The Devil may still be in the details of the newly revised Army Field Manual, but he is also in George Bush's heavy handed insistence, today, that the US maintain "a separate program operated by the Central Intelligence Agency," not governed by the new Army requirements for detentions and interrogations.
"On the same day that the Department of Defense took a stand against the torture and abuse of detainees, the President undercut the uniformed military by defending the CIA's use of extraordinary rendition and interrogation techniques that amount to torture," stated Leonard Rubenstein, Executive Director of Physicians for Human Rights. "When the President had the opportunity to make the high standards of the new Army Field Manual the baseline for all national security interrogations, he instead defended the continued use of harsh tactics that violate the very guidelines the Pentagon released today."
(More reaction quotes from PHR.)
Item 1:
Army to Use Geneva Rules for Detainees
New manual eliminates secret tactics and separate standards for questioning captives.
By Julian E. Barnes, Times Staff Writer
September 6, 2006WASHINGTON — Bowing to critics of its tough interrogation policies, the Pentagon is issuing a new Army field manual that provides Geneva Convention protections for all detainees and eliminates a secret list of interrogation tactics.
Item 2:
CIA Gives Up Custody of Chief Terrorist Detainees
From Associated Press
10:43 AM PDT, September 6, 2006WASHINGTON -- President Bush has transferred 14 key terrorist leaders from secret CIA custody to the U.S. military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be prepared for eventual trials, a senior administration official said today.
These two items are monumental developments. Humane treatment and transparent operations in detention and interrogation are now matters of law and explicit regulations.
BUT the devil may well be in the details---which are not yet all available.
I'm not sure what time I have for writing the next few days, but at the very least you can be sure I'll let you know when the Physicians for Human Rights statement is out on these developments.
A couple of months ago I had my first exposure to Mark Mulcahy's music. The venue was PA's Lounge a little room that is adjunct to a little bar in Union Square in Somerville, MA.
Mulcahy is famous to some for his work in his old band Miracle Legion. I'd never heard any of his stuf before. I was there because my friend Dana was opening for him. She had made a point of telling me how great Mulcahy is, but I had no idea what to expect.
Quickly I was blown away by the crazy intelligence and surprising beauty of the peformance—faux sloppy, effortlessly various and changeable. And what a voice. It was just Mulcahy on guitar along with a bass player and a drummer who each sometimes doubled on other instruments. For a few songs there was also a keyboard player.
A ways into the set Mulcahy took his hands off his guitar and he and the bass player and drummer applied their voices, just their voices, to this song. You could hear the sounds from the bar, separated from the lounge by a wall and a hallway. But the performance space was silent while the three men sang this. The sounds of the bar and pretty much everything else in Somerville dropped into the background.
I wish I had a recording of that performance that night at PA's, but this mp3 will have to do.
Don't Talk Crazy (4:59, 5.7 MB - click on the little blue triangle to listen)
UPDATE (9/7): On request of Mark Mulcahy's management I have removed access to this mp3. The song is currently for sale on the iTunes music store (requires iTunes).
The one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina brought the focus back to New Orleans, but Gulf Coast communities in Mississippi still struggle to get attention and help for areas swept away by last summer's deadly super storm.
"We have been so overshadowed. In Mississippi, we have total neighborhoods that have been just completely wiped off the map," said Cynthia Seawright Wright, who lives in Ocean Springs, Miss.
"We are still living in trailers that are meant for you to live in for a few days," said Darneice Williams, who is raising her granddaughter Brianna with her son serving in Iraq. He can't come to Mississippi because the Army doesn't want him "injured" trying to rebuild, she said. Meanwhile, Williams said she was diagnosed with severe liver damage from drinking dirty water in the FEMA trailers. "I need to talk to someone, I need psychological help. I cannot get it. I don't know what to do," she said.
Statistics (Statewide)
Mississippi residents are among the nearly 750,000 households who have been displaced from the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Current estimates show that of the 47,000 Mississippi residents, who fled their communities in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, only 27,000 have returned to rebuild their homes in communities that have not fully recovered one year after the storm. There are more than 101,000 Mississippi residents living in temporary FEMA trailers. According to the American Red Cross, 47 counties in Mississippi sustained hurricane damage to single family houses, apartments, and mobile homes, but the majority of the damage occurred in the coastal counties of Hancock, Harrison and Jackson, where more than 64,000 homes were completely destroyed and over 70,000 homes damaged. As a consequence, each of the Mississippi coastal counties have experienced a significant population decline, while counties located further inland now have an influx of displaced residents.
(Monique Harden, "HUMAN RIGHTS AND MISSISSIPPI’S DISPLACED RESIDENTS," in Envisioning a Better Mississippi: Hurricane Katrina and Mississippi -- One Year Later.)
Go here to download full report.
Black students ordered to give up seats to whites
August 24, 2006
COUSHATTA -- Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children. . . .
[Superintendent Kay] Easley would not comment much on the allegations Wednesday, saying it is a personnel issue. She acknowledged that she has investigated the claim. And she confirmed that the bus driver did not run her route Wednesday, nor would she today.
Asked if the driver would work for the rest of the year, Easley said, "I'm not going to answer the questions. " You're getting all that you're going to get from me. I'm sorry."
How in 2006 is this possible? Ask yourself how in 2006 is it possible downstate to evict 2/3 of the Black population from New Orleans, and you have something like an answer.
Or maybe it's the other way around. Bus driver Delores Davis said to herself, if they can choose whether to let Blacks back into NOLA, I can choose where Blacks get to sit on my bus.
When segregation was the law of the land such analogies may have been more explicit and more obvious. They still govern the minds and actions of Americans today.
As along as we're making analogies, it's worth saying, too, that separate is never equal:
After Richmond and Williams [parents and guardians to the children] filed complaints with the School Board, Transportation Supervisor Jerry Carlisle asked Davis to make seat assignments for her passengers, Sessoms said.
"But she still assigned the black children to the back of the bus," she added.
And the nine children had to share only two seats, meaning the older children had to hold the younger ones in their laps.
Of course the problem is just one bigoted driver, and the situation is easy enough to rectify, right?
A new solution reached Monday by School Board officials has a black bus driver driving across town to pick up the nine black children.
Nope, racist bus driver Delores Davis is just a symptom of the American disease.
The website that I've been developing for work, and which I've been working on very intensely for the last couple of weeks, is now live.
The site is for the 2006 Physicians for Human Rights National Student Conference:
Defending Dignity: The Power of Health Professionals as Human Rights Advocates
The conference is on Saturday, November 4, in Boston, at the Tufts University School of Medicine.
If you know any health professional students who might be interested, send them the url, http://defendingdignity2006.org.
Special thanks to dNb for his help with hacking Tarski, the theme (WordPress speak for design templates) I used for the site.
¶ Ian Westmore left a valuable comment, explaining that international law leaves no room for any abuse of detainees, regardless of whether they are classified as prisoners of war or as "enemy combatants."
¶ Thursday's English edition of Asharq Alawsat published part two of a two part series, recounting journalist Mohammed Al Shafey’s visit to Guantanamo. Much of it reads like a regurgitated DOD press packet, but there are a few money quotes, such as this one from Part One:
It is not essential that the detainee is an Al Qaeda member to be able to provide valuable intelligence. Officials responsible for the Guantanamo jail say, "The information offered by detainees who had been members of unknown extremist groups would prove to be valuable in the future as we continue to work to prevent the reemergence of groups like Al Qaeda and its supporters."
We are detaining members of "unknown extremest groups" just in case we find them handy later on?
Part Two is here.
¶ Medical Foundation Urges US Doctors to Investigate Torture
"There is evidence of direct medical involvement in torture and indirect planning for the sophisticated psychological and physical techniques of abuse used against prisoners.
"We are aware that the AMA has made strong policy statements against torture. We are also aware that the AMA denounces medical participation in torture in its Code of Ethics. That unequivocal stand needs to be enforced conscientiously.
"Lest the healing profession be accused of doing further harm, it is incumbent on the medical profession and medical establishment in general, and in our view, on the American Medical Association in particular, to take disciplinary action against any of its own who have knowingly violated the basic principles of medical ethics that all of us are pledged to uphold."
¶ My last link is nearly a year old, but I just recently came upon it via Glenn Greenwald's book How Would A Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok. The passage is important because it makes a strong connection between bad intelligence gathered through torture and the Bush administration's lies about why we are fighting the war in Iraq.
In at least one instance, ABC News was told that the techniques led to questionable information aimed at pleasing the interrogators and that this information had a significant impact on U.S. actions in Iraq.
According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.
His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.
"This is the problem with using the waterboard. They get so desperate that they begin telling you what they think you want to hear," one source said.
I am sure that the nature of waterboarding has been rehashed plenty of times in the blogosphere, but it bears repeating for anyone who may be new to the subject.
The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.
"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.
I hope by now I've made it clear that current American Psychological Association policy is unique among the health professional associations in allowing its members to participate in interrogations and in supporting US torture of detainees.
Some people might still be hopeful that the APA's "unequivocal position against torture and abuse" might provide some leverage for those wishing to get psychologists off of the Behavioral Science Consultation Teams that assist in coercive interrogations and torture.
Yet Stephen Soldz and Kos diarist Valtin both have observed that a last minute change to APA resolution makes even its commitment to the UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT) utterly meaningless.
Soldz points to the following language in the APA resolution:
BE IT RESOLVED, that the term “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” means treatment or punishment by any psychologist that is of a kind that, in accordance with the McCain Amendment, would be prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.
Soldz notes that the the apparent prohibitions against torture in the McCain Amendment were "immediately proclaimed to be null and void by President Bush, when he said in his signing statement he would decide if and when it should be followed," and I have already discussed the other reasons why emphasizing the McCain Amendment over international law is a move to allow torture to continue.
Equally important is the last part of the above paragraph from the resolution, "as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.”
Valtin explains that
it's in the UN Convention Against Torture that the United States finds it secret weapon to maintain their legal fiction that the type of torture, uh, I mean, interrogation, they do is acceptable. . . .
Attached to such treaties are Declarations and Reservations made by various countries, amending their ratification by selective nullification or interpretation of parts of the treaty or convention. . . .
Basically, the U.S. changed the definition of torture to enable it to practice barbaric acts of so-called non-physical torture. U.S. "reservations" include:
(1) (a) That with reference to article 1, the United States understands that, in order to constitute torture, an act must be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering and that mental pain or suffering refers to prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from (1) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering; (2) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality; (3) the threat of imminent death; or (4) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality.
In other words, torture is infliction of physical pain or suffering; threat of infliction of same; use of mind-altering substances; threat of same; threat of death. You'll notice that this leaves open the use of psychological methods of torture! "Mental pain or suffering" only comes from "prolonged mental harm", and prolonged mental harm only comes from physical harm, drugs, or threat of physical harm, use of drugs, or death.
Despite US assertions to the contrary, psychological methods of torture are no less serious than infliction of physical pain or suffering. The Physicians for Human Rights report, Break Them Down makes this abundantly clear:
Psychological torture is designed to destroy the victim’s sense of privacy, intimacy, trust of others and security, as well as one’s sense of self and how one relates to one’s surroundings. According to Ian Robbins, head of the Traumatic Stress Service at St. George’s Hospital in London and a former interrogator in the Royal Medical Corps, the methods of psychological coercion are meant “to assert complete control over the victim and break down any will they might have to resist the interrogator’s demands.” Psychological torture often makes victims feel that they are responsible for the pain and suffering that they experience and induces feelings of intense humiliation leading to feelings of worthlessness. Victims often feel that they had a choice, or even that they share in the responsibility of what was done to them, when in reality they were powerless. . . . According to clinicians who treat torture survivors, severe psychological pain usually results from various combinations of intense and prolonged fear, shame, humiliation, horror, guilt, grief, and mental and physical exhaustion.
Psychological torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment can have extremely destructive health consequences for detainees. The effects can include memory impairment, reduced capacity to concentrate, somatic complaints such as headache and back pain, hyperarousal, avoidance, and irritability. Additionally, victims often experience severe depression with vegetative symptoms, nightmares, and “feelings of shame and humiliation” associated with sexual violations, among others.
Although these short- and long-term consequences can be debilitating, the suffering of victims of psychological torture is often disregarded because they do not have physical evidence of the abuse they suffered. The lack of physical signs can make psychological torture seem less significant than physical torture, but the consensus among those who study torture and rehabilitate its victims is that psychological torture can be more painful and cause more severe and long-lasting damage even than the pain inflicted during physical torture.
The outraged portions of the APA membership and the wider public need to ask why the APA has gone to such lengths to make such broad allowances for torture while deceptively claiming to oppose it.
RELATED
UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (with Declarations and Reservations.)
I just discovered that in her recent publication in the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy Melanie Campbell cited my article on voting rights for New Orleans evacuees.
Benjamin Greenberg reported in his In These Times article on 17 November 2005, that there are roughly 219,000 New Orleans evacuees who are voting age [over the age of 18] and estimates that 70 percent of those are Black, which represents 153,300 Black voters who will not have access to the ballot in the 2006 elections. “This is voter disenfranchisement by attrition,” states Greenberg (Greenberg 2005).
(Melanie Campbell, "Right of Return Means Access to the Ballot, Access to Neighborhoods,and Access to Economic Opportunity [pdf]," Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, Volume XII (2006).)
My same article was also cited in congresssional testimony by Wade Henderson, Executive Director Leadership Conference on Civil Rights:
HOUSE JUDICIARY SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE CONSTITUTION OVERSIGHT HEARING ON THE "VOTING RIGHTS ACT: EVIDENCE OF CONTINUED NEED [pdf]" MARCH 8, 2006.
Maybe I'm bragging a little, but it's great to find that my work has had some lasting value.
Today, Dr. William G. Plested, president of the American Medical Association, wrote a letter to Leonard Rubenstein, executive director of Physicians for Human Rights, to counter recent claims by Stephen Behnke [pdf], director of the American Psychological Association Ethics Office, that the APA and AMA have similar positions on their members' participation in interrogations. The letter is now circulating widely among psychologists and other health care professionals.
Plested wrote to Rubenstein:
The AMA is aware of the article published in the July/August issue of the Monitor on Psychology. We have found that the commentary analyzing the AMA and the American Psychological Association positions did not accurately represent our ethical guidelines. By arguing that the two positions are similar and by failing to point out critical differences, we believe the readers of the Monitor could be induced in serious error regarding the ethically acceptable role for physicians. For this reason, the chair of CEJA, Dr. Robert Sade, has submitted a letter to the editor of the Monitor to refute the proposition that the policies are similar. In his words: "AMA and APA policy differ substantially in ethical acceptability of supporting interrogation." [Emphasis added.]
Lest there be any confusion about the AMA's position, Plested reiterated the AMA's policy:
I certainly believe that the recommendations pertaining to the ethical role of physicians are unambiguous; in part, they state:
- Physicians must neither conduct nor directly participate in an interrogation, because a role as physician-interrogator undermines the physician's role as healer and thereby erodes trust in the individual physician-interrogator and in the medical profession.
- Physicians must not monitor interrogations with the intention of intervening in the process, because this constitutes direct participation in interrogation.
- Physicians may participate in developing effective interrogation strategies for general training purposes. These strategies must not threaten or cause physical injury or mental suffering and must be humane and respect the rights of individuals.
In developing its recommendations, I know that the members of CEJA deliberated the meaning of every word; I also know that the AMA Code of Medical Ethics does not use the words "must not" lightly. The guidelines, therefore, leave no room for confusion. The AMA has adopted a strict prohibition on physician participation in the interrogation of an individual, and only permits that medical knowledge be used to develop strategies that can be presented in the context of general training [emphasis added]. This was clearly reiterated in the statement the AMA released on June 12, 2006.
It is time for those in the APA who claim that the positions of the APA and AMA positions are "not significantly different" to face the facts. The AMA prohibits "physician participation in the interrogation of an individual." The APA allows its members to be calibrators of physical and psychological pain.
Let us be clear what the apologetics of some psychologists give cover for:
It may come as no surprise to some that being forced to urinate and defecate on oneself has a long history at Gitmo. At a recent conference featuring interviews with four released Gitmo detainees, there was repeated mention of the tactic (Voices of Guantánamo, George Washington Law School, 20 march 2006). I heard first hand of their ordeal of being “processed” for 8–10 hours by U.S. troops at Bagram air field base. Skimpily dressed in freezing cold weather, the detainees were made to walk in circles with bare feet on sand mixed with shards of glass. Denied the use of toilets, they were forced to urinate and defecate on themselves. They then were shackled in stress positions for the 10-hour flight to Guantánamo Bay; they were hooded, with their eyes taped, and, again, denied the use of toilets.
It is important to be clear about the nature of this form of degradation. However one defines either torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, one common element is that victims often are made to feel complicit in their own abuse. The sense of self-betrayal, of shame, of self-contempt that so many torture victims feel reflects a feeling of compromised agency, of turning against oneself through the very exercise of one’s own will.
Urinating or defecating on oneself, because one is denied more decent forms of relief, is a way of experiencing oneself as an agent without agency—one let’s oneself “do it;” the case is different from that of a toddler who has not yet mastered bladder or sphincter control or an infirm person who has lost full control. Rather, this is actively “doing it,” and yet still, it is being made to “do it” on oneself. It is experiencing oneself as helpless in one’s agency. The victim is prevented from exercising control of body functions that are basic loci of self-control, and this is humiliating.
(Nancy Sherman, "Holding Doctors Responsible at Gitmo," Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal Vol. 16, No. 2, 201–202 (2006))
~
Disclosure: I am employed by Physicians for Human Rights.
The post you are looking for is here.
If you haven't been to Rachel's Tavern, check it out. She's running the 4th Erase Racism Carnival.
As mentioned in my update, below, John Grohol finally replied to my rebuttal---back in the comments at his blog, where he could enjoy a less than rigorous standard for addressing the evidence that I brought to the table.
Grohol has gracioulsy let through the comments that I left today, without long delay. Below is what I wrote back to Grohol in the comments at his blog. Pasted in below the fold is the comment of his, which I am responding to here.
John, Thank you for letting my comment through, finally. And for responding.
In your first four paragraphs you tell me why, perhaps, psychologists, out of a sense of indebtedness to the military for prescription privileges, may be more willing to support torture than psychiatrists and physicians. I don't see how these historical circumstances should make me feel any better about a psychologist consulting interrogators about which phobias of a detainee to exploit or how long to enforce solitary confinement or at what point to desecrate the Koran or how long or at what point to hood a detainee.
In your arguments that follow your history, you continue to have some difficulty keeping quotations and attributions straight. In the passages I quoted from the respective policy statements of the AMA and the APA (psychological), it was the AMA---not the APA--statement that allowed its members two possible roles regarding detainees:
- impartial medical care
- "developing interrogation strategies for general training purposes."
Psychologists who participate in interrogations as military Behavioral Science Consultants (BSCs) have only military standards and procedures to guide them—under which they are
authorized to make psychological assessments of the character, personality, social interactions, and other behavioral characteristics of detainees, including interrogation subjects, and, based on such assessments, advise authorized personnel performing lawful interrogations and other lawful detainee operations, including intelligence activities and law enforcement.
This describes participation for psychologists in individual interrogations---not general training.
You write:
If a psychologist, consulting indirectly in the training of interrogators, can help them understand how to obtain information more quickly and with less pain inflicted upon an enemy prisoner, is that in the benefit to our nation’s defense and security?
So inflicting some pain is acceptable? And just how much pain? Please explain what guidelines psychologists have for making such determinations? The APA has not provided any.
You write:
I think part of our challenge, too, in today’s discussion of issues like these is that we focus on the present, short-term situation (”enemy combatants,” which is a slippery slope if I’ve ever heard one), and ignore serious wars like WWII where such training and consultations, to defeat Nazism, was essential to the military’s operation.
Is it somehow short-sighted of me to object to the detention and torture of people not charged with any crime because we might need the ability to do similar things to the likes of Nazis later? Your logic sounds racist to me—as if our largely Arab and Muslim detainee population is somehow disposable for the sake of more "serious wars like WWII."
Let me restate my point about your quotation methods. In your original blog post, you follow the phrase, "the AMA states" with a block quote. Anyone with even a small amount of academic training would assume that the block quote is something that the AMA has said. But instead, it is something that the APA's Stephen Behnke said.
Further, I used the phrase, "I believe," in order to advance an opinion about one particular phrase—not to characterize my entire, fact based argument. That is obvious in my writing. It is a fact that AMA policy only allows physicians to "participate in developing interrogation strategies for general training purposes." You can quibble with me about what kind of training physicians are allowed to offer interrogators. It is clear, however, that physicians are not allowed to participate—directly or indirectly—in individual interrogations. Psychologists are allowed and they do.
The difference in policy is huge. It is has grave consequences. Psychologists are allowed to participate in individual interrogations in a non-healing capacity. "They employ their professional training not in a provider patient relationship, but in relation to a person who is the subject of a lawful governmental inquiry, assessment, investigation, interrogation, adjudication, or other proper action" (DOD Instruction, 6 June 2006). Psychologists have no professional guidelines for how to behave in this setting. They are supposed to oppose torture, but what constitutes torture has been left wide open for interpretation.
You can find all of my quotations and the sources for them back at the rebuttal I wrote on Hungry Blues.
Long before he was worrying himself about making calls for justice, James E. Prince III had a dream that one day Philadelphia, MS would have its own civil rights tourism industry. In 2002, he ran a story in his newspaper, "Historic tour on civil rights said big draw."
A civil rights tour is "a gold mine waiting to happen," said Terry Watkins, sales manager for the Silver Star Hotel and Casino. "Every time I have a tour group to come to the casino, they want to know about what we have on the civil rights movement. Where is the church? "If we could find the car...someone would know about the car..."
"Visitors would pay 'top dollar' to go on a tour of the major sites because with many of them, money is not an object. These people are professional people with a high dollar income. They want to spend their vacation money here...they want something to see...It is a cultural experience for them," Watkins said.
"If the public would only realize how important this issue is to tourism. A tour like this would not only bring high revenue dollars into this area but would promote the Philadelphia, Neshoba County and the Choctaw Resort. The tourist would eat it up," said Watkins.
Wilson agreed. "It's your history whether you like it or not...accept it and embrace it...turn something negative into something positive and move forward."
In 2002, the biggest problem, according to the Neshoba Democrat, was not the moral burden of white, racist murderers living free in the local community.
The other issue of concern is the local beer ordinance that plagues area tourism. The group felt this issue was a hindrance because of the loss of money in turning away tour groups.
They got Killen. I guess all they need now is some beer.
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