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Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Jillian Maguire, Paul Watson March 22, 2023

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Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded March 22, 2023

This weekend past, the British Columbia Federation of Teachers held its Annual General Meeting. On the agenda: the election of a new president, and an opportunity the BCTF Divest Now campaign to platform its efforts to pursue a practical pathway to cease their pension plan’s investments in “fossil fuels, and other life-killing industries.”

Jillian Maguire was a presidential candidate in the poll, held March 21st. Maguire’s a longtime teacher who over a 27+ year career estimates she’s launched more than 5,000 students into the World. She says she was shocked to discover the teachers’ pension plan was heavily invested in some of the most ecologically destructive businesses, and so co-founded BCTF Divest Now.

Jillian Maguire in the first half.

And; we often forget, everything beginning on the land ends in the sea. As desperate the situation of terrestrial pollution is, in the ocean the effects are amplified, concentrated, and brought back to us as inevitably as the tides.

Paul Watson has spent a lifetime on and in the service of the ocean. A founding member of Greenpeace, he left that iconic organization at the height of its effectiveness to found the Sea Shepherd Society. Renowned for its direct action against whaling, most spectacularly intercepting the massive factory fleets of Japan, Norway, and Russia, Sea Shepherd has also exposed and shut down hundreds of other ecologically destructive commercial ventures and activities.

Now Watson is helming another venture, the Captain Paul Watson Foundation, whose mission to save life in the sea is simply stated: “If the Ocean Dies, We Die!”

Paul Watson and finding a way to protect and defend life in the sea in the second half.

But first, Jillian Maguire and British Columbia’s teachers instructing their union to listen and learn to divest.

Song: Captain

Artist: Tiny Milkshake

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, broad/webcasting since 1999. Check out the Archive at Gorilla-Radio.com, GRadio.Substack.com, and the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com/

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Ron Ridenour, Leigh Vossen, Cassie Shroeder July 2nd, 2022

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Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded July 2nd 2022

As Summer’s dog days begin the drums of war are beating with heightening intensity. Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau at the close of NATO’s Madrid confab dedicated his country’s future to one of increased war-making, promising more weaponry to the current hot war in Ukraine, and announced the inauguration of a “NATO research project”, the Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic devoted to expected wars the military alliance will wage to secure the continued global economic domination of its member nations.

Trudeau’s bellicosity and hubris is no surprise, but that traditional pacifist nations in the alliance are willing to go along with NATO’s blatantly antagonistic New Strategic Concept is a worrisome sign of disasters to come.

Ron Ridenour is an ex-pat American journalist, author, editor, and peace and social justice activist currently living in Denmark. He’s worked as a special correspondent and freelancer for numerous publications in Europe, the US, and Latin America, including CovertAction Magazine where I found his recent article, ‘Does Iceland Set Benchmark for Peaceful and Politically Engaged People?’

Ron Ridenour in the first half.

And; two and a half years after the onset of Covid-19 the pandemic is widely regarded as a past event. Even so, governments and media are warning of next wave variants they say require vaccination and booster regimens be again ramped up.

Leigh Vossen and Cassie Shroeder are members of Students Against Mandates, an organized manifestation of Canadian post-secondary students and their allies “fighting for the right of all students to receive an education, regardless of personal medical decisions.”

Leigh Vossen and Cassie Shroeder on students standing against mandates in the second half.

But first, Ron Ridenour and Iceland’s essential place in a possible peaceful global future.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing since 1998; in Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: cfuv.ca. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com/

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Bjartmar Oddur Þeyr Alexandersson, John Helmer July 15, 2021

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Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s Home Edition, recorded on the dates, July 10th and 11th, 2021.

Crusading publisher and founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange spent his 50th birthday last week just as he had his 49th and 48th, in solitary at London’s Belmarsh Prison. Assange was snatched by British authorities from Ecuador’s London Embassy April 11th, 2019, the place he’d been granted sanctuary in 2012. He said back then he feared extradition to the United States to be punished for WikiLeaks’ release of the infamous Collateral Murder video and other revelations of U.S. criminality. Nearly ten years later, Assange waits in stir as America prepares an appeal of Britain’s dismissal on humanitarian grounds of its first attempt to have him delivered to Washington.

A major element of America’s case against Assange rests on the testimony of Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson, a controversial figure who in a recent interview with Stundin, an Icelandic news site, admits to providing false testimony to the FBI. Bjartmar Oddur Þeyr Alexandersson co-wrote the article that has Assange allies hopeful for his release at long last.

Bjartmar Alexandersson in the first half.

And; it was an international sensation in 2018 when, as like in a Hollywood thriller; a Russian hit squad attempted to rub out a former double-agent in an audacious, broad daylight “military-grade” chemical attack in the heart of Salisbury, a town known more for its Early English Gothic cathedral than international intrigue.

Tensions got so high for a time, it was thought L’Affaire Skripal could even lead to war! And no-one perhaps was a more sympathetic character in the story than Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, collateral victim of the deathly, Novichok chemical agent. Imagine everybody’s surprise then when the now former Detective Sergeant inadvertently revealed he’d never actually been exposed to Novichok!

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’, ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’, and his latest, ‘Hitler Didn’t Die in Berlin – He Moved to Melbourne Where He Runs the State Government of Victoria: A True Covid-19 Thriller’. He’s also the author of ‘Skripal in Prison’ a compendium of his many articles on the Skripal case. His latest on the matter at Dances with Bears is, ‘DETECTIVE SGT NICK BAILEY HAS ANNOUNCED NOT ANOTHER WORD ON NOVICHOK AND THE SKRIPAL CASE‘.

John Helmer and the curious and curiouser case of the once talkative and now silent detective in the second half.

But first, Bjartmar Oddur Þeyr Alexandersson and ‘Key Witness in Assange Case Admits to Lies in Indictment‘.

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