Cynthia McKinney and the Society of Supporters of the Green Book

The billions stolen by dictatorships such as that of Libya's Qaddafi can buy many things. Not least among them is the support of professional activists who sell themselves as advocates of peace and universal principles of human rights. I use the phrase "sell themselves" advisedly. As has been widely reported, a number of universities, NGOs and public intellectuals have come under metaphorical fire for accepting money to provide cover for a dictatorship which has literally been killing many of those unfortunate enough to live under its sway for the past 41 years. That record of duplicitous support by alleged idealists for the most cynical form of tyranny has recently been made unavoidable by the tyrant's decision to unleash the sort of murderous abuse he formerly imposed on an individual, private basis in a more public and widespread manner.  The entire country has become his torture chamber.

With that in mind, let's have a listen to Cynthia McKinney, 2008 Green Party presidential candidate and  2009 honoree of the Qaddafi's Society of the Supporters of the Green Book, a pseudo-NGO the dictatorship set up to honor itself using money it stole from the people of Libya.

Video Part 1:

Video Part 2:

At 0:44 of Part 2 of the video of McKinney's speech, she can be heard heaping praise upon the dictator for helping to spread democracy around the world. To thunderous applause she says:

Colonel Qaddafi should be highly commended for honoring our ancestors, the framers of true democracy, by reaching out from Africa to the entire world.  We would like to thank him for this opportunity to discuss his thoughts as presented in the Green Book.  We are hear to listen and observe, then to support and carry forth the ideas of equality and democracy, universal principles embodied in the Green Book -- the goal of our effort being to empower black and indigenous and depressed peoples worldwide for the betterment of the Earth and all its inhabitants.

We are acutely aware that the planet awaits a total ethical and structural change in governance.  It is therefor necessary to be truly governed of, by and for the people.  To these principles we have pledged out honor and fidelity.  This is what we know, and to put our lives on the line for in our everyday work (sic).  Far too often, we are alone in the battlefield in our respective struggles, so we are pleased to enter into a solidarity that shatters the limits of our separation. We must now all own that we are a community without walls.  Like Che Guevara, we hold that an injury to one is an injury to all, everywhere.   The univeral principles of the Green Book, although widely associated with the challenges facing developing nations, are equally applicable to the needs of people of the United States at this period of profound crisis for finance capital.

At 3:45 she says

We endorse the Green Book principles and offer to contribute to the success of their implementation.  In economics, we hold that the wage system is bondage and should be replaced by shared responsibilities and rewards, true partnership and equal distribution.  

McKinney's speech goes on to elaborate at length the idea that Qaddafi's Green Book represents the highest ideals of socialism and should be universally supported.  She also calls (at 4:40 of the video) for "dismantling" the world's six largest media corporations, a view with which Qaddafi and his supporters would certainly agree.

Along with these videos, I found on YouTube the following videos of McKinney's "delegation" to this pro-Qaddafi conference.



I noticed among the U.S. delegates someone who looks a great deal like the  conspiracy theorist Wayne Madsen.  (See 3:40 of the below-embedded video. The heavy-set man with beard and sunglasses appears to be Madsen.  Under a blaring soundtrack of oud mood music, Madsen can be heard weaving a yarn concerning a conspiracy to have him killed.)  Madsen is currently promoting on his website a conspiracy theory that Israel is secretly backing Qaddafi.  His condemnation of Israel's imagined support for Qaddafi seems odd considering  that Madsen actually participated in a conference supporting the dictator.   This is made all the stranger by his website's report that People's Hall, the regime's main public assembly and the hall in which the 2009 Society of Supporters of the Green Book conference occurred, had been set ablaze by opposition forces.  Madsen illustrates the story with an amateurish photo captioned "Inside People's Hall in Tripoli during WMR editor's visit to Libya in October 2009".

That Madsen was a delegate to this conference is further supported by a column written by another delegate, Bob Fitrakis, a professor at  Ohio's Columbus State Community College, 2006 Green Party candidate for Governor of Ohio, and editor of a website called The Free Press.  Fitrakis' peculiar column describing the conference claims that he initially thought that he was participating in the conference as a journalist, but was named without his knowledge as the chief of the U.S. delegation after McKinney was designated the chief of the North American delegation.  Fitrakis indicates that, while he did not actually volunteer for this role, he more than made up for that by reading a speech to the conference which, he was told, had actually been drafted by Qaddafi himself.  Consider his column's concluding assessment of Qaddafi, which he wrote in November 2009, as you watch reports of the horror currently unfolding in Libya.

(I)t is intriguing that a robed, revolutionary Bedouin living in a tent in Tripoli seems to have a more realistic assessment of the U.S. economy and the state of our democracy than many of our own elected officials.

Fitrakis' column is available in a cached version here and on his website here.

For understandable reasons, Fitrakis and McKinney have been silent on the amazing events unfolding in Libya.  While they were more than happy to offer their support for Libya's dictatorship in the days when the killings were done behind closed doors, they have had nothing to say since the killing has gone public.  McKinney and Fitrakis enthusiastically promoted the lie that Qaddafi was a beneficent, democratic and progressive leader.  Now that the people of Libya have risen up to rid themselves of his brutal yoke, McKinney and Fitrakis have grown uncharacteristically silent.

Also for understandable albeit more blatantly absurd reasons, Wayne Madsen now portrays his former friend Qaddafi as a Zionist stooge.  If you have any doubt that Madsen's anti-Jewish conspiracy theories represent the world in a fun house mirror, let this serve as the last straw.


U.S. delegation to the 2009 Society of Supporters of the Green Book conference.  McKinney is at the center, Fitrakis is on the left of the second row, Madsen is second from the left in the front row.  (From The Free Press)



Cynthia McKinney at the 2009 conference at People's Hall in Tripoli.  (From The Free Press)




The burned-out People's Hall as it appeared on February 21, 2011.

(source for Tripoli videos: YouTube - kampress's Channel)