Tag: Honduras

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Karen Spring, Keith Simmonds December 2nd, 2021

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Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded November 27th, 2021

The Honduran presidential election is November 28th and will see Xiomara Castro, wife of ousted former president, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya face Nasry Asfura, right-wing mayor of Tegulcigalpa and close cohort of exiting president, Juan Orlando Hernández. It’s been 12 years since Castro’s pajama-clad husband was spirited out his bed and out of the country in the coup. Canada and the United States were quick then to recognize the coupsters, and have continued to support different iterations of their “democracy restoration” despite ruthless military and police repression, rampant government corruption, and a flourishing drugs trade and gang violence that helped trigger an ongoing migration exodus.

Karen Spring is the Honduras-based Coordinator for the Honduras Solidarity Network. They describe themselves as a, “… decentralized network of approximately 30 organizations from across Canada and the United States […] committed to demonstrating and advocating for solidarity with the Honduran social movement.” Spring is also author of several articles and reports about human rights issues, has testified before Canadian Parliamentary committees about human rights in Honduras, and blogs at aquiabajo.com.

Karen Spring in the first half.

And; as serious an abrogation of first principles Canada’s failure to support true Honduran democracy represents, its utter abandonment of Palestinian children to Israel’s military court system puts the lie to the country’s claim – and self-regard – as international human rights exemplar. ‘Canada Stand Up for Palestinian Children’s Rights’ is a coalition of human rights organizations who are currently engaged in a continuing awareness-raising campaign because our government has failed in its response to the systemic “kidnap, arrest, detainment, abuse, torture, and murder of Palestinian children…”

Keith Simmonds is a United Church of Canada minister who served as a World Council of Churches human rights observer (Ecumenical Accompanier) in Palestine in early 2020. Stationed in Bethlehem he also spent time in Jerusalem, Galilee and Tulkarem. The ‘second career minister’ has too served as a labour and community organizer, volunteer firefighter and ERT team member, and worked as an assistant to provincial cabinet ministers among other things in a varied career.

Keith Simmonds and holding Canada to its word on human rights in Palestine in the second half.

But first, Karen Spring and can Sunday’s election be Honduran’s second chance at real democracy?

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing 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, Tyler Shipley, Joel Bakan, Janine Bandcroft September 10, 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, September 4th, 2020.

We all grew up with those infomercial-lengthed Canadian history bites, Heritage Minutes. With production values just hoakey enough to appear made by the Ministry of Education for your Grade 6 Socials class, the upbeat and nationhood-affirming vignettes have become, like the TransCanada and some other stuff one of the things that makes us Canadians Canadian. And, like some of the best-loved stories we like to tell ourselves about ourselves, Heritage Minutes is just a pile of crap. Or so contends my first guest.

Tyler Shipley is Professor of Culture, Society and Commerce at Humber College’s Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, and founding member of Canadian poliprog band, Consumer Goods. His first book, ‘Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras’ taught us more about ourselves than we hoped to learn, and the same is promised of his second title, ‘Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination.’ His recent article, ‘The stunning misinformation and whitewashing of racism behind Canada’s Heritage Minutes’ currently challenges our childhood indoctrination from the pages of The Canada Files website.

Tyler Shipley in the first half.

And; way back near the turn of the century, when the unbridled power of transnational capital and its enabling mechanism the modern corporation threatened to destroy democracy, Vancouver-based legal scholar and filmmaker, Joel Bakan released the now classic documentary film, ‘THE CORPORATION’. Now, more than fifteen years later, Bakan has revisited the topic with his newly released book, ‘The New Corporation: How “Good” Corporations Are Bad for Democracy’, and he’s teamed up again with fellow CORPORATION director, Jennifer Abbott on the new film, ‘The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel’.

Joel Bakan and revisiting The Corporation fifteen years later in the second half.

And; CFUV Radio broadcaster and host of Plant Powered Radio, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin, bringing us up to speed with some of what’s good going on in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Tyler Shipley and catching up on Canada’s pretend history, even as the real one catches up with us.

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.uvic.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 and Kevin Zeese Presente! from Aug. 9, 2018

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All who knew Kevin and who care about justice and human rights are deeply saddened to hear of his untimely death last night, taken suddenly at 64 years by a heart attack.

Tributes will follow from all quarters.

The peace enjoyed by the people of Nicaragua since the overthrow of dictator and tyrant Anastasio “Tachito” Somoza was hard-won, and not without reversals. In the last months, an attempt to unseat the elected government of leftist, Daniel Ortega however has seen what many fear could be the beginning of the end of that peace, and revival of the dark forces of fascism once buried, perhaps too shallowly, there.

Kevin Zeese is an American lawyer, political activist, essayist, and author. He’s also co-founder of the Drug Policy Foundation and current co-director of Popular Resistance.org, from where his and colleague, Dr. Margaret Flowers’ weekly podcast, Clearing The Fog emanates.

His frequent essays and articles on social justice issues in America and abroad appear at Popular Resistance, CounterPunch, and Gorilla Radio Blog among other places, and his book titles include: ‘Drug Law: Strategies and Tactics’, ‘Drug Prohibition an the Conscience of Nations’, and ‘The Great Issues of Drug Policy’.

Today, Kevin Zeese and the Lessons Learned from the Failed Violent Coup in Nicaragua.

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.uvic.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, Stefan Goebel, Dimitri Lascaris, Janine Bandcroft June 20, 2019

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A century past the end of the War to End All Wars humankind has experienced unrelenting conflicts both large and small, roiling the length and breadth of the World. A look across media platforms at the headlines today reinforces the calamitous political state of the planet, but what is rarely explored or explained is the role it, the media, plays and has played in our seeming perpetual state of war and its ever-rumoured coming.

Stefan Goebel is a scholar, educator, author, and Director of the Centre for the History of War, Media & Society at Kent University. A reader in Modern British History, professor Goebel is too co-editor of the recently published volume, ‘Propaganda and Conflict: War, Media and Shaping the Twentieth Century‘.

Stefan Goebel in the first half.

And; ten years after pajama-clad Honduran center-left president Mel Zelaya was whisked from his bed and into exile by military coupsters the country is a basket case. For the vast majority, the past decade has seen economic collapse and the erosion of the meagre human rights and agrarian reforms Zelaya had initiated in his final year in office. It has also become the most dangerous place on Earth to live, with police, gangs, and government-sponsored death squads providing impetus for the main component of the Central American refugee crisis.

Dimitri Lascaris is a Canadian lawyer, human rights activist, and reporter for the Real News Network. He’s just returned from Honduras where he joined a tri-national delegation of University academics and members of the Central American Alliance Against Mining on a Human Rights fact-finding mission to investigate local opposition to an iron-ore mine in the Botaderos National Park in northern Honduras.

Dimitri Lascaris and Honduras, ten years after democracy died 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, professor Stefan Goebel and media, propaganda and conflict in the post-truth age.

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.uvic.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/