IT’S BEING acknowledged everywhere — now by Wired magazine and the SEO Theory newsletter. Google Groups is totally broken.

It began well. Google acquired the Deja News archive of Usenet postings from 1995 forward, and then added 1981-1994 material from Marc Spencer’s archive. If somebody said it in a newsgroup, you could find it by searching Google Groups. You could search by author, by keywords, by newsgroup, by date range, or by exact phrase. It was as it should be.

But then Google decided to kluge its own “discussion groups” onto Usenet, and began emphasizing “new communities” or some such cliché at the expense of Usenet archiving, which has been all but abandoned. Some entire newsgroups have been ditched without explanation. And searching by author or exact phrase? Forget it. If you get any results at all, they’ll be woefully incomplete.

Google Groups is in violation of its own terms of service, which state in part “The Service contains the entire archive of Usenet discussion groups dating back to 1981.” To Google: Fix, please. Or remain evil.

Here’s a copy of the letter I sent last September to groups-support@google.com — to which they still haven’t bothered to respond:

Dear Google:

I notice that some political discussion groups, including alt.politics.nationalism.white, on Usenet are no longer accessible via Google Groups. The message one gets when trying to access these newsgroups is that they were “removed” because they violated Google’s terms of service.

How can an unmoderated Usenet group violate anyone’s terms of service? It’s a Usenet newsgroup, for goodness sake. It can’t do anything of its own accord, much less “violate” anything. It’s just a feed of opinion and news messages, which in my view Google promised to carry and archive when you bought DejaNews.

I need access to the archived messages in these groups, going back many years, for my research. (Example: I need to see all messages posted by a particular person in order to find a particular post of historical or political importance. How can I do this if the Usenet archive has been suddenly rendered incomplete by your unilateral and inexplicable “removal” of an entire newsgroup and all its archives going back decades? This is grossly irresponsible. In addition, your Usenet archive search function is no longer working properly, when it works at all.)

While I see nothing in your terms of service that an entire newsgroup could possibly violate, I do note that you are in violation of the very first item in the Google Groups Terms of Service:

“The Service contains the entire archive of Usenet discussion groups dating back to 1981.”

Were these Usenet groups removed in error? Can the error be corrected and the archive restored? If not an error, please explain your reasoning and provide me with the names of the specific individuals behind this removal, along with these individuals’ contact information.

With good wishes,

Kevin Strom.

THANKS TO EU TIMES: My thanks go out to the European Union Times, which — alone among important media outlets — spoke out for justice throughout my travails, telling both sides of the story in their news reporting and calling for my release in editorials. They stated “Kevin Alfred Strom is innocent,” saying of me that “he dedicated his life to fighting against pornography, child pornography, rape, murder… How could they even accuse him of such nonsense?” In another editorial they wrote: “Kevin Alfred Strom has a family and he has children… He dedicated his life to fighting against globalization, child porn, sex slavery, drugs…” and that the accusations against me were “inventions of severely damaged and evil brains.”

YEARS AGO I joked that the next niche radio format to be attempted would be continuous bird calls. I never imagined that it could actually happen, but it has, and the results are quite pleasant.

Apparently one of the Digital Audio Broadcast channels in Great Britain (yes, they have real over-the-air digital radio in the UK, not the dysfunctional “HD Radio” that the media moguls forced on this country) started broadcasting ambient bird calls and other natural forest sounds about a year ago, and it developed quite a following. (I have no idea if the station’s creator, Quentin Howard, ever heard of my decades-old suggestion or not.)

But the station has been axed by channel owner DigitalOne (a British quasi-governmental digital radio monopoly) and replaced by something described as “Amazing Radio, playing rock, indie, urban and jazz tunes,” according to the UK’s Independent newspaper. Ho hum.

Birdsong Radio began by broadcasting a 20-minute loop of chirps and tweets originally recorded for a stage play sound effect in 1991 at Howard’s home garden in West Lavington, Wiltshire. You can still hear that original loop at http://radiobirdsong.com where station supporters have built a home on the Web. Another group of birdsong lovers has built an even more elaborate online station, http://www.birdsongradio.com/ with superb fidelity and a larger variety of recordings.

Howard says of the over-the-air station’s cancellation “I think it’s a bit of a stunt to get attention for the new radio station because there’s enough empty slots on digital radio for both. There’s a lot of very cross people out there.”

I find Birdsong Radio a delightful change from conventional radio, and its outdoors ambience will be augmenting the aural atmosphere of my office often in the future.

Gandhi by Harold Arthur McNeill; click for the full-size version.

by Kevin Alfred Strom

MY RECENT ARTICLE on Mahatma Gandhi has created some interest, and has been reprinted not only by the Historical Review Press in Britain, but also by John de Nugent and by Ironlight, a site whose motto is ‘illumination in the dark age.’ Ironlight also apparently commissioned an illustration especially for the article by the talented artist (and writer) Harold Arthur McNeill, which you can see here.

I also received a few letters disagreeing with my proposition that Gandhi was consistent in his belief in self-determination, and that therefore “equality” under multiracialism could not have been his ideal. One of the more intelligently-written dissenting letters was from a Mr. Allen, who wrote:

‘Gandhi’s remarks have less to do with asserting the need for racial purity than they do assuaging a British (and World) public that a) Indians share the values of the West, and b) Indians do not seek to “contaminate” white genes.’

‘Leaders often have to form arguments that identify common ground with their oppressors.  In terms of argument, Gandhi was trying to show that the Brits could follow their own logic (anti-miscegenation) to justify their leaving India.  Elsewhere in Gandhi’s writings, you do not see this emphasis on racial purity.  It is an opportunistic argument used to persuade an opponent, and also to argue an equality between whites and Indians, that the genetics of both are worth preserving.’

If what Allen says is true, then Gandhi was yet another opportunistic politician, saying one thing one day and another contradictory thing the next, depending on his audience, in a cynical attempt to get what he wants at the moment. Even if that is true, which I doubt, Gandhi still spoke the truth when he told the world in his newspaper articles that (in Mr. Allen’s words) the genetics of both Indians and Europeans are worth preserving. (Mr. Allen is also incorrect in stating that Gandhi was expressing the anti-miscegenation ideas I quoted in order to persuade Britain to leave India. At the time, Gandhi was in South Africa and primarily concerned with the position of Indians there.)

If Mohandas Gandhi deëmphasized race in his later works, after his return to his homeland, that’s understandable considering the vastly different racial, religious, political, and cultural landscapes of South Africa and India. If he disavowed his statements on race or self-determination, that would be a different story — but I have seen no evidence of that.

It is true that Gandhi at times seemed to view the world through rose-colored glasses — as in his strong desire to believe that all the natives of Imperial British India were one people, or that Jews were just a variety of European (as when he called them “the untouchables of Christianity”), or, for that matter, that all policemen in an ideal future India would be “believers in nonviolence.” But when he expressed himself on the Zionist efforts to take Palestine, he not only came down on the side of the native Arabs, but his words resonate with those of Jean-Marie Le Pen and Nick Griffin in calling for France for the French and England for the English. Gandhi wrote these words in 1938 — almost four decades after the statements on race I quoted earlier:

‘Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs. What is going on in Palestine today cannot be justified by any moral code of conduct.’

It’s important that we help spread the truth about Gandhi, because once good-hearted and well-meaning people understand 1) that this man wanted freedom and independence for his people, not “equality” under centralized rule like his polar opposite “Martin Luther King,” and 2) that the version of history they are given in the schools and the mass media has been distorted for crass political purposes, some of them will begin to think for themselves.

Gandhi's remarks have less to do with asserting the need for racial purity than they do assuaging a British (and World) public that a) Indians share the values of the West, and b) Indians do not seek to "contaminate" white genes. 

Leaders often have to form arguments that identify common ground with their oppressors.  In terms of argument, Gandhi was trying to show that the Brits could follow their own logic (anti-miscegenation) to justify their leaving India.  Elsewhere in Gandhi's writings, you do not see this emphasis on racial purity.  It is an opportunistic argument used to persuade an opponent, and also to argue an equality between whites and Indians, that the genetics of both are worth preserving.

A Simple Quiz

by Mark Graffis

EDITOR’S NOTE: Being able to score an “A” on this simple quiz should be a requirement before one is permitted to vote in any national election. — Kevin Alfred Strom.

1. In which of these countries are Christians permitted to pray or wear religious symbols in the schools?

A. France

B. United States

C. China

D. Iran

2. In which of these countries do Christians enjoy the most religious freedom?

A. China

B. France

C. United States

D. Iran

3. During the past 20 years, which of these countries’ governments have killed the most civilians of other countries?

A. Syria

B. Iraq

C. Iran

D. United States

4. In which of these countries have the most people died for their religious faith?

A. Syria

B. United States

C. Iran

D. China

5. Which of these countries possesses the least number of weapons mass destruction?

A. United States

B. Britain

C. China

D. Iran

6. Which of these countries possesses the most weapons of mass destruction?

A. Iran

B. China

C. Britain

D. United States

7. Which of these countries does not possess the atomic bomb?

A. United States

B. Britain

C. Israel

D. Iran

8. Which of these countries’ governments is not conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing?

A. China

B. Sudan

C. Israel

D. Iran

9. Which of these countries’ armed forces have not attacked another country for the past 29 years?

A. United States

B. Israel

C. Britain

D. Iran

10. Which of these countries’ armed forces have not attacked another country during the past year?

A. United States

B. Israel

C. Britain

D. Iran

11.  In the past 30 years, which of these countries has killed the most Americans?

A. Syria

B. Pakistan

C. Iran

D. Israel

(The answer to each question is D.)

POLITICAL PROSECUTION: At the urging of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, European-American activist and writer Kevin Alfred Strom is (wrongfully) convicted of possessing eight images of child pornography, based on the testimony of a perjurer who was having a relationship with the JTTF “investigating officer.” Kevin Strom is sentenced to 23 months in prison, most of that in brutal solitary confinement. He is placed under supervision for 15 years. Contrast that with the case of Korean-American “youth leader” Timothy Han of Miracleland Korean Baptist Church, who was convicted of actually having sex with a child. Han was sentenced to 45 days in jail and 45 days in a work-release program.

MY WORK CITED: I’m pleased to note that my essay on the arrest and prosecution of “Russian” oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, “The Khodorkovsky Affair,” has been cited in The Cardozo Journal of International and Comparative Law.

GANDHI ARTICLE REPRINTED: My essay on the racial-nationalist views of Mahatma Gandhi has just been republished by Britain’s Historical Review Press. It’s quite an honor to be published alongside such luminaries as H.L. Mencken and Thomas Jefferson.

Here we see HD Radio sidebands on either side of an analogue FM broadcast signal, as shown on a spectrum analyzer.

by Kevin Alfred Strom

WITH 2010 APPROACHING, CNET just released its “The Decade’s 30 Biggest Tech Flops” anti-awards, and “HD Radio” was among the “winners.”

HD Radio was not only doomed from the start, it was such a serious blunder that it may well lead to the death of thousands of radio stations and the permanent stunting of the industry itself.

There is nothing wrong with the concept of digital radio.

Using modern firmware-upgradeable codecs, orthogonal FDM transmission, and a network of community transmitters in a dedicated digital band, great things could have been done:

1. In every community, all signals would have been full-quieting with no noise or multipath distortion. There would have been no more disparity in signal or noise levels between 50-kW powerhouses and 250-Watt locals or 10-Watt student stations — all would have had perfect, full-quieting signals within the community’s coverage area.

2. There would have been no more need for any licensees to sign off or go to absurdly low power at night as obtains presently among AM stations. And former AM stations would no longer suffer from crippling skywave interference at night.

3. Depending on how much spectrum was allocated and the ratio of talk to music programming (with their different bit rates), at least four to eight times as many stations could have been allocated to each community as now exist, leaving open the possibility of free and independent public access and non-profit “free radio” style programming, greatly expanding listening choices (and points of view in news programming) for everyone.

4. As stations migrated to the new band, even more channels would become open on the existing AM and FM bands, making them more listenable and viable again and allowing even more space for non-profits and those who want to broadcast for the love of it instead of just for monetary gain.

Digital community-transmitter-based radio in a dedicated digital band thus could have been a tremendous success and a revolutionary improvement.

But we didn’t get real digital radio.

Instead we got IBOC (In-Band On-Channel, now deceptively labeled “HD Radio”), a technical turkey which delivers almost none of the benefits above and increases interference to boot.

Why did this happen?

Another radio station off the air, bankrupted by increasing monopolies in the industry and failure to meet the challenges of digital audio. "HD Radio" isn't helping -- in fact, it was designed to further marginalize small local stations like this one, stifling independent voices.

Because the money-men didn’t want the benefits of item (1) above. They already owned the 50-kW powerhouses. They didn’t want the 10-Watt student station to suddenly have an equal signal to theirs. They didn’t want the mono AM daytimer to suddenly have 20-kHz digital stereo with no audible noise and be on 24 hours a day as in item (2).

And the money-men didn’t want dozens of new independent channels to be available to listeners as in item (3) above.

So they chose IBOC, where the digital signal piggybacks on top of the existing analogue signal, right on the same frequency. IBOC gives distinctly inferior results. IBOC causes significant interference. IBOC on AM is unlistenable and very nearly useless.

But IBOC gave the money-men the one thing they wanted most of all: It preserves the inferiority of the smaller broadcasters. In fact, amid a sea of IBOC hash from the big boys, it accentuates their inferiority.

The end result of this shortsightedness will be bankruptcy for many stations, fewer and poorer choices for the listeners as conglomerates gobble up the remains, and a huge migration away from AM and FM broadcasts and to audio delivery via satellite and the Internet.

MY ART SITE RECOGNIZED: My online art gallery — to which I’ve added quite a bit of content over the last month — has been recognized as being in “impeccable taste” by Leslie H. Higgins, the paleoconservative operator of The Young and Once Good Pundit. Mr. Higgins nevertheless characterizes me as “problematic” and as a “right-winger,” the latter being certainly untrue no matter what you think on the former count. But I don’t mind. Taste, Art, and Beauty matter and will last as long as the race. The political labels of the moment, decade, or century do not and will not.

BENJAMIN FREEDMAN SPEECH REPUBLISHED: The Madrid-based Spanish-language site Qbitacora has an English-language annex which has just republished Benjamin H. Freedman’s revelatory speech on Zionism, A Jewish Defector Warns America. Thanks to the folks at Qbit for spreading the word about Freedman’s important work!

PERJURER EXPOSED AGAIN: Evidence is mounting that Elisha Strom, the woman whose perjured testimony and work with the so-called Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) caused false federal charges to be filed against me, had several inappropriate relationships with the local and “terrorism task force” officers she was at first working with — and then turned against, causing her to be arrested for stalking them, harassing them, and interfering with them. Both she and the JTTF avoided a trial full of revelations of their respective characters when a plea agreement was struck in which she plead guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice.

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

THIS POEM is really two poems by two authors.

The first part was sent to me by an aspiring new poet named Däanlea, whose work really deserves to be published in print one day.

The second part is my response.

This piece begins in a personal vein, and ends with an extension of the personal into the infinite.

We conscious and unconscious beings are all on a journey together. I hope this poem helps the reader capture some sense of that.

THE PINE

I

Cold winds howl down the steep slopes
Where a solitary pine stands tall
The clouds usher in the snowflakes to provide
a protecting layer against the dark, long nights.
Are you the pine or the snow?
When the sun emerges from behind the mountain
will the down covering melt?
The sun provides its warmth and allows
the tree to grow stronger and taller
with each passing day.
Shall we hike today to the hillside
of this tree and make our acquaintance?

II

I am the pine
I am the dissolved and renewed essence of the pines that were
I am the millionfold seeds of the pines to come
And what pines will become

Like you, I am awakened earth
Like you, I am cooled and crystallized starstreams
Unlike you, I think not in moments but in millennia

Whether you know it or not
You are related to me
Together we will act to birth new ages, new universes
Together we acted to birth this age
We were together at the beginning which was more than a beginning
We will be together at the end which is not an end

This earth with its snows and rivers and oceans
Is our gift to each other.
Come beneath me
And be healed.

ART GALLERY RECOGNIZED: The Spanish-language art blog Aquí gobierno yo has added my art gallery to its list of recommended art sites. It’s quite an honor to be linked side-by-side with the Fitzwilliam Museum, the National Galleries of Scotland, and others.

PERPETUAL GROWTH IS IMPOSSIBLE: We’ve all heard the story of the clever merchant who asked the King to pay him with grains of wheat placed on a chessboard. On the first square he was to receive one grain; on the second, two grains; on the third, four grains — doubling with every square up to the 64th. The King readily agreed to pay such a small sum; How much could it add up to in just 63 doublings, after all? The answer is that more grain than exists in the entire world would have to be placed on the 64th square. That is “the magic of compound interest” and it is 1)  the reason that perpetual economic growth is impossible and 2) the reason that economies based on the creation of money as interest-bearing debt (read: all modern economies) inevitably go into crisis and fail.

The maverick Jewish writer Israel Shamir has just published Tom White’s extensive treatment of the subject which is well worth reading.

The Learned portrait of Virginia Poe, left; on the right the Traylor Miniature, showing a very young Edgar Poe.

by Kevin Alfred Strom

THIS YEAR marks the 200th birthday of the great poet and thinker Edgar Allan Poe. Today, October 7th, is the day of his mysterious death 160 years ago in Baltimore. And last month marked the 174th anniversary of his marriage to his beloved Virginia.

Not too long after Poe’s birthday in January of this year, someone very dear to me gave me a surprise present: two gift boxes from the Poe Museum in Richmond, one decorated with a reproduction of the famous Learned portrait of Virginia Poe (pictured, left) and the other (on the right) having on its lid an image of a very young-looking and clean-shaven Edgar Allan Poe — an image I had never seen before. The portrait is oval and in a thin oval gilt frame. Inside the lid of the second box is written “Edgar Allan Poe – Robert Lee Traylor.”

I have been a reader and student of Poe since the age of 11, but this portrait was one I had never seen. The only references I could find to “Robert Lee Traylor” and a Poe portrait were as the owner of a very different Poe picture, a daguerreotype.

And exhaustive searches of the ‘Net, comprising thousands of articles and representations of Poe, didn’t come up with this portrait or any reference to it. It seemed quite a mystery to me.

But a helpful scholar at the Poe Museum provided the answer:

“I know the portrait of which you speak. It is called the Traylor Miniature, after the Poe collector Robert Lee Traylor, who once owned it. (This is not to be confused with the Traylor Daguerreotype, which was one of the two original daguerreotypes taken at a sitting in Richmond in September 1849. Of these two daguerreotypes, the Thompson is the better known and more widely reproduced, while the Traylor was badly damaged in a cleaning attempt around 1900.)

Edgar Allan Poe: the Sartain engraving

“The Traylor miniature is an oval watercolor on ivory measuring 2.5 x 2 inches. It is not a life portrait but an idealized image probably derived from the 1885 Sartain engraving of the Osgood oil painting of Poe. The sideburns have been removed to give Poe a more youthful appearance, but the shadow under the nose and hairline are among the points of strong similarity between this painting and the Sartain image.

“The picture’s known history only goes back to 1905, when the Bendann Brothers art dealers in Baltimore consigned the piece to the Bell Book and Stationary Company in Richmond. Traylor purchased it shortly afterwards. The piece is said to have come to Bendann’s from an owner in Annapolis. Although his statement is unverified, Traylor claimed that the miniature had been acquired from a lady in Baltimore who had been a friend of the Poe family. Traylor also claimed the piece had once been owned by Poe himself, though this seems very unlikely.

“James A. Harrison considered the piece an authentic life portrait done when Poe was nineteen, but, in 1926, James Southall Wilson dismissed it as a synthetic likeness.

The Deas portrait

“The Poe Museum owns the miniature, which was last displayed in our recent exhibit Poe Face to Face: Portraits and Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe. If you would like to learn more about the portraits of Poe, you might be interested in finding a copy of The Portraits and Daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe by Michael Deas.” (Deas is also the highly talented artist who created the painting used in the recent Edgar Allan Poe U.S. postage stamp. — K.A.S.)

Another mystery surrounding portraits of the Poes was the question of why there was only only one known image of Virginia Poe. It was a miniature painted by an unknown artist, supposedly immediately after Virginia’s death. The famous Learned portrait is simply a more painterly and artistic rendering of that image, executed many years later. There have been illustrations and engravings made of this image, but all are essentially copies of the one original.

Virginia Poe by Sully

But Poe researcher and author Cynthia Cirile has stated that more — perhaps many more — portraits of Virginia were painted and engraved during her lifetime, two by the renowned painter Thomas Sully. According to Cirile, Virginia modeled for, among other assignments, fashion spreads in Graham’s Magazine as a young woman and was even somewhat famous for her work. But irrational religio-social conventions, which saw modeling as a “scandalous” vocation, caused her family to “hush up” the facts of her work after her death. Cirile, who says that a daguerreotype of Virginia has also been found and will be included in her upcoming book, writes:

“[T]he absurdity of imagining that Poe waited till his wife was dead to have her image taken is simply absurd. The truth was that many paintings and engravings of Virginia were extent, though they were not publicized at the time. Virginia did sit for daguerreotypes, though so far, I have only discovered one of them, which dates to c. 1845.

The Rundell Virginia Poe, by Sully

“The reason for all this lying was to keep Virginia’s ‘image’ as pure and virginal as her name itself. The Poe family did not want it known that Virginia had modelled, because at that time, modelling for painters/artists was thought a sluttish thing for women to do. Of course, now, we see how inane this idea is-but, 150 years ago, that was indeed the common feeling about such things.

“But, there’s no hiding Virginia’s face, or uniquely serene attitude. She’s very easy to identify. Here, I give an instance of a painting of Virginia by the painter who was like an uncle to Virginia, Thomas Sully, taken when she was perhaps 13 years old. From this painting, we get some idea of what Virginia really looked like.

“In 1875, the same year Edgar was reburied, the cemetery in which she lay was destroyed and her remains were almost forgotten. An early Poe biographer, William Gill, gathered her bones and stored them in a box he hid under his bed. Gill’s story was reported in the Boston Herald twenty-seven years after the event. Gill says that he had visited the Fordham cemetery in 1883 at exactly the moment that the sexton Dennis Valentine held Virginia’s bones in his shovel, ready to throw them away as unclaimed. Gill took the remains and corresponded with Neilson Poe and John Prentiss Poe in Baltimore, and arranged to bring the box down to be laid on Edgar’s left side in a small bronze casket. Virginia’s remains were finally buried with her husband’s in 1885 on January 19 — the seventy-sixth anniversary of her husband’s birth and nearly ten years after his current monument was erected. The same man who served as sexton during Edgar’s original burial and his exhumations and reburials was also present at the rites which brought his body to rest with Virginia and Virginia’s mother Maria Clemm.

“It is important to remember that this Leonine Virginia made her mark on the world, quite separate and apart from her famous husband. Her look, as I said, became ‘The Look’ for women of the mid 19th century, and many emulated and admired it.

“It’s also important to remember that while Virginia was a victim of tuberculosis, she was an active participant in life, and shared a very ‘open’ and controversial lifestyle with her husband. Their lifestyle would be as controversial now as it was then.

“Virginia Clemm Poe was beautiful; she was adored; she was exalted. Long Live Virginia Poe…”

Let us today pay homage to Deist, cosmotheist, and racial-aristocratic thinker Edgar Allan Poe, and to Virginia Clemm Poe who inspired and sustained him and his art. Let us rededicate ourselves to raising up new generations which will be capable — biologically and culturally capable — of understanding him, and of creating new worlds of imagination and reality that Poe could only dream of.

REVILO OLIVER RECOGNIZED: The well-known commentator for the Spectator newspaper in Britain, Taki Theodoracopulos, has just published an essay in his online magazine which, at least tentatively and partially, attempts to restore the place of the great and Menckenesque writer Revilo P. Oliver in the pantheon of 20th century thinkers. Interestingly, the article is published over the byline “Nesta Bevan,” an obvious nom de guerre, since it is the maiden name of the late writer and partisan of our civilization Nesta Webster.

Mahadev Desai (left) and Gandhi meet with other Indian nationalists in 1939

by Kevin Alfred Strom

THIS WEEK Google replaced their normal search page graphic with one depicting Mohandas K. Gandhi, also known as Mahatma (Sanskrit for “Great Soul”) Gandhi, in recognition of his birthday, which is now celebrated as the International Day of Non-Violence. Gandhi’s movement of civil disobedience was a significant factor in India’s successful quest for self-determination and the ultimate withdrawal of Britain from the Indian subcontinent.

Barack Obama praised Gandhi on Friday, saying “Gandhi’s teachings and ideals, shared with Martin Luther King Jr. on his 1959 pilgrimage to India, transformed American society through our civil rights movement. The America of today has its roots in the India of Mahatma Gandhi and the nonviolent social action movement for Indian independence which he led. We must renew our commitment to live his ideals and to celebrate the dignity of all human beings.”

Many people, Obama included if he’s sincere, see Gandhi and his movement in very simplistic and essentially mythological terms: Gandhi’s movement, they believe, was a “struggle for equality” within a multiracial paradigm. Actually it was the opposite of that.

Mohandas Gandhi wanted his people, the native people of the Indian subcontinent, to be free of the British Empire. He wanted his people to have their own country. He wanted them to have their own government, answerable to no other people. He wanted self-determination for his folk: their own territory, their own leaders. And he looked at this situation in explicitly racial terms.

Though there was much greatness in it to be sure, the British Empire outside the Anglo-Saxon dominions like Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, was a multiracialist empire which forced differing peoples together against their will, crushing their self-determination and freedom largely for crass economic reasons. Sound familiar?

What Gandhi was most emphatically not doing was seeking “equality” under the Empire. He was not saying “We are all the same. Therefore give us equal incomes, equal schooling, equal housing and we will all live in harmony and brotherhood as one people.” That is what representatives of the new world empire, like Obama, his handlers, and the billionaire moguls who long preceded them, wish he had said.

What Gandhi was saying was that his people were unique and worthy of survival — and in order to secure their survival they must rule themselves and possess their own territory. Hence his two-word slogan for his movement — his command to the British Empire — “Quit India.” His was no M.L. King-like quest for a chimerical “fairness” enforced by central authority in an equally chimerical race-blind society. Quite the opposite! He said in essence that this land belongs to me and my people — and you, your race, your bureaucracy, and your Empire should just get out.  Ultimately, they did exactly that.

Gandhi’s parallels in the Black community are Robert Brock and Marcus Garvey and Sharity Ross-Petit — not King.

Gandhi expressly stated his belief in maintaining the purity of not only his race, but all races, when he gently chided White nationalists who only cared about their own racial integrity and who crudely lumped all non-Whites together. He wrote in 1903:

“We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do, only we believe that they would best serve these interests, which are as dear to us as to them, by advocating the purity of all races, and not one alone.”

Gandhi also stated in his Indian Opinion newspaper, referring to a then-current issue in multiracial South Africa :

“The petition dwells upon ‘the co-mingling of the colored and white races.’ May we inform the members of the Conference that so far as British Indians are concerned, such a thing is particularly unknown. If there is one thing which the Indian cherishes more than any other, it is the purity of type.”

Greater India, even after the British left, was an artificial construct encompassing several peoples, and it’s not clear to me to what extent Gandhi recognized that further partitions would be necessary. But that’s a subject for another day.

Empires — from the ancient Assyrians in Palestine, to Tito’s Yugoslavia, to the Communist Chinese in Tibet — invariably say that they force differing peoples under one rule — their rule — “for their own good”… to “bring peace”… to make everyone “equal.”

And they invariably condemn any person who wants his people to be free of the empire’s rule — whether Gandhi or Jefferson or the Dalai Lama — as a “troublemaker,” a “hater,” a “terrorist,” or the like:

How dare Gandhi advocate breaking the King’s laws! We’re all subjects of the Crown, Indian and Briton, and Gandhi is a hooligan and criminal!

How dare the Dalai Lama insist that Tibetans should have their own territory and their own government, answerable only to Tibetans! How dare he call for an end to the mass importation of Chinese into Tibet! That’s anti-Chinese — that’s racist! (Of course, once you understand the Maxim of Self-Determination, you can easily see it’s nothing of the kind. The Maxim reads “Every people which considers itself to be a people should, to the maximum extent possible, live under its own government.”)

There is much to be learned from Gandhi and his efforts to gain self-determination for his folk. But we must see that struggle for what it was — a distinct people’s fight for a separate, distinct nation — before we can even begin to learn.

ART SITE UPDATED: My online art gallery has been updated recently, with newly-added paintings by Paul Delaroche, Angelica Kauffmann, Louis Janmot, Sophie Anderson, John Everett Millais, Abbott Handerson Thayer, Alexandre Cabanel, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Also added were portraits of Edgar and Virginia Poe, T.E. Lawrence, William Butler Yeats, Nikolai Gogol, Robert Louis Stevenson, Pedro Del Valle, and many more; along with new photographs and digital art pieces.

ANTHRAX ATTACKS AMAZING SEARCH RESULTS: Even though it was only recently restored from a hacker attack, Robert Pate’s The Anthrax Mystery: Solved Web site is garnering top results on Google, indicating a high degree of interest and relevance. A simple search on the words ANTHRAX ATTACKS gives anthraxattacks.net the number five position out of over 600,000 results. A search on the words ANTHRAX MYSTERY gives Mr. Pate’s site the number five position out of almost 400,000.