This January 2011 I find it disturbing that Martin Luther King’s speech “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence” is as eerily appropriate for the current state of war making as it was in regard to the Vietnam War. It is terrifyingly easy to insert Afghanistan and Iraq in place of Vietnam. But there is one respect in which the issues of April 1967 are in contrast to January 2011–we do not see images of our war zones every day on the evening news nor in the newspapers. The wars of the last 10 years have become increasingly INVISIBLE. It is easy to go about daily life in America without encountering a single reference to war. Those who attempt to voice dissent regarding war are silenced by the very media whose job it is to inform the public about issues and events across the nation and around the world. I’m referring to the corporate media blackout of the Stop These Wars Peace Protest in Washington DC on December 16, 2010 at which 134 people were arrested for refusing to leave the fence outside the Obama White House. It is very easy to ignore the war-zones we do not experience in any manner. Ignorance is ‘bliss’ in America. Blissfully ignorant Americans are precisely what our government’s military industrial complex desires as the lack of unified opposition to war allows the war machine to continue even as it rapes the resources of America to the detriment of the majority of the population. Will “we” ever break our silence? At the time of this speech King was under fire from many for these views.
King’s entire speech is in 7 parts:
Shanti Om
Peace
om mani padme hum jewel in the lotus wahupa qi prana universal life energy
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