Cynthia McKenney again

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[As the credibility of the US government unravels across the board,
former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, now completely
vindicated in her open questions about the government's account of 9/11,
is making her presence felt throughout America. Currently in the
midst of a lawsuit that may well see her returned to Congress with full
seniority, she has become a living reminder for politicians around the
country that there are questions to be answered and that undefeated and
dedicated voices with growing strength on the political battlefield
are not afraid to demand full accountability.

The truth never disappears.

In a recent speech in Harlem, McKinney offered some sobering and very
direct observations about race relations in America, 9/11, civil
liberties, independent media, From The Wilderness and our national ad
campaign which is encountering stiff, unethical, and unconstitutional
resistance from major publications which seem to be continually
resetting the height of the bar we must clear in order to get the ads
run. To
clarify one point: While papers like The Boston Globe and The Atlanta
Journal Constitution have refused to run the ad after checks were
written to the brokerage firm and AFTER the papers had approved the it,
no check has yet been written for The New York Times. The Times
has simply reneged on a prior approval and agreement to run the ad. Each
time FTW passes a new test, another one mysteriously appears.
The powers that be are afraid of these ads. Yet they have seen nothing
compared to the price they will pay when the stench of censorship
becomes so blatant and obvious that the people realize that the most
precious right of every American has been taken away.

Such censorship is not going unnoticed. The right of free speech and
equal access is not one that can be violated without a reaction. ? MCR,
August 5, 2003]

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How proud I am to stand at Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem USA!

Thank you Reverend Butts, Bob, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Sonia Sanchez,
Ralph Carter, Hakim, the Coalition of Artists and Activists, and all
who worked hard to put this rally together. And thank you for inviting
me.

How appropriate that we gather here at this Church, with all its rich
history of proud resistance and indignant defiance of a social order
that
relegated the giants of their day to second class citizenship.

And what an honor for me, to stand among the giants of our day, if only
for a moment, and see America's landscape from their gaze.

What this rally means, is that America's vista has now become as ravaged
in its pristine hillside villas as it has always been for those of us
who
muddle

behind the cities' shadows.

Our people are dying.

On the streets of America our people are dying.

Gathered tonight in this room are people from all walks of life; and for
that reason, this is a very dangerous meeting for the powers that be.

They would like to see us divided.

I'm not just saying that. They wrote that in their COINTELPRO papers;
about how they would keep blacks separated from each other, and
separated from Africans, and separated from other people of color, and
most importantly, separated from progressive activist whites. They
wrote that they would discredit black activists so they would lose favor
within their community and within our American community. They
also wrote that they would replace authentic black leaders with what
they called "clean Negroes" whom they had groomed to be more loyal to
them than to us. Those aren't my words, they're their words.

Well, they were silly enough to write it down, and we were smart enough
to read it. So we're not fooled.

But the Coalition of Artists and Activists has come together to show us
that now is the time for us to get busy. And take our country back.

I, for one, can say that I am tired of burying innocent black and Latino
people who die at the hands of this unjust system.

New Yorkers have buried too many loved ones and shed too many tears.

But sadly, every major city in America can probably call a roll: Ousmane
Zongo, Alberta Spruill, Patrick Dorismond, Amadou Diallo; and
those are just the names I know.

Not too far from here, the streets of Benton Harbor, Michigan exploded
because they got tired of adding names to their roll. It wasn't enough
that Terrance Shurn and Arthur Patterson, young adults, were on the
list, but those names only topped off 16-year old Eric McGinnis and
7-year old Trent Patterson, who had also made the list.

I read that the NAACP called for calm and dialogue.

I'm sorry, but I can't be calm if my baby is going to be shot or hurt by
out-of-control police.

I can't be calm when I drive through sections of Atlanta that look more
like Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo than America.

I cannot be calm.

Dialogue must be followed by swift and deliberate action to root out
racism at its very core. From a California gas station to a Mississippi

Lockheed plant; from Cincinnati, Ohio to Benton Harbor, Michigan; to New
York City, New York. And in Belle Glade, Florida where a
young black man was found hanging from a tree, with his hands tied
behind his back and the authorities call it suicide. In the 21st
Century,
America's trees still bear Strange Fruit.

How much injustice can any community absorb before an eruption of
extraordinary proportions occurs?

And yes, we have our list in Georgia, too.

And so, placing troops in Cincinnati Ohio or in Benton Harbor to restore
calm and "protect property" is about as helpful for the resolution of
the problems of Ohio, or Michigan, or for that matter Black America as
it is to place US troops in Liberia to resolve the problems on West
Africa's oil-rich shore.

Or, for that matter, in the hot, oil-rich desert sands of Iraq.

And while the South Bend Tribune blared on its editorial page that
Benton Harbor rioters must be held accountable, who will blare, if not
us,
that America must be held accountable for the sick and depraved
conditions under which millions of our people now live.

Moreover, since that newspaper called for "accountability," I wonder,
have I ever seen that word in the corporate press when describing the
Bush Administration?

Now it is a fact that it was the Ashcroft Justice Department that gave
law enforcement officials authority to use the no-knock warrant, like
the
one that resulted in the death of Mrs. Spruill.

But, I'm wondering where are the no-knock warrants for the Carlyle
Group, Enron, DynCorp, Halliburton, Worldcom, HealthSouth, all the
off-shore companies that fled our country to avoid paying taxes yet
continue to get billions in federal contracts?

Where are their no-knock warrants?

And further, on this matter of accountability.

George Tenet recently "fell on the sword" as they say and took
responsibility for the 16 untrue words that happened to find their way
into
George Bush's State of the Union Address.

But who among this Administration will take responsibility for the
tragic events of September 11th and the tremendous intelligence failures

that cost the lives of thousands of people who live and work in New York
City?

Interestingly, I was the one who called for an investigation of
September 11th asking the fully appropriate question, What did the Bush
Administration know and when did it know it, about the tragic events of
September 11th?

Both President Bush and Vice President Cheney asked Tom Daschle not to
investigate what went wrong on September 11th. An Australian
newspaper ran the headline, "Bosses so lax, agents felt they were
spies." They were describing our FBI.

"Bosses so lax, agents felt they were spies."

To this day that I know of no one in any decision-making position in the
whole of this Administration has accepted responsibility for failing
the American people. Instead, from this Administration we have
obstruction, obfuscation, dissembling, and deception.

And yet, the one who did her homework, and told the truth to the
American people, that our investment of trillions of dollars in the
defense
and intelligence infrastructures of our country should not have all
failed simultaneously four times on a single day and since they did, we
deserve to know why they did. . .

Well, that's the person who got fired.

Meanwhile, George Bush and Dick Cheney, who remain in office, have the
nerve to launch two simultaneous wars, at least one that is against
international law; award no bid contracts to their friends in the
defense industry; erode our Constitution and our Bill of Rights; put
Paul
Wolfowitz in charge of military tribunals (that same travesty of justice
that we have excoriated other countries for in the past); put a felon,
convicted of lying to Congress, in charge of our privacy; and lie about
the rescue of Jessica Lynch, as well as the landing of America's top
gun�George W.--on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, which supposedly
was out at sea, but that was really in San Diego harbor.

And this all comes after they stole the Presidency on the uncounted
chads of black and Latino voters in a scheme that was orchestrated at
the
top.

Republicans rewarded Katherine Harris with a Congressional seat.

In Georgia, 48,000 Republicans crossed over and voted in the Democratic
Primary for the black woman Republican that they had drafted to
run in my Democratic Primary. Georgia and national Democrats failed to
protect the integrity of their own primary. Terry McAuliffe crows
today about protecting Gray Davis from any Democratic challenge in a
primary, but where was he when he could have protected this black
loyal Democratic woman from a known Republican shill acting for the Bush
Administration?

And it's not enough for this Administration to accept responsibility for
failing the American people. So too must the corporate media.
Including the New York Times.

As you may know, I'm involved with Mike Ruppert of From the Wilderness
in a national campaign that is placing anti-Bush ads in
newspapers all across the country. Sadly, many newspapers are saying no
to the paid ad or are giving us a hard time after they've accepted the
money. The New York Times is no exception.

At the top of the ad is a cartoon. It features the big corporate media
being "played" from behind the curtain by the great big, huge, Wizard.
Like in the Wizard of Oz. But there, ever so small, at the bottom of
the cartoon, is Toto, the little dog, pulling open the curtain and
exposing
the truth about the big, corporate media�kinda like BAI does here. And
the alternative media do all over our country. Well, in the cartoon,
Toto is the alternative media--getting the truth out to the people.

The text mentions oil, missing money from DoD and HUD accounts, the
impeachment clause of the Constitution, the lawsuit that has been
filed against the crossover voting in my election, and a special message
from me.

My special message in the ad is this:

"Beware the Land of Oz. For it is only in the land of Oz that a handful
of vainglorious men could send hundreds of thousands of young
soldiers off to fight in an illegal war. And only in the Land of Oz can
The Grand Wizard erode basic civil rights and call it enhanced
security. And where but in Oz could a felon, convicted of lying in
public, be put in charge of Total Information Awareness? 75 million
Americans had no health insurance in 2001 or 2002. Unemployment is at an
8-year high. Meanwhile, at the Wizard's court, men of dubious
reputation gorge themselves at the people's expense. Expose the Grand
Wizard; this is our America, not Oz."

Now, just a few days ago, I received a message through the ad agency
placing the ad that before The New York Times will run it, I need to
prove that what I say about Oz is true. Can you believe. . . The New
York Times is fact-checking cartoons now?

Or is it just this cartoon?

They didn't bother to fact-check their story about me that's recounted
in Greg Palast's book, "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." They
just printed lies about me in an effort to make sure that a black
Republican woman from New York City who is anti-affirmative action and
anti-reparations would sit at the table of the Congressional Black
Caucus and represent you in Washington, DC.

In 1776, it was King George III who drove the titans of the American
colony to write our Declaration of Independence. They wrote that
there are certain unalienable rights and that it is the responsibility
of government to protect, preserve, and promote these rights. However,
in
the words of its signers,

"when a long train of abuses and usurpations, . . . evinces a design to
reduce [a people to life] under absolute Despotism, it is their right,
it is
their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for
their future security."

And with that, a rebellion became a revolution.

My mother didn't want me to give this speech tonight. I'm sure it's
hard for her to read the terrible things the corporate press and
right-wing
activists write about me.

In today's America, she's right. I will probably get in trouble for
what I've said to you tonight. But it won't be the first time I get in
trouble
for telling the truth. And I'll continue to tell the truth. As I have
said before, I won't sit down and I won't shut up.

I agree with Dead Prez: We need a revolution!

And it needs to start with us.

Thank you so much for inviting me to be with you tonight.
-- -Kraig Grady
North American Embassy of Anaphoria Island
http://www.anaphoria.com
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