the cult in the U.S., and maybe cults elsewhere. Here on American Issues, take two, here on a given Thursday, and we have my co-host, Tim Apachella. We have our contributors, Stephanie Stoll-Dalton, and we have our special esteemed guest, emeritus political science professor, U.H. Manfred Hennigstin. Thank you all for being here. So let me begin with you, Tim. Let's get our nomenclature right. What's the cult? Well, good morning, Jay. A cult basically is excessive devotion to a person or an object or a belief system. And it could take forms of many ways in this country and around the world. I'm thinking of the cult of Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare. He had a cult-like status and caused the careers and, in some cases, the lives of Americans because they're being labeled as communists. I'm thinking of, of course, Jim Jones in the People's Temple down in Guyana. David Koresh was a cult leader. Remember Marshall Applewhite? He was the UFO Hale-Bop Comet cult that led to the suicide of many young men. And to what degree does Donald Trump fit into a cult-like figure? Well, it's public idolization of a person. It's the worship, if you will, of an individual and sacrificing or putting aside the rational thought process, the rational thinking process, and just going to whatever the individual says is right or what they want you to do for them. And I think Donald Trump qualifies as a cult-status personality. But I also- You have to have a certain skill to do this. I mean, can I wake up in the morning, Jim, Manfred, Bethany, can I wake up in the morning, one morning and say, I think I want to be a cult figure and read all the books, study it. I learned how to speak those special words. Hitler was a master of public speaking and become a cult figure. Can I do it or is it reserved for certain personality types, a certain genius, if you will? Well, I wouldn't call it genius. I think they are suffering all from megalomania. And I mean, you have to be megalomaniacal in order to become this type of leader figure. And I have here the analysis of the personality of Otto Hitler that the OSS did in 1943, that the author was Henry Murray, Harvard Psychological Clinic. And it is quite extraordinary when you read parts of it. Let me give you only one thing that I think applies to what you just asked. In that text, it says, he experiences, he talks about Hitler here. He experiences periods of marked abstraction, violent, emotional outbursts, visions of hallucinatory clarity. And speaking before Krause, he's virtually possessed, he clearly belongs to the sensational company of history-making hysterics, combining as he does, some of the attributes of the primitive Shaman, the religious visionary, and the craft-brained demagogue, consummate, actor, one and all. I don't think you are any of that. You don't mean well enough, man. Wait a minute. I think you forgot one thing, and that's charismatic. And of course, Yes, no, that's cool. You qualify. In Hitler, the trend is so intense and the extremely balancing forces, affection, conscience, self-criticism, humor are so weak that we are justified in speaking of megalomania. Can you tell us what is megalomania, Manfred? Well, it's this superiority complex. These people believe that they are superior to anybody else, even if it's quite obvious that they are not, but they believe in it. And strangely enough, people follow that. I mean, you have that in a way as a dimension of the Maga cult in the United States as well. I mean, you have other political figures at this time. Putin is the best and sickening, the most sickening illustration at this point, but you have Erdogan in Turkey, you have Xi Jinping, you had to turn to in the Philippines. So there is no lack of figures who qualify for this position of being a megalomaniacal cult leader. Now, why? One of the elements that I find as a common denominator is that a cult figure can make people do things in large numbers, make people do things that are completely irrational against their own interests. In fact, in many of the cases, him listed, suicidal. And that is quite remarkable. That seems to be against human nature. It seems to be against the primary need to survive. And my question to you, Manfred, is it goes beyond political science. It goes to human psychology, the human species, if you will, is this kind of thing built into our DNA? I don't think so. I think it's when, well, you could say it's built into DNA, you can become stupid. And when you read- That's what my wife says all the time, by the way. When I always thought, I was teaching political philosophy in the policy department and talking about Plato and Aristotle, I always emphasized that both of them, especially Aristotle, but Plato, his teacher, had no different ideas. People are inclined to not actualize what is really central to human nature, namely, reason. And there are people who are slaves, for that reason, slaves by nature. And I would translate that word slave by nature into a stupidity.  I mean, look at- Was that always the case, Manfred? Or have something happened here? It has become worse. Yeah. I mean, look, when you think of this carnage, that happened in Texas, everybody has talked 90% of Americans, one gun control. But some of these people must vote for politicians, not only Trump, but local politicians. Who refuse to sign on to any gun control law? So how do you explain that? How can you be, on the one hand, for gun control, on the other hand, you vote people into office who are really the opposite of what we need at this point. And- I know how to get an answer on that. No, I don't either. No, no, Tim has the answer. Oh, no, Jay, I don't have the answer other than education, education, education. Right, but even though- That is the answer. But I really think that cult figures use what I would call a direct propaganda, which if you really think about propaganda and how the tool on how it works, it's really a walking subliminal hypnosis. And human beings are certainly susceptible to hypnosis, whether it's conscious or subliminal. And that's why subliminal advertising was outlawed in the 1960s because it was so effective. And if you remember, subliminal advertising was the flashing of images at a very rapid speed that it would become subliminal persuasion. So they outlawed it. Yeah. I don't think- Everything, you know, I visualize erasing the prospect that the media has a lot to do with this. What we get on TV and those graphic images Tim is talking about. But can't we modify that? Is the First Amendment so absolute that we couldn't somehow withdraw the stimulus to join a cult by changing the way the media works? Interesting question.  My take on that is the ignorance that we have. And still, as Tim said, the education brings us through to being able to operate at higher levels of thinking. I think that until we move into having all people access the ways that we analyze, the way we synthesize, the way we make judgments, the way we do critical thinking, the way we do that kind of cognition. Because my point about the teaching act is that it is rocket scientist because it is cognitive development. And there's nothing harder than that, including the rocket stuff. Yeah. Well, you know, Manfred Hitler knew to teach the adolescents to the grade school kids in Germany back in the early 30s. He knew that if he brought them into his way of thinking they would be his later on. And it worked. It worked for him. And the problem about education, Stephanie's idea, is that it takes decades and generations to actually have an effect. Do we have the time to fashion a solution through education? Well, I don't know whether this German illustration works because after all, people have always pointed out this extraordinary contradiction between Germany being the society of culture and education. They had the first graduate programs at universities and everybody copied the German university system, including the United States. Science was in charge of all kinds of dimensions of German life. And then you have this incision in 1933. And I don't think education is the only answer. It may not be the most important answer to cut through to what may happen in societies at certain points.  I mean, there are a lot of, I'm sure, is that in Germany, you're out of Nazis with PhDs and the SS, half of the more than 50% of German lawyers were members of the NSDRP. So you have, I mean, this cult definition that Tim gave, I think it does not completely cover the political madness that may take over societies. I mean, what is happening in the United States is not exceptional at this point. You have these figures who are possessed by megalomaniacal dreams about their societies. Think of everyone's Ottoman vision. Think of Xi Jinping's attempt to create a greater in China, including Taiwan. And Putin certainly is the best illustration of that. Now, you have opposition in all of these societies, but for some strange reason, they are unable of breaking through. So if I give you a megalomaniac cult figure and I subtract him from the equation, well, let me ask you the first this way. If I don't subtract him from the equation, what's the dynamic? Do cults get worse over time? Do the people who follow cults get more irrational, suicidal, and manipulatable over time? Or does a cult sort of cool off after a while? What does this mean? In the German case, you could say it's quite obvious, you know, it didn't only cool off, it simply died. Well, as a result of a war? Yes, in 45. Now, all of the people that had been members of the cult suddenly told people they weren't. I mean, they were lying. They went into denial. And that, I think, becomes very, very powerful when cults become dominant in a society. I mean, the figures that Tim mentioned, like Jim Jones, for example, he was an outsider and the cult remains an outside phenomenon. They're not taking over American society. And many of these cult figures stage that way. Whereas we are talking here about a phenomenon that has affected the entire society. Well, let me flip my question on you. Suppose I take Trump or any of these other autocrat megalomaniacs out. In other words, you have a cult, and by definition, by Tim's definition, it's built around one very strong personality. And he is withdrawn. Let's say one day he doesn't wake up, whatever it is. Does that, Manfred, is that the end of the cult? Is it the end of the phenomenon in a given society? It can be. I mean, I think, for example, it would be nice if someone would assassinate Putin. But I do not think there is anyone at this point in the inner circle of his government that will do that.  And they were talking about that in the movie Munich. You have these scenes where German generals are talking about what they are going to do with Hitler. But no one did, even though they had the gun in the pocket and could have killed him. But I mean, after 45, suddenly, you know, the cult was gone. In a way, we said never again. And part of never again, of course that didn't stick, but never again meant we're not gonna let this happen to us again. We're not gonna be crazy, you know, irrational suicidal and- Yeah, but the never again was not said by Germans that were lictons, you know, victim jewels were making that argument. That was not a German line immediately after the war.  Well, here's the question though. If I take Trump out of the equation, okay, and I have this society that he left behind his cult legacy. This goes to the question I'm gonna put to you, Tim. Is it gonna come back like bad wine? Does the society now bear the exposure, the vulnerability, the DNA likelihood that another Trump will emerge? One of those senators we love so much in the Senate will emerge and will take his place and satisfy the need, play on the vulnerability of these people who have already learned about stupidity. So in the United States, if we take Trump out of the equation, are we free of Trumpism? Are we free of the cult? No. I think we're now in the realm of confusing the desire to be an autocrat versus a cult personality. Governor, Florida Governor DeSantis is not a cult personality like Trump, but he's gonna take and pick up the ball where Trump left it and he's gonna run down the field with it. And he is going to try to erode democracy. Trump has done great things to erode democracy and that's why I go back to education. I mean, how do you preserve democracy if you don't know what it is? And that's why civics 101 is not being taught in high schools, nearly to the degree it used to be. Tim, how long does it take to train 50 million students about democracy? Well, yeah, your points were taken. I guess the question is, how long is a semester or a quarter? Take the class, learn what democracy is. And, you know, we can start there. It doesn't take generations. It takes generations to value what democracy is versus autocracy, but it doesn't take generations to understand what democracy is and what it takes to preserve it. And what it takes most importantly is to recognize when someone is trying to undermine it. Well, if you look at history and political science is really so close to history, you find that there have been cult figures, and correct me if I'm wrong, Manfred, all through history. And in the human condition, they have emerged again and again and again. Am I right? Yeah, no, yes, absolutely. But I mean, look, when you're talking about the United States and what Tim said about education is certainly correct. And now, you know, in the digital age, you know, it has become more and more difficult to compete with the messages that are spread in the digital civil society. But the United States, you know, is unique in a way celebrating violence by having the Second Amendment. I mean, it's the only society, the only civilized society where you have the right of citizens to defend themselves with arms. No other society has that. And there's a record of killings that you have. I mean, it's growing. You have 400 million guns in private hands. For God's sake, this is no other society has suffers from the syndrome. Well, that goes to my ultimate question here. And then you have the other syndrome, and that's the legacy of racism, especially anti-black racism. Those are two features that will not go away. Well, isn't part of cultism, this is your definition, Tim, isn't part of cultism, you have to follow me. And it's either you follow me or you don't follow me. You're my friend or you're my enemy. And so there's a hard dividing line, you know, and we certainly have divisiveness here in this country now. It's racist, it's religious bigotry, name it. And that seems to be a dividing line between the Trump cult and the others. It's part of the divisiveness. Is it not, you're with me or you're against me? You know, Jay, I think it's always been with us. And that definition is you're with them or against them. That's very true. But I think the things that make a cult leader great is these things that have been under the surface. And Trump brought it out. He was able to make it acceptable to be racist. He made it acceptable to be xenophobic. He made it acceptable for a lot of bad behavior. And now it's out above ground. It needs to be pushed back below the surface. I don't think we ever get rid of it. I just think we say as a society, that's not acceptable. And we don't want it out in the open air, knock it off. Well, two things then. Stephanie, you know, it goes beyond just the media. You know, both Tim and Manfred have been talking about social media, electronic connection and so forth. If I'm a cult figure and I want to reach people and I want to reach their vulnerability, I want them to get on my team and off the other team and be divisive, whatever it takes. The media right now, the social media, the electronic mesh network that we have in this country and this world is a great aid to me. I mean, you know, technology, information, technology has always been arguably the best weapon of a cultist. Do you agree with that? And what would you do about it? Well, I think that we're overlooking another player in the World War, World War game, okay? Which is Japan, all right? So, and also there were samurai there for hundreds and hundreds of years, all of whom were armed and all of whom exerted force. But we also have more importantly, the cultural context. And I know it was a nasty kind of thing Hillary Clinton to say, but she mentioned the deplorables. So people are in different bubbles and cultures and are influenced by different kinds of things. And so in bringing them out of ignorance and into literacy and then into cognitive activity that's at the higher level, all of those influences and pressures are there for these people to have to cope with. So, there are a few ways to influence people, humans. I mean, you can question them, you can lecture them, you can model for them, you can try to do something about their thinking, which contingency management, you can give them feedback. And these are things that all of these leaders have done because they know the human well and what it is that it takes to influence them. And one of them, I think, doesn't seem to be direct hits and forces, like for instance, in the David Koresh situation. So I think, yes, we can do it in a generation, bring people, if we could do a decent education system. And like in Germany, we're not working with the violin prodigies and the piano players and the great talents that 50% of the population is there. And who are these people that Hillary talked about in some of those last comments? There's a portion of our population that is needy and wants to maintain this presence that they have under these leaders. And that is satisfied with Trump. And I think that in answer to some of your questions is that Trump goes away, that is a problem for them. They won't have that any longer and there's a chance to do something about it. But I mean, it's probably a little bit open. And then back to war, you guys have been talking at least peripherally about violence. And I suggest to you that violence, especially wholesale violence, widespread violence, tends to make a reality test. It tends to show people that really have to think it through before they become irrational. They're gonna shed the chains of irrationality, so to speak. And I suggest to you that cults have often in history and political science ended with violence. And violence is a kind of the cure in a terrible way. Is that still the case? Will the end of cultism by Trump or his successors, will it wind up in violence? And will the violence correct it? Well, look, we talked about it before and I think the U.S. finds itself today in a very peculiar situation that I sometimes compare with the last years of the Weimar Republic. Now, Trump is not Hitler, but the situation that you have in the United States in some say is bordering on civil war. I am not completely convinced that it will come to that, but you have, in addition to the cult dimension that we were talking about, you have this really strange phenomenon of the institutional permission to become violent by owning guns. I mean, I mentioned that before, this is exceptional. America is really exceptional in this really negative sense that you have the institutionalized permission through the Second Amendment. I mean, the Second Amendment was not meant for that. The militia dimension had to do with Washington didn't want to have a standing army because the standing army of the British Empire was a very bad memory for the founders. But then this Second Amendment took on a life of its own. And what you could really say is what you have here is the institutionalization of the permission to be violent. That's exceptional. No other society has that permission. No, Manfred, man, suppose I withdraw that. I subtract it from the American formula. That would be nice, but you cannot. I know it's hard. I'm gonna ask Tim about how you do that. I leave these questions for him. But let's assume it can be done, like in Australia. Let's assume it can be done. What was he doing? Yes, does that solve the problem if I withdraw the Second Amendment? Some issues would vanish, yes. Does it withdraw the problem of cultism? No. So what's the connection? Does cultism require guns? Does it require the Second Amendment? And does the Second Amendment naturally create cultism? No, I think the American situation is unique in that respect. Cultism, I mean, the possibility of cultish figures becoming hegemonic in a society is a universal possibility. But in the American case, the Second Amendment adds the institutional permission to violence that is really exceptional. So is there a natural sine curve on this where you have cultism, you have irrationality, you have gross widespread stupidity, and then over time, something, something inherent in the human condition emerges and shows people that's not a good way to live. Shows people they have to shed the chains of cultism. Well, you could say Germany, post-war Germany is a good illustration of something like that can happen. It took two decades until really in the beginning, in the late 1960s, when Willy Brandt became chancellor, and then in the 70s and 80s, so that Germany became the pacifist society and became, in a way, immunized. Today, you know, the radical right in Germany is down to 5% in the last state elections. So what you have there is an immunization. Now, whether it's education, experience, or whatever it may be, it's a good illustration. Germany is in that sense a very good illustration of how societies can come out of this heritage, overcome it, come to terms with it. And you know how difficult it was for the present German government to support this war-like reaction to Putin's invasion of the Ukraine. And it's the greens of all people in Germany who have pushed the government in that direction. That's really interesting the way that worked. So Tim, suppose I'm a Chinese citizen living in Shanghai and I wake up one morning and say, I'd really like to have an assault rifle. An AR-15 would be fine. Like, I'll keep it in my dresser drawer. Nobody will know about it. I'm gonna go down to the gun shop at the corner and I'm gonna see if I can't buy an AR-15. What happens to me? Well, in China, you're going to be to a re-education camp because no one would dream owning a weapon based on communism and the need to keep the regime in power. A gun represents the ability to change a regime. And so, you know, to use that example, though, I get a gun and I keep in the closet and no one knows I have it, but that's 70% of all gun owners in America. There's 400 million guns and I guarantee you, 400 are not registered. 400 million are not registered. But I wanna get to a point. The point I wanna make, though, is that China's an autocracy or, you know, depending exactly how you define it, but it's an autocracy. And so the ownership of guns in China don't lead to autocracy. They can coexist. You can have no guns and you can have an autocracy. You know, Putin's greatest scare is an uprising. He saw what happened to Libya Gaddafi and, you know, killed in a sewage pipe. That scared him deeply. And when Russia started having these open protests in the street, I mean, he was really very rattled and shaken by that. Now imagine Putin having to deal with people who had guns that came out in the streets. That's why autocrats don't like weapons being owned by private citizens. They don't like it at all because they can be used against them. But the Ukraine is the best illustration for what Jim Judd said, because that's what Putin saw, you know, the revolutionary moves that you had there in 2014 scared the hell out of him. And remember, the dramatizing experience for him was in Dresden, October 1989, you know, when he was the KGB officer in Dresden in East Germany. And there were East German protesters who wanted to storm the building. And, you know, he was frantically burning all kinds of documents in the building. And then he went out and talked to them. Now he had this advantage of putting, he had the advantage of having learned German while he was there. And so he spoke in German to them and he convinced them. I mean, he was a very persuasive guy. He convinced them to not enter the building. But nevertheless, that's October experience. People say, traumatized Putin. And the Ukraine is the very best illustration, you know, for what it did to his soul. If he has any, I mean, Bush thought he saw his soul, but he may not have any anyway. But the Ukraine, the Ukraine scared him because he thought the Ukraine would become the model for what would happen to civil society in Russia. Well, it still may happen just that way. Yes, I wish for that, I pray for that. Stephanie, we're almost out of time, but I did want to ask you, you know, is there, what is the connection between guns and autocracy? We have guns and we have Trump, a cult figure, you know, who would be an autocrat if he possibly could, who is heading in that direction. And so it's not clear that we can, you know, ever, you know, withdraw guns from the American formula. But can they coexist here? It's a deadly brew, is it not? Well, they are, but what's coming out from the Jan 6th committee is that many people did not bring their guns to Washington, D.C. that day. Because like Hawaii, Washington has very strict gun laws, always has. And so as a result, it could have been, many people were there without their weapons and they're admitting it now, just because of that. So as a result of that finding, now there's a movement to change the law in Washington, D.C. to permit gun carrying and all the versions of guns that they want to have available to people who are going to come into that city. Okay, well, we're just about out of time. So I want to go around the table. Manfred, your last comments about this, I mean, I suppose the central question here is does the Colt figure need guns? How does the Colt figure play with guns? Can we subtract guns from the equation and still have a Colt? Can we subtract a Colt and still have guns? Yes, I think you can. After all, I mean, Hitler came to power. He was not elected. He was appointed by the senile president, Hindenburg, in on the 30th of January, 1933.  But I do not think he was, he came to power as a result of his armed followers making that possible. So you can have a Colt figure coming to power without guns. Okay, let's go to Tim for a windup here.  Day before? Whatever. Two days before? Yes, two days before. They say he was acting on his own account. Okay, that's what they say. But was he really? He was acting for a public that he sought to impress with his social media and his streaming video. He was acting for a community that he perceived was out there. And I suggest to you, I'm interested in your thoughts on this, that he was not really alone. He was the point of a spear.  Your thoughts about that, your thoughts about this discussion. Couldn't agree with you more, Jay. I'm thinking of all the testimony of those who were arrested and charged in the January 6th insurrection of our Capitol. And if you remember, most of them said, I was invited. I was invited by Donald Trump. And they use Donald Trump as their motivation to do bad things to our Capitol and bad things to the Capitol police. So, yes, it goes to this. A cult leader really is the center of gravity of evil. And as we know, evil begets evil. And Donald Trump with a, you know, through his words and through his actions, his Boris behavior, his implementation of policy that was worst at best, he said it's okay to lack civility in a society. He said it's okay to act badly and do badly and behave badly in society. He gave the green light. And for that 33% of Americans or even in the world, there's always about a third of people who will gravitate towards that. It takes the forces of civility and the powers of good to say, no, you're not gonna rise to the top. You're not gonna win the day in our society.  And that's where we're at is the forces that have to push this, I call it evil, back under the rock. But right now it's loose. And we have a lot of things that have caused that to happen, specifically social media and 24 hour news service, giving us a green light to act badly. There'll be more. I hope you'll all come back. I mean, Manfred, I hope you'll come back and we'll talk some more about this because it's under the hood. And I'm left with one thought I wanna mention really quickly. One of the great cult figures in American history was Yui Long in Louisiana. And if you recall how his career as a cult figure ended up, he was shot dead. That's how it ended up. And then that cult stopped only to be followed by others. Thank you very much. Manfred Hennigsen, Tim Appatella, Stephanie Stoltz-Alton, thank you very much for this important and provocative discussion. Aloha. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at thinktechhawaii.com. Mahalo.


Let's talk about Waluigi. Something of a dark horse within the Mario universe, the character of Waluigi seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of rounding out character rosters in sports titles. Waluigi has never shown up in a meaningful way in a main series Mario game. He's welcome to join in for cart rallies and tennis matches, but he's always left on the sidelines when things get more serious. And yet, the character has developed a frankly phenomenal fan base among western gamers. Thanks in no small part to the comic efforts of Matthew Taranto, fans have fallen in love with this oft overlooked video game character. All of this leads us to the current debate. Why, when Waluigi is designed specifically to take up space in busy character-driven Mario games, has he been left out of Nintendo's crowning duel? Why is Waluigi not in Super Smash Brothers on the Nintendo Switch? The answer is simple, because Nintendo. Special thanks to commenter the bat with the bowtie pro for suggesting this video topic. Nintendo has always marched to the beat of its own very peculiar drum. Where other games companies listen to play a feedback or attempt to stay relevant in a shifting media landscape, Nintendo is known for planting its head firmly in the sand and refusing to move. It's for this reason that the Switch still doesn't have a viable online service with built-in voice chat. It's also a big part of why Nintendo has managed to remain relevant, where so many other companies from the 80s have lost ground to newer upstarts. Nintendo's basic strategy is to make the games they want to make and force players to engage with them on terms of the company sets. This doesn't always work out, but even when Nintendo is forced to seed ground, it gives up as little as possible. Take the Wii U for example. Nintendo's higher-ups expected people to buy the system simply because it was the successor to the Wii. They envisioned a future where everyone had a console that could also be used in handheld mode. When the Wii U bombed, Nintendo released the Switch. This wasn't so much a concession that their Wii U idea was wrong, so much as it was an insistence that, under the right circumstances, this form of gameplay could thrive. Nintendo's rigid approach to game design is the reason why the Super Mario brand has remained unchanged and yet very much relevant for over 30 years. The formula worked then, and no matter what anyone else in the games industry is doing, Nintendo expects that that same formula works today. The one time Nintendo did allow Mario to change direction, we got the Super Mario Brothers movie, and it's clear that the company is less than eager to repeat that experiment. This attitude can also be seen in Nintendo's recent lawsuits, which are directed at a pair of ROM distribution sites. It's impossible to get many retro Nintendo games on the Switch. Gamers may then feel justified in taking matters into their own hands. Not so, says Nintendo. The company has forbidden people from getting these games through any legitimate means on a modern console, and they will respond with severity if anyone attempts to undermine them on this. So what does this have to do with Waluigi? Well, if Nintendo refuses to listen to outside feedback, then it doesn't matter how large the fan outcry for Waluigi might get. The developers of Super Smash Brothers want someone else in the character slot that could have been given to Waluigi, and that's final. Fans can shout as much as they like, but Nintendo will not listen. The company is not in the habit of coutting to the demands of its customers. Instead, we are expected to play the Nintendo way, or not at all. The next question is whether this is a bad idea. Honestly, it's probably a good thing. No, seriously. It's worth pointing out the buzz among Japanese Nintendo fans surrounding the character of Ridley, a new inclusion in the upcoming Smash Bros. Japanese gamers have begun referring to Ridley as Captain America. This is an allusion to the character's popularity in the United States, and a criticism of the perception that Nintendo bowed to foreign fan demand when deciding to include Ridley in the game. On the very rare occasion when Nintendo does listen to its Western fans, its Japanese fans complain. And who can blame them? When Western media panders to a foreign audience, it always feels a little uncomfortable. Have you ever seen an American film that features a gratuitous trip to China? Looper spends several minutes setting up Shanghai as the beacon of civilization. Transformers 4 involves an extended scene of Stanley Tucci drinking Vitasoi amid Hong Kong skyscrapers. The Chinese cut of Iron Man 3 includes additional footage in which Tony Stark flies to China and remarks on the nation's fantastic scientific development. These scenes exist to try and make Western movies more appealing to an Eastern audience. They often disrupt the flow of the narrative and add little to the story. This kind of filmmaking has been criticized by moviegoers for being shallow, manipulative, and driven by nothing but profits. The same thing happens when Japanese games include elements that appeal to an American audience. Local Japanese gamers can be understandably unhappy about their own culture being watered down in order to pandate to foreigners. This is made all the more challenging considering that Americans typically get their way in most entertainment media around the world. Gaming is one of the only art forms in which Japanese cultural identity can thrive. Obviously, Waluigi is of Japanese origin and his inclusion in Smash Bros. wouldn't be entirely without precedent. It's also worth noting that he's a culturally complicated character to begin with, as the mirror reflection of a Japanese interpretation of an Italian-American stereotype. In spite of all of this, it's easy to see why Nintendo of Japan might not want too much outsider input while deciding on the character roster for Super Smash Bros. The game may be a celebration of many different kinds of video games from different cultures, but the more this game caters specifically to Western tastes, the more difficult it is to stay true to its own Japanese cultural roots.  Certainly, it's hard to argue that this would be the greatest travesty in the history of international relations. It's also entirely possible that, with time, Nintendo might decide to include Waluigi after all. As we've seen with Ridley, Western fans do often get their way eventually. For the moment, though, bear in mind that Nintendo has good reason to be wary of bowing to fan pressure too often, especially when that pressure is coming from fans that are. Let's face it, not the core audience of the game. Today is not the day of Waluigi, but that doesn't mean that fans should give up hope just yet.


Hi everyone, Sean with jaspyscasebrakes.com here doing 2019-2020 Chronicles basketball hangar random team number five Where at the end we're giving away 15 spots in the upcoming opulence break So the break itself no veteran commonship 30 spots 30 teams We're gonna randomize that at the end of the break after we've done the hangar box We'll re-analyze the list of customers and top 15 names each when it's bought in the opulence random team number five So before we actually go, let me grab this list of customer names Just a copy one more time and paste into this list here. So this will be for the randomizer at the end of the break But in the meantime, here's the list of customers Kevin down to Kyle and the list of teams from the Atlanta Hawks down to the Washington Wizards dice roll to randomize both lists and pair them together two and a two four times Oh One fourth and final time Ron to air and four times on the teams one two three and fourth and final time Portland down to Dallas So no trade window since it is a filler break, but let's get it all on camera Chronicles is loaded of rookies. So it's print and rip and let's give 15 spots away for opulence Cool, so there's our hangar box and Kyle last spot mojo with the hornets the bucks and the spurs Look at Donchich Dallas Mavericks Aaron shop key Kobe white for the bowls and Ron held RJ Barrett New York Knicks Aaron Schopke Tyler Harrow Miami Heat John Leon Leo Todd Keon Kakos Sorry John. What's with that name? John Morant, Memphis Grizzlies Roger Ness Seiku Demboya Detroit Pistons Scott Blackwell Luca Donchich Dallas Mavericks Aaron Schopke you got a We got an auto Fred van Leet Auto Toronto Raptors Brian Hayes. Here you go, Brian Rui Hachimura Washington Wizards Sean Maddock. There you go. Not bad You don't often get autos in those hangar boxes, but You are the beneficiary Brian. So back over to our randomizer. Here's the original list from Kevin down to Kyle and New randomizer dice roll one and a one two times quick good luck one and two So From 16 down to 30. Thank you guys very much for getting in on this and Hopefully I do better for you next time Congratulations to Chris Lombardo Roger Ness Logan Callister Roger Hoyn's Aaron Schopke John Leo Takia Nacos Kyla Bode Scott Blackwell Ron Held Eric Jock Kevin Miakawa Thomas R. Kyla Bode John Bradbury and Logan Callister you 15 Have spots in the upcoming opulence break up next And guys that was 2019 2020 Chronicles basketball hangar random team number five Don't know why I zoomed in on that for you, but Sean Jasper's case breaks calm. Thanks for hanging out. I'll see you next time


with Cellular's low data mode on your iPhone. You turn this on by going to Settings, Cellular, Cellular Data Options, Data Mode, and then choose Low Data Mode from the list. This is something I have on all the time on my phone that doesn't seem to do anything negative. What it does is it defers some operations from happening while you're on cellular until later on when you're on wifi, things like picture uploads in the background and that sort of thing. And I think it gives some apps some hints too. So you can save your data by saving your wallet by turning this on, more quick tips like this, plus your questions answered and some cool stuff found with a special guest today on MacGeekGab995 for Monday, August 14th, 2023.


We're talking about Vesicans here this morning and by the way, I'm a dermatologist Vesicans are agents that blister the skin That's just a fancy name for blistering agents This is for a med center in school and to keep everything up and above board You will know for this a these agents at the end most of this No one knows all of this because all the answers aren't in on all of this I'd like to tell you right up front that you know how Involve the treatment of nerve agents aren't everything I want you to relax Because you already know almost everything about rendering the care to a mustard casually because there is no magic bullet for mustard It's all supportive. It's all the good medical practice that you already know. Okay? So all you got to do is listen learn the specific things here, and you already know how to take care of mustard casualties Mustard sulfur mustard is the biggie. I want to spend probably 90 percent of time this morning Talking sulfur mustard and when I get done you'll understand why and also why this old old agent is still one of the top two concerns on the Modern chemical battlefield Nitrogen mustard while very similar has some significant differences and never has been to my knowledge Really weaponized some of its forms are solid some of its forms of explosives some of this forms will eat through the shell So it's never been really used to my knowledge as a chemical warfare agent I would tell you as a dermatologist I have used it in modern days on patients as a topical medicine for a Skiffing lymphoma called mycosis fungoides and still used to this day It was our first chemotherapeutic agent back in the 1930s Nitrogen mustard Lewis site is very similar to mustard with some significant differences, and I'll teach you about those The name Lewis site comes from captain Lewis a US captain Lewis who invented this stuff back in the world We're one time frame. It's my greatest aspiration to have a chemical warfare agent named after me just kidding Foz gene oxyne is Made from foz gene and we don't have another one with foz gene in the name just to confuse you I figured they did that when I took this course, but it's made from foz gene Hence the name foz gene oxyne, and I'll spend just a little bit of time at the end telling you about that because it is important For one or two very specific reasons sulfur mustard first synthesized back in 1822 and then they kind of forgot about it And then it was rediscovered in the mid 1800s way back in the 1800s its first battlefield use was in your pre-Belgium 1917 July Right the last year of the war, okay This is a breakdown of the casualties of World War one there were roughly a million chemical casualties in World War one 30% of all casualties in World War one were chemical casualties But I show you this slide for a very specific reason You've already been told that in World War one less than five percent of the casualties were fatal Okay, and this is the breakdown now if you look at the top three they were under five percent You look at the US and we were at two percent you look at Russia. They were almost 12 percent We came into the war late. We had the benefit of lessons learned We also had the benefit of some of our allies equipment our first mask were not up to snuff So we borrowed French mask initially who had more experience because they'd been in it since 1914 So we were better prepared and better equipped because of lesson learned and because of better preparation and better equipment Our fatality rate was half of the rest of them Russia by comparison you remember those masks that Dr. Seidel showed they look like something that Your your grade school would go in and cut out with cardboard. You remember those really funny look They're all funny looking but the really goofy ones that the That was their mask early on the Russians had little or no protection at times. Their equipment was inferior Their training was inferior and had a 12 percent mortality rate I recently added this one in because I'm trying to make a point about Education and training what a difference it makes and preparation. These are the Kurds Saddam Hussein gassed about five thousand innocent People that were totally unprotected and it wasn't a hundred percent mortality rate, but it was close to it So what a difference protection education and training make Dr. Seidel deliberately preempted me with this slide yesterday But a reminder that even though mustard came into the war the last year of the entire war It accounted for 70% of all the chemical casualties and it's already been made appointment made that the lethality is low It's less than five percent, but it causes long convalescence. It really screws up the medical scenario As a dermatologist, we very often look, but we don't see how many will be say you've looked right at something It was right there playing as a nose on your face, and you didn't see it In times past I have been guilty of going around the house looking for my glasses, and I had them on I Remember my grandfather blessed his soul on occasion would go around the house looking for his pipe, and you know where his pipe was So how many people have done dumb things like that? I hope most of you. I hope I'm not unique Okay, and you know that most of these I'll tell you and show you the percentages of the eye injuries But you know most of these had were in the 75% category had a mild injury that self-healed in two weeks But they were still taken out of action. They were a problem to the fighting effort Okay, we heard that even though there was no actual battlefield usage of chemical agents in World War two there was the Berry Harbor accident, and I Don't think I heard dr. Seidel actually mentioned there were 600 us casualties and a little over 80 Fatalities in that accident. We have no idea how many civilian casualties and fatalities After World War one, you know there have been chemical battlefield uses We know the Italians use mustard against the Ethiopians We think we're almost certain the Japanese use lewiside against the Chinese leading up the World War two We certainly know the Rockies used against the Iranians and the Kurds and it's alleged that Egypt used it in Yemen Now mustard has lots of names and symbols. Most of them have H in it. Okay, so anytime in this course you see H it stands for mustard not Hearst, okay? I don't want anybody going around saying Hearstite or site or whatever here Here's one called HL and it's a mustard lewisite mixture. There's a very specific reason for that I'm gonna tell you about that a little later These by the way were called lead leavens tubes They were like a poor man's mortar and it was one way they shut chemicals out of them in the World War one You saw gas tanks yesterday You see this structure. This is mustard most of these chemical agents have very simple Structure some of them are as simple as water like foiging, you know It's very small molecule and the only ones are complicated more so or the nerve agent ones This substance down here is thiodioglycol and you see the only difference is Between thiodioglycol and mustard or the chlorines on the end Well, thiodioglycol is one of the major urinary metabolites when it's gone through a person or an animal it also is The number one precursor to making mustard in the most simple process of manufacturing and I know if you have Thiodioglycol which by the way is a commercial product using making printers ink and any number of things All you got to do is take thiodioglycol Throw HCL into it hydrochloric acid and walla it makes sulfur mustard a one-step process If you have thiodioglycol and hydrochloric acid you could make it in your bathtub if you were stupid enough Well, there are people they're stupid enough take my word for it not me not me Guess who was buying up all the thiodioglycol he could lay his hands on Saddam Guess where he was buying it from one of the places Germany guess where else he was buying it from US Now guess what the closest city was one of the closest cities he was buying it from Baltimore guess who where there's some got people from there are serving time now Okay They were using intermediate areas. They weren't buying it directly. I don't think but they still were breaking along Mustard is an oily thick substance and at times I have seen it in ball containers It looks just like dirty motor oil. It looks like my motor oil whenever I change it Grungy dirty motor oil heavier than air heavier and water Because it's oily it has low volatility and it's quite persistent now Here's a ringer look at the temperature depending on the manufacturing process Mustard freezes around 57 58 degrees Fahrenheit When I was in the Gulf War and the ground war kicked off the temperatures were below that even in the daytime So Saddam Hussein had thrown pure mustard at us. They've been little ice cubes lying on the ground We could have laughed at so this is a significant factor, but there are ways around that There's more than one way around it, but I'm going to tell you the biggest way around it shortly The M8 Test paper okay turns three colors. You can't read the writing, but the G agents turn kind of orangeish yellow H turns red and V agents turn a dark color black dark green brown You need to know that the M9 tape is all or nothing it turns red if it's exposed to nerve agents or vescans The M256 kit, which by the way is quite good. It just it's an it detects vapors for these detect liquids It's quite good, but it takes about 20 minutes to go through it It detects the vescans it detects cyanide and it detects the nerve agents the vapors You need to know that the cam down here is nerve agents and vescans mustard It also will pick up lewisite, but it'll read it out as mustard. Okay Repeat that I couldn't repeat that twice if I had you know what I'm gonna review you again, and I'll repeat it It's in your little handbook. You really want me to go through that again Well I asked for questions then The end this is representative of the M9 paper and it turns three different colors Okay, and you need to go back and look in the little book. You should try and commit this to memory on the fly The M8. Yeah, it'll turn orangeish yellow or something for the G agents It'll turn red for the Vescans and it turns a very dark color for the V agents The M9 tape, you know, which is what people have on their arms and their legs so you can only cow It's turning colors. I better do something. It's all-or-nothing phenomenon. It turns red if you've been exposed to liquid These are for liquids The M256 kit is for vapors and it's a little kit You got to fold this out and strike this and that it takes and you'll get it do this in the FTX It takes about 20 minutes, but it detects Vescans, cyanide and nerve agents. Okay, vapors The cam you'll see you'll get a handle this and look at it. You won't be made proficient with it in this course But it detects nerve agents and Vescans and remember on the modern battlefield the biggies You're gonna hear hear about in the whole ball of wax in this course But the biggies we're concerned about on the modern battlefield are nerve agents and Vescans and primarily sulfur mustard Okay Mustard when it gets on epithelial surfaces like the skin It takes about two minutes for it start doing its damage So if you can de-con it if you know you got it on you and you de-con it within two minutes or less You're gonna get off scot-free. Okay The problem with mustard is it doesn't hurt you or anything It could feel just like you got a little water on you or something So it's a sneaky peat. It has a latent effect that I'm gonna tell you about 80% of the liquid that gets on the skin evaporates it goes into the air doesn't even damage It's only the remaining 20% that does its harm now They argue about how much does the local damage, but sometimes as little as 10% of that remaining 80% Does the damage on the skin the rest of it gets absorbed and goes systemic You don't have to wrote. This is what you need to know You got two minutes to get it off of you before it starts harming you the molecule I showed you of mustard is not The active moderate molecule when mustard comes into contact with water It cyclizes into a closed little intermediary That's the one that does the real damage and it acts like grease lightning once it it goes into that circular ion Mustard and I haven't said it yet is an alkylating agent just like nitrogen mustard just like cytok and some of the other things What alkylating agents do is they take carbon carbon bonds and rearrange them So you can imagine that if the carbon carbon bonds in your DNA have been rearranged It's not too healthy Likewise it can affect the bonding and the carbon carbon bonds in your your cell proteins your membranes mustard Attacks just about everything it comes in contact with but we know from studies that your cell proteins and especially the DNA and actively dividing cells are the most sensitive targets for mustard and that tells us a lot about the mechanism of action of mustard Thus when your DNA in your cells has been rearranged on your epithelial surfaces It can lead to cell death or mutation in the cells Vapor by and large a mustard or liquid is an epithelial phenomenon The number one sense of area is the surface of the eye the cornea Followed by the airways the tracheal the bronchial epithelium and the skin But if you look at the starting points, they're not that far apart Okay, but your eye is the most sensitive followed by the airways and then the skin Down here is what it takes To kill you you learned about LD 50s and CT 50s yesterday, right? Everybody got that concept straight?  I'm going to show you more But to raise just an insignificant little blister like a poison ivy blister that you know similar It only takes 10 micrograms of liquid mustard Let me remind you that a microgram is a thousand of a milligram milligrams are pretty small to me already But only 10,000 of a milligram of liquid mustard can at least raise a poison ivy type blister on the skin an LD 50 of liquid mustard on the skin is around 7 grams in your classic Svelte 70 kilogram male, you know something like me Well, he knows I'm lying I Want these cameras when you edit this I want you to take 20 pounds off of me you got that So Anyway, seven grams of mustard is a liquid LD 50 now a teaspoon is like five ccs You know a gram is equal roughly to a cc So a teaspoon to a teaspoon and a half of mustard is an LD 50. Okay As a dermatologist I would tell you that if you had suntan lotion or oil and you took a teaspoon a teaspoon and a half You could cover one whole arm and your shoulder front and back and that's about 20% of your body surface area so if a patient comes in with 50% liquid Burns by mustard 50% how many LD 50s have they gotten? You're right.  You got it If somebody comes in with 90% of their body burns and I'm gonna show you a picture of it I hold your breath when I do later on if somebody comes in with a darn near 90% body burns How many LD 50s have he almost gotten? They've gotten four and a half close to five LD 50s.  Rapidly dividing cells internally the bone marrow the GI tract CNS is not rapidly dividing but we'll talk about CNS later on and of course in lymphoid tissue But your systemic effects that you're gonna see most readily are gonna be bone marrow and GI if you get them Hand blisters. This is a moderate to severe Conjunctivitis with mustard. I'll show you larger pictures of this later on. These are bronchi. This is supposed to be smooth and round You look in here. It's gunked up. You see the pseudo membranes. This is lung tissue. That's messed up This is a larynx tongue. I think you might have seen I don't know if you've seen this one yet or not But this is a crispy critter larynx. This is what I what a non-survivable dose Mustard in the pulmonary tract will do to you. It's just fried.  This is looking down on a bronchoscope This is down the trachea and these are the two bronchi. Well, you can barely see any opening They're plugged up with the pseudo membranes and world one some some soldiers died from the mechanical Obstruction of the sloughing of the epithelium. That's what the pseudo membranes are.  I showed you that smaller before Now this is a slide I showed to make a point Depending on which what you read the eyes the lungs and the skin they all come in close 85 90 75 it's all about the same to me. They all got affected in the burn when you got burned And so we expect eyes we expect lungs and the skin also comes in 75 80 percent, but Look what the top area was it got burned and The men are already complaining up here Just goes to show men are dumber than what I mean Look down here the hands and feet You'd almost expect it to be reversed wouldn't you okay? Why do you think this is? Were they all sitting around in puddles of mustard in their shorts or what? What kind of mop suits did they have in World War one? None they had uniforms they had masks, but mostly I was just wearing uniforms in World War one now as a dermatologist I would tell you that Delicate sense of skin is most susceptible to medicines drugs or toxic agents Warm warm moist skin is most susceptible more susceptible and also Occluded skin okay, so where do you have delicate skin? That's occluded warm and moist and then with vapor mustard going right through the uniforms and then kind of being held there It was a real setup for getting the growing burns, okay?  They used to do this down at in Alabama, Aniston at the Kim School the non-medicals course In the old days when I would have been a young fellow They used to put a drop of mustard a dilute drop on each forearm They would allow them to decon one side in two minutes or less and they didn't get a decon the other side Guess which side always got the blister and a teensy little scar and which side never got anything Well the side you decon clean his whistle side. I didn't decon got the blister Mustard's onset of effects, you know, it's a latent period. It's been called radiomimetic It's just like radiation effects. It's like some other chemotherapeutic agents It's like ultraviolet light from the Sun. You don't know you don't feel anything You don't know you're being harmed at first because of its delayed effects So the onset is usually delayed from anywhere from two hours to two days The average is about four to eight hours Now this probably isn't projecting.  You can go straight to a third degree burn with a black s-scar. It has happened, okay? This is the famous person you might have heard about yesterday Who was working at a depot site a little eyelet on the back of his boot let mustard drip in And I think they say that they calculated that was about a 20 milligram dosage of mustard that made this blister I have seen blisters that probably looked about like this that were caused by as little as the 10 microgram dosage But again two minutes to get it off of you Two hours to two days to the onset Obviously if it takes two days for the symptoms to show up You've got a pussycat of an injury versus two hours two hours. You're in trouble. Okay, especially if it's a large area Average four to eight hours Just a blow-up of a blistered hand with mustard that you've seen the smaller picture earlier Little bitty blisters all over a couple big bull I have formed from the coalescence By the way, there is no blister. There is no mustard in these blisters Hospital personnel medics are absolutely not going to be harmed by the blister fluid There is no mustard in these blisters And this is an Iranian casually who has darn near 90 95 percent mustard burns You can see the giant bull I he is red Red red all over and he was a non-survivor The eye injury the mild conjunctivitis There's an intermediate which is more severe takes longer to heal with edema and even roughing of the cornea swelling and a blephar spasm and then there's a severe category that can be so bad There's even perforation of the of the globe and it could even qualify for legal blindness The breakdown on this is 75% of them had the mild conjunctivitis two weeks and they were they could be back to duty and they Required little or no therapy. They just need a lot of TLC The 15% intermediate took sometimes as long as two months four or six weeks more of a problem But they would heal without residual the remaining 10% were severe with residual damage and by today's standards about point one percent of those patients would have met the criteria for legal blindness And this is a blow-up of the picture of a moderately severe mustard conjunctivitis hemorrhage in the conjunctiva this is a blow-up of the The burned-up larynx tongue Symptoms and the upper airway are going to be hemorrhage pain Horseness strider you can imagine. I mean you're not going to be Feeling like singing any songs with a Trachea or larynx that looks like that Down lower you're going to get bronchospasm caused by the inflammation of all the bronchi and then the pseudo membranes will develop and can plug up the airways With a massive massive mustard exposure. You can get hemorrhagic pulmonary edema now pulmonary edema is not Normally a feature of mustard.  There are three types of pulmonary deaths Okay, the first one which is very is very much in the minority Okay, and was it with a massive exposure in the lungs I like it into it as if you had sucked on a blowtorch or somebody poured lye or acid Straight down in your lungs the injury is so massive that you're just torn up down there You couldn't possibly be a survivor and you'll die in one to two days. That is very rare But it's one way you can die a pulmonary death with mustard the most common way and what happened to about 50% Of the soldiers in World War one with a pulmonary injury. They got the lung injury. They got the inflamed bronchi trachea You know pseudo membranes and then along about three to seven days Remember this long about three to seven days the secondary bacterial invaders came along and they got a secondary bacterial bronchonemonia and Guess what they you know what they didn't have in World War one. They didn't have antibiotics That's what took out about half of the soldiers with mustard in World War one. It was a secondary bacterial bronchonemonia that usually shows up three to seven days after the insult The last way you die a pulmonary death with mustard is that at 7 to 14 days and the slide coming up I'll show you this at 7 to 14 days if you've gotten a major systemic hit the bottom falls out of your white count and You get septic because you can't fight infection and you get sepsis and a secondary septic type Pneumonia and that's another way you can die a pulmonary death with mustard And that's what I just said 7 to 14 days the white count drops if it drops below 200 from experience in the Iran or rock war They're very likely you're not going to be a survivor and then you get the secondary sepsis in the GI tract mustard has a Coalinergic effect and it is very poorly Understood or not understood at all and this is nothing like the Coalinergic Effect in nerve agent, but there are Coalinergic symptoms mild ones Early on within 24 hours with a significant mustard exposure that can give you bowel Cramping diarrhea nausea vomiting, but that's transient and it's not the same mechanism as nerve agent later on If the bottom falls out of your white count and it you know you get marrow suppression But also if enough went into circulation and got to the GI tract it can take out the GI mucoso the epithelial surfaces, so you can start Caught vomiting up evacuating Pieces of your GI tract the epithelial surfaces get a hemorrhagic diarrhea, and that's the effect systemic effect on a GI tract Now I don't want you to get the impression that this is like with nerve agent that this is just a Progression, you know like a massive nerve agent exposure But there is a mustard effect in the CNS And it can be apathy and lethargy on the individual or they actually can be giddy and euphoric Why is not understood, but it does happen sometimes with a massive major mustard exposure They can go straight to convulsions and die Okay, but this is not the progression like in nerve agents, and this is with a very large exposure Okay, and it's the minority a very but it has been seen I've told you that mustard has been called Radiomimetic because it has a primary effect at the DNA the DNA of your rapidly dividing Epithelial cells your bone marrow your GI tract Okay, when the symptoms come on within four hours you got a severe injury Okay It's really severe if it's covering it involves your lungs or a large surface area on the body If the airways the symptoms are coming on within six hours, it's often fatal Okay Now in your differential of these blistering agents there's a couple of cases come in and they're not in any real distress You still can think of insignificant things like poison ivy and poison oak We had a case like this in the Gulf War But it was a young trooper who was exploring the old Iran-Iraq bunker where mustard had been stored but had been taken out and he brushed up against the sides and He started with some burning and stinging about 12 hours out and within about 24 hours So he had some little insignificant blisters about like what 10 micrograms would Cause and that was probably a muster. We couldn't prove it. We tried But little isolated cases no no attack known or anything. Yeah, I think just the garden variety stuff You start getting a number of cases in if there's a latent effect It's mustard if it's immediate effect. It's lewis site or phosgene oxy The lab all your findings are non-specific. You already know all this You get you get in the pneumonia. You get fever spikes. You're getting spikes your WBC is a convene infection Chest X-ray if you got infill infill trace starting to show up it probably means pneumonia You do as you would with a normal pneumonia you look for a change in the sputum you look for pure land sputum And you do graham stains if you get positive graham stains or cultures Then you initiate appropriate antibiotics prophylactic antibiotics only will separate Select out a bad bug that will cause you more troubles You've got to wait till the actor shows up and use the appropriate specific antibiotic We did not have urinary thylendike glycol capabilities in country during the Gulf War Anything we try to do had to be shipped back here You now will have that capability in any future actions as there is a lab called a tamel theater area medical lab which will deploy To a situation like that. So you will have sophisticated laboratory capabilities available to you in theater and the next time this happens as Inside I would tell you That before Saddam Signed his last agreement. This laboratory was getting ready to deploy Anybody want to argue with me that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  I don't care whether you've got our 291 kit You've got the Germans diet the maceous for for earth. You've got the The Brits Milton solution The Canadians cream. I don't care what you've got Physical removal is what really counts here because no matter what the active ingredient is in these things They don't kill the agent as fast as I want it killed The the very best thing to decon with and be to jump in a shower and just shower yourself clean Matter of fact if I had that option I'd get in it and they'd have to pull me out of it So remember it's physical removal. Don't get hung up on what you're using get it off of you by whatever means you got That's sad and we so we say this late decon protects the medical personnel in the facility That doesn't mean that a casualty couldn't have gotten agent off the mop suit that was lying here and needs some immediate decon Or it doesn't mean that they didn't have such a large amount that some could still be lying there Even though they got to you half an hour later So when possible with these liquid agents you always decontaminate at the earliest possible time This is all common sense for all medical folk. Okay, it's just supportive now down here a Raw denuded area always gets some kind of secondary mild superficial infection going on That's why with these mustard things that are raw and denuded you would use whatever topical antibiotics you have you know the surgeon the sulfa myelin the Bassetrace and Neospor whatever you got it's appropriate right off the bat systemic antibiotics IV antibiotics are held in reserve you can get a secondary Cellulitis you know with the redness and the infection the staff you can get that and you have to watch for in culture And if you do get it then you use appropriate IV antibiotics systemic analgesics Anybody want to argue that that one case Probably needed a little morphine once in a while You use whatever analgesics are appropriate that could be as little as an aspirin or anihistamine all the way up to morphine It is said and I believe it from the literature I read that a goodly portion of soldiers in World War one died just from lack of Modern-day IV fluids and electrolyte and replacements mustard burns are said not to have The severe fluid requirements that a thermal burn does those of you who know have treated He said know that thermal burns take massive amount of fluids Well mustard burns require a lot of fluids But they're not supposed to require the massive amounts of a thermal burn But they do require good IV fluids and electrolyte replacement I Again, it's supportive. There's two things. I want to point out here With a mustard eye injury you want to grease the rims of the eyelid, you know with ophthalmologic ointment antibiotic I ointment Vaseline if that's all you got but you want to keep the rims lubricate and the reason being is that Conjunctivitis is going to produce pus polys. It'll probably be sterile pus But if the eyelid is stuck together from the edema the swelling and held together and that pus doesn't drain out a Sterile abscess just destroys tissue, you know polys produce peroxide so you want that lid To be open and draining, you know so they can it doesn't get trapped behind here This other point here topical steroids in the eye, you know This is a chemical type burn and I've talked to lots of ophthalmologists and every one of them have always told me They would use topical steroids in this injury. We do not have the laboratory data to prove whether this is beneficial or not, but I Would let it be the call the ophthalmologist There are instances obviously if there's secondary infection you don't want to be using a topical steroid alone Also, if the injury is too severe if the the integrity of the globe is breached Putting steroids in the eye and they go straight in can cause, you know, glaucoma problems And so I would buy in large right now Leave it up to the ophthalmologist, but it could be a very important part of their treatment Sunglasses causes photophobia. It was the first use for photophobia or sunglasses a mustard World War one You can you can use topical anesthetics in a couple of situations. I Could envision and I sometimes address this as it passed it by I can envision a casually coming in being Semi hysterical and a lot of pain and you would need topical anesthetics just to get them under control so you could examine them That's one appropriate use Another one would be as I said, so you or the ophthalmologist could examine them topical anesthetics How many have ever had a coronal coronial abrasion? It hurts doesn't it I had one and my friend Ophthalmologist says here.  You probably could do yourself more damage while you don't feel anything and guess what in five minutes It's right back it doesn't you know you this doesn't work long enough to do squat Okay All everything we know bronchodilators the steroids here are for bronchospasm. They're not for anti-inflammatory There's no indication that we have that it will knock out the inflammation. It's for bronchospasm Atropine this is not like a nerve agent. This is like a preoperative dosage like for Cramping and diarrhea like point three milligrams That's what this would be for for nausea vomiting Diarrhea if you have a co-energic or GI effects of Bustard and we've talked the fluid and electrolyte replacement You know we're talking a lot of World War one data in Iran a rock war because we had we personally Haven't had mustard thrown at us on a modern-day battlefield, and I'm very grateful So we're talking about historical data animal data, etc. I Will bet you dollars to doughnuts that in a modern battlefield if we weren't overwhelmed It wasn't a true mass casualty scenario, and you can get people back to a tertiary medical facility These people that would have died I bet we can save a lot of them, and we'd save them with transfusions, okay We get any there's marrow transplants that work nowadays. We may be able to do hormonal stimulation of the bone marrow erythropo eatin anabolic steroids There some of these things may work and even just reverse isolation techniques to help with the Bottom falling out of the bone marrow It's mustard a cards carcinogen you bet You know there's been a lot of talk about Gulf War illness and what does this and that mustard is absolutely a carcinogen anamutagen there is no evidence to date of Reproductive toxicity in humans there is some animal data of reproductive toxicity And I know there was show on television recently about the Kurds, which I didn't see and it suggested They they may be bothered by report 60 minutes But I didn't get to see that But I'm not going to argue the issue one way or another Chronic exposure does it cause cancer in chronic exposure? Absolutely There's good clear data and people who have been factory workers in the manufacture of mustard who got bronchial cancers, okay? Chronic bronchitis and emphysema We don't know and I'll tell you why because they were primed the best work was done by the British in after World War one and They had about 12% or so of soldiers that ended up with chronic bronchitis emphysema But they were smokers the air in England at that time was Very polluted from burning coal with sulfur in it and also these soldiers that also had a chronic lung Bronchial infection that had to heal without antibiotics. So they had very scarred Bronchi, okay, so they did end up with chronic bronchitis and emphysema. So you can't clearly say what caused what but I Won't bet against it Acutely one or two exposures of no evidence that mustard causes cancer chronic eye problems Absolutely, okay, you get eye damage and stuff you get chronic eye problems a Very, you know low percentage Lewis site captain Lewis World War one that was captain from the US by the way He's never been used except possibly by the Japanese against China leading up the World War two No other known use sparse data on it. It is very similar to mustard with some significant differences Mustard freezes 57 58 the Lewis site freezes and zero Guess what happens when you mix mustard and Lewis site together Drops the freezing point down around zero Where were we gonna? Where did we think World War three would be fought? Europe where it would frequently be low be below those temperatures who had has Lots and lots of mustard Lewis site mixtures You got it. This is the former Soviet Union in it and they still got it Heavier in air heavier water.  We don't know that Lewis site is carcinogenic But we know that arsenic is certainly a carcinogen the exact mechanism of action of Lewis site is unknown, but the primary pulmonary Lesion in Lewis site is like that of mustard. It is necrosis to the bronchial epithelium, okay? But the exact mechanism is unknown eyes Airways skin just like mustard is primary epithelial targets, but look right here. Here's a new one Lewis site damages capillaries. I didn't say anything about capillaries with mustard Lewis site damages capillaries and causes leakage This is said to be a Lewis site blister that you need to remember that is different from mustard. It damages capillaries Causes leakages. Yes, sir a question. How would these be would these be toyed by being packed into munitions get him on the can Would they be um sprayed and just left in the local area? Say your question again I said sir would these be packed what kind of munitions would they be packed into would they be sprayed on or would they be put like an artillery shells Yes, yes This class is starting to pick up you guys are flat you guys are flat. Yes, this is what I like You can deliver this stuff anyway, it can be sprayed most commonly it is blown up Okay, it was either dropped out of airplanes in an explosive thing and you get an aerosol You know the droplets that then can go on the vaporized, okay? That's pretty good. I like that Lewis I cause immediate pain, okay Mustard you got to the late of it immediate pain in five minutes you're getting tissue necrosis big difference, okay big difference blisters Said to cause more necrosis and mustard to the fact is we have very little experience with this because it's never been used on The modern battlefield very similar to mustard, okay? Except it's going to be immediate Same as for mustard Aha Remember I dwelled on the capillaries one mechanism action away. Lewis. I can take you out Is pulmonary edema and death your capillaries?  Lewis. I can do that in the lung aha There is a specific antidote for Lewis site unlike mustard which is totally supportive in World War one they came up with British Anti-Lewis site bow or dimer cap roll most time you think you know British anti-Lewis site bow BAL specific antidote against Lewis site remember. I told you arsenic is in the molecule Lewis site Bow is a heavy metal metal key later it key lights up Lewis site and it does work It's also used in other heavy metal poisonings, okay? It comes in all three forms topical ophthalmologic and systemic Don't even memorize this if I ever have to use this I'm gonna go to a little handbook and look up the mounts, but this is there are directions for using it You ever heard that the treatments as bad as the cure? Well, there are side effects to bow. They're not show stoppers, but It's kind of stuff if you didn't have to take it you'd rather not Fosgene oxyme I thought when I took this course a hundred years ago It wasn't bad enough. There were so many names and symbols They had to go have one called Fosgene and one called Fosgene oxyme.  They got its stock piled. Okay, the former Soviet Union and they still got it It's a very corrosive substance while Fosgene is only a lung amp agent has no effects on the skin Fosgene oxyme is a a corrosive Epithelial agent, but obviously if you get this in the lungs it also is a pulmonary agent management There's no magic bullet. It's everything, you know just like mustard totally supportive I would tell you though that with any any liquid agents and We're talking about Veskins now today, but with any liquid agents. What's the number one thing you do if you can? Decontamination, okay, don't forget that you'll see it again This is a mini pickup truck from Saudi. Okay, and those are camels. That's those are camels And the question is this is your test question. I promised you How many camels can ride in the mini back of a mini pickup truck? One wrong answer the answer was two You just kept going up. You'd eventually hit it, right? There's three okay three back there one's facing out this way one's facing right at me and no one's facing out that way and I never cease to be amazed and Saudi This is this is not even a long bed mini This is one of the little me and it's three big camels sitting in the back of that truck happy as larks That's right. I don't and you saw I mean you can ask anybody else there If they didn't they saw this too, and I guess this just goes to show that Camels are rather right a mile than walk a mile Questions sir could you mention anything about the topical skin protects skin protectants that are yes We have developed a topical skin protectant here As all kind of side stories I can tell on this But I'm already over and if you gab grab me at the break I can give you a color commentary on these But we have a skin protectant that's in advanced development, and it's made from a commercial oil We had to get the right texture and it's got these particles in it They're actually Teflon particles and you got to get the right mix and it protects You can put it on your skin in closure areas, and it will increase your protection on the bare skin to agents up to like four five six hours and Envision to be put in the closure areas, okay the Institute and Colonel little will talk to this at the end of the course We always bring me because we'd like you to know we don't touch on all the neat things of stuff That's going on here for the future, but there are there's Lots of ideas for better protection down the line We also work on a second generation of what is called a reactive topical skin protectant Where and we're trying a lot of different things, but they took the regular Topical skin protectant that's already in advanced development And one thing we did in World War two they were experimenting with all these topical protectants And I brought some 80 year old scientist up here who is a guy in inventus s3 30 in World War two He's still alive PhD sharp as a tank. We took his old Material s3 30 put it in the new topical skin protectant and it doubled the time of the current one and it's reactive destroyed So they're working on you know that may not ever be the The second generation, but we got lots of good leads, okay? Yes, do any of the agents of the other agents to stay in the vesicles No, not to my knowledge now reason I made a point of Bringing that out is There are crackpots around the world that publish all kind of things and every few years Somebody will come up with my record and say aha We found live mustard and a blister fluid that has been tested over and over again That's not true. Okay, and I don't want and I'm not aware that any of the other ones would stick around They react too fast. They're gonna damage tissue. I mean It doesn't even make sense that they would still be there. Okay


The Ministry of Health and Wellness is cautioning that St. Lucia is still in a critical position as it relates to the coronavirus. The country remains vulnerable to the introduction of COVID-19 and variants of concern from the developed countries and neighbouring Martinique and transmission in country due to inconsistent compliance to protocols. Chief Medical Officer Dr Sharon Belmar George noted an increase in the social activities across the island, especially on weekends, and a general relaxation of the public health measures. We continue to advise the public to remain vigilant and adhere to the protocols that are put in place to keep us safe. These include regular hand washing, the use of the face mask in public places covering the mouth, nose and chin, avoiding crowds and people with respiratory symptoms, and keeping frequently touched surfaces clean. We are privileged to have access to vaccines in the COVID-19 fight. Vaccination remains the most effective public health measure in managing infectious diseases. The AstraZeneca vaccine has been proven to be safe and effective in protecting people from developing COVID-19 in severe forms, complications, hospitalisations and death. We continue to urge the public to access the various sites to get immunised at the soonest. The vaccine is available free of charge to the public at many venues on a daily basis. The Ministry of Health and Wellness continues to manage COVID-19 cases in country, collaborating with various ministries to ensure the safety of the public as the country strives to return to a state of normalcy. As of the 31st of May 2021, the island has recorded a total of 5,072 COVID-19 cases. 185 of those cases were recorded over the last 40 days with the majority of cases in the southern region of the island and in the north in Barbado and Grosile. We continue to manage numerous outbreaks emanating from local bars. The Ministry of Health and Wellness continues to support and collaborate with the Ministry of Education in the safe reopening of schools and is pleased with the progress for the last month. The school administration and teachers are encouraged to continue working with the students to ensure a safe educational environment is maintained at all times. The continued diagnosis of cases noted is of concern to the Ministry of Health and Wellness as we continue strengthening the necessary public health systems to manage at this point. The Ministry of Health and Wellness is encouraging the public to get immunised so that everyone can be protected. The vaccination campaign continues on Wednesday, June 2 at the VG Sports Complex and then remithers preschool and on Friday, June 4 at the Darren-Sarmi Cricket Grounds, Jackmill Wellness Centre and VG Sports Complex.