Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook Special Funding Drive Show March 17th, 2022

GR 11-67 Funding Drive 2022 Show CFUV 101.9 FM cfuv.ca

(airdate/time) Thursday March 17th, 2022

11:00:00 2:30 Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded March 12th, 2022

And Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all who celebrate Ireland’s great, green saint. Today I’m leaving the usual show format for my contribution to this year’s Funding Drive. If you’ve listened over the last week you know, today is the penultimate day for our annual outreach. I’ll talk a little more about that as we progress, and about stories of the year past, the strange two years done, and Gorilla Radio after 23 years. And play some music too.

If you can help the station, go online to supportcfuv.ca, or phone us up – operators are standing by at: 250-721-8700 locally, 1-250-721-8700 from elsewhere on the island, in the nation, or across the World.

Meanwhile, listen to this….

11:02:00 6:00 Music: Benjamin Zephania – Naked – Rong Radio

11:08:45 2:40 Blatherskite – (bg: Benjamin Zephania – Naked – You Dream)

The great Benjamin Zephania, from his album ‘Naked’. That’s Rong Radio. You too may have been listening to the wrong radio stations. You may be listening to just that now…With that in mind, better cover our…bases….

11:09:15 :30 CFUV Disclaimer – Elephant Talk

One of the enduring gifts of the Covid-19 pandemic is the intense focus it has trained on our societal institutions: Not least of these being media. But, and it is an enormous but; the real penetrating, laser-like, lethal dosage attention has been much less on THE media, the dominant, near monopolies of information that is the legacy press, with its papers of record, or the state-sponsored broadcasters, and corporate allieged and aligned television network monolith media. No, it’s the “social media” the matter. It is you and me, and the little people speaking to each other representing the real danger to democracy.

In their kindliest incarnation, the teevee personalities shake their talking heads sadly, and from their gilded studios in the sky look down upon us and say, “Forgive the transgressors, they know not what they transmit. It’s the Russians you see, and those extreme populists that’s got a-hold of their tongues and minds…” “Just a little reeducation’s needed to bring them around, and some time away from Twitter, and Facebook, and Youtube. Soon enough, they’ll be seeing things rightly, and singing again from the right hymn books.”

Yeah; or maybe not.

11:11:00 5:00 Music: Transglobal Underground – Impossible Broadcasting – Radio Unfree Europe

16:40:00 :29 CFUV Funding Drive Announcement – Truth

17:10:00 3:00 Blatherskite

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s special Funding Drive 2022 show. The impossibly good, Transglobal Underground and Radio Unfree Europe from their Impossible Broadcasting album of some years ago now. So, the pandemic is over! Well, maybe not so fast…but the mask mandates are dropping in BC, as are requirements for so-called vaccine passports – at least as of this date. Is it because the virus disappeared, surrendering the fight against humanity – a fight we never asked for? No. The mandates and ersatz vaccine passport regimes are going, for now, because legal challenges are primed and ready. Just more than a month has passed since the government here demanded health practitioners – including chiropractors, dentists, and all others subject to B.C. health-care colleges be vaccinated by March 24th or lose their license to practice. Last week, the provincial government changed their orders – while not, as Health Minister, Adrian Dix insists, backing down – saying health professionals must declare thier vaccine status to colleges, and those colleges informed they must now collect information on their membership. The files must be available to government inspection by month’s end, or else….something… the threat has been left unuttered for now.

It all goes to underscore the way the people of B.C., and in every jurisdiction, have been bullied, cajoled, and threatened to succumb to orders to subject their bodily integrity to substances whose medical efficacy and long-term safety are uncertain, or pay a price through a legal process that is so far unspecified, but certainly remains questionable. Will this all become a moot point as Covid-19 passes into endemic status? No. The groundwork has been laid for a next virus, where the same scenario will be restaged and refought but more importantly, the precedents set in information and behaviour control has been set, and where that is leading is already evident in the way the Ukraine war and its provenance is being presented – and not – across media.

20:10 4:45 Music: Angel Olsen – Aisles – Eyes without a Face

24:24 :30 CFUV Funding Drive 2022 Announcement – Timber

24:55 2:30 Blatherskite

Yes, you heard it. Once a year we here put our hats down on the pavement, laying bear our collective pates in a plea for alms. Nobody is going to starve if yoiu don’t donate, but it is a way you can show your appreciation for a nominal alternative to the kinds of radio nonesense we’re all subjected to. If you’ve just tuned in to CFUV: this is a campus/community station, comprised of volunteer programmers and syndicated contributors creating music, spoken word, and current affairs radio. Our studios are in the basement of the Studen Union Building at the University of Victoria, and we transmit locally via a puny 23 hundred and 90- odd watt transmitter. Honestly, you can barely pick us up in most parts of the city; unless you’re in traffic. BUT! The station also livestreams to the whole World – subject approval – on the internet at cfuv.ca. That probably doesn’t amaze many people today; but when I started doing this radio show, the internet wasn’t even a thing. There were no podcast, or anything like that: In fact, pterodactyls still ruled the skies in those day…and we spent our days watching for great circling shadows on the ground with the same intensity some now stare footward at there hand-held flatland machines. How things have changed!

When I began, the world was full of war and rumours of war. The Americans and Russian were nose to nose in eastern Europe, and many were fearing a war that could lead to a nuclear conflagration that would destroy us all. And the media; cripes!!! In those days, all you heard was how bad everybody else was: Evil-doer this and the next new Hitler him. Thank goodness that’s all over with. Goodness because CFUV survives yet for you listening enjoyment and information edification… FOR NOW… If you want to insure our continued flourishing…listen and tell your friends to listen… to alternative voices and opinions…

27:30:00 7:00 Music: Gil Scott-Heron – GasCD – Work for Peace

34:45:00 :30 CFUV Show promo – Pablo (Not Alone)

35:15:00 :30 CFUV Disclaimer

35:45:00 2:30 Blathersite

Well, you heard the lady: These opinions belong to me. It wasn’t until this year we here were impelled to attach disclaimers to programs. I mention this because it’s instructive when viewing where this country, Canada is in 2022, and where it’s headed when the citizenry are fear making their opinions known; or when those still unafraid to speak truth to power can do so only after taking the precaution of disassociating from those who may become collaterally victimized by truth-telling. This is apparently the democracy our leaders in Ottawa and Washington, and London, etc. would have us willing to send our sons and daughters to their doom defending, (or least send money and materiel to proxies for that purpose).

We have entered again the realm of censorship; a place where free speech is deemed dangerous to the common good, and thinking outside the provided parameters is in itself an act of sedition. Marching bravely beneath the banner of truth, the New Censors seek they say to protect us from ourselves – this was made evident during the pandemic crisis, and continues apace now, where those questioning the next war narrative are labelled agents of the enemy, and excommunicated. Just as the scars inflicted by the divisiveness of Covid will require years to heal, the abuse of our civil liberty will mark us indelibly. But, according to one of the exemplars of journalism and truth-telling, there is room to hope in this acrid atmosphere of censoriousness. Julian Assange says censorship is, quote “…an opportunity because it reveals fear of reform. It means that the power position is so weak that you have got to care what people think.”

38:15:00 3:20 Music: Angel Olsen – My Woman – Shut Up, Kiss Me

41:20:00 2:45 Blatherskite

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s special Funding Drive 2022 show. That was the inveterate bard and showman, Chris Chandler doing the promo there. Long-time GR collaborator and host of Plant Powered Radio Janine Bandcroft recorded that more years ago than I can remember now. Before that was Angel Olsen’s 2016 song from her album My Woman, “Shut Up, Kiss Me.She also covered Billy Idol’s Eyes without a Face earlier in the program. And, as I said earlier, this show has been borne on the wings of war. It was the Former Yugoslavia being bombed into whatever it’s called now back then. In addition to all the dirty little secret wars since then, there’s been the destruction of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, very nearly Syria, and of course Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine didn’t start two or three weeks ago. Even the CBC would admit, the killing and dying has been going on there for considerably longer. Back in 2014, agents of the Obama administration succeeded in hijacking popular – and peaceful – demonstrations against the fractious Yanukovych administration and overturning his government. They did this using the tactics of intimidation, street violence, assassination, and mass murder. The government installed by NATO and more specifically Obama’s hand in Kiev, Victoria Nuland moved next on the ethnic-Russian population of the eastern region. What resulted was a separatist declaration in two provinces and a subsequent war of subjugation by the central authority that had, before the recent Russian intervention, claimed the lives some 15,000 people, most of them in Donetsk and Lagansk. These are the regions repeatedly referred to by our state broadcaster as home to, “Russia-backed fighters” – as though they were not fighting from their own homes as Kiev’s shells rain on their back gardens.

Before the recent disaster, there were Canadians warning Ottawa of what we were heading for in Ukraine and eastern Europe and imploring it change course. Now, the opposite is the case, where Canada is increasingly fomenting war and destruction at the behest of our large neighbour south, and to the benefit of none save the arms dealers. I spoke recently with Glenn Michalchuk, a third-generation Canadian of Ukrainian decent and currently Chair of the Peace Alliance of Winnipeg about the then-impending storm now raging in the country of his forebears. Here’s Ken, joined by Tamara Lorincz of Canadian Voice of Women for Peace and the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute in a talk recorded in late January.

44:05:00 5:05 Clip Tamara Lorincz & Glenn Michalchuk (January 22, 2022)

49:10:00 3:35 John K. Samson -Winter Wheat – Vampire Alberta Blues

52:45:00 2:00 Blatherskite

Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s special Funding Drive 2022 show. That was John K. Samson from his Winter Wheat album with Vampire Alberta Blues. Before that a bit of an interview I recorded with Tamara Lorincz and Glenn Michalchuk a couple months ago. We’re fast approaching the end of my time on this the penultimate day of this year’s effort to raise dough for the operations of the station. Go to supportcfuv.ca to find out what’s on offer gift-wise, (yes there are tote bags!). Or if you’re listening over the air, phone us up at 250-721-8700 to pledge your support.

54:45:00 3:00 Ashley Shadow – Nothing – For Love (can con)

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