The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Historical insights & thoughts about the world we live in - and the social conditioning exerted upon us by past and current propaganda.
lux
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The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by lux »

Though some photos of this event are available on the web I found them to be too small to show any detail. As it happens I ran across a copy of the April 12, 1968 issue of Life Magazine which features the King Assassination with fairly large photos taken at the time of the shooting. Details are much easier to see in these photos and I hope you can see them too.

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The photos are all in one 2-page spread:
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Here is a closer look at the important ones (due to my scanner being down I shot these with a DSLR direct from the magazine using cropping and minimal sharpening only):

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The wiki summary of this event states:
At 6:01 p.m. on Thursday, April 4, 1968, while he was standing on the motel's second floor balcony, King was struck by a single .30 bullet fired from a Remington 760 Gamemaster. The bullet entered through his right cheek, breaking his jaw, neck and several vertebrae as it travelled down his spinal cord, severing the jugular vein and major arteries in the process before lodging in his shoulder. By the force of the blast, King's necktie was ripped completely off his shirt. He fell violently backwards onto the balcony unconscious.
More specifically the rifle caliber was a .30-06 aka “thirty ought six”, a high powered rifle cartridge commonly used by hunters and capable of taking the largest of North American game including the Alaskan moose, elk and grisly bear according to the Alaska Dept of Fish and Game

To give an idea of the power of the .30-06 cartridge here are two videos that demonstrate its pentration and impact power. In these videos a Remington Gamemaster 7600 is used (virtually identical to the model 760 said to be used to kill King):


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO-u2_0WfeU


full link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHfiVFOKZ4o

Note that the .30-06 easily penetrated 8 solid 2x4 boards and obliterated the target composed of several water jugs and boards. Imagine what such a force would do if it struck a human being in the face as is claimed of the MLK assassination in which the bullet supposedly lodged in his body and never exited.

Note the photos above of Mr King after the shot as he lay with a white cloth over his face which shows no blood at all on the cloth even though the official account claims that his jugular vein was severed by the bullet (King was still alive when these photos were taken according to the media's version of events). Note also in the photo of Mr. King being brought down the stairs on a stretcher where a portion of the right side of his face (where the bullet is said to have struck) is visible and the white sheet covering him with no signs of blood on it.

Does it appear to you that MLK was really assassinated as the media and official sources claimed?
brianv
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by brianv »

The American M-14 Rifle in 7.62 is still in use in our armed forces and saw a resurgence of use by Marines in the deserts of Iraq during the Gulf War due to it's long range, flat trajectory and ability to penetrate steel.

[...] Upon entering a fleshy target, the 7.62 bullet travels strait nearly six inches before the massive shock wave ahead of the bullet transfers incredible energy into the target as the bullet begins to tumble. Thus the bullet can exit before the maximum shock wave expansion can occur. 30 Caliber rifle bullets of this type are known to knock men down, and throw them off their feet back some distance. The cartridge is powerful, accurate, and humane in it's ability to kill quickly. The permanent cavity produced remains after the bullet exits the body. The temporary cavity causes tearing of tissues and muscle damage. The temporary cavitation (shock wave) causes death when it impacts the heart or liver but not necessarily in other areas of the torso.
http://www.bobtuley.com/terminal.htm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vv1FUpm_Avc

See the comments!
lux
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by lux »

Photo of King in open casket service:
Image
source
hoi.polloi
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

This is a fascinating and depressing case to examine.

A sort of hero with words to the American public, and whose speeches are taught in public schools to have us believe America can be a better place despite the sad truth, Martin Luther King, Jr.'s end was too soon. The lurking corruption of America caught up to his positive campaign but it's not clear how that happened, or why, or what kind of pressure was felt anywhere to bring it to this.

According to those whom I've asked about this, there were instantly rumors of corruption within King's entourage; his own wife, his partners, some accused the extremists and Black Panthers, everyone knew the government was somehow involved but tried to keep a twenty foot pole away from their reeking involvement. To this day, the Memphis memorial has a bizarre culture around it.

There is the touching story as Martin Luther King, Jr. might have told it in pictures - of the slave trade, the tragedy of the beginning of Black America, the civil rights struggle, the marches and assemblies and peaceful gatherings - and then the story starts to twist into a modern interpretation. We are told his campaign was rife with conflict, that King was under duress after setbacks in his peace organizations (i.e.; riots), and somehow this pressure was getting to be too much. TV's begin blaring in this area, as if to remind us of the takeover of the power of television to command the attention of the American people. In a more recent expansion, there is an entire wing of the museum dedicated to smoke and mirrors disproving the government's involvement, complete with 9/11-esque sciences and models of where the lone shooter must have been. Outside, there is a sort of performance-art act of a second museum: people protesting the museum, offering alternative explanations and providing pamphlets.

Most every-day people seem kind of "fed up" with this den of conflict and avoid thinking of the matter. It really explains a lot of American culture, I think, to go to a place like this and experience the bizarre, unresolved explanation of recent history, and the cheesy 1950's "Whites Only"-style diners on the same block - as if to obstinately stand against the discomfort of truth while the quest for truth hasn't even been started yet. The seductive package of comfort, convenience, and ease looms over the throbbing den of corruption, instant-gratification, compassionless and ill-gotten gains that the entire enterprise of the Great Experiment physically is. The real search for truth, in any area, is co-opted by the product of truth that so many people get caught up in. Even those who have discovered something eventually fall for this and try to sell you a book or a movie or something else. (This is why I firmly believe our site must remain free of charge forever and a choice for all truth-seeking people to examine, rather than another chinsy product.)

In the background of this city looms a towering, seemingly abandoned glass pyramid - but I've never been able to get anyone to explain what this pyramid was all about. My friend who lives there claims it is filled with sports equipment and dusty conference tables and nobody uses it for anything. In Memphis, as with every other city in America, there are fantastic artistic expressions of offerings to the "God of Avoiding Pragmatic Truth" that America worships -- and plenty of convenient places to escape reality or get lost in an illusion of grandeur that has never actually once existed in reality in the accursed country. All of America's true grandeur is of the natural landscape, which the Masonic government violently occupies and claims as its own greatness. America (and to some extent Canada) are often accused of not really having a culture at all. I would argue that this has been America's culture since it began, and that it must change soon or prove fatal to America: avoiding truth and self-examination at all cost.

Therefore, I don't think we should throw away the possibility that King, too, was somehow involved in his death or disappearance. I personally find it completely unlikely and offensive. Yet, another part of me says if we can break down the myth of America in all areas, even the treats and tidbits offered to the populists like "Civil Rights", we would be doing the people who are stuck in its clutches a big favor. We can sort fact from fiction, real achievements from false achievements, and in so doing learn from the past instead of burying it in inadequate museums dedicated to falsehood and twisting the truth.

Unfortunately, this is also where the weakness of our site shows; we can judge fake pictures, but the real truth behind the pictures is a mystery ... even where we might most hope that it was not.
simonshack
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by simonshack »

lux wrote:Photo of King in open casket service:
I've found some more images of King in casket. Obviously, the first question that comes to mind is:
How did they reconstruct King's face - if what Wikipedia says is true?
"The bullet entered through his right cheek, breaking his jaw, neck and several vertebrae as it travelled down his spinal cord, severing the jugular vein and major arteries in the process before lodging in his shoulder."

However, I am no plastic surgeon and there may have been - at the time - facial reconstruction techniques of which I'm not aware of. If anyone has specific knowledge about this, please submit your feedback on this issue.

Image
source: http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo ... -in-coffin
Image
source: http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo ... -in-coffin

But there is also another question concerning these images - which clearly are meant to depict the very same historical moments of his funeral (unless we wish to believe that, for some unfathomable reason, King's suit was swapped - or that his uppermost suit button was removed at some stage.). Here are some 'older-looking' images of King's casket (although, oddly enough, labeled " ©2001 Harry Benson") :
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Quite inexplicably, in this much more defined, higher-resolution "CORBIS" image (which I have applied slight brightness/contrast to), that upper suit button is not visible - yet a lower suit button is clearly seen:
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All in all, - considering King's immaculate face and the above observations regarding his upper suit button (clearly visible in the less-defined "Harry Benson" images), I'm afraid we may, once again, legitimately formulate this question:

Image
hoi.polloi
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

These photos are pretty weird, but I think they're implying two buttons. One perpendicular to his body and close to his tie, and the other further from the tie and flat against the suit. You are pointing out two different "official" buttons. The perpendicular button is meant to be that slightly lighter blob where the lapels meet. (Not saying it actually resembles what it's supposed to.)

On the other hand, we have the sim old problem (forgive a pun) of two apparently different photos looking far too similar to one another. The original and the 2001 copyrighted one. And yet different in not a way that builds any confidence - it almost looks like two different versions of MLK in the variation.
However, I am no plastic surgeon and there may have been - at the time - facial reconstruction techniques of which I'm not aware of. If anyone has specific knowledge about this, please submit your feedback on this issue.
I don't know about facial reconstruction from such a devastating wound, but I have seen masterpieces of mortician's works, where they make someone look "more alive" than what they looked like actually alive. It's kind of a morbid art form, but it is useful for things like this where people want to remember them how they apparently lived. Again, I cannot comment on the possibility but they do really crazy things. It is like presenting food for a magazine ad, and they use Elmer's glue for milk and plastic for ice cubes. Nobody has to experience it any other way, so it just has to look good one more time before they bury it - er, forgive me - them. They still represent a person in this latter stage so even though they are a construction of different materials and chemicals that would never work in a living person, people are still saying good-bye so it's still kind of a "them" instead of an "it".

Just why they would have an open casket for such a huge public figure is beyond me, but it actually raises the question for me: why didn't they have "open casket" funerals (it actually looks like there is glass over the image of MLK here) for all the big names - Lincoln, the Kennedys, etc.? And I can't comment on why that would or would not be in this case.

It does appear those two photos suspiciously close to each other are not right. The 2001 image is a derivative of the AP image. Or, wait a second, is it vice versa?

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The red dot marks my "squash" of the fuller 2001 image to achieve the flatness of the AP image. The blue dot is for the AP image and the yellow dot marks the 2001 image rotated to compare. Look how closely the images are to one another simply by stretching the 2-dimensional image. Is this really how real 3D faces behave when looked at from different angles? Yes, the nostril, chin and forehead are slightly different between my squash and the AP pic, but with Photoshop that is simple enough to alter. It just doesn't feel they should be that different, either. The chin has collapsed from a profile perspective? Huh?

It seems to me the closeness and the divergence of these two angles (AP and 2001) is too close for both to be reality. Also, the angle of the casket that cuts off the face seems to diverge too greatly. It does not have the feel of reality to it at all. It has every feeling of typical Mafia-style photo weirdness. Woah, and that's not to mention the third image with the same angle.

Image

Sorry, but that's just weird, and -- if not as simmy as some 9/11 vicsims -- awfully awfully suspicious.
lux
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by lux »

Image

Harry Benson is the same photographer responsible for the images I posted (from his book) in the RFK Assassination thread.
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Image

Lookalikes?
Last edited by brianv on Tue Nov 20, 2012 5:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
simonshack
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by simonshack »

*
Great observations, Hoi - the significantly different angles/vantage points of the AP and Harry Benson images should not produce such similar edge-of-casket-versus-MLK-face angles.

As for the button issue, well I cannot honestly see why the much more defined CORBIS image would not show the upper button quite clearly - or at least as sharply as it is seen in the Harry Benson image.

Look what I just found - another (CROPPED) version of that Harry Benson image - minus the button :

Image
source: http://www.toptenz.net/iconic-photograp ... jr-funeral

One has to wonder why anyone would have felt the need to crop that most historical image. <_<


**************************
lux wrote: Harry Benson is the same photographer responsible for the images I posted (from his book) in the RFK Assassination thread.
Oh, great! <_<
So it's yet another wondrous case of same-photographer-at-the-right-place-at-the-right-historical-time! Good Heavens...
fbenario
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by fbenario »

Make of this what you will. No surprise this actual court verdict has never made its way into any textbook, or any established, mainstream, and thus 'approved', discussion of the killing.
The Martin Luther King Conspiracy
Exposed in Memphis
by Jim Douglass
Spring 2000

According to a Memphis jury’s verdict on December 8, 1999, in the wrongful death lawsuit of the King family versus Loyd Jowers “and other unknown co-conspirators,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government. Almost 32 years after King’s murder at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, a court extended the circle of responsibility for the assassination beyond the late scapegoat James Earl Ray to the United States government.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Uns ... onExp.html
Libero
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by Libero »

fbenario wrote:Make of this what you will. No surprise this actual court verdict has never made its way into any textbook, or any established, mainstream, and thus 'approved', discussion of the killing.
The Martin Luther King Conspiracy
Exposed in Memphis
by Jim Douglass
Spring 2000

According to a Memphis jury’s verdict on December 8, 1999, in the wrongful death lawsuit of the King family versus Loyd Jowers “and other unknown co-conspirators,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a conspiracy that included agencies of his own government. Almost 32 years after King’s murder at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis on April 4, 1968, a court extended the circle of responsibility for the assassination beyond the late scapegoat James Earl Ray to the United States government.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Uns ... onExp.html
Sure.. Yeah... Jim, no doubt a relative of Frederick Douglass. Such a common spelling.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass
Last edited by Libero on Thu Jan 17, 2013 10:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
hoi.polloi
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by hoi.polloi »

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 U.S. 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.
-from the above article

Aha, our familiar lawyer friend Mr. Pepper makes his appearance here. This name is associated with a lot of modern research into government complicity. I don't know how to feel about him, yet but haven't had too many warning flags go off. Except, he does seem to appear a lot. Is he a real "crusader for truth" or a name to stamp on belittled "truth seeking" trials?

This trial is believable as both evidence of what happened (blatant government involvement in King's death), or evidence of the further muck and mire of a psy-op (not everything before his apparent death was as it appeared on paper). It's very difficult to distinguish without having attended the little trial or seen much more during this 1960's time. :/
lux
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by lux »

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 U.S. 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 problem I have with things like this Jowers/MLK trial is that it is common knowledge that the “clandestine services” have methods of murder that are indistinguishable from natural causes or accidents. So if they simply want to get rid of someone why go to all the trouble and risks of conspiracies, accomplices, “secret” pay-offs, hidden shooters, loud firearms, witnesses, murder weapon disposal, security leaks and all the other loose ends and potential complications that a scenario like Jowers' story requires?

I believe the most logical and likely answer to this question is that such a scenario would be done only to set up a patsy. And, the best kind of patsy is one who thinks he really was involved in the alleged murder.
Libero
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by Libero »

I think that the King assassin's story is in-credible. But check for yourself. Often, as I have found, it is not the story that you are told but what you find out after you follow up that really tells the tale. Not to mention many of the ones he associated with that also appear to have become political puppets. James Earl Ray also looks to have a military background. That always gets my fakery meter buzzin' when I see that, as it seems to be such a common theme among many 'assassins.'


Edited original post to keep more on topic :)
Last edited by Libero on Thu Jan 17, 2013 10:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Libero
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Re: The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Unread post by Libero »

Percy Foreman was the attorney ultimately selected by James Earl Ray, the accused assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr. However, it appears that Foreman stepped in just in the nick of time to encourage Ray not to go through with the trial and to simply accept a 99 year plea agreement.

"Mr. Foreman became James Earl Ray's lawyer 36 hours before he was scheduled to go on trial for the killing of the civil rights leader. Mr. Ray had dismissed his attorney Arthur J. Hanes after conferring with Mr. Foreman for several hours. Mr. Foreman eventually persuaded Mr. Ray to plead guilty to the 1968 slaying in exchange for a 99-year sentence."

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/26/obitu ... -king.html

http://jfkresearch.freehomepage.com/PercyForeman.htm


Interestingly, Percy Foreman, a few years prior to accepting the Ray case was also an attorney for Jack Ruby for a mere 4 days after Melvin Belli had been excused, but evidently the Ruby family and he did not see eye to eye on how to handle the case.

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20 ... %20167.pdf

More on Melvin Belli:
http://cluesforum.info/viewtopic.php?f= ... i#p2378201


Foreman, after the Ray plea agreement, would move on to eventually represent Charles Harrelson, a hired assassin convicted of killing a federal judge in San Antonio. Charles Harrelson, who has since passed, also happens to be the father of modern day actor Woody Harrelson.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_Harrelson
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