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.
That “war is a racket” no-one listening to this program more than once would doubt. But, just what kind of racket is the current conflagration roiling Ukraine; and just how many players – and how many games – are being run at the cost of the people doing the dying?
Stavroula Pabst is a writer, comedian, and PhD student in Communications and Mass Media Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her writing appears online at The Grayzone, Reductress, the Harvard Business Review, and at Unlimited Hangout where I found her tour de force article, ‘Ukraine’s Future Lies in the Great Reset’.
Today, Stavroula Pabst and using Ukraine as accelerant for the New Global Society.
Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded January 7th, 2023.
It’s been almost thirty-one years since UNPROFOR, the UN Protection Forces’ mission to the Former Yugoslavia. Canada’s military, then famed for peacekeeping, played a role in standing between the warring parties in hopes of a brokered truce. That mission failed, but not for the reasons believed then. In fact, according to records recently declassified, little about the conflict that led to the destruction of thousands of lives and ultimately redrew the political map of the Balkans occurred either why or how we were told.
Tom Secker is a UK-based private researcher, journalist, and frequently featured commentator on security and intelligence issues. He’s the host of the podcast, ClandesTime, principal behind Spyculture.com, “the world’s premier online archive about government involvement in the entertainment industry”, and author, with Matthew Alford, of the book, ‘National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood’. Tom recently collaborated with Kit Klarenberg of the Grayzone on the article, ‘Declassified Intelligence Files Expose Inconvenient Truths of Bosnian War‘.
Tom Secker in the first half.
And, though it may be difficult to imagine now, back in the day people came out en masse to give voice to the notion of a World without war. They marched and sang, colourfully costumed and carrying clever signs, while massive puppets, designed to attract the attention of a media more normalized to war footage, danced along the boulevards and in the High Street. They were then called “The Left”, now they’re simply known as departed.
David Rovics’ frequent essays on political issues and societal observation are featured at CounterPunch and Dissident Voice.org among other places. He’s a broadcaster, musician, blogger, and author of the novel, ‘A Busker’s Adventures’. His weekly program, This Week with David Rovics can be found through his website, DavidRovics.com – and on Substack – where you can read his essays, listen to his hundreds of original songs, and catch some of his hundreds of interviews. His recent article, ‘An Autopsy on the US Left’ verifies what many of us have known but may not have admitted, the fact that “that parrot is dead!”
David Rovics and ‘An Autopsy on the US Left in the second half.
But first, Tom Secker and “CIA black ops, illegal weapon shipments, imported jihadist fighters, potential false flags, and stage-managed atrocities” revealed in Canada’s declassified Yugoslavia cables.
Song: At the End of World War III
Artist: Chet Gardiner
David sez: “If you’ve never heard of a musician named Chet Gardiner, here’s a fine introduction. This is his solo acoustic version of a song I wrote a few months ago, which he recorded at his home studio in Hawaii.
“Both the bassy resonance of Chet’s voice and his delivery reminds me very much of the last recordings Johnny Cash made, which I think were brilliant. Chet’s fingerstyle DADGAD guitar playing is so evocative as well.”
Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded June 11th, 2022
A foreign war is being used by the Canadian establishment to further entrench its thought monopoly on a nation still staggered following a two-plus year cognitive pounding. Now that the hoi polloi has been sufficiently head-softened, the reasoning seems, it’s time for the second of the old one/two punch combination. Ukraine is doing double-duty in this, both providing Bay Street warmongers the necessary pretense of moral rectitude for their bloody bonanza, while too granting social license for Ottawa to tear the guts out of a burgeoning popular opposition – even if it means eviscerating the country’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. And, so far, the wind has blown from their back.
Stavroula Pabst is a writer, comedian, and PhD student in Communications and Mass Media Studies at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her writing appears online at The Grayzone, Reductress, the Harvard Business Review, and at Passage, the “Canadian publication of thoughtful political, economic, and cultural ideas from a left-wing perspective” where I found her recent article, ‘Big Tech’s Purge of Dissenters is Impeding an Anti-War Movement.’
Stavroula Pabst in the first half.
And; this Victoria has undergone massive changes over its nearly two centuries of settler occupation. One enduring physical feature of the area epitomizes the altered landscape and displacement of both the First Peoples and flora and fauna living here at the time of contact. The Bowker Creek Watershed, named for an early settler/farmer, has tenaciously persisted despite having had a city land on top of it; but, like the rest of the south island it little resembles its original self. The Bowker’s survival though has never been certain, and now it depends on our diligent attention and continued vigilance in its protection.
Gerald Harris is a Director of the Friends of Bowker Creek Society and local leader of the Streamkeepers group working to reestablish salmon returns to Bowker Creek. The Friends are concerned by a recent sale of a section along the creek that could threaten both its ecology and the ability of citizens to protect it.
Gerald Harris and befriending the Bowker in the second half.
But first, Stavroula Pabst and deconstructing Canadian dissent.
Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded November 13th and 14th, 2021.
True to its word, the Trudeau government is determined to spend billions for a revamped fighter jet force for Canada’s military. The main debate until now has been which foreign weapons-making company will get the sweet deal – a deal worth a reported 88 billion buckaroos over the next generation – and not whether Canada should be supporting such a deal in the first place.
Ken Stone is a long-time antiwar activist whose served as an executive member of both the Syria Solidarity Movement and Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War. Ken and the Hamilton Coalition are joining hands in a trans-Canada effort with Canadian Voice of Women, Peace Brigades International, the Regina Peace Council, and the Victoria Peace Coalition here in Victoria among many others to mount the No Fighter Jets demonstrations at Liberal MP’s offices from coast to coast to coast November 22nd.
Ken Stone in the first half.
And; more than a year after Ethiopia’s military launched a so-called “police action” to “restore order” in Tigray province, the fighting rages on. While thousands have died and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced, another casualty of the humanitarian disaster that ensued has been Western goodwill for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate prime minister Abiy Ahmed, who now faces sanctions – along with ally Eritrea – and the threat of American military intervention should the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa nation continue.
To some on the American and European left that threat smacks of the kind of “humanitarian intervention” seen in Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria; it’s something they say is no less than naked neo-imperialism, and prompting their support for Ahmed and Eritrean strongman, Isaias Afwerki.
Finian Cunningham is a prolific journalist and two-time Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism recipient. His articles on international affairs appear at numerous online outlets, including Strategic Culture, where his March piece, ‘U.S. Paves Way for Intervention in Ethiopia, Horn of Africa’ is proving now to be prophetic.
Finian Cunningham and competing narratives in the ongoing Ethiopian disaster in the second half.
But first, Ken Stone and just saying “NO!” to new fighter jets.
Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded November 13th, 2021.
More than a year after Ethiopia’s military launched a so-called “police action” to “restore order” in Tigray province, the fighting rages on. While thousands have died and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced, another casualty of the humanitarian disaster that ensued has been Western goodwill for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate prime minister Abiy Ahmed, who now faces sanctions – along with ally Eritrea – and the threat of American military intervention should the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa nation continue.
To some on the American and European left that threat smacks of the kind of “humanitarian intervention” seen in Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria; it’s something they say is no less than naked neo-imperialism, and prompting their support for Ahmed and Eritrean strongman, Isaias Afwerki.
Finian Cunningham is a prolific journalist and two-time Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism recipient. His articles on international affairs appear at numerous online outlets, including Strategic Culture, where his March piece, ‘U.S. Paves Way for Intervention in Ethiopia, Horn of Africa’ is proving now to be prophetic.
Today, Finian Cunningham and competing narratives in the ongoing Ethiopian disaster.
