Memory is just about illegal

Hello my far flung and wonderfully wide-ranging friends, new and old, and hello to my somewhat grumpier listeners also – I sincerely hope this podcast will surprise you with new perspectives, unexpected fair mindedness and interesting insights, despite my unapologetically strong (and suddenly weirdly unpopular) anti-war opinions.

I was already well into the writing of this episode when the anniversary of my two year ago episode “Upright Wobblies and Low-Down Commies” came up on facebook.  These two should pair well, since that one talked about the earlier twentieth century, and this one takes us on a tour from Reagan to now – with, as usual, several eccentric but I think important stops along the way. 

As all too often lately, the big hug for this episode is really the feeling that you aren’t the only one questioning the official story. This was one of the key consolations I was always hoping to offer with this series, but I swear I have always got more episodes about pure uplift in the works than pieces with these harder truths to deliver.

But even though I try not to tie my pieces to current events, the robbery of context and memory can be too dramatic to responsibly ignore. I know it feels to many as if we’ve been living through an endless (and cumulative) series of panicking crises for five straight years now. I often feel that way too, and know that knowledge and open inquiry alone aren’t enough to get us through.

Promise I’ll add something to the whimsy, wonder and giggles pile again, soon. (Absolute metabolic necessity)

For anyone else who is pocasting or recording lectures or narration, I should pass on that the combination of the Schepps Omni Channel and the PuigTech 570 (Fairchild copy) compressor as a drop-in module, make a ‘radio sound’ much easier to dial in (and finally give me precision ‘de-essing’ though I admit I’m a total noob at proper calibration).

Some Waves plug-ins make my ten year old computer creak and stutter, but these are smooth (and Schepps Omni will definitely remind any X-er of the Tascam gear they desperately wanted as a teenager, and probably charm them even now) ;o)

Finally, here is a bunch of serious stuff that you definitely shouldn’t read and or watch, and if you do, you shouldn’t think about or remember it. You know how thought-police work, right? The less you know, the less you can say when they finally drag you in.

If you’re still not entirely comfortable with the Orwellian world we seem to be designing and demanding for ourselves, you’ll get some laughs and again get that crucial big hug of knowing you are not nearly so alone as it can sometimes feel.

Yikes though, I apologize in advance, okay? For mental safety reasons, please be sure to book a visit with a dolphin, a puppy and a kitten, immediately afterward.

(You think I’m kidding, don’t you?)

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Russell Brand – offers us good questions and winning exuberance (and I’m a hard sell). He’s taking a lot of heat now, because he’s interested in all sides, and heterodox voices, his whole cause is finding a dialogue so we can make genuine social progress. Which to some now makes him a right winger (which accusation he answers himself quite hilariously, below the first quite interesting post).

“We’re not allowed to talk about this”

“So I’m a right winger now, am I?”

CTV is the straightest of the straight when it comes to Canadian news. Hard-core middle, and even they can’t ignore the questions any more.

Mounting questions about the Canadian Army training Ukrainian extremists

Matt Taibbi is a thing of beauty. A gifted writer who, like Hunter Thompson, can often find a hilarious way to put an incredibly depressing truth, without losing the essential quality of the insight and especially the key drama, in the process. America is very lucky to have this guy (and he is very lucky to have Substack – but Scheerpost is a great place to encounter many smart outsider voices gathered and without a paywall!)

America’s intellectual No-fly Zone

Aaron Mate is, like Taibbi, a genuinely independent investigative journalist in a time when these have almost all been domesticated and brought into harness, or else exiled to the fringe wilderness.

Siding With Ukraine’s Far-Right, US Sabotaged Zelensky’s Peace Mandate

Here’s a piece about that disgusting Nuland phone call from Reuters (no doubt ‘owned stooges of Moscow’ – and retroactively, no less – since they published this story eight freakin’ years ago!)

Also kind of barfy-hilarious to note this detail – who exactly was doing the double-speak backpedalling for former Darth Vader advisor Victoria Nuland at that time? None other than our dear sweet friend Jen Psaki! (like I say, it is all so damn incestuous, nauseating and creepy!)

Here’s the BBCs version of the transcript of that conversation, with some commentary added.

Pretty much absolutely yikes, right?

Dolphin, puppy, kitten – you get it now, don’t you?

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