SOUL MATTERS: Writers To Follow
Directing you to important work from Tom Carter, HiFi, Joni Askola, Alex Alvarova, and Carole Cadwalldr
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Reading Carole Cadwalldr’s latest post is both cathartic and tragic.
Independent women reporters targeted with well-coordinated soul-fracturing campaigns are survivors of a war that is still invisible to much of the world. We do not get pensions for our service like those who survived the Stasi’s zersetzung campaigns against journalists. The price of making a commitment to live in truth and share that truth with others is greater and greater with each passing day.
But what is any self-respecting journalist to do? Turn Vichy? Parrot propaganda? Bury reality in euphemisms? There are plenty of stenographers but only a handful of real journalists left, and most of us are unemployable. Corporate and billionaire-owned media bet on fascism, and they got it. Russian-paid propagandist Tim Pool gets a pass to join the White House press pool while AP is banned.
So thank you to everyone who supports those with the courage to deliver truth in a world of normalized lies and liars. It matters. You matter.
I wanted to take a moment to draw your attention to important work by independent journalists. It’s important to offer solidarity to those with real courage.
I hope you are reading the work of my friend Tom Carter, a veteran newsman who spent 15 years of his life trying to warn America of the danger of Leonard Leo — the lobbyist most responsible for the six Catholic extremists on the Supreme Court, which led to America’s judicial coup.
Carter kept receipts of his monumental efforts to try to prompt the New York Times and other high profile media outlets to expose the danger Leo possessed to our democracy and was rebuffed. When I spent time with him in Washington DC last June, he knew it was already a foregone conclusion that America would fall. I didn’t want to believe him.
Despite being retired, he continues to write about Leo. I asked him to summarize his latest report on Leo, which features a thorough timeline:
Rome was not destroyed in a day and neither was US democracy. The Leonard Leo right-wing Catholics, like the mother church, play the long game. While Democrats fiddled, this Leonard Leo timeline traces his role, from early beginnings at roly poly bat faced lobbyist to the Christofascist Musk-Trump virus that is devouring the post WWII modern world. None of this shit happened without Leonard Leo.—Tom Carter for Bette Dangerous
Here is a link to the timeline, titled Leonard Leo & the Stained Glass Curtain He’s Hiding Behind:
In the post, he writes:
None of this trump shit happened without Leonard Leo.
I challenge anyone to name an individual or organization, religious or secular, or billionaire more responsible for our current state of affairs than Leonard Leo.
A publicity shy, extreme right wing Catholic zealot, Leo spent more than 35 years and $600 million corrupting the US federal judiciary, in a Holy War crusade to create a Catholic Christofascist America.
There is no trump or Musk or Doge gutting democracy without collaborator Leo judges.
The timeline begins in 1991 and continues through to the present day — what he calls the Leonard Leo American Inquisition.
And here is another recent post about Leo’s assault on Europe:
Thanks in advance for following his work on Medium.
High Fidelity on Joni Askola’s podcast
My RadPod co-host High Fidelity made a recent appearance on geopolitical analyst Joni Askola’s podcast, and here is HiFi’s summary:
In this interview with Joni Askola, I discuss the events of 2020 that led to me uncovering the Russian financier of the PayPal Mafia and the network of billionaires and predators that would eventually seek to overthrow the democratic government of the United States. I discuss the implications of this discovery, the impact it had upon my life, and what must be done to end the global authoritarian war upon democracy.—HiFi for Bette Dangerous
Here is the interview:
Like Carter, HiFi keeps receipts.
My friend Alex Alvarova is sharing her lived experience from growing up in Czechoslovakia when it was still under Soviet rule, and we are the wiser for it.
Here is a brief bio:
Alex Alvarova is a keen observer and translator of the human struggle against oppression, using words as her weapon of choice in confronting tyranny. Drawing from her experience navigating cultural divides and information warfare, Alex Alvarova's writing dissects how propaganda shapes societies—and how art and storytelling can fight back. An incisive thinker and storyteller, Alex blends personal history, political insight, and poetic depth to explore the fragile line between freedom and authoritarianism.
Among my favorite recent posts from her is this one, A Little Girl’s Memories of America’s Future:
Here is an excerpt from the post:
Communist indoctrination was omnipresent, even in preschool. Pictures of Lenin and Stalin hung everywhere. We sang communist and, later, Russian songs. Teachers spoke a strange Newspeak we children had to learn. It was like learning a new language within your own—words like comrade, socialism, proletariat, peace movement sounded entirely normal to us. At home, the world was safe and ordinary; outside, it was just a learned play we had to perform.
War was talked about constantly; films were about war, songs were about partisans, and children’s competitions awarded trophies symbolically connected to war. We were raised by the Soviets to prepare for war—perhaps the most characteristic trait of the Russian culture implanted in us. I remember running a competition called "For the Partisan Submachine Gun," which involved quickly running a team to the finish and solving a mixture of communist propaganda tasks and scouting skills along the way. My classmates convinced me to join the contest, even though I warned them my running resembled more of a rapid walk interrupted by fainting attempts. We deservedly lost. This competition symbolized our entire childhood. The communists set up a course for us at school, like a flea circus, handing out identical propagandistic tasks to everyone (learn a poem, sing a song, draw a Soviet hero, retell a Soviet story), tasks intended for survival (math problems, multiplication tables, mental division), and short-term memory tests labeled as education (I excelled at these). Deviating from the predetermined path had severe consequences. The essential lesson children learned early for their own good was "don't stand out, don't differ." Unfortunately, I wasn't good at this, so I at least tried to look like a harmless simpleton, an alien slightly out of step, who wasn’t intentionally provoking comrades.
Among the threads linking the writers I am featuring in this post is the fact that they each tried so hard to warn people about what was coming and like me, we just couldn’t beat the algorithm programmed by the technofascists.
But here’s the thing: soul matters. Humanity matters.
I often dream the future. It’s still filled with darkness, but eventually, that darkness will fade and the greed that has poisoned men’s souls will turn on the worst of them, as the people regain their power.
How long the darkness lasts is up to us.
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