Liberalism Against Itself: Cold War Intellectuals and the Making of Our Times / Samuel Moyn

On This Day in Rotten History...

On this day in 1362 – (654 years ago) – one of the most severe North Sea storm tides in recorded history, known as the “Grote Mandrenke” (the “Great Man-Drowner”), tore across Ireland, England, Holland, Denmark, and Germany. The storm was so powerful that it altered the shape of coastlines, destroyed ports and seaside towns, submerged islands, created new islands, and completely destroyed Rungholt, a wealthy city on the Danish island of Strand that was entirely washed out to sea. According to various estimates, between twenty-five and a hundred thousand people were killed. Fragments and artifacts from the lost city of Rungholt continued to turn up on North Sea beaches well into the twentieth century.

On this day in 1862 – (154 years ago) – at the Hartley coal mine in Northumberland, England, the cast-iron beam of a pumping engine broke and fell, blocking the mineshaft and trapping the miners below ground. Over the next several days, increasingly desperate attempts were made to rescue the miners, but they all failed. Two hundred four men and boys died, and to this day the Hartley disaster remains one of the worst mining accidents in British history. It’s credited with motivating the British Parliament to pass an act requiring all coal mines to have at least two shafts, thus offering miners a better chance of escape.

On this day in 1969 – (47 years ago) – a twenty-year-old Czech university student named Jan Palach walked into Wenceslas Square in central Prague, stopped in front of the Czech National Museum, doused himself with gasoline, and set himself on fire as a protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia several months earlier, which had brought to an end the so-called Prague Spring — a short-lived liberalization of Soviet-style communist rule in that country. Palach died in a nearby hospital three days later. Before burning himself, he had sent letters to several people explaining that his suicide was meant to prod his demoralized fellow Czechs into resuming their resistance against Soviet domination. His funeral drew tens of thousands of people, and in the following weeks his fiery act of protest was repeated by twenty-six other young Czechs, seven of whom died. But the mass uprising Palach hoped to inspire didn’t really materialize until twenty years later, when the Berlin Wall opened and... read more

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

9:10 - Biologist Guy McPherson explains why near-term human extinction is guaranteed.

Guy is author of the giant, ongoing, terrifying Monster Climate Change Essay on his website Nature Bats Last.

10:05 - Marc Flury explores what we know / don't know about what happened / didn't happen in North Korea.

We'll also talk with Marc about THUMPER, his upcoming video game that everyone is looking forward to in 2016.

10:35 - Ed Sutton reports back from the trails and tribulations facing refugees along the Balkanroute.

Ed just published the essay O Balkan Pioneers: Anatomy of an Escape Route at his website Antidote Zine.

11:05 - Journalist Michael Massing examines the media's role in selling the One Percent to Americans.

Michael wrote the recent New York Review of Books article How to Cover the One Percent.

12:05 - Economist Mark Weisbrot reveals the intellectual poverty of the economic expert industry.

Mark is author of Failed: What the "Experts" Got Wrong about the Global Economy from Oxford University Press.

12:45 - Jeff Dorchen ponders the price and perqs of other people's fame.

People spell it that way. I cleared it with Jeff.

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

Monster Climate Change Essay - Guy McPherson [Nature Bats Last]

O Balkan Pioneers: Anatomy of an Escape Route - Ed Sutton [Antidote Zine]

How to Cover the One Percent - Michael Massing [New York Review of Books]

Failed: What the "Experts" Got Wrong about the Global Economy - Mark Weisbrot [Oxford University Press]

On This Day in Rotten History...

In 1349 – (667 years ago) – as the Black Plague ravaged Europe, killing millions, the panicky citizens of Basel, Switzerland, rounded up the city’s Jewish population, whom they noticed were suffering much less from the pestilence, and whom they accused of having created it by poisoning wells. After separating the Jewish children from their parents and forcing them to convert to Christianity, the townspeople locked the adults—some six hundred in number—inside a specially constructed building on an island in the Rhine and burned them alive by setting the building on fire. Historians now say that Jewish people suffered less from the plague due to their tradition of sweeping and cleaning houses before Passover, which reduced infestation by rats, now believed to have been plague carriers. About a month after the Basel massacre, a similar one occurred in nearby Strasbourg, where some two thousand Jewish people were burned alive. 

On this day in 1858 – (158 years ago) – Anson Jones—a failed doctor, failed pharmacist, and failed businessman who had served as the fourth and last president of Texas during its brief existence as an independent republic, and who then had failed in his attempt to become a US senator after Texas joined the Union—finally gave up, checked into Houston’s Capitol Hotel, had dinner, went up to his room alone, and shot himself. He was fifty-nine years old.

On this day in 1927 – (89 years ago) – during a Sunday matinee at the Laurier Palace movie theater in Montreal, with about eight hundred children in attendance, someone tossed a still-burning cigarette butt onto the floor. The cigarette rolled into an inaccessible area and started a fire that provoked a stampede toward the exits, some of which were locked. A total of seventy-eight children were crushed to death, killed by smoke inhalation, or killed directly by the flames. The disaster provoked the Montreal citizenry and the Catholic Church to call for a law that would ban children under sixteen from movie theaters. The law was soon passed, and would remain in effect until 1961.

 Rotten History is written by Renaldo Migaldi.

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

9:10 - Sociologist Linsey McGoey explains how capitalism profits from corporate philanthropy.

Linsey is author of No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy from Verso Books.

10:05 - Journalist Steve Horn reports on the details of a joint Obama-Exxon pipeline bill.

Steve posted the DeSmog Blog article During Paris Climate Summit, Obama Signed Exxon-, Koch-Backed Bill Expediting Pipeline Permits.

10:35 - The Radical Pessimist, Kevan Harris examines the domestic politics behind the Iran-Saudi Arabia feud.

Kevin will be working from his own research, plus that of several Middle East scholars he's boozed with.

11:05 - Cultural critic Henry Giroux explores the fear and violence at the heart of current American politics.

Henry is author of the new book America’s Addiction to Terrorism from Monthly Review.

12:05 - Journalist Shubhanga Pandey profiles the conflicts and contradictions facing Nepal's left.

Shubhanga wrote the Jacobin article The Next Nepali Revolution.

12:45 - Jeff Dorchen visits the Oregon militia standoff and finds something much dumber than white privilege.

Jeff will actually be responding to the lack of response, which we've all responded about enough already.

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

No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy - Linsey McGoey [Verso]

Saudi Arabia’s Dangerous Sectarian Game - Toby Jones [New York Times Op-Ed]

During Paris Climate Summit, Obama Signed Exxon-, Koch-Backed Bill Expediting Pipeline Permits - Steve Horn [DeSmog Blog]

America’s Addiction to Terrorism - Henry Giroux [Monthly Review]

The Next Nepali Revolution - Shubhanga Pandey [Jacobin]

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

Chuck celebrates a new year of Hell by looking back at his favorite interviews of 2015