Notes From the Trail: The Real Reason Behind Fake News: Unreported Real News

Today -- April 4th -- marks two interconnected anniversaries.

The first, the one we remember the most is April 4, 1968, the day Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee. The other date, one year earlier, April 4, 1967 was the day King gave his most important speech in opposition to the Vietnam War, something which may have led to the more tragic anniversary a year later.

Of course, we all remember that Martin Luther King died at the hands of a lone gunman, James Earl Ray, who was convicted of the crime and died in prison.

Right?

Well, yes James Earl Ray was convicted, and he did die in prison. But did you know that William Pepper, a human rights lawyer who represented both King's widow, Coretta Scott King, and James Earl Ray, won a civil case in Tennessee in 1999 that exonerated Ray in the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.? And did you know that 70 witnesses were called to show that the government itself was responsible, and the evidence they presented proved that the co-conspirators included J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI, the Memphis police, the CIA, and the Mob?

After a four-week trial, it took jurors less than an hour to uphold William Pepper's case, and even Wikipedia has to acknowledge that this "real news" actually happened.

You didn't know?

Well then the mainstream media "successfully" did its job. As I have asserted previously, the rightwing press -- like Fox "News" -- boldly and blatantly proliferates lies. Not the New York Times. They prefer simply not printing certain inconvenient truths.

So if we wonder why "fake news" became an issue in 2016, and why the New York Times has bounced reality checks of its own in the face of Donald Trump's blatant lying, this should give us a clue. And while those just awakening to how news is manipulated to protect those in power have been sent chasing after pedophilia in high places courtesy of Pizzagate (go ahead and Google it and look at the pros and cons, and decide for yourself if there's a "there" there), the King case is an actual provable perpetration, something that made "real news" that has until now gone unreported.

So I am setting forth a challenge for me, my awakening co-hearts and the body politic. And that is to break this unreported story through the "soundless barrier" so that mainstream media MUST cover it ... and to have a citizens Truth and Reconciliation Commission in place by the time the 50th anniversary of the assassination, a year from now.

Why Truth and Reconciliation? As in South Africa a generation ago, it is necessary for our spiritual healing as a nation to become aware of, to acknowledge, to accept and to forgive the perpetrations that have been done "in our name" by the corporate state and secret government. Just as a family system can be made crazy by unacknowledged perpetrations (think pedophile priests) our entire "spirit politic" has been compromised by truths we know in our gut, but which cannot be acknowledged publically.

And while there are those who insist we have so many dire situations facing us today we can't afford to go "back" to redress these toxic acts, I say we cannot go forward together UNLESS we go back to heal them. Consider the moronic irony of liberalism, so intent on "identity politics" over the past two decades, huffing and puffing about "micro-aggression" (tiny, unconscious insults, visible only to the pathologically politically correct) while this MACRO-aggression gets ignored. That's how the right got right, and the left got left.

Ever since the Transpartisan Citizens Summit in 2009, I've been puzzled why, of all the people there, I had the strongest positive connection with the gun-toting militia folks from Idaho. Yesterday I figured it out. I respected their willingness to look the heart of darkness in the face. When progressives take a similar stand, and require our political leaders to do the same, we will be on the road to realizing Martin Luther King's dream.

Meanwhile ...

Wiki Politiki and a Peoples' Upwising

Because of today's anniversary and an opportunity that came my way, I jump-started a project I was planning to launch in a month or two -- a radio podcast and platform I'm calling Wiki Politiki. Late last week, my friend Byron Belitsos of Origin Press told me he was doing publicity for Bill Pepper, who is promoting the third volume in the series, THE PLOT TO KILL KING: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. You can get more background on the story here.

Prepare to be shocked, angered, and then ... hopefully ... activated. Not to act in some sort of reactive rage or melt into a depressive despair, but rather to cultivate in yourself, and in our collective psyche, the love, courage and will to face this shadow, heal together and then build what our colleague Charles Eisenstein calls "the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible."

Just as surely as a physical condition cannot be simultaneously healed and denied, for our sanity and for the sake of our children and their children, it is time to reveal and heal this now.

That's why I went into the studio with my colleague, podcast host and producer Peter B. Collins, and recorded my first Wiki Politiki podcast, an interview with Bill Pepper. I invite you to listen to it here.

Then go read the book. As with Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States, this is part of our Curriculum of Awakening. In knowing this story, you can help start the healing.

As for Wiki Politiki, my stated intent for the podcast is to "bring left and right front and center, to face the music and dance together, and turn the funk into function and leave the junk at the junction."

That's the jokey way of saying that we're taking a transpartisan approach to evolve beyond the partisan trance that has prevented we the people from conversing and convening across party lines to create and set a standard for our leaders and for society's institutions. Interviewees will include illuminaries and solutionaries who hold key pieces of the puzzle, as well as tools for awakening, engagement and spiritual healing.

In addition to the podcast, we will be posting Wiki Politiki -- Conversations for Co-Creation, longer and more in depth interviews that will become a library for healing and transforming the body politic.

If you'd like to learn more, or become a founding member or sponsor, please go here to participate as an "early wiser".

You'll be hearing more about this very soon, and may it lead to a great "upwising" that gives government of, by and for the people -- back to the people.