by Glynn Wilson

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Photographer Spider Martin parties at the new Gennifer Flowers club at her first Mardi Gras in the French Quarter

Waking up on Fat Tuesday land-locked in Birmingham, Alabama, is just not the same as waking up on Mardi Gras Day in New Orleans.

Watching the television news coverage and scanning stories and pictures online is just not the same as being there.

It is easy to feel sorry for the people of Louisiana and envy them at the same time. In this prudish nation where the Christian Right rules, New Orleans represents an outpost of freedom and fun, even if the sin in Sin City is about as overblown as any Hollywood extravaganza.

While I have visited New Orleans for Mardi Gras and Jazzfest many times in my 48 years on planet earth, I managed to find my way out of Alabama to Georgia in 1996, the year the Olympics came to Atlanta. From there, I wound my way to the mountains of Tennessee and spent four years working on a Ph.D. But when I got the opportunity to make my way down the Mississippi River to the destination city of New Orleans in the summer of 2000 – before George W. Bush stole the election – I jumped at the chance to teach at Loyola University and live in an Uptown apartment and experience New Orleans as a resident.

I had not been there long before I got the opportunity to write for the Dallas Morning News from New Orleans.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the world seemed to go crazy not only in New York and Washington. I slept late that day and did not find out about the attacks on the World Trade Towers until late in the morning, because I had been up most of the night finishing the first draft of my dissertation.

As I watched the images in horror for about a week on TV, something in me changed, just as those events changed the lives of many Americans. I no longer wanted to teach journalism. I wanted back in the news game.

So I wrote a heartfelt letter to Howell Raines of Alabama, then the executive editor of the New York Times. By the summer of 2002, I was free-lancing from New Orleans for not only the Dallas paper, but the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Times and People magazine too.

It was a hell of a run that came to a screeching halt when little Jayson Blair was uncovered making stuff up in the New York Times. The world changed again.

So in December 2003, I packed up my belongings and left New Orleans, came back to Alabama and worked on an investigation of George W. Bush’s time in Alabama in 1972, and then moved to Washington, D.C. to see what kind of contribution I could make in the 2004 election coverage.

Photo by Dave Stueber

Southerner editor Glynn Wilson stands defiant in front of the statue of Jefferson Davis at the corner of Jeff Davis Boulevard and Canal Street before the first Mardi Gras parade of 2001

Bush won again, by hook or by crook, and for better or worse, I ended up back in my home state of Alabama.

After covering the Scrushy trial for the New York Times during the winter of 2005, I came up with the idea to start this Web site to continue an exploration in online publishing I first encountered in 1996.

For all the new readers of the LocustFork.Net news and blog who may be wondering about the creator behind it, here are a few stories that bring back some New Orleans memories for me.

This is not so much an ego trip as a way for the audience to get to know the man behind the mask.

In the last story I did for the Dallas Morning News and The Southerner.Net Web site before I left town, I reported that the voodoo was going to stop working one day and “The Big One” was going to come howling up the Mississippi River and drown New Orleans.

It was hard to watch from afar, just as today, it is hard to watch the city try to recover by masking its pain in Mardi Gras 2006.

If my good friend Spider Martin were alive today, chances are we would have taken off in a van and headed for New Orleans to be there in person on Fat Tuesday. But it is a different world today.

Memories: They Can’t Be Taken Away or Erased
Gennifer Flowers’ First Mardi Gras
Celebs, Competition Rein at Mardi Gras
New Orleans Voodoo Wards Off ‘The Big One’
The Sweet Sorrow of Parting
Global Warming Makes Saving Lousiana’s Wetlands Hard

ReadtheBill.Org called on the U.S. House of Representatives to approve by election day a resolution by Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) to require that all proposed legislation be posted on the Internet for 72 hours before it comes up for floor debate.

“It’s time to stop passing bills in the dead of night that nobody has read,” said Rafael DeGennaro, Founder and President of ReadtheBill.org. “We want sunshine at the Capitol by November. Any member of Congress who opposes this 72 online reform is part of the problem in Washington, D.C.”

For more info, hit the group’s Web site: ReadtheBill.Org.

To the editor:

Once again, Governor Bob Riley has decided to spend much-needed and scarce Alabama dollars to send Alabama prisoners to a private for-profit prison in Louisiana.

He did this with women prisoners shortly after he was elected, and now is sending them men just as he is raising money for his reelection campaign. After the women were returned to Alabama, we were forced to continue to pay for the empty cells in Louisiana, since Riley had leased them for an extended time.

The lobbyists for the corporate prison system give hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Republican party and its candidates. Could this be the reason that Riley has reinvented the horror of the convict lease system of the years of segregation?

Under the convict lease system during segregation, the Alabama prison system leased convicts to corporations to use as forced labor. Getting the forced prison labor for almost nothing, the corporations made millions. When forced labor was desired by the corporations, the police just arrested more black people and the courts convicted them.

Now during campaign season, Riley is again leasing prisoners to a private corporation. I cannot believe that this is to relieve overcrowding, as he claims. It is just another form of convict lease and comes at a time that cannot avoid being seen as lining the pockets of Republican campaign chests, starting with his own.

The Rev. Jack Zylman
Southside, Birmingham

After Jack Abramoff?

Such a story may have meant nothing B.J. (Before Jack), but in a post-Abramoff era we were struck by this item in yesterday’s Birmingham News about how Alabama Gov. Bob Riley is spending part of his time at this week’s National Governor’s Association confab in DC.

Rileys Sleeps Over at White House

Yup, the former three-term House member is being feted by his old House pals Hastert, Boehner and Blunt. Also check out who from K Street is putting on the event.

Now perhaps even post-Jack, a Rep-turned-Gov. up for re-election having a member and lobbyist-laden funder at a DC trade association may not merit a mention, but Riley has some, well, Abramoff issues.

Abramoff partner-in-crime Michael Scanlon was Riley’s congressional press secretary in the ’90s. Later, Scanlon’s outfit, Capitol Campaign Strategies, gave $500,000 to the RGA in October of 2002, which in turn transferred nearly $2.5 million to a soft-money arm of the RNC designed to aid state elections. That same month Riley received $600,000 from the committee and the Alabama GOP took another $600,000.

It was during this same time period, of course, that Scanlon and Abramoff were raking in cash from tribes.

Riley, who does not accept gambling money, maintains that he did not know the source of the RGA money. But the fact remains that the ’02 race between Riley and then-Gov. Don Siegelman was fought in large measure over whether Alabama would join its neighbors in Georgia and Tennessee in instituting a state lottery. Siegelman was for it, Riley against.

And joining Riley in opposing an lottery were the Mississippi-based Choctaws and their man in Washington, DC – Mike Scanlon. The tribe feared a loss of business in their two casinos just outside of Philadelphia, Miss., – about 30 miles from the Alabama state line.

Guilt by association? Perhaps.

But Riley and the Alabama GOP – whose chair just recently resigned from the Mississippi-based lobbying firm that now represents the Choctaws – must not be sweating Roy Moore (R), Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley (D), or Siegleman if they are having this kinda event.

Or perhaps they are – tickets go for $1K a pop. Per individual or PAC, that is.

Originall published in the National Journal’s HotLine Blog

Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush

We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country’s good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world’s evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation’s wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies, writes Lewis H. Lapham in the March issue of Harper’s magazine.

Read the online excerpt here.

by Glynn Wilson
Editor and Publisher
LocustFork.Net

Any day now Americans are going to find out just how unsafe the Bush administration has left the nation’s ports.

If you believe everything President George W. Bush says, maybe because you voted for him and want to believe, and if you support run amok global, corporate capitalism, then you may be shrugging your shoulders at the political brouhaha over the deal to allow Dubai Ports World to take over the management of six major American ports.

If you think it is quite alright for an Arab monarchy called the United Arab Emirates to control the shipping operations in the ports of Baltimore, Miami, New Jersey, New York, New Orleans and Philadelphia, then you can ignore the news and say its just a bunch of liberal reporters and Democratic Party politicians making noise about it.

If you believe a county that is the money laundering capital of the world for terrorists and drug cartels, with historic ties to al Qaeda and the Talban, should not only be in charge of these ports but have access to all the information on the comings and goings of cargo and every little detail of the security at those ports, then shrug it off and pay no attention.

But if you are worried about radical Muslim extremists sneaking into the United States and attacking our ports with weapons of mass destruction, then you may want to listen up.

While the mainstream press helped to make the Dubai port deal an issue, the backtrack is on all the way up to the New York Times and on the Comedy channel talk shows.

The other night on the Colbert Report, which follows the highly rated Daily Show, Times columnist David Brooks pooh-poohed the entire story, saying the backlash was hurting our reputation in the Muslim world by pissing off the six Arab friends we have left.

The show went to commercial before he could answer the question about whose fault it is that the U.S. only has six friends left in the Arab world. You think the Iraq war has something to do with that? How about those American military basis near just about every holy site in the Middle East, including Mecca in Saudi Arabia?

Oh, but “we don’t negotiate with terrorists,” so talking about withdrawing from Iraq or Saudi Arabia is just off the table. All that black oil is there, which is critical to our national security. So we can’t leave, and according to the official policies of the Bush administration, we are not even going to talk about it.

As you must now already know, Bush has never used his veto power in five years as president. But for some strange reason, he threatened to veto any Congressional action to delay or stop the port deal, even when it came not from Ted Kennedy, but Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee.

What is so important about the United Arab Emirates that the prez would threaten to use his veto power to protect their financial interests in this deal? According to Bush, they have cooperated in our “war on terror.” Right.

Not only were two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers from the United Arab Emirates, they recognized the Taliban in Afghanistan and helped fund and hide members of al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden. There is really no reason to believe those ties are still not in place, in spite of some token help that government has provided in a few recent cases of tracking down some money going to al Qaeda.

The only plausible reasons for why the Bush administration wants to push through this deal is to keep the Sheiks who control the oil happy, and to continue supporting the development of global capitalism, which Bush’s father got into major trouble for in his day by calling it “a new world order.”

You won’t hear Shrub use that term, but that is, without a doubt, what this is all about.

It is also why Bush talks out of both sides of his crooked mouth on the issue of illegal immigration. One one side, he will give lip service to protecting our national security by patrolling the borders, all while behind the scenes promoting porous borders and an amnesty program from illegal immigrants – mainly so Wal-mart and other conglomerates can continue to use them for their menial, cheap labor.

The backlash against the backlash against the Dubai port deal is already being spun as anti-Arab (read racist) and anti-Internationalism (read protectionist). But that is a bunchy of bullshit and Karl Rove knows it.

The only reason Bush won reelection in 2004 (aside from the voting fraud, especially Ohio), was because he was seen as strong on national security and “fighting terrorism.”

The Dubai port deal shows just how wrong the people were to trust Bush to protect them. He doesn’t care about protecting America from terrorism, natural disasters or anything else. Ultimately, he doesn’t even care about his standing with the anti-Arab Christian Right, now that he is a lame duck president and can’t win another election in any event.

What matters now is protecting his reputation in the corporate community, where his future fortune will continue to be made once he leaves office and moves back to Crawford.

Once out of office, he will hook up with the Carlyle Group, based in Alexandria, Virginia, just like his father before him. If the laxity of his administration allows the bombers in this country through the ports, to wipe out Washington, D.C., with a nuclear bomb, it won’t matter to Bush. He will just move into the new secret nation’s capital under construction in Alexandria.

Even the Washington Post has from time to time reported on those plans to move the U.S. federal government’s operations there, although the entire plan is, of course, a massive secret.

While living in Alexandria for a time in 2004 and 2005, I used to ride my mountain bike through the under construction Carlyle Group compound on my way to the Potomic river front. It’s an amazing development, a modern-day castle-fortress designed to withstand the most horrific onslaught of weapons the world has ever produced.

No doubt I show up on many surveillance tapes – as a suspected terrorist. Coser scrutiny, of course, showed that no, I’m just a journalist and now a blogger who tries to tell the truth – in spite of the risks.

Watch for the administration to line up enough members of Congress to ram through the backlash on the Dubai port deal. There’s not enough courage left in the nation’s capital – or the press – to stop it.

But there is still enough courage left in the suicide bomber community to attack us. Those plans are giong forward. The Homeland Security Department and FEMA are not prepared to stop it or deal with the aftermath.

Bush says there is nothing to worry about. He will keep us safe from terrorism.

We say heads up and head for the hills – if you have the wherewithall.

Like the poor people stuck in New Orleans in the aftermath of Huricane Katrina, most people will just ignore the warnings and wait and see what happens.

We are hunkered in the bunker. If the Internet still works, we’ll see you on the other side of Armageddon.

I woke up Sunday morning thinking about a column on the uproar over the U.S. port debacle. I may very well still get around to exploring that subject after breakfast. But here’s a heads up on something that I’ve been holding off doing for some time and now must deal with.

The Birmingham News today ran an article, a column and a number of photos that have been buried in a closet since the early 1960s dealing with the civil rights movement in “Bomingham.” At least a couple of those photos were taken by photographer Spider Martin, one of my best friends in the world who decided to take himself out of the world almost three years ago on April 8, 2003, on the 30th anniversary of his hero Pablo Picasso’s death.

Due to the self-serving and revisionist nature of the paper’s handling of this issue today, it now becomes imperative that I tell the story I learned about how the news buried the news during the civil rights days. But this will take some time, so check back later to see the result.

In the meantime, you can read the News story on the subject, along with executive editor Tom Scarrett’s weak column on the issue, and view some of the photos on the Newhouse corporate chain Web site. While we are glad the News had finally decided to admit some errors from those days, thanks to the work of an intern, do not be fooled by their balderdash. The News was a racist institution then, and there’s not much evidence it is that much better now. This is PR to try to save the newspaper by boosting circulation with black readers. Nothing more, nothing less…

From Negatives to Positives
Photos Speak Volumes
Photos: Unseen, Unforgotten

When you go to work, stop at the store, fly in a plane, or surf the web, you are being watched. They know where you live, the value of your home, the names of your friends and family, in some cases even what you read. Where the data revolution meets the needs of national security, “there is no place to hide,” writes investigative reporter Robert O’Harrow.

No Place To Hide is a multimedia investigation by news organizations working together across print and broadcast platforms, to make a greater impact than any one organization could alone, with support from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

Also read James Risen’s book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration.

We’ll have more to say about this on Sunday afternoon. Both authors were interviewed by Tim Russert. Watch for the late night and weekend replay on CNBC.