On this day in 1908 – (107 years ago) – an enormous explosion ripped through the Pittsburgh-Buffalo Coal Mine near Marianna, Pennsylvania. The blast was so loud that it could be heard for miles, and hardware and debris from the mine opening was later found half a mile away. The explosion killed 154 miners. Only one survived. Experts later found that the explosion had been caused by an ignition of concentrated coal dust triggered by a routine dynamite charge being used to loosen the coal in a mine wall.
On this day in 1942 – (73 years ago) – the dance orchestra was about to begin its second set for an over-capacity crowd at Boston’s ritzy Cocoanut Grove supper club when a sixteen-year-old busboy in the downstairs lounge lit a match. Moments later, flames raced across the lounge ceiling and quickly spread up the stairwells into the main ballroom, which was heavily festooned with fake palm trees, bamboo furniture, cloth draperies, and paper decorations, many of which covered the exit signs. As fire spread to the restaurant kitchen, the refrigerators, running on flammable propellant due to a wartime shortage of freon, exploded. In minutes the club was a raging inferno as screaming patrons pounded on padlocked exits and jammed both sides of a revolving door, rendering it useless. Other unlocked doors which opened inward were also useless in the chaos, and a plate glass window had been boarded over. When firefighters finally got inside, they found 492 dead people – some charred to cinders, others still seated at tables with drinks in their hands, overcome by poisonous smoke. It was the deadliest nightclub fire in US history. Barney Welansky, the Cocoanut Grove’s mob-connected owner, was convicted of nineteen counts of manslaughter, and died of cancer after four years in prison.
On this day in 1979 – (36 years ago) – an Air New Zealand DC-10 airliner departed from Auckland on a sightseeing flight over Antarctica, having received erroneous flight programming information the night before. The airplane veered from its usual course, was caught in a whiteout, and crashed into Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on earth. All 257 passengers on board the plane were killed instantly, along with the ten-member crew. Crash investigators later determined that the crew had been unaware of danger until six seconds before their impact with the mountain. It was Air... read more
Award-winning investigative journalist and podcaster Cerise Castle returns to discuss her latest article at the Los Angeles Public Press, "How LASD surveilled me, a journalist, after I started reporting on deputy gangs: More than 50 LASD employees sent emails about me in the months after I published my reporting." After the interview, Jeff Dorchen delivers "The Moment of Truth" live from Second Story Studios!
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Everglades Non-Profit Sues Former Scientist for Stealing Trade Secrets / Boyce Upholt
Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM or stream at www.thisishell.com
9:10 - Anthropologist Scott Atran warns that the West is giving ISIS exactly what it wants.
Scott is co-author of the New York Review of Books essay Paris: The War ISIS Wants.
10:05 - Lawpagandist Brian Foley presents a guide to making lots of money for your lawyer.
Brian just started his own law practice in Philadelphia.
10:35 - Black Agenda Report's Glen Ford explains how Democratic money is cashing out #BlackLivesMatter.
Glen has been writing about #BlackLivesMatter for Black Agenda Report, including the recent pieces “Black Lives Matter” Groups Hoping for a Big Payday
11:05 - Journalists Valerie Brown and Elizabeth Grossman examine bad science and worse politics at the EPA.
Valerie and Elizabeth are authors of the In These Times investigation Why the US Leaves Deadly Chemicals on the Market.
12:05 - Historian Suzanna Reiss traces the history of American empire though the travels of its drugs.
Suzanna is author of We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire from University of California Press.
12:45 - Jeff Dorchen reports live from South Carolina on the surreal self-image of the USA.
This day in rancid, ugly, horrible, putrid, rotten history . . .
On this day in 1386 – (629 years ago) – the Turco-Mongol conqueror Timur of Samarkand, known to Europeans as Tamerlane, captured and sacked the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, took King Bagrat V of Georgia captive, and—according to the ancient chronicles—forced the Christian monarch to convert to Islam. Tbilisi was just one of Timur’s many conquests. His domain stretched from the western edge of China into what is now Turkey, but it was short-lived. On his deathbed, Timur designated a favorite grandson as his successor—but his other descendants ignored his wishes and went to war with each other, and the empire disintegrated in a few years.
On this day in 1918 – (97 years ago) – amid the armed conflict that persisted between Poland and Ukraine after the end of World War I, Polish soldiers and lawless civilians in the eastern European city of Lviv subjected its Jewish population to a pogrom that would last three days. Between 50 and 150 Jewish people were massacred, while about two thousand lost their homes, and some five hundred businesses were destroyed.
On this day in 1920 – (95 years ago) – in Dublin, Ireland, thirty-one people were killed in a day of deadly violence during the Irish War of Independence. It was the second and bloodiest of four different historical incidents in Ireland that have since become known as “Bloody Sunday.” It started in the morning with a series of carefully planned killings of British spies at various locations around the city by members of an assassination unit operating under the Irish military leader Michael Collins. Late that afternoon, a unit of militarized British police responded to the assassinations by showing up at a well-attended football match and firing upon the crowd of Irish spectators. By day’s end, the death toll on both sides included fourteen Irish civilians, fourteen British spies, and three IRA prisoners.
On this day in 1927 – (88 years ago) –about five hundred striking miners and I.W.W. activists outside the Columbine Coal Mine near Boulder, Colorado, were attacked by a detachment of state police armed with tear gas and machine guns. The month-old strike, prompted by wage theft and dangerous work conditions, had been uneventful for more than a month until the arrival of cold weather... read more
Listen live from 9AM - 1PM Central on WNUR 89.3FM or stream at www.thisishell.com
9:10 - Writer Curtis White sees new (and old) problems when he looks ahead to our futuristic robot economy.
Curtis is author of We, Robots: Staying Human in the Age of Big Data from Melville House.
10:05 - Anuradha Mittal profiles the dangerous lives of land rights activists in Ethiopia and Cameroon.
The Oakland Institute just posted the release International Civil Society Alarmed by Conviction of Cameroonian Environmental Human Rights Defender.
10:35 - Laura Carlsen explains how marijuana legalization trends are shifting US-Mexico drug war policies.
Laura was just on CCTV talking about legalization trends in Mexico and the United States..
11:05 - Sociologist Brooke Harrington opens the door to the hidden world of elite wealth management.
Brooke is author of the Atlantic article Inside the Secretive World of Tax-Avoidance Experts.
11:35 - Kyle Lydell Canty talks about why racism and police violence have him seeking political asylum in Canada.
Kyle wrote the Guardian opinion piece It's so dangerous to be a black American, I've sought asylum in Canada. To help with Kyle's legal fees, contribute to his GoFundMe here.
12:05 - Live from Beirut, Rania Masri calls out Western complicity, and silence, in the wake of Middle East violence.
Rania was quoted in the Intitute for Public Accuracy's news release From Beirut After Bombing: 'We are Not Numbers'.
12:45 - Jeff Dorchen apologizes to fiscal conservatives for not telling them what he thinks of them sooner.
Not sure if this program is the most effective forum for that, but we're with you Jeffy.
Here is what Chuck is reading to prepare for Saturday's show:
We, Robots: Staying Human in the Age of Big Data - Curtis White [Melville House]
International Civil Society Alarmed by Conviction of Cameroonian Environmental Human Rights Defender- Anuradha Mittal [Oakland Institute]
Laura Carlsen on Marijuana Legalization - CCTV [Video segment]
Inside the Secretive World of Tax-Avoidance Experts - Brooke Harrington [The Atlantic]
It's so dangerous to be a black American, I've sought asylum in Canada-
From Beirut After Bombing: 'We are Not Numbers' - Rania Masri [Institute for Public Accuracy]
Listen live from 9AM - 10AM Central on WNUR 89.3FM or stream at www.thisishell.com
9:05 - Author Roslyn Fuller explains why democracy lost its way, and how to restore its promise.
Roslyn is author of Beasts and Gods: How democracy changed its meaning and lost its purpose from Zed Books.
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
'The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.'
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote that in 1936. I won't deal here with the context in which he wrote it. I'd rather take it on its merits as a thing unto itself. Fitzgerald meant contradictory ideas such as "doom" and "hope." Let's be a bit less grandiose in choosing our ideas. Let's choose, for now, bigotry against black people, and the idea that bigoted notions about black people, or any people for that matter, are wrong because they are not informed by the deep and wide fullness of reality.
Clearly, a person can hold these two opposed ideas in the mind simultaneously. We white citizens of the USA are famous for doing so, and very few us can be accused of being plagued with first rate intelligence. How can we be intellectually both racist and anti-racist? This is because the mind is not a flat surface on which ideas are inscribed and from which they are read. The mind is a layered, weird thing, puzzling the creature attempting to use it to define its identity. It's not even clear how to define the mind within boundaries. The mind is so complex and elusive that even now it's telling me all kinds of lies about itself.
Fitzgerald was evidentally after something else in his statement than we've come to imagine when we consider it. As such, it's irrelevant to our topic, which today is "distraction." Well, then, why begin an essay on distraction with an entirely irrelevant bromide?
How better to demonstrate distraction? Right? I mean, that's pretty clever, actually.
Instead of testing for first rate minds, which are irrelevant in almost every circumstance involving anything of any importance, we should be trying to weed out the last rate minds. And to me, a last rate mind is one that divides the world into opposing ideas.
Here's an example: a friend of mine posted an article from Mother Jones about law enforcement attempts to identify individuals who might be planning to commit the kind of mass shooting we've been seeing more frequently over the last few years, and to connect with that (typically) young white man's family, friends and community contacts at school and elsewhere to get (typically) him to seek help in sorting out and dealing with his anti-social feelings in a non-destructive way. This strategy was... read more