King's Pool, Okavango Delta, Botswana

      A knock.  Then another, more insistent.  Good morning! we yell from under mosquito netting, across the room out of a movie set, and through the carved-wood door to make it go away.  (Is there any luxury greater than luxury where it’s least expected?)  We dress quickly in layers – T-shirt, sweater, jacket -- all to be peeled off in a few hours when the sun begins to bake away the cold desert night, grab the flashlight and hurry over raised planks to sleepy coffee and our morning safari.     
      But already this is wrong: a landscape with people in it, though all landscapes have people, if they’re to be described.  A conundrum of travel writ large in this vast preserve in northern Botswana, the world’s largest inland delta, we’re told and tell repeatedly, as if we know what that means beyond the flat expanse of dirt and waterways we can see from our land rover.  It’s the animals’ livingroom, and we’re here on sufferance.
      And yet they pose, as if for the easel, in chiaroscuros of wildebeest and zebra, with a stubby warthog snuffling in the foreground.  (Warthogs are born with calloused front knees so they can kneel more easily to graze: another factoid to learn in this crash course on a world where I know nothing.)  Impala leap insouciantly across the track, as a giraffe in the distance stretches its improbable neck to nibble the topmost, tender-most leaves of a rain tree.  We’re on the lookout for lion and leopard, but the other animals will scatter at their scent before our eyes can catch up.  Elephants too disturb the peace, pull up whole trees with their trunks, leave landscapes of destruction.  No one messes with an elephant, except maybe a crocodile. 
      Morning smells baked and new (evening is a mix of wild basil, elephant dung and bug repellant) and in the moment before the sun pops like a champagne cork over the horizon, the light shimmers so golden I long to touch it.
     This is the closest I’ll ever come to the beginning of time.

more on SGLI v Pru

Lucey v Prudential made it to the next round as the court took a step in the right direction and recognized it as a valid class action.  In the logic of business, Prudential probably believes it makes more sense to to fight than to admit to rapacity, but in all other universes, they're on ground about as solid as that of Japan's nuclear plants.  I assume the Lucey et al lawyers are hoping for negotiations and maybe they're already underway.

Talk about burying the lead!

     It took nearly 17 months and a 7-page letter for the Dept. of Homeland Security to determine that I really am a journalist and am entitled to a fee waver on my FOIA requests.  (Actually, the Coast Guard, who seems to be pinch hitting for DHS, issued the decision.)  The determination came halfway down the third page of the letter, embedded in stultifying prose.  Most of the rest of it was quoting long passages of my appeal letter back to me.  Not that DHS ever sent me anything of use, but all FOIA roads seem to lead there (requests to other agencies were forwarded or documents were vetted) so I thought I'd better establish my bona fides.   Then, in the same day's mail, I received official notification that my appeal to the Marines would be taken in the order in which it was received.  (I'd like a dozen bagels and a danish?)  And, by the way, they had no idea when that would be. 

shoutout for a century of women (only a century?)

Marion McDonald (whom I don't know) replied to all us recipients of Margaret Randall's annual Women's Day greeting by noting that today, March 8, 2011, is the 100th anniversary of International Women's Day. 

She writes: "The day was agreed to at the first-ever international women's conference in Copenhagen in 1910 at a meeting in which Clara Zetkin, among others, provided leadership.  The first commemoration was the following March, on March 19, 1911--just days before the Triangle Shirtwaist fire on March 25, 2011, in which over 140 women died from smoke inhalation, fire, or falling to their deaths as they tried to escape the horror. The bosses had locked the doors of the factory, knowing that the women were organizing to improve their conditions. The shirtwaist workers' deaths galvanized support for women workers in New York City and the world."


So a happy day, women the world 'round.  Not sure how one celebrates, but I do wonder: Does having a women's day imply that every other day of the year is a men's day?

FOIA redux

So I requested info from the Marines through FOIA -- this was last October -- and a couple of months later, got a CD of personnel files about 2 ex-Marines with anything that might be mildly interesting blacked out.  I've been told by a high-ranking officer that you're never an ex-Marine and I don't think I should have unfettered access to someone else's personnel file, but the accompanying letter went on to explain that I was being denied any information about a 2007 separation hearing for Adam Kokesh, one of the veterans I'm writing about, because even to acknowledge that such records exist would "constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of that member's personal privacy."  Also, he wasn't important enough to be "of sufficient public interest to outweigh" his privacy interest.

Okay.  How about that Adam waived his privacy rights at the hearing precisely so it could be covered by the press?  Or that my cursory Lexis Nexis search came up with at least 100 stories about the hearing and events leading up to it?  Or that the hearing had to do with downgrading his discharge status because he was participating in antiwar activities, purportedly while wearing his uniform, after he had completed the active-duty portion of his contract and was on the inactive roster?  Or that the national commander of the WFW (with 2.4 million members) made a public statement in support of Adam’s First Amendment rights?

All together now: Can we say, "embarrassing"?

So, just within the 60-day window to appeal that decision, I did.  Adam, adamant that he wanted this info made public, wrote a letter of consent to release the documents to me; his lawyer suggested a list of specific records I should request; and in my neat little bundle, I included a page of 20-odd headlines about the case.  The Marines (who come under the Navy Dept. in the bureaucracy) are supposed to reply within 20 days, though all they have to do by then is say they're on the case.  After that, who knows?  But I too am adamant that, not only the information, but the process of obtaining it, should be made public, so I'll keep posting.

U.S. military as hotbed of radical education?

"The Tillman Story," a documentary about the cover-up of the friendly-fire killing of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan in 2004 notes in passing that he read Noam Chomsky, as have dozens of the soldiers and veterans I've interviewed over the past 5 years.  Noam Chomsky -- hardly an easy read, but nonetheless passed around the barracks and discussed -- may well be more formative in the army than on college campuses these days.  I can only begin to imagine what difference that could make for the future of our country.  (I write this as the Egyptian army (who, in contrast to our professional military, are mostly conscripts drawn from a cross-section of the country's classes & political allegiances) has so far refrained from repressing the popular anti-government uprising.)

"the 22-year-old loner"

In America, assassins and mass murderers come in 2 flavors: weirder than shit or that nice boy next door (but, of course, never with political motives or ideological connections we would do well to examine, though there's evidence every day that it's possible to be crazy and influenced by politics).

Mom's the word

Is anyone else as sick of the cult of Momism as I am?  Just wondering....  And plan to write more about it soon, because you can't spit without hitting a story about childbearing, child raising, child yearning,  breast feeding, child feeding, and the ego feeding of the me-me-me-me-mom who either wouldn't be complete without her young 'un or flaunts what a bad mother -- excuse me, mom -- she is because, well, because she wouldn't be complete without her young 'un (who -- surprise! -- can drive her nuts).

And now, God help us, we have "Tiger Mother" (points for 'mother' over 'mom') who, if nothing else, knows her PR.    I haven't read her book and limit my intake of the spate of commentary on it, but she seems to share a belief with other uber-moms that they can build a better child -- and live to write about it.

The money hole of Iraq-Afghanistan

The total cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 to the present: $1.125 trillion.

(The  National Priorities Project Cost of War site breaks that down all sorts of ways -- per person or taxpayer in the U.S., per state, per city.  Ashfield, the tiny town I once lived in in western Massachusetts -- pop. about 1,800 -- is in for $9.4 million.)

Imagine what else we could have done with that money!  I mean it: let's imagine.

not even a thousand?

WashPo's Dana Priest has once again done excellent work on digging into the spook world, including the tidbit that Homeland Security doesn't even know how much it's spent on state fusion centers, which were set up to prevent terrorists from slipping through the intelligence cracks (apparently large enough to drive a jet through).  What can be counted, kind of, are the government organizations at all levels which have been created, or shifted, to do counterterrorism work, since 9/11: 935.  "At least," says the article.

No comment

"I don't want to have any Marines that I'm visiting at Bethesda [Naval Medical Center] with no legs to be the result of any type of distraction."  Commandant General James Amos, on why he opposes dumping Don't Ask Don't Tell

In freedom's way

I’ve been sending out Freedom of Information Requests for the past 18 months to find out how much and what kind of information the government is keeping on Iraq Veterans Against the War.  Having come of age in the Vietnam era, I assume surveillance, if only  as a matter of course.  I haven’t gotten much back, but I’ve learned a few things so far:

- Everything seems to be going through Homeland Security.  That’s where my requests to the Army, FBI, and Secret Service ended up or got cleared (or not) for release. 

- Govt agencies don’t give up much.  What I’ve gotten usually consists of multiple blacked-out pages – redacted is the official term – with one legible paragraph or a reprint of a news article.  I imagine some poor slob sitting in a tiny, windowless room, fingers permanently stained with black Magic Marker from scratching over line after line of type.  Talk about death of the soul.  But said poor slob is very good; I can’t read what’s been blacked out, even when I hold it up to the light. 

- It takes a long time.  Agencies are supposed to reply within 20 work days and they usually do send a letter telling you they're working on it within that time frame.  It takes a lot longer to get the info, however.  Then there's my request as a journalist for a fee waiver.  DHS denied it in July 2009.  I appealed a month later.  After I emailed them in Feb. 2010, asking for an update, I was informed that they take these things in the order received and I was #497 out of 551 appeals.  I’m still waiting.

- The most material came from what’s known as a fusion center in Maryland.  Fusion centers aren’t physical places; they’re systems for sharing information among law enforcement agencies which were put in place post 9/11, and they’re nigh unto impossible to crack.  My break came when someone put me in touch with a U.S. attorney, who, I think, wanted to prove to me that he really was a friend of the First Amendment.  I sent him a FOIA request and got back a fat packet, including a 42-page compilation of intelligence reports.  It was all redacted, except for a reprint of a WashPo story about an upcoming antiwar march (2 pages).

- Which brings me to perhaps the only surprise I’ve found: It’s possible that Homeland Security has a sense of humor.  The 42 pager, titled, Virtual Roll Call, features on its cover the quotation, “We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know.”  That's attributed to Unknown.

Wikileaks and Gossip Grrrls

Does it strike anyone else that the coverage of diplomatic cables on WikiLeaks is much more about their content than the two prior caches covering the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan?  U.S. reporting on those centered on how eggregious the leaks were, how mendacious Assange was to hide behind the mantle of journalism (and, by the way, he may be a rapist), and how maladjusted prime-suspect leaker, Bradley Manning is.  Not a whole bunch on what the docs told us about what American forces are doing in those countries or what the bits and pieces add up to.  In fact, pretty good avoidance of anything like that.

Now, we're getting all the juicy chatter, gossip and snarkiness among  statesmen, which (forgive me, fellow free speechites) -- I'm not at all sure we need to know.  Yes, bureaucrats classify way too much stuff by reflex or laziness or desire to avoid embarrassment and, yes, much of what the government keeps secret doesn't need to be.  I haven't read this WikiLeaks dump in detail (don't you wonder who has?), but it's a safe bet that some of the information there should see the light of day, if only as a disinfectant.  (Further evidence of rot in the Afghanistan government comes readily to mind.) Secrecy allows governments to cover their asses, which in turn, allows for corruption.  I'm not convinced, as Charlie Sennott argues on Global Post, that exposing the cables will lead to less transparency, at least not in the long run. 

But I buy the argument that diplomacy is a work in progress and that confidentiality needs to be honored to some degree for negotiations to go forward. Besides, what are we really finding out here?  That some diplomat thinks Sarkozy is an arrogant prick?  Amusing, but not particularly enlightening, And is it really news that we piss Canadians off?

It is juicy and amusing and easy to digest and get indignant about.  Like, as opposed to stuff we need to get informed and indignant about.  So my complaint is that this new collection of leaks has given us the excuse to change the subject -- and change it from a subject that we need to talk about more (and, incidentally, that we could actually do something about).

I used to know a theatre costume designer who claimed that when she wrote her autobiography, she'd call it, "If the Song Doesn't Work, Change the Dress."  I vote for a change of key, not of wardrobe.

update on Prudential and military beneficiaries

The day my story (below) ran in the Boston Globe, the judge referred the lawsuit for discovery, an early but significant step in the litigation process.  Meanwhile, David Evans at Bloomberg News (with the help, no doubt of Paul Sullivan at Veterans for Common Sense) continued to do his own discovery and it wasn't pretty.  In September, he reported that the deal between Pru and the VA was sealed with a handshake until last year, when it was finally put in writing, as the law requires, and that beneficiaries will be able to get a real lump sum payment now; i.e. a check, rather than a promise.  That development, coming so quickly after the bad press, implies that the VA knew all was not well.  Sullivan gave me indications that the VA and Prudential were very cozy, a separate vector that didn't make it into my story because of space limits.

Then, on Halloween (significant?), I got an email from Cristobal Bonifaz, one of the lawyers for the case, with the teaser that something very significant was about to happen, stay tuned.
     "Something good?"  I emailed back.
     "Very good," came the reply.
The next morning, the American Legion, an organization whose 2.5 mil. members should be too numerous to ignore (not to mention that it's the American Legion, for god & country's sake!) filed a friend of the court brief in support of the lawsuit.

Case No. 3:10-CV-30163-MAP in U.S. District Court for Western Massachusetts

I'm not in favor of censorship, but

This listings that were here have migrated to their own site.  Please visit.  The door's always open.