The Green Party has nominated former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney as its presidential candidate for 2008. She'll have to wait her alphabetical turn in my candidate list for a closer look at her agenda, but her nomination is news worthy of immediate comment. Her candidacy now gives an outlet to liberal women who can't reconcile themselves to Senator Clinton's defeat -- as long as they can stand a candidate whose foreign policies differ drastically from Clinton's. McKinney is resolutely anti-imperialist and anti-war, while her support for Palestinian causes supposedly contributed to her defeat in a 2002 primary. Her comeback in 2004 demonstrates her resilience, while her defeat in a 2006 primary again shows the hostility of the Democratic party mainstream toward someone who really wants to impreach President Bush and improve American behavior in the world. Here's a quick career history.
McKinney should probably be ranked with Ralph Nader and Bob Barr in a second tier of candidates who benefit from name recognition for extensive public activity. My first guess is that she'd be the candidate most likely as President to at least attempt to hold the Bush administration accountable for its alleged misdeeds. More than Nader, I suspect, she'll be in a position to pressure Senator Obama to slow his drift toward the "center." She could very well cancel out any votes that Senator McCain will lose to Barr -- depending on how many ballots the Greens can get on.
Expect a wave of ad hominem attacks from the liberal establishment. Get ready for reminders of her alleged craziness as purportedly demonstrated by her altercation with a Capitol security guard. Anticipate hints of anti-Semitism based on her sympathy for Palestinians and her father's comments about Jewish influence in her 2002 primary defeat. Prepare for charges that she is a "truther," a 9-11 conspiracy theorist. Like every independent candidate, she will be called crazy or egotistical, as if the only motive for every candidate but two is vanity. But the more of this you hear, the more the Democrats are worried about her.
Maybe 2008 will be a milestone election, given the fact that two former members of Congress are running as independent candidates. Like it or not, that fact gives Barr and McKinney an instant level of credibility that most of the people on the list won't reach. One of them should think of asking the other to do a set of joint appearances of the sort that McCain proposed to Obama, perhaps with Nader along for the ride. They might fear that they would cancel each other out, but a joint tour might actually enhance people's sense that there really are more than two choices this time around.
Here is a video she made upon declaring her candidacy for the Green nomination last December.
In the interest of fairness, when other candidates on the list have similar content available for embedding, I will post it so you hear what they have to say.
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THE ENDURING PATTERN OF LIBERAL VALUES
The writer Gore Vidal, with impressive family connections to high levels in the political elite (including the Zionist agent Al Gore), has this to say:
'In my lifetime and country I have watched our governors manipulate Opinion with the greatest of ease. Certain races, arbitrary categories of human beings, political systems are demonised or trivialized on a daily and unrelenting basis. These are carefully crafted subliminal opinionated messages that hiss through the airwaves and into the minds of everyone from the first switching on of the cathode tube to the last TV supper when the light goes out.
'America's Public Enemy Number One (alas, our public enemies become yours, too) are the Arabs, bestial, sub-human terrorists. The American Israel lobby can take full credit for this campaign and their canny investment in American politicians is so astute that this year 65 out of 100 Senators, acting on the lobby's orders, forbade the Administration to allow Arafat on American soil long enough to address the United Nations.
'I would stop all military aid to the Middle East. This would oblige the hard-liners in Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. We have supported Israel for forty years. No other minority in the history of the United States has ever extorted so much Treasury money for its Holy Land as the Israeli lobby.
'The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent.
' Of course, it is possible for any citizen with time to spare and a canny eye, to work out what is actually going on. But for the many there is no time, and the network news is the only news even though it may not be news at all, but only a series of flashing fictions intended to keep docile the huddled masses, like the avowed commercials keep the addled consumers avid for products.
'Currently, the Arabs are being thoroughly demonised by the Israel lobby while the Japanese are being, somewhat nervously, demonised by elements of the corporate state. But neither will do as a long-term devil because the Arabs are too numerous (and have too much oil) while the Japanese will simply order us to stop it; should we disobey them, they will buy the networks and show us many hours of the soothing tea ceremony.'
[A View from the Diner's Club: Essays 1987-1991, by Gore Vidal. Published by Andre Deutsch.]
Elie Wiesel vs Encyclopaedia Britannica
Wiesel has been a prominent spokesman for the very sizeable group of people known as Holocaust survivors. [According to Norman Finkelstein of the City University of New York in his book The Holocaust Industry published in 2000, ‘The Israeli Prime Minister’s office recently put the number of "living Holocaust survivors" at nearly a million’ (p.83)]. Wiesel has chaired the US Holocaust Memorial Council and has been the recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal and Nobel Peace Prize (sic).
Time Magazine, March 18 1985:
‘How had he survived two of the most notorious killing fields [Auschwitz and Buchenwald] of the century? "I will never know" he says. "I was always weak. I never ate. The slightest wind would turn me over. In Buchenwald they sent 10,000 to their deaths every day. I was always in the last hundred near the gate. They stopped. Why?"
Compare this with Encyclopaedia Britannica (1993), under ‘Buchenwald’:
"In World War II it held about 20,000 prisoners.. Although there were no gas chambers, hundreds perished monthly through disease, malnutrition, exhaustion, beatings and executions."
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