Tag: fascism

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Ted Smith, Dimitri Lascaris February 20, 2022

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Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded February 12th and 20th, 2022

The Victoria Cannabis Buyers Club discovered last week the cost the province’s Community Safety Unit sees fitting for it to pay for the crime of providing British Columbians with medicines they cannot find elsewhere. Following raids led by the CSU in 2019 and 2020, the Buyers Club now faces fines approaching $6.5 million. It’s a price too far they say.

Ted Smith is a long-time justice activist and co-founder of the Victoria Cannabis Buyer’s Club, which for more than twenty-five years has provided cannabis-based products to people with terminal cancer and other incurable medical conditions. He says, though they were waiting for the CSU shoe to drop, the Club was still unprepared for the ridiculous amount announced. Nor were they ready for what followed: GoFundMe® disallowing their legal defense fund, and now webhost, Go-Daddy going and removing the club’s website – reportedly at the request of the CSU.

Ted Smith in the first half.

And; there’s a crisis in Canada. It’s not the one you’ve likely been watching on the news nightly, but a greater crisis of confidence in the institutional foundations not only in this country, but across the western world. From the French Gilets Jaunes and Spain’s Indignados, to the January 6th insurrectionists and Ottawa Freedom Convoyistas, there is an unmistakable whiff of tiki torch in the air. And, perhaps it’s the promise of pitchforks to come that has Neoliberal, globalized leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sánchez, and Justin Trudeau stabbing at the panic button? In Trudeau’s case, the Canadian prime minister’s minority government Februrary 14th declared a “public order emergency” and in an unprecedented step enacted the federal “Emergencies Act”. This in response to a “fringe” group of truckers blocking streets in the nation’s capital.

Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, journalist and activist, and former front-runner for the leadership of the Green Party of Canada. He calls the Trudeau government move “draconian & anti-democratic legislations” that he says “should not even exist“.

Dimitri Lascaris on the Liberal government’s St. Valentine’s Day massacre of Canadians’ civil rights, and the necessity to support dissent, even when you don’t agree with the dissenters in the second half.

But first, Ted Smith and the perils of practicing compassionate care for the sick and dying in Canada’s “legal marijuana” environment.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio and serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Richard Sanders, Jeremiah Hayes February 3, 2022

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Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded January 29th, 2022

While the press here is doing its utmost to create panic at the prospect of a war with Russia in Ukraine, two things Canadians should know are: The war against Russia began in the West a century ago; and, it never stopped. The latest iteration of western hostility towards Russia – using Ukrainian fascists as a Cat’s-paw to occupy its vast neighbour’s attention – is an old gambit and, as the CBC might say, one “with a Canadian connection”.

Richard Sanders is a full-time, full-on antiwar activist. He is a researcher, writer, campaign organizer and founder of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade, or COAT. He’s been at it since Ronald Reagan’s Dirty Wars in Latin America in the 1980’s, and continues the fight today. COAT’s publication, Press for Conversion! has documented Canada’s role in supporting far-right East European émigré groups; the same “rooted in fascist, ethno-nationalist movements that aided and abetted Nazi Germany…”.

Richard Sanders in the first half.

And; the Victoria Film Festival is back, running from February 4th through the 13th, with a hybrid model of in-person and online screenings. One of this year’s offerings is Jeremiah Hayes’ Montreal International Documentary Festival’s People’s Choice Award-winning ‘Dear Audrey‘, an at once ethereal reflection on the enduring power of love, and unblinking revelation of life’s sometimes steel-cold realities.

Jeremiah Hayes’ Dear Audrey, “an invitation for all of us to take better care of each other” in the second half.

But first, Richard Sanders and Canada’s role revealed in the multi-generational war to divide and conquer Russia.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio and serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, John Helmer September 16th, 2021

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Welcome back to Gorilla Radio, recorded September 6th, 2021

With Spring approaching Down Under, citizens there are set to begin a new season under lockdown. For Australians in Victoria State, the sixth Covid-19 lockdown was due to end last week, but days before the deadline, Premier Daniel Andrews’ Labour government announced it would be extended in order to “buy time to allow vaccinations to be undertaken…”

How much time, or how many vaccinations it would take to make this latest lockdown go away wasn’t made clear, but what’s certain is the growing restiveness of the population. Last month, hundreds were arrested during protests of government measures, with the country’s second city, Melbourne seeing the greatest numbers of arrests.

John Helmer is a journalist, author, broadcaster, former political advisor to government, and principal behind the news website, Dances with Bears. Among Helmer’s many books titles are, ‘The Lie That Shot Down MH-17’ ‘Skripal in Prison’, and ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’. His latest is, ‘Hitler Didn’t Die in Berlin – He Moved to Melbourne Where He Runs the State Government of Victoria: A True Covid-19 Thriller’. It’s the chronicle of his legal battles with authorities that banned both his leaving Australia, and allowing his wife rejoin him there.

He writes: “Right now this is a story with urgent parallels in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, Spain, and France – in every country where democratic resistance to abuse of power in the pandemic has run into identical tactics of lawlessness, and suffered the same fate.”

Today, John Helmer and the search for an inoculant to viral government malfeasance and the disastrous effects of hubris on the body politic.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: https://cfuv.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Christopher Black, David Rovics, Janine Bandcroft August 13, 2020

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Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s continuing efforts, NOT broadcast live from CFUV Radio in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but emanating live-to-tape via Skype from our home-based … studios on this date, August 5th, 2020.

Twenty months in to her Vancouver house arrest, Huawei CFO, (and daughter of the Chinese corporate leviathan’s founder) Meng Wanzhou entered a new court filing in B.C.’s Supreme Court. In late July Meng’s legal team charged that, among other things the proceedings against their client had quote, “been poisoned” and “can no longer be reasonably regarded as fair…”. Meng has already lost one appeal to throw out the extradition petition filed by the United States in B.C. courts, and the case has predictably proven a particularly prickly political sticking point in Canada-China relations.

Christopher Black is a Toronto-based criminal lawyer specializing in international war crimes cases. He’s also an executive member of the Canadian Peace Congress. Black’s articles on international law, politics, and World events appear at New Eastern Outlook among other places. And, his timely novel, ‘Beneath the Clouds‘ “a story of how people, acting collectively, can defeat tyranny” is newly out.

Christopher Black in the first half and the international tug-of-war testing Canada’s “Rule of Law” credentials.

And; federal troops are in Portland. Nearly two months in to daily police brutality demonstrations there, the president decided to deploy the “Minneapolis” treatment; or as Attorney General, Bill Barr calls it, the “Occupy Model”. And there are other cities slated to receive the same.

Itinerant musician and now covid-caged broadcaster, is in Portland, where his relatively mild-mannered home city has suddenly become the center of Civil War 2.020. As he can’t tour, David is doing the next best thing, raising Hell on the internet, and helping foment a Renters strike.

“Welcome back to the program, David. I think it’s three of the last four years, fire has been the big story out of Portland. We’ve had a late summer up the road here in BC, what’s your forest situation like down there?”

David Rovics and tearing down community in Portland in the second half.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.ca/

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Dave Lindorff July 21, 2020

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Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s continuing efforts, NOT broadcast live from CFUV Radio in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but emanating live-to-tape via Skype from our home-based … studios on this date, July 21st, 2020.

As with much of Donald Trump’s televised behaviour his June 1st march, Bible in hand, from the Oval Office to St. John’s Church across Lafayette Square would be just another comic display we’ve come to expect from the orange-faced clown president, but for the club-swinging, gas projectile-shooting goon squad preceding he and his clatch of reluctant government A-list photo-op backdroppers. But, there’s nothing funny about what that media exercise was meant to convey and what it means for the near future of America.

Dave Lindorff is an independent, award-winning journalist, author, and founding editor of the news website, ThisCantBeHappening.net. His articles can too be found at Salon.com and The Nation magazine, where his recent piece, ‘Tear Gas and Clubs in Lafayette Square Were Just the Beginning’ appears.

Dave Lindorff and the Trump regime dusting off the ‘Occupy Model’.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Pablo Ouziel, Elisabeth Tova Bailey, Janine Bandcroft June 4, 2020

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Welcome to GR. We are as yet NOT broadcasting live from the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but instead recording live-to-Skype this day, May 13th, 2020.

Fitting it’s been a late Spring here. Winter’s intransigence keeping us indoors longer than we’d like, confined to leaving the greeting rituals of the new season overlong under wraps. But nature won’t be denied, and sure as God made green apples and bright flowers, our deliverance from the power of the pestilence that’s held much of the World at bay is waning. Or, so we’re told. The green lamp is lit – sort of – with Spain, one of the countries worse-effected by Covid, announcing last month its “deconfinement plan” roll out, beginning in earnest Monday, May 11. It’s the first stage of a phased emergence from the virus, and as elsewhere it’s a policy fraught with doubt and controversy.

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 is currently in his native Barcelona.

Dr. Pablo Ouziel in the first half.

And; what can we take away from this weird moment when the World stood uncertainly on its axis? Perhaps from our time in collective isolation we can understand better what it means for others forcibly removed by circumstance from their lives and an agency taken as granted, until just taken? Elisabeth Tova Bailey is an intimate acquaintance of solitude, having experienced years of patient recuperation from a randomly encountered debilitating disease. The product of her long estivation is the book, ‘The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating’. The multi-award garnering chronicle of her bed-side companion and its special history has now metamorphosed too as the short film of the same title.

Elisabeth Tova Bailey and life at a snail’s pace in the second half.

And; long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with this week’s Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things you can get up to in and around our town – both real and virtual – in the coming week. But first, Pablo Ouziel and Spain’s planned emergence from crisis.

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Pablo Ouziel May 14, 2020

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Welcome to GR. We are as yet NOT broadcasting live from the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but instead recording live-to-Skype this day, May 13th, 2020.

Fitting it’s been a late Spring here. Winter’s intransigence keeping us indoors longer than we’d like, confined to leaving the greeting rituals of the new season overlong under wraps. But nature won’t be denied, and sure as God made green apples and bright flowers, our deliverance from the power of the pestilence that’s held much of the World at bay is waning. Or, so we’re told. The green lamp is lit – sort of – with Spain, one of the countries worse-effected by Covid, announcing last month its “deconfinement plan” roll out, beginning in earnest Monday, May 11. It’s the first stage of a phased emergence from the virus, and as elsewhere it’s a policy fraught with doubt and controversy.

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 is currently in his native Barcelona.

Dr. Pablo Ouziel and Spain’s planned emergence from crisis.