The Screwing of Cynthia McKinneyBy Greg Palast, AlterNet
Have you heard about Cynthia McKinney, former U.S. Congresswoman?
According to those quoted on National Public Radio, McKinney�s �a loose cannon� (media expert) who �the people of Atlanta are embarrassed and disgusted� (politician) by, and she is also �loony� and �dangerous� (senator from her own party).
Yow! 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.�
… 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
… 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.
… Did I mention to you that (ex-)Congresswoman McKinney is black? And not just any kind of black. She�s the uppity kind of black.
What I mean by uppity is this:
After George Bush Senior left the White House, he became an advisor and lobbyist for a Canadian gold-mining company, Barrick Gold. Hey, a guy�s got to work. But there were a couple of questions about Barrick, to say the least. For example, was Barrick�s Congo gold mine funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict? Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter.
You�ve guessed: Cynthia McKinney.
That was covered in the . . . well, it wasn�t covered at all in the U.S. press.
… Ted Koppel�s Nightline did a kind of follow-up to the BBC elections story. Our BBC team discovered that of the 180,000 votes never counted in the Florida 2000 presidential race, a sickeningly disproportionate number came from black counties. In Gadsden County, where more than half the population is black, one in eight ballots was marked "spoiled" and, thus, never counted.
Koppel�s team got on the case, flying down to Florida to find out why thousands of black votes were never counted. They talked to experts, they talked to important white people, and Koppel reported this:
Many blacks are new to voting and, with limited education, have a difficult time with marking the sophisticated ballots. In other words, ABC concluded, African Americans are too fucking dumb to figure out how to vote. Hey, if true, then you have to report it. But it wasn�t. It was a fib, a tall tale, made-for-TV mendacity, polite liberal electronic cross-burning intellectual eugenics.
Here�s the real scoop: All races of voters make errors on paper ballots.
But in white counties like Leon (Tallahassee), if you make a stray mark or other error, the vote machine rejects your ballot, and you get another ballot to vote again. But in black counties like Gadsden, you make a mistake and the machine quietly accepts and voids your ballot. In other words, it wasn�t that African Americans are too dumb to vote but that European American reporters are too dumb to ask, too lazy to bother, too gutless to tell officialdom to stop lying into the cameras.
