Author: mopress

By Greg Moses

CounterPunch / DissidentVoice

If at 9:59 pm Central Time on Tuesday night you were refreshing your browser to “sort by date” the latest news on “Medellin” as part of your death watch ritual. And if you clicked to read a somber AP report posted at the Oroville Mercury-Register, you may have seen what I saw: a blank page that only loaded a banner ad at the top, paid for by the United States Army: “What do you see in your future?”

It was some kind of e-haunting that hissed without noise and moved on.

But that lone banner, floating there on nothing but white noise, seemed to make more sense than anything else, because it placed the question of the future in a context of violence as foundation for the United States. If you joined the Army, they’d sock away $40,000 in your behalf to buy a home or start a small business. “After the Army” the American Dream called.

But for any of this to begin to make sense, first there must be some guarantee that the Army makes sense. And for that to make sense, there must be some reason to think that the killing the Army trains you to do will be necessary killing. Which means there has to be something like necessary killing in the first place. And in the second place you have to be quite sure that the killing the Army is put up to these days is of the absolutely necessary kind.

But remember, we got started on this singular meditation during a death watch, by attempting to click into a story to find out if Jose Ernesto Medellin had been killed. And in no way could you come to the conclusion that the killing of Medellin was necessary. He wasn’t going anywhere, especially not on Tuesday night after the Supreme Court had once again split 5 to 4 in their last-minute deliberation. As the Army ad raised the spectre of necessary killing, the Medellin case redoubled the question as universal: “What do you see in your future?”

In the Medellin case, The World Court had twice ruled that the execution should wait for a review. The President of the United States had issued an order that the execution should wait. And the U.S. Supreme Court had twice split 5 to 4 over the question. The death warrant for Medellin would have run out by midnight. The government of Mexico was standing there like an insulted neighbor, having secured both World Court decisions that Mexican citizens in the USA deserve a right to consular assistance. All the Governor of Texas had to say was: “In consideration of our special relation to the people of Mexico, and out of respect for international law, let me take some time to read this evening’s US Supreme Court decision, which was split 5 to 4, and take some time to think about this.”

But Medellin had already been moved into position for the killing. Before it was possible to find out what the Supreme Court had said, the news was out. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the Board of Pardons and Paroles, and the Governor, all invoking the Confederate Principle of State’s Rights — backed by a recent op-ed column at the Houston Chronicle — had proclaimed death. And death was dealt.

Of course, we agree with all the authorities from the World Court on down that the killings for which Medellin was found guilty were altogether gratuitous, horrible, and shocking. Two teenaged girls raped and murdered while walking home through a park. It is difficult to talk about punishments being “cruel and unusual” when crimes like that get done. “Find your strength” says another Army ad. And what strength should we ask the people of the United States to find if not the strength to know, not when killing is strangely satisfying, but when and only when it is necessary.

What is necessary about killing killers? What was necessary about killing Medellin last night?

It’s not at all likely that the killing of a Mexican-born killer in Texas, who had raped and killed teenaged girls, is going to help many people around here to “find their strength” to stop killing. Otherwise the Governor would have stepped in. But the late night killing of Medellin in Texas nevertheless proves that we have not yet learned that what we see in our future is way more killing than necessary.

Also, please see: “Listen to the World Court: Texas Should Honor the Nation and its Neighbor,” (TCRR: June 19, 2008)

By Harold Knight
Holy Land Foundation Trial

Suppose for a moment the State of Texas decided to end one of the menaces to our society—one that is responsible for many deaths and an enormous amount of property loss every year—talking on a cell phone while driving. Then, by executive order of the governor, the state police were given the authority to start going through the phone records and the driving records of people who were suspected of having talked on their cell phones while driving before the law was passed. Soon the state would be prosecuting Texans, not for talking on their cell phones under the new law, but because they talked on their cell phones before the law was passed. Drivers would be indicted because they SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that some day such conversations would be made illegal. Absurd? Ridiculous?

That is what a preponderance of the evidence in the Holy Land Foundation trial is all about; the judge has allowed the prosecution to enter evidence of supposed wrong-doing (note I say “supposed” wrongdoing) in the HLF’s dealings with certain entities that were not illegal at the time of those dealings. A financial transaction that took place in 1989 cannot be deemed illegal under an executive order signed by President Clinton in 1995. Or can it? That seems to be the substance of the government’s case against the Holy Land Foundation so far.

Editor’s Note: “Every law, which makes criminal an act that was innocent when done, or which inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime when committed, is an ex post facto law within the prohibition of the Constitution.” (Ex Post Facto at FindLaw)–gm

Children’s Song
(English)

Chorus
Bridges cross the Rio Grande
We all dance there, they all dance there,
Bridges cross the Rio Grande
Everyone dances around

Handsome men go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Lovely women go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Shoemakers go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Laundresses go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Musicians go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Soldiers too go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Landscapers go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Grape growers go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Dressmakers go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Carpenters go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Breakfast cooks go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Mechanics go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

____________ go this way
Then they all go that way

Chorus

Game Instructions

During the chorus, the children dance in a circle, holding hands. For each verse the children stop the circle, drop hands, and do a little jig to each side, imitating the character of the verse going back and forth across the bridges. Then for the chorus they rejoin hands and reverse the direction of the circle.

Adapted from mamalisa.com, Wikipedia, and Godowsky by the Texas Civil Rights Review — gm

Revised Aug. 5, 2007

Thank you, dear readers, from Texas, China, and all points in between, for making July our busiest month ever at the Texas Civil Rights Review. We always add quickly that our numbers are not massive, but our steady growth is gratifying. Y’all come back and see us soon.–gm

ps: Netcraft rates our site two places above Rice University’s! (Aug. 3, 2007)

pps: a good friend of the web site writes — “hm-m … TCRR over rice …. sounds like a pretty good recipe!”

and finally, the busiest day ever was July 31, 2007 — the eve of the Ibrahim trial