History/MAS 142

Banned: 9/11 Conspiracy Theories. If you believe that, read Matt Taibbi’s “Great Derangement”

• • Origins of Mayday in US and Mexico—and today?

  • Watergate–the plumbers before and after

  • Anything by Chalmers Johnson, San Diego’s author of the “Nemesis” Trilogy

  • The Students for a Democratic Society

  • 1970 Election in US

  • Any cartel (you pick)

  • Lucy Parsons

  • Elizabeth Gurley Flynn

  • John Reed and the Revolution in Mexico (what’s a revolution?)

  • Santa Anna and the disastrous Treaty

  • The Alamo

  • Narcocorridos

  • Big Bill Haywood and the Russian Revolution

  • Impact of the Russian Revolution in the US and Mexico

  • The Industrial Workers of the World

  • Benito Juarez and the Mexican State

  • Shifting levels of Power of the Roman Catholic Church (either Mexico or US or both)

  • Impact of Geography on the political economy of the US or Mexico or both

  • Huerta and Carranza

  • The Cristero Wars

  • Distribution of hacienda lands to ejidos

  • Nationalizing, then “privatizing,” oil in Mexico

  • The Great Financial Crises of 1929 and 2008–focus on US–either year or both

  • NAFTA and the US and Mexico

  • What were Osama Bin Laden’s goals?

  • What is fascism?

  • The Bracero Programs (see Gil Gonzalez’ book)

  • Gustavo Díaz-Ordaz and the General Strike in Mexico

  • Origins (1965) of the Maquiladora programs and the current state of affairs

  • The dirty wars under Gustavo Díaz-Ordaz

  • Water and Power–the US and Mexico

  • The US Invasion of Grenada

  • My Lai

  • GI Newspapers during the US wars on Vietnam

  • Zapatistas

  • “Empire as a Way of Life” by William Appleman Williams

  • Mexico City: the 1968 Olympics

  • Key events in the US: 1968

  • Black Panther Party

  • Malcolm X

  • Origins of WWI or WWII

  • Mexico: The Corpus Christi Massacre

  • Gulf War One or Two or Both

  • The Origins of the Taliban, Al Quada, AQAP, ISIS (aka Daesh)–any one or all

  • Importance of the collision of the US, NATO, the Ukraine, and Russia

  • The Afghan wars of the USSR and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

  • Castro, the US, and Mexico

  • The Bay of Pigs invasion

  • Operation Wurlitzer or Mockingbird or both.

  • Kim Philby, the Cambridge Five, and the CIA

  • MK-ULtra

  • The Lawrence Mass. Textile Strike

  • Joe Hill

  • Joan Baez

  • The IWW Magnon Brothers and Mexico

  • Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

  • COINTELPRO

  • Mexico’s Agriculture: who owns and who works?

  • Mexico’s Maquis: Who owns and who works?

  • Freedom Summer USA (civil rights movement)

  • Former President Fox, a Harvard grad, says “decriminalize drugs.” What sayeth you and why?

  • The state of secularism in Mexico’s schools. What does the Constitution say? The reality?

  • The Calderon/López-Obrador election. Who won and why?

  • The Great Flint Strike Agaist GM

  • The campaign for the 43 disappeared students and the nature of their school

  • Eugene Debs

  • The Palmer Raids

  • B Traven and his Mexico novels

  • Bonus March—Vets after WWI demanding the bonus promised to them. What happened?

  • The AFL-CIO and the CIA

  • Reagan and the PATCO strike

  • The Lemon Grove incident http://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/86spring/lemongrove.htm

  • Herbert Marcuse, UCSD, and Ronald Reagan

  • The 1968 SDSU student strike

  • Chicago and the Democratic Convention: 1968

  • Former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman said, “government is a Trojan Horse for the Rich.” Why would he say that. What did he mean? What sayeth you?

  • Inequality in the US and Mexico–one, the other, or both.

  • The DEA, the Justice Department, and Fast and Furious

  • The US and Saudi Arabia

  • The US and Israel

  • Chicano! PBS Documentary - Taking Back The Schools

  • The Grapes of Wrath and the Facts about John Steinbeck

  • Anything by Carey McWilliams, California’s greatest historian (“Factories in the Fields,” etc.)

  • Zoot Suit Riots

  • How does “culture” relate to social class in either the US or Mexico or both?

  • Finance capital versus industrial capital vs working people in the US and or Mexico

  • What is the role of technology as related to social class?

  • American post 911 Torture and the Spanish Inquisition

  • Opposition to WWI

  • Who was Spreckles? Rosecrans? The other founders of San Diego, really? See this book: https://www.sandiegohistory.org/journal/v55-1/pdf/v55-1roundtable.pdf

  • Wikileaks and Bradley Manning

  • The impact of the Chinese Revolution on the US

  • The impact of the Russian Revolution to the US