In this News Brief we discuss two recent "controversial" country hits, “Try That In A Small Town” by Jason Aldean and "Rich Men North of Richmond" by Oliver Anthony––and their attendant partisan utility. Our guest, Citations' resident Country Music correspondent Alexander Billet.

News Brief: Attack of the Salt of the Earth Republican Country Music Stars

"COVAX and World Bank to Accelerate Vaccine Access for Developing Countries," trumpets a World Bank press release. "How AI Is Making Healthcare More Affordable And Accessible," announces Forbes magazine. "How technology is helping improve financial inclusion around the world," reports CNBC.

It's a linguistic frame that appears regularly in media, PR, and policymaking. Those who can't afford the top-tier forms of basic necessities like housing or physical and mental healthcare, we're told, can have "access" to less expensive, lower-quality versions. Enter bottom-rung ACA marketplace plans, less effective COVID vaccines, homeless people living in train containers, scammy cryptocurrency apps, and clunky chatbot "therapists." After all, they're better than the alternative: having no healthcare, housing, or income at all.

But why must having nothing at all be the only alternative? Why isn't it possible to ensure high-quality essentials for everyone? And how does media's repackaging of substandard necessities as "increasing access" and fostering "inclusion" serve to make the barbarism of austerity politics seem palatable, even benevolent?

On this episode, our season seven premiere, we'll examine the trope of framing subpar material essentials as forms of "inclusion" for the poor or "increasing access" to important life saving and sustaining needs, exploring how media simply accept, rather than challenge, the manufactured austerity that allows this cruel stratification in the first place.

Our guest is writer, artist and pod host Beatrice Adler-Bolton.

Ep 188: How Capital Repackages Substandard Products for the Poor as "Increasing Access"

The end of an era for a destructive numerology-based QAnon cult led by Michael Protzman AKA Negative 48 — a group that got infamous for their belief that JFK Jr and even JFK were on the cusp of returning from the dead. We spoke to CNN correspondent Donie O'Sullivan about his documentary exploring their effect on the families of those involved and the death of their leader. We also spoke with researcher Karma about her long-standing work on the group.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous

Donie O'Sullivan: https://twitter.com/donie / https://www.cnn.com/profiles/donie-osullivan

Karma: https://twitter.com/2022_Karma

Music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.

http://qanonanonymous.com

Episode 247: The Death of Negative 48 feat Donie O'Sullivan & Karma

Matt Christman goes off live on http://www.twitch.tv/chapotraphouse
Topics: Schizophrenic bourgeois mind, life, death

Grill Stream

262 - Hyperborean Chamber II: In Through the Out Door 09.18.23

We begin our multi-part series on the legends and myths swirling around the POW/MIAs allegedly left behind in Indochina with an explanation of how we got there in the first place: The Vietnam war, the Golden Triangle, secret bombings, aerial campaigns, army wives, and Ross Perot.

Episode 321: Dude Where’s My Dad: POW/MIAs (Part One)

"Realities have forced us to remain on diplomatic terms with several dictators," the Pampa Daily News stated in 1958. "U.S. ambassador to the U.N Samantha Power has been forced to look the other way as Saudi Arabia does as it pleases in Yemen," Politico told us in 2016. Biden is being forced to accept the flaws of America's friends," claimed The New York Times  earlier this year, 2023.

For decades, we've heard the same excuse regarding US foreign policy: 'Our leaders might not agree with the world’s dictatorial, reactionary governments, but they’re forced –– by some unknown geopolitical dark matter of realpolitik –– to support them for some broader, more noble goal.'

Strengthening ties with the governments of Saudi Arabia, India, Egypt, Israel, The Philippines, and other countries under right-wing, human-rights-abusing governance might be a bit unpleasant, but it’s the pragmatic thing to do and, therefore, the morally acceptable thing to do.

But countries that are not the United States or its allies are never said to be "forced" into carrying out human rights abuses or supporting those that do. They back bombings, ethnic cleansings, the oppression of women for the sport, because they are existentially evil. No outside mysterious entity ever "forces" them to have to make compromises on the altar of "reality."

But there is nothing, of course, "forcing" these decisions on our own Western leaders, and in nearly every case, they're simply extensions of preexisting geopolitical relationships, imperialist policies, and arbitrary might-makes-right governance.

On this episode, we discuss the media narrative that the U.S. is "forced" to maintain long-beneficial alliances with right-wing regimes, looking at how this suggestion falsely presents the U.S. as an unwilling, but ultimately helpless, participant in repression of human rights around the world.

Our guest is author and NYU professor James Peck.

Ep 190: Why Media Insists the US is "Forced" to Commit Human Rights Abuses

First we confer with our friends over at Compact Mag about how leftists should be more interested in ancient Rome. Then we talk about how the rest of the world is laffin at us. Finally we take a look at a rural community in Michigan who is apparently fighting the red tide.

Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

Episode 311: Scaring The Bros

In this public News Brief we discuss the recent escalation in violence in "the middle east" and the quickly-forming bipartisan consensus to jam the issue into a simplistic, dehumanizing War on Terror narrative

News Brief: US Media, Washington Rush Head First into 9/11 2.0

In this impromptu live show from Oct 30 2023, we break down the four main arguments against a ceasefire in Gaza and why they make no sense. 

Based on this article by Adam
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/those-who-say-cease-fire-wont-work-are-wrong-heres-why/

Live Show 10/30/23: 4 Arguments Against a Gaza Ceasefire and Why They're Bullshit

Bill Gates and his "philanthropic" foundation. We've heard the conspiracy theories — but what if the reality was damning enough? Our guest is Tim Schwab, journalist and author of The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire.

Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to ongoing series like Manclan, Trickle Down and The Spectral Voyager: https://www.patreon.com/QAnonAnonymous

QAA x Goosecult Party on Saturday December 16th: https://dice.fm/event/e8pkd-qaa-podcast-x-goosecult-party-w-john-vanderslice-16th-dec-the-goldfish-los-angeles-tickets

The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250291431
Tim Schwab: https://twitter.com/TimothyWSchwab

Music by Nick Sena.

http://qanonanonymous.com

Episode 255: Busy Bill Gates feat Tim Schwab

We’re joined by Devin Thomas O’Shea to talk about the mystery of Mary Pinchot Meyer’s death. 

Bad Shot, Mary: apocalypse-confidential.com/2023/11/22/bad-shot-mary/

Episode 339: Dead on the Trail: The Potomac Murder

Citations Needed is a podcast about the media, power, PR, and the history of bullshit. It is hosted by Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson, and produced by Florence Barrau-Adams.

Ep 188: How Capital Repackages Substandard Products for the Poor as "Increasing Access"

Citations Needed Podcast