Tavis Smiley
5.0 out of 5 stars OK to Challenge Racism and Poverty — NOT OK to challenge militarism and the national security state, September 12, 2014
The publisher has done a rotten job of summarizing this book. Here, paraphrasing the author as he just spoke on the John Stewart show, is the bottom line:
The minute that Dr. King turned against militarism and denounced the USA as the greatest purveyor of violence upon the world, he was first marginalized and then assassinated. “The System” was fine with Dr. King focusing on racism, and even poverty, but it would not tolerate for one moment his questioning the military-industrial complex and the national security state.
The author — whom I found to be very inspiring, coherent, and concise — a brilliant articulator of the key points in the book — goes on to have a conversation with Jon Stewart about how the USA simply cannot handle truth-tellers in relation to “big money” matters such as elective wars (racism and poverty being “little money” matters, and deliberately so).
Dr. King was ultimately assassinated by a US Army sniper on detail to the FBI and under the personal direction of J. Edgar Hoover. The story is told in An Act of State: The Execution of Martin Luther King and has also been documented and validated in a judgment by a federal court awarding the King family the single dollar in damages they requested.
I will mention in passing, because somehow Reddit noticed it today and sent the world to my website, that Henry Kissinger, the dowager empress of the political servant class, is a war criminal (see The Trial of Henry Kissinger) and now famous for two quotations, both immortalized at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog:
Military men are ‘dumb, stupid animals to be used' as pawns for foreign policy
and, my personal favorite that captures everything wrong with the two-party tyranny of political servants to the financial class:
“The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”
Dr. King died because he recognized that our national security state has turned both our own country and the world into a cesspool instead of heaven on Earth, and this is one of the reasons we have problems not just with poverty, but with illegal immigration. In my view, the best way to honor Dr. King today would be to dismantle this national security state (along with the two-party tyranny) and reboot American democracy by putting ALL of the people back into self-governance. NO ONE now considered a candidate for president in 2016 has the combination of intelligence and integrity necessary to form the necessary coalition to make that happen. Please buy the book — this may be one of those world-changing “aha” experiences we all so desperately need if we are to restore the idea that is America.
A few other books that complement this one in the above context:
War is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier
Grand Theft Pentagon :Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
935 Lies: The Future of Truth and the Decline of America's Moral Integrity
The Power of the Powerless: Citizens Against the State in Central-Eastern Europe
A Power Governments Cannot Suppress
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
Best wishes to all,
Robert David STEELE Vivas
THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth, & Trust
