On August 3, I woke to see on my smartphone a text from David Shedd, a retired career intelligence officer who started at the CIA as an intern decades ago and climbed the ranks to senior management, even meeting with Obama face to face in 2008 to discuss continuing the agency’s torture program. Why is a lifelong spy who also headed the Defense Intelligence Agency messaging me at five in the morning? He’s as spooky as anybody in international espionage: he was on the transition team of organized crime-linked Donald Trump, he’s on faculty at Patrick Henry University — a Creationist school requiring all students and staff to attest that the Bible is their deity’s inerrant word — and who knows what else. And now he’s in my texts.
Back to back in 2018, I wrote one article, for Buffalo’s Daily Public, and contributed to the writing of another, at Boing Boing, regarding video footage Shedd ordered censored that year. So that’s why I’m on his radar generally. But all that was more than four years ago. Why ping me now?
First, some background to contextualize his odd message.
The Backstory
Left to right on the whistleblowing panel: Heather Marsh, moderator Laali Vadlamani, David Shedd, Ewen MacAskill
On February 27, 2018, the Oxford Union held, then censored at Shedd’s demand, a three-person panel on the very topic of whistleblowing. Here in the United States we don’t hear much about this debating society, but in the United Kingdom the Oxford Union is a huge deal: not only have Malcolm X, Winston Churchill, and additional historic figures spoken there, but over the years three of their student presidents have become U.K. prime ministers. A few months ago, one of the planet’s biggest newspapers offered the headline: How the Oxford Union created today’s ruling political class.
The controversial panel, held in the forum’s Goodman Library, consisted of philosopher and human rights activist Heather Marsh, longtime Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill, and Shedd. Toward the end of the evening, the spy didn’t fare well in a back-and-forth with Marsh about torture and other subjects involving how hurting people in shadowy cages is bad actually, so with a politican’s pettiness, Shedd told the Union never to release the video recording. Marsh and her lawyers contend the Union is contractually obliged to upload the film as promised to youtube, which they’ve so far failed to do. The handful of photos they posted don’t count.
Marsh, Shedd debating during panel. Her friend is former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr.
A few months later, Marsh became a whistleblower herself, posting audio of her portion of the panel as well as a transcript. She wrote an accompanying analysis of the censorship, too, discussing how free speech for corporations, predators, and tyrants is shrilly upheld but the words of women and other marginalized people against the powerful are regularly shut down. When the Oxford Union bills itself as the “world’s most prestigious debating society” and the “last bastion of free speech” — then agrees to third party censorship of their own footage of a panel on whistleblowing — the society reveals its ultimate loyalty to the likes of Shedd making up the protection racket that today’s governance amounts to, where the arch-abusers run wild, occasionally promising security and belonging to the gullible who surrender their self and become obedient.
Learning of Marsh defeating Shedd, and Shedd’s subsequent censorship demand, I decided to cover the story and bought phone numbers for the his homes so I could ask him for comment. Through public records sites, personally identifiable information of just about anyone in the United States, king or streetsweeper, is available online legally in exchange for lucre. I politely called the Shedd-associated numbers, which did not include the one he texted me from. His wife — I think that’s who answered — came to the phone, but didn’t put him on the line. “Stop with the harassing phone calls!” she said, though I’d been well mannered, and though her husband had been a senior manager at a notorious worldwide purveyor of waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation — you know, harassing people, to say the least.
Marsh, Shedd debating during panel. Read more about ICE.
Politely seeking comment is harassment? They clearly have an outsize sense of persecution. I simply wanted to ask him straightforward questions such as Mr Shedd, should I describe you in my article as petulant? Or do you prefer petty? How about sore loser? Anyway, my calls to his homes were the only contact I’ve ever had with Clan Shedd, and since I didn’t get ahold of the man himself, I’d never had contact with him until his weird SMS. It’s a routine thing: journalist writing article requests comment; doesn’t hear back. But more than four years later, a sudden text?
To finish up the backstory, note that while the Oxford Union student newspaper mentioned the controversy in 2018, and so did the World Socialist Web Site that same year (one; two; three; four), nobody else — besides me (with my in-depth reporting), Marsh, and social media supporters — has uttered a peep. Even Ewen MacAskill, the third panelist, has said nothing from his perch on good terms with the highly influential Guardian newspaper. Likely that’s because in the aftermath of the censorship, the Oxford Union gave MacAskill a paid lecture series to talk to audiences about, you guessed it, whistleblowing. You see, experts on whistleblowing don’t talk about censorship they know of. They keep quiet like good puppies awaiting treats. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
Now fast-forward to this summer, what triggered Shedd to contact me out of the blue.
Why now?
In the time frame of Shedd’s message, two things were occuring that might have prompted him to send me his strange little note.
One: Unbeknownst to me until late August, the Oxford Union in July asked Marsh to give a solo talk, something she wrote about today on her Patreon in a public post. She asked if they’d post the panel video — with Shedd blurred and muted if necessary, something they’ve done before when an individual didn’t want her performance published. In response, the Union ghosted Marsh. Presumably the debating society, following up on her question, asked Shedd if he’d change his mind, and the hierarch must have said No. And had nothing better to do than text a freelance journalist deceptively — petty and petulant and a sore loser — worrying about how all this is going to reflect on his legacy. Silverbacks like Shedd love legacy: parades, presidental libraries, pyramids. Retired and aging, he must fear the facts around February 27, 2018 will correctly tarnish his status in history. Books and articles are routinely published that trumpet Shedd (and separately, the Oxford Union), so he’s accustomed to accolades, not dissent.
Subterfuge Shedd losing debate
The other: On an ongoing basis I have for years submitted pieces to mainstream and alternative media sites that either focus on, or include, Shedd’s censorship. Revelation of the facts in a large venue would greatly help impute guilt to Shedd in the public record so he can accordingly be shunned and feel shame, unless of course his emotional processing is atrophied, which it probably is from aiding in the command of the CIA. That organization has a long history of propagandistic manipulations of the media. See for instance Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein’s 1977 Rolling Stonedeep dive on the topic addressing cover-ups of how the United States news media “worked hand in glove with the Central Intelligence Agency.” All that said — to indicate the water I’m swimming in — I have no evidence, nor even intuition, that anything illicit has happened with my freelancing, but it’s within the realm of possibility somebody at such a venue told somebody who told somebody who told somebody a freelancer named Doug is still working on winning amplification for this story, and it reached Shedd’s ears.
With the 2018 and 2022 contexts established, let’s scrutinize the spy’s missive.
Scaredy cat’s sneak attack
Good morning Ed. This is David Shedd writing from our new place in south Florida in response to your wonderful update letter. Before writing more, I want to make sure that you get this note and the text works. Warm regards, David
The message arrived at 5:20 a.m. Pacific time (I’m in Seattle). Assuming he was actually in Florida, that would be 8:20 a.m. Eastern. Pretty early to shoot off a mysterious communiqué — maybe he was in a bad mood, rising on the wrong side of the bed after earlier listening to the Oxford Union ask his permission to publish the video. Since he apparently controls them now and apparently told them No way.
I have no idea who Ed is, if anyone. In December 2020, Shedd authored an op-ed titled “Edward Snowden Should Not Get A Pardon Under Any Circumstances,” so I don’t think Shedd means him.
Shedd on the debate panel he lost
As stated above, I’d never before seen this (703) 408-2506 number, but it’s a northeastern Virginia area code where the CIA is located some ten miles from D.C. And my trusty public records services confirmed it belongs to David R. Shedd. Now I have a convenient number to call him at in case I need to request comments again. And so do you.
Regarding Shedd obtaining my phone number, maybe he paid for public records too, maybe he successfully stored my digits for over four years and put in the effort to move them to his (703) 408-2506 device, or maybe, as I documented the Austin-based private spy firm Stratfor assisting with in an unrelated but similar matter, he called a friend with access to surveillance databases and got it that way, saved himself a few bucks. He spearheaded the 2008 revisions to Executive Order 12333, which outlines when and how federal intelligence agencies may spy, so I’m sure he knows multiple ways to grab someone’s digits.
Here’s the big question. Why the deception gambit? The message asks the recipient to respond to confirm the connection is good. Why not just address me as Douglas and say … what exactly? Stop talking about me getting whopped in that debate?
Surely after more than four years, it was no mere pocket-dial or oopsident. If you’ve spent time reading leaked cables between government agents and the like, you know they pick words carefully and stamp security classifications on their papers and all that jazz. Somebody in the spy-versus-spy, backstabber-versus-backstabber world of meetings in the White House and the intelligence agencies is probably going to take his communications pretty seriously especially in light of Marsh concurrently asking the Oxford Union to release the recording.
To understand this better, let’s turn to the spy glossary created by that Austin firm Stratfor, sometimes called a “shadow CIA,” staffed with former military, former intelligence agency spooks, and an assistant to corporations in defending against activists. They define disinformation in part as “A plausible story designed to confuse the other side or to create an uncomfortable political situation.” Pinging the system means in part “Emitting information that is designed to be intercepted by the other side. Usual purpose: figure out their response patterns. Other uses, confusing the other side.” In short, subterfuge is a way of life for these people, including propaganda and manipulation of media like freelance journalists. They’re not serving the public honestly; they’re serving the shareholders and themselves; so why expect a message from a straight shooter?
My guess is Shedd, too timid to use his own name, was trying to bait me into responding, and/or stress me out: I’m watching. CIA is watching. But if you ask them for comment, they’ll just say I must have dialed the wrong number. Hahaha!
Since vanishingly few have ever published about the whistleblowing panel censorship, you have to wonder who else besides the Oxford Union Shedd is intimidating. He’s not stopping me.
David Shedd keeps losing
Such childish antics are among the activities of egregious human rights-violating hierarchs — when they’re not losing debates. Because on their side, they don’t have the truth. He prefers propaganda and fears the facts.
If Shedd’s goal was to scare me, he failed. Fragile Shedd lost again. Whatever the CIA (or Stratfor) may say, protection rackets for the highest bidders, as Marsh pointed out on the panel, aren’t security. As she said, “security is strong involved and supportive communities networked with other communities.” When I moved to Seattle in 2016, I began participating with local chapters of the Hearing Voices Network and Food Not Bombs. These egalitarian movements — and more associations with genuine activists — have afforded me close friends who, unlike many among the civilian/loyalist population, understand my work and show up to support me regularly or when something spooky happens like Shedd’s text. Protective, interlocking horizontal networks turned Shedd’s grenade into a grape bouncing off me harmlessly.
I think, somehow, one day, the whistleblowing video will be released. And then Shedd will have an opportunity to realize he’s not entitled to exceptional treatment. It’s not just his lifelong subterfuge that he tried to deploy on me. I think he’s also trying to fool himself. The longer the footage stays secret, the more easily he — and the public — can follow the head-in-sand, pro-impunity bipartisan philosophy of “look forward, not back” to avoid facing the truths Marsh (and others) have brought forward about our real legacy of torture, governance protection rackets, and so many more injustices. And the more petty and petulant Shedd’s sore loser legacy becomes.
Note: In 2020, I’m writing 52 blog posts, one per week, released on Mondays or so…like this one, which is out on, er, Tuesday! This is Week 14. I’m back on schedule. :)
“It is not your fault, I know, but of those who put it in your head that you are exaggerating and even this testimony may seem just an exaggeration for those who are far from the epidemic, but please, listen to us” — intensive care physician Dr. Daniele Macchini, in translation from Humanitas Gavazzeni hospital in Bergamo, Italy, Friday 6th of March 2020. (Additional attribution information.)
Same day as Dr. Daniele Macchini’s testimony from Italy, “Q: Mr. President, you were shaking a lot of hands today, taking a lot of posed pictures. Are you protecting yourself at all? How are you — how are you staying away from germs? THE PRESIDENT: Not at all. No, not at all. Not at all. […] Q: Have you considered not having campaign rallies? THE PRESIDENT: No, I haven’t. […] Q: Isn’t it a risk if there’s that many people close together? THE PRESIDENT: It doesn’t bother me at all and it doesn’t bother them at all.” Transcript provided by White House of Friday 6th of March 2020 remarks by Donald Trump after tour of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta Georgia.
A week prior at a rally, Trump said: “[T]he Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus. You know that, right? Coronavirus. They’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs [… The Democrats] have no clue, they don’t have any clue. […] this [disagreeing with him regarding coronavirus] is their new hoax.” Transcript of Trump rally Friday 28 February 2020 in North Charleston, South Carolina.
Analysis using the Flesch-Kincaid scale, developed in 1975 for the US Navy to assess the relative difficulty of understanding training manuals, finds US president and self-proclaimed “very stable genius” Donald Trump speaks at the reading level of a fourth grader, which explains his huge popularity among certain segments. The above image superimposes a picture of Trump yelling “Have you seen my ratings?” upon a photo taken by a nurse, showing the inside of a bodybag-laden truck at an ambulance bay outside a New York City hospital, Sunday 29 March 2020, shared with Buzzfeed by the nurse.
This post provides 10 bullet points that suggest and summarize various readings regarding the novel coronavirus pandemic, plus a bonus eleventh section at the end filled with uplifting material. I recommend further study of any or all of these linked materials, which have flown across my radar in the past few weeks. Whereas on Monday 23 March 2020 I wrote a guide for getting caught up on the pandemic if you’ve been living under a rock or enslaved (imagine someone just getting off a lengthy hiking trip in the middle of this or out of a psych ward), this entry is more a grab bag of important COVID-19 items that are a bit off the beaten track of typical US news readers. In the near future I’d like to write a guide helping US news readers develop a 60-90 minute routine for staying up to date on the pandemic daily by plugging into sources such as local and state public health officials, the World Health Organization, and a steady supply of high quality information from self-governance radicals. Hopefully soon I’ll return to writing more narrative-y blog entries, but as the globe is a bit of a bullet point place these days, I hope you find value in the below and if so, consider sharing this post, supporting me via donation, and/or replacing GovCorps around the world with prosocial ideas and actions. Without further ado:
A Monday 23 March 2020 article by Jim Geraghty at the (rightwing but literate) National Review titled “The Comprehensive Timeline of China’s COVID-19 Lies” documents the day-by-day, month-by-month, blow-by-blow of the Chinese government cover-up of the capability of novel coronavirus to transmit from human to human. As best understood to date, the disease jumped from animal to human in late 2019 in Wuhan, China.
You should know the story of Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, whistleblower in this pandemic, or “awakener” as some in China call him as a compliment. The Lancet, one of the longest running and most prestigious medical journals in the world, published an obituary (1-page PDF version) for Li Wenliang by freelance journalist Andrew Green on Tuesday 18 February 2020 (corrected Tuesday 25 February 2020). On Friday 7 February 2020, the New York Timesinterviewed Li days before he died. Briefly: Li worked at Wuhan Central Hospital, where in late 2019 he saw laboratory result reports, being circulated within medical circles, that led him to tell his fellow medical student classmates in a private chat group that “it has been confirmed that they are coronavirus infections, but the exact virus is being subtyped […] tell your family and loved ones to take caution.” He knew that patients were already being treated under quarantine, so he suspected human-to-human transmission was possible and urged caution, though at first he did not want his messages spread further. (Speculation: I’d guess because of the risk from various Chinese authorities, and I’d guess also because at that point Li might have wanted rock solid scientific confirmation of human-to-human transmission, before wider circulation.) The conversation among his fellow doctors was that SARS (i.e. SARS or a SARS-like disease) might come back and that they needed to be careful. Against his wishes, his messages spread more widely on social media, leading Wuhan cops to force him at their station to admit a “misdemeanor” and to promise not to commit further “unlawful acts” like this “spreading rumors.” Seven others also were arrested, but as of a Thursday 23 January 2020 article at Poynter by Cristina Tardáguila and Summer Chen, their identities and fates are unknown (will update if I hear back). Li felt wronged by the cops and as time passed, he came to appreciate, despite the punishment, the value of his warning messages having spread, telling the New York Times later that he “felt very sad seeing so many people losing their loved ones.” He returned from the police station to the Wuhan hospital and, while treating a glaucoma patient, contracted the very virus he had warned of. While he was hospitalized in an intensive care unit, Li spoke out about his experience at the police station, including releasing the document he was made to sign, telling Beijing-based media group Caixin that “I think a healthy society should not have just one voice,” and the New York Times: “If the officials had disclosed information about the epidemic earlier, I think it would have been a lot better. There should be more openness and transparency.” At the time of his death, he was survived by his four-year-old son and wife, who was five months pregnant with their second child.
Image of Li Wenliang by Anthony Kwan for Getty Images, 2020
Social media users in China wrote in loud favor of Li Wenliang and against the Chinese authorities, saying on Weibo that, among other things, according to the New York Times, they wrote out of shame and guilt for not standing up to an authoritarian government. Others shared variations of a quote by Chinese writer Murong Xuecun, “He who holds the firewood for the masses is the one who freezes to death in wind and snow,” which the NYT has to explain “was written as a reminder to people that it was in their interest to support those who dared to stand up to authority. Many of those people had frozen to death, figuratively speaking, as fewer people were willing to publicly support these dissenting figures.” Additional sources regarding Li Wenliang: Friday 7 February 2020 article by Zhuang Pinghui in the South China Morning Post; Friday 20 March 2020 article by Helen Davidson at the Guardian; Friday 7 February 2020 article in the New York Times.
And regarding the importance of whistleblowers in general, check out this February 2018 panel on whistleblowing at the Oxford Union, which included Heather Marsh, CIA senior management David Shedd, and a Guardian journalist who though employed by one of the world’s biggest newspapers did not write about the Oxford Union censorsing the panel he was on (you read that right, about whistleblowing), although I sure as hell did at Buffalo’s The Public and by contributing to BoingBoing. You can read the panel transcript by Heather who had to whistleblow her own whistleblowing panel, or listen to her 22-minute audio of it below. BTW, the Guardian journadoodle who did not mention, via his salaried job at one of the world’s most important newspapers, the Oxford censorship, then got immediately bribed/rewarded with a paid lecture series at Oxford… a paid lecture series about… yes, about whistleblowing … while I, a devout anti-careerist, essentially have lost 100% of my day job hours due to covid-19 and, while restraining myself from retweeting silly Star Trek photoshops, am writing to you on my blog right here right meow and all these other people with really cool ideas and deeds and artworks and cats are also… okay you get the point, but the tough part might be, not forgetting the point/truth and also following it to all the places where it leads.
A failing state in debt to Beijing, Russia does much of China’s dirty work. May 2018 at OpenDemocracy.Net: “They put a bag on my head, cuffed my hands behind my back and tortured me with a taser”: anarchist Svyatoslav Rechkalov on torture at the hands of Russian cops. April 2018 at The Russian Reader: Stay Human, How Russia is hunting down anarchists & anti-fascists and torturing them. Coronavirus, shit is getting real.
On Monday 30 March 2020, Europe-based journalist Balazs Csekö tweeted the Hungarian parliament had that day passed a bill giving Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán unlimited power and proclaiming:
– State of emergency without time limit
– No elections
– Parliament suspended
– Rule by decree
– Spreading fake news and rumors: up to 5 years in prison
– Leaving quarantine: up to 8 years in prison.
On Tuesday 7 April 2020, Andrew Stroehlein, the European media director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted “One week ago, the European Union ceased being a bloc of democracies, as Hungary’s ruler seized unlimited power in his country. Since then, the other EU member states and the European Commission have done nothing about it.” And the same day he tweeted: “There’s an outright dictatorship within the [European Union]. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has seized unlimited power for an indefinite period of time. That the rest of the EU doesn’t care enough to act is a threat to the very EU itself.”
Hungarian Parliament passes bill that gives PM Orbán unlimited power & proclaims:
– State of emergency w/o time limit – Rule by decree – Parliament suspended – No elections – Spreading fake news + rumors: up to 5 yrs in prison – Leaving quarantine: up to 8 yrs in prison#COVID19pic.twitter.com/5ScZCbF4yv
Regarding federal legislators flying around and thus spreading the virus or exposing themselves to it, as the Wall Street Journal published an article partially about on Friday 27 March 2020, see this from Heather Marsh in 2012: “We no longer live in a world where one individual has to make a long arduous journey to appear in person to represent their town or region, we need to work to ensure there is no reason why individuals cannot represent themselves in any circumstance” and “There are two underlying concepts which must be universally accepted for representative democracy to function: groups may act as individuals and individuals may act as groups. These two ideas are fundamentally unsound.” If you want more after that, see her 2017 talk (video and transcript) “The evolution of democracy.” For those asking, due to the pandemic, what we should do regarding governance, and demanding short, more practical/pragmatic readings on the topic rather than books, I highly recommend her 2014 “Installing new governance” and you might also read her 2017 “A societal singularity.” Life’s not really about whatever stupid shit Trump said lately, or whether Nancy Pelosi is going to do this or that. Instead look at the more ludicrous things, the federal legislators jumping on planes instead of picking up phones because people are mentally enslaved by these bizarre memes about Ancient Greece city-states or whatever, or the third rail topic of voting elections integrity or even whether voting for faraway celebullies to represent you and the neighbor who completely disagrees with you, and neither of you have or ever will meet the legislator anyway, makes any lick of sense at all (see my post this year on that and Russiagate whistleblower Reality Winner), and maybe then also realize, in order to uproot all of those echoes of long ago thoughts spellbinding billions of humans for millenia, might take more than a two sentence explanation of “well what should we do instead” and you might need to read and experiment and do different things to work toward replacing entrenched broken systems (i.e., us, we all are the broken system!).
From the 1936 sci-fi movie Things To Come, based on HG Wells’ writings. This is a demagogue leader from the film yelling at a fourth grade reading level except for “muddle”, which is advanced vocabulary I suppose
The 2019-2020 novel coronavirus is deadlier than the 2002-2003 coronavirus SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), but this 2003 unclassified paper on that earlier and related virus, produced by the CIA’s Strategic Assessments Group, may still be of interest for autodidacts and others studying public health systems responding to epidemics/pandemics. The paper is subtitled Lessons From the First Epidemic of the 21st Century: A Collaborative Analysis With Outside Experts. It’s a 17-page PDF: click here for the PDF at the Homeland Security Digital Library (sponsored by US Homeland Security, FEMA, and the US military’s Naval Postgraduate School).
The unclassified paper describes its scope as follows:
In June 2003, the CIA’s Strategic Assessments Group (SAG) sponsored an unclassified workshop with experts from various health-related disciplines titled “SARS: Lessons Learned,” held at the National Science Foundation. The group included leading virologists, epidemiologists, public health experts from academia and government, senior officials from WHO and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and authorities in global public health, health communications, and economics. The meeting’s objective was to extract valuable lessons learned to help prepare for future epidemics of new and reemergent infectious diseases. The group reviewed the SARS experience from its medical-scientific, public health, psychosocial and risk communications, economic, and political dimensions. This report conveys the lessons participants found most important for the containment of SARS and for dealing with future epidemics.
Before going to other bullet points recommending other texts, I excerpt below many of the lessons noted by this 2003 report:
* SARS has served as a sobering warning about the serious worldwide consequences that can occur at every level—public health, economic, and political—when unanticipated epidemics arise in a highly connected, fast-paced world.
* The ability to contain the next pandemic or to achieve global eradication of SARS remains uncertain. The disease could reemerge in fall or winter or move from its animal hosts to humans again at any time.
* Honesty and openness from governments and public health officials is especially important. Without understating the risks or dismissing people’s fears, officials with relevant expert knowledge should advise the public on what measures to follow.
* Official announcements will need to be bolstered by ongoing public education programs to avoid panic and help motivate first responders to take reasonable risks in treating the sick.
* [T]he panel warned that the economic impact of an epidemic involving more deaths, plant closures, and population dislocations could be more significant than the modest SARS-related losses
* Psychological intangibles — fear, risk avoidance, and resilience — are not currently represented in economic models use[d] to gauge the impact of epidemics.
* The panelists stressed that the US defenses against infectious disease outbreaks depended on the expertise and competence of local public health officials worldwide. [Note by Doug: last chance for smug US intelligentsia to stop rolling eyes whenever anyone brings up international law, universal human rights, the importance of global telecommunications and planetwide collaboration, etc.]
* The effective application and efficacy of quarantine and isolation proved a pleasant surprise to the public health community. Equally unexpected was the widespread acceptance of the need for these measures by the general public, panelists observed.
* [P]eople were more prone to comply with quarantine rules when there was no familial or financial hardship involved
* Continued efforts by local health-care workers in a high-risk environment were facilitated when the workers were reassured their families would be cared for and when the press portrayed them to the public as heroes. Conversely, when these measures were not taken, workers were much less willing to put in the long hours and expose themselves to SARS.
* While participants lauded the overall rapid and effective mobilization of the international public health community, they did note that [the World Health Organization] was quickly overstretched in early phases of the epidemic, despite supplemental aid by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other organizations. One participant declared that [the World Health Organization] probably could not cope with a second public health-care crisis [simultaneously] on top of SARS [i.e., SARS plus another crisis at the same time]
* A fearful and confused public, surrounded by speculation, rumor, and exaggerated media reports can lead to genuine panic — facilitating disease transmission and hindering quarantine efforts
* Participants cited the following reasons for lack of transparency in the case of China […] Fear of upsetting foreign investors and incurring sizable economic losses […] Cultural reticence to reveal information that could be perceived as a weakness.
* The panelists also affirmed that the experience with SARS had enabled the Chinese Government to gain valuable crisis management experience in areas such as effective inter-governmental actions when forced to shut down parts of Beijing. They commented that with outside support, China could begin addressing some of its major public health problems such as inadequate rural health care, rapidly increasing rates of HIV infection, hazardous animal husbandry and trade practices, and live animal markets which could easily lead to another pandemic
2016 opinion piece in the Washington Post by Ronald A. Klain, Ebola czar at the White House from 2014 to 2015. The title is “Zika is coming, but we’re far from ready” and here are the key passages in my opinion:
The man who led the effort to wipe out smallpox, Larry Brilliant, often says that the seemingly complex challenge of successful epidemic control can be summarized in one phrase: “early detection, early response.” […] If it seems like the world is being threatened by new infectious diseases with increasing frequency — H1N1 in 2009-2010, MERS in 2012, Ebola in 2014, Zika in 2016, yellow fever on the horizon for 2017 — that’s because it is. These are not random lightning strikes or a string of global bad luck. This growing threat is a result of human activity: human populations encroaching on, and having greater interaction with, habitats where animals spread these viruses; humans living more densely in cities where sickness spreads rapidly; humans traveling globally with increasing reach and speed; humans changing our climate and bringing disease-spreading insects to places where they have not lived previously. From now on, dangerous epidemics are going to be a regular fact of life. We can no longer accept surprise as an excuse for a response that is slow out of the gate.
Improve your food storage techniques with the following resources. SaveTheFood.com, derived from Dana Gunders’ work; Seattle Public Utilities 2-page PDF guide on food storage techniques, 9-page PDF on freezer storage, and website section on reducing food waste in general; World Healthiest Foods, where you type a food item into the search box, then check out the “How to select and store” section on the resulting webpage.
A Wednesday 25 March 2020 article by David Kaplan at the WTAE ABC affliate in Pittsburgh reports that a public school district in the greater Pittsburgh region has been using AM radio to provide lessons to students.
Elementary and secondary school teachers record lessons the night before and send them in. Then, 680 AM WISR in Butler broadcasts the lessons. Secondary students get their lessons at 9 a.m. and elementary students at 9:30 a.m.
“I thought the idea was great. It kind of takes you back in a way to think about the days of fireside chats,” said Hope Hull, the principal at Connoquenessing Elementary School.
Hull says she thinks this exercise improves listening skills for students. She added that her teachers are excited to put these lessons together.
Somehow makes me think of this April 30, 1981 Bloom County cartoon by Berkeley Breathed (my favorite cartoonist from newspaper days).
The University of Michigan’s Center for the History of Medicine maintains a digital repository/encyclopedia with documents from and texts about the US flu epidemic of 1918-1919. I believe that encyclopedia was the source for some of the images in the Thursday 26 March article in the California Sun by Mike McPhate titled “Photos of the 1918 flu pandemic in California,” which begins: “We’ve been through shutdowns like this before.” Below follows some of the images McPhate’s piece republished. I’m unfortunately just going to copy his descriptions and sourcing information for each image without doublechecking them all myself as I would usually do, since by this hour I’m half falling asleep as I’m standing here typing this very sentence.
A group in Mill Valley in November, 2018. Raymond Coyne/Mill Valley Public LibraryThe Oakland Municipal Auditorium is being used as a temporary hospital with volunteer nurses from the American Red Cross tending the sick there during the influenza pandemic of 1918, Oakland, California, 1918. (Photo by Underwood Archives/Getty Images)People lined up for masks in San Francisco, which made their use mandatory. California State LibraryPhysicians vaccinated each other in San Francisco. California State LibraryAmerican Red Cross volunteers prepared masks in Oakland. Oakland Public Library
The University of Michigan’s Center for the History of Medicine’s digital repository/encyclopedia also has city essays that tell the stories of 50 US cities and how each responded to the 1918-1919 flu epidemic. Here’s the Dallas essay, timeline, and gallery. Here’s the Seattle essay, timeline, and gallery. As the saying goes, Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
This last of the ten bullet points (before the bonus eleventh), perhaps the most important, consists of mutual aid resources recently compiled/tweeted by @YourAnonCentral, whom you all should be following on Twitter. First, a five-and-a-half minute video by subMedia.tv explaining what mutual aid is:
Required viewing
Now, some resources. US-based COVID-19 Mutual Aid and Advocacy Resources, a shared Google Doc. Here’s how to organize a neighborhood pod, for you and your neighbors to help each other. It’s a 4-page shared Google Doc and it includes flyer templates for getting to know your neighbors, and more. This 9-page PDF is a small zine of compiled resources on safety practices for mutual aid food supply and distribution, such as safe delivery and collection protocols, quite useful if, say, you are in the habit, as I am lately in the habit, of delivering boxes containing food and supplies to the grassy outskirts of an apartment complex in view of a particular young woman standing up high on a balcony peering down and observing with untraversable and seemingly infinite physical distance your discombobulated attempts to erect the structure of a normal conversation, like a (Thomas Otway remix of a) Shakespeare scene. Here’s a United States progressive group (yes I know), The Center for Popular Democracy, gathering data for a week of action to demand coronavirus tests if you want to fill that out. Here’s a mutual aid hub map primarily for the United States, linking for instance to the North Texas Democratic Socialists of America’s COVID-19 Mutual Aid Coalition website listing resources and offering a form to fill out to request and/or volunteer help. Also check out MasksForDocs.com. They have one goal: Get personal protective equipment (not just masks, despite their name) into the hands of healthcare workers as quickly as possible. Open, healthy, inclusive, grassroots, free. They’re accepting volunteers, donations, and requests. Bellevue’s nonprofit hospital Overlake, in the Seattle metropolitan area, just received 262 face shields from MasksForDocs.
Okay, we made it! Note please that the above is a shotgun approach (when is the twitter-news not a shotgun approach?), so please read carefully, think for yourself, your mileage may vary, at least one person on those eight million shotgun approach mutual aid resources is probably going to be unfun to hang out with at best (ten-point checklist by CrimethInc for spotting snitches, infiltrators, etc.), and so on. So, the eleventh bonus bullet point is some heartwarming examples of mutual aid, big and small, mostly via @YourAnonCentral on Twitter recently, ending this post. See below, and see you next week!
Today’s deliveries at our local hospitals. Each day wonderful volunteers collect goods from local businesses as well as home made food/desserts from other volunteers & deliver the goods to our local hospitals. #NHSThankYou#NHSheroespic.twitter.com/mPwE3IWJVF
— Fitzrovia & Marylebone Covid-19 Mutual aid (@FitzroviaA) April 6, 2020
We want to thank @covid19mutualaidslc for the food and supplies relief for Ute and Diné relatives in San Juan County, White Mesa, Bluff, and the Navajo Nation during this COVID-19 Pandemic. Supplies and foodstuff arrived yesterday to Bluff Area Mutual Aid, and more supplies… pic.twitter.com/jEIO4yRT5A
— Utah Diné Bikéyah (@UtahDineBikeyah) April 4, 2020
Teamwork makes the dream work. 113 fed today by these superstars. Cheers to all those that delivered dropped off stuff and are helping us fight the good fight. Roasted pepper soup. Chicken curry. Bread and butter pudding. Good feed for all of our people today #covid19#mutualaidpic.twitter.com/Z2FGRDM6ZD
— South Norwood Community Kitchen (@norwoodkitchen) April 4, 2020
When I first met Jake Paleschic, the leader, singer, and songwriter of Patriot, he was reading Flannery O’Connor, ’50s and ’60s author of tough, serious short stories and two intense novels. Patriot is just as real as her work. Gritty, not unlike James McMurtry, Jake’s music makes you care — he and his band play, everyone stops to listen. The rest of the band is up to the task of accompanying him. Austin’s experience on classical guitar has trained his right hand to give every single note on bass its own sound, rather than the stream of identical notes you normally hear. Tyler’s fills on lead guitar are as thoughtful as he is, adding to the music like a voice. And Peter’s drumming feels personal, a genuine feel, where so many drummers just bang away mindlessly. I always want to listen to these guys.
Mailman is really fun. Austin has free range for his talent, and Jon sings from his heart. I’m eager to hear “Suburban Angst” recorded, perhaps their catchiest song. Read more about Mailman on the excellent site FortLive.
Ralph White also played solo that night, as did someone else — if you know this other person’s name, leave it in the comments. And if you know the name of the original artist for the song “Hard Way,” leave that in the comments.
(Thanks to Fernando Ochoa for help with some of the photos.)
Googling “how to reduce the need for affection” doesn’t turn up all that much, and if you ask your friends, they’re just gonna laugh at you. Until weeks later, after they’ve been ditched by whomever it was for them that month, and they come to you, tail between legs, asking “Hey…did you ever find out how to reduce the need for affection?” This has happened to me multiple times!
In researching reducing the need for affection, I’ve come across plenty of articles that try to dodge the issue by avoiding the word “affection.” They claim people are seeking “attention” or “prestige” or “approval” or some other medical-sounding reward. But I think the situation is a lot hotter than that, and by hot I mean a warm fuzzy HUG — get your mind out of the gutter.
A lot of the search results you DO get (YGMV*) are content-farm articles on how to spay or neuter your pet (…so that’s what they’re calling it now?) or y so srs/pitiful pieces in the Huffington Post about how to make your man show you more affection (…she really hasn’t figured that out yet?). I lost the very few useful links I came across. But here’s what I’ve discovered:
Get busy working on an idealistic project(s).
Get a pet (this is more of a hack: route around humans).
Get lost. Aloneness becomes a more comfortable habit given time.
And keep in mind this Theodore Sturgeon quote from his novel Godbody, which the character Britt Svenglund ascribes to the character Dan Currier: “any person who cannot be by himself, it’s because when he is by himself he thinks he is not in good company.”
In the last year, I’ve been in a totally unprecedented situation: I’ve had lots of friends! And I’ve conducted a lot of socializing. (Mostly at this excellent coffeehouse & computer repair shop in Fort Worth.) The whole experience startled me. “Wow, so this is what all the people I hated in high school were doing!” It gets so thoroughly, disgustingly addictive. You wake up one day, and your emotions are beseeching the universe to deliver you affection from others. Your long-lasting contributions to humanity? Yeah, screw those. WAIT NO!
You have to consciously pull yourself away if you get addicted. (Twitter, I’m looking at you.)
Now, you might not want to become a recluse. Currently you gotta interact with people to get where you want to go in life, and it turns out social skills are useful for that. Plus, a good social space generates good random. You encounter people who give you knowledge and paying gigs and culture. This happens in cyberspace, too, but it happens differently in meatspace; I’m not sure how to describe the difference, or why both are valuable.
Brain in a Vat Doesn’t Need Your Meatspace (Pic stolen from here).
A pickup artist is going to look at people with alleged affection-deficits and offer to teach them how to acquire more affection. Which, when you think about it, is not unlike a nicer (or at least nicer-sounding) Thrasymachus, who (according to Plato) taught that justice is nothing but “the advantage of the stronger.” (In the fifth century BCE, in ancient Greece, you could buy teachings from sophists such as Thrasymachus. Early-day Tony Robbins.) Pickup artists have a term: One-itis. Urban Dictionary as usual has the best definition:
Often confused with love, this is the feeling that a particular woman is actually special. This is just an illusion; she is the same as the other three or so billion. “Go fuck ten other women” is the most commonly prescribed treatment for this “disease” (hence the “itis”), as it tends to show quite quickly how very alike people are.
But everyone is a special snowflake, dammit (srsly, you are. And aren’t at the same time, too. Paradox WOAH!). Anyway, it is just remarkable, the difference in perspective, when faced with the question: “What do I do about my affection-deficit?” 1) Become more skilled at manipulating people into giving you affection; or 2) Reduce the need for affection. I’ll take option 2.
Not so fast, the psychiatrists are here. They describe “the self-effacing solution” of wanting too much affection, and the resignation solution of (among others) schizotypals wherein you want too little. Oh, good, the psychiatrists left. Continuing on.
Once I was chatting online with someone, importuning the person for attention affection, and found myself rebuffed; instantly my mind generated epic narratives about how they were full of shit and one day, despite my anger and bitterness, I would triumph before all! AT THE EXACT SAME TIME in another chat window someone was importuning me for attention affection, all plaintive, and I was like, geez, this person’s annoying, won’t they go away, like srsly. Humans are up to here in this affection-acquiring attention-economy business. It’s the pits.
So you want the golden mean of affection and social interaction that suits your purposes and not the purposes your addictions or inexperience define for you. (A golden mean is not necessarily in the middle of the continuum, and not necessarily any sort of average.) On the other hand, maybe you’re such an awesome mystic that you flat-out don’t need to interact with others at all. In which case … can we meet?
INTERLUDE. Let’s take a break for a second.
* YGMV: Your Google May Vary, depending of factors such as your IP address. Which is one reason why proxy networks such as Tor are fun: “Today I’m gonna Google from the point of view of someone in the Czech Republic. Podívejte!“
Writing this I found out there’s a now-defunct Swedish goth metal band called Beseech.
They appear not to want my affection…but is it a reverse psychology trick?
Beseech covered ABBA’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)” which is both awesome and horrible, and most fitting for this post.
Half past twelve / And I’m watching the late show in my flat all alone / How I hate to spend the evening on my own! … [Yeah I can’t take any more of this either.]
END INTERLUDE. Back to srs bizns.
I should point out that killing a social addiction is most conducive to creative thought. Which is much more useful to the world and (less important) much more happiness-producing than nightlife. What other people think really gets into you and mucks with your invention wellspring. Of course, not so good to invent something without people in it, so at least say hi to somebody today, okay? Or maybe just this week. (Even if just online ;-)
On Saturday, Stay Wired! Coffeehouse & Computer Service (Twitter, facebook, 2918 W. Berry Street, Fort Worth, TX 76109) hosted an awesome party, organized by Ted Wick and Travis Hildenbrand as the production team Canadian Caveman. Cover was $6 and beer upstairs was free (tips suggested).
Kari talks about burlesque history
The night’s main attraction proved to be Christopher Walker‘s CYBERPUNKS Burlesque. Here are the members’ names in the order pictured above, left to right.
KARI KALVIG, Associate Artistic Director
LUCY GUNN
MYSTICAL TEMPTRESS
MISSY LEMURE
NEVAEH ROGUE
AMBER ROMANCE
MAGENTA D’LITE
MAX VALENTINE
The burlesque troupe performed twice, once before the bands, and a second time after either one band or two had played (I can’t remember for sure).
Nevaeh Rogue was extremely confident. Definitely the star.
NEVAEH ROGUE
Mystical Temptress was a very fun performer, clearly having a good time.
MYSTICAL TEMPTRESS
Max Valentine was entertaining as well. I think he has a pretty good job.
MYSTICAL TEMPTRESS & MAX VALENTINE
Missy Lemure’s expression and hair are amazing here:
Singing, Rebecca never met tied whole notes she didn’t like; her voice glided well over the dreamy, reverb-heavy atmosphere Brian brought with his guitar. Darby’s drumming created the right stoner-rock framework, and Sybil’s bass, strong as a piano’s bottom strings, undergirded it all.
(Maybe it’s captious to criticize, but the addition of eccentric fills from Brian and Darby would add some nice detail to their soundscape.)
Thanks for the Burnett’s Whipped Cream Vodka, Sybil!
You can hear DJ NOiCE in this video compilation. This was the first time I’d ever used my (DSLR) camera to record video, and the first time I’ve ever edited video by computer. What strikes me about this video is how much fun everyone’s having.
Travis is a talented drummer. But all and all what this instrumental band did was stare at the floor and play progressive rock to one another. They were talking to themselves, but at least they seemed to enjoy it.
Downstairs by the coffee bar Hyung-Joo Kim tore it up on cello for passersby. He’s a graduate music student at UT-Austin.
Stereo Type Writers faced a diminished crowd since by then the burlesque troupe had left. It was also their first real gig; each member earned a dollar. They deserved that $3, though, since they persevered bravely despite minor equipment problems and overall venue exhaustion. Their straightforward music was at its best when their enthusiasm took off. Kevin Brown’s confidence on his fuzzily distorted bass drew my attention. It’d work well for this group to find an exciting singer who could move into the crowd.
The weekend was also the 28th birthday of Stay Wired!’s leader, John Campbell. His birthday and his role as host earned him plenty of applause, which he totally deserves.
Birthday Boy John Campbell
Stay Wired! holds an open-mic night every Thursday; arrive at 8:30 p.m. to sign up for a slot; it ends at midnight or so. Events such as the Oct 15th party happen on many weekends. Awesome, right?
After Monday’s suicide of Russell Armstrong (a Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star’s estranged husband), Matt Zoller Seitz of Salon.com called reality TV “A blood sport that must change.” Seitz said:
The type of so-called reality show represented by the “Real Housewives” franchise is the soft-bellied, 21st century American TV version of a gladiatorial contest. It has no agenda except giving viewers the basest sort of entertainment: the spectacle of people doing violence to each other and suffering violence themselves. Instead of going at each other like gladiators with swords and clubs, or like boxers hurling punches, participants in this kind of unscripted show attack each other psychologically. The show’s appeal is the spectacle of emotional violence. The participants — or “cast members,” as they are revealingly labeled — suffer and bleed emotionally while we watch and guffaw. […]
Unscripted shows encourage, and sometimes cause, emotional damage. That’s the whole point of their existence — the reason they get on the air, the reason we watch and discuss them. They record intense, bizarre, sometimes ginned-up conflicts during production. They transform the participants into caricatures of themselves […]
Yesterday I asked a story editor on a long-running dating series who did not want her name used in this story if, during her years of working on these shows, she had ever heard a producer express authentic concern for a participant’s well-being as a person rather than an abstracted “character.” She laughed and said, “No. That just doesn’t happen. If anybody working on this kind of show thought that way, it would make the shows less entertaining, and that person would lose their job.”
Tonight I went to the corner grocery store to buy Wifely some Skinny Cow dessert and me some Mexican Coke. The cashier, a young woman, wore a nametag that, under her name, said:
I LOVE U :)
I thought to myself: that’s an exuberant nametag. Although people who aren’t actually in my skull insist otherwise, I do automatically, non-voluntarily think such words as “exuberant.” If that annoys you, you probably shouldn’t be reading my blog, but rather watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
No one was in the lane behind me, nor was anyone nearing the lane. For a moment I considered saying something or other to the cashier about her nametag. After all, I’ve checked out through her lane enough times for us to share mutual recognition, though just barely. I prefer to interact with a person when checking out, instead of using the self check-out lanes, because something worthwhile, interesting and unique and unpredictable, might happen during my encounter with another human being.
Then for another moment I considered not saying something about her nametag. Because by now the time for exchanging a greeting had nearly ended, she was starting to scan my Mexican Coke, she was about to ask if I’d brought my rewards card (I always lie and say I forgot; cashiers then scan theirs on my behalf, and not only do I not have to deal with signing up for one, but also I singlehandedly defeat the company’s entire research division). But the only word coming to mind during this expiring hourglass time was exuberant.
I decided not to chicken out, to go for it.
“That’s an exuberant nametag,” I said.
Her smile wriggled as happily and confusedly as she did until she stopped to ask what “exuberant” meant. Ah-ha, I thought, a person who doesn’t become angry like so many do when someone else uses a word they don’t know, but instead has the laudable reaction of curiosity. Now it was my turn to wriggle my hand happily and confusedly, trying to pantomime the meaning of exude while telling her, “It means, like, … happiness … like …” I managed to stop stumbling and say “It means something like, ‘Shining out happiness.'”
She said, “I really like that,” and I sensed she meant it. A few moments of silent, shared satisfaction passed as she scanned my items.
Photo ofPhilip K. Dick by Anne Dick “I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities” — PKD
One of the commonplace remarks about reality TV is that it “isn’t real,” that it’s merely “so-called” reality TV. This supposed phoniness is alleged to cover up the “natural” way of being, the “real” way, which is usually not identified by the shows’ deriders.
As I paid for the grocery items, I nervously — as if invisible judges were watching — began to, as they say, “walk it back”: retract and qualify what I said. Anxiously I told the increasingly disappointed cashier the following nonfiction anecdote from a few days back:
I walked down an aisle at this same corner grocery store to pick up some ice cream. A middle-aged female customer was squatting down with a freezer door opened, scrutinizing the vanilla flavors. Without my saying anything, she suddenly started talking haphazardly about the proliferation of vanillas. French vanilla, old-fashioned vanilla, vanilla bean and more. “She told me to get vanilla; I wonder which she meant? There are too many!” In a bad mood, I didn’t want to talk at first; like a person wearing sunglasses indoors, I didn’t want to interact with anyone, didn’t want to engage with people. I resented her a little for introducing conversation. Then I regretted my self-absorption and told her I suspected old-fashioned vanilla would do the trick. The woman half-nodded sorta-assent, and said, as I walked away, “‘Tis a quandary.”
Walking away still, I looked back at her, and she was still squatting, not looking at me. I felt irritated that she hadn’t continued the conversation, that she’d used the word ‘quandary.’ How would she have known I knew what it meant, anyway? Now I was feeling like those who call big vocabulary pretentious. But I guess something small helped her recognize that I’m the sort of odd person who knows odd words. I still feel bad for not engaging with her, for choosing instead to cultivate my sour mood.
I explained all this to the I LOVE U :) cashier who, like I said above, appeared disappointed with me for walking-back the happy shared moment of exuberant. I was disappointed with me, too. But at least when I was driving home I thought up this blog post; I realized there was a big connection between these interactions and the reality TV issue.
At their peak the destructive emotions flaring during these reality TV shows are definitely real. (Perhaps those who decry the shows and miss this point don’t actually see much of them.) Real doesn’t imply good, doesn’t imply that the shows shouldn’t be changed. (I like Seitz’s suggestion of psychologists and better screenings; you can’t eliminate a phenomenon like reality TV; and, to pretend an underbelly doesn’t exist doesn’t help anything.)
Here’s the point. I think that in our postmodern world, people are so hungry for authentic moments of human experience that, even it means havoc or worse for the participants’ lives, they’ll take what these shows offer, if that’s all they know how to find. Because sincerely engaging with other people during the day, even through a good work of art, and sincerely emoting, is a scary risk.
I'm a Texas-born, Seattle-based freelance writer/journalist currently living in Chiapas, México. Published at Rolling Stone, Foreign Policy, Salon, WhoWhatWhy, the Texas Observer, the Daily Dot, others. I write about anything and everything, but usually current events meets investigative journalism and philosophy; liberatory mental health; education; science fiction and fantasy; technology; justice; more. Also a former public ed substitute teacher.
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