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dolphins
Why We Must Defend the Marine Mammal Protection Act
Kirsten Donald, a marine biologist, educator, and advocate with the Pacific Marine Mammal Center, explains why the animals she works with need more protections, not fewer.
Aug 31, 2025
In July MAGA Rep. Nick Begich of Alaska introduced draft legislation that aims to gut the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act at a time when marine mammals are at greater risk than they've been in decades. It would get rid of protections against "incidental takes" from ship strikes, fishing gear entanglement, or deafening sounds from oil exploration, leaving it illegal only to directly shoot or harpoon a mammal.
Rep. Jared Huffman of California, the top-ranking Democrat on the House Resources Committee, calls these proposed changes "a death sentence" for marine mammals. I decided to have a conversation with someone who deals with marine mammals every day to help clarify the situation. Kirsten Donald is a marine biologist, educator, and advocate with the Pacific Marine Mammal Center (PMMC) in Laguna Beach, California.
It's one of California's leading marine mammal rescue centers where they care for, rehabilitate, and release hundreds of sick and injured animals each year. Before coming to California, Kirsten worked for 18 years at the Dolphin Research Center (DRC) in the Florida Keys. In her 30-year-career she's worked with whales, dolphins, manatees, harbor seals, elephant seals, and sea lions. So thanks, Kirsten.
Kristen Donald (KD): A pleasure. Ever since I was a little girl, I got the thrill of being able to go to the ocean because my family had lived in Maryland for a time and I was just utterly fascinated and I just remember seeing dolphins swimming by and being absolutely enamored by them (and wanting to study marine mammal science).
And then, initially when I went to college, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was kind of lost and went into communications. And when I was about 26, I had a midlife crisis early and went back to career counseling and realized that I needed to be back in science and reminded myself that I loved animals. I happened to hear about this place called the Dolphin Research Center that offered a program called the Dolphin Lab, which allowed people to come down for a week and interact with their dolphin colony there. So, I traveled all the way down to Florida and I just fell in love with the dolphins and the mission to educate the public to be more compassionate to the issues that we face with these guys in the wild. And after a bit they asked me to apply for a job and that was in 1997 and I've been doing it ever since.
David Helvarg (DH): And the Dolphin Research Center, just so people understand, it's not SeaWorld, it's not all about entertainment?
KD: Oh, no. The, dolphin Research Center has some of the highest standards in the world for the care of the animals.They are an educational, nonprofit, and research facility that has a colony of dolphins that were born there mostly and some retired from other facilities. They also had some that stranded as babies and needed homes because they could not be put back in the wild. And so now the dolphins participate in everything from interactions with humans so people can realize that these animals should be conserved to a significant amount of research on the capabilities of these animals, both acoustically and cognitively so that we can understand the other species in the ocean and the parts they play in the ecosystem. It's a really wonderful place. It's all about the dolphins first.
The stranding coordinator came up to me and said, "You're the only person I have left. Here's a net, here's a kennel (like a dog carrier). Take the car and go to this beach." And I'm like, "I've never done this before."
I remember whenever we would do a session, you come down and if you had something in mind and the dolphins are like, "No," you had to change gears. That was your job, you gotta figure out what they want to do because it's not about making them do anything. But the thing was we made everything a game and exciting and fun. And so, the dolphins were always excited to come over and play. And really the drive behind it is the fact that we are not the owners of this planet. We share it.
I also got involved a bit in the research, whether it was taking behavioral research observations or later on developing a field research program on bottlenosed dolphins in the middle Keys, which had never been done before. And they're still doing that and have expanded that program today, which is really phenomenal. I became the director of education. And I became the director of the College of Marine Mammal Professions, which basically took all of the different Dolphin Lab weeklong classes… to create our own college and be able to grant an associate's degree in marine mammal behavior and care training, which was the first one in the world.
DH: So, you were 18 years there in Florida. What got you connected with the Pacific Marine Mammal Center?
KD: At the time I'd been at DRC for 18 years and believe me, it was the hardest change I ever had to make because all of those dolphins were very much a part of my family. But my daughter was growing up and I wanted her to have more opportunities. The Keys are kind of rural in a way and all of a sudden, this job popped up at Pacific Marine Mammal Center to run the Education Department.
And so, I decided to check it out and it reminded me very much of DRC when I first started. When I started at DRC, there were only 30 employees. And by the time I left there was over a 100 and even more volunteers. When I came to PMMC, we only had about 15 people at the time and just a handful of education programs. And I could see that there were so many opportunities to widen the educational opportunities and really reach a more diverse audience. Also, it gave me the chance to learn more about pinnipeds…We're dealing with the problems that are happening right now in the ocean and so, PMMC rescues typically in any given year, anywhere from like 100 to 200 pinnipeds and a few cetaceans as well.
DH: That would be seals, sea lions, and dolphins.
KD: Exactly. Seals, sea lions, and dolphins. And there have been years also where it was crazy. Like my first year happened to be the worst year on record for strandings. That was back in 2015. And from 2013 to 2016, we had an unusual mortality event because of that warm water blob (a massive marine heatwave known as "the blob") overlapping with the El Niño (cyclical Pacific warming). The waters were ridiculously warm.
And PMMC rescued over 500 animals, much more than we'd typically rescue. And it was due to the fact that since the warm water is there, the fish like colder water. So, they would either go deeper or further out to sea or further up north. And the pups that are on the Channel Islands (breeding colonies off Central California) couldn't swim that far in order to get nutrition. In addition, the mothers that are tied to the islands can't swim very far away because they've got to nurse their pups. And so, it became a situation where mothers were abandoning pups. Pups weren't getting enough to eat, and so there was just a constant influx of these animals.
And it was crazy because my second week at PMMC all the trucks are out, all the rescuers are out. And then the stranding coordinator came up to me and said, "You're the only person I have left. Here's a net, here's a kennel (like a dog carrier). Take the car and go to this beach." And I'm like, "I've never done this before."
"It's fine. You just pick them up and put them in the kennel, you know?" And I'm like, "Okay, I'll give it a try." And so, I went and the sea lion happened to be a very small pup that was on a pier, San Clemente Pier, curled up. Didn't even move when I picked him up, he was so emaciated. And so, I popped him in the kennel and then this lady ran up to me and she's like, "There's another one over there."
And he is really skinny. And you know, I'm from a different background in terms of when you work with animals that are in human-managed care, you introduce them slowly, you know, you let them get to know each other. And I only had one kennel and I'm like, how could I put another animal in this kennel? I can't do that. What should I do? So, I call her and she goes, "Oh no, just get them both. They don't care. Just shove them in. They'll be fine."
DH: This is triage. This is emergency room type activity?
KD: Yeah. And this is also me not being as familiar at the time with sea lion behavior because they do lie over each other. They create piles, especially as pups. And so, this one was going in and out of the water and I had to actually get the net and get between it and the water so I could net it and then put it in the kennel (with the first pup) and bring it back. So, that was my very first rescue, and I named the animals Yin and Yang because they were very different (personalities). And it was quite the experience.
DH: And as you say, it was a traumatic time because the blob was the worst of these major marine heatwaves that we've experienced linked to climate change. So, there was loss of prey, there was starvation at the time. And these marine heatwaves have also supercharged Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) that can also poison marine mammals.
KD: Exactly. And that's what's happened. This year we have had the worst harmful algal bloom on record. These animals are struggling right now with regard to climate change as well as plastics and chemicals in the ocean. I can give you two really good examples. Number one the gray whale, which was actually a huge success under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). It was one of the major successes of the MMPA. They were the first large whale species to be delisted (taken off the Endangered Species Act list) after whaling (was banned). They were almost decimated, and they came back 27,000 strong. And between 2019 and 2023, their population has plummeted down to 13,000 animals. So, half the population is gone and scientists looked into it and discovered that this was very much connected to climate change.
Basically, what was happening is that since the (polar) ice cover was receding earlier and the algae that grows underneath it, instead of falling to the bottom and feeding the amphipods (tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that the whales feed on) the ice would recede. The fish go in and eat up all the algae and the amphipods die. And these guys (the migrating gray whales) go up there to eat the pods but there's not enough up there. And so, they spend longer and longer trying to eat, expending more and more energy. But they're still coming back emaciated. And they are dying in droves all up and down the coast from Canada to Mexico.
I think that's what everything going on in society is telling us, that people really need to step up and get involved.
So, it was an international event. And actually, they closed the Unusual Mortality Event (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration designation) after 2023. And just this year we are already having a ton of these animals stranded up north around the Monterey Bay area, starting again. It's considered an unusual mortality event because it's something that we normally don't see and is not a natural cycle. So, they thought it was over in 2023, but just this year, in 2025, it's begun again. So, these guys (gray whales) are not out of trouble. In fact, if they can lose half their population in just a few years, this is the worst time to take away their protections.
The other example is California sea lions that breed around the Channel Islands. And one of the studies that our veterinarian did was in looking at the high levels of DDT in these sea lions because there's DDT that was dumped back in the 60s near those islands (by the Montrose Chemical Corp. and others via LA storm drains).
And DDT is a very toxic persistent organic pollutant, which is basically a fertilizer but it stays in the environment for thousands of years. These animals are accumulating it through nursing as well as the food that they eat. And what we've discovered is that they will develop cancer because the DDT interacts with a herpes virus, which pretty much they all have, and is a catalyst for cancer. And so about 25% of the adult patients that come through PMMC are diagnosed with terminal cancer unfortunately, and that's the highest rate of cancer in any mammal on the planet. So again, we're dealing with, human impacts on these species and so they need the protections. In fact, they need more protections than the MMPA provides currently.
DH: We had a few decades where the Marine Mammal Protection Act was working well. The Florida manatees went from 1,000 to 10,000, right?
KD: The Marine Mammal Protection Act is great. It has helped a lot of species, but there are still species that need even more protection like the North Atlantic right whale. There's only 370 of them left. And the changes that are proposed (in the MMPA) actually will delay any action to help them by reducing entanglements (in fishing gear) or ship strikes which are the two major things that are hurting their population. And they don't have 10 years to wait because they've lost half their population since 2017. So, you can see the trajectory that they're already on.
DH: They're trying to roll back all environmental protections. With something like NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, people may not know what it's about, but with the Marine Mammal Protection Act, it's right there in the name. In the 1990s popular movements got us to dolphin-free tuna where they used to put the nets around schools of dolphin knowing tuna where underneath them and they'd kill hundreds of thousands of dolphins along with the tuna. Under this so-called MAGA "reform" of the Marine Mammal Protection Act, there's nothing to stop them from doing that again.
KD: Exactly, and we do need the power of the public right now. I think that's what everything going on in society is telling us, that people really need to step up and get involved.
DH: People need to not only volunteer with the Pacific Marine Mammal Center and other marine animal rescue centers for example but also to call their congresspeople and senators and say, "This is not acceptable."
KD: Exactly, that's something that we talk about all the time, and this is why I am such a big proponent of education, helping people understand that they have power, they have a voice. To stand up and call your congressmen if everybody is doing that and letting them know that they care about these issues. If you're a congressperson and not listening to your constituents, you're probably not going to get reelected. And you're there to represent the people's interest. And so, we need people to express that interest.
DH: And again, there's this disingenuous argument being put forward by Republican sponsors of rolling back the Endangered Species Act and Marine Mammal Protection Act, which is these laws have worked so well that these animals are no longer at risk. And this is simply bunk. Like who are some of your patients right now?
KD: Well, actually our patients are all gone right now. We're very excited. We had a really tough year with the unusual mortality event we went through, with the harmful algal bloom because I gotta tell you, it was very rough. Literally most of the animals that came in, or at least half of them, had to be euthanized because they had too many toxins in their system that damaged their brain. Because that's what happens with domoic acid poisoning. It's produced by the algae, and the fish eat it. And then the sea lions eat the fish and get concentrated doses and that toxin goes to the brain, damages it, and it doesn't allow them to be able to navigate spatially. They do things they're not normally doing…
DH: Wandering up on the highways. There was a lot of publicity recently about a sea lion that was biting surfers.
KD: Exactly. People were up in arms about sea lions biting and they don't normally do that. They normally leave you alone. But the animals were so out of their minds because their brains were damaged, that they were being aggressive. And so, there were quite a number, a large number of animals that we had to euthanize. And what was even sadder is that the majority of California sea lions that came in should be doing what they do every year—breeding.
The biggest help that we can provide is standing up for the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act because they're the two strongest, most important (animal protection) acts that have been passed in the United States.
And so many were pregnant. And they were not yet close to term. They were about three-quarters of the way through their pregnancies. But they were having to euthanize these females and in some cases, they'd have to induce abortions to try to save the females because there are so many toxins in the amniotic fluid that the female can reabsorb those unless we induce abortion.
And so, what's even sadder is when they would induce these abortions, some of the pups would try to take a breath, even though that they were not viable yet, they were not fully developed. And so, literally as the babies were coming out, they were brought to the veterinarian who then had to turn around and euthanize them.
It was a really traumatic year for our animal care. And it's really worrisome that again, this is the fourth year in a row that we've had a harmful algal bloom, and this was the worst on record. What are we in store for in the years to come? That's a real concern of ours. So, yes, it was a tough year.
DH: And again, at the federal level, we're both denying the reality of climate change and now trying to deny the reality that marine mammals are in serious trouble.
KD: Right. And when you look at things happening in the ocean, there's no denying climate change anymore. There's absolutely none. It's happening. It's affecting the animals. They're showing it to us. It's sad when we have these animals. We get them back up to speed, they're ready to go out, they're healthy. And then we realize we're releasing them into a damaged home, a broken home that we need to help fix because we broke it. And so, it's really personal to us.
DH: Okay. I really appreciate the work you're doing, and so let's end on a happy note. What was your last release?
KD: The last release I was on, it was great because I got to go with my entire staff and with some animal care people out on a boat release, because sometimes it's better to release the animals off boats (rather than from beaches), especially if they're like adult animals.
We get them further away from the beach so they don't present a hazard to people. That's where they're normally meant to be anyway, further out in the ocean. And so, we had three different animals, and you would basically move the crate up to the edge of the boat and open the kennel and they look around, they dunk their head in the water and look around and then slowly climb in.
And then you just do one after the other. And it's sometimes funny because I've seen elephant seals do the same thing where one will like stick his head in the water, then look at his buddy and wait for the buddy to go in. And then look in the water again and make sure, I'm thinking he's making sure there's no sharks, you know, let his buddy go in first.
So, it's neat and sometimes they'll look back at us too you know, and we like to think it's a "Thank you for helping me." And then they just swim away and do what they're meant to be doing. So, it's really gratifying to see them go home, but it gives us even more motivation to try to help get word out about these issues so that people can take action in their own lives to help, because there are all these simple things that we can do… The biggest help that we can provide is standing up for the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act because they're the two strongest, most important (animal protection) acts that have been passed in the United States and that also are unique.
This story is based on my interview with Kirstin Donald for Blue Frontier's Rising Tide Ocean Podcast that aired on August 25, 2025.
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US Navy Detonates 40,000-Pound Bomb Off Florida Coast
In addition to concerns about harm to sea life, progressives said the money would be better spent on healthcare and other human needs.
Jun 23, 2021
Marine mammal experts this week expressed deep concern over the potentially devastating effects of the U.S. Navy's recent detonation of 40,000 pounds of explosives off the Atlantic coast of Florida on sea life, while progressive observers blasted what they called the government's misplaced spending priorities.
"Some smaller species of marine mammals would be expected to die within one to two kilometers of the blast, and... [others] would suffer injury including hearing loss out to 10 kilometers."
--Michael Jasny, NRDC
The Navy set off the massive blast--which registered as a magnitude 3.9 earthquake on shore--on June 18 about 100 miles off Palm Coast as the first in a series of full ship shock trials on the USS Gerald R. Ford, a $12.8 billion nuclear-powered aircraft carrier commissioned in 2017.
"The U.S. Navy conducts shock trials of new ship designs using live explosives to confirm that our warships can continue to meet demanding mission requirements under harsh conditions they might encounter in battle," the Navy explained in a press release.
The statement claimed the explosion occurred "within a narrow schedule that complies with environmental mitigation requirements, respecting known migration patterns of marine life in the test area."
The region is home to various marine mammal species including bottlenose dolphins, humpback whales, and North Atlantic right whales. While whales are not typically seen off the northern Florida coast in June, marine experts nevertheless expressed alarm over potential harm to mammals and other sea life.
"The Navy's own modeling indicates that some smaller species of marine mammals would be expected to die within one to two kilometers of the blast, and that some marine mammal species would suffer injury including hearing loss out to 10 kilometers of the blast," Michael Jasny, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) Marine Mammal Protection Project, told The Guardian. "That gives some sense of the power of the explosives we are talking about."
"A large whale might need to be within a few hundred meters of the blast to die, while a small mammal could be a couple of kilometers away," added Jasny, who said that even if the animals survive the blast, potential hearing loss still poses a grave risk to species which use that sense to locate food and their companions.
The U.S. Navy has previously come under fire for its use of undersea sonar, which can injure and kill marine mammals. In 2015, the Navy agreed to limit its use of underwater sonar and explosives in particularly sensitive areas for scores of vulnerable species.
While numerous observers worried about the effects of blast testing on marine life, others expressed concerns about misplaced government priorities, with the advocacy group Public Citizen tweeting that "94% of public school teachers spend their own money on school supplies." Some social media users responded to CBS News' tweet about the explosion lamenting that the United States still does not have universal healthcare.
Janet Weil, an activist with the peace group CodePink and the Portland, Oregon branch of Extinction Rebellion, called the text a "waste of tax dollars and resources."
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'Unprecedented' Decline of Plants and Animals as Global 'Red List' Reveals Nearly One-Third of Assessed Species Under Threat
"We must act now both on biodiversity loss and climate change."
Jul 18, 2019
Calling on global policymakers to act immediately to preserve biodiversity and save tens of thousands of species from extinction, the group behind the world's most definitive list of endangered animals and plants has added more than 2,600 threatened species to its annual report.
The Red List, published Thursday by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), revealed that one third of all species the group has assessed are now under threat due to overfishing, pollution, illegal logging and trafficking, threats to water sources and habitats due to the climate crisis, and other factors, including many human activities.
"This update clearly shows how much humans around the world are overexploiting wildlife."
--Dr. Grethel Aguilar, IUCNOf the approximately 9,000 species the IUCN assessed over the past year, the group determined about 2,600 to be endangered, critically endangered, or threatened, bringing the total number of vulnerable species to about 28,000 of the more than 100,000 that have now been studied.
"Nature is declining at rates unprecedented in human history," said Jane Smart, global director of the IUCN Biodiversity Conservation Group. "Decisive action is needed at scale to halt this decline; the timing of this assessment is critical as governments are starting to negotiate a new global biodiversity framework for such action."
A quarter of all mammals are threatened with possible extinction, while 40 percent of the world's amphibians and a third of reefs and corals--which in addition to providing thousands of species with habitats, also protect humans' habitats by halting the erosion of coastlines--are now endangered.
On social media, climate action and conservation advocates decried the "bleak assessment" and wrote that the Red List only bolsters the case for taking immediate action to move toward sustainable energy sources and curb the climate crisis.
The updated Red List was released less than a year after the World Wildlife Federation revealed that 60 percent of all animal species have been wiped out since 1970 due to human activity.
Plummeting biodiversity observed by scientists has prompted the IUCN to call for the United Nations, at its biodiversity summit planned for next year in China, to move toward bold reforms aimed at curbing fossil fuel emissions which have contributed to the climate crisis and ending other human activities linked to the decline of thousands of species.
"Loss of species and climate change are the two great challenges facing humanity this century," Lee Hannah, a scientist with Conservation International, said. "The Red List addresses both, by letting us know the extinction risk faced by all species, including climate change, in that assessment. The results are clear, we must act now both on biodiversity loss and climate change."
"This update clearly shows how much humans around the world are overexploiting wildlife," said the IUCN's acting director, Dr. Grethel Aguilar.
Species newly listed as "critically endangered"--the category most disconcerting to scientists after regional extinction and extinction in the wild--include the bleeding toad, the Northern Muriqui, the angelshark, and the Rabb's fringe-limbed treefrog.
The South Asian river dolphin and the tri-spine horseshoe crab were also added as "endangered."
A number of trees, including the formerly-common American elm tree, are now considered endangered. About 90 percent of forest trees native to Madagascar, whose wood is widely used and illegally trafficked around the world, are now threatened with extinction.
"The implications for people are that we lose valuable resources such as rosewoods and elms, and we also lose ecosystem resilience, undermining the essential ecosystem services that forests provide," said Paul Smith, secretary general of Botanic Gardens Conservation International. "It is imperative that we not only halt the loss of tree species diversity but that we restore habitats with a diverse range of tree species where these have already been degraded by human activities."
On the IUCN's assessment of more than 105,000 species around the world, no endangered or vulnerable animal or plant species was listed as having an improved outlook for its survival.
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'Sea Rescues Have Been Criminalized' as German Boat Captain Faces 20 Years in Prison For Saving Refugees
"We have only followed international law, especially the law of the sea, where the highest priority is to save people from distress."
Jun 11, 2019
A German boat captain faces a long and costly trial in Italy for charges targeting her humanitarian efforts on behalf of refugees.
"Italy's fascists are using this case as a showcase to deter others from aiding migrants. They would prefer to let people drown in the Mediterranean."
--Rula Jebreal
Captain Pia Klemp, 35, told Basler Zeitung on June 7 that her upcoming trial in Italy for years of efforts with the civilian lifeboat "Iuventa" that saved at least 1,000 lives will take years and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Klemp faces up to 20 years in prison, but, she said, whether or not she ends up in jail--she would challenge any conviction in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France if necessary--the damage has been done.
"The worst has already come to pass," said Klemp. "Sea rescue missions have been criminalized."
Along with helping refugees, Klemp works with ocean conservation group Sea Watch.
The Italian charges against Klemp come as part of an anti-immigration crackdown by far-right Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, who ran on imposing harsh penalties on refugees.
"Italy's fascists are using this case as a showcase to deter others from aiding migrants," journalist Rula Jebreal said on Twitter. "They would prefer to let people drown in the Mediterranean."
Klemp is banned from sailing along the Italian coast due to her activism in favor of refugees. In her comments to Basler Zeitung, Klemp addressed the notion that sea rescues like the ones she did are in any way motivating for refugees to come to Europe.
"People come because unfortunately there are so many reasons for flight," said Klemp. "And they come over the Mediterranean, because there are no legal entry routes."
Commentators on social media noted that Klemp's actions in the Mediterranean were in keeping with the U.N.'s policies on rescues at sea and the humanitarian duties of a ship captain.
Klemp would have been in violation of the U.N. Law of the Sea (pdf) if she didn't help migrants, pointed out Twitter user lifelearner47.
Article 98 1982 UN Law of the Sea:
Every State shall require the master of ship flying its flag
(a) to render assistance to any person found at sea in danger of being losthttps://t.co/S00zQ52x39 German boat captain Pia Klemp faces prison in Italy for migrant rescues-- Angie Fay bending that curve () (@lifelearner47) June 10, 2019
Klemp agreed.
"We have only followed international law, especially the law of the sea, where the highest priority is to save people from distress," she told Basler Zeitung.
Her activism was put into historical context by Peter Scott Smith, son of famed World War II vet Harry Leslie Smith.
"In another era, Pia Klemp would have saved Jews from extermination," tweeted Smith. "That she faces 20 years in jail in 2019 for saving refugees lost at sea, indicts the EU for hypocrisy and abetting crimes against humanity for allowing Italy to conduct a show trial."
A petition on Change.org calling for the charges to be dropped has already received over 77,000 signatures.
Klemp told Basler Zeitung that she hopes the trial is over quickly--the captain has been working full time on the case.
"The sea is the most beautiful place for me," said Klemp.
"Every sunset is great, if you accompany dolphins or the water looks like it's cooking because you accidentally picked up a tuna swarm," she added. "Just that way of being away from the sound, from the many, from everything."
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Your Tax Dollars at Work
The Trump administration just created a map showing mega-corporations where they should industrialize the ocean next
May 01, 2019
As part of its Blue Economy initiative, the Trump administration has developed a map to provide ocean industries information on areas ripe for oil rigs and floating factory farms. The map brands these areas as "ocean neighborhoods." Though that sounds pretty cozy, it is nothing close to reality. What's in store for these "neighborhoods?" Massive rigs and other infrastructure, increased vessel traffic and noise, the inherent risk of dirty oil spills and blowouts and unavoidable toxic discharge.
Although the map touts "a fountain of data for use by industry," it ignores several components of the ocean ecosystem and certain coastal communities that are already struggling and need increased protections -- not increased development. Users can view the migratory pathways of sharks and fish -- but not other migratory species like seabirds and turtles. You can see critical habitats designated pursuant to the Endangered Species Act, but not the habitats for every threatened or endangered species (not all species receive critical habitat protection). Finally, feeding areas for cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises) are shown, but what about breeding areas for these struggling species? And, where are the other species protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act: sirenians (manatees and dugongs) and marine carnivores (like seals, otters, walrus and polar bears)? Trump's new industry-focused map does not include this vital information.
Since taking office, Trump has prioritized rolling back decades of progress in ocean protection policy.
While we're at it, what about coastal communities throughout the Gulf of Mexico that are already bearing the brunt of extensive offshore drilling? Thanks to offshore drilling, they are struggling with basic needs like drinkable water and breathable air. But, the map doesn't pay them any credence. Trump must not see them as a priority in determining where to develop next.
Since taking office, Trump has prioritized rolling back decades of progress in ocean protection policy. Both former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama took steps toward establishing a strong foundation for healthy oceans with protections for marine mammals, the creation of sanctuaries and monuments, improving U.S. fisheries and crafting policies to shield massive swaths of our waterways from dirty drilling activities. Trump has attempted to abolish much of that progress. This map is just one more Trump handout to Big Oil and others in the booming business of ocean industrialization.
Thankfully, we have checks and balances in our federal government to help prevent Trump's bad policies. In January 2019, members of Congress joined together to introduce a series of bills that would protect the majority of our coastlines from offshore drilling activities. And in March 2019, a federal judge nixed Trump's attempt to expand offshore drilling in the Arctic and North Atlantic coasts and upheld protections placed by former President Obama.
States can also attempt to resist Trump through stronger local policies. For example, an inspiring number of governors -- including Republicans and Democrats -- from coastal states opposed Trump's plan for expanded offshore drilling. Unfortunately, Trump responded by proposing to take away states' rights to object to coastal development off their coasts.
Thanks to major pushback from organizations like Friends of the Earth, Trump has temporarily postponed the next phase of his plan for offshore drilling expansion. But the recent issuance of his ocean industrialization map reinforces that Trump will continue providing corporate handouts and pushing to industrialize our remaining wild places. Click here to tell the Trump administration to permanently pull the plug on its five-year plan to expand offshore drilling. Remember: our oceans are home to important and endangered marine species, and shouldn't be treated as mere uncharted areas for mega-corporations to industrialize.
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Nearly 100,000 Pentagon Whistleblower Complaints Have Been Silenced
There is a giant sucking sound in the center of the Pentagon, and whatever’s down there feeds on trillions of secretive dollars, then shits out incalculable death and destruction
Apr 18, 2019
I don't know if I'd have the nerve to be a whistleblower. I'd like to think I would. We all like to think we would, just like we all like to think we could catch the game-winning touchdown, triumph on "America's Got Talent," and fold a fitted sheet quickly and without cursing.
But to blow the whistle on a huge organization with a lot of power, likely drawing that power to come crashing down on your head--that takes some serious spine-age. Now, imagine the organization you're calling out is arguably the largest, most powerful, most secretive and most violent organization on planet Earth. I'm speaking, of course, of the U.S. Department of Defense.
Yet thousands, even tens of thousands, of people have taken that step over the past five years. (More on this in a moment.)
All the while our organized human murder machine continues its work around the world. Every day. Every hour. Never a moment of rest. Never pausing to clip their toenails or scratch their ass. Bombs dropped. Buildings blown up. People killed or imprisoned. No end in sight.
By the way, that's the term I like to use instead of "military"--Organized Human Murder Machine.
It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? "Mili-tary" sounds too boring, too banal. Sounds like a super-lame couple you met at a party. "Yeah, Millie and Terry over there are accountants. If I have to hear one more joke about capital gains taxes, I'm gonna kill myself."
The military is a gigantic organized human murder machine, and even if you "support" every action our military has ever taken, you can still acknowledge it's an organized human murder machine.
But that's not what the military is. The military is a gigantic organized human murder machine, and even if you "support" every action our military has ever taken, you can still acknowledge it's an organized human murder machine. (You would just bizarrely argue that all the murder has been just and sound and pure.)
Eleven months ago I covered $21 trillion of unaccounted-for adjustments at the Pentagon over the past 20 years. Don't try to think about the number $21 trillion because you'll pass out and hit your head on the desk. If your salary is $40,000 a year, in order to earn $21 trillion, it would take you 525 million years. (At which point you can't even enjoy the new jet ski you just bought with all your money because you're almost certainly a brain in a jar ... though a nice embroidered jar that only the rich brains can afford.)
Over the past year there has been a little more coverage of the utterly preposterous amount of money unaccounted for at our human murder machine. The Nation magazine, Forbes and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez all covered it. Then the white blood cells of the military-industrial complex kicked into action in order to destroy the "infection." The New York Times and Vox both claimed the $21 trillion is merely the result of large-scale misdocumentation and therefore doesn't matter at all. Of course, the idea that tens of TRILLIONS of dollars of unaccountable adjustments don't matter and couldn't mask any fraud, abuse or corruption is an assertion that makes Charlie Sheen's statement that he runs on tiger blood seem downright levelheaded.
Probably the best article to date on the $21 trillion was written a few weeks ago by Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone.
Point is, even though most of the mainstream media won't get near this subject (or worse yet--actively attack those who do), the word is getting out: There is a giant sucking sound in the center of the Pentagon, and whatever's down there feeds on trillions of secretive dollars, then shits out incalculable death and destruction. (It's the Death Star if officials at the Death Star spent $10,000 on a toilet seat.)
A month ago the Government Accountability Office came out with a report showing the total number of whistleblower complaints over the past five years at the Department of Defense. It's nearly 100,000. Here's the only part of the report that references that number:
The Department of Defense Inspector General identified 8 substantiated violations of whistleblower confidentiality between fiscal years 2013 and 2018, representing approximately .01 percent of the 95,613 contacts handled by the Inspector General during that time....
95,613 whistleblower complaints over five years.
Sadly, the Government Accountability Office was trying to brag in that sentence. They were proudly stating, "We only breached the confidentiality of .01 percent of our 95,000 whistleblower complaints. Aren't we heroes?!"
It's kind of like saying, "Of the 10,000 dolphins I've killed, not a single one has accidentally been a human." The sane response is, "Well, I'm glad to hear that, but did you say you killed 10,000 dolphins?"
To try to get the 95,000 number to make a little more sense, that averages out to a whistleblower every six minutes of every weekday for five straight years. (That waiting room must be truly nuts. I bet all the good magazines were claimed years ago.)
When you have $21 trillion of unaccounted-for adjustments, it means a seizure-inducing amount of money, parts, pieces, bombs, missiles, manpower and devices are flying around with no accountability--likely creating loads of fraud, which would probably create loads of whistleblowers.
But maybe I'm looking at this all wrong. Perhaps the number 95,613 shouldn't be all that shocking, and I need to roll my tongue back up and store it back within my mouth. When you have $21 trillion of unaccounted-for adjustments, it means a seizure-inducing amount of money, parts, pieces, bombs, missiles, manpower and devices are flying around with no accountability--likely creating loads of fraud, which would probably create loads of whistleblowers. Hence, maybe we all should have expected this number of whistleblowers rather than being shocked.
For example, there's the time in 2003 when the U.S. flew $12 billion in cash to Iraq and promptly lost track of it. As the Guardian makes clear in this article, this was not an instance of hackers on a computer system stealing a bunch of ones and zeroes. This was giant pallets of cash money vanishing without a trace. In fact, it was 281 million $100 bills, weighing in at 363 tons. That's not really the type of thing you can just smuggle away in your sweatshirt while humming "She'll be comin' 'round the mountain."
Or here's another example journalist David DeGraw highlights from the Government Accountability Report:
... according to a Department of Defense official, during an initial audit, the Army found 39 Blackhawk helicopters that had not been recorded in the property system. [$819 million in value] Similarly, the Air Force identified 478 buildings and structures at 12 installations that were not in the real property systems. ...
The Army lost and then found 39 helicopters.
The Air Force lost and then found 478 buildings.
How does one lose a goddamn building? Unless you just had a bad breakup with David Copperfield, there's no explanation for losing a building. (Side note: It must suck divorcing David Copperfield. "Really, honey? You think you're gonna take the house?? PAFOOMPF! What house?!")
Ya see, this madness stems from the fact that the Pentagon has a standard operating procedure of simply making up numbers to fill their books--which for normal human beings is termed "fraud." But in the case of the Pentagon, it's termed, "We get to make shit up because ... ummm... national security."
Here's more from a 2013 Reuters article:
"Linda Woodford spent the last 15 years of her career inserting phony numbers in the Department of Defense's accounts. ... but many mystery numbers remained. For those, Woodford and her colleagues were told by superiors to take "unsubstantiated change actions"--in other words, enter false numbers, commonly called "plugs," to make the Navy's totals match the Treasury's."
Have no fear, patriotic Americans, this is not "lying to the American people, stealing their money, and using it for war," this is just "unsubstantiated change actions." Try that on your next tax return. Put in $10,000 marked "Unsubstantiated change actions." I'm sure they'll love that.
So let's sum this up, shall we? The Pentagon sucks up 55% of all the discretionary tax money we pay to our government (thanks to our bought-off Congress who receive more Christmas cards from weapons contractors than they do from relatives). Those who work at the Pentagon have no idea where or how the money is spent. They make up many of the numbers resulting in tens of trillions of dollars of unaccounted-for adjustments. They lose helicopters, buildings and, in a few instances, even nuclear warheads. There is an unimaginable amount of fraud and corruption at every level and literally thousands of whistleblowers have tried to come forward every single year--one every six minutes. When they do take that incredibly brave action, over 90% of the claims are dismissed without even being investigated.
You would think, in this topsy-turvy world, if there were one organization we could trust with a trillion dollars a year of our taxpayer money, it would be the Department of Unauthorized Highly Secretive Mass Human Murder.
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Stand with Okinawa
The Henoko base construction is framed by the history of colonization and racism against Okinawans, as well as by our ongoing resistance as we attempt to end the long era of U.S. occupation
Dec 11, 2018
"Don't cry here," an 86-year-old Okinawan grandmother I had never met before told me. She stood next to me and took my hand. I had been visiting my family in Okinawa with my four children early in August and had traveled to Henoko, in the northeastern region of our main island, to join the protest against the U.S. military's relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station from Futenma, located in the center of an urban district, to Camp Schwab, in a more remote coastal region. My teenage daughter, Kaiya, and I had spent the day with a crowd of elders holding protest signs in front of the gates of Camp Schwab. Rows and rows of more than 400 trucks hauling large rocks passed by, ready to outline an ocean area for the new base, equivalent to the size of 383 football fields. Our beautiful, tropical ecosystem with all of its internationally proclaimed and protected biodiversity was to soon be crushed, destroying coral and marine life. This, despite the overwhelming opposition of Indigenous island people. I began to cry as I held up my protest sign.
"Grandma is going to cry when I get home tonight so I will be crying with you," she said squeezing my hand. "Here, we fight together." We watched as trucks flooded through the gate of the military base where Japanese police had pushed us away moments before. With tears in her eyes she said, "It wouldn't be strange if we all jumped in front of every one of those trucks, because this is our ocean. This is our island."
If built, there will be no reversing the damage to our ocean, our coral, and our sea life.
Four months have passed since I joined the Okinawan elders back home and so many have continued to hold sit-ins every week -- for some, every day -- despite being forcefully removed by Japanese riot police. Meanwhile, the concrete blocks and metal bars have been dropped into the ocean on top of the coral to outline where the base will be constructed. Governor Takeshi Onaga, who had succeeded in halting the base construction, died from cancer in August and the Okinawan people elected a new governor, Denny Tamaki, by an overwhelming majority -- based on his promise that he would stop the Henoko destruction. More than 75,000 Okinawans showed up in an island-wide protest during typhoon weather to show the world how strongly we oppose this base construction. Yet, the Japanese central government announced that on December 13th (UST) -- this Thursday -- they will resume the landfill with sand and concrete. Authorities argued that building a new Henoko base is necessary in order to maintain the U.S.-Japan security alliance; and U.S. government leaders touted the base's location for regional security.
But if built, there will be no reversing the damage to our ocean, our coral, and our sea life.
The Henoko base construction is framed by the history of colonization and racism against Okinawans, as well as by our ongoing resistance as we attempt to end the long era of U.S. occupation. Okinawa was once an independent kingdom; it was colonized by Japan in the 17th century and during World War II became the victim of the bloodiest battle in the history of the Pacific, where more than a third of our people were killed within three months, including members of my family. Ninety-two percent of Okinawans were left homeless.
Frequent violent crimes against women and children by U.S. military personnel regularly bring out hundreds of thousands of protesters to demand justice and humanity and the complete removal of U.S. bases.
The United States then took the land from the Okinawan people, created military bases, and imposed a new constitution on Japan that took away Japan's right to have an offensive military. Henceforth, the U.S. military would "protect" Japan with bases throughout Japanese territory. However, three-quarters of all U.S. bases on Japanese territory are on Okinawa, even though Okinawa makes up only 0.6 percent of the total landmass that Japan controls. Okinawa's main island alone is only 62 miles long, and an average of one mile wide. It is here that 73 years of U.S. base occupation has created environmental destruction, air pollution and noise pollution, and exposed survivors and families to the sights and sounds of war. Frequent violent crimes against women and children by U.S. military personnel regularly bring out hundreds of thousands of protesters to demand justice and humanity and the complete removal of U.S. bases.
And the occupation continues. Now, the Japanese central government enforces the construction of yet another base -- this one in the ocean itself, in the Henoko region of Okinawa. This new chapter in the ongoing invasion of Okinawa disregards the sovereignty, self-determination and human rights guaranteed by United Nations resolutions. The Okinawan people have voted overwhelming to oppose the base construction -- for more than 20 years, since the base was first proposed.
The Okinawan people have voted overwhelming to oppose the base construction -- for more than 20 years, since the base was first proposed.
The marine habitat of Henoko is second only to the Great Barrier Reef in biodiversity. More than 5,300 species live in Oura Bay, including 262 endangered species like the dolphin-like dugong and sea turtles. Already this week, the Ryukyu Shimpo reported that two of the closely monitored dugong are missing, with predictions that the noise level of the construction has already hindered their ability to graze on seaweed beds.
For me, the Henoko struggle is about honoring my people's existence and our right to protect our native land. I draw inspiration from the Australian students' protest to stop the Adani coal company from building coal mines in Queensland, and from the Kanaka Maoli people's movement to block the destruction of Mauna Kea in Hawai'i for an 18-story telescope. Okinawa is my home, my ancestral home. To have it destroyed is unfathomable.
The United States has more than 800 military bases in more than 70 countries across the globe. And each of these places are, or were, people's homes -- just like my people's in Okinawa.
Of course, what's happening in Okinawa is not an isolated outrage. The United States has more than 800 military bases in more than 70 countries across the globe. And each of these places are, or were, people's homes -- just like my people's in Okinawa. The devastation of Henoko is part of a larger, world-wide U.S. imperialist footprint. What happens in Okinawa matters for Indigenous peoples everywhere. What happens in Okinawa matters for sovereignty fights everywhere. What happens in Okinawa matters for fragile ecosystems everywhere.
As I write, I'm receiving reports from Okinawa announcing the arrival of more ships carrying sand and concrete ready to pour the outline of the 205 hectare area. With only four days left before this destruction of irreplaceable biodiversity, a fellow Okinawan American activist and I created a hashtag campaign to demand the stopping of the base construction in Henoko: #standwithokinawa.
Please post your solidarity message, demanding your representatives take part in protecting Henoko, and connect with organizations and allies to help us fight for our rights as Okinawan people. In addition, organize international solidarity efforts to amplify the urgency of stopping the base construction. Sign the petition to President Trump demanding that the United States stop the landfill of Henoko at https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-landfill-henoko-oura-bay-until-referendum-can-be-held-okinawa.
In the words of one auntie at the sit-in this past summer, "It hasn't been the governments or politicians that have stopped this heliport construction over the last five years. It has been ordinary people; volunteers, the elderly and people who just care about Okinawa. And that's going to be who changes this now. Ordinary people, many, many of us together." We need the world with us. Stand with Okinawa.
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Taken From Oceans Around the World, 100% of Sea Turtles in New Study Had Plastics in Their Bellies
"How many more studies like this do we need for corporations to take strong action to curb the production of throwaway plastic which is predicted to quadruple by 2050?"
Dec 04, 2018
A new study of sea turtles in three oceans and seas drove home the point, green campaigners said Wednesday, that the world's governments and corporations are not doing enough to reduce plastic pollution--and marine life is suffering as a result.
One hundred and two sea turtles inhabiting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and the Mediterranean Sea were the subject of the study by the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory in the United Kingdom--and all 102 of the creatures were found with plastics, microplastics, and other synthetics in their digestive systems.
"From our work over the years we have found microplastic in nearly all the species of marine animals we have looked at; from tiny zooplankton at the base of the marine food web to fish larvae, dolphins, and now turtles," said Penelope Lindeque, who co-authored the report. "This study provides more evidence that we all need to help reduce the amount of plastic waste released to our seas and maintain clean, healthy and productive oceans for future generations."
"This global environmental crisis must be tackled at the source for the sake of marine life, the world's oceans, our health, and our communities." --Graham Forbes, Greenpeace USA
A total of about 800 particles less than half a centimeter long were found in the turtles' guts, with scientists finding an average of 150 pieces of plastic in each animal. The Mediterranean was found to be the most polluted body of water the scientists studied, with some turtles' bodies containing 500 plastics.
"How many more studies like this do we need for corporations to take strong action to curb the production of throwaway plastic which is predicted to quadruple by 2050?" said Graham Forbes, global plastic project leader for Greenpeace USA. "This global environmental crisis must be tackled at the source for the sake of marine life, the world's oceans, our health, and our communities."
The study provides "a clear sign that we need to act to better govern global waste," study author Brendan Godley told Plastics News. "It really is a great shame that many or even all of the world's sea turtles have now ingested microplastics."
The most common materials found inside the turtles were pieces of tires, marine equipment, cigarettes, and clothing. Microbeads used in some cosmetic products, which the United Kingdom banned earlier this year following the U.S. ban in 2015, were also found in many of the turtles.
Smaller plastics may not present a choking danger for sea turtles as larger materials do, the study's authors noted, but they can cause other health problems for the animals.
"Future work should focus on whether microplastics may be affecting aquatic organisms more subtly," lead author Dr. Emily Duncan said in a statement. "For example, they may possibly carry contaminants, bacteria or viruses, or they may affect the turtle at a cellular or sub-cellular level. This requires further investigation."
"Our society's addiction to throwaway plastic is fueling a global environmental crisis that must be tackled at source," said Louise Edge, an oceans campaign coordinator at Greenpeace.
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Trump Greenlights Another 'Violent, Destructive' Assault on Marine Life With Seismic Testing Approval
Trump, warn conservationists, is essentially giving the fossil fuel industry the permission "to harass, harm and possibly even kill marine life... all in the pursuit of dirty and dangerous offshore oil."
Nov 29, 2018
Defenders of ocean habitats and marine life are up in arms on Friday as the Trump administration is set to approve new abilities for the fossil fuel industry to conduct widescale and "deafening" underwater seismic in federal waters off the U.S. Atlantic coast.
The decision is expected to come from the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Commerce Department, but conservation groups say it is a smack in the face to ocean ecosystems and a political nonstarter they vow to fight tooth and nail.
"This action flies in the face of massive opposition to offshore drilling and exploration from over 90 percent of coastal municipalities in the proposed blast zone," said Diane Hoskins, campaign director at Oceana. "These permits were already denied because of the known harm that seismic airgun blasting causes. President Trump is essentially giving these companies permission to harass, harm and possibly even kill marine life, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale - all in the pursuit of dirty and dangerous offshore oil. This is the first step toward offshore drilling in the Atlantic and we're going to make sure coastal communities know what's happening and fight this."
Michael Jasny, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at NRDC, said the president's action is totally detached from the reality of the threats the world's ecosytems now face.
"Just one week after issuing dire warnings on the catastrophic fallout of climate change to come, the Trump Administration is opening our coastlines to for-profit companies to prospect for oil and gas--and is willing to sacrifice marine life, our coastal communities and fisheries in the process," fumed Jasny. "This is the first step towards drilling and scientists warn that seismic activity alone could drive the endangered North American right whale to extinction. We'll stand with citizens, coastal businesses, scientists, lawmakers, and commercial and recreational fishermen who oppose seismic blasting, and we will fight this illegal action."
According to the Washington Post:
In addition to harming sea life, acoustic tests -- in which boats tugging rods pressurized for sound emit jet engine-like booms 10 to 12 seconds apart for days and sometimes months -- can disrupt thriving commercial fisheries. Governors, state lawmakers and attorneys general along the Atlantic coast say drilling threatens beach tourism that has flourished on the coast in the absence of oil production.
Seismic testing maps the ocean floor and estimates the whereabouts of oil and gas, but only exploratory drilling can confirm their presence. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill that soiled the Gulf of Mexico resulted from an exploratory drill. Another gulf disaster that looms almost as large has spewed oil for more than 14 years. The Taylor Energy Co. spill of up to an estimated 700 barrels a day started when a hurricane ripped up production wells, and could continue for the rest of the century, according to the Interior Department.
"Seismic blasting is a violent, destructive precursor to unnecessary offshore oil drilling," said Angela Howe, Surfrider Foundation Legal Director, in a statement. "According to estimates from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the seismic exploration projects could directly harm tens of thousands of whales and dolphins, in addition to thousands of manatees, seals, and sea turtles. This type of damage to our coastal resources is unacceptable. The Surfrider Foundation and our strong coalition of allies will stand up to protect our ocean, waves and beaches for the future."
While the seismic blasting is awful enough, Earthjustice warns that this is only a part of the Trump adminstration's assault on the oceans and marine life. As the group notes:
While destructive in their own right, the seismic tests are only a first step in the Trump administration's broader plans for dramatic expansion of offshore drilling in the Atlantic and beyond. The Department of the Interior has proposed opening 90 percent of U.S. federal offshore waters to the fossil fuel industry, exposing nearly every coastline in the nation to the risk of an environmentally devastating oil spill and the degradation that comes with industrializing more of our rich ocean environments. Since the planning process for this offshore leasing expansion got underway, more than 1.45 million Americans have demonstrated intense opposition with rallies, marches and comments submitted to the Department of Interior agency responsible for crafting the plan.
"As usual, the Trump administration is pulling out all the stops to give favors to the fossil fuel industry, whatever the cost to coastal communities and wildlife," said Athan Manuel, the lands protection program director for the Sierra Club. "We will continue to fight back against their dangerous plans to subject our coasts to seismic blasting and expanded offshore drilling."
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Trump and Kavanaugh Win One for the Pack
How frats, teams, and gangs divide, conquer, and now judge America
Oct 23, 2018
Brett Kavanaugh's hellish Supreme Court fraternity pledge week offered many lessons, but the most powerful, if least noted, was about the raising of boys in America -- all boys, not just the groomed Georgetown elite from which the judge emerged. Too many boys are raised in packs, whether they're called fraternities, sports teams, or gangs, all of which offer brotherhood in return for loyalty, obedience, and a dedicated contempt for the Other -- anyone, that is, who isn't a member, above all women. Kavanaugh was raised (and raised up) by just such packs.
Frats, teams, and gangs have their differences, often involving social class and skill sets, but there's one great similarity: the sense, often nurtured and reinforced by booze, battle, and group sex, that you are part of a special brotherhood. The promise of that brotherhood is to defend boys against a supposedly hostile environment by isolating them from the rest of their world and indoctrinating them with a set of tribal values that must be upheld beyond reason.
For most boys, as was true for young Brett, it starts with making the sports team (or not), being discarded -- "cut" -- (or not), as a pyramid of talent narrows to travel teams, all-stars, and elite leagues in middle school, high school, college, and finally the pros. The prime lesson is always the same: winning is everything and doing so in a dominating way by crushing the opposition is the best of all. In the process, finding an edge by working the refs, purposely injuring opponents, taking drugs, or protecting bad boys become standard tactics in the quest for victory. As Kavanaugh reminded us often enough, being captain of his Georgetown Prep high school basketball team and a member of the football team made him the proudest of proud jocks.
Naturally, fraternities prize such products of Jock Culture, boys growing to manhood who are already popular, trained to take orders, and used to hanging out with their own while excluding others. Frats, in turn, offer the same rewards as teams do, especially a set of brothers who will have your back, no matter what kind of a "puker" you are -- as long as you're loyal. At Yale, Kavanaugh pledged Delta Kappa Epsilon (or Deke), then well known as a hard-drinking frat for jocks, whose many famous members once included Presidents Gerald Ford and that father-and-son team, George H.W. and George W. Bush. Kavanaugh's Deke connections may even have brought him to the attention of the younger Bush as he headed into his presidency and landed Brett his various jobs in that administration. Perhaps it also helped recommend him to one of the country's most notorious and dangerous gangs of conservatives, the Federalist Society.
For the past four decades, much like gangs in minority neighborhoods drafting tough and vulnerable teenagers, the conservative Federalists have been recruiting ambitious students and lawyers with the potential to become judges. Their success reached a peak with Kavanaugh's recent confirmation, a victory with a Trumpian touch. The judge's diatribe about the Clintons and the rest of the left-wing conspiracy to take him out should have evoked the president's pitch on the viciousness of MS-13, a gang of mostly young Central Americans that originated in Los Angeles and has spread into immigrant communities across the country.
Boys Will Be You Know What
Team, frat, or gang, the macho sensibility of the pack will never die as long as it's applauded or at least tolerated in the culture at large as a boys-will-be-boys phenomenon -- as long as it's a given that we need such boys raised up strong and straight, prepared to fight our wars, man (never woman) our teams, and of course run our country. If you are a boy and an outsider, you are likely to play along to avoid trouble. Growing up bookish in Queens, The Donald's borough, so many years ago, I found myself feigning more interest than I had in New York's major league baseball teams and didn't protest too much when other boys misinterpreted a platonic relationship with a girl as something steamier. It kept my image on the male track, reasonably protected from the bullies who went after boys like me.
I was in a college fraternity, saw plenty of alcoholic aggression and sexual misbehavior, but never quite connected that to the code of the pack. Yes, there were drunk guys, horny guys, screwed-up guys, maybe even a few truly bad guys, but I didn't grasp that it was all meant to be a brotherhood against the rest of the world (especially women). My teaching moment came at 24, a lesson (appropriately enough) directly from the locker room.
It was 1962. I was then a rookie baseball reporter for the New York Times, covering the Yankees on the road. The older sportswriters were, at best, warily sociable. Would I, they wondered, disrupt their easy lives with some kind of unexpected reporting? The ballplayers were subtly hostile, especially stars like Mickey Mantle. Would I violate the covenant of the trade: that what happens on the road stays on the road? I felt like an interloper, outside the little bubble they were all traveling in. I was disconnected, lonely, and anxious that such social relations would affect my job, that mine would turn out to be a brief career in sports writing.
Then, one hot morning before a night game in Los Angeles, I met, chatted up, and took a swim in the hotel pool with a young female guest. I suggested lunch. As it was getting too hot for a poolside meal and we were hardly dressed for a restaurant, we left together for my room to order from room service, as some sportswriters and a few ballplayers hanging out at poolside nodded approvingly. No alcohol was ordered and nothing happened. We had lunch and that was that, but several Yankees saw her leave my room and smirked.
And lo and behold, I was in. The press box and the locker room were welcoming that evening. A winking word or two, a nod and a smile confirmed my acceptance. It took me a little while to figure it all out. Suddenly, I was one of them or at least nobody to worry about anymore because I had just marked myself as another frat brother following his dick. It was as easy and stupid as that. I was one of the guys.
Bystanders and Accomplices
I didn't stay on the baseball beat long enough to see if my new brotherhood would pay off in scoops, but the lesson learned could make access easier when it came to reporting on other sports, the cops, city politics, more or less anything else I covered. The rule was simple enough: walk like a bad boy and don't police bad-boy behavior or even point it out. That's no way of making friends. Most in the brotherhood were then and probably still are simply bystanders, as I was at the time. Some, of course, are accomplices, while the bad boys all too often are the stars whom all the other boys in the pack both resent and admire as heroes.
I've been thinking about this for years, but Brett Kavanaugh, that quintessential frat-boy jock-bully, brought it all up in my throat again like so much bile. His belligerent, bleating, entitled, prevaricating, smart-ass Jock Culture posturing reminded me of the boys I had been trying to dodge all my life and, in the end, couldn't help writing about. Now, to imagine the quintessential version of such a figure sitting in judgment on the rest of our lives for the rest of his life is chilling.
And here's the sick joke of it all: by Jock Culture's twisted standards, the judge was a loser. He struck out. He spent parties "holding up the walls" because he was too soused to play. The drunken braggart was disrespectful to women because he never got the girl, even the one everyone else supposedly got -- and what did it matter that they didn't either? Decades later, when it was finally in his interest, he admitted the truth: that he was a virgin all those years. And in that lies a deeper truth: having sex back then was never as important as the guys thinking you did.
And now for that infamous 1985 bar fight, that quintessential test of manhood. As it happened, he didn't clean out the joint with his fists, he threw ice cubes. He was an instigator, endangering his pals, including Chris Dudley, the 6'-11" Yale basketball player who took the fall and was evidently arrested. There is no evidence that Dudley suffered more than a brief detention, which tends to be standard treatment for a college jock near campus, even for far worse transgressions. Usually, some old white guys clean up afterward. In any case, Dudley went on to spend 16 years in the National Basketball Association and run unsuccessfully for governor of Oregon.
The Duke
Once cornered by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford's testimony, Brett Kavanaugh turned in a performance that any frat boy would describe with the worst of pack put-downs: "acting like a little girl." Whatever happened to the steady and stoic John Wayne-style "don't complain, don't explain" guy? Not for him, the classic football player's mantra, "Suck it up, be a man."
John Wayne, the Duke, that on-screen ultimate cowboy, was a movie fixture of my time and Donald Trump's, too. I often get the feeling that the president is trying to channel Wayne with that rolling waddle of his and his pseudo-tough declarative sentences. Even as the Senate struggled with the confirmation of an accused sexual predator, he was out there mocking Al Franken, the former Democratic senator driven to resign by far less devastating (but still insufferable) charges, accusing him of weakness. "He was wacky," Mr. Trump said at a campaign rally in Minnesota. "Boy, did he fold up like a wet rag, huh? Man. Man. He was gone so fast, O.K.?" Then, he added, "Oh, he did something. 'Oh, oh, oh, I resign, I quit.' I don't want to mention Al Franken's name, so I won't mention [it]."
In that nightmarish display of the power of the pack in Congress recently, if there was some semblance of a Republican manly man, it seemed to be, however briefly, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who was willing to be open to two women he did not know when they confronted him in an elevator in the Capitol and so made a rare Republican compromise with the Other. He even demurred when the gang leader himself, Trump, mocked Dr. Ford's pain. In the end, of course, Flake folded like a wet rag in the face of ultimate pack power and voted to confirm Kavanaugh, whose ascension will help normalize the kind of thuggish behavior that has long kept so many boys in thrall.
Loud and aggressive, fueled and excused by alcohol -- what a commercial for the mellowness of pot is Brother Brett! -- the frat-jock gang tries to push everyone else to the margins, drown out all discourse but theirs, and move the goal posts or, if necessary, simply tear them down. And they are so often cheered on by the bystanders, vicariously enjoying the violence, like the audience in a sports arena. It makes me think of extreme sports fandom, a form of tribalism that has given a pass to dozens of sexually predatory athletes over the years. Most recently and sadly typical of our never-ending moment, Ohio State suspended its winning coach, Urban Meyer, for just three games for his mishandling of repeated sexual assault claims by the wife of an assistant coach and friend.
And talk about mishandling: call them a frat or a gang, but the aging white male Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee moved Kavanaugh through his initiation with remarkable determination and then helped Trump cow the rest of the tribe into voting him onto the bench. The only shock in all of this was its blatancy. Otherwise it should have seemed beyond familiar to us all. In winning yet again, the big boys made their male tribalism transparent beyond question. It's beyond question that they believe bipartisanship, cooperation, common decency, and peace are antithetical to the brotherhood of the pack.
In fact, just one question remains: Will this finally mobilize a resistance movement or will it just further confirm the dominance of the pack?
The only appropriate four-letter word in all of this, of course, is VOTE, but even kicking the bullies out won't be enough for the long game. The manipulation of male tribalism occurs on many levels, but since we know where it starts for boys, isn't it time to begin reforming the world of sports teams, get rid of those fraternities, and alleviate the conditions that breed gangs? It's that or roll over forever for Brett and the pack.
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