HAPPY BIRTHDAY Dr. Martin Luther
Jan. 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten. A society is always eager to cover misdeeds with a cloak of forgetfulness, but no society can fully repress an ugly past when the ravages persist into the present. America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness — justice.
MLK ~ Where Do We Go From Here?
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Coretta Scott King: “We have done what we can to reveal the truth, and we now urge you as members of the media, and we call upon elected officials, and other persons of influence to do what they can to share the revelation of this case to the widest possible audience.” – King Family Press Conference, Dec. 9, 1999.
“For a quarter of a century, Bill Pepper conducted an independent investigation of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. He opened his files to our family, encouraged us to speak with the witnesses, and represented our family in the civil trial against the conspirators. The jury affirmed his findings, providing our family with a long-sought sense of closure and peace, which had been denied by official disinformation and cover-ups. Now the findings of his exhaustive investigation and additional revelations from the trial are presented in the pages of this important book. We recommend it highly to everyone who seeks the truth about Dr. King’s assassination.” — Coretta Scott King
Great Read: “Act of State” by William Pepper, attorney for the King family who won a guilty verdict for $100 settlement where a 30 day trial, with over 70 witnesses called and a jury deliberation of just two hours against Jowers, and other “unnamed co-conspirators” of the Memphis Police Department and the 8-man sniper team backed by the 111th U.S. Military Intelligence Unit who were all at the scene the Assassination.
The Assassination occurred exactly one year to the day of his “Beyond Vietnam” speech where he called out the U.S. Government as the “greatest purveyors of violence the world has ever seen.”
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“Orders to Kill” Dr. Martin Luther King: The Government that Honors MLK with a National Holiday Killed Him
Martin Luther King’s family and his attorney, William F. Pepper, won a civil trial that found US government agencies guilty in the wrongful death of Martin Luther King. The 1999 trial, King Family versus Jowers and Other Unknown Co-Conspirators, is the only trial ever conducted on the assassination of Dr. King. The King family’s attempts for a criminal trial were denied, as suspect James Ray’s recant of what he claimed was a false confession was denied.
The overwhelming evidence of government complicity introduced and agreed as comprehensively valid by the jury includes the 111th Military Intelligence Group were sent to Dr. King’s location and that the usual police protection was pulled away just before the assassination. Military Intelligence set-up alleged photographers on a roof of a fire station with a clear view to Dr. King’s balcony. 20th Special Forces Group had an 8-man sniper team at the assassination location on that day.
The overwhelming evidence of government complicity introduced and agreed as comprehensively valid by the jury includes:
US 111th Military Intelligence Group were at Dr. King’s location during the assassination.
20th Special Forces Group had an 8-man sniper team at the assassination location on that day.
Usual Memphis Police special body guards were advised they “weren’t needed” on the day of the assassination.
Regular and constant police protection for Dr. King was removed from protecting Dr. King an hour before the assassination.
Military Intelligence set-up photographers on a roof of a fire station with a clear view to Dr. King’s balcony.
Dr. King’s room was changed from a secure 1st-floor room to an exposed balcony room.
Memphis police ordered the scene where multiple witnesses reported as the source of shooting cut down of their bushes that would have http://tabu4all.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=posthid a sniper.
Along with sanitizing a crime scene, police abandoned investigative procedure to interview witnesses who lived by the scene of the shooting.
The rifle Mr. Ray delivered was not matched to the bullet that killed Dr. King, and was not sighted to accurately shoot
Memphis police ordered the scene where multiple witnesses reported as the source of shooting cut down of their bushes that would have hid a sniper team. Along with sanitizing a crime scene, police abandoned investigative procedure to interview witnesses who lived by the scene of the shooting.
Along with arranging for the assassination, CIA and military disclosure confirm that corporate media collude with political “leadership” to disinform the American public on strategic military, policy, and economic issues. This answers the question why corporate media have not covered the civil trial and verdict for MLK’s assassination. For comparison, please consider the media circus over O.J. Simpson’s trials.
The King family’s attempts for a criminal trial were denied, as suspect James Ray’s recant of a guilty plea were denied. Mr. Ray said that his government-appointed attorney told him to sign a guilty plea to prevent the death penalty for his part in delivering the murder weapon for Dr. King’s assassination, and to prevent arrests of his father and brother as probable co-conspirators. Mr. Ray produced a letter from his attorney stating the promise that Mr. Ray would receive a trial. When Mr. Ray discovered that he was solely blamed for Dr. King’s assassination and would never receive a trial, the King family’s and Mr. Ray’s subsequent requests for a trial were denied.
The US government also denied the King family’s requests for independent investigation of the assassination. Therefore, and importantly, the US government has never presented any evidence subject to challenge that substantiates their claim that Mr. Ray assassinated Dr. King.
The King Center, managed by his family, provide the outline and partial transcript to the trial here. Closing statements are here. A transcript of a talk given by Mr. Pepper explaining the trial and his book with detailed documentation, An Act of State, is here (2-page summary here). I also recommend David Ratcliffe’s review of the book, Jim Douglass’ coverage of the trial, reviewing Edward Rynearson’s resources, and watching Mr. Pepper’s talk on the subject here.
“We are taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in Southwest Georgia and East Harlem. So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.”
King’s family and Mr. Pepper allege that Dr. King’s speech calling upon America to end the Vietnam War, Beyond Vietnam: A time to break silence, and his plan for a 500,000 camp-in for Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1968 were a threat to dominant and fascist political factions within US government. The evidence for Robert Kennedy’s assassination is also conclusive of government complicity with likely motive to suppress war dissent.
Along with arranging for the assassination, CIA and military disclosure confirm that corporate media collude with political “leadership” to disinform the American public on strategic military, policy, and economic issues. This answers the question why corporate media have not covered the civil trial and verdict for MLK’s assassination.
This conclusion is consistent with US history, past and recent, for US “leaders” to lie and kill for wars of choice. These lies are then “covered” by corporate media in news and history texts.
Please watch this six-minute video of the evidence from the trial, and this eight-minute video on the FBI’s disclosures of covert operations against Dr. King, including confirmation from his closest friends and advisors.
Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s wife, is certain of the evidence after 30 years of consideration from the 1968 assassination to the 1999 trial:
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US corporate media did not cover the trial, interview the King family, and textbooks omit this information. Journalist and author, James Douglass
“I can hardly believe the fact that, apart from the courtroom participants, only Memphis TV reporter Wendell Stacy and I attended from beginning to end this historic three-and-one-half week trial. Because of journalistic neglect scarcely anyone else in this land of ours even knows what went on in it. After critical testimony was given in the trial’s second week before an almost empty gallery, Barbara Reis, U.S. correspondent for the Lisbon daily Publico who was there several days, turned to me and said, “Everything in the U.S. is the trial of the century. O.J. Simpson’s trial was the trial of the century. Clinton’s trial was the trial of the century.
But this is the trial of the century, and who’s here?” For comparison, please consider the media coverage of O.J. Simpson’s trials:
“Media coverage of the Simpson trial, which began in January 1995, was unlike any other. Over two thousand reporters covered the trial, and 80 miles of cable was required to allow nineteen television stations to cover the trial live to 91 percent of the American viewing audience. When the verdict was finally read on October 3, 1995, some 142 million people listened or watched. It seemed the nation stood still, divided along racial lines as to the defendant’s guilt or innocence. During and after the trial, over eighty books were published about the event by most everyone involved in the Simpson case.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/01/mlk-assassinated-us-govt-king-family-civil-trial-verdict.html
http://www.examiner.com/article/martin-luther-king-assassinated-by-us-government-mlk-civil-trial-decision
U.S. Government Military Assassin Squad, Memphis Police, Two Individuals Convicted of Killing Martin Luther King ~ 1999
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Mr. King was gunned down exactly one year to the day he challenged the Military/Industrial complex with his “Beyond Vietnam; Time to Break the Silence” speech which exposed the real reasons for the occupation of Vietnam. While he exposed the lies of war, which was later expanded upon by Daniel Ellsberg in the “Pentagon Papers” in 1973, it was the fear of the powerful that Dr. King had gotten too powerful and was not going to keep his movement to Civil Rights and the poor.
“Perhaps the more difficult but no less necessary task is to speak for those who have been designated as our enemies. What of the National Liberation Front — that strangely anonymous group we call VC or Communists? What must they think of us in America when they realize that we permitted the repression and cruelty of Diem which helped to bring them into being as a resistance group in the south? What do they think of our condoning the violence which led to their own taking up of arms? How can they believe in our integrity when now we speak of “aggression from the north” as if there were nothing more essential to the war? How can they trust us when now we charge them with violence after the murderous reign of Diem and charge them with violence while we pour every new weapon of death into their land? Surely we must understand their feelings even if we do not condone their actions. Surely we must see that the men we supported pressed them to their violence. Surely we must see that our own computerized plans of destruction simply dwarf their greatest acts.
How do they judge us when our officials know that their membership is less than twenty-five percent Communist and yet insist on giving them the blanket name? What must they be thinking when they know that we are aware of their control of major sections of Vietnam and yet we appear ready to allow national elections in which this highly organized political parallel government will have no part? They ask how we can speak of free elections when the Saigon press is censored and controlled by the military junta. And they are surely right to wonder what kind of new government we plan to help form without them — the only party in real touch with the peasants. They question our political goals and they deny the reality of a peace settlement from which they will be excluded. Their questions are frighteningly relevant. Is our nation planning to build on political myth again and then shore it up with the power of new violence?
Here is the true meaning and value of compassion and nonviolence when it helps us to see the enemy’s point of view, to hear his questions, to know his assessment of ourselves. For from his view we may indeed see the basic weaknesses of our own condition, and if we are mature, we may learn and grow and profit from the wisdom of the brothers who are called the opposition, so he needed to be removed, just like JFK before him and Robert Kennedy after.
“So, too, with Hanoi. In the north, where our bombs now pummel the land, and our mines endanger the waterways, we are met by a deep but understandable mistrust. To speak for them is to explain this lack of confidence in Western words, and especially their distrust of American intentions now. In Hanoi are the men who led the nation to independence against the Japanese and the French, the men who sought membership in the French commonwealth and were betrayed by the weakness of Paris and the willfulness of the colonial armies. It was they who led a second struggle against French domination at tremendous costs, and then were persuaded to give up the land they controlled between the thirteenth and seventeenth parallel as a temporary measure at Geneva. After 1954 they watched us conspire with Diem to prevent elections which would have surely brought Ho Chi Minh to power over a united Vietnam, and they realized they had been betrayed again.When we ask why they do not leap to negotiate, these things must be remembered. Also it must be clear that the leaders of Hanoi considered the presence of American troops in support of the Diem regime to have been the initial military breach of the Geneva agreements concerning foreign troops, and they remind us that they did not begin to send in any large number of supplies or men until American forces had moved into the tens of thousands.Hanoi remembers how our leaders refused to tell us the truth about the earlier North Vietnamese overtures for peace, how the president claimed that none existed when they had clearly been made. Ho Chi Minh has watched as America has spoken of peace and built up its forces, and now he has surely heard of the increasing international rumors of American plans for an invasion of the north. He knows the bombing and shelling and mining we are doing are part of traditional pre-invasion strategy. Perhaps only his sense of humor and of irony can save him when he hears the most powerful nation of the world speaking of aggression as it drops thousands of bombs on a poor weak nation more than eight thousand miles away from its shores.At this point I should make it clear that while I have tried in these last few minutes to give a voice to the voiceless on Vietnam and to understand the arguments of those who are called enemy, I am as deeply concerned about our troops there as anything else. For it occurs to me that what we are submitting them to in Vietnam is not simply the brutalizing process that goes on in any war where armies face each other and seek to destroy. We are adding cynicism to the process of death, for they 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 hell for the poor.”
Beyond Vietnam ~ Transcript
Beyond Vietnam ~ Audio
“They told us we wouldn’t get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are here and that we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, ‘We ain’t going to let nobody turn us around.’
“I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’ How long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.’ … How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
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Celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day this Monday with fifteen of his most poignant quotes—some you may have heard already and some you probably haven’t—but all of them worth repeating and contemplating on this holiday of remembrance, service, and equality.
1. “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.”
2. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
3. “Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude.”
On Aug. 28, 1963, in front of a crowd of 250,000, King departed from his prepared words to share a dream that would mesmerize the nation. (Getty Images)
4. “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
5. “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.”
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. giving his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. (Photo by Francis Miller//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images)
6. “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
7. “Never succumb to the temptation of bitterness.”
Why Is the Quote Getting Removed from Martin Luther King Jr.’s Memorial?
King, his wife, Coretta Scott, and their first-born child, Yolanda, shown here at home in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. (Getty Images)
8. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
9. “We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.”
King at age 24. (Getty Images)
10. “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.”
11. “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle.”
12. “Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend.”
13. “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.”
14. “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
March on Washington: Newspaper Front Pages Circa 1963
15. “If you can’t fly then run, if you can’t run then walk, if you can’t walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.”
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, a 30-foot statue on the National Mall, was erected in 2011 and made in CHINA!