the new york times on private contractors in iraq

the subject of private security contractors in iraq received relatively little attention from the press for quite some time, either because it was too difficult a subject to take on, or the media simply hadn't realized how large of a role private entities had begun playing in the defense department's day-to-day activities.

from months, it seemed, only one person was making the media rounds as an expert on the subject. npr wouldn't touch it without contacting him first. they had the damn guy on speed dial. he's a scholar at the brookings institution named peter singer. i still haven't read his book, but i had intended to for quite some time. it's called "corporate warriors" and it was one of the first documents to truly chronicle just how much the united states is coming to rely on private outfits to provide various services during war and peacetime.

since then, however, the major players have begun to catch it. pbs's "frontline" did their own piece on the subject a month or so ago, and it was quite good. but the new york times, while having at least previously offered piecemeal reports, finally gave it a full treatment this past sunday on the cover of the nyt magazine. it rehashes much of what has already been reported on the subject, including quoting singer's book, of course. but it offers something very new and very important -- anecdotes showing how much private security providers are engaging in regular, direct military conflict rather than simply providing "security." they're engaging in war without the restraints of global agreements intended to restrict certain activities during conflict. they're essentially lawless.

daniel bergner writes:

"no one knows how many times gunfire from a private security team has wounded a bystander or killed an innocent driver who ventured too close to a convoy, not realizing that mere proximity would be taken for a threat. when they fire their weapons in defense or warning, the teams rarely concern themselves with checking for casualties -- it would be too dangerous; they are in the middle of a war. besides, no one in power is watching to closely."

bergner reports that individual employees tend to be ex-military, particularly special forces like the elite delta force. but what struck me the most was how haphazardly and quickly some of the companies like triple canopy and blackwater security services formed before they began receiving multimillion-dollar contracts.

triple canopy execs burrowed money from friends and family to purchase armored mercedes sedans from a former developing world leader and gained the defense department's permission to peruse captured iraqi munitions dumps for ak-47s. but the company, nonetheless, grew to become a formidable contender in the industry, and it got to the point that triple canopy managers would simply order backpacks of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from the company's home office in chicago to purchase more equipment.

by the way, the four security officers who were last year killed in fallujah, burned, dragged through the streets, and hanged from a bridge were blackwater employees.

but what the private contractors didn't want most from bergner was for him to use the word "mercenary." and he used it. a lot.

read the story, fool. nice illustrations, too, in the print edition. the paper's overall coverage of iraq on sunday was very good. it's worth a look.

updates on kathy and dawn

all right folks. sorry my posts have been hit-and-miss, but work has loomed heavy and i had a bit of the flu hit me for a couple of days. i have some belated updates on kathy and dawn's story, plus some excellent reading this week.

first up:

happily ever after made indefinite for kathy and dawn
the tulsa world reported a while back, again on the front page but this time below the fold, that kathy reynolds and dawn mckinley face a new legal challenge in attempts to have their anomalous lesbian marriage fully recognized by the cherokee tribe.

the two women had obtained a marriage certificate by a cherokee tribal clerk in a push to challenge the language of the tribe’s constitution. but the clerk, opponents allege, should not have issued the paperwork in the first place.

a tribal appeals court had thrown out an attempt by a cherokee attorney to nullify the marriage after months of legal wrangles, but days afterward, tribal councilors filed suit based on the same arguments.

the appeals court stated that todd hembree could not personally prove he would be harmed by their marriage. holy shit, that sounds like an application of simple rationale.

but democracy wouldn’t be any fun if we were to regularly apply reason to issues of personal freedom. that's todd there at the top of the post, by the way. isn't he just cute as hell?

the zeitgeist of the cherokee tribe on many issues tends to parallel whatever the popular position of the rest of the country is on many issues, particularly social issues. but often, political exploitation underlines the debate.

hembree, for instance, initiated his law suit during a time when he was running for state office in a primary campaign. he was beaten badly. i mean badly. but he had to prove his attack on kathy and dawn wasn’t a political maneuver by maintaining the suit. even more hilarious, he was an active volunteer in brad carson's bid for the senate. doug dodd made brad carson look like strom thurmond.

when it’s been suggested to hembree that he needed to sustain his suit simply to save face, he’s vehemently denied the accusation and argued he was simply trying to uphold what he believed was tribal law – the cherokee constitution, before and after the tribal council’s reinterpretation, prohibited same-sex marriage, he says.

this is a joke, and the cherokee tribe’s leadership should drop this ridiculous nonsense. and if you don’t believe this is ridiculous nonsense, consider the following statement by tribal councilor linda o’leary who claimed “necessity” brought about the tribe’s petition:

“we don’t want gay marriages in the cherokee nation. it’s that simple. we do have standing in this case because we’re the ones who make the laws."

the tribal council may maintain the authority, but does it have the precedence? that question should at least be considered in the context of the appellate judge’s opinion.

government bodies have the “standing” to make all sorts of decisions, but that doesn’t mean every decision they make is just.

the cherokee tribe’s leadership proved in print it can find no legitimate reason other than discrimination to limit marriage certificates to heterosexual couples.

might the real strategy for the lgbt community be to consider the full nullification of all special rights granted to heterosexual couples as long as gay couples are discriminated against? that pursuit might change the national debate entirely.

holy shit. senator coburn betrays brief moment of clarity.

it's true. for a brief moment, sen. coburn soberly expressed a sentiment i believed was worthwhile of mention. the man has said and done things wildly contrary to what i personally believe, but why be so divisive that you can't grant credit where credit is due?

there is a catch, however, which we'll get to.

the tulsa world reported sunday that coburn had initially pressed his colleagues not to pass a new version of the patriot act without sunsetting major contentious provisions.

bush has pushed hard to renew the act without any sunsets, which means all such provisions could remain in place permanently. some of the more controversial portions such as roving wiretaps and federal scrutiny of library check-out lists, however, would fall out of permission in four or 10 years depending on whether the senate or house version wins.

but as fervently patriotic as the country has been, coburn showed real concern that his constituents -- largely conservative, remember -- simply wouldn't feel comfortable with police agencies being permitted such broad investigative capabilities, which is telling.

some of coburn's colleagues joined in, and that, for a time, actually made me proud to be an oklahoman. below are some comments on the act.

republican sen. tom coburn:

"the mindset is fear, rather than doing what is the right thing. we shouldn't pass law based on fear. we should pass law based on what is the right thing for the next four to 10 years in this country to help us in the war on terrorism."

republican rep. frank lucas (only member of state's delegation to go as far as to vote against passage of renewal without sunsets):

"i guess i'm just too much of an old civil libertarian at heart."

(he added, as paraphrased by the world, that he couldn't "in good faith" vote to make permanent that kind of expansion of the federal government's ability to keep an eye on every american.)

republican rep. john sullivan (broke ranks with coburn and lucas to fully support passage):

"i believe it is common sense to extend these measures, which are already used in criminal investigations for gang and child molestation cases, to terrorism cases as well."

here's the catch i promised. sen. coburn got tough on renewal of the patriot act for, oh, about a day. coburn withdrew his objections and the renewal bill is on its way to a conference committee. that means coburn can go back to his constituents and say "i tried" without looking soft on terrorism. sure, that's a cynical way of viewing the matter, but he possibly could have put up a bit more of a fight.

in related news, the new york times reported on saturday that the feds have indicted three men, two lobbyists on israeli affairs and one a pentagon official, of violating espionage laws.

it seems the pentagon official mentioned to one of the israelis that israel and the united state had exchanged information about threats posed by iran, and that information was being used to formulate foreign policy on the evil middle eastern country. the three then proceeded to disseminate that information to israeli officials and the press. the feds say the men were legally bound to resist the temptation to acquire unauthorized information. the indictment is based on a seldom-used statute under espionage law.

my concern with this is summarized nicely is a paragraph from the story:

". . .some legal analysts, lobbyists and media lawyers said friday that they were troubled by the government's broad reading of the law. they said the government's indictment in the case and the strong message it sent could be read to signal that anyone receiving classified information -- including lobbyists, private policy researchers and reporters -- could be seen as committing a crime, even if the aim was to further public policy debate."

the case also highlights, yet again, the bush administration's regular willingness to chill open discourse. public, transparent stewards or egocentric, secretive rulers?

cherokee court dismisses gay marriage suit

elation. complete elation.

this is absolutely spectacular news. kathy and dawn have deserved this for much too long. this is an important moment in the history of allowing americans to love whoever the hell they damn well please.

it led thursday's tulsa world: the law suit filed against dawn mckinley and kathy reynolds in attempt to void the marriage certificate they received under cherokee tribal law was thrown out by a cherokee court because the fool who filed it, a tahlequah attorney named todd hembree, couldn't prove he suffered harm as a result of their attempt to be recognized as a married lesbian couple.

by the way, in the photo, kathy is on the right and dawn is on the left.

for those who aren't familiar with this story, dawn and kathy were encouraged by a friend to challenge the wording of the tribe's constitution by filing to receive a marriage certificate, and a tribal clerk, unaware that there would be any problem issuing a marriage certificate to a lesbian couple, gave it to them.

the tribe responded immediately by changing the wording of the tribe's constitution, but the new rules could not be applied retroactively. so, their marriage would have remained technically intact, until hembree filed suit in an attempt to void the marriage claiming he was simply trying to uphold the original wording of the constitution, and thus the law, which to him, barred same-sex marriage.

his attempt didn't work.

still, due to the new language, other cherokees could not marry under the tribe's jurisdiction, but dawn and kathy have at least become a national symbol, their story making it into the washington post last week in a piece filed by a regional correspondent named lois romano.

i also happen to have a little insider information on this story, the reasons of which i won't explain.

at one point, kathy had to go into the hospital for serious back pain stemming from a car accident that had happened when she was younger. she had taken a spill at school that had agitated the back problems. she was at the hospital for days, but dawn was not initially permitted into kathy's room because she was not family.

if you've ever seen these two together, you'd know how important it would be for them to be there for each other when something like a medical emergency occurred. these two were made for each other. they hooked up at a dart tournament for christ's sake.

they had pursued marriage after the hospital incident. now dawn can help make key medical decisions for kathy if necessary, and she can sure as shit now go into the hospital room of her life partner.

but these two still went through more hell together than they should have had to.

romano reports:

"for months, reynolds and mckinley could not even find a local lawyer to take their case. those they approached were either opposed to the marriage or did not want to alienate the tribe that doles out lucrative contracts to law firms.

'there were about 35 lawyers on the list of those permitted to argue in tribal court, and one day I went down the whole list and couldn't find anyone willing to take the case,' mckinley said. 'one guy laughed and hung up on me.'

the san francisco-based national center for lesbian rights agreed to represent them. because the cherokee council has passed the law limiting marriage to a man and woman, reynolds and mckinley's case is being argued solely for them.

'whatever happens will set no precedent -- it will affect only this one case,' said mike miller, spokesman for the cherokee nation.

still, advocates maintain that if the couple prevails, the resolution will help other gay couples who walk the same path. meanwhile, the very public battle has taken its toll on the women, who say they are just trying to live their lives peacefully and raise mckinley's daughter.

'one neighbor just stopped talking to us when this became public,' reynolds said. 'i mean, really, who are we hurting here?' mckinley asked. 'we don't bother anyone, we mind our own business . . . stick to ourselves. how would our marriage hurt anyone?'"

vindication.

mother jones kicks your ass

mother jones magazine has quietly continued to be one of the nation’s most influential magazines. for instance, portions of eric schlosser’s best-selling “fast food nation” first appeared in the pages of mother jones.

i’ve loved it for years, and i’m glad i finally bought a subscription to it after paying the cover price each month for so long.

straight to it: this month, jennifer gonnerman and sara catania report on domestic abuse in the united states. this subject tends to fall off the radar for many americans who assume updates in federal and state legislation are protecting victims of spousal abuse. unfortunately, it’s not that easy.

the headline on the cover is a bit misleading – the first part of the story documents attempts by a group of progressive lawyers to get clemency granted for women in missouri who have killed their abusive husbands.

the piece leads with the story of shelley hendrickson who shot her husband in the back of the head with a 12-gauge after over 20 years of abuse.

the night she finally pulled the trigger, he had tied her to the bed, pounded her face into the backboard, and raped her. he passed out drunk, she pulled the gun she had recently purchased from wal-mart out from under the bed, and shot his ass. she’s serving 15 years, a small sentence compared to the nine other women the group tapped for release who were given 50-year to life sentences.

the story contains photos of shelley’s face the night she was arrested, deeply battered and bruised. from the story:

"when police officers walked into the hendrickson home at 2:45 a.m. on oct. 31, 1994, they found shelley in her nightgown, curled up in the fetal position on the floor. she had a swollen eye, a bruise on her forehead, and tears running down her cheeks. tied to one of her wrists was a piece of rope. ashley was on the couch next to her; the three other children were in their rooms. in the master bedroom, the officers found rodney facedown on the bed. blood spattered the wall next to him. one of his eyeballs was on the floor. there was a gunshot wound in the back of his head."

brutal.

last year, a stranger beat and attempted to rape my ex-girlfriend in a lawrence alley not 200 feet from her front door. to this day, he has not been captured. she continues to be traumatized by the incident.

the second piece of the story is written by a woman who is clearly activist oriented judging by the terminology she uses. however, she is an extremely effective writer, understanding, for instance, the impact of an active over a passive sentence. this is a damn-well written piece on a seemingly neglected subject.

this month’s mother jones also contains a piece on the modern-day minutemen, or “tailgate vigilantes,” who hang out at the border between the u.s. and mexico attempting to catch mexican immigrants entering the country. hilarious.

i haven’t read it yet, but ralph steadman provided an illustration, and the story overall looks good.

there’s so much more i want to write about – an interview with joe sacco, son of the famous anarchist who was executed by the united states, etc.

consider giving mother jones a read, fine friends.

the new yorker kicks your ass

my friends are likely sick of hearing me explain how much i love the new yorker. but screw you all. here are some comments from last week's issue i'd meant to post a while ago. they're split into subsections.

john cassidy on grover norquist
karl rove gets a lot of attention for the intimate relationship he maintains with bush.

but there are others who have not only impacted bush's thinking, but have also influenced the entire administration, effectively the head of every federal agency that, whether you like it or not, enters at some point in virtually every sector of your life.

one of those men is leo strauss, a university of chicago professor who greatly influenced some of the more prominent neoconservatives in the bush camp with his taste for nietzsche's "will to power." harper's wrote about him last year, but he's not of interest to me here.

another man is grover norquist, head of the influential advocacy group americans for tax reform. norquist is most well known for his infamous wednesday d.c. breakfast meetings in which high ranking inside-the-beltway republicans gather and discuss how best to widdle the government down so small that it can be "drowned in the bathtub."

more recently, the new yorker and others have identified evidence suggesting norquist has been selling his influence to various interested parties around the country including indian casinos. the new yorker's piece also highlights norquist's cozy relationship with tom delay and the notorius lobbyist jack abramoff.

norquist is rabid in his desire to break down the tax structure in the united states, and cassidy captures his essence damn well. not to mention, new yorker profiles are considered some of the best in journalism.

i'd love to write more, but i need to cut back on my analysis and demand that you assholes go and read it yourselves. i'm simply a worthless conduit.

philip gourevitch on sri lanka
i've liked this guy for a while now. he's a freakin's badass. he published the compelling text that ran alongside war photographer james nachtwey's image essay in the last issue of mother jones. the series depicted the brutal existances of street kids in indonesia. if you've never seen nachtwey's work, find a few shots online. he's one of the best the world has to offer.

shortly after the mother jones piece, gourevitch published an in-depth look at the ongoing, decades-long war taking place in sri lanka, the relatively small island-nation off the southeast coast of india.

sri lanka's savage war has been wiped under the rug somewhat by a global press focus on iraq, palestine/israel and the sudan. but gourevitch intellegently describes the country as still consumed by violence, even post-tsunami, and the war itself continues to share components with conflicts taking place in most other developing countries: child armies and forced conscription, religious and ethnic tension, early well-meaning revolutionaries turned ruthless demoagogues, neighboring more powerful countries botching attempts to fix the situation or straight-up fortifying one side it favors ethnically or religiously, and so on.

gourevitch quotes the wonderful mark twain from a trip the satiristonce made to the island, then called ceylon:

". . .there was that swoon in the air which one associates with the tropics, and that smother of heat, heavy with odors of unknown flowers, and that sudden invasion of purple gloom fissured with lightnings -- and then the tumult of crashing thunder and the downpour -- and presently all sunny and smiling again."

damn i love twain.

gourevitch is skilled at living and breathing a subject until he's prepared to write about it in-depth. last year, he wrote for the new yorker an exhaustive profile of the former tulsa billionaire bill bartmann, the one-time power of which tulsans have tended to neglect.

check his shit out.

jeffrey toobin on lgbt issues and the supreme court
this was a shorter piece, so i won't spend a lot of time writing about it.

but this is the first time i've seen a truly soild, informative analysis of how a change of the supreme court's composition could greatly impact the direction of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered's movement for equal rights. and the focus of the piece isn't on gay marriage.

this piece gets into the mechanics of the court system and gives some cool insight into an area that many folks tend to misinterpret, in terms of what legal pronouncements should do and how truly different they are from decisions coming out of the two other branches of government.

check it.

corporate record labels caught in payola scandal

eliot spitzer embodies the convenient, yet unfair divide that allows mainstream pundits the chance to define america in black-and-white terms.

either you deeply admire his crusade against anti-trust violators, or you consider him the liberal bane of lassie-faire economic theory.

spitzer is the now famous, or infamous depending on your point-of-view, new york attorney general who has, since he entered office, regularly targeted corporate criminals with his brand of white-collar justice.

and his greatest achievement yet, at least as far as my own pretentious passion for independent music is concerned, was gloriously reported in the new york times this week.

two times reporters noted july 26 that sony bmg music subsidiary epic records was busted by new york state investigators in a payola scheme that spitzer described as a “broad effort by the recording industry to curry favor with radio station programmers in exchange for their promises to play specific songs.”

that’s called “payola,” and not only is it very fucking illegal, but it stinks of what so many have refused to admit for too long: corporate record labels have changed little since the 50s when radio djs openly accepted payments in exchange for circulating mainstream label acts through top 40 lists whether consumers had made them top picks or not.

the only difference is increased sophistication.

“the state investigation found that sony bmg, which releases music by acts including jennifer lopez, good charlotte and beyoncé. had provided stations with entertainers for station-affiliated concerts or paid for station equipment or other bills in exchange for having its songs played. it also provided vacations and electronic goods for on-air giveaways in a direct trade for airplay. and it hired independent promoters to funnel money to radio stations.”

gosh, does that suggest mainstream record labels believe they can craft consumer tastes, rather than provide in response to them? why would corporate record labels make that very unfortunate assumption if it hadn’t benefited their bottom line in the past?

oh, but it gets better. the times reports:

“mr. spitzer said in the settlement documents, ‘sony bmg and the other record labels present the public with a skewed picture of the country’s ‘best’ and ‘most popular’ recorded music.’”

that statement at least subtly suggests eliot spitzer has a better grasp of rock music’s role as a vehicle of genuine human expression than the suited corporate slugs who inhabit the mainstream record industry. then again, only commies would suggest maybe not every facet of the human experience should be wholly commodified.

vivez sans temps mort

i meet with a group of humorously sinister twenty-somethings every couple of weeks for a book gang we formed a few months ago. we call ourselves the twister city text mob and jokingly threaten to terrorize the sometimes-milquetoast literary establishment in america.

our current selection is kembrew mcleod's "freedom of expression: overzealous copyright bozos and other enemies of creativity," an overall academic text with a punk rock flair and tendency to romanticize cultural rebels.

mcleod contends copyright and trademark laws in the united states tend to be wildly over restrictive enabling those with the means to erect figurative walls around what often should be considered property of the public domain, such as human genes and the published creations of anti-copyright rebel woody guthrie.

mcleod spends a portion of the book discussing french lefty pranksters the situationists who during the 60s performed publicity generating stunts or "situations" in a wide-eyed attempt to flashpoint revolutionary cultural and social change.

over the years i've maintained a keen interest in situationism and its utopian sensibility. while today the group's hijinks are largely unknown beyond intellectual circles, their influence has seeped into global popular culture in more ways than people might imagine.

over at least the last decade, american corporations have worked increasingly hard to capture the most lucrative segment of the consumer population -- youth. mtv recognized the potential early on and parent-company viacom has since profitted immensely from developing sophisticated approaches to branding abstract notions like "youth rebellion." but the situationists understood the game, too, quite early on. the situationists commonly called what they considered brainless popular culture "the spectacle." the following is a good, slightly more contemporary summary of their views from an ak press-released situationism reader i picked up a few years ago:

"because of these glaring contradictions manifested in the spectacle effect--in the programmed marketing of a schizphrenic image, punk/new wave is literally forced into being more dishonest than any previous rock 'n' roll epoch. they must be poverty stricken but necessarily rich. they ride in rolls royces and wear bin liners."

youth now describe it more simply as "sell out."

while the word "situationism" in the states rarely moves beyond the ivory tower and anarcho circles, it's impact still appears regularly. adbusters-founder kalle lasn and the mag's agitprop designers claim an influence (lasn quoting "vivez sans temps mort," or "live without dead time" in his book, "culture jam").

when i lived in san francisco, a group of situationism-influenced pranksters known as the "billboard liberation front" delicately stenciled the phrase "sappho collection" on a banana republic billboard near one of the city's main highways that featured two pseudo lesbians in a suggestive embrace. sappho was an influential lesbian poet. the stunt hinted that while pseudo lesbianism seems acceptable in american corporate advertising, two gay men weren't likely to make it on to that billboard, even in san francisco. banana republic, or its owner the gap, removed the board quickly, but not quick enough to avoid exposure to a san francisco morning traffic rush.

two texts on situationism:
"what is situationism? a reader" ak press (1996)
"beneath the paving stones: situationists and the beach, may 1968" ak press/dark star (2001)