This is from an interesting article at In These Times by Matthew Miles Goodrich:
In 1952 a 23-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a love letter to Coretta Scott. Along with coos of affection and apologies for his hasty handwriting, he described his feelings not just toward his future wife, but also toward America’s economic system. “I am much more socialistic in my economic theory than capitalistic,” he admitted to his then-girlfriend, concluding that “capitalism has outlived its usefulness.”
King composed these words as a grad student on the tail end of his first year at the Boston University School of Theology. And far from representing just the utopianism of youth, the views expressed in the letter would go on to inform King’s economic vision throughout his life.
As Americans honor King on his birthday, it is important to remember that the civil rights icon was also a democratic socialist, committed to building a broad movement to overcome the failings of capitalism and achieve both racial and economic equality for all people.
Capitalism “has brought about a system that takes necessities from the masses to give luxuries to the classes,” King wrote in his 1952 letter to Scott. He would echo the sentiment 15 years later in his last book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?: “Capitalism has often left a gap of superfluous wealth and abject poverty [and] has created conditions permitting necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few.”
In his famous 1967 Riverside Church speech, King thundered, “When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
I also want to recommend you read "Queer people and the U.S. Communist movement, 1950-1969" and "Queer people and the U.S. communist movement, 1969-1979."
This is C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot'' for Tuesday:
Tuesday, January 18, 2022. A world thqt makes no sense allows the continued persecution of Julian Assange and tries to pass the continued tragedy that is Iraq off as a 'success.'
Something's don't make sense and never will.
That would include Adel's "Can I Get It."
The songwriting credit on this track from Adele's 30 album gives credit to Adele Adkins, Max Martin and Shellback.
Is that accurate? Will it take the courts to make it accurate?
Not since George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" cribbed from "He's So Fine" have I heard such a bold 'borrowing' or theft.
That's Oasis' "Wonder Wall" which, for the record, does not credit Adele or any of her co-writers. But the hook of ADele's song is a direct steal from "Wonder Wall" -- especially notable when the hook is whistled in the song.
It happens and sometimes it happens purely by accidwent. but Oasis is not a minor band and "Wonder Wall" is not an obscure song -- especially for a British artist like Adele. No one in the studio thoughts, "This sounds a lot like a song that was a huge hit for Oasis"? Right before the Rolling Stones' BRIDGES TO BABYLON was released, the similiary of "Anybody Seen My Baby" to k.d. lange's "Constant Craving" were noted and lange and Ben Mink were added as co-writers to the song.
Adele's 30 is the most discussed album of 2021. Sorry, I didn't listen to it until last night. First thing I noted was the cribbing from "Wonder Wall."
I;ll also never understand how or why Frances Moore Lappe signed off on the recipes that her daughter Anna picked out for the latest edition of DIET FOR A SMALL PLANET (the fiftieth anniversary edition). As we noted at THIRD, the book was supposed to give working parents the tools they needed to make quick and nutrious food for their family but Anna's bread rccipe in the new edition is for . . . white bread -- garbage bread because it has no real nutritional value -- and this garbage bread takes approximately 22 hours to make. Grasp that. A recipe that requires you invest 22 hours into making the bread and there's nothing in the bread of value, it's home made Wonder Bread. How far from the point of the book and the planet, Anna and Frances have wandered.
It doesn't make sense that US President Joe Biden continues to persecute Julian Assange. The Dissident AU Tweets:
The minute you believe you should know what your government is doing behind your back is the minute supporting Julian #Assange is no longer an honour. It is a duty. Every effort counts in this once-in-a-generation battle. #FreeAssangeNOW
CONSORTIUM NEWS' Cathy Vogan has composed a song about Julian entitled "Time To Change The World."
In Iraq? It doesn't make sense that the western press has all eyes on Moqtada al-Sadr, but never fails to see anything but glowing moments. The Shi'ite cleric's slate did not get a majority of the votes and it still can't pull together a coalition all these months after the October 10th election but western outlets keep typing the same damn (fact-free) pieces on Moqtada and pretending that somehow they've covered Iraq and, even funnier, that they've done some actual reporting.
Reality, he's accomplishing nothing and while the western media produces hagiography on Moqtada, they ignore other players -- and you ignore Nouri al-Maliki at your own peril. The former prime minister and forever thug does not give up easy. News outlet IRAN INTERNATIONA ENGLISH Tweets:
Fereshteh Sadeghi offers:
Three months and still no progress on forming a government.
We'll wind down with this from Black Alliance for Peace's latest newsletter:
It is January, and in the U.S. this means it is time for the annual ritual of revisiting the white-washed, de-radicalized, pro- “American” M.L. King fairytale as part of the official celebration of King’s birthday.
In the official story, Dr. King was not the creation of the movement that was fighting for the democratic and human rights of Black people. No, it was Dr. King who created the movement, according to the colonial white elite and the neocolonial Black misleadership. In this story, the objectives of the movement were not for radical social transformation and Black self-determination but the redemption of the U.S. settler-colonial nation/state and the quiet integration of Black people into the state. In other words, to complete the establishment of a “more perfect nation,” as Obama would put it.
But King did not just show up to save Black people. Dr. King was a product of the post-war Black movement. And as such, the King that the movement produced reflected the changing, and sometimes contradictory development of that movement. As a product of the movement, Dr. King’s experiences as the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) evolved. He began to raise criticisms of capitalism, eventually opposed imperialist war and embraced a program of class struggle represented by the Poor People's campaign.
Positions that created tensions in the civil rights wing of the black liberation movement and make King a target for assassination.
This is the King that BAP recognizes. The King that in his last few years of activism was finding his way to the Black radical tradition, a tradition that takes an uncompromising position on colonialism, structural white supremacy and war.
This commitment to the highest articulations of our people for peace, people(s)-centered human rights and the belief that the Pan European white supremacist colonial/capitalist patriarchal project can be defeated, is what animates the worldview and actions of the Black Alliance for Peace.
And it is why BAP takes an uncompromising position on standing with and defending peoples’ and nations who find themselves in the crosshairs of U.S. and European aggression, no matter the criticism we receive from the social imperialist left and morally bankrupt liberals.
Below, you will see just some of the courageous positions that our members have taken in opposition to imperialism and war. Despite questions, we proudly accepted the invitation to attend the inauguration of Daniel Ortega as the newly elected president of Nicaragua. BAP’s representative Margaret Kimberley was given a place of honor on the stage along with the heads of states from Cuba and Venezuela.
As Margaret Kimberley said in her statement following the inauguration, BAP is clear on its mission and responsibility at this critical moment in history. An unambiguous commitment to human rights and anti-colonialism guides our worldview and politics. And for that - we are unapologetic.
“As an organization committed to reviving the Black radical tradition, and committed to an anti-imperialist stance, the Black Alliance for Peace is always ready to defend human rights.
This hemisphere in particular has been viciously targeted by the U.S. government and its vassals in the European Union and United Nations. The Organization of American States should be a platform for discussion and consensus building but it is a U.S. invention and operates under its thumb. The U.S. congress overwhelmingly approved the RENACER Act which legitimizes the regime change effort and makes a mockery of claims that the U.S. acts as a democracy. From Haiti to Nicaragua to Venezuela to Cuba, millions of people in this hemisphere live under U.S. dictates masquerading as democracy in action.
Black Alliance for Peace is committed to giving voice to the peoples of targeted nations and to providing insights and analysis that people in a supposedly free country are deprived of. Our mission demands that we do no less.”
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