A Time to Break Silence
By Rev. Martin Luther King
By 1967, King had become the country's most prominent opponent of the Vietnam War, and a staunch critic of overall U.S. foreign policy, which he deemed militaristic. In his "Beyond Vietnam" speech delivered at New York's Riverside Church on April 4, 1967 -- a year to the day before he was murdered -- King called the United States "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today."
Time magazine called the speech "demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi," and the Washington Post declared that King had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people."
Once to every man and nation
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.
James Russell Lowell
Comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood,
For the good or evil side;
Some great cause, God's new Messiah,
Off'ring each the bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever
Twixt that darkness and that light.
Though the cause of evil prosper,
Yet 'tis truth alone is strong;
Though her portion be the scaffold,
And upon the throne be wrong:
Yet that scaffold sways the future,
And behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own.
James Russell Lowell
Beyond Vietnam: A Time To Break Silence
h/t ICH and transcript h/t zzahier for the uploads.
It's not hard to appreciate, particularly with the benefit of hindsight, that this, along with others I imagine, was an extremely dangerous speech, contributing no doubt to King's subsequent assassination one year later. I thought to look into King's assassination and see if there was any light shed on who ordered his execution. Although too late for me to take in the details tonight, I shall leave this link to more or less the first sight I dropped on that might elucidate things a little.
Unread then. http://www.geocities.com/~virtualtruth/king.htm
Update: Democracy Now Special: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in His Own Words Includes a good proportion of this and other speeches.
5 comments:
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http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/
1954-eisenhower-vietnam1.html
I shall look into the history of the period somewhat deeper, knowing far too little to even try to put the letter in context.
Tomorrow perhaps, if I don't get distracted.
Thanks Chuck.
On the day that America celebrates his birth, OxFam has released a report detailing the shocking economic inequality in America and around the world. Most strikingly, the richest 85 people own as much wealth as the poorest 50% of the world’s population — that’s 3.5 billion people.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/01/20/3184011/statistic-world-2014-outrage-martin-luther-king/
It was ever thus.
If you haven't by the way, listened to MLK's Beyond Vietnam, do give the Democracy Now version a listen to, you won't be disappointed.
You may have noticed that the video: Body Language: Spotting the McCann's Lies has been whooshed. (Carter-Ruck no doubt) I thought it might not last long, so I grabbed it while it was going.
I have just uploaded it to youtube, but I'm waiting for Joana Morais to grab it from there, and then upload it to Vimo Portugal, then I will re-host it.
Not much else to report Chuck, a final re-install of XP on Sunday, and then run with it as long as I can.
It stops being supported by microsoft in April I think. but I shall hang in there for as long as possible. Well until the hackers make it untenable to carry on.
Call me Luddite if you must, but I can't be doing with Windows7. It is without a doubt in my honest opinion, a grande dollop of merde.
Everything is hidden, I cant find a goddamned thing. And that's an improvement on XP? Me arse it is.
This folder works though. All you have to do is make a folder on your desktop and name it:
GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
And then by some kind of magic, everything appears inside it.
Give it a try if you are on 7, you can always bin it. but you wouldn't want to I don't think.
That's it for now Chuck, I'll talk to you later.
Ciao.
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