Monday, January 17, 2011

Martin Luther King Jr. "When Silence is Betrayal " Re: Vietnam War (War on Terror???) & Today's Media's Over The Top Rhetoric Fueling Hate and Violence

"...when silence is betrayal
...when dissent is equated with disloyalty."

from: A Time to Break the Silence -Martin Luther King Jr. King's anti-Vietnam war speech.

and on the role played by the Tea Party Republicans and the media in last weeks most recent massacre and assassination attempt in Tuscon here is a bit from an Open Letter from William Rivers Pitt:
Remember the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and the subsequent occupation? "WMD everywhere, al Qaeda connections to 9/11, plastic sheeting and duct tape because we're all gonna die!" was the central theme of the majority of your broadcast schedule for years...until it was all proven to be a lie. You helped the liars, you were the liars, but you knew that. You also got your spectacle, and the corporations that own you got paid a king's ransom, so everyone was happy, except the dead.


Tell me this is any different, I dare you. For the spectacle, the ratings and the pleasure of your owners, you ran names like "Sarah Palin" across the sky in lights, even after she should have faded into well-deserved obscurity, and helped this blister of right-wing rage fester until it finally burst. This was your show, and in perhaps the most wretched irony of all, I would bet all my worldly possessions that your ratings are through the roof right now. You got what you wanted. I hope you are pleased.

...That's right, I said it. Anyone who thinks good old-fashioned American bigotry and racism are not the core motivation for a vast majority of these so-called "revolutionaries" should get their heads examined. You've heard of the "elephant in the middle of the room?" Well, this is the burning cross in the middle of the room, and no amount of spin will douse those flames.
From " The Wrath of Fools: An Open Letter to the Far Right " by William Rivers Pitt via truthout, Jan. 10, 2011

Martin Luther King speaks out against the Vietnam War-
This speech is more often than not ignored by the mainstream media when they disingenuously do their yearly tributes to him.The media highlights King's civil rights protest but ignore his criticism of the Vietnam War and his talk about social justice for the poor in America.
He believed programs for uplifting the poor and to improve American civil society should come before ill-advised unjustifiable wars.


A Time to Break the Silence - Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr.



Unfortunately the Mainstream Media and the US government and the Pentagon at that time and even today see this speech as UnAmerican , as disloyalty .
Essentially any conflict the US is involved in according to the media , the government and the elites is not to be criticized or held up to ridicule.
Even now those who defend the status quo have convinced a large portion of the American public that War is a necessity and that it is always an honorable cause even when it is revealed to be based upon lies and propaganda . War is Peace they tell us .

Even now the US government and President Obama lie to the world claiming their unjust wars and their unjust killing of civilians is an honorable task when it is not.

If they are so concerned about the troops then they should bring them home and accept the fact that these wars are nothing short of insanity.

There is nothing honorable about committing murder , rape , torture and massacres
under the guise of liberation and freedom .


It is noteworthy that while many today pay homage to Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. others are calling for the assassination, execution, extrajudicial killing of Julian Assange who like Dr. King dares to speak truth to power.

Both have spoken out about lies, propaganda , and maintaining the status quo at any cost.
Both accuse the US for claiming to be on the side of freedom and justice for all when in fact this is just a cover story for even more mayhem and destruction in order to expand the American Empire.

No matter how the Media and even the US government , the Pentagon and even President Obama defend the on going war on terror it is still the wrong approach for taking on the terrorists.

The killing of innocent people by the US military or its allies will not bring victory but rather is a recruitment tool to be used by the terrorists and insurgents.

At some point surely America must come to grips with the difference between a fanatical terrorists and those who see themselves as taking up arms to defend their homes and family and their nation their homeland against the unwanted invaders ie the US military.

The American media it appears is still hostile to anyone who dares question the status quo. When some politicians and the US media were attacking Martin Luther King for being unAmerican or calling him a Communist and a traitor for daring to question the policies on the War In Vietnam helped to create a climate in which it became almost inevitable that someone would try to assassinate Martin Luther King.

anyway in America today there is once again an environment which is being fueled by politicians and the media in which average citizens are being warned that their country is under attack from within by liberals and progressives and without by fanatical terrorists and by those foreigners such as Julian Assange who are critical of US policies and those of its allies . Those who criticize in any real substantive form are demonized as being anti-American and therefore evil incarnate.

On Julian Assange and Inciting the "Whackers" by Peter H. Kemp via Truthout, jan. 16, 2011


It would seem appropriate at this point in time to examine some law on the numerous calls by various high-profile political or commentariat figures in the US (and one in Canada particularly) that Julian Assange be kidnapped, executed, murdered or otherwise "whacked," to use a favorite Hollywood gangster expression.

The CIA and/or US military forces have been invoked by some as the agents who would carry out such extra-curial "services," of which it must be said, such actions - both incitement and carrying the incitement out - are undoubtedly unlawful. Doubtless the early December Assange-illegal-posturing prime minister of Australia would not officially take kindly to the latter course of action.

The web roll of inciters or borderline inciters is growing.

Bob Beckel, an American political commentator and an analyst on the Fox News Channel, said, "There's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the s-o-b."

Tom Flanagan, ex-senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said, "I think Assange should be assassinated, actually." (He has since retracted this statement, which will help him if he is charged and convicted.)

Jonah Goldberg is among the less incite-ful. Goldberg is a US syndicated conservative columnist and author who asked, "Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?" To be fair to Goldberg, he also said he didn't expect the US government to kill Assange, merely "to stop him."

"Can we have a CIA agent with a sniper rifle rattle a bullet around his skull the next time he appears in public as a warning? You bet we can.... "

Rep. Peter King (R-New York) said, "I mean, they are assisting in terrorist activity," when he requested that the administration have WikiLeaks declared a terrorist organization.

William Kristol wrote an article, "Whack Wikileaks" citing Marc Thiessen and asking, "Why can't we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are?"

Jeffrey T. Kuhner, columnist at The Washington Times, wrote under an article, "Assassinate Assange":

He is aiding and abetting terrorists in their war against America. The administration must take care of the problem - effectively and permanently.... Mr. Assange is not a journalist or publisher; rather, he is an enemy combatant - and should be treated as such.... [W]e should treat Mr. Assange the same way as other high-value terrorist targets.

And so on. There are many more denouncements of Assange that border on incitement, including Vice President Biden's response to an interview question: "[Assange is] closer to being a high-tech terrorist."

While not all of these utterances and writings would necessarily satisfy the required elements of a charge of incitement, and notwithstanding the use of euphemisms such as "whack" or "permanently neutralize" and allusions to assassination by descriptions such as "terrorist organization" and "enemy combatant," they still leave an objective reader with little doubt that some of the authors want Assange dead, and that others would not be sorry to see it happen.

One other common thread that runs through all of the statements are mistaken assertions, or, at the very least, premature assertions, of illegality. As Glenn Greenwald pointed out recently and eloquently on a CNN broadcast, Mr. Assange is doing no more, or less, than what The New York Times is doing.

That, in any event, is a matter for a court to decide, if and only if Mr. Assange is charged with an offense, and if, and only if, he is then extradited to the US - both tall orders by many accounts, especially the latter.

Even if Julian Assange is charged, the presumption of innocence applies, and certainly there cannot be a presumption that he deserves death without trial - a form of hysterical presumption unknown to law that one might reiterate.


" The Wrath of Fools: An Open Letter to the Far Right " by William Rivers Pitt via truthout, Jan. 10, 2011

To:Palin-lovers, Fox "News," the "mainstream" media, and the Far Right, et al.

...You false patriots who bring assault rifles to political rallies, you hack politicians and media personalities who lied through your stinking teeth about "death panels" and "Obama is coming for your guns" and "He isn't a citizen" and "He's a secret Muslim" and "Sharia Law is coming to America," you who spread this bastard gospel and you who swallowed it whole, I am talking to you, because this was your doing just as surely as it was the doing of the deranged damned soul who pulled the trigger. The poison you injected into our culture is deeply culpable for this carnage.

You who worship Jesus at the top of your lungs (in defiance of Christ's own teachings on the matter of worship, by the way) helped put several churchgoers into their graves and into the hospital. You who shriek about the sanctity of marriage helped cut down a man who was about to be married. You who crow with ceaseless abandon about military service and the nobility of our fighting forces helped to critically wound the wife of a Naval aviator who fought for you in a war. You who hold September 11 as your sword and shield helped put a little girl born on that day into the ground.

You helped. Yes, damn you, you helped.

The "mainstream" media is already working overtime playing up the "Disturbed loner" angle with all their might. There is no doubt, from the available evidence, of Mr. Loughner's transformation into a disturbed individual. But here's the funny part: all the crazy crap he spewed, about the gold standard (a favorite of Glenn Beck, the master of Fox "News" fearmongering...so he can sell his gold scam to suckers) and government mind control and everything else before going on his rampage, is straight out of the Right-Wing Insanity Handbook. His personal YouTube ramblings were a mishmash of right-wing anti-government nonsense...the kind that attracts sick minds like Loughner, the kind that only reinforces their paranoia, the kind that finally pushes them over the brink and into the frenzy of violence that took place on Saturday. The kind that the likes of you have been happily spreading by the day.

He did not act alone. You were right there with him. You helped.

I'm talking to you, "mainstream" media people, who created this atmosphere of desperate rage and total paranoia out of whole cloth because of your unstoppable adoration for spectacle, and ratings, and because the companies that own your sorry asses agree with the deranged cretins you helped make so famous and powerful. It was sickeningly amusing on Sunday to watch Wolf Blitzer bluster and bluff on CNN about how the media owns no responsibility for this disaster. It was like watching a ten-year-old try to explain how a lamp got broken while he was running through the living room, but no, it wasn't him. It was, in reality, a pathetic display...but that is what you generally get whenever Wolf is on your screen.

"Mainstream" news personalities like David Gergen and John King bent over backwards warning people not to blame Sarah Palin and her ilk for this calamity. It was a sick man who did this, they said. Bollocks to that. I hate to break this to the "mainstream" media know-betters, but words matter. When people like Palin spray the airwaves with calls to violence and incantations of imminent doom, people like Loughner are listening, and prepared to act. The "mainstream" media lets it fly without any questions or rebuttal, because it's good for ratings, and here we are. Words matter. Play Russian Roulette long enough, and someone inevitably winds up dead.

Remember the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and the subsequent occupation? "WMD everywhere, al Qaeda connections to 9/11, plastic sheeting and duct tape because we're all gonna die!" was the central theme of the majority of your broadcast schedule for years...until it was all proven to be a lie. You helped the liars, you were the liars, but you knew that. You also got your spectacle, and the corporations that own you got paid a king's ransom, so everyone was happy, except the dead.

Tell me this is any different, I dare you. For the spectacle, the ratings and the pleasure of your owners, you ran names like "Sarah Palin" across the sky in lights, even after she should have faded into well-deserved obscurity, and helped this blister of right-wing rage fester until it finally burst. This was your show, and in perhaps the most wretched irony of all, I would bet all my worldly possessions that your ratings are through the roof right now. You got what you wanted. I hope you are pleased.

...That's right, I said it. Anyone who thinks good old-fashioned American bigotry and racism are not the core motivation for a vast majority of these so-called "revolutionaries" should get their heads examined. You've heard of the "elephant in the middle of the room?" Well, this is the burning cross in the middle of the room, and no amount of spin will douse those flames.

and so it goes,
GORD.

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