{"id":5084,"date":"2008-12-30T07:59:39","date_gmt":"2008-12-30T15:59:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=5084"},"modified":"2008-12-30T08:01:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-30T16:01:00","slug":"say-what-you-will-about-cynthia-mckinney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/30\/say-what-you-will-about-cynthia-mckinney\/","title":{"rendered":"Say What You Will About Cynthia McKinney&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sometimes former US Rep. and recent Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney comes across a little&#8230;ah&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.opednews.com\/maxwrite\/diarypage.php?did=9805\">wild-eyed<\/a>. I do happen to agree with most of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ontheissues.org\/2008\/Cynthia_McKinney_Foreign_Policy.htm\">her foreign policy positions<\/a>, and she even seems to prefer a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.workers.org\/2008\/us\/mckinney_0807\/\">hands-off approach<\/a> to Zimbabwe and, surprisingly, liberal cause c\u00c3\u00a9l\u00c3\u00a8bre Darfur. I do find <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ontheissues.org\/2008\/Cynthia_McKinney_Free_Trade.htm\">her positions on trade<\/a> to be poorly informed but this isn&#8217;t kookery &#8212; most politicians hold similarly dirigiste views.<\/p>\n<p>But no matter what one thinks of Ms. McKinney, she backs her convictions not just with her own money but her very skin: she went as a human rights advocate aboard a Gaza relief boat. And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2008\/WORLD\/meast\/12\/30\/gaza.aid.boat\/index.html\">this morning, that boat was rammed three times by an Israeli patrol vessel<\/a>, leaving it damaged and forcing it to take a detour in Tyre, Lebanon.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;I would call it ramming. Let&#8217;s just call it as it is,&#8221; McKinney said. &#8220;Our boat was rammed three times, twice in the front and once on the side.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our mission was a peaceful mission, but our mission was thwarted by the Israelis, the aggressiveness of the Israeli military.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p>No other current or former US Congressperson has done something similar, as far as I know. <a href=\"http:\/\/thehill.com\/leading-the-news\/kucinich-criticizes-israel-wants-u.n.-probe-2008-12-29.html\">Dennis Kucinich is calling for a United nations inquiry<\/a>, and I suppose that&#8217;s a nice gesture. But Ms. McKinney got herself on board a ship to steward relief supplies to the suffering civilians of a war zone beseiged by weapons her own country financed. Maybe it takes a little wackiness to get us some real activism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But no matter what one thinks of Ms. McKinney, she backs her convictions not just with her own money but her very skin: she went as a human rights advocate aboard a Gaza relief boat. And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2008\/WORLD\/meast\/12\/30\/gaza.aid.boat\/index.html\">this morning, that boat was rammed three times by an Israeli patrol vessel<\/a>, leaving it damaged and forcing it to take a detour in Tyre, Lebanon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,21,3,41],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antiwar-movement","category-israel","category-news","category-palestine"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5084"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5092,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5084\/revisions\/5092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5084"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}