http://www.alternet.org/story/16172

Did I mention to you that (ex-) Congresswoman McKinney is black? And not just any kind of black. She's the uppity kind of black.

What I mean by uppity is this:

After George Bush Senior left the White House, he became an advisor and lobbyist for a Canadian gold-mining company, Barrick Gold. Hey, a guy's got to work. But there were a couple of questions about Barrick, to say the least. For example, was Barrick's Congo gold mine funding both sides of a civil war and perpetuating that bloody conflict? Only one Congressperson demanded hearings on the matter.

You've guessed: Cynthia McKinney.

That was covered in the . . . well, it wasn't covered at all in the U.S. press.

McKinney contacted me at the BBC. She asked if I'd heard of Barrick. Indeed, I had. Top human rights investigators had evidence that a mine that Barrick bought in 1999 had, in clearing their Tanzanian properties three years earlier, bulldozed mine shafts . . . burying about 50 miners alive.

I certainly knew Barrick: They'd sued the Guardian for daring to run a story I'd written about the allegations of the killings. Barrick never sued an American paper for daring to run the story, because no American paper dared.
The primary source for my story, an internationally famous lawyer named Tundu Lissu, was charged by the Tanzanian police with sedition, and arrested, for calling for an investigation. McKinney has been trying to save his life with an international campaign aimed at Barrick.

That was another of her mistakes.
...
The New York Times wrote about McKinney that Atlanta's prominent Black leaders -- including Julian Bond, the chairman of the NAACP and former Mayor Maynard Jackson -- who had supported Ms. McKinney in the past -- distanced themselves from her this time.

Really? Atlanta has four internationally recognized black leaders. Martin Luther King III did not abandon McKinney. I checked with him. Nor did Julian Bond (the Times ran a rare retraction on their website at Bond's request). But that left Atlanta's two other notables: Vernon Jordan and Andrew Young. Here, the Times had it right; no question that these two black faces of the Atlanta Establishment let McKinney twist slowly in the wind -- because, the Times implied, of her alleged looniness.

But maybe there was another reason Young and Jordan let McKinney swing. Remember Barrick? George Bush's former gold-mining company, the target of McKinney's investigations? Did I mention to you that Andy Young and Vernon Jordan are both on Barrick's payroll? Well, I just did.

Did the Times mention it? I guess that wasn't fit to print