Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Ron Ridenour, Sean Horlor, Steve J. Adams April 22nd, 2021

This Week on GR

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

 

April 22, 2021

 

 Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s Home Edition, recorded April 14th and 19th, 2021

 

Listen. Hear.

It seemed in the bag. Going into the second round of Ecuador’s presidential election all the smart money was on Correista and Union of Hope leader, Andres Arauz. Arauz had mopped the floor with his two major opponents in the first round, falling just short of outright victory. But, South America’s Pink Tide will have to wait a little longer, at least in Ecuador. Instead of continuing the socialist path that had raised living standards for the poorest, (interrupted only by class traitor, Lenin Moreno) now millionaire banker, and former Coca Cola executive, Guillermo Lasso will take the reins of power in May.

Ron Ridenour is a journalist, author, editor, and peace and social justice activist. The ex-pat American has lived and worked in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia and currently calls Denmark home. He’s worked too as a special correspondent and freelancer for numerous publications in Europe the US, and Latin America, and served as press aid to Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales and the governments of Cuba and Nicaragua.

Some of Ridenour’s many book titles include: ‘The Russian Peace Threat: Pentagon on Alert’, ‘Cuba: Revolution in Action’, and ‘Backfire: The CIA’s Biggest Burn’.

Ron’s articles also feature at numerous online sites, including on ThisCantBeHappening.net, and CovertAction Magazine, where his latest, ‘Ecuador’s New Socialist Party Set to Win Elections Despite U.S. Intervention and Deceptive Identity Politics‘ appears.

Ron Ridenour in the first half.

And; most Canadians take as granted the freedoms they have to be who they are and behave as they wish, (within the stricture of the law). But for some, enjoying the privilege of personal liberty is haunted by the knowledge there are others who must live in the shadows or face social exclusion, persecution, and even death.

Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams are award-winning, Vancouver-based filmmakers whose new documentary, ‘Someone Like Me‘ follows the effort of a group of LGBTQ+ rights activists to sponsor and support a gay Ugandan man seeking asylum in Canada. Steve and Sean have more than twenty film collaborations behind them, and ‘Someone Like Me’, their first feature length doc, is an Official Selection for this year’s Hot Docs Festival.

Sean Horlor and Steve J. Adams, and fighting for the freedom to love fearlessly in the second half.

But first, Ron Ridenour and Ecuador’s election proving an ebb in South America’s resurgent Pink Tide.

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.com

Modular Nuclear: The Mistake Worth Making Twice

Advanced Nuclear Dreaming in Washington State

by Patrick Mazza - CounterPunch

April 19, 2021

It was once known by one of the most inadvertently appropriate acronyms ever, WPPSS, the Washington Public Power Supply System.  “Whoops!,” as they called it, in the early 1980s brought on what was then the worst municipal bond default in U.S. history trying to build five nuclear reactors in Washington state at once, completing only one.

 

But faith in the nuclear future lives on at “Whoops!,” today rebranded as Energy Northwest. On April 1, the day perhaps also inadvertently fitting, the consortium of Washington state public utilities announced a move aimed at the first advanced nuclear reactor deployment in the U.S. Energy Northwest will partner with Grant County Public Utility District, a member utility serving a desert county in the center of the state, and X-energy, a leading developer of the nuclear industry’s bright shining hope, the small modular reactor (SMR).

 

Gates' Keeping the War on Life

Bill Gates’ Global Agenda and How We Can Resist His War on Life

by Vandana Shiva - Independent Science News

September 21, 2020

 

In March 2015, Bill Gates showed an image of the coronavirus during a TED Talk and told the audience that it was what the greatest catastrophe of our time would look like. The real threat to life, he said, is ‘not missiles, but microbes.’ When the coronavirus pandemic swept over the earth like a tsunami five years later, he revived the war language, describing the pandemic as ‘a world war’.

 

‘The coronavirus pandemic pits all of humanity against the virus,’ he said.

 

 

In fact, the pandemic is not a war. The pandemic is a consequence of war. A war against life. The mechanical mind connected to the money machine of extraction has created the illusion of humans as separate from nature, and nature as dead, inert raw material to be exploited. But, in fact, we are part of the biome. And we are part of the virome. The biome and the virome are us. When we wage war on the biodiversity of our forests, our farms, and in our guts, we wage war on ourselves.

 

Will Not Stay, Yet Will Not Go: Aloha Afghanistan

Biden’s Claim To Be Ending America’s Longest War Misleading

by Jeremy Kuzmarov - CovertAction Magazine

 

April 15, 2021

 

On Wednesday April 14^th, President Joe Biden announced that he would end the U.S.’s longest war and withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan on the 20^th anniversary of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks. Over 6,000 NATO troops will also be withdrawn by that time.

Biden announcing troop withdrawal on April 14th. [Source: npr.org]

“War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multigenerational undertaking,” Biden said during his remarks from the White House Treaty Room, the same location from which President George W. Bush had announced the war was beginning in October 2001. “We were attacked. We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those objectives. Bin Laden is dead and al Qaeda is degraded in Afghanistan and it’s time to end the forever war.”

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, John Helmer, Pablo Ouziel April 15, 2021

This Week on GR

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

 

April 15, 2021

Listen. Hear.

 Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s Home Edition, recorded on the dates, April 11th/12th, 2021

China’s meteoric rise to the uppermost echelon of international affairs is but one of the signals of America’s declining global stature. Russia too is testing its influence, both on its borders and further afield. In the past few weeks, events in both the Baltic and east Asia offer evidence the country no longer feels constrained by the whim, wishes or wants of the United States and its “international community”.

In Myanmar, Russia has stepped in to quell U.S./ U.K efforts to use UN Security Council sanction and threats of intervention to bludgeon the military coup government there; and, in the Baltic the country’s relentless drive to finish the Nord Stream 2 pipeline marches on, despite being engaged in a bizarre cat and mouse game with an off-the-hook Polish fishing fleet who, in concert with the Polish military, seem intent on provoking an incident involving the nearly completed operation.

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 Lie That Shot Down MH-17’ ‘Skripal in Prison’, ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia’, and his latest, ‘Hitler Didn’t Die in Berlin – He Moved to Melbourne Where He Runs the State Government of Victoria: A True Covid-19 Thriller’. His latest articles examine Russia’s foreign policy tightrope walk on the political knife’s edge in Myanmar and Europe.

John Helmer in the first half.

And; despite Madrid’s state of denial, Spain’s separatist movement is alive and well and living in Catalonia. Regional elections in February maintained independence parties’ hold on a combined majority in the parliament there, while street protests that erupted in Barcelona and other towns following the arrest of popular rapper, Pablo Hásel serve as an unsubtle reminder to Pedro Sanchez’ federal coalition government just how tenuous its hold on the peace is.

Pablo Ouziel is a Postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria’s Political Science Department and Centre for Global Studies whose Fellowship Project at UVic, ‘Democracy Here and Now: The Exemplary Case of Spain’ was interrupted by the Covid-19 closure of the University. He currently resides in his native home, near Barcelona.

Pablo Ouziel and the trouble with democracy in Spain in the second half.

But first, John Helmer and RUSSIA AND MYANMAR – BALANCING ON A KNIFE’S EDGE.

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.com

Ecuador: The Curious Luck of Guillermo Lasso

Millionaire Banker and Former Coca Cola Director With Ties to Far-Right Wing Opus Dei Catholic Sect Defeats Socialist Candidate in Ecuador

by Ron Ridenour - CovertAction Magazine

 

April 12, 2021

 

 Millionaire conservative Guillermo Lasso, former banker and Coca Cola director, won the run-off election over socialist candidate Andrés Arauz, 52.5% to 47.5%. Arauz had led the pack of 16 presidential candidates during the first round, on February 7th, with 32.7% of the vote over Lasso’s 19.74%. 

 

Arauz was Union of Hope (UNES) candidate, a new party that former President Rafael Correa (2007-17) and Arauz had started.

 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Mark Taliano, Leslie Robinson, Jeremy Brind April 8, 2021

This Week on GR

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

 

April 8, 2021

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s Home Edition, recorded April 5th, 2021

March marks the 10th anniversary of the regime-change war against Syria. Following the well-worn pattern, sanctions preceded military action, as animus against the country was stoked through the usual acceptable media sources. 

The script parroted by those press outlets changed little from Afghanistan and Iraq, to Libya then Syria; the destruction of these societies was all for peace and betterment of the people. 

But where those others fell, Syria remained standing. And so, the war goes on.

 

 

Listen. Hear.

Mark Taliano is a retired teacher whose next career as researcher and investigative reporter led him to travel to Syria to discover for himself the truth behind the brutal war against the population there. The result of his 2016 dispatches from the country is the book, Voices from Syria, recently revised and reissued in a second edition.

Mark Taliano in the first half.

And; terror isn’t always borne of bombs falling from the sky. There is too the existential fear of losing ones home due to a dysfunctional economic system. Call it a War on Poor. Right now, millions of Canadians live with the Damaclean prospect of failing to make rent or mortgage payments, or just being dispossessed by a landlord enticed into cashing out of the market by sky high property prices.

Leslie Robinson and Jeremy Brind are volunteer tenant organizers with VTAG, the Victoria Tenant Action Group, “a membership-based organization committed to transforming the housing system and ensuring access to housing for all”.

Leslie Robinson and Jeremy Brind and tenant issues from the municipal, provincial, and federal levels in the second half.

 

But first, Mark Taliano and refuting the persisting “mainstream” media narrative on embattled Syria.

 

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.com

Poles' Dances Towards War with Russia (and Other Nord Stream 2 Distractions)

THE BORNHOLM BASH, THE BALTIC BLUFF, THE BLINKEN BLINK – THE RETREAT OF FORCE FROM WAR 

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

  @bears_with

 

April 7, 2021

 

This is the way it is going.

 

A veteran German source, whose family comes from Prussia and knows the history of wars on the Eastern Front very well, says that the Poles “are notoriously bad at bluffing. They threaten beyond their capacities. They invite trouble, and when it happens, they fold.” A veteran Polish source from Cracow, in Polish Galicia, says the same of the Ukrainians. 

 

The Americans, both German and Polish sources agree, don’t understand bluffing at all because the proxy forces, Polish and Ukrainian, they are threatening Russia with will be sacrificed to their deaths, not American ones — if the Russians call the bluff now on the Donbass line.

 

Making Britain's Nuclear Deterrent Greater (again)

Why is the United Kingdom raising its nuclear stockpile limits?

by Matthew Harries - The Bulletin

 

April 2, 2021

 

On March 16, the United Kingdom announced it was significantly raising a self-imposed cap on its overall nuclear stockpile, from a previous target of 180 warheads by the mid-2020s to a new cap of 260. 

 

Nuclear submarine HMS Vanguard. Photo: CPOA(Phot)

Tam McDonald/MOD via Wikimedia Commons. Open Government License. 

 

The decision was outlined in the United Kingdom’s Integrated Review, a landmark strategic update, which also said the country will no longer declare the size of its operational warhead stockpile (previously 120), or the numbers of warheads and operational missiles deployed on submarines (previously 40 and no more than 8, respectively).

 

Mamas Rising: British Columbia Signs Off on Destruction of Fairy Creek

ARISE for the Ancient Forests | Save Fairy Creek

by MAMAS Movement

April 1, 2021

Dear Community, Our film is released today, alongside an injunction granted from the BC court to Teal Jones to enable the destruction of Fairy Creek's Ancient Forest.

 

Balancing Myanmar's Geopolitical Implications

RUSSIA AND MYANMAR – BALANCING ON A KNIFE’S EDGE

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears 

  @bears_with

 

April 1, 2021 

 

“The person attempting to travel two roads at once will get nowhere”. It’s a well-known Chinese maxim, especially in Myanmar (Burma), China’s backdoor to the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, and the Indian Navy’s forward defence line.   

 

 

Russia’s policy towards Myanmar since the military takeover on February 1 is a case of proving the maxim mistaken. Although experts and officials in Moscow won’t say so aloud, it’s possible for Russia to pursue one strategy with two tactics; three more like.

 

The Lula Also Rises: Brazil's REAL Political Macho Man Returns

Will Lula Make a Comeback? Global Imperialists and Resource Extractors Shudder at the Prospect

by Alan Macleod - MintPress News

April 1, 2021

With the potential comeback of Lula da Silva, Brazil may once again be on a path away from fascism and one that puts economic justice and anti-imperialism first.

Will the world’s sixth most populous country move away from fascism and towards a social democracy putting economic justice and anti-imperialism first once more? That is the question on Brazilian minds right now, as earlier this month the Supreme Court dismissed all charges against former President Luis Inácio “Lula” da Silva.

 

This Is Your Arms Race on Drugs

Accidental Apocalypse and Nuclear War on Drugs

by John Laforge - CounterPunch.org

 

March 28, 2021 

With existential national security threats from floods, droughts, wildfires, water pollution, sea-level rise, and peak oil,^[1] the US Air Force, the Air National Guard and nuclear weapons manufacturers could do crucial defense work in the US heartland by building, installing, managing and expanding renewable (wind and solar) electric power systems — instead of polishing their 400 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, and preparing to welcome an astronomically expensive replacement missile dubbed Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. 

Image by Christopher Farrugia. 

Call such a switch a “Climate Defense Initiative” since it would constitute deterrence against actual threats.

 

Constant Aid to Empire: The Myth of Canada as Peaceable Kingdom

Exclusive Series on Canadian Ties to U.S. Empire: Lester Pearson and the Myth of Canada as Peaceable Kingdom (Part 1)

by Richard Sanders - CovertAction Magazine

 

March 30, 2021

Lester B. Pearson, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize is a symbol of Canada’s supposed humanitarianism; In reality, however, he was a war hawk and the Godfather of Canada’s Cold War.

Lester Pearson surrounded by patriotic Canadians during the late 1950s. 

[Source: mcleans.ca]

 

Part I in an exclusive CAM series on the United States’ northern neighbor and its support for the U.S. empire.

 

Vancouver Island: Last Stand for Ancient Trees—Coast to Coast Coverage

 XRTV Season 1 Episode 5: The Last Stand for Ancient Trees—Coast to Coast Coverage

by XRTV Victoria  

 

March 30, 2021 

From blockaders at Fairy Creek trying to save ancient trees to XR activists in Nova Scotia trying to save an old growth forest for endangered moose. Plus, Ken Wu talks about why Fairy Creek is so frickin’ important, and the intersection of the climate crisis and the pandemic—a wilderness emergency physician weighs in. And Bruce Cockburn teams up with Rainforest Flying Squad videographers for an unforgettable vision of If a Tree Falls, starring Indigenous and settler forest defenders. 

 

 

 

Hosted by four-time Emmy Award winning journalist Mark Nykanen. In these turbulent and challenging times, advocacy journalism for the planet is urgently needed. Please subscribe to our XRTV Victoria channel and share widely.

 

Bringing Bellingcat to Court in the Sturgess Case

FIRST DAY SHOCK AT THE HER MAJESTY’S GOVERNMENT INQUEST – BELLINGCAT TO BE CALLED TO TESTIFY, BUT NOT SERGEI OR YULIA SKRIPAL 

by John Helmer - Dances with Bears

 

March 30, 2021

 

 @bears_with

 

The first session of the inquest into the death of Dawn Sturgess, held in London on Tuesday, was almost entirely predictable. The counsel for the coroner,  like the lawyers for the Sturgess family and for the Home Office, repeated without qualification the allegation that a Novichok poison weapon they say was produced in Russia and taken to the UK by Russian assassins, caused the unplanned  death of Sturgess. 

 

 

This followed twelve weeks after an attempt at assassinating Sergei Skripal with the same weapon on March 4, 2018. Sturgess was the unintended victim of leftover poison, they say. 

 

B.C. Coastal Alert: Potential Oil Spill Disaster Now Transiting Inside Passage!

The Near Coast Destroyer, Jake Shearer Returns

by Ingmar Lee - 10,000 Ton Tanker

 

March 31, 2021

 

Here comes the loaded-to-the-gunnels American ATB petroleum tanker "Jake Shearer" again, currently northbound in Johnstone Strait again. The "Jake Shearer" nearly destroyed the BC Central Coast several years ago after it broke in half with a 10,000 ton load of diesel and drifted out of control to within a cable length of the Goose Islands.

 

ATB Jake Shearer March 31, 2021

 

In 2017, this ship very nearly destroyed the British Columbia coastal ecosystem; the Canadian government did nothing then, and is doing the same now.

 

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Angela Bischoff, Robbie Leppzer April 1st, 2021

This Week on GR

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

 

April 1, 2021

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s Home Edition, recorded on the dates, March 29th and 30th, 2021

 

To some of us it may seem like just yesterday, but 42 years have passed since the “accident” at Three Mile Island made real the terrifying possibility of a nuclear meltdown; the very scenario featured in the film ‘The China Syndrome’, then newly released and playing in American theatres.

On March 28th, 1979 a routine maintenance procedure went wrong in reactor number 2 of the atomic power plant located in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania providing illustrative proof of the industry’s inherent danger to people, and its potential for catastrophic environmental damage.

The federal government was half way into its 14 year clean up at Three Mile Island when the Soviet reactor at Chernobyl went into meltdown, eclipsing the human and ecological cost of Three Mile Island. 

Listen. Hear.

And yet, neither of these industrial disasters stopped the proliferation of the atomic power industry in America, or in the USSR, or around the World.

Angela Bischoff is Director of the Ontario Clean Air Alliance, a “small but mighty group aiming to move Ontario onto a 100% renewable path” She is too a long-time environmental defender whose career in the non-profit sector spans three decades, four Canadian cities, and includes issues ranging from transportation, climate, mental health, electoral reform, and the transformation of our current fossil fuel-driven urban paradigm toward the eco-cities necessary if we’re to have a future.

The Alliance recently released the alert, ‘Stunning Revelations about Pickering Nuclear Station’s Safety‘ that says, “There is no excuse for leaving this ticking time bomb operating for another four years.”

Angela Bischoff in the first half.

And; March marks too the 10th anniversary of the beginning of the disaster-still-in-progress at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. One might think, the stair-stepping of these three calamitous nuclear failures would make shutting down and removing a facility approaching its best before date easy. But one would have to think again!

In March 2011, just as Fukushima was imploding, the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station’s operating license was renewed, given the blessing from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend operations 20 years, to March, 2032.

Robbie Leppzer is a New England-based documentary filmmaker whose 40+ year catalogue includes both short and long-form critically acclaimed documentaries. From the burgeoning environmental protest movement of the 1970’s to the social justice and growing global peace movements currently roiling World capitals, Leppzer has chronicled the people who he says, “…stick their necks out to take risks for grassroots social change and build bridges across cultures“. His 2019 release, broadcast on Free Speech TV, Link TV, and Vermont PBS, and produced in association with NHK-TVJapan is ‘Power Struggle‘.

Robbie Leppzer and turning the tide on Vermont Yankee in the second half.

But first, Angela Bischoff and the time bomb in Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe.

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.com

The Taiwan Tipping Point: Full-Fledged War Between China and US Less Remote Than Imagined

Top US admiral warns war with China over Taiwan “much closer than most think”

by Peter Symonds - WSWS

 

March 26, 2021

The US Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. John Aquilino, testified this week that he regarded a Chinese attack on Taiwan as the most threatening flashpoint for war in the Indo-Pacific region and advocated a further build-up of US military force in the western Pacific to counter China. His remarks underscore the mounting bipartisan clamour in Washington against Beijing and the accelerating danger of the Biden administration, not China, provoking a war.

 

Adm. Philip Davidson, commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command 

[Credit: AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko, Pool]

 

Aquilino was testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee at his confirmation hearing to replace Admiral Phil Davidson as head of the US Indo-Pacific Command—the largest US military command. He told the committee that “the dangerous concern is that of a military force against Taiwan.” He referred to the previous testimony of Davidson, who last week warned of a supposed Chinese takeover within six years, then added, “[M]y opinion is this problem is much closer to us than most think.”

 

WHO Covid Origin Scientists "participants in disinformation" Charges Leading Molecular Biologist

An Interview with Richard Ebright: The WHO Investigation Members Were “participants in disinformation”

by Jorge Casesmeiro Roger - Independent Science News

March 24, 2021

Molecular biologist Dr. Richard H. Ebright, PhD is one of the twenty six world scientists who signed the Open Letter: “Call for a Full and Unrestricted International Forensic Investigation into the Origins of COVID-19”. A document released last March 4 by the Wall Street Journal and Le Monde that reignited the debate over the pandemic’s origin after the WHO-convened mission to Wuhan.

 

Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University, Dr. Richard H. Ebright, PhD, is also Laboratory Director at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology and serves as project leader on two National Institutes of Health research grants. 

Dr. Ebright, you are one of the 26 scientific signers of the Open Letter that stopped the release of the WHO-convened mission Interim Report and has reopened the CoV-2 origin debate. Do you think the final report of this WHO/China joint team is going to shut down COVID origin controversy?

No.