Cynthia McKinney Victory Speech: "It's a New Day"

Click here for webcast of speech.

Good evening.

It's a new day, ya'll!

And the evidence is a clear and convincing victory handed to us by the people of the Fourth Congressional District.

Twelve years ago, Georgia's History Train pulled off from the Georgia Legislature, rolling down the tracks to the United States Congress.

And for 10 years, The History Train gathered momentum.

We rode that train: through poverty and plenty; picking up warriors for justice all over America.

The History Train chugged along with full faith and confidence in the American dream.

Tonight signifies that the History Train is once again gathering steam, but it's also clear that the History Train is changing tracks: taking a new path for community and country.

Sending a strong message that a new way of thinking for ourselves and our future is taking hold.

Ten years ago, the History Train took us through Georgia towns big and small, like Washington, Georgia, the hometown of the most recently fallen Georgia hero in Iraq.

Sadly, now, another Georgia family must feel the pain of George Bush's war machine.

Tonight I say, "Bring our sons and daughters home now" and commend to you this beautiful watercolor expressing what I've been saying for the past year.

I predict that the American people will send a resounding message tonight that the war machine--must stop now.

But there's another kind of machine of which we must beware that lurks among us: and that's the corporate propaganda machine.

Leaders who dare go against, or merely even question, the policies being polished by a slick media machine can get sucked up, chewed up, eaten up, devoured.

Or in a familiar set of words more famous than my own: "expose, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" such leadership. "To pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them." These words are straight from the FBI during its program to counter dissent in this country.

And as we have seen in the cases of both, these immensely powerful and monied machines take their aim directly at the people.

Breaking free of the influence of both these machines heralds a new way of thinking. And that's what this campaign was all about.

We really believe:

that a multitude of people can outweigh any special interest every time; that media magic has little persuasion over an informed people; that we as a people are way more powerful when we turn to each other and not on each other; and that we can embrace the human rainbow, celebrate our diversity, focus on our commonality, and together, tear down the mightiest walls of oppression and injustice.

Evidence of the power of this new way of thinking is here tonight in this room and in our election numbers.

And so commanding is our presence, and significant is our mission that what we have now accomplished in Georgia's Fourth Congressional District, is being broadcast by the best of America's corporate media: Who said the revolution wasn't going to be televised?

This campaign represents a movement to bring America together: Blacks, whites, Asians, Latinos; together; Muslim, Jew, Christian, Hindu; together; Those who still hum Dinah Washington tunes, together with those singing Tupac.

What we represent is the future of America: a first step in taking our country back, freeing ourselves so we can liberate others.

It's a new day, and it belongs to us. Now is our time, and seize it we must.

In 1901, George White, the last remaining black Member of Congress during Reconstruction addressed the United States House of Representatives. Black Members of Congress had been sent home after Jim Crow laws gathered steam across the South. When he, too, had been affected, George White had this to say:

This is perhaps the Negro's temporary farewell to the American Congress. But phoenix-like, he will rise up some day and come again. These parting words are in behalf of an outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but God-fearing people; faithful, industrious, loyal, rising people--full of potential force."

People across the Fourth District and across our country bind together: outraged, heart-broken, bruised and bleeding, but also full of potential force. Many among us have been knocked down, but not a one of us is too wounded to not get back up again.

Tonight is a victory for the people of the Fourth Congressional District and for a new way of thinking.

We celebrate that the History Train rides again.

And invite onboard all who share our values and still believe that America can be a force for good at home and in the world.

Thank you to the voters who came out in record numbers and gave their vote of confidence.

Thank you to all the volunteers (from far and near) who worked day in and day out to make this victory possible;

Thank you to the alternative media who kept our story relevant and thank you to all of you.

Thank you and good night.

Early streetcars: Memorable and uncomfortable

By John McIntyre, Star Tribune

Last update: June 14, 2004 – 11:00 PM

On cold, muddy Washington Avenue, in the late 1870s, a Minneapolis commuter stands with a nickel in his hand. Off toward the east he can the tinkling of a bell - the sound of a horse-drawn streetcar.

The car pulls up. The weary driver nods sourly.

The commuter, if he's been in one of these contraptions before, hesitates before he climbs aboard.

The ride home is going to be no fun.

Twin Cities' streetcar service came a long way from its early horsecar days until it ended in the early 1950s, with then state-of-the-art high-speed electric cars.

The original horsecars -- the ancestors of today's light-rail cars -- were about 12 feet long and weighed about 1,000 pounds. They were called "crackerboxes on wheels." Riders could, for their 5-cent fare, get where they were going at a brisk 6 miles per hour, much faster than slogging through
the mud and manure-filled streets.

But that ride could be brutal. Passengers could be called on to put a derailed car back on track or to negotiate with a balky mule.

The ordeal started at the pay box at the front of the car, writes Stephen Kieffer, in "Transit and the Twins."

"Many an early patron of the cars will remember how the driver reminded him, by the ringing of a bell, that he had not placed his fare in the box."

Inside, the amenities were primitive. Passengers sat on hard benches that ran the length of the car. A foul-smelling oil lamp provided a dim light, says a history of the Minneapolis Street Railway Company.

"In winter, heat was supplied by a small sheet-iron stove in the middle of the car. The floor of the car was covered with hay to a depth of about one foot to assist the stove in keeping the passengers' feet warm. It was a common occurrence for passengers to alight from the cars with hay clinging to their feet and garments."

In the 1870s, the streetcar tracks were laid -- some might say floated -- on the muddy streets. Minnesota's rain, snow and ice knocked them out of alignment, says Goodrich Lowry in "Streetcar Man."

"Passengers were often asked to assist the driver in putting the half-ton car back on the track, or pushing it up a slippery hill."

Riders also could be asked to convince mule to get work. Sam Brinker, a horsecar driver from in the 1890s, recalled in a 1942 Minneapolis Sunday Tribune interview:

"Sometimes we'd use mules, and sometimes the mules would balk. But no one got upset, even though the mules were stubborn as long as an hour. Everyone would contribute ideas on how to get them started again. Pulling the tails slowly but steadily was the most popular suggestion."

Still, the riders had it easy compared with the drivers.

During the first 20 years of service, the typical driver, "unprotected alike from snow and rain, possessed a weather-beaten face, almost as rough and brown as the buffalo coat he wore," E.W. Tuckey writes in "An Historical Account of the Street Railways of Minneapolis and St. Paul" in the Minneapolis Historical Society's collection.

Drivers worked from six a.m. until 11 p.m. and were paid about $45 a month. Says Tuckey:

"During the winter season frozen ears, nose and fingers were expected, and it was not an unheard of thing that some poor driver had to be lifted from his platform frozen too stiff to care for himself.''

In the 1890s when electric streetcars replaced the horse cars, conditions worsened for the drivers, Tuckey writes.

"The swift motion of the (electric) car caused a constant current of air across the front of the platform, which in the depths of winter became almost unendurable. The people were not slow to appreciate the inhumanities of the situation and joined with the employees in demanding protection."

The transit companies refused. But in 1893, the Legislature passed a law requiring the cars to be enclosed between November and April.

Riders didn't exactly have a smorgasbord of alternatives to the horsecars, but there were some - including steam-powered trains and cablecars.

The "Steam Motors" of the Minneapolis, Lyndale and Minnetonka Railway served routes from downtown Minneapolis, along Lake Calhoun and out to Excelsior in the 1880s. They were noisy, smoky, slow and unpopular with riders and residents along the routes, Kieffer writes.

"The coal-fired, steam-powered motors that were enclosed to be less objectionable when running through the streets of the city and less likely to frighten horses."

"In case a stop had to be made part way uphill, say in the neighborhood of Franklin Avenue, the 'Motors' were not powerful to start the trains again. They had to be backed down to the foot of the hill and a fresh start made in order to get sufficient momentum to run to the top."

The solution was finally to reduce the grade of the hill.

In St. Paul, the steep and troublesome Selby Avenue hill was conquered first by cable cars and later by electric cars and a tunnel with a more gradual grade.

The cable car line used a cable that was drawn in an endless loop under the street by a stationary steam engine. When it was time to move, the motorman used a lever to grip the cable. When it was time to stop, he released the cable. The cars moved at a stately 8 miles per hour. Similar cars are still running in San Francisco.

Cable cars were an improvement over horsecars, especially on hills. But Minnesota's weather made them unreliable, Goodrich Lowry writes.

"The slot in the center rail, which had to be just the right size, was apt to shrink in cold weather and expand in hot weather. When it shrank, the gripping lever got stuck, and when it expanded, the wheels of passing drays and carriages were trapped."

And the cable itself wasn't 100 percent reliable, Lowry says.

"Although the entire cable seldom parted, a broken strand could entangle the gripping mechanism, converting an orderly ride in to a wild runaway. When this happened, the entire system had to be shut down - usually in the rush hour!"

Electric streetcars glided onto the scene in about 1890. They were faster, quieter and more reliable. And as the years passed they became ever more sophisticated.

The first line was built along 4th Avenue S. in Minneapolis. It captivated the public from the start. People visited the construction every day until service began at 4 p.m. on Dec. 24, 1889, says "A History of the Minneapolis Street Railway Company - 1873-1908."

"Crowds of spectators lined both sides of the route. Others at the terminus at the Post Office waited for their chance to take a ride. The drivers and conductors, with long ulster coats, buttoned all the way with brass buttons, filled out their breasts, looked straight ahead and felt even more dignified than the passengers aboard who looked out upon their friends standing on the pavement. Ding, Ding, Ding, round the corner and straight out 4th Avenue. The cars swept majestically while the hundreds of onlookers pronounced them 'just the thing.'''

Even so, electricity remained a mysterious and dangerous force, the history says.

"Many watched with alarm the operation of the Electric Cars as they observed fire flying from the wheels and from the trolley wires as the cars ran along. Predictions were freely made that the first heavy snowstorm would settle the Electric Railway and put it out of business. Drivers were afraid their horses would be killed if horses stepped on the street Car Tracks, and a great many persons were afraid of the effect of the first lightning storm on the cars with their loads of passengers."

For the next 50 years Twin City Rapid Transit streetcars carried thousands of people every day. And they did it with remarkable safety, especially as the number of streetcars and their speed increased, says Kieffer.

"This was all the more remarkable when one considers the unfavorable weather conditions under which this transit company operated through most of the year," he writes.

He recalls a near disaster in 1890 when a loaded streetcar nearly fell off the Washington Avenue bridge and into the Mississippi River.

"The car left the track -- and when it stopped, the wheels were within six inches of the bridge. The rear platform was out beyond the edge. Panicky passengers had raced for the exit (there was only one) and without a doubt, some would have been hurled into the river if the conductor had not barred their way."

But James Linsley, a streetcar operator in the 1930s, had a different take on safety. His regular letters to his family, preserved in a 1995 article in Hennepin History, "Streetcarring in the 1930s: A Personal Account," describes the hard life of a driver and numerous accidents, though few injuries.

"Saturday was a tough day for Lake Street Station. We had three streetcars smashed by skidding into stuff. Benetti was driving one of them and smashed into an interurban bus at Washington Square and it in turn hit another streetcar. He got his hand cut by broken glass. All three cars had their whole front end caved in.''

By 1907, streetcar riding had become a daily routine, judging by the observation one young woman. Thora Thoresen, an 18-year-old Minneapolis seamstress, writes in her 1907 diary, preserved by the Hennepin County Historical Society, about going to work every day, running errands and even going to the YWCA for exercise classes.

Riding the streetcar was just a part of her day: Nothing remarkable, but worth noting all the same.

Jan. 17, 1907: (After dinner at a friend's house.) "Litta followed me to the car. I reached home safely, or I would not be writing this.''

"Jan. 23, 1907: This evening, Litta came up to the shop to call for me and Rug and Litta and I went to her YWCA reception. I also joyned (sic) it and so did Litta. So now we are members. Took the Central Car home because Litta did not feel well and didn't like to transfer."

"Jan. 28, 1907: Then we ran over to the car and got on the first car. When we were well seated, he told us it was a short line, so we got off at the next corner, which was Chicago Avenue and 25th Street. We took the next car and transferred on Selby and Lake and got off at the tailor's and fitted my coat."

Another rider, Elizabeth Boyer, told the Linden Hills Oral History Project in the Minneapolis Public Library collection, that when she was a child in the 1920s her parents let her ride the streetcar to a doctor's appointment in St. Paul.

"They gave me a nickel and a penny to get on the streetcar to go downtown. I had a map of what you do downtown... I was six or seven. It was very safe in those days. We were to talk to a policeman if I forgot what I was supposed to be doing."

By the early 1950s, the streetcars were gone - replaced by buses. Various writers expressed their feelings - and opinions about the streetcar system -- in letters to the Minneapolis Tribune.

The owners of the Twin City Rapid Transit Co., seemed elated, which was understandable considering they'd engineered the conversion to buses.

"In less than 25 months we have transformed a confused, sprawling system of 392 miles of rail and overhead cable, 724 streetcars and 354 older type buses into an engineered, modern network served by the world's largest fleet of new 51-passenger air ride Diesel buses. Today the noise of the streetcar is a memory!"

But others found more in the streetcar experience than just iron, steel and copper.

A Minneapolis Tribune editorial writer, on the 25th anniversary of the ending of streetcar service, described the ride south of Lake Street on the Como-Harriet and Oak-Harriet lines.

"We don't know that it was the world's loveliest streetcar ride, but on a June day it surely was a close contender for that honor. It began at the right-of-way at Thirty-first Street. The tracks curved between pleasant backyard gardens, came into full view of lake Calhoun and the 36th St. viaduct, skirted the green lawns and gentle slopes of Lakewood Cemetery with its miniature lake, passed along gracefully wooded areas of William Berry park, and shout into sight of lovely Lake Harriet near the bandstand. Well, that trolley ride is gone forever."

And an anonymous writer remembered the good times.

"Although the streetcars are leaving us forever, we shall not forget them...most of the big, yellow cars were things of beauty, speed, power and adventure ...The glamour and wonder of our streetcars will be remembered long after the discomforts are forgotten."

source: http://www.startribune.com/368/v-print/story/64737.html

Senate Rejects Global Warming Bill

Measure To Curb Carbon Dioxide Emissions Is Defeated

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30, 2003

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1 | 2

(AP)

Related

Interactive

Global Warming

The greenhouse effect, a look at the Kyoto Protocol and a history of the Earth's climate.

Interactive

The 108th Congress

Meet the leaders and follow the action in the House and Senate.

(CBS/AP) The U.S. Senate rejected a plan Thursday to curb carbon dioxide emissions from industrial smokestacks as a source of global warming. It was the chamber's first vote in more than six years on the controversial issue of climate change.

The 55-43 vote against the measure co-sponsored by Sens. John McCain, a Republican, and Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, capped a two-day debate that the two senators described as the opening shot in what they acknowledged will be a lengthy effort to get Congress to address global warming.

Their bill would have required industrial plants — but not motor vehicles — to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. The Bush administration said the bill would seriously harm the U.S. economy.

"Let's get real here: this is a very minimal proposal that should be a first step," McCain told the Senate, showing pictures of Arctic Sea ice loss and melting at Glacier National Park. "But we have to start somewhere. We will be back, because these pictures will continue to get worse and won't improve until we begin to address this issue."

A senator who is a former astronaut recalled Thursday the "blue-and-white awe" of earth's atmosphere, a view that "made me want to be a better steward of this planet." Sen. Bill Nelson called for an end to "putting our heads in the sand" with current U.S. climate policy.

"The earth from space looks so beautiful, and yet so fragile," said Nelson, a Florida Democrat who flew on space shuttle Columbia in 1986. "When we face a major change in climate," he said, "it is going to have devastating effects on the ecological balance of the earth."

However, Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, said there was no need to introduce a "massive new regulatory process" for industrial carbon dioxide.

"It is not a pollutant," he said. "It does not represent a direct threat to public health."

Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the bill's biggest opponent, said, "Like Kyoto, this is an extreme approach." Inhofe has called global warming a hoax perpetrated by environmentalists on the American public.

Proponents say addressing global warming will in the long run help the economy, but the White House said it strongly opposed the bill because it would require "deep and immediate cuts in fossil fuel use" to meet an "arbitrary" goal, and drive up household energy bills and gas pump prices.

"These increases in energy prices would effectively operate as a tax on American consumers and would have a severe negative impact on job creation," the White House said in a statement.

Sen. Kit Bond told senators the bill would cripple the U.S. economy. "Now is not the time to place more burden on our families and our communities," he said.

McCain, who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee, forced the debate and vote to the Senate floor by promising he wouldn't block a major energy bill that has been stalled in Congress.

The administration's stance on global warming has irked critics.

In August, the Environmental Protection Agency said it lacked authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from motor vehicles. In June, CBS News reported that an EPA report on climate change was gutted to eliminate strong language that "climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment" and was "likely mostly due to human activities."

©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/30/politics/main580915.shtml

John Chavis - Free African American in 18th Century America

John Chavis

John Chavis was born on October 18th, 1763. He was a Black educator and minister who made great strides educating both Black and white students in the South during the early 19th century.

From North Carolina, his family was legally free which allowed him to pursue an education. Chavis arrived at Liberty Hall Academy in 1795, one year prior to George Washington's gift of 100 shares of James River Company Stock. He was a student when the institution changed its name to Washington Academy. On November 19 1800 with high honors they granted him a license to preach. His academic performance attracted much public attention because it contradicted the belief that Blacks were intellectually inferior to whites. In 1808, Chavis founded a school for the children of white slave owners. As an educator, Chavis taught full time.

He trained white children during the day and free Black children at night. He prepared the white children for college by teaching them Latin and Greek. The school he opened in Raleigh was described as one of the best in the state. It surely was an excellent school, for some of the most powerful men in white society entrusted their sons’ education to Chavis. His students include Priestly H. Mangum, brother of Senator Willie P. Mangum; Archibald E. and John L. Henderson, sons of Chief Justice Henderson; Governor Charles Manly; The Reverend William Harris; Dr. James L. Wortham; the Edwardses, Enlows (Enloes), Hargroves, and Horners; and Abraham Rencher who became Minister of Portugal and Territorial Governor of New Mexico.

John Chavis' influence was far reaching. A dedicated opponent of slavery, John Chavis was an influential abolitionist leader in the South. The circumstances surrounding his death in 1838 remain unclear, although many suspect that he was murdered because of his work to better the lives of Blacks.

Reference:
African Americans/Voices of Triumph
by Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Copyright 1993, TimeLife Inc.

Founder's Day Lecture Washington & Lee University


The Negro in the American Revolution.
by Benjamin Quarles
University of North Carolina Press for
the Institute of Early American History and Culture,
Williamsburg, Va., 1961.

http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/406/John_Chavis_educator_and_mentor

Barack Hussein Obama's speech against the Iraq War - October 2002

"I stand before you as someone who is not opposed to war in all circumstances. The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil.

I Don't Oppose All Wars

I don't oppose all wars. My grandfather signed up for a war the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed, fought in Patton's army. He fought in the name of a larger freedom, part of that arsenal of democracy that triumphed over evil.

I don't oppose all wars.

After September 11, after witnessing the carnage and destruction, the dust and the tears, I supported this administration's pledge to hunt down and root out those who would slaughter innocents in the name of intolerance, and I would willingly take up arms myself to prevent such tragedy from happening again.

Opposed to Dumb, Rash Wars

I don't oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.

What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income, to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression.

That's what I'm opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

On Saddam Hussein

Now let me be clear: I suffer no illusions about Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal man. A ruthless man. A man who butchers his own people to secure his own power.... The world, and the Iraqi people, would be better off without him.

But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors...and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history.

I know that even a successful war against Iraq will require a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, with undetermined consequences.

I know that an invasion of Iraq without a clear rationale and without strong international support will only fan the flames of the Middle East, and encourage the worst, rather than best, impulses of the Arab world, and strengthen the recruitment arm of al-Qaeda.

I am not opposed to all wars. I'm opposed to dumb wars. So for those of us who seek a more just and secure world for our children, let us send a clear message to the president.

You Want a Fight, President Bush?

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's finish the fight with Bin Laden and al-Qaeda, through effective, coordinated intelligence, and a shutting down of the financial networks that support terrorism, and a homeland security program that involves more than color-coded warnings.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure that...we vigorously enforce a nonproliferation treaty, and that former enemies and current allies like Russia safeguard and ultimately eliminate their stores of nuclear material, and that nations like Pakistan and India never use the terrible weapons already in their possession, and that the arms merchants in our own country stop feeding the countless wars that rage across the globe.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells.

You want a fight, President Bush? Let's fight to wean ourselves off Middle East oil through an energy policy that doesn't simply serve the interests of Exxon and Mobil.

Those are the battles that we need to fight. Those are the battles that we willingly join. The battles against ignorance and intolerance. Corruption and greed. Poverty and despair."

What do Americans eat and why?

The great food debate

Come on in

Aug 29th 2002 | SAN FRANCISCO
From The Economist print edition

How bad is American food? And whose fault is it?

AMERICANS are in a pickle over food. Just as a decade of financial optimism has given way to the shocked discovery that people are poorer than they thought they were, so an era of working out in gyms and low-fat dieting has been mocked by reports of the nation's shocking chubbiness and other food-related forms of ill-health.

The figures on fat are striking. The proportion (if not the proportions) of Americans who are obese rose from 15% in 1991 to 27% in 1999. Youngsters show the same trend: 10% of them are now obese. Add in the merely overweight and you cover 60% of American adults and 25% of children. David Satcher, who retired as surgeon general in February, has estimated that obesity contributes to 300,000 of the 2m deaths each year in America. Treating diet-related conditions such as cancer and heart disease cost $117 billion in 2000.

What to do? The Bush administration has launched a $190m advertising campaign aimed at making children more energetic. This week, the Los Angeles school board moved to ban the sale of fizzy drinks in its schools. In May, a Californian state senator abandoned her bill to impose a tax of two cents on every can of pop statewide, but others are still pushing for “sin taxes” on burgers and sugary drinks.

The courts have become involved too. Last month, a New Yorker sued four fast-food chains. He had eaten their food regularly in the course of reaching 272lb (123kg) and notching up two heart attacks. The restaurants, he said, had not warned him that his diet might be harmful.

Meanwhile, another battle has broken out within the fad-crazed health industry itself. The traditional low-fat, bran-and-broccoli dieticians have been challenged by another school that advocates high-protein eating. Beef and lobster, they say, are fine, but you have to stay off carbohydrates such as pasta and bread.

Is the American stomach really in such poor shape? By the standards of most of the world, Americans are fairly healthy. Life expectancy continues to rise; it is bettered only by places that absorb far fewer immigrants from poor countries. Despite jeers from Europe about the number of additives and hormones that go into American food, there have been no health scares on the scale of Britain's mad-cow disease.

Yet Americans are surely right to be agitated about their food. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that their diet is doing many of them a great deal of harm. The “fat-acceptance” lobby is right that you can be heavy and fit; but without exercise, too much weight makes diabetes and other potentially fatal diseases more likely. Independent of the implications of being overweight, diet also plays a role in other illnesses, such as cancers of the bowel, colon and prostate.

There is also a clear social divide. Both hunger (which still afflicts 10m households in America) and unhealthy excess correlate closely with poverty and poor education. Shops in poor neighbourhoods stock less fresh food (and at higher prices), while fast-food joints proliferate. Poorer people also have fewer parks and playgrounds in which to exercise.

This sounds bad. Yet the food industry is largely giving American consumers (rich and poor) what they want. A pattern of life in which fewer families eat regular meals together, fewer parents remain at home during the day to cook, and increasing amounts of time are spent working or commuting creates demand for convenient, fast food (especially when it is as cheap as it is). Tummy size, then, is largely a side-effect of modern American life—and the choices that Americans make.

That said, there is a debate about how well informed consumers are when they make these choices. Even if you regard the case of the litigious 272lb New Yorker as absurd, America's food industry is particularly powerful and unfettered. In Europe, the most powerful bit of the food-production chain is the one closest to the consumer—the supermarkets. In America, the industry is controlled by food processors. Three facets of the food business are particularly troubling:

•Misleading information. Marion Nestle of New York University points out in “Food Politics” (University of California Press, 2002) that blurbs on packaging are highly selective. Breakfast cereals, for instance, come blazoned with information about how their added minerals and vitamins will strengthen young bones; they have less about what the coating of sugar will do to children's teeth and waistlines.

•Poor regulation. The power of the food lobby extends to Washington. The agriculture department has a huge conflict of interest. It is responsible both for promoting the interests of farmers and for disseminating nutritional information. The Food and Drug Administration has been restrained by Congress, at the behest of food interests, in its efforts to regulate dietary claims.

•Schools. Eating habits formed by children are hard to shake in adulthood: 60% of obese children grow up into obese adults. Fast-food firms often serve as official caterers, while soft-drink firms have installed numerous snack dispensers in schools (especially poor ones), in exchange for providing things like TVs.

Far from representing something new, the current debate about carbohydrates reflects the confusion created when science and marketing mix. While the 1990s fads concentrated on fatty foods and their link to cholesterol, the high-protein dieticians blame starchy carbohydrates. These, they say, produce a rush of sugar in the blood that destabilises the body's regulation of appetite and so lead to overeating.

This does help to explain one mystery of the past 20 years: why “low-fat” food did not work. The low-fat meals that Americans guzzled down were often packed with refined flour and heavily sugared to give them flavour (which the customers also wanted); people who tucked into them kept on wanting to eat more. The food industry did not rush to alert them to this point; nor did its packaging mention the sugar as clearly as the “low fat”.

Yet the more you delve into the issue, the more nuanced it appears. Just as some fatty foods, such as avocados and peanuts, are now thought to protect the heart (not harm it), there are also some sorts of carbohydrates, such as those found in whole grains, that don't encourage appetite. And the newest research seems to imply that people's genetic disposition might matter more than all these things. Variations in the apOE gene, for example, may determine your blood cholesterol level more than your diet. And all that is before you consider things like the amount of exercise people take.

Over the past 25 years or so, Americans have repeatedly jumped at quick-fix solutions for their fast-food habits. In the late 1990s there was a craze for anti-fat drugs, which inevitably led to lawsuits. But in the end nearly all the arguments about food come back to the choices that consumers make.

Americans have got larger because they have chosen (mainly consciously) to eat the way that they do. Millions of them actually eat rather well: these tend to be the richer and better-educated sorts, who go to gyms and buy their vegetables from organic farmers' markets. Their buying power is having an effect: one of the fastest-growing supermarket chains in America is Whole Foods Markets, based in Austin, Texas, which mixes organic vegetables and free-range chicken with a sorcerer's array of vitamin tonics. But, for the moment at least, they are in a clear thin minority.

My recommendation? Go vegetarian!

Wither Congress, Wither America?

Crushing Congressional Dissent: The Fall of Hilliard, Barr and McKinney

by Wayne Madsen

[Reprinted With Permission]
08/22/02

Historians will one day write that the 107th Congress was the last to stand up to the constitutional encroachment by the military and monarchist policies of the Bush II administration. Just as with the Roman Senate, the Congress of the United States is becoming an elite club of pathetic assenters and global elitists. Once the domain of great orators and dissenters like Cato and Cicero, the Roman Senate was eventually subsumed by the Roman Army when the Emperor took on dictatorial powers. The Roman Senate could say nothing as the Roman

dictatorship annexed Macedonia, Spain, Greece, the Middle East, and North Africa. By the time Emperors Tiberius and Septimius Severus took power, the Senate, which had grown to an elite club of 600, was a rubber stamp body that had no choice but to go along with the military's continued usurpation of power.

The United States Congress stands on the same precipice as its Roman ancestor. If Bush pulls another electoral coup in 2004 and we see the presidential election thrown into the House of Representatives, the future for the country appears very dim.

The August 20 defeat of two Georgia Representatives, one Democrat, the other Republican, is a bellwether event that bodes ill for this November's elections. Rep. Cynthia McKinney was successfully challenged by a Republican-turned-Democrat for her Fourth District seat. Before a cleverly contrived political operation was launched under the aegis of Georgia's other quasi-Republican, Senator Zell Miller, no one outside of Georgia had ever heard of former state judge Denise Majette, a self-described supporter of fringe lunatic GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes in 2000. Majette will join in Congress fellow Ivy Leaguer Artur Davis, who beat Alabama Democratic Representative Earl Hilliard in that state's primary because of the latter's outspoken support for a more even-handed Middle East policy. Hilliard and McKinney join a long list of politicians who were defeated after advocating an independent U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East: Senators Charles Percy, James Abourezk, James Abdnor, and J. William Fulbright, and Representatives Paul Findley and Paul McCloskey. The careers of Adlai Stevenson and William Scranton were similarly ended after they supported a Middle East policy less tied to the interests of Israel. Only Michigan's veteran Representative John Dingell was able to stave off a recent assault from the powerful

American Israel Political Action Committee (AIPAC) in a match off with fellow Representative Lynn Rivers in a redrawn congressional district.

However, Dingell's National Rifle Association ally, Georgia Representative Bob Barr, was not as fortunate. Barr was also a target of Miller's political operation. An opponent of the more draconian elements in Bush's and John Ashcroft's USA-PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security Department bill, Barr was a target of opportunity for the extreme right that favors turning the United States into a version of East Germany or North Korea. Moreover, Barr's chairmanship of the House Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law gave him real gavel power to block Bush and Ashcroft on critical civil liberties and privacy infringements, a power Barr has not hesitated to wield. And after supporting Steve Forbes in the 2000 GOP primary, Barr did not fit into Bush's binary and simplistic world: "If you're not with me, you're against me." Therefore, Miller, who, according to a former aide, is targeting fellow Senator Max Cleland and Georgia Governor Roy Barnes for defeat by conservative Republicans, figured out that if Barr supporters in Gwinnett County, which straddles McKinney's Fourth District and Barr's Seventh District, could be coaxed into crossing over party lines and voting for Majette, it would kill two birds with one stone. Barr would lose votes to his opponent John Linder and McKinney would get trounced by Majette in a low turnout (25 per cent) election with a high GOP crossover vote. The gambit paid off. McKinney and Barr were both defeated handily, McKinney with the help of 25,000 crossover votes. Of course, the fact that people not authorized to vote in the Fourth District may have voted anyway would fall into the category of election fraud. But after the Florida debacle, the Ashcroft Justice Department sees such electoral machinations as a way to remain in power a la any totalitarian regime parading around before the world as a democracy.

That McKinney and Barr were on the same neo-conservative hit list was exemplified on August 21 by a second-tier conservative radio talk show host in Washington, DC. Speaking on WTNT-AM, Oral Roberts University graduate, Pat Buchanan political adviser, and Tom DeLay- style Republican talk show host Michael Graham said it was great news that two "kooks" had been beaten in Georgia. He then stated he was talking about "Cynthia McKinney and her photo negative twin, Bob Barr." The statement was clearly racist in nature and a not-so-veiled reference, through a warped attempt at humor, to Barr's long rumored African-American heritage. But for the extreme right that dominates the GOP, such incendiary ethnophobic comments are the rule and not the exception.

McKinney had incurred the wrath of the White House by her question about what George W. Bush knew in advance about the September 11 terrorist attacks. But that was only the tip of the iceberg for the Republicans and their major campaign contributors. While it true that McKinney has championed the cause of Palestinian statehood and self- determination, thus inviting the enmity of major Jewish organizations in the United States, it was her long-time opposition to the trade of

blood diamonds and other strategic minerals in Africa that earned her a major challenge from multinational corporations, including Barrick Gold, on whose board President Bush's father serves as an international adviser. Among its other misdeeds, Barrick has been accused of helping to cover up the 1996 burying alive by one of its subsidiaries of over 50 Tanzanian gold miners in Bulyanhulu, in the northwest part of the country. Of course, when it comes to the lives and welfare of non-white people, the Bushes have never really held any soft spot, whether they are blacks in Africa or America's inner cities, Afghan or Iraqi children, or even a troubled half-Hispanic daughter/niece/granddaughter in Florida.

McKinney long advocated a halt in the pilferage of blood diamonds out of African war zones. She cited, on numerous occasions, the result of such commerce: the hacked off limbs, hands, and ears of small children in Sierra Leone; the permanent crippling from land mines of children in Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and over 2.5 million deaths from civil wars in the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi. The diamond profiteers from this mayhem and death are largely the Hasidic diamond dealers of Antwerp, Amsterdam, New York, and Tel Aviv. These dealers and their lobbyists often circled in and out of House hearing rooms and McKinney's office when issues relating to stemming the flow of ill-gotten African diamonds came up for discussion. These diamond merchants also have a powerful ally in long- time Democratic Party fundraiser and diamond cartel magnate Maurice Tempelsman.

The 108th Congress, lacking the consciousness of Cynthia McKinney and the skepticism of Bob Barr, will be a far more dangerous place. I have had the pleasure of working and knowing both of them over the years - fighting battles, in the case of McKinney, against U.S. human rights offenses in Africa and elsewhere and in the case of Barr, against rampant U.S. government surveillance of the private lives and activities of American citizens. The next Congress will be full of complacent African-American parlor servants like Majette and Davis, dangerous extreme rightists like former cockroach exterminator DeLay and former sportscaster J. D. Hayworth of Arizona, pitiful morons like Florida's former Secretary of State and chief election rigger Katherine Harris, Republican moles and sleepers like Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman, and Democratic spineless amoebas like Richard Gephardt and Tom Daschle. They will stand ready to back Bush's military campaigns into Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Colombia, or wherever Bush's economic interests are at stake. The country stands on the brink of disaster. But we cannot count on the future Congress to save us. Lacking a spine or any guts, it will surely help to bury us.

Wayne Madsen is a Washington-based investigative journalist. He testified before Cynthia McKinney's hearing on the genocide in the DRC in May 2001 and has worked with Bob Barr on privacy legislation in the past. He wrote the introduction to Forbidden Truth. Madsen can be reached at: WMadsen777@aol.com

Source

Nader vs. Floridian Republican Party

THE REPUBLICANS: THE GREEN PARTY; Nader Crashes, And Bashes, G.O.P.'s Party

By ADAM NAGOURNEY
Published: August 03, 2000

Finally, with pedestrian traffic at a complete stop, Al Cardenas stepped forward and said: ''Excuse me, Mr. Nader. I'm the chairman of the Florida delegation, and this is our area.''It took the presence of Ralph Nader consumer advocate, professional gadfly and himself a candidate for president of the United States -- but something finally happened here tonight that, one assumes, was not in the Republican Party script. 

Right in the middle of the presidential nomination roll-call, Mr. Nader charged onto the convention floor, plopped himself in front of the Florida delegation and began tearing into the Republican Party and George W. Bush.

''Why am I here?'' he said, crushed amid a throng of delegates and reporters. ''I wanted to observe this thing in action. This is the most spectacular display of cash-register politics in the history of our country.''

''The message,'' he continued, patiently answering questions from any reporter who had one, ''is to go home and rethink what they're doing to the country when they sell the political system to corporate interests.''

As a rule, Green Party candidates for president are not allowed onto the tightly guarded floor of the Republican National Convention, where everyone, even Republican leaders, wears credentials strung around the neck. Mr. Nader was displaying broadcast media credentials, courtesy of a reporter from WBAI, a Pacifica Radio station in New York, who took him out onto the floor for an interview.

Although polls show that Mr. Nader's campaign has cut into support for Vice President Al Gore*, his venture tonight out among the Republicans was met with something less than an enthusiastic reaction from the Florida delegates, who seemed a bit shocked. First there were chants of ''Go, Bush! Go, Bush!'' Then Mel Martinez, a delegate from Orlando, stepped forward to thrust a Bush-Cheney sign into Mr. Nader's hands. Mr. Nader courteously thanked Mr. Martinez for the souvenir and promised to relish it.

Mr. Cardenas informed Mr. Nader that he would be welcome to join the Republican Party but that meanwhile it was time for him to go. And, with a little pushing from other delegates, he did.

*In the 2000 election, more registered Democrats in Florida voted for Bush than all Florida voters who voted for Nader. 

Democrat Leadership Council

The right wing current of the Democratic party, characterized by its neoliberal economic policies, support of Israel, desire to increase defense spending, and links to heavy donors and fundraisers.

Believes that "left-wing" positions are not politically viable. Describes itself as "moderate and pro-growth". Probably responsible for erosion of the Democratic Party's historical labor and minority base due to support of treaties like NAFTA, lack of support for affirmative action and poverty programs, and their siphoning away of campaign funds from minority groups.

At the national level, the movement was founded by the Democratic Leadership Council (501c4 educational non-profit, founded 1984) and includes the House New Democrat Coalition (founded 1997), the Senate New Democrat Coalition (founded 2000), the New Democrat Network PAC (founded 1996), the misnamed Progressive Policy Institute (501c4 think tank, "Bill Clinton's idea mill", founded 1989), and the umbrella funding group The Third Way Foundation (501c3 non-profit, founded 1996).

Since coming to power within the Democratic Party with Bill Clinton's presidency, the New Democrats/DLC have worked towards "essentially the same purpose as the Christian Coalition... to pull a broad political party dramatically to the right" according to John Nichols of The Progressive.

DLC operatives actively worked to sabotage Howard Dean's candidacy for the US Presidency in 2004, claiming that the "far-left" Democrat was wrong to attack George W. Bush's tax cuts and national security policies.

Corporate contributors to the DLC and New Democratic Network include Bank One, Citigroup, Dow Chemical, DuPont, General Electric, Health Insurance Corporation of America, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Philip Morris, RJR Nabisco, Chevron, Prudential Foundation, Amoco Foundation, AT&T, Morgan Stanley, Occidental Petroleum, Raytheon, and many other Fortune 500 companies.

The New Democrat Movement is sometimes referred to as the Dixiecrat movement due to the DLC's origination in the southern states, their desire to get rid of affirmative action, and their membership's overwhelming whiteness.

"[Democrats should] shift the primary focus from racism, the traditional enemy without, to self-defeating patterns of behavior [among blacks]" --Chuck Robb, 2nd DLC Chairman, Governor & Senator of the Great State of Virginia, White Man, 1986.

"I'm from the democratic wing of the Democrat Party" --Paul Wellstone, progressive Democrat, criticizing the New Democrat Movement.

"Democrats for the Leadership Class" --Jesse Jackson, progressive black Democrat, describing the DLC.

Official Website:
http://www.ndol.org

Name	Occupation	Birth	Death	Known for
Brian Baird	Politician	7-Mar-1956		Congressman, Washington 3rd
Max Baucus	Politician	11-Dec-1941		US Senator from Montana
Evan Bayh	Politician	26-Dec-1955		US Senator from Indiana
Shelley Berkley	Politician	20-Jan-1951		Congresswoman, Nevada 1st
John Breaux	Politician	1-Mar-1944		US Senator from Louisiana, 1987-2005
Maria Cantwell	Politician	13-Oct-1958		US Senator from Washington
Lois Capps	Politician	10-Jan-1938		Congresswoman, California 23rd
Russ Carnahan	Politician	10-Jul-1958		Congressman, Missouri 3rd
Thomas Carper	Politician	23-Jan-1947		US Senator from Delaware
Ed Case	Politician	27-Sep-1952		Congressman, Hawaii 2nd
Ben Chandler	Politician	12-Sep-1959		Congressman, Kentucky 6th
Bill Clinton	Head of State	19-Aug-1946		42nd US President, 1993-2001
Hillary Clinton	First Lady	26-Oct-1947		US Senator from New York
Kent Conrad	Politician	12-Mar-1948		US Senator from North Dakota
Bud Cramer	Politician	22-Aug-1947		Congressman, Alabama 5th
Joseph Crowley	Politician	16-Mar-1962		Congressman, New York 7th
Artur Davis	Politician	9-Apr-1967		Congressman, Alabama 7th
Jim Davis	Politician	11-Oct-1957		Congressman, Florida 11th
Susan Davis	Politician	13-Apr-1944		Congresswoman, California 53rd
Cal Dooley	Politician	11-Jan-1954		Congressman from California, 1991-2005
Byron Dorgan	Politician	14-May-1942		US Senator from North Dakota
John Edwards	Politician	10-Jun-1953		2004 Vice Presidential candidate
Rahm Emanuel	Politician	29-Nov-1959		Congressman, Illinois 5th
Eliot Engel	Politician	18-Feb-1947		Congressman, New York 17th
Bob Etheridge	Politician	7-Aug-1941		Congressman, North Carolina 2nd
Dianne Feinstein	Politician	22-Jun-1933		US Senator from California
Harold Ford	Politician	11-May-1970		Congressman from Tennessee, 1997-07
Dick Gephardt	Politician	31-Jan-1941		Congressman from Missouri, 1977-2005
Al Gore	Politician	31-Mar-1948		US Vice President under Clinton
Bob Graham	Politician	9-Nov-1936		US Senator from Florida
Jane Harman	Politician	28-Jun-1945		Congresswoman, California 36th
Brian Higgins	Politician	6-Oct-1959		Congressman, New York 27th
Rush Holt	Politician	15-Oct-1948		Congressman, New Jersey 12th
Darlene Hooley	Politician	4-Apr-1939		Congresswoman, Oregon 5th
Jay Inslee	Politician	9-Feb-1951		Congressman, Washington 1st
Steve Israel	Politician	30-May-1958		Congressman, New York 2nd
Tim Johnson	Politician	28-Dec-1946		US Senator from South Dakota
Bob Kerrey	Politician	27-Aug-1943		Governor and Senator from Nebraska
John Kerry	Politician	11-Dec-1943		US Senator from Massachusetts
Ron Kind	Politician	16-Mar-1963		Congressman, Wisconsin 3rd
Herb Kohl	Politician	7-Feb-1935		US Senator from Wisconsin
Mary Landrieu	Politician	23-Nov-1955		US Senator from Louisiana
Rick Larsen	Politician	15-Jun-1965		Congressman, Washington 2nd
John Larson	Politician	22-Jul-1948		Congressman, Connecticut 1st
Joseph Lieberman	Politician	24-Feb-1942		US Senator from Connecticut
Blanche Lincoln	Politician	30-Sep-1960		US Senator from Arkansas
Zoe Lofgren	Politician	21-Dec-1947		Congresswoman, California 16th
Terry McAuliffe	Politician	1957		Clinton's Chairman of the DNC
Carolyn McCarthy	Politician	5-Jan-1944		Congresswoman, New York 4th
Mike McIntyre	Politician	6-Aug-1956		Congressman, North Carolina 7th
Mack McLarty	Government	1946		White House Chief of Staff, 1993-94
Gregory Meeks	Politician	25-Sep-1953		Congressman, New York 6th
Juanita Millender-McDonald	Politician	7-Sep-1938	22-Apr-2007	Congresswoman from California, 1996-2007
Dennis Moore	Politician	8-Nov-1945		Congressman, Kansas 3rd
Jim Moran	Politician	16-May-1945		Congressman, Virginia 8th
Ben Nelson	Politician	17-May-1941		US Senator from Nebraska
Bill Nelson	Politician	29-Sep-1942		US Senator from Florida
Gavin Newsom	Politician	10-Oct-1967		Mayor of San Francisco
Sam Nunn	Politician	8-Sep-1938		US Senator from Georgia, 1972-97
David Price	Politician	17-Aug-1940		Congressman, North Carolina 4th
Mark Pryor	Politician	10-Jan-1963		US Senator from Arkansas
Chuck Robb	Politician	26-Jun-1939		US Senator from Virginia, 1989-2001
Timothy J. Roemer	Politician	30-Oct-1956		9-11 Commission member
Loretta Sanchez	Politician	7-Jan-1960		Congresswoman, California 47th
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin	Politician	3-Dec-1970		Congresswoman, South Dakota
Adam Schiff	Politician	22-Jun-1960		Congressman, California 29th
Allyson Schwartz	Politician	3-Oct-1948		Congresswoman, Pennsylvania 13th
David Scott	Politician	27-Jun-1946		Congressman, Georgia 13th
Adam Smith	Politician	15-Jun-1965		Congressman, Washington 9th
Debbie Stabenow	Politician	29-Apr-1950		US Senator from Michigan
John Tanner	Politician	22-Sep-1944		Congressman, Tennessee 8th
Ellen Tauscher	Politician	15-Nov-1951		Congresswoman, California 10th
Tom Udall	Politician	18-May-1948		Congressman, New Mexico 3rd
Anthony A. Williams	Politician	28-Jul-1951		Mayor of Washington DC, 1999-2007
David Wu	Politician	8-Apr-1955		Congressman, Oregon 1st

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