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Today's
Stories
April 5 / 6,
2008
Alexander Cockburn
Did
the Elites Want MLK Dead?
Ramzy Baroud
There
are No Checkpoints in Heaven
Ralph Nader
Runaway Bailouts
David Yearsley
How Scott Joplin Had Wall Street Down
Paul Craig Roberts
The Petraeus and Crocker Show
Lawrence Korb / Ian Moss
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a True Patriot
John Ross
La Cumbia de la Doctrina Bush: Colombia Kills Four Mexican Students
in Ecuador Bombing
Robert Fantina
McCain, Republicans and Family Values
David Michael Green
Back to Disaster: Hoover at Home, Tet Abroad
Missy Beattie
McCan't
Patrick Bond
Vultures Circle Zimbabwe
Phyllis Pollack
The Stones Meet the Press
Adam Engel
The Boobus in the Lie
April 4, 2008
Dave Lindorff
The
Night I Heard King Had Been Shot
Greg Moses
Missing
King
Ron Jacobs
Two Murders, 40 Years On: Bobby Hutton and Martin Luther King,
Jr.
Alan Farago
Show Me the Size of Your Bail Out and I'll Show You Mine
Alison Weir
Funding
Our Decline: U.S. Aid to Israel
David Rosen
Rape as an Instrument of Total War
Robert Weissman
The Unrealized Dream
Jacob Hornberger
Was Killing Iraqi Children Worth It?
Jackie Corr
Hillary and Obama Head for Butte
Carl Finamore
Taking On United Airlines
Laray Polk
We Are All Dith Pran
Susie Day
Advice for the War-Torn
Website of
the Day
Winter Soldiers: a Video Portrait
April 3, 2008
Peter Morici
The Deepening Recession
Joe Bageant
The Audacity of Depression
Andy Worthington
Cleared But Still Detained:
The Ordeal of Moroccan Prisoner Said al-Boujaadia
Nikolas Kozloff
Condi's Divide and Rule Strategy in South America
Rannie Amiri
The U.S. Disdain for Mideast Democracy
David Macaray
More Labor Strife in Hollywood
Stephen Lendman
Lynne Stewart's Long Struggle for Justice
Website of
the Day
The
True Face of Da Vinci?
April 2, 2008
Diane Farsetta
Indian
Point on the Potomac
Harry Browne
Bertie
Ahern Laid Low by Secretary
Wajahat Ali
The Folly of Attacking Iran: a Conversation with Steven Kinzer
George Wuerthner
Open Season on Wolves
Col. Dan Smith
The
Militarization of America
Philippe Marlière
The Politics of Bling-Bling in France: Sarkozy's Cultivated Anti-Intellectualism
Steve Early
A Purple Uprising in Oakland
Bernard Chazelle
Saving the American Left
Reza Fiyouzat
Bowling in Hell
April 1, 2008
Jeff Leys
Fracturing
the Peace to End the War
Thomas P. Healy
Restoring the Constitution: a Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg
Winslow T. Wheeler
When Pigs Sprout Wings: Mangled Rationales for a Fatter Defense
Budget
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
New Deal Nostalgia
Patrick Irelan
Cocaine, Colombia and the Cartels
Andy Worthington
The Case of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani
John V. Walsh
The Shunning of Ralph Nader
Michael J.
Smith
Woolly Mamet
Robert Weissman
The New Philip Morris--Even Worse Than the Old?
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Defining Moments
Martha Rosenberg
Brain Mist Disease: Boss Hog's Gift to Humanity
Website of
the Day
Support Briana!
March 31, 2008
Mike Whitney
Dead
on Arrival: Paulson's Fixit Plan for Wall Street
Mats Svensson
Walls,
Tunnels and Daily Humiliations
Paul Rockwell
Hillary's
Lies About Outsourcing
Paul Craig Roberts
A Third American War in the Making?
Patrick Cockburn
Sadr
Calls for Ceasefire
Peter Dale Scott
The Showdown
Alfredo Molano
Cultura Mafiosa in Colombia
Peter Morici
Why Paulson's Reform Plan Falls Short
Uri Avnery
Day of the Land, 32 Years Later
Michael Simmons
The American Bard in New Orleans
Betsy Roberts
/ Karen Orr
The Clorox Coup
Phyllis Pollack
First the Sun and Then the Moon: Scorsese Does the Stones
Website of
the Day
Five Years Too Many
March 29 / 30, 2008
Alexander Cockburn
When
They Pick Up the Phone at 3 AM, What Will They Say?
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Police Refuse to Back Maliki's Attacks on Medhi Army
Mike Whitney
Bernanke's Next Big Bail Out Plan
Christopher Brauchli
The Pastor of Armageddon and the Slave Sale: McCain, Lieberman
and Rev. Hagee
William Blum
China, Tibet and the Propaganda Olympics
Robert Fantina
Iraq
Troika: McCain, Obama and Clinton
John Ross
AMLO, the Comeback Kid? Fighting the Privatization of Mexico's
Oil
Allison Kilkenny
Shady Lending Hits Home
Nelson P. Valdés
Cuba, the Beatles and Historical Context
Suzanne Baroud
The Great Lake of Gaza: a New Crisis in the Making
Richard Rhames
Social Security: Throwing Granny from the Gravy Train
Christopher Fons
Transcending the 60s? Obama and the Baby Boomers
Carl Finamore
Misery at 35,000 Feet: Mergers Stall, Fares Soar, Services Slump
and Consumers Sour
Eamonn McCann
Hillary Misremembers Again!
Missy Beattie
Justice and the Monsters of War
Fred Gardner
Jim Thorpe, All-American
Kim Nicolini
Cock Chuggers and Cheese Curls: Richard Kelly's "Southland
Tales"
David Yearsley
"All the World's a Hospital"
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up
Poets' Basement
Valentine and Ko Un
Website of
the Weekend
Hidden Iraq
March 28, 2008
Saul Landau
Growing
Dread About Iraq
Alan Farago
Other People's Money: the Chop Shop Economy
Peter Morici
Knocking Down False Economic Gods
Andy Worthington
Plight of the Uyghus: a Chinese Muslim's Desperate Plea from
Guantánamo
Felice Pace
Ashes of Lies: Why No One Trusts the US Forest Service
Peter Montague
Sierra Club Cleans House -- With Clorox!
Dave Lindorff
The Mumia Exception
March 27, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Basra
Erupts
Binoy Kampmark
Free Market Apostates
Joanne Mariner
"Was George Washington a Terrorist?"
Norman Solomon
NPR News: National Pentagon Radio?
William S. Lind
Mars Only Knocks Once: a Prognosis for Iraq
John V. Walsh
Obama's Speech: a Touch of Bigotry?
Robert Weissman
How Things Work
Ron Jacobs
Meeting Charlie Ehlen
Ralph Nader
Put Impeachment Back on the Table
David Macaray
Court Rules Against Grocery Workers
John Borowski
Clearcutting the History of Forest Destruction
Website of
the Day
Going Out for an English
March 26, 2008
Stan Cox
The
Germs Next Door
Sharon Smith
Greed
Pays: Welfare on Wall Street
Anita Sinha / Jill Tauber
Dreams Turned into Rubble in New Orleans
Matt Vidal
So Much for the Self-Regulating Market
William S. Lind
Operation Cassandra
Joe Mowrey
The Audacity of Hypocrisy: Obama's Pandering to Israel
Dave Lindorff
Duck and Cover (Up): Hillary Under Fire
Ray McGovern
Frontline's War: Too Timid, Too Little, Too Late
Justin Smith
Why Race and Gender are Separate Issues
Sam Husseini
The Winter Soldier Hearings and Indy Media
Martha Rosenberg
Blood on Ice: Gentlemen, Pick Up Your Clubs
Michael Dickinson
Politicians as Dogs
Website of the Day
The Wal-Mart Virus: How the Infection Spread
March 25, 2008
Ishmael Reed
The
Crazy Rev. Wright
Corey D. B.
Walker
The Politics of Jeremiah Wright
Linn Washington Jr.
Racism in America and Other Uncomfortable Facts
Alan Farago
The Money Launderers: a Picnic for Wall St. Insiders
Vijay Prashad
A Glimmer of Hope From the Gulf Coast
Joshua Frank
A Silver Lining to the Bush Years?
Ralph Nader
How Public Servants Can Help End This War
David Rovics
If I Can't Dance: Why is the Left So Boring?
Peter Morici
America's Banks are Broken
Dave Zirin
Olympic Flames: China's Crackdown in Tibet
David Krieger
The Crisis in Tibet
Website of
the Day
Memorializing Iraq
March 24, 2008
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Blonde
Ambition: Hillary's Berserker Campaign for 2012
Peter Morici
Digging Out of the Recession
Uri Avnery
Two Americas
Wajahat Ali
First of the Mohicans: an Interview with Rep. Keith Ellison
Paul Craig Roberts
Inside the Shell Game
George Ciccariello-Maher
The Coming War on Venezuela
Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
Christopher
Brauchli
Possessing Someone Else's Country
Cat Woods
A Letter to Mom on Obama
Stacey Warde
Tax Burden
Dave Lindorff
The American Dead Hits 4,000, But Who's Counting?
Website of
the Day
Live from the Longest Walk
March 22 /
23, 2008
Ralph Nader
Bush
Blisters the Truth on Iraq
Nicole Colson
Can You Afford to Feed Your Family?
James Petras
The Cost of Unilateral Humanitarian Initiatives
Laura Carlsen
From Bombs to Markets: The Andean Crisis and the Geopolitics
of Trade
Greg Moses
Tolerance and the American Pulpit
Andy Worthington
Torture Stories Dog Guantánamo Trials
Michael Dickinson
Art on Trial
John Ross
Bush's Surge Hits Mosul
Missy Comley Beattie
Killer Economics
David Michael
Green
Happy Anniversary, America!
Ramzy Baroud
The Coming Uncertain War on Iran
Martha Rosenberg
Easter Egg Shells from Hell
Paul Watson
Evolution is Going to the Dogs in the Galapagos
Isabella Kenfield
Monsanto's
Raid on Brazil
James Murren
Logging v. Water in Honduras
Jacob Hornberger
Sex and the Immigration Officer
Kathlyn Stone
Ben Heine, Master of the Art of Resistance
Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking New Mexico's History
Kim Nicolini
Class, Gender and Abortion in Communist Romania
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Booked Up: What I'm Reading This Week
Poets' Basement
Wilson, Woods, Gibbons and Orloski
Website of
the Weekend
Merci, McCain!
March 21, 2008
Marleen Martin
Land
Behind Bars: the Hidden Casualties of America's "War on
Crime"
Peter Montague
Run
Your Car on Coal? Maybe Not
Saul Landau
Monroe's
Deadly Doctrine
Anis Hamadeh
Merkel in the Knesset
Jacob Hornberger
McCain's Al Qaeda Scare: Slip or Tactic?
Khalil Nakhleh
Al Nakba of 1948: How Long Will It Persist?
Adam Isacson
Colombia, Paramilitary Threats and Assassinations
Kenneth Couesbouc
Money for Nothing
Madis Senner
Will the Feds Underwrite the Stock Market?
Monica Benderman
The Costs of Freedom: What Are You Willing to Pay?
Website of the Day
Stop Foreclosures and Evictions
March 20, 2008
Damien Millet
/
Eric Toussaint
The
Triple Failing of the Big Private Banks
Mike Whitney
Winding
Up Bear
John Ross
What Do We Owe Iraq?
Dave Lindorff
Paying the Piper: the Bodies and Bills are Piling Up
Wajahat Ali
Pakistan on Fire
Jill Nagle
Memo to Sex Workers: Stop Financing Shock Journalism
Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Obama and the Psychic Auto-Shrink-Wrapping Called Race in America
Dan La Botz
Obama's Race Speech
Robert Weissman
Alternative Power: Shutting Down the API
Stella Dallas
/
Jennifer Matsui
Apostasy Now! Mamet, Enter Stage Right
Website of the Day
The Angry Monk
March 19, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
A
War of Lies
Robert Fisk
The Little Men and the Inferno
Jeff Taylor
Five Years of War in Iraq
Ed Ruggero
From Pinkville to Iraq: the Dark Anniversary of My Lai
Ron Jacobs
Who'll Stop the Rain?
Christopher
Fons
Obama Takes the Race Bait
Sherwood Ross
In Defense of Rev. Wright
Cynthia McKinney
An Urgent Crisis: Confronting America's Racial Disparities
Joshua Frank
The Kool-Aid That Kills
Robert Weissman
Monsanto's Genetic Food Gamble
Walter Brasch
It's a Welfare State--If You're Rich
Yifat Susskind
Iraqi Women Resist the Occupation
Andrew Wimmer
War Demands Its Due
Website of
the Day
Glimpses of Nature
March 18, 2008
David Price
The
Military "Leveraging" of Cultural Knowledge
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Collapse of American Power
Tim Wise
Of National Lies and Racial America: Jeremiah Wright, Barack
Obama and the Unacceptability of Truth
Patrick Cockburn
One of the Most Disastrous Wars Ever Fought
Conn Hallinan
Afghanistan, a River Running Backward
James T. Phillips
Monsters: Past, Present and Wannabe
Uri Avnery
The Killing in Bethlehem
David Macaray
Could Wal-Mart Revive the Labor Movement?
Marjorie Cohn
Beware an Attack on Iran
Peter Zinn
Obama in New Orleans
Dan La Botz
The Economic Crisis, Labor and the Left
Monica Benderman
Where are We Going?
March 17, 2008
Pam Martens
The
Fed's Wall Street Dilemma
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The US, Iran and the Policy of Dual Containment
Nelson P. Valdés
The Imperial Branding of Simon Bolivar and the Cuban Revolution
Peter Morici
The Corrosive Consequences of the Trade Deficit
Wajahat Ali
Disrobing the Nine: a Conversation with Jeffrey Toobin on the
Supreme Court Since 9/11
Ronnie Cummins
Beyond Progressive Malpractice: Taking Down Big Pharma
Shaun Harkin
Saint Patrick's Day in Fortress America
Ali Khan
No Pardon for Musharraf
Robert Jensen
Beyond Peace
P. Sainath
Oh, What a Lovely Waiver!
Greg Moses
Jeremiah was a Bullhorn
Dr. Susan Block
Advice for Eliot Spitzer
Website of the Day
No Cowboys
March 15 /
16, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
How
to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Mike Whitney
Bearly
Alive: Investment Giant Rushed to ICU by Panicky Fed Chief
Ralph Nader
Of
Laws and Men
Robert Pollin
It's Still the Economy, Stupid
Diane Christian
The Poetics of Perversity: From Boccaccio to Spitzer
Wajahat Ali
Faking the Hood: a Conversation with Ishmael Reed
Tom Wright
/
Therese Saliba
Rachel Corrie's Case for Justice
Alan Farago
Back to Florida: Where Bushtime Began
Greg Moses
Raiding the Family Room in Texas
Michael Hudson
A Grand Global Bargain?
Martha Rosenberg
Why Hillary's Favorite Chicken Company is Eying China
John Goekler
Fourth Generation Warfare in a Fifth Generation Conflict
Uzma Aslam
Khan
A Letter to Barack Obama: Where's the Change, Barack?
Oren Ben-Dor
The Silencing of Gilad Atzmon
David Underhill
Mammon, Morals and the Mobile Tanker Deal
Fred Gardner
The Education of Eliot Spitzer
David Michael
Green
Why Spitzer Should Have Resigned (and Why He Shouldn't Have)
Rev. William E. Alberts
Jesus, Entombed in Heaven
Gail Dines
It's All About the John: Prostitution and Male Power
David Yearsley
Conducting, Anarchy and the Problem of When to Begin
Chris Clarke
Walking with Zeke: the Luckiest of Dogs
Poets' Basement
Anderson, Lodge & Subiet
Website of
the Day
Deviant Art
March 14, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Watching
the Dollar Die
Don Santina
Vichy
Democrats: Pelosi and the Politics of Collaboration
Patrick Cockburn
Iraqi
Mother Vows Revenge on US: How She Lost Her Husband and Her Sons
Tim Rinne
StratCom
Rules! The Next War Will Start in Nebraska
Robert Fantina
In
Torture We Trust
Saul Landau
Letter
to the Presidents-in-Waitings
David Macaray
Common
Myths About Labor Unions
Franklin Lamb
Is
the Bush Administration Switching Horses in Lebanon
Michael Neumann
The
One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics
March 13, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
Republicans
and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
Mike Whitney
Meltdown
Looms Larger As Credit Markets Freeze
Assaf Kfoury
"One-State
or Two State?"- Sterile Debate on False Alternatives
Andy Worthington
Afghan
Hero Who Died in Guantánamo: The Background to the Story
Adam Federman
From
Autopia to Autogeddon: Cars Reach the End of the Road
March 12, 2008
Dave Lindorff
Bringing
Down Spitzer: It's the Big Brother Who Should Bother US
R.F. Blader
The
Spitzer Backlash
Yonatan Mendel
How
to be an Israeli Journalist. Never Write "Murder" or
"Palestine"
Jonathan Cook
One
State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Fallon
and Gates -- At Least One Cheer
James J. Brittain
Was
the U.S. Involved in Killing the FARC-EP Leaders
Ron Jacobs
"All
the Money You Make Will Never Buy Back Your Soul"
March 11, 2008
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
to End the Subprime Crisis
Ed O'Loughlin
How
Israeli Troops Invade Homes in Gaza, Brutalize, Smash and Steal
Ramzy Baroud
'Unwavering
Commitment' to Inequality
Kathy Christison
One
State or Two? The Debate Over Israel and Palestine
China Hand
PRC
Plays it Cool, as U.S. Tries to Amp Up Pressure on Iran
John Joslin
Thank
You, Nafta! Welcome to Weirton, Home of the Discount Cigarette
Mike Averko
Serb
Politics, Kosovo and the Moscow-Washington Divide
Ben Rosenfeld
Gavin
Newsom's Kneejerk Plan
Thierry Paquot
High
Rise, Low Spirits:The Curse of the Tower Block
March 10, 2008
Uri Avnery
"Kill
A Hundred Turks and Rest": The Five-Day War in Gaza
Col. Dan Smith
Scoring
the "Surge" and What Lies Beyond
R.F. Blader
Why
"Lock Them Up and Throw Away the Key" is Losing its
Sheen
Michael Neumann
The
One-State Illusion: More is Less
Bob Fitrakis
and Harvey Wasserman
Did
the Republicans Give Hillary Her Victory in Ohio?
James J. Brittain
Anti-Uribe
Protests in Colombia and the World
Missy Comley
Beattie
The
Passion of John McCain
March 8-9,
2008 Weekend Edition
JoAnn Wypijewski
The
Only Way to Fight the Clintons
Mike Whitney
Sorting
Through the Rubble in Post Bubble America
Peter Morici
Fed
and Treasury Fiddle as Economy Plummets
Ralph Nader
The
Silent Violence of Gaza's Suffering that Candidates Ignore
Jonathan Cook
The
Meaning of Gaza's Shoah
Steve Niva
Behind
the Israeli Escalation in Gaza
Bill and Kathy
Christison
Crisis
over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
Hervé
Do Alto and Franck Poupeau
Bolivia:
Morales is Checked
Eric Walberg
To
Leave and Stay at the Same Time: Putin to Medvedev to…?
Scott Johnson
City
of A Thousand Foreclosures
Mark Scaramella
James
Brown's Gate
Bill Clinton
President
Clinton's Remarks on Naming William M. Daley as NAFTA Task Force
Chairman
Poet's Basement
St.
Thomasino, Engel, Davies and Willson
Website of
the Weekend
Hillary
Blackens Barack
March 7, 2008
Patrick Cockburn
Why
Iraq Could Blow-Up in John McCain's Face
Robin Blackburn
Question
for Barrack Obama: Why Afghanistan is the'Right War'?
Saul Landau
The
Stupid Economy
Binoy Kampmark
When
Competition is Good: McCain and the Muddled Democrats
Chris Floyd
Crushing
the Ants: Admiral Fallon and His Empire
Andy Worthington
Spanish
Drop "Inhuman" Extradition Request for Guantánamo
Britons
Will Potter
Before
the Smoke Even Clears in Seattle: Bringing Out the T Word
March 6, 2008
March 6, 2008
Vincent Navarro
The
Next Failure of Health Reform
Forrest Hylton
High Stakes in the Andes: Colombia's Cornered President
Peter Morici
Why the Dollar is So Cheap
George Ciccariello-Maher
Counter-Attack of the Bureaucrats
John Ross
Taxi! Taxi! The Dark Side of the Oscars
Jacob Hornberger
No Standing to Lecture on Justice
Paul Watson
Illegal Japanese Whaling by the Numbers
Dan Bacher
Off the Deep End
Website of the Day
A Katrina Reader Online
March 5, 2008
Cockburn /
St. Clair
A
Great Day for John McCain (and Maybe Nader)
Joanne Mariner
After Guantanamo
Fidel Castro
The Raid on Ecuador: Underestimating Rafael Correa
Christopher
Brauchli
The Turkish Invasions
Steven Sherman
Obama and the Prospects for a Renewal of the Left
Dave Lindorff
Busting Bush & Co. in New England
James Murren
Bombing Somalia
Adam Engel
Necropolis Now
Website of Day
Remember Song
March 4, 2008
Wajahat Ali
Mumbo
Jumbo: Naming Names with Ishmael Reed
William Blum
How Could Hillary Have Known?
Bill Quigley
The Cleansing of New Orleans
Ralph Nader
The Prince Harry Solution
Patrick Irelan
Oil and Health in Venezuela
James J. Brittain
/
R. James Sacouman
Uribe's Colombia is Destabilizing a New Latin America
Norman Solomon
The War Election
Jacob Hornberger
Hillary in Waco: the Missing Apology
Andy Worthington
Guantánamo and the European Parliament
Mike Averko
Kosovo and the Press
Website of the Day
Tex-Mex Primary
March 3, 2008
Jennifer Loewenstein
Gazan Holocaust
Alan Farago
American Politics and the Faltering Economy
Richard Gott
Colombian Deaths in Ecuador
Wajahat Ali
Who Speaks for a Billion Muslims? Analyzing the World Gallup
Poll with John Esposito
Paul Craig Roberts
The Mukasey Conspiracy: a Bi-Partisan Attack on the Constitution
Robert Weissman
When Multinationals Say Adieu
Uri Avnery
Good Morning, Hamas
Martha Rosenberg
When Your Meat is a Downer
Eva Liddell
Leave the Next Dance for Bill
Michael Donnelly
Will Ferrell Does Flint
Website of the Day
Muddy Waters: Train Fare Home Blues
|
Weekend
Edition
Apri1 5 / 6, 2008
CounterPunch Diary
Did
the Elites Want MLK Dead--If So, Why?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
I believe Oswald killed JFK and Sirhan
killed Bobby. Lone gunmen both. With MLK, it could be a different
matter. And with the infinitely more radical Malcom X it certainly
was. The Kennedys were no threat to ruling power. They were
part of the ruling power. Whatever his actual function--and King
was given a hard time as an Uncle Tom by radicals in the later
Sixties--the ruling power construed him as a threat.
He was assassinated forty years
ago just after 6 pm as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine
motel in Memphis, Tennessee. A single rifle bullet hit him in
the jaw, then severed his spinal cord. James Earl Ray, a white
man, was convicted of the killing and sentenced to 99 years.
Ray was certainly the gunman.
But there are credible theories
of a conspiracy, possibly involving US Army intelligence, whose
role in the life and death of Martin Luther King was explored
by Stephens Tompkins in the Memphis Commercial Appeal in 1993.
The Army's interest in the
King family stretched back to 1917 when the War Department opened
a file on King's maternal grandfather, first president of Atlanta's
branch of the NAACP. King's father, Martin Sr., also entered
Army intelligence files as a potential troublemaker, as did Martin
Jr. in 1947 when he was 18. He was attending Dorothy Lilley's
Intercollegiate School in Atlanta and 111th Military Intelligence
Group in Fort McPherson in Atlanta suspected Ms Lilley of having
Communist ties.
King's famous denunciation
of America's war in Vietnam came exactly a year before his murder,
before a crowd of 3,000 in the Riverside Church in Manhattan.
He described Vietnam's destruction at the hands of ''deadly
Western arrogance,'' insisting that ''we are on the side of the
wealthy, and the secure, while we create a hell for the poor
We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our
society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee
liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest
Georgia and East Harlem." US Army spies secretly recorded
black radical Stokely Carmichael warning King, "The Man
don't care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you
tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers you got
trouble." Carmichael was right.
After the 1967 Detroit riots
496 black men under arrest were interviewed by agents of the
Army's Psychological Operations Group, dressed as civilians.
It turned out King was by far the most popular leader. That same
year, watching the great antiwar march on Washington in October
1967 from the roof of the Pentagon Major General William Yarborough,
assistant chief of staff for Army intelligence, concluded that
"the empire was coming apart at the seams". He thought
there were too few reliable troops to fight the war in Vietnam
and hold the line at home.
The Army increased surveillance
on King. Green Berets and other Special Forces veterans from
Vietnam began making street maps and identifying sniper sites
in major American cities. The Ku Klux Klan was recruited by the
20th Special Forces Group, headquartered in Alabama, as a subsidiary
intelligence network. The Army began offering 30.06 sniper rifles
to police departments, including that of Memphis. King was dogged
by spy units through early '67. A Green Beret unit was operating
in Memphis the day he was shot. The bullet that killed him came
from a 30.06 rifle purchased in a Memphis store. Army intelligence
chiefs became increasingly hysterical over the threat of King
to national stability.
After his Vietnam speech the
major US newspapers savaged King. Fifteen years later the New
York Times was still bitter when the notion of a national holiday
honoring the civil rights leader was being pressed--with ultimate
success--by labor unions and black groups. "Why not a Martin
Luther King Day?" an NYT editorial asked primly. "Dr
King, a humble man, would have objected to giving that much importance
to any individual. Nor should he be given singular tribute if
that demeans other historical black figures." Give one of
them a holiday and they'll all be wanting one.
Within hours of King's murder
rioting broke out in 80 cities across the country. Dozens of
people, mostly black were killed. On April 6 the Oakland cornered
the Black Panther leadership and when one of the young leaders,
Bobby Hutton, emerged with his shirt off and his hands up, shot
him dead. Futher police executions of Panthers followed, most
notoriously the killing of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, as they
slept, by the Chicago police, with FBI complicity, in December,
1969.
In contrast to Hutton, the
Panthers and above all Malcolm X, slain in 1965, white liberal
opinion, resentments at the disloyalty of the Riverside Church
speech conveniently forgotten, has hailed King as a man who
chose to work within the system and who furthermore failed to
make any significant dent on business as usual. In his last years
King was haunted by a sense of failure. Amid a failed organizing
campaign in Chicago he was booed at a mass meting there and,
as he lay sleepless that night he wrote later that he knew why:
"I had urged them [his fellow blacks ] to have faith in
America and in white society They were now booing because they
felt were unable to deliver on our promises They were now hostile
because they were watching the dream they had so readily accepted
turn into a nightmare." As the radical journalist Andrew
Kopkind wrote shortly after King's assassination, "That
he failed to change the system that brutalizes his race is a
profound relief to the white majority. As a reward they have
now elevated his minor successes into major triumphs."
Forty years on, America is
still disfigured by racial injustice. Militant black leadership
has all but disappeared. To black radicals Obama's sedate homilies
and respectful paeans to America's ladders of advancement available
to the industrious are to the fierce demands for justice of Malcolm
X and of King in his more radical moments, as Muzak is to Beethoven.
Obama is caught, even as King was. The moment whites fear he
is raising the political volume, he's savaged with every bludgeon
of convenience, starting with the robust sermons of the Reverend
Jeremiah Wright, whose sin is to have reminded whites that there
are black Americans who are really angry. "Damn America,"
roared the Rev Wright. King was just as rough at Riverside Church
in the speech that so terrified the white elites: "I knew
that I could never again raise my voice against the violence
of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly
to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own
government." Honesty of this sort from a black politician
in America extorts due retribution.
And an
Aside on Eldridge Cleaver
Reading up on the death of
Bobby Hutton, and MLK, a few weeks ago I came across Henry Louis
Gates Jr's interview with him for Frontline, from which I recently
quoted some lines. I'd been inclined to think of Eldridge Cleaver
as a somehat pathetic figure in his later years, after a failed
bid in the 1980s to bring the codpiece back into sartorial repute.
But Cleaver was a smart fellow who understood that aside most
Americans really believe in rebirth. So, amid problems with crack
addiction, burglary charges and the rest of it, he sensibly rebirthed
himself in the 90s as a Christian and a Republican. He remained
as sharp as a tack and essentially a Marxist in political analysis
right untl the end, as his interview by Henry Louis Gates for
Frontline shows. This must have been done shortly before his
death at the age of 62, in 1998. Next time you want to explain
Marx's theory of the reserve army of the unemployed to someone,
you could do a lot worse than quote Cleaver here:
GATES: Are you optimistic about
the future? I mean given the fact that we have this large black
underclass and a large black middle class, it looks like we have
two nations and they're both black.
CLEAVER: We have more nations
than that because we have poor white people, we have poor Indians,
we have poor -- we have got to eliminate the economic basis of
the underclass by providing them with jobs not handouts from
the federal government. That is the failure of our economic system,
that you have economists who say that you've got to keep the
people on the brink of starvation in order to motivate them to
work and hustle around. The failure of the capitalistic economic
system is that they did not provide for full employment. They
were satisfied with a certain percentile and then they were willing
to keep a lot of people perpetually in reserve and that was to
keep wages down and all that kind of pressure.
We have got to have a policy
of full employment and by restoring the frontier and the union
of the western hemisphere it is a full employment program for
the whole hemisphere. There's a lot of work to be done but we
have to reorient ourselves from a system of scarcity and a belief
system in scarcity and there is no problem that we have on our
agenda that we cannot solve.
GATES: But Tupac was a gangster,
wasn't he?
CLEAVER: Huey was a gangster.
GATES: Oh, he was?
CLEAVER: I'm not-- I'm talking
about a real gangster. Tupac, they were talking about gangster
rap. Huey P. Newton was a gun toting gangster, but that's not
all he was. I'm saying he went through that experience as a criminal,
but the thing about Tupac was his spirit and his rebellion against
oppression. This comes from the way that he was raised and the
values that were transmitted to him.
His father died in a gun fight with the New York police department
and so Afena was a very strong stalwart of the Black Panther
party and Tupac was raised like that. He is what we call a panther
cub. And that was what he was about.
And that is why it was such
a blow, [Tupac's] liquidation, and many people think that it
was the COINTELPRO that took him out because the story doesn't
hold up because anybody who knows Las Vegas knows that after
the Mike Tyson fight there, there is no way that anybody going
to drive along upside of another car, shoot them and drive away
because it's gridlocked for blocks around there, man. So that
is not what happened. There is more to it than that.
GATES: Eldridge, now, thirty
years later, the smoke has cleared, bodies are buried, people
have moved on. Was it worth it? I mean was the Panther movement
worth it? Was it a good thing?
CLEAVER: It was a good thing
and like all things, there was good and bad, but nothing like
what this nitwit, Horowitz, is talking about because that is
not where we were coming from. And I regret the way that the
Party was repressed because it left a lot of unfinished business
because we had planned to make a transition to the political
arena and we would have been able to transmute that violence
and that legacy into legitimate and peaceful channels. As it
was they chopped off the head and left the body there armed.
That's why all these young bloods out there now, they've got
the rhetoric but without the political direction and they've
got the guns. A man told me in Berkeley, said-- 'Eldridge, the
two most dangerous demographics in the Bay Area right now are
young black men with guns and middle-aged white women with Volvos.'
GATES: You're crazy.
CLEAVER: They're taking out
more people than anything else.
GATES: Will history judge you
and your contemporaries from the '60s -- Karenga, Rap, Stokely,
Angela, the whole gang, Julian Bond -- favorably, do you think?
CLEAVER: I think they will.
I think they will give us Fs where we deserve them and they'll
give us As where we deserve them and they're going to give Huey
P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver an A plus.
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