Tuesday, August 23, 2011
It is perhaps a fitting tribute to racial co-operation. However, the decision to outsource to China the carving of a new national memorial to Martin Luther King has raised eyebrows in the United States.
The 30ft-tall statue, which forms the centrepiece of a $120 million (£73 million), four-acre memorial to Dr King, opened to the public on Monday on the National Mall in Washington. It is the only memorial on the Mall that does not honour a president or fallen soldiers.
Standing in the shadow of the Washington Monument, the statue shows Dr King emerging from a mountain of Chinese granite with his arms crossed and is called The Stone of Hope.
However, there has been controversy over the choice of Lei Yixin, a 57-year-old master sculptor from Changsha in Hunan province, to carry out the work. Critics have openly asked why a black, or at least an American, artist was not chosen and even remarked that Dr King appears slightly Asian in Mr Lei's rendering.
Mr Lei, who has in the past carved two statues of Mao Tse-tung, one of which stands in the former garden of Mao Anqing, the Chinese leader's son, carried out almost all of the work in Changsha.
More than 150 granite blocks, weighing some 1,600 tons, were then shipped from Xiamen to the port of Baltimore, and reassembled by a team of 100 workmen, including ten Chinese stone masons brought over specifically for the project...[Full Article]
Labels: China, Martin Luther King, statue
Monday, April 4, 2011
April 4, 1968 - The Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
| Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. | |
|---|---|
 Martin Luther King, Jr. | |
| Location | Memphis, Tennessee |
| Date | April 4, 1968 6:01 p.m. (Central Time) |
| Target | Martin Luther King, Jr. |
| Weapon(s) | Remington 760 Gamemaster |
| Death(s) | 1 (King) |
| Injured | None |
| Perpetrator(s) | James Earl Ray |
Martin Luther King, Jr., a prominent American leader of the African-American civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39. On June 10, 1968, James Earl Ray, a fugitive from the Missouri State Penitentiary, was arrested in London at Heathrow Airport, extradited to the United States, and charged with the crime. On March 10, 1969, Ray entered a plea of guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in the Tennessee state penitentiary.[1] Ray later made many attempts to withdraw his guilty plea and be tried by a jury, but was unsuccessful; he died in prison on April 23, 1998, at the age of 70.[2]...[Full Article]
Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination information at Michael Rivero's "What Really Happened"
MARTIN LUTHER KING - THE FATAL SHOT CAME FROM A DIFFERENT DIRECTION
Overlooked evidence in the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
IF JAMES EARL RAY DID NOT KILL MARTIN LUTHER KING, THEN WHO DID?
Labels: assassination, Martin Luther King, MLK
Monday, January 17, 2011
Veterans Today
January 16, 2011 posted by Michael Leon
The Pentagon sank to a new low this week in their attempt to sell the Afghanistan War to the American people. At their Martin Luther King, Jr., Day observance, a Pentagon official actually claimed that if King were alive today, he might support the war.
This is simply not true. As shown in our new video, Dr. King could not have been more clear in his 1967 speech denouncing the Vietnam War:
A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, “This way of settling differences is not just. …A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
More than 10,000 people died in the Afghanistan War last year alone. This year, the government plans to spend $107 billion on the war. We believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would repeat his admonition to U.S. policymakers on their responsibility:
“I speak as one who loves America…The great initiative in this war is ours; the initiative to stop it must be ours.”
Martin Luther King, Jr., was a national hero who called on us to have the moral courage to stop another war that wasn’t making us safer and that wasn’t worth the cost. Help us fight the Pentagon lies. Spread the truth by sharing this video with your family and friends.
Sincerely,
Derrick Crowe, Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New Foundation team
P.S. If you haven’t done so already, please join Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook and Twitter.
Labels: Martin Luther King, MLK, Veterans Today
What Really Happened: Martin Luther King, Jr.
MARTIN LUTHER KING - THE FATAL SHOT CAME FROM A DIFFERENT DIRECTION
And Other Articles...
Labels: Jr., Martin Luther King, Mike Rivero, MLK, What Really Happened
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