© AFP Photo / Martin BureauA general view shows firefighters, police officers and forensics gathered in front of the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris on January 7, 2015
Running Time: 01:58:00
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Here's the transcript:
Harrison: Welcome everyone to another week of the Truth Perspective. It's January 10th, 2015 and in the studio today we have Caroline returning.
Caroline: Hi there.
Harrison: Elan.
Elan: Hey there.
Harrison: And William.
William: Good afternoon.
Harrison: And I'm your host Harrison Koehli. This week, a week of some crazy news, some big stories that have come out, either breaking news or developing stories. Before we get started, I just want to reiterate for all our listeners, if you want to call in at any time and give a comment, tell us we're wrong, tell us we're right, maybe add a little bit of background that we're missing, feel free to call in. You can call in via Skype by going to Blog Talk Radio, just the regular page where we've got the show there. You can see the instructions, otherwise the guest call-in number is 718-508-9499. So we hope to hear from you today.
But to start out, I'll mention it now, the big news this week of course is the Charlie Hebdo shooting in France. We're going to discuss that in a little bit because first there was something in the news before that, that was making big headlines and that kind of disappeared when these events happened in France. So we're going to talk about that. And that is the so-called Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal. This deals with the billionaire American Jeffrey Epstein who was actually charged with trafficking with a minor. He was trafficking and having indecent sexual relationships with minors.
Caroline: And procuring them for others.
Harrison: Yes. The story actually started years ago because it was in 2005 that at least one 14-year-old and several other teens came forward; their stories came out and it led to a conviction against Jeffrey Epstein. The story however, goes further back than that because this was going on for a long time. Vicky Ward for Vanity Fair actually wrote an article in 2003, two years before he was convicted. This article was a piece on Epstein and who he was because he came out of nowhere. He was in the news for flying Bill Clinton to one of his private islands on his private jet. So everyone started asking "Well who is this guy?" He was this billionaire rich guy, but no one knew where he got his money.
Caroline: Vicky Ward said that she had prepared this piece all through 2002 with a 2003 publication date in Vanity Fair and it was supposed to be your celebrity profile thing, but she kept finding all of these girls, at least one mother and daughter, who were talking about it. And she put it in her piece and her editor killed it, just basically left it out. She said it was very, very upsetting because she really felt for the family, for this child.
Harrison: There's actually three victims that she talked to.
Caroline: That's right. So she later on speculated on how much pressure must have been brought to bear on her editor to leave this out of this little celebrity puff piece. It was very upsetting to her.
Harrison: So the article got published, but without any of the allegations about the underage girls because at the time Vicky Ward had noticed that there were at least two odd things about Epstein; one was the source of his money because no one could find out where this guy actually got his billions of dollars; and second was his strange lifestyle. He had this lavish lifestyle and he was always surrounded by beautiful women. Vicky Ward just published an article recently about her previous article and she talked about talking to Jeffrey Epstein and just what a strange, creepy experience it was and how he had his people stalk her because he was keeping tabs on what she was finding out, what she was going to write about. But at the same time he didn't seem too worried. He was flippant. It just struck her as odd. One of the questions that he kept asking her was "Well, what do you know about the girls? What do you know about the girls?" That got her wondering if there was a bigger thing to this. And of course, like Caroline said, the biggest part of the article got cut because the guy working at Vanity Fair thought "These are unsubstantiated charges. There's no proof for them. They might lead to legal difficulties, so we're just going to get rid of that information."
So two years later he's actually convicted of trafficking a 15-year old and other teens. During that lawsuit his lawyer even tried to discredit these witnesses, understandably, his lawyer being Alan Dershowitz. We'll get back to Alan Dershowitz because he'll be coming up in the discussion a few times today.
So there were those convictions and additional charges or allegations and multiple lawsuits settled out of court, or just in another case, some kind of deal. So basically they paid these victims off. There was a lot of victims, a lot of stuff going on in 2005. Now it's just come out recently that it wasn't just Epstein. Epstein was throwing big parties and these parties were pretty famous around the circles of the people he was involved with. Recently it's come out that involved with these parties and just with Epstein in general, he knew a ton of high-level people. So the allegations and the information coming forward is that along with Epstein and his sex slaves, Prince Andrew was involved. One of the women that has come forward has said that she was basically kept as Epstein's sex slave and farmed out to these different individuals to sleep with them and Prince Andrew was one of the people that she was forced to sleep with.
So that did cause a big wave in the news. Of course this coming on the heels of the other big pedophile scandal in the UK which started with revelations about Jimmy Savile and has spiraled out of control from there, involving multiple people at the BBC, investigations into MPs and people involved in government. All signs point towards there being this giant pedophile ring among the people in power.
Caroline: Especially in schools that were for orphans and were wards of the state. There was a lot of access, hundreds of students from the '60s, '70s and '80s who were children at that time have been coming forward with allegations and trying to create some kind of lawsuit to go after these people.
Harrison: Many of them had come forward, for example in the '80s, and there were investigations going on, reports filed and those were 'disappeared', files have been lost, no investigations were followed through and all these people got off scot-free and the victims are left with no justice. So all this is coming out and the BBC and the MP, that the file scandals have been going on for the last year or two before that. But this thing goes on for decades really. Any country you look at, you can find these kind of scandals. There's the Franklin scandal in the US or the Dutroux scandal in Belgium, which had branches and strings out to the Netherlands and France. It all ties together.
These things have been going on for decades and it's only every once in a while there's a blip on the radar and you see it in the news. So this has been going on, there's been tons of stories about it, then this Epstein thing comes out with Prince Andrew. Now more information has been released, namely all the people that Epstein was involved with and the connections that he had. It turns out that in his little black book of phone numbers and addresses he had something like 21 different pieces of contact information for Bill Clinton. He had ties with politicians from various countries including Israel, celebrities and all kinds of high-level people.
Caroline: He had a direct line with Obama as well as one of the royal family's biggest estates in Scotland. Nobody gets that number!
Harrison: So just like the thing with Jimmy Savile and his connections, you can see pictures of him with the queen and all kinds of high-level people, just laughing and having a good time, Epstein seems to be the same way. So what is it about these guys that end up getting revealed as violent pedophiles and having all these friends in high places? Do they just manage to wheedle their way up there, or what's going on there?
Caroline: Now they have the chance, like any good entrepreneur, they have found a need and they're filling it in their own perverse way.
Harrison: The point being that it's not like all these people involved with Epstein are just totally deceived by this guy. That may be the case for some of them, but the kind of chilling aspect that has come out is that a lot of these people are complicit. They're friends with him because they're the same. Two are violent pedophiles. So one of the people in his contact list, like I mentioned, is Bill Clinton and so we can probably imagine the kinds of things Bill Clinton was getting up to and the fact that he was going to the parties at Epstein's place while these things were going on and it's been documented that these things were going on while a lot of these meetings and get-togethers were taking place. It would be very odd and improbable that these people didn't know what was going on. That's the big thing.
So in this new lawsuit that's coming up against Epstein, I don't know the exact details of the lawsuits. There's even talk that they should call Bill Clinton in as a witness to give any information that might let them know what was really going on.
Caroline: And they should call Prince Andrew too, but apparently they're working on a law that gives the royal family immunity against anything, whatever, in any situation. So that may not happen.
Harrison: Back to Alan Dershowitz, it turns out that one of the ladies making these claims has implicated Alan Dershowitz, Epstein's lawyer, saying that he too was involved in taking advantage of these so-called sex slaves. Now anyone that's familiar with Alan Dershowitz will either be horrified and shocked that one of the bastions of democracy and freedom and justice could ever be involved in such a thing or they'll say "That sounds pretty likely to me. Of course. How could it be any other way?"
Because Alan Dershowitz has been one of the biggest American defenders of Israel for years. He is fairly eloquent, which helps because he is a famous lawyer. He's a good lawyer so he knows what he's doing when he gets on TV or the radio and makes his case. If you're not familiar with Alan Dershowitz, just search him on YouTube. You can look for some of his talks. He usually makes appearances on talk radio and news channels and spews his nonsense.
Elan: He of course made his bread and butter and is known by defending Claus von Bülow in that famous case in the '90s about a guy who allegedly poisoned and killed his very rich wife. So it was made into a movie and this is basically how Dershowitz made his name, by defending someone who probably murdered his wife.
Caroline: The other thing, just a couple of side notes, Norman Finkelstein once said that he was never so creeped out being in the same room with another person as he was with Alan Dershowitz because his personal presence as opposed to the words that came out of his mouth were just so jarring that it was the worst experience he'd ever had in his life.
Harrison: I've actually got a clip from the talk where he said that.I don't have that bit where he said how creepy it was, but I've got the bit leading up to that. It's a bit bad quality, so we'll listen to it and we'll see how it sounds and we'll summarize it after if it's not clear.
Finkelstein: It was after the initial meeting with Dershowitz, I was really kind of shocked at his facility, his capacity to just brazenly lie. He did surprise me because he had this remarkable capacity, some of you have heard the expression "a pathological liar". (laughter) How many have heard that? Well everybody throws around the expression. I never quite knew what it meant. It was to me an interesting sight to observe because Professor Dershowitz is able, simultaneously, to believe every word he says. He does, he believes every word he says. And simultaneously he knows that every single word he's saying is a lie.Harrison: So if you couldn't hear it there, the gist was that Finkelstein was on Democracy Now and had a debate with Dershowitz several years ago. You can view the whole debate on YouTube and Finkelstein is saying that it was just a strange experience because Dershowitz seems to have this incredible capacity to lie and that Finkelstein had heard the term "pathological liar" before and never knew what it meant until he was in the same room with Alan Dershowitz. After this clip he goes into a bit more detail. We won't play it, but he says "Well this actually makes sense because as a defence lawyer, this is what Dershowitz is trained to do. He's trained to be totally convincing, to appear as if he believes every word he's saying even when, for example, he might know that his client is guilty." He went through the same kind of mentality with Hillary Clinton. We've talked about the interview clip of her pretty much doing the same thing with a pedophile client years ago. Then Finkelstein says how creeped out he was by it.
Caroline: As another side note, very tangential, we've talked before about the totally incomprehensible behaviour of world leaders with respect to decisions in different situations and the possibility of blackmail figuring into it when leaders of countries make decisions that are patently bad for them. So hobnobbing with Epstein and folks like that certainly gives the opening for a lot of pressure on these world leaders.
Harrison: But at the same time, when these things come out in ways that they don't predict, it's something that they've got to put the lid on. On the one hand they use this kind of stuff to hold over people they want in their control, the party line, but on the other hand, this information can't get out unless they're the ones with the power to use it. We saw a similar but pretty light example with Dominique Strauss-Kahn with his thing in New York with the lady at the hotel. When you think about the kind of people involved in these sorts of things, and the kinds of things that they're involved in, that was a relatively light thing to get caught with and to be exposed for. Usually if something like that would happen, it would be fairly easily covered up.
Caroline: Wasn't he up for the presidency of the IMF and this whole thing scuttled it?
Elan: That's exactly the case. He had made a speech not one month earlier about how the IMF should be thinking about more equitable terms for the common person.
Caroline: That's sacrilege!
Elan: Yes. And apparently that riled up a few people who were there to listen to him, who were in very high positions of power and not one month later the scandal blows up in his face and the possibility of becoming president and really following through on these visions of his were made impossible.
Harrison: Just because I love him so much, I want to get back to Alan Dershowitz. We'll tie this into the Charlie Hebdo thing, but just to give you an idea of the kind of lies and nonsense that Dershowitz spews on a regular basis, here's another clip of Dershowitz talking about the situation in Israel and Palestine.
Dershowitz: The ratio of deaths, six-to-one or ten-to-one, is far, far too low. It ought to be twenty or thirty or forty-to-one if we're talking about the deaths of terrorists versus the deaths of innocent babies and children. Israel should try as hard as it can to reduce that ratio and make it one in a hundred, one in a thousand and ultimately zero in a thousand. Every Israeli citizen that dies is a tragedy. Every Palestinian terrorist that dies is a victory for justice. Palestinian terrorists target innocent civilians. They try to kill as many babies and children and women and civilians as they possibly can. Israel never targets civilians. It has no reason for targeting civilians. It would lose the war of public opinion if it ever targeted a civilian. It occasionally accidentally kills a civilian.Elan: Wow!
Caroline: Yeah, wow!
Harrison: If it wasn't clear at the beginning, he was talking about the ratio of deaths between Israelis and Palestinians and saying that the ratio should be something like 1,000 Palestinians dead to zero Israelis dead.
Caroline: But they're only terrorists.
Harrison: They're only terrorists and Israel only occasionally, accidentally kills an innocent person.
Caroline: Wasn't it close to 3,000 in the last Protective Edge? Three thousand deaths?
Harrison: The figures I found were 2,100. This might have been an early figure. And out of that 2,000 essentially, seven out of ten were civilians.
Elan: And about 500 I think were children.
Caroline: And there were a total of 13 Israelis killed, most of them were soldiers and three of them were friendly fire. It's ridiculous.
Harrison: So just the number of lies in that one statement that Dershowitz gave is just astounding; that he can say that Palestinian terrorists intend to kill as many Israeli babies as possible is just utterly ridiculous when you look at the numbers on how few Israeli children die in the conflict and how many Palestinians die.
Elan: Well, he is good. I'll give it to him. He takes truth and just turns it right upside down and says it with conviction and if you don't know anything at all about the facts of the matter and you go in there listening to him, you might end up believing what the guy is saying.
Harrison: Yeah. I want to play another clip from the debate he had with Norman Finkelstein. Now in this one the debate is framed around a book that Dershowitz had written called The Case for Israel, basically arguing that Israel is this great country and has the right to do whatever it wants and doesn't do anything wrong ever and that the Palestinians are totally evil. He goes through the history of modern Israel and things like that. So Finkelstein basically shredded his book, took it apart, pointed out all the misrepresentations and lies and plagiarism and just demolished this book and had this debate with him. When you watch the debate Finkelstein will bring up a point and of course Dershowitz, in his lawyerly fashion, just evades. It's like water off a duck's back with the way in which he's able to deflect any criticism and turn any obvious lie in his book around. It's just stunning to watch. In this clip Finkelstein has just quoted a statement that Dershowitz had made that Israel has not willfully killed one civilian ever. None.
So Finkelstein goes through his book, reads some statements and then says "Okay, well look at this report from Human Rights Watch." And he quotes the report saying that there is massive evidence that there are numerous examples of intentional and willful killings of civilians. He gives examples and he gives the names and the circumstances and Dershowitz of course denies it and Dershowitz had even given an offer. He said that he would pay $10,000 to anyone that could point out one thing that was wrong in his book. And so Finkelstein is like "Okay, well give me the $10,000 because here..." and he goes point-by-point.
But this is Dershowitz's rationale, his argument for why Israel never kills innocent civilians:
Dershowitz: The very idea that an Israeli soldier who are trained in the idea of the holiness of arms, who get better training about avoiding civilians, who are punished for killing civilians.Harrison: That was Finkelstein at the end there. So his entire argument was that Israel has no incentive for killing civilians because it would be a bad idea. Well he's got one thing right. It would be a bad idea and to reply to something he said in one of the previous clips, Israel is losing the battle for public opinion because of these killings, because they do intentionally and willfully kill civilians. But that's not an argument to say there's no incentive for it because there may be no rational incentive for it, but murder is rarely rational and used in service of public opinion like that. People kill people because they want to kill people.
Moderator: Let Norman Finkelstein read a response. You're making the point that in general you wouldn't think they would.
Finkelstein: Mr. Dershowitz said a very lovely Bar Mitzvah speech.
Caroline: And they think they have a good reason to.
Harrison: It happens in every war where people kill people and kill innocent civilians. Look at what's happening in Ukraine. Surely Kiev doesn't have any rational incentive for torturing and murdering civilians. That doesn't stop it from happening. What you've got to do is look at the actual evidence and the actual evidence shows that yes, Israel has, does and will continue killing willfully, civilians.
Anyway, that is Alan Dershowitz who has been accused of using sex slaves with Jeffrey Epstein. And of course, in Dershowitz's response to these allegations he essentially says that he is going to "sue this woman for defamation and have her lawyers disbarred for daring to accuse him of such things which he vehemently denies as absolutely absurd to say that he would do such a thing and it's totally untrue."
Caroline: I just want to say one more thing. You wonder how a man like Epstein gets the position "in" and kind of the slippery mark about entrepreneurs. Cleckley made a very perceptive remark. This is Hervey Cleckley who wrote The Mask of Sanity, which is the original, seminal work on the study of psychopathy. He details many case studies in his book of different types and their effects on their family around them. But he made the remark about several that he ran across who were actually very respected members of their various communities, doctors and so forth, and he came to the conclusion that trying to maintain this mask of sanity which these very public figures need to do, is exhausting to them, and that they need the occasion, and he puts it "vacation in filth". This is their way of resting and recharging, getting to express their true nature and I guess gather enough energy to be able to put the façade back on and get back in the public eye.
Harrison: We've been saying it for years, and in recent years, even the mainstream media is saying it, that psychopaths become politicians. So that's become common knowledge, even to the point where you have people like Kevin Dutton and others say "This isn't such a bad thing. Psychopaths have certain qualities that make them good for the job. They don't feel stress. They think everything that they do is just great and they can do things without the drawbacks and the hesitations caused by having a conscience." And yet at the same time you see that not only are politicians yes, psychopaths, they also happen to have a very great tendency towards being violent pedophiles and they take these vacations in filth.
When you think about politicians and how bad they are, just take whatever you think and then multiply it by a thousand and that's probably how bad they really are. If you can't imagine that, then just read a book like Nick Bryant's The Franklin Scandal to get an idea of what really goes on at these parties that they have and that I'm sure went on at Epstein's parties and the parties with all these MPs in the UK and probably all over the world. And then to get an idea of the blackmail angle, I'd recommend reading Sibel Edmonds' novel The Lone Gladio because she weaves all these kinds of things into the novel in a very entertaining but at the same time realistic way; how these things probably actually do happen, how the blackmail works, what goes on behind the scenes and ends up happening all over the world. So do yourself a favour and become informed to understand what's really going on when these stories break out, like Prince Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, Alan Dershowitz. We'll see what happens with Alan Dershowitz.
But to make a tie into our next topic, because Alan Dershowitz is also involved in this one in a way, we had on Wednesday the attacks in Paris on the Charlie Hebdo, the satirical magazine that has published pretty offensive cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed and various other religions. Just to give a brief rundown for those who don't know, on Wednesday initial reports said that there were probably three guys, but let's just say there were two, we don't know for sure, these two guys stormed the building of this magazine while they were having an editorial meeting. All the main editors and cartoonists were there. They went into the office, declared that they were there on behalf of al-Qaeda and they were getting revenge for the insults against the prophet that this magazine had done and opened fire and killed ten of the employees there in addition to two police officers.
They then made their getaway, got in their car and escaped from this high-speed chase and ran out of gas, hijacked a new car, ran out of gas again, hijacked a new car and so essentially yesterday they got to the end of the line, had another encounter with the police, made their way to this printing house building, holed up there with one hostage and then came out guns blazing apparently and were both shot and killed. That's the rough outline of what happened with that.
At the same time, on Thursday a different hostage-taking situation came up in a kosher supermarket. This one guy took hostages at this supermarket, ended up killing four people allegedly, and then he was killed by the police. One of the hostages from that supermarket told the media that the hostage-taker had told people in the room there, and the hostage that overheard conversation over the phone, that this guy apparently knew the two brothers. He had coordinated with them. So these two brothers, after this had happened, first of all no one knew who these guys were. During the attacks they were masked so you couldn't tell who they were. But very quickly the names of three suspects came out in the news, apparently first on Twitter. Where have we heard that before?
So these guys names had come out on Twitter and it said these two brothers, Said and Cherif Kouachi along with a third guy, Hamid Mourad, an 18-year-old. Immediately this Hamid turned himself in to the police because he'd heard his name as being a suspect. Well it turns out he was in class at university while this was happening. So he had a perfect alibi. His fellow students and his professors vouched for his whereabouts saying that he was in class while this was happening. Reading the news reports it turns out that he apparently is somehow related to these two brothers, or there's some connection. His wife was apparently friends with the two brothers' wives, so there was a connection between them. How they managed to get this that wrong I don't know.
So these two brothers were killed, then the guy at the kosher supermarket was killed, the hostage saying that he overheard about the connection between them. One thing that he said is that he is fighting for, or something like that, the Islamic state. He basically told them "I'm ISIS" while this was happening. Now they're tying this third guy, the kosher supermarket guy, to the shooting of a police woman on Thursday. There was an incident where a policewoman was shot in the street on Thursday. First they were saying it was an unrelated incident, but now they're saying that this is the same guy that had done that.
Caroline: Apparently he stated "I did the policeman", something like that, when he was in the middle of this hostage-taking thing.
Harrison: Well let's just get into some more details. So first of all it turns out that the brothers are not just these unknown guys that came out of nowhere. They had a history of being on the police's radar. Cherif, one of the two brothers, was on a global watch list. The US had him on their no-fly list for years. In 2005 he tried to fly to Syria in order to join the Iraqi insurgency, so this was the Zarqawi insurgency al-Qaeda in Iraq but they stopped him from doing so and then in 2008 he was arrested and charged and convicted for three years on charges of terrorism. He only served one-and-a-half years before being let out and this was for providing recruits for the Iraqi insurgency. "Some source close to French security services" told CNN that he had been to Syria and he returned in August of 2014. Then there are other reports saying that the other brother, Said, was trained by al-Qaeda in Yemen. I believe this was in 2011 and that after the training in Yemen the brothers were monitored, they were surveilled. So they had surveillance on them until July of 2014.
So these guys not only had a history of brush-ins with the law, they were being surveilled. They had ties with al-Qaeda in Yemen, allegedly experience in Syria, they were chummy-chummy with the Iraqi insurgency and then in July they are no longer monitored and in August they allegedly get back from Syria where we assume they were helping out the moderate rebels in their war against President Assad. So they hang out for a bit from August until December and then this happens.
So a curious series of events there. Like so many others like it, it seems to follow the pattern, where you've got these guys with a history of involvement in connections with counterintelligence or intelligence agencies in their respective countries who are then allegedly involved in some terrorist attack who are then killed in the final encounter, so we can't hear any part of their side of the story. Of course there are a lot of conspiracies floating out there. There's a history of similar things happening. We've got the video of the attacks, you know these things actually happened, but these guys were wearing masks. And then we have their names released to the media and then police.
Caroline: Well just to make it easier, apparently one of them left their ID in a car.It's like passport redux.
Harrison: Exactly. This guy apparently accidentally left his ID in their getaway car. So that right there made me wonder at first, well are these even the guys because it's pretty standard operating procedure to have someone carry out an attack, a Gladio-type attack, otherwise known as a false flag. So you get trained professionals to do the attack and then you say "Oh, this nobody guy, it was this guy". And then the police go after him and shoot and kill him because he was obviously guilty and then he's not there to defend himself. He's not alive. It's pretty easy to do that.
Now in this case, I personally don't know one way or the other. I think it could have been these two guys, but it could have not been. One of the weird aspects about this case is that when you watch the videos and you hear the eyewitnesses that saw it happening, these guys acted like professionals, like they knew what they were doing, like they had combat training. So you can see this in the videos in the way they move and their hand signals and just the calm demeanor like they're just going through the motions, muscle memory. This is an observation that a lot of the witnesses have made, just how calm these guys were. They first entered the Charlie Hebdo building, just very calmly said who they are and what they're there to do, did it, left, shot that cop on the street, got in a car. When they were in the cars, when they were hijacking and they went to the gas station to get a new car, very calm, just saying what they needed to do, who they were, getting on with business.
But when they get to their final destination, that printing house for the eventual shoot-out, they had their Kalashnikovs and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher and they come out guns blazing apparently and no one gets hurt?
Caroline: Not very professional.
Harrison: Yeah, what happened to all this training? You'd think that if they're going to go out, they're going to go out with a bang. The hostage got away, survived, no injuries as far as I know. None of the police officers were hurt or injured. Who knows what really happened? I don't know. Maybe it wasn't exactly as presented. Maybe they were just very efficiently taken out by the police involved and didn't have the opportunity to give any kind of defence on their way out, or offence.
Caroline: Well there's so many threads to this; just whether or not an attack on Charlie Hebdo was justified. The Saker weighs in on that saying why he is not Charlie Hebdo, apparently because that's a big thing going around on Facebook and people posting pictures on Twitter of this "Je suis Charlie". They were deliberately provocative. It's almost like they were another setup to inflame the whole Muslim thing in Western Europe. I found a very interesting article dating back to 2009 where one of their senior cartoonists who was 82, was fired for producing an anti-Semitic cartoon. So apparently you can mock the Muslim religion all you like but Jewish is totally, totally off-limits. You can't go near it. So that was very, very interesting.
But he made a really good point. He said "There's an expression in Russian called 'spitting in someone's soul'. It is fully applicable here. When Charlie Hebdo published the caricatures of the prophet and when they ridiculed him in a deliberately rude, provocative manner they knew what they were doing. They were very deeply, deliberately offending 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide." Now why would you want to do that? It's silly. So it makes you wonder who's actually behind Charlie Hebdo.
Harrison: Some people just have no class.
Caroline: That too.
Harrison: The way it's played out, we've got the "Je suis Charlie" thing going around all over the world, people saying "I am Charlie" like in solidarity with them. Well, do these people really know what they're saying? Who they're identifying with by saying "I am Charlie?" If you look at some of the cartoons, they're pretty crass and explicit and just all around in bad taste. This is all a talk about free speech, right?
Free speech, it's so great, it's so important. Free speech and democracy. This is taking place in France and like you said, Caroline, there was the one guy that was fired for producing a cartoon that was deemed anti-Semitic. So there you've got a little bit of a double standard when it comes to free speech. And then going a bit further, this would be like if you've got one of those Nazi guys in Ukraine, let's say a Nazi reporter was killed in Ukraine. Everyone saying "I am this Nazi reporter". How many people would really say that if they knew who he actually was? You can defend free speech all you want and a lot of people do, but it just strikes me as odd that these people would identify with Charlie when they probably don't agree. Well they probably wouldn't if they knew what they actually publish.
Caroline: Well free speech is like one of those little Pavlovian knee-jerk things, "Oh yeah, it's free speech. It's good." But they never question what the speech is.
William: Well marching in France today, all in solidarity. Then tomorrow you're going to have another rally with 30 world leaders. They're going to be marching down the street, also in solidarity.
Caroline: I saw a picture on Twitter this morning. Talk about the irony! Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president, is laying flowers at a Charlie Hebdo memorial. This guy's done in more Ukraine reporters than you can possibly think about.
William: Yeah, he's going to join in on the march as well as Angela Merkel, David Cameron, Matteo Renzi from Italy, Mariano Rajoy from Spain, Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission President, you've got Ahmet Davutoğlu from Turkey, a bunch of Muslim African leaders, Evigdor Lieberman from Israel, and Sergei Lavrov from Russia is also going to be there, Nicholas Sarkozy of course. But I haven't seen anything from the US.
Caroline: You wonder if they're all on somebody's phone list.
Harrison: There are two different issues here, at least. Don't get us wrong, what happened was horrible, and I think there should be demonstrations and people coming out with support and being in solidarity for the fact that these people were murdered in cold blood. That's one issue. Another issue, to make this an issue about free speech and identifying with these people when, like I said, if people knew the kind of things these guys publish, they probably wouldn't do that and just the amount of hypocrisy. For example, we have the 12 people dead in that one instance. The number goes up to 17 or 20 when you add in what has happened over the subsequent few days. Look at all the media attention this gets when there are thousands of people that have died in Ukraine last year, and it continues, and where's the media attention to that? Where are the people speaking out about that? In the West all you hear is that Poroshenko's such a great guy and they've got to stop the Russian invasion.
Caroline: Well like all good crises, this again is from the Saker, he writes that what is going on here, only one aspect, one he's focusing on, "The EU one percenters are now capitalizing on these murderers to crack down on the population. Sarkozy already met Hollande and they both agreed that new levels of firmness and vigilance need to be implemented." Does that not reek of a French 9/11?
Harrison: Passports. One more thing about the hypocrisy about the free speech angle, so we have these magazine editors and cartoonists that were killed. Last year at least 66 journalists were killed in conflict situations; at least six in Ukraine and I read one report saying 17 journalists were killed in the situation in Gaza.
Caroline: Syria's a bad place to be too.
Harrison: Syria too. Ukraine is the worst apparently. It's had the most threats against journalists, not necessarily the most deaths. So when this happens in a country that the US and the West in general doesn't like, not a big deal. When it happens in France, huge deal. All I'm saying is all these people should have an equal voice.
Caroline: There's yet another angle too, which is France was starting to get out of line. Paul Craig Roberts talks about an ex-FBI informant that he has and he said "A former White House official says the terrorists attacks that killed 12 people on Wednesday in Paris was a false flag operation designed to shore up France's vassal status to Washington", so apparently along with making the big mistake of attempting to think and/or to act for themselves and for France. And if you think about what he's done in the last couple of months. He had a very surprising off-schedule meeting with Vladimir Putin and apparently it was in an airport, very, very quiet, very quick. But apparently he walked out smiling. Hollande looked rather pleased himself, took everyone by surprise.
I believe that France recognized Palestine and is supporting other moves that Palestine is making, which of course makes Israel very unhappy and you say "Israel" you have to talk about Mossad and you can talk about that with respect to this situation too. France was very unhappy because their shipbuilding was suffering because the Mistral ships they were supposed to sell to Russia are now on hold due to sanctions. And I think he was quietly agitating to get those sanctions lifted because they are losing a ton of money and are in a position to be sued for a ton more by Russia for breaching their contract.
So he was making moves that were making Washington a little unhappy and a little antsy.
Elan: Plus he was probably the only leader in the EU who has come out saying that the EU and the US should probably not be sanctioning Russia anymore and how wrong-headed those policies are. So on the heels of these statements and his moves, it's almost a formula for some kind of covert response in the form of these guys coming in there and shooting up Hebdo and killing 10 or 12 others.
William: And don't forget that Netanyahu also warned France back in late November of last year. He gave a warning to France that if they were going to support the Palestinian state it would be a grave error.
Harrison: If you just look at the timeline of events, it's pretty interesting when you look at it from the angle you guys are saying, not only relating to Israel and Palestine but the US and NATO and Russia. First of all, last year there were all those strange fly-overs of the French nuclear facilitieswith drones.
These were high quality drones. Joe and Niall talked about this before on Behind the Headlines. So on November 9th the French government was on high alert because of these drones. They couldn't catch any of them, November 9th. Then it was on November 23rd that Netanyahu gave that warning saying it would be a "grave mistake" is what he said. A grave mistake if France were to recognize Palestine. A couple of weeks later, on December 6th that was when Hollande met with Putin in Moscow. And then on the 31st, so right before the New Year, France voted in favour of Palestinian statehood at the UN.
And five days later, on the 5th, Hollande urges Russian sanctions to end. And then January 6th, this seems odd, the French military announces that they're sending an aircraft carrier to the Gulf to fight ISIS in Iraq. And then January 7th you have the attacks and Charlie Hebdo.So it's a strange series of events when you look at it. It's like what's going on behind the scenes. It just seems like this attack is very coincidentally timed, at the very least.
Caroline: And has multiple good effects for certain people.
Elan: I was just going to say Netanyahu has now been equating the attackers with Hamas and Hezbollah. So he had to get that in there and of course the situation could not be more different, but he does get to stick that in there and that's something that he has been heard to say to Hollande and of course he's also said that "The key goal of Islamic terrorists is to destroy our societies and our countries, to uproot our human culture which is based on freedom and a culture of choice and to impose in its place a fundamentalist dictatorship which will return humanity to years long past. Never mind that Netanyahu and the Israeli government has been supporting elements of the Free Syria movement, overtly.
Caroline: ISIS never criticizes Israel. It's just deafening how nothing has ever come out of ISIS about Israel. You'd think that would be number one on the list. Also this gave Netanyahu an opportunity to be neighbourly and helpful to France. We see written in Haaretz that Prime Minister Netanyahu confirmed on January 9th the dispatch of an Israeli police SWAT team which would be working in liaison with its French counterparts. "It specializes in siege situations and rescue, ready to stand by to assist French authorities to resolve the siege of the kosher grocery store." Never mind the Charlie Hebdo thing, but the kosher grocery store. "We're worried about that. In addition to the SWAT team Netanyahu has ordered Mossad to provide French officials with all the assistance they need in attacking the ongoing terrorist situation in and around Paris with the suggestion that Mossad agents would be operating on French soil in partnership with France's Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure, formerly known as the Le Deuxième Bureau." So this is a lovely opportunity to get more Mossad agents embedded in France because they're so helpful.
Harrison: How convenient.
William: And Netanyahu also tried to relate Hamas and the Palestinians to it as well, talking about how they've been fighting terrorism for many years now and that the world should join them into this fight of terrorism. "Israel stands for Europe, so too Europe must stand with Israel." After that Abbas and Hamas and both condemned the attacks and also sent their condolences to Hollande.
Harrison: Well Dershowitz is back.
Caroline: Oh yay! What now?
Harrison: Because he had something to say about the attacks too. First he was on the show Midpoint on Newsmexx TV and to host Ed Berliner he said that "France is one of the worst countries when it comes to rewarding terrorism. They play with everybody. They reward every terrorist. I hate to pile on when they're suffering like this, but you have to understand how bad France has been historically in the war against terrorism." To give a little bit of clarity, he was on another show, I can't remember the name of the show, but he was confronted about this statement that he'd made by the host of this other show. So here's a clip of him on this show justifying his position on France.
Dershowitz: The point I was making was a general one and that is that they voted in Palestinian statehood for a country that was built on terrorism. They have done everything to avoid joining the fight on terrorism. I feel terrible for these people. I feel terrible for France.Caroline: Oh my lord! Palestine is a country founded on terrorism?!?
Host: Virtually every country in the world has voted for that statehood. You know that.
Dershowitz: United States hasn't.
Host: Virtually every country in the world.
Dershowitz: Well, good countries don't vote for it.
Host: So most countries in the world are Alan Dershowitz's bad countries.
Dershowitz: Europe is part of the problem. France is part of the problem. I feel terribly sorry for the victims, but France is part of the problem. Maybe this will give them a wakeup call and have them join the war against terrorism rather than becoming part of the problem of facilitating and rewarding terrorism.
Elan: Well he's correct, in a sense.
Caroline: Yeah, but - oh! Finkelstein, oh! You were right. Oh you were right!
Harrison: Yeah. Wow! So there's Dershowitz. Okay, it's just amazing. But if you think about what he said, he's right about France supporting terrorists. But just not in the way that he's talking about it. He's saying that France supports terrorism because they support Palestine and all Palestinians are terrorists, which is ridiculous and not true. But France does have a little bit of a parity relationship when it comes to terrorism. So does Israel, as you mentioned Elan. They both are supporting terrorists in Syria, for instance. Now in 2011 France helped arm the "rebels" in Libya, these same rebels who admitted having ties and links to al-Qaeda. So there's an instance of France arming and supporting al-Qaeda. Then in 2012 the French government said they planned on giving support to the rebels in Syria. In 2013 they followed through with that and have been since then.
Caroline: In Libya al-Qaeda were our good guys, right, against Gaddafi, right?So that was okay. So Dershowitz can't pull those kinds of things up because that's supporting a Western agenda and he should be all for that.
Elan: That's the good al-Qaeda.
Caroline: Oh yeah, the good al-Qaeda as opposed to the bad al-Qaeda, alright.
Harrison: So you've got France and multiple other countries supporting terrorism in Ukraine, Syria, Libya, etc., but that's alright, but then you've got Dershowitz saying "No, they're actually supporting terrorism because they're supporting Palestine" when the IDF is the biggest terrorist organization on the planet. It just doesn't make a lot of sense does it?
Caroline: Professor Alan doesn't have to.
Harrison: No, because he's a pathological liar. Back to things going on in France; so we've had the demonstrations all over the country and at the same time, amid all this solidarity and mourning in France and across the world, we've also had in these past few days several instances of what can only be called hate crimes against the Muslim population in France. Just in the first day after the attack, there were three revenge attacks. A mosque was shot at and blank grenades were thrown into this mosque; a prayer hall was shot at with guns; and a kebab shop was blown up. There were all in three different regions of France. There was graffiti saying "Death to Arabs" that popped up in various spots. A Muslim high school student was beaten. A car to a Muslim family was shot at. And those were just in the past couple of days.
There were more that have come out in the past day or so. I don't have them in front of me. You can easily Google them and find out what's going on because on the one hand you have people out there speaking up for free speech and on the other hand you've got people senselessly attacking people who had nothing to do with this. That just strikes me as a pretty telling dichotomy, juxtaposition of positions to take.
On the one hand you can have something so noble and democratic as standing up for free speech, but on the other you can have something so base as to just lash out at the first Muslim that you see. It's just disgusting.
Caroline: It's all part of herding the population.
Elan: Or raising the level of hate and divisiveness among people, keeping them confused and angry. They've succeeded.
Caroline: Dr. Paul Roberts does say that "The CIA has apparently resurrected a policy that was used against Europeans during post-WWII era when the spy agency would carry out attacks in the European states and blame it on communists. They used to take that little game plan and retool it. The USA continues to have planned false flag operations in Europe to create hatred against Muslims and bring European countries under Washington's sphere of influence. The attack on Charlie Hebdo was an inside job and that people identified by NSA as hostile to the Western wars against Muslims are going to be framed for an inside job designed to pull France firmly back under Washington's thumb." So that pretty much seems to sum it up, seeming to have, at least at this point; the desired effect.
Harrison: At this point we can even look at it either way. It either was or wasn't a false flag, but it doesn't really make a difference either way because it very well could have been a false flag. It follows the modus operandi to the letter. But on the other hand, when you hire a mercenary army and you fund them and you train them and you radicalize them using certain ideas, mercenaries aren't reliable people. They can turn on you on a dime. But the interesting thing is the people behind this have framed it in such a way that either option works in their favour.This could be a genuine attack from people who genuinely think that they're doing god's will and it serves the same purpose as if it was a false flag operation.
Caroline: It could be that whatever handlers may or may not have been involved in it, theoretically these two guys - we don't know for sure - got these two guys all wound up about it and saying "We're going to go off and do something" and "they've insulted the prophet", but you see the same thing done by the FBI in the US where they will gather a bunch of young kids, 19, 20, probably unemployed, definitely angry about their situation and lead them in a terrorist cell and then turn around and inform on them and get them arrested. Then they say they have foiled a terrorist plot.
Harrison: And that's the difference, the FBI always gets their man.
Caroline: Before anything bad happens because that's what we do!
Harrison: Literally their man. It's not always the case when these things happen. Anything else on that subject?
Caroline: We'll just have to see how it develops from here. But there won't be a trial. We've got two dead people. It's like the Boston bombing. They're dead, they're gone, so the versions of events that we get will be the ones that are prepared. There will be no open airing of it.
Harrison: Well with the Boston bombing there's still Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. His trial is coming up.But there's been almost like a gag order put on him so he can't say certain things to certain people. They've probably got him totally drugged up, so even if he is still alive, who knows what he can say.
Caroline: Well the whole thing just played out like a Steven Segal action movie. It was like there was a film script. Bad thing happened, car chase, shoot-out, suspect's dead. It's so formulaic it's sad.
Harrison: If we want to say anything else we can go back to it. I think we can move on from that for now. We'll come back to it if there's anything further.
William: There is one little thing that ties Syria into this. Apparently the attackers were from Syria/al-Qaeda in Syria. Now there are claims that Syria is developing a hidden underground nuclear facility and that's a couple of miles away from the Lebanese border. It's called Zamzam. That's something to keep an eye on. Apparently Syria transferred 8,000 fuel rods to the plant and North Korea and Iran are thought to be helping them with this plant. Unnamed sources say they have pictures and had conversations about this and also Hezbollah, who's apparently guarding this secret project. So something to keep an eye on is weapons of mass destruction are starting to appear again.
Elan: You know William, I had a chat with someone the other day and it's a year-on since the whole red line with "Syria using chemical weapons on its own people" idea that got propagated. And of course it's since been thoroughly disproved and connections have been made to Saudi Arabia. And this person I spoke to was still, in spite of all this information - but I guess they're just not getting this information where they're looking - and still believed in her heart that Syria and the Assad regime was this very evil place. So you're going to have a whole bunch of folks who are hearing about this underground nuclear development, make the connection in their minds about evil Iran and it's just going to justify whatever aggression the US decides to make in the next few months or so.
Harrison: They may very well be building a nuclear thing there, but it's probably ISIS building it. They are going to sell the energy.
Caroline: They're not making any money on oil right now, so you've got to diversify.
Harrison: Yeah, ISIS nuclear energy. Clean living.
Elan: A better future.
Harrison: Okay, moving on, do you want to take it away Elan? I think you've got something you want to bring up.
Elan: Well, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, on the 19th. I was recently re-watching Evidence of Revision, the Assassination of America, which discusses the assassinations of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., and gets into a couple of other topics; really does a great job of showing the patterns in all of these events. And I read SOTT fairly often, and a lot of things have also come out this year about Martin Luther King, Jr. and the almost pathological obsession with which Hoover, who was then at the head of the FBI when Martin Luther King was at the height of his activism and speeches, the way he went after King was just unbelievable.
So a letter has come to the surface that was received by King at some point accusing King of all sorts of perversions and abnormalities and King knew who it was from, since Hoover had made no bones about hating King and calling him a liar publicly. So these kinds of information that have come out in recent months, and brushing up Evidence of Revision reminded me of another article that came out on King. And that was the fact that he was so outspoken on the subject of Vietnam and at the time the public was kind of raging about it, but to have a man like King come out and speak about it and how it was connected to the economic inequality in the US and the oppressive nature of the US government and how many billions and trillions of dollar they were spending fighting this obscene war when you still had many ghettos and many underprivileged and out-of-work people in the US. He had become kind of a threat to the powers that be, if you will, in a way that he hadn't in the years when he was just talking about voting rights and desegregation in the south. It really put a new spin on a serious re-visiting of the reason why King was murdered.
So we plan to talk about this a little bit today and follow this up a bit next weekend, on our next show. We've got a couple of clips that really get to the heart of the matter of what King was saying at the time and the fact that many people were listening. And keep in mind we know and are taught about and mostly hear about the legislation that King's "I have a dream" speech helped propel, the Civil Rights Act and some other things. But excised from the memory of his life, we don't hear anything these days about his strong position on the war in Vietnam and the various things that he was planning to do. He was in the process of organizing a poor people's march on Washington, DC in the months before he was assassinated. This would have meant that he would have come to Washington, DC with thousands of the dispossessed of the US who were connecting all the resources and energy and money that were going into the war with continuing to leave people out of social services and just getting basic help from the government.
So we have one speech. It's the shorter of the two. It's basically his last speech. You've heard it before. It's probably as well known as the "I have a dream" speech. And the man knows what he's up against. He's not going to stop in spite of this. So maybe we can hear that for a moment and share our impressions of it.
MLK: All we say to America is be true to what you're saying on paper. If I lived in China or even Russia or any totalitarian country maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges because they haven't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right.Caroline: The man could speak.
And so that's as I say we aren't going to let any dogs or water hoses turn us around. We aren't going to let any injunction turn us around!
Well I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now because I've been to the mountaintop. I don't mind. Like anybody I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he has allowed me to go up to the mountain and I've looked over and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the Promised Land!
So I'm happy tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.
Elan: Well what's interesting to know about King is that at a very early age, we're talking early teens, he actually rejected certain tenets of Christianity and then out of what he called an inner urge to serve humanity, he decided that though there weren't things that he could completely accept about the bible, things about it, he became a reverend. He went to seminary and used it as a vehicle to do what his innermost being was telling him needed to be done.
So as I was mentioning before, there is this second speech which is much less known and given exactly one year to the day before he was assassinated. It's known as his "beyond Vietnam, a time to break the silence" speech. And he really lays it all out there. I had never heard this speech, or about it, until it's been making the rounds on the web and recent articles and as I mentioned earlier, in Evidence of Revision. He was basically calling the US government out to the floor on its involvement in the war. It really speaks for itself, so maybe we can hear that as well.
The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam today because I agree with Dante that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence is betrayal. The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war, nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom.Elan: "The greatest purveyor of violence today, my own government." The United States.
There has never been such a monumental dissent during a war by the American people. Polls reveal that almost 15 million Americans explicitly oppose the war in Vietnam. Additional millions cannot bring themselves around to support it. This reveals that millions have chosen to move beyond the prophesying of smooth patriotism to the high grounds of firm dissent based upon the mandates of conscience and the reading of history.
Now of course one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows out of the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. Something is happening and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told. And I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person who has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.
Many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. "Why are you speaking about the war Dr. King? Why are you joining the voices of dissent? Peace and civil rights don't mix" they say. And so this morning I speak to you on this issue because I am determined to take the gospel seriously. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I and others have been waging in America.
A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white through the poverty program. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken as if it was some idle, political plaything of a society gone mad on war. And I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic, destructive suction tube.
And you may not know it my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier while we spend only $53 for each person classified as poor and much of that $53 goes for salaries to people who are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and attack it as such, perhaps the more tragic recognition of reality to a place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and die in extraordinarily high proportion relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by society and sending them 8,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in South East Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and east Harlem.
So we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schoolroom. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity, burning the huts of a poor village and we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago or Atlanta.
As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. But they ask, and rightly so, "What about Vietnam?" They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems. And 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.
Harrison: Things haven't changed a bit.
Caroline: Not at all.
Harrison: The things he was saying are just as relevant today as they were.
Elan: Absolutely. And unfortunately we don't have a man like King today to say these things and to be heard. Barack Obama who's been given the Nobel Peace Prize is coming out of the gate not doing anything.
Caroline: He made a pretty speech.
Harrison: He had a pretty speech written for him by someone else. Maybe that guy should have got the Nobel Peace Prize.
Elan: Interestingly, King was the youngest individual to have ever been given the peace prize. He was 35 years of age. This was I think in 1964. And he earned it. The man was arrested a dozen times making marches and protests that weren't officially sanctioned or permitted. So next week we'll be looking at a little bit of who King's real enemies were, especially after that speech on Vietnam and his plans to come to DC with tens of thousands of individuals. And we'll also look a little bit at why we don't know certain things about the King assassination which may be obvious, but we'll look at them anyway.
Harrison: You mentioned that we don't have a King today. I think one of the reasons that we don't is for the reason that he was assassinated, and that so many like him have been assassinated since. The '60s were big for assassination. And since then there have been more. It seems like anyone that can really make a difference is just taken out. The people that we have today, the voices that we turn to, voices of reason, it seems like most of them tend to be comedians. They get away with it because they make jokes about it. And they're good and they're funny and they're insightful. But there is just a different climate today than there was 50 years ago.
Caroline: Yeah, all we have left are the jesters.
Elan: And people of King's quality are extremely rare. The guy was erudite and had incredible character and was never content to stay with one platform or one goal or one idea. He saw connections to bigger things and yet bigger things and decided that to tackle any one of them, you have to look at the whole thing in its broader picture. And who is willing to do that?
Caroline: The other thing that you look at too is that these people of the '60s would have mentored the next generation and they were basically cut off at the knees. So any potential people who could have picked up and carried on their causes and their vision might have been there but they were left without guidance and a warning, "If you think along this line, this is what's going to happen to you".
Harrison: If you think about what it takes, like the clip of the first speech from King there, to be in a position like King and to be a personality like King, you have to be willing to die. And not in the kamikaze "go out in a bang" kind of way. It's the threat that around any door might be an assassin's bullet. Living in that constant tension that you're not just throwing your life away for a cause. Like King was saying, it would be great to live to an old age. And think about how much he could have done if he had. But he lived with the constant tension and awareness that at any moment he could be killed. And if you think about the moral crises that ordinary people have, the majority of the population, are worried about what their friends think.
Caroline: Or even how they're going to feed their kids next week. People have real pressing, one could even say artificially created problems that occupy all your time and all your energy just getting from day to day.
Elan: There's just a little tidbit of that, about King's autopsy. The man who performed it looked at his heart. King was about 38 or 39 when he was assassinated. And the doctor who performed the autopsy said that King's heart was in the condition of a 60-year-old. So the amount of stress and difficulties that he had to negotiate while he was fighting and continuing to fight further, must have been incredibly difficult.
Harrison: I think he among many others can and should serve as a role model for people today. I don't know how many kids these days listen to old speeches from the '60s or before, but they really should. I think it's really important because we don't have people like that living today, or very few. Vladimir Putin is exceptional in many ways. He doesn't quite have the rhetorical flourish that King had when giving speeches.
Caroline: Not a lot in English. Even in Russia?
Harrison: I don't know. We'll have to hear from some of our Russian listeners and see if he's got the same oratory skills. But Putin for example, says a lot of the same things. How many politicians, or just speakers like King or like Putin or people like them, talk about the importance of conscience and doing what is right as opposed to what is convenient or what serves interests?
Caroline: And what benefits the most people and makes their lives happier, healthier and more humane.
Harrison: Okay, we've heard from our chatters that yeah, he does have the Russian oratorical skills. So there we go. Okay, we've got one good example.
Caroline: Yeah, I figured in his native language he's probably fantastic but we get transcripts and we get very harried translators on the fly.
Harrison: That's the problems. Just think of the translators as they're trying to think of what he's saying while he's saying it and yeah, it just doesn't come across very well. But I just want to come back to role models and the importance of actually reading about the lives of people who actually made a difference. If you don't have any kind of benchmark to go from, then you're just going to continue living your life worrying about what your friends think about what you're wearing or something similar and trivial. And those things don't matter! If you listen to a speech like the ones that you just heard and then you start thinking about stuff like that, that's the time to slap yourself and say get hold of yourself, because there are things that are a lot more important than the moral quandaries that the modern hipster find him or herself in.
Elan: Well guys like King were literally taking it upon themselves to better humanity. The intention there can't be underestimated or belittled. That was really what he was trying to do. He had, from his corner, from his background, from his experience, he was putting humanity on his back! Something that he did a few days after that last speech that we heard was he had a little march and a speech. He went right up to the UN. He'd wanted to end the draft and he wanted the UN to take some action about the war in Vietnam. So he was taking everything to its next possible step and taking responsibility himself, personally. So very few people have that kind of will or vision and like you were saying Harrison, about role models, if we do get the picture of a role model today, it's so sanitized, it's so minimized, we really don't have any sense as to what it took for these people and what they felt inside, what their conscience was telling them to do in order to move things a step further for people in a totally un-self-interested way.
Harrison: I blame the movies partly. If you look at the trend that movies have taken over the past decade or two, especially with all the superhero movies, and you look at how characters are presented and how heroes are presented, especially superheroes, just the superficial level of their own moral crises. It's all about "Oh, I've got all this power, oh, but I've got a tragic back story. How am I going to deal with it? And then I'm going to go kill a bunch of bad guys". And that's pretty much how every superhero movie plays out. But what about a superhero movie about a real life superhero? Because that's not the way things play out in real life.
Caroline: They're kind of in short supply at this point.
Elan: Well speaking of movies, they did just come out with the new movie about King called Selma. I think it was produced in part by Oprah Winfrey. It basically covers one of several dramatic events in King's life where he went to Selma, Alabama and was marching there against injunction and all of the forces that he ran up against. So the reviews of it are excellent. Will it convey a part of who King really was? I hope so. I'd love to see a movie about King's latter days and the decision to take on the powers that be and to go against what Lyndon Johnson was trying to manoeuvre him to do. That to me would be a little more interesting, but if we can get a good insight into who King was and a renewed appreciation for the man, then kudos to Winfrey and all the other creators of the movie Selma.
Harrison: If we had a movie about King's last years, or the last days would be good because we'd have a great villain too, the cross-dressing power-hungry maniac J. Edgar Hoover, the mad dog. I'd love to see a movie where he was exposed for the monster that he was.
Elan: Well you have that Leonardo di Caprio/Clint Eastwood vehicle Hoover I think it was called, but that was kind of cleaned up a little bit.
Caroline: Yeah, they pulled their punches on that one.
Elan: They did.
Harrison: That's Hollywood for you.
Caroline: Well if you want access you have to play and I'm sure they had to get the cooperation of the FBI to do it.
Harrison: Well we watched a movie recently, Twelve Years a Slave and the way into this, because we heard King in his first speech using biblical language and I think he did it quite well, like you were saying Elan. He was using words and concepts in a way, almost hijacking those concepts and words to get across emotional content. He was talking about the Promised Land and the mountain. He wasn't talking about a literal mountain or the Promised Land of Israel, he was using it in a kind of allegorical meaning. And just from the tone of his voice, you could feel what he means by that. Anyone listening to just that two minute clip, knows what the Promised Land is, without even having it defined. But at the same time religious language like that can go either way and that's what we see, for example, with ISIS and Islamic terrorism, so-called. Because you can use words however you want and hijack them with your own content and this Twelve Years a Slave, which I recommend watching - I wouldn't say I enjoyed it but it's a good movie - in that you see a few clips of people using biblical language to justify the unjustifiable. And it's just a small part of the movie but it struck me how a person's inner content, what they have in their own mind, inspires how they use words, how they use concepts and how they manipulate those to manipulate other people.
Caroline: They have a shared content. So somebody who has that kind of mindset knows the elements that make up the cultural mind at the time and how people have been raised and so there's this ready-made set of images and archetypes and phrases that they know will resonate and it's just how they're arranged and how you use them to put forth an intent that probably wasn't the original.
Elan: But by the same token, having never gone to Sunday school and listening to a few of King's speeches a few times, I couldn't help but get choked up by them. It's very clear that he's not pounding you over the head with "Christian values". It's almost agnostic but like Harrison is saying, the appropriation of the language to get across these very high ideals is the power of the man. And they were appropriate! Everything he was saying! It was remarkable. So if I heard someone say "And God told me that I'm supposed to do this", in my very cynical background, it's very easy to scoff at because most people just sound like buffoons when they say such a thing, but not King. He had some kind of spiritual mission to accomplish.
Harrison: Alright. It looks like we've got a caller. Mike from St. Paul, Minnesota. So Mike, what do you want to say? What do you want to ask us?
Mike: Hi there guys. Great show. I wanted to ask the question now. The last guy who spoke, from what I'm guessing you're agnostic or maybe atheist. Would that be accurate?
Elan: Uh, I wouldn't say atheist. I would say agnostic, probably closer.
Mike: And would that be everybody on the show here or do we have anyone that would consider themselves a Christian?
Harrison: Ooh, that's a tough question. I'd say personally I'd probably go the agnostic route as well. The reason I say maybe, maybe not is that I wouldn't call myself a Christian simply because of the connotations of what most Christians think and believe.
Mike: Okay. I guess if I'm being more accurate, do you believe in the bible as actually being from God.
Harrison: No.
Mike: Okay. So do you believe God exists?
Elan: Neither. I believe that there are higher intelligences and higher powers, yes.
Mike: Okay.
Caroline: And if you delve into the history of the bible in any kind of scholarly way, it becomes quickly apparent that it's an assemblage of many, many different texts written at different times, re-written at other times and it's quite the hodge-podge that's been cobbled together. So there are elements of value in it, but as the inerrant word of God, no.
Mike: Well no one should believe in something inerrant. Once you've made a sort of almost like myth, a lot of people have been perpetuating. I'm only 28 and I used to be an atheist until the age of 23, and I've come to learn that a lot of these ideas that are put out there about the bible, about God, have completely missed that the secular portions of our country have been just pushing and people believed it because they heard it enough. And they claimed they do research but they really don't because if they did, you know the bible has over 5,300 manuscripts that agree to an infinitesimal degree. We have no document from antiquity, especially from that era, that even comes close to that, first of all. Secondly we have the Dead Sea Scrolls today which show us the Old Testament 200 years before the time of Christ that we can look at, that we can compare to what we have today, see if there are any major changes. That hasn't happened. I'll tell you a story. I used to mock religion. I used to think the bible was ridiculous and I was willing to put my personal beliefs aside and actually test it and look at it and a lot of evidence to re-read. The conclusion is so clear. And what I find amazing is that you see God's hand in history and it's undeniable. The fact that America is the pinnacle nation today is a complete direct reflection of what God promised in the bible. And to me it's no coincidence that every country in the world that at some point was founded on the idea that the God of the bible was their God, is the head of all nations. It's not a coincidence that America and Europe are at the front of everything, the top of everything.
Elan: Well you just said quite a lot there. You're name's Mike, right?
Mike: Yes sir.
Elan: And I thank you for sharing that. One of the points that I think we can discuss here is the idea that the US is the pinnacle, the shining city and one of the points that we're trying to get across here with this show is that that idea, that perception, is largely false.
Mike: Based on what standard exactly? Are you judging America compared to the rest of the world? Because I've been to Europe. I've been to Africa. I've seen Asia. There's no country on this planet - America, the atmosphere itself, there's something just on this country that's unique, that you don't find anywhere else. The fact that Americans for the most part, are probably the most compassionate people on the planet, they treat the poor here with at least a certain amount of dignity which you don't find anywhere else. The rest of the world, they treat the poor like sub-humans, like dogs. That's something people don't realize.
Harrison: I wouldn't agree that it's that black and white.
Mike: It is. It really is. It's that significant. There's a reason why in America for example, go around and look at the fact that this is the only country where someone could start from a low class standing in society and through their hard work and effort and discipline and ingenuity, they can grow with very little limitations. That doesn't exist anywhere else.
Caroline: One thing that you might not have perceived Mike, this is Caroline, that what we generally discuss, especially when we are critical of America, is not the citizen population, which I can agree, the vast majority are compassionate, decent, hard-working people. But what we criticize and point up are the actions of the government, which if you check the world today, is a very meddlesome, violent, destructive, greedy entity. That is what we have issues with.
Mike: But that exists in every country, every aspect in the whole history of mankind. Every government is corrupt.
Caroline: True enough.
Mike: Rich people have used it to their own advantage. The question is, does it go too far to the point where people are being oppressed. Does it go to the point where people are being exploited? Now that's not happening in America today.
Harrison: Oh, we don't agree with that.
Mike: Again, it's your standard. You have to grade it on a curb. You don't grade it on ideals. Ideals don't work in the real world. They're not practical. We're talking about the actual real life. If you compare America to every other country in the history of mankind, and look at the real levels of oppression that has taken place. My family's from a communist nation and I know firsthand what the communists did to people and how they brutally oppressed and killed people. And that is what America's government may be. And I know there's a lot of terrible things they do on the low that people don't know about and how they meddle in different countries for their own economic benefits. I understand that, but every country that has a pinnacle status, whether it was Britain in the past, or France or Germany, or the Roman Empire, we can go through every major empire, that's how they maintained their power. That's common sense. America wouldn't be the place it is if it didn't do that. That goes without saying.
Recorded: Hi karumpa!
Caroline: Look what happened to each of those entities as they hit the end of their lifespan. We do believe the US is on its way out even as the Roman Empire, or the French empire or the British empire. Their actions are those of a very desperate system.
Mike: One thing you're missing is that you have so many good people in it.
Harrison: Sorry Mike, we're getting to the end of the show here, so we're going to cut you off there, before we close. But feel free to call back another day and we can continue the discussion.
Caroline: Absolutely.
Elan: Thank you for calling Mike.
Caroline: Yes, thank you very much for your call.
Harrison: Before we close out I just can't agree that, for example, the amount of poverty in the states. Yes, there's poverty everywhere, but poverty is a big problem in the states.
Caroline: Yeah, the disparity, like the top one percent own more than I think it's like sixty percent of the rest of the country, or something like that.
Elan: And the myth that we're upwardly mobile in the way that Mike suggests is not correct.
William: It's another myth.
Harrison: But I do agree that the US is a pinnacle, but I can't agree that it's a pinnacle of anything good when we look at, like the things that Mike agreed with, like the warfare, the things that go on behind the scenes. Any bad thing that you can say about any evil regime, the United States does, torture, assassination, just total exploitation of the work force, if you look at it that way. And again, just look at the Franklin scandal, look at the horrible things that go on behind the scenes. I think there's a difference between America, the United States, the government ruling oligarchy and the people, but even the American people, how much are they doing as a collective is better, because I don't think things are good. And I think idealism in a certain sense, has a really good place in the world, because you need an ideal to strive towards in order to identify what is wrong in the present to make for a better future.
Caroline: But you have to have the objectivity to identify what's wrong. If you just stick with your ideals and say "Oh everything is happy and good and we have all these lofty principles" but can't look around and see when they're not being applied.
Harrison: Well, we're coming down to the end of the show, so I think we'll close it there. We'll be back next week with some more of Martin Luther King and we'll probably also be discussing a book You are Not So Smart, it's something that I think applies to most people including us here.But thanks for listening everyone and we will talk again next week. So take care.
Elan: Bye now.
Caroline: Bye-bye.
William: Bye.
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