Reading and Listening Suggestions
Tony Olienick Interview, and some interesting developments in Africa
G’day everyone, and Happy Monday.
It’s been a rough few weeks in my own head as of late, and I’ve also been very busy with family and work commitments. The Voice of GO(r)D podcast, and my own writings, in my estimation, have reduced in quality, and I can’t really put stuff out until I get my mind right again. Thanks for your patience while I get things together.
In the meantime, I have come across some great stuff that I thought I would share with you.
Our man Tony Olienick was invited to call in to the Shaun Newman Podcast, and I imagine this conversation would have taken up four or five of Tony’s 20 minutes a pop calls from remand. Many thanks to Shaun for putting this together - if you want to hear a little more of Tony’s story, and how he ended up becoming a Political Prisoner, you would do well to take the time and listen to this.
The GiveSendGo I have set up for all four of the Coutts prisoners is still up and receiving your generous donations. It currently sits just under $47k, maybe y’all could bump it over 50, and I will begin the next round of disbursement.
https://www.givesendgo.com/trudeauspoliticalprisoners
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Last October, I was invited to a mini-conference type event in a tiny place called the WagonBox, in the very small town of Story, Wyoming. While I was there, I was honored to make acquaintance with James Pogue, a writer who has been published in Harpers, Vanity Fair, the NYT, and many other outlets. James is a very interesting cat, and his writings have covered trout and land conservation in the western United States, dissident political movements in the US, and the wide variety of places he has been in the world.
His most recent project involves investigating the intersection of GeoPolitics, post colonialism, and mining in Sub-saharan Africa. The first of a two part long form essay on this subject was just released in UK based journal Granta, and details James’ arrival in the Central African Republic, where he finds that the Russian mercenary group Wagner has been doing business for quite some time. This is an utterly fascinating read and I highly recommend it.
https://granta.com/wagner-in-africa/
If you are an enjoyer of podcasts, as many of my readers are, James recently appeared on the show of my friends the Good Ol Boyz where he discussed, in depth, what is going on in Africa with mining, Wagner and other mercenary groups providing security, the various messes and ad-hoc solutions of post-post-colonialism, and just where all of that wealth being extracted is ending up. He warms up the show by discussing the state of writing today, Ireland becoming an outpost of Global Homogeneity as a result of transitioning their economy into a tax haven for Silicon Valley, and then moves on to the history of France’s colonial projects in Africa, and on to what he has found there now.
This particular episode is super information dense, and probably one of the best interviews in any podcast I have ever listened to - highly, highly recommended.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/eire-and-cote-100789448
You may have also heard James on my show last year, where he was part of a roundtable discussing the vagabond lifestyle of hitch-hiking and jumping trains.
Upcoming guests I’ve already recorded and will be releasing soon -
- King Spud, Trucking Twitter personality and High Miler
- Trent Lalonde returns to discuss the slow decay of Canada
- Fellow Substacker and documentarian of the Coutts situation
- FreightX meme legend and author/trucker READ WHEN SAFE
- Josh Bigger, aka Best Damn Roofer, Canada’s most infamous online personality
- Christine Decaire, a protester from the Ottawa Freedom Convoy, tells us about her time in Ottawa and how acquittals of the ridiculous charges against her were appealed by the Crown.
- aka Shagbark Hick, of the Hickman’s Hinterlands substack, returns for a lengthy discussion about the experiences and ideas which animate his writings.
Thanks again for your patience, I look forward to getting these shows out to you as soon as I can.