Posted by Alexander Jerri
On This Day in Rotten History...
In 1962 – (55 years ago) – in Centralia, Pennsylvania, a fire set deliberately to clear trash out of an underground landfill ignited an ancient coal seam in a nearby abandoned mine. The coal fire gradually spread underneath the town and became a threat to public health and safety. It created dangerous sinkholes, spewed sulfur smoke and carbon monoxide from openings in the ground, and defied all attempts to put it out. By 1984 a mass exodus from the town began, and in 1992, all real estate properties were officially condemned. Centralia, Pennsylvania, once home to a thousand people, is now a ghost town. Nothing remains there but a few derelict buildings and a crumbling network of empty streets covered with graffiti by curious visitors. In some places the ground is still hot to the touch, and cracks in the earth belch poisonous smoke from an underground fire that, experts say, could continue burning for another two hundred years.
In 1971 – (46 years ago) – in the district of Pabna in East Pakistan, units of Pakistan army troops and paramilitaries massacred more than two hundred unarmed members of the local Hindu minority. The killings were a part of Operation Searchlight, a military campaign meant to suppress a Bengali nationalist movement in what was then East Pakistan. Ever since the partition of India after independence in 1947, the new and predominantly Muslim nation of Pakistan had consisted of two sections or “wings” more than a thousand miles apart, with the massive territory of India in between. The two parts of the country had their religious, cultural, and political differences, and as an independence movement grew in East Pakistan, the national government in the West launched a systematic campaign of genocide that led to all-out war, in which India joined on the side of the separatist East. After nine months of air strikes, mass murder, rape, and other atrocities, the war ended with East Pakistan proclaiming itself the newly independent nation of Bangladesh. Body counts vary, but most researchers believe that the war killed about half a million people, and created some thirty million refugees.
Rotten History is written by Renaldo Migaldi
Posted by Alexander Jerri
Listen live from 9AM - 12:00PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast
9:15 - Law scholar Michael J. Glennon examines Trump's battle with the national security state.
Michael wrote the June cover story Security Breach: Trump’s tussle with the bureaucratic state for Harper's.
10:05 - Live from Sáo Paulo, Brian Mier reports on the massive resistance movement sweeping post-coup Brazil.
Brian wrote the article Brasilia 24/5: A View from the Ground for Brasilwire.
10:35 - Gay Liberation Network's Andy Thayer explores Gay Inc.'s mainstreaming of LGBTQ politics.
Andy wrote the article The LGBTQ Movement is an Intersectional Fail for Counterpunch.
11:05 - Geographer Andrew Brooks explains how the Western development agenda expands global poverty.
Andrew wrote the book The End of Development: A Global History of Poverty and Prosperity for Zed Books.
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.
