Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 12:45PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:05 - Writer China Miéville explains what Russia, 1917 can teach the post-Soviet, pre-revolutionary world.
China is author of October: The Story of the Russian Revolution from Verso.
10:00 - Military whistleblower Lisa Ling reports on life and death inside the secret US drone war.
Lisa, a former technical sergeant on drone surveillance systems, was profiled in the documentary National Bird.
11:00 - Journalist Duff McDonald tours the school at the golden heart of global capitalism.
Duff is author of the new book The Golden Passport: Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite from Harper Collins.
12:00 - Organizer Mariame Kaba looks beyond reform, to the destruction of the prison industrial complex.
Mariame wrote the article Free Us All: Participatory defense campaigns as abolitionist organizing for The New Inquiry.
12:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen yanks your physical and mental chains.
Posted by Alexander Jerri
On This Day in Rotten History...
In 1972 – (45 years ago) – in Osaka, Japan, a fire at the Sennichi Department Store killed 118 people. The fire started in the dress department and quickly spread to other areas in the building that were being remodeled, where burning construction materials filled the stairwells with poisonous fumes. The building had no fire sprinklers. In a nightclub on the seventh floor, patrons found the fire exits locked, and in desperation they began jumping from the windows. It took firefighters three days to put out the blaze. Ninety-six people were found dead inside the nightclub, twenty-two died from jumping, and another seventy-eight were injured, including twenty-seven firefighters. Three managers of the building later went to prison for criminal negligence and accidental homicide.
In 1985 – (32 years ago) – Philadelphia police bombed the headquarters of MOVE, a radical commune that advocated black liberation and shunned modern technology. The group was well stocked with guns and ammo, and nine members had already gone to prison for third-degree murder in the death of a cop. The group occupied a row house in West Philadelphia, where neighbors complained to the police about their rooftop bullhorn political speeches. When police arrived and were denied entry, they resorted to fire hoses and tear gas, and were answered with bullets. The resulting shootout led to a two-day armed standoff, which ended when a state police helicopter dropped two one-pound bombs on the house, sparking a fire that quickly spread across the neighborhood. With orders to hold off, firefighters stood by and watched the police gun down commune members who came running out of the burning house. Eleven people, including five children, were killed; some sixty-five houses were destroyed; and more than 250 people were left homeless. Eleven years later, a federal jury found that the city had used excessive force and violated the Fourth Amendment. It ordered payment of $1.5 million to three commune survivors, and Philadelphia briefly became known as “The City That Bombed Itself.” Mayor Wilson Goode issued a formal apology, but nobody in the city government was ever criminally charged.
Rotten History is written by Renaldo Migaldi
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 12:45PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:10 - Attorney Nnennaya Amuchie explains how activists bailed out Black mothers in time for Mother's Day.
Nnennaya worked with BYP100 DC on a local fundraising effort, part of a larger national campaign by the group Southerners On New Ground.
9:30 - Historian Julia Ott details the ways a century of American tax policies valued wealth over work.
Julia wrote the article How Tax Policy Created the 1% for Dissent.
10:05 - Economist Mark Weisbrot explains why Marine Le Pen's electoral defeat is not a victory for the French left.
Mark wrote the articles Curb Your Enthusiasm: Macron Is Just The Beginning Of A New Fight For France And Europe for Huffington Post and How the Eurozone Damaged French Politics—and This Year’s Presidential Election for The Nation.
10:35 - Immigration researcher Karina Moreno profiles Muslim/Latino solidarity in the Trump era.
Karina wrote the artilce A Politics of Solidarity for Jacobin.
11:05 - Zoologist Bill Schutt examines our long, bloody, somewhat recent history of cannibalism.
Bill wrote the book Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History from Algonquin Books.
12:00 - Journalist Sharon Lerner reports on the large-scale poisoning of a small, poor town in Louisiana.
Sharon wrote the article The Plant Next Door for The Intercept.
12:30 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen gets his money back from Adam Smith.
Jeff is hosting the "What Is Capitalism" Contest at Seattle's Red May on Sunday.
Posted by Alexander Jerri
On This Day in Rotten History...
In 1527 – (490 years ago) – mutinous troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V invaded and sacked the city of Rome, which at the time was part of the Papal States. Pope Clement VII had allied with the Kingdom of France to resist growing pressure from the northern empire and the Habsburg dynasty, so he was seen as an enemy by Charles’s troops, who numbered some twenty to thirty thousand and — to make matters worse — were angry because they weren’t getting paid on time. The unruly soldiers poured into Rome, killing everyone they encountered, and forcing almost two hundred of the Vatican’s Swiss Guards into desperate hand-to-hand combat on the very steps of Saint Peter’s Basilica. Before being massacred, the Swiss Guards managed to hold off the intruders long enough for the pope to escape to his bunker. But Rome was devastated, and some forty-five thousand people were killed, wounded, or exiled. The invaders remained for months as corpses lay rotting in the streets, until the city was finally overcome by the plague.
In 1757 – (260 years ago) – the English poet Christopher Smart, having been deemed insane, was committed to Saint Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, in London, one of two asylums where he would be confined for the next six years. It was a time of great debate about the nature of mental illness, but methods of treatment were still primitive, and some doctors even advocated physical beating. For his part, Smart never considered himself insane, and some acquaintances felt he’d been sent to the asylum without due cause. During his years there he was given to intense religious fervor, and he wrote obsessively, producing what are seen today as his greatest works — including the long poem “Jubilate Agno,” which was not published until 1939.
In 1937 – (80 years ago) – the German airship Hindenburg was about to land at Lakehurst, New Jersey, when it mysteriously caught fire and went down in a hellish inferno, killing thirty-six of its ninety-seven passengers and crew. The Hindenburg used explosive hydrogen as its lifting gas, instead of the much safer helium, because the United States had a worldwide monopoly on helium and would not export it to Nazi Germany. Even so, the builders of the Hindenburg were so confident in its safety that the high-end amenities included not only a... read more
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 1:00PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:15 - Economist Kate Raworth outlines the ideas re-shaping our understanding of 21st century economics.
Kate is author of Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist from Chelsea Green.
10:00 - Consumer advocate Ralph Nader discusses ways of challenging power in the 21st century.
Ralph is author of Breaking Through Power: It's Easier Than We Think from City Lights.
10:35 - Our Man in San Juan, Dave Buchen reports back from the May Day general strike in Puerto Rico.
Dave got teargassed twice, if you were wondering about his credentials.
11:05 - Mathematician Eugenia Cheng explores the beautiful dream of infinity.
Eugenia is author of Beyond Infinity: An Expedition to the Outer Limits of Mathematics from Basic Books.
12:05 - Christine Ahn explains why everyone on the Korean Peninsula wants peace but the United States.
Christine wrote the article The High Costs of US Warmongering Against North Korea for Truthout.
12:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen just mostly babbles about sanity.
Jeffy is hosting the "What Is Capitalism" Contest at Seattle's Red May next weekend. Go to it.
