossed his mind?

"Think about it."

*4/8/17

--Richard Brown





 

Death in the Backyard: Part 4

“‘ Just 58 miles west of Indianapolis, the Newport Chemical Depot houses enough of the nerve agent VX to kill every person on earth.’ ” 

Wearing a Cheshire cat grin, Diogenes hit me with that quote this morning before I had even had coffee. I blinked at him.

“Gets your attention, doesn’t it?” he asked, handing me a magazine. “That’s the lede from an excellent and well-balanced story in Indianapolis Monthly. It’s the November 2001 issue. It was timed perfectly, as everyone was still jumpy about terrorism.

“Somewhere in the Operations Office of the Newport plant was a map of the region, divided by concentric circles centered on the Newport Depot. The central circle wasn’t red like a target. It was black, and it was called the Dead Zone. In the event of a major accident it was the area the powers that were had decided would have to be written off because there would be no way to evacuate and/or save those within it.    

“While my cousins—and I when I was visiting—were playing tag and baseball and swimming and riding bicycles and learning to dance and having picnics and campouts and birthday parties and big family Thanksgiving and Christmas gatherings and trying to understand algebra and going to drive-in movies and parks and discovering sex and puzzling out conjugations of Latin verbs and having not a care in the world—and right on through maturity and falling in love and getting married and having children—we never knew we could be snuffed out in an instant. We worried a little about ICBM attacks, but not about ‘friendly fire’ death floating in across the river. We were in the Dead Zone! For almost half a century! And no one knew! Can you begin to understand why this angers me?”

This last he almost shouted, he was so heated. I’ve never seen him so exercised about an issue.

I was silent for a moment, partly out of respect for his emotion, and partly from the shock of hearing about his childhood. Until then I wasn’t sure he had had one.

Finally I ventured, “But you’ve said the plant wasn’t secret. Surely there was some knowledge of the facts.”

“It’s true that the plant itself wasn’t secret, and neither was the nature of its products, but the civilian workforce was strongly urged not to discuss their work or anything they knew about the plant. And such was the longstanding friendly relationship between the plant and its neighboring towns that the employees seem willingly to have acceded to that charge.

“My uncle was well placed in his community and had a great many contacts. He hobnobbed with politicians, law enforcement personnel and several people who worked at the plant, and if he knew anything he kept his silence.

“In the 1980s when the truth began to come out the army was forced to mount a sort of public relations campaign. There were public meetings held mostly to assure the locals they were in no danger, and some people began disputing that point. As more information emerged the public became more engaged, and some very heated meetings took place. 

"When the army’s plan to destroy the VX by incineration became public people became even more active. Incineration had proven problematic in the past, and the knowledge that the agent could be spread by fire helped to support arguments against the process. Finally, after some head butting between army personnel and activists, the incineration plan was dropped and chemical neutralization was agreed upon. It was at the beginning of the neutralization program that the spills I discussed last time happened.

“Let me draw a worst-case scenario for you. Let me stress that this series of events would have been statistically virtually impossible, but the real world does have a tendency sometimes to ignore statistics. The circle that was the Dead Zone had a 30 mile radius. It would have been near impossible for any accident to affect the entire area. Prevailing winds would have caused one vector to suffer while the rest would likely be spared. But humor me.

“Imagine a bright summer day with no clouds and no wind. It’s Sunday and only a minimum staff is at the plant. The army has agreed to allow CSX to park a half-dozen tank cars filled with LPG on a siding until the gas can be transferred to a holding tank on Monday. The siding is between two bunkers that hold ton containers of VX.

“Early that evening an off-duty guard is strolling the grounds, enjoying the evening air and a cigarette. As he crosses the siding with the tank cars he tosses his cigarette butt in their direction—and under, as it happens, a car with a leaking valve. The hapless guard is vaporized in the ensuing explosion, which also rips open the bunkers and ruptures a dozen or so VX containers. The nerve agent is carried upward by the firestorm thousands of feet higher than the visible fireball, expanding as it goes. At about 12,000 feet it stops and begins descending in a circle into the Dead Zone. No wind, remember?

“When the VX reaches ground level it immediately contacts a few hundred people within a few miles of the plant who have come outside to look at the fireball. The explosion destroyed the plant’s communication center, so the system that should have sounded an alarm is never activated.

“Inside a couple of hours 2,827 square miles of mostly productive farmland has been rendered unusable, possibly for years, and virtually every structure will be uninhabitable. More than a hundred fifty thousand people live within the Dead Zone, and they will start to die in minutes, along with all pets, livestock and wildlife under the umbrella of death.

“Within two hours, long before the fire at the plant is extinguished, the Dead Zone is dead.”