Sunday, May 26, 2013

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Laray Polk, Robert Parry, Janine Bandcroft May 27, 2013

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Pacific Free Press

Those listening who remember the release of Duran Duran's 'Rio' video may too recall; more than MTV, life in the nineteen eighties also meant living under the shadow of nuclear destruction. MAD Ronnie Ray Gun ruled America and, aided by sinister side-kick, George Bush seemed poised to take the world down a dark path towards the conflagration of an inevitable nuclear Armageddon.

As doomsday's children, many a night we tossed restless, only to rise the day after to find our nightmares of atomic hellfire were not imagined but the realpolitik of our times. It's an age we who lived through firsthand would have relegated to the dust bin of history, but sadly the insanity didn't end with the fall of the Soviet empire, nor with the welcome demise of the demigod figure heads of the Free World. Today, none of us can afford the comfortable illusion humanity, having dodged the bullet of imminent destruction in the last century, is now out of the woods.     

Listen. Hear.

Laray Polk is a journalist, multimedia artist, and author whose articles have appeared in her adopted home town paper, The Dallas Morning News, and online at Common Dreams, CounterPunch, D Magzine, In These Times, Znet and Pacific Free Press, among others. Laray was also a recipient of a grant from The Nation Institute's Investigative Fund which she used to expose the threat posed to the Ogallala Aquifer by Texas radioactive waste disposal site. Laray Polk's latest project is the book, 'Nuclear War and Environmental Catastrophe.' Co-authored with Noam Chomsky, it's a series of interviews conducted with the famed American academic dissident, intended as a warning and reminder that, "talking about the unspeakable can still be done with humor, with wit and indomitable spirit."

Laray Polk in the first half.

And; while the Reagan/Bush tag team terrorized me and the rest of the world with the promise of instant nuclear annihilation back in the eighties, they and their allies were fulfilling that promise in a more prosaic way throughout Latin America. Guatemala recently made the news in North America with the singular story of former dictator and dedicated US ally and commie hunter Efrain Rios Montt's conviction for crimes against humanity committed against the mainly indigenous people of his country. It was an incredible, undreamed of halcyon moment of justice prevailing for we grey beards still remembering the terror brought down against the Maya people in pursuit of American corporate interests in that place then. But, it seems now to be a victory too good to believe.  

Robert Parry is an investigative reporter, author, editor, and co-founder of Consortium News.com, the Internet's first news magazine website. Parry broke many stories from Latin America during the dirty war years for Newsweek and the Associated Press, and followed those with revelations of the Iran-Contra scandal that contributed greatly to George H.W. Bush's single term presidency. His book titles include: 'Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq,' 'Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush,' and his latest 'America's Stolen Narrative: From Washington and Madison, to Nixon, Reagan and the Bushes, to Barack Obama'.

Robert Parry remembering Guatemala and more in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of what's good to do in and around our city and beyond in the coming week. But first, Laray Polk and waking from nuclear nightmares and other environmental catastrophes.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm 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/
G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.

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