Season 3 Episode 9 October 30, 2022

It’s season 3, episode 9!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  On this episode, we’ll hear about boobs, cheerleaders, and and black baseball players.  But first, (not the headlines)(China edition)….

The Chinese Communist Party just doesn’t quit.  They have no respect for anyone or any other authority of any government anywhere in the world.  Their leader, Xi Zinping has appointed himself to another term, and even had his predecessor removed from the party Congress on live television.  Not because he represented any threat, but because he could, and needed to show the Chinese people a demonstration of his ultimate power.  And Jinping does have ultimate power in China.  But like most dictators, having borders on his power is unacceptable.  That’s why it’s no surprise Chinese Communist  Party agents have been operating in the United States as if they have some type of diplomatic immunity.  Well, they don’t.  That’s why several of them have been arrested recently.  An Associated Press story tells of two who were accused of trying to get a U.S. official to pass along confidential information about an ongoing investigation of a Chinese company, including information about the evidence the government has and any witnesses who were cooperating.  The same story also mentions that the Justice Department also charged four other Chinese agents, working for a University in America, of attempting to steal sensitive technology and equipment.  The same four are also accused of  interfering with protests critical of Chinese policies.
Not only does the Chinese Communist Party ignore the laws of the United States to advance their own priorities, they also try to enforce their own laws on United States territory.   A CNN story tells of seven Chinese nationals, working for the Chinese Communist Party, who were arrested for using intimidation to coerce Chinese nationals in the United States to return to China to face criminal charges.  Now, it’s certainly China’s right to pursue criminals where ever they go.  Many countries keep track of where fugitives are, if they can.  Sometimes they’re out of reach because of diplomatic reasons.  But keeping track of them and harassing them are two different things, and China has crossed the line with their tactics.  The seven people arrested are accused of a variety of illegal tactics not just against the fugitive, but also his family both in the United States and the ones still in China.  They were threatened with different types of harm, incarceration in Chinese prisons, and continued harassment should they refuse to return to China.  All while taking advantage of the freedoms afforded them in the United States.  The charges for the seven include working together to act as illegal agents of the People’s Republic of China.  I wonder if they found their targe because he opened up a tic toc account!  Now, you might be thinking, “But Bob, why is the United States harboring Chinese criminals?”  I wondered the same thing.  Well, in the story about the arrests, there’s a link to an older CNN story that describes the pursuit of the Chinese fugitives as Operation Foxhunt.  China has asked for cooperation from the United States, Canada and other countries with apprehending white-collar criminals who left China with millions of dollars that were accumulated illegally. Some were business executives, some were government officials.  The United States, despite having no extradition treaty with China, has cooperated.  The article cites a number of examples, most of whom were also found guilty of financial crimes in the United States.  If a Chinese fugitive keeps his nose clean while in the United States, he’s less likely to be sent back to China.  So, while the United States is cooperating, that doesn’t mean sending Chinese Communist Party agents to the United States to intimidate our residents, regardless of their national origin, will be tolerated.  The alleged crime committed by a Chinese national now living in the United States does not justify other Chinese nationals breaking American laws.  In China, the government is free to use intimidation tactics and threats to achieve a desired result.  
The real problem is that this behavior by the Chinese Communist Party is only a symptom of the real issue.  China has no respect for any other government, its territories, it’s laws.  The Chinese Communist Party conducts itself in a way that reflects a complete disregard for the sovereignty of any other nation.  They feel they can have their way anywhere in the world, and they’ll send people to other countries to act behind the scenes to accomplish their goals.  
China gained a lot of influence in the world when other nations handed over the manufacturing industry to China’s millions and millions of laborers.  Their factories have provided them political influence, and economic controls over manufacturing, supplies and distribution.  China has been successful in using that influence to infiltrate populations and governments all over the world, to the degree that they feel they can act with impunity anywhere they want.  The arrests of Chinese nationals breaking United States laws in the name of the Chinese Communist Party is a good sign that there are limits to how much intrusion the American government will tolerate.  However, as I’ve said on this program before, the powers that be are the ones who decide which laws are enforced in America.  As long as America is beholden to China for any reason, our willingness to deal with Chinese aggression, spying and harassing residents of the United States, their theft of intellectual property, manufacture of poisonous addictive drugs, and other transgressions will be questioned.  Some say it’s a delicate balancing act to diplomatically deal with China, and I’m sure it is.  But it looks to me like China isn’t as interested in a balancing act as America is.  While America pussyfoots around trying to maintain detente, Chine runs roughshod over diplomatic protocol and humanitarianism.  Xi Jenping has consolidated his power at home, but the long-term goal of the Chinese Communist Party is to consolidate all the power in the world to their headquarters in Beijing.  If you want to be the topcat, you have to establish power over the other cats.  China already has Russia in its pocket.  If the United States isn’t next on the list, it can’t be far behind.  By the way, if you think Covid-19 protocols in America are crazy, be glad you don’t live in China.  But let me be up front about one thing:  The Chinese government never made a vaccine mandatory.  Now, before you say, “Ah ha!,” let me add that they haven’t allowed any foreign-made vaccines into China, and they haven’t had a lot of luck creating a vaccine that’s as good as the ones made in America.  No, they didn’t mandate a vaccine.  What they did mandate was testing.  You needed a negative test to go just about anywhere or enter any building.  If a test came back positive, China’s “Zero Covid” policy mandates a lockdown.  And while in America, the Covid-19 pandemic is virtually over, and people have been living normal lives for quite a while, one-point-three million people in Shanghai are currently under lockdown.  It’s just one district of a city of 25-million.  Just this summer, when Americans were celebrating Independence day, all 25-million of them were locked down, causing food shortages and protests.  They were told it would be just a few days, but then the lockdowns kept getting extended.  Remember “two weeks to flatten the curve?”  Well, while two weeks stretched out to over a year for most of us, those two weeks are still happening in China.  Under the Communist Party, there is no room for dissent.  You are not allowed to express your opinion about the lack of vaccines or being forced to get one.  They have a different approach to Covid in China.  The Communist government is using the virus to gain even more control over the population there.  More control over the movement of citizens, more control over who enters the country.  Have you ever wondered why China doesn’t have an immigration problem?  You know what just occurred to me?  Instead of providing a vaccine for Covid, requiring a negative test to move about also gives the government an opportunity to collect DNA from its citizens and anyone else living there.  The Chinese Communist Party may have used a pandemic they probably also created to gather DNA on a billion people for a database unlike no other.  Perhaps they hoped that a vaccine wouldn’t be created, and their method of controlling the spread would be utilized around the world, creating the opportunity to collect DNA from people around the planet.  Unfortunately for them, we did come up with a vaccine.  Not just one, but three.  Sure, a lot of people in American and elsewhere got tested, too, but the bio-material collected wasn’t used for nefarious purposes.  From that respect, the Covid-19 vaccines may have helped stop the spread of communism.  Once again, American capitalism saves the day.          



1872
Women’s suffrage in the United States: In defiance of the law, suffragist Susan B. Anthony votes for the first time, and is later fined $100.  She never paid the fine.  She was never forced to pay the fine.  Had she been forced to pay the fine, she could have taken the case all the way to the Supreme Court, where it might have been determined that women should, indeed, have the right to vote.  

1896
A picture showing the bare breasts of a woman appears in National Geographic magazine for the first time.  National Geographic was the first to do it, and they’ve done it many times since then.  In fact, generations of young boys have learned all about the world in which we live, thanks in part to the lure of possible photographs in the next issue.  The first one, according to their website, was a photograph of a Zulu bride (topless) and her groom in South Africa.  The editors felt is was allowed because nudity is not necessarily “pornographic” in nature, but is a legitimate tool in showing world cultures as they really are.  I remember seeing those pictures as a kid, and thinking that it must be summertime there.  You certainly couldn’t do that in the winter.  But I grew up in a climate with winter.  What about the kid who grew up in a part of the world with a similar climate, but all the women wore clothes.  They’re probably thinking about how much their country sucks compared to that place where the women walk around with no shirt on.  Fact is, women can legally walk around topless in some parts of the United States.  I believe I talked about it in season one.  

1898
Cheerleading is started at the University of Minnesota with Johnny Campbell leading the crowd in cheering on the football team. Although cheers from individuals in the crowd at sporting events had been going on for centuries, Johnny Campbell decided he was going to try to make a difference that day.  He came up with a mostly nonsensicle group of syllables and words, then got others to recite it in unison.  It wasn’t a real easy one, either, like “Let’s go, team!”  Nooo...Here it is as written on Sportssavour.com.  “Rah, rah, rahl!  Ski-u-mah, Hoo Rah!  Hoo-rah!  Varsity! Varsity! Varsity! Minn-e-so-ta!”  The cheer seemed to work, as the struggling team won the game.  He’s even recognized as the patriarch of the sport of cheerleading and the anniversary of the game marks its official beginning.  When I say patriarch of the sport, that’s because cheerleading is now a sport in it’s own right.  It took a long time to evolve, moving from football team to football team.  Then other sports began gathering organized vocal supporters.  Basketball has a healthy cheerleader program at most levels of play.  The skill level to be a cheerleader has become so demanding at the highest levels that women audition for limited positions.  Not all teams have cheerleaders, though.  In the National Football League, there are several teams that don’t have cheerleaders.  And unlike the cheerleaders for the High School team, the NFL cheerleaders don’t travel with the team.  They’re part of the attraction you can only get when you see the team play at home.  I spend 13 Friday nights a year doing color commentary for High School football radio broadcasts where I live, and one school has cheerleaders that do a push-up for every point their team scores during the game.   They’ve had to do as many as 35 push-ups this season, but the team also got shut out twice.  You might be thinking, “Bob, what’s the big deal about cheerleading?  I’m not even into sports.”  Well, by “not into sports,” you probably mean that you don’t watch the individual games.  But sports has a much larger effect on our lives and society as a whole than you might think.  Just because you never saw them play, you’re familiar with people like Charles Barkley, Michael Jordan, Ronaldo and Tom Brady.  If you live in America, you see them on television everyday in commercials and in interviews and on talk shows.  Sometimes they even make the evening news.  While spectator sports have been around since the time of the gladiators, the spirit of competition that began with sports that attracted an audience led to people who wanted to be a part of the team without being on the field.  At some level, it does make the players play better, hearing organized cheers from the audience.  Today, we compete in many more ways than just physical competition.  We judge who can bake better or who can create the most interesting automobile modification. Putting a time limit on such subjective competitions makes it more of a challenge.  Well, Mary took a lot of extra time in the warehouse getting her ingredients.  If she doesn’t get that oven pre-heated, it could come back to bite her!”  You just don’t have to go to the games to have an effect anymore.  The internet and real-time voting for winners and losers on television programs makes it possible for all of us to be cheerleaders, and the right software will even make it possible for you to cheer in unison.  And you said you weren’t into sports.  Bake that cake!  Bake that cake!  Bake that cake!            

1901
Sigma Phi Epsilon, the largest national male collegiate fraternity is established at Richmond College, in Richmond, VA.  I didn’t go to college.  I went to a tech school for a bit, hated it, and joined the Air Force.  But my first address on my own was the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity at Muhlenburg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.  Fresh out of high school, I rented a room there for the summer.  It cost 10 bucks a week, and I got one shelf in the communal refrigerator in the kitchen.  It had a day room, and a shower room and lavatory on each floor.  Women lived there, too, even though it was a frat house.  Men’s rooms were on the first floor, and women’s rooms were on the second floor.  But by the time I got there, all the men’s rooms were taken.  The guy in charge asked the women if they would mind if I lived on the second floor with them, on the condition that I had to use the first floor bathroom and shower.  The only reason there was still an empty room on the second floor was that the door on that last room didn’t have a doorknob, and it didn’t lock, either.  They women agreed to let me live among them.  In the room that didn’t lock.  So there I was, barely out of high school, the only man on a floor full of college women.  I found a small boulder at a nearby construction site that I used to keep my door closed at night.  Because the women could hear me move the boulder in the morning to get out, they started calling my room “the cave.”  I had a lot of good memories there, and while in Allentown for a pinball convention last year, I went by the old SPE house for the first time in decades only to discover that it had been torn down to make way for the Parkway Boulevard Building.  The Parkway Boulevard Building is one of the first 20 projects in the world to pursue CORE green certification.  Anonymous donors, 1970’s graduates of the college, are paying for the building.  Some of the features of the building include native landscaping, which I can assure you didn’t exist when I lived there, as I found six-foot tall marijuana plants growing on a bank just outside the west exit.  It’ll have covered bike storage, even though it’s at the bottom of a steep hill, rainwater recycling and low water consumption fixtures, energy use reduction of 70 percent compared to regular buildings, and according to an article on the college website, the use of a third-party diversity and inclusion assessment tool to benchmark the design and construction teams.  I don’t know exactly what that means, but it sounds racist.  And, since the world’s leading expert on bird collisions is a professor at Muhlenburg, the windows in the building have bird-safe coatings.    

  1920
In the United States, KDKA of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania starts broadcasting as the first commercial radio station. The first broadcast is the result of the U.S. presidential election, 1920.  I did my Senior High term paper on Radio Broadcasting, as I was already working at my local radio station by the time I graduated.  I’ve seen other claims of the first radio broadcasts, but this was the first commercial broadcast.  The first commercial on the first commercial radio broadcast?  Eveready Batteries.  Today’s Eveready Batteries are better known as Energizer Batteries and the bunny that keeps going.  And going.

1936
The British Broadcasting Corporation initiates the BBC Television Service, the world’s first regular, “high-definition” (then defined as at least 200 lines) service. Renamed BBC1 in 1964, the channel still runs to this day.  Now, here’s a perfect example of how the definition of words can change with advancing time and changing technology.  Back in 1936, the definition of High Definition television was 200 lines of resolution.  Today, 200 lines would look like the screen of a game of pong from 1977.  Today’s televisions offer more than a thousand lines, and people who use today’s High Definition televisions have a hard time looking at screens that aren’t HD.  Some even criticize lower forms of HD, such as the difference in the broadcast pictures of an NFL game on different networks.  The Fox pictures aren’t as clear as the CBS pictures.  

1938
Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells’s (no relation) The War of the Worlds, causing anxiety in some of the audience in the United States.  That’s an understatement.  There were people who thought the description of an invasion of our planet by beings from another world was real, and attempted suicide rather than surrender.  New Jersey National Guardsmen called headquarters, asking to where they should report, police station rung up thousands of phone calls from panicked listeners.  According to History dot com, listeners in Providence, Rhode Island called on the electric company to cut the power to the city to hide if from space invaders.  This was near the end of the great depression, and the American people were in a “what else could go wrong” frame of mind.  So, to many, it was no surprise that the world was under attack by warriors from another planet.  The program had a disclaimer at the beginning and near the middle of the hour-long broadcast, but just as accusations of false news and disinformation cloud our willingness to accept what may actually be real, the brilliant writing and acting prompted many to believe the disclaimers weren’t true.  Many listeners simply never heard the first one, as they tuned in a minute or two late.  The real brilliance of it, though, is the fact that it was performed live with a cast of 10 actors and a 27-piece orchestra.  It could never have been accomplished on live television, but the theater of the mind activated by the spoken voice was a wonderful demonstration of the power of the relatively new medium of radio.     

1945
Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs signs a contract for the Brooklyn Dodgers to break the baseball color barrier.  It was a monumental accomplishment at the time.  When you look back on it from today’s perspective, it seems like the 1940’s were less bigoted than the 50’s and 60’s.  That’s just my perspective.  But here’s the weird part:  In this year’s World Series between the Houston Astros and the Philadelphia Phillies, there are no American-born Black players on either team.  It’s the first time in 72 years.  Like you, I have no idea who keeps track of that stuff.  But since it was brought up, there are groups of people, not just Black people, who consider this a gross injustice.  It’s more racism!  How can there not be any black American players in the World Series when almost 13 percent of the population of America is black?   Well, basic math is probably where you’ll find the answer.  Each team has a roster of 26 players, for a total of 52.  Thirty-eight percent of the players in the league are non-white, like black, Latino, Asian.  More specifically, black players made up 7.2 percent of opening day rosters this season, down from 18 percent in 1991.  So, right off the bat, no pun intended, of the 52 on the World Series rosters, only about 4 of them should even be black, statistically speaking.  The other qualifier is that he be American-born.  A little more than 70 percent of MLB players are from the 50 states.  So 30 percent of 4 is  1.2.  So, theoretically, there should be at least one black, American-born player among the two World Series teams this year.  The fact that there is not would indicate that there is a team among those that are not playing in the World Series that has an unfair share of black American-born players.   A Bleacher Report story quotes the President of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City as saying the situation is Eye-opening.  “It is somewhat startling that two cities that have high African American populations, there's not a single Black player,"  he says, as if teams are only allowed to choose players from the city in which their home stadium resides.  Perhaps a Major League Baseball Equity Policy is needed to insure that at each team have at least 1.2 black American-born players.  Then we’ll make sure that each National Basketball Association team has at least 60 percent white players, to correspond more accurately with the actual population demographics of the Nation..       

1960
At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Dr. Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.  Today, we know there are other animals that use tools as well.  Birds use pebbles to break the eggs of other birds, and use stalks to lure ants out of tree trunks.  Elephants use tools to scratch in the wild, and in captivity, paint brushes to create works of art.  Dolphins use rock in much the same way that birds do, and they use sponges as a cushion when poking their snouts where it doesn’t belong is search of food.      

1970
Genie, a 13-year-old feral child is found in Los Angeles, California. She had been locked in her bedroom for most of her life.  Her father, who kept her in captivity, never spoke to her, only using grunt sounds.  This girl had no idea there was a way to verbally communicate, using words, with other people.  She became a case-study as well as an effort to undo the damage that had been done to her by her years of isolation.  There were two trains of thought on how we are able to learn language.  One suggested that there was a limited window of opportunity to understand how language works, and it expired soon after puberty.  The other believed that the proper training could overcome any missed opportunity.  As it turns out, progress made by the young lady was inconclusive, but after some initial progress at using words to express herself, she eventually retreated back into silence, preferring to express herself with facial expressions, body language and art.  Later, Genie would become a starting point for the argument about the fine line between helping someone who needs help and gathering as much research as possible in the hope that valuable and rare information can be learned.  Genie, if she’s still alive, would be 65 years old now.  Nobody really knows where she is or what her real name is.  She was last seen by a researcher on her 29th birthday.  She is presumed to be in the care of the State of California.  

1973
The Netherlands experiences the first Car Free Sunday caused by the 1973 oil crisis. Highways are deserted and are used only by cyclists and roller skaters.  I know it’s hard to imagine an energy crisis the likes of the one we had in the early 1970’s, but it seems to be getting more likely every week.  Gasoline prices are rising again after a late-summer decline, the Saudi’s say it’s not a good time to be dipping into your oil reserves, just after they announced a 2-million barrel a day decline in production, and the Biden administration is still hell-bent on weaning America off of fossil fuels when we have plenty.  But just as John Lennon challenged us to imagine no possessions, and questioned if we even could, I doubt people younger than myself can imagine a day with no cars on the highways.  Just big, wide, never-ending ribbons of asphalt or cement, stretching on into the sunrise or sunset until the ribbon gets too thin to see.  Empty of all fuel-powered life, we would begin to wonder why we need them, and the parking lots to which they lead.  But alas, to was only one day, and it was in the Netherlands.  They have canals there, too, so it probably wasn’t that big a deal.  Honestly, many of the pickup trucks I see on America’s roads today probably wouldn’t fit down many of the streets of Amsterdam, anyway.

1979
Iran hostage crisis begins: a group of Iranians, mostly students, invades the US embassy in Tehran and takes 90 hostages (53 of whom are American).  They would be held in captivity for 444 days.  On that last day, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as President of the United States.  The American hostages would board a plant to Europe as he was being being sworn in.  It’s been more than 40 years since Iran declared itself an enemy of the United States.  Today, Iran is supplying Russia with drones to blast civilian and power infrastructure positions in Ukraine.  Ironically, the Iranian made drones are probably based on the reverse engineering of American drones that were shot down and confiscated by Iran.

2008
Barack Obama becomes the first African-American to be elected President of the United States.  

2008
Proposition 8 passes in California, revoking state recognition of LGBT marriages.  Of all the places in the country where you would think gay marriage would be accepted, California would be at the top of the list.  But in 2008, a majority of voters decided that gay marriage should not be legal in California.  Ultimately, the case made it’s way to the Supreme Court.  It ruled that the proponents of Proposition 8 didn’t have the legal grounds to legally defend it, and essentially left a lower court’s ruling intact, which made gay marriage legal again in California.  This is another case where the Constitution had to step in and over rule the majority.  Yes, that old document written by a bunch of white guys.  Imagine where those of us who don’t fit in might be if it weren’t for that antiquated document that is the foundation of our society.  It’s some of the same people who benefit most from it who are the loudest opponents of it.  To those people I say, “Be careful what you wish for.  You just might get it.”

Phone and email liner
unfinished business

Well, it finally happened.  Elon Musk has officially taken over Twitter.  Personally, I don’t really care, but it seems like a lot of people do, and that’s enough to spark my interest.  On the surface, it appears to me that twitter has a lot more influence than it should, considering the the comparatively low number of Americans who use it.  I understand it’s used by people in other countries as well, but it’s advertising value is most prevalent in the United States.  With that said, only about 23 percent of Americans use twitter, compared to 61 percent of Americans who have a facebook profile.  I understand that just because you have a profile doesn’t mean you use it, and that applies to both platforms.  And then there’s the evidence that a very small percentage of the people who have a twitter profile are making most of the twitter posts.  So that means a very small portion of America is actually participating in content creation, while the rest are simply followers or not engaged at all.  So was it worth 44 billion dollars?  Probably not.  But if anybody can afford to make a 44 billion dollar mistake, it’s Elon Musk.  His grand vision for twitter is something entirely different than what it was last week.  Four top executives were let go on Mr. Musk’s first day on the job.  There are rumors that as many as 75 percent of the staff will be let go, but I’ll wait and see what actually happens.  The good news for Elon Musk is that 88 percent of Americans are aware of twitter, and maybe he can attract a bunch of those people with the headlines he’ll be making in the near future concerning how the social media tool will adapt to his vision.  I have seen online activity elsewhere that would indicate more people are willing to participate in the twitterverse if Musk’s vision comes true.  As an impartial observer, it seems to me that twitter has very haphazard policy guidelines at the moment.  When the President of the United States gets banned but the Ayatolla of Iran doesn’t, there seems to be a little bit of confusion there.  
Back in July, a group called Moms for Liberty got locked out of twitter for criticizing a California bill concerning gender transition.  Moms for Liberty posted a statement that said, “Gender dysphoria is a mental health disorder that is being normalized by predators across the USA. California kids are at extreme risk from predatory adults. Now they want to ‘liberate’ children all over the country. Does a double mastectomy on a preteen sound like progress?”  Twitter deemed the post a violation of its rule against hateful conduct.  The bill, which was signed into law in September, makes California a Sanctuary state for children who want a sex-change operation.  Not just kids in California, but kids from other states, too.  The law makes it possible for a kid who makes it to the California border to get hormone therapy and surgeries without the knowledge or consent of the parents.  The child will become a ward of the state while so-called gender-affirming care will be administered.  The law also prohibits courts and lawyers in California from enforcing subpoenas from other states demanding that California tell parents where their kids are.  So your child can essentially disappear forever, and the state of California will keep their location a secret.  As a parent, the California law strips you of all of your parental rights.  It’s no wonder Mom’s for Liberty were lobbying against the law.  The fact that twitter blocked them from the platform says a lot about the former administration.  Will Elon Musk turn twitter into a open forum for philosophies and ideas?  Will it become a cesspool of hate speech without any moderation?  We’ll see.  In the meantime, there’s some comfort in knowing that groups like Moms for Liberty will have a voice where it was once taken  away.  You’ll be able to have a voice, too.  I’m not an active twitter user, and I’m not sure how it works or how you find stuff you want to read there, but the fact that people and organizations will not get banned for posts that criticize a law that lets California kidnap your child and change their sex without your permission or even knowledge is a step in the right direction.  

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.