Musk, Greenwald, et al. Campaign Against Brazilian Democracy / Brian Mier

On This Day in Rotten History...

On this day in 1607 – (409 years ago) – the Bristol Channel, between England and Wales on the British west coast, was hit by an enormous flood that swept across two hundred square miles of coastal land and killed an estimated two thousand people. Contemporary accounts describe how the sea first mysteriously receded from the beach, then rose in waves that shot bright sparks, which were quickly followed by “huge and mighty hills of water” moving “faster than a greyhound could run.” Though the exact cause of the disaster remains unknown, many experts studying the written accounts, as well as physical evidence in the area’s soil, contend today that the flood was probably caused by a tsunami. They also warn that the area around the Bristol Channel is vulnerable to being similarly flooded again. 

On this day in 1956 – (60 years ago) – the home of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King in Montgomery, Alabama, was bombed while he was away at a meeting with organizers of the Montgomery bus boycott. The bomb destroyed the front porch and blew out the facade and front windows. Dr. King’s wife, Coretta, and his first child, Yolanda, both of whom were inside the house when the bomb went off, were uninjured. Three days earlier, an anonymous telephone caller had threatened to kill King and destroy his home if he did not call off the boycott. After the bombing, Dr. King urged his supporters not to respond with violence. Montgomery city officials, meanwhile, expressed outrage and vowed to catch the perpetrators — but no arrests were ever made.

On this day in 1968 – (48 years ago) – the North Vietnamese army and the Vietcong launched the Tet Offensive, a campaign of coordinated attacks that caught by surprise the forces of South Vietnam and the United States, who had expected a lull in hostilities during the traditional holiday of Tet, or lunar New Year. Within days, the surprise offensive swept more than a hundred South Vietnamese towns and cities, including Saigon, the southern capital — and it continued for months, with massive casualties on both sides. The Tet Offensive was a shock to the US government, which had previously believed Vietnamese nationalist forces incapable of such strong resistance. Public sentiment in the United States soon turned strongly against the war in Vietnam, and against US president... read more

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9:10 - Anthropologist David Vine explains why more military bases make the world less safe.

David is author of Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World from Metropolitan Books.

10:05 - Our Man in Dublin, Will Lynch reports back from an almost deadly, Guinness-less rainforest trip.

The story involves venomous spiders and a botched terror attempt, but I think the Guinness thing was the hardest for Will to handle.

10:35 - Journalist Curt Guyette investigates both the Flint water crisis and its coverup.

Curt posted the article Gov. Snyder Tainted by Flint Water Crisis for the Michigan ACLU's Democracy Watch blog.

11:05 - Historian Kathryn Olmsted traces the roots of conservatism to the farmlands of Depression-era California.

Kathryn wrote the book Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism.

12:05 - Writer Salma Hussein reflects on five years of activism, revolution and repression in Egypt.

Salma recently posted The Egyptian revolution #Jan25: Important Readings and What you must know about the Egyptian military industrial complex at her blog In Quest For Justice.

12:45 - Jeff Dorchen is relieved to learn that the state has no obligation to provide quality.

I think you might find he actually isn't relieved to find that out. Might be an ironic statement. Jeff's a real trickster.

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

Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World - David Vine [Metropolitan Books]

Right Out of California The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism - Kathryn Olmsted [The New Press]

What you must know about the Egyptian military industrial complex  - Salma Hussein [In Quest For Justice]

On this day in Rotten History...

On this day in 1556 – (460 years ago) – a powerful earthquake hit the Shaanxi province of northern China — altering the course of rivers, causing massive floods, igniting fires, and causing landslides that destroyed countless hillside villages of traditional stone houses, known as yaodongs. In an affected area more than five hundred miles across, the Shaanxi earthquake killed an estimated 60 percent of the population, or some 830,000 people. It’s now believed to have been the deadliest earthquake in recorded history.

On this day in 1968 – (48 years ago) – the USS Pueblo, a US Navy spy ship wth eighty-three crewmen aboard, was captured off the coast of North Korea by warships of that country in an attack that killed one Pueblo crew member and ended with the other eighty-two sailors being taken prisoner. The North Korean government, arguing that the American vessel had violated its territorial waters, kept the Pueblo crew in captivity for the next eleven months, using torture and starvation to extract forced confessions. Meanwhile, the administration of US President Lyndon Johnson struggled to work out a diplomatic solution, while secretly
preparing contingency plans for war. In the end, the Pueblo crew was released after North Korea and the US worked out a complex face-saving solution in which the Pueblo commander, Lloyd Bucher, signed an apology immediately after repudiating it. Upon Bucher’s return to the United States, the Navy began a court-martial against him, but it soon backed down in the face of public outcry. As for the Pueblo itself, it’s now on permanent display at the Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum in Pyongyang, North Korea.

On this day in 1978 – (38 years ago) – Terry Kath, lead guitarist and founding member of the rock band Chicago, who for some time had been struggling with alcohol and drug abuse, was fascinated by handguns, which he collected and enjoyed playing with. At a party in Los Angeles, Kath showed a roadie his unloaded .38, which he repeatedly held to his head, pulling the trigger. Kath then picked up a nine-millimeter semiautomatic and began to do the same. The roadie warned the guitarist to be careful, but to reassure him,. Kath showed him that the gun’s ammo clip was empty. He then held the gun to his head, smiled, and pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately for Kath, the gun had a... read more

Listen live from 9AM - 10:45AM Central on WNUR 89.3FM or stream at www.thisishell.com

9:10 - Political scholar Jodi Dean explains how the left can turn protest crowds into political power.

Jodi is author of Crowds and Party from Verso Books.

10:00 - Historian Lisa McGirr explores the Prohibition-era roots of contemporary systems of state violence.

Lisa's new book is  The War on Alcohol Prohibition and the Rise of the American State from Norton.

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

Crowds and Party - Jodi Dean [Verso Books]

 The War on Alcohol Prohibition and the Rise of the American State - Lisa McGirr [Norton]

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