The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) is helping biotech run the latest war in Ukraine. Make no mistake that what is happening in the Ukraine now is deeply tied to the interests of Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, and other big players in the poison food game.
Monsanto has an office in Ukraine. While this does not shout ‘culpability’ from every corner, it is no different than the US military’s habit to place bases in places that they want to gain political control. The opening of this office coincided with land grabs with loans from the IMF and World Bank to one of the world’s most hated corporations – all in support of their biotech takeover.
Previously, there was a ban on private sector land ownership in the country – but it was lifted ‘just in time’ for Monsanto to have its way with the Ukraine.
In fact, a bit of political maneuvering by the IMF gave the Ukraine a $17 billion loan – but only if they would open up to biotech farming and the selling of Monsanto’s poison crops and chemicals – destroying a farmland that is one of the most pristine in all of Europe. Farm equipment dealer, Deere, along with seed producers Dupont and Monsanto, will have a heyday.
In the guise of ‘aid,’ a claim has been made on Ukraine’s vast agricultural riches. It is the world’s third largest exporter of corn and fifth largest exporter of wheat. Ukraine has deep, rich, black soil that can grow almost anything, and its ability to produce high volumes of GM grain is what made biotech come rushing to take it over.
As reported by The Ecologist, according to the Oakland Institute:
“Whereas Ukraine does not allow the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture, Article 404 of the EU agreement, which relates to agriculture, includes a clause that has generally gone unnoticed: it indicates, among other things, that both parties will cooperate to extend the use of biotechnologies.
There is no doubt that this provision meets the expectations of the agribusiness industry. As observed by Michael Cox, research director at the investment bank Piper Jaffray, ‘Ukraine and, to a wider extent, Eastern Europe, are among the most promising growth markets for farm-equipment giant Deere, as well as seed producers Monsanto and DuPont’.”
The nation WAS Europe’s breadbasket – and now in an act of bio-warfare, it will become the wasteland that many US farmlands have become due to copious amounts of herbicide spraying, the depletion of soil, and the overall disruption of a perfect ecosystem.
The aim of US government entities is to support the takeover of Ukraine for biotech interests (among other strategies involving the prop-up of a failing cabalistic banking system that Russia has also refused with its new alignment with BRICS and its own payment system called SWIFT). This is similar to biotech’s desired takeover of Hawaiian islands and land in Africa.
The Ukraine war has many angles that haven’t been exposed to the general public – and you can bet that biotech has their hands in the proverbial corn pie.
I am well aware that I’m stepping into a hornet’s nest by posting this video, which is going viral. Those who wish to silence all debate have an easy card to play here, accusing me of buying into a conspiracy theory. There’s only one problem: unlike the video-maker, I have few conclusions to draw about what the significance of this video is in relation to the official story. That is not why I am posting it.
But it does, at least to my mind and obviously a lot of other people’s, judging by how quickly it’s spreading, suggest that Ahmed Merabet, the policeman outside the Charlie Hebdo office, was not shot in the head, as all the media have been stating.
That said, it does not prove much more. It doesn’t prove that Merabet did not die at the scene. Maybe he bled to death there on the pavement from his earlier wound. It certainly doesn’t prove that the Kouachi brothers were not the gunmen or that the one who fired missed on purpose. Maybe he just missed.
Nor does the video’s removal from most websites prove that there is some sort of massive cover-up going on. Ideas of good taste, especially in the immediate aftermath of a massacre close to home (ie here in the West), can lead to a media consensus that a video is too upsetting. That can occur even if it does not show blood and gore, simply because of what it implies. Herd instinct in these instances is very strong.
But the unedited video clip does leave a sour taste: because unless someone has a good rebuttal, it does indeed seem impossible that an AK-47 bullet fired from close range would not have done something pretty dramatic to that policeman’s head. And if the video is real – and there doesn’t seem much doubt that it is – it clearly shows nothing significant happened to his head either as or after the bullet was fired.
So what points am I making?
The first one is more tentative. It seems – though I suppose there could be an explanation I have overlooked – that the authorities have lied about the cause of the policeman’s death. That could be for several probably unknowable reasons, including that his being executed was a simpler, neater story than that he bled to death on the pavement because of official incompetence (there already seems to have been plenty of that in this case).
The second point is even more troubling. Most of the senior editors of our mainstream media have watched the unedited video just as you now have. And either not one of them saw the problem raised here – that the video does not show what it is supposed to show – or some of them did see it but did not care. Either way, they simply regurgitated an official story that does not seem to fit the available evidence.
That is a cause for deep concern. Because if the media are acting as a collective mouth-piece for a dubious official narrative on this occasion, on a story of huge significance that one assumes is being carefully scrutinised for news angles, what are they doing the rest of the time?
The lesson is that we as news consumers must create our own critical distance from the “news” because we cannot trust our corporate media to do that work for us. They are far too close to power. In fact, they are power.
Official narratives are inherently suspect because power always looks out for itself. This appears to be a good example – whether what it shows is relatively harmless or sinister – to remind us of that fact.
UPDATE:
I’m still trying to imagine a plausible explanation for the video. I’m no ballistics expert, so I’m firmly in the land of conjecture. But I wonder whether, if the bullet hit the pavement close to Merabet’s head, it might have been possible for bullet fragments to hit him, possibly killing him.
This possibility (assuming it is one) does not invalidate the point of my post. If it was indeed the case, certainly no media outlet has suggested that the gunman missed Merabet and that he died from the exploding fragments.
This isn’t meant to raise technical, or gruesome, details of the case. It is to suggest that western journalists do not report fearlessly and independently when they examine events being narrated by official sources. They mostly regurgitate information on trust, because they trust the authorities to be telling the truth. They do the same when the acts of official enemies are being examined – they again turn to official sources on their side. In short, most journalists have no critical distance from the events they are reporting on our behalf.
That leaves us, ordinary news consumers, in a position of either blindly trusting our own officials too or trying to work things out for ourselves. You would hope that the issues raised by this video get aired by journalists as part of establishing greater trust in our profession and proof of our independence. Instead, I expect it will simply be consigned the “conspiracy theory” bin.
Whether or not the soul exists may depend entirely on how it’s being defined, and depending on the definition may also depend on faith, religious or otherwise. The human soul is thought by many as inherently good while the absence of a soul leaves open the possibility to commit and even delight in malicious or evil acts – these destructive actions are also interpreted in terms of being dark. Oddly enough, man’s ego enjoys taking credit for his goodness, while he regularly attributes responsibility for destructive behaviors to outside influences, including at times a supernatural consciousness of evil that influences or provokes harmful human behaviors and thereby takes the soul, either in part or in whole.
Good or evil in any combination can manifest entirely from within any individual for what sometimes are no humanly discernible reasons. At other times the soul is absolutely being influenced by outside forces, including human and the forces of nature. Our definition would not be complete without recognizing that works committed during the physical life, whether good or evil, live on after physical death by affecting those who’ll be living in the future. Even the obscure and long forgotten dead can have a profound impact on our current reality if they ultimately influenced the mind, or perhaps saved the life of someone who was or became influential at some point in history.
We begin life with a non-negotiable soul thought by some to be a blank slate at birth, but I’ll argue here that it’s not blank and certain predispositions are dictated by instincts and genetic code(s) which also affect the workings of the mind. There are studies indicating genetic makeup is a factor in experiencing empathy and compassion, and we can’t deny other differing intellectual abilities and inclinations along with given physical characteristics – all of which shape the soul through our experiences. Theoretically the natural soul uninfluenced by outside forces, could range from pure good to pure evil with most people having the potential for either, at times depending on present circumstances or what they’ve been subjected to. Due to diversity of attributes and handicaps we are all unique, but we can generalize regarding those with similar traits and beliefs which dictate the processes of reasoning and/or irrational thinking that ultimately leads to conclusions and the actions or inactions of any individual.
Because the soul is shaped by events in life, we can define it as: the sum total of all a person is given before birth, combined with the understanding acquired from personal experiences in life, while recognizing a person’s interactions with others and the physical world are determined by the soul or its absence, and will yield benevolent, malevolent or neutral actions – the human soul is alive and real, it affects our actions and interactions with others and how we feel about ourselves as well as others, including the world and life in general – and by affecting others in the immediate sense, it also affects others well into the future.
Our physical bodies and brains are the conduit between the soul and the physical world, with the emphasis being on the brain which controls the willful actions of our bodies. Whether committed or imposed by humans or nature, actions can profoundly shape and mold human souls in either direction. Because our perceptions may not be accurate, at times certain events can fill us with an unjust hatred or even the desire to commit physical violence. Because we’re all different, the same events or circumstances will not have the same impact on the souls of all people, but people do have similar and sometimes nearly universal reactions that are predictable concerning certain events or circumstances.
With no other choice, and given the opportunity, a starving person will likely commit theft and may kill to survive; relatively few would accept starvation without trying to impose on others in some way. An individual with a legitimate means of support certainly has no need, and is much less likely to resort to theft or violence for personal gain. If rising flood waters force a person to abandon their home, their soul may be imprinted with sadness as well as the realization of a destiny beyond their control. Depending on age and other circumstances such an event could be the final straw, leading to a level of despair and shock where the person no longer experiences life in the same way and no longer functions as well as they once did; though this may be defined as weakness, it’s also a sure sign the person is human, as we all have different breaking-points and tolerances. Being subjected to the same ordeal could cause profound personal growth in others, making them stronger with greater understanding and compassion going forward while giving them the real potential for helping or leading others. The essence of the soul does change over time through circumstance and experience and ultimately leads us to our understanding of life and people, and could lead to a complete lack thereof.
When speaking of souls, our understanding includes that groups of people, large and small, have a collective soul based on the same factors that make up the soul of an individual. As with catastrophes caused by nature, the ravages of war are certain to leave an imprint on the soul of emotionally conscious human beings. These imprints take on a different dimension entirely when innocent people are unjustly attacked through wanton aggression. As the most violent people on earth, Americans may have become jaded from all the violence witnessed through television entertainment and news, starting with cartoons at an early age. We’re so used to accepting violence as being justifiable, the idea of our government killing and destroying the lives of innocent others may not register with most of us – in matters of war we’re incessantly told America is always right. All of this brings into question how the collective soul of a relatively few individuals who, as a group, knowingly and unjustly deceived their own country, leading to a wholesale basis of callous, if not gleeful slaughter and mutilation of innocent and weaker members of the human race – including the annihilation of their existing culture – all without any just or legal provocation.
In the case of America attacking a weaker country we’ll look at one of the most egregious events in recent history. Destruction was unleashed by the overwhelming power of the US military in attacking a comparatively defenseless 2003 Iraq. The verdict is in, and we know there were relatively very few Americans who participated in the deceitfulness which ultimately fueled the country’s appetite for attacking without one valid or legal reason – but collectively we still made the conscious choice to destroy, displace, kill and maim while leaving emotional scars and hatred in the large majority of our victims who survived. After having committed wanton aggression, with our own blind ignorance we don’t dare ask ourselves why so many in the Mideast and around the world despise our collective soul – as the truth would be awkward and hard for many to accept or explain. For “civilized people” this post-invasion nonchalant arrogance is every bit as astounding as that which led the initial attack. To be clear, the US invasion of 2003 Iraq was never a true contest of “war”, the word “war” was used as propaganda to make wanton killing and the destruction of people and their civilization look like something other than what it was – all for the perceived benefits of those few who were ultimately responsible for misleading America to back the slaughter of Iraqi citizens among a multitude of other predicted catastrophic results. The carnage we unleashed continues to this day and will effect an untold number for generations to come – it can never be undone – as the depraved collective soul of the few asserted itself supreme over the collective American public’s right to the truth and leaves a forward cutting wake that will forever travel on into the future – at least as long as man is alive.
The influence of Israel and pro-Zionists in Washington D.C. concerning American Mideast policies cannot be overstated. In 2002 the Bush administration created the Office of Special Plans (OSP) run by neocon pro-Zionists who fed the Bush administration “raw intelligence” which proved to be nothing more than propaganda for enabling the attack on Iraq. Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski in the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy at the time, explained how the OSP usurped real expert intelligence assessments to promote the neocon Zionist agenda as stated in the infamous 1996 PNAC policy report. The PNAC policy first advocated removing Saddam Hussein from power, then going on to Syria and Iran which they’re still trying to accomplish – this is no mere coincidence. It’s all part of Israel’s strategy to eliminate any perceived threat in the Mideast and keep everyone around them weak and fighting amongst themselves. Ironically, Israel’s threats result from its own actions beginning with the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs starting before Israel’s self-declared statehood on those Palestinian lands in 1948 – and the expulsion still continues to this day. Without the undue influence of Israel on U.S. politicians, it is extremely unlikely U.S. public support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq would have materialized. Because the dark soul of America is so influenced by Israel, taking a critical look at the soul of Israel is becoming common and it needs to be recognized for what it is.
The major “news networks” and press operating in the U.S. proved themselves as propagandists, partaking in the policy set by the Bush administration to manipulate the American public during the run-up to the invasion. So persuasive was the propaganda before and after the invasion that some people today still don’t know Iraq had no part in the 9/11/2001 attack on the U.S.; or they simply refuse to accept that our government and mass media would betray America and the world on such a large scale. As far as the press is concerned, they are guilty through aiding and abetting the crime of misleading America into an illegal war – and it was illegal as defined by U.S. and international law. The media people who took part in all of this on any level might as well have lined up all those American soldiers sacrificed and wounded along with all the Iraqi’s killed and maimed while having had the balls to pull the triggers, drop the bombs and fire the missiles to commit the slaughter and devastation themselves.
It’s no secret, huge profits were made by the military-industrial complex (MIC) with the 2003 attack, and they’re still profiting today from Iraq and the overall American Empire strategy. With their connections in Washington, it would be extremely naïve to believe the top individuals in our weapons manufacturing industries didn’t know the reasons given for attacking Iraq were absolutely without credible evidence – while much of those reasons were outright lies. There are a number of choice verbs for describing the condition of those souls among the MIC who knowingly remained silent while the US population sacrificed blood and treasure so they could profit through death and destruction unleashed at will on a relatively hapless Iraq.
Many believe the 2003 invasion was predominantly about securing oil, and it certainly was a contributing factor but no one was pushing more than the pro-Zionist crowd. The petroleum industry had been involved in the pre-war planning for the purpose of dividing the spoils of killing and destruction in terms of barrels of oil. Capitalism as practiced needs oil, and although there are alternative energies available, those making huge profits from oil use their considerable influence to thwart conversion to clean energy.
There’s no legitimate argument against the facts; an undeserved and catastrophic devastation had been levied on the Iraqi people with the 2003 U.S. invasion, conservatively resulting in over half a million Iraqi lives being lost by the time of this writing, with likely millions wounded, and over four million displaced from their homes. To put it in perspective, if it happened to the U.S. with the same percentages across the entire population it would conservatively yield over six million dead, millions more wounded, and roughly fifty million displaced from their homes. Many Americans have a vacancy where a soul should exist as they feel absolutely nothing and no American responsibility for the devastation caused. Other Americans exist with a soul as black as pitch having taken pleasure and profit through the slaughter of Iraqis and their culture. Aside from the U.S. government’s responsibility, these attitudes are largely due to the dark soul of both the U.S. government and media in keeping pertinent facts from the public eye. And if there’s been any remorse or apology from U.S. officials or media it’s been sparse and kept out of sight by the same dark forces which hide from the truth. There are a number of people who could have spoken out before the invasion, and in all fairness some did, though they did not get proportionately heard while the front pages and television news had been reserved for the neocon pro-Zionist mantras to attack Iraq and downplay the ensuing consequences. There were also a few dark traitorous souls operating to dissuade anyone who would speak out while they set an example with the Valery Plame / Scooter Libby affair.
With the invasion of Iraq the U.S. set a new precedent of destructive behavior in motion, which under the pretext of “preemptive defense” has been spread further around the Mideast and now is a matter of historical record and modus operandi. With the U.S. government wreaking havoc at will, killing more innocent civilians than “enemy combatants” – it’s become a very neat and logical self-perpetuating industry of war – creating enemies by killing innocent civilians and thereby creating more revenge-minded combatants to kill – perfect for a world being run by a country of sadistic self-masochistic psychopaths for profit at the expense of the American public and anyone else they choose to victimize. This is not the collective soul of the American people – they have been unwittingly led into the dark by the collective soul of vile depravity. This is, however, a reflection of all those dark souls and their accomplices living in fear of truth and hiding behind the concentrated power at the top of the American political body which now exists predominantly for the sake of personal greed while having unlimited power to unjustly impose on others, domestically and otherwise. It is unfortunate those making the decisions and profits while misleading the country aren’t required to put their own lives, and those that matter to them, on the very front lines; they, being afraid of truth and reality as they are, would be the very first to call an end to the madness.
Phi Beta Iota: To those who have been leveraging the below, thank you for your interest. It seemed like a good idea to go ahead and post a version of the chart showing in red all of the pre-conditions of revolution in the USA that are now actively present. The failure of leadership to manifest ethics and to nurture education is particularly harmful–white collar criminals do not prosper when the political leadership is ethical and upholds its responsibility to protect the public interest. The ONLY thing–the one RIGHT thing–that needs to be done to make everything else possible is Electoral Reform (1 Page, 9 Points). If the various parties and committees and alliances claiming to represent the public interest fail to sponsor this one simple fix, they reveal themselves for what they are: partisan quasi-criminal organizations operating in betrayal of the public trust, with no interest in restoring America the Republic, America the Beautiful.
EDIT: For those who really do not understand the integrity of the above in today’s context, we will make this explicit:
1. The country has been run into the ground–the bottom 98% have had their seed corn stolen and eaten by the top 2%. There is no going back, neither revenge nor expropriation will do. What has been done is done, get over it.
2. There isn’t a leader or leadership team or party or “elite” network on the planet that can put the USA back together again [except perhaps We the People Reform Coalition].
3. HOWEVER, “bottom up” collective intelligence is agile, intuitive, ethical in the aggregate, and so on. This is REALLY SIMPLE: restore the integrity of the electoral system (local to national) and get out of the way. This is called Epoch B Leadership. It is also the root “good” of Advanced Information Operations You start by empowering your own public and not lying to them.
Since today marks the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. it’s an appropriate time to reflect on his life and legacy but we must also never forget the forces which sought to crush his dream. Because of the work of investigative journalists, we have a clearer idea of the scope of the government’s efforts to discredit and psychologically torment Martin Luther King Jr. such as the following excerpt from an FBI letter to MLK:
King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
Given such psychotic threats from the government agency, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine them opting for a more direct approach than trying to bully MLK to commit suicide.
efore scoffing at this headline, you should know that in 1999, in Memphis, Tennessee, more than three decades after MLK’s death, a jury found local, state, and federal government agencies guilty of conspiring to assassinate the Nobel Peace Prize winner and civil rights leader. The same media you would expect to cover such a monumental decision was absent at the trial, because those news organizations were part of that conspiracy. William F. Pepper, who was James Earl Ray’s first attorney, called over 70 witnesses to the stand to testify on every aspect of the assassination. The panel, which consisted of an even mix of both black and white jurors, took only an hour of deliberation to find Loyd Jowers and other defendants guilty. If you’re skeptical of any factual claims made here, click here for a full transcript, broken into individual sections. Read the testimonies yourself if you don’t want to take my word for it.
It really isn’t that radical a thing to expect this government to kill someone who threatened their authority and had the power to organize millions to protest it. When MLK was killed on April 4, 1968, he was speaking to sanitation workers in Memphis, who were organizing to fight poverty wages and ruthless working conditions. He was an outspoken critic of the government’s war in Vietnam, and his power to organize threatened the moneyed corporate interests who were profiting from the war. At the time of his death, he was gearing up for the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to get people to camp out on the National Mall to demand anti-poverty legislation – essentially the first inception of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The government perceived him as a threat, and had him killed. James Earl Ray was the designated fall guy, and a complicit media, taking its cues from a government in fear of MLK, helped sell the “official” story of the assassination. Here’s how they did it.
The Setup
The defendant in the 1999 civil trial, Loyd Jowers, had been a Memphis PD officer in the 1940s. He owned a restaurant called Jim’s Grill, a staging ground to orchestrate MLK’s assassination underneath the rooming house where the corporate media alleges James Earl Ray shot Dr. King. During the trial, William Pepper, the plaintiff’s attorney, played a tape of an incriminating 1998 conversation between Jowers, UN Ambassador Andrew Young, and Dexter King, MLK’s son. Young testified that Jowers told them he “wanted to get right with God before he died, wanted to confess it and be free of it.”
On the tape, Jowers mentions that those present at the meetings included MPD officer Marrell McCollough, Earl Clark, an MPD lieutenant and known as the department’s best marksman, another MPD officer, and two men who were unknown to Jowers but whom he assumed to be representatives of federal agencies. While Dr. King was in Memphis, he was under open or eye-to-eye federal surveillance by the 111th Military Intelligence Group based at Fort McPherson in Atlanta, Georgia. Memphis PD intelligence officer Eli Arkin even admitted to having the group in his own office. During his last visit to Memphis in late March of 1968, MLK was under covert surveillance, meaning his room at the Rivermont was bugged and wired. Even if he went out to the balcony to speak, his words were recorded via relay. William Pepper alleges in his closing argument during King v. Jowers that such covert surveillance was usually done by the Army Security Agency, implying the involvement of at least two federal agencies.
Jowers also gave an interview to Sam Donaldson on “Prime Time Live” in 1993. The transcript of the interview was read during the trial, and it was revealed that Jowers openly talked about being asked by produce warehouse owner Frank Liberto to help with MLK’s murder. Liberto had mafia connections, and sent a courier with $100,000 to Jowers, who owned a local restaurant, with instructions to hold the money at his restaurant.
John McFerren owned a store in Memphis and was making a pickup at Liberto’s warehouse at 5:15 p.m. on April 4th, roughly 45 minutes before the assassination. McFerren testified that he overheard Liberto tell someone over the phone, “Shoot the son of a bitch on the balcony.” Other witnesses who testified included café owner Lavada Addison, who was friends with Liberto in the 1970s. She recalled him confiding to her that he “had Martin Luther King killed.” Addison’s son, Nathan Whitlock, also testified. He asked Liberto if he killed MLK, and he responded, “I didn’t kill the nigger but I had it done.” When Whitlock pressed him about James Earl Ray, Liberto replied, “He wasn’t nothing but a troublemaker from Missouri. He was a front man … a setup man.”
The back door of Loyd Jowers’ establishment led to a thick crop of bushes across the street from the Lorraine Motel balcony where Dr. King was shot. On the taped confession to Andrew Young and Dexter King, Jowers says after he heard the shot, Lt. Earl Clark, who is now deceased, laid a smoking rifle at the rear of his restaurant. Jowers then disassembled the rifle, wrapped it in a tablecloth and prepared it for disposal.
The corporate media says it was James Earl Ray who shot MLK, and he did it from the 2nd floor bathroom window of the rooming house across the street from the Lorraine Motel. The official account alleges the murder weapon was dropped in a bundle and abandoned at Dan Canipe’s storefront just before he made his getaway. But even those authorities and media admit that the bullet that tore through MLK’s throat didn’t have the same metallurgical composition as the bullets in the rifle left behind by James Earl Ray. And Judge Joe Brown, a weapons expert called to testify by Pepper in the 1999 trial, said the rifle allegedly used by James Earl Ray had a scope that was never sighted in, meaning that the weapon in question would have fired far to the left and far below the target.
The actual murder weapon was disposed of by taxi driver James McCraw, a friend of Jowers. William Hamblin testified in King v. Jowers that McCraw told him this story over a 15-year period whenever he got drunk. McCraw repeatedly told Hamblin that he threw the rifle over the Memphis-Arkansas bridge, meaning that the rifle is at the bottom of the Mississippi river to this day. And according to Hamblin’s testimony, Canipe said he saw the bundle dropped in front of his store before the actual shooting occurred.
The Conspiracy
To make Dr. King vulnerable, plans had to be made to remove him from his security detail and anyone sympathetic who could be a witness or interfere with the killing. Two black firefighters, Floyd Newsum and Norvell Wallace, who were working at Fire Station #2 across the street from the Lorraine Motel, were each transferred to different fire stations. Newsum was a civil rights activist and witnessed MLK’s last speech to the striking Memphis sanitation workers, “I Have Seen the Mountaintop,” before getting the call about his transfer. Newsum testified that he wasn’t needed at his new assignment, and that his transfer meant that Fire Station #2 would be out of commission unless someone else was sent there in his stead. Newsum talked about having to make a series of inquiries before finally learning that his reassignment had been ordered by the Memphis Police Department. Wallace testified that to that very day, while the official explanation was a vague death threat, he hadn’t once received a satisfactory answer as to why he was suddenly reassigned.
Ed Redditt, a black MPD detective who was assigned to MLK’s security detail, was also removed from the scene an hour before the shooting and sent home, and the only reason given was a vague death threat. Jerry Williams, another black MPD detective, was usually tasked with assembling a security team of black police officers for Dr. King. But he testified that on the night of the assassination, he wasn’t assigned to form that team.
There was a Black Panther-inspired group called The Invaders, who were staying at the Lorraine Motel to help MLK organize a planned march with the striking garbage workers. The Invaders were ordered to leave the motel after getting into an argument with members of MLK’s entourage. The origins of the argument are unclear, though several sources affirm that The Invaders had been infiltrated by Marrell McCollough of the MPD, who later went on to work for the CIA. And finally, the Tact 10 police escort of several MPD cars that accompanied Dr. King’s security detail were pulled back the day before the shooting by Inspector Evans. With all possible obstacles out of the way, MLK was all alone just before the assassination.
The Cover-Up
Around 7 a.m. on April 5, the morning after the shooting, MPD Inspector Sam Evans called Public Works Administrator Maynard Stiles and told him to have a crew destroy the crop of bushes adjacent to the rooming house above Loyd Jowers’ restaurant. This is particularly odd coming from a policeman, since the bushes were in a crime scene area, and crime scene areas are normally roped off, not to be disturbed. The official narrative of a sniper in the bathroom at the rooming house was then reinforced, since a sniper firing from an empty clearing would be far more visible than one hidden behind a thick crop of bushes.
Normally, when a major political figure is murdered, all possible witnesses are questioned and asked to make statements. But Memphis PD neglected to conduct even a basic house-to-house investigation. Olivia Catling, a resident of nearby Mulberry Street just a block away from the shooting, testified that she saw a man leave an alley next to the rooming house across from the Lorraine, climb into a Green 1965 Chevrolet, and speed away, burning rubber right in front of several police cars without any interference. There was also no questioning of Captain Weiden, a Memphis firefighter at the fire station closest to the Lorraine, the same one from which Floyd Newsum had been transferred just a day before.
Memphis PD and the FBI also suppressed the statements of Ray Hendricks and William Reed, who said they saw James Earl Ray’s white mustang parked in front of Jowers’ restaurant, before seeing it again driving away as they crossed another street. Ray’s alibi was that he had driven away from the scene to fix a tire, and these two statements that affirmed his alibi were withheld from Ray’s guilty plea jury.
The jury present at Ray’s guilty plea hearing also wasn’t informed about the bullet that killed MLK having different striations and markings than the other bullets kept as evidence, nor that the bullet couldn’t be positively matched as coming from the alleged murder weapon. Three days after entering the guilty plea, James Earl Ray unsuccessfully attempted to retract it and demand a trial. Incredibly, James Earl Ray turned down two separate bribes, one of which was recorded by his brother Jerry Ray, where he was offered $220,000 by writer William Bradford Huey and the guarantee of a full pardon if he would just agree to have the story “Why I Killed Martin Luther King” written on his behalf.
The Deception
One of the 70 witnesses that William F. Pepper called to testify in King v. Jowers was Bill Schaap, a practicing attorney with particular experience in military law, with bar credentials in New York, Chicago, and DC. Schaap testified at great length about how the government, through the FBI and the CIA, puts people in key positions on editorial boards at influential papers like the New York Times and Washington Post. He describes that although these editorial board members and news directors at cable news outlets may be liberal in their politics, they always take the government’s side in national security-related stories. Before you write that off as conspiracy theory, remember how people like Bill Keller at the New York Times, as well as the Washington Post editorial board, all cheerfully led the march to war in Iraq ten years ago.
Another King v. Jowers witness was Earl Caldwell, a New York Times reporter who was sent to Memphis by an editor named Claude Sitton. Caldwell testified that the orders from his editor were to “nail Dr. King.” In the publication’s effort to sell the story of James Earl Ray as the murderer, the Times cited an investigation into how Ray got the money for his Mustang, rifle, and the long road trip to Tennessee from California. The Times said that according to their own findings as well as the findings of federal agencies, Ray got the money by robbing a bank in his hometown of Alton, Illinois. In Pepper’s closing argument, he says that when he or Jerry Ray talked to the chief of police in Alton, along with the bank president of the branch that was allegedly robbed, neither said they had been approached by the New York Times, or by the FBI. Essentially, the Times fabricated the entire story in order to sell a false narrative that there was no government intervention and that James Earl Ray was a lone wolf.
So for the following 31 years after King’s death, nobody dared to question the constant reiteration of James Earl Ray as the murderer of Martin Luther King. Even 13 years after a jury found the government complicit in a conspiracy to murder the civil rights leader, the complicit media continues to propagate the false narrative they sold us three decades ago and vociferously shout down any alternative theories as to what happened as “conspiracy theory,” framing those putting forth such theories as wackjobs undeserving of any credibility. It’s strikingly similar to how the Washington Post defended their warmongering in a recent editorial commenting on the invasion of Iraq, and had one of their reporters defend the media’s leading of the charge into Iraq.
As we remember Dr. King and the important work he did, we should also reject the official account of his death as loudly as the government and media shout down anyone who tries to contradict their lies. As Edward R. Murrow said, “Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.”
Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary “We’re Not Broke,” which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
Speaking in Knoxville, Tennessee on January 9 US president Barack Obama unveiled an initiative to provide two years of community college tuition-free, nationwide, to anyone meeting attendance and grade requirements. The idea, inspired by a similar program in Tennessee, aims to make two years of college as universal as high school is now. Obama’s proposal is in keeping, in more ways than one, with traditions going back to the origins of the American corporate state 150 years ago.
Since the mid-19th century, a few hundred large industrial corporations and banks have dominated the American economy. And the American state, functionally, has been closely intertwined with the interests of those corporations. One of its functions is to subsidize the corporate bottom line and artificially prop up the rate of profit by socializing provision of a growing share of inputs — among them the cost of reproducing and training human labor power.
The first statewide public school systems were introduced in New England to meet mill owners’ need for a workforce that was docile, obedient and educated to minimal standards; a function supplemented by education in “100% Americanism” at the turn of the 20th century, and a home economics curriculum in the ’20s and ’30s aimed at processing students into good mass consumers.
As recounted by New Left historian David Noble in America by Design, federal government aid to land grant colleges coincided with the national railroad and industrial corporations’ growing need for trained mechanical and industrial engineers. This trajectory carries through the GI Bill and to Obama’s latest proposal.
These institutional developments were accompanied by the rise of a meritocratic legitimizing ideology which replaced earlier American notions of equality and autonomy. Rather than genuine equality based on widespread economic empowerment and self-employment, the new meritocratic ideology treated step hierarchies of wealth, skill and managerial authority as both normal and necessary, but relied on the ideal of universal education to justify the ideology as “democratic.” With the widespread availability of secondary, higher and technical education, the theory goes, the individual’s rise in the managerial-technical hierarchy is limited only by their own willingness to learn and work. This peculiar American religion combines the existence of deep structural inequalities in wealth and power with the moralistic assumption that everyone gets exactly what they deserve.
The official White House happy talk, predictably, takes the corporate state’s assumptions for granted: “In our growing global economy, Americans need to have more knowledge and more skills to compete — by 2020, an estimated 35 percent of job openings will require at least a bachelor’s degree, and 30 percent will require some college or an associate’s degree.” That it’s the place of the “growing global economy” and the corporate HR departments in it to set the “required” qualifications for labor, and the place of the state’s education system to process people to those standards, goes without saying.
Never mind that globalization, concentration of economic power in the hands of a few giant, capital-intensive corporations, and a wage system that separates labor from both ownership and control of work, are none of them natural or inevitable processes. They all result from the deliberate policies of a state in league with capital.
The real irony is that the system of power Obama’s proposal is designed to serve is doomed to extinction. The revolution in cheap small-scale machine tools means an end to the material rationale for the wage system, and to corporate control of production. Coupled with the rise of open-source or pirated textbooks, free online lectures and syllabi and DIY learning networks, it also means an end to control over access to employment by the unholy alliance of big universities and human resources departments. In an economy where a few months’ wages can purchase a garage factory full of open-source tools and the economy is dominated by commons-based peer production and craft production in self-managed shops, credentialing will be largely stackable and ad hoc, negotiated informally to suit the needs of the groups of people working together.
The days of the educational Cult of Moloch and its human sacrifices are numbered.
The pro-GMO lobby claims that there is a scientific consensus on the safety of GM food and therefore the GMO debate is over. It claims that GMOs guarantee higher yields and less pesticide/herbicide use. The claim is also made that GM agriculture has no adverse impact on soil, the nutritional value and health of crops or biodiversity. The industry and its supporters claim that the ‘scientific community’ believes GMOs can only have positive effects and point to research to back this up.
These claims are bogus. Many analyses have highlighted the inadequacies of the research cited by the pro-GMO lobby, not least in terms of methodology, the glossing over of the significance of certain findings and conclusions that do not necessarily fit the evidence provided [1-3]. Moreover, numerous studies demonstrate the often worrying physiological abnormalities derived from ingesting GMOs as well as poor/falling yields, increased pesticide use, lower nutritional values and degraded soil and plant health (etc) associated with GM agriculture [4].
When certain pro-GMO figures proclaim that the debate over GMOs is over, their proclamations are based on propaganda, not science. They say that people who challenge their views are anti-science, politically motivated and are mounting a ‘campaign’ against the industry. Like all good propagandists, this is doublespeak.
Given the existing scientific evidence that challenges the claims of the pro-GMO lobby, a rational and reasonable response would involve applying a precautionary approach to GMOs [5] because there is clearly no scientific consensus. Yet public safety concerns are regarded by the GMO lobby as a barrier to bringing its products to the commercial market and are to be sidelined by all means possible [6-9]. To justify this, it promotes the falsehood that GMOs are ‘substantially equivalent’ to non-GMO products, which is certainly not the case [10].
It is therefore with good reason that concerned people have organised to ensure the precautionary principle is adopted or strengthened and to challenge the industry and officials that are driving the GMO agenda.
It is the GMO sector itself that is politically motivated, anti-science and mounting a campaign in favour of its products. Its faulty science has been challenged, and as a result it is unable to produce the evidence that would convince us that GMOs are safe and provide the benefits claimed. Little wonder the industry hides behind the notion of ‘commercial confidentiality’ to maintain a veil of secrecy over its own research that regulators too often accept at face value [11].
Having failed to win the day with science, it resorts to placing restrictions on independent research into its products, censors findings, intimidates, smears, bribes, uses fakery and has successfully used its wealth and power to hijack regulatory bodies and co-opt bodies and officials who propagate lies on its behalf [12-15]. Yet it is those who highlight and challenge such tactics who are attacked for attempting to derail an industry which likes to portray itself as working for the public interest.
One of the main PR weapons used by the sector is that anti-GMO campaigners are taking food from the mouths of the hungry [16]. Let’s get one thing clear: GMOs are not the answer to feeding the world [17-22] and that type of emotional blackmail will only ever work on the ignorant, misinformed and those who believe the industry’s propaganda.
There is enough scientific evidence to warrant serious concern over GMOs. After all, evidence is mounting that some of these companies may have already been poisoning us for decades with their cocktail of agricultural inputs [23,24].
However, it is easy for the layperson to become confused by an endless parade of studies claiming to back up one or other side of the debate. For that reason, sometimes they have to look beyond science to sharpen their focus. They have to look at motives. They must ask who is controlling the GMO agenda? For what purpose? What is the track record of those involved? Should we ever in a million years trust certain players given their criminal record [25]?
Commercial concerns are driven by profit. Capitalism compels companies to capture and maintain market shares. However, cartels, price rigging, threats, cronyism and having politicians in your back pocket are a much better guarantee to seize and dominate markets than any economic model taught in textbooks and based on the ‘free’ market being determined by supply and demand. Such economic theory is the smokescreen that modern day neoliberalism tries (but fails) to hide behind [26]. As far as the GMO issue is concerned, however, there is much more to it than the need to make a fast buck.
There is a reason why well-known proponents (Rockefeller, Gates) of depopulation and eugenics are involved with the GMO sector; there is a reason why these very people have funded a giant seed bank on an island in the Arctic [27,28]. There is a sinister side to this industry, which points to a heady mix of US geopolitical hegemony based on the global control of agriculture, the hijack of the world’s seeds and food supply and depopulation [29].
If the science around GMOs is confusing to some, then ambiguity is what powerful corporations want: the tobacco industry was happy for the waters to be muddied for decades over the link to lung cancer. But if ambiguity over the efficacy of GMOs does indeed reign, the underlying politics is much clearer to grasp.
The attacks in Paris on the editorial offices of the weekly satirical journal Charlie Hebdo and a kosher supermarket have, once again, conveniently turned the attention of the world away from the economic turmoil in the European Union and the extreme unpopularity of its major leaders to the seemingly never-ending «global war on terror».
French President Francois Hollande announced that on January 11, he would march in solidarity on the streets of Paris along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny, and the ISIL-enabling Turkish Prime Minister, Ahmet Davitoglu. All of these leaders, facing huge popularity problems at home, were able to use the terrorist attacks in Paris to bolster their own flagging electoral profiles. In addition to the unpopular leaders, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, European Council President Donald Tusk, and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker were also scheduled to march in Paris in the grandiose «photo op» to help honor a magazine staff that often lampooned many of these leaders with cartoons that were almost always of a sexual nature.
Once again, the alleged perpetrators of the recent attacks, Franco-Algerian brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, who were said to have murdered 12 people, including the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, and Franco-Senegalese Amedy Coulibaly, said to have killed hostages at the supermarket, were well-known to the French police and intelligence services. It was claimed by one of the supermarket customers that Coulibaly said proclaimed that he was from Mali and that he supported ISIL and Palestine. The Kouachis’ names were even included on the American «no-fly list».
The fact that the Kouachis had been involved in recruiting and training jihadist volunteers to fight for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria and had earlier been involved in recruitment efforts for jihadist armies in Iraq and Yemen should have placed a surveillance net over the two brothers. But, as in a previous case in France involving an alleged jihadist terrorist who allegedly killed people at random, the Kouachi brothers, as well as Coulibaly, who was also well-known to the police, were permitted to obtain weapons and other materials without tipping off law enforcement. Coulibaly actually met with French President Nicolas Sarkozy in 2009. Coulibaly worked at a Coca Cola plant in the poor «banlieue» of Grigny, outside of Paris. Coulibaly was one of ten workers selected to meet personally with Sarkozy at the Elysee Palace to discuss youth employment issues. As with the U.S. Secret Service and the American president, French security thoroughly vets those who meet with the French head of state, which makes Coulibaly’s selection to meet Sarkozy even more perplexing. «Le Parisien» quoted Coulibaly as being excited over his meeting with Sarkozy and hoped the French president might help him find him a good job. Coulibaly is said to have first met Cherif Kouachi in 2010. However, Coulibaly supposedly converted to radical Islam while serving time in prison in 2005 for armed robbery. It was in prison that Coulibaly became an adherent of Djamel Beghal, said to be a Franco-Algerian member of Al Qaeda who, in 2001, tried to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris. Out of all the unemployed and under-employed youth in France, the French president’s security team decided to vet a known follower of an Al Qaeda member to enter the Elysee Palace to meet with Sarkozy. As the French say, «incroyable!»
Pre-attack knowledge by the authorities of an alleged perpetrator was certainly the case in the Merah affair in March 2012 when Mohammed Merah, a French national, was killed by French police. Merah was accused of killing three French paratroopers in Montauban and three students and a teacher at a Jewish school in Toulouse. It was later discovered that not only did the French Central Directorate of Internal Intelligence (DCRI) maintain a thick dossier on Merah, but that French intelligence tried to recruit him as an agent. Merah traveled with ease to Afghanistan and Pakistan with the foreknowledge of French intelligence. The then-governing conservatives of President Nicolas Sarkozy and the opposition, now ruling, Socialist Party conspired to cover up Merah’s links to French intelligence.
The Kouachi brothers are said to have returned from Syria this past summer, where the CIA and French intelligence have been backing Islamist guerrilla groups battling the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The similarities of the Kouachis and Coulibaly to Merah are amazing. All were known to French intelligence before they allegedly carried out their terrorist attacks and all had connections with Al Qaeda groups and affiliates.
Ever since the 1980 time-bombing of the Bologna train station that killed 85 and injured over 200, Western European «false flag» operations have become fairly standardized «boiler plate» operations. This was certainly the case with the three-man professional military assault carried out in a precision manner by the alleged Islamist terrorists on the Paris editorial offices of the satirical journal Charlie Hebdo. Although the two Kouachi brothers, killed by police at a warehouse north of Paris, are said to have carried out the attacks on the newspaper, there is still no explanation of what happened to the third gunman. A third suspect in that attack, a brother-in-law of the Kouachis named Mourad Hamyd, voluntarily turned himself in to the police after he heard his name broadcast by the media. However, Hamyd, 18, was in school at the time of the attack on Charlie Hebdo.
The attack on the Bologna train station began the age of modern false flag attacks. Although in 1980 the Italian government and media originally blamed the bombing on leftist radical Italian guerrillas, it was, in fact, carried out by an underground fascist cell that obtained the bomb materials from hidden caches belonging to the secret NATO «stay behind» paramilitary network known as «Gladio».
Gladio was intended to mobilize guerrilla forces to fight the Soviets in the event of a ground war in Europe. Weapons and materials were hidden underground and in caves throughout Western Europe for future guerrilla assaults on occupying Soviet troops. However, Italian rightists and Zionists attempted to use the discredited Mitrokhin Dossier, allegedly obtained from KGB files, to pin the blame for the Bologna attack on the Soviets acting in concert with radical Arabs, including Palestinian groups. It was later discovered that it was the CIA that funded such news stories in a psychological warfare operation against the Soviets and the Arab countries. From his Paris jail cell in 2005, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, the famed terrorist known as «Carlos,» revealed that it was the CIA and Mossad that carried out the Bologna bombing and that the Mitrokhin Dossier was being used to «falsify history». Other independent accounts have proven Carlos’s allegation.
Ever since Bologna, the tell-tale signs of Western intelligence false flag operations are extremely evident in attack after attack. By sticking to the same doctrine for over 40 years, Western intelligence fingerprints are becoming as clear as day.
One such tell-tale sign of a false flag operation is the convenient discovery by police of evidence linking attacks to the perpetrators, be they unknowing double agents or patsies who believe in whatever cause has been dangled before them.
One sign of a false flag operation is that «evidence» linking the intended perpetrators to the crime scene is always discovered. French police claim they were able to pin the attack on Kouachis, because Said, the eldest brother, left his French identification card in a black Citroen used as a getaway car. Police would not say whose identification card they found. Some French security experts warned that the ID card may have been purposely planted in the car to confuse the police. Police also conveniently found Molotov cocktails and Islamist jihadist flags inside the getaway car. Alleged 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta’s passport was supposedly found in pristine condition in the rubble of the World Trade Center.
Often, the true perpetrators of false flag attacks are masked. This was the case with the three reported gunmen who killed the Charlie Hebdo staff.
There are always other attacks in the region to confuse police. For example, while French police were concentrating their search for the gunmen from northern Paris to the Belgian border, a French police woman was shot and killed in Montrouge, south of Paris. French authorities were quick to say the events south of Paris and at Charlie Hebdo were not linked. Later, it was announced that the two events were linked. Some witnesses at the warehouse and at the newspaper office were convinced that the masked men who turned out to be terrorists were actually counter-terrorism special troops. One man at the warehouse who escaped injury said he shook hands with one of the masked terrorists who he believed was a special policeman. At the same time French police launched their hostage-freeing operations at the warehouse and kosher supermarket, a hostage situation at a jewelry store in Montpellier, in the south of France, was being reported. Police soon said that situation was not connected to the events in the Paris region. Nevertheless, the Montpellier situation conveniently added to the fear factor.
The events in France have given a boost to anti-Islam immigration movements throughout Europe, from the PEGIDA movement and Alternative for Germany (AFD) party in Germany, to the National Front in France, and the UK Independence Party in Britain. Coming so soon after France’s UN Security Council vote to recognize Palestine as a state and the rising political fortunes of the pro-Israel National Front, a «price tag» attack on France, masked as a jihadist terrorist operation, cannot be ruled out.
efore scoffing at this headline, you should know that in 1999, in Memphis, Tennessee, more than three decades after MLK’s death, 
After the Crash 