Matt and Marla

Yesterday, Marla Ruzicka, a San Franciscan and founder of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict was killed in Iraq. The suicide bomb attack happened while she was driving to Baghdad airport to return to the states. Marla had been documenting civilian casualties in Iraq and was returning to continue lobbying for compensation to victims families. The funeral will be in Lakeport on Clear Lake. Marla was 29.

I, yet again, find myself stranded, wishing there was a channel through which to learn about the world that I could trust. In my recent travels I've realized that one method, though anything but easy, is through empirical study. Here is my most recent shame over believing our media.

Around May 8th the story broke that a guy from Portland had been linked to the Madrid bombings through a fingerprint. I read this article about it. Some of my favorite parts are the headline "It was just a fingerprint on a bag in Madrid. But the latest clue in the probe of Spain's 9/11 led the Feds to a lawyer in Portland. Tracing terror's tricky arc", and the 4th paragraph.

Federal officials told NEWSWEEK that they doubt Mayfield has been innocently swept up in a case of international intrigue. Mayfield married an Egyptian woman and converted to Islam 16 years ago. The couple was active in a local Oregon mosque whose members had openly protested government antiterror policies. But it was another thing that leapt out at investigators: in 2002 Mayfield had volunteered to provide legal help for Jeffrey Battle, one of the ringleaders of the Portland Seven�a group of local jihadists who had flown to Asia after 9/11 in an unsuccessful effort to fight with the Taliban. Although prosecutors never proved that the group had committed terrorist acts, last year Battle and an associate pleaded guilty to "conspiracy to levy war against the United States." Battle petitioned to let family members keep custody of his 6-year-old son. Mayfield represented him in the dispute. (He lost.) "If that print had matched with some little old lady in Peoria, that would be one thing," says a U.S. official. "But what are the odds it would be somebody with this background?"

Today, it was found that the FBI was wrong and that this small town lawyer in Portland had his entire life ass-fucked by our government with the unholy contemporary use of the material witness statute, because of some mistake on the part of the FBI, and because he's Muslim.

Mr. Mayfield, I pay the salaries of the men who just ruined your life. I apologize, though that can't possibly help you in your situation. I will continue to try to find a way to stop my complicity in acts similar to what happened to you.

Has our culture changed so much that our roles as consumers has become the only space in which we can exist? "If you haven't paid for it, you've stolen it." This isn't actually true. There are many things that I have, that were not obtained through the traditional consumer channel that are not stolen. How can a corporation come into our schools and tell the next generation of citizenry that 1 and 1 is 3? I'm gonna go and cry now.