Re: [Marxism] Tonight (Sunday)'s third party debate

[Walter Lippmann <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello!  I'm scheduled to appear on thirdpartyticket.com at 7:00 pm this evening!
Tune in!  I'm also including my remarks from yesterday.  Enjoy!  And don't
forget, please visit www.runcynthiarun.org and donate what you can!

Cynthia McKinney
It's About Time
Auburn Avenue Research Library
Atlanta, Georgia
October 18, 2008

I am extremely pleased to participate in this reunion of some of the boldest, 
most
idealistic, patriotic, inspiring young people that this country has ever seen.  
I celebrate who you are and what you have done to cause the United States 
Government
and all of its instruments of power to write one of the most ignominious 
chapters
in this country's history.  I consistently use you as a gauge:  if they would
do it to the Black Panther Party, then all of America must know that they will, 
without hesitation, also do it to the rest of us.  And so, it is incumbent upon 
those of us who know and want to know, to share the information about your 
experiences,
because there were efforts as you well know, to denigrate your name and 
neutralize
your mission of self-determination for Black people in this country, and to 
instill
fear into the populationâboth black and whiteâat the very mention of the 
Black Panther
Party for Self Defense. 

I begin with this question:  If the decision- and policy-makers at that time 
would
do it when it was "illegal and un-American," as Senator Frank Church described
the actions of those working inside the COINTELPRO framework, what are 
individual
actors with access to power and technology within the government today capable 
of
doing now?  You, the members of the Black Panther Party, are living testament 
that
too many individuals with access to power were willing to commit the highest 
crimes
and misdemeanors in order to achieve their objective--and that was clearly 
stated
in the opening document:  to neutralize you.  You are also living testament that
even though the actions carried out against you were illegal, they were largely 
done with impunity.  Who among the actors inside government--the coordinators, 
conceivers, managers, approvers--of these activities has been punished?  
And what we must never forget is what the U.S. government means when it 
uses the word "neutralize." I think you all know all too well.

Your experience with the Counter-Intelligence Program of yesterday is 
instructive
today now that the Patriot Acts, the Secret Evidence Act, the Military 
Commissions
Act, the Funding for the War on Terror Act are all carved into the law.  
Kathleen
and Natsu and, of course, King Downing, and others can describe how vastly the 
legal
landscape has changed.  But there is one aspect of the operation to neutralize 
your
good works and your good name that has not changed.  And that's what I want 
to talk about today.

How many times has the corporate press used the word "spoiler" in reference
to the 2000 Presidential election and every Presidential election since then and
how many times have they reported accurately the number of black votes cast and 
not counted or the way in which black voters were disfranchised?

How many times did the corporate press use the word "conspiracy," not 
in conjunction with the September 11th tragedy, but in conjunction with those 
who
want to know the truth about what happened on that day?

How many times did the corporate media lie to the people of this country and the
world in the lead-up to the war against Iraq? 

In the wake of accounts of torture and prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, how many 
times
were prisoner abuse and torture inside this country mentioned?  How many times 
was
Attica, the Angola 3, Chicago's Area 2, or the San Francisco 8 mentioned?

In this, an election year, how many times have stories on election integrity 
been
written that inform and warn potential voters of the problems they might face at
the polling place and what their rights are if they encounter them?

When we read accounts that the CIA stationed psychological operations agents 
inside
the newsroom at CNN, we must understand that the Propaganda Matrix is real and 
the
sad fact is that COINTELPRO could not have been as effective as it was without 
the
cooperation and complicity of the corporate media, known as the 4th Estate.  I 
read
a very interesting piece recently that asked if the 4th Estate is really a Fifth
Column.

During the 1999 Memphis, Tennessee trial on the murder of Dr. Martin Luther 
King,
Jr. who joined Black Panther Party members as a target of COINTELPRO, and was 
murdered
because of it: 

On November 30, 1999 testimony in that trial reveals the lengths to which the 
government
would go to eliminate a problem of conscience and the extent of cooperation 
between
the government's operatives and the esteemed members of the journalistic 
community.
The testimony on that date reveals the presence of the US military operating 
inside
this country in civilian clothing.  Testimony from one such operative revealed 
special
operations forces charged with assassinations operating with instructions 
directly
from the White House.  The testimony included information on the role of Jeb 
Bush
who, as Governor of Florida, saw to it that certain "civilian operations"
went forward from the port of Miami, Florida.  Including drug shipments from 
Colombia
into the U.S. 

The testimony in Dr. King's trial starkly portrays the collusion of the paragons
of the press with suppression and omission of important information, regarding 
the
murder of Dr. King as well as in the efforts to smear Dr. King and the movement 
he was leading.  The testimony of Bill Schapp is frightening reading about 
propaganda
and disinformation in the information lifeline of this country.  He testified 
that
approximately one-third of the entire CIA budget and hundreds of millions of FBI
dollars are dedicated to media propaganda operations.  That the CIA actually 
owned,
at the time of the Church Committee hearings, about 250 media organizations and 
employed thousands of journalists actually on the CIA payroll.  Mr. Schapp 
testified
that the FBI had friendly journalists at AP, Copley News Service, U.S. News and 
World Report, and at the Atlanta Constitution, The New Orleans Times Picayune, 
The
New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, even The Washington Post.  Schapp
testified that Frank Wisner called control over information flows the "Great
Wurlitzer."

And what is to be made of the Brasscheck TV 
(http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/439.html)
claim that video they have posted shows the Prime Ministers of Australia and the
soon-to-be Prime Minister of Canada giving the exact same speech in support of 
the
U.S.-led war in Iraq?
 
Among the top 25 censored stories for 2009, according to Project Censored, 
include "Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by U.S. Occupation"; "Security
and Prosperity Partnership:  Militarized NAFTA"; "InfraGard:  the FBI 
Deputizes Business"; "ILEA:  Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin 
America"; "Seizing War Protesters' Assets"; "Cruelty and Death in Juvenile 
Detention Centers"; "Marijuana Arrests Set New Record";
and in light of the bailout blowout, "Bush's Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer."

A recent immigration court case uncovered what is, according to Sibel 
Edmondsâwho
is probably the most-gagged woman in the country right now--an illegal, covert 
CIA
operation involving the intentional "Islamization" of Central Asia using
Turkey as its front for the purpose of establishing US control over the vast 
energy
resources of the region.  All of this is to say that the corporate press do not 
inform us of the activities of our own government.  Indeed, on Valentine's Day
in 2003, a Florida Appeals Court ruled that the media can legally lie.

So, if it's the truth or real information we want, we have to go elsewhereânot
the corporate press.  In this election year, don't expect talk about civil 
liberties
or human rights, don't expect discussion of a full employment economy or even
of a single payer health care system, recently described by 5,000 physicians as 
the only morally and fiscally responsible way to deliver health care in this 
country.

Now we learn that special surveillance units have been formed to track our hip 
hop
icons as was done with our cultural icons of the past, including Paul Robeson 
and
Bob Marley.  No wonder.  We get more straight talk from political hip hop than 
we
do from today's journalists charged with informing the people of their voting
choices and policy options.  Artists like Immortal Technique, who writes in his 
song on the media entitled "Fourth Branch:"

"It's like MK Ultra controlling your brain . . . "

Michael Franti writes:

"We can bomb the world to pieces, but we can't bomb it into peace."

Finally, Paris speaks to the character of our country when he asks:

"If you saw all the things that's wrong, would you stand tall and strong,
or would you turn and walk away?"

You, members of the Black Panther Party saw all the things that's wrong, you
stood tall and strong.

Thank you.



=========================================
     WALTER LIPPMANN
     Los Angeles, California
     Editor-in-Chief, CubaNews
     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/
     "Cuba - Un ParaÃso bajo el bloqueo"
=========================================

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