Home Media Lessons From the Fiftieth Anniversary of the King Assassination

Lessons From the Fiftieth Anniversary of the King Assassination

35
Martin Luther King Jr. addresses crowds during the March On Washington at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington DC, in 1963. (adapted photo credit – Agence France Presse/Getty Images)

By James O’Neill*

The 4 of April 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the assassination of American civil rights leader Martin Luther King. The media coverage in Australia followed the same pattern that has been observed in the previous anniversaries. Tribute was paid to King’s legacy of non-violent resistance; his opposition to the Vietnam War; and the stock attribution of his murder to a “lone white racist”, James Earl Ray.

The King assassination, coming as it did between the assassinations of John Kennedy (1963) and his brother Robert (like King also murdered in 1968) reflects some characteristics common to all three events.

First, the killings are attributed to a “loner”: Oswald, Ray and Sirhan respectively. Secondly, a mountain of evidence, then and later, discrediting the official story accumulates. Thirdly, that evidence, even when revealed in official documents, is ignored by the mainstream media. Fourthly, the real culprits are agents of one or more agencies of the State. Fifthly, there is a sustained campaign by the media to cover up, obscure, manipulate the truth, or outright lie, and continue to do so for now, more than 50 years for the three victims referenced above.

As it is the anniversary of the King assassination, I will refer only to the evidence in that particular case. The important part of this story begins after the King assassination and the sentencing (to 99 years) of the accused perpetrator, James Earl Ray. The facts surrounding the Ray conviction are a wholly separate issue, and not discussed here.  Suffice to say that it does not reflect well on the person who allegedly represented his interests.

The King family were not persuaded that Ray was in fact the killer. They employed a British barrister, William Pepper, to investigate. Pepper did so, over many years and in the face of incredible obstacles.

The investigation culminated in a civil suit brought by the King family against Lloyd Jowers and others. Jowers was the owner of the Lorraine Motel where King was staying the night he was murdered. The “others” were the FBI, the CIA, the Memphis police and the United States Army.

One might have thought that in many respects this trial would qualify as one of the trials of the century. In the event, it was covered by only two journalists, Wendell Stacey from the local Memphis newspaper, and James Douglass, later author of the invaluable “JFK and the Unspeakable.”

Stacey’s newspaper did not print his reports of the trial. To the mass of the US public the trial never happened, and certainly its evidence and conclusions never appeared in the mainstream media. This continues to the present day.

The trial commenced on 15 November 1999. The jury reached an unanimous verdict, after hearing from more than 70 witnesses, on 8 December 1999. They took only two hours to do so. It was the Judge’s duty to apportion liability among the defendants.  Jowers (who was an accessory) was held to be 30% liable. The remaining co-defendants were liable for the 70% balance.

All of the relevant facts and details are to be found in the three books that Pepper has published on the subject: Orders to Kill (1995) Act of State (2002) and The Plot to Kill King (2016).

Suffice to note here that Ray was no more then a patsy (shades of Oswald and Sirhan) and that the actual killing was carried out by a member of the US Special Forces, with a mafia assassin as a backup.

Pepper’s latest book provided substantial new evidence gathered post trial, based on interviews, confessions from some of the perpetrators, and access to the official documents. This will all be very familiar to those who have followed the two Kennedy assassinations. What is notable from the King trial and Pepper’s books, is the detailed accounts given of the control of the media, mainly, but not only, by the CIA. The CIA project was known as Operation Mockingbird.

According to the evidence of William Schaap at the King trial, and confirmed in detail in Pepper’s latest book, the CIA owned or controlled some 2500 media entities around the world. It’s had its own people in positions in the media, up to and including editorial control in every major media organisation.

The recognition of this singular fact goes a very long way to explaining the nature and content of so much of what passes for “news” and “analysis” in the major news media outlets in Australia and elsewhere.

When one hears, ad nauseam, about Oswald and Ray as lone assassins of Kennedy and King respectively, the obvious question is: do those “journalists” actually believe that, in which case they are appallingly inept; or do they say that because that is what their controllers want the message to be?

Either way they do not serve the public interest, much less the fabled democracy we are said to enjoy. As to why Kennedy and King were killed, again there are some remarkable parallels. Kennedy effectively signed his own death warrant in his June 1963 speech to the American University, and by signing a national security memorandum ordering the withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam after the 1964 election.

King had called for nothing less than a social revolution to reverse what he called in his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, delivered a year to the day before he was killed, the “far deeper malady within the American spirit,” and that “if we are to get on the right side of world revolution, we must as a nation undergo a radical revolution of values.”

The language of Kennedy and King was clearly seen as a threat to prevailing American values, then as now seen as a belief in American exceptionalism; the imposition of American power on recalcitrant nations in pursuit of full spectrum dominance; the ignoring of international law and treaties to which they are a party when it is convenient to do so; and a willingness to destroy all who threaten the power and the profits that flow from such “values.”

Kennedy and King were not the first to die for their opposition to the status quo.  They are unlikely to be the last.

*Barrister at Law and geopolitical analyst.  He may be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au

SHARE

35 COMMENTS

  1. You are probably right, Dee. Rupert Murdoch was born a Jew, into a wealthy family by Australian standards. But alongside US capitalists he would have been a pauper. I have been trying to figure out for years how a pip-squeak from Down-Under could possibly compete in the US media empire. He not only competed, he appears to have beaten them in New York and London.

  2. Just received this news from a friend. “Today there has been a serious event concerning Tucker Carlson. Having left his office for the last time he was involved in a hit and run head on collision on his way home in New York. The “Hit” car had apparently been modified to withstand a “Head on”. NYC Police told reporters that the well known “news anchor” who was rammed looked like an act of violence and not an accident. Tucker Carlson is said to be in a critical condition awaiting surgery.”

  3. Per TheHill.com (written before the accident):

    “Prominent supporters of President Trump are expressing skepticism over his decision to launch airstrikes against Syria, slamming the move as overly aggressive and unnecessary.

    “Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham both questioned Trump’s decision Friday to launch strikes in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack last weekend that the U.S. has attributed to the Syrian government.

    “Carlson noted the move was inconsistent with the president’s message during his 2016 campaign, and Ingraham said she found that intervention in other countries could be risky, as shown in the Iraq War, according to the Daily Beast.”

    Surely not connected, I hope.

  4. So the big difference between the JFK and King cases is that, 30 years after the latter, a complex gov conspiracy was actually officially acknowledged.
    Which speaks volumes about the fortitude of the King family and the value of the family unit generally

  5. Orrite! What is the plan? There is no doubt that the government and its instruments is corrupt and serving foreign interests. Interminable moaning and gripes will fixit… eh?

    Good grief! Here is a “troll” daring to challenge the official Glueshoe narrative.

      • Mary, Mary how does your garden grow?
        With silver bells and cockle shells
        And trannies in a row.

        Look up, you silly old “maybe girl”? If you’re going to do a citizen’s arrest you’ve got to make it stick! There is at least one instance that I know of where a high profile politician has been formally accused in a lawsuit of treason according to the Constitutional definition of treason. Where have all the Lowest Lying Bitches (LLB’s) been? I suggest they’ve been proposing hypothetical cases with practically no possibility of review under the present secretocracy. I already know of several instances where the secretocracy have colluded to perform a great “legal” miscarriage of justice.

        It will never be improved while the secretocracy is the accuser, the prosecutor, the judge, jury and executioner.

C'mon Leave a Reply, Debate and Add to the Discussion

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.