https://www.foreignexchanges.news/p/a-future-of-walls-or-liberation

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2667284

Shocking news, I know, but a good historical overview

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/3869214

Institution: Yale
Lecturer: Prof. Donald Kagan
University Course Code: CLCV 205
Subject: #history #ancientgreece
Description: This is an introductory course in Greek history tracing the development of Greek civilization as manifested in political, intellectual, and creative achievements from the Bronze Age to the end of the classical period. Students read original sources in translation as well as the works of modern scholars.

More at [email protected]

I'm trying to recall some of my earliest memories of world events. The further back I go, the more vague things get as you'd expect.

I think I recall seeing on tv over the course of several days in the 90s a tragic and mostly unsuccessful rescue operation to try and dig out kids who were buried in rubble and mud from a giant landslide that occurred after an earthquake.

I think it was in a part of the world you might have called 3rd world at the time and this featured in the media coverage in respect to the inadequacy of the rescue operation and the infrastructure allowing access to the site of the disaster.

What sticks in my mind is footage, almost always from the same angle, a very wide shot from far away of the school on a very steep hillside just about completely buried in mud. I think the buildings nearby that still stood looked kind of tropical, I think I recall tin roofs but the memory is a bit too vague to say that for sure. I think the angle all the news coverage seemed to be using over the several days must have been one of the only cameras near the scene and in a fixed spot since it was hard to see much of what was going on and it was the same angle throughout the reporting.

While researching this I came across photos of the Aberfan disaster in Wales and thought that might have been it until I saw it was from the 60s, and also the hillside wasn't really tall enough and the obviously the location, UK doesn't match my memory. I also found stuff about the same thing happening in Yunan Province in China. But that was in 2012. The photo in that article is basically exactly my memory in terms of hillside and type of region I'm thinking except that I recall it being a bit more cropped in and much more blurry SD-analogue TV-ish looking as it was actually footage not a photo.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/12865151

Witch-hunting in 17th-century Scotland was so well paid that it attracted some blatant fakers – Susan Morrison

A witch-hunter nicknamed ‘The Bloody Juglar’ appears to have used a retractable needle to prick his victims without drawing blood, while another responsible for the deaths of many innocent women turned out to be a woman herself

At Spynie Palace in 1662, John Innes of Leuchars had a serious problem on his hands. Local people were complaining to him about milkless cows, shrivelling crops and dying children. Pretty obvious that a witch was on the loose. As the local law enforcement thereabouts, John was expected to do something, but witch-hunting was not in Mr Innes’s skill set.

It must have been a relief when a slight young man almost magically appeared in front of him: John Dickson’s the name, and witch-hunting’s the game. Bags of experience. Happy to sort the problem out. Possibly dropped the name of superstar witch-hunter John Kincaid into the conversation, a Tranent man with a fearsome reputation as Scotland's most fearsome witch pricker or ‘brodder’.

The Scots didn't do witch-ducking. We went for the needle. The Devil gave his followers marks somewhere on their bodies. Where the Devil left his mark, there would be no blood, and no pain. Kincaid and his like would use the needle to ‘prick’ the accused. The words prick and needle are misleading. This needle was no dainty thing to be lost easily in a haystack. These were more like hefty great crochet hooks. The ‘pricking’ was more of a violent slam into the body.

The mark could be anywhere. The accused were stripped and shaved, and the needle plunged in. Some victims didn’t move, scream or bleed – the mark had been found. Possibly they couldn’t move. They may have been in deep shock. These were pious times.

Women rarely left home without covering their heads, now they stood publicly naked, shaved and exhausted. There may well have been little or no bleeding, if the needle hit a part of the body with a poor blood supply. Or perhaps the needle was retractable.

There are clues to such trickery. In the late 17th century, a witch-hunter nicknamed “The Bloody Juglar” turned up in Berwick-upon-Tweed. Pretty quickly his trusty needle pricked a victim and drew no blood. A witch, ready for trial and execution. Hold up, said Colonel Fenwick, the town’s military governor. He called in the mayor and the magistrates. He was worried that this evidence was falsely procured. He had his suspicions about that needle.

Why not get The Bloody Juglar to do the pricking again, but with a council-provided needle? Our boy baulked – “by no means would he be induced unto”. To the good people of Berwick, this “was a sufficient Discovery of Knavery”. The Juglar was busted.

John Kincaid may have been a knave, but between 1649 and 1662 he rampaged freely. It was lucrative. He pocketed £6 for a discovery of a witch at Burntcastle estate. They chucked in another £3 to cover the booze bill for him and his manservant.

The year 1659 was a busy one. Kincaid seems to have pricked profitably in East Lothian, where 18 accused witches were executed. In 1661, Forfar was so chuffed with his efforts that they gave him the freedom of the burgh.

Perhaps young John Dickson was inspired by Kincaid. Seemed a good trade for a lad, finding God's enemies and being very well paid for it, too. John headed north, fetched up at Spynie Palace and appeared before the harassed Innes, who wasted no time in signing up his new witch-hunter to an exclusive contract.

John was on a good retainer with performance-related bonuses, six shillings a day expenses plus £6 per witch caught. In no time at all, our man on the make had two servants and a very fancy horse. He was on-call and carried out witch-pricking in Elgin, Forres, Inverness and Tain. He possibly pricked Isobel Goudie, Scotland’s most famous witch.

He had a particular take on the procedure. Folk called him the Pricker “because of his use of a long brasse pin”. He had his victims stripped naked, then the “spell spot was seen and discovered. After rubbing over the whole body with his palms.” In a vicious witch-hunt/clan war in Wardlaw on the banks of Loch Ness, 14 women and one man were treated so savagely under John’s direct supervision that some of them died.

Our boy was on a roll, until he did something stupid. He pricked a man named John Hay, a former messenger to the Privy Council. Now, this was not a man to mess with. He had connections. He wrote to Edinburgh complaining in an incredibly civil servant manner, denouncing the witch-pricker who worked on his case as a “cheating fellow” who carried out the torture without a licence. Even witch-hunters need the correct paperwork.

The Privy Council in Edinburgh agreed. They called the maverick Mr Dickson in for a word. And they made a terrible discovery: John Dickson was a woman. Her name was Christian Caddell, and she came from Fife. Oh, she could tell a witch, no doubt about it. She claimed she spotted them by looking into their eyes and seeing an upside-down cross.

Of course, this was not the scientifically accepted manner of witch-finding. A needle must be used. And, obviously, you needed to be a man.

Christian stood trial, not for fake witch hunting, torturing or even for those murderous deaths, but for wearing men’s clothing. She was sentenced to transportation, and on May 6 she sailed from the port of Leith on the ship Mary, bound for Barbados.

On the day she left Scotland, Isobel Elder and Isabel Simson, pricked by John Dickson, aka Christian Caddel, were burned in Forres. Just because you were discovered to be a witch in the wrong way didn’t mean to say you were innocent. They were the last two victims of the cross-dressing counterfeit witch-pricker.

In the throes of the Cold War, a tiny Caribbean island dared to wage a revolutionary experiment. As the Revo imploded, the United States invaded.

With this poem, George Lamming, Barbadian novelist and poet, ended his address at a December 1983 memorial service in Trinidad for Maurice Bishop, Jacqueline Creft, Norris Bain, Vincent Noel, Unison Whiteman, and all who had been killed during “Bloody Sunday”—the abrupt end to the Grenada Revolution.

“It is the tragedy of a whole region which has brought us here,” said Lamming during his address. “The landscape of Grenada and its people are the immediate victims… But all of us are now the casualties of the American invasion.”

When an intra-party conflict broke out, leading to the killing of revolutionary leader Bishop and other victims on October 19, 1983, the Reagan administration seized the pretext to invade. On October 25, 1983, thousands of U.S. troops landed on the island.

This year, Grenada commemorates both 50 years as an independent nation and 40 years since the violent implosion of the People’s Revolutionary Government and subsequent U.S. invasion. For the first time, the government of Grenada has recognized October 19 as a national holiday, designated as “National Heroes Day.” Decades on, reckoning with the events of 1983 continues.

Writer Marise La Grenade-Lashley spoke at the inaugural National Heroes Day gathering, where she echoed sentiments expressed in her article in Now Grenada a year prior. “The shocking events of 19 October 1983, whose effects reverberated across the Caribbean and beyond, created deep psychological wounds that have never really healed. One coping mechanism adopted by some persons directly affected by the events of that fateful day has been to retreat in silence,” she wrote.

“While silence is a common reaction to trauma, it has, in the case of Grenada, created a void in our society that needs to be filled with factual and unbiased information related to those four and a half years during which Grenada embarked on an alternative path to development that crumbled so abruptly, so brutally, so tragically,” La Grenade-Lashley added.

The designation of National Heroes Day includes a mandate to bring the history of Grenada’s revolution to civics classes in Grenadian schools.

read more including starting poem: https://www.truthdig.com/articles/40-years-later-remembering-the-us-invasion-of-grenada/

archive link: https://archive.ph/esApJ

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/3194334

Scrolls count as books, right?

They've managed to find actual words in a two-thousand year-old, burned scrolls from Herculaneum.

The exciting bit? The words they've read so far appear to be from a previously unknown ancient text. And there are over six hundred other scrolls. If we can read more of them, we'll find lost texts. Maybe some we've heard of, maybe some we haven't. Either would be amazing!

From the article:

The Herculaneum papyri, ancient scrolls housed in the library of a private villa near Pompeii, were buried and carbonized by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. For almost 2,000 years, this lone surviving library from antiquity was buried underground under 20 meters of volcanic mud. In the 1700s, they were excavated, and while they were in some ways preserved by the eruption, they were so fragile that they would turn to dust if mishandled. How do you read a scroll you can’t open? For hundreds of years, this question went unanswered.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/803365

Mentions Samir Amin as well.

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/10358195

The road from Rome

The fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t a tragedy for civilisation. It was a lucky break for humanity as a whole

For an empire that collapsed more than 1,500 years ago, ancient Rome maintains a powerful presence. About 1 billion people speak languages derived from Latin; Roman law shapes modern norms; and Roman architecture has been widely imitated. Christianity, which the empire embraced in its sunset years, remains the world’s largest religion. Yet all these enduring influences pale against Rome’s most important legacy: its fall. Had its empire not unravelled, or had it been replaced by a similarly overpowering successor, the world wouldn’t have become modern.

This isn’t the way that we ordinarily think about an event that has been lamented pretty much ever since it happened. In the late 18th century, in his monumental work The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788), the British historian Edward Gibbon called it ‘the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind’. Tankloads of ink have been expended on explaining it. Back in 1984, the German historian Alexander Demandt patiently compiled no fewer than 210 different reasons for Rome’s demise that had been put forward over time. And the flood of books and papers shows no sign of abating: most recently, disease and climate change have been pressed into service. Wouldn’t only a calamity of the first order warrant this kind of attention?

It’s true that Rome’s collapse reverberated widely, at least in the western – mostly European – half of its empire. (A shrinking portion of the eastern half, later known as Byzantium, survived for another millennium.) Although some regions were harder hit than others, none escaped unscathed. Monumental structures fell into disrepair; previously thriving cities emptied out; Rome itself turned into a shadow of its former grand self, with shepherds tending their flocks among the ruins. Trade and coin use thinned out, and the art of writing retreated. Population numbers plummeted.

But a few benefits were already being felt at the time. Roman power had fostered immense inequality: its collapse brought down the plutocratic ruling class, releasing the labouring masses from oppressive exploitation. The new Germanic rulers operated with lower overheads and proved less adept at collecting rents and taxes. Forensic archaeology reveals that people grew to be taller, likely thanks to reduced inequality, a better diet and lower disease loads. Yet these changes didn’t last.

The real payoff of Rome’s demise took much longer to emerge. When Goths, Vandals, Franks, Lombards and Anglo-Saxons carved up the empire, they broke the imperial order so thoroughly that it never returned. Their 5th-century takeover was only the beginning: in a very real sense, Rome’s decline continued well after its fall – turning Gibbon’s title on its head. When the Germans took charge, they initially relied on Roman institutions of governance to run their new kingdoms. But they did a poor job of maintaining that vital infrastructure. Before long, nobles and warriors made themselves at home on the lands whose yield kings had assigned to them. While this relieved rulers of the onerous need to count and tax the peasantry, it also starved them of revenue and made it harder for them to control their supporters.

When, in the year 800, the Frankish king Charlemagne decided that he was a new Roman emperor, it was already too late. In the following centuries, royal power declined as aristocrats asserted ever greater autonomy and knights set up their own castles. The Holy Roman Empire, established in Germany and northern Italy in 962, never properly functioned as a unified state. For much of the Middle Ages, power was widely dispersed among different groups. Kings claimed political supremacy but often found it hard to exercise control beyond their own domains. Nobles and their armed vassals wielded the bulk of military power. The Catholic Church, increasingly centralised under an ascendant papacy, had a lock on the dominant belief system. Bishops and abbots cooperated with secular authorities, but carefully guarded their prerogatives. Economic power was concentrated among feudal lords and in autonomous cities dominated by assertive associations of artisans and merchants.

Read more through the link. And join lemm.ee/c/history

Over 300 students were murdered by the Mexican army during a peaceful protest that occurred 10 days before the 1968 Olympic Games.

On Monday, thousands of citizens gathered to demand answers from President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) regarding the massacre that took place in Mexico City on October 2, 1968. The incident involved hundreds of students protesting against the administration of Gustavo Diaz Ordaz (1964-1970).

They marched from the Three Cultures Square in Tlatelolco, where the massacre occurred, to the Zocalo in front of the National Palace.

Mexico City's Citizen Security Secretary deployed hundreds of police officers, who engaged with protesters at some points along the route.

The march commemorates the 55th anniversary of the death of over 300 students in a massacre carried out by the Army and the "Olympia Battalion" paramilitary group during a peaceful protest that occurred 10 days before the 1968 Olympic Games.

read more: https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Mexicans-Remember-Victims-of-the-Tlatelolco-Massacre-20231003-0001.html

archive: https://archive.ph/r60fU

This resulted in over 3 million being massacred and 700.000 sent to labour camps.

Hanns Scharff was a German nazi who was famous for being what was considered the best interrogator the nazis had, as he was able to extract information from almost every person he was given, which mainly consisted of American pilots from the 8th and 9th Air force. However, Hanns techniques were very diffrent and even a complete opposite of what you would expect from the nazis, as he didn't torture or deprive his subjects of their needs. In fact, he actually gave them privileges such as being able to roam about the court yard freely anytime they wanted, and in some cases, even let the pilots fly german aircraft for fun. At no point in his career did he ever have to resort to violence, making him actually praised for his effectiveness.

Olga of Kiev, also known as Saint Elena, was a viking queen who live from ~890-925, and ruled in territories of modern day Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. Olga's husband, Igor, was murdered after returning to the tribe of the Drevlians, which had a shaky relation with Igors empire, and murdered Igor when he requested further payment (the payment in question was tribute to Igors predecessors, to which the Drevlians had stopped paying until confronted). Upon Igors death, Olga assumed power of the throne as her son, Sviatoslav, was too young at the time. Just as Olga began to grieve for her husband's death, the Drevlians sent 20 negotiators to try and convince Olga to marry their prince (the reason for this was an attempt to keep Olga from retaliating against the Drevlians). Olga responded calmly and requested they return tomorrow so that she may gather her people to hear the news. The next day, the 20 negotiations returned in their boats, and repeated what they had requested to Olga. Her people then picked up the boats with the men still in them and peraided them through town until they arrived at the court to which they were unceremoniously thrown into a hole, their soon to be grave, with Olga mocking them as they were buried alive. Afterwards, Olga sent a request to the Drevlians to send men to help safely bring her to their kingdom, to which the Drevlians abliged. Upon arrival, Olga offered the men a bath, and when they entered the bath house, Olga herself set the door on fire and let the men burn to death. Olga sent another request for the Drevlians to prepare mass amounts of mead so that when she arrives, they may have a large feast and so she may grieve over her husband's grave. The Drevlians, again, obliged and prepared the mead as requested. Olga did go to the Drevlians and feast and grieve, however had herself and her men not indulge as much as the other attendants. When the attendants had drunk themselves to sleep, Olga and her men killed what is estimated to be 5,000 men in a single night, all of which were the party attendants. Olga would leave and return with an army at her side and a year long conflict would insue. With little results from either side, Olga would request they stop fighting and the Drevlians agreed, though stated they were still scared she still wanted revenge. Olga promised to leave them be under the condition that each house hold bring three pigeons and sparrows to her. When done, each bird had a sack of sulfer tied to their legs, with it set on fire, and released back into the city where almost every house was burned down. This would finally satiate Olga's blood lust. In ~950, Olga would travel to Constantinople and would convert to Christianity, and would then attempt to peacefully introduce her kingdom to it.

Episode 1 here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2pibBnPuHqKr07hxEMZE41

Greatest history podcast out there. Season 1 Iraq, Season 2 Cuba, Season 3 Korea!

If you haven't listened yet, get on it folks.