WERU-FM Community Soapbox (Part 2)

Good morning! This is Reverend Doktor C. Sarian, voice of the Mid Coast Sub Church of Paranoia, a schismatic sect of the Church of the SubGenius, with a paranoid look at the news on the Murphy channel.

The military is extolled by guests who repeat threadbare lies about defending freedom and spreading democracy. They carefully avoid framing the military as the enforcement arm of the Whirled Bank. Troops are always depicted as doughty heroes, rescuing children from the rubble, never as the dark knights of corporate capital, protecting desert wellheads from locals, and punishing colored people for being too poor to defend themselves.

Climate discussion has reached an intractable polemic. Everyone who doubts that human activity controls Earth’s climate is a climate denier. Weather worries and disaster capitalism inflate fear of changing conditions. Compulsory consumption of toxic new technology mitigates imposition of Agenda 21 austerity measures somewhat. Buying new bulbs and cars stops climate change more profitably than turning off lights and riding bikes. Just don’t bring up the little Congolese children working down in the cobalt mines.

Progressives of every stripe are proud of their non-profits. Profit is a bad thing, so a non-profit must be good thing. Right? What they never say is the first thing they must do to be non-profit is incorporate. Although they say “non-profit organization”, no such thing exists unless it is a registered corporation. Activists jump through regulatory hoops at the statehouse to be accredited as a 501 (c) 3 corporation, then they never again breathe the c-word as they solicit support from leftists to whom corporatism is anathema. Corporate structuring is the praxis of patrism: monolithic, hierarchical, authoritarian. Albert Einstein said A problem cannot be solved with the thinking that created it. Corporate structuring is Trojan Horse in alternative culture. Every 501 (c) 3 corporation is an adjunct to globalist fascism.

With each iteration of Democracy Now! Amy Goodman waxes more shrill and partisan. She segues briskly from pat-a-cake patriotism to matter-of-fact global warming without drawing a line connecting madcap militarism to climate crisis. The obligatory salute to armed forces coupled to a dire forecast is plausible only if people don’t know about the Pentagon’s weaponization of weather. At the end of each show it all gets tied up neatly with a bow, ending in supplication for donation to her non-profit corporation.

Community radio should be a voice of many voices; that is - the many voices that are unheard in commercial media. More business supporters means more support for business. Though some listeners may resonate with support-the-troops cheerleading, martial messages are available all day every day on the Military channel, the Christian channel, the Clear channel. Should CONspiracy propaganda be permitted to pollute programming on the Murphy channel too?

Get more SLACK! Support community radio!

Good Morning! This is Reverend Doktor C. Sarian, voice of the Mid Coast Sub Church of Paranoia with a special paranoid report.

It was reported recently that this year’s November was the hottest on record, though as usual, they never mention that the period of record keeping is less than a second in geological time. In December however it was reported that record cold was exceeded in thousands of locations around the globe. Images of snow on the Pyramids of Giza appeared on the net, some weren’t even photoshopped! Arctic ice was variously reported to have both doubled and dwindled this year, and record cold was reported in Antarctica (it’s almost summer there..). That darn global warming! You never know if it is going to be hotter or colder.

But hey! Whether you are baked to hardpan or frozen solid under a glacier, one thing is for certain: your body is accumulating radioactive particles from Bikini to Fukujima, Kosovo to Falluja, Los Alamos to Hiroshima, Three Mile Island to Chernoble, and there is nothing you or anyone can do about it. Every day there is more scary news about carbon dioxide levels increasing, but there is no news whatsoever about the increase of radionuclides in the environment. In response to the explosion at Dai Ichi the U.S. government closed monitoring stations, raised exposure thresholds and lowered safety standards. You can get any of thousands of electronic devices to amuse yourself and amaze your friends (I want to pork you, Siri!), but you cannot buy a Geiger counter anywhere and they are illegal in New York. 

Radiation is like salt – you can always add more, but you can never add less. As background radiation steadily increases with each new incident that releases a “tiny” amount, and every living thing gets hotter and hotter with internal emitters, the pain will drive people insane and the global civil war between the 99 and the 1%  will devolve to a personal struggle for daily survival in a post infrastructure landscape against erstwhile neighbors in every city and hamlet.

But don’t worry! Be happy! It’s not the end of the world! No! In fact, the world is going to be just fine! In only, say, ten million years from now the background radiation will be back in the ground the way it was one hundred years ago and we can all come out of our holes into the sunlight again! That’s something good to look forward to!

Get more SLACK! Support Community Radio!

Good Morning! This is Reverend Doktor C. Sarian, voice of the Mid Coast Sub Church of Paranoia, with a special paranoid report:

Bringing the war home department:

Amazing how events unfold as foretold. In the movie Paycheck, a future prediction of warfare and collapse cannot be avoided. So too, current events seem uncannily scripted.

As seen in foreign war zones far from American suburbia, heavily armed troops in armored vehicles are patrolling residential streets, firing gas and rounds at anything that moves. Not the streets of Afghanistan, Iraq, or Ukraine, but Missouri, USA. 

Media pundits and government sources frantically deploy their stock meme - that“unrest” in Ferguson is a flare up of racial tension. Ho hum! America has featured racial tension for centuries. The U.S. president, poster boy for racial ambiguity, while affirming Americans’ right to assemble peaceably to petition for redress, nevertheless characterizes anyone who “clashes” with police as a criminal.

What neither he, nor the pundits are mentioning is that “unrest” in Ferguson has little to do with race, but rather is a clarion of the growing grumble from oppressed people of any race. As long as revolt can be framed as racial, it is divisive. As soon as people across the country realize official oppression is available for citizens of any race, hundreds of millions will find common cause against the central banking conspiracy.

In the meantime however, the military industrial complex will respond to protest with the only therapy it knows – mechanized violence. People running in the streets is a sure sign of a failed state; keeping people out of sight is stability to government, even if it means terrorizing and murdering to keep them indoors.

In a true takes-one-to-know-one moment, President Obomba says the Islamic State is savage, that they kill indiscriminately for no apparent reason. Oh, there’s a reason all right. It’s the same reason the U.S. government kills indiscriminately – to terrorize the people into submission. Ferguson, Missouri is only the opening act of application of war methods domestically. Just as the use of overwhelming force has created a fierce resistance in the occupied Levant, soon armed resistance will become the only recourse left to citizens of occupied America wishing to preserve their communities, their freedoms, their lives.

Get more SLACK! Support Community Radio!

082414

There has been a lot of talk lately about poverty. Like warfare, surveillance, pollution and alienation, nothing can be done about it– it’s just part of the human condition. Every year it is news that the gap between rich and poor has widened. The world over, poverty is a prominent concern. Homelessness, food insecurity, illness and crime are the sad symptoms of people struggling with poverty. How to end poverty?

There is no such thing as poverty. There is only wealth disparity. If no one has anything, no one is poor, but when someone has everything, everyone else is poor. An interesting experiment in anthropology. A group of chimps was fed cucumbers. They were fine. When half the chimps received grapes, the other half threw their cucumbers. They had become poor. And they revolted. Who could blame them? It would suck to be stuck with cukes when the neighbors have grapes! By the same token, what would be the point of being wealthy if everyone were equally wealthy? It wouldn’t seem like wealth if everyone had it.

Poverty is built into the system. The capitalist economy is based upon profit derivation, The ethic of profit says it is okay to drain off a portion of value at every transaction. Workers are paid less than the value they produce, goods and services cost more than it took the workers to produce them. Every fiscal quarter the screws are tightened and the disparity increases, Prices rise, wages decline and more people drop in the traces, out of a job, their service disconnected, home foreclosed. The result is a regressive accumulation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands. The logical endgame of capitalist economy is a single entity owning everything, and all people reduced to desperation and slavery. Despite manifestly inequitable price structuring, it is the individual who is accountable for his own finances. Anyone who falls behind paying bills has no one else to blame. The state may step in with a program to help customers pay off arrearages to megacorp, but there is no state program requiring businesses to pay employees the value they produce, and charge no more than products are worth.

That won’t happen because the morality of inequity is burned into the collective conscious of the lumpen proletariat. It is considered unethical to charge the wealthy more because they can afford it, but it is not considered unethical to charge the poor a higher rate because they can’t afford it. The poor cannot hide their assets when the landlord, the utility, the state demand payment, but wealthy corporations can take the money and run. Overwhelmed ratepayers are blamed for adding to the costs for those still being served, while malicious structuring continues to provide bonuses for executives and shareholders. It’s like Parker Brothers’ Monopoly. Ever notice how it is the banker who always wins?

It is high time to stop blaming the victim. A system that charges the highest rate to those who can least afford and gives bonuses to those who can already afford anything is cruel and unjust punishment. There is no legal recourse because the laws protect unjust patterns of ownership. The predatory capitalist economy will continue to centralize and oppress until the breaking point. The only escape will come when people realize what the CONspiracy needs to control everyone is their consent. Profit is phalse SLACK! It appears to make your life better while making it worst for everyone. 

Stop buying stupid products! 

Give money away!

Braise “BoB”!

Get more SLACK! Support community radio!

032014

Good morning! This is Yo in Tremont

There has been a lot of pearl-clutching lately about what the new administration might or might not do, including defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It hasn’t happened yet, but the meme is for us to fight for more federal funding.

You don’t have to be a critic of big government to realize tax dollars are tainted. As Chase Iron Eyes puts it The hand that feeds is the hand that can starve. Any person or project waxes fat during good times, and grows lean during ill times. Why should WERU Community Radio be any different?

A good chunk of the federal money goes to buying syndicated shows. It would be too bad not to have This Way Out, WINGS, or Guns and Butter, but if we can’t afford, we can’t afford. Those slots could be available for local programming, call-ins. I know I could put a show together!

Another big chunk of money goes to salaries. As much as we all appreciate the work our staffers do, WERU Community Radio was never intended as a job creator. Once again, if we can’t afford we can’t afford. It may be time to ask staff to volunteer too – if they care that much about community radio. ANYone will work for money..

Listeners! If this is your favorite spot on the dial, step up! Become a member today! 

Members! If you want syndicated shows and professional staff, pony up! You pay peanuts, you get monkeys! 

And friends – everyone can help with a donation of cash, stuff and time to keep the station open. Here’s something simple anyone can do: when calling the station, use the local number because, paradoxically, toll-free calls cost.

There is something deeply wrong about protesting the government, then begging for tax money. Corporate government has no licit interest in subsidizing community radio. Why would the feds want to support a smarty-pants radio community of pointy-headed radicals anyway? It’s suspicious! Screw them! Maybe without federal dollars the programming wouldn’t have to be so straight, and there would be room to include those who have not been certified by the state.

Thank you for putting on this program and thank you to everyone for supporting community radio!

041717

Good morning! This is Reverend Doktor C. Sarian, voice of the Mid Coast Sub Church of Paranoia, with a special paranoid report.

Everywhere you go, security measures are visibly in place. Barriers, checkpoints, guards, ID checks have become common in America, land of the free. And cameras. Cameras are everywhere. In every store, at every gate, on every light post, in every cop car, in everyone’s device. Thirty years ago the Rockland City Council decided not to adopt a proposal to install security cameras in town because it was “too Orwellian’. Today, George Orwell would be getting billions in royalties. Americans are reluctantly becoming accustomed to being video surveilled just about anywhere at any time.

All it took was a few staged incidents to sell people on tougher security measures. Since the imposition of draconian new policies which violate civil rights, no buildings have imploded. Mission accomplished! A flood of Federal anti terror funding has provided for the militarization of local police departments. In the absence of actual terrorists who intend to hurt people for political purposes (more on that later), the anti terror laws, training and equipment are being used against ordinary citizens for typical, if anti social behavior. Even little children are being arrested in school for childish acts such as holding a pizza slice like a revolver.

Case in point. At this year’s Boston Marathon a man was stopped for suspicious behavior (he was BAREFOOT!) and was found to be carrying cookware filled with confetti in a backpack. Well, cookware in a backpack is a now a terror meme, after a cooker was oviously used at last year’s marathon. Just as after the shoe bomber they check everyone’s shoes, or after the underwear bomber they check everyone’s underwear. A woman in Wisconsin was raided by the FBI after she ordered a pressure cooker from Amazon. They asked her if she could make a bomb with it? She said No, she makes rice with it. The guy is being charged with possession of a hoax device. That’s interesting. Was he going to perpetrate a hoax? Or parody the original hoax? He probably was going to pop the confetti as runners crossed the line, disrupting the routine, disturbing the piece, alarming security personnel.

That’s not security, it is security theatre. It is not meant to stop actual attacks, it is meant to stop anything out of the ordinary that makes CONspiracy rituals look ridiculous. Like the woman who threw a shoe at Hillary. It may be strange to consider her a terrorist, but Ms. Clinton really was terrified.

That’s what it is all about. Calling Code Pink Granny Medea Benjamin a terrorist allows her to be treated as a terror detainee. Even though she would never hurt a fly, she makes powerful people fearful. That is the truest essence of terrorism. While the war continues and expands, plastic fills the oceans and banksters rob trillions from billions, security measures will be aimed at little girls, now called pirates for illegally looking at something freely available on the internet, artful pranksters will be judged insane for suspicious barefoot acts involving confetti, and peaceful protesters will be held as terrorists for upsetting the elite’s morning coffee.

Get more SLACK! Support Community Radio!

041714

It’s a wacky whirled!

The president says it is difficult for police in communities where they know guns are everywhere, like in the U.S. That’s why they confiscate people’s phones.

The political establishment manipulates the electoral process so only the CONspiracycandidate can win, then they tell everyone to go out and vote.

The most powerful political figures are organized criminals, while the jails and prisons are filled with people who smoked a joint.

The United States Supreme Court affirms the right of free speech for corporations to invest in election day while protesters are beaten and arrested if they leave a “free-speech zone” a mile away.

Freaks formed the co-op to invent a non-business economy. Suburban Normals flooded the scene for cheap food and a cheap cool. Now it is just another business-as-usual, and the freaks are just freaks again.

Freaks invented community radio to give a voice to voices seldom heard, only to feature straights, Normals and other CONspiracy shills who don’t know what they are talking about, reading without comment from the newswire and mocking callers. 

Terrifying deep events occur every day, yet the only persons who get prosecuted are those who try to reveal their truth.

War is spreading everywhere, robots kill more people every day. Radioactivity is spreading everywhere, more sea animals are dying every day. Strife is spreading everywhere, they kill another black man every day. Poisons are spreading everywhere,they kill another child every day. And what do activists, and the government say? Control the weather.

Water is the soul of Earth, but to humans water is either a highway, or a sewer.

Humans don’t think about Earth as a person, but they think people are pretty neat. Humans protect the environment so they have a place to live. When people are removed from any ecosystem, that ecosystem flourishes.

If murder is the sincerest form of criticism, suicide is the sincerest form of social awareness. Two thirds of gun deaths are suicides. Support second amendment rights for humans!

Get more SLACK! Support Community Radio!

071616

Good morning! This is Reverend Doktor C. Sarian, voice of the Mid Coast Sub Church of Paranoia, a schismatic clench of the Church of the SubGenius, with a special paranoid report. 

In the last episode of Community Soapbox, Gray explained: We had to incorporate, we had no choice! Well, that’s the problem isn’t it? 

Left progressives are supposed to be anti-corporate, condemning corporate crime and creating democratic alternatives to exploitative vertical hierarchies. But it’s true. If you want a loan from a corporation, if you want insurance from a corporation, if you want to do business with a corporation you must be a corporation. Oddly though the 501 (c) 3 corporation is also a prerequisite for admission into the progressive pantheon. Without incorporation as a non-profit, your group will not be recognized, endorsed, or supported by the liberal establishment. This rejection of and yet adherence to extrinsic corporate methodology creates a profound schizophrenic break in the Left.

So why this infatuation with the corporation? Primarily because economies of scale. It is axiomatic that the larger a company is, the more efficient is its operation. Take the U.S. government as example. Everyone knows, or rather no one questions, the fundamental law that says Bigger is better because more is cheaper.

But that is a lie. Larger companies seem more efficient because they externalize costs by cheapening labor, violating regulations, securing subsidies, and promulgating military intervention to seize resources. Without those advantages, it would be obvious top-heavy, corrupt centralized production yields cheaper goods at a higher cost than small-scale local business. They say the corporation is value neutral – it’s just a tool for getting things done. Not so. The corporation is inherently malevolent, the ultimate patristcommand structure – providing a protected platform for embezzlers, extortionists, and emperors to perpetrate with impunity.

I see something that makes me tremble for our nation: corporations will concentrate money power in a few hands and the republic will be destroyed. Those are the august words of Abraham Lincoln, shortly before having his hat size changed. Attacking slavery made people mad, but attacking corporations was really bad. After Lincoln’s execution, banking cartels, railroad trusts, and new petroleum conglomerates formed conspiracies that overwhelmed the power of states to regulate them. Today the corporation is more an authority than government, more a moral code than religion, more a person than people.

There really is no choice! As in Orwell’s 1984, today’s America lacks even the language of emancipation from corporate/government. Terms like autogestion, biodynamic, entropolitical flux, schism science are meaningless sounds in the snake-pit of for-profit policy. So-called progressives are fiercely proud of replicating capitalism on the backs of volunteers because they can’t articulate anything else. Besides – they too are tempted by corporate power. Elite directors deciding policy, community services sacrificed for compliance with regulations, successful adoption of the business model, excommunication of free radicals, and reintegration with the military industrial complex are perennial triumphs of non-profit corporations.

The corporation is the umbilical cord that binds any organization to the CONspiracy. It feeds, but it also bleeds. Adaptation to corporate structuring will never bring freedom from the debt economy, or stop destruction of ecosystems. Like the feudal system it replaces, corporatism is obtuse, obstructive, andobsolete. Passionate advocacy of equality, selfless dedication to liberty, and compassionate love for others are the path to true progress.  

Communicate! Co-operate! Not incorporate!

Get more SLACK! Support community radio!

041518

Corporations are top-down hierarchies controlled by owners who tell employees what to do. Alternative organizations are completely different. They are top-down hierarchies controlled by employees who tell member/owners what to do. 

At WERU the general manager is the boss, the top-dog, the head honcho, the last court of appeal, the ultimate go-to guy to whom all volunteers defer, asking permission, or forgiveness for participation. Aside from managing the station’s business affaires, the general manager hosts shows, conducts interviews, plans events, records promos, announcements and reports, chairs meetings, and exercising veto power over everything that goes on the air, censors or cancels member input in real time as he sees fit.

These days WERU sounds like the Murphy Channel, with the general manager’s voice on the air every few minutes 24/7. Rather than expressing thanks to the membership for his lengthy tenure at WERU, and training his successor, the general manager instead boasts he will retain that position for another ten years.

Is it proper for the general manager to ask on the air for members to contact their legislators to drum up more federal funding so WERU Community Radio can pay professionals? WERU Community Radio was never intended as a job creator.

South African activist Steven Biko instructed Higher ups go down. What he meant was in democratic communities, individuals have short terms in control positions, then step down to let someone else take a turn. It is absurd to suppose there is only one person in a community who is capable of directing. Every alternative risks becoming a cult of personality when rank and file delegate responsibility, allowing charismatic apparatchiks control not only of daily operations, but projects, tenor and intent. They seem so capable, so decisive, so reliable running things, until it becomes all about them. Alert revolutionaries are suspicious of persons who take on too much, who perpetuate their positions, who boast of their permanency. Eventually, entrenched managers facilitate the alternative’s reintegration into the CONspiracy.

WERU still has an opportunity to create horizontal structure of equal participation known in Europe as autogestion. Does the WERU community have the courage, tolerance and determination to cast off alien orders, and instead envision and embrace egalitarian economics?

063017

Good morning! This is Yo in Tremont.

It’s a shame to use Community Soapbox time to discuss management of community radio, but with WERU Review cancelled, again, there’s no other option. Ask yourself – how many institutions do you know that provide a platform for anyone to speak publicly about that institution? Public access programming on WERU Community Radio is one of our most important services. The ability to speak freely on the radio about what radio means to us is what makes it community, and not just radio. In addition, call-in shows don’t cost money, unlike syndicated programs. With only four fifth Fridays, plus Community Soapbox, that makes a TOTAL of sixteen hours of open access programming for the entire year. Without WERU Review, that will be reduced by 25% to a meager twelve hours per year. 

The manager general’s proffered excuse for cancelling December’s WERU Review, substituting instead a prerecorded rerun, was that he is too busy doing fundraising, and everything else, to schedule this vital program. That move exemplifies a pattern and practice of concentration of authority that is anathema to collective organizing. With all the volunteer power, should the manager general take on so many duties he is too overwhelmed to schedule a one-hour show? Or is it shadow banning? 

Will Community Soapbox be cancelled next?

Some people don’t want any public access programming because they don’t like my voice. Maybe Katharine, Fred, Ralph, Marsha, David, Gray, Maria, Iver, Analog, Mike, and all the other cranky geezers have had their say, and this slot is needed for reruns. Perhaps many members are perfectly content to listen to whatever the manager general deigns to give them. But wait a sec: manager – that’s business, and general – that’s military. Is replicating corporate/government the triumph of the progressive left, including WERU Community Radio? Is hierarchical command the path to emancipation from the CONspiracy? Or is it a default setting for zombies? 

Is WERU 89.9 FM community radio? Or is it the Murphy Channel?

In these dread times, MORE public access is needed, not less. An uncensored forum for public discussion is the life-blood of a healthy community, and that ain’t Facebook or Twitter. Any curtailing of listener access to public airwaves, either by design or laxity, must be resisted. Public access to open discussion is an essential cornerstone of free society. Few freedoms are as delicious as speaking your truth without getting squelched. Truly, community radio  is a rare medium well-done.

Thank you for putting on this program, and thank you to everyone for supporting community radio.

011618

Good morning! This is Yo in Tremont.

In our last episode, the question was posed – Why yam I a member of WERU?

More particularly, why be a contributing member of WERU for 28 years? Why renew Rio Bisbee Band artist/membership? Why volunteer for community radio? Why listen to WERU 89.9 FM?

Those are good questions everyone should ask hirself every day. It recalls a co-alumnus who put it this way: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. That’s the way I feel about WERU Community Radio. I don’t ask much of community radio, and I pay for what I get. On the other hand, I never go a day without thinking, saying, or doing something to support community radio. 

Okay, but why? 

When I was young, they packed me off to school, and taught me how not to play the game. I realized when I was just eight there was something very wrong with business, church, and state. Everything they said was a lie, everything they did was a crime. From a very early age I dreamed of a perfect community, where everyone was equal, where no one hurt anyone else, where everyone had a chance, even the meek, the small, the queer. I wanted a world where I wouldn’t be bullied by brats. 

I allied with underdogs, I applauded losers, I assisted weaklings. Did it do me any good? No. But I knew it was good. It was in that spirit I joined the co-op. 

In the seventies the co-op seemed to offer a softer alternative to the dog-eat-dog business world. And it did! Food for People, Not for Profit! Until managers took over and re-imposed the business model. Idem with FEDCO. Idem with MOFGA. Idem with the SLACK Factory. I know whereof I speak. The perennial triumph of the progressive left is replicating corporate structuring more obdurate, myopic and intolerant than CONspiracy counterparts they so envy.

Of all the alternatives I have supported, WERU Community Radio is the most dynamic. Important as food, and the arts are to community, communication is fundamental. Around the world, locally operated radio stations are essential data nodes and information outlets in the communities they serve. Is Mid-Coast Maine any different?

Yeah, but you might ask What’s in it for me? Well, I like to speak to the world from my desk. I like listening to my radio friends speak to the world. I like listening to my music on the radio. I like listening to everybody’s music on the radio, not just corporate stars. I like listening to volunteer-produced independent news and views. I like stopping by the station and speaking to WERU people in person. I like doing my part for something everyone can enjoy, whether they help out too or not. Mostly, I yam a member because WERU is a voice for underdogs, and I aim to keep it that way. I yam still bullied by brats, but I ain’t giving up yet!

Yam I dissatisfied? No. WERU Community Radio has exceeded my naive expectations when I first volunteered at the Hen House decades ago. I didn’t guess our radio project would go so far, or do so much, or be so cool. I love WERU Community Radio!

Yam I satisfied? No, I yam not satisfied. And I hope no one else is either. Satisfied people quit trying. I don’t worship what we’ve done, I question it. There is much more the WERU radio community can do to shape and share our collective destiny. Also there are many challenges, both external and internal, WERU Community Radio will face as the world around us changes in the new millennium. Dedicated effort on every member’s part is essential to keep WERU alive, vital, and free.

Thank you for putting on this program, and thank you to everyone for supporting community radio.

070117