Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Helen Caldicott, Nils Melzer (redux) April 2nd/5th, 2023

Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded April 2nd and 5th, 2023.

Just thirty years since the fall of the USSR and end of the Cold War, the atomic Mexican stand-off between East and West is hotter than its ever been. At this moment, nervous fingers hover above buttons and toggles that once triggered mean the end of everything we know. Worse, with the advent of AI, human agency is no longer required; its messy, indecisive moral acid removed from the Earth-ending equation.

Dr. Helen Caldicott is a physician, author, and lecturer who has for more than forty years studied, written, and campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons and their derivatives, delivering impassioned speeches and making imprecations to both the politicians and power-brokers overseeing the precarious atomic tinderbox, and more importantly, imploring the people step up to stop the madness.

Helen Caldicott’s book titles include: ‘If You Love This Planet,’ ‘Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer,’The New Nuclear Danger,’ ‘Depleted Uranium: Metal of Dishonour,’ ‘If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth,’ and her most recent, ‘Sleepwalking to Armageddon’ in which she assembles contributions from the world’s leading nuclear scientists and thought leaders to “assess the political and scientific dimensions of the threat of nuclear war today.”

Helen Caldicott in the first half

And; Reporters Without Borders was to pay a visit to Julian Assange, the journalist wasting in Belmarsh Prison, London this week but in yet another example of arbitrary cruelty at the last moment authorities refused the RSF visit, barring too for good measure Assange’s wife, Stella.

April 11th marks the four year anniversary of Julian’s incarceration, under the harshest measures the British penal system can mete out. He’s held not for any crime committed in Britain, or against Britain, but because an American warrant seeking his extradition is “in process”.

June 6, 2019, I recorded an interview with Nils Melzer, then the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Melzer visited Assange in May of that year and subsequently issued a public call for Assange’s immediate release, along with a searing rebuke of both his current jailors in Britain and those in America who would be if their extradition petition is executed.

Nils Melzer and the continued call for Julian Assange’s release in the second half.

Song: Behind These Prison Walls

Artist: David Rovics

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, Yves Engler November 4th, 2021

Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded October 30th, 2021

Next week, Canadians will again gather in towns and cities across the nation to commemorate Armistice Day, (November 11th, 1918) and celebrate the fulfillment of The Great War’s promise to be the “End of All Wars”. But you needn’t worry about putting to knee the youth of the land and painfully instructing them on the glorious horrors, or forgotten methods and meaning of human warfare. The promise was a lie. And the wars and the lying about war persist a century and more later – obviously. Less obvious to even the most engaged citizens of this Canada however is the depth and breadth of the lies sustaining both the country’s military and militarism in the country. The reasons for that dearth of Canadian incredulity are many, but primary among them is the dismal grasp of history here.

Yves Engler is a Montreal-based political activist, essayist, lecturer, and author whose eleven books – mostly on Canadian foreign policy – are joined now by a twelfth title, ‘Stand on Guard for Whom? A Peoples’ History of the Canadian Military.’ Yves is preparing now for the far western swing of his book tour, which will see him presenting in Nanaimo, Victoria, Duncan, and Vancouver from November 10th to 14th.

Today, Yves Engler and revealing, remembering, and recognizing the pervasiveness of Canada’s militarist past and present.

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