Ultimate African Safari

History Book Club

Rockport Public Library

Rockport, MA 01966

Monthly Meeting, Wednesday, June 29^th, 2016

[Modified from earlier report, July, 2013]

Wednesday, June 29, 2016: Africa since 1900.  Colonization by Belgium, France, Britain, Germany and Portugal; End of Colonialism; Democracy and Dictatorship; Rwanda; Jomo Kenyatta; Apartheid and South Africa; Congo; Angola; more….

Paul Theroux, Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari, 2013. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt: New York, NY. 368 pp.

            In 2003 Paul Theroux told the story of his trip down the east coast of Africa in Dark Star Safari. Ten years later, he published Last Train to Zona Verde, his account of a trip up the west coast of Africa.

            Theroux introduces us to this “ultimate African safari” by taking us into the world of the !Kung people, the Ju-Hoansi—“the earth’s oldest folk, with a traced lineage to the Upper Pleistocene, 35,000 or so years ago…. the proven ancestors of us all, the true aristocrats of the planet.”

            In the “civilized” world the news is bad The Greeks are rioting, world financial markets are in turmoil, the Eurozone is approaching meltdown.  And here these ancient people show him how to build a snare to catch a guinea hen, and after they catch it, how to pluck it and cook it over a fire, that they’ve started the old way, by rubbing sticks together. 

Ju-Hoansi tribesman. Theroux writes “The best of humankind are bare-assed.”

            It’s an interesting juxtaposition--- these ancient people, laughing gently as they live their lives far from the frenzy of Europe, and America, dollars and Euros and taxes and inflation and governments awash in debt.

            However, the Ju-Hoansi are just about extinct.  In the 19^th century the Boers hunted them just for sport.  Modern times have overtaken many of them and they have descended into alcoholism and depressing poverty.

            In that way, the Ju-Hoansi are just like many millions of Africans who have left their subsistence farming lives in the bush, and flocked to the nearest urban magnet.  African cities hardly deserve the name, because they are small cities, the ones built in the colonial times, surrounded by miles and miles of shanties—tin-roofs, tents, cargo boxes, scrap lumber, plastic sheeting ---- anything and everything to house people.  Water available, sometimes, from one public faucet.  Slit trenches for toilets, draining to--- don’t ask.  No police, no electricity, no jobs.  Just poverty, crime, and filth.  And you must imagine the smell!

            Today, 200 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in these slums or squatter camps, the highest number of slum dwellers in the world.

           

            Theroux ended Dark Star Safari in South Africa, and that is where he begins his trip in Last Train to Zona Verde, in the depressing settlements of Cape Town. 

            Often Theroux stops to ask, “Why am I here?”  It’s a question most of us have asked during a trip at some point. 

            South Africa has not fared well in the post-independence economy.  Everywhere, men and boys are standing around all day, idling.  Many women work—they seem to have more spirit.  And there is trash everywhere.

 

            Theroux’s overall assessment of Cape Town and South Africa is not encouraging.  Soon, however, he is on the night bus to Windhoek in Namibia.

            Namibia is a place with promise. A former German colony, there are places that have the look of German organization. There are buses of sweating, red-faced German tourists, on their way to see hippopotamuses or elephants, but really just looking for a beer. 

            Behind the German organization are dreadfully poor Africans.  It is in Tsumkwe, Namibia that Theroux finds the Ju-Hoansi Bushmen in the northeastern corner of the country, near Botswana to the east and Angola to the north. All the dancing around naked, hunting for guinea hens and starting a fire with sticks is the act that they put on for visitors. After the show is over, they slip into castoff American tee-shirts and jeans, and look pretty much like the rest of Africans living well below anyone’s poverty line.

            Next on the itinerary is Angola.  Theroux talks with travelers and Namibians, but Angola is a dark secret.  Only bad news comes out of that darkest of the dark continent.

            No matter, Theroux catches a bus to the frontier between Namibia and Angola.  He walks through the border formalities and enters a country that is still pretty much ravaged by war.  Angola was a mini-Cold War battleground during the civil war that raged from 1975 to 2002, off and on.  The Cubans and Soviets joined rebel groups fighting for another communist state, and the U.S. and South Africa supported rebels fighting for a non-communist state. 

            Our author is harsh in his criticism of the Portuguese, who first occupied Angola and began shipping slaves from there in the 17^th century, and their sloppy, exploitative colonization until independence in 1974. 

          

            He is critical of colonialism throughout Africa, but quick to point out that hardly anything has shown improvement as Africans have gained independence.  Theroux also ridicules the thousands of well-meaning do-gooders from the rest of the world, who helicopter in to distribute aid, and cover the bush, but mainly stay in the big cities, driving white SUVs. 

            “Virtue tourism” is what Theroux calls the world-renowned entertainers who throw money at projects in Africa, but lack the follow-through.

            Theroux buys a seat in a van driven by a drunk Angolan, and filled with a colorful group of plain Angolan men and women, as they race and bounce over bad roads, stop for hours for engine repairs, and often for unisex urination breaks.  A shriveled up little woman appears with a bucket of smoked chicken parts, covered with swarming flies.  It sounds pretty gross, but it’s been a long time since his last meal, and a long time before he’ll reach any form of civilization, so finally Theroux succumbs and buys a piece of the chicken, and all its flies.

            In Angola, everywhere he turns he sees idle Angolans and hard-working, eager Chinese.  The Chinese are everywhere.  They are building roads and airports and factories, so there are nicely dressed plant managers, engineers and other leaders, and there are hard-working owners of little shops.  There are also thousands of working-class Chinese, doing work that should be getting done by Angolans.  But, the Chinese owners say, “The Angolans don’t want to work as hard, and as long, as needed to get jobs done.”

            At several points Theroux encounters bright, eager and hard-working young Africans.  Many of them leave this depressing scene for Europe or America, and we see them right here, working in our hospitals and elsewhere in Boston. 

            Increasing efforts to teach Africans about family planning, fidelity, abstinence in marriage.

            In an opinion piece in the Boston Globe the other day Jeffrey Sachs, in discussing globalization and the fallout from populist movements like Brexit in the UK and Trump in the U.S. wrote about the population explosion in Africa, now at 1.111 billion, and estimated to reach 4.39 billion by 2100. He writes:            

            “Africa’s astounding demographic surge, for example, would be decisively eased by a simple, humane, decent, and wise policy to ensure that every African child has the realistic prospect of at least a secondary-school education. The result would be a dramatic voluntary reduction of the sky-high fertility rate.”

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/06/27/brexit-symptom-globalization-deeper-ills/BY8fKiVi8BdpnZHCu3lv4I/story.html

            When will we start to see bright young Africans take over their countries, not to grab all the money they can, but to help their people create a land of promise? Africa has tremendous raw materials, and many of the resources to develop, if only leaders start to emerge who can unlock the potential of the people of this continent.

            It will happen.   It must happen.

-end-

Future History Book Club Topics

Here are the topics for the rest of 2016.  We encourage you to nominate topics for 2017! 

Wednesday, July 27, 2016: American Foreign Policy from the Barbara Pirates to today. Civil War alliances by both Union and Confederacy; Gunboat Diplomacy; Spanish-American War; “He Kept Us out of War!”; Britain and the U.S. in WWII; The Cold War; more.

Wednesday, August, 31, 2016: Germs and Plagues: A history of epidemics in the world. Plague of Athens (429 BC), Plague of Justinian (541 AD), “Black Death” in 1346, Cocoliztli Epidemic in Mexico (1528), Wampanoag Smallpox in 1616, 1918 Flu Pandemic, more.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016: Scaremongering and Witch Hunts in America.Salem Witch Trials, House Un-American Activities Committee; McCarthy Investigations; more.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016:  Political Parties in America. Whigs, Know-Nothings, Federalists, Copperheads; Communists, Socialists, Republicans, Democrats, more.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016: Colonization in America. Jamestown, Plymouth, Gloucester, St. Augustine, Junipero Serra, Roger Williams, Quebec, Nieuw Amsterdam, more.

December:  No Meeting

            

Modern Life in the Middle East

History Book Club

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

 Modern Life in the Middle East and the Islamic State  

Wednesday, May 25, 2016: Modern Life in the Middle East and the Islamic State. Iraq from its formation after WWI, Syria, the Caliphate, Origins of conflict, Sunni vs. Shii vs. Kurds vs. Alewhites Vs. Wahabi vs. ?   Modern technology with Seventh-century ideas, Impact of USSR and U.S. in Afghanistan, U.S. combat in Iraq; Arab Spring; Turkey and Islam, Jordan, The Gulf States, Egypt, much more.

Dabashi, Hamid, Iran, the Green Movement and the USA: The Fox and the Paradox;

Zed Books, London, 2010.

            Dabashi, born in Ahvaz, Iran in 1951, received his education in his hometown and then at Tehran University.  He then moved to the United States where he received a dual Ph.D. in Sociology of Culture and Islamic Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.

Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. He has taught and delivered lectures in many in American, European, Arab, and Iranian universities. He is a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, as well as a founding member of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia University. He has written 25 books.

Dabashi begins this book with an ancient Persian tale of a majestic lion who ruled over a jungle. A weak but wily fox had earned a good relationship with the lion, which meant that whatever was left over from the lion’s kills, the fox could enjoy.  The lion grew old, his hair began to fall out, and the fox, with his clever skill, urged the lion, to look for a cure to his deficiencies.  The lion consulted his royal physicians, who advised him to eat the heart and ears of an ass, and he would be restored.

It turns out that the lion is the United States, the wily fox is Iran, and the ass is the rest of the Middle East.

Dabashi traces the modern history of Iran, beginning when the wiliest of foxes outsmarted Jimmy Carter, then President of the United States. The Shah of Iran was chased out of his country, and soon after student activists invaded the American Embassy on Takhte Jamshid Street in November 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage there for 444 days. They were released just as Ronald Reagan took the oath of office to relieve Carter, in 1981.

Reagan built a firewall around Iran by arming Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and arming the Taliban in Afghanistan to resist the Soviet Union, which had invaded the country.  Saddam began a war with Iran that lasted eight years.

Reagan’s “firewalls” metastasized.  Saddam became a regional monster and so did the Taliban.  When Saddam decided to invade Kuwait, then President George H.W. Bush formed a multi-national force to push him out. 

The Taliban managed to push the Soviets out of Afghanistan, but at the same time Osama bin Laden created his al Qaeda.

Next, al Qaeda carried out the attacks of September 11, 2001, which caused then President George W. Bush to retaliate by invading Afghanistan that same year. Two years later, feeling that the American action in Afghanistan was effective, he invaded Iraq.

Since 1979 the Iranian Islamic Republic has stayed on, and Dabashi’s story is about a Green Revolution which took place in 2009.  This demonstrated that the Iranian people, who had grown weary of the Shah and Savak secret police and the corruption in 1979, were growing weary of the Mullahs and the Basij voluntary militia and the repression and corruption again. 

The Green Movement acted as a catalyst to help distinguish between the morally corrupt and politically opportunist expat opposition and their American, Israeli and Saudi backers; and the main and healthy body of principled aspirations for democratic change in Iran.  

            In the larger historical and geographical context of the Green Movement, as a result, it bloomed early like a fragrant flower, to paraphrase a beautiful poem of Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000), the Iranian poet of liberty, announcing the winter had ended, and gently blended into the Arab Spring, forever changing the geopolitics of the region. This is not to suggest that the Green Movement "caused" the Arab Spring. 

            It simply means the fate of millions of Iranians and Arabs is not that different from each other, and their historic march towards liberty is far more organically linked than the miserable sectarianism and racism that on the surface mars that collective fate.

            The Green Movement announced the end of post-colonial ideology, almost identically to the way in which the Arab Spring ended a vicious cycle of domestic tyranny and imperial domination.

            As the Green Movement receded from the public space into the underground, it began occupying a sphere that will continue to thrive under the radar of the violent changes that now ravage the region from Iraq to Syria. As such, it will remain a prototype for a non-violent civil rights movement, a perfect model for the region at large, as the Arab and Muslim world goes through massive revolutionary changes.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/05/201351661225981675.html

ISRAEL-PALESTINE

Morris, Benny, One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict, 2009, New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press. 240 pp.

            Americans have followed the drama of Israel since its creation in 1948, and Benny Morris does a good job of filling in some of the blank spots, at least in this reader’s understanding. 

            Although Morris wants us to get an impartial view, this Professor of History at Ben Gurion University in Israel does not give us anything which might approximate the Arab point of view.  I have had Arabs and friends of Arabs try to give me their point of view before, and I was unable to take it on board.  I found that the whole matter of deciding upon a place for a home for the Jews was one that was doomed to cause conflict no matter where it ended up.

            Arabs don’t agree, but the Jews have a pretty solid prior claim to the Land of Milk and Honey, going back over 6000 years.

            Morris tells about the first gathering of Zionists in 1882, which began the drive to find a national homeland. The assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881 set off a wave of pogroms in Russia and led to the idea of a Zionist organization. Alexander had been a very liberal tsar, freeing the serfs and allowing Jewish merchants in certain areas (that is the “Pale of Settlement”)  to join guilds, and some Jewish children could attend schools.

            Alexander was assassinated by an anarchist, atheistic group called “The People’s Will”, but one of the assassins had Jewish heritage.  

             After centuries of being abused and murdered, with large and small pogroms, the Jews were fed up with always being a minority in any setting. 

            The Arabs in Palestine first developed a national consciousness as Palestinians in the early 1920s.  Up to then, the Arabs who lived in Palestine were simply Arabs.  They were the majority in a land with a significant minority of Jews (800,000 to 160,000 in 1928).

            The extermination of some 6,000,000 Jews by Hitler in World War II created an international impetus to find a home for the Jews.  Britain, which had captured Palestine in World War I, had been leaning toward Palestine as a national home for the Jews since then.  The final decision to bring Jews displaced from Europe fell to President Harry Truman, with agreement of Great Britain, and approval of the United Nations. 

            The central question in this book is whether the area between the Jordan and the Mediterranean which was set aside for the Jews and the Palestinian Arabs would be One Nation or Two, whether there should be a Jewish nation alongside a Palestinian nation, or one nation, partitioned. 

            That is the question that has swirled about since 1948.  The Jews knew what it was like to be the minority.  They had done that for ages, and they would not permit that.

Being a Jewish minority with a majority of Arabs?  They would be exterminated.

            The Arabs bitterly resented having the Jews land in Palestine, and they fought it, resisted it, hated it, in every way, from the start until now.

            Could there be a Palestinian state existing in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as Israel?  Palestinians have bitterly objected, and have never relented in their demand for ejection of the Jews and “the Right of Return” to the homes from which they had been removed when the Jews arrived. 

            Morris details the many discussions and agreements, or semi-agreements or non-agreements that have tossed around various peace arrangements.  There was the United Nations General Assembly partitioning of November 1947;

The Six-day War of 1967 which resulted in huge loss of territory by the Arabs;

            The Allon Plan of 1967-68 giving back some land to the Arabs, but retaining a strip along the Jordan;

            And there was the infuriating meeting hosted by President Clinton at Camp David in July 2000, that ended with Yasser Arafat not agreeing to anything. 

            The Palestinians have steadfastly opposed any plan that gives them land, including part of Jerusalem, most of the West Bank, etc., etc. as long as the Jews are still around. 

            I was reading about the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Siberia that Stalin created in 1934. The administrative center is the town of Birobidzhan, population 176,000 in 2010. Of all those, only a little over one percent are Jews.  Some prominent anti-Semites have suggested petitioning Putin of Russia to accept resettlement of all the Israeli Jews there.

            The British and Americans did a heroic think in making the way for Jews to build Israel.  I’m sure all Muslims, especially Arabs, think that move was Satanic.  Some Americans think it was, as well.

            As I finished this book, I asked myself: “What will it take to have peace between Palestinians and Israelis?” 

-end-

Future History Book Club Topics

Here are the topics for the rest of 2016.  We encourage you to nominate topics for 2017! 

Wednesday, June 29, 2016: Africa since 1900.  Colonization by Belgium, France, Britain, Germany and Portugal; End of Colonialism; Democracy and Dictatorship; Rwanda; Jomo Kenyatta; Apartheid and South Africa; Congo; Angola; more….

Wednesday, July 27, 2016: American Foreign Policy from the Barbara Pirates to today. Civil War alliances by both Union and Confederacy; Gunboat Diplomacy; Spanish-American War; “He Kept Us out of War!”; Britain and the U.S. in WWII; The Cold War; more.

Wednesday, August, 31, 2016: Germs and Plagues: A history of epidemics in the world. Plague of Athens (429 BC), Plague of Justinian (541 AD), “Black Death” in 1346, Cocoliztli Epidemic in Mexico (1528), Wampanoag Smallpox in 1616, 1918 Flu Pandemic, more.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016: Scaremongering and Witch Hunts in America. Salem Witch Trials, House Un-American Activities Committee; McCarthy Investigations; more.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016:  Political Parties in America. Whigs, Know-Nothings, Federalists, Copperheads; Communists, Socialists, Republicans, Democrats, more.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016: Colonization in America. Jamestown, Plymouth, Gloucester, St. Augustine, Junipero Serra, Roger Williams, Quebec, Nieuw Amsterdam, more.

December:  No Meeting

History of Journalism--The Bully Pulpit

History Book Club

Wednesday, April 27, 2016

The "Yellow Kid" cartoon of the 1890s may have given the name to "the Yellow Press"

 The History of Journalism and the Media

Wednesday, April 27, 2016: History of Journalism and the Media. Benjamin Franklin, Horace Greeley, Yellow Press, “Acta Diurna” in Ancient Rome; “Notizie Scritta in Venice; The Manchester Guardian; Jonathan Swift; more.

THE BULLY PULPIT

Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, and the Golden Age of Journalism

By Doris Kearns Goodwin, Illustrated. 909 pp. Simon & Schuster. 2013 (Kindle Edition)

            Doris Kearns Goodwin is the quintessential presidential historian.  As the author of Team of Rivals, she appeared on Stephen Colbert’s Late Night show a few months ago. She was brought in on a platform carried by four half-nude Chippendale-type males with beards and top hats à la Lincoln. 

            When Colbert asked about Donald Trump’s campaign she said that there has never been a demagogue like him elected president.  But, of course there is always a first time.

Theodore Roosevelt family at the White House, ca. 1905

           

Bully Pulpit is three stories, set in the 1890s, when America was changing from a growing industrial country to a nation with international aspirations, on its way toward become a super power. Goodwin tells the story of a young, sickly “Teedy” Roosevelt, born to a privileged family. That boy overcame the sickliness and became a model of masculine energy and achievement, the Eveready Bunny who studied, learned, wrote scores of books, dreamed and carried out ideas, became a leader and champion of the underdog. On his way to becoming President, he fought corruption as a New York City Police Commissioner, served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy at a time when he could help our Navy to become the force that eventually defeated Japan and Germany in World War II.

William Howard Taft family, Manila, ca. 1902

            The second story is of William Howard Taft, also born to a privileged family, who became what historian Henry Adams felt was eminently qualified to become President.  Where Will Taft began life as a husky, handsome achiever in sharp contrast to Theodore, as time went on he became obese, while Teddy was shooting bison in the west and hunting big game in Africa.

            The story is also of Alice, Roosevelt’s first wife, who died after their first child was born, then Edith, the quiet, intelligent woman who served as a brake for her impetuous husband, and of Helen (Nellie), Taft’s wife, who had the political aggressiveness that Taft lacked, as well as intelligence and style to help propel him through his career.

            The third story is about the “Muckrakers”--- a group of journalists who gathered together by Sam McClure to create a unique magazine, which served up long, detailed articles each month which opened the eyes of intelligent middle class Americans to the predatory activities of rapacious captains of industry, criminally cruel slumlords, and corrupt politicians, public servants and union bosses.

Ida Tarbell

This collection of journalists included Ida Tarbell, whose father had been squeezed out of the oil business by Standard Oil Company; Lincoln Steffens, who had observed the crooked politicians who ran Minneapolis; and Ray Stannard Baker, who had observed the labor unions who cheated their members and colluded with their employers.  There were also William Allen White editor of the Emporia (KS) Gazette, Albert Boyden and John Siddal.

Teddy Roosevelt began his education of the realities of life in New York City as a New York Police Commissioner.  He soon saw that much of police work was corrupt, from top to bottom, and he began nightly walks around neighborhoods to see where police were actually walking their beats, or were napping or otherwise engaged in crooked practices.  Along the way he befriended Jacob Riis, who had already devoted much energy toward chronicling the plight of new immigrants jammed into stinking tenements. 

As a politician who actually wanted to make a difference, Teddy became one of the Progressive Republicans, fighting crooked Tammany Hall, which was the New York Democratic party. 

He soon began friendships with the journalists of McClure’s Magazine and Riis, which helped him to learn the dark side of his world, and gave him the opportunity to capture the attention of millions of voters to right these wrongs.  Roosevelt and the Muckrakers formed a tight, mutually-beneficial team for good in the city.  This marked the era when Republicans like Teddy and Taft opposed the laissez faire, get along establishment part of the GOP. 

How different were Teddy and Will Taft, fighting status quo Republicans for Progressive causes like improving the lot of the poor, stopping big corporate monopolies and busting trusts. Today the “Progressive” label belongs to the Democrats, and the Republicans have the reputation of opposing abortion, gay marriage, denying climate change, stopping government in its tracks, unwavering loyalty to the National Rifle Association, and, with its fundamentalist religious wing, extreme views on evolution, the Christian bible, and creation.

The goal of McClure’s Magazine was to educate literate middle class Americans, and it worked for several years. They priced the magazine within reach of the middle class (35¢) and readers gobbled up issues loaded with lengthy stories which revealed sleazy, greedy, avaricious practices of big industry, big labor, government, and landlords. The McClure’s team dug out stories that exposed wrongdoing, and their readers often gave leaders like Roosevelt and Taft the backing to achieve legislative and regulatory change. Goodwin wrote that the muckrakers were “putting faces and names to the giant corporations, shining a bright light on the sordid maneuvers that were crushing independent businessmen in one sector after another.”

McClure's Magazine in 1902 featured Tarbell's History of Standard Oil

            For years the railroads had worked a scheme of charging different rates for different customers.  Ida Tarbell’s father had been a small oil producer in the country’s first oilfields at Titusville, PA.  Rockefeller’s Standard Oil had a special low rate for his oil shipments, but Tarbell had a much higher rate.  This forced small producers out of business.

            All over the country there were deals like this.  One of Roosevelt’s first targets after taking office was to regulate the railroads, and to empower the Interstate Commerce Commission to set rates and root out discriminatory practices. Ray Stannard Baker produced a multi-part article, 50,000 words total, which each month revealed more of the railroads’ trickery.

            Roosevelt and Baker collaborated on this measure, because in Congress, with senators well taken care of by the railroad lobby, it was going to be nearly impossible.  After several months, and against fierce opposition, but with an angry public well informed on the issue, the legislation passed.  This was a great example of how Roosevelt and the media could gain the support of the public to right an old wrong.

            Bully Pulpit is also a story of a strange friendship, between two quite dissimilar men. Teddy admired Taft, and brought him into his cabinet as Secretary of War, where he performed well.  After nearly eight years, Teddy urged his old friend to run for President.  Taft really did not want the job, but his wife, Nellie did, and she urged him to run. 

            The book ends with the election of 1912.  Taft has completed his term and is running for a second term against Democrat Woodrow Wilson.  Teddy, after a year’s hunting trip in Africa and other adventures, has unfriended Taft, and ends up running for President as a third party candidate.  The party is his own creation, The Progressive Party, or The Bull Moose party. Teddy lost, dragging Taft down with him, and Wilson went on to face The Great War.

-end-

           

Future History Book Club Topics

Here are the topics for the rest of 2016.  Feel free to comment on these topics, and to suggest additional or substitute topics. 

Wednesday, May 25, 2016: Modern Life in the Middle East and the Islamic State. Iraq from its formation after WWI, Syria, the Caliphate, Origins of conflict, Sunni vs. Shii vs. Kurds vs. Alewhites Vs. Wahabi vs. ?   Modern technology with Seventh-century ideas, Impact of USSR and U.S. in Afghanistan, U.S. combat in Iraq; Arab Spring; Turkey and Islam, Jordan, The Gulf States, Egypt, much more.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016: Africa since 1900.  Colonization by Belgium, France, Britain, Germany and Portugal; End of Colonialism; Democracy and Dictatorship; Rwanda; Jomo Kenyatta; Apartheid and South Africa; Congo; Angola; more….

Wednesday, July 27, 2016: American Foreign Policy from the Barbara Pirates to today. Civil War alliances by both Union and Confederacy; Gunboat Diplomacy; Spanish-American War; “He Kept Us out of War!”; Britain and the U.S. in WWII; The Cold War; more.

Wednesday, August, 31, 2016: Germs and Plagues: A history of epidemics in the world. Plague of Athens (429 BC), Plague of Justinian (541 AD), “Black Death” in 1346, Cocoliztli Epidemic in Mexico (1528), Wampanoag Smallpox in 1616, 1918 Flu Pandemic, more.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016: Scaremongering and Witch Hunts in America. Salem Witch Trials, House Un-American Activities Committee; McCarthy Investigations; more.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016:  Political Parties in America. Whigs, Know-Nothings, Federalists, Copperheads; Communists, Socialists, Republicans, Democrats, more.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016: Colonization in America. Jamestown, Plymouth, Gloucester, St. Augustine, Junipero Serra, Roger Williams, Quebec, Nieuw Amsterdam, more.

December:  No Meeting

"End of the World" History of Doomsday Forecasts

History Book Club

Wednesday, March 30, 2016

 “The End of the World” –History of Doomsday Forecasts

Goldwag, Arthur, Cults, Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Straight Scoop on Freemasons, the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, and more; Vintage Books, New York, NY: Vintage Books; 2009. 384 pp. Kindle Edition.

Wilson, Colin, with Damon and Rowan Wilson, World Famous Cults and Fanatics,  London, UK:  Magpie Books, 1992. Kindle Edition.

            Introduction: Reading these books about cults, conspiracies, secret societies and fanatics was a trip through a world of upside down facts, crazy connections and horrible aberrations of human behavior.

            If you spend enough time on line these days, you will become exposed to “Breaking News” stories, most from unfamiliar and suspicious news sources, that connect up public figures with an un-ending string of conspiracies.

            If you believed half of the stuff that gets poured out on the internet, you’d be ready to go off to join the Branch Davidians in Waco, or the Rev. Jim Jones’ Peoples’ Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. In 1843 you might have been the guy who climbed a tree, wearing turkey wings, to help get to heaven when the big day arrived.

            Millerites:  The 1843 episode was originated by Rev. William Miller, who prophesied that the Second Coming of Christ would be between two dates in 1843 and 1844. A publisher took interest in this, and then more publishers, and soon there were people all over the United States excited about the Second Coming.  The books and papers telling about this Second Coming made it to Europe and Canada, and cults formed all over, all looking for the Second Coming. 

            Wilson tells a story in his book about a Millerite encountering Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker on a street, and telling them about the Second Coming.  Parker, who was an intellectual opponent of Emerson, replied: “That doesn’t affect me—I live in Boston.”

Finally, the Second Coming was nailed down to October 22, 1843, and thousands came to a hilltop in central Massachusetts for the arrival. Miller did some calculations and came up with another date. And another.  It all turned out to be a great disappointment.

            From the beginning of recorded history, there have been Messiahs, preachers, charlatans of all shapes and sizes, demanding your attention, ready to lead you to the promised land, or lead you to the next life, or gather you up in a commune, away from the rest of society.

            Many of these men and women quite surely were sincere, even if it usually turned out that they were disconnected from reality.  Many, many were simply out to make a lot of money, and perhaps have their way with sexual partners, or mutilate or kill their willing followers.

            Can you imagine a person running for president of the United States using the fear of foreigners, or fear that a black President is going to send men from “the Government” to take away your firearms? 

In the years right after the Civil War the suggestion that freed slaves would rape wives and kill white men was enough to gather up a powerful force that became the Ku Klux Klan.

            Perhaps if we were to know enough about some of these bizarre events we might be more capable of resisting any temptation to fall for some similar scheme that may come along in the future.

            These two books take the reader on a twisted trip through history. In 1172 an unnamed man who claimed to be the Messiah was brought before the Caliph in Yemen. The Caliph asked him, “How can you prove you are the Messiah?”  “That’s easy,” the man replied, “cut off my head and I shall return to life.”

 “That sounds right,” agreed the Caliph. He had his headsman come in and cut off the Messiah’s head.  He didn’t appear to be the Messiah.

There were the Assassins of the 11^th and 12^th centuries, operating in what is now Iraq and Persia.  These pot-smoking fanatics were from the Ismaili offshoot of the Shia. They managed to make inroads into Syria. They killed Conrad of Montferrat, King of Jerusalem, sending terror into the heart of Europe.

            In modern times we’ve had the Heaven’s Gate cult of Marshall Applewhite, when 39 followers and Marshall “returned” to their home planet near the star Sirius (1997). And then there were the murders of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Jay Sebring and more by Charles Manson’s zombielike “Family”, starting in 1969.

            There was Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Japanese Red Army, Brigatta Rossa (Red Brigade) and the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Some of 900+ dead in Jonestown

            Jonestown Massacre.  Reverend James W. Jones (1931-1978) established the Peoples’ Temple in Indianapolis, IN in 1954. Sometime later he got to know Father Jealous Devine, who convinced him that he was God.

            Father Devine ran the International Peace Mission Movement, which was connected with communism, among other things.

            Now that he believed he was God, Jim Jones stepped up his activities, and gained converts. In 1965, convinced that a nuclear apocalypse was soon to take place, he moved his group of some 150 followers to Ukiah, CA.  He started a lot of programs, many were genuinely helpful.  He gained a political following that soon brought him into favor with San Francisco Mayor George Moscone, who named him head of the San Francisco Housing Commission.

            Complaints started to come in about Rev. Jones from ex-members of his community, about sexual, physical and financial abuse. He was caught “curing” cancer in a parishioner when the “cancer” turned out to be a chicken gizzard.

            This time (1977) Rev. Jones relocated with his whole group, to Guyana, to a colony he had built, which he named Jonestown.

            In May 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan, who had gained a reputation for his tracking down crimes in the Scientology church, the Unification Church and others, flew with his staff to Jonestown to investigate complaints he’d received.

            Jones cooked up a Potemkin village for him to inspect, but some of Jones’ followers slipped him urgent notes, and Ryan gathered up several defectors and the party left for their planes.  Jones’ security force ambushed them, killing Ryan, three journalists and one defector.

San Francisco Chronicle report of Jonestown Massacre

            Shortly afterward, Jones ordered parents and nurses to give babies and toddlers potassium cyanide and potassium chloride poison. Then adults and children sipped Kool-Aid with poison out of paper cups.  Soon over 900 people, including Rev. Jones, were dead.

            Then came the conspiracy theories.  Someone said that Jones was a CIA agent and the CIA killed all those people so they could use their bodies to ship drugs into the U.S.

Mayor Moscone and his assistant, Harvey Milk were assassinated two weeks later, and the conspiracy theorists tried to spin that into a CIA coverup as well.

            Branch Davidians.  This group was an outgrowth of The Shepherd’s Rod, a breakaway sect of the Seventh Day Adventists.  Formed in Fullerton, CA in 1929, they moved to Waco in 1935, occupying land called “Mount Carmel” east of the city. They maintained a quiet compound there, printing and mailing out pamphlets all over the world.  In the 1950s they announced that the Judgement Day would take place April 22, 1959, which attracted a lot of attention to the sect.  The faithful came from everywhere; a tent city of some 900 people sprung up at the compound.

However, when nothing happened on that day, interest in the sect began to drop off. The sect continued to exist, changing leaders. Then in 1978 along came David Wayne Howell, a 20-something former rock guitar player, who found his way into the bed of the leader of the cult, Lois Roden, an elderly woman who had succeeded her husband in the post.

Howell managed to win the old lady’s heart, but then left with a teen-age bride for a trip to Israel.  It was there that he discovered that he was the Messiah, and destined for great things. He changed his name to David Koresh (the Hebrew name for “Cyrus”), and returned to Texas, where he established his own church in Palestine, TX, about 70 miles from Waco. 

Then Lois died, and David returned to take command of the Branch Davidians from Lois’ son. David called for a contest to see which of them could bring a corpse back from the dead.  They dug up a body from the sect cemetery. That ended in a squabble and a gunfight, and Koresh was arrested, accused of attempted murder.  Later, however, his rival killed one of the followers with an axe, and was sent to a mental hospital.

David Koresh was an unlikely Messiah.  Born illegitimately of a 14-year-old girl, he was slight, spindly, with low self-esteem.

The Davidians made money by selling firearms and military memorabilia at gun shows.  Koresh stirred up followers, and gained more followers by prophesying Armageddon, which would begin by an attack, probably by the government.

Just like some politicians know very well, if you tell people in a culture that is excited about guns that there is a threat that “the government wants to take your guns from you” you can find lots of eager followers.

Koresh had also discovered that in his role as Messiah it was his duty to impregnate all the young girls in the compound.  He told other males that, while it wore him out to spread his seed like this, it was necessary.

            It was well known that the compound was loaded with guns and ammunition, and there were reports that children were being molested. On February 28, 1993 the Department of Justice sent agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to serve a search warrant. The Davidians opposed the agents with gunfire: four ATF agents were killed, and six Davidians as well.

            That began a siege of the compound, with Department of Justice and FBI personnel surrounding the compound, trying various methods to get the Davidians to surrender. Finally, on April 19, 1993, FBI tanks advanced, tearing off pieces of the building housing the Davidians, and firing CS tear gas grenades inside. Fire broke out, probably accelerated by the cyanocarbon dust from the tear gas, and some 80 Davidians, including 22 children, were burned to death.

            Both books I read made ample suggestions that the U.S. Government, under Attorney General Janet Reno and President Bill Clinton, was greatly responsible for allowing this encounter to escalate to the point that so many lives, including those of innocent children, were lost. Subsequent congressional investigation cleared the Federal government, but the criticism and suspicion of the U.S. Government in this case continues today.

           

            Reading these two books reassured me that nutty things have been going on for a long time, and there are strange people who will pop up where you least expect them, and attract followers, sometimes in the millions.  “Reasonableness” and “Common sense” do not appear to be a part of these schemes.

-end-

           

Future History Book Club Topics

Here are the topics for 2016.  Feel free to comment on these topics, and to suggest additional or substitute topics.

Wednesday, March 30, 2016: “The End of the World” –History of Doomsday Forecasts. Arrival of the Antichrist, Swedenborg and the Last Judgment, the Millerites of 1844, the End Times, Marshall Applewhite and the Heaven’s Gate Cult, Armageddon, more.

Wednesday, April 27, 2016: History of Journalism and the Media. Benjamin Franklin, Horace Greeley, Yellow Press, “Acta Diurna” in Ancient Rome; “Notizie Scritta in Venice; The Manchester Guardian; Jonathan Swift; more.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016: Modern Life in the Middle East and the Islamic State. Iraq from its formation after WWI, Syria, the Caliphate, Origins of conflict, Sunni vs. Shii vs. Kurds vs. Alewhites Vs. Wahabi vs. ?   Modern technology with Seventh-century ideas, Impact of USSR and U.S. in Afghanistan, U.S. combat in Iraq; Arab Spring; Turkey and Islam, Jordan, The Gulf States, Egypt, much more.

Wednesday, June 29, 2016: Africa since 1900.  Colonization by Belgium, France, Britain, Germany and Portugal; End of Colonialism; Democracy and Dictatorship; Rwanda; Jomo Kenyatta; Apartheid and South Africa; Congo; Angola; more….

Wednesday, July 27, 2016: American Foreign Policy from the Barbara Pirates to today. Civil War alliances by both Union and Confederacy; Gunboat Diplomacy; Spanish-American War; “He Kept Us out of War!”; Britain and the U.S. in WWII; The Cold War; more.

Wednesday, August, 31, 2016: Germs and Plagues: A history of epidemics in the world. Plague of Athens (429 BC), Plague of Justinian (541 AD), “Black Death” in 1346, Cocoliztli Epidemic in Mexico (1528), Wampanoag Smallpox in 1616, 1918 Flu Pandemic, more.

Wednesday, September 28, 2016: Scaremongering and Witch Hunts in America. Salem Witch Trials, House Un-American Activities Committee; McCarthy Investigations; more.

Wednesday, October 26, 2016:  Political Parties in America. Whigs, Know-Nothings, Federalists, Copperheads; Communists, Socialists, Republicans, Democrats, more.

Wednesday, November 30, 2016: Colonization in America. Jamestown, Plymouth, Gloucester, St. Augustine, Junipero Serra, Roger Williams, Quebec, Nieuw Amsterdam, more.

December:  No Meeting