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.
Continue reading ‘Gandhi, Obama, and Race’
US navy sailors line up beneath the First Navy Jack flag during the USS Kitty Hawk Departure Ceremony, August 2008.
by Kevin Alfred Strom
PROOF WE ARE ruled and “protected” by dangerous morons can be found in this document, entitled “Crisis Controlled,” from the Virginia State Police (VSP), authored by Trooper John R. Wright.
Not only is the whole essay written on about a fifth-grade level of literacy and intelligence, not only does it characterize anyone, left or right or otherwise, who questions the constitutionality or morality of our current rulers as a “terrorist,” but it wraps itself in smarmy authority-worshipping “patriotism” of the most repellent variety imaginable, which is the opposite of real patriotism.
Continue reading ‘Dangerous Morons’
THE FOUR FREEDOMS?: Corruption rules modern America. It is a truism, mentioned by Mike Gravel among many others, that both parties and their candidates take in considerable sums of money from hedge funds, oil companies, lawyers’ associations, and numerous multinational corporations — to say nothing of the Israel Lobby. But it’s nothing new.
A (much older) friend of mine, who worked for Army intelligence during World War 2, once told me that many Washington insiders routinely referred to FDR’s “Four Freedoms” as “The Rake Off, the Pay Off, the Shakedown, and the Fix.” And so it goes.
JEFFERSON SAID IT WELL: “I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That ‘all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people.’ To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition.” A single step!
HAS ANYONE NOTICED?: “Our new president” has dismantled the NSA’s and CIA’s and FBI’s wiretapping and snooping programs… hasn’t he? He’s stopped the wars in the Middle East… right? And lobby groups for special interests like Wall Street and Israel no longer rule Washington… as promised, right?
Sorry, but… those were just more lies. What we have in Washington now is not the legal government of the United States of America. It is an illegal, illegitimate regime. Both ruling parties are complicit in its crimes. It uses the symbols and trappings of the original government; it uses the names and titles and some of the forms of that government; but it is in its essentials exactly the kind of government the Constitution was written to prevent.
by Kevin Alfred Strom
IT WAS RECENTLY reported that a London bank had laid off some employees — nothing unusual about that these days. But there was a buzz of discussion about the fact that, horror of horrors, they had supposedly laid off foreign workers in greater proportion than British ones. One writer said that the bank “should be reported to the Equalities Commission.”
One sees the same kind of furor amongst the TV-watchers here in America if a business fails to favor some members of, as the Newspeak expression goes, a “protected class” — like homosexuals or non-Whites. The only real difference is that our Commissars are called “EEO officers” instead of “Equalities commissioners.”
Continue reading ‘Freedom of Association: A Criminal Act?’
