This Week on GR
by C.L. Cook - Gorilla-Radio.com
It’s been almost 22 years passed since a group of concerned Hamiltonians assembled the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War. Then it was their hope to help belay the coming Iraq invasion, or pressure Ottawa to stay out of it if the invasion came. The Coalition’s foundational document reading in part,
“The burning question in the world today is War or Peace. America seems to know no bounds in pursuit of its agenda. […and…] we are hearing the drumbeat of illegal and immoral wars become louder and louder.”
Well that applies even moreso today than all those years and shattered lives ago.
Ken Stone is an activist and author working for peace with the Syria Support Movement International. He was one of those founding the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War in 2002. His book, ‘Defiant Syria: Dispatches from the Second International Tour of Peace to Syria’ is a compilation of his dispatches from his 2016 visit there. Ken and the Hamilton Coalition abide, and are at the fore of Canadian resistance to militarism yet. Currently ramping up for the No To NATO! counter-summit in Washington, D.C. they will too be hosting Israeli anthropologist and Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, Jeff Halper as part of his North American book launch and lecture tour in early July.
Ken Stone in the first half.
And; Canadian mining interest, Quantum Minerals is back in business in Panama. Its massive open-pit copper mine had been ordered shut by that country’s Supreme Court; found to be operating against the “public good” in 2021. But, a new deal cut with a corrupt government got the wheels churning again.
Viviana Herrera is Latin America Program Coordinator for MiningWatch Canada. They are part of an international alliance of environmental and ecology organizations who, along with Panama Vale Más Sin Minería, recently presented the report, ‘Human Rights Violations, Abuses, and Incidents Registered During the Protests Against the Mining Contract in Panamá, October-November 2023‘ detailing the negative impacts of Quantum’s Cobre Panama operation.
Cobre Panama (Image Franco-Nevada assets handbook.)
Viviana Herrera and Cobre Panama, snake in the heart of Panama’s threatened rainforest, in the second half.
But first, Ken Stone and the Hamilton Coalition, still saying NO! after all these wars.
Song: ‘Divide and Rule’
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: https://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com/
