Surviving Capitalism (Not) : The Government, that Honors Dr. Martin Luther King with a National Holiday, Killed Him

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

The Government, that Honors Dr. Martin Luther King with a National Holiday, Killed Him

Click here to access article by Edward Curtin from The Greanville Post. (Added to commentary at 11 AM Seattle time.)

On the 50th anniversary of the assassination of another great American leader who posed serious difficulties for the Empire's ruling class, Curtin provides a review of a new book, The Plot to Kill King, by William Pepper. Pepper is an attorney who has thoroughly researched the assassination during the past several decades,and was hired by the King family to expose the truth. Curtin writes:

Pepper shows how the mainstream media and government flacks have spent years covering up the truth of MLK’s murder through lies and disinformation, just as they have done with the Kennedy and Malcom X assassinations that are of a piece with this one.

But since this is a book review and not a book, I will stop listing Pepper’s very detailed and convincing findings. While he may not have answered every aspects of the case, and may be mistaken in some small details, he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the basic fact that James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King, but that this great and dangerous leader was killed by a conspiracy organized at the highest levels of government.

The Plot to Kill King will mesmerize any reader seeking the truth about MLK’s assassination.

However, I wish to emphasize that the order to kill King was not that of the government, but the invisible ruling capitalist class directorate, or the Deep State (top financiers, industrial corporate executives, and their dedicated ideologues) that controls the government and every other institution. The Deep State directed the government agencies, specifically the FBI, local Memphis police, and assorted government officials to carry out the order and ordered their corporate media to collaborate with the necessary coverup and "explanation" of the event.

As a side note, I wish to qualify what William Pepper wrote in his book:

To understand his death, it is essential to realize that although he is popularly depicted and perceived as a civil rights leader, he was much more than that. A non-violent revolutionary, he personified the most powerful force for the long-overdue social, political, and economic reconstruction of the nation.

He was a civil rights leader up until he realized in 1967 that civil rights was tied to the issue of the Vietnam War. This was best expressed in his speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam" delivered exactly one year before his assassination on April 4, 1967. There was already a massive anti-war movement occurring and the ruling class feared that the civil rights movement would add substantially to the existing opposition to the war. I believe that this is when the Deep State considered King to be dangerous and had to be assassinated.

(Regarding the assassination, you may also be interested in reading an article entitled "The ‘Crucifixion’ of the Black Messiah" by Greg Maybury also from The Greanville Post.)