Millions of citizens from across Venezuela traveled to the capital and cued for hours last Thursday in a miles-long procession to see Hugo Chavez's body as it lay in state. So many in fact, the interim government of vice president, Nicolas Maduro announced, following his funeral Friday, the "Comandante" would lie in state an extra week. While death marked his finish, as it ends us all, the work Hugo Chavez began as South America's first modern reformist president is not over; not by a long chalk, if the cries of Venezuela's "Chavistas" are to be believed.
The send off Chavez received in the "Western" press was decidedly unflattering; a series of black epitaphs running the A to B gamut; from the celebratory Fox, to the barely contained gleefulness of Canada's State broadcaster, whose radio news flagship reporter, Anna Maria Tremonti pronounced of his death on her program, 'The Current;
"In a country dominated by a cult of personality where information is not free, the death of the populist and polarizing Hugo Chavez leaves a gaping hole and endless questions." end quote.
Not least of those questions, for Canadians, should be: "Do we actually have to PAY for this crap masquerading as news!?"
Like Anna Maria Tremonti, Greg Palast is not a journalist, but he is an honest reporting investigator, whose peerless work for the BBC's Newsnight broke wide-open the similarly lop-sided and wrong-headed reportage surrounding the 2002 coup d'etat against Chavez and Venezuelan democracy. In an article he wrote at the Guardian about the coup almost eleven years ago, Palast observed;
"Thirty years ago, when US corporations demanded the removal of a bothersome president, the CIA thought it most important to aim propaganda at the Latin locals. Now, it seems, in the drumbeat of disinformation buzzwords about Chavez - "dictatorial", "unpopular", "resigned" - the propagandists have learned to aim at that more gullible pack of pigeons, the American and European press."
How little has changed. While still working with Newsnight and the Guardian, Palast also writes a weekly column for Vice Magazine and is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, 'Billionaires & Ballot Bandits,' 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,' and 'Armed Madhouse.' He's also author of the highly acclaimed, 'Vulture's Picnic: In Pursuit of Petroleum Pigs, Power Pirates, and High-Finance Carnivores.'
Greg Palast in the first half.
And; while the 2002 attempt against Hugo Chavez was a rare failure of Western democracy's economic hit men, lessons learned there certainly helped guarantee the success of 2004's usurpation of Haiti's mild reformist president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The former liberation theologist priest Aristide was spirited farther out of the country than Chavez, all the way to the Central African Republic, from where there could be no triumphant return. Aristide's two short-lived administrations are contrasted by the Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier reigns of terror, together lasting more than three decades, and seeing uncounted numbers of Haitians tortured, killed, and disappeared. Baby Duvalier was too flown out of Haiti courtesy of the US government, but his exile was a self-imposed, luxurious vacation in France that only ended when the booty he looted from the treasury on leaving began running out.
Duvalier returned to Haiti just over two years ago, and has danced with the judiciary there ever since. That jig picked up pace last Monday, seeing the former "president for life" in court answering questions about human rights abuses committed on his watch. Just hours after his first scheduled court appearance, the 61 year old was reported to have been hospitalized, his lawyer Reynold Georges saying only Duvalier "was sick." It's a sentiment long held in Haiti.
Kim Ives is a journalist, co-host of the WBAI radio program, 'Haiti: The Struggle Continues,' and co-founder of the international weekly newspaper Haiti Liberté. He's also a writer and editor with Haiti Progres newspaper and a documentary filmmaker who has directed and worked on many films about Haiti, including: 'Bitter Cane,' 'The Coup Continues,' and 'Rezistans.' He also works with the Haiti Support Network (HSN), has led numerous delegations to Haiti, and frequently speaks about Haiti before church, student, and community audiences, and on Haitian and U.S. radio programs.
Kim Ives and tales from the dictator's fall in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us news from our city's streets and beyond. But first, Greg Palast and the passing of a president.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.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/
Welcome to GR's annual Year-Ender show. 2012 has come and nearly gone in record fashion. There were earth shaking events, sea and sky raking tempests, and e'er the sound of the pipes O' war heard 'cross t' hill and dale in many a-land and yonder.
End of year updates, countdowns, and lists upon lists are surely found aplenty elsewhere, so this year, just here, we'd rather than look back at the year's top repeated stories, peer instead, a la Project Censored at deserving stories that received less, little, or no coverage.
And, we'll feature music and nonsense.
Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will too pop by at the bottom of the hour to ring in and wave out the new and old years. But first, a little music to set the calendrical tone from the Red Hot Chilli Pipers with Robbie Burns' annual paean to the passing year, Auld Lang Syne.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.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/
G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.
Following the Soviet fall, triumphalist American economists declared an end to history, as though human progression through time had reached a just and stable equilibrium. Capitalism was Number One, and it was here to stay.
But, and it was indeed a very big "but", those optimistic prognosticators hadn't figured on the rise of George W. Bush, or more properly, "Bush's Brain" in the form of Karl Rove.
Though not alone, Rove ushered in a new age of Crony Capitalism through his relentless assault on both American Justice, and the laws governing the political process. So successful has Karl and his cohorts been, they have effectively hijacked every major election in America since the year 2000, and stand ready to do the same in 2012.
Greg Palast is a multi-award winning reporting investigator and the serial best-seller author of 'The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,' 'Armed Madhouse,' Vulture's Picnic,' and his most recent, 'Billionaires & bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps'.
Working both sides of the pond, Palast's reports for the BBC's flagship news program, Newsnight have rocked corporate crooks and struck terror into the hearts of political bagmen in Britain and America. The too few outlets brave enough to carry his investigative journalism in the United States include: Harper's, The Nation, and Rolling Stone magazine, while Democracy Now! is virtually alone in covering Greg's television work, rebroadcasting portions of his BBC exposes.
Greg Palast in the first half.
And; more than eighteen months after the destruction of Fukushima's Daiichi Nuclear facility radiation continues to spew from the plant. Four of the six reactors housed there were destroyed in the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and still neither the plant's operators, TEPCO nor the Japanese government has any idea how to contain the meltdown.
Arnie Gundersen is a former nuclear power engineer and recipient of the Atomic Energy Commission Fellowship for his Master Degree in nuclear engineering. He is a former licensed reactor operator, nuclear industry senior vice-president, and nuclear safety patent holder.
Over the course of his 40-plus year career, Gundersen managed and coordinated projects at 70 nuclear power plants within the United States. Arnie Gundersen has filed reports on the unfolding situation at Daiichi, and the current conditions of many of America's nuclear facilities, through his energy consulting company, Fairewinds Associates.
Arnie Gundersen charting the course of the nuclear power industry in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us newz from our city's streets and beyond. But first, Greg Palast and taking the next election the easy way.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://www.GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.ca
As we ready to welcome Fall and the 2012 school year here at UVic, the Occupy movement is readying itself for a second year of mobilization against the gross disparities of the economic system. From ground zero at Wall Street in New York, and financial districts around the United States, (and in Canada too) last year's explosion of dissent and demonstration leaves behind hundreds of stories. Many of these stories went viral on the internet as they happened, as they revealed police state styled repression and brutality most Americans haven't seen since the Vietnam War protests of the 1960's.
Arguably, the worst of that repression was witnessed at Occupy Oakland.
Kevin Pina is an American journalist and filmmaker who has reported from Haiti on and off for more than twenty years, and who lived in the capital for more than seven years. From his early days as a KPFA radio reporter documenting the human rights abuses in Port au Prince's poorest neighbourhoods, to covering the initial 1991 coup d'état against populist president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide to his own imprisonment there in 2005, Pina has borne witness in a way few foreign correspondents can equal. His film titles include: 'El Salvador: In the Name of Democracy,' 'Amazonia: Voices from the Rainforest,' 'Haiti: Harvest of Hope,' 'Haiti: The UNtold Story,' and 'HAITI: We Must Kill the Bandits.'
Kevin's latest effort produced the documentary, 'Occupy the Bay.' Directed by Jonathan Riley, Occupy the Bay chronicles the Occupy Wall Street Movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kevin Pina in the first half.
And; nearly eighteen months have passed since the earthquake and tsunami disaster that killed tens of thousands in Japan, and rendered Fukushima's Daiichi nuclear facility a smoldering wreckage. Though you would be hard-pressed to find the story in your local paper, or covered on the nightly newscasts; a year and a half later, the smashed plant spews radiation still into the sea and atmosphere with no near end to it in sight. Worse yet, there is tonnes of spent nuclear rods in cooling pools at Daiichi, pools that could fail catastrophically in another earthquake.
Steven Starr is a senior scientist at Physicians for Social Responsibility and an associate member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is the Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri, and a medical technologist who has spent years detailing the real and possible effects of the nuclear weapons issue from his site, www.NuclearDarkness.org. Appearing at the UN and other fora to give expert testimony on the environmental consquences of waging, and readying for, nuclear war, Starr has, since the Fukushima calamity, collaborated with renowned Japanese diplomat Akio Matsumura, founder and Secretary General of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival, who famously warned recently of the precarious situation at Daiichi's reactor #4.
Steven Starr and Fukushima's present and continuing danger in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us newz from the city's streets and beyond. But first, Kevin Pina, welcoming the Fall and rise of Occupy the Bay.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.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
Welcome to the annual Gorilla Radio X-Mas Special, wherein we leave the show format's rutted path to bloviate, bellow and blatherskite on the state of the world in the year past, and sound a knell warning of what 2012 holds in store should we stay the disastrous course charted by the maniacs on the bridge.
There'll be music and such, and Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster will join in the gas-baggery too at the bottom of the hour.
But first, before beginning the wind, an annual tradition with Ini Kimoze, and all he really wanted for Christmas.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.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
G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in corporate and state media. Gorilla Radio airs live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 102FM, 104.3 cable, and on t
2013-03-12
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