[GPCA Updates] GP RELEASE Cynthia McKinney's speech prepared for Human Rights conference in Damascus; McKinney blocked from leaving the US

[Green Party of California Updates]

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES
http://www.gp.org

For Immediate Release:
Monday, December 1, 2008



Text of Cynthia McKinney's speech prepared for conference in Damascus on 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the denial of the Right of Return 
for Palestinians

• McKinney was blocked from leaving the US and unable to deliver the speech 
in person


WASHINGTON, DC -- 2008 Green presidential candidate and former six-term 
Congress member Cynthia McKinney has published the text of her speech 
prepared for a conference in Damascus, Syria, in commemoration of the 60th 
Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the denial of 
the Right of Return for Palestinians, in violation of the Universal Declaration.

Ms. McKinney was unable to deliver the speech, because she was detained at 
the Atlanta airport under circumstances that haven't yet been made clear.

The text of Ms. McKinney's speech, preceded by an introduction, follows below.


Cynthia McKinney
November 23, 2008
http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com

Today, November 23rd, I was slated to give remarks in Damascus, Syria at a 
Conference being held to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of the Universal 
Declaration of Human Rights and, sadly, the 60th year that the Palestinian 
people have been denied their Right of Return enshrined in that Universal 
Declaration. But a funny thing happened to me while at the Atlanta airport 
on my way to the Conference: I was not allowed to exit the country.

I do believe that it was just a misunderstanding. But the insecurity 
experienced on a daily basis by innocent Palestinians is not. Innocent 
Palestinians are trapped in a violent, stateless twilight zone imposed on 
them by an international order that favors a country reported to have 
completed its nuclear triad as many as eight years ago, although Israel has 
remained ambiguous on the subject. President Jimmy Carter informed us that 
Israel had as many as 150 nuclear weapons, and Israel’s allies are among the 
most militarily sophisticated on the planet. Military engagement, then, is 
untenable. Therefore the exigency of diplomacy and international law.

The Palestinians should at least be able to count on the protections of the 
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What is happening to Palestinians in 
Gaza right now, subjected to an Israeli-imposed blockade, has drawn the 
attention of the United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, who noted 
that over half of the civilians in Gaza are children. Even The Los Angeles 
Times criticized Israel’s lockdown of Gaza that is keeping food, fuel, and 
medicine from civilians. Even so, Israel stood fast by its decision to seal 
Gaza’s openings. But where are the voices of concern coming from the 
corridors of power inside the United States? Is the subject of Palestinian 
human rights taboo inside the United States Government and its 
government-to- be? I hope not. Following is the speech I would have given 
today had I been able to attend the Damascus Conference.

Cynthia McKinney
Right of Return Congregation
Damascus, Syria
November 23, 2008

Thank you to our hosts for inviting me to participate in this most important 
and timely First Arab-International Congregation for the Right of Return. 
Words are an insufficient expression of my appreciation for being remembered 
as one willing to stand for justice in Washington, D.C., even in the face of 
tremendously difficult pressures.

Former Prime Minister Tun Mahathir, thank you for including me in the 
Malaysian Peace Organisation’s monumental effort to criminalize war, to show 
the horrors of the treatment of innocent individuals during the war against 
and occupation of Iraq by the militaries and their corporate contractors of 
Britain, Israel, and the United States. Thank you for standing up to huge 
international economic forces trying to dominate your country and showing an 
impressionable woman like me that it is possible to stand up to “the big 
boys” and win. And thank you for your efforts to bring war criminal, 
torturer, decimator of the United States Constitution, the George W. Bush 
Administration, to justice in international litigation.

Delegates and participants, I must declare that at a time when scientists 
agree that the climate of the earth is changing in unpredictable and 
possibly calamitous ways, such that the future of humankind hangs in the 
balance, it is unconscionable that we have to dedicate this time to and 
focus our energies on policies that represent a blatant and utter disregard 
for human rights and self-determination and that represent in many respects, 
a denial of human life, itself.

In the same year as Palestinians endured a series of massacres and 
expulsions, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights became international 
law. And while the United Nations is proud that the Declaration was flown 
into Outer Space just a few days ago on the Space Shuttle, if one were to 
read it and then land in the Middle East, I think it would be clear that 
Palestine is the place that the Universal Declaration forgot.

Sadly, both the spirit of the Universal Declaration for Human Rights and the 
noblest ideals of the United Nations are broken. This has occurred in large 
measure due to policies that emanate from Washington, D.C. If we want to 
change those policies, and I do believe that we can, then we have to change 
the underlying values of those who become Washington’s policy makers. In 
other words, we must launch the necessary movement that puts people in 
office who share our values.

We need to do this now more than ever because, sadly, Palestine is not 
Washington’s only victim. Enshrined in the Universal Declaration is the 
dignity of humankind and the responsibility of states to protect that 
dignity. Yet, the underlying contradictions between its words and what has 
become standard international practice lay exposed to the world this year 
when then-United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour 
proclaimed:

“In the course of this year, unprecedented efforts must be made to ensure 
that every person in the world can rely on just laws for his or her 
protection. In advancing all human rights for all, we will move towards the 
greatest fulfillment of human potential, a promise which is at the heart of 
the Universal Declaration.”

How insulting it was to hear those words coming from her, for those of us 
who know, because it was she who, as Chief Prosecutor of the International 
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, willfully participated in the cover-up of an 
act of terror that resulted in the assassination of two democratically- 
elected Presidents and that unleashed a torrent of murder and bloodletting 
in which one million souls were vanquished. That sad episode in human 
history has become known as the Rwanda Genocide. And shockingly, after the 
cover-up, Louise Arbour was rewarded with the highest position on the 
planet, in charge of Human Rights.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that justice delayed is justice 
denied. And 60 years is too long to wait for justice. The Palestinian people 
deserve respected self-determination, protected human rights, justice, and 
above all, peace.

On the night before his murder, Dr. King announced that he was happy to be 
living at the end of the 20th Century where, all over the world, men and 
women were struggling to be free.

Today, we can touch and feel the results of those cries, on the African 
Continent where apartheid no longer exists as a fact of law. A concerted, 
uncompromising domestic and international effort led to its demise.

And in Latin America, the shackles of U.S. domination have been broken. In a 
series of unprecedented peaceful, people-powered revolutions, voters in 
Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and most 
recently Paraguay used the power of the political process to materially 
change their countries’ leadership and policy orientation toward the United 
States. Americans, accustomed to the Monroe Doctrine which proclaimed U.S. 
suzerainty over all politics in the Western Hemisphere, must now think the 
unthinkable given what has occurred in the last decade.

Voters in Cote d’Ivoire, Haiti, Spain, and India also took matters clearly 
in their hands to make “a clean break” from policies that were an affront to 
the interests of the majority of the people in those countries.

In country after country, against tremendous odds, people stood up and took 
their fates in their hands. They did what Mario Savio, in the 1960s, asked 
people in the United States to do. These people-powered, peaceful 
revolutions saw individuals put their bodies against the levers and the 
gears and the wheels of the U.S. imperial machine and they said to the 
owners if you don’t stop it, we will. And I know that people of conscience 
inside my country can do it, too: especially now that the engines of 
imperial oppression are running out of gas.

Even though the Democratic Party, at the Convention that nominated Barack 
Obama, denied its microphone to Former President Jimmy Carter because of his 
views on Palestine, let me make it clear that Former President Carter is not 
the only person inside the United States who believes that peace with 
justice is possible in Palestine.

Inside the United States, millions who are not of Arab descent, disagree 
vehemently with the policy of our government to provide the military and 
civilian hardware that snuffs out innocent human life that is also Arab.

Millions of Americans do not pray to Allah, but recognize that it is an 
inalienable right of those who do to live and pray in peace wherever they 
are-including inside the United States.

Even though their opportunities are severely limited, there are millions of 
people inside the United States struggling to express themselves on all of 
these issues, but whose efforts are stymied by a political process that robs 
them of any opportunity to be heard.

And then there are the former elected officials who spoke out for what was 
right, for universal application of the Universal Declaration, and who were 
roundly condemned and put out of office as a result. My father is one such 
politician, punished-kicked out of office-because of the views of his daughter.

In my case, I dared to raise my voice in support of the World Conference 
Against Racism and against the sieges of Ramallah, Jenin, and the Church of 
the Nativity. I raised my voice against the religious profiling in my 
country that targets innocent Muslims and Arabs for harassment, 
imprisonment, financial ruin, or worse. Yes, I have felt the sting of the 
special interests since my entry onto the national stage when, in my very 
first Congressional campaign, I refused to sign a pledge committing that I 
would vote to maintain the military superiority of Israel over its 
neighbors, and that Jerusalem should be its capital city. Other commitments 
were on that pledge as well, like continued financial assistance to Israel 
at agreed upon levels.

As a result of my refusal to make such a commitment, and just like the old 
slave woman, Sojourner Truth, who bared her back and showed the scars from 
the lashes meted out to her by her slave master, I too, bear scars from the 
lashes of public humiliation meted out to me by the special interests in 
Washington, D.C. because of my refusal to toe the line on Israel policy. 
This “line” is the policy accepted by both the Democratic and Republican 
Party leadership and why they could cooperate so well to coordinate my 
ouster from Congress. But I have survived because I come from the strongest 
stock of Africans, stolen then enslaved, and yet my people survived. I know 
how to never give up, give in, or give out. And I also know how to learn a 
good political lesson. And one lesson I’ve learned is that the treatment 
accorded to me pales in comparison to what Palestinian victims still living 
in refugee camps face every day of their lives.

The treatment accorded to me pales in comparison to the fact that human life 
is at stake if the just-released International Atomic Energy Agency report 
is true when it writes that “The only explanation for the presence of these 
modified uranium particles is that they were contained in the missiles 
dropped from the Israeli planes.” What are the health effects of these 
weapons, what role did the U.S. military play in providing them or the 
technology that underlies them, why is there such silence on this, and most 
fundamentally, what is going on in this part of the world that international 
law has forgotten?

Clearly, not only the faces of U.S. politicians must change; we must change 
their values, too. We, in the United States, must utilize our votes to 
effect the same kind of people-powered change in the United States as has 
been done in all those other countries. And now, with more people than ever 
inside the United States actually paying attention to politics, this is our 
moment; we must seize this time. We must become the leaders we are looking 
for and get people who share our values elected to Congress and the White House.

Now, I hope you believe me when I say to you that this is not rocket 
science. I have learned politics from its best players. And I say to you 
that even with the fallabilities of the U.S. system, it is possible for us 
to do more than vote for a slogan of change, we can actually have it. But if 
we fail to seize this moment, we will continue to get what we’ve always been 
given: handpicked leaders who don’t truly represent us.

With the kind of U.S. weapons that are being used in this part of the world, 
from white phosphorus to depleted uranium, from cluster bombs to bunker 
busting bombs, nothing less than the soul of my country is at stake. But for 
the world, it is the fate of humankind that is at stake.

The people in my country just invested their hopes for a better world and a 
better government in their votes for President-elect Obama. However, during 
an unprecedented two year Presidential campaign, the exact kind of change we 
are to get was never fully defined. Therefore, we the people of the United 
States must act now with boldness and confidence. We can set the stage for 
the kind of change that reflects our values.

Now is not the time for timidity. The U.S. economy is in shambles, 
unemployment and health insecurity are soaring, half of our young people do 
not even graduate from high school; college is unaffordable. The middle 
class that was invested in the stock market is seeing their life savings 
stripped from them by the hour. What we are witnessing is the pauperization 
of a country, in much the same way that Russia was pauperized after the fall 
of the Soviet Union. There are clear winners and the losers all know who 
they are. The attentive public in the United States is growing because of 
these conditions. Now is the time for our values to rise because people in 
the United States are now willing to listen.

So the question really is, “Which way, America?”

Today we uplift the humanity of the Palestinian people. And what I am 
recommending is the creation of a political movement inside my country that 
will constitute a surgical strike for global justice. This gathering is the 
equivalent of us stepping to the microphone to be heard.

We don’t have to lose because we have commitment to the people.

And we don’t have to lose because we refuse to compromise our core values.

We don’t have to lose because we seek peace with justice and diplomacy over war.

We don’t have to lose.

By committing to do some things we’ve never done before I’m certain that we 
can also have some things we’ve never had before.

I return to the U.S. committed to do my part to make our dream come true.

Thank you.

For more information on Cynthia McKinney please visit 
http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com

LINK:
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2008/11/cynthia-mckinney-prevented-from-leaving-us/



MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org
202-319-7191, 866-41GREEN
Fax 202-319-7193
• Running tally of Green election victories 
http://www.gp.org/2008-elections/election-results.html
• Green candidate news http://www.gp.org/2008-elections/candidate-news.php
• Green candidate database for 2008 and other campaign information: 
http://www.gp.org/elections.shtml
• Green Party News Center http://www.gp.org/newscenter.shtml
• Green Party Speakers Bureau http://www.gp.org/speakers
• Green Party ballot access page http://www.gp.org/2008-elections

Cynthia McKinney/Rosa Clemente 'Power to the People' Campaign for the White 
House
http://www.runcynthiarun.org
http://votetruth08.com
http://www.rosaclemente.com

"Greens respond to a slanderous attack by lawyer Alan Dershowitz against the 
Green Party and its position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict"
Green Party of the United States: press release, October 27, 2008
http://www.gp.org/press/pr-national.php?ID=125

"Greens, Calling for Palestinian Rights, Urge Divestment from Israel"
Green Party press release, November 28, 2005
http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_11_28.shtml

"A Real Road to Peace in the Middle East"
Green Party platform
http://www.gp.org/platform/2004/democracy.html#310677


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