A Christmas Tale

From "Cassandra's Legacy"

This is a true story that took place a few years ago. There is no mention of "Christmas" in it, but I think it can be seen as appropriate to the Christmas atmosphere. A time in which we tell stories and we rethink about what we are and what we do. 


I have volunteered as a teacher to support disadvantaged children and I am here, helping boys and girls in junior high school who have fallen behind in their studies. Most of them are from poor families of immigrants.

Today, I have in front of me a boy of around 12, Ahmed. He told me that his family came from Algeria and his father is a cook in a restaurant. Tall, dark-haired, with a light brown skin, he speaks perfect Italian. A nice boy, friendly and smiling.

I am supposed to help Ahmed with biology. So, we open the textbook on the page he has to study. We read the text together, "eukaryotes have a nucleus and organelles, prokaryotes do not."

I look at him, he looks at me. Clearly, this sentence makes no sense to him. And I can understand why: the authors of the book, really, have no idea of what they are talking about. Prokaryotes and eukaryotes are described as curious little critters in the same vein as one could describe the animals of a zoo: "giraffes have long necks, zebras do not."

It is not the first time in my life that I feel like the last centurion of the Empire, defending a world that is ceasing to exist. I am supposed to defend science, but what's happened to the science I know? It seems to have faded away with the legions of a disappearing empire. There is nothing in this biology book that describes the intricacy of the molecular mechanisms of life, nothing of the immense timespan of billions of years that led to life moving from bacteria and archaea to eukarya, and then to multicellular organisms. Nothing about the infinite complexity of ecosystems. Nothing about the amazing scientific journey that led us to understand how life evolved and changed. Nothing that could interest a 12-year old boy.

This book is totally flat: plenty of illustrations but as exciting as a painting supplies catalog. I looked at several of these books. They are all the same: slick commercial books designed to convince teachers to push their pupils to buy them.

Ahmed repeats the sentence as it is written, "eukaryotes have a nucleus and organelles, prokaryotes do not." He could as well be telling me that the capital of Madagascar is Antananarivo.

I nod at him, he smiles at me. I have in mind to ask him, "do you understand what that means?" But I don't.

I ask him, "do you like studying biology?" He says "Yes". Then he realizes that I understand that he spoke out of courtesy toward me. He adds, "But I prefer to study other things."

"What do you like to study?"

"The Holy Koran," he says. He seems to understand my perplexity, so he adds, "See, my sister and I are studying the Holy Koran. My sister is older than me. She can already recite some suras by heart."

The feeling of being the last centurion defending the empire is becoming even stronger. I see myself as standing on one of the few surviving ramparts of the ruined walls of the capital city. Behind me, the city is almost deserted; the temples and the buildings half ruined, infested with weed and mice, the emperors forever gone.

I say, "is it interesting to study the Koran?"

He looks at me, perplexed. For him, the answer is so obvious that he can't even understand my question. But he does his best. He says, "My father says that reading the Koran makes you a better person."

That's not an answer, it is an invitation. In no time, I have been turned from teacher to student. I try to answer the best I can, "I studied a little Arabic."

"It is good that you did that."

"It is not very easy."

He smiles. "You can learn." He says.

I nod, smiling at him. "I try to do my best," I say. We go back to the biology textbook.

The Butterfly Effect in History: How a Dinner in Antioch, 50 AD, Changed the World

This post originates from the book by Eric Zuesse "Christ's Ventriloquists".  It is a book with several problems, the main one is that more than 350 pages discussing a couple of pages of a single letter by Paul are really too much. Then the book is focussed on demonstrating that Paul was a liar and a traitor, projecting on him evil intentions which he may or may not have had. Finally, its bibliography is very limited. 

But it also a good book in the attempt it makes to shed light on an episode that may have had enormous consequences on the whole human civilization. More than all, its saving grace is that it is a book. One of those books that you read in one afternoon sitting on a comfortable chair, flipping the pages one by one, because you understand that the author cares about what he writes and does his best effort to write it. Reading a paper book is an experience that we are losing nowadays, but we shouldn't let it happen. As Walt Whitman wrote in "So Long" "This is no book. Who touches this, touches a man". And this is true also of "Christ's Ventriloquists" with all its defects and shortcomings, it touches something human. 




One of the most fascinating things about history is how small events can change the world. It is, after all, typical of complex systems to be sensitive to small perturbations: it is the story of the butterfly that starts a hurricane. And, these perturbations may come from single persons who take a specific, often ill-fated, decision. Do you remember when a man named George W. Bush became obsessed with the idea of invading Iraq?

One of those small events that changed history may have been a dinner that took place in Antioch perhaps on 50 AD at the home of Saul of Tarsus, also known as Paul the Apostle. It is an event described in detail in Paul's "Letter to the Galatians," normally supposed to be one of the earliest, still-extant documents related to the origin of Christianity.

Let's go back to that remote year. In 50 AD, Yeshua Bar Yosef, later to be known as "Jesus Christ," had been executed for sedition by the Romans some twenty years earlier. But his memory of prophet and healer still lingered. Jesus's brother, Yaʻaqov (James) was the leader of a Jerusalem based group - or sect - of Jewish people who followed Jesus' teaching. The sect had also started proselytizing among the Goyim (non-jews, or Gentiles).

One of the members of the Jesus sect was a Jew who was also a Roman citizen, something very rare at that time. He was Saul of Tarsus, who also used the romanized name of Paulus, today known as "Paul". He tells us that he had been persecuting the followers of Jesus but that a mystical experience or a vision ("hit by lightning on his way to Damascus") made him change his mind and become a follower of Jesus. He visited Shim'on bar Yona (Peter) and received a sort of initiation from him. Afterward, he was charged with preaching the Gospel ("the good news") to the Gentiles.

It seems that Paul was successful at proselytizing, so much that a split within the sect developed. Jews and Gentiles had different traditions, different ideas, different languages. They were also geographically separated, with the Jews mostly located in Palestine, whereas it seems that Paul operated mainly in Asia Minor. Then, there was the question of Jewish dietary habits and, perhaps more important, that of circumcision. It may be that most of the Jewish members of the group wanted that the male Gentiles who joined to be circumcised. That was, obviously, a tough requirement and considerable obstacle for the expansion of the sect.

The split came to a head during that fated dinner that Paul tells us about in his letter to the Galatians. We don't know exactly what precipitated a quarrel between Paul and Peter, the latter having come to Antioch to visit Paul. It may have been about the appropriateness of the food served, or the fact of true Jews and Gentiles sitting together at the same table. Or, it may be because Peter had come to Antioch - perhaps sent by James -  to tell Paul that his male followers should have been all circumcised. Later on, some unidentified "agents from James" appeared at the dinner. That precipitated a strong verbal reaction from Paul who insulted his former mentor, Peter, and proclaimed that he had received the Gospel directly from God and that salvation came to followers by following Christ as a divine person, not the Judaic law which imposed special dietary rules and circumcision.

And there we go: the origin of the split between Christianity and Judaism that affected so much the history of the world may have originated at a dinner table in Antioch, a little less than 2000 years ago.

Is it possible? Maybe, and maybe not. We cannot be completely sure that the letter to the Galatians we read today is exactly what Paul wrote, although most scholars think it is. But this is just one of the different possible interpretations of the text of the letter to the Galatians. Finally, even though Paul was the person who catalyzed the break, it would have probably occurred anyway because the reasons for Gentile Christians and Jews to separate were many and deep and there were surely other occasions for that to happen.

Yet, if it is true that Christianity originated with a quarrel at a dinner in Antioch, then we have a truly impressive case of "the "butterfly effect" that led Christianity to expand until, today, it counts more than 2 billion adherents! It is one of those fascinating flashes of how history is made, that elementary flavor of history that Jorge Luis Borges found in the words of a Saxon King reported by the Icelandic Scholar Saxo Grammaticus.

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When did women fight in battle for the first time?

Liberty Leading the People (La Liberté guidant le peuple) by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830. This woman is commonly referred to as "Marianne" and is considered a symbol of the French fighting for freedom. 

Apart from fictional tales about the Amazons and other legendary warrioresses (as Camilla of the Aeneid), there are no reliable traces in the European history of classical times of women having fought in battle. In time, things changed and, in our age, the more than 100,000 women who fought in the Red Army during the 2nd world war were a crucial factor in the Soviet victory.

But when did women start fighting in Europe? There are scattered reports here and there of women fighting, say, with Napoleon's army and even earlier than that: think of Joan D'Arc, who fought for the French against the English in the early 15th century.

How far back can go in history and find fighting women? I think that the earliest report is from Paul the Deacon who describes a battle between the Wandals (later known as the Vandals) and the Winnili (later known as the Longobards). Here is an excerpt from the "Historia Langobardorum" (book I):

At this point, the men of old tell a silly story that the Wandals coming to Godan (Wotan) besought him for victory over the Winnili and that he answered that he would give the victory to those whom he saw first at sunrise; that then Gambara went to Frea (Freja) wife of Godan and asked for victory for the Winnili, and that Frea gave her counsel that the women of the Winnili should take down their hair and arrange it upon the face like a beard, and that in the early morning they should be present with their husbands and in like manner station themselves to be seen by Godan from the quarter in which he had been wont to look through his window toward the east. And so it was done. And when Godan saw them at sunrise he said: "Who are these long-beards?" And then Frea induced him to give the victory to those to whom he had given the name.[1] And thus Godan gave the victory to the Winnili. These things are worthy of laughter and are to be held of no account.[2] For victory is due, not to the power of men, but it is rather furnished from heaven.

It may be wholly fictional, but if a battle between the Longobards and the Vandals really took place, it must have happened before the Longobards moved into Italy, so not later than the 6th century AD, possibly much earlier. And if it there really was such a battle, this report can be understood as meaning that the Longobard women didn't just show up on the battlefield, they fought! And from what we know of the Longobard and their assertive queens (think of Theodolinda), it looks plausible. It looks also consistent with some archaeological evidence of female warriors buried in Northern Europe in early Middle Ages.

So Paul the Deacon gives us perhaps the first recorded (albeit fictionalized) case of women fighting in a battle in Europe. They have come a long way from those times!

Mata Hari: Remembering Her One Hundred Years After The Execution

In Vincennes, on Oct 15th, 2017, where Mata Hari was shot, one hundred years ago. 

The above is a short clip that I made when visiting the park of Vincennes, in Paris, for the centennial of Mata Hari's death. I was exactly (I think) where Mata Hari was executed, and I had my wife, Grazia, recording this short speech of mine. It was an impromptu performance, nothing scripted, so excuse me if it is a little rough. But I thought I could have done it as a small homage to Mata Hari; the best I could do. 

The idea this little talk of mine was to place Mata Hari's death in the context of the great "pulse" of extermination that gripped the world, starting with what we call the "first world war"; really just an episode of the pulse. Overall, some 260 million people are believed to have been killed over some 50 years of madness. 

Of course, Mata Hari was just one of the many victims of this period. There were many before her, and many, many more after her. But I think we can take her execution as somewhat of a starting point of something. 

In 1917, the Great War had raged already for three years, but at it was at that point that things really started to be ugly; uglier than anything ever seen before. It was the moment when a wave of hate-generating propaganda pervaded Europe - it was the starting point of everything that happened afterward. Just to cite an example, on the centennial of the battle of Caporetto, one week later than Mata Hari's death, an Italian General declared, correctly, "it was when we learned to hate our enemies". 

So, it is no coincidence that Mata Hari, a woman who was so clearly both innocent and harmless was killed by the French state. She was killed for no other reason than pure hate. It was part of the beginning of a true tsunami of hate that swamped Europe and most of the world.

The Great War was supposed to be the war that would end all wars. It didn't, just as no other war ever did. We cannot say whether the great pulse of the 20th century was an end of something or the start of something much larger. As always, only the future will tell us about the future.

But we can remember a brave woman, Mata Hari, who died that day at Vincennes, a victim of hate and injustice. Of course, she was not an intellectual, not a person of culture, she probably had no idea of what was happening to her and to the world. But she chose as her stage name that of "the path of light," a path that, one day, we might learn to follow.  

Mata Hari: Why no pictures of the execution?

The martyrdom of St. Eulalia by John William Waterhouse (1885). It is a shocking painting and, for us, it is debatable (to say the least) that the body of a dead woman could be considered as a form of art. Yet, it is also true that the history of humankind is mostly about killing people, men and women, and we cannot ignore that. In this specific painting, the position of the dead woman seems to have been chosen in order to portray her as an innocent victim and inspire piety in the viewer. That may tell us something about why there are no photos showing the body of Mata Hari after she was executed for espionage in Vincennes, in 1917. She was to be described as a monster, not as a victim.

Pictures of dead people still hanging from the stake were they had been shot were relatively common during the first world war. They were part of the propaganda of the time and were used as ways to show people that justice was being meted out against spies and traitors. You see here an example: Marguerite Francillard, killed in Paris in 1917, accused of espionage for the Germans.

There are many more pictures like this one that can be found on the Web. Julie Wheelwright (the author of "The Fatal Lover")  tells me that she interviewed the son of Pierre Bouchardon, one of the prosecutors of espionage cases during the 1st world war in France and that he had a whole journal where his father kept the photos of executed people.

But, if we have the photo of Marguerite Francillard, why don't we have one for Mata Hari, who was executed for the same reason, in the same place, just a few months later? Actually, there are several pictures that you can find on the web purporting to be real photos of the execution, but all of them are obviously fake. There is one exception, perhaps, for this one:

This photo comes from the archives of Roger Viollet, it has a catalog number, 72342-14, and it is labeled "The execution of Mata Hari on Oct 14th, 1917." Of course, there has to be something wrong with the date, because the execution was on Oct 15th, but that may simply be a typo. Apart from the wrong date, several details of the photo agree with the only description we have written by a person who was present at the execution, Emile Massard in his 1926 book "Espionnes à Paris". The two cars, the mounted dragoons, soldiers armed with rifles, and the trees that could be those of the park of Vincennes, near Paris. Incidentally, the car in the foreground seems to be a Clement-Bayard, probably a 4M model, which was manufactured before the war in France. Its presence fits well with the date of the photo. Only one detail seems to be missing: the hill in front of which Mata Hari stood. Maybe it is made invisible by the fog, or maybe it is outside the boundaries of the photo.

Overall, I would say that it is possible, although by no means certain, that this is an actual photo of the execution of Mata Hari. But, if it is true, it means that there was a photographer there. So, why do we have only one photo? Why a photo that shows nothing interesting? Why didn't the photographer take pictures of Mata Hari's body?

As I argued in a previous post, executions were performed in conditions of near darkness, so that by when there was enough light for taking pictures, the only subject for photography was a dead body hanging from a pole. But, in the case of Mata Hari, there was a difference. She refused to be tied to the stake and when she was shot she collapsed on the ground. Of course, that didn't prevent taking a photo of the body but, perhaps, the fact that there was no need to untie her from the stake made it possible to remove the body more quickly than the usual. That would have left the photographer with nothing to photograph but the bystanders, as we see in the one picture we have.

That's not impossible, but there is a more intriguing possibility. That photos of Mata Hari's body were taken but were not shown or were destroyed. To explain the reasons why, take a look at the image below.

The British nurse Edith Cavell was shot by the Germans in 1915 for having helped British and French soldiers to move through Belgium, a territory occupied by the Germans. Unlike Mata Hari, Edith Cavell had really acted against Germany, as she herself confessed. Yet, the Allies used her as a powerful propaganda tool, describing her as a saintly woman brutally murdered by the savage Germans. Note how, in the image above, she is shown lying on the ground in the same helpless position that Waterhouse chose for St. Eulalia in his painting, above.

The Death of Edith Cavell was used as a very effective propaganda campaign and the Germans understood the damage that they had done to themselves. It may well be that Mata Hari was a casualty of a counter-propaganda effort by the German secret service who maneuvered to frame Mata Hari in such a way to create an innocent victim on the other side. The plan may have been that they could then use Mata Hari as a propaganda tool, just as the allies had used Edith Cavell.

It didn't work. Mata Hari was an entertainer of dubious reputation; there was no way she couldn't be presented as a saintly woman in the same way as Edith Clavell, the nurse, was. Nevertheless, the German plan was dangerous for the French and they had to be very careful in the way they presented the execution of Mata Hari in the press.

Now, imagine that on the day after the execution the pictures of the dead body of Mata Hari are presented to a group of high-ranking French officials. They look at the body lying on the ground and they notice how similar these pictures are to those of Edith Cavell, so widely used to smear the Germans. The officers briefly look at each other and then they shake their heads: no way that these photos should be diffused. They could generate a feeling of sympathy for Mata Hari No, Mata Hari was not to be just killed, she had to be humiliated, destroyed, squashed like an insect. No images of her dead body could be allowed. And here is why we never saw those images and, probably, never will.

All this is, of course, just a series of hypotheses but everything about Mata Hari is shrouded in mystery and legend and this is the best we can do until, perhaps, these hidden images will resurface from wherever they are hidden. But it doesn't matter so much, Mata Hari was a creature of light, just as the stage name she chose for herself, meaning "The path of light" or "the light of dawn." That's the way we like to remember her.

Mata Hari: The Death and The Darkness

The famous painting by Francisco Goya The Third of May 1808. Note the dark sky: it is a detail that Goya caught by being, probably, an eyewitness of this kind of executions. It was a tradition execute people at dawn, in nearly complete darkness. That was also what the sky looked like when Mata Hari was shot in Paris on Oct 15th, 1917 at 6:30 a.m (solar time). 

If you read "The Golden Bough" by Sir James Frazer, you may remember the innumerable descriptions of ritual human sacrifices. One thing that seems to be common in these rituals is that they are carried out in secrecy, and sometimes in darkness. Human sacrifice, it seems, carries blame and feelings of guilt and it is better done in a secluded and dark place.

I had not realized the role of darkness in executions by firing squads until the centennial of the death of Mata Hari, when I tried to be exactly in the place and at the time, in Paris, when she had been shot, one hundred years before. I tried to walk there, in the woods of the Park of Vincennes, but it was impossible for me to get there; it was just too dark. I had to wait for sunrise, about one hour later.  Later on, the famous Goya painting of an execution came to my mind. I went looking for it and, yes, it was the same dark sky that I had seen in Paris at the moment of the day when Mata Hari had been shot.

This discovery opened new perspectives for me. One is that it explains why there are many pictures of people shot by firing squads during the first world war, but in most cases, we see only the dead body. Never, as far as I can say, we see the victim standing, ready to be killed. There is a logic in this: taking pictures in the near darkness at dawn must have been too much for the photographic film of the time. An example is the photo below of Marguerite Francillard, a woman shot in Vincennes in 1917, probably in the same place where Mata Hari was shot.

Assuming that Francillard was shot at dawn, as it was the use, this picture must have been taken at least half an hour after her death. Otherwise, there wouldn't have been enough light. (I know, it is ghastly, and poor Marguerite was probably innocent, but it is history)

Then, knowing that executions were carried out in darkness can help us identify what's real and what's fake among many pretended authentic pictures. For instance, look at the picture below:

In this case, we know that it is not a real picture of the execution, it is taken from a 1931 movie. But if you didn't know that, you might imagine that it shows the real execution of 1917. All the details are right: the firing squad, the hill, the dress that Mata Hari wears. But the light is just not right: this picture was taken at least at mid-morning, not at dawn. The same consideration can rule out many fake photos of the execution of Mata Hari.

But the most interesting thing about the idea of carrying out executions in darkness is darkness itself. These executions were not "justice", they were dark rituals; modern versions of human sacrifices carried out to appease the Gods of war. Today, it seems that these dark Gods are not around anymore. Maybe they are dead but, maybe, they are just sleeping, ready to wake up and restart to ask for more human sacrifices. And many human beings will probably be more than happy to sate the Gods' lust for blood.

Remembering the Execution of Mata Hari, One Century Later

Vincennes, the path of light near where Mata Hari was executed, one hundred years ago.

My idea was to remember the death of Mata Hari by being where she was killed, at the same moment when she was killed, one century later, on October 15th, 2017. It turned out to be not so easy, but let me tell you the story.

First of all, I needed to know where exactly Mata Hari was executed. That was not obvious: all things about Mata Hari's story are always shrouded in a fog of legends and misinformation. And so it was for the execution, where no journalists were allowed, of which there are no pictures.

After some research work, I managed to determine where she was shot, at least with a certain degree of probability. It was in Paris (of course!), at the Bois de Vincennes, in front of the hill that was called "butte du tir" at the time and that today is called "Belvedere." So, a few days before the centennial, I went to Paris and I explored the park of Vincennes by bicycle, finding what seemed to be the likely place of the execution.

At this point, there remained for me to be there at 6:30 in the morning of Sunday, Oct 15th. Actually, Mata Hari was shot at 6:30 solar time, while France in 2017, on the same day, was on legal time (legal time was introduced in France only in 1923). That meant I had to be there when my watch marked 7:30 in the morning. Rather early, but not so much.

Now, there was a problem: Mata Hari was taken to her death by car but, today, that place is in the middle of a public park that cannot be reached by car or by other motor vehicles. So, my idea was to lodge somewhere near the edge of the park of Vincennes and just walk there. I found an airbnb room in Joinville-Le-Pont, south of the Park. Not a short walk, some 40 minutes on foot, but possible. This time, I was accompanied by my wife.

So, at 7 a.m., we were walking inside the Bois de Vincennes and we saw what the problem was: it was dark. Some vague streaks of light were appearing on the horizon, but the park was in near complete darkness. Where streets were lighted, the problem was another one: it was crowded with prostitutes inside their mobile homes or simply standing on the sidewalk. Not that it was dangerous; the places where there are prostitutes working are normally safe: nobody wants the customers harmed. But, still, it was a queer situation and, besides, it made the idea of venturing into the woods in complete darkness even less attractive than it would have been without prostitutes.

At around 7:15, we gave up: too dark to walk in the woods. We turned around and we walked back to Joinville to get a coffee and a croissant in one of the few coffee shops already opened that early on Sunday morning. We waited for the light of dawn to appear and then we walked back into the park at around 9 am. We crossed some of the ladies we had seen earlier on, walking back home after having finished their night shift, but the park had now a much friendlier atmosphere. People were walking, running, and bicycling around.

So, we arrived at the place of the execution at 9:30 am and we celebrated the occasion with some photos and a little movie clip, only me and my wife. We missed the chance of seeing the ghost of Mata Hari appearing to us as a bluish ghost hovering among the trees, but we did our best. If Mata Hari was looking at us from the Elysian Fields, I hope she appreciated our effort. And this is the end of the story.