'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

Nearby were framed photos of her idols: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. These days, though, Karman is most inspired by her peers. 'Look at Egypt,' she said with pride. 'We will win.'

-- Reporter Sudarsan Raghavan, in yesterday's Washington Post profile of Tawakkol Karman (right). The head of an organization called Women Journalists Without Chains, she's using the internet to push for change in her native country of Yemen, site of unrest for the last several days. Karman's received death threats, been attacked by a mob, and detained by police for 38 hours. (photo credit)

On November 15

On this day in ...
... 1949 (60 years ago today), sentences of death by hanging were carried out on 2 men convicted of involvement in the assassination India's independence leader, Mohandas K. Gandhi, in 1946, as he walked to a prayer meeting at the New Delhi house where he was living. Executed were a 39-year-old newspaper editor who had been "nearly lynched" after he fatally shot Gandhi, and a 38-year-old man "believed to be the leader of a political group" opposed to a secular Indian state. The executions took place "after the Privy Council in England rejected their appeals."


(Prior November 15 posts are here and here.)

On August 9

On this day in ...
… 1942, Edith Stein (left), known as St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, was executed in Auschwitz. (photo credit) Born in 1891 to a Jewish family, Stein converted to Roman Catholicism in 1921. She took the name Teresa Benedicta of the Cross in 1933, and entered the Discalced Carmelite monastery, where she wrote her metaphysical masterwork Finite and Eternal Being. On July 20, 1942, the Dutch Bishops' Conference had a public statement read in all the churches of the Netherlands condemning Nazi racism. On July 26, 1942, all Jewish converts, who had previously been spared, were ordered arrested. Stein was among those who died in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Stein was beatified as a martyr on May 1, 1987 by Pope John Paul II, and canonized by him on October 11, 1998.
… 1942, Indian leader, Mohandas Gandhi (far right) was arrested in Bombay by British forces, launching the Quit India Movement. (photo credit) By 1942, Indians were divided over World War II, as the British Governor-General of India had unilaterally and without consultation entered India into the war. On July 14, 1942, the Indian National Congress, including Gandhi (and Jawaharlal Nehru, near right), passed a resolution threatening massive civil disobedience if their demands for complete independence from Britain were not heeded. On August 8, Gandhi told Indians to follow non-violent civil disobedience and to act as an independent nation. Less than twenty-four hours after Gandhi's speech, almost the entire Congress leadership was put into confinement.
(Prior August 9 posts are here and here.)

On June 7

On this day in ...
... 1893 (115 years ago today), a 25-year-old, India-born barrister practicing in Durban, Mohandas K. Gandhi, was thrown off a South African train because he had sat in a compartment reserved for whites. The incident -- the 1st act of civil disobedience by Gandhi, seated in the photo at left -- occurred a year to the day after Homère Patris Plessy was dragged out of a Louisiana train for the same reason. (See too post above.)
... 1948 (60 years ago today), Eduard Beneš abdicated his post as President of Czechoslovakia, a move that placed the state in control of the Soviet Union. Beneš, who had been a resistance fighter during World War I, helped negotiate Czech independence during the Paris peace talks, and served as Czech President before and after World War II, died a few months later at age 64. (credit for 1921 photo of Beneš with his wife, Hana)