Curmie Doesn’t Like Being Lied To

 

It would seem that prevarication has supplanted baseball as the national pastime.  Name a politician you’d trust to tell you the truth if a lie would be more convenient.  Curmie can’t, and if there’s one out there, it sure as hell isn’t one of the frontrunners in the next Presidential election.

Curmie has experienced two separate incidents over the past couple of weeks.  What they share is not simply that someone failed to provide a service they were obligated to provide, but that they lied about it and showed literally no remorse for having done so.

Incident #1: Although Curmie has retired from teaching, his university has a provision that emeritus faculty are entitled to an office if one is available, and one is.  Because I’m still doing some academic writing, I’m grateful for the workspace, the use of a computer, access to a printer and scanner, etc.  We’re now back in the building we occupied from the time I came here until the summer of 2020, when we were displaced to across campus while renovations and expansions were happening to our “home.”  (We were told we had to move out by the end of May 2020 or we couldn’t move back in the fall of 2021; we couldn’t move in at all until August of this year, and the building won’t really be ready for at least another few months.  But that’s a rant for another day.)

The problems are two-fold.  First, the new office is less than half as big as the one Curmie moved out of three years ago.  Second, it was designed by an idiot, or, more likely, a committee of idiots.  The desk, made of cheap but heavy material, is far too big for an office of that size.  There are permanently mounted cabinets above the desk, but no place for files.  Curmie could go on.  And on.  And on. The biggest annoyance is that the offices on my side of the hallway (the smaller ones, with windows offering a view of the convenience store across the street) got only a single bookcase.  Curmie seriously doubts that whoever decided that has ever as much as met a faculty member in the humanities, let alone listened to one.

Curmie was able to get a second bookcase, but they’re absurdly deep, so you can’t put a third one against the remaining space on the only available wall or you could never get past it to sit at that enormous L-shaped desk.  Despite donating over 1000 books to the new department library and taking a dozen boxes home since moving out of my former office, I still have far too many books to fit on the available shelves.  I’ll no doubt need to do another purge when I retire retire, but most of what remains are things I anticipate using in upcoming research projects, and many of these volumes aren’t in the university library.

The solution, obviously, was to buy another bookcase (the university sure as hell wouldn’t provide one) that will fit the available space.  So I did.  I found something on Amazon that met my purposes.  It would have been perfect instead of merely good if those stupid cabinets didn’t extend an inch or so past the desk, and I can’t move the desk (even if I had the strength) and still be able to open the door.  The new bookcase won’t solve the problem, but it will help.

It was to be delivered Friday the 1st.  At 10:37 that morning I got a message from Amazon that the USPS had tried unsuccessfully to deliver it.  This, of course, was a lie; they never bothered.  I was less than pleased.  Anyway, I found the tracking number and did a little investigating.  According to that information, the package was loaded onto a truck and was “out for delivery” at 6:20 a.m., but it wasn’t delivered because—get this—my mailbox was full!  This was both a lie and, of course, irrelevant even it were true.  Bookcases, even those requiring assembly, tend not to fit into mailboxes.

So Curmie called the USPS 800 number, and had a charming conversation with the robot voice.  Now, it became clear that the reason for non-delivery could have been that the package was “large.” Well, duh.  I was told I could pick up the package from the post office starting Saturday, or arrange to have it delivered that day.  I chose the latter, but, needless to say, the package didn’t show up on Saturday.

I’ll grant them Sunday and Monday (Labor Day).  Nothing Tuesday, either, of course, and the tracking now said the bookcase was being held at the post office.  (All the previous stuff about being loaded for delivery had conveniently vanished.)  In other words, it had been sitting in the back room there since Friday, and if they’d told me the truth I could have picked it up then and had the weekend to assemble it without disturbing my colleagues.  But apparently honesty is in short supply at the USPS.

So I went to the post office on Tuesday.  I asked why the tracking said it had been “out for delivery” early Friday morning but wasn’t delivered.  I was told that “No one was here that early.”  Then something about the timestamp being linked to when it got scanned in.  I decided not to bother to ask the obvious question of who scanned it in if there was no one there. 

Anyway, the woman who waited on me went into the back room and then re-appeared carrying the package.  It had “heavy” stickers on it in three or four places, but she managed it just fine.  In its unassembled state, the bookcase is about the size of a carry-on bag and weighs maybe 45 or 50 pounds.  I had no trouble getting it to my car or loading it into my trunk.  (I confess that I asked our tech director to borrow a hand truck to get it to my office since I couldn’t park anywhere near the elevator; he chose to carry it, instead.  This involved a trek of 50 yards or so and a set of stairs.)

OK, it’s hardly news that the USPS will avoid work whenever possible, and certainly the utterly false statements about “out for delivery” and the reason for non-delivery are all too typical.  But, Gentle Reader, as they say on the late-night infomercials, wait! There’s more!  Presumably they knew when they got the package from Amazon that they weren’t actually going to deliver it… or maybe it’s just the locals who decided that.  Either way, the USPS got paid to deliver the bookcase to me and failed to do so.

The only question is whether Amazon is responsible at all.  Other couriers are perfectly willing to deliver “heavy” packages (see below).  Why would Amazon choose the USPS?  Surely they’ve been around the block enough times to know that the postal service isn’t necessarily going to treat their (Amazon’s) customers right. 

Still, it’s easier to forgive a less than inspired business decision than outright prevarication.  But, alas, there’s not a lot an online customer can do to avoid the mendacious organization.  And it doesn’t help that it’s a government agency.

It’s not just those with ties to the government, though.  Private companies feel the need to get in on the act, too.  So let’s move on to Incident #2.

We’ve been in our current house a little over 22 years.  The garage door opener wasn’t new when we moved in.  A few days ago, the chain snapped.  So I went to the local Lowe’s, checked out the possibilities, came home and discussed the options with Beloved Spouse, and ordered a new opener online.  So far, so good. 

FedEx delivered it when they said they would, last Thursday.  (By the way, the box is essentially the same size and weight as that unassembled bookcase I mentioned last time, and FedEx delivered it, no problem.)  But whereas 20 years ago I would probably have done the installation myself, for a variety of reasons I decided to just have Lowe’s arrange for a professional installation.  That’s where the fun begins.

Lowe’s farms out this kind of job through Handy or their subsidiary Angi.  We’d had pretty good luck with Handy in the past; our experience with Angi was, shall we say, less pleasurable.  So we were apprehensive when it was Angi, not the parent company, that contacted me.

But I filled out the requested information, including that with a little notice I could be available at any time.  I was given three choices of when the work could be done, and chose late afternoon on Sunday.  The text messages urging me to be “excited” that the installation was soon to happen began on Friday.  Sorry, I come by my nom de plume honestly, and few curmudgeons get excited over garage door installations.  Relieved, perhaps.  Grateful, even.  Excited?  Nope.

So then came the message at 6:30 Sunday morning that “due to a last-minute issue with [my] pro,” they were going to re-schedule until Tuesday.  This led to more texts to get excited, and then another re-scheduling until Thursday.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Well, not quite.  The 3:00 a.m. text that woke me up on Thursday declared that the installation was “cancelled unexpectedly.” 

“Cancelled,” as in “we’re washing our hands of this whole business”?  Really?  “Unexpectedly”?  So I called the local Lowe’s that morning.  Naturally, I got a robo-voice, but was able to get transferred to a different robo-voice, and then to someone in the installations department (I’m guessing she’s not located in my small town in East Texas, but I suppose she could be).

According to what she was seeing on her screen, the installation was still scheduled for 11 a.m. that day.  It was, in fact, never scheduled for 11 a.m.; the cancelled appointment was for 3 p.m.  I immediately had a flashback to the Firesign Theatre’s most famous line, “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus.”  Somebody—Angi? Lowe’s?—was screwing up.  Big time.

Anyway, the Lowe’s rep “reached out” to Handy, and ultimately put someone from there on the phone with me.  This woman’s accent was often incomprehensible, but I did get that the cancellation was because this was the third delay of the same project, and that’s what they always do.  She acted totally befuddled that I didn’t accept company policy as a divinely inspired reason for jerking a customer around.  And she did confirm my initial suspicions that there never was anyone assigned to do the job, so all that crap about “last-minute issues with [my] pro” was simply a lie.  Like the woman at the post office described in my last post, she at least purported not to understand why I objected to being lied to.

This is when the woman from Lowe’s went into high dudgeon: “We pay you to provide this service to our customers.  Are you telling me you’re unable to do that?”  Well, yes.  But the Lowe’s rep pulled back a little when it became clear that my refund was already underway.  That still left me with a garage door opener still sitting in its box, where it is somewhat less useful than when professionally installed.  The Lowe’s woman asked me if I wanted to speak to an Angi manager.  Yes.  Yes, I did. 

A manager called me back a couple of hours later.  She mouthed all the right platitudes about how sorry they were for the inconvenience, but (predictably) showed no remorse for having lied to a customer.  “My pro” never existed.  There are only two possible choices: either Angi knew there weren’t enough contractors in this area to meet the demand or they didn’t.

If the former, then not only were their excuses to me a lie, but they had also, in effect, lied to Lowe’s, and made that company guilty of false advertising.  If the latter, then Hanlon’s Razor kicks in, and they’re just morons.  I’d told them I could be available as needed.  The logical thing to do is to put a call out to their workers in this area and say that they had a customer who could be available at any time but would like the job completed as quickly as possible, then let the people actually doing the job pick a date and time.  Nope.  They decided on an arbitrary time and expected both me and prospective installers to accommodate.

That is, there was no one available Sunday at 4:00, Tuesday at 4:00, or Thursday at 3:00… but there very well might have been on Friday or Saturday or Monday or Wednesday, or at a different time on Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday.  I claim no expertise on running a business, but I do have list of a few things not to do.  This kind of scheduling incompetence is Exhibit A.  No… wait… it’s Exhibit B.  Lying to customers is exhibit A.

The good news is that I was able to follow a different course, and the guy showed up at my door less than 24 hours after initial contact.  The better news is that Angi got nary a nickel from this transaction.

As has sometimes been the case in the past, this post began as a guest post—well, actually as two guest posts—on Ethics Alarms.  You can find them here and here.  There has been a little more editing than normal, but, Gentle Reader, you will certainly recognize the content.  Curmie apologizes for taking so long to get this version posted.

 

 

John Brennan Richly Deserves to Be Unemployed

At least he's good at something: lying is a skill, right?

Curmie started a piece today on high school yearbooks, or, rather, on four different controversies involving such publications this year. I’m going to put that essay on hold for the moment, though, to talk about the current furor over CIA Director John Brennan. Brennan, whose rise to the leadership of the agency has been aptly described by The Guardian’s Trevor Timm as “failing upwards,” was a supporter of rendition, torture, and all the other insidious Bush-era programs the Obama administration pretended for a while to oppose, all the while immunizing the worst offenders from criticism, let alone much-deserved job losses and long-term incarceration.

Brennan was floated as a possibility for the CIA’s top post when President Obama was first elected, but withdrew from contention amid a swarm of reminders of what a sinister little weasel he truly is… only to re-appear as Obama’s chief counter-terrorism advisor. In that position, he was caught lying on numerous occasions, most notably the outrageous claim that no non-combatants were killed in a year’s worth of drone strikes in Pakistan. Here’s an article about the falseness of the claim, even using the CIA’s own massaged numbers. That patently mendacious assertion was made on June 29, 2011. Analysis by New America shows a total of six strikes leading to civilian deaths, accounting for between 61 and 68 civilian fatalities in the previous year. Brennan, in short, is a liar. That’s an OK quality in a spy, I suppose, except when he’s lying to his presumed bosses: the President, Congress, and the American citizenry.

He told a bunch of other lies, too, including false information about the death of Osama bin Laden. For this record of colossal arrogance, untrustworthiness, and deceit, he was duly rewarded by President Obama with the nomination for the CIA position in January of 2013. Obama cited serial prevaricator Brennan’s “integrity and commitment ‘to the values that define us as Americans.’” Really, he did: it’s right there on the White House website.

The confirmation process was anything but smooth, with two leading Democrats—Senators Mark Udall and Ron Wyden—expressing real concerns. Republican Senator Rand Paul launched a real-live filibuster—the “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” kind, not the candy-assed variety that has been allowed to hold sway of late—against Brennan’s nomination. After some 13 hours, the vote finally happened, with Brennan being confirmed by a less-than-overwhelming 63-34 margin.

Fast forward a year or so, to January of this year, at which point Brennan allegedly told Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein that the CIA had searched the computers of Senate staffers engaged in an oversight investigation because they feared the committee might have gained access to internal review documents they weren’t authorized to see. Senator Feinstein subsequently complained on the Senate floor in March that “The CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the internal review or how we obtained it. Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee’s computer.”

Here’s a post-facto version of Feinstein’s argument, as reported by Spencer Ackerman of The Guardian:

Feinstein, in her dramatic speech on the Senate floor in March, said the agency breached the firewall to obstruct the committee’s investigation of the agency’s torture of post-9/11 terrorism detainees, a years-long effort expected to be partially declassified in the coming days or weeks. That investigation was itself prompted by a different coverup: the destruction of videotapes of brutal interrogations by a senior official, Jose Rodriguez.
Despite that, the committee has concluded that the torture was an ineffective means of gathering intelligence on al-Qaida—contradicting years of CIA assurances it was crucial – and that the agency lied to its overseers about its value.

Feinstein’s indignation was well-placed, not least because there are precious few documents that ought to be kept from an oversight committee. But, Gentle Reader, I urge you to look at what Brennan was asserting, remembering that this is the best-case scenario for the CIA’s public image and credibility. He’s saying that the reason the CIA took the outrageous action of searching Congressional computers is that the world’s allegedly most sophisticated spy organization doesn’t know how to keep documents out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have access to them. Mr. Brennan had his choice: he could admit to a series of felonies, or to having the crime-fighting abilities and general competence of Inspector Clouseau on a bad day.

Of course, he took another option: righteous dudgeon. He—to use the phrase of The Hill’s Alexander Bolton “[waged] an aggressive counter-attack,” rolling his eyes and claiming that “nothing could be further from the truth” than Feinstein’s charges. He continued, “I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the scope of reason.” He was lying, of course. You could tell that because he’s John Brennan, his lips were moving, and words were being formed. And he probably picked the wrong adversary: Senator Feinstein is well-respected on the hill, in part because even political rivals like Senator Lindsey Graham say she “is somebody who’s not prone to say wild things.”

And so now it emerges that what we knew all along—that if John Brennan says it, it’s probably not true—turns out to have been proven by the CIA’s own investigation. Yes, the CIA was spying on the very people charged with overseeing their activities. Yes, Brennan is either less trustworthy than the proverbial fox guarding the henhouse or dumber than a stack of burnt toast. Who knew, right? Other than anyone who was paying the slightest bit of attention, that is.

So now he’s issued a private apology and seems ready to continue to be the same prevaricating jackass he’s always been. Brian Hughes (article linked above), however, writes:

“Brennan is either a liar or incompetent—or maybe both,” one senior Democratic Senate aide told the Washington Examiner. “No, I don’t think the White House can expect us to give him the benefit of the doubt here.”

Two Democratic Senators—Mark Udall and Martin Heinrich—have already called for Brennan’s ouster; don’t be surprised if there are further demands from both sides of the aisle: Senators Graham, McCain and Wyden all come to mind as possibilities.  Others will join if there’s already enough blood in the water. Yet somehow the Obama administration itself remains convinced that Brennan is the right man for the job: “full confidence” is the President’s term.

Excuse me, waiter, but could I have an extra helping of WTF with that bullshit-burger? It’s pretty clear that the President is joining Dorothy on her trip to Oz. The only question is which of her fellow travelers he’s chosen to emulate. Is he really without a brain? How else to explain his apparent inability to perceive what’s been obvious to everyone else for months if not years? Does he lack the courage to do what’s right even if it casts doubt on his initial decision-making? Or is what he is missing heart—the human capacity to care whether justice is served, competence rewarded, and mendacity punished?

Of course, the Scarecrow, Cowardly Lion and Tin Man all actually had those attributes all along. It just took the Wizard (“really a very good man, but… a very bad Wizard”), to point that everything they sought was always already present. I’d like to think that the POTUS has those qualities, too. But I’m beginning to suspect the contrary. (That’s Curmie-speak for “I’ve been pretty damned convinced for a while,” in case you were wondering.)

John Brennan has had a chance to resign. He didn’t take it. He should therefore be fired. Anyone want to bet that he will be?

I didn’t think so.

And now for what we DID see on a video

If my last post was about what wasn’t seen in a video, this one is about what is. This Monday, an organization called WikiLeaks released footage of an attack on July 12, 2007, by two US Army Apache helicopters on a group of Iraqi civilians, killing about a dozen people and wounding two children. The incident would no doubt have attracted little attention except for the single and utterly random fact that two of the dead were employees of Reuters News Service: driver/assistant Saeed Chmagh and photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen. Reuters, apparently, doesn’t take kindly to losing its people in unprovoked fits of arrogance by the US military. Moreover, they know how to negotiate the vagaries of the Freedom of Information Act, and both have and are willing to employ the resources to get to the truth. After nearly three years, the video shot from the lead helicopter has apparently come to light.

The footage shows the American helicopters opening fire on a group of Iraqis who have committed no apparent offense other than being in the vicinity of each other. One of the Americans talks about seeing a weapon… but there is no evidence of one: one suspects that he was misidentifying Noor-Eldeen’s camera equipment. I’m not trained in this stuff, so maybe there’s a weapon there somewhere that I don’t see. But I do earn my living, in part, by knowing what gestural patterns are plausible manifestations of what psychological impulses: in the terms of Konstantin Stanislavsky, the relationship between the action (psychological) and the activity (physical). And I’m here to tell you that there’s no way that those men in those pictures were engaged in any sort of belligerent activity. They are relaxed, paying no attention whatsoever to the attack helicopter a couple hundred yards away from them—they had to have both seen it and heard it—until, of course, it opened fire on them.

The report back to the base, that the pilots can see “five to six individuals with AK47s” is at best an obvious exaggeration—even counting the camera equipment, they have identified precisely two even possible weapons. But even if we take them at their word on that, they aren’t satisfied until they have slaughtered everyone in the area, well over half of whom, by their own numbers, are unarmed. They subsequently claim that “we had a guy shooting”; the tape doesn’t confirm that assertion, but, again, it might be true. Of course, it might be true that Rush Limbaugh will honor his pledge to leave the country since health care reform passed, but I’m not holding my breath.

Our Beloved Boys in Uniform then gloat about “those dead bastards.” A short while later a van approaches and some men emerge, obviously with the intent of coming to the aid of a wounded man (who turns out to be one of the Reuters men) who has managed to crawl up onto the sidewalk. The guys in the helicopter start sounding like three-year-olds in the candy store, impatiently demanding of the base, “C’mon, let us shoot.” Permission is granted: apparently such basic human decency as caring for the wounded—any wounded—is now a capital offense. Anyway, the helicopters proceed to blast the crap out of the van, killing most of those inside but—miraculously—only wounding the two children.

A few minutes later, ground forces arrive, and the helicopter guys get a good chuckle when their comrades appear to drive over one of the bodies. When the soldiers find the wounded children, there’s a brief moment when it almost seems like there’s someone human there, but then we get this exchange: “Well, it’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.” “That’s right.” This has got to be one of the most disturbing moments of a very disturbing piece of video. The implication is that although we shot these kids, it wasn’t our fault… they were brought into a “battle.” No, actually, they were brought into a massacre. And apparently when attempting to rescue an unarmed man who has been seriously wounded, it's protocol to drop your kids off first: to do otherwise is reckless. No one in this sequence did anything even remotely deserving of being slaughtered by a gaggle of trigger-happy goons: not the wounded man, not those who tried to help him, certainly not the children themselves.

Ultimately, however, this isn’t about the soldiers. I was fortunate enough to have been just a little too young to have been drafted into the Vietnam War, but I’ve done enough reading on the subject and have known enough veterans to understand that it is a different world there. Protestations that “none of the soldiers I know are like that” are as hollow as the claims that all soldiers are monsters. The fact is, we don’t know how any individual will respond until he’s there. Indeed, we don’t know how behavior will change (or won’t) from minute to minute. If what it takes to cling to a shred of sanity in that environment is to dehumanize anyone who isn’t one of us, to reduce the human carnage below us to a sort of video game, I understand. I don’t like it, but it’s one of life’s little contradictions. I don’t want to hang out at the slaughterhouse, either, but I do like those steaks and chops.

So I am perfectly willing to believe that the men we saw and heard behave so callously and indeed ghoulishly on this footage are actually quite wonderful fellows when removed from this environment: they were before they got there, and they are/will be again. The Army brass, on the other hand, are, to coin a phrase, liars. Here’s the report in the New York Times the next day: “Clashes in a southeastern neighborhood here between the American military and Shiite militias on Thursday left at least 16 people dead, including two Reuters journalists who had driven to the area to cover the turbulence, according to an official at the Interior Ministry…. The American military said in a statement late Thursday that 11 people had been killed: nine insurgents and two civilians. According to the statement, American troops were conducting a raid when they were hit by small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades. The American troops called in reinforcements and attack helicopters. In the ensuing fight, the statement said, the two Reuters employees and nine insurgents were killed.”

Now, whether there were any Shiite militiamen in the area may be open for debate, but those two journalists sure as hell didn’t die in any “fight.” They were simply attacked. Lt. Col. Scott Bleichwehl is quoted as asserting that ''There is no question that coalition forces were clearly engaged in combat operations against a hostile force.” This is, of course, an outright lie. There’s plenty to question about Bleichwehl's assertion—the military just wanted to sweep another “oops” moment under their very large rug. They’d have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling journalists. (Any resemblance to Scooby Doo dialogue in the previous sentence is entirely coincidental.)

On July 16, some four days after the attack, Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger, citing a preliminary police report of a “random American bombardment” and Reuters’s own preliminary investigation which “raise[d] real questions about whether there was fighting at the time the two men were killed,” demanded a “thorough and objective investigation” of the circumstances of the two Reuters employees’ deaths. (It would be nice if alleged news organizations cared about the truth all the time, not just when one of their people has been killed, but I guess we take what we can get.)

Gentle Reader, you may have noticed that I equivocated at the end of my first paragraph. You know, when I said “the video shot from the lead helicopter has apparently come to light”? That’s because the tape has not been confirmed as authentic because… wait for it… the military can’t find their copy. According to the Associated Press, “Military officials said they believed the video was authentic, but that they had to compare the images and audio with their own video before confirming it publicly. When pressed Tuesday on why the military had not released the video when other documents related to the investigation were made public, officials said they were still looking for it and weren't entirely sure where it was.” Yep, really. If nothing else, this makes me feel a little better about the stuff that disappears into the abyss I call my desk. Seriously, though, I suspect that copy will somehow never be found, thereby making that rather damning tape unconfirmed. Hate it when that happens. Wikileaks says they are scrupulous about authentication, but John McCain said he vetted his running mate. And Wikileaks, to the extent that they have a reputation at all, are known for protecting their sources. So I’m guessing that we’re just going to have to assume the footage is real.

If we do that, then, there’s only one question. Not whether the helicopter guys got a testosterone overdose and started shooting up the place just because they could: they did. Not whether the Army brass consciously, brazenly, lied about what had happened: they did. Not whether Reuters gave a damn about only two of the dozen or so dead: they did. The only question is whether Glenn Greenwald is accurate in his assertion that “what is shown is completely common. That includes not only the initial killing of a group of men, the vast majority of whom are clearly unarmed, but also the plainly unjustified killing of a group of unarmed men (with their children) carrying away an unarmed, seriously wounded man to safety--as though there's something nefarious about human beings in an urban area trying to take an unarmed, wounded photographer to a hospital” [emphasis his]. Based on the testimony of the necessarily anonymous reader of Andrew Sullivan’s blog who wrote “90% of what occurs in that video has been commonplace in Iraq for the last 7 years, and the 10% that differs is entirely based on the fact that two of the gentlemen killed were journalists,” I’d have to say yes. Based on what I’ve been reading (or re-reading) to prep for my course on the American Theatre and the Vietnam War, yes. Based on over a half-century of observing human nature, yes. But you’re free to disagree. As long as you share whatever you've got in that pipe…