Semi-Dead Shortwave

Propagation usually sucks when I try to tune in the Saturday night gathering of the Liberty Net. Now I listen via a streaming website run by one of the Lib Netters. On some nights conditions are so bad that even the amateur radio operators participating in the net have problems hearing each other, despite their pro equipment.

But even if propagation conditions were good, shortwave radio overall is dying out. International broadcasters like the BBC in England, DW in Germany and Radio Netherlands have stopped transmitting their programs to the US. One excuse for cutting back is that people can listen on their home computers via streaming.

I still enjoy listening to a radio but the stations that have remained on the air, Radio Australia and Radio New Zealand International, are being affected by the lousy listening conditions. So once again I turn to streaming audio on my computer. I want to hear what other countries are saying.

They say the sunspot cycle is on the upswing, meaning improved SW reception conditions. But for the most part the only stations that come in that well are domestic US ones like WWCR which broadcast Xtian and superpatriot - conspiracy programs. Even then I've had problems with those broadcasters.

Gee, maybe HAARP up there in Alaska is trying to cut off all outside contact and is also selectively squelching some local stations.


Six Degrees Of The Liberty Net

I did some more Googling and found a site that archives audio files of the Liberty Net gatherings. As I mentioned before, the Lib Net is a group of ham radio operators who discuss current events but with a superpatriot focus. At times some racism shows through.

So it didn't surprise me that the site archiving the Saturday night gatherings, http://3950.net/, was under the auspices of Kevin Alfred Strom, a man described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "a bookish yet dogmatic neo-Nazi whose predilection for child pornography ultimately ruined his efforts to claim his former master's legacy." That former master was the late William Pierce, founder of the neo-Nazi organization the National Alliance.

As for Strom's problems with child porn, he maintains his innocence, saying he was set up. His wife, Elisha Strom, says she found child porn on his computer and that's why she turned him in to the authorities.

Kevin Strom faced two separate trials. He prevailed with the first one held in 2007, found innocent of trying to entice a minor into performing sex acts. But with the second trial in January 2008, Strom struck a deal, pleading guilty to possession of child pornography so that multiple counts of receiving child porn were dismissed. During his sentencing Strom contended that he didn't intentionally download child porn, it came from an online forum he had visited. He wrapped up his prison stretch in September 2008 but still faced 15 years of supervised release.

At his website Strom under his Marginalia section thanks the European Union Times for its support during his "travails." I never heard of the European Union Times so I did some more searching and found the editorial comment that defended Strom. Placed at the end of an article about Strom pleading guilty to child porn, the editor stated:

"Kevin is innocent and he is a victim of the ZOG Empire! He only pleads guilty so he won’t get the maximum sentence!

"He dedicated all his life fighting against: pornography, child pornography, rape, murder, race mixing, suppression, homosexuality, etc! How could they even accuse him with such nonsense?? It’s well known that they placed some pictures with naked children in his computer…"

ZOG refers to the Zionist Occupation Government, a key component of many anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

Is it me or do I sense a pattern here?