Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Stavroula Pabst, Gerald Harris June 11, 2022

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.

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, Ken Stone, Finian Cunningham November 18, 2021

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.