Lucid Summations When Tomorrow Is Today and MLK Day
Edward Curtin
“What they [regular people] need, and what they feel they need, is a quality of mind that will help them use information and to develop reason in order to achieve lucid summations of what is going on in the world and what may be happening within themselves….what may be called the sociological imagination.”
C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination
In what follows, I offer some conclusions I have arrived at and am skipping all the steps taken to arrive there. Everyone needs to follow their own path to the end.
I know Mills was right when he penned those words long ago. Arguments don’t go too far to convince others; only self-directed investigations do. It is a question of the moral will-to-truth and the desire to be free, plus the imagination to connect the dots using reason that lead to conclusions that make sense.
There are many explanations for every public issue and personal problem under the sun that tell us why this or that is true or false.
But since we live in an age of non-stop lies and propaganda, determination and the willingness to do our homework is essential. The following summations are the results of my study over many years, and this is a partial list.
There comes a time to state them outright and as clearly and concisely as possible, when silence is betrayal, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said so passionately in his speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence,” from the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967, a year to the day before he was murdered by U.S. government forces. He said:
This I believe to be the privilege and the burden of all of us who deem ourselves bound by allegiances and loyalties which are broader and deeper than nationalism and which go beyond our nation’s self-defined goals and positions. We are called to speak for the weak, for the voiceless, for the victims of our nation and for those it calls “enemy,” for no document from human hands can make these humans any less our brothers.
I feel bound by that deeper loyalty and offer these summations in that spirit.
- The United States is now, and has long been, as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world. It is led by leaders possessed by a demonic spirit leading the world toward nuclear conflagration by initiating and waging war against Russia via Ukraine. It cares not a bit for all the dead and suffering victims of its policies there and around the world.
- Because he so passionately denounced the warmakers and fought for racial and economic justice, MLK, Jr. was murdered by the same government that later gave him a national holiday to hide its guilt.
- Most people in the U.S.A. do not care that this is true but wish to live their small-world lives, not thinking about it. Indifference reigns. Another holiday means more shopping at the sale counters.
- Anyone who reminds them of this is considered a pain in the ass or worse.
- The violence of the U.S. state is directed not just against people in other countries but against those who live in the United States. This has long been true as the CIA and the FBI have conspired assiduously for decades to control the population while the Pentagon slaughters people all over the world. Mind control is necessary to achieve this goal.
- To accept this reality is anathema to most people, for it means their own government is their enemy and that they are its targets, this being contrary to the myth of democracy.
- This targeting of Americans by their government is not new but has reached new heights in recent years as the national-security state and its organs of propaganda in the media have gone on steroids.
- The corporate mass media, and elements of the “alternative media,” are the key organs of this propaganda and are completely infiltrated by the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI, etc.
- Agents of these agencies, while enemies of regular people, are often seen as friends because their deviousness is profound. They smile a lot with their fake white teeth. “One may smile and smile and still be a villain,” wrote the Bard.
- All the wars known and unknown waged by the U.S. warfare state are based on lies and propaganda that’s been developed over a century and more. Actually since the founding of the country and its extermination of native peoples.
- Not some foreign country or its secrets agents, but the U.S. National security state led by the CIA and FBI has assassinated all anti-war, racial and economic justice leaders who have tried to change things: JFK, Malcom X, MLK, Jr., Robert Kennedy, et al., and anyone who tries to distract from this fact by ambiguity and slick words is serving the national security state. Many of these people are assets or agents of the intelligence services and there are far more of them than one can imagine.
- The events of September 11, 2001 and the anthrax attacks were carried out by elements within the U.S. national-security state and not by foreign terrorists under the leadership of Osama bin Laden. That their own government would kill thousands of innocent people is beyond the imagination of so many Americans because they have bought the myth of U.S. innocence and on a personal level have come to think of themselves as victims also.
- Such thinking is self-destructive. While it is very true that everyone has been subject to vast and never-ending government propaganda campaigns, the only remedy is to fight back by assuming all official pronouncements are false until proven otherwise, and to do one’s homework.
- This sense of victimhood is the result of decades-long propaganda that has been promulgated by all institutions that have taught and reaffirmed a materialistic philosophy that there is no free will but only biological and social forces that make people who they are. Key to this is the promotion and use of drugs for all problems.
- The War on Drugs has always been the War on us, a deep fake intended to distract and control the population. This includes all the happy “pills” and drugs used to silence thought and the connection between the social and the personal, like anti-depressants, etc.
- The War on Terror was a war to kill as many foreigners, mainly Muslims, as possible, and to kill the conscience of decent people by appealing to their worst prejudices and fears. It was used to institute the Patriot Act and tighten the stranglehold of unfreedom on the population.
- Yet this “war on terror” that has led to the wars on Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, China, Russia, etc., was long preceded by decades long wars against Cuba, Vietnam, Iran, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras, Iraq, Yugoslavia, throughout Africa, etc. – endless open and secret wars all over the world.
- The promotion of fear has been the prime propaganda tactic of the Deep State. Fear to immobilize the population to do as the propagandists tell us. It’s all about control. The root of all fears is the fear of death, thus the power to assassinate dissidents, wage war, and kill through “medicine” are all employed by the power elites.
- Reality, by any simple definition, or news as the communication of reality, has been replaced by entertainment. Everything is now a spectacle geared to a crowd of naïve children who sit on the edge of their seats enjoying the disasters that are continuously promoted to induce fear and passivity.
- The War of Drugs used against the population, while having been waged for many decades, has since March and April 2020 been internationalized and coordinated as a global coup d’état against humanity with the Covid-19 propaganda program with its lock-downs, deadly “vaccines,” and push for the World Economic Forum’s “Great Reset.” Corporate media led (and leads) this propaganda pandemic narrative that has abrogated human and constitutional rights in the service of corporate capital interests, resulting in the enrichment of the richest few and the impoverishment, injury, and death of the many. It is the vastest propaganda campaign in history and continues unceasingly even as all its claims have been shown to be false.
- Central to all the efforts of the international gang of political and financial gangsters responsible for so many crimes against humanity is their deep-seated nihilism and their antagonism to the religious spirit of love and non-violence that informs the great religions of the world. Demonic is the best word to describe their evil deeds.
- The digital revolution is more accurately described as the digital propaganda program with the cell phone being the key to its enactment. It is an effort to coax people into loving their machines more than the human touch and to think of themselves as extensions of their machines. Clicking numbers, statistical analysis, the mathematical mindset, etc. have all been used to indoctrinate people into a world of artificial intelligence and robotic thinking in which flesh and blood become abstractions and nature something to be conquered and controlled.
- This so-called “digital revolution” with its computer technology dominating people’s lives has allowed the ruling elites to penetrate deep into the population’s psyches without them knowing it. It has allowed propaganda to infiltrate every moment of every day as people click the buttons on the machines they think are their lifelines to reality. All becomes a miasma of manufactured illusions and spectacles in the service of the “third industrial revolution.”
- All of this is part of a “spiritual” machine revolution in which the human spirit and its connections to God, nature, and our common humanity is slowly extinguished, everything that MLK said was necessary for our salvation.
- Martin Luther King was a transmitter of a radical non-violent spiritual and political energy so plenipotent that his very existence was a threat to an established order based on institutionalized violence, racism, and economic exploitation. He was a very dangerous man to the U.S. government and all the institutional and deep state forces armed against him. So they killed him.
The best “service” we can offer on Martin Luther King Day is recognize that fact and oppose the evil and violent forces directing the American nightmare.
And to do our homework connecting the dots that run down the years.
Edward Curtin is an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years. His website is edwardcurtin.com and his new book is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.
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That Americans would think of themselves as victims is possibly the only (darkly) comical aspect of this tragedy…
but, wait a minute…
This could be funny but it is not, since “the great religions” in the average reader’s mind does not just mean Buddhism and Zen and the Dao, it primarily means Abrahamic religions…. It boggles the mind how so many would think of these as “peace and love” when the hate, war mongering and racism is printed in black and white in the books they regard as “god’s word” (*another joke). I suppose the scientiology-like narratives in those books are so mind-numbing that most readers glaze over the overt instructions to burn, murder and rape en masse.
Some good thoughts here, but it makes it seem like the US is fundamentally different from the terrorist USEUNATO conglomerate, which it isn’t, and like Russia/Ukraine, and, even China, were “victims” of US machinations, when in reality, Moscow/Beijing have been closely coordinating and choreographing the global response to the COVID-19 bioterrorist attack against mankind, which some would love to frame as an attack “against China”. You don’t ride the waves of PCR “positives” to global “vaccine” mafia superstardom, on par with the Pfizers and Astra-Zenecas of the West, if you’re the “victim” of a “bioattack” by that same West. From their standpoint, a nuclear war would only present them with further opportunity to manage their respective taxcattle stocks as they see fit in such a situation.
The UN, and World Bank/IMF are, instead, quietly praising Saint Putin’s new Universal Biometric System datababase of central banking and social credit for access to services as some boon for achieving the UN’s so-called “sustainble” development goals.
Anymore I just worry about myself. No one has time to talk or the desire to talk in person any longer. If they’re not scared to death of you and hidden behind a mask (yes still), or looking at Facebook or just “too busy” then they might give you 5 minutes while constantly looking at their smart watch. Who takes the time for a real, in person discussion of anything any longer? I certainly can’t find anyone. The few I had left dumped me for being the unvaccinated outlier. And now it’s very inconvenient that I’m not sick or dead. So I hike with my dogs, work, kayak and spend most time alone hoping for that wonderful, rare conversation I might stumble upon once a month or so. Good thing I was mostly hermit like to begin with.
The “demonic spirit” is, I believe, power: gaining and retaining it is the raison d’être of all empires. Power is an illusion, which is why all empires fall. They delude themselves, thinking they won’t – but they do. They get the conflict they are trying to avoid. World War Three beckons as they ignore history.
https://patternofhistory.wordpress.com/
MLK
Most American mainstream heroes are plastic creations of propaganda, this man was no exception.
King privately described himself as a Marxist
David J. Garrow King’s biographer.
He was not a legitimate Reverend.
He was not a bonafide PHD.
And his name isn’t really Martin Luther King Jnr.
How to Make Sense of the Shocking New MLK Documents.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/04/how-to-make-sense-of-the-shocking-new-mlk-documents-227042/
“The article, based on FBI reports summarizing the bureau’s audio surveillance of King.” FBI alleges that King was present …stopped reading at FBI alleges.
Why was he under surveillance anyway? Is that normal in the free and democratic world?
Who are your heroes? Or maybe you don’t have any?
Politico? LOL
Excellent list.
Was very glad to find this:
Had begun to wonder if OffG was totally Controlled Opposition. This article diminished my suspicions somewhat.
That’s more weight than I can handle.
To fulfill this perfectly rational and needful advice is all but impossible, for one reason: we must begin the process with our friends, neighbors and relatives. It has by now become a truth almost too banal to even mention that the psychos could not do what they do without the willing support of the people.
To accuse the ruling elites of their crimes is necessarily to accuse the majority of Americans.
I personally know no one who would willingly harm others. But I know of many – most of those I know – who would stand aside to let the American war machine mow down men, women and children with abandon.
It’s like paying an assassin to take out a neighbor one doesn’t like so that one’s hands can remain clean.
Psychopaths form a small proportion of the people everywhere. Under the guise of the common good, the sociopath overlords – who are also psychos – delegate enforcement, elimination and plunder to them.
As for the masses, nationalism, racism and ignorance – through dogma, schooling and propaganda – serve to make them complicit.
MK Ultra Day
A time comes when silence is betrayal.
How, then, do we fight the Secret War? Do we just whine and whimper as we head toward the silent betrayal – knowing that’s how it ends? Or do we finally get a bit wiser?
The main difficulty which JFK overlooked is that the majority of people form into zombified, group-thinking masses – and rather than being its creator, the media is more the reflection and manipulator of this inherent zombification. Consequently, the solution requires a bit more finesse than merely informing the public of threats and dangers.
A number of potential strategies will have been war-gamed, and there may be some which have yet to be revealed, but the two main ones which are currently active are Operation Warp Speed and the Brzezinski Playbook. These two strategies overlap and interact, but they deal largely with opposing pincers of the “invisible enemy”.
There are two main aspects to the Trump admin’s declaration of a “covid emergency” (i.e. Warp Speed). Firstly, there is the reassignment of Continuity of Government away from the DHS and to the Pentagon. Secondly, there is the accelerated roll-out of the jab. The Brzezinski Playbook was prepared during the Trump administration and implemented immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – Russia being a proxy for Kissinger et al.
The first pincer of the invisible enemy is the globalised, totalitarian, Public Health ideology. Given the degree to which it is embedded within the zombification, there was no possibility of tackling this directly. Trump demonstrated this during the primaries when he dared to challenge vaccine orthodoxy. Instead, it has to be tricked into destroying itself (i.e. “hoist with his own petard”). The second pincer is the fifth column within the MAGA and populist movements. These are in the process of being fully exposed via their support for an invasion which is overtly genocidal.
—
JFK’s “Secret War” Speech
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_President_and_the_Press
Perhaps there is no answer to the dilemma faced by a free and open society in a cold and secret war.
—
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoist_with_his_own_petard
“Hoist with his own petard” is a phrase from a speech in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet that has become proverbial. The phrase’s meaning is that a bomb-maker is blown (“hoist”) off the ground by his own bomb (a “petard” is a small explosive device), and indicates an ironic reversal, or poetic justice.
—
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-top-secret-plans-if-coronavirus-cripples-government-1492878
Exclusive: Inside The Military’s Top Secret Plans If Coronavirus Cripples the Government
March 18, 2020
—
Trump: “Wartime president” fighting “invisible enemy”
March 22, 2020: Coronavirus Task Force Briefing
https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-task-force-briefing-transcript-march-22-national-guard-activated-in-new-york-california-and-washington-state
[click any “time” link to go to video]
Any suggestions?
O, yes, I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath —
America will be!
– Langston Hughes
—
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I’ve Been to the Mountaintop
delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm
Now about injunctions: We have an injunction and we’re going into court tomorrow morning to fight this illegal, unconstitutional injunction. All we say to America is, “Be true to what you said on paper.” If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.
Love that. Worth memorizing. Thank you.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Martin_Luther_King
Speeches and letters
“I Have a Dream” under copyright in the U.S. until 2038
“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” still under copyright in the U.S.
“Letter from Birmingham Jail” still under copyright in the U.S.
“Keep Moving from This Mountain” still under copyright in the U.S.
“Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” still under copyright in the U.S.
“Give Us the Ballot” still under copyright in the U.S.
Ironic, given his plagiarism.
Most people wouldn’t know or care about a grass roots movement or a protest if it showed up in their home town.Oh,unless it’s media endorsed -like BLM.
Progressive Liberal friends eschewed the Canada’s Truckers Freedom Convoy-as racist, misogynist extremists-and were afraid of the protesters or didn’t support them-understatement-as they thought them “ noisy.”Only a fraction of people know about all the protests that have happened in the last 2+ years in Europe-over lockdowns, inflation, mandates.
Hele, your comment brings to mind progressive/liberal/pseudoleftist Toronto Star columnist Linda McQuaig, who managed to stuff eight mentions of “right wingers” into an Oct. 22 hysterical attack against the Canadian Truckers Freedom Convoy.
If things work as they’re supposed to, Linda will not enter any history book. The Truckers will, every one
The plutocracy’s mind control apparatus has succeeded in neutering Martin Luther King Jr and his radical movement to the point the man who stood for peace, socio-economic justice/change and brotherhood, who was willing to confront and challenge the US empire and its evil policies both foreign and domestic has been recast as a “dreamer” and his radical in your face campaigns for peace and social transformation have been highjacked and rechanneled into a token “Day of Service” that maintains the status quo! The American people are too brainwashed and bamboozled to even realize what is being done to them.
Big demo in London on 21 Jan 2023. Wear black and bring a white rose. The media will love it, and I hope it gets lots of publicity.
“Giving a voice to the injured and bereaved.”
https://twitter.com/CoviLeaksCVVAM/status/1613920660975423493?s=20
What the hell is wrong with you people.? dont you check anything.
The twitter account was set up in late October.
It is asking you to wear black and bring a white rose. why.?
are you that naive, your not even going to question anything.?
Old European Lunar New Year–Celebration of the Triple Goddess (Goddess of the Moon and the Seasons) being transformed from the Crone into the Virgin; celebrated with ritual bathing of divine images.
Feast of Old Greek Goddess Hekate, who guides all through transitions and crisis.
Enjoy your ritual.
Satan’s minions are literally everywhere- the Church didn’t do a thorough enough job in the Middle Ages (of cleansing the world of all those pagan heathens!).
It is high time for a Holy Inquisition 2.0. Your neighbour could have a maypole in their backyard!
A few things, as with the war on drugs being a war on us, the war on terror, which is not over (there is no “was” about it) and has been completely institutionalized, is actually a war OF terror by the U.S., Israel, and friends. The U.S. was and is the tool for the neocon zionists who were responsible for 9/11 and the middle east wars in their quest for Greater Israel and pacification of Israel’s Muslim enemies. Obviously, those controlling the U.S. and Western Europe had their own motives, but the primary motive was for Israel. Relative to JFK, there is evidence that Mossad may have been the primary mover among those involved, i.e., with the CIA and the Mob. The author’s contention that “Not some foreign country or its secrets agents” omits a major figure that must be recognized and held accountable. None of this excuses the actions of the United States, and those that control it. Not to mention zionist control of the media and the federal reserve. So, to leave out Zionist Israel and the Mossad in this article relative to “opposing the evil and violent forces directing the American nightmare”, is either short sighted or intentional.
The neocons are continuing their agenda with their machinations in Ukraine. Convid and the poison pricks are also their work.
At the start, some tried to ask for a definition of terrorism, or for its root causes. Those inconvenient questions were quietly cast aside.
I hope it was short-sight. Rather convinced. of this … that said, one should observe the hierarchy of things,, neither the Mob nor any Western intelligence agency makes a move without first informing Mossad.
It wasnt ’til around 50 years after his assassination that i read of the many times Mr King denounced in his speeches Police Violence…Even his “I Have A Dream…” speech contained a number of denunciations of Police Violence against American Negroes…
Before the memory of MLK could be celebrated by a national holiday such condemnations had to be expunged, and MLK Whitewashed …
During the convid psyop the constabulary confirmed emphatically that they are the enemy of the people.
Dr. Martin Luther King’s Statue is revealed $10 million (£8.2 million) of him kissing his own arse
?imwidth=960
Even I find that offensive – though I guess it portays The USA quite well.
Total sh1thole?
Complete insanity
“We can create our own reality made from our “All American” brown slaves.?”
Now – Take The Knee.
Puke Diarrhoea and vomiting
The USA has totally lost it.
Seems to me, they are trying to provoke civil war
Tony
Looks likes head in a bum..
Bad art.
Not even art at all.
Just attention-craving for money.
Ten Million Dollars.
All our world leaders are currently trying to provoke the general public into some kind of extreme action.
Their fingers are on the button, and they’re dying to unleash their latest crowd-control technology.
It’s not just the USA that has totally lost it. There are no ethics left anywhere in politics.
The only person named in this article is MLK, a man long dead. Everyone else Mr Curtin laments against is a “they”, “the ruling elites”, “the united states”? Its long past time to start naming these people that are responsible for this madness. If you’re spending all your time studying these crimes against humanity, why not take it one step further and let us know who they are so something can actually be done about it instead of bitching on the internet. They aren’t demons and they aren’t elite. They’re just normal humans like all those they oppress. So give us their names and we can begin the task of removing their power.
They know who you are ‘Bob’.
Their names are interchangeable.
The Evil they wallow in and perpetrate is unstoppable because they own the means to destroy and/or dumb down.
Welcome to the last century of ‘civilisation’.
…- *Absolutely* Agree, Bob – *Criminal* culpability vests in individuals, *NOT* corporations/organizations/agencies or departments, etc.,…
– One may begin here, at least:…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51761051_The_Network_of_Global_Corporate_Control
…- The paper’s stale by some dozen years now, but the overall structure described therein, particularly the ‘Superconnected Entity’ *Assuredly* still holds… (- Think: Blackrock, Vanguard, State Street, and those *Above* them…)
…- The problem lies in identifying and then finding out the names of the principal *Individual* shareholders of the above, and the best of British luck with that, for they are *Very Well* concealed and *Exceptionally Well* protected by their very own latterday praetorian guard…
I assume by now everyone know who ‘they’ are, but when all are guilty, and ALL are deceived who will execute the justice required?
When Jesus demanded the name of the demon possessing a man he was helping, they replied, “We are legion.” That is your answer.
You don’t know who “they” are? What names would you not know and, even better, surprise you?
You are a regular, Bob. You must understand that the terms are appropriate and comprehensible epithets.
If you have a list of “them”, please link. If you don’t, here’s a good place to start:
https://tabublog.com/2017/07/11/the-holy-grail-of-who-they-are-that-rule-over-us-all/
From Michael Parenti:
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2023/01/12/i-have-a-dream-a-blurred-vision-by-m-parenti/
In Honor of Martin Luther King 1000s demonstrated in NYC yesterday
–against US participation in Ukraine
–against NATO expansionism
“Protesters gathered from 12:00 local time in Times Square and marched through midtown Manhattan chanting slogans against US and European Union militarism.
In addition, they demanded that the billions of dollars that today grease the war machine be dedicated to education, health, employment and other needs of the population.
Numerous participants displayed banners demanding peace for Ukraine, the dissolution of NATO, the end of the US interventionist policy and the elimination of its unilateral restrictive measures against Cuba, Venezuela and other States, among other issues.”
http://www.elespiadigital.com/index.php/noticias/historico-de-noticias/39783-2023-01-15-20-33-29
That’ll make headlines on the evening news Penelope.
(Like hell it will).
Why not peace for Russia?
A good summary of the institutional evil that has infiltrated our everyday lives.
Most here probably have experienced the apathy of the majority and their eye roll of ‘here goes that conspiracy theorist again.’ They do not want to see beyond their small-world lives and leave the reservation. They prefer their “postage stamp” lives, as David Icke calls it.
Part of this is smugness and not being hungry or desperate enough. The other part is cowardice and not wanting to stand alone. Haven’t revolutions always only garnered the very destitute, those with nothing left to lose?
Well, this time around, I’m afraid that point in time, when it arrives, will be too late for rising up. The digital prison walls will be impossible to break down. Even the internal digital prison, the nano tech hooked up to the internet and the external control infrastructure, will have advanced to such an extent that revolutionary thought itself will have been completely stamped out.
One point mentioned above I would question: Is victimhood truly linked to materialistic philosophy or was it first instilled in us by organised religion which preached immaterial salvation in the after life? I’m thinking, original sin…
Agreed that The Science claims that we are nothing but now even hackable machines.
Everything is boiled down to genetic determinism, no free will, no other influencing factors.
Which is ironic because The Science does state that drugs and vaccines will bring us salvation but diet and lifestyle, human contact and social interaction have no bearing on our health and wellbeing.
This focus on genetics in The Science serves to make inequality look natural. This and genetic engineering of plants, animals and humans, as well as the injection of control technology into our bodies all aim to bring the Epsilon Agenda to its final stage, not that deliberate impoverishment, pharmaceutical drugging and dumbing down hasn’t already made great inroads into this agenda.
Thanks for this eloquent example of how to remember King and his spirit in the present. Very lucid summation of where we’re at which connects with where we’ve been, as shown by King’s own example in living and dying for human equality and solidarity in a world overrun by divide-and-conquer rule and its institutionalized violence.
No doubt, there will be those commemorating this holiday, as with ‘I-Have-an-American-Dream’ or identity-ridden woke cooptation by the fascist state that killed King, who will read, if at all, nothing more here than conspiracy theory from another anti-science, anti-vax, QAnon, right wingnut pain in the ass or, worse, domestic terrorist. Like all coincidence theorists, they lack sociological imagination.
Or, in other words, they lack memory, historically rooted and lived in the present. The struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. (Milan Kundera) Many of my generation, who awakened or at least didn’t sleepwalk through the era of people’s struggles of which King remains a hero, seem to have lost their memory to lives lived in quiet desperation (Thoreau) amid the very evils King opposed. Forget to fight, memory fades. When there’s nothing left to defend, we fail to fight. It’s not the past that’s dead. We are.
Amid many reasons for this lost generation, what stands out for me on a day like today is the loss of passion and compassion with which King and others from that era committed their lives to building what King called the beloved community, a kin-dom of heaven on earth compared to the desperate straits we are placed more than ever today by the principalities and powers which rule the world.
The fear, the despair, the universal alienation which the death cult tries to impose upon us in our very being is what must be broken with realized courage, hope, and love among us.
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men [in US cities], I have told them that… rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, ‘What about Vietnam?’ They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, 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.
[US troops] must know after a short period there that none of the things we claim to be fighting for are really involved. Before long they must know that their government has sent them into a struggle among Vietnamese and the more sophisticated surely realize that we are on the side of the wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor.
The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit…
…our nation has taken the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on to the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values… When… profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.
A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries and say, ‘This is not just.”
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling difference is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nations homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind.
We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today… We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation.
-MLK, Beyond Vietnam, 1964
My God, no one wonder he was killed.
Imagine if that speech took place today. That speech would not have been covered by msm.
None of his speeches would be.
FYI: MLK’s ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech was roundly criticized by nearly all of the US’ main-stream press [ala the NY-Times, WaPost, etc] & then, especially after they killed him exactly 1 yr to the day later, they buried it down the ‘memory hole‘. The US MSM ‘News’ media hardly even alludes to it, let alone play key excerpts from it. I’m old enough to remember when they killed MLK [ditto for JFK, Malcolm X & RFK], but I never heard MLK’s ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech till 40 yrs after his assassination, & then I heard it on an internet web-news site, not on any US MSM ‘News’ outlet.
But then IMO most people haven’t heard or read MLK’s entire ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, nor his last speech on April 3, 1968 [the eve before they killed him] the ‘I’ve been to the Mountain Top‘ speech. What we got from the US MSM media were short excerpts of that speech in the immediate wake of his assassination, now they just give us excerpts of that excerpt, but IMO it behooves you to listen to &/or read the entire ‘I’ve Been to the Mountain Top‘ speech. BTW: In that April 3, 1968 speech, MLK clearly signaled he was expecting to be killed soon.
I did not know about King’s stance on Vietnam (which, I believe, was the nail in his coffin) until I watched an interview with Wm Pepper on the Corbett Report. Pepper is the fellow that ended up suing the USA on behalf of the King Family.
Pepper, through his own story meeting King, flushes out the Vietnam aspect.
Of course, I, too,never learned this growing up, and like you, lived through it and all the killings in the ’60s.
Watching a 9/11 documentary in 2014 was the start of my journey to the real history of the US.
So why would the US MSM ‘News’ media bury MLK’s ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech [especially after his assassination], after they had roundly criticized it when he gave it? IMO it was not just what MLK said in the speech, but the fact that he gave it exactly 1 yr to the day before they killed him! If the general public had known this especially within a few yrs of his assassination, the idea that a small time criminal ala James Earl Ray, had escaped prison & then fled to Canada, would then return to the US just to kill MLK exactly 1 yr to the day after he gave his blistering critique of the US Govt’s [under the Dim LBJ regime] persecution of the Vietnam War [by calling the US Govt: ‘The biggest purveyor of violence in the World today.’ & ‘A nation gone mad on War‘]…- Most folks would have found that ludicrous. IMO many / most folks would have known it had to be elements of the US Govt [via COINTELPRO, & other covert black-ops] that was behind MLK’s assassination.
That’s why the US MSM media had to bury MLK’s iconic ‘Beyond Vietnam’ speech down the ‘memory-hole’- even to this day.
BTW: Do you know about the 1999 Civil Trial ‘The King Family vs Loyd Jowers’? Where a jury of 6 Black people & 6 white people found MLK was assassinated due to a conspiracy involving elements of the US Govt, Memphis PD, & local Memphis Mafia [if you’re familiar w Atty William Pepper’s work re the King case, then maybe you’re aware of this trial]. Of-course the US MSM ‘News’ media boycotted this trial & barely reported on it, so you’d have to look to alternative media sources to get the ‘411’ about it. Author James Douglass [‘JFK & the Unspeakable‘] sat thru the entire trial & did a report on it. Douglas has said what he heard during that trial inspired him to write about the 4 major political assassinations of the 1960s [JFK, Malcolm X, MLK & RFK] which resulted in him writing ‘JFK & the Unspeakable‘ [generally considered to be one of the best books about JFK’s abbreviated term in office & his assassination]. There’s also a YouTube video of Douglas talking about the ‘King Family vs Loyd Jowers’ trial, & there’s also one w the late comedian-activist Dick Gregory [who personally knew MLK & Malcolm, too] talking about that trial.
Correction: ML.King Jr’s ‘Beyond Vietnam speech was given at the Riverside Church in NYC on April 4, 1967, exactly 1 yr to the day before they killed him.
This is what happens when Children are Systematically Terrorised By Government. It is not pretty. It is not nice. This is quite recent in Poland. That sunflower looks real and fresh. This has had over 1 Million views. Kids have always done weird stuff to protest, and always will. Maybe its because I am old, but this does not look normal to me, and I have met loads of Polish kids. I grew up with them in England. Seemed highly intelligent, nice and normal to me. Their parents moved to England to survive.
Now where do our Grandchildren go, in a world gone mad?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1615056992049172480
The actual picture…
looks fake too especially with an obvious spelling mistake
I’m not responsible for the spelling mistakes made years ago! I won’t pay any reparations for that either…
“Service!” Slowly I turn… step by step… inch by inch. Curtin’s use of the word has triggered me to dust off an MLK Day comment I wrote several years ago:
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Sadly, it’s almost become a cliché to observe that Dr. King’s life and beliefs have been purposely repressed and denied by a long-term, top-down consent-manufacturing campaign, aka Big Lie propaganda. This is obvious from an examination of the way the MLK federal holiday is observed.
The official celebration of “Martin Luther King Day” has increasingly advanced the agenda of expurgating the memory and meaning of MLK’s radical leadership, especially the powerful anti-war, anti-empire, and anti-capitalism views King espoused during his final months of life as he continued to evolve politically.
Instead, as numerous critics have observed, Dr. King has been formally reduced to a “plaster saint”, a gifted orator and civil rights advocate whose legacy begins and ends with promoting “non-violence” and public service. The hideous depersonalized sculpture that’s the centerpiece of the Washington DC “MLK Memorial” ironically captures the ugly deceit informing this official rehabilitated conception of King’s life and work.
With the cooperation and blessing of complacent moderates in and out of power, the mainstream narrative imposed a Booker T. Washington façade on Dr. King’s life work. Thus, the generations who came after King’s death are instructed that MLK was all about “volunteerism” and, yes, public “service”. Local news stations in my city reverently proclaim this holiday as “The Doctor Martin Luther King Day of Service”, and showcase saccharine “human interest” stories of schoolkids doing volunteer work and the like to honor MLK’s ostensible legacy.
Thus, King is reduced to being a benevolent “uncle”, a House Negro “role model” exemplifying polite and submissive “volunteerism”.
This sanitized emphasis on submissive, compliant “service” fortuitously leaves no room for the possibility that any decent, responsible kid might be out there dabbling in radical counterculture, or actually agitating for social change as King did. Instead, they are adjured to meekly and reverently line up like choir members to perform civic “service” in honor of King’s memory– as if King’s message is “Help to row the boat, don’t rock it!”
___________________________________________
Back in the present: since writing the above, I’ve seen opinion pieces (e.g., in the online version of the remaining Philly newspaper, The Inquirer) pushing back on the now-settled sanitized memory of King. But even those challenges reinforce the Big Lie by arguing that honoring King with volunteerism and public service is commendable and desirable, but isn’t “enough” to conquer social ills like warmongering and racism.
Meanwhile, local mass-media organizations still piously and reverently refer to the holiday as “The Martin Luther King Day of Service”. This year, we’re told, in Philadelphia the focus of today’s “service” is “reducing gun violence”. Good luck with that!
It gives me the fantods. 😡
MLK was never big in the UK, but Nelson Mandela was. and I felt proud to be English
600 Million+ Global Audience from Wembley Stadium
“The Specials – Nelson Mandela (Official Music Video)”
aye nelson mandela a knight of malta
Yep, few people know this. Also that he was buddies with Bill Clinton and noted among his “good friends” some rich Jewish South African businessmen, the very ones that made fortunes during the Apartheid era, exploiting cheap Black labour. Maybe Saint Nelson’s halo was stuck on with some defective glue – – -.
Thanks for this. It’s right on target.
Given the state of black America in 2023, a little Booker T. Washington (and more than just a façade) might be in order.
Used to wonder how Germans could live with themselves. And now I wonder about me. I don’t want to be American. I am ashamed. What we’ve done is too too terrible. We killed, robbed, pillaged and then we told lies – huge lies. And we’re still at it! Like it’s normal. Jesus.
No, “we” did not. I don’t know about you but I’ve never killed robbed or pillaged anybody. I was simply born here, and I am more than willing to be part of the solution if “we” can move past the culture, gender, and race wars to finally begin the class wars that the parasite class seems so adept at avoiding.
You must be an educator. We as humans are all guilty. Getting self righteous won’t help.
Off topic but I must recommend Patrick Henningsen’s mind blowing deep dive over at 21st Century Wire “Disinformation Experts Caught Spreading Lie to Ban Magazine in New Zealand.” Tacked at the end is a David Ray Griffin style anomaly buffet from the New Zealand mosque shooting. In case you’d forgotten, as I had, the shooting wasn’t what they said it was. Oh and Henninsen interviews the author TJ Coles in the podcast. A conspiracy theorist’s media dream package. Sorry for the interruption. Like the joke goes, “Are you kidding? I’m telling everyone!”
I’ve always thought that the only event that can shake the somnolent public out of their soporific lethargy would have to be an acute economic crisis – slowly or less slowly unfolding. One that REDUCES THEIR LIVING STANDARDS.
Wait til most of we non-elites can’t get our daiily cappuccinos. Then we’ll see some real action!
Separate Standards require Separate Solutions. Otherwise you’ll be left pissing in the wind.
> … an acute economic crisis …
On the way, pal, on the way …
Basically, that’s already happened: people working longer hours for less pay or working two and three jobs. As long as it can be blamed on someone else (like Russia or China), the people will generally accept it.
The digital world is a tool designed to control, just like the printing press.
however, these days people are quicker to question the source and have an easier way of discussing topics.
back in the day, TV, radio, and newspapers were doing the same task, but discussion was limited to your community and peers…