Cynthia McKinney Is 'Our' Hero
On April 12th Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) released a press statement critical of the Bush administration's actions in responding to 9-11. It raised serious concerns about the United States government's foreknowledge of the brutal terrorist attacks on both the World Trade Center in New York City as well as the Pentagon in Washington, DC. McKinney argued, "The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11[th] is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle. The press release from McKinney's office further stated "news reports from Der Spiegal to the London Observer, from the Los Angeles Times to MSNBC to CNN, indicate that many warnings were received by the [US] Administration."
There is considerable evidence that key players in the US intelligence as well as federal law enforcement community deliberately turned a deaf ear to persistent rumors that Mohammad Atta, who had been previously identified as a member of an extremist, fundamentalist group, was involved in a plot to bomb the twin towers.
If McKinney or her staff had engaged in the thoughtful but time consuming investigative process necessary to lend credence to her charges, they would have come across a number of articles written by courageous independent writers myself included that provided substantial factual evidence supporting her claims.
One piece in particular written by Tom Flacco and entitled Profits of Death 1: Insider Trading and 9-11 "revealed that the A.B. Brown (Alex Brown) investment arm of the banking giant Deutschebank/A.B. Brown had been headed until 1998 by the man who is now the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency - A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. In fact, Krongard is but one name in a long history of CIA interconnections to stock trading and the world's financial markets."
Unfortunately, McKinney like her colleague from the 35th District of California, Maxine Waters (D-California) who raised similar concerns in the wake of allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency was directly involved in the importation of drugs into the US generally and her district particularly, McKinney took the path of the least resistance.
Consequently, the serious allegations she raised against powerful players in the Bush administration, without providing substantial evidence supporting her position, enabled her detractors to dismiss her allegations out-of-hand. By unfairly labeling McKinney unpatriotic, a conspiracy theorist, and member of an extreme left wing lunatic fringe, has caused her to lose substantial "credibility" with her herd-like colleagues in the Congress.
On Sunday, April 21st Black Entertainment Television's Lead Story hosted by Amy Holmes aired a segment where McKinney was roundly criticized by not only House Negro-in-Residence Armstrong Williams, who a shameless tout for conservative - read that: white - reactionary interests and a disingenuous apologist for racist American policy without an original thought to his credit, but also by moderate writer for Savoy magazine, Jack White, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered producer Brenda Wilson.
The dismantling of McKinney was an incredible display of collective ignorance by persons charged with the mission to bring us factual, objective information; information culled not only from the mainstream, co-opted, I mean, corporate media but from alternate sources as well. Government has long had it hand deep in the pocket of corporate media.
Mike Levin, the host and executive producer of The Expert Witness Show, which airs on NYC's WBAI 99.5 FM at 7:00 PM on Tuesdays once had a retired CIA operative brag on air that the agency had co-opted the corporate media in these United States.
In short, he claimed that virtually all of the major players would publish unedited releases written by bureaucrats in his as well as other US Intelligence agencies. The watered down, heavily censored reports we have been receiving from the likes of the Hearst corporation, Tribune, Knight Ridder, United News & Media, Dow Jones & Company on the Israelis-Palestinian conflict is a glaring contemporaneous case-in-point.
So it stands to reason that we ought to be extremely critical of information we read in those reactionary rags; papers published primarily to promote the Bush administrations' fascistic agenda. And ironically those publications were the very reference sources these black barely intellectuals cited in their mindless lockstep attacks on McKinney.
Moreover, to the point at hand, the airspace over the Eastern seaboard of the continental United States is the most heavily monitored, regulated and, more importantly, restricted airspace than anywhere else in the country! And with good reason. Old eastern seaboard cites housing the nation's Capital, three Federal Reserves, banking and finance centers of the country if not world.
We are supposed to believe that air traffic controllers in not one but seven different FAA Air Traffic Control Command Center regions two of which have ARO or Airport Reservation Office status - i.e., JFK in NYC as well as Regan in Washington, DC - meaning that they are specifically designated to process high density traffic requests all dropped the proverbial ball simultaneously.
Sources in the administration would have us think that these highly-trained Federal Aviation Administration workers most of whom are equally highly paid (with average annual salaries of approximately one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars), high-ranking, reserve non-commissioned officers in the US military, undergo through extensive federal background checks and hold high-level security clearances as a result, allowed three fully loaded passenger jets to wander hundreds of miles off course violating restricted airspace and slam into the twin towers in NYC, and the Pentagon in Washington, DC without sounding any alarm.
That is simply not believable. It is so unbelievable, moreover, that it raised more questions than non-existant investigations have answered; questions that no one in the Congress has had the courage to ask accept for Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia).
The fact of the matter is that these planes were tracked and fighter jets from east coast based US Air Force fighter wings were scrambled to intercept them. There is credible evidence to suggest that the downing of American Airlines Flight 11 - the plane that allegedly crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania - a rural community approximately 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh - was not the result of heroism on the parts of the passengers on board the plane but the deliberate shooting by one of those fighter jets.
This persistent rumor has been floating about in the alternate press since it was revealed that the co-pilot was an African American reserve Air Force officer and pilot.
Famed essayist and writer Gore Vidal was featured on a two hour special public affairs segment hosted by Matthew Finch, public affairs director, at NYC's Pacifica station WBAI 99.5 FM on Tuesday, April 23rd. Vidal has a piece coming out in which he claims that five FBI special agents have brought suit against their supervisor for refusing to accept evidence that foretold of the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
We could neither prove nor disprove this information during our research for this piece. However, it is this type of investigative reporting, fact checking, and research that makes for the compelling, factual, and critical information that is no longer available to us through the so-called mainstream media. It is frightening and speaks to McKinney's point, that "The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11 is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle."
Instead of being castigated and ridiculed by her colleagues in the congress and other black leaders - most of whom are too busy greedily feeding at the slop trough of public largess to do the important work they were elected to do - she ought to be lionized for exhibiting the courage to raise questions about a troubling aspect of the negligence demonstrated by several investigatory as well as oversight agencies in the US government.
The public's lack of skepticism relative to obvious unanswered conflicts surrounding 9-11 brings to mind another era and another figure in history: Roman Emperor Tiberius Gracchus, a famed war hero who upon assuming the throne was told by the Senate that his decrees would be passed without deliberations. Tiberius responded "so quick are they to become slaves. . ."
We presume that the government has our collective interests at heart when the historic record clearly contradicts that supposition. So quick are we, as black folks or people who ought to know better, to become slaves. . .
There is considerable evidence that key players in the US intelligence as well as federal law enforcement community deliberately turned a deaf ear to persistent rumors that Mohammad Atta, who had been previously identified as a member of an extremist, fundamentalist group, was involved in a plot to bomb the twin towers.
If McKinney or her staff had engaged in the thoughtful but time consuming investigative process necessary to lend credence to her charges, they would have come across a number of articles written by courageous independent writers myself included that provided substantial factual evidence supporting her claims.
One piece in particular written by Tom Flacco and entitled Profits of Death 1: Insider Trading and 9-11 "revealed that the A.B. Brown (Alex Brown) investment arm of the banking giant Deutschebank/A.B. Brown had been headed until 1998 by the man who is now the Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency - A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard. In fact, Krongard is but one name in a long history of CIA interconnections to stock trading and the world's financial markets."
Unfortunately, McKinney like her colleague from the 35th District of California, Maxine Waters (D-California) who raised similar concerns in the wake of allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency was directly involved in the importation of drugs into the US generally and her district particularly, McKinney took the path of the least resistance.
Consequently, the serious allegations she raised against powerful players in the Bush administration, without providing substantial evidence supporting her position, enabled her detractors to dismiss her allegations out-of-hand. By unfairly labeling McKinney unpatriotic, a conspiracy theorist, and member of an extreme left wing lunatic fringe, has caused her to lose substantial "credibility" with her herd-like colleagues in the Congress.
On Sunday, April 21st Black Entertainment Television's Lead Story hosted by Amy Holmes aired a segment where McKinney was roundly criticized by not only House Negro-in-Residence Armstrong Williams, who a shameless tout for conservative - read that: white - reactionary interests and a disingenuous apologist for racist American policy without an original thought to his credit, but also by moderate writer for Savoy magazine, Jack White, and National Public Radio's All Things Considered producer Brenda Wilson.
The dismantling of McKinney was an incredible display of collective ignorance by persons charged with the mission to bring us factual, objective information; information culled not only from the mainstream, co-opted, I mean, corporate media but from alternate sources as well. Government has long had it hand deep in the pocket of corporate media.
Mike Levin, the host and executive producer of The Expert Witness Show, which airs on NYC's WBAI 99.5 FM at 7:00 PM on Tuesdays once had a retired CIA operative brag on air that the agency had co-opted the corporate media in these United States.
In short, he claimed that virtually all of the major players would publish unedited releases written by bureaucrats in his as well as other US Intelligence agencies. The watered down, heavily censored reports we have been receiving from the likes of the Hearst corporation, Tribune, Knight Ridder, United News & Media, Dow Jones & Company on the Israelis-Palestinian conflict is a glaring contemporaneous case-in-point.
So it stands to reason that we ought to be extremely critical of information we read in those reactionary rags; papers published primarily to promote the Bush administrations' fascistic agenda. And ironically those publications were the very reference sources these black barely intellectuals cited in their mindless lockstep attacks on McKinney.
Moreover, to the point at hand, the airspace over the Eastern seaboard of the continental United States is the most heavily monitored, regulated and, more importantly, restricted airspace than anywhere else in the country! And with good reason. Old eastern seaboard cites housing the nation's Capital, three Federal Reserves, banking and finance centers of the country if not world.
We are supposed to believe that air traffic controllers in not one but seven different FAA Air Traffic Control Command Center regions two of which have ARO or Airport Reservation Office status - i.e., JFK in NYC as well as Regan in Washington, DC - meaning that they are specifically designated to process high density traffic requests all dropped the proverbial ball simultaneously.
Sources in the administration would have us think that these highly-trained Federal Aviation Administration workers most of whom are equally highly paid (with average annual salaries of approximately one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars), high-ranking, reserve non-commissioned officers in the US military, undergo through extensive federal background checks and hold high-level security clearances as a result, allowed three fully loaded passenger jets to wander hundreds of miles off course violating restricted airspace and slam into the twin towers in NYC, and the Pentagon in Washington, DC without sounding any alarm.
That is simply not believable. It is so unbelievable, moreover, that it raised more questions than non-existant investigations have answered; questions that no one in the Congress has had the courage to ask accept for Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia).
The fact of the matter is that these planes were tracked and fighter jets from east coast based US Air Force fighter wings were scrambled to intercept them. There is credible evidence to suggest that the downing of American Airlines Flight 11 - the plane that allegedly crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania - a rural community approximately 80 miles southeast of Pittsburgh - was not the result of heroism on the parts of the passengers on board the plane but the deliberate shooting by one of those fighter jets.
This persistent rumor has been floating about in the alternate press since it was revealed that the co-pilot was an African American reserve Air Force officer and pilot.
Famed essayist and writer Gore Vidal was featured on a two hour special public affairs segment hosted by Matthew Finch, public affairs director, at NYC's Pacifica station WBAI 99.5 FM on Tuesday, April 23rd. Vidal has a piece coming out in which he claims that five FBI special agents have brought suit against their supervisor for refusing to accept evidence that foretold of the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
We could neither prove nor disprove this information during our research for this piece. However, it is this type of investigative reporting, fact checking, and research that makes for the compelling, factual, and critical information that is no longer available to us through the so-called mainstream media. It is frightening and speaks to McKinney's point, that "The need for an investigation of the events surrounding September 11 is as obvious as is the need for an investigation of the Enron debacle."
Instead of being castigated and ridiculed by her colleagues in the congress and other black leaders - most of whom are too busy greedily feeding at the slop trough of public largess to do the important work they were elected to do - she ought to be lionized for exhibiting the courage to raise questions about a troubling aspect of the negligence demonstrated by several investigatory as well as oversight agencies in the US government.
The public's lack of skepticism relative to obvious unanswered conflicts surrounding 9-11 brings to mind another era and another figure in history: Roman Emperor Tiberius Gracchus, a famed war hero who upon assuming the throne was told by the Senate that his decrees would be passed without deliberations. Tiberius responded "so quick are they to become slaves. . ."
We presume that the government has our collective interests at heart when the historic record clearly contradicts that supposition. So quick are we, as black folks or people who ought to know better, to become slaves. . .
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