May 8, 1967, “Martin Luther King Jr.: “My dream has turned into a nightmare.”…In April 1968, 11 months before his assassination, Dr. King was interviewed at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta by Sander Vanocur of NBC News.
Dr. King’s April 4, 1967 speech in which he accurately described the US government as “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today“ enraged the media…Time magazine called the speech “demagogic slander that sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi,” and the Washington Post declared that King had “diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people.”
May 8, 1967, Excerpts from Ebenezer Baptist Church interview
@20: “I must confess that that dream that I had that day
(1:32) When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war,
it loses its social perspective and programs the social uplift suffer.
This is just a fact of history, so that we do face many more difficulties
as a result of the war [on Asian soil]. It’s much more difficult
to really arouse the conscience during a time of war.
There is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive, it dulls the conscience, it strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence. I think the biggest problem now…(2:32) we’re confronting issues that cannot be solved without costing the nation billions of dollars. I think this is where we’re getting our greatest resistance. They may put it on many other things, but we can’t get rid of slums and poverty without it costing the nation something. I feel that non-violence is really the only way we can follow because violence is just so self-defeating. A riot ends up creating minimal problems for the Negro community,...you can burn down a building, but you can’t establish justice. You can murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder through violence. You can murder a hater but you can’t murder hate. And what we’re trying to get rid of is hate and injustice and all of these other things
that continue the long night of man’s inhumanity to man.”
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You Tube page: “Dr. King explains the war in Vietnam was undermining the fight for social justice by breeding insensitivity to the suffering of South Asians and dulling America’s collective conscience…”
He gave his “I have a dream” speech on August 27, 1963.
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Added: Whatever happened to US “Neutrality Acts”?
“Neutrality Acts: Definitions,” Historyonthenet.com
“To involve America in World War Two, FDR had to overcome two major obstacles:
American public opinion and
a consistent body of neutrality legislation.
By the 1930s, 70 percent of Americans polled said that U.S. involvement in World War I had been a mistake. When war broke out again in 1939, Americans were determined to stay out of the affairs of its quarrelsome neighbors across the Atlantic. They were also
legally bound by the Neutrality Acts, a series of laws passed in the 1930s that would limit U.S. involvement in foreign wars. They passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939.
FDR’s other problem was the pesky neutrality laws from the 1930s that were designed to prevent the United States from being lured into war, and which especially sought to avoid the circumstances that had led to U.S. entry into World War I. Thus, for example, Americans on belligerent ships were at first told that they traveled at their own risk, and neutrality legislation later in the 1930s prohibited such travel altogether. The neutrality legislation also prevented the United States from selling weapons to countries at war. America could sell other goods to belligerents, but only on a cash-and-carry basis and transported in the recipient country’s ships. America’s ships could not venture into war zones to conduct wartime trade.
FDR sought to change the part of the neutrality legislation that stopped the United States from selling weapons to nations at war. As of 1939, therefore, it became legal for a belligerent (Britain, in this case) to acquire weapons from the United States on a cash-and-carry basis. The prohibition on the lending of money to belligerents was preserved, and the requirement that the equipment be transported in the belligerent’s own ships meant that American ships would not be exposed to danger.” Historyonthenet.com
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Added: To get re-elected in 1940, FDR promised not to involve the US in a foreign war. In the US, it’s not illegal to lie to get elected:
FDR “declared at Cleveland on November 3: “The first purpose of our foreign policy is to keep our country out of war.”
So much for presidential words. What about presidential actions?
American involvement in war with Germany was preceded by a long series of steps, not one of which could reasonably be represented as conducive to the achievement of
the President’s professed ideal of keeping the United States out of foreign wars.”
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Added: Famous saying: Everyone knows that “we have to fight them over there so they won’t attack us over here.” Editor of FDR Library
More “no foreign war” promises by FDR, a few days before 1940 election:
“On October 23, 1940, in Philadelphia, the President [FDR] again said:
“We are arming ourselves not for any foreign war. We are arming ourselves not for any purpose of conquest or intervention in foreign disputes. I repeat again that I stand on the platform of our party:
‘We will not send our army, naval or air forces
to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas,
……………..
Comment: What does “We will not send our army…except in case of attack” mean? Does it mean “if US is attacked on its soil” US will send military to foreign lands judged responsible for attacking them? That’s to be expected. Also, why does FDR use the term, “the Americas” which is defined as “North, Central, and South America and the West Indies”?
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Added: “‘[Bill] Clinton’s [1999] war on Serbia was a Pandora’s box from which the world still suffers.
Because politicians and most of the media
portrayed the war against Serbia as a moral triumph,
it was easier for the Bush administration to justify attacking Iraq,
for the Obama administration to bomb Libya, and
for the Trump administration to repeatedly bomb Syria
[and illegally annex one third of Syria: 3/23/2019, Redrawn Syrian borders seen on flag flown by US funded Kurdish “fighters,” upper right is portion seized by Trump:
3/11/2018, “In January [2018], US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that US “troops will remain in Syria” indefinitely....The SDF, or Syrian Democratic Force, is a US-constructed outfit which…is neither Syrian…nor democratic….[4] “US President Donald Trump’s rollout of an updated Syria policy,” reports Aaron Stein, writing in the unofficial journal of the US State Department, Foreign Affairs, “commits US forces to maintaining a presence” in northeast Syria in order to “hedge against” any attempt by Damascus to assert sovereignty over its own territory. [5]”] (Trump admin. prevents starving Syrians from trying to grow crops on their own land)…3/30/2018, “The (largely unrecognized) US occupation of Syria,” Stephen Gowans]
All of those interventions sowed chaos that continues cursing the purported beneficiaries….
Anti-terrorism is a flag of convenience for Washington policymakers.…In 1999, the Clinton administration designated the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army]
as “freedom fighters” despite their horrific past
and gave them massive aid.“...6/25/2020, “Kosovo Indictment Proves Bill Clinton’s Serbian War Atrocities,” Jim Bovard
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Trump admin. uses ““wheat weapon” to starve Syria’s civilian population:”
Added: 10/23/2019, “Starving Syria of oil and wheat, the basics of survival,” Grayzone, Ben Norton. [Below, Syria map #1, gold area controlled by “Kurdish forces,” ie, the US. Syria map #2, below, light green area controlled by “Kurdish forces,” ie, the US]
“For the Syrian government, regaining control over its oil and gas reserves in the eastern part of its territory is crucial
to paying for reconstruction efforts and social programs — especially
at a time when suffocating US and EU sanctions have crippled the
economy, caused fuel shortages, and severely hurt Syria’s civilian population.
The US has aimed to prevent Damascus from retaking profitable territory, starving it of natural resources from fossil fuels to basic foodstuffs….
US soldiers enabled Washington’s control over nearly one-third of Syrian sovereign territory — territory that just so happened to include
90 percent of Syria’s oil, as well as
The US subsequently forced the Kurdish-led YPG to rebrand as the SDF, and then treated them as proxies to try to weaken the Syrian government and its allies Iran and Russia.
In June [2019], Reuters confirmed that Kurdish-led authorities had
agreed to stop selling wheat to Damascus,
after the US government pressured them to do so.
The Grayzone has reported how the Center for a New American Security, a leading Democratic Party foreign policy think tank bankrolled by the US government and NATO,
proposed using
the “wheat weapon” to starve Syria’s civilian population.
A former Pentagon researcher-turned-senior fellow at the think tank declared openly, “Wheat is a weapon of great power in this next phase of the Syrian conflict.” He added, “It can be used to apply pressure on the Assad regime, and through the regime on Russia”…
Donald Trump appeared to echo this strategy in his October 21 cabinet meeting.
“We want to keep the oil, and we’ll work something out with the Kurds so that they have some money, have some cashflow,” he said. “Maybe we’ll have one of our big oil companies to go in and do it properly.”
While Trump has pledged to bring US soldiers home and end their military occupation of Syrian territory –
which is illegal under international law –
it is evident that the broader regime change war continues.
A brutal economic war on Damascus is escalating, not only through sanctions but through the
theft of Syria’s natural treasures by foreign powers.”
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