S3 Episode 2

 S3E2

Hello! Welcome to season 3, episode 2 of the Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. On this edition, Columbus sails the ocean blue and Magellan says “hold my beer”, what caused the Peekskill riots, and why your death may not stop you from voting! But first, (not the headlines)

The Artemis rocket, ultimately destined to take astronauts back to the moon, had a setback on the launch pad prior to its initial launch, but I’m sure it’s just a blip on the radar. NASA will accomplish the mission, and we’ll have a permanent station on or above the moon. The mission has many goals, and many participants from a variety of countries who will contribute to the effort. In anticipation of its participation, Canada has established laws that apply to their astronauts. A story by the Calgary Herald’s Tristin Hopper made note of it’s inclusion in an amendment to the 2022 federal budget. Essentially, Canada established that anyone who’s up in space on behalf of Canada is subject to the laws of Canada while they’re up there. It was one sentence in a 443-page budget bill. It simply said, “A Canadian crew member who, during a space flight, commits an act or omission outside Canada that if committed in Canada would constitute an indictable offence is deemed to have committed that act or omission in Canada.” This isn’t the first time space crime has been addressed. In 1998, Canada was among the countries agreeing to a treaty that states that anyone committing a crime in space is subject to the jurisdiction of their home country. But there remains a question as to what would happen to somebody who commits a crime against somebody from another country. The 1998 treaty only suggests the countries involved work it out back here on Earth. So is Canada just getting out ahead of the issue, or are they planning on sending their repeat offenders to space? Either way, any country that hopes to contribute to the exploration of space needs to figure out what to do about crime committed in space. So far, only one person has been accused of committing a space crime, and that was an alleged identity theft using a computer on the International Space Station. No charges were filed. But crime in space is inevitable. As more people leave the atmosphere, and private companies decide who goes to space, the probability of crime rises. It’s not like when only well-established, competent, vetted people went to space anymore. We need to be ready with rules when crime happens in space, and Canada has taken the lead. There’s just one thing missing: Space Justice. As it stands right now, any crime committed in space cannot be prosecuted until the suspect returns to Earth and falls under whatever jurisdiction in whatever country he or she may be representing. Now, you might say, “Well, we’ll get ‘em when they get back.” Sure. Let’s say they’re on a multi-year mission to another solar system. It’s a bunch of people sent to a planet that the Webb Space Telescope tells us has the right atmosphere and chemical composition to support a carbon-based life form like ours. Along the way, people die of mysterious circumstances. Nothing can be done to investigate, because there is no investigative branch of the expedition. Even if there is, there’s no justice system on board the ship. Nor is a return trip planned. Like it or not, space will at some point become like the American wild west for a time. A lawless place where the survival of the fittest rules the day. Those who were savvy enough to see an opportunity or recognize an advantage, who had the resources to put assets in the right place, were the ones who ruled. There are a lot of things we’ll need to take to space with us to survive. Until we can produce things like food, fuel and shelter using the resources of other heavenly bodies, we’ll have to take everything we need with us. Perhaps a justice system is something we should put at the top of the list.

There’s a meme going around social media that I’ve seen shared by more than one organization, including Women’s Rights News. It’s attributed to B.B. Alston and says,”Book Banning: When you erase the history/experience of one kid to “protect”another, what you’re also doing is saying is that there is one type of kid worth protecting.” Let’s take a look at this statement. It’s a meme that takes the responsibility of defining the term Book Burning. It assumes all books being banned are historical in nature, or relate the experiences of a kid. Right off the bat, I’ll have to say there aren’t many kids who have a history or experiences worth writing about. The only exception I can think of would be Anne Frank. Claiming that one kids history/experience is being erased is just a false premise. Nothing is being erased, and no kid is being protected by it. Therefore, the rest of the statement, “what you’re also doing is saying is that there is one type of kid worth protecting,” is just another way online propaganda works to divide us. This meme literally tries to make you decide which group of kids you support more than a group of other kids, without even saying which kids are being protected at the expense of the other group of kids. All it does is make you imagine which group is which. See, the meme doesn’t even care who’s side you’re on, as long as you stay divided about it. The truth is, nobody’s banning books in the sense that the meme tries to define. It’s just a way to take advantage of the current climate in school districts around the country who are being asked by parents why certain books are being made available to younger students who might not be ready for that level of discovery. After all, kids aren’t supposed to have access to pornography or sexually explicit content. Parents were surprised to find out that type of material was available in school libraries. I’m sure they had nothing in them about the history/experience of a kid, unless it was child pornography. So the definition of Banned Books in this meme is more than faulty, it just doesn’t even constitute an actual existence. So what is the definition of a banned book? Banning books has been done by every civilization in history. Even in America, certain states have banned books, and there are some examples that are no longer enforced. This isn’t new, so don’t be fooled into thinking one political party or another just invented it. The fact is, nobody is banning books, and history has shown that it is ultimately the people who decide what books continue to be printed, and not governments. In fact, if you live in the United States of America, there is no such thing as a banned book. There have been some published materials that have been edited for legal or security reasons, but American adults are free to read whatever they want. American children, however, do and should have limited access to published material commensurate with their maturity. Regardless, thousands of people shared and commented about the perceived banning of books. They chose sides and condemned each other’s opinions over an issue that doesn’t exist, perpetuated by a meme that is literally moot. 

There’s another one that claims we’re being denied something by some unnamed power over all of us. Let me read it to you first, then we’ll examine it more closely. “Peace at the cost of our voice, your needs, or your feelings isn’t authentic peace-it’s just silence. There’s a difference between being silenced and being peaceful.” The overall sentiment of the meme is that if you’re not happy, you should say something. You shouldn’t keep quiet because it’s the easy way out, even though you don’t like it. That’s a sentiment with which most of us can agree. So if it said, “peace at the cost of your voice isn’t authentic peace, I could agree with the statement. But the author, who claims to be a codependency recovery coach, also equates your speech with your needs and feelings. These three things are not equal at all. You have a right to free speech, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, but you do not have a guaranteed right to your needs, nor is society responsible for your feelings. Once it gets you to equate your voice with your needs being fulfilled and your feelings becoming every one else’s problem, it goes on to tell you that you won’t be peaceful unless all of your demands are met, including your right to speak, your right to not need anything, and your right to be happy regardless of the results of your personal pursuit of it. By equating your right to speak, (which nobody has taken from you) with your sustenance and happiness, they try to justify not being peaceful. This meme actually incites violence by telling people that where will be no peace unless the impossible happens: Everybody is happy and cared for by the government, and if you’re not happy and cared for, you have the right to not be peaceful. Do not be silent. At the same time, do not rely on society to fulfill your needs or care about your feelings. This meme is just another example of how they’re designed to lure you into taking a stand about something ill-defined and misleading. 

If you want to make an important point, make it. You’ll get a lot more respect if you type out your opinion about an issue than if you just share a meme. If you feel strongly about a subject, you’re free to let people know. Not everyone will agree with you, and you might even be surprised by how many people do agree with you, by you’ll never know if all you do is share other people’s memes. You might have to fight for your right to party, but you don’t have to fight for your right to express your own point of view. Generations of soldiers have already done that for you. Why would you relinquish that sacred right to somebody who writes memes for a living? From where I sit in the world right now, I’m free to say that! I’m free to encourage you to say whatever you feel, too! Depending upon where you are, you might not have that freedom. But if you do, use it! Don’t let someone else form your thoughts for you! Speak your mind. Just a heads-up, don’t expect immediate results. Just because you think it, doesn’t mean anybody else does, or has to! As free as you are to speak your mind, everyone else is just as free to disagree with you.

Let’s go back liner... 

1492

Christopher Columbus sails from La Gomera in the Canary Islands, his final port of call before crossing the Atlantic for the first time. Anybody who graduated from high school in America knows that in 1492, Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. I can’t speak for the class of ‘81. There are people who object to recognizing the voyage of Columbus. People who don’t think he should be credited with sailing into unknown waters, searching for unknown lands. We know there were already people here when Columbus arrived. The poem learned by school children acknowledges as much. Here it is:

IN 1492

In fourteen hundred ninety-two

Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

He had three ships and left from Spain;

He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.

He sailed by night; he sailed by day;

He used the stars to find his way.

A compass also helped him know

How to find the way to go.

Ninety sailors were on board;

Some men worked while others snored.

Then the workers went to sleep;

And others watched the ocean deep.

Day after day they looked for land;

They dreamed of trees and rocks and sand.

October 12 their dream came true,

You never saw a happier crew!

 “Indians! Indians!” Columbus cried;

His heart was filled with joyful pride.

But “India” the land was not;

It was the Bahamas, and it was hot.

The Arakawa natives were very nice;

They gave the sailors food and spice.

Columbus sailed on to find some gold

To bring back home, as he’d been told.

He made the trip again and again,

Trading gold to bring to Spain.

The first American? No, not quite.

But Columbus was brave, and he was bright. 

Columbus was a top-notch explorer indeed, but didn’t go nearly as far as Ferdinand Magellan. This week in 1522, The Victoria, the only surviving ship of Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition, returns to Spain, becoming the first ship to circumnavigate the world.

1698

In an effort to Westernize his nobility, Tsar Peter I of Russia imposes a tax on beards for all men except the clergy and peasantry. Peasants weren’t completely off the hook, though. Peasants who had a beard were charged two half-kopeks to enter a city. Depending upon your social status, if you wanted to wear a beard, you had to pay an annual tax of 60 or 100 rubles. As proof of payment, you were issued a token to carry with you to prove your beard tax was paid. It stayed in effect for about 75 years until Catherine the Great repealed it in 1772. I’m guessing she liked men to wear beards. The surprising thing to me is that the tax was repealed at all. When was the last time an American tax was repealed or was allowed to expire? 

1774

First Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While such a congress had been suggested before, England’s response to the Boston Tea Party led to the need for the colonies to band together to petition the King. That led to the second Continental Congress in 1775, then this week in 1776, The Continental Congress officially names its new union of sovereign states the United States.

1839

United Kingdom declared First Opium War on the Qing Dynasty of China.. How the table have turned! The Opium war started because the English were growing opium in nearby Bengal, then selling it to Chinese smugglers to sell to the Chinese people. England did that as an answer to a trade imbalance with China. The result was a steep increase in Chinese opium addicts, which caused concern among Chinese officials. There were calls for China to legalize and tax the opium, but the Emperor was against it. Instead, he took steps to stop the supply, including a coastal defense of the ships delivering the drug. It worked so well that the British sent a navy. After a series of British victories, the Chinese were forced to sign a number of treaties that, among other things, ceded Hong Kong to the British. Today, China is supplying drugs to the Mexican cartels, who smuggle it into the United States. Unlike Opium, fentanyl can be deadly in a single dose, and millions of doses have been confiscated by law enforcement at our southern border. Unlike Chinese officials in 1839, American officials in Washington refuse to do enough to stop the flow.

This week in 1897, the Lattimer massacre happened in Lattimer, Pennsylvania, when a sheriff’s posse kills about 20 unarmed immigrant miners. Coal mining is hard work still today, and was even harder in 1897. The mines weren’t safe, the wages were low, and many mine owners also owned the towns in which the miners lived and the stores in which they bought the needs. Miners were exploited. Ethnic prejudices were rampant. Unarmed members of the United Mine Workers union were marching to Lattimer to show support for the new union there. They were on strike to protest the failure of mine owners to increase wages for all miners, as they had promised. A few hundred striking miners were stopped by a posse formed by the sheriff of Luzerne County at the request of the mine owner. About a hundred-fifty deputies confronted the group of a few hundred strikers, and when the sheriff tried to take the American flag from the man leading the march, a scuffle ensued. The posse opened fire. At least 19 died, and up to 50 others were wounded. Many were shot in the back, multiple times. The sheriff and 73 deputies were arrested and tried. All were acquitted. Perhaps the most dramatic result of the massacre was an additional 10,000 new members of the United Mine Workers union. 

This week in 1901, Anarchist Leon Czolgosz (CHOW-gosh) shoots United States President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York. He died just over a week later. President McKinley had been re-elected after leading the nation back to prosperity after the Panic of 1893 and the Spanish-American War, which gave control of the Philippines and Puerto Rico to the United States. He was at the height of his power and popularity. But Czolgosz was a self-described anarchist, and held the President responsible for what he considered poor social conditions. Back then, if you described yourself in front of an audience in New York, you could be arrested for disturbing the peace or disorderly conduct. But McKinley didn’t like security coming between him and the people. He was shot as he was reaching out to shake his assassins hand in a reception line. On the day of his funeral, everything in the country stopped for five minutes. Trains stopped moving, no phone calls could be made, no telegraphs could be sent. Theodore Roosevelt would become President, and the Secret Service was put in charge of the President’s safety from then on. His assassin was quickly tried and convicted, then put to death in the electric chair. McKinley’s biographer, Margaret Leech, summed up the event when she wrote, “The new President was in office. The republic still lived. Yet, for a space, Americans turned from the challenge and the strangeness of the future. Entranced and regretful, they remembered McKinley's firm, unquestioning faith, his kindly, frock-coated dignity; his accessibility and dedication to the people: the federal simplicity that would not be seen again in Washington ... [After McKinley's death,] old men came to the [White House] on errands of state and politics, but their primacy was disputed by the young men crowding forward. The nation felt another leadership, nervous, aggressive, and strong. Under command of a bold young captain, America set sail on the stormy voyage of the twentieth century.” A hundred years later, America would again set sail on another stormy voyage. This time, it was a war on terror following the hijacking of jet planes to use as weapons by radical Islamic followers of Osama bin Laden. . 

This week in 1945, Igor Gouzenko, a Soviet Union embassy clerk, defects to Canada, exposing Soviet espionage in North America. That was the beginning of the Cold War. It lasted until 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved. Today, the tyrant Putin is trying to reassemble the old USSR. It will never work, but relations between Russia and western nations have chilled again.

In 1946, while riding a train to Darjeeling, Sister Teresa of the Loreto Sisters’ Convent claimed to have heard the call of God, directing her “to leave the convent and help the poor while living among them”. She would become known as Mother Teresa. Although she’s now gone, she’s now known as Saint Theresa of Calcutta.

1949

The Peekskill Riots erupt after a Paul Robeson concert in Peekskill, New York. I wonder what caused it….

Look that up liner…

Robeson was a singer who had performed in Peekslill before without incident. But he had also become politically active, and supported detant with the Soviet Union. The cold war was still young, and communism was frowned upon. He was critical of white supremacy around the world. According to Wikipedia, earlier that year, he attended a Soviet-sponsored World Peace Conference in Paris. He was asked about the growing tensions between the USA and the USSR. He said, “We in America do not forget that it was the backs of white workers from Europe and on the backs of millions of blacks that the wealth of America was built. And we are resolved to share it equally. We reject any hysterical raving that urges us to make war on anyone. Our will to fight for peace is strong...We shall support peace and friendship among all nations, with Soviet Russia and the People's Republics.” That statement doesn’t seem like it should cause a riot, does it? Not really. Maybe that’s why the Associated Press reported that he said something entirely different. Here’s what the Associated Press reported him as saying, “We colonial peoples have contributed to the building of the United States and are determined to share its wealth. We denounce the policy of the United States government which is similar to Hitler and Goebbels.... It is unthinkable that American Negros would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generations against the Soviet Union which in one generation has lifted our people to full human dignity.”

This fabricated statement was seen by many as un-American. The Peekslill Evening Star newspaper condemned the concert and encouraged people to express their anti-communist sentiment. Instead, the concert became a race riot. All thanks to a fabricated news report by the Associated Press, echoed by the many news agencies who got their news from the AP. Fake news is not a new phenomenon. It is our responsibility as citizens to question the media in much the same way it is the responsibility of the media to question our elected officials. Unfortunately, neither is being done as well as needed. 

Phone and email liner

If you live in Michigan, and you’re not allowed to vote for whatever reason; maybe you’re not old enough, or you’re a convicted felon, or you just forgot to register, here’s a tip you can use to get your voice heard on election day: Pretend you’re a dead person. It’s not as hard as it sounds. You don’t need any makeup. You don’t need to arrange a funeral. Just show up at your local polling location and claim to be somebody who used to vote, but died. You’ll have to do a little research. Look in the obituaries, find out where a recently deceases person lived and in what ward they lived, then show up and claim to be them. Since there’s no voter identification laws, because that would be racist, you don’t even have to prove your the now-deceased person. Just sign there name so it looks like they signed it, and go vote! Now, you might be thinking, “But Bob, how can you do that? Isn’t it against the law?” Well, probably. If anybody asks, I didn’t tell you to do it. But here’s why it’s possible. The Michigan Secretary of State refuses to do her job. Not only that, but she went to court to argue against doing her job. What job is that? Getting dead people off the voter rolls. As it turns out, 26-thousand dead people are still eligible to vote in Michigan. How do we know that? Because two years ago, before the 2020 election, the Public Interest Legal Foundation did the research to find out. The foundation, according to Hans von Spakovski, a board member of the organization, as well as a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, compared the names of registered voters in Michigan with the Social Security Administration’s death index and matched full names, full dates of birth, credit address history information and Social Security numbers to find almost 26-thousand dead registered voters. More than 3-thousand of them had been dead for over 20 years. They gave this valuable research information to the Secretary of State to aid in her obligation to remove the names from the voter rolls. But she didn’t remove the names, as required of her by section 8 of the national voter registration act. When asked to provide updated voter registration rolls, or let the public inspect them, she said that no public inspection would be allowed and no copies would be provided because of the Covid-19 pandemic. The foundation that did all the research filed a lawsuit, claiming that Secretary Benson refused to remove dead people from the voter rolls. Instead of agreeing to do her job, she filed a motion to dismiss the case! This woman literally went to court to keep dead people registered to vote! Twenty-six thousand of them! Secretary Benson’s spokesperson called the Foundation’s lawsuit an attempt to undermine democracy! That’s right! Getting dead people off of the voter registration list is a threat to democracy! This lady would rather go to court and claim that removing dead people from the voter rolls is an attempt to undermine democracy than do her job and remove the names. What could possibly be the reason for that? Is she just lazy? Twenty-six thousand is a lot of dead people. But the Foundation has already done all the research, provided the names, explained the methodology employed to insure its accuracy, and sent all of it to her in a nice, neat package to make it easy as pie for her to do her job. She would rather go to court. Well, the judge didn’t dismiss the lawsuit. Plus, the foundation has precedent on its side. They did the same thing in Pennsylvania, and the commonwealth (yes, Pennsylvania is a commonwealth) agreed to settle the case and remove the dead voters from the list. But not Michigan! Not Secretary of State Benson! She’ll have to defend her lack of action, her refusal to do her job, her denial to follow federal law, in court. One might assume this isn’t a partisan issue. It seem like common sense to remove dead people from voter rolls. That way, someone else can’t claim to be them and vote in their stead, and perhaps vote as themselves as well. That smell isn’t rotting flesh, it’s the rat in the office of Secretary of State in Michigan. There can be only two reasons she will fight to keep dead people voting: Either those votes are being sold, or they’re being given away to people willing to use them in the way they’re instructed. Look, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m not claiming the 2020 election was stolen. But when a Secretary of State will go to court to defend keeping dead people on the list of eligible voters, something fishy is going on. The other night, President Biden told the country that people who want to make America great again are a threat to democracy. I’m not sure he believes that, but he felt the need to say it. However, the bigger threat to democracy might be 26-thousand dead people voting in Michigan, or government officials who fight to keep it that way. When individuals take it upon themselves to install their own rules under the color of authority of the government, regardless of the law, regardless of their duty, regardless of the negative effect it has on the public, then democracy is threatened. When District Attorneys decide for themselves what laws they will enforce, and what laws they will let slide, democracy is threatened. We are a nation of laws. Our representative in congress are called lawmakers! If our laws are not followed, if our laws are not followed by our own government officials, if our laws are not enforced by the people we entrust to put the power of laws to work to keep us safe, to keep us healthy, to keep us living in peace, that’s when our democracy is threatened. Without laws and the proper enforcement of them, we descend into anarchy. That’s what some people want. That’s why people like George Soros, who might also be dead but we can’t tell, bankrolls elected District Attorney’s who will aid and assist the goal of anarchy by not enforcing the laws established by the people’s representatives. Perhaps one of the ways these D.A.’s get elected is by having dead people vote for them. How ironic would it be if a dead person voted for a District Attorney who dropped the charges against the person who killed him? Well, that can happen in Detroit. And the Michigan Secretary of State is willing to go to court to make sure it stays that way.

Speaking of voting, early voting will soon be underway in many states. It used to be that you had one day to vote, and if you could make it you did, and if you couldn’t make it, you didn’t. There were exceptions, of course, like absentee voting for service members stationed overseas, as well as their spouses. Today, we begin voting before election day, and our vote might still count even if we mail it in late. Voting by mail is one of the lasting effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. We had to take steps to make sure every eligible voter who wanted to vote safely could have their voice heard through the ballot box. Many states changed the voting rules in the middle of 2020 election campaign season. With those changes came opportunities to cheat. People were registered to vote without their knowledge. Mail-in ballots were filled out by somebody other than the legal voter. People showed up to the polls only to be told that they had already voted by mail. If voting is such a sacred right, why is it that this sacred right isn’t more closely protected with simple measures like having to prove you’re alive and that you are who you say you are? And if early voting is allowed, why does election day need to be a federal holiday? If election day is going to be a national holiday, then why do we need early voting? If election day is a national holiday, why can’t voters be required to show up at the polls in person? And show ID to prove who they are? We should make it easy to vote, but we shouldn’t make it easy to cheat. We should make it hard to cheat. For some reason, though, every time somebody tries to make it harder to cheat on elections, they’re automatically called racist, because, you know, Black people don’t have ID’s. Am I to assume all the Black people I see driving cars don’t have a license to do so? Are all the black people I see working doing so without a Social Security number? Are Black people who go fishing doing so without a permit because they didn’t have any identification? The truth is, people who call voter ID racist have run out of legitimate reasons to oppose the idea, so they fall back on the catch-all argument of racism. Asking voters to prove who they are in order to practice the sacred right of voting in the United States of America isn’t racist, it’s common sense. Our vote is a valuable thing. It should be protected and cherished, not exploited and made easy to be stolen or misrepresented. When you hear people object to voter ID and other measures to protect our vote, what you’re actually hearing is people who want to make it easier to cheat. Now, you migh be thinking, “But Bob, there’s never been any evidence of widespread voter fraud.” Sure, all the ballots that said Joe Biden were counted, and all the ballots that said Donald Trump were counted, and Joe had more. The question is, of all the mail-in ballots that were suddenly allowed because of Covid-19 election rule changes, how many were actually filled out by the person who’s name was on the ballot? Mail-in voting makes it easier to cheat. The pandemic is behind us now, or at least less deadly than it was. It’s time to remove the voting rules that make it easy to cheat. It’s time to restrict mail-in voting to the people who genuinely can’t make it to the polls on election day. It’s time to protect the sacred right of American voters. I’m not advocating for restricting who can vote. I encourage every eligible American to exercise that sacred right. If voting is that important, then it’s worth the effort to get to the polls on election day. It’s worth the effort to make sure people are who they say they are when they cast their ballot. It’s worth the effort to remove dead people from the voter registration lists, so that other people can’t take advantage of them postmortem. It’s important for the American people to have confidence in the system. We’ve seen what can happen when that confidence is broken. Well, it’s still broken, and it’s up to individual states, not the federal government, to create rules that encourage voting, prevent, not encourage cheating, and treat each individual vote with the respect and value it deserves. Republicans blame the democrats and democrats blame the republicans for attempting to destroy democracy. The truth is that democracy is already being destroyed by the by the voting system itself. It’s vulnerable. It’s not well-regulated. Until the American people have confidence in the security of our voting system, every election loser will have grounds to claim they were cheated. There won’t be any evidence to support the claim, but that’s not because there was no cheating, it’s because our voting rules make it easy to cheat without getting caught. In Michigan, you can vote, and you don’t even have to prove you’re still alive. How can anyone have any confidence in a system like that?

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2022. Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.