Let's Go Back Through the Listening Tube Oct 27

Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

I'm Bob Woodley from the Listening Tube. This week in 1682, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is founded. The birthplace of American independence, the first capital of the colonies and the budding country. A gathering place for patriots and civil leaders. The American Way was forged in the halls of buildings there. Home of the Liberty Bell, Philadelphia stood for all that is American. Independence, virtue, liberty. It's where independence was declared and where the laws of the land were put to paper in the Constitution of the United States. Today it's a sanctuary city with a district attorney who's under investigation, referred to the U.S. Department of Justice by a federal judge for how he handled a case involving a man convicted of second-degree murder. The judge alleges that Philly D.A. Krasner encouraged his staff to lie to the judge, threatened that there would be consequences for not following orders. The D.A. is trying to get the guy off, citing ineffectual counsel. The Philadelphia District Attorney is one of the most progressive in the country, and like many progressive DAs, he's more interested in letting criminals walk free than prosecuting them. This week in 1838, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs issues the Extermination Order, which orders all Mormons to leave the state or be exterminated. No one was ever executed. The whole thing began mostly because communication between where a skirmish happened among the state militia and Mormons and the state capital was about a hundred miles. But the Mormons had been victims of mobs that forced them from their homes, and authorities weren't interested in helping. They began to defend themselves, according to an account by the church. All of the Mormons still in Missouri were forced to relocate, and they went to Illinois. Among them was the founder of the church, Joseph Smith, who was lucky to have survived. Upon capture by the militia in Missouri, he was tried in a military court-martial for making war against the state and sentenced to death. The officer assigned to carry out the task refused, as he believed the order was illegal. This week in 1924, the Uzbek SSR, or Soviet Socialist Republic, is founded in the Soviet Union. It lasted until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Uzbek was a combination of areas with different names prior to the Soviet Union redrawing all of the boundary lines. Moscow created a republic and a national identity for it, then took it over with collectives and urbanization. Where there wasn't urbanization, there was probably cotton, as that's where more than 60% of the USSR's cotton came from. But that cotton came at a high cost. Irrigation shrank the Arrol Sea by 90% of its volume. What at one time yielded 40,000 tons of fish a year was sucked dry by the cotton fields, leaving a salted crust behind. Efforts to revive some of the Arrol Sea began in 2005, and some life began springing up about 15 years later, but most of it is still dry. After declaring independence from the Soviet Union, the area became Uzbekistan, which it remains today. This week in 1962, Major Rudolf Anderson of the United States Air Force becomes the only direct human casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis when his U-2 reconnaissance plane is shot down in Cuba by a Soviet-supplied SA-2 guideline surface-to-air missile. Back then, Cuba relied on its relationship with the Soviet Union to maintain the communist Castro regime. The Soviets were happy to help as long as they could put missiles on the island pointed right at the United States. President Kennedy ordered a blockade of ships bringing war materials. Cuba still maintained a friendly relationship with the USSR. Then it was Russia, then Venezuela. Now the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia has better things to worry about, and Venezuela is no longer run by a communist dictator. China is willing to step up, but Cuba has become more isolated through economic pressure brought by the Trump administration than it ever could by Kennedy's ship blockade. But in order to end the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy promised Moscow the United States wouldn't attack Cuba. So far, we've kept that promise. But there's more than one way to skin a cat. This week in 1988, Ronald Reagan decides to tear down the new U.S. Embassy in Moscow because of Soviet listening devices in the building structure. A United Press International story from the time explains that the embassy, which took more than 10 years to build at a cost of $190 million, was infested with listening devices. How did they get in there? Well, the building was put together by Soviet workers using Soviet materials. Although supervised by Americans, the crafty Russians found ways to bug the building forever. Secretary of State George Schultz recommended the raising after an engineering study determined that the only way to be sure the building isn't bugged is to tear it down and start over. This week in 1994, the U.S. prison population tops 1 million for the first time in American history. While a million may seem like a lot, the population of the country was about 261.8 million, so it's actually.003% of the population. 31 thousandths of a percent. Today, America's population is 336 million people, and 1.25 million are prisoners. That's as of 2023, actually. Again, the math works out to three one thousandths of a percent. So if the prison population remains a flat point zero zero three percent, then the higher the population outside the prison, the higher the population inside the prison. If the bleeding heart liberals want to reduce the prison population, one way to accomplish that would be to stop breeding. This week in 2005, riots began in Paris after the deaths of two Muslim teenagers. Twine years ago, riots erupted in Paris and other cities around France, all based on misinformation. The two teens died after entering an electrical substation and were electrocuted. But there was a third teen with them who survived. He was able to tell the story of what happened. The teens thought they may be chased by the police because they were in the vicinity of a robbery. They ran, even though they weren't being chased. They looked for a place to hide in the Paris suburb populated mostly by people from the Middle East and North Africa. They trespassed into an area they knew was dangerous, according to the third teen who survived. Riots are again taking place in Paris and other French cities. The pretext is different, but it seems like the same kind of people are rioting. Follow the listening tube at thelisteningtube.com, where you'll also find not the headlines and interviews with interesting people. Click on the green button or donate to the program by clicking on the Buy Me a Coffee link. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou Ad Infinitum.