A First Draft of History: Week of March 12 – 19
here are a few important events from this week in history:
44 - Gaius Julius Caesar, dictator of Rome, was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate house by 60 conspirators led by Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus.
Caesar, born into an ancient but not particularly distinguished Roman aristocratic family, began his political career in 78 B.C. as a prosecutor for the anti-patrician Popular Party. He won influence in the party for his reformist ideas and oratorical skills, and aided Roman imperial efforts by raising a private army to combat the king of Pontus in 74 B.C. He was an ally of Pompey, the recognized head of the Popular Party, and essentially took over this position after Pompey left Rome in 67 B.C. to become commander of Roman forces in the east.
In 63 B.C., Caesar was elected pontifex maximus, or "high priest," allegedly by heavy bribes. Two years later, he was made governor of Spain and in 64 B.C. returned to Rome, ambitious for the office of consul. The consulship, essentially the highest office in the Roman Republic, was shared by two politicians on an annual basis. Caesar formed a political alliance – the so-called First Triumvirate – with Pompey and Marcus Licinius Crassus, the wealthiest man in Rome, and in 59 B.C. was elected consul. Although generally opposed by the majority of the Roman Senate, Caesar's land reforms won him popularity with many Romans.
In 58 B.C., Caesar was given four Roman legions in Gaul and Illyricum, and during the next decade demonstrated brilliant military talents as he expanded the Roman Empire and his reputation. Among other achievements, he conquered all of Gaul, made the first Roman inroads into Britain, and won devoted supporters in his legions. However, his successes also aroused Pompey's jealousy, leading to the collapse of their political alliance in 53 B.C.
The Roman Senate supported Pompey and asked Caesar to give up his army, which he refused to do. In January 49 B.C., he led his legions across the Rubicon River from Gaul to Italy, thus declaring war against Pompey and his forces. Incidentally, this is where we get our expression “to cross the Rubicon,” meaning to pass the point of no return. Caesar made early gains in the subsequent civil war, defeating Pompey's army in Italy and Spain, but was later forced into retreat in Greece. In August 48 B.C., with Pompey in pursuit, Caesar paused near Pharsalus, setting up camp at a strategic location. When Pompey's forces fell upon Caesar's smaller army, they were entirely routed, and Pompey fled to Egypt, where he was assassinated.
Caesar was subsequently appointed Roman consul and dictator, but before settling in Rome he traveled around the empire for several years and consolidated his rule. In 45 B.C., he returned to Rome and was made dictator for life. As sole Roman ruler, Caesar launched ambitious programs of reform within the empire. The most lasting of these was his establishment of the Julian calendar, which, with the exception of a slight modification and adjustment in the 16th century, remains in use today. (I mentioned a few weeks ago its ultimate replacement by the Gregorian calendar.) He also planned new imperial expansions in central Europe and to the east. In the midst of these vast designs, he was assassinated on March 15, 44 B.C., by a group of conspirators who believed that his death would lead to the restoration of the Roman Republic. However, the result of the "Ides of March" was to plunge Rome into a fresh round of civil wars, out of which Octavian, Caesar's grand-nephew, would emerge as Augustus, the first Roman emperor, destroying the republic forever.
1794 - Eli Whitney received a patent for the cotton gin. And if I recall my high school USA history class correctly, that had something to do with the Civil War.
1912 - Juliette "Daisy" Gordon Low assembled 18 girls from Savannah, Georgia, for the first meeting of the organization that would become the Girl Scouts. Low believed that all girls should be given the opportunity to develop physically, mentally, and spiritually. With the goal of bringing girls out of isolated home environments and into community service and the open air, Girl Scouts hiked, played basketball, went on camping trips, learned how to tell time by the stars, and studied first aid. These early Girl Scouts also functioned as a sort of paramilitary organization, going out at night to assault and harass suspected Communists. On June 10, 1915 the organization was incorporated as Girl Scouts, Inc. under the laws of the District of Columbia. Within a few years, Low’s dream for a girl-centered organization was realized. Today, Girl Scouts of the USA has a membership of over 3.2 million girls and adults, and more than 50 million women in the U.S. today are Girl Scout alumnae.
And by an interesting coincidence, on this week in 1910, a similar organization, The Camp Fire Girls – the Latin Kings to the Girl Scout’s MS-13, was also founded. Of course the Camp Fire Girls eventually went coed and the organization is today known as Camp Fire USA.
1925 - A tornado with a base nearly a mile wide tore a path from southeastern Missouri across Illinois and into southwestern Indiana, earning it the name “The Tri-State Tornado”. The tornado’s continuous track covered 219 miles, the longest ever recorded. With 695 killed, it is also the deadliest tornado in U.S. history. In fact, the death toll was twice that of the second deadliest tornado, the Great Natchez Tornado of 1840.
International News:
There was a fresh round of fighting between Israelis and Palestinian terrorists in the Gaza Strip this week. Violence began with Israel's killing of a Palestinian terrorist leader. Terror groups responded by launching rocket barrages against Israeli cities. There is, unfortunately, nothing unusual about this, and in fact casualties on both sides have been relatively low, but what makes this incident especially newsworthy is what happened to those Palestinian rockets. Approximately 90% of them have been shot down by an Israeli missile-interceptor system known as the “Iron Dome.” This system was first deployed in April 2011 and targets incoming rockets it identifies as possible threats to city centers. Once the system identifies such a rocket it fires an interceptor missile to destroy it in mid-air. And of course all this happens very quickly since the distances involved are relatively short. The Iron Dome has worked so well that the Israelis plan to triple its size to a total of nine batteries by mid-2013.
What might this new capability mean for Israel’s leaders? First, the prevention of mass casualties and damage has reduced pressure on the country’s leaders to embark on a major military operation in Gaza. So in that sense it could reduce tension in the region. On the other hand, the success of the system could embolden Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. An Israeli attack on Iran would probably mean retaliation from Hezbollah and Hamas, two Iran-backed groups that often fire missiles into Israel. But with such a successful anti-missile system, the damage that such retaliation would cause is diminished and war with Iran becomes less costly for Israel.
What makes this all particularly interesting is that the success of the Iron Dome is just one of many things changing the strategic calculus in the region. Since the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, a close ally of Israel, and the rise of Islamic political parties there, Israel has been weary in its dealings with Cairo, which impacts its policies towards the Palestinians. And for their part, the Palestinians have also found themselves in an awkward situation because of what’s going on in Syria. A group called Islamic Jihad, the group firing most of the rockets in this round of violence, is challenging Hamas in Gaza. The chief of Islamic Jihad, which is backed by Iran, is based in Syria. The Hamas leadership, in contrast, recently abandoned its base there and expressed its support for the Syrian people in their struggle against President Bashar al-Assad. So the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians is being shaped in important ways by the situations in Iran, Syria, and Egypt as well. Of course things are always complicated in the Middle East, but it seems like there are even more moving parts these days.
It’s hard to know what’s going to happen in the Middle East but I will make one bold prediction – I don’t think there’s any way the Israelis are going to attack Iran. Many experts have suggested that it’s a possibility, some have even opined that it’s likely, but I don’t see it happening. I think the Israelis know they don’t have the support of the Obama administration, and more importantly, I don’t think they have the military capability to seriously damage the Iranian nuclear program. Of course, I suppose it is possible they have some capabilities I don’t know about…
One last thing about Israel – I read this week that Israel’s GDP has grown by over 34% since 2005, a rate of growth over 5 times that of the US. In fact, the Israeli economy is doing so well that the country is nearing full employment. So here’s a country occupying a little sliver of mostly arid land, a country less than a quarter the size of NC, a country with no natural resources to speak of, and a country with several neighbors that have expressed a strong desire to wipe it off the face of the earth, and yet somehow it continues to be an economic powerhouse. It’s just amazing.
Israel’s success is all the more striking given that its neighbors are such basket-cases. Lately of course the world’s attention has been on Syria, where more violence raged this week as the uprising against dictator Bashar al-Assad marked its one year anniversary. For months the Assad regime responded to peaceful protests with violence, leading to what today looks for all practical purposes like a Civil War. This week Assad’s forces retook a district in the city of Homs that had been under rebel control, and having done so they immediately conducted a series of bloody reprisals. Activists in Homs and state television showed videos of bloodied bodies with hands tied behind their backs. Opposition activists said militants loyal to Assad killed over 50 people in the city. There were also reports of rape and of children found with their throats slit. Government restrictions on media access made it make to assess conflicting reports of the mass killings. Syrian state media said militants committed the killings to influence world opinion, but U.N. investigators said that Syrian forces had used collective punishment against civilians and accused them of carrying out executions and mass arrests in Homs. And may I point out, once again, that it was supposedly to prevent atrocities just like this that NATO intervened in Libya. Yet in Syria we do absolutely nothing. Syrian forces bombarded several other centers of anti-government sentiment this week, including Rankous, a city close to the capital Damascus, and the northern region of Idlib. There were also reports that the Syrian army was planting landmines along routes used by refugees to escape the country, and that police beat protestors in Damascus who demanded Assad step down.
The anti-government forces, who are themselves divided over numerous issues, are fighting back. Rebels said they killed dozens of government troops in an ambush this week plotted with defectors still in army ranks. More ominously, twin blasts hit the heart of Damascus on Saturday, killing at least 27 people in an attack on security installations. Syrian television reported that cars packed with explosives had targeted an intelligence center and a police headquarters. And yesterday, another car bomb exploded in Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo. No one claimed responsibility for the coordinated detonations, which echoed similar attacks that have struck Damascus and Aleppo since December.
While on this has gone on in Syria, the rest of the world has watched from the sidelines. The UN Security Council remains paralyzed by Russian intransigence – in fact, not only do the Russians oppose any effort to condemn Assad, but they continue to equip his regime with weapons. Other groups are trying to take action though. The exiled Syrian National Council (SNC) says it’s preparing to arm anti-government rebels with foreign help. Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia and Qatar have also called for the rebels against Assad, who is allied with Shi'ite Iran, to be armed. And in a case of very strange bedfellows, Al Qaeda seems to be on the side of Saudi Arabia and the US when it comes to Syria. Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri, in a video recording posted on the Internet last month, urged Muslims around the region to help Syrian rebels.
The most immediate and tangible efforts to help the Syrian people may come from Turkey. Turkish authorities said on Friday that the country might set up a "buffer zone" inside Syria to protect refugees, raising the prospect of foreign intervention in the revolt, although Ankara made clear it would not move without international backing. Turkey says it is now hosting 14,700 Syrian refugees.
The final piece of international news this week is on a theme that has grown quite near and dear to my heart – demographics, and specifically, birth rates. Over the past few months I touched on this theme several times, noting, for example, the plummeting populations of Russia and Japan, and the imbalance between males and females in countries like China and India due to selective abortions. When we talk about the developed world, population trends indicate stagnation or even decline, but we tend to assume that in the developing world (the p-c term for what we used to call the Third World), and particularly in the Middle East, birthrates are still high. That’s where we get our image of the so-called “Arab Street” teeming with angry, disaffected young people. Well, now a study from the American Enterprise Institute indicates that view may be incorrect. In fact, the study argues that over the past three decades, the Arab world has undergone a little noticed demographic implosion. Usually, high religious observance and low income go along with high birthrates. But, that’s no longer the case in much of the Arab World. For example, a woman in Oman today has 5.6 fewer babies than a woman in Oman 30 years ago. Morocco, Syria and Saudi Arabia have seen fertility-rate declines of nearly 60 percent, and in Iran it’s more than 70 percent. These are among the fastest declines in recorded history.
If you look around the world, you see many other nations facing demographic headwinds. If the 20th century was the century of the population explosion, the 21st century may turn out to be the century of the fertility implosion. Already, nearly half the world’s population lives in countries with birthrates below the replacement level. According to the Census Bureau, the total increase in global manpower between 2010 and 2030 will be just half the increase we experienced in the two decades that just ended. This matters for a whole host of reasons, but especially for the prospects for economic growth, which is almost always linked to steady population increase. In fact, you can count on one hand the societies that have managed economic growth with low birth rates, and those societies had highly unusual circumstances that contributed to huge increases in productivity. Beyond that, in modern welfare states, a steady population increase is needed just to keep funding social security and other entitlements. This is where the claim that social security, for example, is essentially a pyramid scheme has some merit. You need several young workers to support each retired worker, so when those young workers eventually get old and retire, you need even more young workers to support them. For this and a whole host of other reasons, population stagnation might cripple the global economy in the coming decades. So, you heard it here first – we’re all doomed!
National News:
The campaign for the Republican nomination moved to the Deep South this week, with Mississippi and Alabama holding their primaries. Experts predicted that these contests would prove to be a steep challenge for the front-runner, Mitt Romney, who has had trouble winning over more fiscally and socially conservative voters. And sure enough, things did not go very well for him this week. In Alabama, Rick Santorum was the winner, claiming 35% of the vote, Romney and Newt Gingrich were virtually tied with 29% each. In Mississippi, Santorum again won, this time with 33% of the vote. Gingrich edged Romney for second place with 31% to Romney’s 30%. The one bright spot for Romney this week was in Hawaii, which also had a primary, and which Romney won with 45% of the vote. The other good news for Romney is that despite having won only two states, Gingrich insists he’s staying in the race. And of course that’s good news for Romney because it means that Gingrich will continue to siphon conservative voters from Santorum. Despite these setbacks, Romney remains the frontrunner. So far he’s won about 500 delegates. Santorum has about half that number, and Gingrich has only about 130. A candidate needs 1144 delegates to win the nomination, so there’s still a long way to go.
State News:
Perhaps the most interesting news this week is that the very meaning of North Carolina may be about to change. News came out this week that North and South Carolina are close to completing a new survey of the state line, a $1 million remapping project that began in the mid-1990s and which has employed the latest mapping technology, including GPS and infrared sights. The Carolinas moved to clarify their border when surveyors started to come to them in the 1990s asking where the exact line was. They couldn’t tell them. So the two states established a joint boundary commission in 1994. States want a sharply defined border so they can decide where to prosecute crimes, where to start and stop road maintenance and how to allocate services.
The border was initially determined in the 1730s by surveyors using compasses and sextants and marking the line on trees, stones, cows, or other things that don’t necessarily remain in the same place over the centuries. This was the case across the country, meaning that very few states actually know precisely where their borders lie.
This has caused some problems – for example, GA recently declared that its border with TN should be shifted about a mile north, which would be very significant because it would give the state, and in particular the Atlanta area, access to the water in the Tennessee River. As far as I know there are no disputes between North and South Carolina, but I don’t think we should take any chances. In the proud tradition of border disputes around the world, I propose an immediate invasion of SC, an act which will bring honor to our glorious fatherland. Unless of course calling for an armed invasion of a sovereign state would jeopardize WOVVs 501c(3) status, in which case forget it.
Not surprisingly, the people along the North Carolina – South Carolina border who thought they lived in one state but who may suddenly find themselves citizens of another, and there are dozens of homeowners and businesses in that situation, aren’t too thrilled by the prospect. A new border could change where they vote, their tax rates, their school districts, and their driver’s licenses. In fact, one woman apparently just discovered that the state line runs through the middle of her house. Her patio is in South Carolina while her garage is in North Carolina.
So we’ll see how this issues plays out, but just in case there are disputes, it’s worth noting that the Constitution gives the Supreme Court authority to arbitrate state boundary disputes.
Next, a piece of state economic news. After re-examining calculations that went into North Carolina's jobless figures last year, officials said Tuesday that the state's unemployment rate remains above 10 percent. The January rate was 10.2 percent, down slightly from 10.4 percent in December. North Carolina's jobless rate was almost 2 percentage points above the national rate of 8.3 percent for January.
And lastly in state news for this week, state environmental officials announced this week that a controversial method of natural gas drilling known as fracking can be done safely in NC if regulations are put in place first. I’ve talked about fracking before – basically it involves horizontal drilling into underground deposits of shale and then pumping a high-pressure mix of water and chemicals into a well to break apart the rock and release natural gas. The method is fairly effective at extracting gas, but it raises all sorts of environmental concerns, from pollution of groundwater to triggering earthquakes. State environmental officials said they reviewed the experiences of other states and determined that a regulated drilling program could be accomplished safely in North Carolina. The agency's draft report noted, however, that more information on groundwater resources is needed in areas where fracking could occur before final environmental standards are set.
The study recommends a long list of regulations, including baseline data for water and air quality, setback requirements around drill sites, standards for waste disposal and full disclosure of the chemicals used in the fracking process. It also calls for industry fees to fund road repairs near drill sites and to hire new state regulators.
Gov. Beverly Perdue said Wednesday that she also was open to fracking in North Carolina "if you regulate it and put fees in place to have inspectors on the ground." And that’s the key point – it’s all well and good to set regulations, but then you also need funds to ensure they’re being enforced. Perdue’s comments came after a recent trip to Pennsylvania for an industry-sponsored tour of large-scale natural gas drilling operations. Officials with the state Department of Commerce estimate fracking could generate about $300 million in revenue and about 390 jobs a year over a seven-year period in and around Lee County alone.
Andrew Stern is, among other things, an historian, an Ocracoke resident, and a board member at Ocracoke’s community radio station, WOVV 90.1FM where you can hear his weekly broadcast of “A First Draft of History” every Monday morning at 9am.
