Options
In Remembrance of MLK
baraka
Posts: 1,268
To remember the spirit of MLK, I thought I'd post this article. I found it very interesting. Happy MLK day!!!
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2007/01/15/0115edking.html
King's words still apply
Civil rights leader's wisdom could help solve ills of today's world
Published on: 01/15/07
In time to mark the national observance of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, a new exhibit of his papers is opening at the Atlanta History Center. Separately, work is under way for a monument honoring him in Washington. While both will help enhance our understanding of the slain civil rights leader, the true significance of the man cannot be fully captured on paper or in stone.
King has left a living legacy that still has much relevance in contemporary America. While we've made progress toward the goals he championed, some of the ills he worked to cure during his lifetime have, in fact, metastasized.
(ENLARGE)
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at a Selma, Ala., church in January 1965. King would be 78 years old today.
At the risk of taking King's words out of context, it's instructive to see how elements of the philosophy he articulated a generation ago might apply to the problems and personalities shaping our world today.
Beyond the famous "I Have a Dream" and "Mountaintop" speeches, some of King's lesser-known utterances resonate across the racial, economic, ethnic and cultural boundaries that continue to separate us. Although his voice was silenced too soon, we can still pose hypothetical questions. What might King have said to:
Misguided black students who think getting an education is akin to "acting white?"
"A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan."
Celebrities and politicians such as actor Mel Gibson, comedian Michael "N-bomb" Richards and former Virginia Sen. George "Macaca" Allen?
"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."
Americans who continue to define the actions of others based on their skin color?
"The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers."
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and others in the Bush administration who suppressed early concerns about invading Iraq?
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter."
Rev. Creflo Dollar and other religious leaders who preach the so-called "prosperity gospel?"
"The church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society."
Elected officials who make decisions based on polling?
"Cowardice asks the question — is it safe? Expediency asks the question — is it politic? Vanity asks the question — is it popular? But conscience asks the question — is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right."
The unemployed who've stopped looking for work because there are no high-paying, "good" jobs available?
"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well."
Those who mistakenly believe the civil rights movement was only intended to benefit African-Americans?
"God is not merely interested in the freedom of brown men, yellow men, red men and black men. He is interested in the freedom of the whole human race."
Anyone who thinks of themselves as too educated, moral or sophisticated to ever be guilty of discrimination?
"We have flown the air like birds and swum the seas like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers."
Americans who don't vote or express their dissent because they fear being in the losing minority?
"This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Dangerous passions of pride, hatred and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless Calvaries. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority."
Kim Jong-il of Korea and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
Endlessly warring factions in Iraq and the Middle East?
"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding. It seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. . . . Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. . . . Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."
Atheist scholar Richard Dawkins and biblical literalists feuding publicly over religion and science?
"Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. . . . Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism."
Extremists and opportunists who engage in racial politics?
"A doctrine of black supremacy is as evil as a doctrine of white supremacy."
Wealthy Americans who believe accumulating money can insulate them from social problems caused by poverty?
"All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America. In doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that (Nazi war criminal Adolf) Eichmann chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it."
And finally, to journalists who vainly try to interpret King's philosophies every year?
"Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart."
— Lyle V. Harris, for the editorial board (<!-- e --><a href="mailto:lharris@ajc.com">lharris@ajc.com</a><!-- e -->)
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/stories/2007/01/15/0115edking.html
King's words still apply
Civil rights leader's wisdom could help solve ills of today's world
Published on: 01/15/07
In time to mark the national observance of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr's birthday, a new exhibit of his papers is opening at the Atlanta History Center. Separately, work is under way for a monument honoring him in Washington. While both will help enhance our understanding of the slain civil rights leader, the true significance of the man cannot be fully captured on paper or in stone.
King has left a living legacy that still has much relevance in contemporary America. While we've made progress toward the goals he championed, some of the ills he worked to cure during his lifetime have, in fact, metastasized.
(ENLARGE)
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. speaks at a Selma, Ala., church in January 1965. King would be 78 years old today.
At the risk of taking King's words out of context, it's instructive to see how elements of the philosophy he articulated a generation ago might apply to the problems and personalities shaping our world today.
Beyond the famous "I Have a Dream" and "Mountaintop" speeches, some of King's lesser-known utterances resonate across the racial, economic, ethnic and cultural boundaries that continue to separate us. Although his voice was silenced too soon, we can still pose hypothetical questions. What might King have said to:
Misguided black students who think getting an education is akin to "acting white?"
"A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on an installment plan."
Celebrities and politicians such as actor Mel Gibson, comedian Michael "N-bomb" Richards and former Virginia Sen. George "Macaca" Allen?
"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."
Americans who continue to define the actions of others based on their skin color?
"The good neighbor looks beyond the external accidents and discerns those inner qualities that make all men human and, therefore, brothers."
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell and others in the Bush administration who suppressed early concerns about invading Iraq?
"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter."
Rev. Creflo Dollar and other religious leaders who preach the so-called "prosperity gospel?"
"The church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society."
Elected officials who make decisions based on polling?
"Cowardice asks the question — is it safe? Expediency asks the question — is it politic? Vanity asks the question — is it popular? But conscience asks the question — is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular; but one must take it because it is right."
The unemployed who've stopped looking for work because there are no high-paying, "good" jobs available?
"If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well."
Those who mistakenly believe the civil rights movement was only intended to benefit African-Americans?
"God is not merely interested in the freedom of brown men, yellow men, red men and black men. He is interested in the freedom of the whole human race."
Anyone who thinks of themselves as too educated, moral or sophisticated to ever be guilty of discrimination?
"We have flown the air like birds and swum the seas like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers."
Americans who don't vote or express their dissent because they fear being in the losing minority?
"This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Dangerous passions of pride, hatred and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless Calvaries. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority."
Kim Jong-il of Korea and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?
"Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men."
Endlessly warring factions in Iraq and the Middle East?
"The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding. It seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. . . . Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. . . . Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."
Atheist scholar Richard Dawkins and biblical literalists feuding publicly over religion and science?
"Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge, which is power; religion gives man wisdom, which is control. Science deals mainly with facts; religion deals mainly with values. The two are not rivals. They are complementary. . . . Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism."
Extremists and opportunists who engage in racial politics?
"A doctrine of black supremacy is as evil as a doctrine of white supremacy."
Wealthy Americans who believe accumulating money can insulate them from social problems caused by poverty?
"All too many of those who live in affluent America ignore those who exist in poor America. In doing so, the affluent Americans will eventually have to face themselves with the question that (Nazi war criminal Adolf) Eichmann chose to ignore: How responsible am I for the well-being of my fellows? To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it."
And finally, to journalists who vainly try to interpret King's philosophies every year?
"Occasionally in life there are those moments of unutterable fulfillment which cannot be completely explained by those symbols called words. Their meanings can only be articulated by the inaudible language of the heart."
— Lyle V. Harris, for the editorial board (<!-- e --><a href="mailto:lharris@ajc.com">lharris@ajc.com</a><!-- e -->)
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance,
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
MLK Jr's Murder:
Confessions Of Conspiracy
by Sean Gonsalves
April 4, 2000
Conspiracy theories abound. Professors, pundits and especially government eggheads - having read Richard Hofstadter's excellent analysis of the political paranoiac - talk about conspiracy theories in pejorative tones, certain that the rabble just doesn't understand the complexities of governance.
I suppose all that makes for an interesting intellectual exchange but the crucial question is whether a conspiracy is, in fact, behind a particular political event. Conspiracies happen.
Loyd Jowers told Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s son, Dexter, and former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, that he was part of a conspiracy to kill King. Today marks the 32nd anniversary of his assassination.
The plot in which Jowers said he took part went to trial after all these years. This past December the jury ruled that, indeed, there was a conspiracy to kill King, involving Jowers and "others, including governmental agencies."
They call the O.J. trial "the trial of the century." It pales in significance to King v. Jowers. A European reporter covering the trial remarked: "You Americans are always talking about 'the trial of the century!' Well, this is the trial of the century, and none of your reporters are covering it!"
Well, there was one. His name is James Douglass and he wrote an insightfully important article on the case. In it, Douglass reports on the major pieces of evidence that point to the unbelievable (and undeniable?) conclusion that the United States government killed the greatest American apostle of nonviolent freedom-making.
Exhibit A: Former CIA operative, Jack Terrell, testified of J.D. Hill's confession that he was a member of an Army sniper team in Memphis when King was killed. After training for a triangular shooting, they took positions in a water tower and two buildings in Memphis when their mission was canceled.
"Hill said he realized the next day that the team must have been part of a contingency plan to kill King if another shooter failed," Douglass reports in an article you can check out at http://www.christiancentury.org/. Also see the trial transcript at http://www.thekingcenter.com.
Back to Jowers. He told Andrew Young that he received a smoking rifle at the rear door of his restaurant, Jim's Grill, which is across the street from the Lorraine Motel where King was shot with a rifle. This is in flat contradiction to the incredible official story, which is that after James Earl Ray shot King he ran out of the infamous rooming house and dropped the murder weapon on the sidewalk before fleeing!
Jowers said he broke the rifle down into two pieces and wrapped it in a tablecloth. The next day he gave it to the same man who had dropped the rifle off at his restaurant two days before that. The man's named was Raul, Jowers said, the same man that James Earl Ray claims to have set him up.
On the evening when King was killed, the police protection around him was withdrawn. A black Memphis police detective, Ed Redditt, was removed from his post at Memphis Fire Station No. 2 - across the street from King's motel - under orders from Memphis police and fire director, Frank Holloman.
Holloman, a retired FBI agent, was J. Edgar Hoover's appointments secretary. Holloman told Redditt his life had been threatened.
Redditt was brought home, and when he arrived at his house the radio news was reporting that King had been shot at the Lorraine Motel.
Former Memphis police Capt. Jerry Williams testified that before King was killed he was told by his superiors that someone in King's entourage asked for no security, which seemed strange to Williams because whenever King came to Memphis, he and a unit of black officers would serve as bodyguards for King.
Then there's Marrell McCollough. Jowers says he met with McCollough, Memphis police lieutenant Earl Clark, a third officer and two men Jowers didn't know but whom he thought were federal agents. McCollough, who in 1968 was an undercover officer for the Memphis Police Department, now works for the CIA. There's a famous photo where King is lying on the balcony moments after he was shot and someone is kneeling next to King checking his vitals. That man is McCollough, one of the first to reach King after he'd been shot.
When King was shot, many witnesses pointed to the bushes as the place where they heard the shot come from and where they saw smoke seconds after the fatal bullet was fired. The next morning, those bushes - the ones right in between the Lorraine Motel and Jowers' restaurant - were cut down and cleared out by the Memphis Sanitation Department under orders from the Memphis police, as testified to by Maynard Stiles, who was then a sanitation department official.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. But don't take my word for it. Go check it out for yourself.
Its sad that todays world is full of Lindsays and Britneys and Justins, and is not full of people being hailed the next MLK
http://forums.pearljam.com/showthread.php?t=272825
except for the part where he cheats on his wife
"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity"
~MLK
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
http://www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/?mid=18239657
So MLK was a perfect human being who had no negative aspects whatsoever?
No one is perfect.
MLK's ideas were ruined by affirmative action...in other words, "conscientious stupidity."
-Enoch Powell
geez, man, was that necessary?
Yes. He cheated on his wife and had 3 illegitimate children. Great man.
7-6-2006 Las Vegas. 7-20-2006 Portland. 7-22-2006 Gorge. 9-21-2009 Seattle. 9-22-2009 Seattle. 9-26-2009 Ridgefield. 9-25-2011 Vancouver.
11-29-2013 Portland. 10-16-2014 Detroit. 8-8-2018 Seattle. 8-10-2018 Seattle. 8-13-2018 Missoula.
and that ruins everything else that he did?
try focusing on the positive, instead trying to discredit a great leader.
One of his quotes on israel that stands out for me.
--
“peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect its right to exist, its territorial integrity."
---
lol You do understand that he who is violent last wins, right?
Or do you just hate Israel?
"What I lack in decorum, I make up for with an absence of tact."
Camden 5-28-06
Washington, D.C. 6-22-08
Of course not! He was human like you and I. No human is perfect. I did take issue with an unsolicited comment in a thread remembering the man on his b-day. I'm sure if we dug deep into the lives of everyone here, we would certainly find some dirt, and I'm no exception. That should not negate all the good we do in our lives. MLK was indeed a great man & there is no argument to the contrary.
but the illusion of knowledge.
~Daniel Boorstin
Only a life lived for others is worth living.
~Albert Einstein
Yes, but we can not have an over symathetic view to the point of hero worship for this man.
i strongly disagree. Worship? of course not. Hero status? Absolutely. Point to a greater American. Thats a direct challenge. Of course, to a degree, its all a matter of oppinion, and you are probably sick and tired of all these uppity Negroes these days, but even so, i offer this challenge, if only out of curiosity as to your response.
lol@ you thinking im racist because i dont put King on some pedastel.
You can worship him...ill stick to reagan
i'm completely and totally unsurprised. A man under whom civil rights took several steps BACKWARDS. Butresses my earlier assesment.
Regan kicked ass. One hell of an american.