http://www.takingbackpolitics.com/2008/09/where-matt-kennard-found-his-wabo/

Except there is one factual inaccuracy in the first sentence: Barack Obama is not a black man – he is of mixed race; biologically, he is as much white – 50% – as he is black. This truth has been passed by in the orgy of self-congratulation by the liberal establishment. Does anyone think that Obama would have had a chance in the primaries or be within grasp of the presidency if both his parents were black?

You can get a clue to the answer by looking at how other African-American candidates have faired in recent history. Jesse Jackson ran for president in 1984 and 1988. Both his parents are black. So what happened? In 1984 he got 8% of the delegates in a race short on talent that he should have won. In 1988 Michael Dukakis defeated him even after Jackson had seemed on course for a historic victory – what stopped him?

Jackson is a heavyweight politician, a good orator and intelligent by all accounts – the problem for him was he was ‘too black’ for mainstream America. There is no doubt Obama’s campaign is historic and a great leap forward for the country, but if he had been as black as Martin Luther King Jr. it’s unlikely he would have won anything.

This is witnessed most blatantly by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in the primary season. It was alleged that Clinton’s staff had darkened Obama’s face and widened the image to make him look more African. They were obviously cognizant of the fact that being only half-black was not scary enough for voters. It is a disgusting and pitiful ploy, but very instructive for the whole race debate.

In many ways Obama is the establishment’s perfect black man, a baton to beat the rest of us with the message “Racism is dead!” when it most definitely is not.

Educated at Columbia and Harvard and willing to talk down to black people, Obama has ushered in what has been called a “post-racial” era. What that means is that Obama is “post-racial” because he doesn’t know all that much and definitely doesn’t talk about the black experience in the U.S., and doesn’t care to publicize what it involves, often poverty and racism.

Compare this with Jackson, who talks consciously about black issues and the cancer of racism in this country, and you start to see why Obama has been so rapturously welcomed by the Democratic Party. He brings none of the embarrassment they accord to “Angry Black Men” like Jackson, and, aside from one completely anodyne and ambiguous statement on race, he ignores the issue like the plague.

So now the liberal elites, and the conservative ones too, can crow about how everyone is so civilized now because they will elect this Ivy-League educated half-black man. But when will the time come when someone from the ghetto, someone who went to a normal university or none at all, someone who is fully African-American, and someone who doesn’t tow the establishment line on all matters of race, will become president?

It’s understandable why black America has taken Obama so close to their hearts. In a society still pervaded with the fetid stench of racism, Obama’s success deals some long needed hygiene to so many of the stereotypes and racist tropes we all know so well. But this success should be seen for what it is; one small step on the long road to full emancipation for African-Americans.

There is a danger, expressed by activists, that the wheels of the movements for racial equality will just be taken off if Obama wins. This shouldn’t happen because Obama is indicative of how our system operates. Since the times of slavery the white barbarians would turn black slave on black slave, by promoting some to the position of what Malcolm X called ‘house niggers.’ We live in a different time now, but co-opting real forms of legitimate anger and dissent has been one of the best control methods in our society. Obama has been showered with all the trappings of power, and he obviously loves it. We need to remember this is NOT the experience of a majority of black people in this country, and that the movement for equality and justice doesn’t stop here. This is just the start.

Which is why I found it weird that I was in the Excel Center on Thursday perched on a seat for four hours listening to the warm-up acts and then John McCain’s lacklustre speech. I didn’t have any credentials to get in, and on Wednesday, when I had got in with someone else’s pass, I wasn’t even asked to go through a metal detector. I was standing next to all the major figures in the Republican Party and I’d just walked in off the street with someone else’s pass – I could have been anyone.

The media passes and those for the actual Convention centre were generic on the outside and had no pictures or names, and no one was asked to produce ID to corroborate at the entrances. This incredible fact came to light when McCain’s speech was interrupted on a number of occasions by anti-war demonstrators from the group Code Pink who said they had found passes or got them off journalists.

The media hasn’t yet picked up on how outrageously lax the security was at the Excel Center. While protestors were getting pepper sprayed and arrested, anyone could have picked up a dropped pass and gone into the Convention Center – maybe without even been put through metal detectors – and got cosy with the Republican establishment.

McCain’s speech was curious because he tried to cast himself as a reformer and has basically positioned himself against his party. After the perfunctory thanks to George W. Bush, he later said, “We were elected to change Washington, but it changed us” – talking of his own party.

Then he said this, and the Convention hall and the assembled media didn’t bat an eyelid:
“On an October morning, in the Gulf of Tonkin, I prepared for my 23rd mission over North Vietnam. I hadn’t any worry I wouldn’t come back safe and sound. I thought I was tougher than anyone. I was pretty independent then, too. I liked to bend a few rules and pick a few fights for the fun of it. But I did it for my own pleasure, my own pride. I didn’t think there was a cause that was more important than me.”

When McCain waxes lyrical about his time in Vietnam there is never any word for the millions of Vietnamese who died under the greatest tonnage of bombs dropped since WW2, but this was a new departure - apparently, he did it for his own pleasure and fun.

The diehard around me greeted the whole speech with massive hysteria, shouting “Drill baby drill!” – the new mantra – on numerous occasions. It didn’t seem to matter what McCain said, it was all greeted with raucous shouting and applause, which put me under the impression, while I was seated, that he had given a epic speech even though I couldn’t understand what his point was. When I got out and listened to the fallout it became clear that it wasn’t being well received by the media. And in the U.S. whether a speech is viewed positively or negatively usually calcifies about five minutes into the resulting analysis on the news channels, and the narrative is then set and repeated again and again.

At the end the confetti and balloons came down for a further 30 minutes - I wondered if it would all go on forever. But sitting in the Convention hall and listening to McCain was a fitting way to end my five days in St Paul and Minneapolis. Conventions are weird, intangible and absurd things when experienced in the flesh. The whole experience helped me understand why Hunter S. Thompson insisted on being on some sort of drug when he covered them. Hallucinogens are probably the only way to make sense of it all.

I got through the heavily fortified perimeter around the Excel Convention Centre for the first time yesterday. There are two passes – one gets you into the actual auditorium where the magic happens, and one is just for the sprawling media metropolis next door. I just had the media pass, but hanging around there long enough I was able to talk to an interesting range of Republican bigwigs and smaller-time delegates and talking heads.

The first floor is dedicated to talk radio and I spotted John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and an extremist even within the neoconservative movement. The Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, attempted a citizens arrest on Bolton when he came to speak to the Hay-on-Wye festival in May. As he walked to the Convention entrance I asked him about the controversy during his visit to UK. “What was the controversy?” he asked incredulous so I told him what I was talking about. “I thought it was immature at best and really kind of threatening in some respects,” he replied, “because it respects an unwillingness to tolerate other points of view and I think it’s very disturbing to see it in Britain, and I was happy he was not able to arrest me because the whole thing was a sort of juvenile exercise.”

Next I talked to Alaska delegate, Ralph Seekins. He is from the state which has given us Sarah Palin, the much debated Republican VP choice. “I think the choice is exciting,” he said. What about her family history? “It’s a history of the American family,” he said, talking of her 17-year-old daughters pregnancy. “I think they handled the challenges to their family pretty well; I raised four children and eleven grandchildren and they didn’t always do exactly what I wanted them to do, and my mother shouldn’t be made accountable for what I did when I was a kid. So I think Sarah has an exemplary background; she represents Middle America very well and I think people will learn to trust her and I think they are going to be surprised.”

Seekins said he wasn’t a McCain fan from the start. “I was a Romney man early on, but I certainly will support McCain, I respect the man, you can’t question his patriotism, it’s a stronger ticket now with Sarah on there.”

The ever-present, ever-visible Republican apparition that has been actor Jon Voigt then showed up and was surrounded by the press corps. “We need an America that is going to be strong and safe,” he said, and I switched off involuntarily. Up popped then to give him a hug and kiss the Congresswoman from Minnesota’s 6th district, Michele Bachmann. It was all very lovely dovey. “Minnesota loves Jon Voight,” she beamed into the cameras.

The local channel 5 Eyewitness News was asking the normal round of boilerplate questions which she seemed happy answering. “She’s a strong, independent woman,” she said, talking about guess who. Then this: “We are really showcasing our state well, people will come back because they are wowed by Minneapolis-St. Paul.” I couldn’t let that go, so I barged in on the interviewed and asked her what she thought of the police behaviour vis-à-vis the protesters.

Her face dropped. “The police behaviour?” she said. “Well, I hope they bought law and order to the situation, because it was criminal what was going on downtown, not called for, certainly not representative of local Minnesotans.” I mentioned that journalists were being arrested for covering the protests. “Well, I don’t know anything about that,” she said, and moved on quickly.

I wanted to speak to a local journalist to get their perspective on the heavy-handed police behaviour. It emerged yesterday that 8 leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee – an activist group trying to disrupt the RNC – have been charged with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism under the first use of the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act.

Doug Grove works for the online publication Minnpost.com. “The hope of the Police Department was that they could handle everything with smiles and warmth and friendliness and obviously that quickly went away. And many of have been surprised that the reaction has been as strong as it’s been… Certainly it’s not the image that Minnesota was looking for.”

There has been much talk about the law-and-order sheriff amongst journalists and the protesters. “Well, the Sheriff of Ramsey Country, which is the county in which St. Paul is located, is a guy called Bob Fletcher,” said Grove. “Fletcher is an egomaniac with a dark side. And he has frequently put his foot in his mouth leading up to the convention.”

Going back inside, I spotted a young guy with a beard and a trendy hat; he looked like he should be a famous indie musician so I was curious how he had ended up at the RNC media circus. It turned out he was a guest Republican blogger and a serious ‘winger’. He supported Rudy Guliani because he “would be further to right than Bush on the Bush Doctrine. I want to take the terrorists and kill every single one of them,” he assured me.

He laid into the Iranian President who he called “Armaggedonijan” and said the time for a military strike on the “Islamo-fascist state” was imminent. He was firmly for John McCain, which gives an indication of what the Republican Presidential Candidate is expected to do by some of his fans should he win in November.
…

In the evening we went to a party in a hotel in Minneapolis hosted by the Creative Coalition, a lobbying groups for artists. Slated to turn up was Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee, amongst other luminaries. Again, a no-show, and instead there was two hours of live country music from a Father Christmas lookalike. He proudly told us he was a “Redneck, like the rest of you”, and then proceeded to play tracks about tying a noose around criminal’s necks and hanging them from the tree.

It was all very posh except they served the drinks in plastic cups and the garlic-mash-potato in fancy Martini glasses. Didn’t understand that.

As the delayed convention got going inside the action on the outside started to peter out. At the State Capitol there was, however, a music concert which showcased legendary hip-hop act Dead Prez, who rapped their “F*** the Police” and directed their wrath toward what is possibly the most heavily-policed city on earth - at least for the moment.

There was later a rally by the Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign in a park near the Excel Center with maybe a 1,000 people listening to more speeches and some performances. I left before the pepper spray came out, which, according to news reports, it did later.

The tension between the serious protesters and a small band of ‘anarchists’ is coming much more to the surface now. There were grumbles from the Poor Peoples Campaign that they hoped their serious march would not be hijacked by militants who are smashing windows around the city and getting themselves arrested. In terms of media exposure, these self-avowed ‘anarchists’ are stealing the show, and have managed to tarnish the protests in the eyes of mainstream America.
***
What might not be clear to people in the UK or the U.S. is how far the Convention season is just an almighty booze-up. There is a narrative that Hurricane Gustav has blunted the party season here, but it’s hard to notice as every night the strip in Minneapolis becomes a bustling Republican Mecca of open bars and live music.

On Monday night I saw Megan McCain, John’s daughter, at one of these social events and a country singer with a new hit “Raising McCain”. Last night I went along to the University of Minnesota to attend a Grammy Foundation fundraiser. The organisation gives the esteemed music award, the Grammy, and when we arrived we were shown three pages of names of Senators and Congressmen and women who would be in attendance. In the end none showed up.

After the initial clearing of throat, which, at the RNC, usually involves a long list of corporate sponsors, this time including Lockheed Martin, we were given a show by The Abdomen, an anodyne three-piece band that had formed at Grammy Camp, a youth arm of the organisation which wants to put out the next generation of musicians.

With the warm up over there were still only about 100 people, out of an expected 500, in the huge room and the PR manager was looking a bit worried. There was a mound of tuna and some bread for food, and the ubiquitous open bar. Next was the singer-song-writer Greg Laswell. He played a few plaintive numbers, then said, “I used to write sad songs, but then I dreamt that my grandma told me to write happy songs, then I wrote this…” And he played an upbeat track. Then he said, “This song is a lie. Sometimes a lie turns into the truth,” referring to “How The Day Sounds,” a tune he wrote for his parents who were worried about his state of mind.

For the finale, four country singers took the seats, and took it in turns to spin a track. Joe Nichols played “Tequila Makes Her Clothes Fall Off” and “Cool To Be A Fool”, while Brett James sang his “Jesus Take The Wheel” number, which was about a car crash being avoided when Jesus takes over control of the vehicle, steering it to safety.

Alice Peacock then played her blockbuster “Bliss”, which is now being used by Hershey’s chocolate advertisement, she told us. She even inserted the word “chocolate” into her rendition to push the point. She sang: “Hey it’s really very simple, follow my example, learn to love each other, your sister and your brother.”

At the end of the performances we were ambushed by the PR agent and suborned into interviewing some people.

“We brought out fine top-calibre songwriters – a really unique opportunity,” said Peacock, who is originally from White Bear Lake, Minn. She added: “It’s great to see the convention in Minnesota.”

On our way down to the biggest protest march of the week, my colleague and I encountered a counter-protest happening up the road. It was organized by the Families United for Iraq, which was made up of parents who had lost children in the war and were now directing their efforts to defending the honour of the adventure in Iraq.

There was the Hollywood actor Jon Voigt, the archconservative and father of Angelina Jolie, and he stood dutifully signing the pictures of the fallen soldiers in Iraq. Apparently, a non-partisan event, on inspection it was a largely McCain affair. “Support Our Troops and Their Mission” said the large banner unfurled on the lawn.

At 11 am the great and good of the anti-war movement, from St. Paul and around the country, assembled for a two-hour rally at the State Capitol. About 5,000 people were gathered in and around the stage for the speeches from, amongst others, the Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Vice Presidential Candidate for the Green Party, Rosa Clemente, and, a Somali contingent against the Ethiopian occupation.

The speeches were the usual stuff, some of it very powerful, especially the veterans, about 25 of them got on stage, there to remonstrate with the Iraq war and the lack of benefits they are given when they return.

The crowd was an odd-mix of mainstream Obama fanatics who bandied about with “Change” and “Hope” written on their clothes, and the more rarefied socialists, anarchists and Green Party members.

This tension was exposed when Clemente, of the Greens, started speaking on the lack of essential differences between the two main parties. There was a piercing silence when she finished her sentences. “Poverty in America isn’t going to get you excited?” she asked.

At 1 pm the crowds swelled and congregated down the road from the State Capitol. At its most populous there were easily 30,000 people marching, and their route snaked through downtown St. Paul.

All along the route stood police officers with sticks in their hands (not stowed in their trousers), secret service in Matrix-style outfits and earpieces. Everyone had guns and was in riot gear. The guns were no joke either; there were M-16’s and a bunch of other weaponry bigger than many of the kids on the march. These guys were ready for the apocalypse apparently.

The route of the march took us about half a mile through a passageway with high metal fencing on both sides, it all felt a bit Guantanamo Bay. “Welcome to the Freedom Zone,” said one protester at the entrance.

The police looked like they meant business, and, inevitably, later on they flexed their muscles. On what appeared to me a wholly peaceful march nearly 250 people were detained. Video has now appeared of the police using pepper spray on the protesters.

And the police seemed like they were arresting large swathes of people for no apparent reason. Later, I heard that even Republicans – even these staunch defenders of freedom – had been detained by their own police force erroneously as the 50 swept up large sections of the downtown.

Most egregious and scary was the arrest of two producers and the host of Democracy Now! the most popular independent media outlet in the United States.

The police arrested two producers, Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar, while they were interviewing protesters at the march, then took the award-winning journalist, Amy Goodman, in too, for merely trying to find out what had happened to Kouddous and Salazar. You can see the video here.

I know Sharif, Nicole and Amy and know they were doing what they are famous for – covering issues with rigour and independence of mind. They have all been released now but Sharif and Nicole now have a felony charge for rioting over their heads.

They were seen interviewing people at the time the police swept them up and both claim they were physically abused by the police as they were heavy-handedly arrested.

This came on the back of the pre-emptive raids on protesters that presaged the Convention: armed police, initially without a warrant, kicked down the doors of I-Witness on Saturday early morning. In the age of the Patriot Act and increasing repression of dissent, the police behaviour on the march was a very scary spectacle.

Billy Bragg and Mos Def were playing a concert on Harriet Island, just near St. Paul after the march for Labour Day, so at the end of the march I set off to downtown again. On the way, I saw Fox News, the Pravda of the Republican Party, around and about the protesters trying to find the most crazy so they could all laugh about it on TV. “F*** Fox News!” was the chant that went up, as the correspondent, and his attendant secret service helpers, were splashed with water from somewhere at the back.

Then came the fun. The police had blocked the bridge going back into downtown. About 300 people waited for two hours before they would let them through. Meanwhile, activists were stopping traffic and being threatened with arrest. One man claimed to have had his helmet and clothes stolen by the police. At the same time, in a wonderfully weird episode, a man in an electronic wheelchair went around berating the protestors and told them to go back to Iran and that they were anti-American, literally every second for an hour. He also laid into me for being from the UK and allowing Islamists to take over my country. Sorry about that. In the end, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer for the police to let us through so spurned hearing the dulcet tones of Bragg and went home.

I spoke first to preppy looking Matthew Zubrow, a 17-year-old from Fast Hills, New Jersey. “I believe in McCain because he is a fiscal and social conservative and he is right for America,” he said, like an automaton. “He has more experience than Obama.”

At this moment his friend sitting next to him got involved. A diminutive 15-year-old called Brendan Zehner he reeled off a scary and perfectly delivered set of Republican shibboleths. “I’m not pro-McCain but I definitely don’t want Obama winning,” he said. “McCain is too liberal for me,” he continued, “his energy plan, his cap-and trade policy fails economically, and he doesn’t support drilling in Alaska, that would make us much less dependent on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela. But at least he doesn’t want to tax the people creating the jobs,” said the 15-year-old.

Zubrow agreed. “In some respects McCain is too liberal. Overall I feel he is excellent and despite what I disagree with he’s a good, honest person; I know because I interned for the campaign this summer.”

But what do they think about Bush, the mega-unpopular Republican now in the White House. “In theory Bush is not the problem, he hasn’t been a bad President. It’s the way he does things that makes his policies seem bad,” said Zehner.

***

I moved on to the Convention in a shuttle full of octogenarian Republicans. They talked variously in the back about how “Fox News is too liberal”. One of the older women said, “I have a horrible feeling that Obama and his wife hate America.” As her husband was getting out he said: “Tell those liberals in the UK if they think Obama is gonna make it you’re dead wrong.”

The shuttle driver Abdi Mohamous, 26, came from Somalia in 1991 and said he was supporting Obama. “These Republicans are scary,” he said. “I have to listen to all their bullshit in the back, these 80-year-olds talking about how they want to bomb Iran and how they are disappointed because the Vice President is a woman.”

He dropped me off at home, and I went down to the convention centre to check out what I thought would be the raucous protests. In the end it was one guy with a “9/11 was an inside job” placard.

There was a surfeit of cops hanging around though doing pre-programmed routines marching about the place. Dave Morris, 25, was from Minneapolis, Minnesota. “I think the government planned 9/11 for it’s own political gain,” he said. “They did it so they could invade the Middle East, set up a police state, control the world drug trade, and all the other stuff.”

He was getting a fair about of media attention. “I’m just here to get people to wake up, spread the word,” he said.

Morris was standing at the main entrance, and not much was happening so I moved around to the media entrance where there was one placard that read McBlood and “No more wars for Israel”, alongside, without any seeming animosity, a pro-Israel placard of another protester.

After talking idly for a minute the atmosphere suddenly turned febrile and out passed us walked George W. Bush’s brain, Karl Rove. I followed him with my camera asking him why he’s a war criminal and what he thought of torture in Guantanamo, which was the signature issue of the Amnesty protesters, who I’d just been talking to. He gave no response and was surrounded by four burly guards. He got in the car with three women all decked in Red.

I walked back up the path and got into a conversation with the Ron Paul fans, a perennial fixture at any American political event these days. John Kusske, 30, from St. Paul was a slow talking but intelligent guy who believes in bringing the Republican Party back to the principles on which it was founded. “We have to make our presence know to the delegates,” he said. “There are a lot of people in there with ideas sympathetic to Ron Paul.”

So what was wrong with the current Republicans in power? “Two things,” he said, “Number one, they spend far too much, the Federal Reserve prints too much money, it’s spending money we don’t have; we need sound finances and I would like us to go back to the gold standard.”

He paused now consumed with an evangelical zeal that was a little scary. “And number two,” he declared, “we should not be going around the world invading other countries; we need to get rid of troops around the world and not declare war around the world without even going to Congress.”

***

That was it for the daytime convention, which was all taking place in the stuffy surroundings of the Excel Center, a gargantuan edifice surrounded by reams of barricades and surly police and tooled up secret service.

The real action everyone knew was happening in the evening in Minneapolis ten miles away where the party season was getting under way. I went along with my friend Eugene Mulero, who works for the wonkish D.C. weekly National Journal. He had got me in free to a $75 party and we got down there about 9 pm.

It was at a club called 1st Avenue on the main Minneapolis strip, which was full of cops and sprightly Republicans – not everyone’s idea of fun, but worth a try. Inside there was to be a performance by the music titan, Sammy Hagar, also know as the Red Rocker, who used to perform in Van Halen.

Inside there was the usual Republican fabric; out of the probably 300 people there wasn’t one black face. It was an open bar and everyone got jollier as the event drew on. Then came the video show that would be the intro to Hagar. Up flashed pictures of Mexico and young Americans kissing and fondling each other in Cabo, a popular Mexican resort for young frat types. Snoop Dogg’s pimp classic “Gin and Juice” then came on and the crowd looked a bit bemused. Then, strangely, a Banksy style rendering of Bush’s visage. Then the line: “Right now youth equals violence.” Then this one: “Right now Christians and Muslims don’t pray together”. Then more pictures of Mexico and the beach. Everyone looked as confused as I was.

Then up came the video and on came the prophet, Sammy Hagar, himself. A shaggy haired blond man in sandals and beach shorts and a “Cabo Wabo” T-shirt. The definition of an aging rocker his enthusiasm contrasted farcically with the depleted crowd on the floor. Behind him were fake plastic palm trees and it all felt a bit David Brent.

I talked to Marina Hockenberg, 52, from Minneapolis, who was part of the Katrina Relief Fund and selling T-shirt’s behind a table. “I think it’s a crime and unconscionable what the Bush administration did in New Orleans,” he said, while I looked around to see if anyone could hear us. She was obviously not a True Red. “The Republicans don’t seem in the mood to purchase this stuff so far,” she said. “Maybe they feel a bit guilty!”

Meanwhile the rockster was still on stage singing away and the crowd was getting behind him now. People were hi-fiving him on the stage and he was talking about his mom’s back yard in between songs and how all she wanted was a place to grow tomatoes; the Republicans cheered. He then did a song about chasing your dreams. My notebook at this point reads: “Fake palm trees – End Of The World.”

I then spoke to Jordan Russell, 22, a student from the University of Mississippi, and a College Republican. “I’m here because we have a war to win,” he said. “Palin has electrified young conservatives.” He paused: “We don’t want to be socialists,” he declared swigging his drink. “We want to be Americans!”

Hagar stopped his infernal racket after about two hours and the crowds seeped out onto the street. There was speculation that Republicans didn’t want to be seen to have fun while the South was bracing itself for a new hurricane, but judging by this show it’s going to take more than a category 4 to stop them.

Thirty-eight-year-old Sibel Edmonds is the whistleblower, and her claims are stunning. Grossman, who was the U.S. Ambassador to Turkey from 1994 to 1997, and later Under Secretary of State, is accused by Edmonds of “aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

The nuclear secrets that he is alleged to have let seep out for his own personal aggrandizement were dribbled to agents from Pakistan and Turkey. It is assumed that they have since fallen into the hands of infamous Pakistani nuclear scientist and trader A.Q. Khan, who is known to have sold secret nuclear information to a host of rogue regimes from North Korea to Iran.

The FBI hired Edmonds nine days after 9/11. They fired her six months later. She has claimed that she was fired because she highlighted the criminality of her seniors and her principled stand was not to be tolerated. She took her claim to the courts and filed suit against the Department of Justice, the FBI and several high-level officials in July 2002. In October 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft invoked the State Secrets Privilege—a politicized and often misused legal doctrine—to block the release of any of the material that Edmonds had in her possession because it endangered national security.

But in the Sunday Times she has rehashed these claims with more damning furnishings. The latest revelation is that Grossman “tipped off a foreign contact about a bogus CIA company used to investigate the sale of nuclear secrets.” She came into possession of all this information as she translated hundred of hours of intercepted recordings made during a six-year FBI investigation focused on an international nuclear smuggling ring.

And it is not only Grossman who is implicated. On Edmonds’ website she also fingers Douglas J. Feith, Undersecretary of State for Policy from July 2001 to August 2005, and Richard N. Perle, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, among a dozen others. And the FBI has been accused by the Sunday Times of lying blatantly when they denied the existence of a key case file detailing corruption in the FBI after a Freedom of Information Act request from a human rights group. The Sunday Times claims it knows the file exists.

But these earth-shattering revelations have, astonishingly, not appeared in one mainstream newspaper in the United States. A whistleblower highlighting criminality at the highest echelons of government, the FBI blatantly lying about a report in its possession: these scoops have been plastered across one of the most august journals in Britain, yet not one outlet deigns to print it here in the U.S. What is going on?

The reticence is worse than weird. It is genuinely conspiratorial. Why on earth would titles like the New York Times and the Washington Post deem this story not important enough to get even a few column inches in their newspapers? Why is there this sordid silence?

Harry Shearer, one of the voices behind the Simpsons, asks these same questions on his Huffington Post blog. “The theft of U.S. nuclear secrets, the diverting of them to Pakistan (and, according to Edmonds, Saudi Arabia), the involvement of Israel in the scheme,” he writes, “all of these would justify as jaw-droppingly newsworthy in a rational journalistic universe. Clearly, that’s not where we live.”

Daniel Ellsberg, the great CIA whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers (an internal CIA evaluation of the Vietnam War decision-making) in 1971 goes further. The release of the Pentagon Papers caused a national political storm and changed the trajectory of the war in Indochina. He says Edmonds’ revelations are potentially even more explosive, but laments the mute media. “It’s a measure of how far the New York Times and Washington Post have fallen from their responsibilities to the public, to their profession and to American democracy, since I gave them the Pentagon Papers in 1971,” he writes. “They printed them then. Would they today?” he asks.

“For the last two weeks—one could say, for years—the major American media have been guilty of ignoring entirely the allegations of the courageous and highly credible source Sibel Edmonds…. It is up to readers to demand that this culpable silent treatment end.”

Various rumors and theories are ricocheting around the blogosphere. Various commentators are saying there is evidence that the powerful individuals being targeted by Edmonds are contacting media outlets and beseeching them not to print, and that the newspapers are being craven and supine under this duress. Others are cleaving towards the more prosaic explanation that the story ‘lacks legs’ and adds nothing new to Edmonds’ previous utterances since she was fired. I know which of the theories I believe.

Reams of comments have appeared under the Sunday Times articles, many coming from despairing American citizens railing against their impotent media. The latest installment—the third in the series—has Michael Monk, from Raleigh N.C. lamenting in the comments section: “You can be the free press we don’t have in the states.” Ron Curtis, of Cleburne, T.X., writes more pugnaciously, “The American ‘news’ media is a disgrace and nothing more than a modern-day Izvestia or Pravda of the Soviet era, spewing propaganda and brainwashing Joe Sixpack with images of Britney and nothing-else-matters-wall-to-wall election coverage.”

Is Mr. Curtis right? One of the most potent tools of thought control in an ostensibly democratic society is censorship by omission: it does not involve overt manipulation of reality, but the more insidious shielding of germane information from the populace. The American media need to show us, and show us soon, that they haven’t consciously imbibed this technique to keep the corrupt politicians happy and the people in the dark. Otherwise this transatlantic blockade of information is going to get more embarrassing and the silence increasingly hard to uphold.