Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Dave Lindorff, Will Tell, Janine Bandcroft May 14, 2020

This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com

May 14, 2020

Welcome to Gorilla Radio, where we are still, as yet, NOT broadcasting live from the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but are instead recording live-to-Skype this day, May 10th, 2020.

While millions breathe sighs of relief as jurisdiction around the World take the first tentative steps towards reopening after the unprecedented Covid shut-downs, others dare not venture out, or allow potentially infected people cross their thresholds. From the start, this pandemic has been Janus-headed, experienced very differently depending on ones health, income, area code, and most vitally, age. For elders, especially those in care home, Covid has been more plague than pandemic.

Dave Lindorff is an independent, award-winning journalist, author, and founding editor of the news website, ThisCantBeHappening.net. Among the ‘Izzy’ Award for ‘Outstanding Independent Journalism” recipient’s four books, the most cogent in this moment is his 1992, ‘Marketplace Medicine: The Rise of the For-Profit Hospital Chains’.

Listen. Hear.

Dave’s recent article, published under a joint agreement between Tarbell.org and ThisCantBeHappening!, is ‘The Nursing Home Coronavirus Pandemic’.

Dave Lindorff in the first half.

And; as bad as this pandemic gets here in the West, in the Global South, where care homes, and state supported healthcare are not an option for the majority, things are by orders of magnitude more desperate. Worse still is the situation in those countries where governments embrace neoliberal economic doctrine and care little for those at the bottom of the class and economic spectrum. In India, after more than six weeks of rigidly enforced lockdown, food and medicine supplies, and the ability for internally displaced migrant workers to get home, are priority concerns; as is getting in this year’s crops.

Will Tell is an expat living in rural southern India, where lockdown measures have been eased somewhat, but says, “Migrant workers (literally millions of them) got stranded in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore (the major cities, that attract them) when the lockdown occurred.” Adding, “…[B]orders have been closed for nearly a month now, and it looks like a lot longer before they open.”

Will Tell and the pandemic over there in the second half.

And; long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with this week’s 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, Dave Lindorff and Covid-19’s expendables.

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.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/