SWC Agenda – HIS 100


Fall 2017 History 100 M/W 6:45 to 10:05

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Our Phantasmagoric Class–Number 15 (the last!)

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose.

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell

We can comprehend and change the world. Gibson

PORTFOLIOS DUE MIDNIGHT DECEMBER 8, FRIDAY

December 4th

1674 – Father Jacques Marquette founds a mission on the shores of Lake Michigan to minister to the Illiniwek. (The mission would later grow into the city of Chicago.)

1864American Civil War: Sherman’s March to the Sea: At Waynesboro, Georgia, forces under Union General Judson Kilpatrick prevent troops led by Confederate General Joseph Wheeler from interfering with Union General William T. Sherman‘s campaign destroying a wide swath of the South on his march to the Atlantic Ocean from Atlanta.

1943 – World War II: In Yugoslavia, resistance leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito proclaims a provisional democratic Yugoslav government in-exile.

1969Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are shot and killed during a raid by 14 Chicago police officers.

Detroit News

Do you know about the Fisher Building's secrets?

Did you know about the old jazz club hidden inside?

Posted by Curbed Detroit on Sunday, December 3, 2017

1.20 Rivera appears

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Update: 4 people shot outside of DIA during Noel Night festivities

Once home to the finest urban school system in the US, Detroit is now the most violent city in the US. 43% of the citizens are illiterate. Once, the American city that had the most single family homes, today two-thirds of the buildings in the city, public and private, are vacant, the Mayor making unfulfilled promises year after year to bulldoze thousands of them.

Things changes, sometimes for the worse.

One last fun movie suggestion

Our Last Phantasmagoric Agenda

1. What is up?

a. War with N. Korea–or who is next???

b. More? Last chance!

2 After the Civil War

a. PBS’ Ken Burns reactionary take on the war is very popular. His series on Vietnam is on a seemingly endless loop. It too, is terrible, but here is his Civil War.

Professor Devine describes the period of about 12 years after the Civil war, 1865 to 1877, the Reconstruction Era, as “agony.”

For who? Again, standpoint is key.

Both North and South were in serious financial trouble after the war.

Lincoln, who stood for reconciliation, was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a well known actor, in April, 1865.

V.P Andrew Johnson became President. He rather quickly pardoned the masters of the South.

People freed by the war, by self help, and by law, were set free with no education and no land. It’s the hollow kind of freedom, a mystical pretense, that arches over much of American reality.

He was the only southern (born in the Carolinas, moved to Tn.) senator loyal to the union. He hated rich planters but thought everyone should have a slave: Devout racist, unionist.

Reconstructing Southern Society
South devastated– cities burned, factories ruined. 50% of wealth vanished.
Black people want land, education, and the vote (Dubois says just first two, without them the vote is hollow)
Northerners travel south to help, and to profit.
Divine on page 416 blames the freed people’s goals for violence and chaos. 

Federal troops would be required to enforce the Constitution and the Reconstruction Amendments in the South (but remember, the Constitution is designed to protect property, that is, capital).

The Reconstruction era in the south was probably the most small d, democratic, era in US history. But that could only happen under the gaze of armed Federal troops.

More evidence of history as a battleground, for about 100 years, this Reconstruction period was taught as a time of mass corruption, rape, and hysteria. It was, and often still is, the South’s narrative (see Ken Burns above).

Brilliant historian W. E. B. Dubois changed that with “Black Reconstruction in America.” But even for years after its publication, racism dominated the teaching of Reconstruction.

There was constant struggle over what the south would be.

Contradictions: Radical Republicans in north and south vs Democrats, ex-slaves vs white southern racists and planter elites, poor whites in south vs nearly everyone else, and the Presidents for the preservation of property laws: capital and profits.

Frederick Douglass continued his struggle against racism during Reconstruction. He was appointed head of the Reconstruction Freedmans’ Bank.

President Johnson was in constant battle with congressional Republicans. He was impeached, but the process failed.

U.S. Grant, top Northern General during the Civil War, was elected President in 1868.

Prior to Reconstruction, many southern states, like Georgia, had no public school system. Reconstruction set up “Freedman’s” Bureau (sic) schools.

Remember, General Fremont had promised to give all the Mississippi lands to ex-slaves. General Sherman promised every former slave “40 acres and a mule,” along the south’s east coast. Expectations were high. Some people actually were able to keep their land, most of it along the Carolina coast and on nearby islands.

However, somewhat like the treaties with the Indians, those promises to ex-slaves were broken far more often than not.

Early in Reconstruction, the Ku Klux Klan, White League and Red Shirts, and other conspiratorial terrorist groups began a campaign of lynching.

This “first KKK” was secretive. The “second” Klan, rising in the 1920’s, was violent but mainly engaged in racist, anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic electoral work, putting tens of thousands of ardent racists into high, and local offices–including the Supreme Court (Hugo Black) and, probably, the presidency (Truman).

In a speech delivered on November 15, 1867, Douglass said: “A man’s rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box.

Grant Signed:

The Civil Rights Act of 1871

The Civil Rights Act of 1871 is a United States federal law that prohibits ethnic violence against blacks. The Act was passed to protect southern blacks from the Ku Klux Klan by providing a civil remedy for abuses then being committed in the South.

Pursuant to 42 USCS § 1983 “Every person who, under color of any statute, ordinance, regulation, custom, or usage, of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia, subjects, or causes to be subjected, any citizen of the United States or other person within the jurisdiction thereof to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured by the Constitution and laws, shall be liable to the party injured in an action at law, suit in equity, or other proper proceeding for redress, except that in any action brought against a judicial officer for an act or omission taken in such officer’s judicial capacity, injunctive relief shall not be granted unless a declaratory decree was violated or declaratory relief was unavailable.”

But, by the early 1870’s the White League and the Klan, had taken over entire states (like La.)-even with the Federal troops in place. Northern rank and file racists were tired of the “south’s problem.”

Divine fails to note the White Leagues were known as the military arm of the Dem party. They were well armed confederate vets who operated in the open. Funded by wealth who got them money for good Winchesters, etc. 5,000 of them fought a pitched 1874 battle with the state militia and won.

Grant sent troops. They drifted away. But 1874 was the last time Grant sent troops.

1872 Election: Grant and the Republicans win
Democrats ran an openly racist campaign, hostile to Federal Control–back to State’s Rights!
New rise of now-unmasked violence.

 Grant’s presidency was mired by scandals: Credit Mobilier, a banking scandal; The Black Friday scandal involving Jay Gould and Jim Fisk seeking to corner the gold market, and more. The scandals damaged the reputation of the Republican Party and Grant.

Congress adopted the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which, like similar measures, proved nearly meaningless except as historical artifacts.

(later declared unconstitutional) guaranteed African Americans equal rights in public places like theaters & public transportation.

Here is how Howard Zinn addresses the election of 1876–and brings it into the present. This was probably the most racist campaign in US history.

Tennis on the Titanic

…as the Gore-Bush contest rose to a frenzy, the media kept referring — to the Hayes-Tilden election of 1876.

The education that the public received about this was typical of what passes for history in our schools, our newspapers, our television sets. That is, they learned how the Founding Fathers, in writing the Constitution, gave the state legislators the power to choose Electors, who would then choose the President.

We were told how rival sets of electors were chosen in three states, and how Samuel Tilden, the Democrat, had 250,000 more popular votes than the Republican , Rutherford Hayes, and needed only one more electoral vote to win the Presidency. But when a special commission, with a bare Republican majority, was set up by Congress to decide the dispute, it gave all three states to Hayes and thus made him President.

This was very interesting and informative about the mechanics of presidential elections and the peculiar circumstances of that one .

But it told us nothing about how that “Compromise of 1877”, worked out between Republicans and Democrats in private meetings, doomed blacks in the South to semi-slavery. It told us nothing about how the armies that once fought the Confederacy would be withdrawn from the South and sent West to drive Indians from their ancestral lands.

It told us nothing about how Democrats and Republicans, while fencing with one another in election campaigns, would now join in subjecting working people all over the country to ruthless corporate power, how the United States army would be used to smash the great railroad strikes of 1877.

The video below is a student project and has its weaknesses. But it does demonstrate the role of the government in relation to the distribution of land to railroad trusts, the role of the military and the strikers, and the current state of the “labor movement” today which is surely not what the students see.

Zinn continues: These were the facts of race and class and Western expansion concealed behind the disputed election of 1877. The pretense in disputed elections is that the great conflict is between the two major parties. The reality is that there is an unannounced war between those parties and large numbers of Americans who are represented by neither party.

The ferocity of the contest for the presidency in the current election conceals the agreement between both parties on fundamentals. Their heated disagreement is about who will preside over maintaining the status quo.

Whoever wins, there may be skirmishes between the major parties, but no monumental battles, despite the inflated rhetoric of the campaign. The evidence for this statement lies in eight years of the Clinton-Gore administration, whose major legislative accomplishments were part of the Republican agenda.

Both Gore and Bush have been in agreement on the continued corporate control of the economy. Neither has had a plan for free national health care, for extensive low-cost housing, for dramatic changes in environmental controls, for a minimum income for all Americans, for a truly progressive income tax to diminish the huge gap between rich and poor. Both have supported the death penalty and the growth of prisons. Both believe in a large military establishment, in land mines and nuclear weapons and the cruel use of sanctions against the people of Cuba and Iraq. Both supported the wars against Panama, Iraq, and Yugoslavia.

Hayes made a racist deal with Tilden. Hayes becomes president. He agrees to withdraw federal troops from the South.

Southern elites and racist white workers joined together to drive freed people off the land, into sharecropping relationships. The schools were closed.

Harsh laws were enacted, varying from state to state.

*Miscegenation-against inter-racial marriage

*Separate “but equal” schools

*No integrated dining.

*No integrated drinking fountains

*No integrated bathrooms

*An 1850 California statute provided that “no black, mulatto person, or Indian, shall be allowed to give evidence in favor of, or against a white man. The law later included Chinese/

*Segregated housing and employment

*Bizarre tests for voting rights

Mississippi didn’t ratify the 13th Amendment until 2013

Black Codes were enforced for nearly 100 years–understanding that the north was as segregated and racist as the south in many ways.

Lynchings (a right of passage) grew to 187 a year from 1889 to 99.

This 1930 photo shows the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. This image is a part of the “Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America” exhibit.

The PBS series on the “Jim Crow” era is here:

Famous Northern Generals, made heroes by the Civil War efforts, went west to fight and kill Indians like William TECUMSEH Sherman, Little Phil Sheridan, and George Armstrong Custer.

But, things changed, just not as fast as they should have.

Lawyer and author Michelle Alexander believes there is a “New Jim Crow”

My colleague and friend, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz wrote an excellent essay on what was to come next:

Dr. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: “The great revolutionary movements in the US have largely been powered by African-American, Mexican-American, and Native-American resistance” 

Dr. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: “The great revolutionary movements in the US have largely been powered by African-American, Mexican-American, and Native-American resistance”

History is a science. Now, some reminders of what we did, and a fond farewell. 

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 14 (nearly done)

PORTFOLIOS DUE MIDNIGHT DECEMBER 8, FRIDAY

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose.

History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity. CICERO, Pro Publio Sestio

History is more or less bunk.HENRY FORD, Chicago Tribune, May 25, 1916

To remain ignorant of things that happened before you were born is to remain a child. CICERO

November 29

Portfolios Due Midnight December 8!

1781 – The crew of the British slave ship Zong murders 133 Africans by dumping them into the sea to claim insurance.

1864American Indian Wars: Sand Creek massacre: Colorado volunteers led by Colonel John Chivington massacre at least 150 Cheyenne and Arapaho noncombatants inside Colorado Territory.

1944 – World War II: Albania is liberated by the Partisans. (below, Enver Hoxha and Albanian flag)

1967Vietnam War: U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announces his resignation.

.Mr Micawber’s famous, and oft-quoted, recipe for happiness: “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen [pounds] nineteen [shillings] and six [pence], result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

Our Phantasmagoric Second to last Agenda!

1. What is up???

a. Trump to Kurds: Please return the weapons we gave you.

b. Benghazi conviction: Hersh on why the CIA and others were there

c. China racing for AI superiority over US (Reuters)

d.One world one language…Esperanto

e. More!

2. The Civil War–a brief timeline:

1860

The results of the 1860 census show a total population of 31,183,582 including 3,950,528 slaves or 13% of the population. Slaves equal 2% of the population in what would be Northern Aligned States and 39% in Southern Aligned States. The total population for Northern Aligned States was 22,080,250 and for Southern Aligned States was 9,103,332.

In the Northern Aligned States 8% of the families owned slaves and 31% in the Southern Aligned States. 57% of the population in South Carolina were slaves and 49% of the families in Mississippi owned slaves.

November – Abraham Lincoln is elected president. Lincoln received 40% of the popular vote and won 59% of the Electoral votes. He was not even on the ballot in the deep south.

In his inaugural address, Lincoln denied he had a plan to free the slaves.

December – On December 20th the South Carolina convention passes ordinance of secession thus seceding from the Union. Note that S. Carolina was first. And S. Carolina was the first to engage the war.

Quickly, 11 states seceded to join the Confederacy

April 12, 1861: Confederates fire on Ft Sumter in S. Carolina. The Ft surrenders the next day.

 

April 15th – In Washington, President Lincoln issues a proclamation announcing an “insurrection,” and calls for 75,000 troops to be raised from the militia of the several States of the Union.

 

First Bull Run (Manassas) Spectators with boxed lunches!

July 21, 1861 – The Union Army under Gen. Irvin McDowell suffers a (shocking) defeat at Bull Run 25 miles southwest of Washington. Confederate Gen. Thomas J. Jackson earns the nickname “Stonewall,” as his brigade resists Union attacks. Union troops fall back to Washington.  President Lincoln realizes the war will be long. “It’s damned bad,” he comments.

September 11, 1861 – President Lincoln revokes Gen. John C. Frémont’s unauthorized military proclamation of emancipation in Missouri. Later, the president relieves Gen. Frémont of his command replaces him with Gen. David Hunter.

How Slavery Really Ended in America

General Benjamin Butler  May 23, 1861

“. “I am informed,” he said, “that three Negroes belonging to Colonel Mallory have escaped within your lines. I am Colonel Mallory’s agent and have charge of his property. What do you mean to do with those Negroes?”

“I intend to hold them,” Butler said.

“Do you mean, then, to set aside your constitutional obligation to return them?”

Even the dour Butler must have found it hard to suppress a smile. This was, of course, a question he had expected. And he had prepared what he thought was a fairly clever answer.

“I mean to take Virginia at her word,” he said. “I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be.”

“But you say we cannot secede,” Cary retorted, “and so you cannot consistently detain the Negroes.”

“But you say you have seceded,” Butler said, “so you cannot consistently claim them. I shall hold these Negroes as contraband of war, since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property.”

Ever the diligent litigator, Butler had been reading up on his military law. In time of war, he knew, a commander had a right to seize any enemy property that was being used for hostile purposes. The three fugitive slaves, before their escape, were helping build a Confederate gun emplacement. Very well, then — if the Southerners insisted on treating blacks as property, this Yankee lawyer would treat them as property, too. Legally speaking, he had as much justification to confiscate Baker, Mallory and Townsend as to intercept a shipment of muskets or swords.”

When Lincoln finally unveiled the Emancipation Proclamation in the fall of 1862, he framed it in Butleresque terms, not as a humanitarian gesture but as a stratagem of war.On the September day of Lincoln’s edict, a Union colonel ran into William Seward, the president’s canny secretary of state, on the street in Washington and took the opportunity to congratulate him on the administration’s epochal act.

Seward snorted. “Yes,” he said, “we have let off a puff of wind over an accomplished fact.”

“What do you mean, Mr. Seward?” the officer asked.

“I mean,” the secretary replied, “that the Emancipation Proclamation was uttered in the first gun fired at Sumter, and we have been the last to hear it.”

  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html

February 6, 1862 – Victory for Gen. Ulysses S. Grant in Tennessee, capturing Fort Henry, and ten days later Fort Donelson. Grant earns the nickname “Unconditional Surrender” Grant.

February 20, 1862 – President Lincoln is struck with grief as his beloved eleven-year-old son, Willie, dies from fever, probably caused by polluted drinking water in the White House.

March 8/9, 1862 – The Confederate Ironclad ‘Merrimack’ sinks two wooden Union ships then battles the Union Ironclad ‘Monitor’ to a draw. Naval warfare is thus changed forever, making wooden ships obsolete.

Shiloh

April 6/7, 1862 – Confederate surprise attack on Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s unprepared troops at Shiloh on the Tennessee River results in a bitter struggle with 13,000 Union killed and wounded and 10,000 Confederates, more men than in all previous American wars combined. The president is then pressured to relieve Grant but resists. “I can’t spare this man; he fights,” Lincoln says.

April 24, 1862 – 17 Union ships under the command of Flag Officer David Farragut move up the Mississippi River then take New Orleans, the South’s greatest seaport. Later in the war, sailing through a Rebel mine field Farragut utters the famous phrase “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

Second Battle of Bull Run

August 29/30, 1862 – 75,000 Federals under Gen. John Pope are defeated by 55,000 Confederates under Gen. Stonewall Jackson and Gen. James Longstreet at the second battle of Bull Run in northern Virginia. Once again the Union Army retreats to Washington. The president then relieves Pope. Jackson is below.

September 4-9, 1862 – Lee invades the North with 50,000 Confederates and heads for Harpers Ferry, located 50 miles northwest of Washington.

The Union Army, 90,000 strong, under the command of McClellan, pursues Lee.

Antietam

September 17, 1862 – The bloodiest day in U.S. military history as Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Confederate Armies are stopped at Antietam in Maryland by McClellan and numerically superior Union forces. By nightfall 26,000 men are dead, wounded, or missing. Lee then withdraws to Virginia.

1863

January 1, 1863 – President Lincoln issues the final Emancipation Proclamation freeing all slaves in territories held by Confederates and emphasizes the enlisting of black soldiers in the Union Army. The war to preserve the Union now becomes a revolutionary struggle for the abolition of slavery.

January 29, 1863 – Gen. Grant is placed in command of the Army of the West, with orders to capture Vicksburg.

March 3, 1863 – The U.S. Congress enacts a draft, affecting male citizens aged 20 to 45, but also exempts those who pay $300 or provide a substitute. “The blood of a poor man is as precious as that of the wealthy,” poor Northerners complain.

Chancellorsville

May 1-4, 1863 – The Union Army under Gen. Hooker is decisively defeated by Lee’s much smaller forces at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia as a result of Lee’s “brilliant and daring” tactics. Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson is mortally wounded by his own soldiers. Hooker retreats. Union losses are 17,000 killed, wounded and missing out of 130,000. The Confederates, 13, 000 out of 60,000.

“I just lost confidence in Joe Hooker,” said Hooker later about his own lack of nerve during the battle.  Hooker is where “hooker” comes from.

 

Gettysburg

July 1-3, 1863 – The tide of war turns against the South as the Confederates are defeated at the Battle of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania.

The Confederate Army of Northern Virginia
70,100 men and 280 guns commanded by General Robert E. Lee
vs.
The Federal Army of the Potomac
93,700 men and 372 guns commanded by Major General George G. Meade
The armies at the Battle of Gettysburg included regiments and batteries from 12 Southern and 18 Northern states. Both armies had units from Maryland.

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Casualty counts at Gettysburg are estimates: total around 50,000 total, dead and wounded, for both sides.

July 4, 1863 – Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, surrenders to Gen. Grant and the Army of the West after a six week siege. With the Union now in control of the Mississippi, the Confederacy is effectively split in two, cut off from its western allies.

July 13-16, 1863 – Anti-draft riots in New York City include arson and the murder of blacks by poor immigrant whites. At least 120 persons, including children, are killed and $2 million in damage caused, until Union soldiers returning from Gettysburg restore order.

July 18, 1863 – ‘Negro troops’ of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment under Col. Robert G. Shaw assault fortified Rebels at Fort Wagner, South Carolina. Col. Shaw and half of the 600 men in the regiment are killed.

August 10, 1863 – The president meets with abolitionist Frederick Douglass who pushes for full equality for Union ‘Negro troops.’

Lincoln’s purpose for the war changed over time, from preserving the nation to ending slavery. Why?

August 21, 1863 – At Lawrence, Kansas, pro-Confederate William C. Quantrill and 450 pro-slavery followers raid the town and butcher 182 boys and men.

November 19, 1863 – President Lincoln delivers a two minute Gettysburg Address at a ceremony dedicating the Battlefield as a National Cemetery.

Even Before the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, the slaves began to free themselves, one of the key turning points of the Civil War, supplying the Northern Armies, denying the South the labor they had relied upon for life itself. By war’s end, nearly 200,000 formerly enslaved people joined the US military. Below is a presentation using the Common Core standards now typically in use in American schools.

1864

March 9, 1864 – President Lincoln appoints Gen. Grant to command all of the armies of the United States. Gen. William T. Sherman succeeds Grant as commander in the west.

May 4, 1864 – The beginning of a massive, coordinated campaign involving all the Union Armies. In Virginia, Grant with an Army of 120,000 begins advancing toward Richmond to engage Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, now numbering 64,000, beginning a war of attrition that will include major battles at the Wilderness (May 5-6), Spotsylvania (May 8-12), and Cold Harbor (June 1-3).

In the west, Sherman, with 100,000 men begins an advance toward Atlanta to engage Joseph E. Johnston’s 60,000 strong Army of Tennessee.

August 29, 1864 – Democrats nominate George B. McClellan for president to run against Republican incumbent Abraham Lincoln.

September 2, 1864 – Atlanta is captured by Sherman’s Army. “Atlanta is ours, and fairly won,” Sherman telegraphs Lincoln. The victory greatly helps President Lincoln’s bid for re-election.

November 8, 1864 – Abraham Lincoln is re-elected president, defeating Democrat George B. McClellan.

March to the Sea

November 15, 1864 – After destroying Atlanta’s warehouses and railroad facilities, Sherman, with 62,000 men begins a March to the Sea. President Lincoln on advice from Grant approved the idea. “I can make Georgia howl!” Sherman boasts.

December 21, 1864 – Sherman reaches Savannah in Georgia leaving behind a 300 mile long path of destruction 60 miles wide all the way from Atlanta. Sherman then telegraphs Lincoln, offering him Savannah as a Christmas present.

Sherman famously said, “War is hell.”

Proof that history is a battleground itself, the two videos below on Sherman’s strategic and tactical brilliance (my side of the story).

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Note that Sherman deliberately bypassed the notorious Andersonville Prison.

1865

January 31, 1865 – The U.S. Congress approves the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, to abolish slavery. The amendment is then submitted to the states for ratification.

March 4, 1865 – Inauguration ceremonies for President Lincoln in Washington. “With malice toward none; with charity for all…let us strive on to finish the work we are in…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations,” Lincoln says.

April 4, 1865 – President Lincoln tours Richmond where he enters the Confederate White House. With “a serious, dreamy expression,” he sits at the desk of Jefferson Davis for a few moments.

Lee Surrenders

April 9, 1865 – Gen. Robert E. Lee surrenders his Confederate Army to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at the village of Appomattox Court House in Virginia. Grant allows Rebel officers to keep their sidearms and permits soldiers to keep horses and mules.

Lincoln Shot

April 14, 1865 – The Stars and Stripes is ceremoniously raised over Fort Sumter. That night, Lincoln and his wife Mary see the play “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater.

At 10:13 p.m., during the third act of the play, John Wilkes Booth shoots the president in the head. Doctors attend to the president in the theater then move him to a house across the street. He never regains consciousness.

April 15, 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln dies at 7:22 in the morning. Vice President Andrew Johnson assumes the presidency.

December 6, 1865 – The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, passed by Congress on January 31, 1865, is finally ratified. Slavery is abolished. But…we shall see…

Herman Melville wrote the Martyr when Lincoln was killed

There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand:
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.

He lieth in his blood—
The father in his face;
They have killed him, the Forgiver—
The Avenger takes his place,
The Avenger wisely stern,
Who in righteousness shall do
What the heavens call him to,
And the parricides remand;
For they killed him in his kindness
In their madness and their blindness,
And his blood is on their hand.

There is sobbing of the strong,
And a pall upon the land;
But the People in their weeping
Bare the iron hand:
Beware the People weeping
When they bare the iron hand.

At the end of the war, the US arrested and tried the commander of the Andersonville concentration camp.

Of the 45,000 Union soldiers who’d been held at Andersonville Confederate prison during the American Civil War, 13,000 died. During the worst months, 100 men died each day from malnutrition, exposure to the elements, and communicable disease.

Its stockade, in which prisoners were detained, measured 1,600 feet by 780 feet, and was designed to hold a maximum of 10,000 prisoners.

The prisoners arrived before the barracks were built and so lived with virtually no protection from the blistering Georgia sun or the long winter rains. Food rations were a small portion of raw corn or meat, which was often eaten uncooked because there was almost no wood for fires. The only water supply was a stream that first trickled through a Confederate army camp, then pooled to form a swamp inside the stockade. It provided the only source of water for drinking, bathing, cooking, and sewage.(2)

On the scaffold, Wirz reportedly said to the officer in charge, “I know what orders are, Major. I am being hanged for obeying them.”(3)

Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other top leaders of the Confederacy were never tried for treason, war crimes or anything, although Lee’s former plantation, Andersonville, became a cemetery, Arlington, where the US buries its war dead.

New York Times of the day on the hanging of Wirz :  http://www.nytimes.com/1865/11/11/news/execution-wirz-closing-scenes-life-andersonville-jailor-farewell-interview-with.html?pagewanted=all

Following the South’s surrender, the US passed “The Reconstruction Amendments” to the Constitution.

13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments

Synopsis

The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery to this day.

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution declared that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are American citizens including African Americans.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen’s race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

 

 

  1. http://www.historyplace.com/civilwar/

2. http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/02/27/history/post-perspective/american-atrocity-the-andersonville-prison-camp.html

3.  http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/henry-wirz-hanged

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 13 (much more than half way done)

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose.

The state is nothing but an instrument of oppression of one class by another – no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.  friedrich_engels

 

November 27 (again–almost done so CATCH UP!)

 

1868American Indian Wars: Battle of Washita River: United States Army Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer leads an attack on Cheyenne living on reservation land.

1896Also sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss is first performed.

1965Vietnam War: The Pentagon tells U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson that if planned operations are to succeed, the number of American troops in Vietnam has to be increased from 120,000 to 400,000.  2,709,918 Americans served in uniform in Vietnam.

November 28th

1443Skanderbeg and his forces liberate Kruja in central Albania and raise the Albanian flag.

Our Phantasmagoric Agenda #13

1. What is UP?

a. Congress paid $17 million in secret settlements–and Conyers!

b. Buy American and who killed Vincent Chin

c. Time sold as big fish eat little fish and Chomsky on the media

d. Pakistan surrenders to fanatics again

2. Doubling the size of the USA: Mexico and Manifest Destiny

above, “His Most Serene Highness” Santa Anna

Crockett:

“Be sure you are right; then go ahead.”

“You may go to hell, and I will go to Texas.”

3. Sectional Crises in the US and the run up top to the Civil War

a.  Ideological and Material differences (abolition and land)

b. The Missouri Compromise of 1820 (Maine/Missiouri–free/slave) set aside by–

d. The Kansas Nebraska Act 1854

  Fugitive Slave Act of 1850

For decades before 1850, many men and women who escaped from slavery were able to avoid being captured and returned to their owners, but the Fugitive Slave Act, part of the Compromise of 1850, empowered federal officials to assist owners seeking to reclaim runaway slaves.

1856: Senator Charles Sumner (Republican) attacked in Senate  by Representative Preston Brooks (D-SC): Southern code of honor applied for speech Sumner gave in favor of a free Kansas

The PANIC of 1857

Abolitionists and Radical Republicans

Thadeus Stevens

Stevens was an ardent abolitionist who championed the rights of blacks for decades—up to, during, and after the Civil War. With other Radical Republicans, he agitated for emancipation, black fighting units, and black suffrage. After the war, he favored dividing up Southern plantations among the freed slaves, embracing William Tecumseh Sherman’s “forty acres and a mule.”

Pro-slavery forces (“bushwackers” who demean the term “guerrilla”) led by William Quantrill raided from Missouri into Kansas, burning Lawrence. Among Quantrill’s band were Jesse and Frank James, later famous criminals.

 

The Pottawatomie Creek Massacre

Osawatomie

,

Confederate States of America – Mississippi Secession

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.

The hostility to this institution commenced before the adoption of the Constitution, and was manifested in the well-known Ordinance of 1787, in regard to the Northwestern Territory.

The feeling increased, until, in 1819-20, it deprived the South of more than half the vast territory acquired from France.

The same hostility dismembered Texas and seized upon all the territory acquired from Mexico.

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.  http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 12 (much more than half way done)

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose

November 22

1864American Civil War: John Bell Hood begins the Franklin–Nashville Campaign in an unsuccessful attempt to draw William Tecumseh Sherman back out of Georgia.

1928 – The premier performance of Ravel‘s Boléro takes place in Paris.

1942 – World War II: Battle of Stalingrad: General Friedrich Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th Army is surrounded.

1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John Connally is seriously wounded by Lee Harvey Oswald, who also killed Dallas Police officer J. D. Tippit after fleeing the scene.

2004 – The Orange Revolution begins in Ukraine, resulting from the presidential elections.

Our Phantasmagoric agenda #12

1. What is UP?

a.

Detroit: The Most Exciting City in America?

b. US Navy transport plane crashed yesterday–carrying 11….

c. Guantanamos at Sea!

d.

2. And the plan for the day is……

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 11 (much more than half way done)

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose

“The most radical notion of all is a long historical memory.” Utah Phillips.

November 19, 1959

November 20

1910: Revolution (really an insurrection) in Mexico

1945Nuremberg trials: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg.

1962Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, U.S. President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.

1969Vietnam War: The Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.

1993Savings and loan crisis: The United States Senate Ethics Committee issues a stern censure of California senator Alan Cranston for his “dealings” with savings-and-loan executive Charles Keating.

“Journalism is the first cut of history.”

Our Phantasmagoric Aganda 11

1. What IS up???

a. The Media, Pa. Break-in and COINTELPRO

John Raines, 84, Who Evaded Capture in an F.B.I. Break-in, Dies (NYTimes)

b. Student loan collections part two–suspending licenses

c. Scientologist Charles Manson died

d. Slavery returns to Libya

e, The Aircraft Carrier Movie at the Fleet Science Center (almost as good as

Leni Riefenstahl see “Triumph of the Will” film on agenda below).

2. Sun Tzu nd the Art of War

2.  Indian Removal and the Run-up to the Civil war…and more!

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c3967854/indian-removal-act-1830

https://www.c-span.org/video/?302329-1/sequoyah-cherokee-syllabury

First battle of Wounded Knee

https://www.c-span.org/video/?318534-1/1890-wounded-knee-massacre

Second battle of Wounded Knee

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 10 (more than half way done)

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose

“History cannot give us a program for the future, but it can give us a fuller understanding of ourselves, and of our common humanity, so that we can better face the future.”
Robert Penn Warren
November 15
1532 – Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca Empire leader Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day.
1777American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation.
1864American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins Sherman’s March to the Sea. A fascinating story worth a paper!
1969 – Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 250,000-500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the war, including a symbolic “March Against Death”.
DETROIT JOBS
It is no secret that there is a building boom taking place in the center-city of Detroit. Unfortunately they can’t meet the need for laborers in the city of Detroit and they have to go outside to get that help. So here is the solution young men and women, if you really want to work. The Operator Engineers Labor Union has an apprenticeship program. All you have to do is pass a math test to get in the program. By May you could be making $25-30 per hour. Call 517-546-9610 And ask about the apprenticeship program.

It is the seventy fifth anniversary of the making of “Cassablanca.”
 Lyrics in English http://www.marseillaise.org/english/english.html
Wall Street

Our agenda
1. What is UP?
a. Student Loan Collections
b. Coming War of Saudi Arabia and Iran?
c.Sexual Harassment charges grow–how things change: quantities add up; an accelerator, a leap, a new situation containing elements of the old. And what of Billary?
d. Stalingrad 75 years on
e. The tax plan and the Obamacare health mandate: follow the money!
2.Review of the Haitian revolution and the  run up to the War of 1812, the Battle of New Orleans and US presidential doctrines
3. Sun Tzu and the Art of War
4. Getting a bit ahead of things and Wednesday 11/22/2017
a.  Chapters 10 and 11 in Professor Devine’s American Story and Zinnn#7
b. When we think about it, the US has ALWAYS been at war–with the Indians….
 1820’s and thirties:

 Rising inequality, but then based on accumulated wealth, not inheritance.Myth of “democracy.” Founders believed in natural aristocracy, meritocracy, disappearance of inherited social rank, “decline of deference,” self made men, no one but a slave is a servant, booming inequality based on ownership of means of production (often land).

“The rise of industrialism was creating a class of landless…..” (NO, driving people off land was, and people forced to move from Europe…p. 258

White men equal before the law, not like Europe. Attacks on all forms of elitism.
Popular press. Mass literacy.

Growth of unions. Opposed to non-producing parasites. “Radicals want to abolish inheritance, redistribute property, extend public schooling, 10 hour day, currency based on hard money..”

Abolitionists rising….sometimes connected to the womens movement and often not.

The “political status of blacks and women declined in era of ‘common man.”

1824–John Quincy Adams elected….won via electoral college..negotiated Florida from Spain (empire grows)

1828–Andrew Jackson wins. 1st ‘modern political party formed–Dems. Mass campaigning. Rachel Jackson accused as an adulteress. Posed as a “Man of people.” Fought many duels.

Spoils system rises–backscratching: Corruption.

Indian Removal is main thing about Jackson. Zinn calls him land speculator. Devine misses that.

Cherokees in his way. Trail of Tears. 4,000+ dead.

Nullification as key issue. Can states nullify fed law? Tariff another key issue. South and cotton states oppose Tariff, north wants it.

JC Calhoun of S. Carolina fights feud with Jackson over nullification. Jackson threatened to invade south but made deal on tariff.

JC Calhoun of S. Carolina fights feud with Jackson over nullification. Jackson threatened to invade south but made deal on tariff.

Jackson was a southerner and slaveholder. A pro slavery president but above that a nationalist.

Bank Wars….Finance Capital…. Bank of US, Jeffersonian Dems opposed, no popular control.

1832 Jackson wins re-election—bank key issue. Jackson vetoed bank. Removed fed deposits. Gave $ to some state banks. Congress refused to regulate them. Biddle did credit contraction. Recession/depression. Congress attempts to censure Jackson, but fails.

Whigs are born against King Andrew the usurper. Absorbed anti-masons, evangelicals, prudes.

1836 election–Urban working class radicalizing…vs banks….formed Equal Rights Party.

Jackson issues “species circular” only hard money….brought on recession, but curbed inflation.

1836- Van Buren wins…..Chosen by Jackson….

1837–Catastrophic depression says Devine, treated as a natural occurrence, why? Banks collapse, international in scope.

1840 Election—Harrison wins. Tippecanoe and Tyler too. Died in office after one month…

Whigs…for gov intervention….Whig positive liberal state….Whigs richer industrialists…Whigs for tariffs for elites. …

Dems—poorer, Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalian, states righters, white men majority…

White mens democracy….not for women, black people, Indians, on the job, or really for poor.

De Tocqueville—predicted slavery would lead to civil war….described white racism is…growing….

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 9 (nearly half way done)

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose
“We spend a great deal of time studying history, which, let’s face it, is mostly the history of stupidity.”
Stephen Hawking (The NYTIMES agrees)

November 13th

1918Allied troops occupy Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

2001War on Terror: In the first such act since World War II, US President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against foreigners suspected of connections to terrorist acts or planned acts on the United States.

CSPAN (Public TV) carries many interesting book talks. This is a ling to a discussion of the book “Inside Terrorism” by Bruce Hoffnam (3rd edition)  https://www.c-span.org/video/?436569-1/inside-terrorism

This is a link to the book, “Janesville” about what happens to a town and its people  when,  in 2008,  GM closed a plant of 4.8 million sq ft. https://www.c-span.org/video/?427443-1/amy-goldstein-discusses-janesville

Daniel Golden reports on how national security agencies established espionage rings at American universities …https://www.c-span.org/video/?436317-3/spy-schools

 

Quickly Noting events of 11/9. 10.11.+12

Our Phantasmagoric Agenda #9 (halfway done!)

1. What is up?

***A. Capitalism is a contradictory social relationship. In the US and the world: booming inequality, stagnation and war. How much is a TRILLION?

***B. Saudi Arabia  vs Iran

***C. Local IMAX celebrates Aircraft Carrier

***D. America’s Wall and  Much more!

2. The run-up to the Monroe Doctrine and the imperial doctrines that followed. After the French Revolution ….Haiti!

3.RESOURCES I USE TO FIGURE OUT WHAT IS UP…

4. Sun Tzu will make you smarter wherever you are!

 

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 8 (nearly half way done)

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose

A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots. Marcus Garvey

November 8th (check due dates on syllabus)

1892 – The New Orleans general strike begins, uniting black and white American trade unionists in a successful four-day general strike action for the first time. They won a shorter work day (ten hours) and overtime  pay.

1917 – The first Council of People’s Commissars is formed, including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.

The Russian revolution took place during WWI.  The Bolshevik Party, led mainly by Lenin (left above) and Trotsky (right, leader of the Red Army) said, “Turn the imperialist war (partly to divide Africa and the Middle East) into  a Civil War. Russian troops, over time, refused to fight, came home, and made the first SOCIALIST revolution. So, what is socialism?

1933Great Depression: New Deal: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveils the Civil Works Administration, an organization designed to create jobs for more than 4 million unemployed.

2004War in Iraq: More than 10,000 U.S. troops and a small number of Iraqi army units participate in a siege on the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah. This battle was fought to “avenge” the deaths of Blackwater mercenaries.

The Second Battle of Fallujah was the deadliest set battle, door to door fighting, in the Iraq war: December 2004. Nobody is sure how many innocents were killed.

.

Our Phantasmagoric Agenda #8

1, What is up?

a. The Trump tax proposal, the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers

b. “Today’s China must be able to maintain ever-expanding national interests in areas such as sea, space, frequency spectrum, the Internet and geopolitics.”  (That’s China-as-empire)  2016-05-16 Innovation in Military reform. Jin Yi Nan China War college.

 c. SDSU Faculty Senate votes to abolish the racist Aztec nickname. (Professor Michael Meyer, author and narrator of the History Channel on the Aztecs and the invasion: “The Aztec myth  is used to falsely unite people who otherwise would be naturally divided.”

d

2. What is capitalism?

Henry Ford: Capitalist

above, Henry Ford on right, and enforcer, Harry Bennett on left.

3, Working at “Fords”

a. Taylorism

3. Back in what is now in the USA.

***Support or Opposition to the French Revolution was one of many dividing lines in the rapidly growing USA (population explosion) . In addition: a growing gap of rich and poor, free and slave,  Town and Country, Mental and Manual labor (the later two typical of capitalism).

May 9, 1800: John Brown is born. He changed the world.

***Ideas of the American and French revolution spread to the French colony, Haiti, where rebels massed and killed colonists. Napolean invaded three times before Touissant L’overture and the INSURECTIONISTS were smashed but they persisted and over a long time (1791 to 1804) the revolution won, in a sense. Haiti (San Domingo then) has suffered ever since. But the long uprising terrified slavers everywhere, and stood as proof against the lies of inate inferority.

François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture–the “black Spartacus”

***The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 (Jefferson’s second term) : The Haitian revolt and war with Britain caused Napolean to seek funds. He sold the Louisian territory to the US for about $11 million dollars.The EMPIRE Grew!

Since navigation had opened with Spanish permission along the Mississippi River, and Robert Fulton had invented the steamboat (upriver travel) commerce expanded and slavers involved, especially with cotton, looked west.

Napolean planned to use his new-found money to invade England, but he never accomplished it.

***Problems in the Louisiana Territory: Slavery; Spaniards (Catholics) vs French slavers fleeing Haiti. And, to underline, slavery in what would become the South.

***1805: The Lewis and Clark Expedition reached the Pacific Northwest.

***The aggressive wars against the original people, Indians, continued throughout North America, Mexico, Central and South America.

***PIRATES! On the Barbary Coast (“from the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli). 1800-1805–Jefferson refused to pay tribute (which had been traditionally paid by other nations) and went to war.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster also has Pirates

LIteracy was widespread in the new USA. Newspapers spread everywhere–except to rural life where, frequently, the bible was the literature of the day.

1812–Madison declares war with Brits.Issues: Impresment. Open trade on the seas. The then “northwest” US (as in Detroit, northern Ohio (Brits want to use these areas as a buffer vs US incursions to Canada).

According to some historians, Madison’s plan was to seize Canada. But the US was unready. Brits seize Detroit.

USS Constitution wins key battle. Oliver Perry destroys Brit fleet at Put In Bay. “We have met the enemy and they are ours.”

1814 Brits burn DC. Attacked Baltimore. Star Spangled banner.

Both sides were going broke so they met and negotiated in Ghent, Belgium

Andrew Jackson—Battle of New Orleans, Johnny Horton.

Treaty of Ghent—Brits refused to discuss impressment, no territory exchanged, war did build nationalism, slavery endured.  Neither side won anything.

James Monroe, US president 1817 to 1825. A revolutionary war vet and slaver who favored returning slaves to Liberia, Monroe established what is seen as the first of many US presidential doctrines.

And, he presided over the Treaty of 1818 with Britain


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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 7

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose.

We can comprehend and change the world.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it–Karl Marx

November 5th

Eugene VictorGeneDebs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) 

Debs was an early founder of the Industrial Workers of the World  (Wobblies)

The Original I. W. W. Preamble

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until all the toilers come together on the political, as well as on the industrial field, and take and hold that which they produce by their labor through an economic organization of the working class, without affiliation with any political party.

The rapid gathering of wealth and the centering of the management of industries into fewer and fewer hands make the trade unions unable to cope with the ever-growing power of the employing class, because the trade unions foster a state of  things which allows one set of workers to be pitted against another set of workers in the same industry, thereby helping defeat one another in wage wars.The trade unions aid the employing class to mislead the workers into the belief that the working class have interests in common with their employers.   https://www.iww.org/about/official/StJohn/1

November 6th

1860Abraham Lincoln is elected as the 16th President of United States.

1928Herbert Hoover is elected the 31st President of the United States.

1984Ronald Reagan is reelected President of the United States.

Followed by the invasion of Grenada and so long pensions! Enjoy the 401K

Our Phanstasmagoric Agenda 7

Part Two: The Interlude as Contradictions Build in Empire, Nationalism, and Democracy

1. What IS up?

a. Caligula at Yakota , Japan , base and on in Asia-US vs China vs N, Korea vs Japan vs Vietnam, trade wars become real wars–note the US trade deficit! (“The US DOMINATES the land, the sea, the air, and space; The US always, always, ALWAYS, wins; I got a really great bomber jacket; Try building your cars in the US!  Is that rude?; Hey! Buy more weapons from the USA!  Jobs!” so sayeth Donald Trump).

b. Semi-Coup in Saudi Arabia (vs Iran)

c. The Big Short’ Michael Lewis  and education: Surgeons become Wall St Traders

d. Big drama i the Democratic Party  (Brazile/Sanders vs the Clinton gang)

e

f

2. Picking up where we left off…

Was this a revolution or not? Zinn says “No.” Why?

Remider: Chalmers Johnson on Revolution http://richgibson.com/johnsonquotes.htm

“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a Colossus shall we be when the Southern continent comes up to our mark! What a stand will it secure as a ralliance for the reason & freedom of the globe! I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. So good night. I will dream on, always fancying that Mrs Adams and yourself are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries.” – Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Monticello, 1 August 1816

Link below Jefferson and slavery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzZnqXvRSLE

Both capitalism and empire were born almost simultaneously, rooted in slavery.

The US was a growing, slave holding, empire, declaring liberty and freedom–a profound contradiction!

In 1776 there were more than 500,000 enslaved people in the colony. In the shouthern region they made up about 40% of he population.

Alex De Toqueville predicted that slavery would destroy the US

The Articles of Confederation and Shay’s Rebellion

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights (federalists like Madison vs Republicans like Jefferson).

***SLAVERY and the Constitution (key role of property rights):

a.  3/5s clause. 

b. slave trade extended to 1806.

c. Fugitive slave clause.

In 12 of the first 16 presidential elections, a Southern slave owner won. Extending the slave trade to 1806 brought many slaves to America. 

Zinn: “In Federalist Paper #10, James Madison argued that representative government was needed to maintain peace in a society ridden by factional disputes. These disputes came from “the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society.” The problem, he said, was how to control the factional struggles that came from inequalities in wealth. Minority factions could be controlled, he said, by the principle that decisions would be by vote of the majority.

So the real problem, according to Madison, was a majority faction, and here the solution was offered by the Constitution, to have “an extensive republic,” that is, a large nation ranging over thirteen states, for then “it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength, and to act in unison with each other…. The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States.”

Madison’s argument can be seen as a sensible argument for having a government which can maintain peace and avoid continuous disorder. But is it the aim of government simply to maintain order, as a referee, between two equally matched fighters? Or is it that government has some special interest in maintaining a certain kind of order, a certain distribution of power and wealth, a distribution in which government officials are not neutral referees but participants? In that case, the disorder they might worry about is the disorder of popular rebellion against those monopolizing the society’s wealth. This interpretation makes sense when one looks at the economic interests, the social backgrounds, of the makers of the Constitution.

or reason) is out of t

As part of his argument for a large republic to keep the peace, James Madison tells quite clearly, in Federalist #10, whose peace he wants to keep: “A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it.”

When economic interest is seen behind the political clauses of the Constitution, then the document becomes not simply the work of wise men trying to establish a decent and orderly society, but the work of certain groups trying to maintain their privileges, while giving just enough rights and liberties to enough of the people to ensure popular support.

In the new government, Madison would belong to one party (the Democrat-Republicans) along with Jefferson and Monroe. Hamilton would belong to the rival party (the Federalists) along with Washington and Adams. But both agreed-one a slaveholder from Virginia, the other a merchant from New York-on the aims of this new government they were establishing. They were anticipating the long-fundamental agreement of the two political parties in the American system. Hamilton wrote elsewhere in the Federalist Papers that the new Union would be able “to repress domestic faction and insurrection.” He referred directly to Shays’ Rebellion: “The tempestuous situation from which Massachusetts has scarcely emerged evinces that dangers of this kind are not merely speculative.”

It was either Madison or Hamilton (the authorship of the individual papers is not always known) who in Federalist Paper #63 argued the necessity of a “well-constructed Senate” as “sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions” because “there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misted by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn.” And: “In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?”

The Constitution was a compromise between slaveholding interests of the South and moneyed interests of the North. For the purpose of uniting the thirteen states into one great market for commerce, the northern delegates wanted laws regulating interstate commerce, and urged that such laws require only a majority of Congress to pass. The South agreed to this, in return for allowing the trade in slaves to continue for twenty years before being outlawed.

Charles Beard warned us that governments-including the government of the United States-are not neutral, that they represent the dominant economic interests, and that their constitutions are intended to serve these interests.”

The Bill of Rights (First Ten Ammendments):  Jefferson on religion: Don’t pick my pocket and don’t break my leg. We’ll be fine.

Washington served two terms as president. He then offered his  Farewell Address

1. Preserve the union. Oppose sectionalism

2. Oppose the formation of political parties which would feud.

3. Avoid foreign entanglements–stressing neutrality.

Yikes! The idea of human equality (anti-monarchy, fhe bag!

In Effect, the French Revolution destroyed feudalism (which is?)

1798: The Alien and Sedition acts–Stifling dissent for “National Security”

***Harder for an alien to become a citizen (naturalization act–especially aimed at Irish)

***The president can jail and deport “dangerous” non-citizens or people fron “enemy” nations

***a  crime to criticize the government (Franklin’s grandson jailed)

By the early 1800’s, capitalism and imperialism had grown together for about 100 years (remember slavery).

Again, what is capitalism?

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“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
George Orwell

October 31, 1517 (500 years ago) 

The precipitating event of the Protestant Reformation is generally considered to be Martin Luther’s posting of his Ninety-five Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Church on October 31, 1517….

Luther, a Roman Catholic monk, challenged the authority of the pope and, in particular, the selling of indulgences. Rather than heed the call to reform, the Roman Catholic Church dug in its heels and sought to silence the Reformers.

Eventually, new churches emerged from the Reformation, forming four major divisions of Protestantism: Luther’s followers started the Lutheran Church, Calvin’s followers started the Reformed Church, John Knox’s followers started the Presbyterian Church in Scotland (using Calvinistic doctrine), and, later, Ref ormers in England started the Anglican Church.  The Protestant Reformation, Revised Edition by Hans Hillerbrand

Luther On the Jews and Their Lies

Luther’s attitude toward the Jews took different forms during his lifetime. In his earlier period, until 1537 or not much earlier, he wanted to convert Jews to Christianity, but failed. In his later period when he wrote this particular treatise, he denounced them and urged their persecution.[1]

In the treatise, he argues that Jewish synagogues and schools be set on fire, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes burned, and property and money confiscated. They should be shown no mercy or kindness,[2] afforded no legal protection,[3] and “these poisonous envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time.[4] He also seems to advocate their murder, writing “[W]e are at fault in not slaying them”.

November 1

1520 – The Strait of Magellan, the passage immediately south of mainland South America connecting the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans, is first discovered and navigated by European explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the first recorded circumnavigation voyage.

1765 – The British Parliament enacts the Stamp Act on the Thirteen Colonies in order to help pay for British military operations in North America.

1950 – Pope Pius XII claims papal infallibility when he formally defines the dogma of the Assumption of Mary.

1957 – The Mackinac Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge between anchorages at the time, opens to traffic connecting Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas.

1963 – The 1963 South Vietnamese coup begins

Our Agenda Number 6

1. What IS up???

a.

 

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union

In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery – the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

That we do not overstate the dangers to our institution, a reference to a few facts will sufficiently prove.  http://www.civil-war.net/pages/mississippi_declaration.asp

 

b. NYTimes Obits:  Dennis Banks and Leonard Peletier

c. Manafort (Trump campaign and indicted) lived LARGE

d. What is fascism?

e. A’s for the day to those who call out world series scores!

2. The Run up to the American Revolution

While England was, compared to the American colony, a very hierarchical society, there were movements in England for equality: The Levellers, the Diggers (one became the other, bassed on equality in the Protestant bible) and the Ranters

Video: The Beard’s Economic Interpretation of the colonial period:

“ARMED VIOLENCE IS KEY TO UNDERSTANDING THE USA AS A NATION” (Professor Devine)

Equality is the Byword of the Day: all kinds of privileges, well beyond aristocracy, were under attack. (Ideas as material forces).

Economic Transformation: White Americans did well. Farming economy. Rice. Wheat. Tobacco. And, finally, cotton.

England continues to try to control all trade (empire).

Smuggling begins to boom.

Rising Capitalism in Britain, more demand for American goods. Balance of trade shifts. Americans buy goods manufactured in Britain, Brits offer credit, American debt grows.

Inside America, inter-coastal trade grows. Drawn together through systems of trade, communication, transport, travel, etc.

After seven generations of settlement, or invasions, the colonists became accustomed to self-government.

Controlling the Market place. Navigation act of 1660. Trade must be with British and using US or Brit ships.

STAPLE Act must only sell tobacco and other staples to England.

About 20 % of the British population could vote.

In America, 85% could vote (white males owning property)

The sophisticated town as distinct from uneducated rural country divide typical to capital grew fast.

The battle for the west began early and continued through the civil war (empire).

1756. Brits declare war on France. Seven Years War, French and Indian war. William Pitt key to war in America. George Washington, earlier a surveyor in the region, led troops fighting Indians, where, as each side taught the other, he learned the basics of guerrilla war.

Britain wanted the Americans to pay for at least part of the war. Americans rejected that.

England passes a series of measures to tax Americans to pay for Seven Years War and Pontiac’s war 1763 and methods to force them to pay.

1770 (March 5): The Boston Massacre (an Accelerator)

TEA ACT; 1773 (Boston TEA PARTY)

STAMP  Act

Coercive Acts, “Intolerable Acts”, Requires Quartering.

Administration of Justice Act, was aimed at protecting British officials charged with capital offenses during law enforcement by allowing them to go to England or another colony for trial. The fourth Coercive Act included new arrangements for housing British troops in occupied American dwellings, thus reviving the indignation that surrounded the earlier Quartering Act, which had been allowed to expire in 1770. Note today’s US Status of Forces Agreements.

Key Battles of the Revolution

What are the strengths and weakness of the 2 sides?

April, 1775: First battles at Lexington and Concord. A guerrilla war begins.

Paul Revere does his “Midnight Ride”.”The British are coming!”

At Lexington, 60 civilians (including slaves and freedmen) faced hundreds of trained British soldiers from the most powerful army in the world, having fought on five continents, never defeated.

The first shot is known as the “shot heard ’round the world.”

The Americans had a militia, citizens army, men between 16 and 50, ready in a MINUTE’s notice

1776: Revolutionary Tom Paine writes “Common Sense,” an attack on tyranny and monarchy written in plain language that anyone could understand.

1776: The Declaration of Independence.

The British response: Why are these slave owners complaining about tyranny, demanding liberty?

1776 Xmas, Washington Crosses Delaware, attacks Hessian mercenaries. Big boost to American morale

Battles of Saratoga: September 1876 to October 1877

Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne with 8000 British soldiers, 200 carts carrying his silverware, hundreds of servants and women, and a handful of Indian scouts sets out from Canada to split the colonies in half. It didn’t go so well.

Burgoyne is met by 500 guerrilla fighters under the Daniel Morgan. They know themselves, know the enemy and know the terrain.

Who will they kill first? What of Burgoyne?

Cornwallis at Yorktown and the Key Role of the French allies like Lafayette (below).(October 19, 1781)

Below, famous portrayal of the gentlemanly Cornwallis surrender

Was this a revolution or not? Zinn says “No.”

Remider: Chalmers Johnson on Revolution http://richgibson.com/johnsonquotes.htm

“Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both. We are destined to be a barrier against the returns of ignorance and barbarism. Old Europe will have to lean on our shoulders, and to hobble along by our side, under the monkish trammels of priests and kings, as she can. What a Colossus shall we be when the Southern continent comes up to our mark! What a stand will it secure as a ralliance for the reason & freedom of the globe! I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past. So good night. I will dream on, always fancying that Mrs Adams and yourself are by my side marking the progress and the obliquities of ages and countries.” – Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, Monticello, 1 August 1816

Link below Jefferson and slavery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzZnqXvRSLE

Both capitalism and empire were born almost simultaneously, rooted in slavery.The US was a growing, slave holding, empire, declaring liberty and freedom–a profound contradiction!

The Articles of Confederation and Shay’s Rebellion

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Again, what is capitalism?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 5

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose.

We can comprehend and change the world.

October 29th (today is 10/30)

1929 – The New York Stock Exchange crashes in what will be called the Crash of ’29 or “Black Tuesday”, ending the Great Bull Market of the 1920s and beginning the Great Depression.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is a very moving work,and by appearances it’s radical, but in fact Steinbeck was conservative and racist.

30 Oct 1929 — The headline of Variety proclaims “Wall St. Lays An Egg” after the October 29, 1929 crash of the Stock Market. — Image by © CORBIS

above, “With Babies and Banners”  (47 minutes) about how US workers’ organized resistance to Depression repression .And they won!

Why all the financial crises?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_economic_crises

November 1 (tomorrow)

1800John Adams becomes the first President of the United States to live in the Executive Mansion (later renamed the White House).

1955 – The Vietnam War begins. (This from wiki is wrong. The imperial invasion of the French into Vietnam began nearly 100 years before this date). The US backed Ho Chi Minh during WWII, then betrayed him and supported the French. The French left after  thei defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The US took over…

Mexico Day of the Dead

Nobel prize-winning Mexican writer Octavio Paz explained in his seminal work Labyrinth of Solitude:

“The Mexican … is familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it, celebrates it. True, there is as much fear in his attitude as in that of others, but at least death is not hidden away: he looks at it face to face, with impatience, disdain or irony.”

Diego Rivera said in 1920: “If you look around my studio, you will see Deaths everywhere, Deaths of every size and colour.”

Reasons Speculated: Aztec death culture, Spanish and US oppression, deadly and utterly failed Mexican Revolution.

 

Our Agenda Five

1. What is UP?

a. Many, maybe most, Kennedy assassination files released. Zapruder and Oswald and Ruby. Surprise! US assassinates foreign leaders!

b. Trump campaign associates indicted: flipped?

c. Those vanished Irish children and Moms

d. ISIS still holds territory and is on the move.

2. What is racism?

3. Revolutions: Via Theory–Chalmers Johnson–why and how?

4. What do you know about the American revolution? Want to know?

Pending Questions

Why Have Government? What is the History of governments?

What is capitalism?

Imperialism?

Socialism?

Communism?

Fascism?

Racism? History?

Ponzi scheme?

How shall we treat religion?

How to do college and where to go

Advice about colleges and universities

*Get scholarships! Grades suck, but grades matter. What would Kim Philby do?

*Select the best possible school–with the best reputation–schools are Not equal (UC vs CSU vs CC)

*Determine to finish from the outset. Don’t just stick your toe in.
*Find a mentor–fast–get help with right classes and schedule. Visit profs during office hours.
*Stay away from frats/sororities and 7 day a week parties.

*Make an effort to connect with and learn from people from different backgrounds. Make friends!
*Pick classes with care–ask your mentor–other students–don’t count on RateMyProf.
*Read the syllabus! Follow it. Keep up. Check the syllabus and agenda before every class.

*Sit in front if you can stand it. Attend class! Five minutes early–at least!
*Use writing centers. If they suck and always only use formulas, get Ken Macrorie’s I Search Paper online.

*Proofread. Don’t just spell check. Get someone else to proof too.
*Create a disciplined schedule that includes exercise at least 30 minutes a day 4 days a week.

*Don’t be discouraged by crappy classes, bad profs. If someone is stealing your education–steal it back. You are responsible for your own education.

*Don’t be suckered by bad, for-profit colleges (Corinthean, etc.) as you will get a worthless degree and lots of debt.

*A fine prof who is a friend adds: “eat right and sleep. And become a serious person. That is, some of the best things in life aren’t fun or entertaining. Finally, I would say that even though all colleges aren’t alike, what you get out of them is to a large extent, much larger than an 18 year old would usually expect, up to you. There are many incredibly intelligent people even in crappy schools. Be serious about finding them.”

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 4

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose.

We can comprehend and change the world.

“History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.”
Winston S. Churchill

Fifty Years Ago: Detroit Rebellion July ’67

Fifty Years ago: October 1967

October 25

1962Cuban Missile Crisis: Adlai Stevenson shows photos at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council proving that Soviet missiles are installed in Cuba.

1774 – The first Continental Congress adjourns in Philadelphia.1

775 – King George III of Great Britain goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorizes a military response to quell the American Revolution.

1776Benjamin Franklin departs from America for France on a mission to seek French support for the American Revolution.

1955 – Ngô Đình Diệm declares himself Premier of South Vietnam. Note how wiki treats Diem.

1967Mohammad Reza Pahlavi crowns himself Emperor of Iran and then crowns his wife Farah Empress of Iran.

2001 – The United States passes the USA PATRIOT Act into law.

2003 – The Cedar Fire, the second-largest fire in California history, kills 15 people, consumes 250,000 acres (1,000 km2), and destroys 2,200 homes around San Diego.

Your weekend movie suggestion:

The fascinating back story to the making of Spartacus   https://www.biography.com/news/kirk-douglas-spartacus-vs-the-blacklist-20857693

Our Agenda 4

1. What IS up?

a. South Africa: Political “liberty” is not economic liberty.

Nelson Mandela and Joe Slovo of the SACP

Mao and Xi

b. Slight delay in my response to you responses and why.

c. Please scroll through the calendar on the syllabus to see how fast we are going! Keep up!

d.  “Our military has never been stronger. Each day, new equipment is delivered; new and beautiful equipment, the best in the world – the best anywhere in the world, by far.” DJT

What defeats men with  guns? Ideas. This is not an idea.

2. Introducing Howard Zinn

***What is racism? This vital question will pend til next week.

3. Rosa on the nature of empire

http://richgibson.com/twinbirths.html

4. On to Professor Devine’s “American Story” through chapter 4!!!

The Enlightenment:

PART ONE: PROBLEMS OF BUILDING A NEW NATION AND CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY: EMPIRE, SUPREMACY, AND THE ARTS OF RESISTANCE

Pending Questions

Why Have Government? What is the History of governments?

What is capitalism?

Imperialism?

Socialism?

Communism?

Racism? History?

Ponzi scheme?

How shall we treat religion?

How to do college and where to go


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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number 3

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose.

We can comprehend and change the world.

An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep.
Arab Proverb

Banned in the US for nearly fifty years, “Salt of the Earth”: On this day-October 17, 1950- in the Grant County town of Hanover, New Mexico, workers at the Empire Zinc mine finished their shifts, formed a picket line, and began a fifteen-month strike. The classic labor film `Salt of the Earth’ is based on this strike. Represented by Local 890 of the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers (Mine-Mill), the miners, overwhelmingly Mexican American, had voted to strike after reaching an impasse with the company over “collar-to-collar” pay (rather than paying only for the time workers spent at their individual work places inside the mine), lack of paid holidays, and the extremely high number of job classifications, which allowed the company to reserve the lowest-paying jobs for Mexican Americans the so-called “Mexican wage”.

Salt of the Earth: The Movie Hollywood Could Not Stop

October 22

1861 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus in Washington, D.C., for all military-related cases.

1917Lenin calls for the October Revolution.

1941World War II: Field Marshal Georgy Zhukov takes command of Red Army operations to prevent the further advance into Russia of German forces and to prevent the Wehrmacht from capturing Moscow.

The entire outstanding BBC “World at War” series is linked here  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3H6z037pboH4mumre4pvkJbvmC0ZUDKG

1944 – World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf: The largest naval battle in history begins in the Philippines.

1972Operation Linebacker, a US bombing campaign against North Vietnam in response to its Easter Offensive, ends after five months.

1973 – The Watergate scandal: US President Richard M. Nixon agrees to turn over subpoenaed audio tapes of his Oval Office conversations.

1983Lebanese Civil War: The U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut is hit by a truck bomb, killing 241 U.S. military personnel. A French army barracks in Lebanon is also hit that same morning, killing 58 troops.

Reagan then caused the invasion of Grenada

 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
EASTERN DISTRICT OF MICHIGAN
    SOUTHERN DIVISION
DR. RICHARD JOHN GIBSON,

Plaintiff,

v.                                                                                                     Case No. 97-CV-72734

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, and                                       Honorable Denise Page Hood

DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY                                          United States District Judge

Defendants.

________________________________/

JUDGMENT
This action having come before the Court by way of Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment, and the Court having issued a Memorandum Opinion and Order this date granting Plaintiff’s Motion,

Accordingly,

Judgment is entered in favor of Plaintiff and against Defendants.

JOHN P MAYER
CLERK OF THE COURT

 

The Last Prisoners of the Cold War are Black

Our Phantasmagoric Agenda 3

1. What IS up???

***Exxon’s Rex Tillerson: “All foreign troops must leave Iraq.”

***NYTimes Gone Wild!!!

2. Questions regarding the syllabus?

3, Reminder: What is History?

4. Reminder and extension: why have school…plus the method of analysis.

5, Checking out the syllabus links (from class 2)

6. Plato’s Cave and the Master/Slave exercise

7. Prof. Devine: 1492 Columbus sailed the blue and what else?

***The Spanish Inquisition

***The Requerimiento

***Building Missions and (some) teacher resistance

***Understanding slavery (and racism) is key to understanding the history of the USA–a timeline:   https://sharondraper.com/timeline.pdf

Pending Questions

Why Have Government? What is the History of governments?

What is capitalism?

Imperialism?

Socialism?

Communism?

Racism? History?

Ponzi scheme?

How shall we treat religion?

How to do college and where to go

 

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda–Number Two

Why are things as they are? We make our own history, but not in circumstances we chose.

We can comprehend and change the world.

“History does not erase grievances but lays them about like landmines.” Marx 

October 17, 18, 19 cool events

1917: 100th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution,  creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the US’ main target in the last century)

October 17

1943 – The Holocaust in Poland: Sobibór extermination camp is closed.

 

1979Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

 

October 18

1860 – The Second Opium War finally ends after nearly 5 years at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, an unequal treaty.

1945 – The USSR‘s nuclear program receives plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Reminder of comments from Monday: Sir No Sir, online, free.

.

Our Agenda October 18th

1. What IS up?

a. What does Trump wish to abolish or change? Searching for radical (to the root) answers….

***NAFTA the US, Mexico, and Trump–winners and losers

***DACA

***Obamacare

***Paris Climate Accord

***Iran Nukes deal

***Current tax code

***Shift in VA Funding

***Greater latitude for the police and military

***Perhaps remake the Federal Reserve Policies

b. The For-profit press and Trump (Stocks top 23 thousand–bubble bubble), So, if this list is mostly appearances, what is the essence of what is up?

c. ISIS, the Kurds, and Raqqa. More War!

2. Review: What is history?

3. Locating the syllabus–discussion and questions today and Monday. Be patient. Learning takes time!

4. Why have school?

***What are the main things going on in school?

***What are the main things going on in society (and an aside to schooling in China today)

5. Plato’s Cave and the Master Slave Exercise here

Pending Questions

Why Have Government? What is the History?

What is capitalism?

Imperialism?

Socialism?

Communism?

Racism? History?

Ponzi scheme?

 

Dr Rich Gibson

Emeritus Professor, SDSU

Professor, SWC

 

Our Phantasmagoric Agenda #1

Why are things as they are?

We make our own history but not in circumstances we chose.

“Shams and delusions are esteemed for the soundest truth, but reality is fabulous.” Henry David Thoreau

October 15 and 16

END OF DAYS

Is the end of the world on October 15?

October 16th

1859John Brown leads a raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

1934 – Chinese Communists begin the Long March; it ended a year and four days later, by which time Mao Zedong had regained his title as party chairman.

Above, Mao Tse Tung on Long March

1946Nuremberg trials: Execution of the convicted Nazi leaders of the Main Trial.

 

1968 – United States athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos are kicked off the US team for participating in the 1968 Olympics Black Power salute.

MEETING 1 – 10/16

In most classes, we will address: “What’s up?” That is a brief discussion of our social context which is, or will be, history. Today, I ask, “How do you feel about the new President of the USA?” You may choose to pass, not to answer.

 

1.     Introductions.

a.     Questions:  Who are you?

From? Why are you here?  From? Why take this class? What were you taught about history? How was it taught? Why? What do you remember most clearly? Why?  What are you curious about?

b.     Who is this professor anyway? 

2.    What is history?   What are the motive forces of history?

3.     How our class will work–the syllabus: read it for next class and bring questions. (Just google “Rich Gibson,” click the link and see the syllabus and agenda at the top of the page).

4.    Why have school? (an exercise in critical, to the root, thinking–studying contradictions in the real world.

History/MAS 141 Spring 2017

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