Tag: Honduras

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Karen Spring, Keith Simmonds December 2nd, 2021

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Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded November 27th, 2021

The Honduran presidential election is November 28th and will see Xiomara Castro, wife of ousted former president, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya face Nasry Asfura, right-wing mayor of Tegulcigalpa and close cohort of exiting president, Juan Orlando Hernández. It’s been 12 years since Castro’s pajama-clad husband was spirited out his bed and out of the country in the coup. Canada and the United States were quick then to recognize the coupsters, and have continued to support different iterations of their “democracy restoration” despite ruthless military and police repression, rampant government corruption, and a flourishing drugs trade and gang violence that helped trigger an ongoing migration exodus.

Karen Spring is the Honduras-based Coordinator for the Honduras Solidarity Network. They describe themselves as a, “… decentralized network of approximately 30 organizations from across Canada and the United States […] committed to demonstrating and advocating for solidarity with the Honduran social movement.” Spring is also author of several articles and reports about human rights issues, has testified before Canadian Parliamentary committees about human rights in Honduras, and blogs at aquiabajo.com.

Karen Spring in the first half.

And; as serious an abrogation of first principles Canada’s failure to support true Honduran democracy represents, its utter abandonment of Palestinian children to Israel’s military court system puts the lie to the country’s claim – and self-regard – as international human rights exemplar. ‘Canada Stand Up for Palestinian Children’s Rights’ is a coalition of human rights organizations who are currently engaged in a continuing awareness-raising campaign because our government has failed in its response to the systemic “kidnap, arrest, detainment, abuse, torture, and murder of Palestinian children…”

Keith Simmonds is a United Church of Canada minister who served as a World Council of Churches human rights observer (Ecumenical Accompanier) in Palestine in early 2020. Stationed in Bethlehem he also spent time in Jerusalem, Galilee and Tulkarem. The ‘second career minister’ has too served as a labour and community organizer, volunteer firefighter and ERT team member, and worked as an assistant to provincial cabinet ministers among other things in a varied career.

Keith Simmonds and holding Canada to its word on human rights in Palestine in the second half.

But first, Karen Spring and can Sunday’s election be Honduran’s second chance at real democracy?

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing 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

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Tyler Shipley, Joel Bakan, Janine Bandcroft September 10, 2020

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Welcome back to Gorilla Radio’s continuing efforts, NOT broadcast live from CFUV Radio in the basement of the Student Union Building at the University of Victoria, but emanating live-to-tape via Skype from our home-based … studios on this date, September 4th, 2020.

We all grew up with those infomercial-lengthed Canadian history bites, Heritage Minutes. With production values just hoakey enough to appear made by the Ministry of Education for your Grade 6 Socials class, the upbeat and nationhood-affirming vignettes have become, like the TransCanada and some other stuff one of the things that makes us Canadians Canadian. And, like some of the best-loved stories we like to tell ourselves about ourselves, Heritage Minutes is just a pile of crap. Or so contends my first guest.

Tyler Shipley is Professor of Culture, Society and Commerce at Humber College’s Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, and founding member of Canadian poliprog band, Consumer Goods. His first book, ‘Ottawa and Empire: Canada and the Military Coup in Honduras’ taught us more about ourselves than we hoped to learn, and the same is promised of his second title, ‘Canada in the World: Settler Capitalism and the Colonial Imagination.’ His recent article, ‘The stunning misinformation and whitewashing of racism behind Canada’s Heritage Minutes’ currently challenges our childhood indoctrination from the pages of The Canada Files website.

Tyler Shipley in the first half.

And; way back near the turn of the century, when the unbridled power of transnational capital and its enabling mechanism the modern corporation threatened to destroy democracy, Vancouver-based legal scholar and filmmaker, Joel Bakan released the now classic documentary film, ‘THE CORPORATION’. Now, more than fifteen years later, Bakan has revisited the topic with his newly released book, ‘The New Corporation: How “Good” Corporations Are Bad for Democracy’, and he’s teamed up again with fellow CORPORATION director, Jennifer Abbott on the new film, ‘The New Corporation: The Unfortunately Necessary Sequel’.

Joel Bakan and revisiting The Corporation fifteen years later 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, bringing us up to speed with some of what’s good going on in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Tyler Shipley and catching up on Canada’s pretend history, even as the real one catches up with us.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon 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/

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook and Kevin Zeese Presente! from Aug. 9, 2018

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All who knew Kevin and who care about justice and human rights are deeply saddened to hear of his untimely death last night, taken suddenly at 64 years by a heart attack.

Tributes will follow from all quarters.

The peace enjoyed by the people of Nicaragua since the overthrow of dictator and tyrant Anastasio “Tachito” Somoza was hard-won, and not without reversals. In the last months, an attempt to unseat the elected government of leftist, Daniel Ortega however has seen what many fear could be the beginning of the end of that peace, and revival of the dark forces of fascism once buried, perhaps too shallowly, there.

Kevin Zeese is an American lawyer, political activist, essayist, and author. He’s also co-founder of the Drug Policy Foundation and current co-director of Popular Resistance.org, from where his and colleague, Dr. Margaret Flowers’ weekly podcast, Clearing The Fog emanates.

His frequent essays and articles on social justice issues in America and abroad appear at Popular Resistance, CounterPunch, and Gorilla Radio Blog among other places, and his book titles include: ‘Drug Law: Strategies and Tactics’, ‘Drug Prohibition an the Conscience of Nations’, and ‘The Great Issues of Drug Policy’.

Today, Kevin Zeese and the Lessons Learned from the Failed Violent Coup in Nicaragua.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon 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/

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Stefan Goebel, Dimitri Lascaris, Janine Bandcroft June 20, 2019

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A century past the end of the War to End All Wars humankind has experienced unrelenting conflicts both large and small, roiling the length and breadth of the World. A look across media platforms at the headlines today reinforces the calamitous political state of the planet, but what is rarely explored or explained is the role it, the media, plays and has played in our seeming perpetual state of war and its ever-rumoured coming.

Stefan Goebel is a scholar, educator, author, and Director of the Centre for the History of War, Media & Society at Kent University. A reader in Modern British History, professor Goebel is too co-editor of the recently published volume, ‘Propaganda and Conflict: War, Media and Shaping the Twentieth Century‘.

Stefan Goebel in the first half.

And; ten years after pajama-clad Honduran center-left president Mel Zelaya was whisked from his bed and into exile by military coupsters the country is a basket case. For the vast majority, the past decade has seen economic collapse and the erosion of the meagre human rights and agrarian reforms Zelaya had initiated in his final year in office. It has also become the most dangerous place on Earth to live, with police, gangs, and government-sponsored death squads providing impetus for the main component of the Central American refugee crisis.

Dimitri Lascaris is a Canadian lawyer, human rights activist, and reporter for the Real News Network. He’s just returned from Honduras where he joined a tri-national delegation of University academics and members of the Central American Alliance Against Mining on a Human Rights fact-finding mission to investigate local opposition to an iron-ore mine in the Botaderos National Park in northern Honduras.

Dimitri Lascaris and Honduras, ten years after democracy died in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and long-time Gorilla Radio contributor, 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 in the coming week. But first, professor Stefan Goebel and media, propaganda and conflict in the post-truth age.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon 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/

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Dan Kovalik, CAIA’s Great March Solidarity Protest, Janine Bandcroft, Christina Nikolic May 3rd, 2018

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As Honduran refugees squeezed between street gangsters and the immovably corrupt government of President Juan Orlando Hernandez hang fire in Tijuana, protests by the little people in the capital reportedly “turned violent” Tuesday. That’s the neutral “turn of phrase” the professional western media uses when the monied interests, friends of the bankers and resource barons of El Norte, are challenged by those they rob daily.

The truth is plainer: Social order in Honduras has been brought to the breaking point by the thieves who stole the government, (with the blessing of Canada and the United States) and the failure of the capitalist system – at least as practiced by Hernandez and his cohorts.

And, the evidence of that failure is both bleeding in the streets of Tegucigalpa, and banging on America’s doors at Mexican crossings and elsewhere.

Contrast the reportage of the growing riots in Honduras, that followed years of peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations, with the recent eruption of “Arab Spring-like” manifestations in neighbouring Nicaragua. There, a leftist government long a thorn in the imperial paw touched off a tax revolt after announcing changes to the state pension plan – changes Sandinista President, Manuel Ortega was quick to reverse, but to listen to the BBC, CBC, and US corporate press, it sounds as though Satan himself has risen in Managua.

Daniel Kovalik is a human rights lawyer, essayist, and author who’s book, ‘The Plot to Scapegoat Russia: How the CIA and the Deep State Have Conspired to Vilify Putin’ is still fresh a year after publication. He teaches international human rights law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, is Senior Associate General Counsel for the United Steel Workers union, and is a long-time peace and justice activist, focused especially on Colombia and Central America, where he serves as an attorney for Colombian plaintiffs in cases alleging corporate human rights violations. Dan is too a co-recipient of a Project Censored Award for chronicling the murder of trade unionists in Colombia.

Dan Kovalik in the first half.

And; while Palestinians continue to press for their rights in the homeland they’ve watched being stolen for three generations and more, their ‘Great March of Return’ in it’s fifth week now, has highlighted the brutality of the Netanyahu regime. Every Friday hundreds of demonstrators have been injured, many shot in the legs by snipers with high velocity, live rounds. At least fifty are confirmed to have been shot dead. Tomorrow is another Friday, and the desperately determined people of Gaza will again go to the wall, emblem of their suffering, and challenge Israel’s conscience.

In cities around the World, others have demonstrated in solidarity for the Palestinian cause. I went down to where the Victoria chapter of CAIA, Canadians Against Israeli Apartheid hold their weekly vigil downtown after the second week of killings and talked to both CAIA and pro-Israel counter-demonstrators.

Gaza and the Great March seen from a great distance in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft, and greentrepreneur extraordinaire, Christina Nikolic will be here in studio at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin to bring us up to speed with some of the good things to get up to in and around our town in the coming week. But first, Dan Kovalik and troubling times bubbling over in Central America.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon 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/

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Phil Little, Richard Sanders, Janine Bandcroft April 26th, 2018

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Though seldom spoken now, those past a certain age will remember the Dirty Wars waged in South America in the last half of the last century. Perhaps the worst of it was when The Dirty Wars soiled Central America: El Salvador, Nicarauga, Guatemala, and of course Honduras from where Gringo mastermind, John Negroponte coordinated Central America’s share of the infamous Operation Condor.

The rise of leftist governments in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Sandinista reemergence in Nicaragua in the early years of this century was hopeful. Even in Guatemala truth and reconciliation commissions were established to acknowledge, if not punish, the genocidal horror visited upon the Mayan majority.

But that short-lived hope is ending. The fascists are risen again in Latin America, and Honduras is again in the middle of the nightmare.

Phil Little is a former Catholic missionary, retired teacher, and for the last five years has acted as “accompaniment” for social and human rights activists in Honduras at risk because, as he says, “the theory [is] that a person is less likely to be killed if accompanied by a foreigner, preferably a gringo.” That belief proved tragically over-optimistic in the case of murdered Honduran activist, Berta Cáceres in 2016. Phil will be at Cafe Simpatico tomorrow night, 1923 Fernwood Road, in the heart of Fernwood, with Kay Gimbel of CASC and MJAC, and micro-economist, Bill Feyrer presenting ‘Honduras Today’.

Phil Little in the first half.

And; as Stephen Harper’s Canada was first among nations to recognize and sign trade deals with the coup government of Honduras, so too has his successor been quick to adopt militarism, leaping in support of the recent bombing of Syria before it happened. But then, Justin Trudeau was only acting in accordance with the new understanding of Canadian values, as expressed by the Canadian Pension Plan. Your CPP long ago decided to adopt the ruthless morays of corporate war profiteers; and, you may be happy to know, the killing business has never been better.

Richard Sanders is founder and coordinator of Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade and serves as editor to COAT’s publication, Press for Conversion. COAT cleaves to the quaint old notion war should not be regarded as a profit-driver by government, or used as an investment vehicle for its citizen’s retirement fund.

Richard Sanders and how the CPP helped Canadians profit from the US/UK/France Air Strikes Against Syria, and will profit again the fires next time in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV Radio broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour with the Left Coast Events Bulletin and some of the good things to get up to around here for the coming week. But first, Phil Little and matters of life and death in Honduras, where corruption IS the operating system.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon 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/

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Jesse Freeston, Ramzy Baroud, Janine Bandcroft Feb. 22nd., 2018

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Foreign meddling in electoral politics can legitimately be compared to an act of war. Just ask the voters of Honduras whose popular president was forced out of office at gunpoint by agents working for the interests of offshore corporations.

Since the replacement of Mel Zelaya in 2009 the coupsters, anointed by the good offices of El Norte, have run roughshod over the rights and dignity of the people, putting in place by hook, crook, bullets and batons an old-fashioned fascist regime; a banana republic the likes of which has not been seen since the last time Uncle Sam ran the show.

Jesse Freeston is a Canadian documentary filmmaker and video journalist. A seminal member of The Real News Network, he’s also produced documentaries for teleSUR, the world’s largest Spanish-language public broadcaster, and his latest film, Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley documents an agrarian take-over of palm oil plantations by share-cropping farmers. He’s currently working on his next independent film, Human Park.

Jesse is back in Honduras and a few weeks ago released the two-part report, ‘Honduras: The Never-Ending Coup‘ on TRNN.

Jesse Freeston in the first half.

And; media-shaded the last few years by neigbouring regional conflicts, and more recently by the Olympics and spotlight hogging Trump political circus, Gaza, and Palestine generally, has garnered scant coverage in North America’s press. That changed a little with Israel’s aerial and tank bombardment of the embattled enclave last week; but that the attention would hover a little longer there to reveal the desperate, ongoing plight of the World’s largest and longest refugee crisis.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is an American-Arab journalist, media consultant, syndicated columnist, educator, founder and editor of the Palestine Chronicle, past editor of numerous online and print news organizations, and author. He’s currently embarking on a World-tour to promote his latest book, ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story‘ to provide, he says, “a new take on the history of the Palestinian people, one in which the refugees are the core theme”.

That tour will bring Ramzy to our town next week, 7pm Friday March 2nd, right here at UVic’s David Strong building.

Ramzy Baroud and bringing the voice to Palestine’s refugees in the second half.

And; Victoria-based activist and CFUV broadcaster at-large, Janine Bandcroft will be here with the Left Coast Events bulletin to bring us up to speed with some of what’s good going on in and around Victoria in the coming week.

But first, Jesse Freeston and the story of Honduras’ never-ending coup.

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Thursday between 11-Noon 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/