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In the spirit of MLK Week, MEGATRENDS asks: what would MLK have said about US participation in Israel's genocidal war in Gaza? We use his thoughts on the Vietnam War as our mirror. As we celebrate the life and legacy of Reverend Martin Luther King this week, we cross the 100-day mark in the devastating war in Gaza. If Dr. King were alive today, he would have joined marches this weekend and used his voice and his pulpit to press the US government to urge the Israeli government — which it has backed politically, diplomatically, militarily and financially — to agree to a ceasefire in its war in Gaza.

That war, waged in response to the deadly cross-border attack by Hamas and other militants on October 7 into Southern Israel has resulted in at least 23,000 Palestinian deaths and massive destruction, as well as a blockade of "collective punishment"--a war crime by definition--that is preventing adequate food, water, medicine and other critical care to over 2 million people penned into the Gaza strip. As they seek shelter from artillery or bombs, more than 90 percent of the population is now at near term risk of starvation.

All of this horror is happening before our eyes — the same way that the nightly network TV news brought reports from Vietnam in the 1960s. On April 4, 1967, Rev. King spoke out against the deadly impact of America’s role in the Vietnamese civil war at the Riverside Church in his historic “Beyond Vietnam” speech, declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice.” Rev. King insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to take radical steps to halt its role in the war.

MEGATRENDS joins the international call for President Biden to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza; the safe & immediate return of all hostages still held in Gaza; the restoration of water, electricity, and urgent humanitarian relief to Palestinians; an end to oppression in the West Bank; and to acknowledge South Africa's call at the ICJ to investigate Israel for crimes of genocide.

The conflict in Gaza threatens to escalate into a regional war. Our fears are now being realized, as the U.S. government has launched missiles or dropped bombs on Syria, Iraqi militias, and — most recently — unleashed a barrage against the Yemeni forces who are disrupting shipping in the Red Sea, in an effort to put pressure on states to end Israel’s slaughter in Gaza by stopping oil & gas shipments to Israel. War with forces in Lebanon appears highly probable. Biden has to avert a point of no return--NOW. We taxpayers who help fund the US war machine say NOT IN MY NAME!

Later, we will have a GPT chat via Khanmigo with Albert Einstein about how James Webb Space Telescope and discoveries at the CERN have validated and extended General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and Particle Physics to unify the physics of the small and the large towards a "theory of everything".