Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Ariel Nasr, Will Tell, Janine Bandcroft July 2nd, 2020

This Week on GR

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

July 2, 2020

Welcome to Gorilla Radio’s continuing efforts, NOT broadcast live from CFUV Radio in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but emanating live-to-tape via Skype from our home-based studios on this date, June 17th, 2020.

In 2001 a great tragedy befell Afghanistan; but, as bad as hosting the inauguration of America’s Global War on Terror was for Afghans, it was merely the continuation of decades of suffering conflicts of other people’s making.

Nearly twenty years after Operation Enduring Freedom’s first B-52 bombing sortie the fighting rages still; and though its name has since changed, the price those mired within The Long War pay endures. Yet, Afghanistan is more than a proxy battlefield for superpowers; made of more than just its most recent history.

Ariel Nasr is a celebrated documentary filmmaker, earning more than a dozen awards and nominations, (including an Oscar nod and Canadian Screen Award prize) for his film work; work encompassing writing, directing, and producing across platforms and crossing continents.

Listen. Hear.

Nasr’s credits include, ‘The Boxing Girls of Kabul’, Good Morning Kandahar, the interactive, ‘Kabul Portraits’ project, and his latest, the feature-length documentary release, ‘The Forbidden Reel,’ a "story of Afghanistan’s fearless and visionary moviemakers…"

Ariel Nasr in the first half.

And; as the tidal wave that has been the Covid-19 lockdown ebbs, around the World the financial and social damage wrought in its wake is beginning to be revealed. While Wall Street rockets, the biggest and strongest buffeted best by government bailouts, workers are finding promises made at the height of crisis are now quietly being broken. And like the pandemic itself, the pattern of feeding piles of public funds to corporations while pleading poor mouth to the starving knows no borders.

Will Tell is an expat living in rural southern India who says, as well as reneging on promises of financial aid to small business, the Indian government has, "NOT delivered on its promise to subsidise the ‘day labourers’. This includes taxi drivers, rickshaw drivers […and] self-employed skilled tradesmen […] either in the form of money […] or in delivery of staples [like] rice, dahl, cooking oil, [and] sugar."

Will Tell and India racing to aid the powerful, whilst the rest are left to the Covid tsunami’s rip tide in the second half.

And; long-time Gorilla Radio contributor and Green Vegan Grandma Youtuber, 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, Ariel Nasr and preserving a nation’s culture, frame by frame.

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/