Hi. Because of length, I had to excerpt The McKinney interview. I'll try to send the other half on the weekend, but thought these sections pertinent and pressing this morning. -Ed
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 9:42 PM Tidbits - January 8, 2008 Re: Hillary Clinton This is not an assessment of Hillary Clinton's politics. It is a fed-up comment on the double-standard assessment of male and female politicians. When a man comes off as macho, as George W. Bush did during his campaigns, and, especially in his cowboy persona following 9/11, he is regarded as a true leader. But when a woman shows strength in her public life she is viewed as hard, cold, arrogant, whatever. ABC's Charles Gibson, the moderator of the debate the other night, asked her to respond to the charge that she is "not likable." Sticky, yes? But she answered it just right. She blushed with a smile and said it made her feel terrible. The audience laughed, and then she bit into the charge, noting that the early assessment of George Bush was that "you could have a beer" with him. Then came the big news of the day: Hillary became choked up during comments she made at a lunchtime meeting in New Hampshire! Good Lord! What next? Not since the Tin Man shed a tear at the end of "The Wizard of Oz" has there been such a contradiction of character. An entire article in the Washington Post was devoted to this earth-shaking event on Tuesday. It was titled "A Chink in the Steely Facade of Hillary Clinton," by Robin Givhan. It ends with the following paragraph: "A lifetime of work, sacrifice, frustration, patience and defiance seemed to be compressed in a few sentences. There was a little bit of disappointment in her words. A hint of exasperation. Her voice sounded heavy with tearful emotion. Not crocodile tears, but real ones. Not because she's a wimp. But simply because she's human." Would Hillary Clinton make a good president? If our judgment is based on her record and her campaign we would have to conclude that she might not be the best choice. But will it be possible for that judgment not to be colored by the media's incessant harping on her "steely" nature? Why do we look for steel in men and tears in women? Seymour Joseph *** Obama's Success Is Making Us All Winners By Jesse Jackson Chicago Sun-Times - January 8, 2008 http://www.suntimes.com/news/jackson/729978,CST-EDT- jesse08.article Barack Obama's stunning victory in Iowa lifts our hearts, no matter whom we support. You can't help but be touched by a brilliant, passionate African American with a message of hope winning the vote of Iowa's presidential caucuses. Although it's only a first step in a long race for Obama, it is surely a giant step for America. Nearly 44 years ago, Fanny Lou Hamer led the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to the Democratic convention in Atlantic City, challenging a Mississippi delegation that had systematically excluded all blacks. Hamer had to kick open locked doors simply to gain a hearing. She was dismissed by President Lyndon Johnson as an 'illiterate.' In the end, two delegates from the Freedom Democratic Party were seated, on condition that Hamer not be among them. Four years later, Democrats required equal representation. And now four decades later, an African-American leader can compete on a more level playing field. On the stage of the Democratic debate Saturday night in New Hampshire were the leading candidates for the nomination - a white woman, an African American, a white man and a Latino - strong leaders all, contesting for the presidency. (Dennis Kucinich was unfairly excluded from the debate.) We have come a long way. George Bush the First talked in New Hampshire's primary about having the 'Big Mo,' as in momentum. Obama enjoys far more than that. He's got the 'Big M's': magnetic personality, magic moment, message, money and momentum. And the preposterously short primary season - it's all over essentially by Feb. 5 - dramatically favors anyone who can win the early contests, in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. If Obama wins today in New Hampshire, he will be well on his way. The media are into the horse race: Who's up? Who's down? Daily polls, focus groups, on-the-street interviews. Lost in all this are the issues Americans care most about. Never was this more apparent than in the New Hampshire debate. Moderator Charles Gibson came with videos on various issues to set up discussions. The first, on nuclear weapons and terrorism, stimulated a serious discussion. The second was on the budget deficits, priorities and entitlements, but Gibson clearly was tired of substance. He turned to Clinton and asked her what positions of Obama she thought ought to be 'vetted.' Rather than substantive differences on Social Security and spending - of which there are many - he teed up the tit-for-tat discussion that got the headlines the next day. It is time to get real. This economy is probably already in recession. Last month, the private sector lost jobs. Millions are facing the loss of their homes. More and more students are getting priced out of college. Our infrastructure is crumbling, our cities being ignored; New Orleans has been abandoned. Oil is at $100 a barrel. The dollar is sinking. Catastrophic climate change is a real and present danger. We've squandered lives and resources on the war in Iraq, even as al-Qaida is consolidating and a nuclear-armed Pakistan is in turmoil. Kenya (the home of Obama's father), which is now disintegrating into violence, somehow was not part of the debate. We need commentators to probe these issues with candidates. Not with 'gotcha' questions - 'Do you know the name of the interim Uzbekistan prime minister?' - but in ways that are as sober as the moment. Obama is now the Democratic front-runner, with Mike Huckabee and John McCain running strong on the Republican side. They will and should be scrutinized. But let's put aside the opposition research and partisan jibes that magnify the petty. Let's focus on their answers to real challenges. Submit via email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe Search the archives: portside.org/archive *** 8 Jan 2008 18:07:49 -0500 From: All the News That Doesn't Fit <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [NYTr] ILC Interview with Cynthia McKinney [Sorry about the weird formatting; the original was full of hard returns. The website listed resulted in a "temporarily disabled" error message.-NY Transfer] "Angela Davis made an interesting comment on the current presidential campaign. She said all the candidates are talking about "differences" that will not make a difference and "changes" that will not bring about any change. How true." - Cynthia McKinney ILC via The Freedom Archives - Jan 8, 2008 http://freedomarchives.org/mailman/listinfo/news_freedomarchives.org [Note: The following interview with former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney is reprinted from issue No. 268 of the ILC International Newsletter (Jan. 8, 2008), published weekly in multiple languages in Paris. The interview was conducted for the ILC International Newsletter by Alan Benjamin on Jan. 5. To contact the ILC, the Reconstruction Party Organizing Committee, and the Cynthia McKinney for President campaign, see the "Afterword" at end of the interview.] ILC Interview with Cynthis McKinney by Alan Benjamin Question: Sister McKinney, as someone who is running for president of the United States on behalf of the Power to the People electoral coalition, how do you view the recent Iowa caucus? Cynthia McKinney: I just received a three-page letter from a woman in Tennessee -- a veteran who did three tours of duty in Vietnam. She wrote to say how dissatisfied she is with the level of political discourse in our presidential election, with none of the Democratic or Republican candidates addressing the real issues that she and her family are facing in terms of health care, job offshoring, declining public education, stagnation of wages, and more. She is looking for real answers and is not getting any from politicians and a media more interested in hype and hot-button issues (such as the "war on terror" or the "war on drugs") than in promoting any serious discussion of policy, much less offering any serious political alternatives. Angela Davis made an interesting comment on the current presidential campaign. She said all the candidates are talking about "differences" that will not make a difference and "changes" that will not bring about any change. How true. Take Obama and foreign policy: Independent journalist Allan Nairn spoke to Amy Goodman on her January 3 Democracy Now program about Obama's top policy advisers. I will quote from the transcription of this program, appropriately titled, "Vote for Change? Atrocity-Linked U.S. Officials Advising Democratic, GOP Presidential Frontrunners." Nairn stated: "Obama's top adviser is Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski gave an interview to the French press a number of years ago where he boasted about the fact that it was he who created the whole Afghan jihadi movement, the movement that produced Osama bin Laden. And he was asked by the interviewer, 'Well, don't you think this might have had some bad consequences?' And Brzezinski replied, 'Absolutely not. It was definitely worth it, because we were going after the Soviets.' ... "Another key Obama adviser, Anthony Lake, was the main force behind the U.S. invasion of Haiti in the mid-Clinton years during which they brought back Aristide essentially in political chains, pledged to support a World Bank/IMF overhaul of the economy, which resulted in an increase in malnutrition deaths among Haitians and set the stage for the current ongoing political disaster in Haiti. "Another Obama adviser, General Merrill McPeak, an Air Force man, was the man overseeing the delivery to Indonesia of U.S. fighter planes not long after the Dili massacre in East Timor in '91. "Another key Obama adviser, Dennis Ross, advised Clinton and both Bushes. He oversaw U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine. He pushed the principle that the legal rights of the Palestinians, the rights recognized under international law, must be subordinated to the needs of the Israeli government -- in other words, their desire to expand to do whatever they want in the Occupied Territories. "And Ross was one of the people who, interestingly, led the political assault on former Democratic President Jimmy Carter. Carter is no peacenik -- Carter is the one who bears ultimate responsibility for that Timor terror that Holbrooke was involved in. But Ross led an assault on him, because, regarding Palestine, Carter was so bold as to agree with Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa that what Israel was doing in the Occupied Territories was tantamount to apartheid. And so, Ross was one of those who fiercely attacked him. "Another Obama adviser is Sarah Sewall, who heads a human rights center at Harvard and is a former Defense official. She wrote the introduction to General Petraeus's Marine Corps/Army counterinsurgency handbook, the handbook that is now being used worldwide by U.S. troops in various killing operations." That's the Obama team. But Nairn demonstrates that the Clinton and Edwards teams are equally loaded with Washington insiders who in one way or other have contributed to our current national predicament. There is another message coming out of Iowa that is aimed directly at Black people. Former Clinton presidential adviser and columnist Dick Morris wrote that with Obama's victory in Iowa, "race is no longer a factor in American politics." Tell that to the Black folks living in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, or who are facing "Hurricane America" in cities and communities all across the country. Bill Bennett on CNN said that Barack Obama is the kind of Black person Blacks should be -- not like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. This is the way to go if you want to get somewhere in this country, Bennett said. Question: You recently issued a statement announcing that as a presidential candidate you would use your campaign to promote the building of a Reconstruction Party in the United States. You are now serving on the newly formed National Organizing Committee for a Reconstruction Party. Why is this important to you? McKinney: More than two years ago, the world got to see what many of us live on a daily basis in this country. They saw the Black community in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast decimated by government neglect. They saw a community targeted by ethnic-cleansing. Throughout this country there are still communities that are desperate because of generations of poverty and neglect. The world now knows this terrible situation exists in the very heart of a country that is touted as the most "prosperous" and "democratic" in the world. This situation has gone on way too long. The mainstream politicians want it simply to go away. They want to erase the color line. But while they and their media change the subject -- preferring to give us every detail about what Brittany Spears wore when she was arrested, for example -- and while no one deals seriously with growing poverty and racism in this country, things only get worse. It was only after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita that some folks in the Gulf Coast realized there is a desperate need to build a Reconstruction Movement because all the palliatives offered by the politicians haven't worked and because there are pockets of neglect all over the country -- not just in the Gulf states. The Reconstruction Movement was born in the aftermath of Katrina and Rita, but the conditions of poverty, racism, and neglect have existed since America's first Reconstruction Period after the Civil War. A 2003 Harvard University study found that Black infant and maternal mortality rates are 2 and 3.5 times higher than for whites. Dr. David Satcher found in 2005 that 83,750 Black people died from premature deaths for no other reason than that they were Black. The New York Times wrote that by 2003 nearly one half of all Black men between the ages of 16 and 64, living in New York City, were unemployed. And in its 2005 report, United for a Fair Economy told us that it would take 1,664 years to close the home-ownership gap and that on some indices the racial disparities are worse now than at the time of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. In their 2006 report, United for a Fair Economy told us that Blacks and Latinos lost ground, and that in order to close the racial wealth divide in our country, it would take the equivalent of a "G.I. Bill for Everyone" that would include comprehensive federal investment in low-income families and communities, with an emphasis on people of color. == Question: You are seeking the Green Party's presidential nomination? How do you see the relationship between the Greens and the Reconstruction Party? McKinney: This is a time for coalition politics. I believe we need a coalition -- a peace and justice coalition, a Power to the People coalition -- that can put another voice at the table of American political discussion. We now only have two voices -- which are more and more the same voice. And with 5% of the vote we can get three. The Reconstruction Party is a necessary and central component of this coalition. Winning the 5% of the vote, which we can do through the Green Party ballot, will translate into increased visibility on the issues of concern to the Reconstruction Party activists. Question: How do you answer those who say you might be a spoiler on behalf of the Republicans if you get 5% of the presidential vote in 2008? McKinney: I tell them that more than 40% of the potential voters in this country don't vote because they don't hear a message that motivates them to go out and vote. I want to give them a reason to vote. I also tell them that the real spoilers are the ones who stole the vote in 2000 and 2004 -- or who didn't fight to defend the vote. --- To subscribe to the English-language ILC International Newsletter, contact us at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. To contact the Reconstruction Party Organizing Committee, write to Kali Akuno at <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>. To learn more about Cynthia McKinney's record, visit http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com The ILC International Newsletter is published weekly in Paris by the International Liaison Committee of Workers and Peoples (Entente internationale des travailleurs et des peuples) 87, rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis 75010 Paris France. T?l : (33 1) 48 01 88 28 Fax : (33 1) 48 01 88 36. http://www.eit-ilc.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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