The Other Foot…

My father served in WWII. He was trained stateside as a radio operator in the Air Force(more accurately, the Army Air Corps in those days) and was stationed in Saipan for the duration. He later used the tech knowledge gained there to come back and attain an electrical engineering degree. 
Now, I won’t go on and on about how great he was…even though I thought so then, and still do. He was a brilliant man, and he taught me a lot in his short life.  As do most veterans however, he mostly  kept his wartime experiences to himself. Rarely would he impart tales of his life in the service during that world war. But a few times he let down his guard, when he thought it important enough to do so. I remember as a kid, begging him to tell me how he had won a purple heart. He laughed as he recalled pulling a radio component off a shelf, and a bayonet that had been laying next to it had fallen and stuck into his calf.  That was his big physical war wound. Although he had many mental scars to carry…he had not seen much actual battle. He did feel it important enough to relate to we kids once that he and his company had been awakened early one morning to witness a plane taking off from the Tinian B-29 airfield, only a stone’s throw away from their base. The C.O. told the sleepy-eyed men that they were witnessing the plane that was on its way to end the war.  Of course, he was right.  An historically horrible thing to witness, in retrospect, I’m sure. But that’s as may be.
 
What I wanted to cover here was that my father’s love of radio communication followed him all his days. Growing up in our house meant sharing this enthusiasm.  He had an elaborate set-up of radios in the basement and it became an enjoyable pastime for we kids to pick up a new transmission, on short wave or CB, from many far-flung locales around the world. On shortwave especially, between broadcast bands you could always hear morse code. 

“Dad!  What are they sayin?”.  He would stare at the radio for a few minutes and usually say something like: “Oh…nothing really important…that was a position of a ship off the coast of Spain”.  The magical talent he used to decipher those beeps amazed us to no end.
But what left the biggest impression on my young grey matter was “Radio Free Europe”.  Not the actual broadcasts by them that we could easily pick up…but the idea.  As it was explained to me then, those countries behind “The Iron Curtain” needed to hear the truth. RFE was supplying it.
“The truth?”, thought I. “Well, ALL radio broadcasts transmit the truth, don’t they?  And what is this curtain all about?” So I learned about propaganda.  Theirs and ours.

Funny that.

How amazed my father would be if he could see me now…intensely interested in receiving another type of Radio Free Europe.  Searching feverishly for truth…as the founders of that effort envisioned those desperate to hear it under communist rule.  Desperate to hear what is really happening in the world before it is synthesized behind a ‘curtain’.  Same people closing the curtain on the truth.  A few generations later…the other side of the world.  The shoe is on the other foot.  Everything that is old…is new again.

I synthesize my own truth now.  Press TV…Russia Today…Al Jazeera. There are many media outlets on the other side of the new Iron Curtain. And we living under the new zio-communist rule must reject its government propaganda, as did our forefathers…and use the technology available to us to find that illusive reportage without spin. Facts, at least, will out. Truth is another matter.
As we hated the USSR in my youthful days…so too are we now hated. The jewish oppressors have simply moved shop. When it was ordered “Mr. Gorbachov, tear down this wall”…those huddled around their computers here now understand that what was meant was that there is no need for that wall anymore.  They have a new one. In Palestine.  In New York.  In Hollywood.  The same wall-builders keeping out the same knowledge. The same curtain-closers trying to wall off people from others that have a more factual truth. 

So the circle is complete yet again. When do we break the cycle? When enough people realize that there are those among us that need walls and curtains.  And that they have a common ancestry.  They have a common political identity.  It is always them.
So this is the new Radio Free Europe.  The new crackling broadcast signal.  Telling those listening that they are not alone.  That they are being fed the same bullshit that their fathers were fed in other countries only a couple generations ago.

If you think this is all ancient history….well, you better wise up.

I think my father, if he was still living…would approve of the internet.  He would see the need and the urgency of it all.  And revel in the fact that you cannot keep the truth hidden for long.  And that the shoe being on the other foot…we are doing our best to learn and spread the truth. To the West this time around.