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Wednesday, February 22, 2023

ANTH281.1001--Communicative practices of Las Vegas casino workers--UNR, SPRING, 2023


Anthropology 281.1001: Research Assignment: University of Nevada, Reno, Spring 2023


Communicative practices of Las Vegas casino workers:

1. Describe the linguistic and ethnographic considerations for the project

     In order to get an idea of the breakdown of casino employees by demographics, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) page was examined. This is helpful not just for the particular employment of the individuals, but for backgrounds as well. Categories include but are not limited to gambling dealers (39-3011), slot mechanics, bartenders (35-3011), cocktail waitresses (35-3031) , restaurant employees, housekeeping (37-2012), security guards (33-9032), and upper management. The numbers in parentheses represent the BLS occupational codes. Apparent from this data is that close ethnographic scrutiny will be dependent on a number of factors, due to a crossover effect.  

     Cocktail waitresses may work in several venues of the casino such as the main floor, restaurants, showrooms, and lounges where interaction between customers and employees of each venue may be remarkably different. This could add to, but also take away from getting accurate data on the interaction. By contrast, other employees such as bartenders, barbacks, change booths, cashiers cages, gambling tables and pit bosses may have a more static assignment in the casino. Interaction between coworkers may be lessened to a greater degree than that with customers. Housekeeping, room cleaners would have a greater interaction with their own staff and less with customers. Restaurant employees would have somewhere in between an equal balance in contact with both coworkers and diners, except possibly those in the scullery, dishwashers. 

     The first part of the ethnographic study, then, would be to design a scenario that would maximize interaction in the target research. Since it is casino oriented, housekeeping and restaurant would not be as ideal as the gambling tables, poker rooms and sports books. A glossary of casino slang would be helpful to get a background of what to expect in the language shortcuts used by the various actors, and can be found at Casino.org “Gambling Terms and Glossary Guide.” Of course, this is more or less an official, or prescriptive approach, not necessarily descriptive where individual employees, depending on their backgrounds, have developed their own casino lingo using terms relevant to their ethnicity: “code switching.” 

     “Experience everything you love about Paris, right in the heart of the Strip.” What better place to create an ethnographic research project than Paris Las Vegas. This particular casino was selected for its appeal to not just foreign clientele, but to workforce diversity as well. Its exterior, with a mini-Eiffel Tower and other iconic landmarks of the capital of France, creates a cultural aura on the Vegas strip unparalleled by other establishments. It therefore offers the possibility of that very cultural diversity unique to Europe and a challenge to the ethnographer looking to research its appeal and linguistic variation not just to tourists, but to its employees.

     The casino boasts 130 gaming tables and 1,700 slot machines. The tables offer blackjack, roulette and craps. The Race and Sportsbook has not just professional athletics but horse racing as well. One room offers Pai-Gow Poker. Fueling this enterprise is spirits, drinks, and the interaction between bartenders, barbacks and cocktail waitresses is rivaled only by activity in the restaurants. It is here that a great deal of ethnic and linguistic diversity, non-prescriptive grammar, signal and symbol shortcuts and shorthand will be found in quality, and quantity. 

2. Generate 3 research questions:

a.) What is the most common drink that creates confusion not just between the customer and the employee, but between employees themselves?

b.) How much shorthand/invented language goes into the drink order from a large party at a gaming table? Please provide examples.

c.) What are some of the linguistic requirements for a position as cocktail waitress or bartender at Paris Las Vegas? Is fluency in a second language necessary, and if so, which one? What are the common second languages of the employees in the Food and Beverage Department?

3. What methods will you use to answer these questions? And specifically, what kind of data will you collect to analyze?

a.) Interview: The most direct method is to ask questions. In the hustle and bustle of the casino environment, employees have little time to chat about their jobs, their feelings and discourse with those in their surroundings. In addition, management may frown upon someone asking too many questions.

b.) Observation: This includes both watching and hearing what’s going on in the surroundings. An ideal method is to sit close to the cocktail station at the bar where all kinds of information in the interchange between the waitresses and bartenders can be recorded; there are also house telephones located near those stations.

c.) Data: Looking for abbreviated terms, linguistic shortcuts, unintelligible chatter among the staff will establish the indispensable bartender-busboy-waitress lexicon that keeps the drinks flowing to the customers. Comparing that to the downtime between the rushes will contribute to that particular culture and how it operates effectively under all conditions.  

4. What ethical considerations with your project must you consider? How will you account for these ethical issues?

     Scott Roeben gives pointers on how to take photos, videos and audios in casinos. It’s not illegal but it can certainly create problems for the ethnographer in getting accurate statements from employees. Surveillance systems and security personnel are constantly observing clientele for any and all violations of casino policy; not just for the sake of security, but Nevada gaming laws as well. Clearing the project with management might be the best approach but there’s no guarantee that it will give desired results. Spontaneity is always more desirable for a field study; prepared, rehearsed responses remove a great deal of authenticity to the results.  Employees can be suspicious of interviews and observations for a number of reasons. Bartenders and cocktail waitresses might suspect that someone making inquiries about their activities is from the IRS looking to investigate unreported tips. Discretion and consideration for employees needed in the research project is the number one priority. 

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Tuesday, November 30, 2021

PANDEMIC--The Fort Detrick Connection---FROM AIDS TO COVID-19

 

Saturday, July 24, 2021

#PANDEMIC--The Fort Detrick Connection---FROM AIDS TO COVID-19

IMMEDREL//ATTN"CD@TCNET/VIA/JC/CMD-CTRL--//EOC//UNCLSF/FOIA//


     (The Lab)-- "No long range ill effects from vaccinations have been found so far, but doctors won't be sure until they contact about 1,000 more  former employees at Fort Detrick as a follow-up study of the Army's germ warfare experiments." 1


     Under the headline "Ft. Detrick workers sought for germ warfare followup," the article was published in the (Hanover, PA) Evening Sun in 1980.  "Laboratory workers, contractors and tradesmen" were immunized, but the National Cancer Institute (NCI) was in the process of looking for about 3,000 total and at the time the search was only 66 percent complete, according to Dr. Thomas Mason, head of the study. "We don't want to frighten anyone," Mason said, but considering today's ongoing existential war against the coronavirus pandemic, a closer look at the Fort Detrick history  is in order. 
    A few months later, an FOIA expose by the Church of Scientology revealed that Fort Detrick's Special Ops Division had secretly sprayed a "harmless simulant agent" into gratings above New York City subways in early summer, 1966 to test the effects of scattering as a possible bioweapons tactic.  The report also stated the Army tossed light bulbs of the agent from moving trains for a more effective pattern;
     "In 1966, one Charles Senseney, a project engineer with the Department of Defense, spent two weeks flinging bulbs of simulated poisons in front of New York City subway trains." (2)


In May, 1980, Robert Cooke warned in The Boston Globe the possibility of less-than-safe conditions at labs conducting genetic experiments;
     "Instead of taking elaborate--and some argue unnecessary-- precautions to guard against escape of newly altered organisms, most of the work is now being done in ordinary laboratories under relatively normal conditions." (3)
A photo included in the article shows workers at the Army base conducting research without the least bit of biosafety measures. 
     When an animal caretaker at a Reston, Virginia lab was exposed to Ebola tainted monkeys in 1989, a decontamination unit was called in to disinfect the cages. (4)  As for the recent reference to "The Big Lie," it is worth noting that Patrick Buchanan used the phrase back in 1989 in his Pittsburgh Press column;
     "Under glasnost, the propaganda of hatred against the United States continues. Soviet newspapers continue to promote the Big Lie that AIDS was invented at Fort Detrick, Md., as a weapon in biological warfare." (5)

The HIV-from-Fort-Detrick myth--

     The allegation that AIDS was lab engineered was engineered by an East Berlin biologist, Jacob (Jakob) Segal as reported in the Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice;
     "The first suggestion that AIDS was made in America goes as far back as 1983 when it appeared in an Indian newspaper and was largely ignored...the suggestion reappeared in October last year in more damaging form in the Soviet magazine Literaturnaya Gazeta in the fall of 1985... Jacob Segal, described as a retired director of the Institute of Biology at an East Berlin university, was quoted by the Express as saying AIDS 'escaped ' from a secret US laboratory at Fort Detrick in Maryland. " (6)
The Indian newspaper where the story first appeared was the New Delhi Patriot. (6A, see also Addendum)
     The Ukiah Daily Journal reported in 1987 that the story was originally planted in the Indian newspaper by the Soviet propaganda tool Novosti. (7) It was flatly rejected by the U.S. government. However, that same year, Uganda's Minister of Health, Samuel I. Okware, asked;
     "If Africa was the original source of AIDS, how come Europe, which has so much social interaction with Africa, has fewer problems very remote to Africa, like the United States..." (8)
Okware's statement was in reference to the HIV epidemic prevalent in America in homosexuals, Haitians and African-Americans. 
     As for the original proponent of the theory, Jacob Segal, a detailed report on the biologist was published in The Baltimore Sun by Ian Johnson in 1992.  (9)


     With respect to Segal's allegation that AIDS "escaped," Jill Jonnes added;
     "In spite of such precautions, however, there have been more than a thousand accidents connected with biowarfare research at Fort Detrick, and three deaths. "(2)

    According to the Sun article, Segal's original theory was that AIDS was found in Icelandic sheep, which by extrapolating backward from his initial research in 1986, the HIV virus in humans was the same as sheep in 1978.  Perhaps one of the most revealing aspects of Segal's influence, accidental or otherwise, generated by the theory, is found in "Disinformation Squared," (See Addendum;) 

     "This extraordinary document (Segal's allegation), written from within the East Berlin Administration of the Ministry of State Security, showed 'everyone' guessing that powerful figures in the East German Communist Party were protecting an eccentric biologist while he embarrassed - practically sabotaged - their country." (Page 69)
     
The Coronavirus-from-Wuhan-lab theory--

In much the same way Segal's HIV-from-Fort-Detrick myth gained momentum, the timeline of the COVID-19 origin at the Chinese laboratory was similar. According to Jack Brewster reporting in a  Forbes timeline, the first to raise the Detrick connection was found in a Washington Times article by Bill Gertz where Dany Shoham is mentioned. (11) Shoham, a former Israeli intel specialist, first surfaced in 2002 calling out Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons program; real or otherwise didn't seem to matter. (12) Shoham's claim was followed up by Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR). (12) The Forbes timeline ended in May, 2020 but wasn't lost on Congress and the media. Last week, in a heated exchange between Dr. Fauci of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), each accused the other of lying about the origin and funding for coronavirus research at the lab. (13) It is clear from the HIV-from-Fort-Detrick myth that a great deal of political support is being given to the Wuhan myth for political "gain-of-function."  The political environment ignores the concept of viral jumping--from animal (bat, civet) to primate--as a weak explanation for the cause of the disease.

The Coronavirus-from-Fort-Detrick theory--

     Countering the charge that Wuhan lab was responsible, China's The Global Times responded with a long rebuttal of the Wuhan theory and suggested Fort Detrick was the origin; 

     " Combing through more than 8,000 pieces of news reports related to the lab-leak theory, the Global Times found that as many as 60 percent of the coverage was from the US alone." (14)

     In what appears to be collusion between the U.S. government and Western media, another "disinformation squared" effort is underway. Still, Global Times had no explanation for the viral jumping phenomenon, the principal method of spreading of the pathogen to humans. The Global Times compared the effort to affix blame on Wuhan similar to that of the Saddam Hussein nuclear weapon deception; instead of using the more convincing argument of the HIV-from-Fort-Detrick myth. Clearly that would have undermined the Times' own propaganda agenda. If there is insufficient evidence to fix the blame on Wuhan, insufficient evidence exists as well in Fort Detrick theory. 

Preponderance-of-coincidences--

The Disinformation Squared paper refers to a "preponderance-of-coincidences." (page 21)   But there is little evidence to support the lab as the kickoff point. Funding by the U.S government granted to the lab is meaningless; it doesn't point to some ulterior, evil motive as suggested by the demagogues in Congress. The first suspected clusters were reported in Wuhan; certainly the Chinese government would not test out its secret new bioweapon on its own population. The source would have to be external, and already in a transmissible form so that "jumping" could be readily achieved, if, of course, the virus was engineered. Even then, the role of coincidence, no matter how many in sequence, does not verify a claim without strong supporting evidence. 
     On a final note: the concept that the virus "escaped" from a lab, any lab, is nonsense. It doesn't have wings or feet; it was either carried out, floated out or flushed out, either by accident or by intentional design. The focus needs to be on that as a motive to find the origin.
     
Cited
1.) Staff, "Ft. Detrick workers sought for germ warfare followup," The Hanover Evening Sun, 19 February 1980, Page B1.
2.) Jonnes, J., "Biowarfare: the U.S. record," The Record (Hackensack, NJ), 04 February 1979, Page E1.
3.) Cooke, R., "Relaxed rules spur on the geneticists," The Boston Globe, 04 May 1980, Page A1.
4.) Engelman, R., "Deadly virus found in lab monkeys," The Fresno Bee, 09 Dec 1989, Page A10.
5.) Buchanan, P., "Glasnost can't fix closed Soviet ways," The Pittsburgh Press, 01 December 1987, Page B3.
6.) Staff, "Soviets make AIDS a propaganda issue," Wilkes-Barre Citizens' Voice, 27 December 1986, Page 16.
6A.) Cockburn, M., "No, AIDS virus was not a big Pentagon plot," The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 July 1987, Page 3.
7.) Editorial, "Blatant Propaganda," Ukiah Daily Journal, 17 November 1987, Page 4.
8.) Hale., E., "AIDS rumored to come from CIA, American clothes, witchcraft...," NY Press and Sun- Bulletin, 12 October 1987, Page 10A
10.) n/a
12.) Zacharia, "A Stealth bomber: what Israel fears about Saddam," The Miami Herald, 25 August 2002, Page 5C.

Addendum- Geissler, Erhard, and Robert Hunt Sprinkle. “Disinformation Squared: Was the HIV-from-Fort-Detrick Myth a Stasi Success?” Politics and the Life Sciences, vol. 32, no. 2, 2013, pp. 2–99. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43287281. Accessed 25 July 2021. 

 NBACC image, 
National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center (NBACC) Photos | Homeland Security (dhs.gov)


 James C. L'Angelle
University of Nevada, Reno
Undergraduate, College of Liberal Arts, Fall 2021
NYU, Social Media Studies, Fall 2021

Pvt. "JC" L'Angelle,  27th Marines
China Beach, DaNang, 1968
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