The bleaching of Martin Luther King Jr.

[Tracy Riddle]

As one black leader, Cornel West, whose brain has not yet turned to mush put it, "If Martin were to show up at this march (the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington) and they asked him to give a speech, what he would say would be so subversive that those on the Obama plantation would be revealed for who they are, which is obsessed with career, obsessed with access, obsessed with status as opposed to being obsessed with the suffering of poor Black brothers and sisters."

http://lookingglass.blog.co.uk/2013/08/2...-16333136/

[Charles Drago]

As one black leader, Cornel West, whose brain has not yet turned to mush put it, "If Martin were to show up at this march (the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington) and they asked him to give a speech, what he would say would be so subversive that those on the Obama plantation would be revealed for who they are, which is obsessed with career, obsessed with access, obsessed with status as opposed to being obsessed with the suffering of poor Black brothers and sisters."

http://lookingglass.blog.co.uk/2013/08/2...-16333136/

I would respectfully suggest to Dr. West that he consider the following observations:

1. It was Dr. King's commitment to end the suffering of all poor brothers and sisters regardless of skin color and including those whose economic status had driven them to the killing fields of Southeast Asia that precipitated his public execution.

2. Until such time as we are fully aware of the circumstances of Dr. King's death we cannot hope to understand fully the greatness of his life.

[Peter Lemkin]

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. v. Barack Obama

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Jared Ball

These are my excerpted comments made for today's press release from theInstitute for Public Accuracy.

"Those who say that Dr. King would not be invited by those convening this coming 50th anniversary March on Washington are correct. Similarly, it is also correct to note, as some have, that Barack Obama is disingenuous when, as is again happening, he tries to assume, symbolically, the position held by King.
But these points themselves are insufficient; neither King's false heirs nor the presidency of false hopes would exist at all without first the assassination of King and then the perennial abuse of his history and image. These replacement events and leaders are fraudulent stand-ins for a movement so well represented by King's focused stances against the intransigence of white supremacy, the violence of capitalism at home and the imperialism it fosters abroad.
"Instead, rather than a peaceful world governed by open redistributive policies, a world in which the United States is not, as King said, the greatest purveyor of violence,' Obama militarizes the African continent with AFRICOM, kills by drone strike with impunity and revels in murdering without trial those deemed terrorists.'
"At home, instead of King's call for bringing about the unconditional surrender of forces dedicated to the creation and maintenance of slums,' Obama appoints slumlord Penny Pritzker to Secretary of Commerce and lies to labor about supporting The Employee Free Choice Act.
"And instead of calling into question support of unjust laws, as was also the call of Dr. King, Obama's response to the police/state killings of Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Troy Davis and Trayvon Martin and the laws that ultimately protected only the killers has been to uncritically uphold the virtues of those decisions by saying we are a nation of laws,' and that we are governed by the rule of law.'
"And rather than King's poignant comments about silence being betrayal' in the face of injustice, Obama has gone back on his campaign promise of defending a free and open Internet and become the man presiding over that medium becoming mechanism number one for turning the world into a privately controlled and monitored domain where no one has privacy or is free from persecution. The coming March on Washington, its leadership and their slavish devotion to a soft, liberal Democratic party make King himself, alive or in honest memory, fully incompatible and incapable of coexistence with the the ignoble alliance of those involved in organizing the coming march or the continuing presidency. For more we invite readers to hear this year's commemoration of the 45th anniversary of Dr. King's assassination convened at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland."

-----
Note: I was at the original March On Washington 50 years ago and remember well the electricity of MLK's speech. Now, we learn the FBI had installed a 'kill switch' in the PA system, in order to be able to shut down the whole thing, if they felt it got 'out of hand'. The murdered the most moral man in America and still assassinate his REAL messages, and substitute it with a watered-down version.

[Albert Rossi]

Fantastic, Peter.

If you haven't read it already, Robert Shetterly (the potrait artist)'s speech is also good on this:

https://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/31/3521

Praticularly:

"It has always confounded me every year when we celebrate Dr. King's life that no mention is made of [the] Riverside Church speech in the major media. We are always treated to sound bites of the 1963 I Have a Dream speech. That speech's oratory is as powerful as it is non-confrontational. Which is why it is re-played for modern audiences. Dr. King was about confrontation. Non-violence and confrontation, each ennobling and making the other effective. In 1967 he said, "... my country is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today." And he explained how our economic system thrived on exploitation and violence, or, as Emma Goldman put it, "The greatest bulwark of capitalism is militarism." This was probably the most important speech King ever gave and not playing it when we ostensibly honor him, is tantamount to castrating him morally and intellectually. Just as there is a long history of White America castrating black men, there is an equal legacy of Elite America cutting the most important truths of our social prophets out of the history books. We pay homage to King's icon, the cardboard cutout, but not to his strongest beliefs and his most cogent analysis of our problems --- to what vision called forth his courage. And, if we think that he spoke the truth, to censor that truth is to promote a curious kind of segregation. He is segregated, not for the color of his skin, but for the accuracy of his perception, how close to the bone his words cut. We can't bear to hear the sound of truth's knife scraping on hypocrisy's bone."

And, of course, the full text of the Riverside speech:

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html.

We ought to have a Phillips-like Guatemala radio campaign where we blast this speech over and over again every day on the airwaves.

And MLK quotes one of my own favorite JFK statements: "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

[Phil Dragoo]

A most salient paragraph from RAFXpro's Bleaching:

"As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems... but they asked, and rightly so, what about Viet Nam? They asked if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today - my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent... "

Murdered by a plot of the shadow state the month after Johnson boo-hooed his no mas no mas, murdered for his opposition to the war as was the 35[SUP]th[/SUP] president.

As Charles notes

It was Dr. King's commitment to end the suffering of all poor brothers and sisters regardless of skin color and including those whose economic status had driven them to the killing fields of Southeast Asia that precipitated his public execution.

Until such time as we are fully aware of the circumstances of Dr. King's death we cannot hope to understand fully the greatness of his life.

Peter's citation is a prime principle of the historic revisionism upon which the current Kabuki rests, and sinks

Those who say that Dr. King would not be invited by those convening this coming 50th anniversary March on Washington are correct. Similarly, it is also correct to note, as some have, that Barack Obama is disingenuous when, as is again happening, he tries to assume, symbolically, the position held by King.

But these points themselves are insufficient; neither King's false heirs nor the presidency of false hopes would exist at all without first the assassination of King and then the perennial abuse of his history and image.

Albert Rossi cites Robert Shetterly from whom I repeat what for me is the greatest insight

In my talk on Martha's Vineyard I spoke about William Pepper's book, An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King, Jr. Pepper had been James Earl Ray's lawyer. Ray was the man convicted of killing King. But both Pepper and the King family were convinced that Ray was innocent. The King family hired Pepper to represent them in a suit; they asked only $100.00 in damages to clear Ray's name. Before the trial came to court in 1999, Ray had died in prison. The jury determined that King had been assassinated by a conspiracy involving the Memphis police, the Mafia, the FBI, and the Special Forces of the U.S. Army. Ray, the patsy, had left town before the shot was fired. Pepper had confessions from people involved from each of the organizations named. The verdict was barely mentioned in the U.S. media then and is not mentioned every year on the anniversary of his death. Why?

Just as John F. Kennedy was murdered for obstructing the work of the shadow state resting on perpetual war and resource exploitation, so Martin Luther King was murdered for obstructing the supply of conscripts for that perpetual war, and placing a universal brotherhood above that exploitation.

This president is a poseur. A product of wealth, a similarly elite radical as Ayers, in the end, in service to the military-intelligence apparatus with its surveillance and drone kills, and a small knot of crony capitalist entrepreneurs and bankersnot to mention the brutal Saudi and Gulf regimes which treat people at large and women in particular as livestock.

In the literature of this thread is reference to LBJ errand boy Moyers' craven libel of Kingand lest we forget, his Daisy-plucking girl which drew rebuke from Sam Waterson.

And so it goes with the faux-left be it Chomsky or Maddow, or this POTUS tool of Saudi agendathose who champion brotherhood and peace, transparency and integrity, are murdered and their context blasted, bulldozed and salted.

Down to Manning's imprisonment, Snowden's pursuit, Hasting's murder.

The dream of this POTUS is of playing cards or golf as the legions march and burn, loot and crucify.

Young blacks unemployed in enormous numbers, families of King's day long dissolved.

Sibel Edmonds' admonition to eschew the partisan would help illuminate the role of Clinton's Reno "Justice" in burying justice for Martin Luther King, and Obama the Most Transparent for plastering over the vault door to the Joannides files, even as wardrums rise for the Syrian episode against the axis of evil du jour

Surely Brennan has said the case is a slam-dunk

Detroit the new Beirut. Chicago becomes Leadville. New York's Mayor Ratchett cannot reverse the abortion genocide with flip action on breast feeding.

Jesse Jackson, in whose house Michelle said she "grew up", is the un-King, profiting on the inequity Martin Luther King was truly reversing.

The remark that it's "not conspiracy, it's fact" is the context of it all, the entire Century of the Fed.

A rededication to a General Theory of Cabalian Cancer will fold in all the minutiae into limning the terrible device of the nightmare state.

It is not enough to awaken a people to a lone gunman who had no gun.

It will be necessary for the nation which sacrificed in a civil war to continue that to completion

--rather than be herded into the next boxcar, destination Damascus

[Jim Hackett II]

That summer 50 years ago I still believed in America. Sure, John Glenn and the Flag.

As I have said before Dr. King deserved his Nobel Peace Prize.
I cannot say the same for President Obama for whom I and the World had such hope.
I think the world was glad to be rid of the Bu$h Crime Family at the table of World Politics,
all of which made our President appear so much better than he is in fact.

Contrast this with Dr. King, seeking genuine peace even in confrontation with injustice and racism.
When your people and poor people in general are being killed by the authorities with impunity,
when the ex-officio KKK not uniformed secondary enforcement arm of "law and order" are empowered by J.E. Hoover's FBI,
when it was made clear by the "Freedom Riders" that no protection would be forth coming without Bobby Kennedy's US Marshals
as the FBI not only watched violence but under cover participated and encouraged the racist BS.

Promoting love in the face of hate is Dr. King's way. Mine too when possible.
In those kinds of times the King Of Hearts was speaking peace. That is a kind of leadership rare indeed.
In those times 250,000 people marching on Washington was dreadful to some in power,
however the people were seeking redress of racism with peaceful means, proving the quality of Dr. King's wisdom and leadership.

Today 250,000 poor people marching on the Beltway would be met with violence in the face of peace as was the case in 1970-72 Nixon before the fall.
We here honor John Kennedy and Dr. King by being concerned and involved in issues touching other American's lives.
Hate killed them and took them from our world.
I choose Hope and Love and Truth.
I am Caucasian but my race is Human.
And I have a dream too that includes Dr. King's.

[Phil Dragoo]

Jim, above

I am Caucasian but my race is Human.

And we are all still mortal. . . .

[Jan Klimkowski]

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. v. Barack Obama

Posted on August 23, 2013 by Jared Ball

:pointlaugh:

From Dream to Drone.

Wow - yeah.

[Jim Hackett II]

1960 Largo Fla.
Age 6 and I just didn't get it.
Another kid that most of us just played with, some didn't, like any other kid.
I had rules like don't go into the groves except with us (parents),
Don't walk the 1/4 mile to the beach without us.
Nobody imposed difference into my thinking about people.
Heck we all played at someone's house in the yard and which one didn't matter.
Moms were home then, guidance was everywhere. Not just our parents but all parents took the responsibility.

After the first couple of weeks I noticed the segregation, not the hate behind it.
My friend John was not in my school. What the heqq?
I thought at first he was in another room at my school.

We still played together and nothing changed to us.
Little did I know then the gulf between our lives.
Maybe from that doubt about "difference" the awareness grew later.
I was not taught to hate.

God knows Indiana tried to remake me when we came back "home". I hate winter to this day.

As Charles posted above:
-------------------------------------------
I would respectfully suggest to Dr. West that he consider the following observations:

1. It was Dr. King's commitment to end the suffering of all poor brothers and sisters regardless of skin color and including those whose economic status had driven them to the killing fields of Southeast Asia that precipitated his public execution.

2. Until such time as we are fully aware of the circumstances of Dr. King's death we cannot hope to understand fully the greatness of his life.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is worth noting the Riverside Church speech Dr. King made in April '67 emphasised those exact issues - poverty and abuse of all poor folks.
The use of the poor as cannon fodder in the SE Asian games he confronted too in that speech.

Uniting the misused of all distinctions to seek redress is a VERY DANGEROUS thing.

The Empire cannot have this idea spread, they seek to divide and promote hate just like J.E. Hoover did in service of the Empire.

This concept of refusing to be divided is the most dangerous idea to come around in a while.
He died for that opposition to Empire.

Too many buy the steaming pile of hate, they must blame someone for their own failures.
I've seen it too often.

I take a lesson from this example.
That is part and a large part of why my race is human.
The lesson was given a booster injection into my being by the DOD. Amazing ain't it?

Where the standard was "Can you do the job and is your word good?" Color ain't nothing but a word.
A slap in the face I hope to the Empire trying to make me hate and kill with a smile.