Politics

I first saw the Greg Palast article a few weeks, ago, but after seeing Michael Tomasky refer to Cynthia McKinney as “a discredited anti-Semite”, I just can’t stay silent.

A strong black woman who dares question the Bush regime or any of its financial supporters can’t survive our political system.

Before anyone starts posting “she is an anti-semite!” comments on my weblog, I will warn you that any post that says that without any links to a reputable news source for backup will be deleted.

Some selections from Palast’s article:

…

And why is McKinney dangerous/loony/disgusting? According to NPR, “McKinney implied that the [Bush] Administration knew in advance about September 11 and deliberately held back the information.”

The New York Times’ Lynette Clemetson revealed her comments went even further over the edge: “Ms. McKinney suggest[ed] that President Bush might have known about the September 11 attacks but did nothing so his supporters could make money in a war.”

That’s loony, all right. As an editor of the highly respected Atlanta Journal Constitution told NPR, McKinney’s “practically accused the President of murder!”

Problem is, McKinney never said it.

That’s right. The “quote” from McKinney is a complete fabrication. A whopper, a fabulous fib, a fake, a flim-flam. Just freakin’ made up.

…

The McKinney “quote” was, indeed, all over the place: in the Washington Post, National Public Radio, and needless to say, all the other metropolitan dailies – everywhere but in Congresswoman McKinney’s mouth.

Nor was it in the Congressional Record, nor in any recorded talk, nor on her Website, nor in any of her radio talks. HereÂ’s the CongresswomanÂ’s statement from the record:

“George Bush had no prior knowledge of the plan to attack the World Trade Center on September 11.”

Oh.

And I should say former Congresswoman McKinney.

She was beaten in the August 2002 Democratic primary. More precisely, she was beaten to death, politically, by the fabricated quote.

…

Months before the 2000 presidential elections, the offices of Florida Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris ordered the removal of 90,000 citizens from the voter rolls because they were convicted felons . . . and felons canÂ’t vote in Florida. There was one problem: 97 percent of those on the list were, in fact, innocent.

They weren’t felons, but they were guilty . . . of not being white. Over half the list contained names of non-whites. I’m not guessing: I have the list from out of the computers of Katherine Harris’ office – and the “scrubbed” voter’s race is listed with each name.

…

At BBC Television, we had Florida’s computer files and documents, marked “confidential” – stone-cold evidence showing how the vote fix was deliberately crafted by Republican officials. Not a single major U.S. paper asked for the documents – not from the state of Florida nor from the BBC. Only one U.S. Congressperson asked for the evidence and made it public: Cynthia McKinney of Atlanta.

That was her mistake.

The company that came up with the faux felon list that determined the presidency: a Republican-tied database company named “ChoicePoint,” one of the richest, most powerful companies in Atlanta.

…

After George Bush Senior left the White House, he became an advisor and lobbyist for a Canadian gold-mining company, Barrick Gold. Hey, a guyÂ’s got to work. But there were a couple of questions about Barrick, to say the least. For example, was BarrickÂ’s Congo gold mine funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict? Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter.

YouÂ’ve guessed: Cynthia McKinney.

That was covered in the . . . well, it wasnÂ’t covered at all in the U.S. press.

McKinney contacted me at the BBC. She asked if IÂ’d heard of Barrick. Indeed, I had. Top human rights investigators had evidence that a mine that Barrick bought in 1999 had, in clearing their Tanzanian properties three years earlier, bulldozed mine shafts . . . burying about 50 miners alive.

I certainly knew Barrick: TheyÂ’d sued the Guardian for daring to run a story IÂ’d written about the allegations of the killings. Barrick never sued an American paper for daring to run the story, because no American paper dared.

The primary source for my story, an internationally famous lawyer named Tundu Lissu, was charged by the Tanzanian police with sedition, and arrested, for calling for an investigation. McKinney has been trying to save his life with an international campaign aimed at Barrick.

That was another of her mistakes.

There is plenty more — go read it. Among the items he talks about are the fact that McKinney that we should investigate why the FBI and CIA were told to back off from investigating connections between the Saudi government and Al Quaeda. Also worth a read is his weblog — he talks about this article in the July 21, 2003 post.

Some Greens are asking her to run as the party’s candidate for President. That’s why it’s necessary for the political establishment, including Tomasky, to destroy her.

What is she up to these days? She’s earning her doctorate at Princeton School of Diplomacy.

I was reminded that I hadn’t posted anything about this when I saw the article in the NY Times today. The Guardian, a great leftish British newspaper, is considering an American weekly magazine. I would buy several gift subscriptions right away? Not only is their political and world events coverage great, they are one of the smartest voices covering books and the rest of the arts. For an example, see this article on Strauss’s opera Die Schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman):

The librettist was Jewish. The composer was head of the Reich Music Chamber. But Stefan Zweig and Richard Strauss still managed to beat the Nazis and get their comedy sea opera on stage.

New York Magazine had an article by Michael Wolff titled En Guardian! on this a couple of weeks ago.

One of the arguments people use to justify our “free market” medical system as opposed to some form of national health insurance is countries with such systems “ration” healthcare. Well, what are we doing with our corporate HMO system? Who elects them?

Via ABC News:

A new study done by the American Medical Association’s Institute of Ethics finds that 31 percent of more than 700 doctors surveyed say they sometimes withhold medical information about treatment options from patients when they believe the patient cannot afford them.

Of these doctors, 35 percent were doing so more often than they had in the five years leading up to the 1998 survey. Doctors whose patients were largely poor and unlikely to get appropriate help from their health plans often fall short on disclosing information. The study is published in the latest issue of Health Affairs.

…

According to the study, doctors are often caught between their obligation to provide information and their fear of being asked to cheat insurance companies so that patients can receive care they are not eligible for — a practice called “gaming the system.”

It is also suggested that doctors whose revenue is significantly tied to managed care companies tend to hold back information about non-covered treatments to some patients.

Many doctors contacted by ABCNEWS cited time constraints as the number one difficulty. Dr. John Messmer of Penn State Hershey Medical Center says doctors are now expected to explain complicated medical information to patients while having less and less time to do so. They are caught between their duties to their patients and their lack of resources.

“The ethical issue is that we no longer work for patients since we are no longer paid by them. Practitioners who want to be compensated must follow the insurance company’s or government’s rules, even if we disagree with them,” says Messmer.

… while he’s making a speech about slavery.

While “President” Bush was giving his speech about the evils of slavery on Goree Island in Senegal, most of the island’s inhabitants were taken out of their homes and kept in a stadium until he left. All for security, of course.

“It’s slavery all over again,” fumed one father-of-four, who did not want to give his name. “It’s humiliating. The island was deserted.”

White House officials said the decision to remove the locals was taken by Senegalese authorities. But there was no doubt who the residents blamed.

“We never want to see him come here again,” said N’diaye, hiking her loose gown onto her shoulders with a frown.

As the sun rose over Goree before Bush’s arrival, the only people to be seen on the main beach were U.S. officials and secret service agents. Frogmen swam through the shallows and hoisted themselves up to peer into brightly painted pirogues.

Normally, the island teems with tourists, Senegal’s ubiquitous traders, hawkers of cheap African art, photographers offering to take pictures and all the expected trappings of a tourist hot-spot in one of the world’s poorest countries.

On Tuesday, shutters on the yellow and red colonial-style houses remained shut. The cafes were closed and the narrow pier deserted, apart from security agents manning a metal detector, near the sandy beach. A gunship patrolled offshore.

“We understand that you have to have security measures, since September 11, but to dump us in another place…? We had to leave at 6 a.m. I didn’t have time to bathe, and the bread did not arrive,” the father-of-four said.

“We were shut up like sheep,” said 15-year-old Mamadou.

Many residents compared Bush’s hour-long visit unfavorably to the island tour by former President Bill Clinton in 1998.

“When Clinton came, he shook hands, people danced,” said former Mayor Urbain Alexandre Diagne.

It must be nice to be able to “think” like the people around him and never have any cognitive dissonance.

If anyone spotted this in an American newspaper, please let me know.

[via Body and Soul]

A friend just set up a Yahoo group meant to be “a catch-all discussion group for people interested in organizing protests against the Republicans when they come to New York in September of 2004.”

I just subscribed.

In the coming months a black spot will pop up everywhere… on store windows and newspaper boxes, on gas pumps and supermarket shelves. Open a magazine or newspaper – it’s there. It’s on TV. It stains the logos and smears the nerve centers of the world’s biggest corporations.

This is the mark of the people who don’t approve of Bush’s plan to control the world, who don’t want countries “liberated” without UN backing, who can’t stand anymore neo-con bravado shoved down their throats.

This is the mark of the people who want the Kyoto Protocol for the environment, who want the International Criminal Court for greater justice, who want a world where all nations, including the U.S.A., are free of weapons of mass destruction, and who pledge to take their country back.

Go check out Move On for actions to take to stop the FCC’s destruction of media consolidation regulations:

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission intends to lift restrictions on media ownership that could allow your local newspaper, cable provider, radio stations, and TV channels all to be owned by one company. The result could be the disappearance of the checks and balances provided by a competitive media marketplace — and huge cutbacks in local news and reporting. Good, balanced information is the basis for our democracy. That’s why we’re asking that:
“Congress and the FCC should stop media deregulation and work to make the media diverse, competitive, balanced, and fair.”

I have added a link to Move On over there on the right side. It’s a good group to watch for information on all sorts of evil-doing from the folks in Washington.