{"id":87172,"date":"2022-06-16T19:31:05","date_gmt":"2022-06-16T18:31:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/?p=87172"},"modified":"2022-06-17T22:46:49","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T21:46:49","slug":"the-barbarism-of-dying-empires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelcityscribblings.uk\/wp\/2022\/06\/16\/the-barbarism-of-dying-empires\/","title":{"rendered":"The barbarism of dying empires"},"content":{"rendered":"

One nation is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, continually working to destroy any nation who disobeys it, and has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions<\/a><\/strong>. It isn’t Russia. It isn’t China. You have to account for this fact.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Caitlin Johnstone<\/p>\n

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The 1982 movie, Gandhi, had Ben Kingsley in the title role and – up there with such thespian titans as Edward Fox, John Gielgud, Nigel Hawthorne, Michael Horden and John Mills – Martin Sheen as American journalist Vince Walker, a fictitious character loosely based on Webb Miller, whose remarkable career and eventful life are summarised here<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Miller – who’d survived a kidnap attempt by a thwarted oligarch, gained international fame for his WW1 reports, covered Ireland’s Easter Rising and won a Pulitzer for his graphic description of the botched public guillotining of Henri D\u00e9sir\u00e9 Landru, aka\u00a0<\/em> Bluebeard – went on to befriend the Mahatma as, in the decade preceding WW2, the cause of ousting the British Raj brought an unprecedented unity to the bewilderingly diverse nation state the Raj had itself created.<\/p>\n

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Gandhi the movie won eleven Academy Awards including Best Actor for Kingsley, Best Picture and Best Director for Richard Attenborough and Best Original Score for Ravi Shankar. One of its most memorable scenes is of the Salt Satyagraha<\/em>\u00a0 described in this (abridged) wiki entry<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u00a0Nonviolent civil disobedience: a twenty-four day campaign of tax resistance against the British salt monopoly<\/a><\/strong>. The Civil Disobedience Movement needed a strong inauguration that would inspire more people to follow Gandhi’s example. The march spanned 239 miles, from Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi (now in the state of Gujarat). Growing numbers of Indians joined them along the way. When Gandhi broke the salt laws<\/a><\/strong> at 8:30 am on 6 April 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience by millions of Indians.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here, lasting three minutes twenty-nine, is the scene. As Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs – men and youths: some wearing turbans, most sporting the Congress cap – march row after unwavering row towards the certainty of skull-cracking lathi blows by awaiting sepoys, Walker\/Miller’s filing of his report over a long distance line supplies, in the second half of the clip, the voiceover.<\/p>\n

They walked .. with heads held high, without any hope of escape from injury or death. It went on and on, into the night. STOP. Women carried the injured and broken bodies from the road, until they dropped from exhaustion. STOP. But still, it went on and on. STOP. Whatever moral ascendancy the West held was lost here today. India is free …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n