Open Thread Tue 15 Jan 19 -- MLK Birthday

Submitted by QMS on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 3:20am

~
The Most Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. circa 1964
220px-Martin_Luther_King,_Jr..jpg
~

Quote from MLK's 1967 speech "Beyond Viet Nam"

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just."

~

Quote from MLK's 1968 sermon

Yes, 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.

~

From MLK's book "Why We Can't Wait" 1968

Our nation was born in genocide when it embraced the doctrine that the original American, the Indian, was an inferior race. Even before there were large numbers of Negroes on our shores, the scar of racial hatred had already disfigured colonial society. From the sixteenth century forward, blood flowed in battles over racial supremacy. We are perhaps the only nation which tried as a matter of national policy to wipe out its indigenous population. Moreover, we elevated that tragic experience into a noble crusade. Indeed, even today we have not permitted ourselves to reject or to feel remorse for this shameful episode. Our literature, our films, our drama, our folklore all exalt it.
~

Dion 'My Old Friend Martin"

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Open thread so share your thoughts as we celebrate the life of a good man.

~
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Submitted by QMS on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 7:50am

Decided a pause to remember the life, ambitions and philosophies of an outspoken leader appropriate today. Recently finished Stephen King's novel '1963' using time travel and alternate universe themes to explore the JFK assassination. Thought his conclusions were a bit ambivalent, but the descriptions of the culture and political climate of the time created an interesting framework of our struggles then (and now).
Here and there today, so you may have to self-modulate.
Make the best of your day!

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Submitted by detroitmechworks on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 8:00am
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from all the assholes trying to pervert his messages. I'm thinking that the equation for a religion is that the BETTER the message, the more awful the followers must be and must explain away the original intent.

Essentially, the purer and truer the "Vision" of the original, the more bullshit that has to believed in order to still support TPTB and follow it. Hence why Ethnic Studies is a four year degree, same length as a Clergy brainwashing.

Interestingly, it's also how long the Army WANTS to keep you at least. I'm just noticing coincidences, clearly there's no connection there...

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThKidN0kUNU]

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Submitted by QMS on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 8:22am

@detroitmechworks
Hadn't heard that one before. It is true how the brain wash works. Seems history is being re-written to favor the crooks. Education is both selective and constrained to myths. Critical thinking skills are not taught for a reason. To think MLK, Jr. would have been 90 today if the murdering cowards had not cut him down. I can only imagine the good he could have done for us.
Cheers

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Submitted by detroitmechworks on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:43am
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@QMS Since he never seemed to care much about the fact he was a Beatle. Smile

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Submitted by QMS on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:54am

@detroitmechworks
All things must pass is still one of my favorite albums

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Submitted by dkmich on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 10:12am

@QMS

I turned it into a framed hanging. It still hangs over my fireplace.

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Submitted by eyo on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 8:30am

Good morning, Happy Birthday Martin Luther King Jr.. Sing along with Stevie Wonder and dream of peace, that's what I do. One more federal worker holiday, right on. Posthumous middle finger to McCain.

BOHICA, or can someone talk me down after reading?
Lawmakers must find common ground to support the defense-industrial base

I downloaded and browsed the PDF, realized there are opportunities to create peace all the time. The politicians just ignore them and go for the easy money, that's what I think. Here are some quotes that jolted me a little. 4.5 on the richter not too big:

Despite stark political divides in the 116th Congress, industrial-base policy offers one of the most fertile areas for bipartisan cooperation.

Hence the BOHICA, but keep reading it goes on forever. Until the end. heh

Why work together?

This year, Congress will be asked to reauthorize the Defense Production Act of 1950. Though amended and modified over the years, this law remains the premier source of authority for stewardship of the defense-industrial base. For example, DPA Title III authorities assistance to private firms in their efforts to commercialize and scale up critical projects that might otherwise struggle to transition from the research and development phase to full production.

There's the link up there to the PDF I was browsing.

The U.S. Geological Survey reports that the U.S. is now 100 percent import-dependent for 21 essential minerals, and 50 percent import-dependent for another 29. This growing reliance on imports — many from unstable nations or geopolitical rivals — stands in stark contrast to U.S. minerals abundance. A cumbersome, duplicative and ineffective permitting process shoulders much of the blame. Given the strategic risk that U.S. mineral import reliance entails, Congress should approach the task of mine permitting reform with a sense of urgency.

I also went and got the 75 page USGS Mineral List, just for laughs. Drill baby drill. Let's not and say we did, how 'bout those beans?

Srsly, the article goes on and on about how bigly the world-burning DoD depends upon an economy of death merchants. Why not life? Make dirt not bombs, etc.. I don't know what to do with the "warfighters" they talk about, maybe ask detroitmechworks. Swords to athames and glass bongs why not. Co-op America for real, that's my kinda government contract. Remember when Tommy Chong got busted for importing bongs? GONG! fair trade failure

The rest of the workers on the payroll are regular people, really good at building and rebuilding large objects, providing disaster relief, etc.. Thank you for not killing.

If anyone else goes rabbit holing that article, can you see it too? A real peace economy. No "job" is worth saving unless it makes peace on earth, that's what I think. The military is so deeply embedded, it just needs a little transformation that's all. Use every base for good, all your base...heh. No more bombs, sorry. No more depleted uranium getting spread around, no more death industries. Drone food and med drops, not bombs. Make it so.

Use the law why not, it is right there before the politicians, right in their faces (since 1950!). What? You can't see the pols through the forest of lobbyists? rats My neighbor called in sick yesterday, he has a bum knee. Accidental revolutionaries unite, right on.

Thanks QMS. cheers

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Submitted by QMS on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:31am

@eyo
Hey eyo. Think you are on to something there. Since the info managers insist we call military budgets and adventures 'defense', perhaps the way is to use the the boeings, grummans and pentagons of this world to change the focus on 'defense'. To defend 'the homeland' we need to re-direct funds into protecting our 'way of life' from the inevitable collapse of the biosphere. this is the most clear and immediate threat to the national security. Appoint Bill McKibben to be the civilian director of the Pentagon. Re-word the contracts for the outlays from "tactical fighter jets" to "infrastructure repair" or "photovoltaic research and development"; "battleships" to "ocean cleaners" ; "troop training and deployment" to "wetland reconstruction"; "chemical warfare weapons" to "rehabilitation of soils". The board members of the big military contractors won't care if the money is spent on re-tooling for electric cars or light rail, as long as they get the big contracts and dividends.
Or, as MLK said "I have a dream..."

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Submitted by randtntx on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 10:03am

@eyo a simple transition to a peace economy seems like the smartest way forward. I mean, we do have this cute little planet and seems just plain stupid to mess it up so much. All we have to do is stop with the destruction, the pillage, the poisoning, the bombing, etc. and clean up after ourselves. Then we could take a whole different path and try and make life better for people instead of worse. That's all....easy. I do mean easy, what we are doing now is hard, in part because it is so damn ugly and goes against our nature. On top of that, continuing on as we are now, which ensures our own destruction, is colossally stupid.

I'm with you on turning every single military base into a community garden (we would have to create some serious jobs to deal with soil remediation), a recreation center with public swimming pools, bike paths, tennis courts, areas for ping-pong, billiards, dancing, badminton (my favorite), classrooms for fun stuff, libraries, art studios, butterfly gardens, etc. Why not? Just think what we could do with that ugly 5-sided building in our capitol....we could turn it into a thing of beauty. Ha.

What better way to honor MLK than to stop now and change. He deserves that honor, we all do. He saw that we had to stop in 1968. We are way late. Now if we don't stop we can kiss it all goodbye. We know that though so how do we get the word out? I think we don't have to scare people with the R word, just possibly phrase it in another way. How about 'smart people unite'....or 'don't let the stupids ruin everything',...or 'do you want your kids to live in a cesspool ? ' ....or ... 'it's good to clean up after yourselves'... or 'love thy neighbor' or 'thou shall not kill'... 'thou shall not pillage after killing'. I don't know. How do you get people to see?

Good morning everybody and thanks QMS.

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Submitted by eyo on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 10:48am

@randtntx thanks, you get me. I think it will be hard, not easy. But it is a simple idea, one that even I can understand. The DoD uses the most oil of all, should be left in the ground not burned in jet fuel. Virgin has an electric jet now, don't they? I used to dream about a clean energy grid running from Canada to South America, lifting poor people the whole way with cheap power for the masses. Instead, Obomba and Clinton gave us more killing. wah

Remember Bill Clinton's peace economy? Yeah no, I'm not talking about laying off a bunch of workers and leaving a bunch of toxic waste behind, which is what he did. My SiL was a buyer on Mare Island, took them years to not even recover before the next down cycle, took forever to cleanup. meh

We should know how to shrink an economy too, or sustain a viable one, not just grow everything to death. Have some true resiliency. It can happen, why not? Man this is some good stuff. lol

peace

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Submitted by randtntx on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 12:57pm

@eyo @eyo let's do it. We need some good people with good ideas like Francis Perkins, Henry A. Wallace, and Eleanor to get FDR to do the smart thing. For that matter we need an FDR, someone who isn't too insecure to accept good ideas. We need someone who is not craven, or greedy, or bought and paid for, or smug, or so convinced of their own superiority that they are completely useless. We need people who don't think it's O.K. to behave like a criminal. We need someone who doesn't consider their fellow countrypeople a "basket of deplorables".

I guess it is hard. I don't see any of those sorts around. Hmmm. What to do.
peace to you eyo, and thanks for the inspiration.

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Submitted by janis b on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:15pm
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@eyo

the real sense of urgency, and what is of value to desire.

No "job" is worth saving unless it makes peace on earth, that's what I think.

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Submitted by enhydra lutris on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:40am
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mission, his work and his words. I remember those days and those struggles, There were momentous losses, MLK, JFK, Malcolm, RFK, but their words and ideas are out there and perhaps they might still win in the end.

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Submitted by QMS on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:50am

@enhydra lutris @enhydra lutris
Think you are right. Their words and ideals still resonate and inspire, from their short dance on earth, on into the waltz of social change today. We shall overcome the repressions.
Best regards

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Submitted by magiamma on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:59am
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Was just checking the date of his bday and found this interesting.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/15/the-story-of-how-michael-king-jr-...

The story of how Michael became Martin began in 1934 when King’s father, who then was known as the Rev. Michael King or M.L. King, was senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church and a prominent minister in Atlanta. In the summer of 1934, King’s church sent him on a whirlwind trip. He traveled to Rome, Tunisia, Egypt, Jerusalem and Bethlehem before setting sail to Berlin, where he would attend a Baptist World Alliance meeting, according to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

The trip to Germany, historians say, had a profound effect on the elder King.

King arrived in Berlin a year after Adolf Hitler became chancellor. During his trip, the senior King toured the country where, in 1517, the German monk and theologian Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg castle church, challenging the Catholic Church. The act would lead to the Protestant Reformation, the revolution that would split Western Christianity.

All around him in Berlin, King Sr. was seeing the rise of Nazi Germany. The Baptist alliance responded to that hatred with a resolution deploring “all racial animosity, and every form of oppression or unfair discrimination toward the Jews, toward coloured people, or toward subject races in any part of the world.”

When the senior King returned home in August 1934, he was a different man, said Clayborne Carson, director of the King Institute. It was sometime in this year that he changed his name and changed his son’s name, too.

“It was a big deal for him to go there, to the birthplace of Protestantism,”

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Submitted by HenryAWallace on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 10:07am

Jame Earl Ray in prison. Near the end of the video, Ray said, "I did not kill your father." And Martin Luther King, Jr.'s son said, "I believe you." I would love to know what else Martin Luther King, Jr.'s son thought about his father's assassination. BTW, I doubt anyone sneeringly referred to MLK, Jr.s son as a "conspiracy theorist."

A charismatic, successful leader who was veering from focusing primarily on equal rights, including voting rights. for black people to racism in general, economic justice in general and opposition to the Vietnam War in general. A Democratic Socialist. Accomplished phenomenal things during his short lifetime. A threat to the PTB if there ever was one. Under constant and prurient surveillance by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI.

My only question is how he escaped assassination for as long as he did.

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Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 10:33am

name of the song is, "Abraham, Martin and John".

It's one of those songs that still brings a frisson every time I hear it, when he does the cut from the end of the bridge into the last verse about Bobby, and the sorrow of it all just hits me, overwhelming.

I don't remember the King assassination, but in 1968 I was 6 years old and growing up in Canada. The second moment of political awareness in my life was my 12-year-old babysitter's dismay over RFK's death. I didn't even know who he was.

(In case you're wondering, the first moment of political awareness in my life came a few months earlier, when I sat on my father's knee and read aloud the newspaper article about Pierre Elliott Trudeau being elected to the leadership of the Liberal party. Because the Liberals were in power at the time, Trudeau immediately became Prime Minister as well, replacing the retiring Lester Pearson.)

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Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 12:27pm

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Submitted by janis b on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:06pm
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for remembering one of the best.

Happy Birthday MLK, and thank you for the legacy of your thoughts and words.

Because I think James Baldwin so well reflects MLK's distinguished direction ...

King is a great speaker. The secret of his greatness does not lie in his voice or his presence or his manner, though it has something to do with all these; nor does it lie in his verbal range or felicity, which are not striking; nor does he have any capacity for those stunning, demagogic flights of the imagination which bring an audience cheering to its feet. The secret lies, I think, in his intimate knowledge of the people he is addressing, be they black or white, and in the forthrightness with which he speaks of those things which hurt and baffle them.  He does not offer any easy comfort and this keeps his hearers absolutely tense. He allows them their self-respect—indeed, he insists on it.

From a review of the Baldwin documentary, I Am not Your Negro …

I Am Not Your Negro reveals Baldwin’s thoughtful exposition of the black struggle not as a fight against racism as an abstraction, but rather a battle against the insanity that drives racism, an affliction that affected so many around him so deeply that they couldn’t even see it for what it was. One of Baldwin’s most famous quotes is, “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” But many of the people who reference that quote overlook what he said directly after that. “Part of the rage is this: it isn’t only what is happening to you, but it’s what’s happening all around you all of the time, in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, the indifference and ignorance of most white people in this country.” To not be consumed by that rage was, in Baldwin’s mind, the true test.

[video:https://youtu.be/rNUYdgIyaPM]

Thanks again QMS

*edited to add link

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Submitted by QMS on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:35pm

Good to 'see you' here. Did watch the 'not your negro' movie awhile back. Impressive. I've been accused of being a white nigger from time to time. I take in context of the speaker. Normally don't punch my way out of ignorance, but have mad a few exceptions. Normally with cops. Trying to teach them what 'serving the community' and 'keeping the peace' means. Uphill battle.
We are a better informed, more spiritually awakened by having the big thinkers speaking to us. Guess that's why they die young. The message is threatening to the enforcers.
Don't give up. Learn from the critical thinkers. Ain't easy, but we are in the position to make change.

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Submitted by janis b on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 9:46pm
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@QMS

Don’t Give Up
Peter Gabriel
In this proud land we grew up strong
We were wanted all along
I was taught to fight, taught to win
I never thought I could fail
No fight left or so it seems
I am a man whose dreams have all deserted
I've changed my name, I've changed my face
But no one wants you when you lose
Don't give up
'Cause you have friends
Don't give up
You're not beaten yet
Don't give up
I know you can make it good
Though I saw it all around
Never thought I could be affected
Thought that we'd be the last to go
It is so strange the way things turn
Drove the night toward my home
The place that I was born, on the lakeside
As daylight broke, I saw the earth
The trees had burned down to the ground
Don't give up
You still have us
Don't give up
We don't need much of anything
Don't give up
'Cause somewhere there's a place
Where we belong
Rest your head
You worry too much
It's going to be alright
When times get rough
You can fall back on us
Don't give up
Please don't give up
'Got to walk out of here
I can't take anymore
Going to stand on that bridge
Keep my eyes down below
Whatever may come
And whatever may go
That river's flowing
That river's flowing
Moved on to another town
Tried hard to settle down
For every job, so many men
So many men no-one needs
Don't give up
'Cause you have friends
Don't give up
You're not the only one
Don't give up
No reason to be ashamed
Don't give up
You still have us
Don't give up now
We're proud of who you are
Don't give up
You know it's never been easy
Don't give up
'Cause I believe there's a place
There's a place where we belong
Songwriters: Peter Gabriel
Don’t Give Up lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

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Submitted by QMS on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 10:01pm

It's going to be alright
When times get rough
You can fall back on us

~
'Cause somewhere there's a place
Where we belong
Rest your head

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Submitted by janis b on Tue, 01/15/2019 - 10:09pm
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@QMS

George Winston ...

[video:https://youtu.be/dPkKF0d6OpY]

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