Hasta La Gadget!

Donald J. Trump is causing some high anxiety inside the military.

He has suggested carpet-bombing Syrian cities, assassinating the families of Islamic State fighters and torturing detainees, all illegal under international or U.S. law. He has proposed withdrawing troops from South Korea (a similar troop withdrawal helped ignite the 1950 Korean War), advocated disengaging from NATO, and declared that Japan would be “better off” with its own nuclear weapons. And he has famously bragged, “I know more about ISIS than the generals!”

The U.S. military prides itself on scrupulous adherence to strict moral and ethical values. While some in the ranks may be passionate Trump supporters, for others, the idea of actually carrying out his more bizarre ideas is unthinkable.

“I cannot imagine active-duty troops doing what Trump is stating,” said Paul Eaton, an Army two-star general who resigned in 2006 in protest against Bush administration military policies. “I believe we would have outright defiance,” Eaton told The Huffington Post. Michael Hayden, a retired Air Force four-star general and former director of the National Security Agency, is even more blunt. Given an order to kill families of suspected terrorists, “the American armed forces would refuse to act,” he said.

Trump has fired back. “They won’t refuse. They’re not going to refuse me,” he boasted at a March 3 GOP presidential debate. “Believe me ― If I say do it, they’re gonna do it.”

Trump may be right. Despite its occasional disagreements with presidents and civilian officials, the military doesn’t have an especially proud record of refusing orders. Military officers swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, not to the commander in chief. Nevertheless, the top brass, despite deep misgivings about the conduct of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq, quietly went along with what the White House wanted. In 11 years of war in Vietnam, 58,220 Americans were killed; 4,520 Americans have died in the still-raging Iraq War so far.

“Do what’s right, legally and morally,” the Army instructs its soldiers.
U.S. Army Doctrine, Army Values

The record suggests that the United States military, which takes pride in its strong professional ethics, nevertheless is no bulwark against military fiascos.

“It’s hard for military officers to disobey orders,” said Peter Mansoor, a historian and retired Army colonel who was the top aide to Gen. David Petraeus during the Iraq War troop surge in 2007-2008. “It’s a career-ending move that likely will get you court-martialed. One has to be willing to put one’s future on the line.”

The legal lines are clear. Waterboarding, used on detainees during the Bush administration as an “enhanced interrogation technique,” or torture, is illegal under international and now U.S. law. The deliberate targeting of war-zone civilians, whether or not they are related to ISIS fighters or other terrorists, is a war crime under international law.

Nevertheless, Trump has asserted that both are necessary and, if he’s president, would be part of his war on ISIS.

“You have to take out their families,” Trump said three times during a phone interview with Fox News last December, brushing aside the issue of civilian casualties as “political correctness.”

These and other Trump pronouncements may be impulsive bluster, but they clash hard against the military’s values of personal courage, honor, integrity and loyalty, among others. At its core, the military’s value system is its commitment to use lethal violence only when legally and morally justified.

“Do what’s right, legally and morally,” the Army instructs its soldiers. “Facing moral fear or adversity may be a long, slow process of continuing forward on the right path, especially if taking those actions is not popular with others.”

To a private, that might sound like an invitation to free thinking. After all, these values seem to enshrine the principle set forth in the founding charter of the Nuremberg war crimes trials of German military officers after World War II: “The fact that the Defendant acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior shall not free him from responsibility … ” In short, “I was just obeying orders” is no defense of a war crime.

The harsh reality, however, is that an enlisted person can be court-martialed for refusing an order, illegal, immoral or otherwise. According to the U.S. Manual for Courts-Martial, “An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate.”

If that’s not clear enough, the manual explains that deciding whether an order is illegal or immoral is up to a military judge ― not the enlisted person, regardless of his or her “conscience, religion or personal philosophy.” Penalty: dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and prison for five years. In wartime, the penalty for disobeying an order can be death.

Two clear cases of principled disobedience stand out from the first Iraq war. Back in 1990, as U.S. forces were gathering to push Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, a 40-year-old doctor in the Army reserves and mother of three children was called up to active duty. Capt. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn opposed the war on moral grounds and refused to go. Charged with desertion, she was convicted at court-martial and served eight months of a 30-month sentence.

Bryan Centa, a 21-year-old Army private, refused on religious grounds to accompany his unit to the war. He was chained in leg irons and handcuffs, carried out of his barracks past hooting and jeering soldiers, bundled onto a military transport plane and sent to Saudi Arabia anyway.

Given those examples, it’s not surprising that disobeying an order is rare. Zachary Spilman, a former Marine officer who served as a judge advocate in Afghanistan, is now a civilian attorney specializing in military justice. “I’ve advised innumerable young Marines that you get to complain, and the boss gets to say, ‘I hear you, I disagree, my order stands,’” he said. “And at that point your duty is to salute and execute smartly.”

Officers have a bit more leeway. As Army doctrine puts it, officers are expected to serve honorably “under civilian authority while obeying the laws of the Nation and all legal orders; further, we reject and report illegal, unethical, or immoral orders or actions.”

So the officer corps operates under two potentially conflicting core principles: subordination to civilian control under the Constitution; and a requirement to do what is legally and morally right. How to respond when those conflict is an issue that concerns Army Lt. Col. Peter Kilner, who teaches ethics at West Point.

“I do sense a strong consensus that only an unethical decision that has strategic implications could justify disobeying our civilian leaders,” Kilner said, “because we have a moral duty to be subordinate to them. That said, I believe that a deeper, more universal moral principle is our duty to obey only moral and legal orders.”

The justifiable response to an illegal or immoral order, Kilner said, is to advise against it and explain why. “You always advise against an illegal or immoral order, that’s a given. But if the advice is ignored, there is a spectrum of response, based on how egregious the order is.” Those responses include putting your objections in writing, or resigning. The most extreme response, Kilner said, “is to say, ‘I will not allow this, I will make sure this doesn’t happen.’ I’m not aware of any military professional ever having to do this.”

“I am now going to my grave with that lapse in moral courage on my back.
Gen. Harold Johnson, U.S. Army chief of staff, on his failure to oppose the Vietnam War

Of course, most questionable military orders don’t involve significant moral or legal issues. Most can be resolved by a smart junior officer who allows a commander a face-saving correction: “Hey, sir, did you really mean for me to take my platoon directly to Objective Alpha, because there’s a swamp on that route.” Or, “Firing on that village will cause civilian casualties, and I know you didn’t mean for me to do that, right, sir?”

Practically speaking, though, it hardly ever happens that military officers “reject and report” illegal or immoral orders as their oath demands, especially orders that carry immense strategic implications ― such as invading Iraq or carpet-bombing cities full of civilians.

Gen. Harold Johnson, the Army’s chief of staff from 1964 to 1968, deeply regretted having never opposed the decisions of President Lyndon B. Johnson and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara that deepened U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. “I am now going to my grave with that lapse in moral courage on my back,” Johnson later lamented.

H.R. McMaster’s 1997 account of that period, Dereliction of Duty, which detailed the failure of other senior officers to stand up against Johnson and McNamara, was widely read across the officer corps in the years before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “There was a deep bitterness over Vietnam and the way the [service] chiefs had been co-opted,” military historian Richard H. Kohn observed. “[Army officers] said, ‘We’re never going to put up with this again, we’re not going to be put in that position again by civilians.’”

But when the Bush administration and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld began planning to invade Iraq with too few troops, no plan for occupation and no recognition that it would destabilize the region, only one senior officer resigned rather than take part. That was Marine Gen. Gregory Newbold. As director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was deeply involved in planning for the invasion and came to believe the operation was ill-considered and badly planned. He voiced his objections to his colleagues, and then quietly resigned.

It wasn’t until 2006 that Newbold finally aired his views publicly. A year later, in April 2007, he told Vanity Fair, “I should have had the gumption to confront him,” he said of Rumsfeld. “The right thing to do was to confront, and I didn’t.”

Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims — 1.6 billion members of an entire religion — from entering the U.S.

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Household chores can be pretty fraught: Who does what and how is it decided? And what does it mean about equality and harmony in your household? 

If bitter fights over dirty dishes feel like the gender wars, or you’ve found yourself ranting about The Second Shift, a new study from Indiana University suggests you’re onto something. For most Americans, the survey study found, chore roles align with traditional thinking on masculinity and femininity ― even among couples where a woman is the primary or sole breadwinner and even in same-sex couples.  

The researchers were surprised by how much gender mattered ― and how little income did.

“Most research on housework suggests that couples divide housework along different axes; for example, lower-earning partners do more housework than higher-earning partners,” said lead author Natasha Quadlin, a doctoral student at Indiana University. “Instead, our findings suggest that [gender] is by far the biggest determinant of Americans’ attitudes toward housework.” 

How the study worked

Quadlin recruited a randomized, representative sample of 1,025 participants and gave them each a sample marriage scenario to consider. The genders of the hypothetical partners and their relative incomes varied, along with information about their gender roles (in other words, if a partner could be described as more masculine or feminine).

Here’s an example of one of the vignettes:

Brian and Matt met five years ago and have been married for just over a year. Brian is a physical therapist at a hospital, bringing home about $57,500 a year, and Matt is a reporter for a local newspaper, bringing home about $25,250 a year. They are both very busy, each working 40 hours per week. Despite their busy schedules, they try to do things together regularly. In fact, one of the only reoccurring arguments they have is what to do on the weekend together. Brian usually wants to play basketball if they are going out, or watch an action movie if they are staying in. Instead, Matt would rather go shopping or watch a romantic comedy.

She then asked participants to indicate which partner should have primary responsibility for eight household chores and four childcare tasks. The household chores were: cooking, washing dishes, cleaning, grocery shopping, doing laundry, “outdoor chores” (such as mowing the lawn or taking out the garbage), making auto repairs and managing finances. The childcare tasks were physical care, emotional care, discipline and primary caregiving.

Gender matters more than income

Participants assigned straight women more female-typed chores, more gender-neutral chores and more physical and emotional caregiving than their partners. This held true even if the woman earned more money than the man.

While relative income determined whether or not the husband or the wife would become the stay-at-home caregiver, Quadlin pointed out that low-earning men in straight relationships were still expected to do fewer chores and fewer childcare tasks than their wives.

But even though gender mattered most, Quadlin found that participants gave primary responsibility for cooking, cleaning, laundry and dishes, as well as being a primary caregiver for a child, to lower-earning partners, while expecting the higher-wage earners to manage the household finances. Income didn’t have any bearing on groceries, car maintenance or outdoor chores. However, the effects of relative income were minor — for instance, low-wage earners were given responsibility for cooking 55 percent of the time, versus 45 percent for higher earners.

Same-sex couples are still beholden to gender norms

Among both straight and same-sex couples, typically “female” chores like cooking, cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping were assigned to the partner perceived as most “feminine.” 

Partners perceived as more masculine were assigned typically “male” chores like car maintenance and outdoor chores. Feminine partners were expected to care for a child’s physical and emotional needs, but discipline and stay-at-home parenting wasn’t linked to gender.

In same-sex couples, where the partners were by definition of the same gender, a stronger predictor for chore assignment was stereotypically gendered behavior, such as liking sports vs. liking baking. In straight couples, by contrast, sports-loving wives were still more likely to do the “feminine” chores than a husband who baked. 

This study shows we have a long way to go when it comes to equality at home

In contrast to Quadlin’s research, data compiled by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show that American households are slowly evolving beyond traditional gender roles in the home. 

From 2003 to 2015, men’s participation in food prep and clean up on an average day increased from 35 percent to 43 percent, and the time spent doing these activities increased from 16 minutes to 21 minutes. During the same time span, the share of women doing housework on an average day decreased from 54 percent to 50 percent, and the time they spent doing housework declined from 58 minutes to 52 minutes. This data is broken up by gender, which means there’s no information about whether people are in same-sex or heterosexual relationships.

However, it’s still true that women do the lion’s share of housework. On an average day in 2015, 85 percent of women spent time doing things like housework, cooking, lawn care or financial management, while only 67 percent of men did so. Women spent an average of 2.6 hours on housework on the days they did housework, while men spent 2.1 hours.

And on an average day, 22 percent of men are doing housework like cleaning or laundry, while 50 percent of women are doing the same. It’s also clear that if women are partnered and have children, they’re more than likely coming home after a long day of work to face more household and childcare responsibilities than their partners. 

While these statistics indicate that women are still doing the bulk of housework and childcare, they can’t tell us whether it’s because she’s a woman, she acts more feminine or she has a lower salary than her (usually male) partner.

Quadlin’s survey disentangles the possible factors that might be driving this inequity, and shows clearly that a woman generally does most chores simply because she is a woman, she explained.

Why it matters that women are stuck with most of the chores

“We have data on how people spend their time, and how many hours people are spending on chores,” said Quadlin. “But by looking at Americans’ attitudes about who should be doing chores, we’re better able to understand what it is about partners that creates expectations about housework.”

This never-ending workday may have harmful effects on a woman’s health; a recent study found that women who work more than 60 hours a week are at a higher risk of several chronic diseases, while this wasn’t true in men who worked the same amount of time outside the home. 

And in addition to the health effects of this “second shift” of work women perform, other research shows that women are more likely than men to initiate divorce. This could be because they suffer more from deeply unequal divisions of household chores and childcare, even when both partners work. 

Despite the popular notion that same sex couples distribute chores more evenly (see Sheryl Sandberg’s advice for women to marry other women), Quadlin’s study shows that when couples have the same gender, they still fall prey to the same norms, using gendered behavior as a proxy for gender itself. 

Quadlin plans to publish this research in a journal in the future, but presented the results Aug. 21 at the American Sociological Association’s 111th Annual Meeting in Seattle.

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If you were a child of the 1980s, you truly can grasp just how big Michael Jackson was. He was our decade. He was our Elvis. A white glove. A dance move. A chimp sidekick. Everything he did made news. Heck, a Pepsi commercial was hyped like a Marvel blockbuster. He wasn’t just the king of a genre, he was a king period. With all that being said, not seeing the icon in concert has plagued me since the old school days of blowing in a Nintendo game cartridge. That void was just about filled a few days ago despite the fact the King of Pop has been gone for over seven years.

As part of their “Michael Jackson Birthday Weekend” with the Estate of Michael Jackson, Cirque du Soleil hosted myself and a few other journalists to catch their Michael Jackson ONE within the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas and take a tour backstage. The show, now in its third year, transports you back in time with the Gloved One’s hits and other standouts blasting out of countless speakers (including some literally etched into the back of your seat) as projections flash images at lightning speed. Oh, and of course, this is Cirque so that barely scratches the surface. The music and imagery are paired with jaw-dropping acrobatics, sets, costumes, and a cast of 63 performers and dancers who somewhat all-too-easily made me forget about the athleticism of the Olympians I watched just a few weeks ago.

Boasting about all of this is easy. It really rocks with you, takes you back in the day, and lasts long after its hour-and-a-half run time. It also, and this is a constant theme of the show, reminds you no matter how many times the tabloids taunted the man, his myth and magic triumphed over both. It also drives home Jackson’s message of unity. We are all ONE after all, and fittingly the cast hail from 17 countries.

Moving from center to backstage, meeting the cast and crew of ONE was the cherry on the proverbial sundae. To witness first hand how goes into this unimaginable production twice a night was just as engaging and amazing. In a video embedded below, you’ll see a few highlights of a tour in which we were shown how the staging, the sound, the lighting, and so much more work. But, clips were kept to a minimum. Why ruin the mystery? I will say this, though, being taught some of the master’s dance moves by the show’s choreographers was a trip. Ironically, we all danced to “Man in the Mirror” while facing a mirror. I opted not to look, because Michael Jackson I am not. I can’t even dance like Peter Jackson.

Yes, it was a magical weekend that also included members of the Estate unveiling an iconic piece of Michael Jackson memorabilia to be displayed at the theatre: the iconic white-and-blue pinstriped suit and matching white fedora famously worn by Jackson in the short film for “Smooth Criminal.” In any event, watch the footage (filmed by Andrew Plotkin), check out some behind-the-scenes tidbits, and watch A-Sides interviews with a few of the performers and dancers. Oh, and for more from “Michael Jackson’s Birthday Weekend” and A-Sides in Vegas, check out thisisasides.com all week.

About A-Sides with Jon Chattman – thisisasides.com :
Jon Chattman’s music/entertainment series typically features celebrities and artists (established or not) from all genres performing a track, and discussing what it means to them. This informal series focuses on the artist making art in a low-threatening, extremely informal (sometime humorous) way. No bells, no whistles — just the music performed in a random, low-key setting followed by an unrehearsed chat. In an industry where everything often gets overblown and over manufactured, Jon strives for a refreshing change. Artists featured on the series include Imagine Dragons, Melissa Etheridge, Yoko Ono, Elle King, Joe Perry, Alice Cooper, fun, Bleachers, Charli XCX, Marina and the Diamonds, and Bastille.

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September marks the beginning of fall, and that chill in the air means more excuses to sit inside binging on Netflix. This month, Netflix brings along som originals and some true classics.

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In November of 1975, Australia faced one of the most uncertain periods in its political history. The Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, was unexpectedly dismissed
(which is to say fired) by a man named John Kerr, the Governor-General of Australia. Rumors have swirled for years about whether the CIA or British intelligence services had anything to do with it. And while a new document obtained by Gizmodo doesn’t answer that question, it does add a bit of color to the mystery.

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