B.Z. Douglas, my cohost on the Walking the Wire podcast set up a Twitter Spaces after our latest episode was released. Several folks on Twitter that are mutuals of ours showed up and the conversation ran the gamut from prosecutorial corruption to Stanley Kubrick conspiracies and B.Z.’s idea for a crowdsourced investigation platform to help us get stories we’re too busy to fully devote ourselves to at the moment some more eyes on the situation.
We should be doing these after each show, so every couple weeks. Hope to see you there next time! Feel free to just listen in live, join the convo or listen to the recording after the fact.
Synopsis: The brass deal with the fallout from Prez’s brutality. Freamon steps out of the shadows with a fresh photo of Avon. Omar makes his grand entrance in the Pit.
Our Guest: Kareem Henton is the Vice President of Black Lives Matter Cleveland.
Visit walkingthewirepod.com to connect with BZ and Philip, follow the show on social media, or become a Patreon. Send us your cover of Way Down In the Hole, and we’ll consider it for use in a future episode!
B.Z. Douglas and I have finally released our prologue episode of Walking the Wire, our exploration of the influential series that arguably birthed “prestige tv.” This is actually part 2 of our interview. Part 1 we talked about my book Pedogate Primer: the politics of pedophilia and in part 2 we discuss how we met, bonded over shared hassles from lawyers asking us to pull stories and interest in The Wire.
The first four episodes are already recorded and we will be bringing some incredible guests on. Release schedule should be twice a month. I’ll be embedding the videos and or podcast links here as they come out, so stay tuned!
You can also listen to the episode at Anchor FM right here and make sure to follow the podcast for updates. We will be setting up a Patreon and likely a discord server and have some bonus materials for patrons if you’re interested will update when more info is available.
Also, don’t forget to join us for the live Q&A session with me that will be at the link below.
I talked with indie journalist B.Z. Douglas recently for a two part interview. In part one we talk about my book Pedogate Primer: the politics of pedophilia which can be purchased at major booksellers such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and a handful of shops (multiple in some countries) in Australia, Norway, UK,Poland, Holland, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Taiwan and elsewhere. I personally recommend supporting independent booksellers like Powell’s, Skylight Books or Trident’s Book Cafe. if you plan to buy it. As always if you can’t afford a copy, drop me a line at kafkaguy at gmail.com or via the contact form (if you don’t get an answer through the contact form try again with the email to be safe).
We had initially met through a mutual on Twitter who knew we were both dealing with harassment from lawyers with very vague and toothless threats trying to get us to pull factual reporting.
We’ll also continue doing “aftershows” at the @walkingwirepod account to discuss more about our cases as they relate to The Wire via Streamyard and Twitter spaces. Call in guests are welcome, you can see our second aftershow (first recorded) below.
Look for part 2 of this interview in a couple days. This Friday at 9pm EST B.Z. will be hosting me for a livestream Q&A.
Between next week and early April should have a 3 hour interview (possibly in two parts) coming soon from independent journalist B.Z. Douglas. First half we talk about my book. In the second we talk about how we met, our shared love of The Wire and how a Twitter mutual friend introduced us due to our both being targeted for harassment by lawyers who don’t like the factual reporting we’ve done on their clients. On our first zoom call, The Wire, the early 2000s HBO crime drama came up. We talked a lot about how the show encapsulates corruption in the system and ended up discussing the idea of doing a podcast based on The Wire from the perspective of two indie journos. Each episode we cover one of the shows with help of a special guest. Mostly people who come from one of the walks of life in the show whether that’s dock workers, union members, ex drug dealers, former prisoners, former cops or whistleblowers. We’ve already got quite a few interesting guests lined up and have recorded the first 4 episodes which we should begin releasing by April if we stay on schedule.
Meantime, we are going to be doing Twitter spaces aftershows that will be restreamed on YouTube and Facebook. Today was our second aftershow and first livestreamed video afterparty. The stream only covers the first part, a Baltimore native came on and shared some inside scoops about certain characters in the show based on real people (David Simon even used real names of Baltimore homicide detectives like Jay Lansdale and many characters are based on real people or composites of multiple people).
Once we have a schedule will be shared with the next aftershow. We welcome audience engagement and even if you haven’t seen the show or heard the podcast you’re welcome to come join us (warning, spoilers abound).
You can check out B.Z. Douglas at http://www.bzdug.com where you can also find his YouTube, Substack, Patreon and social media including his music. That’s right, both B.Z. and I are guitarists and Tom Waits fans so the first two seasons of Walking the Wire podcast just may have versions of us covering the song… To keep up to date follow @walkingwirepod on Twitter.
Don’t forget to check out the new book Pedogate Primer: the politics of pedophilia now available at Amazon in paperback and on Kindle. Also available at independent booksellers like Powell’s and Skylight Bookstore if you’d rather not support Bezos and the chain stores like Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Target and Wal-Mart. It is also available from some overseas sellers in Taiwan, Poland, UK, Australia, Germany and a couple other countries.
This week it was my absolute pleasure to take part in a long chat with Lino Faelnar from Defenders of Indigenous Languages of the Archipelago. A lawyer, linguistic expert and language preservationist, Lino is also a genuine renaissance man. Our conversation was all over the map, both literally and figuratively as we bounced around from indigenous Filipino languages to the history of Crimea, Suharto and E. Timor, strange coincidences that seem to connect the Vikings to China, the Basque, Celts and the indigenous Melanesians who inhabited the Philippine islands before the Austronesian migrations. From Dr. Charles Tart to linguist Noam Chomsky and concepts like linguistic fascism or intellectual piracy, we covered quite a bit of ground in a little over 2 hours. Endangered languages and cultural genocide to the importance of folk tales and how stories and language affect our window on the world and much more today on through the plastic screen…
Unfortunately this was the last episode of the podcast for a while. I’ll be on hiatus until I can get the cost of the surgery taken care of and recover from that, but once I have that out of the way, already have several amazing guests from artists to best selling authors and ordinary people with extraordinary stories.
This week on through the plastic screen podcast… I randomly happened across the #takeUsBackToChina hashtag at the beginning of June. It only took a few minutes of reading before I was drawn to reach out to some of the students so they could share their stories with me.
There will always be obstacles when you work to create a better life, but in the era of coronavirus, there are even more hurdles. Especially for international students. In some cases online classes are offered, but in between drastic time zone differences, needing to work and the impracticality of trying to use Powerpoint slides to learn surgery make online classes impractical for most.
One common thread seems to be the existence of China International Students Union and the community gathered around the hashtag giving students some hope. For more information I recommend following Joyce Lau of Times Higher Education as well as the Twitter and Instagram profiles for CISU.
In the past few months, China’s Global Times has reported on a similar situation faced by Chinese international students unable to return to the US for studies. The Chinese government and the students themselves have a right to be upset, but a very similar situation is faced by students from Europe, Russia, the middle East and throughout Asia.
Here’s hoping with more eyes and ears on the situation the plight of these students will be heard and China’s “soft power failure” as Curtis Chin put it. For those interested in learning more about this situation, in addition to just perusing the hashtag I highly recommend following Joyce Lau of Times Higher Education who has been reporting on this since 2020 and recently did an update at the end of May.
My guest this week is someone I met through my time doing kratom advocacy. Nina Ajdin was a refugee from Bosnia during the period of intense war and ethnic cleansing, since her teenage years she has been dealing with topical steroid withdrawal for years. Despite the painful and dangerous side effects, she writes, has appeared in a documentary Preventable. To learn more about TSW you can visit the UK website Scratchthat.org.uk or www.ITSAN.org in the US. You can help with her medical bills by supporting her GoFundMe
You can also follow her on Instagram and Facebook and for anyone interested in TCM, Nina’s practitioner does sessions through zoom worldwide:)- www.amethystacu.com
I spent months talking to victims of a Texas ponzi and real estate fraud ring before sharing my notes and numbers with journalist Alissa Fleck. For backstory make sure to check out Crimescoop.org’s coverage. Part II will be coming soon. Dozens of people lost everything, some, even their lives. Today we will be focusing on Jessica’s story.
Jessica was married to one of the members of the con ring. It wasn’t until she found herself living in Costa Rica that some issues began to arise that were too big to ignore. We will hear her harrowing experience and courageous escape. She has spent years keeping in contact with some of the others who were hurt by this callous gang and has repeatedly done what she can to get this story of multimillion dollar fraud, a mini-Madoff ring that preyed not on the fabulously wealthy but on people from all walks of life.
Episode 1 of through the plastic screen is live! Had some static issues with the headset mic during the first 5 minutes but took care of it after that. Lav mic on the way, so hopefully future episodes will be higher quality. Unfortunately, can’t sit up and use the home recording studio mixer/mic kit I previously used to record due to the spinal injury keeping me on my side most of the day. If you can get past the static in the first few minutes, you’re in for a wild ride. Ramsey’s Global Death Cult: The Order of Nine Angles, Atomwaffen and the Slaughter of the Innocentsis an incredible tale, stranger than fiction.
For those familiar with MK-Ultra, Project Paperclip and Gladio, the idea of military and intelligence working with Nazis shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Ramsey’s latest book delves into the Order of 9 Angles/O9A which boasts connections as far ranging as David Tibet of the underground goth band Current 93 to Operation Gladio front group Column 88 (H being the 8th letter of the alphabet, 88 is shorthand for “Heil Hitler”).
What’s more, these groups are responsible for decades of murders, terror attacks and other atrocities and they have cells, or “nexions” to use their lingo, all over the world. Make sure to check out Ramsey’s site William Ramsey Investigates as well. You can find his podcast and previous books and even get signed copies direct from the author. Ramsey was also one of the first podcasters to interview me about my bookPedogate Primer: the politics of pedophilia you can find that interview here.
Phil Fairbanks: portfolio 