Pilgrim Nuclear Plant Severely Uneconomic

Posted: Oct 15, 2013 6:51 PM EDTUpdated: Oct 15, 2013 6:51 PM EDT

JIM FITZGERALD | AP

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — The Indian Point power plants in the New York suburbs have been cited for more violations than any other nuclear site in the country, although 99 percent were low-risk violations, according to a federal report awaiting release.

The Government Accountability Office report, using figures from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said four of the 384 citations between 2000 and 2012 were for "higher-level" violations. Many plants around the nation have more in that category.

But no plant site had more total violations. The closest to Indian Point's total was at the Cooper plant in Brownville, Neb., which had 374 violations. Eleven of those were "higher-level" violations, the report says.

Cooper has just one reactor, while Indian Point has two.

Lower-level violations are those considered to pose very low risk, such as improper upkeep of an electrical transformer.

Entergy Nuclear, owner of Indian Point, issued a statement saying it "has received the most regulatory scrutiny of any plant in the country." It said, "Entergy's commitment to address even minor issues and enhance safety is unrelenting."

Phillip Musegaas of the environmental group Riverkeeper, an Indian Point critic, said of the plant's violations, "Even if they're low-level violations, they're still safety violations, and the NRC does not have an effective system for tracking them. ... The people of New York should wonder why Indian Point has twice as many as any other plant in the Northeast."

 

What a dog...this is a widespread collspe with plant reliability. Anybody who watched them last year with repetetive loss of power event in a blizzard last year realized the grid don't have the quality to support a nuclear plant. Entergy, the grid and Nstar have repetedly talked about plant trip after storms never allowing this to happen again...and it keep happening over and over again.

Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station offline again

 

Krux('

HEATHER WYSOCKI

hwysocki@capecodonline.com

October 15, 2013

PLYMOUTH – The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station is operating on generator power today after one of two power lines went down last night.

At 9:21 p.m. yesterday, the plant automatically shutdown after it lost one of its two 345-KV lines, owned by NStar, which provide offsite power to the plant, according to a statement from Carol Wightman, the spokeswoman for Entergy, the company that owns and operates the Pilgrim plant, said.

Last week, NStar removed the other line from use for planned maintenance, Wightman said. She would not comment on the operating level of the plant while it was under maintenance.

But a spokesman for the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the Times he believed the plant reduced power output to below 50 percent while it flushed organic material off the water condensers for the reactor in a process called “thermal back-washing.”

The plant is now running on its emergency diesel generators, which “immediately started and are safely powering the plant,” Wightman's statement read. There is no impact on the health and safety of employees or the public from the shutdown, she added.

While the plant is shutdown, workers will “take advantage of this time to perform maintenance that cannot be done while the plant is operating,” she said. The plant will return to service after NStar restores offside power and completes maintenance.

Pilgrim has been shut down several times in the past few months for various reasons.

A heat wave in July reduced the plant's output by 15 to 25 percent when water temperatures in Cape Cod Bay, which is used to cool Pilgrim's systems, went over those allowed under the plant's federal license.

Then, starting Aug. 22, there was a monthlong trend of shutdowns and partial power-downs. The plant wasn't restored to full service until Sept. 18.

9/9/13: Basically I told neil, why is their so many different reports on the goings on at the Pilgrim Plant post outage.

Why can’t the agency write or force Entergy to write a concise report of these events. Why no event report? I know the rules.

I think the object is the NRC and Entergy give incomeplete information...they want the media to make mistake in reporting issues with nuclear power. That way, the editors will ask for perfect information, thereby mismizing reports in the media. It is a stratory to disrupt communication.

And the NRC has the power to make news...you have to call in to the public relation office. Thus the media owes a favor to the NRC for a free story.

They agency is playing the media becuase they don't have the independant skills and knowledge to understand the complex terms of nuclear power...

Region I says it is a leaking feed water heater and generally it is in restricted and isolated area. Certainly because of the high radiation around the heaters...people pass this area quickly. And stay times are limited.

It is absolute disgrace...they don't clearly tell us why they shutdown. All these tricky words. Now it is a safety relief valve...

Did they use it during the feed pump scram...

Monday morning around 5:25 a.m. the Pilgrim nuclear power plant in Plymouth was shut down again to investigate a minor leak on one of the plant’s four safety relief valves.

You get it, they are still don't fully understand what happened to the power supplying those feed pumps...there is nothing more reckless than you don't know what is going on in your systems and starting up...

Sept 10: They don’t say where the leak comes from…the worst nuclear power plant accident in the USA comes from the Surry nuclear plant...which scalded to death 4 workers and severely injured two more in 1985...

You get that don't you, it hot water water under very high pressure...it is only steam when it is released to the air.
 
A big pipe at 400 degrees broke apart…

Mechanical Malfunction

By BY CHRISTINE LEGERE
clegere@capecodonline.com

September 09, 2013 10:25 PM

PLYMOUTH – A series of mechanical difficulties at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station has kept the plant from operating at peak for more than two weeks.

Currently Pilgrim is completely off the electric grid, shut down Sunday evening because of a steam leak in a pipe supplying hot water to the nuclear reactor.

Spokesmen for both the plant and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission stressed the problem did not pose a safety risk for the public, but Pilgrim opponents say such ongoing mechanical problems show the time has come to shutter the 41-year-old plant.

Diane Turco, a Harwich resident and founder of the Cape Downwinders, said recent events at Pilgrim make it the perfect time to deliver to the Statehouse a citizens advisory calling for Pilgrim's closure. The advisory was penned by the Downwinders and approved by town meeting or ballot votes in 14 Cape towns last spring.

“It calls on Gov. Patrick to request the NRC uphold their mandate and close the Pilgrim nuclear plant because the public safety cannot be assured,” Turco said. “We're supposed to be given a time and date to meet with the governor on Wednesday.”

Both Gov. Deval Patrick and Attorney General Martha Coakley opposed the relicensing of the plant in June 2012. The NRC subsequently renewed the license for another 20 years.
The governor's office did not return a request for comment on an upcoming meeting with the Downwinders.

Dave Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, tracks nuclear plant shutdowns in the U.S.

Pilgrim has had “more than its share,” leading with seven shutdowns between January and June 30, Lochman said.

“Overall there have been 94 shutdowns at U.S. nuclear power reactors in 2013 through June,” Lochbaum said. “With roughly 100 reactors, that's an average of less than one shutdown per reactor. Pilgrim has had seven times that.”

Neil Sheehan, spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said his agency categorizes shutdowns into unplanned forced shutdowns and controlled shutdowns to make needed repairs. Since January, Pilgrim has logged four forced shutdowns, according to NRC records.

One of those occurred on Aug. 22. Workers forced a rapid shutdown when an electrical malfunction caused a loss of power to the three massive pumps that supply water to the reactor.

When the plant was being powered back up four days later, the motor on one of the three main water pumps failed. The plant stayed at 76 percent power while Entergy, the owner-operator of the power plant, secured a replacement motor. The replacement was installed last weekend, but the plant never made it back to full power.

Plant operators had been keeping an eye on a small leak in a steam pipe joint, according to Carol Wightman, spokeswoman for Entergy. On Sunday, workers noticed the leak was getting worse, and they decided to systematically shut down the reactor and address the problem.

Sheehan indicated issues with the electrical power to the water pump may not yet be fully resolved. “Troubleshooting activities are continuing.” Sheehan said in an email. “Further investigation involving the electrical supply system for the motor are ongoing.”

Meanwhile Plymouth officials, who recently signed a three-year agreement for $28.75 million in lieu of taxes from Entergy, are also closely watching power plant operations.

“It's very concerning,” said Selectman Belinda Brewster. “There seems to be an increase in the number of shutdowns over the last year.”

Plymouth Selectman John Mahoney, who also serves on the Plymouth Nuclear Matters Committee, said, “With a plant entering its fifth decade of operation, these problems are bound to happen.”

“The only thing we can do is keep pressure on with the NRC and our federal officials,” Mahoney said.

It sounds like they been watching the leak for days and they screwed up big time by not fixing it when they were shutdown for the feedpump trip.

"She said plant personnel had been monitoring the leak while they decided whether it needed an immediate repair. The plant was taken offline when the amount of the leak increased Sunday."

Sept 9: What in the hell is Pilgrim in the NRC status report at 0% power today...the NRC says they are shutdown last night... 

Originally posted 9/7

May 9, 2013

Entergy-Fitzpatrick Is Beginning To Be Unreliable?

First published on Sept 5

Believe me, Neal Sheehan gets it...I talk to him first and then the so called "foes" come in to clean up after me. Least it gives him time to gather the agency's information. Neal was kinda nice to me.

What was clear to me talking to Neal...I couldn't get a answer when was the first indication they were having troubles with the feed pump. Was it during the trip or did if fail during the startup....or weeks before? Did it have a intermittant or small ground for many days...then it failed.

Everyone including the NRC is pissing their pants wondering if Pilgrim will be next?

Pilgrim plant foes cry foul

By CHRISTINE LEGERE 

clegere@capecodonline.com

September 07, 2013

PLYMOUTH, Sep 07, 2013 (Menafn - Cape Cod Times - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --Two weeks after an electrical malfunction caused the shutdown of the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station's reactor, the plant is still not at full power.

Representatives from Entergy, which owns and operates the plant, initially attributed the delayed return to standard procedure. Shutdowns provide opportunities to address items on a reactor's "to do" list, they said.

But federal nuclear energy officials confirmed Tuesday that a failed motor in one of three massive pumps that supply water to the reactor was keeping the plant from operating at peak.

The burned-out motor, within days of the wiring problem, had nuclear watchdogs talking.

Diane Turco, a Harwich resident and founder of the Cape Downwinders, compared the 41-year-old plant to an old Volkswagen Beetle. "You keep repairing it bit by bit until the front wheels fall off," Turco said. "This is a far too serious situation to keep having problems. They need to close the reactor."

Mary Lampert, founder of Pilgrim Watch, called the two plant problems "an example of one thing after another."

"It's indicative they're not spending the money to make sure the equipment is in operable condition," Lampert said. A replacement motor was in stock at the plant, but it had last been refurbished in about 2007. Plant officials decided to send it out for an inspection before installing it.

The motor was checked and is now awaiting installation.

"It's fair to say any power plant has operational conditions that need to be managed, and we're doing a good job of responding and getting the plant back to full power," said James Sinclair, spokesman for Entergy.

Lampert said the Nuclear Regulatory Commission should be demanding better performance from Pilgrim. "The NRC doesn't seem capable of developing a backbone and making sure they're doing what they should be doing," Lampert said.

NRC spokesman Neil Sheehan said feed-water pumps are a production issue, not a safety issue. They provide water for the nuclear reaction process. "Still we are certainly going to monitor the work," Sheehan said of the motor installation.

On Aug. 22, a breaker had tripped due to a faulty electric cable in the junction box, causing the three large feed-water pumps to shut down. Workers immediately halted the nuclear reaction process.

Pilgrim was at zero power from Aug. 23 to 25, then very slowly powered up over the next three days to 20 percent. On Aug. 29, power reached 74 percent and now hovers at about 76 percent.

While the lower production rate would seemingly result in lost revenue, Sinclair said Entergy does not comment on production-related issues for business reasons.

In its mid-year performance review released Wednesday, the NRC appeared satisfied with the Plymouth plant. "Pilgrim operated in a manner that preserved public health and safety and met all cornerstone objectives," the review letter said.

The NRC will continue to oversee Pilgrim at the level used for plants that meet performance standards.

Sheehan said the August shutdown, the plant's fifth unplanned shutdown in the last 15 months, wasn't factored into the mid-year review, but will be considered as part of the NRC's third quarter report later this fall.

"We are still evaluating whether there will be any changes in oversight due to the number of unplanned shutdowns," Sheehan wrote in an email.

Sept 5: Pilgrim Nuclear Plant Severely Uneconomic

I mean, last cycle with all their shutdowns and power reduction associated with the defective "new" safety relief valves…now for the last five days the plant has been restricted to 75%. How can these guys be economically healthy?

As I said, I think Entergy has lost the capability to effectively and cost effective….to keep up with maintenance and upkeep. They aren't getting a big enough bang for their maintenance buck.

They have lost the capability to maintain increasing members of their nuclear fleet...to keep up at a economic high capacity factor.

One thing you can say about Vermont Yankee…they stayed out of the media’s eyes and have maintain very high capacity factor post AOG leak…

Right, Pilgrim now is on a special NRC watch because of all the shutdown issues?

...I mean, from the startup on Aug 27...they never exceeded 76% power. That is ten days at 75% power?

How has Fitzpatrick been doing?

Are we talking about the next 18 months at 76%?

Then the Palisades boondoggle with their refueling and their injection water tanks…

...Hmm, and Fitz has been at 90% since Aug 25...

...And the media and antis have been asleep about this since start-up.

...So region ii says they busted a main feed pump...they are staging the job now.

So Entergy-Pilgrim recently tripped by a botched maintenance job done during the the last outage... that shorted the pump cooling water power instrumention tripping all feed pumps. They were coming out of that screwup 10 days ago...when they discovered the bum feed pump. The moter is bad..

Don't drop the stator...

Nuclear Regulatory Commission website

Nuclear Regulatory Commission website

Adams is still up...

Due to the lapse in government funding, the NRC's website was last updated on October 9, 2013, and will not be updated until further notice. Normal business activities (including public meetings) are suspended. We sincerely regret this inconvenience.

According to the NRC's shutdown plan, approved by the Office of Management and Budget, the agency will retain about 300 of its current 3,900 employees for "excepted functions" during a lapse of appropriations. Of that number, roughly half are resident inspectors assigned to reactor and fuel facilities. The rest are staff necessary to respond to emergency situations at NRC-licensed facilities. For updates on the status of the NRC, please go to the agency blog. For information about the status of the

 

 

 

Note To My lawyer: "Build New Bridge" Sign Littering Charge

( under law You can't break what is already broken...)

"The allegation is that he struck the rear portion hatchback window, which has a gaping hole already in it; it's already destroyed," Arlia told reporters. "Under the law, it's a fatal flaw. You can't break what's already broken."

Look at all this littering...like, how small a group do I belong too on being charged with littering in Island Park.

This was the area I was protesting in for years...

Why was I charged with it and all these people got away with it?

Mike Mulligan Arrested For littering With "Need New Bridge" Sign

Reed said the volunteers found "everything from couches to bedding to clothes to empty food cans and lots of toys. So that means lots of people have their children out there." There were also two love seats, a tire and large piece of sheet metal in addition to 40 bags of garbage and 28 bags of recyclables.

Keeping the river clean

Volunteers remove debris from underneath bridge during 17th Annual Source to Sea Cleanup

By DOMENIC POLI / Reformer Staff

BRATTLEBORO -- As the president of the National Honor Society at Hinsdale (N.H.) High School, Abigail Haskins had already registered all her mandatory volunteer hours before last weekend, but thought tidying up under the Anna Hunt Marsh Bridge would be worthwhile.

So she, and about 25 other students from both her school and Brattleboro Union High School, decided to join a local group of volunteers sacrificing their time for the 17th Annual Source to Sea Cleanup on Friday and Saturday. The cleanup, organized by the Connecticut River Watershed Council (CRWC), is an annual event for trash pickup along the Connecticut River and its tributaries in the four states that touch the watershed - Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Groups of volunteers clean up sections of the Connecticut River, thus preventing trash and debris from flowing down to the Long Island Sound and into the Atlantic Ocean.

"I have all my volunteer hours already but I just really thought it was a good cause and my teacher was involved and I thought it'd be pretty cool," said Haskins, 17. "I've never done it before but I'd love to do it again.

"We got a lot of stuff. It was hard to get all the stuff out but I think we did a really good job," she continued. "We pulled together a lot more than I thought we would. I got to know some more students in a different way and we worked together. It was really good."

Dinah Reed, of the Windham Regional Commission, said this was the first year of the volunteer group known as the Wantastiquet Hellgrammites. She explained that a hellgrammite is used as fish bait and serves as an indicator of fresh water wherever it lives.

"(The cleanup) went really well. And more people came than I expected," she said, after she and the students worked tirelessly from 9:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. She said the volunteers found a lot of remnants from homeless camps under the Anna Hunt Marsh Bridge, one of the two linking Brattleboro to Hinsdale, N.H.

Reed said the volunteers found "everything from couches to bedding to clothes to empty food cans and lots of toys. So that means lots of people have their children out there." There were also two love seats, a tire and large piece of sheet metal in addition to 40 bags of garbage and 28 bags of recyclables.

Mike Auerbach, the faculty advisor for the Preserve our Planet group at BUHS, said it is great to see so many young people volunteer their time to help the community and it is proof that not all high school students get into mischief or trouble on the weekends.

"This was the best turnout we've ever had," he said. "When you read the negative things about kids, it's nice to know there is just as large a percentage here or twice as many as you read about in the roundup [police log]."

Angela Mrozinski, the CRWC's outreach and events director, told the Reformer last week there were 80 registered groups made up of 2,000 people who volunteered from northern Vermont and New Hampshire down the river's roughly 410 miles to the Long Island Sound. She said 70 percent of the water in the Long Island Sound comes from the Connecticut River - the longest in New England - and any trash or debris picked up by volunteers is guaranteed not to get washed downstream and into the sound, the Atlantic Ocean and the large floating garbage patches around the world.

According to a statement from the CRWC, trash pollution of rivers is a major problem for human and wildlife communities and about 806 tons of trash have been removed from the river as part of Source to Sea Cleanups to date.
Domenic Poli can be reached at dpoli@reformer.com; or 802-254-2311, ext. 277. You can follow Domenic on Twitter @dpoli_reformer.

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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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