Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!! And be on time! For the whole class!

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

“Whether you will be the hero of your own story is yet to be written. It will be written by you. ” (Conrad)

Portfolios due Dec 9: Midnight!

Please put your SWC name and “M/W” class in the subject line of all emails!

December 9th

1835 – Texas Revolution: The Texian Army captures San Antonio, Texas.

1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first African-American governor of a U.S. state.

1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking: Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing (Nanking).

1946 – The “Subsequent Nuremberg trials” begin with the “Doctors’ trial“, prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.

1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.

1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.

Our last Phantasmagoric Agenda

1. What is UP?

a. Notes on inequality in the NYTimes.

b.

https://youtu.be/G3hbtM_NJ0s

c. Some semester! Trump! Brexit! Syria! Italy! Libya! Mosul!

d. A Worker Reads History   https://allpoetry.com/A-Worker-Reads-History

2. History as continuity and change: the American Revolution to the Wars on Vietnam and beyond.Picking up where we left off last week–with a reminder…..

3. A wrap up on what we did, a visit from Charlie, and fond farewells.

https://youtu.be/V1fMvLbE85E

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1848 – California Gold Rush: In a message to the United States Congress, U.S. President James K. Polk confirms that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California.

1933 – The Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified. (repeals prohibition)

1955 – The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merge and form the AFL–CIO.

December 7th

1941: Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.

Our last phantasmagoric agenda

!. What is up?

a. Well, there is the coming war with China, but let us skip that for today…!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3hbtM_NJ0s

b.  Some semester! Trump! Brexit! Syria! Italy! Libya! Mosul!

b. A Worker Reads History   https://allpoetry.com/A-Worker-Reads-History

2. History as continuity and change: the American Revolution to the Wars on Vietnam and beyond.

https://youtu.be/x8hhEPc9Sq0

3. A wrap up on what we did, a visit from Charlie, and fond farewells.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1fMvLbE85E

 

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Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!! And be on time! For the whole class!

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

Our Phantasmagoric Agenda December 1 Class XIII

Second to last class

In all Emails: Put your SWC Name and T/Th Class in the subject line!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8hhEPc9Sq0

One of the best movies ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTsg9i6lvqU

December 1

1803 – In New Orleans, Spanish representatives officially transfer the Louisiana Territory to a French representative. Just 20 days later, France transfers the same land to the United States as the Louisiana Purchase.

1862 – In his State of the Union Address President Abraham Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation.

1913 – Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.  THIS IS WRONG! Pharmaceutical plants in Detroit were running assembly lines long before Ford. He simply adopted the idea.

 

1941 – World War II: Emperor Hirohito of Japan gives the final approval to initiate war against the United States.

1955 – American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city’s racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.  WHERE DID MISS ROSA MOVE TO???

Our Phantasmagoric Agenda

1. We know what’s up (Aleppo) now, so on to some special history.

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda November 29  Class# 12

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!! And be on time! For the whole class!

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

“History will absolve me.” Fidel Castro

Maybe not

Castro and Khrushchev

Take Note: Portfolios due Midnight 12/9. Please put your SWC name in the subject line and “Tuesday/Thursday  after your name.

Our last class will be 12/9 in this room beginning at noon.

If you missed the last class, I will review a little of the era to be covered. If you read this before class (good plan) scroll down for early prep.

November 26 1922: Charles Schulz born

November 28th

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

1964 – Vietnam War: National Security Council members agree to recommend that U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson adopt a plan for a two-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam.

1989 – Cold War: Velvet Revolution: In the face of protests, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announces it will give up its monopoly on political power.

Below, Pope John Paul

November 29th

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

1877 – Thomas Edison demonstrates his phonograph for the first time.

1944 – World War II: Albania is liberated by partisan forces.

Above, Enver Hoxha, communist leader of Albanian Partisans

1990 – Gulf War: The United Nations Security Council passes two resolutions to restore international peace and security if Iraq does not withdraw its forces from Kuwait and free all foreign hostages by January 15, 1991.

More Movies that won’t make you stupid!

..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVsEBric-94

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bcubkt6BwY

Agenda 13

1. What is up? In high speed!

***Many lectures from Yale are online, videos: free. As I am not a traditional lecturer (I teach students first, history second) you might want to watch an excellent lecture from Professor Blight on the end of the Civil War and beyond

http://oyc.yale.edu/history/hist-119/lecture-19

***Fidel Died (The promise of socialism and the practice)

***Cuban mafia driven out (make ties with CIA which tries to kill Fidel again and again), illiteracy eradicated, fine medical care but Party rules and Caudillo rules the party.

***Cuba and Grenada        http://richgibson.com/grendaventour.htm

2. Scroll down to “Sectional Crisis” for US history in hyper-speed!

 

 

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda! #12 Nov 23

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!! And be on time! For the whole class!

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

.

November 22

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

https://youtu.be/vkNz-LvkkTI

1963 – US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John Connally is seriously wounded.

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https://youtu.be/iU83R7rpXQY

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv_viK8qOfw

November 23

1863 – American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga begins: Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant reinforce troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and counter-attack Confederate troops.

1914 – Mexican Revolution: The last of U.S. forces withdraw from Veracruz, occupied seven months earlier in response to the Tampico Affair.

1943 – World War II: Tarawa and Makin atolls fall to American forces.

What is up? Let us be brief and come back to it if we have time. We will probably have time.

Back to the growth of capital and empire buttressed by racism, religion, and sexism

Sectional Crises:

Compromise of 1850, the South got the possibility of slave states via popular sovereignty in the new New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory, which however were unsuited to plantation agriculture and populated by non-Southerners; a stronger Fugitive Slave Act, which in practice outraged Northern public opinion; and preservation of slavery in the national capital, though the slave trade was banned there except in the Virginia portion of the District of Columbia which rejoined Virginia

Below, the North vs South Lineup as it became by 1861

United States secession map – 1861. Union states, Confederate states.    States that seceded before April 15, 1861    States that seceded after April 15, 1861    Union states that permitted slavery    Union states that banned slavery    Territories, unaffiliated

Red=Slave state. Blue=North (“Union” banned slavery). Yellow=Northern states where slavery continued. Gray=non affiliated territories.

Upheaval of 1852-56 : Nonentity Franklin Pierce wins election of 1852 but it was a win over anti-slaver Scott.

That is per Devine who does mention in passing that Pierce was trying to create a Caribbean slave empire.

The Ostand Circular: Let’s buy Cuba from Spain or take it by force–as a slave state.

Pierce the only elected president to not get renominated by his party. He was hated in N. Hampshire.He supported the slavers in Kansas, later denounced the Emancipation Proclamation.

Kansas Nebraska act…..Overturned Missouri Compromise….Slavers wanted a rr built in the area, opened possibility of slavery, that is, where it was previously prohibited. Shattered sectional peace. Passes House and Senate.; Vote in Kansas: Slavery? Up or Down?

Kansas, bitter violent battle:

***Racist Missouri raiders, Quantrill, Jesse James, armed men enter Kansas,

***illegal votes, make it crime to speak or act against slavery. ***Majority of Kansans are free soilers, rise up with armed struggle, formed government,

Below, Quantrill’s Racist Raiders

“PRO=SLAVERY “Adherents” (Devine’s language) burn Lawrence. “

Anti-slavery “ZEALOT” (Devine again), John Brown (1800-1859–above and below) pursued Quantrill’s raider-slavers (and chopped their  heads off with broadswords).

***Battle of Osawatomie: 40 on Brown’s side forced to retreat from an invading force of 400–raiders burned the town.

***Sacking of Lawrence, KA.

***Potawattomie!!!  May 1856

The anti-slavery Republican Party is coming into being, led by radical anti-slavers called “radical Republicans.”

North/South Divide sharpens 1856-60—churches split north and south; was slavery approved by the bible or does it attack the traditional family.
Edgar Allan Poe writes pro-slavery tracts

Thoreau, went to jail vs war on Mexico and poll tax, writes against slavery.
Melville, Emerson, H.B Stowe and Uncle Toms Cabin anti-slavers
Northern textbooks banned in south. Idea of Southern Nationalism grows.

Dred Scott decision–Scott a slave who had lived in Wis sued for freedom. Court ruled he is not a citizen.

Professor Devine skips over Dred Scott lightly, google http://www.answers.com/topic/dred-scott-case

Missouri Compromise ruled unconstitutional. 5 of 6 voting judges were slavers.

Kansas–repeated votes on slave issue. Split repubs vs dems and dems vs dems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKfNMel5dug

Lincoln Douglass debates re Illinois Senator race—Lincoln tags Douglass as covert defender of slavery.
But Lincoln denies he is an abolitionist. Just opposed to expansion. Lincoln insists he is a racist. Lincoln lost election.

1858 Kansas enters as free state…..after Brown’s raid

October 1859 John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. Devine portrays him as a religious nutcase.

Captured and hung by Robert E. Lee. Trial. Outpouring of sympathy for John Brown. Executed Dec 2, 1859. Bells toll all over the north. “John Brown’s body lies a molderin’ on the grave.” 

Lyrics are here http://www.civilwar.org/education/assets/images/john-brown-150/john-brown-original-song.html

Note his last speech online.

And this lithograph.

http://chnm.gmu.edu/lostmuseum/lm/74/

Abe Lincoln was a representative of the unity of a rising middle class and the ruling industrial elites.

Lincoln elected President of the US, the 19th, taking office in 1860. Against 3 opponents (Bell, Breckenridge, Douglas) Lincoln won about 40% of the popular vote but nearly 60% of the Electoral votes.

Racists posed Lincoln as a candidate of the railroaders and abolitionists. There are dozens of racist cartoons from the period on line. I chose not to post them.

S. Carolina secedes Dec 20 1860. (Devine still dodges the SC Declaration of Independence) and the issue is slavery. Deep south joins SC. Northern south delays.

Mississippi Dec of Secession: “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.” 

Note all the similarities between north and south. Language. Usually protestants. Political ideology of republicanism and a fierce belief in individual liberty. Slavers? Both sides rich nationalists. Both talked about states rights.

Wisconsin said they would not enforce Fugitive Slave Act on states rights grounds. Both shared reality of westward movement. Both sides led by capitalists. Both had same kind of oligarchy. Less than 1 percent of the real property was held by 50 percent of free adult men. The richest 1 percent held about 30 percent of all wealth.

The distinct factor of the Old South was anti-modernism, disdain for the corruption of modern commercialism. Suspicious of the spread of literacy. Suspicious of democratic tendencies of the north, spreading literacy and the vote. Suspicious of reform, change, democracy itself. Of course, they were outvoted.

It was a threat to hierarchy, the south became rooted deeply in conceptions of class and race, some born to rule. Others to be ruled. Their own sense of Honor. “Gentlemen” underlined. Class rank and status and you better recognize it. Reputation is to be Recognized, and ackowlegged in rituals. Near Monarchs.

By 1820 the south economy was a slave economy, the fifth or sixth society in world history. One of the deep myths was that the plantation economy was dying out. That is nonsense. Slavery was very profitable and the S. Economy was booming. Not hit by depressions as much as the north. The south thought of itself as OPEC does today. It was world’s largest supplier of cotton and fueled the industrial revo in Britain.

By 1860 there were about 4,000,000 slaves in the south. 2/3 of white south did not own slaves. Some owned land, but around ½ did not.

By 1860 slaves were worth about 76 billion in today’s dollars. Worth more than all the other assets in the US by far. Except for the land itself. No one can put a value on that.

Shorthand History! There is a fine Civil War Timeline here

http://www.civil-war.net/pages/timeline.asp

March 4th, 1861: Lincoln Inaugurated!

C.S.A. born Feb 4 1861–Devine says “moderates” came to power in C.S.A., “not to establish a slaveholders reactionary utopia.” Huh. Slavers who kill for slavery are not, in my eyes, moderates.

“A conservative revolution,” per Devine. But “slavery is the Negroes Natural condition,” Stephens, VP of C.S.A.

7 states had seceded by time of Lincoln Inaugural.

Note the colonial relationship of north and south being shattered by secession. Businesses wanted South as a market and for raw materials (and cheap labor for cotton).

April 13 1861 the south attacked Ft Sumter. Charleston, South Carolina,  Harbor key. Surrenders to South.

VA. Ark, TN, NC secede. The attack united the north.

Short war expected. People planned to picnic at battles. And they did at the first battle of Manasas (Bulls’ Run).

Maryland, martial law keeps in union.

Guerrilla war in Missouri

 

Total War. The south fought hard, if stupidly. See Devine’s chart of advantages/disadvantages.
P386

North Advantages: population, industrial organization and capacity, Railroads.  But would have to invade and occupy the south. North had south 10 or 100 to 1

South Advantages. Only had to defend their own territory. Morale? Well, Zinn contradicts this, listing collapsed morale of poor southern whites as key to loss. Actually, they fought like hell for white supremacy and slavery. Devine breaks down here.

South Chooses “Offensive Defense”

North “anaconda strategy,” squeeze south to death. Block ports, seize Miss. River, Cut off food.

Lincoln chose a multi front war but was surrounded with inept military leaders.

Early War==both sides had plenty of volunteers. Then draft. Northern industry hums. Huge fortunes being made. War is good for capitalism. Civilian sacrifices minimal. But inflation up.
South depended on imports. Created own efficient arms industry.

Agriculture failed in the south (note slave slowdowns, sabotage, men off to war, etc). Bad Transport system.

By 1863, southern troops hungry. Civilians too. C.S.A. commandeers food.

POLITICAL Leadership–Lincoln seizes executive powers. Suspends habeaus corpus. Devine calls this restraint. Closes down newspapers.

Jeff Davis, a complete failure, did not have a party behind him. Creating a new institution in the middle of a war.

Pinkertons–a spy agency working for both sides. …..unmentioned in Zinn AND Devine.

Duponts made a fortune selling ammunition, etc., to both sides.

Battles: Manasas, Bull Run.

Stonewall Jackson wins his name at battle of Bull Run.

Shiloh in the west

New Orleans captured by union navy.

1862 Monitor beats Merrimac (though some historians call it a tie)

1862 Robert E. Lee (slaver of Arlington) becomes top S General. He was psychologically unfit to lead what should have been a guerrilla war. He loved the offensive and seemed to simply enjoy war and bloodshed.

He was constantly outnumbered two to one, yet repeatedly went on the offensive. After Gettysburg, he offered his resignation–rejected.

Cotton famine begins but many Brits profit from it. Stockpiles costs rise.

1862 Slaves begin to free themselves and Lincoln seeks more Liberias.

Sept 1862 Lincoln warns south, 100 days to surrender and Keep the Slaves!

Jan 1 1863–Emancipation Proclamation. Out of military necessity.

“African Americans” A true term then. 200,000 in union army. Others say 300,000. Segregated units, paid less. The US military was segregated until the end of WWII (fighting racist Nazis and Japanese).

Jan 1865—13th Amendment outlaws slavery.

Tide turns 1863 but clearly it is a “rich mans war and a poor mans fight” for both sides.

Lee invaded the north. He got as far as Gettysburg, PA, where the famous “Pickett’s Charge” took place, and failed. Pickett alone lost about 10,000 men. In all, Lee lost about 28,000 and the myth of his invincibility was demolished. Northern General Meade failed to pursue Lee and destroy Lee’s Army of Virginia. Meade was harshly criticized.

Lincoln’s Gettysburg address:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Abraham Lincoln
November 19, 1863

While Lee was invading the north at Gettysburg (“The high-water mark of the Confederacy) General Grant seized Vicksburg, winning control of the Mississippi River.

1864 election…Lincoln thought he would lose to McLellan who would not endorse emancipation but on Sept 2 1864 Atlanta falls to Sherman, tide shifts to Lincoln.

Here, again, we see the key role of ideas. Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, all understood that public opinion was key–and that would be won by killing as many Confederates as possible, to destroy the will of the south.

The strategy was not, for example, to attack the South’s capital, Richmond, but to attack Lee’s army in the east, and to destroy the south itself via Georgia and the heartland of the South.

Grant, like Sherman, was with the troops.

Grant, constantly moving south and/or east, was trying in 1864 to cut Lee off from his southern supply lines. Lee built trench work after trench and Grant launched many frontal assaults.

Mathew Brady took dozens of Civil War photos.

Battle of the Crater–a union disaster–4000 union dead–snatching defeat from victory.

Below is an excellent depiction of Sherman’s March. I’d differ only with a few details (like the number of men). What is missing or unspoken is Sherman’s brilliant “indirect approach.” (See Sun Tzu). Compare Sherman to today’s generals.

Below, Sherman’s neckties (destroying railroad lines)

Sherman: We are not fighting a hostile army. We are fighting a hostile people. We will makewar so terrible, make them so sick of war, they will never appeal to it again.

Union General Sheridan said: Leave them only their eyes with which to weep.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKhvqRd2i-4

Sherman marches to Georgia with 60,000–100,000 men (depending on whose history you like) and a train of slaves cutting 50 mile swath. Sherman’s neckties not in Devine. Captures Savannah on Dec 22. Then Sherman turns north to S. And N Carolina.

Sherman burned Columbia, SC, it’s capital, to the ground.

Lee Surrenders at Appomattox on April 9, 1865. They knew each other, slightly, from fighting on the US side in the battles to seize parts of Mexico.  Lee had wasted at least 300,000 men fighting for slavery, and lost.

Southern General Johnston surrendered to Sherman 10 days later.

Terms at and of war were very generous. Take your horse and sidearm and go home. Leave your rifle.

Nobody but Wertz of Andersonville (southern prison camp) was prosecuted for war crimes.

Grant  ordered no celebrations among his troops. The whole of the north celebrated, but the south was profoundly depressed (anger turned inward).

“We are conquered.”

Thousands of southerners fled the country.

1 of every four union soldiers was foreign born.

Slaves withdrawing their labor and assisting the union army were pivotal to winning the war.

What to do with the notion of racial and human equality?

Below, Arlington cemetery was Lee’s plantation outside D.C. What is to be remembered is not noted.

About one in four men who went to war died. About 60,000 died in captivity (Andersonville and Libby Prisons in the South are notorious)    http://www.civilwar.org/education/civil-war-casualties.html#

More than 4 million slaves were freed.

Letter to His Master from Former Slave (amazing irony and good humor)

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/01/to-my-old-master.html

Sherman had promised the freedmen and women “40 acres and a mule” along the eastern coasts of the Carolinas. Some of them got and kept that. Lincoln’s successor, Johnson, refuted Sherman’s promise.One of many good cases for reparations is based on that promise and betrayal.

Yale Professor Blight (above) discovered the 1st Memorial Day which took place in 1865 at a Charleston race course which had been turned into a Union prison-death camp. Freed children sang “John Brown’s Body.”

Ken Burns did a PBS series, “The Civil War.” I didn’t like it much but you may   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLzKzOnJ76Q

The war solidified an activist nation-state.

Al Szymanski outlined the basic functions of the capitalist state’s democracy:

To guarantee the accumulation of capital and profit maximization and make it legitimate.
Preserve capitalist class rule.
Raise money to fund the state.
Form and preserve capitalist class rule.

1865 to 1877:  Reconstruction from the 2nd American Revolution

“Agony” of Reconstruction per Prof Devine–agony for who?

The 11 or 12 years of Reconstruction was a struggle to determine what the Civil War was about, a referendum on the meaning of the war.

It was an incredibly violent period following a terribly death-filled war.

Clearly the North won, and the South was almost totally defeated.

How to take the blood feud that happened and turn it into a new nation. The survivors would have to occupy the same country, with the same government.

How to have HEALING and JUSTICE?

March 4th, 1865: Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural concludes with:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”    http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres32.html

April 14th, 1865: Famous Actor John Wilkes Booth shoots and kills Lincoln in Ford’s theater. Wilkes escapes but is caught. Lincoln is carried across the street and dies.

The Martyr by Herman Melville (author of Moby Dick)

GOOD Friday was the day

Of the prodigy and crime,

Andrew Johnson, a pro-slavery northerner becomes President.

Johnson vetoes 2 bills.
1. Freedman’s bureau to set up education, legal aid, land, employment.
2. Civil Rights act to nullify black codes.

Congress overrides vetoes. South enacts:

It was, and became again soon, de-facto slavery. Separate facilities, require long term labor contracts, vagrancy laws, Mass terror and thousands murdered. 1865-67.

In January, 1865, Congress adopted the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery (Mississippi didn’t ratify the amendment until 2013).

The 14th Amendment passed in 1866 and the 15th in 1869—all during Reconstruction.

But, in 1867: A military occupation of the south by the north came to be full blown.

From 1865 to 1877, Northern troops were in the south but most went west fighting Indians, including Sherman.

Civil Rights Act of 1875 overturned later by Plessy vs Ferguson (1896). The Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” legal.

Freedmen and women want land and education. The vote was a distant third as people knew without the first two, the vote was a fantasy exercise.

Freedmen and women had NO CAPITAL, NO LAND, Little or NO EDUCATION. Soon, it became clear that voting power without capital, land, or education, was a myth.

1873: Colfax Massacre: The White League and Red Shirts in Louisiana killed about 150 freedmen. A trial, based on the 1870 “Enforcement Act”  convicted three of the White Leaguers prosecuted.

Colfax led to the next Supreme Court case that reversed Recon.

The case US v Cruickshank in 1876 took up the convictions. Court 7 Repubs 2 Dems. Court overturned 2 of 3 convictions. Said due process etc only applied to state actions, not of individuals. Thus, the political murders would be state, not fed, matters. Fed Govt does not have the power to enforce the right to vote, civil rights, etc. This meant mass murder went unpunished and black people would be at mercy of whites and their governments.

This case meant the federal government was exiting Reconstruction, and terror/terror unleashed in south. A Southern Counterrevolution.

The Ku Klux Klan grew, rode, killed and lynched.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5u1QARlCph0

One of the most popular films of the early 1900s and President Wilson’s favorite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXxY1QWPBtc

Billy Holiday sings “Strange Fruit”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4ZyuULy9zs

Teachers, men and women, went south and set up schools. Most were segregated.

Black men were elected to office all over the south. Their offices were taught as utterly corrupt until the mid-1960’s.

Radical Republicans like Thadeus Stevens  and Charles Sumner wanted to completely remake the South.

Sumner had been beaten nearly to death on the floor of the Senate by a Slaver.

Property rights, inviolate in any capitalist system, won. The Northerners could not dispossess the plantation owners. Over time, freedmen and women were forced into sharecropping, a feudalistic system, and then

Jim Crow

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChWXyeUTKg8

Mostly Sioux Indians defeat Custer and his 7th Cavalry at Little Big Horn on Jun 25, 1876. Nearly 700 men of the 7th die. Calls for retribution were answered with the continued genocide of the Indian nations.

Election of 1876/77:Tilden vs Hayes election. The Republican, Hayse, made a deal made to pull troops out of the south. Jim Crow rules.

!877 was a very violent year: KKK, Poverty,starvation…

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A massive strike involving 500,000 workers started on the railroads and spread throughout the USA. In some instances, troops refused to fire on strikers. In most instances, they did not.

Eugene Debs was active in the strike in Indiana. You will see him again in the IWW.

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Mark Twain vigorously supported the 1877 strike, denouncing the role of government taking the side of a rich minority against the mass of people.

 

President Rutherford B. Hayes: “The strike was put down BY FORCE.” (emphasis his).

The Great Strike of 1877 was inspired, in part, by the Paris Commune of 1871. A Yale lecture on the Commune is below. The Commune was praised by Marx and Engels as a possible model for a future socialist or communist society.

After Plessy vs Ferguson (segregation dejure–by law–in 1896), the South has free hand to enact segregation laws. In North Carolina, in early 1900s, zero African Americans could vote (Poll taxes for black people and grandfather clauses for whites).

Segregation “de-facto”– means “in fact” if not in law or By Custom (redlining, bathrooms, sidewalks, etc).

Federal Jim Crow: Woodrow Wilson, a Virginian born before the Civil War, segregates federal work place and army. He was US president for 8 years from 1913

After WWII, Truman desegregated the military after the veteran’s attackers were found not guilty.

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda! #11 Nov 22

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!! And be on time! For the whole class!

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

 

November 21st

PLEASE: Class Evaluations (anon)

How are you doing as a student?

How am I doing as a prof?

What could be better?

Place in my red box!

1905 – Albert Einstein‘s paper, “Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?”, is published in the journal Annalen der Physik. This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass. This leads to the mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc².

Why was Einstein not allowed into the Manhattan Project designing the A-bomb?

Why Socialism?

1945 – The United Auto Workers strike 92 General Motors plants in 50 cities to back up worker demands for a 30-percent raise.

1967 – Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland tells news reporters: “I am absolutely certain that whereas in 1965 the enemy was winning, today he is certainly losing.”
Ten years later, April 29/30 1975, the US fled from Vietnam, after losing another 30, o00 US dead and perhaps 2 million Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian dead.

Quick Web site on the Vietnam Wars http://www.richgibson.com/vietnam/

1986 – Iran–Contra affair: National Security Council member Oliver North and his secretary start to shred documents allegedly implicating them in the sale of weapons to Iran and channeling the proceeds to help fund the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

November 22

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkNz-LvkkTI

1963 – US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John Connally is seriously wounded.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iU83R7rpXQY

SWC Accreditation!

So what is SWC’s Current Accreditation Status and Timeline?

by prof Angelina Stewart (Spanish instructor)

SWC sent it its Self-Evaluation Report (SER) in summer of 2015, year one of our current accreditation cycle.  We are now in year two.

The ACCJC sent a Visiting Team in October of 2015 to see if our evidence supported the SER.  The Team was not impressed with our institutional processes and felt that they were not all as complete or integrated as stated in our SER.  Thus, the Visiting Team wrote a Report with 15 recommendations to fully resolve in 18 months!  The Follow Up Report is due by March 15, 2017 and all 15 recommendations must be fully resolved.

Want to learn more?  Click on the link below to see the ACCJC Action Letter with the 15 recommendations as well as to read the current version of our Follow Up Report on the SWC Accreditation website:

http://www.swccd.edu/index.aspx?page=3414

Nearly 3/4 of the faculty are adjuncts…..what’s an adjunct?

Our Phantasmagoric  Agenda 11

1. What is, like, up? (signs all over UCSD at beginning of school year: “Don’t say ‘like’ as people will think you are stupid.”

***Children in Detroit have no right to literacy: http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/education/2016/11/20/state-says-literacy-right-detroit/94193032/

***Register Muslims? Of course not. Wait! See Spartacus.

***Go to Yosemite! Seven hours north in a car!

2. How to think! Unraveling contradictions in the real world.

3. Reminder: Capital and Empire (US presidential doctrines: SEE BELOW

4. Professor Devine, Chapters:11,12, 13

The Move to the West–see Luxembourg on Imperialism.

Mexican Borderlands: Tx, NM, AZ, CA, NV, UT, Col.
30,000 Indians as slaves on missions.(21 in CA)

In detail, capital in its struggle against societies with a natural economy pursues the following ends:

1. To gain immediate possession of important sources of productive forces such as land, game in primeval forests, minerals, precious stones and ores, products of exotic flora such as rubber, etc.
2. To ‘liberate’ labour power and to coerce it into service.
3. To introduce a commodity economy.
4. To separate trade and agriculture. (Rosa Luxemburg)

1829–Mexico frees slaves except in Tx. In Mexico they become somewhat like indentured servants. The hacienda system remains.
1833 Mexico secularized missions (little changed). Rancheros replace padres, still a feudal system.

Texas “revolution”

Mexico opens to settlement by Americans. ( Stephen Austin a key early leader). The agreement: Americans had to become Mexicans and Catholics.

Below, Texan Sam Houston

Texicans resist Mexico’s demands.

Santa Ana (below) comes to power, sends troops. Austin lays siege to San Antonia–wins.

1836 Republic of Texas (many slavers) declares independence. “Wanted to be free of heavy handed Santa Anna (who btw opposed slavery). 

Battle of Alamo–(February 23 – March 6, 1836) in today‘s San Antonio

above, Jim Bowie and his namesake knife

Davy Davy Crockett “King of the Wild Frontier”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuI2gmbBR80

Colonel Travis draws a line in the sand.

Remember the Alamo!  Slavers all.

above, painting by my pal Dennis Cox. “Cowboys at the Alamo”

Santa Anna later captured by Houston at San Jacinto. Gives up. Santa Anna signs away what becomes the Republic of Texas.

Oregon Trail—1830’s to 60s–nearly 2200 miles in wagon trains. Nearly 400,000 people traveled the trail. And of the people already there?

Mormons on the move– Mountain Meadow massacre. Mass killings of Arkansas Immigrants. Children stolen. Not mentioned in Devine. Mormonism initially seen as outrageous. Polygamy. Founded Salt lake City  Salt Lake City. Racism. Black people became human in the 1970s. Key figure in early Mormonism: Brigham Young. 

A play, “The Book of Mormon,” wins all kinds of awards.

Coming! War with Mexico!

Manifest Destiny and the Mexican War:
President Tyler—US has a right to entire continent. Tyler was a pro-slaver.

1844  James K. Polk (above) wins promise to annex Tx and Or.

Reasons: God made them do it. More Space. Free development. EMPIRE! Expand or die!

Oregon: 44/40 or fight. 49 parallel agreed with Britain, avoids another war.

Fast review! War with Mexico: 1846 Zachary Taylor, Fremont seizes CA. Vera Cruz falls in 1847 to Winfield Scott.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. 1848. NM and CA territory. 500,000 sq miles. UT, NM, NV, COL, NV Wyoming. Santa Anna gave away half the country. Mexico City protests to no avail.

1853—Gadsden Purchase, Grabs southern Az and NM, slavery burning issue in all territories.

***INTERNAL Expansion in 1840’s:

California Gold– Great Exception.

Morse Code.Communications speed past Pony Express

Railroads speed transport. Role of the state or government– gave land, bought stocks and bonds, massive land grants.

Iron horse created massive iron industry, mines, and time zones!

Below, another Landmark book

Industrial Revolution: Iron, Coal, Factory System grows fast
Arms, clocks, sewing machines,
Three capitalist Divisions of Labor:

1. Mental and Manual labor,

2.Industry and agriculture.

3. town and country

A fairly lengthy discussion of political economy and the role of the divisions of labor is here http://www.richgibson.com/polecon2.htm#division
Workforce gathers in single place vs craft workers  who make the  whole product
Pay cash wages, make interchangeable parts, continuous manufacture, assembly line in embryo,
Goodyear, rubber overshoes. Machine tools. Turret lathes. Calipers.

Note greater and greater need for raw material, cheap, labor, markets (US becoming huge internal market).

Still, by 1860–factory workers only small percentage of work force. Agriculture  is #1.

Age of Invention: Capitalism’s rapid advance of technology. Steel plow. Interaction of transportation, communication, industry agriculture.

Mass Immigration: shortage of cheap labor, women and kids used in textiles.

1840-60 40 million come to USA, Irish and Germans. Potato famine.
Germans brought capital and skills. Irish, peasants, not white.
Slums
Class Struggle intensifies…shorter work day, hours of labor key
Yellow dog contracts (employee must agree not to join a union)
Tardiness, drunks, loafing, breaking tools, etc. absenteeism
“Adjustment to industrial work was painful and took time.” People never really did that. But schools played their part.

Adjusting to exploitation, class/ethnic rivalries.

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda! #10 Nov 17th

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!! And be on time! For the whole class!

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

History doesn’t repeat itself. It moves like a spiral, sometimes crossing back on itself, not necessarily moving forward, but I like the cartoon below.

November 16

1793 – French Revolution: Ninety anti-republican Catholic priests are executed by drowning at Nantes. (remember Chalmers Johnson on revolutions–and Sun Tzu on the Art of War)

1849 – A Russian court sentences writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky to death for anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group; his sentence is later commuted to hard labor. FD wrote the “Brothers Karamazov”. The most famous chapter is the Grand Inquisitor:

“The Grand Inquisitor” is part of an extended dialogue within Dostoyevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov.” It is told by Ivan, who questions the possibility of a personal and benevolent God, to his brother Alyosha, a novice monk. “The Grand Inquisitor” is an important part of the novel and one of the best-known passages in modern literature because of its ideas about human nature and freedom, and its fundamental ambiguity. The tale is told by Ivan with brief interruptive questions by Alyosha. In the tale, Christ comes back to Earth in Seville at the time of the Inquisition. He performs a number of miracles (echoing miracles from the Gospels). The people recognize him and adore him, but he is arrested by Inquisition leaders and sentenced to be burnt to death the next day. The Grand Inquisitor visits him in his cell to tell him that the Church no longer needs him. The main portion of the text is devoted to the Inquisitor explaining to Jesus why his return would interfere with the mission of the Church.”

1914 – The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States officially opens. (and Hamilton wins).

1940 – Holocaust: In occupied Poland, the Nazis close off the Warsaw Ghetto from the outside world.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVh0qCc_AR0

November 17

1871 – The National Rifle Association is granted a charter by the state of New York.

1933 – United States recognizes Soviet Union. (16 years after the Russian Revolution).

1967 – Vietnam War: Acting on optimistic reports that he had been given on November 13, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson tells the nation that, while much remained to be done, “We are inflicting greater losses than we’re taking…We are making progress.” (five months later below)

1973 – Watergate scandal: In Orlando, Florida, U.S. President Richard Nixon tells 400 Associated Press managing editors “I am not a crook.”

1983 – The Zapatista Army of National Liberation is founded in Mexico.

on the night of the election at 9:14 the Free Press ran this. Trump won Michigan

Our Phantasmagoric Agenda

What is to be done?

1. Attend class, bringing a contribution to “What’s Up?” and prepared to discuss readings.

2. Email (in the body of an email or pdf or rtf) a reading response of about 100 words, every other week: four in total.

3. Two papers five to seven pages on topics chosen from the syllabus or from an agreement with me.

4. Compile all your written work into a portfolio and email it to me in PDF or RTF. In this portfolio, please include your own analysis of or criticism of our class, a critique of your work and a request for a grade.

I will announce the final, hard, deadline to get your portfolio in at class next week.

1. What IS up?

a. NATO will place hundreds of thousands of troops on alert for military action against Russia in the coming months, top NATO officials told the Times of London on Monday.

The US-led military alliance is planning to speed up the mobilization of forces numbering in the tens of thousands and, ultimately, hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions that are to be mobilized against Russia. Beyond its existing 5,000-strong emergency response force, NATO is tripling its “incumbent response force” to 40,000 and putting hundreds of thousands of troops on higher alert levels.

a.1 General Smedley Butler’s “War is a Racket.”

https://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html#c5

 b.  Reminder on Sun Tzu; http://richgibson.com/discusssuntzu.htm

c. Reminder: What is racism? Note the Kerner Commission report.Dr Seuss!!!

2. Chapters 10 and 11 from Professor Devine

***a. How slavery has been taught is a good example of history as a problem and battleground.  The South wrote the official history until well into and after the CR movement and in some cases still is. Note the cultural effect of popular, racist, movies like Gone with the Wind, Showboat, the many cowboy movies glorifying the Quantrill raider Jesse James etc. 

***Slave Rebellions happened but were ruthlessly smashed:
Denmark Vesey 1820

Nat Turner

1831 Nat Turner….Virginia, killed 60 slavers, “whites” to Devine, Nat killed and all his accomplices were killed as well: no major uprisings for a long time.

1830s and on: South promotes slavery as a positive good. Black people need white people. They are beasts; happy children. Racism sharpens. “One drop of blood” laws expand.

Slave laws expand: pass systems, no meetings allowed (but Sunday church for many), constant surveillance. Remember to tie together the practices of the Spanish Inquisition.

Any inquisition has these characteristics:
***Set of disciplinary procedures targeting specific groups
codified in law,
***organized systematically, bureaucratic (instruction manuals, lawyers, etc) ,
***enforced by surveillance and censorship–thought control
sustained over time,
***backed by institutional power,
***justified by a vision that there is one true path. Moral Certainty.

1830s-1840s

Pro Slavery argument: (1) blacks inferior, another species, born to be slaves, (2) approved by bible, St Paul and Ham, servants are to obey…(3) slaves need masters…..free workers starve in the north.

South moves to seal off region from abolitionists.
Shut up the pulpit. Cut off post office. Tar and feather northerners.

1857–More new laws: crime to teach slaves; literacy banned, banned ANY meetings.

Both northern financiers and industrialists and their counterparts in the south are looking west, for territory to expand upon.

1848: Karl Marx and Frederich Engels publish “The Communist Manifesto.”

“Chapter   I. Bourgeois and Proletarians

1860–4 million slaves….–tripled since 1810. 

Deep South: “the first modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794. However, the Indian worm-gear roller gin, invented some time around the sixteenth century,^[4] has, according to Lakwete, remained virtually unchanged up to the present time. Whitney’s gin used a combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks to pull the cotton through, while brushes continuously removed the loose cotton lint to prevent jams. It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the growth of slavery in the American South as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased.”

Depressions followed booms in 1815-19, 32-37, 49-60

See Financial Crises: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis

Slavers doing well. Every economic reason to keep slavery.

Slavery and Industrialization—feudalist slavers had no reason to invest in industry, little reason to expand education and technology (the cotton gin contradicts this).
The South was dependent on the north for industry and capital./markets
Slavery or its related forms WAS profitable from its onset through the Jim Crow years, until the mid-1960s.
Texas opened to slavery while Mexico claimed to abolish it, but didn’t,

Presidents who owned slaves

* George Washington
* Thomas Jefferson
* James Madison
* Andrew Jackson
* James Polk
* Zachary Taylor

Abolitionists:

1818(?) to 1895

Tubman said to have freed 1000 slaves.

David Walker’s Appeal, arguably the most radical of all anti-slavery documents, caused a great stir when it was published in September of 1829 with its call for slaves to revolt against their masters. David Walker, a free black originally from the South wrote, “. . .they want us for their slaves, and think nothing of murdering us. . . therefore, if there is an attempt made by us, kill or be killed. . . and believe this, that it is no more harm for you to kill a man who is trying to kill you, than it is for you to take a drink of water when thirsty.” Even the outspoken William Lloyd Garrison objected to Walker’s approach in an editorial about the Appeal.

The goal of the Appeal was to instill pride in its black readers and give hope that change would someday come. It spoke out against colonization, a popular movement that sought to move free blacks to a colony in Africa. America, Walker believed, belonged to all who helped build it. He went even further, stating, “America is more our country than it is the whites — we have enriched it with our blood and tears.” He then asked, “will they drive us from our property and homes, which we have earned with our blood?”

Copies of the Appeal were discovered in Savannah, Georgia, within weeks of its publication. Within several months copies were found from Virginia to Louisiana. Walker revised his Appeal. He died in August of 1830, shortly after publishing the third edition.  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2931.html

3. Reminder Thanksgiving week.

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda! #9 Nov 15

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!! And be on time! For the whole class!

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

“All that was pretense is dissolved into delusions”: Gibson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7NPuK_QhEk

 In our hands is placed a power greater than their hoarded gold
Greater than the might of armies magnified a thousandfold
We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old
For the Union makes us strong

http://unionsong.com/u025.html

November 14

A very rare “supermoon” will appear in the sky on Monday with the moon being the closest it’s been to Earth since 1948.  

1960 – Ruby Bridges becomes the first black child to attend an all-white elementary school in Louisiana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T18uT2MgzMQ

1965 – Vietnam War: The Battle of Ia Drang begins – the first major engagement between regular American and North Vietnamese forces.

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

1979 – Iran hostage crisis: US President Jimmy Carter issues Executive order 12170, freezing all Iranian assets in the United States in response to the hostage crisis.

Ayatollah Khomeini below

Shah of Iran and Jimmy Carter

Below, Kermit Roosevelt: CIA spy

2001 – War in Afghanistan: Afghan Northern Alliance fighters take over the capital Kabul.

Red indicates areas held by Taliban 4/16 (15 years of war)

this was a conservative estimate. “They probably either control or heavily influence about a half of the country,”

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/29/world/asia/afghanistan-taliban-maps.html?_r=0

2012 – Israel launches a major military operation in the Gaza Strip, as hostilities with Hamas escalate.

https://jackiewangwh.wikispaces.com/Israel+and+Palestine+Question

November 15

1532 – Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Inca Empire (western Latin America) leader Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca, arranging a meeting on the city plaza the following day. 40 years later, the Incas were completely defeated.

1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1lWlVx0-4A

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”

Our Agenda

1. What IS Up???

a. Please write 3 paragraphs (anon). How are you doing as a student? How am I doing as a prof? What could go better? Place on front table in this class, or on Thursday.

b.

NYTimes publisher letter to the readers: “…To our readers,

When the biggest political story of the year reached a dramatic and unexpected climax late Tuesday night, our newsroom turned on a dime and did what it has done for nearly two years — cover the 2016 election with agility and creativity.

After such an erratic and unpredictable election there are inevitable questions: Did Donald Trump’s sheer unconventionality lead us and other news outlets to underestimate his support among American voters?”

* According to education researcher, Mike Antonucci, the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers spent a combined $60 million to elect the Clintons, after ramming through their endorsement against the popular will of the members who wanted Sanders (wiki).

1.5 Let us discuss the key points Sun Tzu makes in the Art of War http://richgibson.com/discusssuntzu.htm

2.  Review of American Story chapters 7,8.9

Remember: Except for Slavery!

Haiti: The First Massive Slave Rebellion

A few of the many problems of successful revolutionary movements:

***Nationalism

***The Theory of Productive Forces

***Democratic Centralism–Russia, China, etc.

***Respected key leaders killed or turned into dictators

***Revolutionaries turning into what they set out to oppose (Mao, Castro, Stalin)

The rapid expansion of finance and industrial capital via empire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDCKBT8jkag

Monroe Doctrine of 1823

James Monroe above

1 Presidential doctrines (wiki + Gibson)

• 1.1 Monroe Doctrine
• 1.2 Roosevelt Corollary: Dear Europe–we will rule Latin America for you–don’t bother to come.
• 1.3 Truman Doctrine
• 1.4 Eisenhower Doctrine: Contain USSR
• 1.5 Kennedy Doctrine (Continue the invasion of Vietnam and invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs).
• 1.6 Johnson Doctrine
• 1.7 Nixon Doctrine
• 1.8 Carter Doctrine

• Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force. (full speech)

• 1.9 Reagan Doctrine
  • 1.9.1 Reagan’s definition
  • The Reagan doctrine called for American support of the Contras in Nicaragua, the mujahideen in Afghanistan and Jonas Savimbi‘s UNITA movement in Angola, among other anti-communist groups.
• 1.10 Clinton Doctrine
• 1.11 Bush Doctrine
• the Bush Doctrine has come to be identified with a policy that permits preventive war against potential aggressors before they are capable of mounting attacks against the United States, a view that has been used in part as a rationale for the 2003 Iraq War. The Bush Doctrine is a marked departure from the policies of deterrence that generally characterized American foreign policy during the Cold War and brief period between the collapse of the Soviet Union and 9/11, and can also be contrasted with the Kirkpatrick Doctrine of supporting stable right-wing dictatorships that was influential during the Administration of Ronald Reagan.
• 1.12 Obama Doctrine (continue the Bush legacy)

My Friend William Blum’s List of US Invasions Since WWII

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/US_Interventions_WBlumZ.html

Indian Removal

The Current Controversy: Was this a genocide?

70,000 Indians were forced west. Black Hawk, “an Indian as bad as a white man could not live in our nation. White men are bad school masters, carry false books…”

Lewis Cass, “they are savages…barbarous people who cannot be near civilized people.” Harvard gave him Honorary Doc degree. Took millions of Indian acres. Detroit has entire streets and buildings named for him.

Cass told Indians, “move west and be ok.” but he knew “extinction is inevitable.”

Indians as children, President as father. Tecumseh, “Father? The sun is my father.”

An integrated tribe, Seminoles, fight. Flee to Florida swamps. Osceola fights guerrilla war. Dec 28, 1835, 107 of 110 US soldiers killed.

Osceola: one of the Seminole war chiefs

1837–10,000 fed troops invade FL. Cannot find Seminoles who engage guerrilla war. Osceola dies but Seminoles never surrender.

Cherokees, Trail of Tears, death march, 4,000 die: 1838-39.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1567.html

The Legal Definition of Genocide

http://www.preventgenocide.org/genocide/officialtext-printerfriendly.htm

 College Advice!

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda! #8 Nov 9

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!! And be on time! For the whole class!

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

NYTimes:

BREAKING NEWS Donald Trump has been elected president of the United States, a stunning upset for an outsider who defied the political establishment 11:41 PM

Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment: NYT

Diderot died in 1784 on eve of French Revolution

November 9th

1799 – Napoleon Bonaparte leads the Coup of 18 Brumaire ending the Directory government, and becoming one of its three Consuls (Consulate Government).

1851 – Kentucky marshals abduct abolitionist minister Calvin Fairbank from Jeffersonville, Indiana, and take him to Kentucky to stand trial for helping a slave escape.

1887 – The United States receives rights to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1906 – Theodore Roosevelt is the first sitting President of the United States to make an official trip outside the country. He did so to inspect progress on the Panama Canal.

 

Movie above: Arsenic and Old Lace—funny election antidote.

1935 – The Congress of Industrial Organizations is founded in Atlantic City, New Jersey, by eight trade unions belonging to the American Federation of Labor.

Counterfeit unionism  http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/10/23/counterfeit-unionism-in-the-empire/

1960 – Robert McNamara is named president of Ford Motor Company, the first non-Ford to serve in that post. A month later, he resigned to join the administration of newly elected John F. Kennedy.

1965 – A Catholic Worker Movement member, Roger Allen LaPorte, protesting against the Vietnam War, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building.

1989 – Fall of the Berlin Wall. East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall, allowing its citizens to travel to West Berlin.

…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mnKJpvTntk

Our Agenda #8 (at the end the class, more than 1/2 way done–keep up!)

1. What is up?

a. Great college opportunity: 

What is Semester at Sea?

On average, each voyage travels:

• 10-12 destinations
• 4 continents
• 20,000-25,000 nautical miles
• 100-105 days

b.

Queen Offers to Restore British Rule Over United States

http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/queen-offers-to-restore-british-rule-over-united-states?mbid=social_facebook

c. Election! Again! Oh NO! 

Between the Occasional Calms of Democracy: Stratfor

https://www.stratfor.com/weekly/between-occasional-calms-democracy?utm_campaign=LL_Content_Digest&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=37247044&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9O6A_A-2fY7pavARfJiUvQZBBCXkLU_RGZrf2N2wPc1qdcB3ewnwGwY0itceB67asRxmgcWEy3284iOez6-_OnRmBHFg&_hsmi=37246354

2. Reminder: what is capitalism via the IWW and Professor Ollman and Gibson too!

3. You should have read Sun Tzu. Discussion! How to deal with this 2000 year old philosopher of war?

4. Prof Devine through chapter 9 (American Story) (capitalism and slavery……

5. College Advice

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.

*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! #7 Nov 7

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!! And be on time! For the whole class!

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

Professor Johnston often said that if you didn’t know history, you didn’t know anything. You were a leaf that didn’t know it was part of a tree. ~Michael Crichton

“Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.” – W. C. Fields

“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.”  (Fields as MaCawber in “David Copperfield”)

On November 7th, 1917 (new calendar) the Bolshevik Party of Russia led by Vladimir Illych Lenin completed the second phase of the Russian Revolution.

Below, clip from movie “Reds”

1837 – In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot dead by a mob while attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time.

1919 – The first Palmer Raid is conducted on the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists are arrested in twenty-three different U.S. cities.

1912

A Fight for Free Speech in San Diego

The radical interaction between the working members of a community and the owners of production and capital in modern times have been, in the words of one historian, a streak that “runs through the fabric of American history like a color through a plaid: sometimes dim, sometimes bold, but always a part of the design.” Indeed the Free Speech Fight in San Diego that was waged throughout most of 1912 by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was one of this streak’s boldest moments, and yet stands alone in its bitter excess and consequences, causing one to question its place in the larger quilted design of labor conflict. The events of 1912 in San Diego demonstrate more than a fight for free speech, however. They indicate the power of big business leaders in their ability to overcome labor in vying for public sympathy, which both forces demanded for their respective plights. In utilizing the press which they owned, capital was able to mobilize citizens against the IWW, who were eager to address the issue themselves as Wobblie tactics in jail and court overcrowding left the city essentially powerless.  …

On March fourth the San Diego Evening Tribune lambasted the protesters; “Hanging is none too good for them and they would be much better dead; for they are absolutely useless in the human economy; they are the waster material of creation and should be drained off in the sewer of oblivion there to rot in cold obstruction like any other excrement.” The following day the paper clearly demanded that someone take action. 

https://www.iww.org/history/library/misc/DJones2005

1944 – Soviet spy Richard Sorge, a half-Russian, half-German World War I veteran, is hanged by his Japanese captors along with 34 of his ring.

1973 – The United States Congress overrides President Richard M. Nixon‘s veto of the War Powers Resolution, which limits presidential power to wage war without congressional approval.

2000 – Controversial US presidential election that is later resolved in the Bush v. Gore Supreme Court Case.

2004 – Iraq War: The interim government of Iraq calls for a 60-day “state of emergency” as U.S. forces storm the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah.

Our Phantasmagoric Agenda #7 (About 1/2 way done!!!)

1. What’s UP?

Electoral Spectacle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYvF1FtoZu4

Having won the 1964 election against the “War Hawk” Goldwater, Lyndon Johnson quickly escalated the war on Vietnam which lead to the death of around 3 million Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians and nearly 60,000 American troops with, perhaps, 300,000 sick (agent Orange, etc) and wounded.

NY Times (11/6) Hillary Clinton has an 84% chance to win.  

ISIS counter-attacks in Mosul as fierce fighting rages

ISIL fighters launched ferocious counter-attacks on Saturday in territory Iraqi special forces captured in Mosul’s eastern edges, highlighting the tough battle ahead as troops push into densely populated neighbourhoods.

Fighters from the armed group emerged from deeper in the city to target Iraqi soldiers with mortars and suicide car bombs. They also attacked the southern edge of the Gogjali district, which Iraqi forces declared “liberated” earlier this week, pushing back some gains.

Street battles continued with both sides firing mortar rounds and automatic weapons at each other’s positions, while Iraqi troops also responded with artillery.

Clashes were most intense in the al-Bakr neighbourhood. Sniper duels played out from rooftops in the mostly residential areas, where the majority of buildings are two stories high.

Lieutenant-Colonel Saad Alwan, from Iraq’s counter-terrorism unit, told Al Jazeera the street battles were ferocious.

“We’re facing fierce resistance, they’re digging trenches and using car bombs,” Alwan said.  www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/11/isil-counter-attacks-mosul-fierce-fighting-rages-161105194328137.html

Above a parody of the Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymous Bosch

2. Professor Devine–Chapter 8–Growing Capital, Empire and a More Powerful Central Government (remember–EXCEPT FOR SLAVERY)

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

The US Constitution (remember “economic interpretation”) was ratified when a ninth state. New Hampshire, ratified it on June 21, 1788.

The Constitution underlined the conservative side of what was otherwise a radical, fairly egalitarian, revolution (as in citizens vs monarchs and tyrants).

The struggle for power: Thomas Jefferson (backed French Revolution) below

Federalist Madison below (favored aristocracy and slave owner)

Alexander Hamilton below (favored aristocracy and a privately held national bank, somewhat like today’s Federal Reserve–backed slavers’ constitution)

We are witnessing the early stages of capitalism rooted in US slavery and British textiles.

So, what is capitalism?

Review: How things change…..

below, famous image of the French revolution.

Back to the ground: The French Revolution (remember Lafayette and Paine)

Leaders of the French Revolution wrote and adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man:

“Article I – Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good.

Article II – The goal of any political association is the conservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, safety and resistance against oppression.

Article III – The principle of any sovereignty resides essentially in the Nation. No body, no individual can exert authority which does not emanate expressly from it.

Article IV – Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the enjoyment of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.

Article V – The law has the right to forbid only actions harmful to society. Anything which is not forbidden by the law cannot be impeded, and no one can be constrained to do what it does not order.

Article VI – The law is the expression of the general will. All the citizens have the right of contributing personally or through their representatives to its formation. It must be the same for all, either that it protects, or that it punishes. All the citizens, being equal in its eyes, are equally admissible to all public dignities, places and employments, according to their capacity and without distinction other than that of their virtues and of their talents.”

George Washington declared US neutrality. France declared war on Britain, sought to involve US via ambassador Genet–who failed.

The young empire was moving west. Mad Anthony Wayne, a top officer in the revolution, was assigned by Washington as a key Indian fighter. He is heroized all over Michigan and the mid-west.

Whiskey Rebellion—western Pa–Hamilton’s excise tax on whiskey, farmers etc raised a militia to not pay. 15,000 US troops go after them. They vanish. Washington blames Republicans. Jefferson claims the rebellion was Hamilton’s plot to kill Republicans with Army. He opposed standing army. 

Washington’s farewell address…written by Hamilton

*built Federalism, nationalism.

*Opposed forming political parties and sectionalism.

*Urged a balanced federal budget.

*Take advantage of geographic isolation and avoid foreign entanglements.

*Set tradition of two terms…

Crushing Dissent for National Security–
*1798 Army formed. Washington is General. Demands Hamilton as #2. Only Federalists became officers. Jefferson opposes standing army.
*1798–Alien and Sedition Acts. To silence Republicans.

*Alien Enemies Act give prez wartime powers to expel. Remains in power, slightly revised, today.
*Alien Law–expel by exec decree
*Naturalization Law—14 years for Naturalization, keep Irish from voting Republican.
*Sedition Law—no criticism of government. Libel, fines, jail. Franklin’s grandson jailed.

Real repression followed. Federalists arrest 17 people. Matthew Lyon jailed. Elected to congress.

Compare this to today’s Patriot Act and NDAA.

Adams dodged war with France, cost him re-election

1800–Jefferson/Burr tied in Electoral College, resolved in 1804 when EC casts separate ballots. Federalists shift support to Jefferson.

1800—no riots, no coup—-“extremism is dangerous to democracy” What was the revo if not extreme?????????

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda! #6 Nov 2

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!!

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

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” Desmond Tutu

November 2

Notice! SWC has a food pantry on main campus: Room 554. Don’t go hungry!   http://www.swccd.edu/index.aspx?page=3653

1917 – The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet, in charge of preparation and carrying out the Russian Revolution, holds its first meeting.

Below, Lenin–Trotsky erased from photo by Joe Stalin, Soviet Dictator

above, Leon Trotsky (aka “the Pen) murdered in Mexico on Stalin’s orders.

1963 – South Vietnamese President Ngô Đình Diệm is assassinated following a military coup.

1965 – Norman Morrison, a 31-year-old Quaker, sets himself on fire in front of the river entrance to the Pentagon to protest the use of napalm in the Vietnam war.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ev2dEqrN4i0

1967 – Vietnam War: US President Lyndon B. Johnson and “The Wise Men” conclude that the American people should be given more optimistic reports on the progress of the war.

Whoever Wins–It’s Perpetual War and your side is losing Here’s Why

by Rich Gibson

October 2016

http://richgibson.com/suntzu.htm

Our Agenda

1. What IS Up?  The Spider and the Fly–a classic!

a. Bill Clinton, the Marc Rich pardon, Eric Holder, and the FBI

b. Election soon to be OVER!!! Meanwhile, Engels on the State from ‘Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State’:
“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it “the reality of the ethical idea,” “the image and reality of reason,” as Hegel maintains (Grunlinken der Philosophie des Rechts, § 257 and § 360). Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms and classes with conflicting economic interests might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power seemingly standing above society that would alleviate the conflict, and keep it within the bounds of “order” ; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”

Remember: For all that follows–“except for SLAVERY”

2. Run-up to the American Revolution and the Revo!

Incidents and Acts that Inflamed the Colonialists

(Quantity into Quality–then a Leap!)

Boston Massacre and the battles of Lexington and Concord (local militias grow)

Molasses and Sugar Taxes: massive tax evasion in colony (whisky!)

*Tea Act–tax on tea

*Stamp Act–tax on all documents

*Quartering Act–must house British Troops

*Impressment–forced into service of the British military, usually Navy

*Coercive Acts–(aka “Intolerable Acts) 1774  –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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Status_of_forces_agreement

*Corrupt British Tax officials

After French and Indian War, Brits demanded Americans not move beyond the Appalachians. (George Washington owned land beyond the Appalachians)

Enlightenment Ideology vs Tyranny (Monarchs) tied to the promise of FREEDOM and EQUALITY (a la Chalmers Johnson “On Revolution)

Declaration of Independence! Read it ALL!

This man read it!See how the US press portrayed him

Ho Chi Minh with Giap (right) and US advisors during WWII

Declaration of Independence for Vietnam:

“All men are created equal; they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
This immortal statement was made in the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776. In a broader sense, this means: All the peoples on the earth are equal from birth, all the peoples have a right to live, to be happy and free.
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of the French Revolution made in 1791 also states: All men are born free and with equal rights, and must always remain free and have equal rights.
Those are undeniable truths.
Nevertheless, for more than eighty years, the French imperialists, abusing the standard of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, have violated our Fatherland and oppressed our fellow citizens. They have acted contrary to the ideals of humanity and justice.
In the field of politics, they have deprived our people of every democratic liberty.
They have enforced inhuman laws; they have set up three distinct political regimes in the North, Center, and South of Vietnam in order to destroy our national unity and prevent our people from being united.
They have built more prisons than schools. They have mercilessly slaughtered our patriots; they have drowned our uprisings in bloodbaths.
They have fettered public opinion; they have practiced obscurantism against our people.
To weaken our race they have forced us to use opium and alcohol.
In the field of economics, they have fleeced us to the backbone, impoverished our people and devastated our land.
They have robbed us of our rice fields, our mines, our forests, and our raw materials. They have monopolized the issuing of bank notes and the export trade.”

US’ Revolutionary Grand Strategy-Split from England–self government )by a new ruling class per Zinn)

Strategy–mobilize masses of people behind the ideas and promises of the revo (Zinn believes this was an elites’ trick)

Tactics: various forms of guerrilla war (Sun Tzu or Indian Warfare) matched by occasional frontal war–persevere!

Organizations of the revolutionaries: Sons of Liberty–Committees of Correspondence–Continental Army-Later a Fleet.

Key Battles of the Revolution (see Devine and Zinn too!)

Christmas 1776–Valley Forge–Washington crosses the Delaware River and attacks Hessian mercenaries–boosting revolutionary morale throughout the 13 colonies–proofs the Redcoats could be defeated.

The Swamp Fox General Francis Marion fought a guerrilla war (Americans wrongly call him the father of guerrilla war) with an integrated (enslaved people, Indians, freed men, white peasants) in the Carolinas for much of the revolution. While Washington was stalled around New York, Marion kept up the fight! Marion was instrumental in keeping the unity of the northern and southern colonies.

Battle of Saratoga (September-October 1777) Gentleman Johnny Burgoyne lost to American forces convincing the French the revolution could win–and they entered the war.

October 19 1781: Cornwallis Surrenders at Yorktown

Skirmishing continued but in effect the British empire was defeated

Articles of Confederation (1781 ratified): a loose alliance of the states with:

*No national tax system

*difficult to raise army to repress local rebels

*difficult to conduct national affairs

*No executive branch but departments of war, finance

*States issue own currency–rely on hard money (gold, silver, etc)

*Soldiers from Continental Army not being paid $ due–rebellious

James Madison + Alexander Hamilton write the Federalist Papers–there is too much democracy–seeks powerful central government. How shall we prevent rule of the majority? (Part 10)  Madison below

Shays Rebellion, vs debt, foreclosures, taxes, defeated.

“The uprising in Massachusetts began in the summer of 1786. The rebels tried to capture the federal arsenal at Springfield and harassed leading merchants, lawyers, and supporters of the state government. The state militia, commanded by Gen. Benjamin Lincoln, crushed the rebels in several engagements in the winter of 1787. Shays and the other principal figures of the rebellion fled first to Rhode Island and then to Vermont.”

The Slavers’ Constitution and the Beard Interpretation:

Philadelphia Convention 1787–held in secrecy. 3/5 compromise to keep national unity
return fugitive slaves.
25 of 55 framers owned slaves

Electoral College to make sure voters got it right.

Bill of Rights. Result of antifederalist work.

Federalists, rich—antifeds poor.

Life, liberty and ——PROPERTY

Huge propaganda campaign to ratify:
States ratify by 1790

BILL OF RIGHTS

Devine, “people had learned that they are sovereign” Huh????

We are witnessing the birth of modern capitalism and empire

Rooted in SLAVERY

So, What is Capitalism?

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda! #5 October 31

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!!

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

“If voting mattered; they wouldn’t let us do it.” Director of the National Education Association’s PAC to me.

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters. ~African Proverb

October 31

1922 – Benito Mussolini is made Prime Minister of Italy

below, Mussolini before….

above, Mussolini after

1940 – World War II: The Battle of Britain ends: The United Kingdom prevents a possible German invasion.

1941 – After 14 years of work, Mount Rushmore is completed.

1956 – Suez Crisis: Israel invaded Egypt. As part of a three pronged scheme, the United Kingdom and France begin bombing Egypt to force the reopening of the Suez Canal. Eisenhower, using economic threats, forced withdrawals, underlining the end of Britain as a dominate world power.

http://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/suez-crisis/speeches/eisenhower-on-the-suez-canal-crisis

1968 – Vietnam War October surprise: Citing progress with the Paris peace talks, US President Lyndon B. Johnson announces to the nation that he has ordered a complete cessation of “all air, naval, and artillery bombardment of North Vietnam” effective November 1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nPJgeg6hpA

2011 – The global population of humans reaches seven billion. This day is now recognized by the United Nations as Seven Billion Day.

Agenda 5 (almost 1/3 done)

1. More on What is Racism (reminder).

a. Innate inferiority–sub-species

b. Indelible difference—cannot change

c. linked to power and control–that is–divide and rule for profits (racism is born alongside early capitalism although it has origins in the Spanish Inquisition).

d. Institutionalized in law (vs. intermarriage, etc), social structures (education, housing, etc.) customs (the “curse of Ham in Genesis contradicted by Christian equality before god.

e. Out group cannot hold public posts (slavery through Jim Crow)

f.  Racism means death: “white men with 16 or more years of schooling can expect to live an average of 14 years longer than black men with fewer than 12 years of education.(For white and black women with the same educational differences, that gap was 10 years.)”

g. Crestwood, Mich!

2.  What IS UP??? Pay attention! Thoreau: “To be awake is to be alive.”

a.  Election! What about ME?

OMG Hillary! Pardoned? Precedent? Impeached?

b. Gowdy at 59 seconds

Clinton top advisor, Kissinger, said on CSPAN, “This looks like the run-up to World War 1.”

c. Huge Ballot in CA means long lines at booths!

d. You cannot make this up. Bloomberg news: “With the battle for the Iraqi city of Mosul barely begun, the US and its allies say they need to move within weeks on the other remaining Islamic State stronghold, Raqqa in Syria. The trouble is that no one can agree on who should do the actual fighting.”

3. Chapter 4 and 5 in American Story -quarreling with Professor Devine.

a. What was the Enlightenment? Criticize everything. Ask to-the-root questions. Know yourself. Engage, then see.

above: John Locke

above: Voltaire

Link below, the War on Science (15 mins to 25)

https://www.c-span.org/video/?411578-1/war-science

4. What is a revolution? Check out Chalmers Johnson linked on the syllabus. Or here:  http://richgibson.com/johnsonquotes.htm

5. The Run-up to the American Revolution

 

Below, Jefferson’s slave and paramour, Sally Hemmings

Below, Sons of Liberty

1st Row: Samuel Adams • Benedict Arnold • John Hancock • Patrick Henry • James Otis, Jr. 2nd Row: Paul Revere • James Swan • Alexander McDougall • Benjamin Rush • Charles Thomson 3rd Row: Joseph Warren • Marinus Willett • Oliver Wolcott • Christopher Gadsden • Haym Salomon Not Pictured: Hercules Mulligan

Below, famous image of the Boston Massacre of 1768

Below, famous image of battle of Lexington and Concord–1775–Washington still refused to declare split

Below, Hessian mercenary–why Americans were taught to hate mercs

Below, SAIC in San Diego

Below, Titan Corp, San Diego

Below, Abu Ghraib prisoner, gratis Titan and CIA and U.S. Army

 

Pending Questions

What makes it possible to end a Master/Slave relationship

What is feudalism?

What is the American colonists critique of tyranny/Monarchy?

What is capitalism and where did it come from?

What is imperialism and where did it come from?

What is a revolution?

 

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda! #4 October 26

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!!

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

October 26

1775 – King George III of Great Britain goes before Parliament to declare the American colonies in rebellion, and authorized a military response to quell the American Revolution.

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

1881 – The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral takes place at Tombstone, Arizona.

http://www.pkwy.k12.mo.us/intra/professional/student_work/west_web3/chriss1.htm

1944 – World War II: The Battle of Leyte Gulf ends with an overwhelming American victory.

1955 – Ngô Đình Diệm declares himself Premier of South Vietnam.

1967 – Mohammad 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. Chalmers Johnson on elements of the Patriot Act which essentially abolished the Bill of Rights, followed by the National Defense Security Act:  http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Chalmers_Johnson/Sorrows_Empire_TSOE.html

003 – 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.

Notes on Hellfire October 2003

By Rich Gibson
San Diego State University  http://richgibson.com/Fire2003.htm

Agenda 4

1. What IS Up? Pay attention! Tom Hayden is dead.

The Chicago Seven (Bobby Seale, chained and gagged in court, made 8)

May 12, 2015

The Wars on Vietnam

by Rich Gibson   http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/12/the-wars-on-vietnam/

NYC cops take a full page ad defending a “good shoot.”NYTimes wants to bring back bracero program!!!! NO! Gitmo suit fails because he’s not in Gitmo anymore!

2. Meet Howard Zinn

2.  Chapter 1 in Zinn, People’s History USA.

3.   Chapter 3 in American Story

4.   Chapter 4 in People’s History

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Our Phantasmagoric Agenda!  #3 October 24th

Be Sure to SIGN IN!!!!

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

History is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up. ~Voltaire

Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience and history teach is this, – that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself alone. (Hegel)

.

October 24

1917 – Bolshevik Red Guards began takeover of buildings in Russia, among the first events associated with the October Revolution.

1929 – “Black Thursday” stock market crash on the New York Stock Exchange.

The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as Black Tuesday (October 29),the Great Crash, or the Stock Market Crash of 1929, began on October 24, 1929 (“Black Thursday”), and was the most devastating stock market crash in the history of the United States, when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects.The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries (only WWII ended it) WIKI

Lewis Corey:The Decline of American Capitalism

(1934)

If you read the first chapter of this book, you will understand why the Great Depression of 1929 happened.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/corey/1934/decline/

Louis C. Fraina as he appeared in a grainy Bureau of Investigation identification photo.

Yip Harburg wrote “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” also wrote “Over the Rainbow.” He was blacklisted, passport revoked, from 1950 to ’62. Why?

http://history1900s.about.com/od/photographs/tp/greatdepressionpictures.htm

1975 – In Iceland, 90% of women take part in a national strike, refusing to work in protest of gaps in gender equality.

1990 – Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti reveals to the Italian parliament the existence of Gladio, the Italian “stay-behind” clandestine paramilitary NATO army, which was implicated in false flag terrorist attacks implicating communists and anarchists as part of the strategy of tension from the late 1960s to early 1980s.

2008 – “Bloody Friday” saw many of the world’s stock exchanges experience the worst declines in their history, with drops of around 10% in most indices.

The Great Financial Crisis—Three Years On

Why financial crises, one after the other????

Agenda 3

1.     What’s up? Philippines! Detroit schools and reform. The total U.S. budgetary cost of war since 2001 is $4.79 trillion,

2. Discuss  Gibson’s Lie Spotters Manual at: http://www.richgibson.com/liespotter.htm

Discuss these links demonstrating my own method of analyzing how things change.

a.    http://www.richgibson.com/diamatoutline.html and

b.     http://www.richgibson.com/scedialectical4.htm

2. 5  Chapter 1 in American Story.

3.   Chapter 2 in American Story.

4. Please read this brief selection on empire http://richgibson.com /twinbirths.html 

By the end of this day, your topic for your first paper should be submitted and approved!!! (fast class, eh?)

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Class Two- Our Phantasmagoric Agenda!e Sure to SIGN IN!!!!

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

“Money is the Devil’s Dung.” Pope Francis: Head of the Billions of dollars in the Vatican Bank

 “History is a prophet who looks back,” Eduardo Galeano

 

https://youtu.be/bYm_oEO5iyE

October 19th

1944 – United States forces land in the Philippines.

1950 – The People’s Republic of China joins the Korean War by sending thousands of troops across the Yalu River to fight United Nations forces.es land in the Philippines.

1960 – Cold War: The United States government imposes a near-total trade embargo against Cuba.

1973 – President Richard Nixon rejects an Appeals Court decision that he turn over the Watergate tapes.

1987 – Black Monday: The Dow Jones Industrial Average falls by 22%, 508 points. Check US Financial Crises

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

2005 – Saddam Hussein goes on trial in Baghdad for crimes against humanity.

MEETING 2 – 10/19

1.     What is up? Mosul! Philippines! Saudis and ISIS. Oh No! The debate! Yuck! We’ll miss it, so let’s ask “Why have government?” What does history say?

2.     Discussion of syllabus.

2 1/2. Review Why have school? What is the social context? What of school “reform.”

3.     Chalmers Johnson (San Diegan author of the great Nemesis trilogy) says that Americans are so unaware of history they cannot connect cause and effect. Is that true? Why, or why not? Proof? What is our social context today?

4.  Please Review Questions for Criticism at: http://www.richgibson.com/QUESTCRI.html  (Save this).

5.  What is history?  Read my synopsis of Carr’s, “What is History?” at http://richgibson.com/compromisehistory.htm and This key synopsis by me, here: http://richgibson.com/HistoryIs.pdf 

6.     Read Gibson’s Lie Spotters Manual at: http://www.richgibson.com/liespotter.htm

             7.   Read these links demonstrating my own method of analyzing how things change.

a.    http://www.richgibson.com/diamatoutline.html and

b.     http://www.richgibson.com/scedialectical4.htm

c. Watch Plato’s Cave  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTWwY8Ok5I0

            8.    We will work through the Master/Slave exercise here: http://richgibson.com/masterslave.htm

Class One

Why Are Things as they Are?

“We make our own history but not

in circumstances we chose” (Gibson)

Sign in! Sign In! Sign In!

October 7th

15th Anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan. How’s that going? “No nation gains from protracted war.” Sun Tzu

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
   An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
      Go, go, go like a soldier,
      Go, go, go like a soldier,
      Go, go, go like a soldier,
         So-oldier of the Queen!
Rudyard Kipling  http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/young_british_soldier.html


The lone British Soldier after Afghan retreat

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dJf5rO0-BM

October 15th

50th Anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bcubkt6BwY

October 17th–Today

1777 – American Revolutionary War: British General John Burgoyne surrenders his army at Saratoga, New York.

We will ask, soon, “What is a revolution?” How do they win or lose?

1781 – American Revolutionary War: British General Charles, Earl Cornwallis surrenders at the Siege of Yorktown.

1943 – The Holocaust: Sobibór extermination camp is closed. We will discuss: ” What is fascism?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9L0e3_6_0nw

1979 – Mother Teresa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Made Saint, September 2016.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65JxnUW7Wk4

MEETING 1 – 10/17

1.     Introductions.

a.     Questions:  Who are you? 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? Credentials.  Dr Rich Gibson, Emeritus Professor, SDSU. Lecturer, SWC. Why I’m here and what I’m curious about.

2.    Why have school–a demonstration of critical, dialectical, thinking: contradictions in the real world.

*What are the main things going on in school ?

*What are the main things going on in society?

*What might your answers have to do with each other?

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

4.     How our class will work? Note the syllabus! Read it! Follow it! We will discuss it in Class #2.

5. Next Class: What is up? What history is being made now?