lewrockwell--2020-01-25--In Royal Family Drama, Harry and Meghan Look Worse and Worse

As the drama of Harry and Meghan unfolds , it becomes ever clearer that Harry is a figure not of tragedy , but of self-interested hypocrisy .
The prince is not only dull , but the cause of dullness in others , more a figure of betrayal than of sacrifice .
The psycho-drama of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is one of spoiled individuals shedding crocodile tears over their fate .
In his final speech on January 18 , 2020 in London , Harry delivered what was in essence an address about himself , mentioning as always the impact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never mentioning his father , Prince Charles , who has been financing him .
Eighty years ago , King Edward VIII explained his abdication by saying he could not be king without the support of the woman he loved .
In similar fashion , Prince Harry explained why he was “ giving it up ” for the woman he loved .
But unlike the consequent action of King Edward in leaving the country , it is not clear that Harry is as direct and straightforward .
Harry said , “ What I want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not walking away .
We both do everything we can to fly the flag and carry out our roles for this country with pride .
The U.K. is my home and a place that I love .
That will never change.
” However , he did walk away and immediately left for Vancouver Island , where Meghan is residing with son Archie , accompanied on the flight from London by at least three Met protection officers .
Against the Left : A Ro ... Llewellyn H Rockwell Jr Best Price : $ 13.57 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ I haven ’ t always gotten it right , but as far as this goes , there really was no other option.
” But in fact there were a number of other options : at one extreme , fulfilling royal obligations in a life to which he was born , and at the other retiring completely from public life and becoming a private citizen .
His chosen option is to have his cake and eat it , retention of some privilege and continuation of financial support , at least from his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without fulfillment of official obligations or military duties .
For her part , Meghan , still formally duchess of Sussex , issued a bizarre , curious statement , saying quitting the royal family was the best thing that could ever happen to Harry .
In the royal family , his spirit , and hers , was being crushed .
Her love for him made their new life possible .
For a long time , Harry has played the Diana card .
Meghan seems to be doing that with son Archie .
Meghan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she did not want Archie around such a “ toxic environment , ” one where she can barely breathe .
Moreover , she confessed she can not be the best mother to Archie if she is not her true , authentic self .
That self is not defined , but to outsiders , she is an elitist snob , happiest with Hollywood royalty , not a social justice warrior .
She has no immediate desire to move out of the $ 14-million mansion in Vancouver Island she has been lent .
She and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ website or Instagram name .
She can now do as she pleases without asking permission .
Not the least important is that the Sussex pair they will keep their royal titles , though they can not use His or Her Royal Highness in public or for commercial use .
Nor can they officially represent the queen at events .

As the drama of Harry and Meghan unfolds, it becomes ever clearer that Harry is a figure not of tragedy, but of self-interested hypocrisy. The prince is not only dull, but the cause of dullness in others, more a figure of betrayal than of sacrifice.
The psycho-drama of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex is one of spoiled individuals shedding crocodile tears over their fate. In his final speech on January 18, 2020 in London, Harry delivered what was in essence an address about himself, mentioning as always the impact of his mother Diana on him but never mentioning his father, Prince Charles, who has been financing him.
Eighty years ago, King Edward VIII explained his abdication by saying he could not be king without the support of the woman he loved. In similar fashion, Prince Harry explained why he was “giving it up” for the woman he loved. But unlike the consequent action of King Edward in leaving the country, it is not clear that Harry is as direct and straightforward. Harry said, “What I want to make clear is we’re not walking away. We both do everything we can to fly the flag and carry out our roles for this country with pride. The U.K. is my home and a place that I love. That will never change.” However, he did walk away and immediately left for Vancouver Island, where Meghan is residing with son Archie, accompanied on the flight from London by at least three Met protection officers. Against the Left: A Ro... Rockwell Jr, Llewellyn H Best Price: $2.85 Buy New $8.00 (as of 07:59 UTC - Details)
Harry defended himself: “I haven’t always gotten it right, but as far as this goes, there really was no other option.” But in fact there were a number of other options: at one extreme, fulfilling royal obligations in a life to which he was born, and at the other retiring completely from public life and becoming a private citizen. His chosen option is to have his cake and eat it, retention of some privilege and continuation of financial support, at least from his father for at least a year, without fulfillment of official obligations or military duties.
For her part, Meghan, still formally duchess of Sussex, issued a bizarre, curious statement, saying quitting the royal family was the best thing that could ever happen to Harry. In the royal family, his spirit, and hers, was being crushed. Her love for him made their new life possible.
For a long time, Harry has played the Diana card. Meghan seems to be doing that with son Archie. Meghan, presumably referring to Buckingham Palace, said she did not want Archie around such a “toxic environment,” one where she can barely breathe. Moreover, she confessed she cannot be the best mother to Archie if she is not her true, authentic self. That self is not defined, but to outsiders, she is an elitist snob, happiest with Hollywood royalty, not a social justice warrior. She has no immediate desire to move out of the $14-million mansion in Vancouver Island she has been lent. She and Harry do not intend to change their website or Instagram name. She can now do as she pleases without asking permission. Not the least important is that the Sussex pair they will keep their royal titles, though they cannot use His or Her Royal Highness in public or for commercial use. Nor can they officially represent the queen at events.
Read the Whole Article


lewrockwell--2020-01-25--Would You Like Brain Damage With That?

Would You Like Brain Damage With That?

New research has shown that despite being marketed as a healthy alternative , soybean oil , America ’ s most popular oil , causes neurological changes in the brains of mice , and may contribute to autism and dementia in humans .
Extracted from the seeds of soybeans and used in everything from fast food to animal feed and even baby formula , soybean oil is easily the most widely consumed oil in the US , ubiquitous in the national cuisine .
It ’ s in McDonald ’ s fries , Pizza Hut crust , and the “ healthy ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A research team from University of California , Riverside has been studying the impact of soybean oil for several years .
They previously found that it induces diabetes and obesity in mice , hardly surprising given that vegetable oils are high in saturated and unsaturated fatty acids .
By now , most people know that eating too much fried food is bad for your ticker .
What You Must Know Abo ... Jeffrey Anshel OD Best Price : $ 10.78 Buy New $ 11.84 But what is really shocking about their latest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have on the brain .
The study is published in Endocrinology , a scientific journal , and it shows that when soybean oil is fed to mice it has major impact on their hypothalamus , an area of the brain crucial for regulating mood and behaviour .
More worryingly , it even affected over 100 of the mice ’ s genes , including one for controlling oxytocin , the love and bonding hormone .
Soybean-fed mice showed lower levels of oxytocin in the hypothalamus .
Other genes affected had to do with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ insulin pathway , synonymous with diabetes .
There was also upregulation of genes associated with anxiety , depression , and schizophrenia .
Considering the evidence , the authors believe that soybean oil could increase the risk of Parkinson ’ s disease , Alzheimer ’ s disease , and autism .
However , there is no concrete proof yet that soybean oil causes these conditions , since this research was conducted on male mice only .
But mice are used as a model organism for human health for a reason , as a mammal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to us , and it is reasonable to provisionally project some of the authors ’ health warnings onto humans .
Lead author Poonamjot Deol said : “ If there ’ s one message I want people to take away , it ’ s this : reduce consumption of soybean oil.
” Is the GM version better ?
There is a genetically engineered form of soybean oil that has a lower linoleic acid ( LA ) content , and this form is healthier for the heart .
The authors also fed mice this form @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any better , but the low-LA form had a similarly detrimental effect on the mice ’ s brains .
It is produced from what are called Roundup Ready soybeans , designed for use with the signature product of bought-out agrochemical firm Monsanto , which is embroiled in a controversy of its own .

New research has shown that despite being marketed as a healthy alternative, soybean oil, America’s most popular oil, causes neurological changes in the brains of mice, and may contribute to autism and dementia in humans.
Extracted from the seeds of soybeans and used in everything from fast food to animal feed and even baby formula, soybean oil is easily the most widely consumed oil in the US, ubiquitous in the national cuisine.
It’s in McDonald’s fries, Pizza Hut crust, and the “healthy” 9-grain bread used for your Subway sandwich.
A research team from University of California, Riverside has been studying the impact of soybean oil for several years. They previously found that it induces diabetes and obesity in mice, hardly surprising given that vegetable oils are high in saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. By now, most people know that eating too much fried food is bad for your ticker. What You Must Know Abo... Anshel OD, Jeffrey Best Price: $3.56 Buy New $11.75 (as of 10:45 UTC - Details)
But what is really shocking about their latest findings is the effect soybean oil seems to have on the brain.
From Alzheimer’s to autism
The study is published in Endocrinology, a scientific journal, and it shows that when soybean oil is fed to mice it has major impact on their hypothalamus, an area of the brain crucial for regulating mood and behaviour.
More worryingly, it even affected over 100 of the mice’s genes, including one for controlling oxytocin, the love and bonding hormone. Soybean-fed mice showed lower levels of oxytocin in the hypothalamus. Other genes affected had to do with metabolic and hormone pathways, including the insulin pathway, synonymous with diabetes. There was also upregulation of genes associated with anxiety, depression, and schizophrenia.
Considering the evidence, the authors believe that soybean oil could increase the risk of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and autism. However, there is no concrete proof yet that soybean oil causes these conditions, since this research was conducted on male mice only. But mice are used as a model organism for human health for a reason, as a mammal species they have similar tissues and genetics to us, and it is reasonable to provisionally project some of the authors’ health warnings onto humans.
Lead author Poonamjot Deol said: “If there’s one message I want people to take away, it’s this: reduce consumption of soybean oil.”
Is the GM version better?
There is a genetically engineered form of soybean oil that has a lower linoleic acid (LA) content, and this form is healthier for the heart. The authors also fed mice this form to see whether the results would be any better, but the low-LA form had a similarly detrimental effect on the mice’s brains.
It is produced from what are called Roundup Ready soybeans, designed for use with the signature product of bought-out agrochemical firm Monsanto, which is embroiled in a controversy of its own.
Reprinted from RT News.


lewrockwell--2020-01-25--New Thought Police NewsGuard Is Owned by Big Pharma

The media is using a variety of tactics to restrict your access to the truth from websites like mine , including NewsGuard , a self-appointed internet watchdog that sells a browser plugin to rate websites on nine criteria of credibility and transparency .
Before I delve further into NewsGuard and its underlying agenda , it ’ s important to look at who funds it .
NewsGuard received much of its startup funds from Publicis Groupe , a giant global communications group with divisions that brand imaging , design of digital business platforms , media relations and health care .
Publicis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Health , names Lilly , Abbot , Roche , Amgen , Genentech , Celgene , Gilead , Biogen , Astra Zeneca , Sanofi , Bayer and other Big Pharma giants as clients , which gives you an idea of where its loyalties lie .
GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK ) has also awarded Publicis Media a healthy piece of business , and the communications group responded by creating a custom “ platformGSK ” to run the drug giant ’ s media business .
In October 2018 , following a five-month review , GSK sent its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which beat out other media agencies vying for the account , including Omnicom ’ s PHD and WPP ’ s Group M.1 According to FiercePharma , with the creation of the “ platformGSK ” model , the partnership gave “ Publicis Media responsibility for all offline and digital paid media strategy and planning in the Americas , Europe , Middle East , Africa and Asia-Pacific .
In the U.S. , that includes DTC [ direct to consumer ] pharma work.
” 2 Further , the news outlet reported : In January 2020 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more business , handing over the former Pfizer Consumer Healthcare brands to Publicis .
The move was decided without a review and will add Advil , Centrum , Caltrate and other Pfizer brands to platformGSK , worth an estimated $ 400 million .
GSK holds a 68 % stake in the joint venture .
“ GSK has already announced its plans to spin off the joint venture within three years and list it as standalone company on the U.K. exchange as GSK Consumer Healthcare , leaving the pharma giant to focus on medicines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Publicis also handles other Big Pharma media accounts , including Novartis .
In August 2019 , Publicis created NovartisONE2 to manage the pharma giant ’ s global media account worth $ 600 million.5 While Publicis has been busy solidifying its strong ties with Big Pharma , it was also the lead investor among a group of 18 that helped make NewsGuard a reality .
As of March 2018 , Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz , the “ media entrepreneurs ” behind NewsGuard , had raised $ 6 million to launch the company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the fake news crisis by hiring dozens of trained journalists as analysts to review the 7,500 news and information websites most accessed and shared in the United States … These sites account for 98 % of the news articles read and shared in the English language online in the United States.
” 6 Once installed on your browser , NewsGuard assigns a color coded “ Nutrition Label ” to sites , rating them green or red in a process they said would be “ completely transparent and accountable.
” 7 While first launching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , launching in the U.K. in 2019 and rating more than 200 websites .
The startup created controversy in January 2019 after giving Mail Online — the most read news website in the U.K. — a failing grade , stating it failed to uphold even basic standards of accuracy or accountability .
Following backlash and apparent “ discussions ” with a Daily Mail executive , NewsGuard changed the rating to green , stating the site “ generally maintains basic standards of accuracy and accountability ” and said they were wrong.8 It was an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when you trust a conflicted startup company to dictate what ’ s truth and what ’ s not .
In January 2020 , NewsGuard announced it would adopt a subscription service in the U.K. and will start charging for the service.9 At the same time , NewsGuard issued a notice to subscribers in the U.S. with an offer to sign up early for $ 1.95 a month to “ help keep NewsGuard free for the hundreds of libraries and schools that use NewsGuard.
” 10 NewsGuard Is the Latest ‘ Truth Arbiter ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ NewsGuard is setting itself up as the self-appointed global arbiter of what information is “ trustworthy ” — based on nine , self-described “ credibility and transparency ” factors — not only for information viewed for pay on private electronic devices , but also for information accessible for free in public libraries and schools .
Librarians will even provide instructions to patrons on how to install the NewsGuard extension on their personal computers , tablets and cell phones .
If you install the plugin on your computer or cellphone , it will display @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and other web searches as well as on articles displayed on social media .
What are the nine criteria NewsGuard is using to “ protect ” you from fake news ?
11 A score lower than 60 points gets a red rating , while higher scores get more favorable results , which is intended to provide readers with a “ signal if a website is trying to get it right or instead has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods or propaganda.
” 12 These icons are meant to influence readers , instructing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and cautions .
While the warnings may be enough to prevent someone from clicking these links , I believe the true intent is to bury this content entirely from search results and social media feeds .
It is very likely Google , Facebook , Twitter and other platforms will use these ratings to lower the visibility of content — making nonconformist views disappear entirely .
It ’ s ironic , too , that NewsGuard is citing the importance of transparency in verifying independent online news outlets and vetting online media for conflicts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ verify the credibility and transparency of the verifiers , i.e.
, NewsGuard ?
On NewsGuard ’ s United States Securities and Exchange Commission Form D filed March 5 , 2018 , there is an option for disclosing the size of its revenue , but that box was checked , “ Decline to disclose.
” 13 That ’ s far from the 100 % transparency they ’ re expecting from others .
NewsGuard also claims a Rule 506 ( b ) exemption , which among its benefits allows for an unlimited amount of money @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of accredited investors.14 In doing some digging of our own , it appears NewsGuard is backed by companies that are presently involved in , or have been in the past , advertising and marketing of pharmaceutical products , cigarettes and unhealthy junk food to kids .
As noted , Publicis , NewsGuard ’ s lead investor , made a name for itself by promoting and strengthening big industries , including tobacco .
For instance , Leo Burnett , the ad company famous for creating the Marlboro man ad campaigns that made Marlboro the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the nicotine addiction of millions , many of whom died from smoking , is also part of Publicis.15,16 Are we to believe that the profit preferences of such entities will have no influence on NewsGuard ’ s ratings of individuals , organizations and companies that criticize the safety or effectiveness of those products ?
If this conflict of interest and lack of transparency concerns you I urge you to contact NewsGuard now and let your voice be heard .
Click on the button below to send NewsGuard a message today .
Overall @ @ @ @ @ @ @ big business aimed at keeping the chemical , drug and food industries , as well as mainstream media , intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competition , which likely includes yours truly and many others who empower you with information that helps you take control of your health .
Indebted to Big Industry through its funding , it appears that NewsGuard is being positioned as a “ competition eradicator ” that will allow Publicis and Big Industry to maintain their undisputed reign as shapers of public opinion about health-related issues , including the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , medical devices and products , prescription drugs and vaccines , as well as public health policies that endorse the use of those products .
You can read more on this full-circle plan to censor media truth here .
Some people also use Snopes as their go-to source for online fact-checking , believing it to give the unbiased and credible final word on all those widely circulated stories .
Yet , Snopes engages in massive censorship of natural health and general promotion of industry talking points .
What started as a tool to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has manifested into a self-proclaimed “ definitive fact-checking resource ” that ’ s taking on topics like whether or not vaccines can cause autism .
Case in point : In their purported fact-checking of a “ Full Measure ” report17 by award-winning investigative reporter and former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson,18 Snopes simply spewed propaganda , not real facts , in an attempt to discredit the report and the potential vaccines-autism link .
In the end , though , they actually ended up confirming the main point of Attkisson ’ s report .
For @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gets an ‘ F ’ for predictable propaganda in [ the ] vaccine-autism debate.
” It ’ s dangerous to rely on any one source or group of individuals as authorities on truth , as it sets up the path for inevitable censorship .
Even under the best circumstances , everyone is subject to their own biases , but in the case of Snopes , it was founded on fabrications from the start .
Snopes was created in 1995 by Barbara and David Mikkelson , who posed as “ The San Fernardo Valley @ @ @ @ @ @ @ order to gain credibility .
Such a society does not exist as a legal entity , according to an investigation by the Daily Mail19 — the same Daily Mail that NewsGuard originally gave a failing ranking , only to later reverse it .
Seventy-three percent believe the proliferation of “ fake news ” on the internet is a major problem , and only half feel confident that readers can get to the facts by sorting through bias.20 And the fact is , fake news is a real problem .
But it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ believing even “ fact checked ” sources like Snopes or “ Internet Trust Tools ” like NewsGuard , which are in fact backed and supported by industry giants .
The Best of Joseph Mercola

The media is using a variety of tactics to restrict your access to the truth from websites like mine, including NewsGuard, a self-appointed internet watchdog that sells a browser plugin to rate websites on nine criteria of credibility and transparency. Before I delve further into NewsGuard and its underlying agenda, it’s important to look at who funds it.
NewsGuard received much of its startup funds from Publicis Groupe, a giant global communications group with divisions that brand imaging, design of digital business platforms, media relations and health care.
Publicis Groupe’s health subsidiary, Publicis Health, names Lilly, Abbot, Roche, Amgen, Genentech, Celgene, Gilead, Biogen, Astra Zeneca, Sanofi, Bayer and other Big Pharma giants as clients, which gives you an idea of where its loyalties lie.
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has also awarded Publicis Media a healthy piece of business, and the communications group responded by creating a custom “platformGSK” to run the drug giant’s media business.
GSK Adds $400 Million to $1.5 Billion Publicis Collaboration
In October 2018, following a five-month review, GSK sent its $1.5 billion media account to Publicis, which beat out other media agencies vying for the account, including Omnicom’s PHD and WPP’s Group M.1
According to FiercePharma, with the creation of the “platformGSK” model, the partnership gave “Publicis Media responsibility for all offline and digital paid media strategy and planning in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific. In the U.S., that includes DTC [direct to consumer] pharma work.”2 Further, the news outlet reported:
“Publicis Groupe client lead Laurent Ezekiel said the agency is ‘excited to partner with them to establish a transformative client-agency relationship that will enable GSK to deliver on its ambition to become the best data-driven marketer in the industry.'”3
In January 2020, GSK awarded Publicis Media with even more business, handing over the former Pfizer Consumer Healthcare brands to Publicis. The move was decided without a review and will add Advil, Centrum, Caltrate and other Pfizer brands to platformGSK, worth an estimated $400 million. GSK holds a 68% stake in the joint venture.
“GSK has already announced its plans to spin off the joint venture within three years and list it as standalone company on the U.K. exchange as GSK Consumer Healthcare, leaving the pharma giant to focus on medicines and vaccines,” FiercePharma reported.4
Meanwhile, Publicis also handles other Big Pharma media accounts, including Novartis. In August 2019, Publicis created NovartisONE2 to manage the pharma giant’s global media account worth $600 million.5
Publicis Funds NewsGuard
While Publicis has been busy solidifying its strong ties with Big Pharma, it was also the lead investor among a group of 18 that helped make NewsGuard a reality.
As of March 2018, Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, the “media entrepreneurs” behind NewsGuard, had raised $6 million to launch the company, which was slated to “address the fake news crisis by hiring dozens of trained journalists as analysts to review the 7,500 news and information websites most accessed and shared in the United States … These sites account for 98% of the news articles read and shared in the English language online in the United States.”6
Once installed on your browser, NewsGuard assigns a color coded “Nutrition Label” to sites, rating them green or red in a process they said would be “completely transparent and accountable.”7 While first launching in the U.S., NewsGuard expanded internationally, launching in the U.K. in 2019 and rating more than 200 websites.
The startup created controversy in January 2019 after giving Mail Online — the most read news website in the U.K. — a failing grade, stating it failed to uphold even basic standards of accuracy or accountability.
Following backlash and apparent “discussions” with a Daily Mail executive, NewsGuard changed the rating to green, stating the site “generally maintains basic standards of accuracy and accountability” and said they were wrong.8
It was an early indication of what can go wrong when you trust a conflicted startup company to dictate what’s truth and what’s not. In January 2020, NewsGuard announced it would adopt a subscription service in the U.K. and will start charging for the service.9
At the same time, NewsGuard issued a notice to subscribers in the U.S. with an offer to sign up early for $1.95 a month to “help keep NewsGuard free for the hundreds of libraries and schools that use NewsGuard.”10
NewsGuard Is the Latest ‘Truth Arbiter’ to Deceive You
In other words, NewsGuard is setting itself up as the self-appointed global arbiter of what information is “trustworthy” — based on nine, self-described “credibility and transparency” factors — not only for information viewed for pay on private electronic devices, but also for information accessible for free in public libraries and schools.
Librarians will even provide instructions to patrons on how to install the NewsGuard extension on their personal computers, tablets and cell phones. If you install the plugin on your computer or cellphone, it will display its rating next to Google, Bing and other web searches as well as on articles displayed on social media. What are the nine criteria NewsGuard is using to “protect” you from fake news?11
A score lower than 60 points gets a red rating, while higher scores get more favorable results, which is intended to provide readers with a “signal if a website is trying to get it right or instead has a hidden agenda or knowingly publishes falsehoods or propaganda.”12
These icons are meant to influence readers, instructing them to disregard content with cautionary colors and cautions. While the warnings may be enough to prevent someone from clicking these links, I believe the true intent is to bury this content entirely from search results and social media feeds.
It is very likely Google, Facebook, Twitter and other platforms will use these ratings to lower the visibility of content — making nonconformist views disappear entirely.
NewsGuard Lacks Transparency
It’s ironic, too, that NewsGuard is citing the importance of transparency in verifying independent online news outlets and vetting online media for conflicts of interest. But who is going to verify the credibility and transparency of the verifiers, i.e., NewsGuard?
On NewsGuard’s United States Securities and Exchange Commission Form D filed March 5, 2018, there is an option for disclosing the size of its revenue, but that box was checked, “Decline to disclose.”13 That’s far from the 100% transparency they’re expecting from others.
NewsGuard also claims a Rule 506(b) exemption, which among its benefits allows for an unlimited amount of money to be raised from an unlimited number of accredited investors.14 In doing some digging of our own, it appears NewsGuard is backed by companies that are presently involved in, or have been in the past, advertising and marketing of pharmaceutical products, cigarettes and unhealthy junk food to kids.
As noted, Publicis, NewsGuard’s lead investor, made a name for itself by promoting and strengthening big industries, including tobacco. For instance, Leo Burnett, the ad company famous for creating the Marlboro man ad campaigns that made Marlboro the best-selling cigarette in the world and led to the nicotine addiction of millions, many of whom died from smoking, is also part of Publicis.15,16
Are we to believe that the profit preferences of such entities will have no influence on NewsGuard’s ratings of individuals, organizations and companies that criticize the safety or effectiveness of those products? If this conflict of interest and lack of transparency concerns you I urge you to contact NewsGuard now and let your voice be heard. Click on the button below to send NewsGuard a message today.
Overall, it appears NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competition, which likely includes yours truly and many others who empower you with information that helps you take control of your health.
Indebted to Big Industry through its funding, it appears that NewsGuard is being positioned as a “competition eradicator” that will allow Publicis and Big Industry to maintain their undisputed reign as shapers of public opinion about health-related issues, including the safety of food, air and water, medical devices and products, prescription drugs and vaccines, as well as public health policies that endorse the use of those products. You can read more on this full-circle plan to censor media truth here.
Watching the ‘Watchdogs’
Some people also use Snopes as their go-to source for online fact-checking, believing it to give the unbiased and credible final word on all those widely circulated stories.
Yet, Snopes engages in massive censorship of natural health and general promotion of industry talking points. What started as a tool to investigate urban legends, hoaxes and folklore has manifested into a self-proclaimed “definitive fact-checking resource” that’s taking on topics like whether or not vaccines can cause autism.
Case in point: In their purported fact-checking of a “Full Measure” report17 by award-winning investigative reporter and former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson,18 Snopes simply spewed propaganda, not real facts, in an attempt to discredit the report and the potential vaccines-autism link.
In the end, though, they actually ended up confirming the main point of Attkisson’s report. For this, Attkisson wrote, “Snopes gets an ‘F’ for predictable propaganda in [the] vaccine-autism debate.”
It’s dangerous to rely on any one source or group of individuals as authorities on truth, as it sets up the path for inevitable censorship. Even under the best circumstances, everyone is subject to their own biases, but in the case of Snopes, it was founded on fabrications from the start.
Snopes was created in 1995 by Barbara and David Mikkelson, who posed as “The San Fernardo Valley Folklore Society” in the beginning in order to gain credibility. Such a society does not exist as a legal entity, according to an investigation by the Daily Mail19 — the same Daily Mail that NewsGuard originally gave a failing ranking, only to later reverse it.
Seventy-three percent believe the proliferation of “fake news” on the internet is a major problem, and only half feel confident that readers can get to the facts by sorting through bias.20 And the fact is, fake news is a real problem.
But it’s important to do your own research before believing even “fact checked” sources like Snopes or “Internet Trust Tools” like NewsGuard, which are in fact backed and supported by industry giants.
Sources and References
The Best of Dr. Joseph Mercola


lewrockwell--2020-01-27--Sexbots, Robots, Neural Networks, Weird Oriental Games, and the Spores of Skynet

Today we will have Profound Thought .
Actually it ’ s the only kind we ever have in this corner of the internet .
Thunderous insight .
Volcanic perceptiveness .
That sort of thing .
Anyway , some slightly addled questions about robots , and sexbots and their relations with people and how smart they are or aren ’ t .
For example , can you love a robot ?
I mean with actual affection , such as one might have for a good dog ?
Or–larger question–how much emotional involvement is possible with machines , and how much is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ know , this sounds silly .
But we really are moving toward a world in which the inanimate and the human aren ’ t all that distinct .
Bear with me .
Little girls seem genuinely attached to their dolls , and a boy of fifteen can become romantically involved with anything concave that can ’ t run faster than he can .
But with the advent of sex robots and increasingly human software–Siri , for example–how far can this go ?
I have read of bordellos staffed by silicone doxies that are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ To me an air mattress has more sex appeal , but maybe I am not up with the times .
Every few weeks a story appears saying that poke-bots have become more realistic .
Some try to be conversational .
Join the Rubber Maid Lonely Hearts Club .
Nekkid In Austin : Drop ... Fred Reed Best Price : $ 2.40 Buy New $ 18.95 There are even male sexots .
These must be for homosexuals .
Women have better sense .
I think .
So , OK , they look like women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ braindead .
You could never mistake one for a living , breathing gal .
Except these days maybe you can .
Thanks to movies , we expect robots to sound like robots , at least a little bit .
But they don ’ t have to .
Siri sounds entirely human .
She even has a sense of humor .
Then , one might wonder , how intelligent might these plastic love interests be ?
In a sexbot this might not be the essential question , but we will consider it anyway .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ actually going somewhere .
patience . )
Alan Turing was an early and talented computer wonk who famously devised the “ Turing Test ” to determine whether a computer was genuinely intelligent .
Said Turing approximately , put the computer in one room and a human in another and connect them with a telephone .
The human chats with the computer : “ Hey , homey , how ‘ bout them Redskins ?
” “ Whatcha doing Saturday , catch a couple of brewskis ?
” And so on .
If the human @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then the thing is intelligent .
Can today ’ s machines pass for human ?
It depends on the human the computer is supposed to be and how exhaustive the interrogation .
I will bet that a five-year-old could today be done well enough in software that if he , or she , or it answered your telephone call , you would not suspect .
A six-year-old ?
Seven ?
” Chatbots ” now exist that can talk intelligently about narrow subjects , such as how to replace your credit card .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ doll and , if it were programmed to talk like a small kid , I bet a three-year-old girl would chat with her for hours , becoming unable to distinguish emotionally between the doll and a human .
Why don ’ t I think this is a good idea ?
It ’ s kind of eerie .
Now we come to artificial intelligence , which recently has gotten screwy .
AI now uses neural networks that imitate the human brain .
I read about them decades ago in a book by a girl @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I didn ’ t think neural nets would ever amount to much .
This showed that I wasn ’ t the most radioactive isotope in the periodic table , because they are now a Big Deal .
See , with normal programming you start with , say , A equals pi-r-squared , and then you get lots of radii and calculate areas .
In AI , you start with a million areas and calculate the formula .
It ’ s like starting with answers to get the question .
But if you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ need the questions ?
Maybe they got the idea from Jeopardy .
Anyway , I think it is wrongheaded , bass-ackward , and probably against God .
But it works .
If you like technoglop , this is neat stuff .
Lots of partial derivatives and learning rates and sinusoidal functions and stochastic gradient descent to avoid local minima of error surfaces , which are like energy wells in physics but instead are information wells , which is weird .
With this stuff and a little practice , you could bore whole cocktail @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jones .
Probably a good idea .
Anyway , this kind of AI learns the way babies do .
Tell the baby a million things in spoken English .
It doesn ’ t know what the question is , but eventually notices that if it says one thing , mommy does this , and if it says another thing , mommy does that .
This equips it to become a minor tyrant .
The point I was creeping up on , and hoping to take unawares in a savage pounce : Technology is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more and more of things we thought only humans could do .
A Brass Pole in Bangkok Fred Reed Check Amazon for Pricing .
It gets worse .
I suppose that by now we all know that IBM ’ s computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion and its later machine , Watson , beat the national Jeopardy champion .
But to salve our pride , we humans can say that these boxes didn ’ t really , exactly beat humans .
the programmers of Deep Blue , see , put the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Deep Blue only did what people figured out long ago .
We just automated ourselves .
But here is something spooky .
There is an Oriental board game called Go , universally regarded as harder than chess .
( The foregoing sentence contains everything I know about it . )
The folks at Deep Mind/Google wrote an AI program called that started with only the rules of Go .
No tactics , openings , strategy .
Nothing .
It played with itself ( See ?
Getting more human all the time .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ thousands and thousands of games .
Hour after hour .
Day after day .
For forty days .
On a wicked fast computer .
It is a phenomenally inefficient way to learn Go .
Or anything .
But it ended by beating the world Go champion .
Sez me , this is something new under the sun , a machine that all by itself learned to do something exceedingly difficult with no help from us .
Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review .
The Best of Fred Reed

Today we will have Profound Thought. Actually it’s the only kind we ever have in this corner of the internet. Thunderous insight. Volcanic perceptiveness. That sort of thing.
Anyway, some slightly addled questions about robots, and sexbots and their relations with people and how smart they are or aren’t. For example, can you love a robot? I mean with actual affection, such as one might have for a good dog? Or–larger question–how much emotional involvement is possible with machines, and how much is a good idea?
Yeah, I know, this sounds silly. But we really are moving toward a world in which the inanimate and the human aren’t all that distinct. Bear with me.
Little girls seem genuinely attached to their dolls, and a boy of fifteen can become romantically involved with anything concave that can’t run faster than he can. But with the advent of sex robots and increasingly human software–Siri, for example–how far can this go?
I have read of bordellos staffed by silicone doxies that are said to attract a considerable clientele. To me an air mattress has more sex appeal, but maybe I am not up with the times. Every few weeks a story appears saying that poke-bots have become more realistic. Some try to be conversational. Join the Rubber Maid Lonely Hearts Club. Nekkid In Austin: Drop... Reed, Fred Best Price: $3.99 Buy New $14.95 (as of 01:20 UTC - Details)
There are even male sexots. These must be for homosexuals. Women have better sense. I think.
So, OK, they look like women, but when they talk they sound braindead. You could never mistake one for a living, breathing gal. Except these days maybe you can.
Thanks to movies, we expect robots to sound like robots, at least a little bit. But they don’t have to. Siri sounds entirely human. She even has a sense of humor.
Then, one might wonder, how intelligent might these plastic love interests be? In a sexbot this might not be the essential question, but we will consider it anyway.
Now, Turing. (This is actually going somewhere. patience.) Alan Turing was an early and talented computer wonk who famously devised the “Turing Test” to determine whether a computer was genuinely intelligent. Said Turing approximately, put the computer in one room and a human in another and connect them with a telephone. The human chats with the computer: “Hey, homey, how ‘bout them Redskins?” “Whatcha doing Saturday, catch a couple of brewskis?” And so on. If the human thinks he is talking to another human, then the thing is intelligent. Can today’s machines pass for human?
It depends on the human the computer is supposed to be and how exhaustive the interrogation. I will bet that a five-year-old could today be done well enough in software that if he, or she, or it answered your telephone call, you would not suspect. A six-year-old? Seven?
”Chatbots” now exist that can talk intelligently about narrow subjects, such as how to replace your credit card.
So put a Siri receiver in a doll and, if it were programmed to talk like a small kid, I bet a three-year-old girl would chat with her for hours, becoming unable to distinguish emotionally between the doll and a human. Why don’t I think this is a good idea? It’s kind of eerie.
Now we come to artificial intelligence, which recently has gotten screwy. AI now uses neural networks that imitate the human brain. I read about them decades ago in a book by a girl I knew who worked for Hecht-Nielsen Neurocomputers. I didn’t think neural nets would ever amount to much. This showed that I wasn’t the most radioactive isotope in the periodic table, because they are now a Big Deal.
See, with normal programming you start with, say, A equals pi-r-squared, and then you get lots of radii and calculate areas. In AI, you start with a million areas and calculate the formula. It’s like starting with answers to get the question.
But if you have the answers, why do you need the questions? Maybe they got the idea from Jeopardy. Anyway, I think it is wrongheaded, bass-ackward, and probably against God. But it works.
If you like technoglop, this is neat stuff. Lots of partial derivatives and learning rates and sinusoidal functions and stochastic gradient descent to avoid local minima of error surfaces, which are like energy wells in physics but instead are information wells, which is weird. With this stuff and a little practice, you could bore whole cocktail parties into mass suicide, like Jim Jones. Probably a good idea.
Anyway, this kind of AI learns the way babies do. Tell the baby a million things in spoken English. It doesn’t know what the question is, but eventually notices that if it says one thing, mommy does this, and if it says another thing, mommy does that. This equips it to become a minor tyrant.
The point I was creeping up on, and hoping to take unawares in a savage pounce: Technology is producing, in bits and pieces, more and more of things we thought only humans could do. A Brass Pole in Bangkok Reed, Fred Buy New $2.99 (as of 08:55 UTC - Details)
It gets worse. I suppose that by now we all know that IBM’s computer Deep Blue beat the world chess champion and its later machine, Watson, beat the national Jeopardy champion. But to salve our pride, we humans can say that these boxes didn’t really, exactly beat humans. the programmers of Deep Blue, see, put the tactics and strategy of chess in, and Deep Blue only did what people figured out long ago. We just automated ourselves.
But here is something spooky. There is an Oriental board game called Go, universally regarded as harder than chess. (The foregoing sentence contains everything I know about it.)
The folks at Deep Mind/Google wrote an AI program called AlphaGo Zero that started with only the rules of Go. No tactics, openings, strategy. Nothing. It played with itself (See? Getting more human all the time.), taking both sides, for thousands and thousands of games. Hour after hour. Day after day. For forty days. On a wicked fast computer. It is a phenomenally inefficient way to learn Go. Or anything. But it ended by beating the world Go champion.
Sez me, this is something new under the sun, a machine that all by itself learned to do something exceedingly difficult with no help from us.
Reprinted with permission from The Unz Review.
The Best of Fred Reed


lewrockwell--2020-01-27--‘Orders to Kill’ Martin Luther King: The Government that Honors MLK With a National Holiday Killed H

‘Orders to Kill’ Martin Luther King: The Government that Honors MLK With a National Holiday Killed Him

MLK DAY 2020 .
In commemoration of Martin Luther King ’ s assassination , we bring to you this article by Edward Curtin first published on Global Research in January 2017 .
Very few Americans are aware of the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr. Few books have been written about it , unlike other significant assassinations , especially JFK ’ s .
For almost fifty years there has been a media blackout supported by government deception to hide the truth .
And few people , in a massive act of self-deception , have chosen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ choosing , rather , to embrace a mythic fabrication intended to sugarcoat the bitter fruit that has resulted from the murder of the one man capable of leading a mass movement for revolutionary change in the United States .
Today we are eating the fruit of our denial .
In order to comprehend the significance of this extraordinary book , it is first necessary to dispel a widely accepted falsehood about Dr. Martin Luther King , Jr. William Pepper does that on the first page .
In other words , Martin Luther King @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and political energy so plenipotent that his very existence was a threat to an established order based on violence , racism , and economic exploitation .
He was a very dangerous man .
The Plot to Kill King : ... William F. Pepper Esq .
Best Price : $ 41.63 b Revolutionaries are , of course , anathema to the power elites who , with all their might , resist such rebels ’ efforts to transform society .
If they can ’ t buy them off , they knock them off .
Forty-eight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the causes he fought for – civil rights , the end to U.S. wars of aggression , and economic justice for all – remain not only unfulfilled , but have worsened in so many respects .
And King ’ s message has been enervated by the sly trick of giving him a national holiday and urging Americans to make it “ a day of service.
” Needless to say , such service does not include non-violent war resistance or protesting a decadent system of economic injustice .
Because MLK repeatedly called the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on earth , ” he was universally condemned by the mass media and government that later – once he was long and safely dead – praised him to the heavens .
This has continued to the present day of historical amnesia .
But William Pepper resurrects the revolutionary MLK , and in doing so shows in striking detail why elements within the U.S. government executed him .
After reading this book , no fair-minded reader can reach any other conclusion .
The Plot to Kill King , the culminating volume of a trilogy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , consists of slightly less text than supporting documentation in its appendices , which include numerous depositions and interviews that buttress Pepper ’ s thesis on the why and how of this horrible murder .
It demands a close reading that should put to rest any pseudo-debates about the essentials of the case .
Pepper , an attorney who represented the King family in the 1999 trial that found U.S. officials of the federal ( in particular , the FBI and Army Intelligence ) , state , and local governments responsible for King @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the King case since 1977 .
He met MLK in 1967 , after King had read his Ramparts ’ magazine article , “ The Children of Vietnam , ” that exposed the hideous effects of U.S. napalm and white phosphorous bombing on young and old Vietnamese innocents .
The text and photos of that article reduced King to tears and were instrumental in his increased opposition to the war against Vietnam as articulated in his dramatic Riverside Church speech ( “ Beyond Vietnam : A Time to Break Silence ” ) on April @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the day before his execution in Memphis .
That speech , in which King so powerfully and publically linked the war with racism and economic exploitation , foretold his death at the hands of the perpetrators of those abominations .
Devastated by King ’ s death , and assuming the alleged assassin James Earl Ray was responsible , Pepper retreated from the fray until a 1977 conversation with the Rev .
Ralph Abernathy , King ’ s associate , who raised the specter of Ray ’ s innocence .
After a five hour @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Pepper was convinced that Ray did not shoot King and set out on a forty year quest to uncover the truth .
Before examining the essentials of Pepper ’ s discovery , it is important to point out that MLK , Jr , his father , Rev .
M. L. King , Sr , and his maternal grandfather , Rev .
A.D. Williams , all pastors of Atlanta ’ s Ebenezer Baptist Church , were spied on by Army Intelligence and the FBI since 1917 .
All were considered communist sympathizers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their espousal of racial and economic equality .
When MLK , Jr. forcefully denounced unjust and immoral war-making as well , and announced his Poor People ’ s Campaign and intent to lead a massive peaceful encampment of hundreds of thousands in Washington , D.C. , he set off panic in the bowels of government spies and their masters .
Seventy-five years of spying on black religious leaders here found its ultimate “ justification.
” As Stokely Carmichael , co-chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee , said to King in a conversation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The man don ’ t care you call ghettos concentration camps , but when you tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers , you got trouble.
” It is against this “ trouble ” that Pepper ’ s investigation must be set , as that “ trouble ” is also the background for the linked assassinations of JFK , Malcolm X , and RFK .
Understanding the forces behind the military , the spies , and the gunmen who , while operating in the shadows , are actually the second @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essential .
The government and mainstream corporate media form the outer layer with their collusion in disinformation , lying , and truth suppression , but Pepper correctly identifies the core as follows .
MLK was assassinated on April 4 , 1968 at 6:01 PM as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis , Tennessee .
He was shot in the lower right side of his face by one rifle bullet that shattered his jaw , damaged his upper spine , and came to rest below his left shoulder blade @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a racist loner named James Earl Ray , who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary on April 23 , 1967 .
Ray was alleged to have fired the fatal shot from a second-floor bathroom window of a rooming house above the rear of Jim ’ s Grill across the street .
Running to his rented room , Ray allegedly gathered his belongings , including the rifle , in a bedspread-wrapped bundle , rushed out the front door onto the adjoining street , and in a panic dropped the bundle in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few doors down .
He was then said to have jumped into his white Mustang and driven to Atlanta where he abandoned the car .
From there he fled to Canada and then to England where he was eventually arrested at Heathrow Airport on June 8 , 1968 and extradited to the U.S .
The state claims that the money Ray needed to purchase the car and for all his travel was secured through various robberies and a bank heist .
Ray ’ s alleged motive was racism and that he was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Disinformation and Dirty Tricks : James Earl Ray Was Innocent of the Assassination of Martin Luther King , Jr .
When Ray , under extraordinary pressure , coercion , and a payoff from his lawyer to take a plea , pleaded guilty ( only a few days later to request a trial that was denied ) and was sentenced to 99 years in prison , the case seemed to be closed , and was dismissed from public consciousness .
Another hate-filled lone assassin , shades of Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the years leading up to Pepper ’ s 1978 involvement , only a few lonely voices expressed doubts about the government ’ s case – Harold Weisberg in 1971 and Mark Lane and Dick Gregory in 1977 .
The rest of the country put themselves and the case to sleep .
They are still sleeping , but Pepper is trying with this last book to wake them up .
Meanwhile , the disinformation specialists continue with their lies .
While a review is not the place to go into every detail of Pepper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s shabby claims , let me say at the outset that he emphatically does so , and adds in the process some tentative claims of which he is not certain but which , if true , are stunning .
As with the assassinations of President Kennedy and his brother , Robert ( two months after MLK ) , all evidence points to the construction of patsies to take the blame for government executions .
Ray , Oswald , and Sirhan all bear striking resemblances in the ways they were chosen and moved as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ positions where their only reactions could be stunned surprise when they were accused of the murders .
It took Pepper many years to piece together the essential truths , once he and Abernathy interviewed Ray in prison in 1978 .
The first giveaway that something was seriously amiss came with the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations ’ report on the King assassination .
Led by Robert Blakey , suspect in his conduct of the other assassination inquiries , who had replaced Richard Sprague , who was deemed to be too independent , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ denied all evidence that raised the possibility that James Earl Ray was innocent , ” and that government forces might be involved .
Pepper lists over twenty such omissions that rival the absurdities of the magical thinking of the Warren Commission .
The HSCA report became the template “ for all subsequent disinformation in print and visual examinations of this case ” for the past thirty-seven years .
Pepper ’ s decades-long investigation , not only refutes the government ’ s case against James Earl Ray , but definitively proves that King was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the FBI , Army Intelligence , and Memphis Police , assisted by southern Mafia figures .
He is right to assert that “ we have probably acquired more detailed knowledge about this political assassination than we have ever had about any previous historical event.
” This makes the silence around this case even more shocking .
This shock is accentuated when one is reminded ( or told for the first time ) that in 1999 a Memphis jury , after a thirty day trial and over seventy witnesses , found the U.S. government @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The King family had brought the suit and William Pepper represented them .
They were grateful that the truth was confirmed , but saddened by the way the findings were buried once again by a media in cahoots with the government .
The civil trial was the King family ’ s last resort to get a public hearing to disclose the truth of the assassination .
They and Pepper knew that Ray was an innocent pawn , but Ray had died in prison in 1998 after trying for thirty years to get a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Sirhan Sirhan who still languishes in prison ) .
During all those years , Ray had maintained that he had been manipulated by a shadowy figure named Raul , who supplied him with money and his white Mustang and coordinated all his complicated travels , including having him buy a rifle and come to Jim ’ s Grill and the boarding house on the day of the assassination .
The government has always denied that Raul existed .
Blocked at every turn by the authorities and unable to get Ray a trial @ @ @ @ @ @ @ TV trial that aired on April 4 , 1993 , the twenty-fifth anniversary of the assassination .
Jurors were selected from a pool of U.S. citizens , a former U.S. Attorney and a federal judge served as prosecutor and judge , with Pepper serving as defense attorney .
He presented extensive evidence clearly showing that authorities had withdrawn all security for King ; that the state ’ s chief witness was falling down drunk ; that the alleged bathroom sniper ’ s nest was empty right before the shot was fired ; that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Earl Caldwell , said that the shot came from the bushes behind the rooming house ; and that two eyewitnesses saw Ray drive away in his white Mustang before the shooting , etc .
The prosecution ’ s feeble case was rejected by the jury that found Ray not guilty .
As with all Pepper ’ s work on the case ( including book reviews ) , the mainstream media responded with silence .
And though this was only a TV trial , increasing evidence emerged that the owner of Jim ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ involved in the assassination .
Pepper dug deeper , and on December 16 , 1993 , Loyd Jowers appeared on ABC ’ s Primetime Live that aired nationwide .
Pepper writes , “ Loyd Jowers cleared James Earl Ray , saying that he did not shoot MLK but that he , Jowers , had hired a shooter after he was approached by Memphis produce man Frank Liberto and paid $ 1,000,000 to facilitate the assassination .
He also said that he had been visited by a man names Raul who delivered a rifle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrangements were finalized … .
The morning after the Primetime Live broadcast there was no coverage of the previous night ’ s program , not even on ABC … .
Here was a confession , on prime time television , to involvement in one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the Republic , and virtually no American mass-media coverage.
” In the twenty-three years since that confession , Pepper has worked tirelessly on the case and has uncovered a plethora of additional evidence that refutes the government ’ s claims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a continuing cover-up .
The evidence he has gathered , detailed and documented in The Plot to Kill King , proves that Martin Luther King was killed by a conspiracy masterminded by the U.S. government .
Much of his evidence was presented at the 1999 trial , while other was subsequently discovered .
Since the names and details involved make clear that , as with the murders of JFK and RFK , the conspiracy was very sophisticated with many moving parts organized at the highest level , I will just highlight a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A reader should read the book to understand the full scope of the plot , its execution , and the cover-up .
• Pepper refutes the government and proves , through multiple witnesses , telephonic , and photographic evidence , that Raul existed ; that his full name is Raul Coelho ; and that he was James Earl Ray ’ s intelligence handler , who provided him with money and instructions from their first meeting in the Neptune Bar in Montreal , where Ray had fled in 1967 after his prison escape , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It was Raul who instructed Ray to return to the U.S. ( an act that makes no sense for an escaped prisoner who had fled the country ) , gave him money for the white Mustang , helped him attain travel documents , and moved him around the country like a pawn on a chess board .
The parallels to Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan are startling .
• He presents the case of Donald Wilson , a former FBI agent working out of the Atlanta office in 1968 , who went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an abandoned white Mustang with Alabama plates ( Ray ’ s car , to which Raul had a set of keys ) and opened the passenger door to find that an envelope and some papers fell out onto the ground .
Thinking he may have disturbed a crime scene , the nervous Wilson pocketed them .
Later , when he read them , their explosive content intuitively told him that if he gave them to his superiors they would be destroyed .
One piece was a torn out page from a 1963 Dallas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the top , and the letter “ J ” with a Dallas telephone number for a club run by Jack Ruby , Oswald ’ s killer .
The page was for the letter H and had numerous phone numbers for H. L. Hunt , Dallas oil billionaire and a friend of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover .
Both men hated MLK .
The second sheet contained Raul ’ s name and a list of names and sums and dates for payment .
On the third sheet was written the telephone number and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Read Jim Douglass ’ s important interview with Donald Wilson in The Assassinations , pp.479-491 . )
• Pepper interviewed four other witnesses who confirmed that they had seen Raul with Jack Ruby in Dallas in 1963 and that they were associated .
• Pepper shows that the alias Ray was given and used from July 1967 until April 4 , 1968 – Eric Galt – was the name of a Toronto operative of U.S. Army Intelligence , Eric St. Vincent Galt , who worked for Union Carbide with Top Secret clearance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Carbide Plant in Toronto that Galt supervised “ housed a top secret munitions project funded jointly by the CIA , the U.S .
Naval Surface Weapons Center , and the Army Electronics Research and Development Command … .
In August 1967 , Galt met with Major Robert M. Collins , a top aide to the head of the 902nd Military Intelligence Group ( MIG ) Colonel John Downie.
” Downie selected four members for an Alpha 184 Sniper Unit that was sent to Memphis to back up the primary assassin of MLK .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the patsy , was able to move about freely since he was protected by the pseudonymous NSA clearance for Eric Galt .
• To refute the government ’ s claim that Ray and his brother robbed the Alton , Illinois Bank to finance his travels and car purchase ( therefore no Raul existed ) , Pepper “ called the sheriff in Alton and the president of the bank ; they gave the same statement .
The Ray brothers had nothing to do with the robbery .
No one from the HSCA , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ had sought their opinion.
” CNN later reiterated the media falsehood that became part of the official false story .
• Pepper proves that the fatal shot came from the bushes behind Jim ’ s Grill and the rooming house , not from the bathroom window .
He presents overwhelming evidence for this , showing that the government ’ s claim , based on the testimony on a severely drunk Charlie Stephens , was absurd .
His evidence includes the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses and that of Loyd Jowers , the owner of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he took the rifle from the shooter in the bushes and brought it into the bar where he hid it .
Thus , Ray was not the assassin .
• He presents conclusive evidence that the bushes were cut down the morning after the assassination in an attempt to corrupt the crime scene .
The order to do so came from Memphis Police Department Inspector Sam Evans to Maynard Stiles , a senior administrator of the Memphis Department of Public Works .
• He shows how King ’ s room was moved from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to balcony room , 306 , on the upper floor ; how King was conveniently positioned alone on the balcony by members of his own entourage for the easy mortal head shot from the bushes across the street .
( Many people only remember the iconic photograph taken after-the-fact with Jesse Jackson , Andrew Young , et al.
, standing over the fallen King and pointing across the street . )
Pepper implicates that Reverends Billy Kyles , Jesse Jackson , and , to a lesser extent , Ralph Abernathy were involved in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ role of black military intelligence agent Marrell McCollough , attached to the 111th MIG , within the entourage .
McCollough can be seen kneeling over the fallen King , checking to see if he ’ s dead .
• Pepper confirms that all of this , including the assassin in the bushes , was dutifully photographed by Army Intelligence agents situated on the nearby Fire House roof .
• He presents evidence that all security for Dr. King was withdrawn from the area by the Memphis Police Department , including a special security @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tactical police units .
A black detective at the nearby fire station , Ed Redditt , was withdrawn from his post on the afternoon of April 4th , allegedly because of a death threat against him .
And the only two black firemen at Fire Station No.2 were transferred to another station .
• He names and confirms the presence of Alpha 184 snipers at locations high above the Lorraine Motel balcony .
• He explains the use of two white mustangs in the operation to frame Ray .
• He proves that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; that Loyd Jowers took the rifle from the shooter who was in the bushes ; that the Memphis police were working in close collaboration with the FBI , Army Intelligence , and the “ Dixie Mafia , ” particularly local produce dealer Frank Liberto and his New Orleans associate Carlos Marcello ; and that every aspect of the government ’ s case was filled with holes that any person familiar with the details and possessing elementary logical abilities could refute .
• So importantly , Pepper shows how the mainstream media and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the truth of MLK ’ s murder through lies and disinformation , just as they have done with the Kennedy and Malcom X assassinations that are of a piece with this one .
But since this is a book review and not a book , I will stop listing Pepper ’ s very detailed and convincing findings .
While he may not have answered every aspects of the case , and may be mistaken in some small details , he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the basic fact that James @ @ @ @ @ @ @ King , but that this great and dangerous leader was killed by a conspiracy organized at the highest levels of government .
The Plot to Kill King will mesmerize any reader seeking the truth about MLK ’ s assassination .
Even when Pepper , towards the end of the book , offers circumstantial and non-corroborated testimony from witnesses Ronnie Lee Adkins and Johnton Shelby , the reader can ’ t help but be intrigued and to consider their stories highly plausible given all that Pepper has proven .
Adkins claims that his father @ @ @ @ @ @ @ FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ’ s deputy , and then he himself , were part of the plot to kill King .
This involved politicians , the FBI , MPD , and mafia , including the aforementioned produce dealer Frank Liberto and others , making payoffs with FBI money to various people , including Jesse Jackson ( whom Adkins , Jr. claims was a paid FBI informer ) and working closely on the details of the assassination .
Johton Shelby ’ s story as recounted in his deposition ( 2014 ) to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ( 2009 ) , as appendices in the book ) , is that his mother , who was working as an emergency room aide at St. Joseph ’ s Hospital when King was brought there , inadvertently witnessed men spitting on Dr. King as he lay in the emergency room and a doctor putting a pillow over his head and suffocating him to death .
Pepper tends to accept these accounts , but says he isn ’ t completely convinced of all aspects of them .
The reader is offered plenty of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Besides clearly proving the government ’ s part in killing Martin Luther King , this book is very important for the way Pepper links the case to those of JFK and RFK , who was murdered two months after King .
At the center of all these murders is a trinity of men who were devoted to the ending the Vietnam War and all wars , restoring economic justice for all Americans , and eliminating racial inequality .
That their goals were the same provides a motive for their murders by forces opposed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ murders clearly involved highly sophisticated operations and cover-ups that could never have been pulled off by “ crazed lone assassins ” points to powerful forces with those means at their disposal .
And when it comes to opportunity , when did the shadowy forces of the deep state ever lack for that ?
The ramifications of the MLK assassination profoundly inform our current condition .
For anyone who truly cares about peace , love , and justice , The Plot to Kill King is essential reading .
William Pepper should be saluted .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ s noble legacy .
The Best of Edward Curtin

MLK DAY 2020. In commemoration of Martin Luther King’s assassination, we bring to you this article by Edward Curtin first published on Global Research in January 2017.
**
Very few Americans are aware of the truth behind the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Few books have been written about it, unlike other significant assassinations, especially JFK’s. For almost fifty years there has been a media blackout supported by government deception to hide the truth.
And few people, in a massive act of self-deception, have chosen to question the absurd official explanation, choosing, rather, to embrace a mythic fabrication intended to sugarcoat the bitter fruit that has resulted from the murder of the one man capable of leading a mass movement for revolutionary change in the United States. Today we are eating the fruit of our denial.
In order to comprehend the significance of this extraordinary book, it is first necessary to dispel a widely accepted falsehood about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. William Pepper does that on the first page.
To understand his death, it is essential to realize that although he is popularly depicted and perceived as a civil rights leader, he was much more than that. A non-violent revolutionary, he personified the most powerful force for the long-overdue social, political, and economic reconstruction of the nation.
In other words, Martin Luther King was a transmitter of a non-violent spiritual and political energy so plenipotent that his very existence was a threat to an established order based on violence, racism, and economic exploitation. He was a very dangerous man. Best Price: $21.09 Buy New $17.00 (as of 06:30 UTC - Details) b
Revolutionaries are, of course, anathema to the power elites who, with all their might, resist such rebels’ efforts to transform society. If they can’t buy them off, they knock them off. Forty-eight years after King’s assassination, the causes he fought for – civil rights, the end to U.S. wars of aggression , and economic justice for all – remain not only unfulfilled, but have worsened in so many respects. And King’s message has been enervated by the sly trick of giving him a national holiday and urging Americans to make it “a day of service.” Needless to say, such service does not include non-violent war resistance or protesting a decadent system of economic injustice.
Because MLK repeatedly called the United States the “greatest purveyor of violence on earth,” he was universally condemned by the mass media and government that later – once he was long and safely dead – praised him to the heavens. This has continued to the present day of historical amnesia.
But William Pepper resurrects the revolutionary MLK, and in doing so shows in striking detail why elements within the U.S. government executed him. After reading this book, no fair-minded reader can reach any other conclusion. The Plot to Kill King, the culminating volume of a trilogy that Pepper has written on the assassination, consists of slightly less text than supporting documentation in its appendices, which include numerous depositions and interviews that buttress Pepper’s thesis on the why and how of this horrible murder. It demands a close reading that should put to rest any pseudo-debates about the essentials of the case.
Pepper, an attorney who represented the King family in the 1999 trial that found U.S. officials of the federal (in particular, the FBI and Army Intelligence), state, and local governments responsible for King’s assassination, has worked on the King case since 1977. He met MLK in 1967, after King had read his Ramparts’ magazine article, “The Children of Vietnam,” that exposed the hideous effects of U.S. napalm and white phosphorous bombing on young and old Vietnamese innocents. The text and photos of that article reduced King to tears and were instrumental in his increased opposition to the war against Vietnam as articulated in his dramatic Riverside Church speech (“Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence”) on April 4, 1967, one year to the day before his execution in Memphis. That speech, in which King so powerfully and publically linked the war with racism and economic exploitation, foretold his death at the hands of the perpetrators of those abominations.
Devastated by King’s death, and assuming the alleged assassin James Earl Ray was responsible, Pepper retreated from the fray until a 1977 conversation with the Rev. Ralph Abernathy, King’s associate, who raised the specter of Ray’s innocence. After a five hour interrogation of the imprisoned Ray in 1978, Pepper was convinced that Ray did not shoot King and set out on a forty year quest to uncover the truth.
Before examining the essentials of Pepper’s discovery, it is important to point out that MLK, Jr, his father, Rev. M. L. King, Sr, and his maternal grandfather, Rev. A.D. Williams, all pastors of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, were spied on by Army Intelligence and the FBI since 1917. All were considered communist sympathizers and dangerous to the reigning hegemony because of their espousal of racial and economic equality. When MLK, Jr. forcefully denounced unjust and immoral war-making as well, and announced his Poor People’s Campaign and intent to lead a massive peaceful encampment of hundreds of thousands in Washington, D.C., he set off panic in the bowels of government spies and their masters. Seventy-five years of spying on black religious leaders here found its ultimate “justification.” As Stokely Carmichael, co-chairman of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, said to King in a conversation secretly recorded by Army Intelligence, “The man don’t care you call ghettos concentration camps, but when you tell him his war machine is nothing but hired killers, you got trouble.”
It is against this “trouble” that Pepper’s investigation must be set, as that “trouble” is also the background for the linked assassinations of JFK, Malcolm X, and RFK. Understanding the forces behind the military, the spies, and the gunmen who, while operating in the shadows, are actually the second layer of the onion skin, is essential. The government and mainstream corporate media form the outer layer with their collusion in disinformation, lying, and truth suppression, but Pepper correctly identifies the core as follows.
Bombastic, chauvinistic, corporate propaganda aside, where the slaughter of innocents is, and always was, justified in the name of patriotism and national security, it has always and ever been about money. Corporate and financial leaders trusted with the keys to the Republic’s treasure moved from boardrooms to senior government positions and back again. Construction, oil and gas, defense industry, and pharmaceutical corporations, their bankers, brokers, and executives thrive in a war economy. Fortunes are made and dynasties created and perpetuated and a cooperating elite permeates an entire society and ultimately contaminates the world in its drive for national resources wherever they are ….Vietnam was his [King’s] Rubicon …. Here, as never before, would he seriously challenge the interests of the power elite.
MLK was assassinated on April 4, 1968 at 6:01 PM as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. He was shot in the lower right side of his face by one rifle bullet that shattered his jaw, damaged his upper spine, and came to rest below his left shoulder blade. The U.S. government claimed the assassin was a racist loner named James Earl Ray, who had escaped from the Missouri State Penitentiary on April 23, 1967. Ray was alleged to have fired the fatal shot from a second-floor bathroom window of a rooming house above the rear of Jim’s Grill across the street. Running to his rented room, Ray allegedly gathered his belongings, including the rifle, in a bedspread-wrapped bundle, rushed out the front door onto the adjoining street, and in a panic dropped the bundle in the doorway of the Canipe Amusement Company a few doors down. He was then said to have jumped into his white Mustang and driven to Atlanta where he abandoned the car. From there he fled to Canada and then to England where he was eventually arrested at Heathrow Airport on June 8, 1968 and extradited to the U.S. The state claims that the money Ray needed to purchase the car and for all his travel was secured through various robberies and a bank heist. Ray’s alleged motive was racism and that he was a bitter and dangerous loner.
Propaganda, Disinformation and Dirty Tricks: James Earl Ray Was Innocent of the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
When Ray, under extraordinary pressure, coercion, and a payoff from his lawyer to take a plea, pleaded guilty (only a few days later to request a trial that was denied) and was sentenced to 99 years in prison, the case seemed to be closed, and was dismissed from public consciousness. Another hate-filled lone assassin, shades of Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, had committed a despicable deed.
In the years leading up to Pepper’s 1978 involvement, only a few lonely voices expressed doubts about the government’s case – Harold Weisberg in 1971 and Mark Lane and Dick Gregory in 1977. The rest of the country put themselves and the case to sleep. They are still sleeping, but Pepper is trying with this last book to wake them up. Meanwhile, the disinformation specialists continue with their lies.
While a review is not the place to go into every detail of Pepper’s rebuttal of the government’s shabby claims, let me say at the outset that he emphatically does so, and adds in the process some tentative claims of which he is not certain but which, if true, are stunning.
As with the assassinations of President Kennedy and his brother, Robert (two months after MLK), all evidence points to the construction of patsies to take the blame for government executions. Ray, Oswald, and Sirhan all bear striking resemblances in the ways they were chosen and moved as pawns over long periods of time into positions where their only reactions could be stunned surprise when they were accused of the murders.
It took Pepper many years to piece together the essential truths, once he and Abernathy interviewed Ray in prison in 1978. The first giveaway that something was seriously amiss came with the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations’ report on the King assassination. Led by Robert Blakey, suspect in his conduct of the other assassination inquiries, who had replaced Richard Sprague, who was deemed to be too independent, “this multi-million dollar investigation ignored or denied all evidence that raised the possibility that James Earl Ray was innocent,” and that government forces might be involved. Pepper lists over twenty such omissions that rival the absurdities of the magical thinking of the Warren Commission. The HSCA report became the template “for all subsequent disinformation in print and visual examinations of this case” for the past thirty-seven years.
Pepper’s decades-long investigation, not only refutes the government’s case against James Earl Ray, but definitively proves that King was killed by a government conspiracy led by the FBI, Army Intelligence, and Memphis Police, assisted by southern Mafia figures. He is right to assert that “we have probably acquired more detailed knowledge about this political assassination than we have ever had about any previous historical event.” This makes the silence around this case even more shocking. This shock is accentuated when one is reminded (or told for the first time) that in 1999 a Memphis jury, after a thirty day trial and over seventy witnesses, found the U.S. government guilty in the killing of MLK. The King family had brought the suit and William Pepper represented them. They were grateful that the truth was confirmed, but saddened by the way the findings were buried once again by a media in cahoots with the government.
The civil trial was the King family’s last resort to get a public hearing to disclose the truth of the assassination. They and Pepper knew that Ray was an innocent pawn, but Ray had died in prison in 1998 after trying for thirty years to get a trial and prove his innocence (shades of Sirhan Sirhan who still languishes in prison). During all those years, Ray had maintained that he had been manipulated by a shadowy figure named Raul, who supplied him with money and his white Mustang and coordinated all his complicated travels, including having him buy a rifle and come to Jim’s Grill and the boarding house on the day of the assassination. The government has always denied that Raul existed.
Blocked at every turn by the authorities and unable to get Ray a trial, Pepper arranged an unscripted, mock TV trial that aired on April 4, 1993, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the assassination. Jurors were selected from a pool of U.S. citizens, a former U.S. Attorney and a federal judge served as prosecutor and judge, with Pepper serving as defense attorney. He presented extensive evidence clearly showing that authorities had withdrawn all security for King; that the state’s chief witness was falling down drunk; that the alleged bathroom sniper’s nest was empty right before the shot was fired; that three eyewitnesses, including the NY Times Earl Caldwell, said that the shot came from the bushes behind the rooming house; and that two eyewitnesses saw Ray drive away in his white Mustang before the shooting, etc. The prosecution’s feeble case was rejected by the jury that found Ray not guilty.
As with all Pepper’s work on the case (including book reviews), the mainstream media responded with silence. And though this was only a TV trial, increasing evidence emerged that the owner of Jim’s Grill, Loyd Jowers, was deeply involved in the assassination. Pepper dug deeper, and on December 16, 1993, Loyd Jowers appeared on ABC’s Primetime Live that aired nationwide. Pepper writes, “Loyd Jowers cleared James Earl Ray, saying that he did not shoot MLK but that he, Jowers, had hired a shooter after he was approached by Memphis produce man Frank Liberto and paid $1,000,000 to facilitate the assassination. He also said that he had been visited by a man names Raul who delivered a rifle and asked him to hold it until arrangements were finalized …. The morning after the Primetime Live broadcast there was no coverage of the previous night’s program, not even on ABC …. Here was a confession, on prime time television, to involvement in one of the most heinous crimes in the history of the Republic, and virtually no American mass-media coverage.”
In the twenty-three years since that confession, Pepper has worked tirelessly on the case and has uncovered a plethora of additional evidence that refutes the government’s claims and indicts it and the media for a continuing cover-up. The evidence he has gathered, detailed and documented in The Plot to Kill King, proves that Martin Luther King was killed by a conspiracy masterminded by the U.S. government. Much of his evidence was presented at the 1999 trial, while other was subsequently discovered. Since the names and details involved make clear that, as with the murders of JFK and RFK, the conspiracy was very sophisticated with many moving parts organized at the highest level, I will just highlight a few of his findings in what follows. A reader should read the book to understand the full scope of the plot, its execution, and the cover-up.
Pepper refutes the government and proves, through multiple witnesses, telephonic, and photographic evidence, that Raul existed; that his full name is Raul Coelho; and that he was James Earl Ray’s intelligence handler, who provided him with money and instructions from their first meeting in the Neptune Bar in Montreal, where Ray had fled in 1967 after his prison escape, until the day of the assassination. It was Raul who instructed Ray to return to the U.S. (an act that makes no sense for an escaped prisoner who had fled the country), gave him money for the white Mustang, helped him attain travel documents, and moved him around the country like a pawn on a chess board. The parallels to Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan are startling.
He presents the case of Donald Wilson, a former FBI agent working out of the Atlanta office in 1968, who went with a senior colleague to check out an abandoned white Mustang with Alabama plates (Ray’s car, to which Raul had a set of keys) and opened the passenger door to find that an envelope and some papers fell out onto the ground. Thinking he may have disturbed a crime scene, the nervous Wilson pocketed them. Later, when he read them, their explosive content intuitively told him that if he gave them to his superiors they would be destroyed. One piece was a torn out page from a 1963 Dallas telephone directory with the name Raul written at the top, and the letter “J” with a Dallas telephone number for a club run by Jack Ruby, Oswald’s killer. The page was for the letter H and had numerous phone numbers for H. L. Hunt, Dallas oil billionaire and a friend of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Both men hated MLK. The second sheet contained Raul’s name and a list of names and sums and dates for payment. On the third sheet was written the telephone number and extension for the Atlanta FBI office. (Read Jim Douglass’s important interview with Donald Wilson in The Assassinations, pp.479-491.)
Dallas telephone directory with the name Raul written at the top, and the letter “J” with a Dallas telephone number for a club run by Jack Ruby, Oswald’s killer. The page was for the letter H and had numerous phone numbers for H. L. Hunt, Dallas oil billionaire and a friend of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Both men hated MLK. The second sheet contained Raul’s name and a list of names and sums and dates for payment. On the third sheet was written the telephone number and extension for the Atlanta FBI office. (Read Jim Douglass’s important interview with Donald Wilson in The Assassinations, pp.479-491.) Pepper interviewed four other witnesses who confirmed that they had seen Raul with Jack Ruby in Dallas in 1963 and that they were associated.
and that they were associated. Pepper shows that the alias Ray was given and used from July 1967 until April 4, 1968 – Eric Galt – was the name of a Toronto operative of U.S. Army Intelligence, Eric St. Vincent Galt, who worked for Union Carbide with Top Secret clearance. The warehouse at the Canadian Union Carbide Plant in Toronto that Galt supervised “housed a top secret munitions project funded jointly by the CIA, the U.S. Naval Surface Weapons Center, and the Army Electronics Research and Development Command …. In August 1967, Galt met with Major Robert M. Collins, a top aide to the head of the 902 nd Military Intelligence Group (MIG) Colonel John Downie.” Downie selected four members for an Alpha 184 Sniper Unit that was sent to Memphis to back up the primary assassin of MLK. Meanwhile, Ray, set up as the patsy, was able to move about freely since he was protected by the pseudonymous NSA clearance for Eric Galt.
Military Intelligence Group (MIG) Colonel John Downie.” Downie selected four members for an Alpha 184 Sniper Unit that was sent to Memphis to back up the primary assassin of MLK. Meanwhile, Ray, set up as the patsy, was able to move about freely since he was protected by the pseudonymous NSA clearance for Eric Galt. To refute the government’s claim that Ray and his brother robbed the Alton, Illinois Bank to finance his travels and car purchase (therefore no Raul existed), Pepper “called the sheriff in Alton and the president of the bank; they gave the same statement. The Ray brothers had nothing to do with the robbery. No one from the HSCA, the FBI, or The New York Times had sought their opinion.” CNN later reiterated the media falsehood that became part of the official false story.
Pepper proves that the fatal shot came from the bushes behind Jim’s Grill and the rooming house, not from the bathroom window. He presents overwhelming evidence for this, showing that the government’s claim, based on the testimony on a severely drunk Charlie Stephens, was absurd. His evidence includes the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses and that of Loyd Jowers, the owner of Jim’s Grill, who said he took the rifle from the shooter in the bushes and brought it into the bar where he hid it. Thus, Ray was not the assassin.
He presents conclusive evidence that the bushes were cut down the morning after the assassination in an attempt to corrupt the crime scene. The order to do so came from Memphis Police Department Inspector Sam Evans to Maynard Stiles, a senior administrator of the Memphis Department of Public Works.
He shows how King’s room was moved from a safe interior room, 201, to balcony room, 306, on the upper floor; how King was conveniently positioned alone on the balcony by members of his own entourage for the easy mortal head shot from the bushes across the street. (Many people only remember the iconic photograph taken after-the-fact with Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, et al., standing over the fallen King and pointing across the street.) Pepper implicates that Reverends Billy Kyles, Jesse Jackson, and, to a lesser extent, Ralph Abernathy were involved in these machinations. He uncovers of the role of black military intelligence agent Marrell McCollough, attached to the 111 th MIG, within the entourage. McCollough can be seen kneeling over the fallen King, checking to see if he’s dead.
on the balcony by members of his own entourage for the easy mortal head shot from the bushes across the street. (Many people only remember the iconic photograph taken with Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, et al., standing over the fallen King and pointing across the street.) Pepper implicates that Reverends Billy Kyles, Jesse Jackson, and, to a lesser extent, Ralph Abernathy were involved in these machinations. He uncovers of the role of black military intelligence agent Marrell McCollough, attached to the 111 MIG, within the entourage. McCollough can be seen kneeling over the fallen King, checking to see if he’s dead. Pepper confirms that all of this, including the assassin in the bushes, was dutifully photographed by Army Intelligence agents situated on the nearby Fire House roof.
He presents evidence that all security for Dr. King was withdrawn from the area by the Memphis Police Department, including a special security unit of black officers, and four tactical police units. A black detective at the nearby fire station, Ed Redditt, was withdrawn from his post on the afternoon of April 4th, allegedly because of a death threat against him. And the only two black firemen at Fire Station No.2 were transferred to another station.
He names and confirms the presence of Alpha 184 snipers at locations high above the Lorraine Motel balcony.
He explains the use of two white mustangs in the operation to frame Ray.
He proves that Ray had driven off before the shooting; that Loyd Jowers took the rifle from the shooter who was in the bushes; that the Memphis police were working in close collaboration with the FBI, Army Intelligence, and the “Dixie Mafia,” particularly local produce dealer Frank Liberto and his New Orleans associate Carlos Marcello; and that every aspect of the government’s case was filled with holes that any person familiar with the details and possessing elementary logical abilities could refute.
So importantly, Pepper shows how the mainstream media and government flacks have spent years covering up the truth of MLK’s murder through lies and disinformation, just as they have done with the Kennedy and Malcom X assassinations that are of a piece with this one.
But since this is a book review and not a book, I will stop listing Pepper’s very detailed and convincing findings. While he may not have answered every aspects of the case, and may be mistaken in some small details, he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt the basic fact that James Earl Ray did not kill Martin Luther King, but that this great and dangerous leader was killed by a conspiracy organized at the highest levels of government.
The Plot to Kill King will mesmerize any reader seeking the truth about MLK’s assassination. Even when Pepper, towards the end of the book, offers circumstantial and non-corroborated testimony from witnesses Ronnie Lee Adkins and Johnton Shelby, the reader can’t help but be intrigued and to consider their stories highly plausible given all that Pepper has proven. Adkins claims that his father, a friend of Clyde Tolson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s deputy, and then he himself, were part of the plot to kill King. This involved politicians, the FBI, MPD, and mafia, including the aforementioned produce dealer Frank Liberto and others, making payoffs with FBI money to various people, including Jesse Jackson (whom Adkins, Jr. claims was a paid FBI informer) and working closely on the details of the assassination. Johton Shelby’s story as recounted in his deposition (2014) to Pepper (reproduced, together with Adkins’ (2009), as appendices in the book), is that his mother, who was working as an emergency room aide at St. Joseph’s Hospital when King was brought there, inadvertently witnessed men spitting on Dr. King as he lay in the emergency room and a doctor putting a pillow over his head and suffocating him to death. Pepper tends to accept these accounts, but says he isn’t completely convinced of all aspects of them. The reader is offered plenty of food for thought concerning these claims.
Besides clearly proving the government’s part in killing Martin Luther King, this book is very important for the way Pepper links the case to those of JFK and RFK, who was murdered two months after King. At the center of all these murders is a trinity of men who were devoted to the ending the Vietnam War and all wars, restoring economic justice for all Americans, and eliminating racial inequality. That their goals were the same provides a motive for their murders by forces opposed to these lofty objectives. That their murders clearly involved highly sophisticated operations and cover-ups that could never have been pulled off by “crazed lone assassins” points to powerful forces with those means at their disposal. And when it comes to opportunity, when did the shadowy forces of the deep state ever lack for that?
The ramifications of the MLK assassination profoundly inform our current condition. For anyone who truly cares about peace, love, and justice, The Plot to Kill King is essential reading. William Pepper should be saluted. He has carried on Martin King’s noble legacy.
Reprinted with permission from GlobalResearch.ca.
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