"A culture jamming war would do no one any good.
The information overload online is already
overwhelming and confusing enough."
"Fnord 'em if they can't take a joke. Or not."
--The Chao of Poo
Special to Tales of Radio Paranoia
by General Shun, DXing Professional
illustrations by Lauren Sheng
For reference by future generations of pirate radio fans and historians, the FRN died in July 2012.
The corpse may continue to show occasional spasms and zombie-like animations, between the annual domain lapses, but the FRN you once knew is defunct. It has ceased to be. It has shuffled off this mortal coil. It ain't pinin' for the fjords. It is an ex-parrot. What you see now is an open grave, a cheap casket with few mourners, and a tombstone etched with a pitiable epitaph:
"Herein Lies... lies."
The onetime "Free Radio Network" had been on life support since the late 2010-early 2011 mass exodus toward safer sanctuary on the HFU and FRC. In
April 2012 John T. Arthur took the FRN off life support but the brain-dead body clung to a vegetative state of meager existence until
July 23, 2012 when JTA put a knife through its heart... from behind its back, of course.
Recently JTA, longtime Belfast, NY mail drop operator and erstwhile FRN cat herder, advocated exposing the identities and locations of shortwave pirate radio operators who'd been "dumb enough to be busted" by the FCC.
In so doing, JTA surprised some of us who, perhaps naively, had once regarded him as a somewhat uncommon voice of reason and sanity in an undeniably quirky hobby. There was a time, on rare occasions, JTA dared to counter the increasingly insane abuses of Pat Murphy's numerous sockpuppets. That time is no more.
Specifically he joined "Commander Bunny" of WBNY in repeatedly naming the operator of The Crystal Ship, and, by logical inference, advocating exposing the identities of other pirates who'd met with similar misfortune. By this same logic, any op who'd gotten The Knock, a NOUO, warning or other FCC enforcement action can expect to see their names, addresses and personal information repeatedly posted on the FRN, the WBNY blog and Facebook pages and everywhere the Virginia Bunnyman pauses to munch a load of his own night poops. This should alarm not only every station operator who has been the subject of any FCC action, but also every active station operator who still uses the Belfast mail drop.
"Why are we still referring to him by his sock puppet name "John Poet"? If he was dumb enough to get busted, he doesn't deserve to be called
anything but Greg."
--John T. Arthur, operator of Belfast, NY, mail drop. "6925 AM Music and Crying" thread, FRN, July 23, 2012
Aside from willful ignorance of the difference between an alias or pseudonym and a sockpuppet, JTA also demonstrated to countless free/pirate radio operators and listeners, who have entrusted him with their names and addresses, that respect for personal privacy is subject to whim. Those posts underscore the disease of hypocrisy and hubris that quickly decimated the FRN after the 2008 "pirate war" led to Pat Murphy (aka, Jerry Michael Graves)
resigning his position as site administrator taking his toys and stomping off in a huff... or a minute and a huff. Thence he donned full time the bunny garb of Lagomurph & His Sock Puppet Crew of Beans, Mosby, Thumper, Bouncer, et al. This myxomatosis infection spread to full butthurt level by late 2009, by which time his delusional, paranoid hostility, slanderous accusations of enemies as pedophiles and generally questionable closeted aspirations had meta
murphosed the FRN into his personal vanity site resulting in a mass exodus to friendlier radio hobbyist websites.
A few of the faithful cling to the corpse, like
flies on shit pitiable mourners who can't bring themselves to face reality and bury the body. They're misled pagans and wannabe druids worshiping at the ruins of a Stonehenge, not realizing the structure never was what they'd been led to believe. They thought the FRN was a supportive community for pirate fans to exchange info and tips on neutral ground. Instead it was a temple occupied by an increasingly
paranoid, delusional cult leader, his sock drawer acolytes, a minuscule remnant of actual minions and his ever faithful homunculus goon bred from the Lagomurph's sperm and ample supply of bullshit.
Reviewing the old FRN threads chronologically reveals how the site began dying from Murphy's slow poison. The illness progressed rapidly around 2005 when the toxic effect of his pet homunculus interjected itself. The Lagomurph's sockpuppetry finally choked the spirit of a once lively and generally gregarious site. JTA's comments this year merely nailed the coffin shut on a rotting corpse. All that remains now is to bury or burn the thing.
Cryptically and somewhat ironically, a reply to JTA's April 2012 thread, seemed to hint - wittingly or not - at the rotten core of the bond between the mail drop operator and the Lagomurph:
"Want a list of a lot of the folk involved in pirate radio and their addresses? Put a station on the air and offer QSL's."
At this point it is difficult to tell whether JTA's recent comments were mere recklessness born of frustration over seeing the once proud FRN deteriorate to the level of a bad joke, or carefully contrived to reassert pirate radio as being only for a select group of bad boys. Either way, he's pandering to the mentality of Murphy and Kracker in advocating an abrasive style that makes the FRN inhospitable to most people who prefer their personal privacy be respected - ops and listeners alike.
Perhaps most humiliating of all for the Lagomurph and his puny FRN coterie, nobody is intimidated any longer. The Felching Rabbit Nuthuggers have become at best irrelevant and at worst a laughingstock. Several new stations have emerged with solid signals that reach across the continent and even the world, unlike the WBNY signal that entertains only the varmints in his backyard hutch. (I will confess to once having heard an authentic WBNY broadcast via my
carradio while I was driving near his hutch.) The hobby continues to draw new listeners.
The loss of trust in the Belfast mail drop is also a loss to traditional DXers who enjoyed receiving QSL cards. But time marches on and somehow we manage to adapt, even without the Lagomurph's Trojan Bunny gifts festooned with increasingly bizarre symbols that seem to belie a latent obsession with nude men and suicide, even in preference to his former passion for monkey boys.
For what it's worth, many of us who received QSLs courtesy of JTA's mail drop are - or
were - grateful for his efforts. But everything has its limits. A few postcards and postage stamps don't buy the right to slander fans of a niche hobby or abuse access to personal information.
A comment on Poet's
TCS blog last year seems more appropriate now than ever:
See Poet's follow up and additional information on this topic.
August 6, 2011 6:10 PM