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Between Despair and Hope: MLK, Obama and War
The Washington DC memorial to Martin Luther King, located on the Tidal Basin between the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, was supposed to be completed by now. President Clinton authorized the memorial in 1996; President Bush appeared at a groundbreaking ceremony in 2006, as did Senator Barack Obama. But the memorial, designed with a massive statue of King and two huge rocks representing the Mountain of Despair and the Stone of Hope, was left hovering in legal and bureaucratic limbo for a dozen years.
In the meantime, Senator Obama became President Obama. And in the course of one year, those who thought President Obama would move our nation closer towards Dr. King's vision find themselves tottering, like King's memorial, between hope and despair.
Obama certainly gave the world hope when he spoke of the importance of diplomacy, global cooperation, re-engaging with the Muslim world and respecting international law.
But his actions speak another language. He promised to end torture and close Guantanamo but extraordinary renditions continue, Guantanamo is still open, and the Bagram prison in Afghanistan is still filled with over 600 prisoners who have been held indefinitely-some for six years-with no charges and no trials.
Obama promised to reignite the peace process in the Middle East, and tried to get a commitment from the Israeli government to freeze settlements. But he backed off when Israel refused the freeze. Moreover, Obama authorized $30 billion to Israel with no strings attached, dismissed the Goldstone report that called for an investigation into Israeli war crimes during the invasion of Gaza, and refuses to even talk to the democratically elected government in Gaza: Hamas.
In Iraq, Obama won support from a majority of Americans by setting a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops by August 31, 2010 and pulling all troops out by the end of 2011. But Defense Secretary Robert Gates, during a visit to Iraq in December 2009, said Air Force advisers will probably stay in Iraq after the end of 2011. And nobody is promising to pull out private contractors.
But it is the escalation of the war in Afghanistan - and beyond to Pakistan - that is the greatest cause for despair as it reveals an administration stuck in the mindset of militarism.
Martin Luther King, dealing with the military mindset of his time, called for a revolution of values. In his powerful April 4, 1967 speech outlining his opposition to the war in Vietnam, King put forward his vision: "A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: This way of settling differences is not just. This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people 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."
Obama would do well to examine the reasons that King turned his moral compass to opposing the Vietnam war, as the parallels with Afghanistan are striking:
- King saw President Johnson's Poverty Program as a moment of real promise for the poor, both black and white. "Then came the build-up in Vietnam, and I watched the program broken as if it was some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money, like some demonic, destructive suction tube."
Obama's domestic programs-from heath care to jobs to green initiatives-all require hundreds of billions of dollars. By 2009, Congress had approved over $1 trillion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the administration will soon ask for another $33 billion to pay for the surge. This continued emphasis on war and a bloated Pentagon budget is making it impossible for Obama to fund critical domestic programs in a time of financial crisis.
- King was concerned about the death of U.S. soldiers, and the disproportionate number of soldiers from poor communities. He also pointed out that young black men were being sent thousands of miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia that they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem.
Today, with a volunteer army instead of a draft, the poor still disproportionately enlist and fight, and military recruiters do their most aggressive recruiting in neighborhoods that fall below the median income.
- King also felt a calling to oppose the war because of the suffering it brought to the people of Vietnam. He expressed compassion for the Vietnamese who, like Afghans, had been under the curse of war for almost three continuous decades. "It is clear to me that there will be no meaningful solution until some attempt is made to know these people and hear their broken cries," he said.
The cries of innocent Afghans have been getting louder. A January 2010 report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said that 2009 saw the highest number of civilian casualties since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001, with at least 5,978 civilians killed or injured. Civilian deaths were up 14 percent from 2008. The report cited the use of air strikes and the placement of military facilities in civilian areas as greatly increasing the risk of civilians being killed and injured. It documented 65 incidents in which air strikes, including those by unmanned drones, resulting in the deaths of civilians.
In Pakistan, the U.S. launched 44 drone strikes in 2009. According to DAWN News, these drones killed 708 people, the vast majority of them civilians. The use of drones and paramilitary teams to assassinate adversaries violates international law and helps swell the ranks of Al Qaeda.
- King gave another compelling reason he opposed the war: love of country. "I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love."
Finally, King felt the heavy burden of another responsibility: winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964. He said the prize gave him a responsibility beyond national allegiances to "work harder than I had ever worked before for the brotherhood of Man." During his acceptance speech, he put forth his vision of a world without war. "I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God," he said, "and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land."
When Obama accepted the Peace Prize, he acknowledged the moral force of nonviolence that King espoused, but said that as a head of state sworn to defend his country, Obama had to be a realist, to face the world "as it is." "We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes," Obama declared. "There will be times when nations will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified."
Still, mindful that he was receiving a peace prize, Obama invoked King's message of hope and love. "The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached-their fundamental faith in human progress-must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey." Many wonder if Obama has lost his moral compass.
Back in 2006 when Senator Obama spoke at the King memorial groundbreaking ceremony that never broke ground, he speculated on what he would tell his daughters about Dr. King. He would tell them that King never held public office but he led the nation by his vision, determination, and "most of all, faith in the redeeming power of love."
He would say that King "pointed the way for us towards a land no longer torn asunder with racial hatred and ethnic strife, a land that measured itself by how it treats the least of these, a land in which strength is defined not simply by the capacity to wage war but by the determination to forge peace."
"We have not yet arrived at this longed for place," he would tell Sasha and Malia. "For all the progress we have made, there are times when the land of our dreams recedes from us - when we are lost, wandering spirits, content with our suspicions and our angers, our long-held grudges and petty disputes, our frantic diversions and tribal allegiances. And yet, by erecting this monument, we are reminded that this different, better place beckons us."
In January 2010, construction on the King Memorial finally began. It should be completed in the fall of 2011--the same time that U.S. troops are scheduled to return from Iraq. By then we should have a better understanding of where, between the Mountain of Despair and the Stone of Hope, Obama's legacy will lie.
- Posted in
59 Comments so far
Show AllA nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
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Our nation's actual military budget is around one trillion dollars a year.
Single-payer health care would've cost under eighty million per year.
Spiritual death is upon us.
80 million? not 80 Billion? 80 million is less than we give Rahm's cousins per year to kill Palestinians.
To put it simply: Obama doesn't quite "get" King's message. MLK was about love not war, peace not conflict, caring not indifference. He stood up for what he espoused and paid the ultimate price. Obama stands for nothing but appeasement -- to Wall Street, to the hawks at the Pentagon, to insurance companies and Big Phara, to lobbyists and rich supporters.
To even mention Obama and MLK together is an insult I regret to King's memory.
Gary
Jody Evans, Medea Benjamin, and Code Pink have gone soft and cowardly into the night.
When it was the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gates, and Murder Incorporated doing the killing, they were flapping all over the place. But now that it's Uncle Barack with his finger on the trigger, they soft-peddle their antiwar stance with no venom and little rock and roll.
They should ask the new mountain of civilians murdered by Uncle Barack, Gates, and Murder Incorporated if they care where Obama's "legacy will lie." To them and those of us with our eyes wide open, Obama's legacy is already laid in cement.
Man, this country can sure as hell bullshit itself into anything.
Legacy? He's a war criminal and betrayer of the Constitution. If Bush were doing and saying the same things, that would be obvious to you.
Will he be the War Criminal who turned away from war? Will Bankers give the money back? I suppose it is possible, I mean he got his kids a dog. He has a nice smile. He speaks well. He does those thoughtful pauses, where he looks off into the distance as though he were listening for the angels, before he lies and equivocates and says something completely safe and meaningless.
Meanwhile the planet burns, real people are ripped to shreds and tortured so we don't have to admit our horrible mistakes, and hard-earned taxes go to militarism, bankers, and the charades of Tweedle Dee.
What is this nonsense " tottering ....between hope and despair! What possible hope could there be left for Obama? He has chosen the dark path set out by his predecessor and escalated the evil that was churned so vigorously for eight years prior to his ascension to the 'throne' of the Fascist state. No there is no room for hope, there is only room for action! Wake up people and be aware when it comes time to vote!!!
The hope is that all elected officials in this country get thrown out of office.. It may be the only way to start to heal this mess.
We only hope that the people from the great state of Massachusetts do not elect the democrat, the last thing the Obomber should have is more votes in the senate. I suppose if all these bums are thrown out we may have some hope.
Problem is that most people like there bums because they bring the bacon home.
However we must start some where.. I am amassed at the number of people that get it.. Hell I must talk to one or two new ones a day, and I thought that there weren't any.
Support the Empire send your kids
Why is this comment flagged?
I'm not sure if it's worth commenting upon, but I've noticed several utterly gratuitous and unwarranted comments "flaggings" in the past couple of days.
Fortunately, they don't seem to result in corresponding gratuitous and unwarranted deletions-- judging, of course, from the flagged comments that are still there.
It's especially irksome to me, I guess, because for many years I lived in a little cubicle apartment in a larger cubical complex.
Over the years, we would periodically be subjected to rashes of "false alarms"-- vandals, pranksters, or mentally unstable residents pulling the building alarm, resulting in the needless hassle of evacuation, swarms of fire trucks and related services, etc.
"False-flagging" comments induces a mild PTSD reaction, perhaps.
· Yr Obd't Servant
YOS; maybe it was flagged by an old middle school English teacher because he/she spelled "amazed" as "amassed?" What do you reckon?
If comments got flagged because of atrocious spelling, and especially persistent punctuation errors (can you spell apostrophe?), there'd be less than half the comments typically seen on any thread. "Amassed" is bad, but I see worse on an hourly basis. And I've been a retired English teacher (K-16) for several years.
Ephraim: do you mean "fewer than half?" Just kidding, one of my pet grammatical peeves (sp?).
Vote for who? Most people on this site are aware enough to recognize that voting in the US has become a democratically-hollow, symbolic act.
Even Kucinich, when asked why he is still a member of the Democratic Party, defended his position by stating that the DC way of doing things is so corrupt (campaign financing/lobbying/bribery) that, even if a third party candidate was elected, he/she would never get the backing to push anything close to a progressive agenda.
"... even if a third party candidate was elected, he/she would never get the backing ..."
In that case, we can use our collective voice at the ballot box while we still can! What's the difference? We have to start somewhere!
Go Green!
I consider the source of this article.
I happen to know what the author did in Cairo. Cutting a deal with the dictator's wife, in private. Nothing she says or does surprises me.
She was a big Obama supporter. And she doesn't 'get it'. She was talking about the need for the u.s. military to not leave Afghanistan too soon. For the sake of the women!
But that was a few months ago. She may have changed her mind since then.
I don't think many here are waiting hopefully to find out what Obama's legacy will be. He set up permanent camp on the Mountain of Despair while intoning lie after hypocritical lie that he himself was the very Stone of Hope itself. The tragedy is that so many millions were willingly stoned on the false hope he spewed, and far too many continue swilling and staggering around senselessly from that poisoned cup.
It is time to give up dreaming and hoping that this fraud will in any way reprise MLK, when it's abundantly clear he's Bush warmed over, only wrapped in pretty brown packaging, looking like a middle-aged GQ runway model with fashionable Michelle at his side, and speaking "eloquently" into teleprompters as he never tires of justifying his criminal continuation of the entire Bush-Cheney Legacy. That's now HIS legacy. The abusive honeymoon is over. The verdict is in.
Ephraim: "The verdict (on Obama) is in" I agree. Interesting that Cornel West, a rare black dissident, was quoted as saying at an MLK event: We need to "protect and respect" him (Obama) but we also need to "correct" him. And that's too close to the discredited "Progressive for Obama" of first electing him and then "influencing" him. As long as Obama is "protected and respected," he's not amenable to "correction" because protection and respect are all his vulnerable and narcissistic personality demands.
"Hope" is standard presidential campaign pablum. Obama's peace prize speech could have been written by the speech writers of Reagan or Bush.
So, what was the deal with the starry eyes and why the absurd residual slack? The power of branding, of course. Of packaging. What else could it be? "Progressives" should be ashamed of themselves.
Obama is a stain on Black History and an affront to the memories of Dr. King and Malcolm X, real leaders and activists.
An Uncle Tom and a traitor, Obama has done nothing for blacks and other minorities since he became president but everything to further the agenda of his white masters. Shameful and tragic.
I remember the big stink when Nader asked, "The question is whether Obama will be Uncle Sam or Uncle Tom." Oh, my, what an uproar. This makes Nader a racist!! Nader said he was just asking that question.
Well, now we have the answer. Obama is Uncle Tom. He works to serve the master and not for the people of this nation or the world. Obama got a peace prize? What a sick joke.
And shame on us for falling for all that expensive P.R. to make us have false hope for any change. The demopublicans are for the wealthy and screw the working people what ever their skin color is. THe only way to get out from all this evil is to NEVER VOTE for the corporate parties again. Can't we learn?
Our whole political system to going ever more steadily and faster to the right. (fascism over democracy) The Republicans go right and the democrats go to the 'center' as that center moves right. Sometime big movement goes to the right under the democrats---like Nafta, the end of welfare and the banking deregulation under Clinton; or the expansion of the profitable wars into Pakistan, Yeman and Somalia under Obama.
Get off that right spinning merry-go-round and vote independent!
Why not say that Obama is the master himself, if you must use such imagery? Afterall, he is a very rich man, and a very powerful man. The MASTER. Or is the idea that a man with dark skin is the master too much for you and Nader to handle?
Was Clinton called an Uncle Tom? How about Hilary? Why not? Why is Obama an Uncle Tom, but not Bill Clinton?
Yes, it is racist, if Obama is Uncle Tom but Bill Clinton isn't.
Why is Obama not the Master?
No Obama's a puppet, not a master, for he bows to his white bosses, Emanuel, Bush, Cheney, the Clintons, Goldman Sachs, Blackwater, JPMorgan and Citigroup.
For your enlightenment, Wikipedia defines Uncle Tom as a "pejorative term for a black person who is perceived by others as behaving in a subservient manner to white authority figures, or as seeking ingratiation with them by way of unnecessary accommodation."
So you see, Uncle Tom doesn't apply to whites, Clinton, Bush or Hillary. I can think of many pejorative terms for them however.
And for the life of me, why would calling someone an Uncle Tom be racist? Nader was right (as he usually is).
I know full well what Uncle Tom means, you don't need to Wikipedia me to enlighten me.
How do you know that Obama is bowing? How do you know that those policies that he is instituting aren't HIS policies? How do you know that it isn't Emanuel who is his puppet, who does what Obama tells him to do? How do you know that he isn't instituting those policies because they benefit him, as a master? He is wealthy, he is among the elite, his 2 princesses study at an elite private school, etc, he does things that benefit the elite, which includes him.
Yes, it isn't used as a pejorative for whites. THAT IS WHY IT IS RACIST. It is racist because it enforces certain behaviour on blacks. If a black doesn't behave in a certain way, well, he is behaving like a slave.
It is racist because it is automatically assumed that if a black men isn't behaving in a certain way, he is behaving like a slave.
Why not assume that he is behaving like a master?
It is racist PRECISELY because you don't use it on Bill or Hillary.
You think Nader is right? Go to up random black people and tell them that in your opinion and Nader's opinion Obama is an Uncle Tom, and oh no, it isn't racist because wikipedia says that it is a pejorative only used against blacks.
Good luck.
You are, of course, exactly correct.
Thanks for another view on this. Something to think about .... again.
Uncle Tom, Uncle Sam, and the Man from UNCLE.
And, if you're from the third world, he won't stop bombing until you say Uncle!
Happy MLK day to everyone!
What a fantastic man he was and all tears and hope and praise to his memory!
A similar article, that is more to the point I'd say, by Paul Street posted on the blackagendareport.org
http://www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/killer-obama-dr-king-and-triple-evils
The twain shall never meet--BHO is as far from MLK as the East is to the West--is it because BHO is a white man living in a black man's body--and MLK was a real leader and a man of God living in a black man's body--totally two complete different beings.Always remember to judge men not by their color or creed, but by their character--so MLK's noble character can not be compared to BHO's Nobel character if you get my drift?
"I have a dream! I have a dream! I have a..."
**WTC gets blown up**
"...nightmare! We're all Goldman Sachs now!"
" By then we should have a better understanding where, between the Mountain of despair and the rock of hope Obama's legacy will lie". Medea, why do you have to wait till 2011? I did not vote for Obomba because I knew what his legacy would be if he got elected President, a long time ago. Sounds to me like you are still being conned and are apologizing for what Malcom X probably would have called the White House Negro; however your last three words if taken out of context, are correct: Obama's legacy will definately lie!
*** Comment deleted by site administrators for using all capital letters. ***
see: http://www.commondreams.org/comment-policy
I'm glad people adressed this head on today. If MLK were alive today I would say he would be embarrassed and humiliated at what Obama really represents. Irag and Afganistan, drone attacks, C.I.A. running out of control, Justice Department corrupt, less taxes for the rich, more taxes for everybody else, high unemployment, high inflation, less opportunity for everybody in general except the rich - THESE ARE NOT THE THINGS MARTIN LUTHER KING STOOD FOR.
Then, as now, as always ~ A REVOLUTION OF VALUES.
How can any citizen of this country, knowing what we know re: the CIA setups of conflicts/massacres too numerous to name (Iraq, Vietnam, Panama, Guatemala ... just for starters), knowing that MLK was murdered by a conspiracy from within the US Govt. ("King Family vs Jowers and...", 1999, Memphis Circuit Court), knowing of the undeniably questionable conclusions of both the Warren Commission and the Kean Commision, knowing what just happened to the US economy at the hands of Wall Street and "too big to fail" financial institutions ... we know all this and yet we keep on as if ... as if we were powerless.
A REVOLUTION OF VALUES!
How can a citizen pay for, work for, sit idly by and even stand, for living with THE BIG LIE. Unplug the mainstream media, end militarism, stop "working" for a taxable wage that supports the MIC, get to work living in the world you wish to create, WITH your neighbors, WITH your heart open and vulnerable, willing to take on CHANGE in your ACTIONS, NOW.
It always amazes, in reading replies to offerings like this, how quickly the tone descends to name calling, bickering and rants that have nothing to do original writing. Change THAT, lefties and righties. Stop the war within. As Kennedy said (and I'm sure JC said something along the same lines) "We breathe the same air."
JOIN THE REVOLUTION OF VALUES ~ turn away from money, ownership and genocide. You ARE a sovereign human being!
srenade: A REVOLUTION OF VALUES! - // "How can any citizen of this country, knowing what we know re: Listed ...
Do you really think the majority of our citizens do know, are even remotely aware of what's really going on?
My own family, just about all of whom live out of state, and who have bachelor's and master's degrees, and friends of mine from a retired college professor to a librarian to a retired NASA engineer from Long Island and California have absolutely nothing to say and minimal knowledge of what's happening at all. They all are caught up in their lives, children's and grandchildren's lives, current endeavors, etcetera.
Most watch CNN for their News or read "The Wall Street Journal" and the "NY Times" and the more standard news magazines such as TIME, and therefore have only "The Establishment" view, and go no further than that, nor are they interested to read more than that, even though I regularly supply them with web sites such as this one and many others to get a more comprehensive take.
They are really disinterested as I present my rundowns based on an enormous amount of reading and researching and intense interest. No matter what I say or report, there just is no interest in going further.
A former New Yorker, I've lived in a small town in upstate Western NY for most of my adult life. Here it's the same -- a minimal knowledge of what's happening and enormous disinterest to total apathy.
And it doesn't matter if the people are well-heeled, relatively comfortable and secure, or struggling some, they don't seem to want to know, and to me, it is as if they have been drugged from years and years of TV watching that perhaps gives one the sense that unless there is a fire burning in your own kitchen, you are watching a film of horrors, tragedies, wars going on, but it has really nothing to do with you or your family life.
To me, it's frightening. How does one arouse a citizenry which is caught up in the minutiae of their own lives and surroundings, but cannot see past that? ... nor are they interested in seeing past that? I will say, however, that what I have termed the "minutiae" of their lives keeps them very busy.
We're talking an age-range here of 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, early 70's, many who are college educated, several who are not and working hard at the jobs they have.
Yes, it's obviously more difficult. My son's expensive home is on the market; others have been in and out of jobs; a few are looking for work; others seem not to have been touched at all by the economic mess.
All of these people are "good," decent people, law-abiding and hard-working when that is or has been required. Some have been touched by personal tragedies and griefs, but those things have not been enough evidently to create a bridge of feelings to the Afghan peoples, for example, who have been touched by great personal tragedies and griefs, delivered by the United States of America.
A REVOLUTION OF VALUES? I don't think these folks would even know what that meant.
They have good family values and solid work ethics and, I'm sure, consider themselves good citizens, and over-all life has been quite good.
Frankly, however, they, and many more like them, frighten me. They are vapid, ignorant, stuck.
Most are far more successful than I am, in terms of their worth monetarily and the over-all stability of their lives.
Do bombs have to drop in their kitchens before they wake up?
Anybody else find in the general population more apathy than interest? more unconcern than any sense of urgency? more ignorance than a fair amount of actual knowledge about the major crises confronting us here and around the world?
???????????????
/cm
I applaud this insightful and moving response. I would add only the words of James Baldwin, from a letter he wrote to his nephew on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation:
"This is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them; that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it."
Oh what the heck, one more, just because of the significance of the day:
"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
For me I've moved away from considering "apathy" and lack of "interest", toward recognizing denial and recognizing what the interest is that consumes one's passion(very helpful personally, professionally and socially). As can be found in your writing most if not all people function, in part if not the main driving force, from a traumatic experience(which can be an imaginary "I need" forced upon the imagination). Denial of course masks the pain, especially emotional, of an experience until a new form of behavior that reconciles the masked emotional state can come forward; thus most compulsive television viewing is a choice to deny masked emotions and not so much a brain washing by "the beast or state or AIPEC".
All people share basic interests, what actions are taken to meet those interests are greatly varied. Recognition of the interest a friend or relative or associate is acting under, and the emotion related to this motivation, is the first step in culturing the trust needed to explore the very real and very fearful areas of life being masked with denial (and in certain circumstances it may very well be better to leave the denial in place...no new behavior opportunity experienced, no dropping of denial). Are you ready to be there when the flow of passion starts to redirect? If not, the situation can get very messy. If so, then all that striving to have the latest and greatest flat screen or the greenest grass can be focused on the common interests with the civilians caught in the cross fire in the Middle East, as well as the common interests of those caught in the cross fire of drug wars and the abject poverty of the American Ghetto on this continent.
I know about the lawsuit and the decision. I know that the "certain associates" of Loyd Jowers are supposed to be members of the Memphis Police, Tennessee State Troopers, agents of the CIA, the FBI and various domestic military intelligence operations along with J. Edgar Hoover’s Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).
I just never bought it.
The decision at that was that "other unknown co-conspirators." worked with Jowers to frame Ray. Even IF so, and the evidence had a lot of holes, being almost exclusively hearsay and rumor, how then one jumps to concluding it was a government plot involving an enormous number of agencies and people is beyond my imaginative powers. Not one of which agencies or persons has been _shown_ to be involved. Just a lot of rumor and innuendo. Let alone have any admitted it.
Personally, IF James Earl Ray _was_ the fall guy and not actually the assassin, (still a big if) then a white power and racist group is far more likely "co-conspirators" as these are the kind of vile people Ray would have associated with in the first place being a Hitler-loving bigot himself. Not the entire law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the United States! Come on now.
Even if it wasn't all these persons that have been suggested it still would involve a lot of people. And leave a trail.
Makes for a dramatic and exciting conspiracy. But it doesn't pass the smell test.
Of course the exhaustive investigation ( http://www.justice.gov/crt/crim/mlk/part1.php ) of these very allegations is "another Warren Report" cover-up. Right? Yeah right. They always are aren't they. Always.
I'm hardly naive about what the government is capable of. It COULD be true in the abstract. It just doesn't feel right _this_ time.
In summary I am unconvinced by the "evidence" as it currently exists.
Gary
There also was that guy in the Carolinas openly collecting money for MLK's assassination for years. Until people staring bugging him about no result.
"It always amazes, in reading replies to offerings like this, how quickly the tone descends to name calling, bickering and rants that have nothing to do original writing."
It's a symptom of the emotional plague, where the excitement of one thinking they are right and defining something (the basis of Western education) is ingrained behaviorally to such an extent that the pleasure of crafting an argument on an organic level is missed and passed off as woo woo or non-realistic thinking. The trick, and it's very tricky, is to somehow culture an environment, including the conversation, that offers an opportunity for insight into the pleasure that can be had, with the same insight showing the before chosen behavior of "excitement" as containing masochistic aspects; under this scenario changes in the shrill compulsive behavior can be made toward the composed behavior from where answers to the day's challenge can arise.
After the Republicans take away the Democrats' majority, the Dems will have their excuses back. Whew! This has been rough for them, having to stand there, full Monty, with everything hangin' out! When Republicans gain in Congress, the hope disappears. Obama will posture even more. This is all by design.
Given Obama is making sure bi-partisanship with evil is all we have, can he really be called the lesser of two evils?
Medea, I'm kind of embarrassed by this article of yours. You're teetering? What happened to your fire? Did Obama and the Dems drown it with a big bucket of water?
World Can't Wait has not teetered one little bit. Check it out!
How far can Obama Barack Off?!
FWIW, I've read this article over twice, and am less sure of Medea's point than ever.
Put another way, she seems truly confused over WHAT to believe about, or expect from, Obama.
It's my iconoclastic nature to root for persons like Medea, and groups like "Code Pink", even if they're at times more "hellraiser wannabes" than actual hellraisers. So I'm touched by the profoundly pathetic quality of this commentary. I mean "pathetic" in the original sense, not in the pejorative, derisive sense more common nowadays.
She can see that Obama's spell is losing potency, and that formerly enchanted and enthralled masses are beginning to remember that "talk is cheap", and "handsome is as handsome does".
The piece reads like Medea warning that she's losing the MOOD here, and won't Obama please get himself together and vindicate everyone's cherished hopes and expectations? There's an implicit, but distinct, FORLORN quality to her words.
It feels like poor Medea is sitting at a table alone, nursing a second glass of wine, checking her watch in spite of herself, and wondering why this really terrific guy she met hasn't shown up yet to escort her to a Martin Luther King Day remembrance.
Incidentally-- I'll probably be repeating this a lot-- it flashed upon me today that if an inquisitive extraterrestrial asked me to name the single most remarkable aspect of Obama vis-à-vis his admirers, I would reply, "For some reason, an awful lot of people mistake Barack Obama for a HUMANITARIAN."
· Yr Obd't Servant
Damn, I love your take on things. I'd rather read your comments than most of the articles in here. I never really say this, but you rock, dude.
Yr Obedient....Excellent commentary and wit!
Thanks to you and Ephraim for your kind compliments.
[blushes]
· Yr Obd't Servant
For several years I worked as a teacher in an after-school program for public housing residents. Racially, the tables were turned in our little social unit, where african-americans made up 95% of the pop and eur-americans 5%
I'd have to sa it was a good learning experience, understanding what it's like to be a minority. Except, of course, I could go home at night and step out of the role of the oppressed.
The most quixotic part of that experience was "how to react?" to the phenomenon of black kids referring to one another as 'nigger.' Had it been white kids there would have no doubt. Detention and an oral report.
A black co-worker told me to "let it go." My white supervisor laughed it off.
My class watched a film about integrating the lunch counters in the south. Of course black kids knew all about the word. They were trying to defuse it. But they didn't know the history.
So the word went out of fasion for a week or maybe two.
Probably a bad choice of terminology for Ralph Nader to refer to Obama as an Uncle Tom. He is. He's sold out the people who were counting on him and he's done it throughout his career. Just like a strikebreaker sells out their brothers and sisters. They're scabs. These aren't words you're born with, you have to earn them.
Obama is an Uncle Tom. Earned the title the old-fashioned way, by selling out. But it needs to be Jesse Jackson or John Conyers or Maxine Waters who says it.
Hmm in hindsight, perhaps Nader should have refered to Michael Moore as an Uncle Tom too as he was truly on his knees. Again, it was shameful how the "progressives" turned their back on Nader and jumped in front of the demagogue's bus.
What is interesting is that "they" attack Nader personally and fail utterly to discuss his agenda and platform, which is their own as well. We do indeed get the kind of govt we seem to deserve.
The man is dead and I for one would not want to superimpose what mlk would want more than a black or a mulatto to become president of this country BUT, I just cannot by having lived through the rottenness and objection to his civil rights cause to have the first black to be nothing more than the same of the past administrations which includes slick willie's 2 terms and if alive I would think he should be most angry.
But, as he is not here, just where in the hell are his family members who have no qualms about basking in the light of his hard fought push for equality but who have not said anything about o's actions which varies so obviously from his slick tongue rhetoric; where is jesse jackson, al sharpton and others.
It is just a bit too hard to think these hangers on to mlk's coat tails are, in their silence, demonstrating through their actions, approval of corporate suppression that can't be much better than when all the civil rights posturing was happening under mlk in the 60s, but then again, it may be easier to grease palms to keep them quiet than to have a bunch of people objecting to the 'new' president.
"... just where in the hell are his family members who have no qualms about basking in the light of his hard fought push for equality but who have not said anything about o's actions which varies so obviously from his slick tongue rhetoric; where is jesse jackson, al sharpton and others."
Each year during the NAACP annual conference, about mid-week, there is a Military Dinner. Any writing I've seen from Jackson, Sharpton, or King III over the last decade fails to include the linking of poverty to the behavior of war as part of daily commerce that the "Original King" made. It is my hope that the likes of Reverend Wendall Anthony, past president of Detroit Chapter of the NAACP, and the above mentioned will come around to making the link King did(how do you get corporate sponsorship for a statue if you're rocking the boat?). Anthony in Detroit has started to call the Jobs, or lack of jobs, situation a "national security" concern. But it's a high hurdle to leap...overcoming the momentum of a Military Dinner, and the fact that a large part of the economic activity in the African-American community comes from Yum Yum Foods(how do you dare bite the hand that feeds you; especially when that hand can be easily turned for a backhand slap which has been the relative norm in this nation?) perhaps the largest private contractor organization in the Middle East.
Yeah, hopefully the economic pressure (the current depression added to 8-10 million still in a Slave Economy) coming into the African-American population, that didn't or wasn't able to move from the American Ghetto or it's fringe, will force the link between poverty and militarism into the light of day and into the daily conversation of the likes of King III, Jackson and Sharpton.
Here is THE problem.
Too many people could not or would not see beyond Barack Obama's skin color.
To try to compare Obama to Martin Luther King Jr. is an insult to Mr. King.
Barack Obama is a corporate, surveillance loving, warmongering liar who gets away with it because he calls himself democrat and has darker skin.
Martin Luther King Jr. was a man of peace and a believed in equal justice for all - no matter their income, their religion, their skin color, or their nationality.
Please stop contaminating the legacy of a great human being by associating his work with the work of a fraud.