Justice Delayed, but not Denied

This is what a terrorist looks like.
One variety of that animal, anyway.

Sometimes you just luck out. You walk into a classroom and a professor just blows your hair back and changes your life.

Twenty years ago, I took an upper-division Sociology course called Racism & Discrimination, and the professor who taught it changed me profoundly. In fact, the first person I thought to call when this whole blogging thing started to take off and I started to make a name for myself and get a little notice was Bill Russell, the professor who taught that course. Such was his impact on my life.

When I woke up this morning to the news that Klansman and domestic terrorist James Ford Seale had been convicted of murder and kidnapping in the deaths of two black teenagers forty-three years ago. My first instinct when I heard the news was to call that professor - but it is June. He is not in his office. (♥ email.)

On May 2, 1964 Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were picked up on a country road, beaten, stuffed into the trunk of a car, and driven to a remote backwater of the Mississippi River. They were bound and weighted down, tethered to an engine block, and thrown into the river alive. A crime rooted in evil and hatred. An act only a human would - or could - commit.

Their bodies were discovered weeks later, during the search for Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman who disappeared while registering black voters in Mississippi.

''I'm going to go to that cemetery, that Mount Olive Cemetery, I'm going to tell Charles Moore, `I told you that I see it to the end.''' Thomas Moore, 63, of Colorado Springs, Colo., said after the verdict. “I now feel that Mississippi is my home, Mississippi, you came a long way and I'm so proud the jury spoke.''

Thomas Moore has not lived in Mississippi since joining the Army just a few weeks before his brother disappeared. He served in Vietnam and made the Army his career, serving 30 years. His efforts were instrumental in the successful prosecution of the animal who heinously murdered two young men for the crime of being black in Franklin County Mississippi in 1964.

Charles Moore and Henry Hezekiah Dee were murdered 43 years, one month and 12 days before justice was served.

Last night, they were finally able to rest in peace.

Are we journalists? We strive to be.

Crossposted unedited from WTWC

While everyone frets over whether or not bloggers are journalists, I know that my Republican Senator’s staff regards our enterprise here as such.

Today Senator Kit Bond’s office sent a letter to his colleagues asking them to add their signatures to another letter, this one to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, demanding that the issue of the 5-13 discharge be investigated and obvious abuses set right. (apologies to the senators office. I had problems with the .pdf and the google docs are not nearly as pretty.)

The abuse of the 5-13 Discharge is an issue because bloggers made it such (examples here and here) after a piece in The Nation, How Specialist Towne Lost His Benefits. We seized on the issue, as we had the larger mental health issues for returning GI’s and the understaffing of Vet Centers. (See here, here, here, here, here, and here). We kept bringing it up until it gained traction, even though the mainstream media largely ignored the issue, and continues to do so.

“Bloggers have helped bring the necessary scrutiny to this important issue.” Said Shana Marchio, Communications Director for Senator Kit Bond (R-MO). “Bloggers offer folks a new medium to get their information and news. Their importance in the debating and sharing of ideas should not be discounted. At the same time, the relationship between bloggers and members of Congress and their spokespeople is an evolving one. Both sides are learning who to trust and how to interact. As a part of the Fourth Estate, it is essential that professional bloggers adhere to the ethics and professional conduct standards that traditional members of the media follow as their role in information sharing continues to grow. Also, I do believe that bloggers will only be come more important in coming elections and it’s important to start a dialogue.”

This is all new territory for everyone. But I think I know why the best source I have in Washington is the Communications Director for my Republican Senator. She is 30 years old. Where blogs and the internet are concerned, she instinctively “gets” it because she grew up with technology. I may have policy disagreements with my Republican Senator – but credit where credit is due. He was smart enough to hire a young person with that innate sense for press second six years ago, and promote to communications director from within.

On the trust issue, everyone has to be prepared to get burned once or twice. But getting burned is part of the bargain when you blaze a trail. So we move forward cautiously. The importance of the free exchange of information is only going to gain in importance. As it does, the issues will work themselves out.

Bloggers do not have the immediate access that reporters working the Washington bureaus have, nor do we have the resources to do a lot of original reporting. All we really have are our wits and our words...and our word. Because that is the irrefutable dynamic, the blogs represent a truly new, and meretricious, form of media, and we will earn exactly the amount of credibility and respect that we deserve.

Civil War in Gaza

Oh where to even start. I have been trying all day to write something about the pressure-cooker in Palestine that has blown apart in the last few days.

Five years ago this month, the President of the United States made a Rose Garden speech, wherein he laid out a bold, vivid two-state vision for the Middle East. Israel and Palestine, coexisting side by side, their peoples living in peace and prospering together. "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror." he declared back then.

That vision was a mirage.

I certainly do not have the answers to this dilemma but I do know one thing beyond all doubt – a lot of it can be directly traced to the horrid policies of the Bush (mal)administration and the State Department that wasn’t.

United States policy overtly encouraged Israel to withdraw from the Gaza strip – not in and of itself a bad thing. But they also pressed for elections in both the Palestenian territory and Israel. Abbas won the election to replace Arafat as the President of the Palestinian Authority after Arafat’s passing in late 2004. He arrogantly allowed Hamas to run candidates to stand for legitimate election to parliament, thinking that he could defeat them at the polls.

He thought wrong.

So the Bush administration – on the heels of moving the goalposts in Iraq from WMD’s to fostering Democracy – decided that they didn’t much care for Democracy the way the Palestinians exercised it, because gosh-darnit, they picked the wrong leaders. Money and aid was cut off – a situation choreographed by Washington D.C. – in an attempt to strangle Hamas out of the political process.

This blew up in their faces most spectacularly. The attempt to make Hamas unpopular enough that the Palestinians would blame them and their support would erode, instead engendered hatred and pure, unadulterated resolve toward the west, and by extension, to the man they perceived as a marionette of western masters, Abbas. This week, the seething cauldron boiled over. Hamas and Fatah turned their guns on one another, and as it stands now, Hamas is in control in Gaza.

"The two-state vision is dead. It really is," said Edward G. Abington Jr., a former State Department official who was once an adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Abbas, whose bouts of vacillation have irritated U.S. officials, yesterday dissolved the Palestinian government in response to Hamas's takeover of Gaza. U.S. officials signaled that they will move quickly to persuade an international peace monitoring group -- known as the Quartet -- to lift aid restrictions on the Palestinian government, allowing direct aid to flow to the West Bank-based emergency government that Abbas will lead.

"There is no more Hamas-led government. It is gone," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the administration must still consult with other members of the Quartet. He said that humanitarian aid will continue to Gaza, but that the dissolution of the Palestinian government is a singular moment that will allow the United States and its allies to create a "new model of engagement."

The evolving U.S. strategy would let the Hamas-run Gaza Strip fend for itself while attempting to bolster Abbas as a moderate leader who can actually govern and deliver peace with Israel. The senior administration official noted that Gaza has no territorial issues with Israel, since there are no Israelis in Gaza, so the Hamas entity there would have no stake in potential peace talks concerning the border on the West Bank.

Referring to Abbas, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters yesterday that "we fully support him in his decision to try and end this crisis for the Palestinian people and to give them an opportunity to return to peace and a better future."

But analysts said yesterday that this strategy of dividing the moderates from the extremists -- which was the core of Bush's 2002 speech -- proved ineffective and may have led to the dilemma facing the administration.

So now, the government has been dissolved, and the Gaza Strip is under Hamas control. Fatah has retreated to the West Bank, and the Bush administration is still supporting Abbas. And a radical Islamic state, committed to the destruction of the jewish state, exists literally on Israel’s doorstep.

No one has asked me, but if they did, I would say that it looks to my eyes like we should probably bow out. Every damned thing we have done has turned around and bit us on the ass. Beyond encouraging the “Quartet” to get aid and assistance flowing, and maybe send a check.

Although I am perhaps the least religious person you will ever encounter, I leave you with a prayer for peace. Oseh Shalom, Gaza.