September 16, 2013 – DocuDharma

Sep 16 2013

On This Day In History September 16

By TMC in News

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

September 16 is the 259th day of the year (260th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 106 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1932, in his cell at Yerovda Jail near Bombay, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi begins a hunger strike in protest of the British government’s decision to separate India’s electoral system by caste.A leader in the Indian campaign for home rule, Gandhi worked all his life to spread his own brand of passive resistance across India and the world. By 1920, his concept of Satyagraha (or “insistence upon truth”) had made Gandhi an enormously influential figure for millions of followers. Jailed by the British government from 1922-24, he withdrew from political action for a time during the 1920s but in 1930 returned with a new civil disobedience campaign. This landed Gandhi in prison again, but only briefly, as the British made concessions to his demands and invited him to represent the Indian National Congress Party at a round-table conference in London.

In 1932, through the campaigning of the Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar, the government granted untouchables separate electorates under the new constitution. In protest, Gandhi embarked on a six-day fast in September 1932. The resulting public outcry successfully forced the government to adopt a more equitable arrangement via negotiations mediated by the Dalit cricketer turned political leader Palwankar Baloo. This was the start of a new campaign by Gandhi to improve the lives of the untouchables, whom he named Harijans, the children of God.

history, On This Day in History, Open Thread

Sep 16 2013

what a real 11-dimensional master might do

By pfiore8

if he or she was so righteously committed to humanitarian concerns, such as eradicating weapons of mass destruction? perhaps they’d lead governments, industry, and citizens in working together to:

– acknowledge climate change and address and implement, immediately, ways in which we can live and work sustainably …perhaps some 21st century New (Age) Deal

– provide access to non-profit health care systems, rather than make the dubious claim that access to health insurance (not care) should be a fundamental right.

– save honeybees

– get back to educating the children of this earth, instead of indoctrinating and/or testing them to death

– tamp down on the texting and ramp up playfulness

– put arts back into education

– commit to organic farming, good lives for farm animals, and eating less meat

– revamping regional economies and commit to only fair trade practices

– put more value on principles and integrity than money and riches

– commit to peaceful coexistence

certainly, there are many many good and just things that could be initiated and even realized through the leadership and brilliant strategy of someone as clever as this mythic master of 11-dimensional chess.

certainly, a master at 11-dimensional chess willing to BOMB a foreign country for the sake and safety of all humanity could apply this substance-over-style visionary genius to something epic, like eradicating poverty…

poverty, a true weapon of mass destruction, is inflicted not only on humans, but all kinds of earthlings struggling to make a living on this increasingly hostile planet.

and let me just throw this one in: would a true master fast-track the sovereignty-killing, environment-killing, earthling-killing TPP?

it is amazing then, the straining that goes on to explain how, when:

Once again, Obama is doing something that’s enraging progressives… it’s time to read about how he’s really doing the exact opposite because he’s a super mega genius, a complete and total mastermind. I thought by now that meme would’ve died the death it so richly deserves, but nope, it’s back.

I quote this because I could not have said it or written or summed it up better myself.