Here begins an essay that appeared on the writer’s blog yesterday to commemorate the life of Martin Luther King Jr., born Jan. 15, 1929. See also a reprinted 2016 review by Edward Curtin of The Plot to Kill King, HERE. — MCM
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By Edward Curtin | Behind the Curtain
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 . . . READ MORE . . .
