Chapter 5 Scraps of Lives III

• Yolie:
• Sir Henry Parkeswas an Australian colonial politician of English origin. He was Prime Minister of New South Wales (now the State of New South Wales). He is commonly referred to as the "father of the Australian federation", thanks to the fact that he was one of the first promoters of the federation of the six Australian colonies and also one of the first critics of the transport of convicts in Australia by the British, and was one of the proponents of the expansion of the continental rail network.
• Parkes received little school education and was forced to work at an early age as a ropemaker for four pence a day. He then worked in a brick factory, which he described as "breaking stones on the queen's path with hardly any clothing to protect ourselves from the cold." He was later apprenticed to John Holding, a Birmingham-based bone and ivory turner. Around it, he began to associate himself with popular-type political movements that pointed to an improvement in the quality of life and working conditions for the lower classes.
• As a young adult, Parkes developed extensive self-learning through reading; He also showed an interest in poetry. In 1835, he wrote his first poems (later included in the first of his volumes on this branch of literature) that were directed to Clarinda Varney, the daughter of a local butcher. On July 11, 1836, he married her and they moved into a room together. Parkes began working on his own in the city of Birmingham.
• After the loss of two of his children at an early age and after living a couple of unsuccessful weeks in London. Parkes and his wife made the decision to immigrate to the prosperous New South Wales region. Both traveled aboard the Strathfieldsaye (one of the first Australian commercial passenger ships that had a regular route), with which they arrived in the island country on July 25, 1839. Two days earlier, on the 23rd, they had another of their children. According to Parkes himself, they arrived in Australia with only a few shillings in their possession, and because of this they had to sell most of their belongings while Parkes was looking for work.
• He eventually landed a job as a laborer for the banker and physician John Jamison, one of the wealthiest settlers in the entire state, in the town of Regentville, near the town of Penrith.
• There he enjoyed a low average salary of £ 25 per year or £ 2 and 2s per month (£ 220.67 and £ 2,652.29 respectively, in 2021 pounds) alongside food rations.
• A year after his arrival in Sydney, Parkes was hired by the New South Wales Customs Department as a tidal waiter, tasked with inspecting merchant ships to prevent illegal trade in goods. Jamison's brother-in-law, William John Gibbes, (son of Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes) mayor of Regentville, a prisoner of that agency, was the one who recommended him for the position.
• During his early years in Australia, Parkes became interested in political conflict. Most notably, he
• joined the colony's growing autonomist independence movement. By that time, the riots had already turned into a serious diplomatic conflict.
• He was also one of the earliest modern proponents of universal suffrage in Australia. Even though he considered his own speech a rather poor performance,it is true that this controversial position turned out to be visionary and would eventually inspire future referents of the suffrage movement in that country. Ultimately, the petition was successful, and resulted in a relaxation of the minimum conditions required to exercise the right to vote.
• On June 8, 1849, Parkes attended a demonstration against the docking of a boat full of foreign convicts at Circular Quay, a Sydney harbor. Over the years, he continued to support the anti-shipping cause with various articles and speeches, until finally, four years later, in 1853, the British Government almost completely concluded this type of operation.
• Parkes also believed in the power of immigration, and his well-known oratorical skills led to him being petitioned in May 1861, alongside politician William Dalley, to England to work as immigration commissioners with an excellent salary of £ 1000 (equivalent to £ 121.7 thousand pounds of 2021). Parkes left his pregnant wife, and five children in poverty, on a rented farm in Warrington. His work was limited to disseminating information, and he spoke at some 60 conferences in cities in the west and north of England and Scotland. He felt he had done a good job, but it is difficult to quantify the impact of his words.
• Parkes was known for his commanding personality and speaking skills, despite having a slight speech impediment with controlled aspirations. He was addressing his supporters with simple and realistic language, and pursued their causes with great determination. Some of his acquaintances considered him vain, temperamental and even rude. Despite this, she was warmly welcomed when she met Thomas Carlyle and Alfred, Lord Tennyson during her visit to the UK. He became interested in early Australian writers, having been friends with both Harpur and Kendall. He received almost no formal education, but was trained by reading a lot.
• He was an official in the Australian Parliament for five terms. In October 1889, a report on the defenses of Australia suggested, among other things, the joining of the forces of all Australian colonies and a uniform gauge for the railways. Parkes had concluded that the time had come for a new federal move.
• When the convention met on March 2, 1891, Parkes was named president. The next issue was the discussion of a series of resolutions proposed by Parkes as a preliminary exchange of ideas and
• establishment of guiding principles. At this convention the first bill to establish the Commonwealth of Australia was drafted. Parkes proposed the name Commonwealth of Australia for the new nation.
• Parkes was now 77 years old. He retired permanently from politics. He was replaced by Reid as the leader of his party. Thereafter, Parkes became a de facto independent member. In 1895, he opposed Reid in the general election for Sydney-King and lost by 140 votes. He took on Reid because he felt the government was neglecting the federation issue, but Reid was too popular in his constituency to be defeated. Parkes's second wife died in the course of the election, and he had many other concerns.
• Towards the end of his life he rented Kenilworth, a gothic mansion on Johnston Street, Annandale, a suburb of Sydney. He was given a low rent because the landlord wanted the prestige of having Parkes as a tenant. He died on April 27, 1896; By then living in poverty, a state funeral was turned down, but large numbers attended when he was placed next to his first wife at Faulconbridge, on the grounds of his former home in the Blue Mountains.
• His portrait, the work of artist Julian Ashton, is in a public collection in Sydney. The Times newspaper described Parkes in life as "the most imposing figure in Australian politics." Alfred Deakin described him as "although he was neither rich nor versatile, his personality was massive, enduring and imposing, and he relied on elemental qualities of human nature elevated by a strong mind. He had
• the mold of a great man and, although he suffered from numerous pettiness, bites, and flaws, he was himself a large-brained, self-taught Titan whose natural field was in Parliament and whose resources of character and intellect enabled him in his later years to outshine all his contemporaries. "
• At present ... there is no information on what he does either ... hmm. Markos Botsaris: was a general and hero of the Greek War of Independence and captain of the Souliotes. Botsaris is one of the most revered Greek national heroes. Botsaris was born into one of the leading clans of the Souliotes in Epirus.
• Epirus, Alex's mother was from there ... are they related, him and Botsaris?
• He was the second son of Captain Kitsos Botsaris, who was assassinated in Arta in 1809 under the orders of Ali Pasha. The clan of the Botsaris comes from the city of Dragani (today Ambelia).
• In 1803, after the capture of Souli by Ali Pasha, the Botsaris and the rest of the Souliotes crossed over the Ionian Islands, where Markos served in the Albanian regiment of the French army for 11 years becoming one of the officers of the regiment.
• In 1814, he joined the patriotic Greek society known as Filiki Eteria. In 1821, Botsaris took part in the revolution against the Ottoman Empire. He and other Souliote captains, including Kitsos Tzavelas, Notis Botsaris, Lampros Veikos, and Giotis Danglis enlisted only fellow Souliotes in their bands. At the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence, he distinguished himself for his bravery, tenacity and skill as a partisan leader in the fighting in western Greece and shone in the defense of Missolonghi during the first siege of the city.
• On the night of August 21, 1823, he led the famous attack on Karpenisi of 350 Suliots against 1,000 Ottoman soldiers who formed the vanguard of the army with which Mustai Pasha, Shkoder's Albanian Ottoman Pasha, was advancing to reinforce the besiegers. Botsaris planned to capture Mustai Pasha as a prisoner during the skirmish but was hit in the head by a gunshot and killed.
• Botsaris was buried with all honors at Missolonghi. After the Ottomans conquered the city, in 1826, his tomb was desecrated by Ottoman Albanian groups.
• Many of his family members became key figures in Greek politics. Markos's brother Kostas (Constantine) Botsaris, who also fought at Karpenisi and completed the victory, survived to become a
• respected general and deputy in the Greek kingdom. He died in Athens on November 13, 1853. Markos's son, Dimitrios Botsaris, born in 1813, was a three-time minister of war during the reign of Otto I of Greece and George I of Greece. He died in Athens on August 17, 1870. His daughter, Katerina Botsaris, was in the service of Queen Amalia of Oldenburg.
• Evangelos Zappas, the well-known benefactor and founder of the modern Olympic Games, was an aide-de-camp and close friend of Markos Botsaris.
• Wow!
• Many philohellenes who have visited Greece have admired the value of Botsaris and many poets have written poems inspired by it. The American poet Fitz-Greene Halleck wrote a poem entitled "Marco Bozzaris", the Swiss Juste Olivier also wrote an award-winning poem dedicated to him, in 1825. The Greek poet, Dionysios Solomos, composed a poem entitled "On Markos Botsaris", where
• compares the mourning for the body of Botsaris with the lamentation of Hector, as described in the last book of the Iliad. His memory is still remembered in famous Greek folk songs.
• Botsaris is also considered the author of the Greek-Albanian lexicon written in Corfu in 1809, at the insistence of François Pouqueville, Napoleon Bonaparte's general and consul at Ali Pasha's court in Ioánnina. The dictionary is very important for the knowledge of the extinct Souliote dialect. However, although the book is known as the Botsaris dictionary, Professor Xhevat Lloshi has argued in various works that Botsaris could not have written the dictionary himself due to his youth and a note from Pouqueville clearly stating that the dictionary was sketched under the dictation of Markos's father, uncle and future godfather.
• In Greek music, there are several folk songs dedicated to Botsaris, such as a Tsamiko from central Greece, known as "Song of Markos Botsaris" and from the Greek minority of southern Albania. In Albanian music (Albanian: Marko Boçari) there is a polyphonic song from the 19th century entitled "Song of Marko Boçari from Suli" mourning his death. Folk dramas and children's songs were also written after his death.
• Botsaris appeared on the reverse side of the 1976-2001 Greek 50-lepton coin. He also appears often on posters adorning classrooms, government offices, and military units, as a member of the national pantheon of Greek heroes.
• There is not much about his history, really. Marc Botsas currently serves as vice president of the Philipides Consortium, the multinational company that stands out in the construction of both merchant and luxury cruise ships. Its most important shipyards are located in England, southern France and Greece.
• I close my eyes into slits. Philipides Consortium is one of Alex's companies. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi:was the most prominent leader of the Indian Independence Movement against British
• rule, for which he practiced non-violent civil disobedience, as well as an Indian pacifist, politician, thinker and lawyer. He received from Rabindranath Tagore the honorific name of Mahatma (composition in Sanskrit and Hindi of mahā: 'great' and ātmā: 'soul'). In India he was also called Bāpu ('father' in Gujarati language).
• He was born on October 2, 1869 in Porbandar, a coastal city in the small princely state of Kathiawar, now in the state of Gujarat (India). His family was of the Vaisia (merchant) caste. He was the son of Karamchand Gandhi, the diwan (prime minister) of Porbandar. His mother, Putlibai, his father's fourth wife, had a great influence in his childhood, when Gandhi learned at an early age not to harm any living being, to be a vegetarian, to fast to purify himself, and to be tolerant of others religious creeds. He was the youngest of three brothers, Laksmidas and Karsandas (boys) and a sister named Raliatbehn.
• At the age of thirteen, his parents arranged his marriage to Kasturba Makharji, of the same age and caste, with whom he had four children.
• In his youth, Gandhi was a mediocre student in Porbandar. Later in Rajkot, in 1887, he managed to barely pass the entrance examination of the University of Mumbai, enrolling in the School of Samaldas, in Bhavnagar. He did not stay there long, because he took advantage of the opportunity presented to him to study in England, a country he considered "the cradle of philosophers and poets, the center of civilization." He studied law at University College London. He returned to India after obtaining his Bachelor's degree to practice law in India.
• He tried to establish himself as a lawyer in Bombay, but was unsuccessful, as the legal profession was overcrowded at the time and Gandhi was not a dynamic figure in the courts. He returned to Rajkot doing the modest work of preparing petitions for litigants.
• He had to leave this task after an altercation with a British officer, in an incident in which he tried to advocate for his older brother.
• In 1893 he accepted a one-year employment contract with an Indian company operating in Natal, South Africa. He was interested in the situation of the 150,000 compatriots who resided there, fighting against the laws that discriminated against Indians in South Africa through passive resistance and civil disobedience.
• The incident that would serve as a catalyst for his political activism occurred two months after his arrival in South Africa, when traveling to Pretoria, he was forcibly removed from the train at Pietermaritzburg station because he refused to move from first class to third class, It was intended for black people. Later, traveling in a stagecoach, he was beaten by the driver because he refused to give up his seat to a white-skinned passenger. In addition, on this trip, he suffered other humiliations
• as he was denied accommodation in various hotels due to his race. This experience brought him much more in touch with the problems that black people in South Africa face on a daily basis. Also, after having suffered racism, prejudice and injustice in South Africa began to question the social situation of his countrymen and of himself in the society of that country.
• When his contract ended, he prepared to return to India. At the farewell party in his honor in Durban, leafing through a newspaper reported that a law was being drafted in the Natal Legislative Assembly to deny the Indians the vote. He postponed his return to India and devoted himself to the task of drawing up various petitions, both to the Natal assembly and to the British government, trying to prevent this law from being passed. While it did not achieve its goal, as the law was enacted, it nevertheless managed to draw attention to the problems of racial discrimination against Indians in South Africa.
• He extended his stay in this country, founding the Indian Congress Party of Natal in 1894. Through this organization he was able to unite the Indian community in South Africa into a homogeneous political force, flooding the press and the government with allegations of violations of the Indian civil rights and evidence of discrimination by British in South Africa.
• Gandhi returned to India for a brief period to take his wife and children to South Africa. Upon his return, in January 1897, a group of white men attacked him and tried to lynch him. As a clear indication of the values that he would uphold throughout his life, he refused to bring his attackers to justice, stating that one of his principles was not to seek compensation in court for the damages inflicted on his person.
• At the beginning of the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa, Gandhi considered that the Indians should
• participate in this war if they aspired to legitimize themselves as citizens with full rights. Thus, he organized non-combatant volunteer corps to assist the British. However, at the end of the war, the situation of the Indians did not improve; in fact, it continued to deteriorate.
• In 1906 the Transvaal government enacted a law that required all Indians to register. This led to a massive protest in Johannesburg, where Gandhi first adopted the platform called satyagraha ("attachment or devotion to the truth") which consisted of a non-violent protest.
• He insisted that the Indians openly but without violence defy the enacted law, suffering whatever punishment the government wanted to impose. This challenge lasted seven years in which thousands of Indians were imprisoned (including Gandhi on several occasions), flogged and even shot for protesting, refusing to register, burning their registration cards and any other form of non-violent rebellion. Although the government managed to suppress the protest of the Indians, the denunciation
• abroad of the extreme methods used by the South African government finally forced the South African general Jan Christian Smuts to negotiate a solution with Gandhi.
• From 1919 he openly belonged to the front of the Indian nationalist movement. He established new methods of social struggle such as the hunger strike and in his programs he rejected the armed struggle and preached ahimsa (non-violence) as a means of resisting British rule. He widely defended and promoted total fidelity to the dictates of conscience, even reaching civil disobedience if necessary; in addition, he fought for the return to the old Hindu traditions. He corresponded with Leo Tolstoy, who influenced his concept of nonviolent resistance.
• Gandhi returned to India in 1915. At this time he had already changed his habits and lifestyle adopting the more traditional ones of India. At first he tried to launch a new newspaper and practice law, but was dissuaded by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who convinced him to pursue work of greater national importance.
• Gandhi and his wife Kastūrbā traveled throughout India. He maintained a copious correspondence with different characters in his country and continued to experiment with their diet and deepen his knowledge of religion and philosophy, but, above all, he paid main attention to politics.
• From March 12 to April 6, 1930, he starred in an important non-violent protest, known as the salt march (salt satiagraha), which would serve as inspiration for movements such as that of the
• American Martin Luther King.
• World War II broke out on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Initially, Gandhi had favored the policy of indifference and non-violence against the British, but the unilateral inclusion of India in the war, without the consultation of the people's representatives, offended other leaders of Congress. All members of Congress elected to resign en masse.
• After lengthy deliberations, Gandhi declared that India could not be in favor of a war that was apparently a fight for democratic freedom, while that same freedom was denied to India.
• As the war progressed, Gandhi stepped up his claim for independence, outlining a call for the British to leave India. Gandhi's rebellion and the most definitive one of the Congress Party aimed to secure the British exit from India.
• For India it was the most powerful movement in the history of its struggle, with arrests and violence on an unprecedented scale. Thousands of freedom fighters were killed or injured by police fire, and hundreds of thousands were arrested.
• Gandhi and his supporters were clear that they would not support the war effort unless immediate independence was granted to India. He was even clear that this time the movement would not stop, even if individual acts of violence were committed, and ordered to say that "anarchy" around him was "worse than true anarchy." He invited all members of Congress and Indians to maintain discipline via ahimsa (non-violence), and karó ia maró ("done or given") in the ultimate cause of freedom.
• He leaned in favor of the right of the Congress party and had conflicts with his disciple Nehru, who
• represented the left. In 1942 London sent Richard Stafford Cripps as an intermediary to negotiate with the Nationalists, but when a satisfactory solution was not found, they radicalized their positions.
• The British arrested Gandhi and the entire congressional working committee in Bombay on August 9, 1942. They held Gandhi for two years in Aga Khan's palace in Pune. It was then that Gandhi suffered two terrible blows in his personal life. His secretary Mahadev Desai (42 years old) died of a heart attack six days later and his wife Kasturbá died after 18 months of imprisonment, in February 1944; Gandhi suffered a severe attack of malaria six weeks later. He was released before the end of the war, on May 6, 1944, due to his poor health and the need to heal. The British government did not want him to die in prison and that would produce hatred in the nation.
• Although the nonviolent movement in India was moderately successful in its goal, the ruthless repression of the movement brought order to India in late 1943. With the end of the war, the British Empire gave clear indications that power would be transferred. at Indian hands. At this point Gandhi ordered the fighting to be suspended, getting around 100,000 political prisoners released, including the leadership of the Congress Party.
• Gandhi and his wife Kasturba were deprived of their liberty and placed under house arrest in the Palace of the Aga Khan, where she died in 1944, while he was on a twenty-one day fast.
• His moral influence on the development of the talks leading up to the independence of India was
• considerable, but the separation with Pakistan deeply discouraged him.
• Once independence was achieved, Gandhi tried to reform Indian society, beginning by integrating the lower castes (the shudras or 'slaves', the outcasts or 'untouchables' and the mlechas or 'barbarians'), and by developing the rural areas. On political economy, he thought that capital should not be considered more important than labor, nor that labor should be considered superior to capital, judging both ideas dangerous; that, rather, a healthy balance should be sought between these factors, both being considered equally valuable for material development and justice. He was a great defender of vegetarianism and rejected any form of mistreatment of living beings. On one occasion he expressed:
• "The vegetarian diet is priceless for me. I feel that spiritual progress demands at some point that we stop killing our neighbors to satisfy our bodily desires. "
• Hmmm, how does he handle those beliefs since he is a vampire?
• He disapproved of the religious conflicts that followed the independence of India, defending Muslims in Indian territory, being assassinated by Nathuram Godse, a fanatic Hindu integrationist, on January 30, 1948 at the age of 78. His ashes were thrown into the Ganges River.
• How interesting. Converting in a vamp seems to accomplish incredible things. He was cremated and yet I have seen him in one piece.
• Gandhi never received the Nobel Peace Prize, although he was nominated five times between 1937 and 1948. Decades later, however, the Committee that administers the Nobel Prize declared the injustice of such an omission, which it attributed to divided nationalist sentiments that they denied him such an award The Government of India awards an award which they call the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Prize. One of those who received this award is the South African leader Nelson Mandela.
• Currently, although he resides in India under the name of Mohas Karam, he is the lead attorney for the Philipides Holdings India branch. It is characterized by leading a quiet and quiet life. He makes frequent visits to orphanages and other charities where, despite his apparent advanced age, he enjoys volunteering fifty hours a week.
• I scratch my head thoughtfully. After reading the BIOS of each of Alex's guests I am able to understand why he converted them. Almost all share two characteristics in common: The excessive love for the freedom of their respective homelands and ideas far advanced for their times.