For having seen it televised to the point of saturation, the first thing that comes to mind about Rev. Martin Luther King for most people around the world and in the US, are his opening words before a massive civil rights demonstration in the US capitol Washington DC, "I have a dream!"
Also somewhat well known is that King was shot to death five years later.
What
the world and most every Americans under the age of fifty, do not know
(for it having been criminally suppressed in all US media for nearly a
half-century), is that exactly one year before being assassinated, Rev.
King condemned the US war in Vietnam and all previous "atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945 meant to maintain unjust predatory investments" and held all Americans, including himself, responsible for these atrocity wars for "not being willing to give up the pleasures and privileges that come from the immense profits from those predatory investment the wars and violence had been protecting.
In
Europe, on April 8th, 1967, as your author descended stairs to the
Hotel lobby, his eye rebounded as it caught a glimpse of the news stand,
for the headlines in bold large print on all the newspapers from around
the world: "KING CONDEMNS US WARS," "KING CONDEMNS US WARS FOR PROFIT," " KING CALL US GREATEST PURVEYOR OF VIOLENCE IN WORLD."
US
media from New York Times to tabloids, from TV News Networks to radio
and magazines vilified King as a traitor to his country and a disgrace
to his race, removing himself as a leader by his shameful sermon at
Riverside Church in New York City. Elected officials and politicians
ranted about him being worst than just unpatriotic.
Fifty
years ago, with powerful media and popular government spokespersons
denouncing King as a traitor without ever referring to the truthful
history and current genocidal situation in Vietnam, the average American
got the message that agreeing with King's truthful statements would be
social and political suicide. In America's Baptist churches, both
ministers and congregations, were at first reticent to speak, then
slowly carefully let it be known they could not go along with King. Some
of King's fellow civil rights leaders within the national coalition
King led, felt the need to be vocal in dissent from King saying
involving themselves with the war in Vietnam would sidetrack the civil
rights movement. Though King's prominence as an American leader was
diminished, his plans for a second nationwide march on Washington being
planned with the theme connecting poverty to the war in Vietnam was
going forward in strength when King received the bullet to his brain
that stopped that march on poverty and the war. One
imagines that those investors of trillions of dollars in the Vietnam
war breathed a sign of relief, having feared King could stop their wars
as he stopped segregation.
In
the weeks after King's assassination, the African American poor in most
major and some minor cities rioted with much loss of life and great
destruction. To get the image of King off and out of the streets so to
speak, the image of King was 'promoted' upstairs to most great American
hero, the only American hero to have a three day official national
holiday celebrating his birth. And perhaps that mollified many in the
nation's African American communities and made them less likely to
notice the complete tight media black out of any mere mention of King's
condemnations of US wars.
In his world shaking New York sermon 'Beyond Vietnam a Time to Break Silence' Martin Luther King held all Americans, including himself, "responsible
for atrocity wars and covert violence on three continents since 1945,
all meant to maintain lucrative unjust predatory investments." Though King throughout his sermon spoke to his fellow Americans, dismissing his government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,"
we have, in all these intervening years since his assassination, become
used to seeing those few protesting US wars pointing a finger at their
own government and away from themselves.
King
gave his audience a succinct history of US crimes in Vietnam beginning
in 1945 that would today awaken understanding of the history of all
previous and subsequent US crimes against humanity in small defenseless
nations. King's
warning to humanity of a continuing illegal and genocidal use of the
nation's armed forces, secret services and media has been blacked out of
Western media and all sources of information for nearly a half century. What
would happen today if people read and heard the video on the Internet
rarely clicked on to baring Luther King's horrific descriptions of
merciless abominable mass murder of a peaceful innocent Buddish
population of mostly rice farmers, for example: "They
languish under our bombs and consider us, not their fellow Vietnamese,
the real enemy. They move sadly and apathetically as we herd them off
the
land of their fathers into concentration camps where minimal social
needs are rarely met. They know they must move on or be destroyed by our
bombs.
So
they go, primarily women and children and the aged. They watch as we
poison their water, as we kill a million acres of their crops. They must
weep as
the bulldozers roar through their areas preparing to destroy the
precious trees. They wander into the hospitals with at least twenty
casualties from American firepower for one Vietcong-inflicted injury. So
far we may have killed a million of them, mostly children.
They wander into the towns and see thousands of the children, homeless,
without clothes, running in packs on the streets like animals. They see
the children degraded by our soldiers as they beg for food. They see
the children selling their sisters to our soldiers,
soliciting for their mothers."What do the peasants think as we ally ourselves with the landlords and as we refuse to put any action into our many words concerning land reform? What do they think as we test out our latest weapons on them, just as the Germans tested out new medicine and new tortures in the concentration camps of Europe? Where are the roots of the independent Vietnam we claim to be building? Is it among these voiceless ones?
We have destroyed their two most cherished institutions: the family and the village. We have destroyed their land and their crops." We have cooperated in the crushing in the crushing Buddhist Church. We have supported the enemies of the peasants of Saigon. We have corrupted their women and children and killed their men."
Those who are old enough to have heard King's anguished plea for
the lives of non-white brothers and sisters and their children in
Vietnam and other poor countries, have maintained a silence that King
called betrayal.
"A time comes when silence is betrayal." And that time has come for us."
But since even King's own family and his closest colleagues and friends
have maintained a betraying silence as they pursued political careers
during wars so profitable for the Industrial Military Financial Complex
that engendered them. In retrospect, it was not to be expected that
anyone would raise his voice, seeing what happened to King.
For nearly five decades, even America's thousand African American celebrities, somehow, either out of fear or lack of interest, have cooperated by their silence with America's total blackout of Martin Luther King's anguished cry, "Silence is betrayal!" and have remained silent, indifferently silent, while non-white men, women and children by the millions have perished 'in harms way' of Americans, including Black Americans, in uniform. (Why the rest of the world has produced no vocal King follower is a topic for another article, but the snow job of Rockefeller ushering a person of color as the latest Commander-in-Chief of the White Colonial Power ruled planet is of no small importance.)
For nearly five decades, even America's thousand African American celebrities, somehow, either out of fear or lack of interest, have cooperated by their silence with America's total blackout of Martin Luther King's anguished cry, "Silence is betrayal!" and have remained silent, indifferently silent, while non-white men, women and children by the millions have perished 'in harms way' of Americans, including Black Americans, in uniform. (Why the rest of the world has produced no vocal King follower is a topic for another article, but the snow job of Rockefeller ushering a person of color as the latest Commander-in-Chief of the White Colonial Power ruled planet is of no small importance.)
There are
exceptions to the above mentioned. Hon. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the
Nation of Islam, is unrelenting in referring to King's words and speaks
eloquently to the subject of American genocide. Perhaps waiting in the
wings for less dangerous weather is Obama's ex-family minister Rev.
Jeremiah Wright of "God damn America for her crimes against humanity!" TV sound bite fame during Obama's 2008 election campaign.
Your
author believes that the half-century of continual destruction of US
'humanitarian'
bombings, 'humanitarian' invasions and 'humanitarian' occupations that
have gone on since King's outcry was silenced, might have created enough
unease for folks to be
ready to see the difference between truth and lies, should King's
Beyond Vietnam be given rebirth.
Amazingly
brazen titles of recent articles of a conservative former
Under-secretary of the Treasury under President Ronald Reagan
and former editor of the Wall Street Journal, writer Paul Craig Roberts,
strike this author as portending public disillusionment:
'The
Proof Is In: The US Government Is The Most Complete Criminal
Organization In Human History';
'US Government Drives Toward War With
Russia';
'The "War On Terror" Is The Hoax Foundation Of The Police/Spy
State';
'Americans Stand Naked Before Injustice';
'The Fate of Children in
the Amerian Police State';
'The Rule of Law no Longer Exists in Western Civilization;'
'The Rule of Law no Longer Exists in Western Civilization;'
'This is America Today' - a gutless, cowardly population that accepts mass murder of women and children and destruction of countries without protest.'
Another
conservative, Ron Paul, during 2012 debates for Republican candidate
for President was heard on prime time new programs repeating over and
over again for two weeks saying, 'All
the bombings, invasions, occupations beginning with those of Korea were
illegal and unconstitutional and a horrible taking of lives.'
Will
it happen in 2016, during the weekend holiday in the United States
dedicated to Martin Luther King's birth date that of the dozens of
nations presently under attack, whether by US NATO UN military or
economic warfare, one will field a celebrity status
leader reading to the public from King's long suppressed sermon Beyond
Vietnam - a Time to Break Silence?
If a crack in the ice is opened up, the crack will spread until a river of life saving truth is navigable.
This would be to the protection of everyone on Earth, for as Indian writer Arundhati Roy writes in 'Capitalism a Ghost Story, "the multinationals own the Indian government, which budgets officially the starving to death of millions of children annually." King had cried out, "There will be no progress on social issues, as long as the poor abroad are killed using the enormous human and financial resources that make any such progress impossible."
If it became widely known, that America's hero condemned his government as,
"the US government is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world,"
it would disable credibility of war criminal media and their ability to
justify humanitarian genocide after humanitarian genocide,
and end the civil rights movement being a war supporting movement. It
will be a hell of lot harder for media to denounce Rev. King after
praising him as a great American for a half-century.
It
will be an opportunity for Martin Luther King's words to help Russia,
Syria, Venezuela and all nations under US attack by quoting suppressed
'Beyond Vietnam a Time to Break Silence. King identified the genocidal
danger the US represents, for all humanity to be aware of for its own
protection, and not to be fooled by its war investors owned media.
Eventually the world will understand that King was assassinated to protect the $trillions invested in these wars that will continue as long their profitability continues and the world public is disinterested in making them unprofitable for the compensations, reparations and indemnities that will eventually be awarded tens of millions of victims and survivors of unlawful death, injury, deformed birth, destruction and theft of natural resources. The changing world balance of economic power Eastward and Southward now underway will bring this justice about, but better sooner than wait.
Eventually the world will understand that King was assassinated to protect the $trillions invested in these wars that will continue as long their profitability continues and the world public is disinterested in making them unprofitable for the compensations, reparations and indemnities that will eventually be awarded tens of millions of victims and survivors of unlawful death, injury, deformed birth, destruction and theft of natural resources. The changing world balance of economic power Eastward and Southward now underway will bring this justice about, but better sooner than wait.
The complete text of Beyond Vietnam a Time to Break Silence can be read, or King's voice heard, at http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm
or by simply googling 'Beyond Vietnam American Rhetoric.'
And after listening or reading King's Beyond Vietnam, one might scroll down the Ramsey Clark co-founded educational and stimulus website Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign containing the pertinent laws and a country by country history of us crimes in 19 nations. http://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com can be viewed by googling name.
Finally, those interested may check out:
War-Promoting Media's Snow Job and King's Condemning US Wars for Predatory Investments which contains links to OpEdNews Author jay janson's forty articles on King's last year on Earth.
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