This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook

This week, Geraldine Cahill of The Real News, an upstart web-based media collective filling in the gaps left by old media; Mike Ferner of Vets Against the War on War Inc., the legacy of  America's reaction to 9/11; Janine Bandcroft bringing us up to speed with all good goings-on in and around the south island in the coming week.

 

Listen: Hear and Hear 

 

 

 

Of the world's industrial states, Canada has perhaps the most concentrated media. In this country, the confluence of corporate media purveyors with a singular political vision; a State broadcaster run by careerist weaklings, desperate to preserve their jobs by pleasing the party of the day; and, a supine regulatory system, more interested in making life difficult for college and community radio programmers than in challenging the systemic abuses of the nation's "public" airwaves, conspire to make of Canadian media a final product little better than the base propaganda of the communist regimes of old.

 

What this means for the denizens of this sad, satellite state that is Canada is a monolithic meme delivery system masquerading as journalism, while media handmaidens to power pretend to operate in the public interest. It's no wonder then Canadians can blithely sit before flickering boxes, sucking beer, as the nation is frog-marched into fascism.

It is a dangerous, and seemingly hopeless situation: Corporate players are not likely to change the way they massage their message, and fearful bureaucrats behind the State media apparatus will not endanger their livelihoods to buck the system to deliver truth to the citizenry.

 

Luckily, we live in a time of technological wonders whose magic promises to change not only the way we live, but the way we learn about the others effecting our lives.

Geraldine Cahill is Communications and Social Media coordinator for The Real News, a Toronto-based emerging media upstart challenging "old media's" news dissemination monopoly. Geraldine Cahill in the first half.

And; almost seven years past the time the first bunker busters fell upon the heads of hapless Afghani goat herds and their keepers, it's instructive to look back upon the carnage of the interim and what meaning we can take away from this madness.

 

Hundreds of thousands dead; millions maimed and made homeless; landscapes scarred and corrupted with poisons and unexploded ordnance, just waiting for the curious attentions of children to add again to the misery the chosen course engendered for Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, and the un-people thrown into dark prisons around the world without a glimmer of hope for salvation.

Mike Ferner is an activist with Voices in the Wilderness and Veterans for Peace, broadcaster, and author of the book, 'Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran for Peace Reports.' He's also a dedicated writer, chronicling America's spiral into perpetual war in hundreds of articles published across the internet.

Mike Ferner and keeping tabs on War, Incorporated in the second segment.

And; Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with all that's good to do in and around Victoria in the coming week.

G-Radio is dedicated to social justice, the environment, community, and providing a forum for people and issues not covered in the corporate media.

Some past guests include: M. Junaid Alam, M. Shahid Alam, Joel Bakan, Maude Barlow, David Barsamian, Rhoda Berenson, William Blum, Luciana Bohne, William Bowles, Mordecai Briemberg, Vincent Bugliosi, Helen Caldicott, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, Diane Christian, Juan Cole, David Cromwell, Murray Dobbin, Jon Elmer, Reese Erlich, Anthony Fenton, Jim Fetzer, Laura Flanders, Chris Floyd, Connie Fogal, Glen Ford, Susan George, Stan Goff, Amy Goodman, Robert Greenwald, Denis Halliday, Chris Hedges, Sander Hicks, Julia Butterfly Hill, Scott Horton, Robert Jensen, Dahr Jamail, Chalmers Johnson, Diana Johnstone, Kathy Kelly, Naomi Klein, Anthony Lappe, Frances Moore Lappe, Jason Leopold, Jeff Leys, Dave Lindorff, Jim Lobe, Jennifer Loewenstein, Wayne Madsen, Stephen Marshall, Linda McQuaig, George Monbiot, Loretta Napoleoni, John Nichols, Kurt Nimmo, David Orchard, 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, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, Starhawk, Grant Wakefield, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Mickey Z., Howard Zinn and many others.