Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, broad/webcasting since 1999. The show is archived at: www.gorilla-radio.com. The GR blog is at: gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com, and you can find and support the program at GRadio.Substack.com. Financial support is also possible through the Patreon site: https://www.patreon.com/PacificFreePress. He’s too the past contributing editor to the web news site, www.pacificfreepress.com, (now defunct) and tweets at @paciffreepress. G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media. Some past guests include: M. Shahid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, Ramzy Baroud, David Barsamian, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Paul Cienfuegos, Yves Engler, Laura Flanders, Denis Halliday, Julia Butterfly Hill, Sam Husseini, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Chalmers Johnson, Malalai Joya, Kathy Kelly, Ingmar Lee, Dave Lindorff, Andrew Gavin Marshall, Stefania Maurizi, Greg Palast, Michael Parenti, John Pilger, Kevin Pina, Ted Rall, Paul Craig Roberts, John Ross, David Rovics, Joan Russow, Danny Schechter, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, David Swanson, Andy Worthington, Mickey Z., Howard Zinn and many others.
Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s Home Edition, recorded April 12th, 2021
Despite Madrid’s state of denial, Spain’s separatist movement is alive and well and living in Catalonia. Regional elections in February maintained independence parties’ hold on a combined majority in the parliament there, while street protests that erupted in Barcelona and other towns following the arrest of popular rapper, Pablo Hásel serve as an unsubtle reminder to Pedro Sanchez’ federal coalition government just how tenuous its hold on the peace is.
Pablo Ouziel is a Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria’s Political Science Department and Centre for Global Studies whose Fellowship Project at UVic, ‘Democracy Here and Now: The Exemplary Case of Spain’ was interrupted by the Covid-19 closure of the University. He currently resides in his native home, near Barcelona.
Today, Pablo Ouziel and the trouble with democracy in Spain.
Last week, Spain’s political path followed its European neighbours into uncertain territory. The young Socialist Party government of Pedro Sánchez, the shortest-lived government since the fall of Franco, lost coalition support over the continued prosecution of Catalan separatists involved with the “illegal” October 1, 2017 independence referendum.
Dr. Pablo Ouziel is Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria’s Political Science Department and Centre for Global Studies. He’s a native of Barcelona, and his Post-Doctoral Fellowship project at UVic, ‘Democracy Here and Now: The Exemplary Case of Spain’ couldn’t be more timely.
Pablo Ouziel in the first half.
And; were he alive today, Walt Disney might sing, “It’s a small planet afterall.” The World’s population has more than doubled since old Walt’s death in 1966, and the exponential increase in human numbers is the number one reason cited by proponents of the Green Revolution of that era, and reiterated by transnational agribusiness behemoths today, for the continued expansion of industrial scale agriculture and necessity of increasing the scope of genetically modified food crop organisms across the globe. It’s a no-brainer, right?
Timothy A. Wise is senior researcher at the Small Planet Institute and director of its Land and Food Rights Program. He’s also a senior research fellow at Tufts University’s Global Development and Environment Institute and founded its Globalization and Sustainable Development Program.
Timothy A. Wise and the politics on your plate in the second half.
And; Victoria-based activist and long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Pablo Ouziel and Catalans taking to Barcelona’s streets again.
A new day’s dawning in the ongoing communications revolution that has, over the last four decades, already transformed our World.
5G, or fifth generation wireless technology will, promises Canada’s Communications Research Centre, “benefit Canadian telecommunications systems, technologies, and applications.” It is, they say, a “game changer” readying us for a near future where online devices vastly outnumber the humans using them, and will enable the coming age of “The Internet of Things”.
He’s also the past president of Stop Smart Meters.ca, a citizen’s coalition to reverse BC Hydro’s imposition of the so-called “Smart Meter” without due consultation, and at great cost to British Columbians.
McGinnis’ work with Stop Smart Meters was instrumental in bringing about the 2011 moratorium on Smart Meter installation at the Convention of the Union of B.C. Municipalities. Walt’s also an electrical contractor specializing in “making the built environment safe from the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiation.”
Walt McGinnis in the first half.
And; a lot has changed in the year since Spain’s central government brought out the Gardia to violently shut down pro-independence activists in restive Catalonia; and a lot hasn’t. As it stands, Spain is still whole, though the leadership on both sides of last year’s contretemps are out of power, but resentment is more than simmering in Barcelona, heart of the Catalan independence movement, where pitched battle was seen again in the streets between old foes last week.
Dr. Pablo Ouziel is a Post-Doctoral fellow at UVic whose project in progress is, ‘Towards Democratic Responses to the Crisis of Democracy in Spain: Forms of Participatory and Representative Civic Engagement.’ He’s freshly returned from a visit to his home city of Barcelona.
Pablo Ouziel and a darkened horizon persisting for both Spain’s and European democracy in the second half.
And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Walt McGinnis and a 5th Generation dawning.