Asylum Story

Some friends of ours are "sponsors" for a young man from Afghanistan who fled his homeland and landed in Austria. I'll call him A. Yesterday over brunch, I got an update on A. and his struggle for Austrian personhood.

A doesn't know his age: though his papers say he is 23, he's probably more like 28-29. Back in Afghanistan, someone known to him killed A's brother. As is the custom there, A could have taken what the Austrians call "blut rache" (blood revenge) and rightfully killed his brother's killer. Naturally the killer knew this, and in what may be a logical progression in Afghanistan, the killer therefore swore that he would also murder A before A could kill him.

A left Afghanistan.

Austria may be less violent than Afghanistan, but of course it isn't just peachy for people like A. After eight years here and many meetings with the immigration authorities, A has the legal right to stay in Vienna and even work (!) here. But he'll have to wait another seven years before he can become an Austrian citizen.

And even though he's got a work permit, A still has that refugee head. He doesn't really know that he has some of the same protections that other Austrian workers have. So at his last few jobs, A's bosses have paid him under-the-table, sub-standard wages.

The other day, our friends took A to his local trade union. The man they met with there listened to A's story, looked at his papers, then turned to A and said, "Comrade, why do you let these bosses treat you this way?"

Socialism 1, Assholes 0.

out of the frying pan...

Anette and I went to see the film Wüstenblume (Desert Flower) the other night. Wüstenblume tells some of the story of the Somali supermodel and human rights spokesperson Waris Dirie. Dirie, like many Somali women yesterday and today, was a child victim of genital mutilation. She fled her desert home, on foot, the night before she was to be forcibly wed to an old man. She was 13. She was lucky to survive the trek through the desert, and according to the film, when Dirie finally arrived at a road and flagged down a truck, the driver tried to rape her.

That sort of an ordeal would kill most humans, but for Dirie, things really got weird when she left Somalia. She made it to London, where she worked for a time in the Somali embassy, then she ended up homeless. Somehow she got a job in a burger joint, where she--presto!--was discovered by a famous photographer and became--chango!--a supermodel. One of Wüstenblume problems is its failure to make anything of the irony of Dirie's escape from an oppressed life in Somalia to an equally oppressive (and sick) world politely known as the "fashion industry." But I'm saving that rant for another post.

The African scenes of the film--well-acted and beautifully shot--were almost too difficult for me to watch, because I couldn't look at the screen without thinking of V. and especially Adinah. From what I know, genital mutilation is not widely practiced in Ethiopia, though it does border Somalia. But many girls in the Ethiopian countryside are married off, by the age of 6 or 7, to a boy they may think is just a playmate. As I watched the film, and especially as Anette and I walked home afterward--feeling like we'd been kicked in the teeth--I thought once again that when our girls get old enough to understand a film like Wüstenblume, we're going to have some explaining to do. Life in Africa is so different from our everyday, and the "Africa" one sees in films, TV and other media is so distorted and filtered. How will we be able to express our view of Africa to Adinah? Will she understand that despite its problems, Ethiopia is an amazing place?

Or will she think, 'Thank god Mama and Papa got me out of there?'

Or is it okay for her to think that (a little) once she understands the larger truth that we never meant to save a child? We're not hoping to win one for Western Civilization. We wanted a child. And we thought going to Ethiopia was a good way to find her.

Worse than these thoughts was the feeling I got watching the scenes of the teenage Dirie fleeing her home alone, or the scene where the three-year-old Dirie is genitally "cut." Since we became parents, movies which depict the harm or neglect of a child have become even more difficult viewing for me. I can't process this. How could a parent knowingly harm a child?

Maybe that's why I can't believe that Adinah and V.'s first parents felt any differently. Both of our daughters knew tragedy before we met them. But I feel sure that their birth parents did everything they could for their girls. I'm certain they tried to save their own children. But they couldn't.

Maybe I have to feel this way about the parents before us. I look at our kids and I think, 'They're so beautiful--how could anyone not cherish them?'

who, me? homophobic?

I met a couple of Americans for drinks the other night, and our conversation took me back to one of my initial impressions of Austria. I used to think that this country was socially conservative, and politically progressive. Now I'm not sure about the progressive part. For example, the government provides very generous childcare subsidies and maternity leave programs, which makes it easier to be a moms. But this could also be seen as an inducement to women to become housewives instead of artists, bankers or brain surgeons.

Another example: Not only do many Austrians have no grasp of political correctness--lots of them think it's okay to refer to black people as "negers"--they're also a little shaky on the subject of hate crimes. If there are any actual laws here against discrimination because of race or sexual preference, those laws are toothless.

Check it out: a lesbian couple we know have adopted a daughter, and they want to buy an apartment. About a month ago, they found a nice place, and one of them got in touch with the owners about buying the place. The owners asked for an application and some financial statements from our friends. Then the owners called them back and said, 'Let's make a deal.'

Our friends then went to their first face-to-face meeting with the owners, who are both men. Shortly after they walked in together, they were told the property was no longer for sale.

Then the bashing started.

"So you're from Hamburg?" one of the owners said to one of our friends. "Why aren't you blonde then?"

At first our friends were confused, then struck dumb by disbelief.

"How would you live in a place like ours?"

"As a family," our other friend answered.

"Is that legal?" one of the apartment owners asked. "I have to make a phone call to check on that."

"You have a daughter?" they asked. "Why didn't you adopt a son? Is it because you have a problem with men?"

At some point, our friends declared this "meeting" over and they walked out. One of them was so shocked (and hurt?) she only started to gather her wits on the way out of their office. But then all she could do was complain to the owners' receptionist.

Here's the punchline: our friends went to a local gay rights organization to get help. The people there told them, 'Sorry, there's not much you can do. But thanks for coming to us--will you sign our register? Then we can continue to get government funding for our anti-discrimination programs.'

a few choice quotes

I am the Decider.
George W. Bush

There is no such thing as society. There are only individual men and women and families.
Margaret Thatcher

If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
Oscar Wilde

Be kind, be kind, be kind.
Henry James

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen 200 limping, exhausted men come out of line—the survivors of a regiment of 1,000 that went forward 48 hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
William Shakespeare

I know I ain’t doing much/But doing nothing means a lot to me.
Bon Scott

If your pictures are no good, get closer.
Robert Capa

One way to take a good picture is to get yourself into a good place, then wait.
Ellen Wallenstein

When you live with someone, you learn a lot about yourself.
Don Blashill

I know you love me, and I love you, but I love you in a different way.
A former girlfriend

That relationship was like Vietnam: I got my ass kicked, and I shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
Henry Rollins

If there is a subtext, you can bet I haven’t read it.
Ricou Browning

Do not be tempted by a twenty-dollar word when there is a ten-center handy, ready and able….
Strunk and White

overloaded

Sometimes my life is too full.

Like days when I meet an 18-year-old hate crime victim who's experienced such senseless violence but can somehow still smile. And then I see a friend's snapshot of her kid on his first roller coaster ride, taken at the instant his car went into free fall--so much terror in that young face it hurts to see it. And then the man in front of me at the subway ticket automat walks away and leaves an ATM card in the machine and I'm standing there with a co-worker I barely know and we have to figure out what to do because the guy is already gone.

So then I come home and almost the first thing I do is scold V. for running out of the front door when my back is turned but she's just exhausted from a busy day and anyway she just wanted to say goodbye again to Rosa, her favorite (and only) babysitter in the whole world. Then Adinah draws me beautiful pictures of princesses and African dancers. And V. sits next to me to help make the mashed potatoes and she tells me, "I love you, Papa," for the first time ever. Then she lays her head on my shoulder.

And Anette comes home and asks me how my day was and suddenly I'm trying to explain to her and Adinah (a simple version of) what happened to the hate crime victim and I get a lump in my throat and then I tell them what V. told me and I do cry and V. comes over and says, "Are you sad?" and I say, "No," but the truth is I don't even know exactly what I'm feeling, but I'm feeling a lot.

Sometimes it's too much. Too much.

Another Question They Ask

The other thing the hopeful immigrants to the US whom I work with ask me frequently is,

'Will I have to get a gun when we move to America?'

Now after the shooting at this community and immigration center in Binghamton, NY, I expect more questions. 'Will we be safe in our English classes?' 'Can't the US police do anything about these shootings?' Why does this happen so much in America?'

As usual I'll try to be reassuring, but of course, I can't answer these questions.

This morning, a woman told me her children are 9 and 12, and she's worried they won't be safe in American public schools.
Should I tell her that I would be worried about the same thing if we were moving back to the US?

Usually, I point out that the danger in US public schools has been sensationalized and exaggerated. I tell them that they probably won't be in 'bad' neighborhoods too often in the US, and when they are, nothing will happen to them. I tell them, no, do not buy a gun, because you're statistically more likely to shoot someone in your own family with it. All of these things are true.

But when I hear myself saying them, it don't sound so reassuring.

There are too many guns in the US, and they're too easy to get. Everyone knows this. Assault weapons are only good for one thing: killing lots of humans. So why are they still obtainable by madmen with grudges? It's the gun lobby, stoopid. It's about money. Everybody knows.

(The Last Part of this) Police Story (I Promise)

My friend J. brought this to my attention the other day. It appeared in the conservative, schlocky free subway paper Heute, and is clearly a response to the treatment J.'s friend Mike Brennan received at the hands of the Vienna Police. The repro's terrible here in my blog, but the cartoon shows Obama on a world tour, and ends with what he could probably expect in Vienna. Maybe there's more self-reflection (and criticism) in the Austrian soul than I had thought....

{Another Part of (Another)} Police Story

(The Story so Far: A friend of a friend was attacked by some racist Vienna cops, and I'm a little disgusted about it....)

As in the US, this particular sort of police brutality has happened plenty of times before in Austria. The cops use racial profiling and they have a record of severely beating black men who are already in handcuffs or lying on the pavement. The difference here is that Austrian police continue to do these things without any apparent concern about oversight, let alone being caught. They have the open support of many politicians, particularly those of the loathsome Freedom Party, one of whom once told the newspapers, " If you see a black man in Vienna, he's a drug dealer."

A lot of Austrians, young and old, have a profound sense of entitlement, combined with a certain sort of nineteenth century obliviousness. Some claim to be baffled by the (American) concept of political correctness. Oftentimes, a claim like this is merely a prelude to a statement like, 'Well, you know, a lot of black people are drug dealers.' Friends of ours have actually said shit like this!

So when my colleague J. told our staff about how his friend got beat up by a gang of undercover cops who never bothered to identify themselves, it sparked some interesting discussions around the water cooler. J. is African-American too, and when he talks about racism or some other bullshit, his voice goes up half a notch; he is as baffled by Austrian ignorance as they say they are by American 'sensitivity'. J. told me a story about being on a city bus, and overhearing a man make a goddamn fool remark. The man probably assumed, like many Viennese, that J. doesn't speak or understand German, because he's black. Of course, J. does, and he did understand the hate speech the guy was slinging, so he looked over at him and said, in German, "You're an idiot."

The man, apparently unconcerned with being busted as a fucking racist, didn't blink. "You should address me with 'sie,' " he said. "Sie" is the more formal way of saying "you."

I laughed when J. told this story, especially at the way he screwed up his face to show his incomprehension of the guy. You would think that this asshole would understand that by calling him an idiot, J. was already dispensing with manners. But no. Austrians aren't always concerned about racism or police brutality, but they worry a lot about good manners.

One of the less funny things about all of this is that it could have easily been J. who was attacked by the Vienna police.

I worry about raising two black daughters in a place like this. Am I going to have to worry about Viennese policeman attacking Vivien when she's 17 years old?

The other night, I was watching tv, and I was dumbfounded by an almost perfect example of why Austrian police think they can assault black people without cause. As I was channel-surfing, I stumbled upon a broadcast of some sort of costume party banquet. (It may have been scenes from the Villacher Faschingsfest, a notoriously offensive event held in Carinthia, the provincial seat of power for the Freedom Party.) I watched a man flanked by two "Secret Service agents" take the stage to the tune of "Hail to the Chief." He began to speak German with a broad American accent and a squeaky (i.e. young and inexperienced) voice. He was obviously meant to be Obama. He was a white guy in blackface.

I started to float in a strange fog of confusion and disbelief. I was watching a minstrel show on Austrian television. I thought, 'What kind of people would allow this sort of 'entertainment'? (Answer: A people with nary a shred of understanding of black people or black history.) But I also thought, 'Is this maybe okay? Could an argument be made that this is a legitimate form of comedy?' Haven't American tv comics put on brown-face to imitate Middle Eastern people? (A: Yes, and I thought that was offensive too.)

And as I sat there staring at the pretty lights on the television screen, I came back to a question I've asked myself a few times before: How am I going to explain all of this to Adinah and V.?

(Another) Police Story

A couple of weeks ago, J., one of the teachers I work with, came into the office with a story. Seems a friend of his, who teaches and coaches at the Vienna International School, was attacked on the subway here. He had been on his train and noticed several men staring at him. When he got off at his station, they jumped him. One of them literally jumped on Mike's back. They beat him pretty badly, then left him there. Luckily Mike's girlfriend had shown up to meet him, and she helped him to a hospital.

Guess what? They were undercover cops. They didn't tell Mike that. They later claimed they had mistaken him for a drug dealer. You see, Mike is black. It's possible the police mistook him for an African. Nope. Mike is African-American.

Oops.

That morning, after the hospital doctors fixed him up and put him on crutches, Mike actually went in to work. He told his coworkers what had happened to him. They were outraged. They told him he had to file a complaint with the police. And, crucially, they insisted that Mike go to the American Embassy with his story. He did both.

Then a familiar chain of events unfolded. After complaints from the US Embassy and some press attention to the case, the police claimed that there had been no incident. [Curiously, they also claimed that there was no surveillance camera footage of the incident, even though there are cameras all over every U-Bahn station in the city.] Then the police claimed they had identified themselves, but Mike had resisted arrest. Now "police experts" are claiming that Mike's injuries may actually be from some earlier time in his life. Even though the doctors who treated him have said, nope, he suffered these injuries that day.

(To be continued)

Not a Shamus

I’m reading Raymond Chandler again. This time it’s “Farewell My Lovely.” I also acquired The Big Sleep, starring H. Bogart and Lauren Bacall. That is also good. Though it’s slightly harder to follow than the book. It’s a regular Raymond Chandler kniption I’m going through here.

I don’t know what it’s all about. (Besides my continuing retreat into film fantasy land—swear to god, I now replay and rethink and refeel some movies as if they were scenes from my own life.) (I need to get out more.) Maybe, though, I like this gumshoe-LA-broads-in-flouncy-dresses world because it’s so much like my own life and my own little Vienna. Phillip Marlowe dodges bullets. I worry about dodging shoes thrown by my Middle Eastern students. Every time Marlowe gets into a cab or a bookstore, it’s filled with curvy, yearningly available blondes. Everytime I get onto a bus, a big Turkish guy steps on my foot and grunts.

Here in this phase I’m having, I think, ‘It looks so cool when Bogart pulls on his ear. I oughta do that.’ But in Vienna, if I pulled on my ear every time I tried to have a thought, people would regard this as a schizophrenic symptom. Treatment would be recommended.

Phillip Marlowe untangles bizarre knots of happenstance, violence, greed and desire. I pull my ear as I try to figure out why the Viennese lapse into states of clinical depression when they see the first fallen leave of autumn.

Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead....

I try not to dabble in schadenfreude, but let's just say I'm not sorry that Jörg Haider is dead.

This motherfu--um, this guy is the guy who has steered Austrian politics into a binary argument about whether foreigners are good or evil. This is the guy who said immigrants seeking asylum in Austria should be rounded up and--yes, he did!--put in camps! Some people say he had already started doing this as governor in his home state of Carinthia.

It's people from this guy's party who say that when you see a black man in Vienna, you can be certain that he is a drug dealer.

Naturally, it's his party that is opposed to Turkey joining the EU, and to Muslim women wearing headscarves here.

Jörg Haider is the guy--and, sadly, not the only guy--who said the Nazis did some good stuff.

He died in a car crash last night.

Don't cry no tears around me.

(a movie about) that day

Last night, after putting the kids in bed, I watched United 93, the Paul Greengrass film about the only hijacked plane which didn't hit its target on September 11th. I'd heard it was good, I'd gotten a copy, but still I had waited until I thought I was ready to see it. Maybe I miscalculated.

Anette is out of town, and even though I was completely exhausted from chasing V. and Adinah around by myself all day, and even though I was drinking a tall boy to steady my nerves, I was twitching five minutes into the movie. After 18 minutes, I paused United 93 to catch my breath and try to stop shaking. I paused it again after 29 minutes, and then again every seven to ten minutes. It wasn't exactly suspense or excitement, but reliving the shock of that day was almost too much.

Since 2001, wherever I am in the world, and whoever I'm talking to, if the subject of 9/11 comes up, it's always the other person who's in a rush to say where they were the minute they heard what had happened in New York City. Oftentimes they say, 'I saw it happen!' and what they mean is that they saw it live on TV. But I really did hear those two booms. I really was on Pitt street on the Lower East Side on that beautiful fall morning when I looked half a mile south and saw a hole in the World Trade Center. I saw it all.

I guess it left a hole in me too.

So.

Yeah, well that was almost seven years ago.

In the apocalyptic, ohmygod days and weeks after September 11th, I decided I wanted to live. To go forward somehow. I decided I wanted to have a kid. One of the shittiest Presidents we've ever had got us into even more trouble. We went to Ethiopia and met Adinah. Then we moved to Vienna, and I wasn't sorry to leave behind a country that would re-elect a shitty President. And now I miss America, but I live in Europe, and I have a foster daughter too and I work for an NGO and help refugees because I want to live and embrace life.

I wonder where I would be if that day never happened.

March Entertainment Etceterum

Pretty sure 'etceterum' isn't a word but what the hell, I've got a few loose ends to express.....

1 The tabloids here are claiming Brad Pitt is Barack Obama's cousin. Is this true? Could either have been handed a better piece of etceterum publicity?

2 I've seen a lot of good Hollywood films lately but something's really beginning to bug me. I liked Michael Clayton and Breach, but I just read a review of Boarding Gate, this new Oliver Assayas film, and I thought, 'Urp.' Can we have a break from the flicks about rich people behaving monstrously? Nevermind whether the 'good' rich guy wins or not, these films are not critical of the idea that it's all about getting mo' money, mo' money. And you know, there is this, uh, thing called the Wealth Gap in the USA (and the rest of the frigging world.....)

3 Hey, Eliot Spitzer, wow, what a show! But you know what? Who cares about what he does with his penis? I don't. And he seems to have been a good politician. Did any of this sleazy business affect his ability to lead?

4 I finally saw an actual photograph of Amy Winehouse (as opposed to a paparazzi grab shot), and I thought, 'Hmmm. At least she looks like a real person. Sort of.' But isn't she just another sham? Please. Ripping off Erykah Badu and every other black female performer in the history of rock and roll? At the time of this revelation, I was listening to the great old psychedelic band Love, who were led by a black man named Arthur Lee, who spent much of his later life in prison because he discharged a pistol in his front yard. Why is it that black geniuses get incarcerated for bullshit, and white artistes who break the law and misbehave for the cameras just triple their record sales?

Hey Hollywood!

What's with all the movies about the War on Terror and Iraq and Afghanistan FBI CIA torture and patriotism? Lions for Lambs Redacted Rendition In the Land Of Elah the Kingdom etc.etc.? Can't you studio execs stop having the same idea over and over again and then hearing that someone else has the same idea and then rushing your project into production because of it?
Hey American media, what's with Hollywood touching stories you never have? Why is it that the new Brian DePalma film sounds like it deals with the subject of atrocities committed by American soldiers in the Middle East in much more depth that the combined embedded reportage from five years of mainstream "coverage" of the shit in Afghanistan-Iraq-Gitmo etc?
Hey Senator Clinton, how come you don't speak out against these nightmares any more than the American slick paper media?
Hey#*!@##!*!

trouble

My situation has changed.
Or maybe I should say my perspective has changed.
I have put myself into a position in which I can say that if humans are animals, the immigrant is a particular kind of human animal. And leaving one world behind for another is even more dangerous than the most astute and self-aware animal may know. One day you are in your homeland, and everything is fine. Maybe you are a villain, maybe you are well-respected. But the next day and a thousand miles away, you are doing the same things, living as you think right, or doing the best you can, but everything around you has changed. The world has turned beneath your feet. And now you are a criminal. Or a victim.
You don't speak the language and you don't know what you did wrong. What can you do? Who will help you?
Let's say this strange new country you are in sends police to you--eight men with black boots and guns--and they say, 'Tell us what happened and we will help you.' Or these same men come to you and say, 'You have broken our laws, come with us.' Let's say you're a nine-year-old boy and you watch these things happen to your parents. How can you know what is right?
If a violent act is standard in one country but illegal in another, how does the immigrant know that in this new place, here and now, it's okay to ask for help?

There are days when one can see too much and all jokes fail. Today was one of those days.

I was shocked and saddened to hear about the shootings at Virginia Tech yesterday. I want to express my sympathy and condolences to the victims, students and families of victims of this horrible tragedy.

****************************************************************

My mom was a public elementary school teacher in Texas before she retired, and after the Columbine shootings, she told me that the teachers in her school had began locking their classrooms from the inside everyday. After class began, they would only open their doors for someone who had used a special knock. She also told me that the school administration would ring a bell every morning at about 11 a.m. to remind children to take their Ritalin and various other medications. I don't know if those policies stayed in place through the last few years, but maybe they're back in effect today.

Some of our friends here cannot understand these things or how they can happen in America. I feel like I understand America a lot better than they do, but I still don't understand this stuff. I get angry at Europeans who tut-tut about tragedies like this. Because even those of them that have spent a lot of time in the States don't really get it. Not that I get it. But at least I feel like I have the right to talk about it, or feel bad about it or even judge it. It's still my country.

the Dead

Die Toten is the name of a project by the Dusseldorf artist Hans-Peter Feldmann, which is now on display here in Vienna at the Kunsthalle museum. The work consists of ninety reproductions of photographs of the members and victims of several violent political groups founded in the the late nineteen-sixties, particularly the Red Army Fraktion, also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang. We took a look at it on Sunday, and it burned a hole in my brain.

Feldmann has been criticized for hanging pictures of the RAF next to those of the people they killed, since this could be seen as setting up an equivalence between criminals and victims. I don't think Die Toten does that, but one real problem with the project is that it's entirely composed of press photographs and clippings. In fact, the RAF attacked the offices of the right wing German publisher Axel Springer because they believed biased and irresponsible mass media was one of the scourges of late capitalism; Feldmann has in effect given the media trolls the last laugh, by reproducing much of their version of the story.

All of the photographs in Die Toten are death scenes, which adds a sensational element to an already sensational, and morbidly fascinating subject. (It's a typical choice for the Kunsthalle as well, which seems to be programmed by a thirty-something adolescent who mistakes shocking pictures for compelling art.) The photograph above is not part of Feldmann's project, but it is a picture of the RAF leaders Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin. They look nice, don't they?

For me, this photograph is more shocking than some of those in the exhibition, because Baader and Ensslin may have been nice, but they also led a group which blew up department stores, robbed banks and killed people.

Feldmann's work is part of a soul searching process in Germany and Austria concerning the RAF, which has been set off by the fact that one of the group's last living members was recently released from prison. But as an American, I've always been haunted by the Red Army Fraction story too. It seems like such a bitter tragedy: an ultimate example of ideological commitment and fatal wrongheadedness.

Since September 11th, one of the delusional aspects of America's war on terror has been our tendency to imagine that our enemies are all Islamic fundamentalists, all Over There somewhere, and all somehow fundamentally different from us. I think the RAF is still so disturbing for this part of Europe (and for me) because it means that terrorism isn't other people. It's us.

LaVena

As a father, I do my best to take care of my little girl. I try to teach her the good stuff, try to be there if she falls down on the sidewalk, and I talk to her. But her mother and I can't take care of her all the time, and there's a short list of people we trust to watch over Adinah when we're not around. Our babysitter Rosa. Our friend Micha. The women and men at our Kindergarten.

As she gets older, our daughter will have to learn to take care of herself. I may find this a difficult process, but Adinah is gonna be just fine, I know. At the same time, she will entrust herself, first to her friends, and then to various institutions--we all do this as we become little league baseball players, university students, parents and responsible citizens of the place we call home.

We all want to be able to trust our institutions--our society--to take care of our children. But what if they don't?

This is a photograph of LaVena Johnson. She grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. She was an honor roll student at Hazelwood Central High School who played the violin in her spare time and volunteered for the American Heart Association. When LaVena finished school, she joined the Army. They sent her to Iraq. She died there on July 19, 2005. She was nineteen years old.

Army representatives initially told LaVena's parents that she died from "self-inflicted, non-combat injuries" but that she had not committed suicide. After an investigation, they changed their story and insisted LaVena had killed herself. But the Army also sent investigation photos and documents home to the Johnsons, and these documents suggest that LaVena was murdered. The evidence of foul play includes the disappearance of LaVena's debit card, lab results that indicate she may not have even touched the rifle she was said to have shot herself with, and indications that someone tried to set her body on fire. Despite these findings, the Army has declared the case closed and refused to make any further comment.

Last week, the St. Louis CBS-TV affiliate KMOV broadcast a report about LaVena's death. I learned about her from posts by Waveflux, Shakespeare's Sister and an Angry Black Bitch. As far as I can tell, there has been little media attention otherwise. That leaves LaVena's father, Dr. John Johnson, all alone in a fight to find out what really happened to his little girl.

As a father and a man who is living a long ways from home, I want to believe that people over there in the US are trying to do the right thing. And as Americans, we have to be able to trust our Army to take care of us and our children. But what if they don't?

In this case, it's possible that Army investigators really did try to discover the truth about LaVena's death in her tent in Iraq. If that is so, our message to them is simple: Try harder.



(PS: Waveflux suggests, as do we here at Euro Like Me, that anyone who cares about this case contact their US Senator, particularly if that Senator is on the Armed Services Committee. That Committee's membership is listed here:

Democrats
Carl Levin, Chairman (Michigan)
Claire McCaskill (Missouri)
Edward M. Kennedy (Massachusetts)
Robert C. Byrd (West Virginia)
Joseph I. Lieberman (Connecticut)
Jack Reed (Rhode Island)
Daniel K. Akaka (Hawaii)
Bill Nelson (Florida)
E. Benjamin Nelson (Nebraska)
Evan Bayh (Indiana)
Hillary Rodham Clinton (New York)
Mark L. Pryor (Arkansas)
Jim Webb (Virginia)

Republicans
John McCain, Ranking Member (Arizona)
John W. Warner (Virginia)
James M. Inhofe (Oklahoma)
Jeff Sessions (Alabama)
Susan M. Collins (Maine)
John Ensign (Nevada)
Saxby Chambliss (Georgia)
Lindsey O. Graham (South Carolina)
Elizabeth Dole (North Carolina)
John Cornyn (Texas)
John Thune (South Dakota)
Mel Martinez (Florida))