June 30, 2019 Sunday

Bedtime Story 

Christianity in United States

Those idealists in the Congress who thought that this Act would spell the end of slavery in South would be deeply disappointed.

The interesting point regarding slavery was that even though for the Atlantic Slave Trade the most important customers were the states of the South such as Georgia and the Carolinas it was the states of the New England that provided all the Slave Ships for it to flourish. 

The North was as much a part – albeit vocally abolitionist – of the continuing slave trade as much as was the South whose role was more obvious and visible. 

There is one strange factor that still puzzles me and that is one of religion.

If everything else failed to unite the Divided States of America or as it was building up to by the mid nineteenth century at least the same common benevolent Christian religion should have helped to curtail the divisive forces.

After all, United States or at least the people of it were all homogenous in the religious sense believing in the same Jesus and reading the gospels of the same King James Version of the Bible.

King James Version of the Bible also known as KJV was the English translation of the Bible ordered by the King of Scotland and King of England and Ireland James VI and I in 1604 for the Church of England.

The translation was finally completed and published after seven long years in 1611 and since then has been described as one of the most important books of English culture that has both defined it and shaped it.

Most apes living today would not be aware that Bible was originally written in multiple languages by various people belonging to different places and time.

The Biblical scholars generally consider three languages to have mainly contributed in the origin of the Bible as we know it – Hebrew, Aramaic (of Afro-asiatic language family) and Koine Greek (Greek of the Roman and early Byzantine Empire).     

The religiosity of the Founding Fathers is evident in that fact that nowhere the Constitution of the United States explicitly states that “the church and the state needed to be separate”.

The Free Exercise Clause which accompanies the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution merely insists on the following:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”  

The idea of keeping the state out of the affairs of the church was – as a matter of historical record in United States – was stated clearly by the President Thomas Jefferson in an 1802 letter of his that was addressed to Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut.

In it he had written:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & His God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of the government reach actions only & not opinion, I contemplate

with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American…”

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

                  

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

June 29, 2019 Saturday

Bedtime Story 

Constitution That Prevented Abolition of Slavery 

This meant that tacitly the Constitution and the Founding Fathers permitted slavery. 

In fact the constitution of the United States out rightly sheltered the slave trade for twenty years since its creation in 1787.

Article 1 Section 9 of the Constitution read as follows:

“The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”

Though it was not specified but “such Persons” obviously referred to the African slaves from across the Atlantic.

 

Article 1 of the Constitution besides other things places various limitations on the legislative powers of the Congress and the states one of which then was curtailing its power to abolish slavery until the year 1808.

Therefore until the year 1808 neither the Congress nor the President had any power to touch upon the status of slave or slavery which meant the status quo would persist which in turn meant that slavery was not only legal but enshrined in the Constitution.

But the positive thing that can be said about the people of this great nation is that as soon this time period was breached the Congress with the support of president Thomas Jefferson brought forth the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves.

The Act was ratified in 1807 and took effect in 1808 the very year until which the Constitution had tied it down.

One would think that once such an Act had been instituted the issue of slave import and slavery would have been settled and resolved once and for all.      

But as always when a law comes up human apes do their utmost to resist it either bypassing it deviously, by evading it subtly or openly defying it.

Such was the case in the United States in 1808 when the law prohibiting import of slaves was brought into force.

While on January 01, 1808 the President was congratulating his fellow countrymen for withdrawing from “all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa” some of his more predatory and avaricious fellow countrymen were demanding for covert faster boats in the majority of American ports to secretly perpetuate the activities that this Act forbade.

What could be not done legally would be done illegally henceforth for the next fifty years or more after the enactment of the 1808 law.  

Ships with secret slave holding areas were specially designed to continue ferrying in this lucrative African cargo that was much needed in the agriculture plantation of South and Deep South.

Just because some sweet-talking, charming, nigger-loving President with high ideals sought it illegal did not meant that profit making and business would come to a grinding halt.  

 Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

                  

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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

June 28, 2019 Friday

Bedtime Story 

Five-Point Summary of Economic Exploitation

Tonight we shall continue with the 5 points (we had left midway of the third because I want to limit my bedtime stories to an arbitrary short but specific length since most apes inherently show little interest in reading and knowing Mon Ami being exceptional of course; long essays will sap away both the energy and attention of average apes) that summarized the economic exploitation of the Hindu Subcontinent.

As always - you must have surely noted that by now - I am consistently cynical and critical of human apes thereby establishing myself a confirmed misanthrope.

Being a true misanthrope I am first and foremost most critical of my own self first.

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert had put it:

I would “die of suppressed rage at the folly of fellow men.”

I can then very well say, “I ought to die of suppressed rage at the follies of my own makings.”

Now back to the great baniya.

The English worker not only has the advantage of better wages, but the steel companies of England get the profit of building the factories and machines.

Wages; profits; all these are spent in England.

Point 4: The finished product is sent back to India at European shipping rates, once again on British ships.

The captains, officers, sailors of these ships, whose wages must be paid, are English.

The only Indians who profit are a few lascars who do the dirty work on the boats for a few cents a day.

Point 5: The cloth is finally sold back to the kings and landlords of India who got the money to buy expensive cloth out of the poor peasants of India who worked at seven cents a day.

As I have always said it is very important to have not only basic literacy but also numeracy (if not outright baniyapanti) to have a true understanding of reality.

“Baniyapanti” is not a word found in English lexicon though the word “baniya’ is.

Hence it would be not too far-fetched an idea to introduce “baniyapanti” into English language as this word contains the essence of wide explanatory power for so many things that human apes do and the way they conduct themselves in integrated societies.    

The last component that was necessary for the motto “Cotton is King” to be realized in Deep South of the United States was of course the slaves and the prevalence of the Atlantic slave trade.

Slavery was such a contentious issue (for economical reasons than for anything else) that even the Constitution of the United States and its framers never allowed the word “slave” or “slavery” to appear on it even once.

More tellingly the Constitution of the soon to be great nation that defied its mother land and sought liberty against the tyrannical and unfair rule did not explicitly prohibit slavery.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

                  

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

June 27, 2019 Thursday

Bedtime Story 

South Carolina Senator's Gloat

Cotton had become so central to the world economy in those times and the South had become so prosperous through it due to the confluence of various factors – most of them arising purely as a matter of random chance rather than any conscious or willful planning - converging at one place and time that it made a senator of South Carolina boast:

“Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should they make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet…

What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years?

England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her save the South.

No, you dare not make war on cotton.

No power on the earth dares to make war upon it.

    

Cotton is king.”

This, I think, says it all.

But just as an exercise of imagination do try to think what all things had to have happen for the Senator to make such a tall but fairly substantive claim.

There had to be a Mughal Empire in Indian Subcontinent from the 16^th to 18^th century with Mughal Kings who introduced agrarian reforms and revenue system that incentivized production of cash crop (in contrast to subsistence crops such as maize, rice, wheat and potato which is a norm for farmers and agriculturists) by linking it to market demand.

There had to be accompanying industrial revolution that could allow mass production of yarn from cotton through devices such as flying shuttle, spinning jenny, stocking frame and of course Watt steam engine.

Then there had to be a British Empire and its famous and ambitious and yes, greedy and adventurous East India Company that would exploit and distort the cotton production to its favor by deindustrializing Bengal, imposing bans and tariffs upon Indian-made goods and obtaining total monopoly on India’s large market and cotton resources.

Mahatma Gandhi – a true Hindu baniya and an English barrister by training but never in committed practice – saw through this whole charade of exploitation.

He summed up the whole cotton game of East India Company or the Raj through his five lucid points:

Point 1: English people buy Indian cotton in the field, picked by Indian labor at seven cents a day, through an optimal monopoly.

Point 2: This cotton is shipped on British ships, a three-week journey across the Indian Ocean, down the Red Sea, across the Mediterranean, through Gibraltar, across the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean to London.

One hundred percent on this freight is regarded as small.

Point 3: The cotton is tuned into cloth in Lancashire.

You pay shilling wages instead of Indian pennies to your workers.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

                  

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

June 26, 2019 Wednesday

Bedtime Story 

The Antebellum South Economy

If a weaving of patterns on fabric in a hand loom could be controlled by a “chain of cards” then this principle if extended further to other mechanical devises could in principle be used to pre-program instructions to mechanical calculators that had begun to appear even a century before.

But that story of mathematics and mechanical calculators is not our primary concern tonight (even though I am using this very technology to transmit my bedtime stories to Mon Ami who lives right across the globe).   

Along with advancement in looms and commercialization and mass production in weaving industry, advent of steam power combined with cheap fertile land of the American South and of course that precious human resource – slaves made cotton plantation a lucrative business in the Antebellum South.

“Antebellum” should be a new word for most of you readers even for the most erudite and well read ones (if not then you deserve my salute).

Antebellum Era refers to the period of American South from late 18^th century to the beginning of the American Civil War that saw the sharp rise in the plantation economy that was underpinned predominantly by the British mercantile ideology.

Antebellum Era of South saw great prosperity through the means of agriculture plus slave economy through just five commodities – cotton, grain, tobacco, sugar and rice.

Of the five the leading cash crop was cotton concentrated in the Deep South of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana.  

Cotton plantation and cultivation had become the most profitable business in the United States prior to the Civil War making the owners the wealthiest people in the country.

In spite of the South States and the Slave States being economically affluent they remained rural with no large cities except for Baltimore and New Orleans.   

The plantation economy of the Antebellum South needed unskilled labor in large volume that would prove to be ill-adapted in future when modernization accompanied with industrialization would usher in.       

But that would happen later.

Now see the strong relationship that slavery had with the antebellum economy.

All the Free States that did not have slaves or had relatively limited number of slaves rarely could grow their agricultural farms into large profitable enterprises due to want of farm workers.

The Southern States (which was euphemism for Slave States) on the other hand could recruit as many slaves as they wished for allowing them to greatly increase the land under cultivation.

Thus you see that the limiting factor in the profitability of cotton cultivation was not land which was cheap but labor specially the black slave labor which not only came cheap but was far more productive for the land and slave owners.

You would be surprised to know that by late 1850s as much as half the population of states such as Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana comprised of slaves not because they were loved as much they were indispensable.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

                  

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

June 25, 2019 Tuesday

Bedtime Story 

The 1850s

These “push” type immigrants lived around the city ghettos in very unhygienic conditions doing low-paying and physically demanding work and were largely treated as undesirable by the already settled populace.

The “pull” type immigrants were the German immigrants who had a prosperous life back at home (but believed that economic disaster could hit them soon) and sold of their property and arrived in this new country with lots of money in their pocket.    

They chose to settle in the Midwest in and around cities such as Cincinnati in Ohio and St. Louis in Missouri.

A large part of the Midwest that was acquired by President Thomas Jefferson in 1803 from France in a deal known as Louisiana Purchase was then known as unorganized territory for the simple reason that this sparsely populated vast land had virtually no organized system of government.

This unorganized large chunk of land lying in the very center of now mainland United States was organized and integrated as states through the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

Even here the issue of slavery rose its ugly head in the form of political controversy as to whether the newly admitted state of Kansas would be a Free State or a Slave State meaning whether the new state or states will allow owning of slaves to be legal or not.

Series of violent mini civil confrontations ensued between the two groups that gradually degenerated into barbaric gang wars and even paramilitary enforced guerrilla warfare.  

Certainly the history and formation of today’s mighty Empire was far from rosy or seductive as one would hope, desire or fantasize about it to be so.

In contrast to the North which was rapidly industrializing the South had cotton plantations for the simple reason that cotton was then becoming a very valuable commodity in the world market thanks to the growing population, industrialization and booming textile industry.

Remember that the largest manufacturing industry during the Mughal India was cotton textile manufacturing and in the 18^th century Indian cotton textiles was the most important manufactured goods in the world trade.

The entry of East India Company opened the gates of cotton from India to the world thanks to the formidable reach of the vast and mighty British trading Empire to all corners of the world including the Americas.

By 1800s the United States had become not only the most important consumer of British cotton (and thereby Hindu cotton) but also a production house of cotton due to simultaneous convergence of various factors into one local geographical space and time.

One such factor was innovation in spinning and weaving.

You remember my story on Jacquard Loom, don’t you?

It was invented in 1804 and would have far reaching, unimagined and unintended repercussions in North America.

Not only would it lead to the American Civil War but would be a crucial advancement in the history of computing hardware by inseminating the idea of computer programming into the minds of fascinating apes.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

                  

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg

June 24, 2019 Monday

Bedtime Story 

Fondly do we Hope, Fervently do we Pray

“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.

Yet, if God will that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until very drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another dawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.””    

Lincoln’s wish indeed came true and his prayers apparently answered because the great civil war ended just two months (or even one as many historians argue) following his winning address to the nation.

The war effectively ended on April 9, 1865 because on the day the Commander of the Confederate States Army General Robert Lee surrendered to General Ulysses Grant at the Appomattox Court House in a village of the Appomattox County in the state of Virginia.

There was no bloodshed in this combined surrender and truce and on the contrary Lee has come to be revered more after the surrender than during the course of the prolonged war.

Today he remains and is recalled as a national hero with several monuments, memorials, countless statues dedicated to him along with college and university named after him.

While god apparently did end the war as Lincoln had fondly hoped and fervently prayed (and if you wish to believe in this pleasant-sounding fairy tale), the same god did precious little to save him when Booth shot him in his head at point blank range barely 40 days or so after he had addressed his people in his victory.     

Lincoln’s speech following his re-election – if the god and religion part is accepted as a figure of speech – speaks volumes about the conditions prevailing in the United States in 1860s – politically, socially, religiously and economically.

Just by the way, it was only in the 1850s that the United States had begun to have a semblance of what it appears today and when California was given the statehood in 1851 the Pacific Coast was reached.

In 1840s the Industrial Revolution of United states had begun but even there it was confined to the Free states (in contrast to the slave states) of New England, the North East and the Midwest.

Roads, railroads, water canal system which greatly enhanced transportation and increased mobility and connectivity for trade, along with family farms, industry, mining, commerce with establishment of industrial cities and commercial centers such as Boston, New York City and Philadelphia was rapidly transforming the North.

1840s was also the era of old migration that constituted the classic European migrants mainly from Britain, Ireland and Germany-centered Europe who also had a much-desired high birth rate.

These European migrants were either of “push” types or “pull” types.

The “push” type immigrants were mainly the Irish who were escaping the Great Famine (also commonly known as the Irish Potato Famine) that lasted for four-long years from 1845 to 1849.

Stay tuned to the voice of an average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com

                              

Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.

                           

  

                

                  

Advertisements

Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.

While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and physics.

He started the participation of Indian students at the International Physics Olympiad.

Do visit him here:

http://skmclasses.weebly.com/

All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:

https://zookeepersblog.wordpress.com/science-tuition-chemistry-physics-mathematics-for-iit-jee-aieee-std-11-12-pu-isc-cbse/

For edutainment and English education of your children, I recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd14DRdYKj454znayUIfcAg