Monday OT: 01/18/21 is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Today is day 18 of the Gregorian Calendar year,
Pungenday, Chaos 18, 3187 YOLD
And let us not forget 13.0.8.3.10 mlc (the Mayan Long Count)

No Known Restrictions: "Martin Luther King and Malcolm X Waiting for Press Conference"  by Marion S. Trikosko, March 26, 1964 (LOC)

Martin Luther King and Malcolm X by by Marion S. Trikosko, March 26, 1964 (LOC)

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OK, it's Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.  Not that today has anything to do with the Reverend King, beyond that he was born in Jauary but that's better than at least one recent birthday celebration, so there we are.   This is where I throw up a short pithy quote from the good doctor, so, well and good, I shall do so, a few, in fact:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

The time is always right to do what is right.

A riot is the language of the unheard.

Do any of those do the man justice?  His life, his actions, his prose, his rhetoric, his speeches, his influence on others and on history? Nope, not at all.

Every champion of the downtrodden acquires a great many enemies, especially amont the powerful and he was no exception.   Jedgar The Hooved, the capo of a criminal conspiracy, colloquially known then as now as the Feebs became a sworn enemy of Dr. King and determined to take him down.  The Hooved one even put him on his gang's COINTELPRO hit list.  After all, did not Dr. King use the "E-Word", and is that not inherently communist?  Everybody knows that the US is based on the principle that, as Pogo the Possum told us "some is more equal than others."  Nonetheless, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1964, much to the chagrin of many.

And, speaking of peace, he was, of course, an opponent of the war in Viet Nam.  At first he was reluctant to risk the usccess of the civil rights movement by getting entangled with the peace movement too, but as time passed he began speaking more and more about how wrong the war was and about the need to end it.  He also began more openly and directly addressing the economic and class warfare aspects of the mistreatment of the US' Black populace. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968.

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On this day in history:

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1670 – Henry Morgan captured Panama.

1778 – James Cook became the first European to find the Hawaiian Islands, which he names the "Sandwich Islands" because that's how "explorers" behave

1788 – The first ships of the First Fleet carrying 736 convicts from Great Britain to settle Australia arrived at there.

1806 – The British conquered the Dutch Cape Colony and made it a British Colony.

1896 – An X-ray generating machine was exhibited for the first time by H. L. Smith.

1911 – Eugene B. Ely landed an airplane on the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay, the first such ship landing in history

1915 – Japan issued the "Twenty-One Demands" to the Republic of China 

1919 – The Paris Peace Conference opened in Versailles, France.

1943 – The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began

1945 – The Red Army liberated Kraków, Poland

1974 – A Disengagement of Forces agreement was signed between Israel and Egypt
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1976 – Lebanese Christian militias massacred 1,500 people in Karantina, Beirut.

1977 – Scientists identified the bacterium that causes Legionnaires' disease.

1978 – The European Court of Human Rights found the UK government guilty of mistreating prisoners in Northern Ireland

1983 – The International Olympic Committee restored Jim Thorpe's Olympic medals .

1993 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was officially observed for the first time in all 50 US states.

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Born this day in:

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

~~ Montesquieu

1659 – Damaris Cudworth Masham, philosopher and theologian
1689 – Montesquieu, lawyer and philosopher
1779 – Peter Mark Roget, physician, lexicographer, and theologian
1854 – Thomas A. Watson, assistant to Alexander Graham Bell 
1856 – Daniel Hale Williams,  surgeon and cardiologist
1880 – Paul Ehrenfest, physicist and academic
1882 – A. A. Milne, author, poet, and playwright
1901 – Ivan Petrovsky, mathematician and academic
1905 – Joseph Bonanno, businessman
1921 – Yoichiro Nambu, physicist and academic,
1932 – Robert Anton Wilson, psychologist, author, poet, and playwright
1933 – Ray Dolby, engineer and businessman, founded Dolby Laboratories 
1938 – Hargus "Pig" Robbins, session keyboard and piano player
1941 – Bobby Goldsboro, singer, songwriter, guitarist, and producer
1941 – David Ruffin, singer (The Temptations)
11943 – Dave Greenslade, keyboard player and composer
1953 – Brett Hudson, singer, songwriter, and producer
1963 – Carl McCoy, singer and songwriter
1969 – Jim O'Rourke, guitarist and producer
1971 – Amy Barger, astronomer
1971 – Jonathan Davis, singer and songwriter
1974 – Christian Burns, singer and songwriter
1976 – Damien Leith, Isinger, songwriter, and guitarist
1977 – Richard Archer, singer,songwriter, and guitarist
1982 – Quinn Allman, American guitarist and producer
1983 – Samantha Mumba, singer, songwriter, and actress
1984 – Kristy Lee Cook, singer, songwriter
1986 – Marya Roxx, singer and songwriter
1988 – Ronnie Day, singer and songwriter

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Died this day in:

The pen is mightier than the sword.

also

It was a dark and stormy night ...

~~Edward Bulwer-Lytton 

1425 – Edmund Mortimer, 5th Earl of March, politician
1783 – Jeanne Quinault, actress, salonista, and playwright
1873 – Edward Bulwer-Lytton, poet, playwright, and politician 
1878 – Antoine César Becquerel, physicist and academic
1936 – Rudyard Kipling,  author and poet
1966 – Kathleen Norris,  journalist and author
1990 – Melanie Appleby, singer
2000 – Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, architect
2004 – Galina Gavrilovna Korchuganova, test pilot and aerobatics champion
2007 – Brent Liles, bass player
2010 – Kate McGarrigle, singer, songwriter, and musician
2010 – Robert B. Parker, author and academic
2011 – Sargent Shriver, politician and diplomat
2015 – Tony Verna, director and producer, invented instant replay

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Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days, Days of Recognition, and such:

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
Elementary School Teacher Day
Thesaurus Day
Maintenance Day
National Peking Duck Day
Winnie the Pooh Day
It is also Week of Prayer for Christian Unity ; a truly horrifying goal that is luckily prodigiously unlikely to come to fruition.

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Music goes here, iirc, well, With apologies Wink

Martin Luther King
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Peter Mark Roget

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Ray Dolby - see below

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Hargus "Pig" Robbins

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David Ruffin

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Dave Greenslade

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Jonathan Davis

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Richard Archer

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Ronnie Day

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Kate McGarrigle

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The first Album recorded using Ray Dolby's then new Dolby SR technology was "In The Dark"

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It's an open thread, so do your thing

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lotlizard's picture

at Frankfurt airport in Germany.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9155077/Police-shoot-gunman-Ger...

https://www.dw.com/en/frankfurt-airport-terminal-reopens-after-police-op...

(“Left” perception of the first, foreign tabloid newspaper report:) The sensationalist right-wing press inflating irrelevant details about unremarkable incidents to make Muslims and immigrants look bad !!

… versus …

(“Right” perception of the second, German state-owned broadcaster report:) The lying mainstream press playing down and omitting key details about dangerous incidents so as not to make Muslims and immigrants look bad !!

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@lotlizard

Bad is Good and
Good is Bad
Confusion has its' cost...

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lotlizard's picture

@QMS  
separate media universes, depending on which movie, by which company, having which political agenda, they ended up viewing, in which projection-room in the Plato’s-Allegory-of-the-Cave cineplex.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@QMS

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

@lotlizard

Things like that would be great pedagogical tools for teaching critical thought and analytics in the midst of courses on language skills, journalism, civics and the like. Here you'd have to look pretty hard for at least the lefty one.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Lookout's picture

I never met MLK, but knew many of his associates and friends. He has a long shadow here in Alabama. I do think he was probably assassinated by the FBI or their goons. Start a poor peoples campaign instead of just a civil rights movement and you'll be eliminated. Too dangerous for TPTB.

Although the Justice Department officially claims James Earl Ray assassinated MLK, a civil suit later determined that a Memphis cop was involved in a conspiracy to murder the civil rights leader.

https://thefreethoughtproject.com/52-yrs-fbi-memphis-pd-assassination-mlk/

I think JFK's assassination was also governmental/CIA related.

So put on your tin foil hat, grab a dark beer, and celebrate the fact that brave men and women have stood up to the US power structure and struck blows for equality. However, as BLM demonstrate, we still have a long way to go.

I like Coretta's line, "the color isn't black or white, the color is green." (meaning money). Race is a view into class, and we really remain in a class struggle as much as a racial conflict.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/venessawong/2020-pandemic-inequalit...

Have a great holiday everyone!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

enhydra lutris's picture

@Lookout

all across the land, and yes, it's funny how once he started talking all socialistic and anti-war he went down. We've been a racist nation since day one and there has been a class war going on since before that. They intersect often and each is used as a weapon in the other conflict, with racism often used as a weapon in the class war and class used as a weapon in keeping the "races" down and apart.

be well and have a good one.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Lookout's picture

@enhydra lutris

with racism often used as a weapon in the class war and class used as a weapon in keeping the "races" down and apart.

sadly I think we're seeing the same techniques used between (educated) dims and (working class) rethugs...and ne'er the twain shall meet. Divide and conquer.

Funny how that dynamic of the parties has shifted during our lifetime. Dims USED to represent working class, but that was derailed with Clinton's turd way.

Have a wonderful holiday. Now that I'm retired, everyday is a holiday and every night is Friday night (as the saying goes around here).

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

enhydra lutris's picture

@Lookout

The Dems definitely bailed on the working class big time and then cynically promised them efca which they never even tried to bring to a vote while running anti-labor campaigns in at least a couple of states and holding a scab convention.

It'ds not like the GOP intends to really represent them either, but they stepped into that vacuum with their rhetoric big time.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

TheOtherMaven's picture

It's the punch line of Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others".

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

enhydra lutris's picture

@TheOtherMaven

have more opunch when it comes from a cartoon character, in a "shit, even this cartoon opossum gets it" sort of way.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

wendy davis's picture

our adopted black/azteca son just phoned so we could discuss the day as always.

thank you soooo much for including the MLK and malcolm x photo. it allowed me to find this page on X's 1964 post-hajj transformation. whooosh-worthy reading.

and 'Scholar Says Martin Luther King Jr. And Malcolm X Both Brought 'Sword' And 'Shield' To Their Work' with this outtake from the transcript:

Peniel Joseph: Malcolm X is not just this political sword; he’s also a person who's talking about human rights. He actually says that if whites were willing to peacefully integrate racially, even before he left the Nation of Islam, he'd be fine with racial integration. He just felt that Black people shouldn't have to beg to be accepted in this society and be treated as citizens.

And King is not just this peaceful warrior. He's absolutely this nonviolent civil rights leader. But he comes to bring the sword, too. And that sword is this movement against not just racial injustice, but poverty and war. King breaks with Lyndon Johnson over the Vietnam War. King organizes this poor people's campaign, which is this multiracial, multicultural struggle. King is really a big critic of American democracy and the gaps between the rhetoric of American democracy and its reality.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@wendy davis

Thank you very much for that delicious quotation with the "compare and contrast" theme.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

lotlizard's picture

Dorothy Parker, reviewing A. A. Milne for the New Yorker, was not amused.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1928/10/20/far-from-well

And, from Caitlin Johnstone:

The two faces of the U.S. empire

The Biden/Harris inauguration event is going to be a star-studded celebration spanning an unprecedented five days, a giddy orgy of excitement at a murderous oligarchic empire having a new face behind the front desk after promising wealthy donors that nothing will fundamentally change.

This comes at a time when Americans are now reporting that they trust corporations more than they trust their own government or media, when pundits are gleefully proclaiming in The New York Times that “CEOs have become the fourth branch of government” as they pressure the entire political system to smoothly install Biden, when the leading contender for the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division is an Obama holdover who went from the administration to working for both Amazon and Google, and when Americans are being paced into accepting an increasing amount of authoritarian changes for their own good.

And this manic celebration and increasing brazenness of corporate power are of course overlaid atop an unceasing river of human blood as the globe-spanning empire continues to smash any nation which disobeys it into compliance so as to ensure lasting uncontested planetary hegemony.

But hey, at least they voted out fascism.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@lotlizard @lotlizard

often wish I was around back then.

And it is that word “hummy,” my darlings, that marks the first place in “The House at Pooh Corner” at which Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.

is but intro and segue to her assault on some work by a Charles Petit -

“Elegant Infidelities of Madame Li Pei Fou,” indeed! Even if I could pronounce it, it would irritate me.

It is to be feared that Mr. Pettit chooses too delicate a point and too sweetly lustrous a surface for his writings. After all, you really can’t improve on the old board fence and the blunted bit of chalk for such things. A dogged preciousness in the telling only makes the old stories seem the older. ...
... Not a very good book. And not, alas, a very wicked book.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

When I think of Dr. King I just think of 1968 as a turning point for America, for the worse. I don't mean to take away from his day, it's just I feel so bleak about what was a time of turmoil, and of hope.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/a-look-back-at-three-hero_b_3994892

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Snode

point in many ways, and not such a good one.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

ggersh's picture

https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

Martin Luther King Day

"And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak."

Martin Luther King, A Time to Break the Silence, Riverside Church, 4 April 1967

"Take a stand for that which is right, and the world may misunderstand you and criticize you, but you never go alone, for somewhere I read that 'One with God is a majority,' and God has a way of transforming a minority into a majority. Walk with him this morning and believe in him and do what is right and he'll be with you even until the consummation of the ages.

Yes, I've seen the lightning flash, I've heard the thunder roll, I've felt sin's breakers dashing trying to conquer my soul but I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on, he promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone; no, never alone, no, never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone.

Wherever you are going this morning, my friends, show the world that you're going with truth. You are going with justice, you are going with goodness, and you will have an eternal companionship.

And the world will look at you and they won't understand you, for your fiery furnace will be around you, but you'll go on anyhow.

But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil."

Martin Luther King, Ebenezer Baptist Church, 5 November 1967

"And every now and then I think about my own death and I think about my own funeral. And I don't think of it in a morbid sense. And every now and then I ask myself, 'What is it that I would want said?' And I leave the word to you this morning...

If you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice. Say that I was a drum major for peace. I was a drum major for righteousness. And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind."

Martin Luther King, 4 February 1968

“Now the problem is not only unemployment. Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day? And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation. These are facts which must be seen, and it is criminal to have people working on a full-time basis and a full-time job getting part-time income...

If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”

Martin Luther King, 18 March 1968

"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place.

But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.

So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Martin Luther King, 3 April 1968

The next day Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in Memphis, Tennessee, 4 April 1968.

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I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

enhydra lutris's picture

@ggersh

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

mimi's picture

soundtrack
[video:https://youtu.be/pgd0zCmpMCQ]
this classical music version gets to me:
[video:https://youtu.be/yMSvqaufgOc]
not digging into the blues today, digging into the sounds of death.

The key to longevity is to learn every aspect of music that you can.
- Prince

Joe Shikspack, there is a mighty long life ahead of you. ... Have good ones, you and all.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@mimi

harmonica well. Also the movie. Indeed the sound of death.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

magiamma's picture

Et al

Warm here, huge waves. Rain coming Friday.

Thanks for the wonderful photo. They both look so calm and peaceful. I was just wondering how far we have really come. Two steps forward, one step back. Or not. We now have the prison industry. When will it ever stop.

Take good care and be safe.

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Stop Climate Change Silence - Start the Conversation

Hot Air Website, Twitter, Facebook

enhydra lutris's picture

@magiamma

here, high surf warnings too. Seriously high winds today. Really loud "BANG!" about 2 am - got up this morning and several isolated tall willows across the street were snapped off. Hoping for rain for sure.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

smiley7's picture

The two came to a private compromise.

And as to 67-68 being a bad turn, just the opposite in my memory, a good turn; it's that the movement was squashed quickly, by Reagan's election, for sure.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@smiley7

To me 67-68 was almosst the high water mark of "the movement", and then the bottom rapidly fell out, so I was referring to what I was seeing as an incipient downturn. Not much later our rights and wins began to erode in an accelerating fashion.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --