AE

They FINALLY released a Parenti book as an audiobook. This guy is the much better Noam Chomsky and if I had gotten ahold of this book 2 years ago, I think it would have accelerated my ideological development much faster, saving me a lot of time. I recomend this book to ANYONE interested in expanding their political horizons, reinterpreting their preconceived understanding of modern history, or if you think the Soviet Union was bad.

The author has a strong criticism of Soviet Russia, rightfully so. But he does not see things in black and white like what we in The West have been led to believe. He asserts, and backs up with hard evidence, that the collapse of the Soviet Union has resulted in an overall decrease in the material wellbeing of the people within Soviet countries. Capitalism didn't make their lives better; It made them worse.

Here ares some of my favorite quotes:
~~
Fascism & Capitalism:

Speaking about Germany in 1932, “True to form, the Social Democrat leaders refused the Communist party's proposal to form an eleventh-hour coalition against Nazism. As in many other countries past and present, so in Germany, the Social Democrats would sooner ally themselves with the reactionary Right than make common cause with the Reds.” This holds true to this day. SocDems are not allies to the left because they will inevitably support fascism if it means maintaining capitalism.

“In both Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s, old industrial evils, thought to have passed permanently into history, re-emerged as the conditions of labor deteriorated precipitously. In the name of saving society from the Red Menace, unions and strikes were outlawed. Union property and farm cooperatives were confiscated and handed over to rich private owners. Minimum-wage laws, overtime pay, and factory safety regulations were abolished. Speedups became commonplace. Dismissals or imprisonment awaited those workers who complained about unsafe or inhumane work conditions. Workers toiled longer hours for less pay. The already modest wages were severely cut, in Germany by 25 to 40 percent, in Italy by 50 percent. In Italy, child labor was reintroduced.” This is excellent evidence to show how similar modern conservatism is to fascism. They support the same economic policies.

“Italian fascism and German Nazism had their admirers within the U.S. business community and the corporate-owned press. Bankers, publishers, and industrialists, including the likes of Henry Ford, traveled to Rome and Berlin to pay homage, receive medals, and strike profitable deals. Many did their utmost to advance the Nazi war effort, sharing military-industrial secrets and engaging in secret transactions with the Nazi government, even after the United States entered the war. During the 1920s and early 1930s, major publications like Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, Saturday Evening Post, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Christian Science Monitor hailed Mussolini as the man who rescued Italy from anarchy and radicalism.“
As I've said in previous book reviews, the fact that the USA backed the Allies in WW2 instead of the Axis powers is a historical fluke. The predominant ideology of US elites at the time were far closer to the fascists. This is shown by how much the US media and oligarchs fawned over the fascists, even helping them after the US started fighting them. Corps love fascists. The US took in as many fascists as they could as the war was ending. Fascists learned from the US in order to do fascism better. The West did a far worse job De-Nazifying countries than the Soviets. And all of this is because Capitalism and Fascism are 2 heads of the same monster. Fascism is Capitalism in decay.

“Under the protection of U.S. occupation authorities, the police, courts, military, security agencies, and bureaucracy remained largely staffed by those who had served the former fascist regimes or by their ideological recruits—as is true to this day. [...] “In comparison, when the Communists took over in East Germany, they removed some 80 percent of the judges, teachers, and officials for their Nazi collaboration; they imprisoned thousands, and they executed six hundred Nazi party leaders for war crimes.” Woulda killed more Nazi's but the rest fled to the open arms of The West.

“Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombings.” Imagine that for a moment. A company collaborated with the Nazis and then got money from the US government because they bombed the company's factory. Insane.

The fascists were never removed from Italy because the US prefers fascism over socialism “The Italian neofascists were learning from the U.S. reactionaries how to achieve fascism's class goals within the confines of quasidemocratic forms: use an upbeat, Reaganesque optimism; replace the jackbooted militarists with media-hyped crowd pleasers; convince people that government is the enemy—especially its social service sector—while strengthening the repressive capacities of the state; instigate racist hostility and antagonisms between the resident population and immigrants; preach the mythical virtues of the free market; and pursue tax and spending measures that redistribute income upward.” This is literally what Faux News and Republicans do every day.
~~~
US Terrorism (Post WW2)

“In pursuit of counterrevolution and in the name of freedom, U.S. forces or U.S.-supported surrogate forces slaughtered 2,000,000 North Koreans in a three-year war; 3,000,000 Vietnamese; over 500,000 in aerial wars over Laos and Cambodia; over 1,500,000 in Angola; over 1,000,000 in Mozambique; over 500,000 in Afghanistan; 500,000 to 1,000,000 in Indonesia; 200,000 in East Timor; 100,000 in Nicaragua (combining the Somoza and Reagan eras); over 100,000 in Guatemala (plus an additional 40,000 disappeared); over 700,000 in Iraq; over 60,000 in El Salvador; 30,000 in the “dirty war” of Argentina (though the government admits to only 9,000); 35,000 in Taiwan, when the Kuomintang military arrived from China; 20,000 in Chile; and many thousands in Haiti, Panama, Grenada, Brazil, South Africa, Western Sahara, Zaire, Turkey, and dozens of other countries, in what amounts to a free-market world holocaust.”
The Black Book of Capitalism is thicker than anyone would like to admit. But when the US does terrorism, that's good, right? We've never been known for invading countries for unjust reason, right?


This is my favorite quote: “There is no such thing as freedom in the abstract. There is freedom to speak openly and iconoclastically, freedom to organize a political opposition, freedom of opportunity to get an education and pursue a livelihood, freedom to worship as one chooses or not worship at all, freedom to live in healthful conditions, freedom to enjoy various social benefits, and so on. Most of what is called freedom gets its definition within a social context.”

Both negative freedoms and positive freedoms must come together for the betterment of all people. Arguing just for negative freedoms is absurd.

This quote was in the context of revolutionary governments, and how many of them throughout the last ~100 years were not sufficiently democratic. This gave the US empire justification to overthrow the countries.

“U.S. policymakers argue that social revolutionary victory anywhere represents a diminution of freedom in the world. The assertion is false. The Chinese Revolution did not crush democracy; there was none to crush in that oppressively feudal regime. The Cuban Revolution did not destroy freedom; it destroyed a hateful U.S.-sponsored police state. The Algerian Revolution did not abolish national liberties; precious few existed under French colonialism. The Vietnamese revolutionaries did not abrogate individual rights; no such rights were available under the U.S.-supported puppet governments of Bao Dai, Diem, and Ky.”

These revolutions improved the material conditions of the people within the country. Did they become Western-style democracies? No. But that wasn't the goal. The goal was making people's lives better. Those don't necessarily coincide. The US does not have a perfect system and forcing it upon other countries that do not want it is evil. The West's goal isn't really to improve the wellbeing of the countries with their invasions, coups, and terror campaigns. It's to “open up the economy” and infect the countries with US-based corporate interests.

The West doesn't care about the freedom of the people to live a healthy, fulfilling life. It cares about the “freedom” of corporations to exploit the people. US-backed propagandists poison the minds of those in the West to claim these countries aren't “free”.

“So a conservative think tank like the Heritage Foundation rated Cuba along with Laos, Iraq, and North Korea as countries with the lowest level of ‘economic freedom.' Countries with a high level of economic freedom were those that imposed little or no taxes or regulations on business, and did without wage protections, price controls, environmental safeguards, and benefits for the poor. Economic freedom is the real concern of conservatives and plutocrats; the freedom to utilize vast sums of money to accumulate still vaster sums, regardless of the human and environmental costs.”

We cannot look at a country's “freedom” based on the metrics of our own country. We must look at it on the metrics of its own history. Not “more or less free than us” just “more or less free than before”: “But what of the democratic rights that these peoples were denied? In fact, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, these countries had known little political democracy in the days before communism. Russia was a czarist autocracy, Poland a rightist dictatorship with concentration camps of its own, Albania an Italian fascist protectorate as early as 1927, Cuba a U.S.-sponsored dictatorship. Lithuania, Hungary, Rumania, and Bulgaria were outright fascist regimes allied with Nazi Germany in World War II.”

State socialism “transformed desperately poor countries into modernized societies in which everyone had enough food, clothing, and shelter; where elderly people had secure pensions; and where all children (and many adults) went to school and no one was denied medical attention.” That'd be nice.

~~~
Left Anticommunism

This was the most interesting aspect of the book, the arguments against self-described anti-capitalists who denigrate the Soviet Union as “not real socialism”. I've dabbled in this myself and I was impressed by how well the author provided a thorough, nuanced retort against such a belief.

Was the Soviet Union perfect? No. But “In the three decades after the Bolshevik revolution, the Soviets made industrial advances equal to what capitalism took a century to accomplish—while feeding and schooling their children rather than working them fourteen hours a day as capitalist industrialists did and still do in many parts of the world.”

What matters is the material conditions of the people. Were they better or worse in Socialist countries pre-1990 vs Capitalist countries then? Depends on the metric. It certainly didn't help that the West strove to topple them at every turn: “As with Nicaragua, so with Mozambique, Angola and numerous other countries in which U.S.-financed mercenary forces destroyed farmlands, villages, health centers, and power stations, while killing or starving hundreds of thousands—the revolutionary baby was strangled in its crib.” Hard to improve the material conditions of the people when you've got Coca Cola death squads and the US Marines trying to kill you.

Many people in socialist countries took for granted their lack of consumer debt, their universal healthcare, their guaranteed employment, universal housing, their met basic material needs, and focused instead on the lack of consumer goods: “People took for granted what they had in the way of human services and entitlements while hungering for the consumer goods dangling in their imaginations. [...] “Once our needs are satisfied, then our wants tend to escalate, and our wants become our needs. A rise in living standards often incites a still greater rise in expectations. As people are treated better, they want more of the good things and are not necessarily grateful for what they already have.” The people of the second-world weren't “yearning for freedom”. They were yearning for stuff.

This failure to meet the wants of the people was not inevitable under the economic system. It was because the socialist countries were too busy fighting off an endless barrage of attacks on all fronts from the capitalist countries: “One reason siege socialism could not make the transition to consumer socialism is that the state of siege was never lifted. As noted in the previous chapter, the very real internal deficiencies within communist systems were exacerbated by unrelenting external attacks and threats from the Western powers. Born into a powerfully hostile capitalist world, communist nations suffered through wars, invasions, and an arms race that exhausted their productive capacities and retarded their development.” Bombs, not blue jeans.

The entire history of the USSR from its very inception was being constantly under siege. “One might recall how, in 1918-20, fourteen capitalist nations, including the United States, invaded Soviet Russia in a bloody but unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the revolutionary Bolshevik government.” When your enemy has literally committed a nuclear holocaust against civilians, and has also invaded you once already, it makes sense why you might want to stock up on nukes. It's a shame that this arms race took place, because if the US (AKA the aggressor) chose to seek a true genuine peace, we might be living in a more peaceful world today, with a less massive military industrial complex.

~~~
Capitalist “freedom”

Meanwhile in the first-world capitalist countries, we don't get universal healthcare, universal housing, job guarantees, free higher education, unions, pensions. Not then, before the wall fell, and after it did fall, there was no reason for Capital to capitulate to Labor's demands because Labor had no standard bearer to hold up and say “the Soviets have this, why don't we?” So the social safety net was gutted in the West.

What is very clear is that countries that were once part of the Soviet Bloc and then became capitalist are objectively worse for the majority of people. This is an undeniable fact. Their social safety nets and state-owned factories were sold off for pennies on the dollar to private firms, creating vast inequalities and absolutely destroying the wellbeing of the people.

“Without making compensation, West German capitalists grabbed almost all the socialized property in [East Germany], including factories, mills, farms, apartments and other real estate, and the medical care system—assets worth about $2 trillion—in what has amounted to the largest expropriation of public wealth by private capital in European history.
The end result of all this free-market privatization in East Germany is that rents, once 5 percent of one's income, have climbed to as much as two-thirds; likewise the costs of transportation, child care, health care, and higher education have soared beyond the reach of many.” Don't you feel so free??

“The overthrow of communism brought a rising infant mortality and soaring death rates in Russia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Latvia, Moldavia, Rumania, Ukraine, Mongolia, and East Germany. One-third of Russian men never live to sixty years of age. In 1992, Russia's birth rate fell below its death rate for the first time since World War II. In 1992 and 1993, East Germans buried two people for every baby born. The death rate rose nearly 20 percent for East German women in their late thirties, and nearly 30 percent for men of the same age.” Things have not gotten much better. How is it possible for capitalism to be the pinnacle of an economic system of the people within newly capitalist countries are objectively worse off than they were before? Why do 2/3rds of Russian people think things were better under the USSR? Because it was better.

“The overthrow of communism has brought a sharp increase in gender inequality. The new constitution adopted in Russia eliminates provisions that guaranteed women the right to paid maternity leave, job security during pregnancy, prenatal care, and affordable day-care centers.” Crazy how they had that decades ago and “the richest, freest country on earth” still hasn't figured it out.

Here's my 2nd favorite quote from the book:

“According to Noam Chomsky, communism ‘was a monstrosity,' and ‘the collapse of tyranny' in Eastern Europe and Russia is ‘an occasion for rejoicing for anyone who values freedom and human dignity.' I treasure freedom and human dignity yet find no occasion for rejoicing. The postcommunist societies do not represent a net gain for such values. If anything, the breakup of the communist states has brought a colossal victory for global capitalism and imperialism, with its correlative increase in human misery, and a historic setback for revolutionary liberation struggles everywhere.”
~~~
Marxism

Then the book ends with a basic overview of Marxism which was good too. It's as pertinent today as it was in 1867. Good stuff.

The pinnacle of anti-colonial text. A key book on the shelf of the revolutionary.

While this book has a lot of key messages that are useful in fighting the class war, I think it's far more valuable to people in the underdeveloped world. And as a 5th-generation colonizer on land that required a lot of genocides to steal and slave labor to develop, it really feels like this book isn't FOR me. It's for people far more oppressed than me. While a lot of the content is timeless, he occasionally makes references to timely events with little to no contextualization, usually because he's trying to build a bigger point so the contextualization necessary for those out of the know would have derailed the point.

Regardless I still got some good stuff out of it. Here are some of the quotes I highlighted:

“...it only needs the newly born to fear living a little more than dying, and for the torrent of violence to sweep away all the barriers.” As relevant as ever. Deteriorating material conditions will inevitably spark revolution. Whether the state crackdown that follows extinguishes the revolution, that is circumstantial.

“Imperialism and capitalism are convinced that the fight against racism and national liberation movements are purely and simply controlled and masterminded from ‘the outside.'” We see this any time the corporate media repeat the propaganda of “outside agitators” trying to fight for human rights, like during the 2020 BLM protests.

“Europe's well-being and progress were built with the sweat and corpses of blacks, Arabs, Indians, and Asians. This we are determined never to forget. When a colonialist country, embarrassed by a colony's demand for independence, proclaims with the nationalist leaders in mind: ‘If you want independence, take it and return to the Dark Ages,' the newly independent people nod their approval and take up the challenge. And what we actually see is the colonizer withdrawing his capital and technicians and encircling the young nation with an apparatus of economic pressure.” This is how the world works. Get dominated by a stronger country, and either accept it or fight for your independence and get economically crushed. Hello Cuba.

“Colonialism and imperialism have not settled their debt to us once they have withdrawn their flag and their police force from our territories. For centuries the capitalists have behaved like real war criminals in the underdeveloped world. Deportation, massacres, forced labor, and slavery were the primary methods used by capitalism to increase its gold and diamond reserves, and establish its wealth and power.” Indeed.

“In order to invest in the independent countries, private companies demand terms which from experience prove unacceptable or unfeasible. True to their principle of immediate returns as soon as they invest “overseas,” capitalists are reluctant to invest in the long term. They are recalcitrant and often openly hostile to the so-called economic planning programs of the young regimes. At the most they are willing to lend capital to the young nations on condition it is used to buy manufactured goods and machinery, and therefore keep the factories in the metropolis running.” This was talked about a lot more in “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” by Walter Rodney (1972). Europe bought the raw material form underdeveloped countries for cheap, then sold the processed goods back for far more. They had no interest in helping other countries develop. They just wanted to exploit them. They still exploit underdeveloped countries. Exploitation is inevitable under Capitalism.

“The more the people understand, the more vigilant they become, the more they realize in fact that everything depends on them and that their salvation lies in their solidarity, in recognizing their interests and identifying their enemies. The people understand that wealth is not the fruit of labor but the spoils from an organized protection racket. The rich no longer seem respectable men but flesh-eating beasts, jackals and ravens who wallow in the blood of the people.” I love this one. I have nothing of value to add to this. I just really liked it.

Read this book if you're interested in anti-colonialism/post-colonial nationalism.
See also:
• “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” by Walter Rodney (1972)
• “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent” by Eduardo Galeano, (1971)
• “Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism” by John Henrik Clarke (1992)

Cory Doctorow is the cooler, more radical version of Douglas Rushkoff. This book is like a shorter, less boring version of the book “Surveillance Capitalism”.
So few people are going to understand these comparisons....

Doctorow is one of the few great technologists who isn't a grifter or an oligarch demon. He understands the power of modern technology and how it is being used for the enrichment of the wealthy rather than the betterment of masses.

The problem is that neoliberal deregulation spearheaded by Reagan, and Thatcher resulted in every industry becoming overly monopolistic, including the tech industry. The tech monopolists achieved their power not because they're smarter or better than their competitors, but because they leveraged the broken system to keep competition down.

The Chicago School of Demons and Ghouls, led by the hellhounds Friedman and Bork, have indoctrinated courts into accepting their crackpot economic ideals, such as that monopolies are actually good, as normal: “Bork's investors consolidated their gains. They sponsored economics chairs and whole economics departments and created the Manne Seminars, an annual junket in Florida, where federal judges were treated to luxury accommodations and ‘continuing education' workshops on Bork's unhinged theories.”

This is what we're supposed to believe qualifies as a “democracy.”

These corporations could never get this big if not for the shift in economic theory spearheaded by the Chicago Ghouls. The corporations then use their power to strengthen regulations that primarily benefit themselves and not the people. The “lovers of free market” will always leverage the arm of the state to protect their corporate interests. This is inevitable under capitalism.

This includes fighting against, say, the right to repair. The power of the state is used to crush you from doing what you want with the product you own. “Apple uses patent to prevent the independent manufacture of some parts; it uses anti-circumvention to prevent the independent installation of other parts; it uses contractual arrangements with recyclers to ensure that most used phones are not broken down for parts; it uses trademark to block the re-importation of parts that have escaped the recyclers' shredders.” All of this behavior should be criminalized. People who care about deflating or breaking up big tech should look precisely at THIS to do so. This is what needs to be deregulated. Yet conservatives never talk about this. Isn't that curious? Like they actually stand on the side of capital and not the people....

Some more fun quotes as a reflection of our “democracy”...

“Regulators can't regulate tech because they're clueless, sure. But why are they clueless? Because the process by which regulators and lawmakers understand issues starts from the presumption that there will be an adversarial process and a neutral referee, and monopolies turn that into a chummy backroom deal between a handful of executives from the industry and a handful of their former colleagues who are temporarily regulating their former colleagues.”

Or look up the story of Mark, who took medical photos of his son's groin to send to his doctor, but that photo was uploaded to the Google Cloud, got marked as CSAM (child sexual abuse material). The cops talked to him, realized this was all a misunderstanding, but not Google...

“Google deleted his account and all his data, including every family photo he'd ever taken. He lost his phone number (he was a Google Fi customer). He lost his phone, too (he was an Android user). He lost his email address. He lost the two-factor authentication he used to log in to accounts, which meant that he lost every other account that relied on either 2FA, a phone number or email to log in. He lost every document he had on Google's cloud.”
What a great thing to have one company have all this power with absolutely zero oversight!

“Today's tech giants have not invented an interop-proof computer. They've invented laws that make interoperability illegal unless they give permission for it. A new, complex thicket of copyright, patent, trade secret, noncompete and other IP rights has conjured up a new offense we can think of as ‘felony contempt of business model'—the right of large firms to dictate how their customers, competitors and even their critics must use their products.”

The book goes into detail as to how to fix the problem.

It's all very interesting stuff. I highly suggest it to anyone who cares about understanding the tech industry.

I figured I'd better read an official history book from a well-established & respected old white man. (Making father proud). It was interesting seeing how this war impacted every aspect of international development.

It's pretty appalling that he has all the time in the world to list every bad thing China & Russia did but only gave us 2 sentences about McCarthyism and not even a singular mention of COINTELPRO, or the fact that the US gave chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war, which were then used on civilians.

If the author was going for even-handed, I'd give him a C.

After reading way too damn many books about US imperialism during the 20th century and its connection to the Cold War, I've come to the conclusion that virtually none of our aggressive actions were at all justified and are completely indefensible.

Hiroshima&Nagasaki. Vietnam. Guatemala. Iran. MK Ultra. Red Scares. McCarthyism. Operation Cyclone. COINTELPRO. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Lumumba. Jakarta. The “War on Drugs”. Iraq.

It's all connected in this tangled web with one singular philosophy at its very core: the centralization of wealth and power. The most repugnant, immoral, insane things done by the US government under the guise of ‘protecting its citizens' were actually done to benefit and protect those in power at the expense to the powerless. Alas.

I've read enough books to be convinced that the CIA assassinated JFK as retribution for his refusal to conduct a full-on invasion of Cuba after the Bay of Pigs debacle and otherwise displeasing the powers that be. But I think it's not unreasonable to be skeptical of the conspiracy theory. There's not enough declassified evidence to satisfy the ardent supporters & maintainers of the status quo. Maybe when more is released, the history can be more thoroughly reevaluated that would prevent corporate media from being able to continually deny reality.

Comparably, the conspiracy to assassinate MLK by the FBI and Memphis Police Department is SO UNDENIABLY TRUE, that no rational person could possibly refute the MOUNTAIN of evidence. It is night and day.

The author has spent decades conducting interviews and calling for new trials on this assassination. His investigation is incredibly thorough. Throughout it, he has been stymied by federal officials stalking him, bullying his witnesses, and refusing to cooperate in any way.

“Skeptics” often use the semantic satiation phrase “if it were a conspiracy, then hundreds of people would have to be in on it! Surely someone would have talked by now.” But what's clear is that people have talked! At least 70 different people have gone on the record in a court of law arguing that the official story about the assassination is false. These are people who were there at the day, who've overheard conversations by police, who spoke to witnesses that end up getting mysteriously killed, even people involved have admitted their involvement. It is truly baffling how thorough the author's investigation is.

In 1999, the author and the King family filed a Civil case against

70+ people have come forward to speak on the record in a civil trial in 1999 that proved James Earl Ray was an unwitting patsy and a conspiracy orchestrated by the FBI in cooperation with the Memphis Police Department and US Army Intelligence. Why didn't you ever hear about this trial?

“Some seventy witnesses and thirty days later, a jury took fifty-nine minutes to find for the King family and against Loyd Jowers and agents of the government of the United States, the state of Tennessee, and the city of Memphis. Jowers's liability was assessed at 30 percent, while the government's liability was put at 70 percent. The extraordinary array of verbal testimonial and documentary evidence is set out in detail in my second book An Act of State. Suffice it to say, the roles and link between the Mafia, the military, local law enforcement, and government officials became crystal clear.”

Where was the media for this trial?

“The media camera, like the media itself, would come and go. They were nearly always absent, with the notable and sole exception of local anchorman Wendell Stacey, who almost lost his job at the time over his insistence that he attend every day. He was eventually fired but won a wrongful dismissal action and was rehired.”

Truth to fucking power indeed.

The author not only thoroughly debunks the US government's official story with mountains of evidence, but even annihilates other authors who wrote books that reinforced the government's official story, pointing out all of the blatant ignoring of contrary evidence, distortion of the evidence they do use, and outright fabrication.

It is inherently dishonest and disingenuous to argue that we can support the official government story when information is still classified more than half a century later. No one in good conscience can argue the US is a “free democracy” when so much critical information about what the US Government does on its own soil to its own citizenry is hidden away for decades “for our protection.” That is, at its very core, bullshit.

While I DO NOT subscribe to a majority of conspiracy theories, I DO think that the current system of document classification, as well as the overt ties mainstream corporate media has with federal agencies, and the actual, undeniable, proven conspiracies conducted by the federal government (MK Ultra, COINTELPRO, Iran-Contra) give enough credibility to those who do not immediately accept the official stories provided by US government officials.

The US government has failed to provide its people with enough reason to trust their word. Though I think plenty of the conspiratorially minded take it too far. But that's not surprising given how much insane shit the US government has actually, demonstrably, undeniably done over the last 100 years.

The Jesse Jackson involvement was the most shocking revelation to me. I had no idea he was involved. It is clear as day that he wanted the fame and notoriety for himself, so he made a deal with the devil to get it. What did South Park say about him again?

Anyway...

The author goes in depth about how corporate media has continually stymied any substantive reporting on his decades-long investigation, cancelling his appearances, refusing to publish his books, refusing to report on the revelations, always either siding with the government's flimsy story or ignoring him outright.

“By 1967 the CIA was spending 1.5 billion dollars a year without any effective fiscal control over individual expenditures on operations. Covert domestic activities and operations were paid for by “unvouchered funds” (expenditures without purchase orders or receipts). As a result of the 1949 Central Intelligence Act, Director Helms had the authority to spend money “without regard to the provisions of law and regulations relating to the expenditure of government funds.” Helms's signature on any check, no matter how large, drawn on any CIA bank account, was deemed to be sufficient. Interagency cooperation, particularly with the army and/or the State Department, was frequently necessary and this was accomplished through the establishment of Special Operations Groups (SOG) created for particular projects or missions. SOG activity inside the United States against “Willie” (blacks and dissidents) was not publicized or known.”

We know these people funded fascists in Europe and South America. We know these people orchestrated political assassinations across the globe. We know these people ran guns and drugs in order to get more unaccountable funding. And I'm expected to believe a word they say about “no involvement?” Gimme a break

“On June 16, 1978, while at the United Nations to talk with members and staff of the UN Special Assembly on Disarmament, [Daniel] Ellsberg [leaker of the pentagon papers] became quite friendly with [Brady] Tyson [then an aide to UN ambassador Andrew Young]. [...]
In the affidavit Ellsberg stated, “I asked Tyson whether he thought there had been a conspiracy and who he thought might have done it. He said very flatly to me, ‘We know there was a conspiracy and we know who did it.' ... I asked him who it was, if he would feel free to say, and he said again in a way that was very surprising to me in its lack of equivocation or reservation, ‘It was a group of off-duty and retired FBI officers working under the personal direction of J. Edgar Hoover.' He said further that this was a group working secretly and known to almost no one else in the FBI. This group Tyson said included ‘a sharpshooter,' who had actually done the shooting.””

Would you look at that, someone DID talk! Why would somebody with rock solid credibility, the guy who leaked the pentagon papers, not let this revelation become international news? The House Select Committee On Assassinations in the 1990's didn't seem to care. WEIRD. After the affidavit was brought to the committee's attention, the author and his cohorts addressed the media: “Abernathy, in his offhand manner, informed them that, yes, we had had a very productive meeting with the staff and leadership of the committee, we hoped that they would go on and complete their work, and we had given them certain information implicating the FBI in the killing of Dr. King. I was amazed that none of the press picked this up: there was virtually no response.” WEIRD.

“At this point, it appears entirely reasonable, in light of this sordid history, of disinformation with collaboration between mainstream media and the government, to conclude that the more we learn about contemporary publishing and news reporting in the United States, the more accurate does it appear was Carl Bernstein's conclusion in Rolling Stone in October 1977 about the extraordinary degree of influence and control over—and actual working presence in all aspects of print, audio, and visual media by the intelligence community and its assigned agents. The willingness of corporate media to collaborate and the consolidation of that collaboration has, for the most part, made it impossible for a free and independent press to operate in this Republic.”

The corporate media doesn't care about the truth. They are not there to speak truth to power. Quite the opposite, they're there to make you THINK they're speaking truth to power so you don't think critically beyond what they show you.

The author became the lawyer of James Earl Ray. He, along with the King family, wanted to have an actual trial for Ray. The corporate media doesn't want this because the US government doesn't want this. So...

“The media continually sought to undermine the strength of the family's commitment to a trial. Distortions abounded. Take the New York Times coverage on February 21 of our motion to test the alleged murder weapon. Drummond Ayres Jr. reported Mrs. King's testimony:

>Mrs. King, speaking after years of silence about Mr. Ray's legal maneuvering, took the stand this morning, and acknowledging the incongruity of her appearance on his behalf and behest, said, “We call for the trial that never happened.”

This was a gross distortion of what she actually said, which was: “We call for the trial that never happened.... If we fail to seize this fading opportunity for justice to be served, the tragedy will be compounded by the failure of the legal system.” Nowhere in her statement did she refer in any way to James being pressed to tell anything.”

Not only is the crime clear, but the cover-up was clear from the beginning. The crime scene was immediately tampered with when the bushes (where the real shooter was located) got cut down the MORNING AFTER the shooting. A taxi driver who saw the real shooter running from the scene was murdered. Witnesses were harassed to prevent them from coming forward.The author was being followed by the FBI while he was trying to meet with witnesses. “I would learn later from a mutual street acquaintance that an FBI contact was trying to locate where I was staying. Now, why would they be doing that?“ HUH. WEIRD.

I could go on, but I've said all I need to say and it would be beating a dead horse. Read this book if you want to know what really happened to MLK. Every single argument he makes is backed up with logic, reason, and mounds of evidence.