Gones for Good: Episode 55
Radio Free Europe
Life in Freedonia is a whirl of activity with Donald J. Firefly, the dashing sun-tanned young President of 78 years full of triumphs and achievements, signing new proclamations every day. Just last Wednesday, he introduced a new public feast day for the citizens of Feedonia, “Liberation Day”. If you live in Russia you would hear about it on Radio Liberty, if you live in Iran, Turkmenistan, Hungary, Romania, Occupied Crimea or numerous other jolly places that have managed to shut down a free media and replaced it with a state controlled and compliant one you would have heard about it on Radio Free Europe. If you don’t actually listen on a radio, as that’s just too 20th century, you can listen on YouTube or on the web, via a VPN, here. In each place you get to here uncensored, non-state controlled news in your own language. In most of these places, no other option exists. Big deal, you may think, who wants to hear NPR woke articles in Turkmen? How about during a pandemic when the authoritarian government of Serdar Berdimuhamedow and his Dad, former dentist and Chairman for Life, Gurbanguly, decided that Covid-19 didn’t really exist so they didn’t need to do anything about it. They officially had zero cases, banned the word "coronavirus" and that people could be arrested for wearing masks or discussing the pandemic. 18 months into it, they finally got the super effective Chinese vaccine and the slightly more super Sputnik from their best buds in Moscow. The only way anyone in the country got any reliable guidance and information was via Radio Free Europe. Couple of fun facts about Gurbanguly, he had J-Lo sing happy birthday to him in 2013 at a private ‘sponsored’ birthday party, and I am assuming she wore white as he has a thing about white. Not a little thing, a fucking big deal about white. In 2018, he ordered the impounding of black cars in the capital because he considered the color white to be "lucky". Police seized dark-colored vehicles in Ashgabat and their owners were told they must pay to have them repainted white. He lives in the ‘White Palace’ and supposedly the capital holds the world record for the highest concentration of white-marble buildings.
Anyway, back to Radio Free Europe. For young men of a certain age, that phrase is immortalized by the hit pop combo from the 80’s REM and their song of the same name on the album ‘Murmur’.
Radio Free Europe was started in 1949 by those defenders of freedom the CIA, broadcasting from Germany into the former Eastern Bloc countries, Radio Liberty, targeting Russia in 1951. The CIA’s involvement was covert, of course, and ended completely in the 70’s, when it became part of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM). At their peak, they broadcast in 49 different languages. The Chernobyl disaster was still being denied by Russia and its puppet neighbors even as their citizens were exposed to the fallout; who, two days after it happened, exposed the truth and broadcast what was really happening? Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. With the fall of the iron curtain and the establishment of free media in many of the former satellites they stopped broadcasting in Latvian, Estonian, Lithuanian, Polish etc. They had to restart their Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian services when authoritarianism reared its ugly head again in the late 20 teens.
Back in Freedonia, Firefly somehow heard about the efforts of USAGM, whether someone like his old buddy Vladimir Poutine, President for Life of Rudonia, whispered into his ear or his wealthy benefactor, Mrs Elon Teasdale, suggested that this hive of ‘woke radical propaganda’ be completely shut down, so Firefly issued the proclamation anyway on March 15th. The total savings will be $142 million per year. To put this in real dollars that everyone can relate to, during the first three months of this year Firefly’s golfing trips to Florida have cost an estimated $22 million, so the shutting down of a global soft power that provides a voice in the dark for an estimated 400 million listeners annually will pay for his golfing through to the 5th of August next year. Margarita Simonyan, the head of RT, Rudonia’s state propaganda broadcaster and head of Sputnik (they really should come up with some different names for something the Russians do, other than kill and maim people), its Internet channel, heralded Firefly’s announcement and gave her staff the day off in celebration.
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty has been based in Prague in Czechia since 1995. The Czech government has pledged to find the money to keep it broadcasting, tapping into European funds. As the majority of its efforts are focused to our Eastern border (other than Iran and the ‘Stans) it is probably appropriate that Europe sees this effort in the correct light, this is for our common defense, for our common democratic values and so maybe we should pay for it, to safeguard its future and guide its mission. I hope they continue regardless of the lawsuits and bullshit in Freedonia, the land which seems so focused recently on ‘free speech’, or at least for some.
Sunday the 6th of April is the feast day of St Marcellin. Not only is this the name of a great cheese, but he also founded not the Marx Brothers but the Marist Brothers and was from Lyon, so could not let him go by unheralded. Born Joseph Benedict Marcellin Champagnat, he was born in Marlhes, in the middle of nowhere, France in 1789. At the end of the French Revolution, he entered the seminary and was ordained and worked for the Archdiocese of Lyon. Young Joseph’s long term focus was on children’s education, partly due to his own awful educational experience. During the Revolution, education suffered, as many facets of normal life did. There was no great education historically for the poor and as the revolution took away the land and rights of the Catholic Church, locked up the priests, the little educational options for the poor disappeared. Marcellin did not attend school until age 11, and that experience lasted only one day, he watched in horror as the school teacher beat a student who tried to answer a question that had been posed to Marcellin. Following that fun introduction to the wonders of getting an education, unsurprisingly, he did not return to formal schooling until he entered the seminary at age 16. He founded the Marist Brothers as an educational establishment focused on helping young poor people, like he had been. They had great success and grew like topsy in the 19th century, when industrialization was opening up society for both good and bad, by the early 20th century it had a footprint on all continents and especially in the New Worlds catering for underserved communities like indigenous peoples. Like with many religious institutions the success of growth and multiple sites over many countries brings its own problems, not the least is the need for staff and the pool of single, very religious men who have sworn a life of celibacy gets stretched to include some, that on hindsight, maybe not leaving that group in charge of vulnerable young people, especially in remote locations that include accommodation would have been a better idea. So the good name of the Marists for educating ‘vulnerable youth’ that was the mission of St Marcellin has been tarnished with the same troubles the greater Catholic Church has suffered from. Denial immediately of any problems, moving bad actors around rather than removing them from the institution, late apologies with excuses followed by large scale lawsuits from victims around the world.
The reputation of the cheese St Marcellin is happily unsullied. From the small town of St Marcellin in the Isère, 90 km southeast of Lyon. It is a small soft cow’s cheese usually weighing about 80 grams, it’s got a high fat content at about 50% fat. The degree of runniness (“I like it runny”) increases with age as the exterior gains blue, then yellow, hues within two to three weeks after production. This little beauty is available in 3 degrees of ripening or ‘affinage’: ‘sec’, ‘crémeux’ and ‘bleu’. Occasionally you can find it cured in Marc brandy for a month or so, called ‘Arômes au Gène de Marc’. If you find it cured in white wine, it becomes ‘Arômes de Lyon’. There is a favorite recipe of mine from the sadly late Judy Roger’s marvelous Zuni Cafe Cookbook for salad with Mixed Lettuces with Roasted Cherries, Hazelnuts and Warm St Marcellin, stunning and begs for an off dry Riesling or Pinot Gris from the Alsace. I can’t find the recipe online, but if you fancy it, and don’t have the Zuni book, drop me a dm and I will scan it for you.