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.

 

Listen. Hear.

 

But first, before beginning the wind, an annual tradition with Ini Kimoze, and all he really wanted for Christmas.

 

 

On December 7th, Stephen Harper and Barack Obama signed the 'Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan,' a deal between Canada and the US Harper says will, quote; "[C]reate a new, modern order for a new century." Adding; "Together, they represent the most significant steps forward in Canada-U.S. cooperation since the North American Free Trade Agreement."

 

Stephen Harper may think NAFTA a "step forward" for Canada but for millions on both sides of the 49th, who stood helplessly by as good jobs left the country, flying to foreign parts due to these corporate agreements, the prospect of further forward motion into Harper's vision of "a new, modern order" is less welcome.

The deal is what Canadian nationalists like David Orchard describe as the greatest existential threat Canada. It is an act of finishing through treachery what force of arms could not accomplish; conquest by deception. Of the deal, the Council of Canadians' Maude Barlow says, quote;

 

"The Harper government has again succumbed to U.S. pressure to beef up security and surveillance powers for little or no real security gains to either country. As we suspected, perimeter security just means that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will set most of the terms for greater information sharing, the use of no-fly lists, and joint policing of the border and beyond. Harper has also bent to the desires of North American business lobbies to remove regulatory burdens most of us understand as health and safety standards."

   
And that is the rub: Using fear and insecurity, the traditional tools of blaggards and bullies, the disingenuous p.m. and his imperial master plan to use this false promise to allow the corporate hordes, first and foremost in the form of agri-business giants, to prise open the nation's farms and fields to genetically engineered monstrosities, aptly called "Frankenfoods," while exposing our grocery store shelves to dairy products bastardized by growth hormones known to cause disease and hasten death.

 

These noxious foods, this egregious agreement allows, will be hidden from view by labelling obfuscation and point of origin obliteration. Of this "regulatory convergence," the Council asks:

 

"Does it make sense to adopt U.S. style industry self-inspection of food processing plants? Do we automatically want to recognize in Canada the safety of new genetically modified crops or, in the case of salmon, GE animals? Do we want to stop testing pesticides approved for use in the U.S. just to get them to Canadian shelves quicker?"

      
The Harper government, as it prefers to be called, offers little, saying it will, quote; "[C]ontinue to consult relevant stakeholders and Canadians on these issues." Relevance is the point here, as the Council of Canadians points out; Harper's pronouncements were directed at a very select group of "relevants" who apparently enjoyed special access. According to the CoC;

 

"[O]nly business stakeholders were invited into the government lockup to brief media on the virtues of the plan. And only business stakeholders will have privileged access to ongoing Regulatory Cooperation Council working group sessions on Canada-U.S. standards convergence."

  

That "Regulatory Cooperation Council" is to be the supra-Parliamentary actor now responsible for maintaining these unifying policies, "going forward" as they say. That's what I call "harmonious. 

 

 

This time of year is replete with year-end news roundup programs. But how many have you heard that cite the Fukushima meltdown as the number one story of the year? Forget the year; the Fukushima meltdown is the story that keeps running, even after hair-do newsreaders and their useless editors have moved on. And, its busted reactors will run on. Are you aware, Fukushima is still melting down. Are you aware, George Monbiot, people have died because of the disaster you said reassured you about nuclear power? Has anyone heard how many millions more will get cancer because of the Fukushima meltdown; have already got the cancer that will in time sicken and kill them? Rex Murphy was on the telly just before Christmas with his year-ender take on Fukushima; he mentioned there had been a devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March. And that was it. No triple reactor meltdown; nothing on the continuing crisis; not a word spake Thesaurus Rex of the spewing nuclear radiation polluting the air land and seas still, far and beyond Japan's border. Nothing, nada, zilch, zero, never happened according to Rex. Some news is too bad to remember I suppose; but, not to worry Rex and the rest at the CBC, maybe next year; this story is going nowhere fast. In the meanwhile, Arnie Gundersen of Fairwinds Associates has followed the story assiduously, filling in the blanks Rex and his ilk left in the narrative. Gundersen sums it up, in part, saying, quote; "The past nine months have been a difficult and confusing time for many people struggling to make sense of the Fukushima nuclear accident. The failure of four Mark 1 BWR reactors rattled the nerves of on-lookers around the world. As large amounts of radiation have continued to leak into the environment, information-seekers discovered that finding reliable and comprehensive facts would be easier said than done. Tokyo Electric and the Japanese government slowly released selective bits of information, but those who could not interpret the industry data were left to make sense of the situation for themselves."

And, as some of us are still trying to make sense of it, some of us aren't. Also missed by corporate reportage of the ongoing Fukushima disaster is the investigative work of Japanese independent journalist, Tomohiko Suzuki. Suzuki went undercover, working with the clean-up crews, many of whom he reports were recruited by the infamous Yakuza to pay off outstanding debts to the crime organization.

As 2011 fades into history, a brief look back at where we in Canada find ourselves. The 'Perimeter Security and Economic Competitiveness Action Plan,' signed with little fanfare December 7th, quietly makes its way now through final ratification. Promised to mean easier access to the US by eager cross-border shoppers and busy importers is, as was its predecessor NAFTA, a much broader agreement than either the government or press makes out. It is a profound step towards national annihilation, a necessary step towards continental integration. Already, Canada has largely ceded self-determination in foreign policy matters. The nation's military is too captured, enmeshed with the Americans and NATO in a web of "interoperability" that demands Canadian Forces become in essence a hand-maiden to foreign interests. On the home front, Canada's Border Services, the RCMP, and major urban centre police forces are too interoperable, as we saw in Toronto at last year's G20 police riots. Stephen Harper's government has also introduced the US criminal system to Canada in the form of his massive crime bill, ensuring prison populations will soar, just as the corporate prison-industrial complex hopes. Other changes see the Great North strong and free dropping its guard to allow Genetically Modified products onto our grocer's shelves, planted into our soil, and implanted in the genome of God knows what else.

2011 marked too the finale of the country's ten years long entanglement in Afghanistan - sort of. One government after the other has extended the military "mission" in that distant land. Both the Liberals and the Tories have lied to the Canadian people, making promises of departure that are soon broken when the due date comes around, and so it is still. The 2011 deadline for military withdrawal has been again forestalled, this time through the use of weasel words and a vague redefinition of duty. The soldiers remaining are no longer soldiers per se, but trainers, left to educate the Afghan military and police on how best to keep a boot on the neck of restive countrymen who, unlike Canadians, take exception to being ruled from "over the horizon."

But, that's not how some of the big picture thinkers view the decade-long campaign of destruction and occupation of Afghanistan and its neighbours. Recently deceased Anglo-American writer, Christopher Hitchens, the nominal leftist who served as intellectual bulwark for the fight against what is variously termed: Islamofascism, crypto fascism, or just plain Islamic terrorism, shucked his mortal coil still believing "we," as he invariably described the actors destroying lives by the millions, as if that destruction was not the work of war profiteers and demagogues, were engaged in an honourable project for the betterment of Afghanistan and its people. His failure of imagination, like all the big picture failures, is the inability to see what life means for people who struggle in small ways to survive with dignity. What remains invisible to those Olympians, for whom the world is an imagined passion play, a spectacle viewed from the heavens, or Washington, D.C., spanning the breadth of history and far into the unknowable future, is the actual reality of the lives lived below; the humble dreams and daily doings of the hoi polloi who strive for some small semblance of transcendence and greater existential understanding amid an often miserable reality. These are anonymous to Hitchens and his ilk, the unfortunate, uncounted, and necessary collaterals who must fall that Utopia may rise someday; their hopes, their dreams, their lives mean nothing to the crusaders beyond serving as paving stones on an endless road to an imagined destination.          

Hitchens was lain in his grave, unapologetic to the end. Of the wars he promoted, he said, quote; "I meanwhile am a prisoner of what I actually do know about the permanent hell, and permanent threat of the Saddam regime." But he didn't stop of course with his support of the destruction of Iraq and the millions killed, maimed, made homeless, and hopeless. No, Iraq is merely prelude to an unfinished symphony of death and horror that won't conclude until the last recalcitrant religionist is vanquished. In the end, Hitchens became the fascist he hated, eerily aping the biggest fascist of them all, Adolf Hitler and his primacy of the Will, saying Afghanistan was merely, quote; "A test of will we can't lose."

Today, that test of will continues; only now it is the "permanent threat" of Iran beckoning more war. And on it will go as wearily predicted by the less credulous of us who never joined Christopher Hitchens' "we" and never will.

 

 

Some past guests include: M. Junaid Alam, M. Shahid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, David Barsamian, Mark and Rhoda Berenson, Diana Beresford-Kroeger, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, William Bowles, Mordecai Briemberg, James J. Brittain, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Paul Cienfuegos, David Cromwell, Ezili Danto, Jon Elmer, Yves Engler, Anthony
Fenton, Jim Fetzer, Laura Flanders, Chris Floyd, Connie Fogal, Susan George, Stan Goff, Amy Goodman, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Sander Hicks, Julia Butterfly Hill, Scott Horton, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Chalmers Johnson, Diana Johnstone, Malalai Joya, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Brewster Kneen, Betty Krawczyk, Anthony Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Jason Leopold, Jeff Leys, Dave
Lindorff, Jim Lobe, Jennifer Loewenstein, Stephen Marshall, Robert Massoud, Loretta Napoleoni, John Nichols, Ken O'Keefe, David Orchard, Riki Ott, Greg Palast, Mike Palecek, Michael Parenti, Robert Parry, John Pilger, Kevin Pina, William Rivers Pitt, Justin Podur, Lila Rajiva, Jack Random, Sheldon Rampton, Paul Craig Roberts, David Robb, Paul de Rooij, John Ross, David Rovics, Danny
Schechter, David Schindler, Vandana Shiva, Tim Shorrock, Norman Solomon, Jean Saint-Vil, Starhawk, Grant Wakefield, Harvey Wasserman, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Andy Worthington, Mickey Z., Howard Zinn and many others.