by Diane V. McLoughlin
January 23, 2012
Casey Gane-McCalla, blogger at newsone.com, appears to have sold his soul for the rock bottom price of page views and Facebook 'likes'. (On the other hand, it is not an uncommon tactic to embed government plants in major publications to sway public opinion.)
Newsone.com, is a publication dedicated to black people's interests. Gane-McCalla, and/or newsone, has sold their readership out.
He baits readers with the red flags of racism, slavery and Deep South bigotry. Yet, many readers nevertheless watched the
YouTube clip he attached to
one of the several hit pieces he has cranked out on doctor, twelve-term congressman, and current contender for leadership of the Republican Party - Ron Paul.
We know this is so, because many readers have left blistering comments attacking Gane-McCalla's, 'Ron Paul Made "South Was Right" Civil War Speech With Confederate Flag' - yellow journalism, pointing out the glaringly obvious discrepencies between what Ron Paul actually says on the clip, versus Gane-McCalla's sly, misleading innuendo. It was heartening that some readers chose to watch the clip as well as read the screed. Because when we read 'South was right' we feel compelled to believe that it must mean 'right on slavery,' when
nothing could be further from the truth.
From my experience on Facebook on subsequent days, there are also many who did not watch the YouTube clip for themselves, content to trust Gane-McCalla to report in an honest, forthright fashion.
There are three central points one comes away with from viewing two segments (not one) of Ron Paul's lecture on the South.
One: Slavery needed to be abolished. Let's be very clear on this point.
There were eleven other countries in the hemisphere at that time that had slavery. According to Dr. Paul, all of them abolished slavery by various means, but all of them without war; either through legislative measures, or, in at least one instance, by buying the freedom of people who were enslaved.
Two: The Civil War was not a war to end slavery. That was not why Lincoln launched the war. The North waged war against the South, because the South was to that time being forced to underwrite 90% of the entire federal government's budget. The South was fed up with being treated this way, and wanted to secede, which they had a natural right to do. (From this
segment of the lecture.)
Three: Ron Paul laments the cost in human lives and suffering caused by the Civil War; the toll in human suffering were simply immense. Upwards of 700,000 young men's lives were lost, altogether. This would be extraordinary if we fought a war today and lost so many young men. The population of the country was much smaller back then, making the impact that much more devastating.
To reiterate, what Ron Paul shares in the lecture he is giving is that the Civil War was not waged by President Abraham Lincoln to end slavery.
Abolishing slavery was an important issue, and there were abolitionist societies devoted to the cause. But it was not the prime motivating force behind Lincoln's launching the war.
Much is made about the fact that a Confederate flag hangs in the room behind Dr. Paul during his public leture. (Although one comment following Gane-McCalla's article claims the flag is in fact an early State of Georgia flag.) He is a Texas congressman. I've never been to Texas. I'm also not black. (Celts have suffered racism, oppression and slavery, however - a story for another day.) Is it really a stretch for a lecture on the Civil War and secession to have the Confederate flag as a backdrop? I don't know. Maybe it is. I doubt it was Ron Paul who put it there.
If you are black, why should you care to give Ron Paul a second look, when the country has only had one black president, for one term - the current one? Even without this other stuff, it's a good question. On domestic policy, President Obama has some advantage over Ron Paul - Ron Paul is a fiscal conservative who wants to shrink government, drastically reduce taxes, restore the Constitution by getting rid of the Patriot Act, amongst other bad laws, and end the wars.
He has pledged to end the War on Drugs, legalize drugs, and pardon all nonviolent drug offenders currently in federal prisons. Blacks commit 14% of drug crimes. They comprise over 60% of those incarcerated. Ron Paul deplores the unequal administration of justice in America.
Congressman Paul says NO! to any more aggressive, unnecessary war. He wants to bring the troops home. Proportionally, the poor, blacks and minorities serve beyond their fair share in these conflicts. A doctor for thirty years, Ron Paul laments for the military men and women who are killed or return home wounded - physically, and psychologically.
The active military supports Ron Paul more than President Obama, and more than the other Republican candidates, combined.
The Establishment is going to try to take Ron Paul down. The weapon of choice is the charge of racism. Every allegation and false smear always has just enough of something in them to seem right.
He is such a threat to the shadow government that the corporate-owned media do their level best to not even mention his name. Candidates' names being mentioned after the South Carolina primary last week, averaged 80-90 times. Number of mentions of candidate Ron Paul? One.
Now, Newt Gingrich, another Republican leadership candidate, doesn't get that treatment, and he gets accused of being a racist all over the place. Calling President Obama 'the food stamp President', for example. Search 'Newt Gingrich' on Twitter, and one word that comes up in tweets is 'reptilian.'
So something else must be going on. One of the biggest somethings is that Ron Paul wants to stop the push for more unnecessary war. But. War is big business.
I'm independent and progressive, mostly, depending on the issue. Agnostic. I don't agree with Ron Paul's staunch blanket opposition to abortion, for example, preferring at least some flexibility on the issue for the woman's sake. So I must see something awfully worthwhile, to go to such lengths to support a man with such unfortunate baggage trailing behind him. President Obama doesn't have such baggage. He looks good. He sounds good. (Plus, I hear he sings a mean Al Green.)
But President Obama just signed a law granting unprecedented power to the military to be able to arrest and detain anyone, even American citizens on U.S. soil, and to hold them in indefinite detention without charge or trial.
Unless and until the National Defense Authorization Act is reversed, I don't know exactly what it has now become, but the U.S. is no longer a democracy. President Obama continues the legacy of war (Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran) in spite of his promises to the contrary when running for office.
The only challenger is Ron Paul.
Many progs are switching party allegiance* just for a year to be able to vote him in. Think progressives would go to those lengths to vote for a racist? Not a chance.
(*
bluerepublicans.org)
It seems to me that one of the biggest elements of the picture with the Israel-Palestine conflict is that Israel clings to the racist notion that it exists to the exclusive benefit of Jews.
Over 20% of Israel's citizens are Palestinian. No solution is going to be able to account for this sad reality for almost two million people who languish under constant oppressive and demeaning treatment as second-class citizens unless it is faced head-on.
This is one of the most important aspects of the problem that must be illuminated. Ynet News, the largest daily on-line Israel news site, and as far as I know a conservative publication, ran an article about the Mossawa Center's annual report on racism that shares that the Knesset is the most racist 'since the establishment of
Jonathan Cook writes in The National about a Jewish family who wanted to rent a home to their Bedouin friends. Three of their dogs were poisoned,
IPS reports from East Jerusalem of nightly IDF raids into family homes for the arrests of children: '...accelerated attacks by Israeli forces and Jewish settlers inside Silwan in particular, directed towards the community's youngest and most vulnerable population. Since January, at least 33 children from the area have been arrested, detained and interrogated by Israeli forces as home demolitions and settler takeovers continue apace. Muslem Odeh, [aged] 10, tells IPS that he was taken by Israeli forces on Mar. 11 at 3 am, after police broke into the family's home in Silwan's Bustan neighbourhood and pepper-sprayed his father who attempted to protect him...'; in the area of Bustan particularly we are told, the Arab children take their favorite toys and clothes with them to school every day because they worry they will have no home to return to at the end of the day.
A brief scan at uruknet.info finds that 90% of Gaza's water is polluted; the Israeli Education
The apologists will tell you that Palestinian Israeli citizens have 'equal rights'; that Gaza had to be attacked because of rocket fire - Gaza was in the middle of abiding by a mutually agreed upon cease-fire (see CNN YouTube here) when Israel, rather than seizing the opportunity to work at normalizing relations with Gaza and lifting the military siege, girded for total destruction of Gaza instead.
In Canada, an unappointed group of Parliamentarians led by Irwin Cotler (the CPCCA) is busily spinning quietly in back rooms to come up with ways to create legal chill against public criticism of Israel - what they refer to as 'the new anti-Semitism'. Glen Greenwald is so right to refer to Canada's so-called 'hate speech' laws as 'creepy'. I'd go further: it's a fundamental threat to democracy and liberty. So's the McCain-Lieberman bill, S.3081 - but that's a story for another day.
Jewish Voice For Peace is asking everyone who abhors the current unmovable stasis of the situation to sign their PETITION: Tell President Obama: No more unconditional aid to Israel;
support his demand for an end to settlement construction. It reads, in part: 'Please withhold US aid to Israel until it agrees to abide by international law including ending settlement construction and lifting the blockade on Gaza.'
Petition link: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org...
And editorials of mine can be found at http://www.mcloughlinpost.com
For now.