But Dr. King gave hundreds of unpopular and controversial speeches ranging from the dangers of the Vietnam War to mass commercialization. During his life, he was attacked and marginalized from the white and black community alike.

The US government coined Dr. King the most “dangerous Negro leader in the country”, routinely spied on him and even went as far as writing him a letter in 1964 urging him to commit suicide.

In fact, MLK Jr.’s surviving family filed a civil suit in Memphis, TN, in which the jury found elements of the US government complicit in his assassination.

Having been arrested thirty times, Dr. King routinely threw his body upon the gears of the machine to show that change doesn’t roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but through continuous struggle against institutionalized injustice.

Focusing on America as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, Dr. King spent the last year of his life fighting what he called the triple evils of the word: racism, militarism, and economic exploitation.

In fact, when MLK was assassinated he was planning the “Poor People’s Campaign” – a mass march and occupation of DC until the US government granted poor people an “Economic Bill of Rights”.

Listen to his profound speech “Beyond Vietnam”, given exactly one year before Dr. King’s assassination.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Beyond Vietnam”

It’s a topic Tavis Smiley explores in amazing depth and clarity in his new book, Death of a King: The Real Story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s’ Final Year in which he talks about the unvarnished truth about Dr. King’s life, and last sermon entitled “Why America May Go to Hell”.

Breaking the Set speaks with Smiley about Dr. King and Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson, Arun Gandhi, about why structural and passive violence are the most inhibiting factors for peace.

Breaking the Set with Tavis Smiley and Arun Gandhi

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 Abby Martin | @Abby Martin 

Photo by flickr user Angela N.

MEDIA ROOTS- Anna Hazare is a social activist who is leading the anticorruption movement in India by following Mahatma Gandhi’s  principles of nonviolence. He received worldwide attention with a four day hunger strike in early April that led to the Indian government conceding to his demand of enacting an anti-corruption law (based on the Lokpal Bill) for those holding public office.

On July 28, the Parliament approved a draft of the Lokpal Bill, which excluded the Prime Minister, judiciary and lower bureaucracy from the scope of proposed corruption. Hazare discounted the draft and announced that he would embark on an indefinite hunger strike starting August 16 until proper provisions were made to the legislation. After a brief arrest, Hazare started his strike a week ago and he is garnering support from millions across the country. Regardless of what the outcome of the strike may be, it is exciting to see a figure making corrupt politicians pay attention by practicing Gandhi’s satyagraha methods. Hopefully his method starts a ripple effect…

Abby

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THE HINDU– Over 100 supporters of social activist Anna Hazare staged a dharna in front of the rented house of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh at Sarumotoria here on Monday. They beat drums, shouted slogans Anna Hazare zindabad and in support of the demand for tabling the Jan Lokpal Bill in Parliament.

The rented house of Dr. Singh, a Rajya Sabha member from this State, is owned by Hemoprova Saikia, former Assam Minister and wife of the former Chief Minister, Hiteswar Saikia.

Police arrived at the spot but Anna’s supporters dispersed peacefully after about half an hour. The protesters included Guwahati BJP MP Bijoya Chakravarty’s daughter and award-winning filmmaker Suman Haripriya and son Ranajit Chakravarty, a lawyer.

Security has been beefed up at Dr. Singh’s residence in the wake of the protests.

Anna’s supporters staged a dharna in front of the residence of the BJP MP also. However, there were no reports of demonstration in front of the houses of other MPs from Assam.

© 2011 The Hindu

Photo by Flickr user vm2827

NY TIMES– A court-ordered search of vaults beneath a south Indian temple has unearthed gold, jewels and statues worth an estimated $22 billion, government officials said Monday.

The treasure trove, at the 16th century Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, is widely believed to be the largest find of its kind in India, catching officials in the state of Kerala by surprise and forcing the government to send two dozen police officers to the previously unguarded shrine for round-the-clock security.

The discovery has also revived questions about who should manage the wealth, much of which is believed to have been deposited at the temple by the royal family of the princely state of Travancore, which acceded to India when the country became independent in 1947. Some of the vaults under the temple have not been opened for nearly 150 years, temple officials have said.

Read the full article about Buried Treasure Discovered Under Indian Temple.

© 2011 The New York Times

Photo by Flickr user Watchsmart

TRUTHOUT– Fears about loss of privacy are being voiced as India gears up to launch an ambitious scheme to biometrically identify and number each of its 1.2 billion inhabitants.

In September, officials from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), armed with fingerprinting machines, iris scanners and cameras hooked to laptops, will fan out across the towns and villages of southern Andhra Pradesh state in the first phase of the project whose aim is to give every Indian a lifelong Unique ID (UID) number.

“The UID is soft infrastructure, much like mobile telephony, important to connect individuals to the broader economy,” explains Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the UIDAI and listed in 2009 by Time magazine as among the world’s 100 most influential people.

Nilekani is a co-founder of the influential National Association of Software and Services Companies and, before this assignment, chief of Infosys Technologies, flagship of India’s information technology (IT) sector.

According to Nilekani, the UID will most benefit India’s poor who, because they lack identity documentation, are ignored by service providers.

“The UID number, with its ‘anytime, anywhere’ biometric authentication, addresses the problem of trust,” argues Nilekani.

But a group of prominent civil society organisations are running a Campaign For No-UID, explaining that it is a “deeply undemocratic and expensive exercise” that is “fraught with unforeseen consequences.”

Participants in the campaign include well-known human rights organisations such as the Alternative Law Forum, Citizen Action Forum, People’s Union for Civil Liberties, Indian Social Action Forum, and the Centre for Internet and Society.

A meeting was organised by the campaigners in New Delhi on Aug. 25 where speakers ridiculed the idea of a 12-digit number, and said it is unlikely to rectify, for example, the massive corruption in the public distribution system that is supposed to provide food to poor families.

J.T. D’Souza, an IT expert, asserted at the meeting that the use of biometrics on such a massive scale has never been attempted before and is bound to be riddled with costly glitches.

Other speakers raised issues of security and the possibility of hackers getting at databases and passing on information to commercial outfits, intelligence agencies or even criminal gangs.

In talks and television interviews, Nilekani has maintained that the benefits of the UID project far outweigh its risks. “It’s worth taking on the project and trying to mitigate the risks so that we get the outcomes we want,” he told the CNN-IBN television channel in an interview.

But the possibility of religious profiling by state governments or misuse by caste lobbies is real. This is because the central government has decided to include caste as a category in the UID questionnaire to be filled out by applicants.

Because identity is already a potent issue and the trigger for frequent identity-related conflict – such as the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat that left 2,000 people dead – any exercise that enhances identification is fraught.

Usha Ramanathan, a prominent legal expert who is attached to the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in the national capital, does not buy the UIDAI’s assurances.

At the Aug. 25 meeting, Ramanthan said that while enrolling with the UIDAI may be voluntary, other agencies and service providers might require a UID number in order to transact business. Indeed, the UIDAI has already signed agreements with banks, state governments and hospital chains which will allow them to ask customers for UIDs.

Ramanathan said that, taken to its logical limit, the UID project will make it impossible, in a couple of years, for an ordinary citizen to undertake a simple task such as travelling within the country without a UID number.

The UIDAI will work with the National Population Register (NPR) which draws its powers from the Citizenship Rules of 2003 and provides for penalties if information is withheld.

And as a government website says: “Certain information collected under the NPR will be published in the local areas for public scrutiny and invitation of objections.” Seeking to allay privacy fears, the website goes on to explain that this is merely “in the nature of the electoral roll or the telephone directory.”

But things begin to look ominous when seen in the context of the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID), the setting up of which home minister P. Chidambaram announced in February as part of his response to a major terrorist attack.

Chidambaram said NATGRID would tap into 21 sets of databases that will be networked to achieve “quick, seamless and secure access to desired information for intelligence and enforcement agencies.”

He added that NATGRID will “identify those who must be watched, investigated, disabled and neutralised.”

“Internationally only a few countries have provided national ID cards because of the unsettled debate on privacy and civil liberties,” says Prof. R. Ramakumar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. He added that several countries have had to withdraw ID card schemes or drop biometric aspects because of public opposition.

Nilekani maintains that the main purpose of the UID project is to empower the vast numbers of excluded Indians. “For the poor this is a huge benefit because they have no identities, no birth certificates, degree certificates, driver’s licences, passports or even addresses.” 

By Ranjit Devraj

This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.

Photo by Tom Thai