Safety is not job one

To-day, once again, the essential meanness of management raised its stupid head. Now, car plants, thanks to the UAW and the Big Three's wanting to avoid liability, actually practice safety (to some quantifiable degree). Of course, they emphasize simple, visual compliance, but actually do encourage and demand compliance, on occasion, of weightier concerns. Now, it is said, in the public relation, piffle propaganda, that, safety is job one.

The situation: one man is working in a basket lift, between presses and other equipment. The lift is telescoped out and the basket is needled into position. Plant rules are very simple: one man in lift, one man on the ground, if caught disregarding rule, then both men removed from the facility and a one year ban.

General foreman and office representative for the employing electrical contractor notice ground man. General foreman approaches groundman, and tells him he can be bending pipe, while other man is in lift. Pipe bending machinery for rigid pipe and pipe threading machine are a distance away, not very far away, but totally out of eyesight from lift. Clear violation.

All involved know the rules, but the presumed judgment, that, the groundman is shirking work and is not being productive and profitable is foremost of concern. The groundman is a target of management for correction and ultimate dismissal. The presumption of guilt is automatic.

Job requirements and customer demands are reflected in the bid for the work, if it is not, it is completely the fault of the contractor and his representative(s). But, the workman is the victim, scapegoat, and the problem to be solved.

This is only one example, but it is entirely indicative of management's and ownership's modus operandi. Rule over the men, and squeeze every moment of time, and every imaginable cent out of them. This is why contracts need to be followed, and why business needs regulation. Unregulated, industrial production causes worker injury and death. The Republicans, fascists and libertarians do not want government regulation, or a strong and organised labor force.

To add to the hypocrisy, just recently, we were buffaloed about "the code of excellence" ( a recent post), same employer, same union, same customer, different location. Ford has its demands, but they are not secret. They may be inconsistent in their application, the contractors are, bloody damn well, consistent in their behavior.

All construction work is not the same. A steel mill is not wired like a cul-de-sac ticky-tacky home. But, the tendency for construction management to impose 'efficient', 'modern' and 'economical' methods is rampant. The scabs have the former market. Their owners are the bedrock of Republican party contributors and core. Their workers are reaganesque voters. Now, union contractors think like scab contractors. Union workers, minus the idiots and company men (shoppees), are of the Democracy.

Job one is to get it done, and done quick, and as profitable as possible. This is why since 1981, we have had a constant barrage against organised labor, OHSA, trial lawyers, environmentalists and anyone who is an impediment to business' desires and demands. Reagan, Bush the first, Clinton and business Democrats, bush the lesser, and all Republicans are to be pilloried. Any man, and his family, who works for a living and votes for economic royalists is an ass, and an idiot.
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Postscriptum: The two men above, the man in the lift's basket and the groundman, were fired the next day in the last half hour of the shift, Friday the 11th of July. They were "ineligible for rehire" and discharged for "unproductive work". Both men reported to IBEW Local Union 38's hall to describe the firing. It remains to be seen, whether, the union will defend the men and uphold working agreements and contracts, or accommodate Herbst Electric. -- 5.30 p.m. EDST July 11.
The earlier post, referenced supra, is titled "Cohoosion", and was written in the previous month.

People of Pamplona! Long live San Fermín!

San Fermin is a patron of Pamplona and the Basque country, he was their first bishop. He was beheaded at Amiens on 25 September 303. Some of his relics came to Pamplona in 1196 and the celebrations began. There is a week of events to the exuberant fiesta. It begins at noon, the day before, with the fireworks chupinazo salute. It ends at midnight 14/15 July.

The Encierro or 'Running of the Bulls' was introduced to an english reading audience by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises (1926). The annoyed bulls are let loose on the street chasing juvenile, drunken men. It is exciting and colorful and occasionally disastrous. It is an event, that when it comes to the notice of a boy, he wants to engage. There is a certain frivolous romance that appeals to the youthful. Every day at 8 a.m. the men and boys, dressed traditionally in white and wearing red neckerchiefs, line up for the slightly, less than a kilometer run. Doing the half mile run on cobblestones being chased by upset beef, can be an experience and anecdote one can share for a lifetime.

On successive days from the 7th to the14th the bulls run in the morning, and fight in the afternoon. Hemingway wrote Death in the Afternoon(1932), a non-fiction book, also partly based on his 1925 fiesta experience.

Thomas More and William Shakespeare

“a man of the most tender and delicate conscience that the world saw since Augustine ”— John Donne
“He was the person of the greatest virtue these islands ever produced.”— Jonathan Swift
“Blessed Thomas More is more important at this moment than at any moment since his death, even perhaps the great moment of his dying; but he is not quite so important as he will be in about a hundred years’ time.” — G. K. Chesterton
“the best friend the poor ever had” — Sir Thomas More, William Shakespeare et allia
“More is a man of an angel’s wit and singular learning. I know not his fellow. For where is the man of that gentleness, lowliness and affability? And, as time requireth, a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes, and sometime of as sad gravity. A man for all seasons.” — Robert Whittington in 1520

DON PEDRO
The sixth of July: Your loving friend, Benedick.

BENEDICK
Nay, mock not, mock not. The body of your
discourse is sometime guarded with fragments, and
the guards are but slightly basted on neither: ere
you flout old ends any further, examine your
conscience: and so I leave you.

— William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, I. i.

One joke is particularly puzzling. If Benedick ever does fall in love, laugh his friends, he will sign a letter on "the sixth of July." Benedick is stung. "Mock not, mock not," he reproves, "ere you flout old ends any further, examine your consciences." Like the language of the liturgy, July 6 meant nothing to Protestants at the time, and nothing either to modern textual commentators. But to Elizabethan Catholics it was a highly significant date. It was on July 6 that Henry VIII executed Sir Thomas More, his former chancellor, for refusing to acknowledge the monarch as the supreme head of the church in England. More had become the model for "recusant" English Catholics, ready to face destitution, imprisonment, exile, or death for their religion. The significance of the date was deepened for Catholics when the young Edward VI, Henry VIII's fervently Protestant son, also died on July 6--clearly a judgment on his heretic father. This is why Benedick puts a stop to the banter. His friends have gone too far. Mock not old ends he says--the deaths of Thomas More and Edward are not a laughing matter--and his parting shot "examine your consciences" is a reminder of the case of conscience which drove More to the scaffold. From this moment on, Benedick's behavior--and the hidden identity of Beatrice--would have been of consuming interest to dissident audiences. — Clare Asquith, Shadowplay

Shakespeare does not write nonsense. He always says something, you may not understand it, but he is imparting information, albeit, sometimes, in obscured references. The sixth of July must refer to something! Shakespeare had worked on a play about Thomas More. In his hand survives the lines, that, a censor warned him of consequences. Art was political, and not less so in the elisabethan police state. The poet saints Campion and Southwell were horribly executed, Marlowe was assassinated and others were also silenced. Shakespeare was adept at veiling and surviving. So what in english history, before 1600 would an audience note about that day? Shakespeare came from a family of recusants. The recusants were quite aware of the 6th of July.

A tragedy, Sir Thomas More, was written by a team of playwrights in 1592. One of the group, was our friend from Stratford. The play was not known to have been performed. The censor wrote on the manuscript, “Perform this scene at your peril.” Shakespeare is ‘Hand D’ in the autograph. His contribution includes More, as London sheriff, in quieting the anti-foreign mob*, in the riot of 1517. Thomas More was a dangerous topic in Elisabethan England.

For centuries, english catholics held the 6th of July for Thomas More. When Saint Thomas More was officially canonised by Rome in 1935, his day was shared with Saint John Fisher, whom was also martyred by Henry, on the 22nd of June, the day Fisher was executed. Either day commemorates.

Robert Bolt’s play and the subsequent movie, A Man for All Seasons, paints a marvelous and heroic portrait of More. A man of conscience, a living embodiment of its exemplar, a man whose opinion was necessary to legitimatise government policy. Other such individuals, Fisher, Reynolds, Webster, Hale, Houghton, Middlemore, Exmew, Newdigate, Forest met cruel torments and hideous executions. This is why More is a patron of conscience for the edification and benefit of all who would touch on the law, its advocates, legislators, counselors and statesmen. He would not consent, when refusal meant death. He was a man, whom “No” meant “No”. He would not assent to error mandated by the state.

An interesting note, the bolsheviks, after they seized Russia, had Thomas More’s name inscribed on a monument, in Aleksandrovskij Garden, Moskva. Was it in regard to his Utopia ? or his conscience?
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*If one accepts Shakespeare’s catholic code, the foreign merchants being attacked can be identified with Catholic missionaries, whom were ministering to the faithful.

Independence Day — Tom’s Declaration

The usurperous chimp has been scheduled for a photographic, propaganda appearance at Jefferson’s Monticello. His party mastered this routine with Reagan. Reagan would say nonsense, it would be reported as nonsense, his people didn’t care. They knew the viewers would only register the visual. Chimpy the Outrageous is making a grand triumphal tour. He has come back from Europe, where, he is recognised as a fraud. He was in Slovenija. They put on a horse show featuring the dancing, prancing, white Lipizzaners from Lipica. I wonder, if the Slovenes knew his fear and dread of horses; perhaps they thought he was a cowboy. Well, he went on to the Vatican, Rome, Paris and London, most, or all, of which despise him. Now, the desecration tour of gall will find him on Tom’s estate.

The absolute contrast: Jefferson the shy, multi-talented democrat and genius; bushjr the strutting, incompetent fascist and idiot. If Mozart were to stage this farce, he would have a statue of Jefferson drag gwbjr to Hell.

And more of the kettle calling the pot black, Kindasleasy Rice and the busheviks are calling Mugabe’s victory in Zimbabwe a sham. They ought to just compare notes and toss back a few drinks. Both were going to have their ‘victories’, no matter what, and without shame.

Perhaps someone should read from Jefferson’s letter to a mad George, whom fashioned himself, a mighty king:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them ...

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postscriptum: It seems, partly reported by the press, I read most so by CNN, that, there were at least six protesters forcefully removed by police. They identified and denounced the poseur for what he is. The choice part was, as one was handcuffed and taken away, bushjr made a comment about free speech. Clearly the White House did not handle the ticket requests. This had to have been the first time ever, that, he was confronted by any non-selected adulators. A non-demarcated, non-authorised ‘free speech zone’ temporarily appeared within hearing and viewing distance. This will probably not happen again. Perhaps, he can gage public opinion now. The official transcript, of his script, is marked with the interruptions. Applause is also indicated, but applause is an interruption also. Future generations can always guess what the two indications mean. Well, chimpy is off to Beijing where they handle these matters better.

Saint Thomas the Apostle

Thomas was one of the Twelve. He is most remembered for his initial unbelief at the news of the Resurrection. He recovered and became zealous, and evangelised far and wide, to Syria, Persia and Parthia, and well into India.

An indian bishop was at Nicea, but most information of the ancient church in India is lost to time. When the portuguese and the jesuits arrived on the Malabar coast and Kerala, they found Christians. There had been occasional references to them for centuries. Those communities exist still, some are in the Syro-Malankara Church and Syro-Malabar rite, and are in union with the universal church. Some are in union with the Antiochian Orthodox.

Besides the pictures of Thomas probing the side of Christ, he is sometimes pictured with a builder’s square, for he built many churches. He is sometimes portrayed with a spear, which was, the implement of his martyrdom. There exist syrian church documents, from the 4th century. A church calendar has the date of the translation of his relics:

3 July, St. Thomas who was pierced with a lance in India. His body is at Urhai [Edessa] having been brought there by the merchant Khabin. A great festival.

Tayside police dog

To-day is the middlemost day of the year, as many days have passed, as our left to come this year. Not much, but a curious and trivial note. I had no particular thing I was planning to type. But, last night, because of the quickness information travels, I heard and saw, that, the cute advertisement above, had set off the mohammedan anger alarm.

Now, Tayside contains Dundee in Scotland, and Scotland within Britain. Dundee sits on the Firth of Tay. Historically, the town is known for the Jacobite, Bonnie Dundee, and for marmalade.

They employ hounds in their constabulary. They are promoting their german shepherd pup, Rebel, in public relations. A clever and pleasant action. He is available on their public computer site. One would think, this would be welcomed by the community. They had grade school (Saint Ninian’s, though in eastern Scotland, they do have many of the auld faith) children name the animal. He has appeared on placards and/or postcards informing the public of a new telephone.

It is proverbial that the anglais and, by extention, all britons really like dogs. Dogs and horses make marvelous good will ambassadors, and they, often, make the people around them better. Sounds as it would be a simple success, but, no! Besides, the usual catholics, protestants and non-believers, there are mohammedans. And some portion of them have made a stink, and here is the oddest part: the police apologised. Do you know how rare that is? Police, disgustingly often, do horrid things and make great errors, that are really travesties; and this often brasenly and without remorse. Yet, for this innocent thing, they are sorry.

Some maintain that dogs are grandly unclean. To be very simple: don’t harbor them. And don’t be a dictatorial, asinine prohibitionist for others, whom, do harbor them.


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The mediæval persians had other great poets than Omar Khayyam alone. One was Nizami *1141,†1203. Perhaps, the poem was based on a passage from al-Ghazali’s †1111, The Sayings of Jesus, where he translated aramaic into arabic.

The Eye Of Charity

One Evening Jesus lingered in market-place,
Teaching the people parables of truth and grace,
When in the square remote a crowd was seen to ride,
And stop with loathing gestures and abhorring cries.

Master and his meek disciples went to see
What cause this commotion and disgust could be,
And found a poor dead dog beside the gutter laid:
Revolting sight! at which each face its hate betrayed.

One held his nose, one shut his eyes, one turned away:
And all among themselves began aloud to say,
"Detested creature! he pollutes the earth and the air!"
"His eyes are blear!", "His ears are foul!", "His ribs are bare!"

"In his torn hide there's not a decent shoe-string left!"
"No doubt the execrable cur was hung for theft!"
Then Jesus spoke, and dropped on him this saving wreath,
"Even pearls are dark before the whiteness of his teeth!"

The pelting crowd grew silent and ashamed, like one
Rebuked by sight of wisdom higher than his own;
And one exclaimed, "No creature so accursed can be,
But some good thing in him a loving eye will see."

Blessed Junípero Serra — Apostle of California

An old priest had come up into the country, Father Junípero Serra, and he built missions and schools, and taught the Indians trades; and the churches were run like big ranches. They each had thousands of cattle, and horses and sheep. He was an odd old fellow. He could pray without shooting an Indian first. He was a greater humanitarian than all the Pilgrims combined, including the 3 million that come on the Mayflower. No such man ever set foot on the eastern shore. He civilized with a Bible, and the old Pilgrim boys did it with a blunderbuss. There was never a church in the east built for Indians to worship in. — Will Rogers in 1934

Miguel José Serra was born in Majorca in 1713. He became a Franciscan professor, and had taken the name of Juniper, Saint Francis’ humble and comic friar. In 1749 he was in Mexico, and soon became famous in delivering missions (preaching). In 1769, he established a mission in Baja California. The first of July, he founded, Mission San Diego de Alcalá, the first of 9 (eventually 21) missions, he, started in Alta California. Though in poor health, he continued, till his death on 28 August 1784, as the indefatigable “Father Presidente” of the friars and Indians.

Alta California was Spain’s last colonisation in the new world, it was New Spain’s northwest territory. Jose de Galvez, the King's Visitor General for New Spain, wanted Fray Junípero Serra to lead the Franciscan friars in the new missions. There would be conflict from the military. Serra looked upon the Indians, not as pagans, but as gentiles and children to be converted, converted to Christian Spaniards as full and equal Christian Spaniards, according to the Laws of the Indies (1542) which were binding codes of conduct, based on the views of the Dominican Bartolome De Las Casas. Both friars were the titular “Protector of the Indians”. It was from the civil and military authorities and mercenary economic motives, that, the natives needed protection from. The highest Spanish authorities judged in the the favor of the Indians and the friars.

Blessed Junípero Serra was the first San Diego Padre. He and the Indians were teammates.