Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Ken Stone, Finian Cunningham November 18, 2021

Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded November 13th and 14th, 2021.

True to its word, the Trudeau government is determined to spend billions for a revamped fighter jet force for Canada’s military. The main debate until now has been which foreign weapons-making company will get the sweet deal – a deal worth a reported 88 billion buckaroos over the next generation – and not whether Canada should be supporting such a deal in the first place.

Ken Stone is a long-time antiwar activist whose served as an executive member of both the Syria Solidarity Movement and Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War. Ken and the Hamilton Coalition are joining hands in a trans-Canada effort with Canadian Voice of Women, Peace Brigades International, the Regina Peace Council, and the Victoria Peace Coalition here in Victoria among many others to mount the No Fighter Jets demonstrations at Liberal MP’s offices from coast to coast to coast November 22nd.

Ken Stone in the first half.

And; more than a year after Ethiopia’s military launched a so-called “police action” to “restore order” in Tigray province, the fighting rages on. While thousands have died and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced, another casualty of the humanitarian disaster that ensued has been Western goodwill for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate prime minister Abiy Ahmed, who now faces sanctions – along with ally Eritrea – and the threat of American military intervention should the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa nation continue.

To some on the American and European left that threat smacks of the kind of “humanitarian intervention” seen in Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria; it’s something they say is no less than naked neo-imperialism, and prompting their support for Ahmed and Eritrean strongman, Isaias Afwerki.

Finian Cunningham is a prolific journalist and two-time Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism recipient. His articles on international affairs appear at numerous online outlets, including Strategic Culture, where his March piece, ‘U.S. Paves Way for Intervention in Ethiopia, Horn of Africa’ is proving now to be prophetic.

Finian Cunningham and competing narratives in the ongoing Ethiopian disaster in the second half.

But first, Ken Stone and just saying “NO!” to new fighter jets.