Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded May 28th, 2022
In early May, Cuban president, Miguel Diaz-Canel returned the
diplomatic favour, hosting his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez
Obrador in Havana. The two signed various agreements tying the two
nations closer, while AMLO used the opportunity to further criticize
historical US foreign policy in the hemisphere, reminisce about Mexican
support for Castro and the Cuban revolution, and to call for the lifting
of the decades-long blockade against Mexico’s “sister nation.”
None of this likely pleases the United States, but worse still for the
Biden administration is Obrador’s hardly veiled threat to boycott next
week’s Summit of the Americas confab in Los Angeles.
Tim Boultbee is a long-time activist for Latin American human and
democratic rights. From Ronald Reagan’s Dirty Wars against the people of
Nicaragua and El Salvador to the financial annexation of Mexico by
means of the NAFTA agreement he has borne witness as an international
observer at the front lines of the fight for justice. Tim is currently a
member of CASC, the Victoria Central America Support Committee,
assisted the Building Bridges Human Rights Project in Chiapas, and
worked to raise funds for the Fray Bartolome Human Rights Center in San
Cristobal.
Tim Boultbee in the first half.
And; just as Canada has supported US belligerence in Latin America, (earning for the trouble exclusion from CELAC,
the organization likely to determine the cultural, political, and
economic future of the hemisphere) the current administration too has
gone along with its larger neighbour’s campaign to isolate China. The
lengths Trudeau’s government is willing to go to please Uncle Sam was
made painfully obvious in its two-plus years contralegal persecution of
Huawei executive, Meng Wanzhou. Now, it has announced the exclusion of
Huawei from this country’s 5G communications network development.
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 Coalition fought tooth and nail
against the incarceration of Meng Wanzhou and extradition efforts by the
United States, and they’ve opposed the odious AUKUS military pact
threatening war with China in the Pacific. The danger AUKUS presents
to World peace ramped up last fall with the deal to provide nuclear
powered submarines to Australia, and more lately with the announced
rapid development of hypersonic missile technology and expanded
electronic warfare aimed at the People’s Republic.
Ken Stone on Huawei in Canada, and AUKUS going over the top in the Pacific in the second half.
But first, Tim Boultbee and Biden’s Summit of the Americas proving a low point in hemispheric interrelations.
Chris Cook has hosted Gorilla Radio since 1999. Check out the GR blog at: https://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com
