Why Unattached Boards On The Charles Dana Bridge Matters

Do you know what the job of a whistleblower is? We are consequence minimizers and occurrence disruptors. We illuminate or bring to light the true behaviors and defects of the organization before the accident happens...before we then all have to spend big bucks on a accident.

We all play the whistleblower role many times in our lives...we are all whistleblowers! 

I will give you an idea of what I am talking about. We drive drunk 100 to 300 times on average before we get caught by the police.

"The Anna Hunt Marsh Bridge connects Brattleboro to Hinsdale Island, which is connected to Hinsdale by the Charles Dana Bridge. JB Mack, the principal planner for the Southwest Region Planning Commission, previously told the Reformer federal highway standards dictate the bridges are too narrow and have insufficient weight limits and vertical clearance. "

 

This is the pdr of the below...easier to read. 

 

The Firebird Forum

THE OCCURRENCE PYRAMID

The Nature of High Hazard Industries

We read about the highly consequential events, but the near misses, compromises, and deviations/infractions seldom get much ink. Thus, the data we encounter can mislead the unwary.

However, we are generally not surprised at the results of detailed government inspections of organizations that have had newsworthy consequential events. These inspections nearly always report that there were near misses, compromises, and deviations/infractions before the consequential event.

The nature of occurrences in high hazard industries, and, perhaps, of life generally, is illustrated by The Occurrence Pyramid in the first column.

Often a regulator, a journalist, or an editorial writer bemoans the failure of the organization to attend to the non- consequentials before the consequential occurred.

Recent consequentials in the news include:

The Occurrence Pyramid

Consequentials and near misses

Compromises

Deviations/ Infractions

Suggestion for root cause instructors

e
The Newsletter of Event Investigation Organizational Learning Developments Volume 16 • Number 10 October 2013

The West Delta 32 Platform Explosions

Links to more information on those consequentials is readily available by internet searching

 

How about "Near Misses"?

A "near miss" is generally thought of as an occurrence that could have resulted in one or more of the d-words given below, but did not because of only one non-robust mitigating factor2.

For every consequential occurrence you should expect to see roughly ten near misses. A "consequential" is an occurrence that resulted in one or more of the d-words: death, damage, dollars of loss, disruption of service, delays in work, disgrace to the organization, defection of customers, or the like.

1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lac- M%C3%A9gantic_derailment 2 For a fascinating near miss asphyxiation see https://app.box.com/s/3r4111e5qm9hbsrgi778

Thought of the month

Quotation of the month

Back Issues

The Arkansas Nuclear One Stator Drop

The Crystal River Containment Failure

The San Onofre Steam Generator Failures

The Lac-Megantic Rail Car Explosions

Challenger launch could be regarded as near misses because they had O-rings similar to those of the Challenger, but happened to have been launched at a higher temperature. Sometimes near misses are easy to recognize and sometimes they are not.

Almost everyone would recognize a dropped object event involving penetration of a hard hat3 as a near miss injury.

Most people would recognize a load drop within a few feet of a work area as a near miss. Some people would not. I knew of one organization that did not recognize repeated diesel generator exhaust system fires as near misses.

At another organization an electrician involved in a near miss electrocution did not recognize it, but his foreman did- fortunately. It may well be that near misses are the most difficult level of event to recognize, at least by some people. Thus it is worthwhile to have unfamiliar people review the occurrence database from time to time to see if their calls are the same as yours.

Perhaps like dead men in the old pirate saying4, near misses tell no tales.

How about "Compromises"?

A "compromise" is a situation in which a required safety or quality barrier has been omitted, breached, or degraded. For example, conducting a load lift within a short distance of work would be a compromise.

 

Similarly, driving without a seat belt or driving with air bags disarmed would be a compromise.

The inoperable blowout preventer on the Macondo Rig was a compromise in that important protection was missing5.

The power operated relief valve failures to close that preceded the Three Mile Island Unit 2 fuel damage event were compromises in that they represented a situation in which a required safety or quality barrier was breached, or degraded.

Noticing that one is in the wrong unit of a multi-unit plant is a recognized compromise. But many compromises are unrecognized until after the consequential that they were precursors to.

http://www.marinesafetyforum.org/upload- files/safetyalerts/msf-safety-flash.06-08.pdf#! 4

 

See the last few seconds of the clip at

 

http://youtu.be/aLSJNTr-k9o 5

 

For the whole report see: http://ccrm.berkeley.edu/pdfs_papers/bea_pdfs/dhsgfinalreport -march2011-tag.pdf

More commonly, compromises consist of omissions such as failures to invoke appropriate quality program requirements, failures to reinstall foreign material barriers, failing to close security doors, failures to replace protective covers, failure to recharge fire extinguishers after discharge, and the like. .

We should expect to see about ten compromises for every near miss.

How about "Deviations/ Infractions"?

A "deviation" or an "infraction" is a situation in which a quality or safety requirement that supports required barriers has been inadvertently or deliberately overlooked. For example, if a load lift were conducted without walking down the lift path a deviation or infraction would have occurred.

All non-consequential self-check and peer check errors are deviations or infractions.

These are somewhat harder to detect than consequentials, near misses, or compromises. It takes knowledge of requirements to recognize deviations and infractions and many organizations do not provide effective training in what the requirements are.

You should expect to see roughly ten deviations/infractions for every compromise. This is shown in The Occurrence Pyramid. The base of the Occurrence Pyramid suggests a thousand or so deviations/infractions preceding every consequential.

All deviations/infractions are noncompliances with requirements. This creates a link between compliance and safety.

But what good does this do me?

If you buy into this model you can use it in at least two ways.

You can use it to test the integrity of your occurrence database and you can use it to gain support for certain safety improvement measures.

Occurrence Database Integrity

Often the occurrence database is a reflection of what is going on in people’s minds rather than what is going on in the facility.

An occurrence database will reflect what gets into it. It will reflect The Occurrence Pyramid if the database "holds water", i.e., has integrity. Otherwise it will not.

If, for example, you see about the same number of compromises as near misses, you might hypothesize that the compromises are not being reported faithfully.

You might want to explore what it is about your organization that results in its recorded experience not being typical of high hazard industries. Is there something that is suppressing compromises relative to near misses?

Or are the compromises being concealed? Or do people just not bother to report compromises?

Gaining Support for Safety Improvements

Given your belief in The Occurrence Pyramid a strategy for reducing the consequentials and the near misses is to correct the conditions, behaviors, actions, and inactions that result in deviations/infractions and in compromises.

The same conditions, behaviors, actions, and inactions that result in deviations/infractions and in compromises will, under different conditions, result in consequentials or near misses.

By use of The Occurrence Pyramid you may be able to convince some people in your organization that it is in their best interests to understand and correct the b conditions, behaviors, actions, and inactions involved in compromises and in deviations/ infractions.

A reliable way to reduce the size of The Occurrence Pyramid in your organization is to reduce the size of the base. What we are talking about is finding out what conditions, behaviors, actions, and inactions cause the compromises and deviations/ infractions and correcting them.

Unfortunately, many organizations ignore the compromises and deviations/ infractions or simply record them without finding the behaviors and conditions that cause them. Even some regulatory agencies downplay non-consequential pathogenic occurrences by giving them dismissive names.

We are not suggesting that a Root Cause Analysis be done on all such minor occurrences, but we are suggesting that an intelligent sampling scheme might surface the dominant behaviors and conditions that need to be corrected for safety and business reasons.

But what about precursors?

A “precursor” is a situation that has some, but usually not all, of the ingredients of a certain type of consequential occurrence, e.g., there are precursors to plant scrams, precursors to large environmental releases, electrocution precursors, etc.

Seen in this way, all occurrences in the pyramid are precursors, even the consequentials. For example, an electrocution of one worker is a precursor of an electrocution of multiple workers if there is a possibility of doing the same job with a larger work team. Most electrocutions are also precursors of serious fires.

Thus it is generally not useful to single out certain events as precursors and exclude others. Any harmful event, condition, behavior, action, or inaction worth discussing is a precursor to something consequential, otherwise it is not very significant.

Precursors come in exactly three types by their potential involvement in the consequential that has not yet happened. These are facilitators, initiators, and exacerbators. A facilitator precursor is a condition, behavior, action, or inaction that sets the stage for a certain specified type of consequential.

An accumulation of transient combustible material could be a facilitator precursor to a hot work induced fire. An accumulation of combustible gas could be a facilitator precursor to a hot work induced explosion.

An initiator is a condition, behavior, action, or inaction that could have initiated a consequential (but didn't because other ingredients were missing). For example, creating a spark in an area known to occasionally contain combustible gas would be an initiator precursor to a detonation.

An exacerbator precursor is a condition, behavior, action, or inaction that couldn't facilitate a consequential or initiate one, but could make the consequences of an event worse, should it be initiated.

For example, a defective piece of fire fighting equipment could be an exacerbator type of precursor of a consequential fire.

The failures of the reactor shutdown systems at Salem and Browns Ferry were exacerbator precursors.

Before the chemical release at Bhopal the inoperability of some safety systems6 was an exacerbating precursor, even though it was not recognized as such.

Summary Table

The Summary Table below shows the relationship of The Occurrence Pyramid levels to the normal types of precursors. These relationships are not always as shown, but this table is a good rule of thumb. Like all rules of thumb apparent and legitimate exceptions are not unusually difficult to find.

6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

 

Occurrences

Level

Precursor Type Facilitator Initiator Exacerbator Conseq-

Not uential

Normally

Not Normally Near Miss

Yes

Not Normally

Yes Yes

Compro- mise

Yes

Not Normally

Yes

Deviation Infraction

Yes Yes Yes

Suggestions for root cause instructors

Discuss The Occurrence Pyramid. Indicate how the behaviors that result in pyramid base occurrences can also result in pyramid peak occurrences.

Thought of the Month

The consequential occurrences are the tip of the iceberg. They are supported by the whole pyramid of near misses, compromises, and deviations/ infractions. In order to understand the culture you must understand the whole pyramid and the management behaviors that sustain it.

Quotation of the Month

Geiger's Principle: "If you only investigate consequentials you will soon have consequentials to investigate."

Firebird Forum Staff

William R. Corcoran, Ph.D., P.E. 21 Broadleaf Circle Windsor, CT 06095-1634 Tel: 860-285-8779 e-mail: firebird.one@alum.mit.edu

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The Firebird Forum may be freely retransmitted without changes electronically or in hard copy, but may not be incorporated in whole or in part in any other document without permission.

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Reminder

Think of Bill Corcoran when you need to take the next step in event investigation, organizational learning, corrective action, self-assessment, or internal oversight-or when those processes are not giving you the results you need.

Feedback

Send me an email at firebird.one@alum.mit.edu Give me your thoughts and point out any weaknesses, errors, omissions, and/or improvement opportunities.

The Meat Grinder: The McDonaldization Of The 8th District Court

Oct 9: So the assistant prosecutor told me today they dropped the felony...


Aug 8: On Monday the judge did question me concerning these events. I could have been fined $350. A guy before me had totally blew off an arraignment. The police never came around to arrest him...they just caught him the next time he came into court. They came to my house at 8 pm last Friday with a bogus warrant...

But I faced a threat of a loss of my freedom over a weekend...why do I have to pay the risk. The judge didn't charge me with any wronging over this and didn't even make a comment.

Why is the court system and prosecutors not paying risk or getting chewed out for poor communication? How do you make them correct their communication messaging and make arraignment day not so chaotic for the poor souls who enter their system...

Right they are making it convenient to themselves instead of the rest of us.

I have already seem multiple times...many times...people who have such deep seated problems and mentally ill...they are animals and are barely in control of themselves out in our societal. People with a impaired conscience.

And the courts and society just has to control and deal with them. It is so sad...

I pity the position we put the court in and its employees...

I asked that he remove my bail conditions...told me not until the probable cause. As he was reading my bail conditions “not to have fire arms”-said I don’t believe in guns and “refrain from booze and drugs”- said I haven’t used any booze or drugs for over 30 years...they were surprised I spoke up. This judge has seen so much societal devastation and disorder over booze and drugs.  I bet you 70% of the court’s case load revolves around addiction or destructive dependence.   

Course, I was again in my tie and suit coat. He got a piece of me and I am certain they were all sizing me up as I approached the bench.

Honestly, with all the animals clogging our courts, how can the innocent and good get the attention they deserve and justice? ( I am using human  “animal” as a tool and trying to be excessively provocative.)

I am mocking our disorderly society with creating so many animals...

I was an uncontrollable animal...I am really speaking about me when i was younger and so disconnected from societal and my humanity. I hung around with many animals when I was young...

Added Oct 6: Explained how the court made out a arrest bench warrant, cleared it...then the police tried to arrest many hours later with the arrest warrant no longer valid.

...This is where I began documenting my Keene court

 "Arraignment Day" Issues.

Mike Mulligan: Fugitive From The Law

Oct 3: Arrangement In Keene Court

 

Going into the arraignment and thinking I am going to plead to the judge.

Sep 30, 2013

8th District 8 court in Keene@8:30

…Question the integrity of the court…one court employee tried to intimidate me into signing the bail requirements. He created inaccurate documents, tried to punish me outside a trial--remove my driving license…didn’t disclose verbally in the police station all the condition of my bail. Are court employees controlled by outsiders?

…Talk about inaccurate police documents (the complaint) and to not verbally in the police department disclosing the full nature of the charges against me…the felony.

…Disclose to the court I became privy to a private conversation with my case between the charging police officer and the bail bondman while under police custody. They were in another room negotiating the charges against me and discussing how to legally grab my driving license.

(Update: none of the charges have been removed...we are having probably cause soon on all of them)
This is what I am thinking of the prosecutor throwing out the felony and three of five charges on Oct 3. This guy got a 60%  charging accuracy rate. I hope they can shoot scores are  more accurate that than this. What would the implication be on my bail conditions if the police accurately charged me. Is it an indication of how poorly the police and its management are educated in the laws of New Hampshire. I will tell you what I think, this is called the politicization of the police department. This is proof the Hinsdale police excessive charged a individual to meet a political ends...not according to the laws of NH.

Oct 4, 2013: Not at all, there was a significant percentage of the population of Hinsdale and many businesses who thought my camping out at the bridge with signs were wrecking the homeowner image and business reputation of Hinsdale...many people were outraged over my activities at the bridge.

These trumped up charges was a public communication from the Hinsdale selectmen and police through the media....an answer to the disgruntled homeowners and businesses that we are punishing “angel guy” Mike Mulligan who has been despoiling our community for years with his protest at the bridge.

It is a answer to all of the communities around the area...this is how you should treat any despoilers of community life in your towns...

This is how the Hinsdale police reported the arrest and my charges in the newspapers. The police got the charges mixed up...the reckless conduct was a misdemeanor and the criminal mischief was the felony. How come they didn't call up the Reformer to ask them to correct the inaccurate  charge portrayal.

This is why the court case is going to be so much fun. The complaint said the criminality occurred at  7:15 am on July 31. At 7: 15 AM i pulled up loose boards, took pictures, replaced boards...then reported my activities to the Hinsdale police station. There was no appreciable damage to the bridge. I waited for a call from the Hinsdale police. Got none, so at aroud 8 pm I pulled up the boards and then threw them over the side...then called 911 using my real name.  I'll bet the 7:15 AM and the date of the Brattleboro police investigation of the bridge don't match.

Tuesday August 6, 2013 HINSDALE, N.H. -- A local man familiar to area residents for his public demonstrations against the two bridges linking the town to Vermont was cited for allegedly causing damage to the pedestrian portion of one of them Friday.Michael Mulligan, 60, was cited with reckless conduct, disorderly conduct, criminal mischief and littering, according to Hinsdale Police Lt. David Eldridge. Reckless conduct is a felony.Mulligan was released on $5,000 personal recognizance and is scheduled to be arraigned in 8th Circuit Court District Division in Keene on Thursday, Oct. 3.Eldridge said part of Mulligan's bail conditions mandate that he not walk within a mile of either side of the Charles Dana Bridge or stop any vehicle within 100 yards of it. The lieutenant said witnesses saw Mulligan pulling up some of the bridge's boards.Mulligan's arrest came one day after he appeared at a public meeting hosted by the Federal Highway Administration, the New Hampshire Department of Transportation and the Vermont Agency of Transportation. The meeting, held in the Brattleboro Union High School Multipurpose Room, was held to discuss the draft environmental assessment that had been released and was used to gauge local support for a project to rehabilitate the Charles Dana and Anna Hunt Marsh bridges and construct a new one to span over the nearby railroad tracks in Brattleboro and touch down near the stop light at the former Walmart location.Mulligan, who brought with him pieces of rust he had chipped off the bridges, said he feels the environmental assessment contains gross inaccuracies and said he fears the bridges are in danger of collapsing. He said the assessment overestimates "by many magnitudes" the bridge's integrity, even though those who put together the assessment consider it "functionally obsolete."Mulligan, wearing a homemade halo, also referenced movies in which an angel lurks near a bridge before it collapses and said he is that angel for the Charles Dana and Anna Hunt Marsh bridges.

 

This is how I thought arraignment day went.

Oct 3: Thursday morning at the court wasn’t justice...it was MacDonald’s at lunch time.

This is how the NYT's explains the McDonaldization within the 8th district court. Just exchange doctors and medical practitioners with judges, prosecutors and police officers

Who Will Heal the Doctors?

“The reasons people go into medicine are often woven deeply into who they are,” explains Remen, who has taught The Healer’s Art at the University of California—San Francisco for more than 20 years. “Despite difficult and sometimes impossible demands placed on them, they will continue to try to do their best to care for people, but the system always asks them to function far below their level of personal excellence. When you compromise your best self on a daily basis, something gets extinguished in you — and that something is what has kept the profession of medicine alive for thousands of years.”

The Healer’s Art doesn’t purport to fix the health care system. “It’s about how to help the people in medicine survive the system,” adds Remen.

People who are caught in oppressive systems adopt various stances toward them, consciously or unconsciously. They may choose to abandon the systems; today many doctors are doing just that. Several wrote in to say that they had already quit medicine, or were planning to quit soon. “I retired early from medicine, was glad to get out, and don’t regret fleeing a broken system,” wrote J. Skinner from the Midwest."

Here is my explanation of how arraignment day went in the 8th Keene Districk court. I became disgusted with the court system.  

I came to court and was in there to about 11am.

Over the last few months I observed many court arraignments. I intended to go to court...sit around for however long it took to get called up to the judge.

There was a big crowd waiting to get in when I went upstairs...a lot of young people. This was different than I ever seen. We got into the court and it was almost full.

Seems it was arraignment day...a day only focused on arraignment.

A lot of young people get into trouble with open alcohol containers...it is a college town. Most of the court was filled with these kinds of charges. If you plead guilty you pay $350 and if you are good for a period of time the charge gets expunged.

The Keene and Hinsdale prosecutor got up in front of the court to explain how the special arraignment day would go. He specified how it would go for the Keene criminals as well as the Hinsdale criminals. He said nobody here today is going to see a judge. You get in line to see your prosecutor...you tell him if you are pleading guilty or innocent. If you plead guilty you go up the clerk of court to sign papers and make arrangements to pay your fines. If you are going to plead innocence we will work out a trial day.

We all raced to our prosecutors...most of the room went to the Keene prosecutors. Five or six criminals went to Hinsdale prosecutor. I got intentionally last in line figuring I have nothing to do. The prosecutor took a half an hour to 45 minutes with the first guy. He took around ten minutes for the four people in front of me each. Meanwhile another criminal got in line behind me. The prosecutor asked my name...I told him it. He made like a grunt of disgust with hearing my name. He told me I am pleading innocent...going to trial...there was no deal to be made. Maybe a prosecutor would talk to you later by phone. I asked him about disclosure, pined I asked the police much earlier for their documents, but they ignored me. He gave me his office phone number and said you can ask my secretary for discovery. I then said I got an integrity issue with the court...I wanted to tell judge this to his face but they told us in the beginning we are not seeing the judge today. Dudek said he has no idea why I am mentioning this to him. The prosecutor said he has no idea who I should to talk to if I had suspicion of court corruption. If he should have told me you can tell it to the judge when you see him today. I  would have then stayed around. I thought and was told none of us would be seeing a judge today. I reminded Dudek he gave me a speeding ticket a time or two in Hinsdale.

He said, what does that got to do with anything.  

Then he turned to the NH state police officer sitting next to him...he began looking to the ceiling with exaggerated big open eyes and twisting his head around like he was in great pain. I bet you he was signaling; you know Frank, here is another one of “those” kinds of people with his big ceiling eyes. The statie then said me, you need to go sit in the back of the room because other people need to talk to the prosecutor. The last guy talked a little to the prosecutor. I directly went back to the back room like a little school boy. I get it I had a lawyer this won't have happend. 

The regular court secession began. I knew earlier the prosecutors said "none of you would see a judge today" (a cop told me this pandemonium is normal business for the courts with arraignment day). So the prosecutor knew the court secession was going to begin...that was why he was rushing me. Why did he then spent so much time with the first guy?  The court secessions contradicted the Keene prosecutor's general instruction saying “no court would occur today on arraignment day and you won’t be seeing a judge today. You only talk to the court clerk. I was irked because this contradicted the past arraignments I’d seen. It looked to me like a trial was to begin. I waited around for about two hours without the prosecutor coming back to me or calling me for a discussion outside. I thought they stuck me in the back of the room to ditch me because I was upsetting the persecutor.

Then I thought I pleaded innocent to the prosecutor like I was instructed too. I have his office phone number. I’ll just call him for my regular court date beginning sometime after the beginning of the year. When I asked him for the police documents (I call next day and discovered through the prosecutor's secretary that I had a arrest bench warrant), I will ask for my court date. Nobody said hang around because you need to see the judge. I didn’t hear that once. 

I thought the court just set the date and we had to show up! Little did I know I would had to see the judge...contrary to the general special instruction to us all earlier in the morning by the Keene and Hinsdale prosecutors (that nobody would be seeing the judge today). 

I now suspect this special instruction by the Keene prosecutor was for the multitudes of open booze container Keene criminals...but he included the Hinsdale people in his general instruction and the Hinsdale prosecutor never told the Hinsdale people the procedure would be different. It was really poor court communication from these court professionals. Right, these court  professionals are in the court day after day...while the vast majority of the people in the court were there for the first time.

On Friday Oct 4 at around 1 pm I finally get around to call the prosecutor’s office to request my discovery. A nice woman answers the phone. I ask her for the police document after giving her my name...she says I can’t because the judge has entered a bench warrant for your arrest. You left the court room before you had seen the judge. I asked who can I talk to straighten this out. She told me the general NH district court. I asked her for the number which she gave me. (I would have spent the weekend in jail if I didn’t make an ass out of myself with asking discovery in the courtroom and getting the office number.) I called the general number and explained the short form with why I am calling. She asked if I could attend court Monday at 9 am...I could...she made me promise to show up. She them removed the warrant for my arrest.

 

At around 7 pm I put this up on the Internet...within a hour two cops showed up at my house to arrest me with a fictitious warrant. I bet you the police thought when reading this, we can't tolerate anyone taunting the police department.

"Mike Mulligan: Fugitive From The Law

Mike Mulligan is now a fugitive from the law. The judge has entered a bench warrant for my arrest because I did not go to my arraignment...

Well, complete it...

Friday morning at the court wasn’t justice...it was MacDonald’s are lunch time."

 

Bam, then the cops showed up aound 8pm . I am writing right after the nice cops left my house...the timing was so suspicious..can you believe putting this on the internet and they directly showed up with a bogus arrest warrant. Please don't give these guys any bullets.

Was the arrest engineered as punishment to put me in jail over the weekend"

 "I mean, somebody is listening to this. Within an hour of putting this on the Internet the Hinsdale police department was at my house to arrest me.

Honestly, do you ever think I would mention this if the warrant hadn't clear up...

The question is, who called me to warn me?

As soon as I learned about it maybe 1pm today...I cleared it up with the 8th District court.

The senior police officer in my kitchen said they knew the warrant was issued yesterday (Oct 3)...he was told to pick me up at the beginning of shift. Why didn't they arrest me yesterday immediately? It sounds like they were saving it for a weekend jail stay as punishment.

The two police officers at my house were really polite and you could talk to them. They had a really extremely respectable attitude towards me. But they would have arrested me if the paperwork was straight. "

This is how a police officer thought of it...he said this in my kitchen.

"The senior police officer said shaking his head...this is a first for me. I have never been told to arrest a guy without all the proper documentation. I never in my career gone to a guy's house for arrest and the bench warrent was not valid or withdrawn.

Never heard of this ever happening from anyone in my career."

More!

 "he was instructed to pick me up at the beginning of shift today."

The Stone September 15, 2013

The Banality of Systemic Evil

By PETER LUDLOW

The Stone is a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless.

In recent months there has been a visible struggle in the media to come to grips with the leaking, whistle-blowing and hacktivism that has vexed the United States military and the private and government intelligence communities. This response has run the gamut. It has involved attempts to condemn, support, demonize, psychoanalyze and in some cases canonize figures like Aaron Swartz, Jeremy Hammond, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden.

In broad terms, commentators in the mainstream and corporate media have tended to assume that all of these actors needed to be brought to justice, while independent players on the Internet and elsewhere have been much more supportive. Tellingly, a recent Time magazine cover story has pointed out a marked generational difference in how people view these matters: 70 percent of those age 18 to 34 sampled in a poll said they believed that Snowden “did a good thing” in leaking the news of the National Security Agency’s surveillance program.

So has the younger generation lost its moral compass?

No. In my view, just the opposite.

Clearly, there is a moral principle at work in the actions of the leakers, whistle-blowers and hacktivists and those who support them. I would also argue that that moral principle has been clearly articulated, and it may just save us from a dystopian future.

In “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” one of the most poignant and important works of 20th-century philosophy, Hannah Arendt made an observation about what she called “the banality of evil.” One interpretation of this holds that it was not an observation about what a regular guy Adolf Eichmann seemed to be, but rather a statement about what happens when people play their “proper” roles within a system, following prescribed conduct with respect to that system, while remaining blind to the moral consequences of what the system was doing — or at least compartmentalizing and ignoring those consequences.

A good illustration of this phenomenon appears in “Moral Mazes,” a book by the sociologist Robert Jackall that explored the ethics of decision making within several corporate bureaucracies. In it, Jackall made several observations that dovetailed with those of Arendt. The mid-level managers that he spoke with were not “evil” people in their everyday lives, but in the context of their jobs, they had a separate moral code altogether, what Jackall calls the “fundamental rules of corporate life”:

(1) You never go around your boss. (2) You tell your boss what he wants to hear, even when your boss claims that he wants dissenting views. (3) If your boss wants something dropped, you drop it. (4) You are sensitive to your boss’s wishes so that you anticipate what he wants; you don’t force him, in other words, to act as a boss. (5) Your job is not to report something that your boss does not want reported, but rather to cover it up. You do your job and you keep your mouth shut.

Jackall went through case after case in which managers violated this code and were drummed out of a business (for example, for reporting wrongdoing in the cleanup at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant).

Aaron Swartz counted “Moral Mazes” among his “very favorite books.” Swartz was the Internet wunderkind who was hounded by a government prosecution threatening him with 35 years in jail for illicitly downloading academic journals that were behind a pay wall. Swartz, who committed suicide in January at age 26 (many believe because of his prosecution), said that “Moral Mazes” did an excellent job of “explaining how so many well-intentioned people can end up committing so much evil.

Swartz argued that it was sometimes necessary to break the rules that required obedience to the system in order to avoid systemic evil. In Swartz’s case the system was not a corporation but a system for the dissemination of bottled up knowledge that should have been available to all. Swartz engaged in an act of civil disobedience to liberate that knowledge, arguing that “there is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.”

Chelsea Manning, the United States Army private incarcerated for leaking classified documents from the Departments of Defense and State, felt a similar pull to resist the internal rules of the bureaucracy. In a statement at her trial she described a case where she felt this was necessary. In February 2010, she received a report of an event in which the Iraqi Federal Police had detained 15 people for printing “anti-Iraqi” literature. Upon investigating the matter, Manning discovered that none of the 15 had previous ties to anti-Iraqi actions or suspected terrorist organizations. Manning had the allegedly anti-Iraqi literature translated and found that, contrary to what the federal police had said, the published literature in question “detailed corruption within the cabinet of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government and the financial impact of his corruption on the Iraqi people.”

When Manning reported this discrepancy to the officer in charge (OIC), she was told to “drop it,” she recounted.

Manning could not play along. As she put it, she knew if she “continued to assist the Baghdad Federal Police in identifying the political opponents of Prime Minister al-Maliki, those people would be arrested and in the custody of the Special Unit of the Baghdad Federal Police and very likely tortured and not seen again for a very long time — if ever.” When her superiors would not address the problem, she was compelled to pass this information on to WikiLeaks.

Snowden too felt that, confronting what was clearly wrong, he could not play his proper role within the bureaucracy of the intelligence community. As he put it,

[W]hen you talk to people about [abuses] in a place like this where this is the normal state of business people tend not to take them very seriously and move on from them. But over time that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up and you feel compelled to talk about [them]. And the more you talk about [them] the more you’re ignored. The more you’re told it’s not a problem until eventually you realize that these things need to be determined by the public and not by somebody who was simply hired by the government.

The bureaucracy was telling him to shut up and move on (in accord with the five rules in “Moral Mazes”), but Snowden felt that doing so was morally wrong.

In a June Op-Ed in The Times, David Brooks made a case for why he thought Snowden was wrong to leak information about the Prism surveillance program. His reasoning cleanly framed the alternative to the moral code endorsed by Swartz, Manning and Snowden. “For society to function well,” he wrote, “there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things.”

The complaint is eerily parallel to one from a case discussed in “Moral Mazes,” where an accountant was dismissed because he insisted on reporting “irregular payments, doctored invoices, and shuffling numbers.” The complaint against the accountant by the other managers of his company was that “by insisting on his own moral purity … he eroded the fundamental trust and understanding that makes cooperative managerial work possible.”

But wasn’t there arrogance or hubris in Snowden’s and Manning’s decisions to leak the documents? After all, weren’t there established procedures determining what was right further up the organizational chart? Weren’t these ethical decisions better left to someone with a higher pay grade? The former United States ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, argued that Snowden “thinks he’s smarter and has a higher morality than the rest of us … that he can see clearer than other 299, 999, 999 of us, and therefore he can do what he wants. I say that is the worst form of treason.”

For the leaker and whistleblower the answer to Bolton is that there can be no expectation that the system will act morally of its own accord. Systems are optimized for their own survival and preventing the system from doing evil may well require breaking with organizational niceties, protocols or laws. It requires stepping outside of one’s assigned organizational role. The chief executive is not in a better position to recognize systemic evil than is a middle level manager or, for that matter, an IT contractor. Recognizing systemic evil does not require rank or intelligence, just honesty of vision.

Persons of conscience who step outside their assigned organizational roles are not new. There are many famous earlier examples, including Daniel Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers), John Kiriakou (of the Central Intelligence Agency) and several former N.S.A. employees, who blew the whistle on what they saw as an unconstitutional and immoral surveillance program (William Binney, Russ Tice and Thomas Drake, for example). But it seems that we are witnessing a new generation of whistleblowers and leakers, which we might call generation W (for the generation that came of age in the era WikiLeaks, and now the war on whistleblowing).

The media’s desire to psychoanalyze members of generation W is natural enough. They want to know why these people are acting in a way that they, members of the corporate media, would not. But sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; if there are psychological motivations for whistleblowing, leaking and hacktivism, there are likewise psychological motivations for closing ranks with the power structure within a system — in this case a system in which corporate media plays an important role. Similarly it is possible that the system itself is sick, even though the actors within the organization are behaving in accord with organizational etiquette and respecting the internal bonds of trust.

Just as Hannah Arendt saw that the combined action of loyal managers can give rise to unspeakable systemic evil, so too generation W has seen that complicity within the surveillance state can give rise to evil as well — not the horrific evil that Eichmann’s bureaucratic efficiency brought us, but still an Orwellian future that must be avoided at all costs.

---

Peter Ludlow is a professor of philosophy at Northwestern University and writes frequently on digital culture, hacktivism and the surveillance state

Oct 3: Arrangement in the 8th District court in Keene

 

8th District 8 court in Keene@8:30

…Question the integrity of the court…one court employee tried to intimidate me into signing the bail requirements. He create inaccurate documents, tried to punish me outside a trial--remove my driving license…didn’t disclose verbally in the police station all condition of my bail. Are court employees controlled by outsiders?

…Talk about inaccurate police documents (the complaint) and to not verbally in the police department  disclosing to me the full nature of the charges against me…the felony.

…Disclose to the court I became privy to the private conversation of my case between the charging police officer and the bail bondman (while under police custody) of them in another room  negotiating (crafting) the nature of the charges against me and discussing how to illegally grab my driving license in punishment to me. 

I expect they will throw me a deal of sorts...I want my day in court.

N.H. Bridge Meeting Set For Wednesday

Sept 25:

The best we got out of the NHDOT is the bridge might be replaced sometimes after 2021...

District budgets depend on population and some other fudge factor...

NHDOT says they got $75 million in needs, others say much greater than $100...with $45 million in unmet needs on the NHDOT list. The state and fedural funding cover only 40% of the total needs.

We got level funding...with massive increases of needs...

It might become a tragedy of immense proportions with the VY shutdown and a bridge closing happens concurrently

There is a rumor circulating about hardship a bridge shutdown might be imminent...thus one town official after another spoke about  the hardship it would cause between the schools and the police...they are talking about $500,000 to $1 million dollars the shutdown would cost.

So the question comes, considering the devastation to our town and region...would the NHDOT have the courage to do the right thing. Will they follow science and engineering ...

Science and engineering informs us to build the bridge already,...

What is missing from this, is a hightly safisicated poltical accessment of the current NH budget problems and if and when our bridge will be fixed.

I give you a shortcut....it won't be budgeted for 50 years.

http://www.reformer.com/localnews/ci_24160266/bridge-meeting-set-wednesday

N.H. bridge meeting set for Wednesday

By DOMENIC POLI / Reformer Staff

Posted: 09/24/2013 03:00:00 AM EDT

Updated: 09/24/2013 07:03:50 AM EDT

 
HINSDALE, N.H. -- The first meeting designed for the public to weigh in on the plan to replace the Anna Hunt Marsh and Charles Dana bridges with a new one is slated for noon Wednesday on the second floor of town hall.

Known as a Governor's Advisory Commission on Intermodal Transportation (or GACIT) meeting, it is an opportunity for people to either show their support for bridge projects in New Hampshire or help raise awareness for projects not on 2015-24 N.H. Department of Transportation's 10-year Transportation Improvement Plan. The proposed $45.7 project to construct a new bridge linking Hinsdale to Brattleboro, Vt., and maintain the two existing ones for pedestrian and bicycle traffic, recently made it into the plan's draft proposal.

JB Mack, the principal planner of the Southwest Region Planning Commission, said inclusion in the 10-year plan means the state can start apportioning money for the project, which can enter the Statewide Transportation Improvement Program (STIP). He told the Reformer that citizens of Vermont are also welcome at the meeting because they are affected by the bridges as well.

"Every bridge that crosses into Vermont is important to the whole region," he said.

Brattleboro can be reached from Hinsdale via the Anna Hunt Marsh and Charles Dana bridges, two Pennsylvania truss bridges built in 1920 that span the Connecticut River. The Anna Hunt Marsh Bridge links Brattleboro to Hinsdale Island, which is connected to Hinsdale by the Charles Dana Bridge. Mack has previously said federal highway standards dictate the bridges are too narrow and have insufficient weight limits and vertical clearances. They are considered "functionally obsolete" at this point.

The project is supported by elected and appointed officials on both sides of the river, as they view a new bridge as a necessity for both safety and economic reasons.

N.H. State Rep. Bill Butynski (D-Hinsdale, Chesterfield, Walpole, Westmoreland) said he hopes for a good turnout Wednesday and wanted to thank the N.H. Department of Transportation for putting the project on the draft proposal of the 10-year plan.

"It's a significant step forward. What we need to do now is ensure it stays in the plan," he said, adding that the old bridges are deteriorating. "It's in everyone's best interest on both sides of the bridge to get it done sooner, rather than later."

The bridges are used by emergency services, such as Mutual Aid, and a delay at the train tracks on the Brattleboro side of the bridges could be the difference between life and death for someone who needs to be transported to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital. Fire and police departments also use the bridges. The new bridge would go over the railroad tracks and alleviate traffic at the section of downtown Brattleboro known as "malfunction junction."

Butynski also said a new bridge is vital for economic prosperity of both Hinsdale and Brattleboro. He said he has heard of several businesses that nearly moved to the tax-incentive district of Hinsdale until those in charge opted not to because their large trucks could not get across the Anna Hunt Marsh and Charles Dana bridges. He said a new structure would make it easier for people to get to the Tractor Supply Co. store that will soon be completed in Hinsdale and connect New Hampshire residents with the downtown businesses and entertainment Brattleboro offers.

"To me, it clearly benefits people on both sides of the river," he said.

Butynski also mentioned that the Vilas Bridge -- the closed bridge linking Walpole to Bellows Falls, Vt. -- may be discussed at Wednesday's meeting in Hinsdale as well.

The second GACIT meeting is slated for Room 14 at the Keene Parks and Recreation Center at 312 Washington St. on Tuesday, Oct. 8.

Domenic Poli can be reached at dpoli@reformer.com, or 802-254-2311, ext. 277. You can follow him on Twitter @dpoli_reformer.
















 

NHDOT Shutting Down Hinsdale Bridge Shortly?

Just got a called from a select board member insider...

Reliable sources are saying the Hinsdale bridge committee and select board has been given feelers by the NHDOT hinting that there is a 50% chance the Hinsdale bridges are going to be shutdown permanently in the next week or so...

Big NHDOT meeting on the bridges are scheduled for this Wednesday...