Gorilla Radio for Monday August 3, 2009

by C. L. Cook

This week on GR: Broadcaster and environmental activist, Sean Paton on the devastation of the Antilles isle of Bonaire by the Scientologist run cruise ship, Freewinds; investigative journalist, author, and rag-timer, Dave Lindorff on l'Affaire Gates and living in the United Police-States of America; and, Victoria Street Newz publisher, broadcaster, and activist, Janine Bandcroft recaps the 20th Pastors for Peace Caravan taking Goods to Cuba.

 

Listen. Hear.

 

 

It's an idyllic land; a beautiful island, set like a precious stone in diamond-sparkled ocean, threatened by industrial and human wastes spewed by cruise ships. No, it is not Vancouver Island, though it suffers too the same despoiling, it is the Caribbean isle of Bonaire, one of the necklace of sun kissed, white sand, paradisiacal places making up the Dutch Antilles.

 

The names of its destroyer include: greed, stupidity, and Scientology. It is the great cruise ship Freewinds, owned and operated by the infamous Scientology cult using Bonaire as its septic dumping ground, despite promises made to islanders they would cease and desist.

 

Sean Paton is an English sailor who, via a globetrotting trajectory, shored up in Bonaire. He's a writer, activist, videographer, broadcaster and foremost, an oceanophile who describes himself as; a music-loving family man, with big ideas about keeping in tune with an environment we humans seem intent on destroying. He's butted heads with local officials and the great "church" of Scientology to put an end to the Freewinds' defiling of his home. Sean Paton in the first half.

And; is it a policed, or police state?

 

That is the first question of the high school law class I took so many years ago. Back then, the answer was obvious. Now, the answer is changing, and that answer becomes more obvious every day.

 

A few weeks back, black Ivy League professor Henry Louis Gates' arrest in Cambridge, Massachusetts while breaking into his own house sparked a firestorm of self-reflection on American race relations and policing in the media.

 

Despite countless hours of hair-pulling punditry diatribes, my second guest argues; the salient point of the incident was missed entirely.

 

Dave Lindorff is an award-winning investigative journalist, broadcaster, and a regular columnist featured at CounterPunch, Salon, The Nation and other internet news sites. He is the author of the books, Marketplace Medicine, Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, This Can't Be Happening: Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy, and his latest, co-authored with Barbara Olshansky, The Case for Impeachment: Legal Arguments for Removing President George W. Bush from Office. Dave Lindorff and Life in the Police State in the second half.

And; Gorilla Radio stalwart and Cuba Caravanista, Victoria's own Victoria Street Newz publisher, and CFUV radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will bejoin us at the bottom of the hour to brief us on her most recent sojourn to that besiege Caribbean island to deliver Goods for Cuba.

 

But first, Sean Paton and the Freewinds' bad tidings for the isle of Bonaire.  

 

 

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, Brewster Kneen, Betty Krawczyk, 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, David Schindler, Vandana Shiva, Norman Solomon, Starhawk, Grant Wakefield, Paul Watson, Bernard Weiner, Mickey Z., Howard Zinn and many others.