Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Finian Cunningham, Selam Gebremeskel, Selam Randall December 24th, 2020

This Week on GR

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

 

December 24, 2020

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s home edition, recorded on this date, December 15th, 2020.

 

Last month, the federal government of Ethiopia attacked the newly elected provincial government in the country’s northern Tigray region. 

 

Acting prime minister, Abiy Ahmed said the reason for the military action was in response to a raid on a federal army base within Tigray by the regional government as part of its plan to secede. 

 

But there’s much more going on behind the scenes than what’s reported by Abiy; and much more behind his rise to power too.

Finian Cunningham is a long-time and prolific journalist who worked as an editor and writer for major U.K. media outlets The Mirror, Irish Times, and Independent. 

 

 

 

 Listen. Hear.

 

The two-time Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism recipient’s articles on international affairs appear at numerous online outlets, including RT, where I found his article, ‘Nobel-winning Ethiopian PM has overseen country’s descent into barbarity and madness‘ written as the conflict was beginning in early November. 

 

Finian Cunningham in the first half.

And; though the desperate situation for Ethiopia’s Tigrayan population worsens, their story has largely disappeared from Western media reports. The Abiy government has tried to stem the flow of refugees into neighbouring Sudan, even as it renews its promise to settle militarily differences outside observors say could make the country “the Libya of East Africa”.

Selamawit Gebremeskel and Selam Randall are Ethiopian emigres. Both are long-time Canadian citizens who now call Victoria home.

Selam Gebremeskel and Selam Randall anxiously watching developments in Ethiopia from afar in the second half.

But first, Finian Cunningham and Abiy Ahmed ushering chaos in Ethiopia.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: https://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/

Crickets and Echo Chambers: America's CIA-Sized Headache

A CIA Officer Has a Headache. Media Blame Russia

by Alan MacLeod - FAIR

 

December 16, 2020
 

A 9,000-word story for GQ (10/20/20) about the mystery ailment of a CIA officer in Moscow has become the unlikely subject of a weeks-long media storm.

Marc Polymeropoulos told the magazine’s correspondent Julia Ioffe that in December 2017, while staying at a Moscow hotel (or “enemy territory,” as she described it), he was suddenly struck with strong feelings of head pain, nausea and dizziness.

Losing It: 2020 As End of History

2020: The Year We Lost the Plot

by Rob Slane - The Blogmire

 

December 14, 2020

This piece is the first in a series of five articles I will be publishing over the next couple of weeks looking at various aspects of our new Covidian State in 2020. These pieces are also due to be published on The Conservative Woman website from 27-31 December.

 

“Our Government, along with Governments around the world will shortly announce the quarantining of whole populations for a seasonal respiratory virus which leaves 99.8-99.9% of those who get it in the land of the living. 

 

“What is more, they will also announce a shutdown of the entire economy for months and then, when the epidemic has actually gone, will mandate that you cover the lower half of your face with a bit of cloth. They will do this by frightening people into compliance with a barrage of propaganda, slogans, data entirely taken out of context, and the threat of massive fines.”

John Pilger from Going Underground

John Pilger on The New Cold War With China, American Exceptionalism, Biden’s Victory, Coronavirus

by Afshin Rattansi - Going Underground (RT)

December 19, 2020

On this season finale episode of Going Underground, we speak to legendary journalist and filmmaker John Pilger. He discusses the devastating impact of Coronavirus in the U.K., rising poverty and militarism, the Western logic for the new Cold War with China, the victory of Joe Biden over Donald Trump and why not much will change with Trump leaving the Presidency, the Yemen War, the survival of Venezuela despite crippling international sanctions, mainstream journalism vs real journalism and much more! 

 

FOLLOW Going Underground https://www.youtube.com/user/GoingUnd... Going Underground on Twitter http://twitter.com/Underground_RT Afshin Rattansi on Twitter http://twitter.com/AfshinRattansi PODCAST https://soundcloud.com/rttv/sets/goin...

Erasing the Reasons: How the Times (and the rest of Western media) Skews Venezuela

NYT Erases US Economic War Against Venezuela

by Bryce Greene - FAIR

 

December 19, 2020

 

The New York Times (5/12/20) describes “a difficult time for Venezuela, as the country grapples with deep economic challenges and a breakdown of its health care system”—without mentioning that US policy is designed to deepen those challenges and exacerbate that breakdown.

Last week, Venezuela held elections for the national assembly, the country’s main legislative body. Though turnout was at a historic low, President Nicolás Maduro’s United Socialist Party won a resounding victory. 

 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, John Helmer, Andy Worthington, Janine Bandcroft December 17th, 2020

This Week on GR

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

 

December 17, 2020

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s home edition, recorded on this date, December 9th, 2020.

While elections-manipulating mastermind, Vladimir Putin has fallen off the front pages in America, across the pond in Jolly Old, ‘Evil Russia’ still serves as nemesis and fictional bete noire for scriptwriters and semi-autobiographical memoirists alike. A case in point is former GCHQ honcho, Sir David Omand’s hot New Cold War release, ‘How Spies Think, Ten Lessons in Intelligence’. To hear Sir David tell it, the West is at war with disinformation artists who would have us believe: 

“…Ukraine was responsible for downing Malaysian airliner MH17 and there are fascist roots to the government in Kiev; COVID-19 was actually covert bio-warfare by the US against China; and, NATO isn’t an instrument of peace, but is planning aggression against Russia…” Imagine!

Listen. Hear.

Well, if I’m to apply the time-tested axiom, “Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied…” David Omand’s non mea culpa may teach us more than his Ten Lesson’s intended.

John Helmer is a journalist, author, broadcaster, former political advisor to government, and principal behind the news website, Dances with Bears. Among Helmer’s many books titles are, ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’, the two-plus year chronicle of the Skripal case, ‘Skripal in Prison’, and his latest, ‘The Lie That Shot Down MH17’. His recent article, ‘THE ENRICHMENT OF BRITISH INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS – HOW THEY THINK THEY ALWAYS GET IT RIGHT ABOUT THE RUSSIANS, NEVER DO, BUT GROW RICH TRYING’ is a revelation of the disquieting future currently being prepared by the folks of the Intelligence Community.

John Helmer in the first half.

And; if the measure of a society is how its weakest are treated then do we deserve more than the precipitous societal decline witnessed these last decades?

As millions careen into extreme poverty and the Bastille is full to bursting, while the very few accumulate vast wealth undreamed of by either the Captains of the Gilded Age or courtiers of Versailles, the real impoverishment of our civilization is a terminal dearth of popular conscience and abandonment of the moral compass. Nowhere is that better evinced than in Guantanamo Bay, the 21st Century’s Devil’s Island.

Andy Worthington is an English journalist, activist, author, photo-historian, filmmaker, musician, song-writer and principle of The Four Fathers band. He is too, co-founder of the ongoing Close Guantánamo campaign, and successfully completed, We Stand With Shaker campaign. Worthington’s book titles include: ‘The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison’, ‘Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion’, and ‘The Battle of the Beanfield’. His articles appear at his website, AndyWorthington.co.uk, where he is preparing 2021’s version of the annual Close Guantanamo effort.

Andy Worthington and a framework for a new president to finally Close Guantanamo in the second half.

And; CFUV Radio broadcaster and host of Plant Powered Radio, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of what’s good going on in and around our town, and virtually too, in the coming week. But first, John Helmer in search of British intelligence on Russia.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: https://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/

UK MPs Request Video Meeting with Journalist/Political Prisoner, Julian Assange

 UK lawmakers request urgent meeting with Julian Assange

by Richard Burgon MP, et al

December 16, 2020

UN Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer talked to Gorilla Radio about his fears for the health and survival of political prisoner, Julian Assange in 2019. Melzer has continually appealed to Britain for Assange's immediate release.

Listen. Hear.

 

 

War Times: All the Time War Times

It’s Almost Twenty Years Since 9/11 Can We Finally Stop Marching to Disaster?

by Rebecca Gordon - TomDispatch

 

December 17, 2020

It was the end of October 2001. Two friends, Max Elbaum and Bob Wing, had just dropped by. (Yes, children, believe it or not, people used to drop in on each other, maskless, once upon a time.) They had come to hang out with my partner Jan Adams and me. Among other things, Max wanted to get some instructions from fellow-runner Jan about taping his foot to ease the pain of plantar fasciitis. But it soon became clear that he and Bob had a bigger agenda for the evening. They were eager to recruit us for a new project. 

 

And so began War Times/Tiempo de Guerras, a free, bilingual, antiwar tabloid that, at its height, distributed 100,000 copies every six weeks to more than 700 antiwar organizations around the country. It was already clear to the four of us that night -- as it was to millions around the world -- that the terrorist attacks of September 11th would provide the pretext for a major new projection of U.S. military power globally, opening the way to a new era of “all-war-all-the-time.” War Times was a project of its moment (although the name would still be apt today, given that those wars have never ended). It would be superseded in a few years by the explosive growth of the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle. Still, it represented an early effort to fill the space where a peace movement would eventually develop. 

 

America's Global War Victims

2021’s Most Pressing Humanitarian Crises Are All Victims of US War, Regime Change

by Alan Macleod - MintPress News

 

December 16, 2020

A new report highlights 2021’s most pressing humanitarian crises and perhaps no surprise to many, victims of US wars and regime change efforts top the list. 

 

CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Karrar al-Moayyad

The International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) yearly report on the world’s most pressing humanitarian situations has just been published, with the three most disastrous cases — Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria — all the product of decades of interventionist U.S. foreign policy. 

 

Covering the EcoHealth Alliance: Keeping Knowns Unknown in the Military-Pandemic-Security Complex

Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance Has Hidden Almost $40 Million In Pentagon Funding And Militarized Pandemic Science

by Sam Husseini - Independent Science News

 

December 16, 2020

“Pandemics are like terrorist attacks: We know roughly where they originate and what’s responsible for them, but we don’t know exactly when the next one will happen. They need to be handled the same way — by identifying all possible sources and dismantling those before the next pandemic strikes.”

This statement was written in the New York Times earlier this year by Peter Daszak. Daszak is the longtime president of the EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based non-profit whose claimed focus is pandemic prevention. But the EcoHealth Alliance, it turns out, is at the very centre of the COVID-19 pandemic in many ways. 

 

Are We Prepared to Allow Julian Assange Die in Belmarsh? UN Rapporteur on Torture Demands Publisher's Release

UN rapporteur Nils Melzer demands Assange’s immediate release after ten years’ arbitrary detention

by Oscar Grenfell - WSWS

December 13, 2020

In a statement last week, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer demanded that British authorities immediately release Julian Assange, declaring that his ongoing incarceration in London’s Belmarsh Prison “clearly lacks any legal basis.”

Melzer issued his latest call on the tenth anniversary of Assange’s confinement to various forms of arbitrary detention. This has been enforced by the British state in response to the WikiLeaks publisher’s exposure of American war crimes.

A Plea for Peace in Ethiopia's Tigray Region

A Plea for Peace in Ethiopia's Tigray Region

by Tigray community in Victoria

 

December 10, 2020

 

We are Ethiopian- Tigrayans families living in Victoria BC, writing this email to voice our pain and concern of our people in Tigray. We are asking you to be a voice to the voiceless. 

 

The War in Tigray is killing our family. We are around 20 families here in Victoria with close families in Tigray. We have been disconnected from our families and we do not know if our families are alive or dead. This stress is affecting us all. 

 

Covid-19 by the Numbers

Nineteen Tragic Facts About COVID-19 

by Bill Quigley - CounterPunch

 

December 11, 2020 

87 million. 87 million workers will lose federally mandated COVID sick leave at the end of December unless Congress acts to extend the law.

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair 

 

50 million. 50 million people are now facing hunger at least once a month, including 1 in 4 children. The rate of adults who sometimes or often do not have enough to eat is double in Black and Latino homes, according to the Associated Press. 

 

Ghosts of Afghanistan: Canada's Military Conduct in Light of Australian War Crimes Revelations

Canada’s military seeks to cover its tracks following damning report on Australian war crimes in Afghanistan

by Penny Smith - WSWS

December 11, 2020

In response to the release of a report exposing Australian military atrocities in Afghanistan, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has doubled down on its long-running efforts to cover up its own war crimes in the region.

 

Upon the report’s public release, the Canadian military immediately sought to distance itself from its Australian allies. When pressed by the media on the nature of its collaboration and joint actions with Australian Special Forces units mentioned in the report, the CAF Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) conceded that its members did conduct missions with Australian Special Forces in Afghanistan.

Before the War: How Ethiopia's Unelected Leader Was Groomed to Destroy the Country

Nobel-winning Ethiopian PM has overseen country’s descent into barbarity and madness

by Finian Cunningham - RT

November 6, 2020

 The Western media have hailed Ethiopia’s Premier Abiy Ahmed as a “liberal reformer” ever since he rose to power in the East African country nearly two years ago.

Remarkably, despite the chaos and conflict that has accompanied his leadership, the same media tend to portray the mayhem as somehow due to opposition to his benign reforms.

Same As It Ever Was Wars: The Trump-Biden Endless War Baton Exchange

Trump Didn’t End Endless Wars, He Extended the Carnage

by Finian Cunningham - Strategic Culture

 

December 9, 2020

Fans and apologists of U.S. President Donald Trump like to point out that he is the first president since Jimmy Carter (1977-81) who didn’t start a new foreign war. Hardly a commendable claim. Nevertheless, while it is narrowly true about not starting a war, it belies Trump’s record in office as a relentless warmonger. 

 

A new study out this week reports a massive increase in civilian deaths in Afghanistan from U.S.-led air strikes under Trump’s watch. The death toll leapt by 330 per cent since he took office in early 2017, attributed to Trump and his cabinet loosening the “rules of engagement” for U.S. forces.

 

In Search of British Intelligence: 10 Easy Lessons in Profiting from the Spy Business

THE ENRICHMENT OF BRITISH INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS – HOW THEY THINK THEY ALWAYS GET IT RIGHT ABOUT THE RUSSIANS, NEVER DO, BUT GROW RICH TRYING

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

@bears_with

December 9, 2020

Even as the British Empire was collapsing, and its army was defeated by the Germans, Japanese, Israelis, Egyptians, Indians, Cypriots, and the Kenyan Mau Mau, British intelligence officers were unshaken in their confidence that they were cleverer than their adversaries; their espionage and deception operations an uninterrupted success despite the loss of men, materiel, territory, terms of trade, and the pound. 

 

“We have the brains. [The Americans] have the money,” remarks one of these officers, Sir David Omand (lead image). 

 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Diana Johnstone, Randy Caravaggio, Janine Bandcroft December 10th, 2020

This Week on GR

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

December 10, 2020

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s home edition, recorded on this date, December 7th, 2020.

A year into this pandemic and amazingly, there are fundamental questions about the origins and nature of the SARS-CoV-2, or Covid-19 virus still unanswered. 

Uncertainty, mistrust, and disinformation abound, and every day that goes by provides new opportunities for scammers, mountebanks, and scoundrels to dream up ways to turn the chaos to their advantage. 

But, there’s much more than PPE price gouging and toilet paper riots going on here. Over at the World Economic Forum, founders Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret see the pandemic as accelerant for the World Order paradigm change they’ve promoted in recent years. 

 

 Listen. Hear. 

Diana Johnstone is an author whose books include: ‘Fool’s Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions’, ‘Queen of Chaos: The Misadventures of Hillary Clinton’, and her latest, ‘Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher’. Her essays feature online at Consortium News, where her latest piece, ‘The Great Pretext…for Dystopia’ appears.

Diana Johnstone in the first half.

And; the Trump administration’s hard line on Cuba undid the diplomatic and economic advances of the Obama years. There’s hope in the long-besieged Caribbean island nation the inauguration of the 44th president’s vice-president, Joe Biden will signal a return to political rapprochement and removal of trade restrictions imposed by the departing Republicans. But, it’s no sure thing. Though the president-elect promised a return to Obama era policies while campaigning, specifics are uncertain, and media and Senate pressures are already being applied.

Randy Caravaggio is a social justice defender and organizer with the Victoria Goods for Cuba campaign, and co-ordinator with Victoria’s contribution to the Pastor’s for Peace Caravan to Cuba. He’s also been a constant champion of the revolutions in Venezuela and Bolivia, and long-time supporter of Palestinian sovereignty.

Randy Caravaggio and cautiously watching the tides of change in Cuba and Latin America in the second half.

And; CFUV Radio broadcaster and host of Plant Powered Radio, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin of some of the good things to be gotten up to in and around our town, and virtually too, in the coming week.

But first, Diana Johnstone and Covid as pretext for a dystopic Great Reset.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: https://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/

Bharat Bandh: This Is What a General Strike Looks Like

Modi maneuvers as support for Indian farmers’ protest swells

by Wasantha Rupasinghe - WSWS

December 8, 2020

Indian farmers have called for a four-hour Bharat bandh (all-India shutdown) from 11 AM to 3 PM today to press their demand that the country’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government rescind a series of recently-adopted laws that put them at the mercy of domestic and international agribusiness.

photo via: ZEEBIZ

Bharat Bandh News 8 Dec 2020: The railway union, which has around 9 lakh members, is the latest to show solidarity with the agitating farmers, who have found support from transport unions and the joint forum of trade unions.

Several hundred thousand farmers, some with their wives and children, are currently camped at Singhu and other entry points to India’s Delhi National Capital Territory. Many have been there since Nov. 27, when police, acting on the orders of the BJP government, used tear gas, water cannons and barbed wire barricades to block them from entering Delhi.

Canada Ignoring Political Reality in Latin America

Canadian government is wrong to interfere in Venezuela's election process 

by Canadian Latin America Alliance

December 7, 2020

When Luis Arce and his MAS party swept to victory in Bolivia’s general election this past October, it took Canada several days to recognize the results. 

Canada’s Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne didn’t even wait until counting ended to tweet out that his government would not accept the results of Venezuela’s legislative elections on Dec. 6.