In May of 1968 the U.S. submarine Scorpion was lost with all 99 souls onboard. What happened to her is A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma…
In May of 1968 the U.S. submarine Scorpion was lost with all 99 souls onboard. What happened to her is still something of a mystery.
Her last transmission was on the 20th of May when a communications station in Greece picked up a message from Commander Slattery, Scorpion’s C.O.. The radio communiqué stated that the vessel was closing in on a group of Soviet ships “to begin surveillance.” Two days later she was in pieces on the ocean floor.
Before I go any further let me say that I myself am a submarine veteran. I spent six years as a missile technician making patrols in both the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. As submariners, the U.S. Navy didn’t tell us anything more than they told the general press. They stood by their assertion that the USS Scorpion’s battery well had a buildup of hydrogen gas which ignited and exploded during a routine battery charge.
Over the years I have talked with several veterans who, like me, saw the photos taken of the wreckage (1985). Not one person I conversed with was buying what the navy was selling. I’ve also spoken with a woman whose father was a crewman on the Scorpion when it went down. She had a rather extensive file on the disaster—she wasn’t buying the hydrogen explosion theory either.
In Kenneth Sewell’s All Hands Down Sewell proposes that the Scorpion met her demise on the business end of a Soviet torpedo. I won’t spoil his presentation by bullet-pointing his argument—I’ll just say that, in my opinion, there are speculations and assumptions here that challenge logic. Still, Sewell’s theory is AT LEAST as plausible as anything the USN has put forth....more
**spoiler alert** “The two great turning-points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.” -Oscar Wilde
Dur**spoiler alert** “The two great turning-points in my life were when my father sent me to Oxford, and when society sent me to prison.” -Oscar Wilde
During his lifetime, Wilde was at once a celebrity and a pariah. His skill as an author and a playwright made him famous, but his flamboyant sense of fashion and his “effeminate mannerisms” made him stand out as both an eccentric and a target.
On a lecture tour in the United States it was Wilde’s indeterminate ethnicity rather than his indeterminate sexuality that caused him the most trouble. Because of the fervent anti-Irish sentiment of the late nineteenth century, Wilde often presented himself as an Englishman rather than an Irishman. When his ruse failed, Wilde was accused of ethnic trespass. An Irishman posing as an Englishman was an interloper of the worst sort. Attendance at his once popular lectures declined and anonymous death threats were made.
Curiously (at least to me) it was England, not America, where Wilde’s sexuality proved to be his undoing. More and more his speaking engagements were infiltrated by hecklers waving bibles and shouting “SODOMITE!” In 1895 Wilde was convicted of “gross indecency” and imprisoned for two years in London where he was compelled to walk a treadmill for up to six hours a day and sleep on a plank. His already fragile health declined rapidly. Wilde was released in 1897 and died a mere three years later at the age of 46.
For serval years following his conviction and imprisonment, Oscar Wilde's name was stigmatized and could not be spoken in polite circles. I kept drawing parallels between Oscar’s life and that of Alan Turing—two brilliant men who were prosecuted under draconian laws and denied the opportunities and the recognition they richly deserved.
Michèle Mendellssohn’s Making Oscar Wilde does what a good biography should do. It tells a life story in context with the era in which that particular person lived and died. I expected Wilde’s life to be filled with controversy and laced with witticisms (which it was!) but I was taken back by the hardship and unjust misfortune of Oscar’s wild ride....more
““Get your ass back over to Pharaoh's palace and tell that prick that if he continues to refuse to free my people, I'm going to attack Egypt with frog““Get your ass back over to Pharaoh's palace and tell that prick that if he continues to refuse to free my people, I'm going to attack Egypt with frogs!" . . . Well, all right, frogs seemed like an odd choice, but Yahweh was, after all, a god. So Moses said, "Sure, frogs. Whatever you say, I mean, you're the god."”
Let’s be frank. When you read the old testament critically it is imbecilic. When you consider it literally it is preposterous. When you filter it through the mind of Steve Ebling it is freakin’ hilarious (and also imbecilic and preposterous)....more
“You who are so liberal, so humane, who take the love of culture to the point of affectation, you pretend to forget that you have colonies where massa“You who are so liberal, so humane, who take the love of culture to the point of affectation, you pretend to forget that you have colonies where massacres are committed in your name.” -Jean-Paul Sartre
Fanon’s riveting breakdown of the Algerian revolt against French colonization, published in 1959–a full three years before the signing of the Évian Accords.
Frantz Fannon was himself a member of Algeria’s National Liberation Front, Front de libération nationale FLN, and his accounting is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in Algerian history specifically or anti-colonialism in general....more
“. . . it is the ongoing conception that Black feminism is the exclusive territory of black women that traps and limits Black feminists and Black wome“. . . it is the ongoing conception that Black feminism is the exclusive territory of black women that traps and limits Black feminists and Black women academics who continue to be conscripted into performing and embodying their intellectual investments.”
A dissertation on intersectional* Black feminism, its history, its structure, and its struggles, from Duke University Professor Jennifer Nash.
Straight Outta’ Academia
Although she most often refers to intersectionalism as an analytic Dr. Nash also references it as an act, an argument, an analysis, a theory, a category, a concept, a constraint, a descriptor, a discipline, a foundation, a framework, an identity, an instrument, an intervention, a point of entry, a practice, a system, a tool, a tradition, and a “territory under siege” (just to name a few). To call this an intense study in Black feminism would be an understatement. Sit down, saddle up, and be prepared to take notes. ______________________________
*”Intersectionality is a term first coined in 1989 by American civil rights advocate and leading scholar of critical race theory, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. It is the study of overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination.” -Research Guide, First Year Studies, Syracuse University...more
“It's no coincidence that so many cults align themselves with mainstream religions. Like a predatory animal that has evolved to resemble something com“It's no coincidence that so many cults align themselves with mainstream religions. Like a predatory animal that has evolved to resemble something commonplace and nonthreatening, these organizations understand that the more they appear to be a branch of a familiar institution, the more easily they'll be able lure new followers into the fold.” -Sara Coughlin, 2018
Flora Jessop was born and raised in the polygamous hell-hole of Colorado City Arizona. Her father and his many wives were fundamentalist Mormons (FLDS). While still a child Flora was repeatedly sexually abused by her father. As a teenager she made several attempts to escape Colorado City, eventually succeeding. She now works as an advocate for the protection of abused children and as an activist helping both children and adults to extricate themselves from religious tyranny and abuse.
Trigger Warning
This is a hard read. The descriptions of the abuse Flora endured are nauseatingly graphic, so much so that I almost put this down and walked away. Consequently, you’ll find this title on many DNF lists. Unless you’re devoid of empathy the accounts of what happens to the children in FLDS will very likely turn your stomach as well as break your heart.
it gets worse…
Monsters are still out there. The FLDS may have a prophet or two in prison (see Warren Jeffs) but their pestilential presence is still alive and well. According to Al Jazeera America the adherents number around 10,000 in the United States and Canada (2015), a high percentage of those are young adults and children.
horrors ad infinitum
I am not sure where to draw the line between religion and cult. Is one better than the other? Religions tend to be larger, making their crimes against children less conspicuous, but does that necessarily make them less culpable? Less evil? For every bad actor in FLDS there are, for example, a hundred spread throughout the various Catholic dioceses. Churches have been and will continue to be a mecca for pedophiles and degenerates because of the access they provide to women and children. The FLDS is a beast, but it is one of many....more
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