General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: It's amazing that John Lewis can be so easily insulted by people hiding behind keyboards. [View all]DevonRex
(22,541 posts)IMO, that reporter purposely got that interview under the auspices of discussing Congressman Lewis's civil rights and life history, which is nothing short of amazing. He is the only living member of the "Big Six" left among us. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Six_(civil_rights) His story is invaluable. That a reporter would use and abuse that story for his own purposes, slyly but intentionally twisting it to say something the congressman did not say, is racist.
He used an African American story, an African American struggle, a people who protested without endangering others' lives, all the while putting their own lives on the line. They were willing and ready to lose their freedom and their very lives for civil rights. Many, including John Lewis, were jailed. Many did lose their lives. None ran. Because of the Big Six, none ran. Because of the Big Six, support came from around the nation.
And the Voting Rights Act was signed. http://www.866ourvote.org/pages/rep-john-lewis-delivers-a-passionate-speech-to-protect-the-voting-rights-act
And now this smarmy little Guardian reporter wants to USE this great man to get readers for his stupid column, in his slimy tabloid, for his fucking little traitor Snowden who defected to fucking Russia?
Wanna see what Russia does to whistleblowers?
HIS is what RUSSIA does to whistleblowers, liberals, dissenters, and probably LGBTs.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Magnitsky
Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky (Russian: Сергей Леонидович Магнитский; 8 April 1972 16 November 2009) was a Russian accountant and auditor whose arrest and subsequent death in custody generated international media attention and triggered both official and unofficial inquiries into allegations of fraud, theft and human rights violations. Magnitsky had alleged there had been a large-scale theft from the Russian state sanctioned and carried out by Russian officials. He was arrested and eventually died in prison seven days before the expiration of the one-year term during which he could be legally held without trial. In total, Magnitsky served 358 days in Moscow's notorious Butyrka prison. He developed gall stones, pancreatitis and a blocked gall bladder and received inadequate medical care. A human rights council set up by the Kremlin found that he was beaten up just before he died. His case has become an international cause célèbre and led to the adoption of the Magnitsky bill by the US government at the end of 2012 by which those Russian officials believed to be involved in the lawyers death were barred from entering the United States or using its banking system. In response Russia blocked hundreds of foreign adoptions. In early January 2013, the Financial Times editorialised that "the Magnitsky case is egregious, well documented and encapsulates the darker side of Putinism" and endorsed the idea of imposing similar sanctions against the implicated Russian officials by the EU countries.
In 2013 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a D.C-based nonprofit news organization, obtained records of companies and trusts created by two offshore companies which included information on at least 23 companies linked to an alleged $230 million tax fraud in Russia, a case that was being investigated by Sergei Magnitsky. The ICIJ investigation also revealed that the husband of one of the Russian tax officials deposited millions in a Swiss bank account set up by one of the offshore companies.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/globalbusiness/8207690/Sergei-Magnitsky-European-Parliament-recommends-tough-sanctions-on-Russian-officials.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-drops-inquiry-into-death-of-sergei-magnitsky-8541205.html
Investigators have dropped an inquiry into the death in jail of Sergei Magnitsky, stating that the whistleblowing lawyers agonising death, which became an international scandal, was not the result of malpractice.