New Robber Barons Prevent Using Tech for the Common Good / Loretta Napoleoni

On This Day in Rotten History...

On this day in 1881 – (135 years ago) — the area in and around Moradabad, in northern India, experienced a terrifying storm that battered houses and farms with highly destructive winds and pelted the countryside with hailstones reportedly the size of oranges. Since no severe weather warning systems existed at the time, many farmers were working in their fields when the storm struck, and were instantly killed by the huge hailstones. Once the storm died down, the hail was piled two feet high on the ground in some places. Two hundred forty-six people were killed, along with thousands of farm animals.  

On this day in 1900 – (116 years ago) — Casey Jones, an engineer for the Illinois Central Railroad, was killed when his passenger train, the Cannonball Express, plowed into the rear end of a stalled freight train near Vaughan, Mississippi. It was a foggy night and Jones had been running his train at top speed, trying to make up for lost time, when he rounded a curve and saw the stalled freight ahead of him on the main line. Shouting to his fireman to jump from the train, Jones blew his whistle, reversed the throttle, and slammed on his air brake. It was just enough to slow the Cannonball Express from seventy-five to thirty-five miles an hour before it slammed into the freight train’s caboose. Both trains were heavily damaged, the fireman who jumped from the train was knocked unconscious, and a few other people were slightly injured. But most passengers on the Cannonball Express felt only a sudden bump that awoke them in their sleeping cars. The only person killed in the accident was Casey Jones himself. Folk singers would go on to celebrate him as a hero for having given his life to save his passengers. The IWW activist Joe Hill, however, would write and sing a very different tune that denounced Jones as a scab for having refused to join a strike against the Southern Pacific Railroad.

Rotten History is written by Renaldo Migaldi

Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM / stream at www.thisishell.com / subscribe to the podcast

9:10 - Journalist Seymour Hersh investigates the truth and lies around Osama bin Laden's death.

Seymour is author of the new book The Killing of Osama Bin Laden from Verso.

10:00 - Writer Simone Weichselbaum explains what stalled the Chicago model of police reform.

Simone wrote the Marshall Project feature The ‘Chicago Model’ of Policing Hasn’t Saved Chicago

10:35 - Policy analyst Laura Carlsen follows a call to end the drug war across Latin America.

Laura covered the protest in her piece The Caravan for Peace, Life and Justice Demands End to Drug War in New York City.

11:05 - Occupy Wall Street co-founder Micah White looks beyond protest, to the future of activism.

Micah is author of The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution from Penguin Random House.

12:05 - Writer Marina Sitrin explores the new democracy blooming on the streets of Paris.

Marina wrote the ROAR Magazine essay ‘Soon we will be millions’: from Paris with love and lessons.

12:45 - Jeff Dorchen grasps at the meaning of life, and comes up empty-handed. Again.

One of these 8 minute monologues, he's gonna get it though. Just not this one.

Here is what Chuck is reading to prepare for Saturday's show:

The Killing of Osama Bin Laden - Seymour Hersh [Verso]

The ‘Chicago Model’ of Policing Hasn’t Saved Chicago - Simone Weichselbaum [The Marshall Project]

The Caravan for Peace, Life and Justice Demands End to Drug War in New York City - Laura Carlsen [CIP Americas]

The End of Protest: A New Playbook for Revolution - Micah White [Penguin Random House]

‘Soon we will be millions’: from Paris with love and lessons - Marina Sitrin [ROAR Magazine]

On This Day in Rotten History...

On this day in the year 599 – (1417 years ago) — in what is now Chiapas, Mexico, near the Guatemalan border, Uneh Chan, also known as “Scroll Serpent” — the king of Calakmul, one of the largest and most powerful city-states of ancient Mayan civilization — led his troops across the Usumacinta River to attack the rival city-state of Palenque, which at the time was ruled by queen Yohl Ik’nal, the first female ruler recorded in Mayan history. In the ensuing battle, Palenque suffered a massive and probably bloody defeat. Though the city-state retained its political identity and its queen survived for five more years, historians believe that for at least the next decade Palenque was a client state of Calakmul, which in turn was locked in a long-term power struggle with the rival city-state of Tikal, in what is now Guatemala. Calakmul and Tikal are often described as the two major superpowers of the classic Mayan era, and historians liken their political maneuvering to a modern cold war. 

On this day in 1940 – (76 years ago) — Walter Barnes and his Royal Creolians, a highly regarded swing orchestra from Chicago, were in the middle of their set at the Rhythm Club dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, when a fire started near the building entrance. The flames moved through the club quickly because the rafters were heavily festooned with Spanish moss that had been sprayed with a petroleum-based insecticide to prevent bugs. A few people managed to escape through the building’s front entrance, but the other doors and windows were boarded shut, trapping most of the patrons inside. As flames spread and smoke grew thick,  Walter Barnes directed his band to keep playing, in an attempt to calm the increasingly hysterical crowd. In the end, 209 people were killed and many more were seriously burned. Among the dead were Barnes and most of his band. The town’s morticians were so overwhelmed that they had to bury the dead in mass graves. The Rhythm Club fire was later the subject of songs by Howlin’ Wolf and John Lee Hooker. 

On this day in 1967 – (49 years ago) — Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was launched into orbit aboard Soyuz 1, a brand-new spacecraft that — as he and his colleagues knew very well — was not ready for spaceflight. Members of the Soviet Politburo, anxious to score... read more

Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM or stream at www.thisishell.com

9:10 - Social justice scholar Monique Morris examines the injustices pushing Black girls out of school.

Monique is author of Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools from The New Press.

10:00 - Our Man in San Juan, Dave Buchen reports on the debt crisis pulling Puerto Rico underwater.

Dave previously reported on the story for This is Hell! back in June 2015.

10:35 - Live from São Paulo, Brian Mier exposes the forces behind the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff.

Brian recommends reading the Intercept article After Vote to Remove Brazil’s President, Key Opposition Figure Holds Meetings in Washington.

11:05 - Political scientist Kathy Cramer explores the ways resentment is driving American politics.

Kathy wrote the new book The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.

12:05 - Economist Yanis Varoufakis challenges the bankrupt ideology of Europe's debt/austerity regime.

Yanis is author of And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future from PublicAffairs.

12:45 - In a Moment of Truth, Jeff Dorchen disgorges a political philosophy like a mother pelican.

I guess you the radio listener play the role of the pelican chick in this scenario, eating regurgitated fish.

Here is what Chuck is reading to prepare for Saturday's show:

Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools - Monique W. Morris [The New Press]

After Vote to Remove Brazil’s President, Key Opposition Figure Holds Meetings in Washington - [The Intercept]

The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker - Kathy Cramer [University of Chicago Press]

And the Weak Suffer What They Must? Europe's Crisis and America's Economic Future - Yanis Varoufakis [PublicAffairs Books]

On This Day In Rotten History...

On this day in 1457 BC – (3,473 years ago) — in the earliest military battle that modern historians view as being reliably documented, Egyptian armies and a coalition of Canaanite forces faced off at the Canaanite city of Megiddo, in what is now northern Israel. Pharoah Thutmose III led some ten to twenty thousand chariots and infantry against a roughly equal-sized force led by the king of Kadesh. Thutmose outmaneuvered the Canaanites, and his forces entered the walled city and plundered it, laying siege to the city for seven months until the Canaanites surrendered. Thutmose’s armies later continued through Syria and Mesopotamia, pillaging towns, burning crops, and taking prisoners. The establishment of Egyptian dominance over Palestine was a key episode in Thutmose’s expansion of the Egyptian empire to its greatest geographical extent — stretching from what is now Syria all the way south to what is now Sudan.

On this day in 1847 – (169 years ago) — a junior British army officer shot a minor chief of the Wanganui people, of the indigenous Maori of New Zealand. The incident triggered a series of clashes between Maori warriors and British forces that became known as the Wanganui Campaign, and which hinged mainly on the disputed legality of sales of Maori land to British settlers. The fighting extended into July and resulted in several deaths on both sides. But the Wanganui Campaign would only be the beginning of the larger New Zealand Wars, which would drag on for another twenty-five years as Maori tribes across New Zealand tried to form a united government to defend their lands against European colonialists. The wars would claim the lives of more than two thousand Maori people and some eight hundred British and colonial troops. They would end with the colonial confiscation of more than six thousand square miles of Maori land.

On this day in 1943 – (73 years ago) — in Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hoffman, a chemist employed in research and development for the pharmaceutical company Sandoz, accidentally touched his finger to his mouth or eye while working in the laboratory with the chemical lysergic acid diethylamide, also known as LSD. Over the next few hours, he inadvertently became the first person to discover that chemical’s hallucinogenic effects. He later wrote: “In a dreamlike state . . . I perceived an... read more