Truly one of the great speeches of all time. Sermon, history lesson and prophetic call. I have listened to the Ebenezer Church recording of this speech many times. Now posted here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pdM4Rvwcx8&list=PPSV
"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people."
I would like to believe that but sadly, the world doesn't really give a shit. Certainly that's true of most Americans who, so long as the wars don't touch them directly, are so caught up in their daily underwear that they are totally unaware of what has happened to our country. Others see it as an opportunity for profit and only a few really care.
Even the majority of the few that care will still vote for war on election day, as they will insist on voting for a Democrat or a Republican, whichever they view as the least evil. But the outcome is always the same as both political parties are totally dedicated to war and there is no one who will put the brakes on to stop them.
Excellent reminder of what’s true and important. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a visionary, an acute observer, and a prophet. That self-styled “beacon of freedom”, the Divided States of America inhabited by hundreds of millions, is where the few visionaries are executed by “lone gunmen.”
Apparently one of LBJ's primary motivations for escalating the Vietnam War was the desire to not go down in history as the guy who lost the war. Of course one of the best ways to avoid losing a war is to not get involved in one in the first place. Nowadays it seems we get involved in wars at the drop of a hat.
JFK and MLK, Jr. had to be eliminated because both were preaching a vision that challenged the National Security State, the military-industrial complex, endless war-making, and the entire edifice that exists to promote US global hegemony in perpetuity. Both had achieved broad mass support and were seen as charismatic leaders by a large swath of the American public and, therefore, threats to the existing class structure and power relations in this country. With their assassinations by the National Security State, a very strong message was sent: If you dare to challenge the existing class structure and power relations in this country, you had better watch your back.
Three Days after MLK gave that speech, Israel shot down 6 Syrian jet fighters.
Egypt responded to that by shutting down the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, much like the Houthies are doing Today.
Israel's preemptive strike on Egypt destroying Egypt's air force on the ground in response to that Economic Sanction, started the 1967 War on June 5.
The subsequent Illegal Israeli settlements established in OCCUPIED Palestine since that 1967 WAR led to October 7, and the current Israeli Slaughter of Palestinian Civilians in Gaza.
That's what the United Nations Secretary-General was saying with the fundamental REALITY, "October 7 didn't happen in a vacuum."
Thank You, Bill, for sharing Your thoughts on MLK Day 2024. The more i read those earlier articles You keep referring BV readers to, the more i wish i'd hooked up with it much longer ago than i did. Permit me to share my thoughts on this day...:
It has been argued that the key, indeed critical influence on Martin Luther King’s coming out totally, completely, and forcefully against America’s War in and on the Peoples, Land, Country, and Nation of Vietnam ~ despite the very real risks and threats that such opposition would generate for America’s Civil Rights Movement and, as it turned out, for King personally, as well ~ that influence was Thich Nhat Hahn: the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk who the Nobel Laureate Dr King formally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 even before his anti-War speeches in the Churches.
“As the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of 1964, I now have the pleasure of proposing to you the name of Thich Nhat Hanh for that award in 1967. I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam.”
For an overview of the relationship between Dr King and Thich Nhat Hahn, and Thay’s [Vietnamese for “Teacher”] impact on King’s stance on the War, see any and/or all of the following:
And for a detailed history of that relationship ~ from its beginnings in 1965 to after King’s assassination ~ see BROTHERS IN THE BELOVED COMMUNITY: The Friendship of Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr., by The Right Reverend Dr. Marc Andrus, the 8th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California.
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous,” warned Rev. King, “than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
How true those words. For the government that honors Dr. King with a national holiday killed him. This is the suppressed truth behind the highly promoted day of service. It is what you are not supposed to know. It is what Thomas Merton, as quoted by James W. Douglass, called The Unspeakable:
It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and officials declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his service.
Imagine if King were alive today as the Israeli/U.S. alliance commits genocide against the Palestinians with the full backing of U.S. leaders and aspiring presidential candidates. Everyone knows he would be denouncing these atrocities, while today’s smiling political jackals with polished faces cheer them on or remain silent.
The voices of the prophets are never silenced, even as the sycophants of empire play word games to cover their savage ruthlessness.
Another assassinated prophet of our broken world, the Hindu Mohandas Gandhi, soul brother to King, echoed the words that many have heard, that “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong,” when, in crossing over to the Christian tradition, he told us: “We dare not think of birth without death on the cross. Living Christ means a Living Cross, without it life is a living death.”[1]
Would Dr. King, if he were alive Today, excoriate President Biden?
Biden, Israel’s accomplice in Gaza, pretends to be a bystander'
While the White House claims to be "frustrated" with Israel's conduct in Gaza, US support for the carnage continues.
On October 15th, President Biden took umbrage at a suggestion that his administration could not back both the Ukraine proxy war and Israel’s assault on Gaza at the same time.
“We're the United States of America for God's sake, the most powerful nation… in the history of the world,” Biden told CBS News. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.”
Three months and well over 20,000 defenseless Palestinians slain later, the self-declared leader of the most powerful nation in the history of world now claims to be a helpless bystander.
According to four US officials, Biden is “increasingly frustrated” and “losing his patience” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has rejected “most of the administration's recent requests related to the war in Gaza,” Axis reports. “The situation sucks and we are stuck,” one official complained. “The president's patience is running out.” Another official fumes that “there is immense frustration” in the Oval Office. According to Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen: “At every juncture, Netanyahu has given Biden the finger. They are pleading with the Netanyahu coalition, but getting slapped in the face over and over again.”
Van Hollen is correct that the administration is getting slapped in the face by Israel. But he omits that Biden is a willing scene partner in a barely disguised performance: pretending to be up in arms about Israel’s genocidal conduct while doing everything he can to support it.
Martin Luther King would approve of this Opinion in the New York Times Today, for all our Days called TODAY.
'Opinion Today: Maybe we should embrace uncertainty'
Freezing temperatures hitting huge swaths of the country. Multiple court cases embroiling former President Donald Trump, still the Republican front-runner in what’s sure to be a fractious election season. Ongoing wars in Gaza and in Ukraine. Lingering questions around Covid as it and other respiratory illnesses hit the population hard, again, this winter.
Those are just some stories that we were sitting with this weekend — each one rife with its own set of questions that have no clear answers. And we can expect the rest of the year to have more questions and more uncertainty in store for us.
That’s probably not very comforting to read. But perhaps it should be. In her guest essay for Opinion, the author Maggie Jackson makes a strong argument for why uncertainty in our lives should not be something we flee from — but instead something we embrace and use as a tool to better understand the world around us, and to make positive change for ourselves.
It’s quite a challenging appeal. When we feel uncertain, our instinct is to either find answers, or cope with the uncertainty by finding a way to put it out of our minds. Coming to grips with simply not knowing something and accepting that feels especially out of place in the modern day, when our smartphones beckon us to resolve uneasy feelings as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.
I find the idea of embracing uncertainty to be especially difficult as a journalist. My entire career is built on the habits I’ve cultivated: to ask direct questions, to utilize whatever tools I have at my disposal to get to the bottom of something and to tell the rest of the world what I’ve found when I’m done.
But Jackson makes it clear that leaning into uncertainty doesn’t mean simply sitting in the proverbial dark. Accepting uncertainty can be a path forward to actually finding the information you seek. It’s an approach that may help you shake off biases and assumptions, to find new starting points from which to seek knowledge. To that end, it could really be considered a valuable tool for journalists and readers alike..........................................
It's a synopsis in a sense, of what Belief in the Resurrected Christ Omega Today, does with us, and our uncertainties.
Today is the 238th Day of my 80th Year counting up, not down. In my 49 year search for more of Christ in me, I have learned giving God the benefit of MY Doubts, has a return of Spiritual BENEFITS to me in many different ways at the right TIME when it is NEEDED, as this Material World contracts in a tightening Economic Straitjacket at the same TIME as WARS and rumours of WARS.
I believe when they say "War Hero" they mean he, or she are a Hero, and they are because they gave their life in Battle and saved others their brother soldiers, or even helped hasten the defeat of a sworn enemy this can be a righteous kill like a David over a Goliath say...! And this is noble in the main, but you're right obviously War is or should always be a last resort... MLK was a true, religious, holy man who never lacked for guts despite his flaws.
Truly one of the great speeches of all time. Sermon, history lesson and prophetic call. I have listened to the Ebenezer Church recording of this speech many times. Now posted here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pdM4Rvwcx8&list=PPSV
"The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people."
I would like to believe that but sadly, the world doesn't really give a shit. Certainly that's true of most Americans who, so long as the wars don't touch them directly, are so caught up in their daily underwear that they are totally unaware of what has happened to our country. Others see it as an opportunity for profit and only a few really care.
Even the majority of the few that care will still vote for war on election day, as they will insist on voting for a Democrat or a Republican, whichever they view as the least evil. But the outcome is always the same as both political parties are totally dedicated to war and there is no one who will put the brakes on to stop them.
Excellent reminder of what’s true and important. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a visionary, an acute observer, and a prophet. That self-styled “beacon of freedom”, the Divided States of America inhabited by hundreds of millions, is where the few visionaries are executed by “lone gunmen.”
Apparently one of LBJ's primary motivations for escalating the Vietnam War was the desire to not go down in history as the guy who lost the war. Of course one of the best ways to avoid losing a war is to not get involved in one in the first place. Nowadays it seems we get involved in wars at the drop of a hat.
JFK and MLK, Jr. had to be eliminated because both were preaching a vision that challenged the National Security State, the military-industrial complex, endless war-making, and the entire edifice that exists to promote US global hegemony in perpetuity. Both had achieved broad mass support and were seen as charismatic leaders by a large swath of the American public and, therefore, threats to the existing class structure and power relations in this country. With their assassinations by the National Security State, a very strong message was sent: If you dare to challenge the existing class structure and power relations in this country, you had better watch your back.
Three Days after MLK gave that speech, Israel shot down 6 Syrian jet fighters.
Egypt responded to that by shutting down the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping, much like the Houthies are doing Today.
Israel's preemptive strike on Egypt destroying Egypt's air force on the ground in response to that Economic Sanction, started the 1967 War on June 5.
The subsequent Illegal Israeli settlements established in OCCUPIED Palestine since that 1967 WAR led to October 7, and the current Israeli Slaughter of Palestinian Civilians in Gaza.
That's what the United Nations Secretary-General was saying with the fundamental REALITY, "October 7 didn't happen in a vacuum."
Thank You, Bill, for sharing Your thoughts on MLK Day 2024. The more i read those earlier articles You keep referring BV readers to, the more i wish i'd hooked up with it much longer ago than i did. Permit me to share my thoughts on this day...:
It has been argued that the key, indeed critical influence on Martin Luther King’s coming out totally, completely, and forcefully against America’s War in and on the Peoples, Land, Country, and Nation of Vietnam ~ despite the very real risks and threats that such opposition would generate for America’s Civil Rights Movement and, as it turned out, for King personally, as well ~ that influence was Thich Nhat Hahn: the Vietnamese Buddhist Monk who the Nobel Laureate Dr King formally nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1967 even before his anti-War speeches in the Churches.
The text of Dr King’s Letter of Nomination is available at https://plumvillage.org/letter-from-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-nominating-thich-nhat-hanh-for-the-nobel-peace-prize-in-1967, and begins:
“As the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate of 1964, I now have the pleasure of proposing to you the name of Thich Nhat Hanh for that award in 1967. I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam.”
For an overview of the relationship between Dr King and Thich Nhat Hahn, and Thay’s [Vietnamese for “Teacher”] impact on King’s stance on the War, see any and/or all of the following:
1, “Thích Nhất Hạnh and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Spiritual brothers, partners in nonviolence” at https://usfblogs.usfca.edu/fierce-urgency/2021/10/12/thich-nhat-hanh-and-dr-martin-luther-king-jr-spiritual-brothers-partners-in-nonviolence/ .
2. “’I Have Always Felt His Support’: A look into the friendship of Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr., two brothers working to build a Beloved Community” at https://tricycle.org/article/martin-luther-king-thich-nhat-hanh/ .
3. “What Happens When Two Giants Meet?” at https://thichnhathanhfoundation.org/blog/2017/8/9/when-giants-meet .
4. “The Buddhist and The Christian: When Thich Nhat Hanh Met Martin Luther King Jr.” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oo34-B5EXYw .
And for a detailed history of that relationship ~ from its beginnings in 1965 to after King’s assassination ~ see BROTHERS IN THE BELOVED COMMUNITY: The Friendship of Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King Jr., by The Right Reverend Dr. Marc Andrus, the 8th bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California.
BROTHERS is available from Parallax Press at https://www.parallax.org/product/brothers-in-the-beloved-community/#product-content , and Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1952692458?smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER&psc=1 .
To paraphrase Edith and Archie Bunker: “Mister, we could use some men like TNH and MLK agaaain… .” [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fye4uY3pCvo ]
“Orders to Kill” Dr. Martin Luther King: The Government that Honours MLK with National Holiday Killed Him-A Review of The Plot to Kill King-W. Pepper
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/orders-kill-dr-martin-luther-king-government-honours-mlk-adomdza
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous,” warned Rev. King, “than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
How true those words. For the government that honors Dr. King with a national holiday killed him. This is the suppressed truth behind the highly promoted day of service. It is what you are not supposed to know. It is what Thomas Merton, as quoted by James W. Douglass, called The Unspeakable:
It is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said; the void that gets into the language of public and officials declarations at the very moment when they are pronounced, and makes them ring dead with the hollowness of the abyss. It is the void out of which Eichmann drew the punctilious exactitude of his service.
Imagine if King were alive today as the Israeli/U.S. alliance commits genocide against the Palestinians with the full backing of U.S. leaders and aspiring presidential candidates. Everyone knows he would be denouncing these atrocities, while today’s smiling political jackals with polished faces cheer them on or remain silent.
The voices of the prophets are never silenced, even as the sycophants of empire play word games to cover their savage ruthlessness.
Another assassinated prophet of our broken world, the Hindu Mohandas Gandhi, soul brother to King, echoed the words that many have heard, that “God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong,” when, in crossing over to the Christian tradition, he told us: “We dare not think of birth without death on the cross. Living Christ means a Living Cross, without it life is a living death.”[1]
https://off-guardian.org/2024/01/21/why-the-us-national-security-state-assassinated-mlk/
Would Dr. King, if he were alive Today, excoriate President Biden?
Biden, Israel’s accomplice in Gaza, pretends to be a bystander'
While the White House claims to be "frustrated" with Israel's conduct in Gaza, US support for the carnage continues.
On October 15th, President Biden took umbrage at a suggestion that his administration could not back both the Ukraine proxy war and Israel’s assault on Gaza at the same time.
“We're the United States of America for God's sake, the most powerful nation… in the history of the world,” Biden told CBS News. “We can take care of both of these and still maintain our overall international defense.”
Three months and well over 20,000 defenseless Palestinians slain later, the self-declared leader of the most powerful nation in the history of world now claims to be a helpless bystander.
According to four US officials, Biden is “increasingly frustrated” and “losing his patience” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has rejected “most of the administration's recent requests related to the war in Gaza,” Axis reports. “The situation sucks and we are stuck,” one official complained. “The president's patience is running out.” Another official fumes that “there is immense frustration” in the Oval Office. According to Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen: “At every juncture, Netanyahu has given Biden the finger. They are pleading with the Netanyahu coalition, but getting slapped in the face over and over again.”
Van Hollen is correct that the administration is getting slapped in the face by Israel. But he omits that Biden is a willing scene partner in a barely disguised performance: pretending to be up in arms about Israel’s genocidal conduct while doing everything he can to support it.
https://www.aaronmate.net/p/biden-israels-accomplice-in-gaza
Martin Luther King would approve of this Opinion in the New York Times Today, for all our Days called TODAY.
'Opinion Today: Maybe we should embrace uncertainty'
Freezing temperatures hitting huge swaths of the country. Multiple court cases embroiling former President Donald Trump, still the Republican front-runner in what’s sure to be a fractious election season. Ongoing wars in Gaza and in Ukraine. Lingering questions around Covid as it and other respiratory illnesses hit the population hard, again, this winter.
Those are just some stories that we were sitting with this weekend — each one rife with its own set of questions that have no clear answers. And we can expect the rest of the year to have more questions and more uncertainty in store for us.
That’s probably not very comforting to read. But perhaps it should be. In her guest essay for Opinion, the author Maggie Jackson makes a strong argument for why uncertainty in our lives should not be something we flee from — but instead something we embrace and use as a tool to better understand the world around us, and to make positive change for ourselves.
It’s quite a challenging appeal. When we feel uncertain, our instinct is to either find answers, or cope with the uncertainty by finding a way to put it out of our minds. Coming to grips with simply not knowing something and accepting that feels especially out of place in the modern day, when our smartphones beckon us to resolve uneasy feelings as quickly and as thoroughly as possible.
I find the idea of embracing uncertainty to be especially difficult as a journalist. My entire career is built on the habits I’ve cultivated: to ask direct questions, to utilize whatever tools I have at my disposal to get to the bottom of something and to tell the rest of the world what I’ve found when I’m done.
But Jackson makes it clear that leaning into uncertainty doesn’t mean simply sitting in the proverbial dark. Accepting uncertainty can be a path forward to actually finding the information you seek. It’s an approach that may help you shake off biases and assumptions, to find new starting points from which to seek knowledge. To that end, it could really be considered a valuable tool for journalists and readers alike..........................................
It's a synopsis in a sense, of what Belief in the Resurrected Christ Omega Today, does with us, and our uncertainties.
Today is the 238th Day of my 80th Year counting up, not down. In my 49 year search for more of Christ in me, I have learned giving God the benefit of MY Doubts, has a return of Spiritual BENEFITS to me in many different ways at the right TIME when it is NEEDED, as this Material World contracts in a tightening Economic Straitjacket at the same TIME as WARS and rumours of WARS.
I believe when they say "War Hero" they mean he, or she are a Hero, and they are because they gave their life in Battle and saved others their brother soldiers, or even helped hasten the defeat of a sworn enemy this can be a righteous kill like a David over a Goliath say...! And this is noble in the main, but you're right obviously War is or should always be a last resort... MLK was a true, religious, holy man who never lacked for guts despite his flaws.