Hungry Blues

Breaking news on the 'Skeeter Bites Report:

A letter by a Virginia-based U.S. attorney to a federal appeals court appears to contradict CIA Director Michael Hayden's public statements on the destruction of hundreds of hours of video footage of "extreme" interrogations of suspected al-Qaida operatives by strongly indicating that at least two of the videos still exist, The 'Skeeter Bites Report has learned.

Charles Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote that his office viewed two videotapes of CIA interrogations of al-Qaida suspects as recently as September 19 and October 18 of this year -- contrary to Hayden's statement that the tapes were destroyed in 2005.

Disclosure of the continued existence of these two videos is almost certain to intensify the controversy over the tapes that were destroyed -- and accusations that the CIA is engaging in a cover-up of evidence that its operatives employed interrogation tactics outlawed as torture under both U.S. and international law.

Rosenberg's five-page letter, addressed to Judge Karen Williams, chief judge of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia and to Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court in nearby Alexandria, was referring to the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the lone suspect convicted in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Brinkema was the presiding judge in the Moussaoui trial. A copy of the letter, dated October 27, was obtained by The 'Skeeter Bites Report.

Rosenberg wrote that his office was informed on September 13 by the CIA that the agency "obtained three recordings -- two videotapes and one short audiotape -- of interrogations" of suspected al-Qaida terrorists.

(More at the link.)

Exciting developments in the notorious case of the 1964 murders of the three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman. Jerry Mitchell reports in the Clarion Ledger:

Authorities should reopen the Klan's 1964 killings of three civil rights workers because of newly discovered evidence, family members say.

"Without a doubt," said Ben Chaney of New York City, a Meridian native whose brother was among those slain. "There is enough to warrant the state attorney general to reopen the case and begin to pursue other people who committed this crime."

Six people are still alive who have been accused of playing a part in the June 21, 1964, killings of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, which led to a massive FBI investigation code-named Mississippi Burning. The probe later was depicted in the 1988 fictional film of the same name.

The Clarion-Ledger has found three potential new witnesses in the case, including a former FBI agent who said reputed Klansman Billy Wayne Posey admitted he was a guard for the Klan's killing party.

Upon hearing about the possible testimony, Ben Chaney said he believed this was enough evidence to put the case in front of a grand jury again, particularly since the 2005 Neshoba County grand jury came within one vote of indicting Posey.

He encouraged Attorney General Jim Hood to ask for the FBI's help in investigating the case. "By doing so, I think he can get indictments against the people who are still alive," he said.

Authorities say they're interested in what the newspaper has found.

"Any new evidence we will certainly follow it up," said Hood, whose office investigated the case, leading to the 2005 conviction of Klan leader Edgar Ray Killen, now serving 60 years in prison for manslaughter.

The Clarion Ledger has also published several related article today:

• Six living suspects from 1964 civil rights murders
• Grand jury within one vote of indictment
• Buried secrets: Confession, but no charges

The Ledger has also released some of realated documents:

• James Jordan's confession
  
• Wayne Posey's statement to authorities
  
• Cecil Price's confession
  
• Horace Doyle Banette's confession

I am on deadline for an article on another Civil Rights Era murder case in Mississippi and do not have time to comment on this development just yet. See my past coverage of the Neshoba Murders case (aka Mississippi Burning) for more background.

The kid asked me to post this one.

By Mario Marcel Salas

On October 31, 2007 the San Antonio Coalition on Human and Civil Rights (the Coalition) put into the hands of Police Chief William McManus, City Manager Sheryl Sculley, and Mayor Phil Hardberger a copy of a request, under the Texas Open Records Act, of some eleven elements that relate to data that is needed by the Coalition to begin research on police abuse. The Coalition is interested in statistics on the question of abuse, the crookedness at the Internal Affairs Department (IAD), and the orchestrated setup that the San Antonio Police Officers Association (SAPOA) have instituted through its collective bargaining arrangement of the Citizen Action Advisory Board (CAAB) and IAD. The legal process obligates the City of San Antonio to respect the request for records within 10 days, but as of this date no records have been given! The City of San Antonio appears not to working in good faith with a large array of Civil Rights groups that are trying to give the police chief and the City room to mend the problem.

A succeeding email was sent and a certified letter making the request for a second and third time. The ten-day period has slipped! What this could mean is that the City of San Antonio is holding some records back because they would be deleterious and perhaps show a record of abuse, or a record of incorrectly filed reports. The SAPD has maintained that there have been only infrequent abuse cases, but this does not square with undeniable police abuse complaints that the Coalition is receiving. The real reason why there are sparse official reports is because people are being misdirected to places where the filing will not be made official. The only division where a report of police mistreatment can be officially filed is with the Internal Affairs Department (IAD), but that too is rigged in favor of police who beat people up and have stripped them naked on city streets. Residents are being urged not to call officers' supervisor, as this is a deceitful effort to misdirect and block an official complaint from being filed. Additionally, this setup may be border on official corruption, which could result in an official Federal investigation.

The City of San Antonio City Attorney's Office, headed up by Michael Bernard, has evidently exercised its option of asking for a State Attorney General's ruling, which means that the request for records could take up to 90 days. This would mean that the records requested could be postponed up until January of 2008. What does the city have to camouflage? Why are the records not being given to the Coalition? These questions may inevitably end up in Federal Court if the City does not bring forward what the law allows. Since the City of San Antonio did not acknowledge the request in a punctual manner the Coalition asked a second time on November 11, 2007 via email (electronic transmission) for the records. Furthermore, a certified letter was sent on the same day that requires the City Attorney's office to acknowledge the request. Some Coalition members perceive that since the city was given the request at a meeting, there may be an attempt to negate that they were ever given the petition, but there were at least 20 spectators who observed the request letter being handed to the three city officials. So it seems more likely that the appeal is being denied until the Texas Attorney General can rule on it. The Coalition had asked the City to tell the Coalition that the request was being passed on to the Attorney General if the 10-day rule was not going to be followed, but nothing has been communicated to the Coalition except an email acceptance of the second request.

The Coalition continues to urge citizens to report police abuse to the American Civil Liberties Union, the Neighborhoods First Alliance, LULAC, the NAACP, and other others. This is being done because one cannot expect an impartial response from the IAD or the CAAB. Moreover, the IAD and the CAAB are compromised so completely that these boards linger as a total farce. The integrity of IAD is non-existent for it is controlled and jeopardizes by the SAPOA, while the CAAB has Dan Martinez on its board. Martinez can hardly be said to be a disinterested observer when he is also a member of a crime coalition. This makes Martinez's presence on the CAAB a conflict of interest, and one in which Dan Martinez would be hard pressed to minister a decision against police abuse because of his biased connections. In light of these injustices the Coalition is asking that if you have been a victim of police abuse to call the Neighborhoods First Alliance at 226-9041, the ACLU at 226-8707, the Esperanza Center at 228-0201, LULAC at 733-5454, or the NAACP - 224-7636. Please indicate that you wish to file a San Antonio Human and Civil Rights complaint on the Coalition's form.

[Open records request can be found below the cut.]

[click to continue…]

What's the headline refer to? Hurricane Katrina's deforestation of the Gulf Coast, primarily Mississippi.

New satellite imaging has revealed that hurricanes Katrina and Rita produced the largest single forestry disaster on record in the nation -- an essentially unreported ecological catastrophe that killed or severely damaged about 320 million trees in Mississippi and Louisiana.

The die-off, caused initially by wind and later by weeks-long pooling of stagnant water, was so massive that researchers say it will add significantly to the global greenhouse gas buildup -- ultimately putting as much carbon from dying vegetation into the air as the rest of the nation's forest takes out in a year of photosynthesis.

In addition, the downing of so many trees has opened vast and sometimes fragile tracts to several aggressive and fast-growing exotic species that are already squeezing out far more environmentally productive native species.

Efforts to limit the damage have been handicapped by the ineffectiveness of a $504 million federal program to help Gulf Coast landowners replant and fight the invasive species. Congress appropriated the money in 2005 and added to it in 2007, but officials acknowledge that the program got off to a slow start and that only about $70 million has been promised or dispensed so far. Local advocates said onerous bureaucratic hurdles and low compensation rates are major reasons.

"This is the worst environmental disaster in the United States since the Exxon Valdez accident . . . and the greatest forest destruction in modern times," said James Cummins, executive director of the conservation group Wildlife Mississippi and a board member of the Mississippi Forestry Commission. "It needs a really broad and aggressive response, and so far that just hasn't happened."

The U.S. Forest Service and Farm Service Agency have made estimates of the forest damage from the two 2005 hurricanes, but they have generally focused on economic losses -- $2 billion, or 5.5 billion board feet, worth of timber.

The new assessment of tree damage comes from a study being published today in the journal Science, written primarily by researchers at Tulane University who studied images from two NASA satellites.

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita did more than 30 times the damage to forrests than Mt. St. Helens.

Most of the lost trees in the Gulf region stood 70 to 100 feet tall, and others will not grow back for decades, if ever, experts said.

Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in August 2005 with winds that reached 125 mph, damaged 5 million acres of forests, 80% of them in Mississippi, according to the U.S. Forest Service. By comparison, the 1980 eruption in Washington of Mt. St. Helens wiped out 150,000 acres of forest.

"In some areas of southeast Louisiana and southeast Mississippi, it was 100% damage," said Wayne Hagan, founder of Timberland Management Services of Louisiana in Clinton. "I had one landowner on 2,000 acres who had basically $4 million worth of trees on his place. One hundred percent of the trees were blown over and broken down. That's basically what the hurricane did."

And for all this new talk of environmental damage, there has still been no comprehensive assessment of the other environmental issues severely exacerbated by the 2005 hurricanes.

Desegregation, A Story of Quiescence and Violence

By Mario Marcel Salas

Violence against integration efforts would not end after the Brown v. Board decision, and patterns of hatred and segregation would be revealed in graphic media images in the North. In 1965, a decade after the desegregation of southern schools, school segregation in the North became national news. As a outcome of extreme segregated neighborhoods in the North, racist savagery erupted in Boston. The NAACP in seeking to end educational segregation supported black parents by confronting the Boston School Committee, and racist leader Louise Day Hicks, who stood fast in her claims that Boston’s black public schools were not inferior. Black parents took the Boston school committee to court, and a federal district court judge ruled that the school committee had intently maintained two divided school systems. The outcome that was imposed was that students were to be bused citywide to eradicate segregation. White racists never accepted it and just moved away causing the schools to stay segregated.

To a certain degree African American political power itself, in many southern states, was a continuation of the orchestration and control of the white elite in which "partial" freedom was granted to them as the result of the Civil War and Reconstruction, and later the Civil Rights movement. There were civil rights victories, but the colonial white elite controlled its extent. These racist white systems of control were not plantation based, but was based upon a state colonial matrix that helped them to recapture control of a newly freed African American population. This colonial system has never been destroyed but has morphed with time. It retailored itself to the legal victories and desegregation efforts by controlling the scope of change, while protecting white elitist positions of power. This is why many political scientists maintain that racism is permanent.

Many public schools across the United States were never truly integrated and San Antonio perhaps best describes the process by which many schools were desegregated. When Brown vs. Board became law, in 1954 and 1955, the white racist power elite, along with their economic and political allies, sought ways to appease desegregation efforts in many areas of the South. The legal, political, and social struggle by anti-integration activists blunted the Brown decision in a number of ways. Racist southern school boards, supported by their allies in state governments, brought suits challenging the Brown judgment, thereby creating escape routes to get around the intent of the decision. In many areas around the country social trickery, intimidation, and violence were used to uphold segregation or blunt the intent of the Brown decision.

Topeka, Kansas became the legal battleground on which school segregation was fought. The 1954 Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board declared that racist segregation of public schools was unequal and thereupon unconstitutional. The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. the Board brought much gravity to the racial model and the structure of U.S. society. Though the Brown decision did not begin the historic African American civil rights movement it provided the political fire and legal impetus for social action. While The Brown decision did not end segregation, it provided a legal foundation by which social action could be launched. However, the court decision raised questions as to how much authority it had over entrenched institutional and traditional racism that was embedded into the social fabric of society in a racial matrix that appears to have permanence in U.S. society.

The paternal system of white dominance, as codified in law, was overturned as the constitutional policies established by the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that validated the doctrine of "separate but equal" were ruled illegal. Interestingly, the racist "one drop rule" was also codified in the Plessy decision, as Homer Plessy was said to be only "one-eighth black." Jim Crow laws reinforced this pyramidal structure of white racism throughout the South and established separate facilities for Blacks and Whites in every area of social life. Though the South had lost the war segregationist forces were able to "redeem" southern values through segregation and the perpetuation of the myth of "black racial inferiority." The Plessy decision was a achievement for the "Redeemers movement," and those who wanted to "save the South" from Reconstruction and the perceived threat of black rule.

For many years the Robert E. Lee model of separate educational institutions that focused on a curriculum of domestic skills instruction and manual labor was the societal norm of admittance into white society for freed slaves and their ancestors. This is why it took so long to bring black schools and colleges up to par academically. By choosing these pathways, racist paternalistic models of control could assign the boundaries by which the descendents of Africans could interact within a white racist society. Thus, the promises of emancipation and Reconstruction were sidestepped and structured to guarantee white racist rule in the United States. Booker T. Washington’s ideas became the affirmed model for white racist doctrines of paternalism. Consequently, African American movements for social equality fought within the boundaries set by racial models and codified by the Plessy decision. African Americans fought for equal pay for teachers, for equal school facilities, for equal libraries, and for equality on the same footing as whites beyond the racist vocational models prescribed for blacks. The Plessy decision legally defined the boundaries of these struggles, but did not completely control it as African Americans challenged the law and the legal boundaries in many cases.

~
Mario Marcel Salas was born in San Antonio, TX in 1949. He joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee soon after high school, and became a civil rights worker for over 30 years. He was the leader of the last SNCC-Black Panther chapter in the United States in 1976. Now a full time professor at Northwest Vista College in San Antonio teaching American and State government, Mr. Salas writes for three African American Newspapers in Texas and speaks across the country at various colleges and universities.

By John Gibson

There is a board of the foundation that controls the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.

There are over 30 people on that board.

The majority of the board members are not Black.

The vast majority of the board members are corporate connected.

There are only 3 of the over 30 board members who might be considered Civil Rights Movement veterans.

There are no Movement people on the board who are from outside of Memphis.

The Chairman of the Executive Committee of the board is J. R. Pitt Hyde.

Pitt Hyde is an extremely wealthy white conservative. He is reported to be a billionaire.

Hyde, the Executive Committee's chair for over a decade, was founder and chairman of the AutoZone Corporation until 1997. That company is now in a multi-year long battle with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In it's original suit against Hyde's Autozone the anti-discrimination agency charged:

From June 1, 1993 to May 31, 1995, [Autozone] had at least 59 vacant positions filled in the official/manager category...none were filled by Blacks; During that same time period, qualified Blacks applied for official/manager positions; that they were qualified for those jobs; that they were not hired; that White males were selected although Black applicants had superior qualifications.

In September 2006, Pitt Hyde hosted a fundraiser in his home for Bob Corker, the opponent of Harold Ford, Jr. in the 2006 U.S. Senate race in Tennessee which was widely regarded as the most racist campaign of the 2006 election.

Pitt Hyde's fundraiser for Harold Ford's opponent was attended by George Bush and raised close to a million dollars.

• Trudy Dies - Palace Music
• Just Say So - Bettye Lavette
• Civil War Parade - Rev Gary Davis
• Them There Eyes - Louis Armstrong
• Birds and Ships - Billy Bragg and Wilco
• Super Bad - James Brown
• Piano Improvisation No. 4 - Duke Ellington
• The Wheel - Grateful Dead (Greek Theatre, 8/17/89)
• My Sweet Lord - George Harrison
• Saturday - Little Wings

Glenn Greenwald explains.

Numerous Senate Democrats delivered dramatic speeches from the floor as to why Mukasey's confirmation would be so devastating to the country. The Washington Post said the "vote came after more than four hours of impassioned floor debate."

"Torture should not be what America stands for . . . I do not vote to allow torture," said Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy. Russ Feingold said: "we need an attorney general who will tell the president that he cannot ignore the laws passed by Congress. And on that fundamental qualification for this office Judge Mukasey falls short." Feingold added: "If Judge Mukasey won't say the simple truth -- that this barbaric practice is torture -- how can we count on him to stand up to the White House on other issues?"

Wow -- it sounds as though there was really a lot at stake in this vote. So why would 44 Democratic Senators make a flamboyant showing of opposing confirmation without actually doing what they could to prevent it? Is it that a filibuster was not possible because a large number of these Democratic Senators were willing to symbolically oppose confirmation so they could say they did -- by casting meaningless votes in opposition knowing that confirmation was guaranteed -- but were unwilling to demonstrate the sincerity of their claimed beliefs by acting on them?

The Post said the vote "reflected an effort by Democrats to register their displeasure with Bush administration policies on torture and the boundaries of presidential power." Apparently, they wanted to oh-so-meaningfully "register their displeasure" but not actually stop confirmation.

[The most amazing quote was from chief Mukasey supporter Chuck Schumer, who, before voting for him, said that Mukasey is "wrong on torture -- dead wrong." Marvel at that phrase: "wrong on torture." Six years ago, there wasn't even any such thing as being "wrong on torture," because "torture" wasn't something we debated. It would have been incoherent to have heard: "Well, he's dead wrong on torture, but . . . "

Now, "torture" is not only something we openly debate, but it's something we do. And the fact that someone is on the wrong side of the "torture debate" doesn't prevent them from becoming the Attorney General of the United States. It's just one issue, like any other issue -- the capital gains tax, employer mandates for health care, the water bill -- and just because someone is "dead wrong" on one little issue (torture) hardly disqualifies them from High Beltway Office.]

Over and over again this year, Republican filibusters were depicted (both by Senate Democrats and the media) as nothing more the routine need to obtain the "60 votes required" for passage of any measure in the Senate. That "requirement" was said to apply to everything, including immigration ("The Senate voted 52-44 for the DREAM Act, but 60 votes were required to end debate"); Iraq withdrawal timetables ("Support is expected to top 50 votes but fall short of the 60 required"); troop leave requirements ("Webb's Iraq bill inches closer to 60 . . . . Winning at least three of those Republicans over could give the Democrats the 60 votes they need"); and warrantless surveillance ("Democratic-sponsored bill failed to reach the 60-vote majority").

(Whole thing.)

Elle, PhD is has ventured to answer Langston's still prescient question, "What happens to a dream deferred?"

If you know about small communities in the South, you know that Jena is not an aberration of racial progress but rather a manifestation of festering tensions that have never gone away. What's amazing about Elle's blog post is that it provides outsiders with a chance to hear something about how things are going in one locale, about 100 miles from Jena.

It occurs to me that I am cataloguing, watching, and waiting for shit to explode in my little corner of the world.

Something is going on here in my home region, something created by the nature of race, gender, and class relations here. Everyone is whispering, but no one is talking.

To date:

Precious "Petey" Story, an 18-year old white woman, was murdered in August. The suspected murderers are young black men, one of whom Petey had previously dated.

Shortly thereafter, when the family of a local white girl decided that she was missing, they went to the home of her black ex-boyfriend and demanded entry. She was not there (was later found on her family's property), but that did not stop her parents from withdrawing her from the local, primarily black high school. They were careful to state that they were not racist, but did not believe in interracial dating.

Over the next couple of days, at least seven other white students withdrew (fewer than 30 were enrolled). When my offended best friend asked one of the white boys about it, he said that his sister confessed to being "afraid" to attend school with so many black boys now. "If one of them tries to date her and she refuses, she's scared of what he might do to her."

Really. He said that.

In a neighboring town, four black boys and one white girl checked out of school one day. They "went to one of the boys’ house, located close to the school, where sex occurred between one of the boys and the girl." They returned to after-school activities and during that time, the girl said she had been raped.

The 14-year-old girl was taken to a local hospital, treated for possible rape, and released to her parents.

A 16-year-old male [was charged] with forcible rape... and placed... in an undisclosed juvenile detention center. He was later released.

...The school district conducted a thorough investigation of the incident and determined that sex occurred, but there was no evidence of a rape. No staff members were notified that a rape had occurred during the school day.

The girl's parents have removed her from the parish school district.

When Ouachita Christian (you know what "Christian" typically means in the name of a southern school right? k, thx) played the majority black Madison High School in football in September, some parents reported hearing gunshots. Some time later, OCS played the (majority black) high school where my best friend is cheerleading advisor. She sent her girls over to introduce themselves, but the OCS cheerleaders were not allowed to come to their side. The gist of the OCS cheerleading advisor's explanation? While it was safe for the black cheerleaders to face their crowd, they couldn't trust the black crowd not to shoot at their cheerleaders.

Believe it or not, this is just half of it. You should go read the whole thing. This isn't just Louisiana or even just the South. America's been pretending pretty hard that we're all done with our race problem.

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

A while back, I passed on some information about the local efforts in Memphis to block white dominated, corporate interests from taking control of the Lorraine Motel, where MLK was assassinated, which has been made a National Civil Rights Museum. Gary Younge, who does excellent reporting on race issues, has picked up the story for The Nation.

Twenty years ago, the Lorraine Motel, where King was assassinated, was turned into a National Civil Rights Museum. The chair of the executive committee of its board, J.R. "Pitt" Hyde III, is a wealthy white Republican. Charged with safeguarding a vital landmark in the nation's racial history, Hyde lobbied for the defeat of Harold Ford Jr.'s bid for the vacant Senate seat from Tennessee in what was widely regarded as the most racist campaign of the 2006 election. While Hyde has been representing the civil rights museum, the company he founded, AutoZone, has been embroiled in a longstanding EEOC racial discrimination lawsuit.

The board, on which blacks are a minority, is packed with those who dedicate their lives not to civil rights but to corporate profits. And they know how to do business. Recently the board discussed exercising an option to buy the museum building from the State of Tennessee, which owns it, for $1. (Apparently they never made a formal offer, as they knew it would be rejected.) Black history on sale at bargain prices.

Younge lays out high stakes of this battle over memory and symbol.

Hyde and the corporate agenda he represents remain at the core of that "problem," which keeps one in four Memphis residents (who are mostly black) below the poverty line.

The civil rights movement made great strides in achieving integration. But that victory prompted white supremacy to become more skillful and subtle in its bid for self-preservation. Segregation was outlawed, but its economic, social and cultural legacy was left intact. Black people in Memphis now have the right to go into any restaurant they like. Unfortunately, many cannot afford anything on the menu.

Second, the story of the Lorraine museum is a brazen example of the crude but effective manner in which the right, which fought so hard to thwart the work of the civil rights movement in its heyday, has sought to buy, co-opt or otherwise manipulate the movement's most popular emblems.

Four years ago fundamentalists stood on the steps of Alabama's Supreme Court building, waving Confederate flags and singing "We Shall Overcome" as they protested the removal of the Ten Commandments from the rotunda. A few months earlier, opponents of affirmative action went to the building to protest a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment--ratified to protect the rights of freed slaves. They called on universities to judge applicants not by "the color of their skin but by the content of their character," words of course lifted from King's "I Have a Dream" speech.

"Nowadays they like the fact that they can sit down to dinner at the site of the King assassination," says Circuit Judge D'Army Bailey, a founder of the museum who was ousted from the board. "It gives them a good feeling. Corporations want to be identified with it because that kind of identification brings pacification. It's been hijacked."

• That's How Things Get Done - Howe Gelb
• Jesus Christ - Woody Guthrie
• We Died in August - Dana and Karen Kletter
• Speeding Motorcycle - Daniel Johnston
• A Friend Like Lonely Jesus - Reverend Gary Davis
• With Arms Outstretched - Rilo Kiley (live)
• Chicago - Robert Fripp
• Commemorative Transfiguration & Communion at Magruder Park - Sufjan Stevens
• And Then - Miracle Legion
• Think Too Much (B) - Paul Simon

I have not had a chance to blog about the important AP interview with Megan Williams. Go read it, but also check out the video excerpts from it, below. Megan Williams is articulate and composed. She does not seem at all like she is mentally challenged or "slow," as has been reported.

No time for further comment just now, so I'll hand it over to David Neiwert.

I couldn't help reading this and feeling a chill. It reminded me of the stories people would tell from the lynching era, of anonymous black bodies floating by on local rivers, just so many more uncounted corpses atop the already considerable toll that mounted during those years. And you have to wonder how many cases like this have occurred in which the perpetrators have simply gone uncaught, because the disappearances were simply shrugged off.

I want to thank pdxWoman for exposing the falsehoods of Blair, who commented on my recent post on Megan Williams as well as on one of pdxWoman's. pdxWoman was writing about underreporting of the Megan Williams case and of other cases of violence against and abductions of Black women; I was writing about the history white violence against Black women in domestic settings and why whites sometimes go ape shit and show blood lust for Blacks.

To pdxWoman, Blair wrote:

Now that interracial dating and marraige [sic] is not uncommon, more and more spousal abuse cases involve interracial couples. It appears that the Megan Williams case is turning out to be a case of domestic violence rather than a hate crime.

Bobby R. Brewster, one of six arrested in the case, had a relationship with the victin, He was charged in July with domestic battery and assault after a dispute between them. It appears that this is the motivation for the subsequent attack on Williams. All too often, husbands and boyfriends arrested for battering their spouses or girl friends often retaliate with the victims call the police.

Blair wrote a very similar passage on my blog, using many of the same phrases and formulations as above. As supporting evidence, on both pdxWoman and Hungry Blues, Blair made a lengthy, detailed description of Black violence against whites in the murders of Chanon Christian and Chris Newsom. I also heard from Yobachi that Blair made a similar comment on one of his Megan Williams posts.

Problem is that Blair's version of what happened to Christian and Newsom rehearses white supremacist distortions of the case, to suggest it was an example of racially motivated, Black-on-white crime. pdxWoman found an SPLC article that explains:

On the night of Jan. 6, Knoxville, Tenn., couple Christopher Newsom, 23, and Channon Christian, 21, drove to a friend's house to watch a movie after a dinner date. When they reached the friend's apartment complex, they were carjacked at gunpoint by three men and a woman who forced them to drive to an abandoned house where the assailants raped and murdered the young couple. The next day, police discovered Newsom's body shot and burned along city train tracks. Three days after that, officers discovered the body of Christian in an unoccupied house. She had been strangled and crammed into a garbage can.

Knoxville-area television stations and newspapers have covered the story heavily since the bodies were found. On the national media level, The Associated Press and MSNBC reported on the murders shortly after they occurred. But starting in April, a loud and growing throng of white supremacists began protesting what they call a conspiratorial media blackout, owing, they claim, to the fact that Newsom and Christian were white and their alleged killers black....

Attempting to capitalize on the propaganda value of a gruesome crime, white supremacists have flooded the Internet and radio waves with false details concerning the purported sexual mutilation of the victims and held a rally in Knoxville to protest "black crime." Their lies - that the murders were a race-based attack and that the victims were horribly mutilated -are gaining traction. Without acknowledging the source, some mainstream conservative commentators in recent months have been parroting the key white supremacist talking point, characterizing the Christian-Newsom murders as a black-on-white "hate crime."

It's an old pattern with the Klan and these other extremist types. The get themselves and others all into a frenzy with their fantasies about dangerous Blacks, when in fact there are whites really doing the stuff they imagine Blacks might be doing.

Think back to the Klan's 1964 torture and murder of Henry Dee and Charles Moore, two Black teens from Franklin County, MS. James Ford Seale, who in June was convicted for his involvement in the murders, and the other Klansmen involved, tortured Dee and Moore to extract information about supposed Black Muslim gun runners who, some feared, were bringing weapons into Franklin County. Though there were Blacks who defended themselves with guns and other means, Dee and Moore do not seem to have been involved, and there has yet to be any evidence of Blacks moving weapons into the county.

But the right wing rumor mill had been long at work. Since at least 1961 white supremacist government officials from throughout the South and beyond had been spreading rumors of a Black Muslim threat to the Southern way of life.

On June 4, 1961 Garland Lyell, Assistant Attorney General of Mississippi; Gwin Cole, Assistant Director of the Bureau of Identification, Mississippi Highway Patrol; Investigator DB Crockett, Identification Bureau, Mississippi Highway Patrol; and AL Hopkins, Investigator, MS Sovereignty Commission went to Atlanta, GA "for the purposes of attending a confidential meeting of state officials from several southern and western states."

The purpose of this meeting was to establish better communications between the various states and to familiarize those present with past and current activities of Communistic, Socialistic, Subversive and Agitative individuals.

According to AL Hopkins, 11 states were represented at this meeting.

The delegates from Mississippi and the other states were welcomed by Major Harold Burson of the Georgia Dept of Public Safety and Lt. Col. Lowell Conner of the same dept.; Major Delmar Jones, Director of the Georgia Bureau of Identification; Captain BG Ragsdale, Asst. Dir. of GBI; and Special Agent Arthur L. Hutchins, GBI.

Presiding over the meeting was Lt. HA Poole, Security Division, GBI.

Lt. Poole stated that the purpose of the meeting was not to discuss the racial issue alone but to work out the best method of combatting any subversive acts and especially to discuss "The Muslim Cult," "Communism," and the "Freedom Riders."

The documents from the meeting include about a page and a half on the "Muslim Cult" (i.e. Nation of Islam/Elijah Muhammad), with passages such as this one:

This is undoubtedly the most vicious organization in existence today and a real threat to the sovereignty of all states. They advocate violence and it is well known that they will unhesitatingly kill a suspected informant and that a great number of the members of have criminal records.

I can't say whether Blair is like the government propagandists or like the Klansmen whose anxieties they cultivated---whether s/he is playing or being played. But either way, trading in these kinds of racist fantasies is trading in methods of inciting violence against Blacks and others. Blair, consider yourself banned from this site.

For more analysis on how these right wing distortions of Black-on-white violence confuse discussions of hate crimes, see David Neiwert's post, Hate crimes: Muddying the waters.

For all interested parties Blair's IP info; it appears s/he is a Netscape employee:

OrgName:    Netscape Communications Corp.
OrgID:      NSCP
Address:    501 E. Middlefield
City:       Mountain View
StateProv:  CA
PostalCode: 94043
Country:    USNetRange:   207.200.64.0 - 207.200.127.255
CIDR:       207.200.64.0/18
NetName:    NETSCAPE-CIDR
NetHandle:  NET-207-200-64-0-1
Parent:     NET-207-0-0-0-0
NetType:    Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS.NETSCAPE.COM
NameServer: NS2.NETSCAPE.COM
Comment:    ADDRESSES WITHIN THIS BLOCK ARE NON-PORTABLE
RegDate:    1996-09-06
Updated:    2001-03-28RTechHandle: AOL-NOC-ARIN
RTechName:   America Online, Inc.
RTechPhone:  +1-703-265-4670
RTechEmail:  domains@aol.net