Loss

A little over a week ago we ran away from home to a dilapidated cabin on Lake Crescent in the Olympic National Park. We needed a break from Current Events so we blew our flimsy budget to smithereens for five days of campfires, hiking, and canoeing (is that a word?). No radio, television, newspapers, or Internets allowed.

Carved out by glaciers during the last Ice Age, and surrounded by old growth forest, Lake Crescent is one of the deepest lakes in the country. Just being able to gaze upon the unbelievably brilliant blue water was a respite … at least for a little while … from the partisan junk and noise that passes for news, BP’s oil volcano, and the death tolls from our ongoing war crimes.

Frequently my mind is not my best friend. There I was in the middle of the Awesome Beauty of Nature and my brain insisted on reminding me of the terrible realities that existed just over the horizon. Then I had to give my brain a great big shove and tell it to sit down and shut the hell up. Sometimes that works … sometimes it doesn’t.

We were in a canoe paddling towards the middle of the lake. The sky and water was blue as the blue in a Maxfield Parrish painting. I looked down and it seemed I could see forever into the depths of the lake. And I wondered … What would it be like to lose something right here … in the middle of the lake? Something of great value. What would it be like if my wedding band slipped off my finger into the lake?

It would be lost the moment it hit the water.

Even if I immediately dove in after the ring it would sink faster and deeper than I could swim down. I would be able to clearly see it as it sank … for a long time. That’s the terrible part. To see it fall away with absolute clarity … sunlight glinting off the gold as it rapidly recedes farther and further into the depths … finally passing deeper than light can penetrate … and then the ring would seem to wink out of existence.

Lost.

As we paddled back to shore a wave of sadness hit. Not about the hypothetical loss of a ring … but about all the things we’ve lost … clearly lost … things that are receding quickly into an irretrievable past.

John Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. 7 days later President Lyndon Johnson established the Warren Commission to investigate the president’s murder. The 888-page final report, presented on September 24, 1964, concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of Kennedy. There was no conspiracy to kill the president according to the Warren Commission.

15 years later the 1978-79 House Select Committee on Assassinations reexamined the evidence and concluded that President Kennedy was “most likely killed as the result of a conspiracy”.

But what is the story consistently told by Main Stream Media?

An April 2010 Newsweek story, Political Violence in America, stated, “Nov. 22, 1963 – President John F. Kennedy was shot and killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a Marxist and social outcast, while riding in a convertible in Dallas.”

Later in the same article, “April 4, 1968 – Civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Ray on a hotel balcony in Memphis.”

There isn’t any mention of a civil trial held in 1999.

Coretta Scott King, King’s widow, along with the rest of King’s family, won a wrongful death civil trial against Loyd Jowers and “other unknown co-conspirators.” Jowers claimed to have received $100,000 to arrange King’s assassination. The jury of six whites and six blacks found Jowers liable and that “governmental agencies were parties” to the assassination plot. The jury also affirmed overwhelming evidence that identified someone else, not James Earl Ray, as the shooter, and that Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.

Author Jim Douglass attended the trial and commented, “This historic trial was so ignored by the media that, apart from the courtroom participants, I was the only person who attended it from beginning to end. What I experienced in that courtroom ranged from inspiration at the courage of the Kings, their lawyer-investigator William F. Pepper, and the witnesses, to amazement at the government’s carefully interwoven plot to kill Dr. King. The seriousness with which US intelligence agencies planned the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks eloquently of the threat Kingian nonviolence represented to the powers that be in the spring of 1968.”

The list of cover-ups and lies is seemingly endless. Even when the lies and cover-ups are exposed … the lies trump truth … and worm their way into our media … our history.

We are lied to about the assassinations of our leaders and we are lied to about why our country goes to war.

The New York Times said that the Pentagon Papers, leaked to the press by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, “demonstrated, among other things, that the Johnson Administration had systematically lied, not only to the public but also to Congress, about a subject of transcendent national interest and significance.“

The war in Vietnam.

Ellsberg said the documents, “… demonstrated unconstitutional behavior by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates.“

Though we saw the Vietnam war was based on lies, it ground on for 4 more years. And no one but the dead were held accountable.

The United States has been waging wars for almost 9 years because of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The explanations the government has given us about the attacks and subsequent wars have been riddled with provable lies. But the wars continue to be supported by our media and funded by a majority of Republicans and Democrats.

James K. Galbraith wrote in The New Republic, “The financial crisis in America isn’t over. It’s ongoing, it remains unresolved, and it stands in the way of full economic recovery. The cause, at the deepest level, was a breakdown in the rule of law. And it follows that the first step toward prosperity is to restore the rule of law in the financial sector.”

“… Upon taking office, President Obama had a chance to change course … and didn’t take it.”

There has been a criminal takeover of our country. The criminals in previous administrations, as well as the current administration, have made sure that accountability will never be enforced. Those who want to get at the truth … can’t. We don’t have access. We can’t dive that deep. The people who could help us … won’t.

We can see the lies so clearly as the truth sinks further away into a history that will never be taught. That’s why we – as a country – have never “Learned Our Lesson” because we’ve never been taught the truth.

We can only passively watch as our leaders take our country to wherever it is that will profit them most … leaving us to mourn the loss of truth … a loss that will never be relieved.

Loss July 12, 2010