This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook

This week we leave the usual format for Gorilla Radio's eagerly anticipated 2009 Year-Ender Show. Yes, the year that is almost was, and what a year it almost was too!

 

Listen. Hear.

 

So, today music, personal bloviations, and a visit from Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft looking back at a year chronicling Victoria's streets.

 

Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca.  He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, www.pacificfreepress.com.

 

Check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com
 

Welcome to GR, etc. And welcome to GR's annual year-end show. We'll leave the usual format today for a look back at the year ending and forward in attempts at prognostication. There will be music and bloviations, and perhaps a visit from friends. But, before beginning any of that, my shout out to the Christmas season just passed with old friend of the show, Ini Kamozee and his only wish for Christmas, Caribbean style.

5:01:00        4:00    Music (All I Really Want for Christmas - from Putumayo's World Christmas(?) - GRBlog)

5:04:00        6:00    Over There

It was a sad Christmas for the Victoria family of Canadian Forces soldier, Lieutenant Andrew Nuttall. The UVic alumnus died December 23 in Afghanistan alongside an unnamed Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier in a roadside bomb attack. Reports carried in the Times-Colonist said Andrew's friends were surprised when he told them of his plans to enter the military and go to Afghanistan. The T-C also reported the kind words of Andrew's colleagues and bosses within the Canadian Forces, which reiterated his strong desire to do good for the people of Afghanistan and beyond. Lieutenant-Colonel Jerry Walsh said, "From the first day I met him, I knew Andrew was special. There was nothing that could get him down. He was everything Canadian: A young man, possessed of great energy and enthusiasm for life, and so giving of everything he had to everyone else." The premier of B.C. commented too, saying Andrew "showed great courage, bravery and dedication in service to his country and to all Canadians."

So, how does Andrew Nuttall's death serve all Canadians? How does Andrew's death serve me?

I saw the Department of National Defence photograph of Lieutenant Andrew Richard Nuttall in the newspaper: A young face, just thirty, open and expectant; intelligent, green/hazel eyes, and a slightly crooked smile. On his blog site, Nuttman.info he wrote about his work in Afghanistan; what he and the Canadian military hoped to achieve there. In his last post, he wrote about the recent extension of his, and others', tour with confidence, saying;

"On one side the people are frightened, impoverished, and seek nothing but safety and prosperity for their families. On the other side is a very small subset of a combination of extreme Salafist muslims (aka seeking to impose an extremist version of islam on the entire world), anti-western mercenaries, and misguided brainwashed (generally) youths that utilize cowardice hit-and-run and ied tactics in order to sway the civilain population of afghanistan and north america to pull their troops out. Then there is us in the middle, an array of nations trying to combine our traditionally conventional forces and conduct combined operations with the young but capable ANA (and young but immature Afghan National Police, ANP), in a barren country with many more needs than just militaristic. Complicated, yes, confusing, only a bit, frustrating, unfortunatly too much."     - from http://www.nuttman.info/

"Complicated, confusing, and frustrating" also describes the sentiments of millions of Canadians who opposed Canada's entanglement in the revenge attacks against al Qaida staged on Afghanistan in October of 2001. Thousands took to the streets then, imploring fellow Canadians not allow "our troops" be a part of 'Operation Enduring Freedom;' imploring the government not be sucked in and used to follow the way of the brute force as first response. All to no avail. What has endured these eight years since is anything but freedom; unless you count the free reign of corporate war profiteers and the free imposition of militarism upon the nation that once fought for democracy, fought for the peaceful rule of the people over generals and their friends in the war industry.

So, rest in peace Andrew Nuttall. I hope you find the peace you and the 136 other Canadians killed in this conflict deserved but didn't know when your lives ended.

5:10:00        5:00    Music (WAM - Requiem)

*Background music cue: Rocky*

5:15:00        6:00    A Crazy Woild

While Canada has promised it will end it's fruitless military 'Mission' in Afghanistan by the end of 2011, it has pledged too to remain involved in the country on other levels; presumably whether the people of Afghanistan wish it or not. It promises a withdrawal without withdrawing; a promise similar to ones made by other members of the Coalition of [Reluctantly] Willing countries that followed the U.S. lead into Afghanistan so many years ago. It's a promise made too by the new leader of that coalition, President Barack Obama. He also says America's days in Afghanistan are numbered. His promise of eventual retreat has been leveraged in the Congress to increase the number of combat troops and attendant mercenaries deployed to surge democracy into that benighted land before next year's end. Obama laid it out to the graduating class at the West Point Military Academy in an address that later proved to be merely a warm-up for his acceptance speech to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee. Yes, it's a crazy old woild when a guy leading, and escalating, a global war can be recognized as the planet's pre-eminent man of peace, but then war makes people crazy, and we've had so much of it this last year, and for so many years now.

Chris Floyd, at Empire Burlesque puts the issuance of the prize in its properly grotesque perspective, writing;

"Obama staked his boldest claim to American exceptionalism with a passage that he lifted, almost verbatim, from his West Point speech just a few days before [...] when he announced his second massive escalation of the war in Afghanistan:

        '"Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest — because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other people's children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity."'

Here is chutzpah -- and hubris -- raised to the level of the sublime. Obama has taken the words he used to instigate the certain death of thousands of human beings and the acceleration of hatred, extremism, chaos and brutal corruption around the world -- and offered them as justification for the hideous, unabashedly Orwellian doctrine at the core of his speech: War is Peace. In this perverse inversion of values, Obama, as a warmaker, is actually a peacemaker, you see -- and thus a legitimate heir to the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., who was evoked at several points in the speech.

And here we come to what was for me the most revolting part of the speech. And perhaps the most significant too. All the cant about America's altruism and "enlightened self-interest" in killing millions of people -- Indochina was one of many convenient blank spots in Obama's historical survey-- for the sake of all the children of the world (red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in our sight) was just par for the rhetorical course. It was nothing that had not been said many times before, including the references -- so lauded by Obama's liberal apologists -- to those inadvertent "mistakes" America seems to keep making; out of a surfeit of good intentions, no doubt. But I don't think an American president has so openly and directly traduced the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mohandas Gandhi before. (And to do it while accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, no less! Oh, that sublime brass...)"

A bit of slack may be cut the current Nobel Committee, considering some of the past honourees, but Obama's speech closes the deal: After eight years of George W. Bush's "through the looking glass" presentation of reality, the shadowplay farce of empire and its wars will continue with Obama, as it would with whomever was in the White House.

5:21:00        7:11    Music (Chris Chandler - Carnivals #3 - track 5)
5:28:00        1:00    Cart(s)
5:29:00        10:00    Janine Bandcroft
5:39:00        3:00    Music (Upbeat) Mr. Jones(?)
5:42:00        5:00    The Big House

Fresh from his triumph before the Nobel Committee, Obama appeared in the waning hours of the last days of the COP15 United Nations' Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. It was for him to arrive as hero-saviour of the fractious CO2 negotiations, or prove the talks-scuttling goat most predicted the U.S. would be. Either way, the summit crashed, the kinds of industrial and consumer pollution reductions necessary to provide the natural world the time to regenerate the atmosphere, and humankind the time to invent its way out of a potential species-ending catstrophe beomg left off the table. All that seems to have come from it, not yet two weeks after the fact, is weasel-worded deals between major polluters, and vague offers of pay-offs for the worst affected; as though throwing money at the poor and carbon trading schemes at the atmosphere will change the verdict physics demands. Or so scientists say...

At the close of 2009, there is still debate in the media about that science stuff. How could it be true, when Stephen Harper and the government he runs is buying further into the tar oil and car businesses? He wouldn't steer the country down a globe-killing, dead-end course, would he? In British Columbia, the famously conservative B.C. Liberals are too promoting vast energy developments. Fossil fuels, pipelines, mega dams, mining, forestry, and all resource industries are priority #1 for the Liberals and their leader Gordon Campbell. That's why more than one eyebrow went up in B.C. to see the same Gordon Campbell feted as climate hero in Copenhagen, by green paragon Tzeporah Berman no less! It's a queer climate that would see the province's entire water cycle privatized, transforming every viable river and creek flow into the hands of privateers, inevitably bringing irrepairable damage to existing natural conditions. The so-called Run of Rivers is the project pairing the improbably green Gordon with once media-darling of Clayquot Sound, Tzeporeh Berman, the same Berman recently re-annointed by B.C.'s corporate press as the province's Queen of Green. The sacrifice of the entirety of the province's wild water courses is all in the name of climate change; or so say the press releases.  

5:47:00        4:00     Music    (Rabbleberries -Hit 'em in the Bottom Line - track 11)
5:51:00        4:00    Bringing it Home (Rocky bg)

Another bloody year almost gone. Last year at this time, the bombing of Gaza was well underway. Israel's Operation Cast Lead saw 22 days of determined destruction of Gaza's civil infrastructure, and the murder of more than 1500 people. Thousands more were wounded, tens of thousands rendered homeless. What has happened in the interim? Israel was barely censured, the so-named "international community" allowing the blockade of prison camp Gaza continue. Even now, millions of aid dollars to Israel and Egypt are devoted to digging the walls of that prison deeper into the earth so the tunnel economy sustaining the imprisoned can also be squashed, the better to starve the survivors. As it did last year, Viva Palestina caravans stand poised to break again the embargo, bringing in to Gaza aid that serves more as a symbol than ameliorative to the great need there. Since the blitz, the homeless and jobless must make do. The houses and business destroyed largely lay still in ruins because the Israeli government has forbidden building supplies be allowed in; could be used as weapons they say. The sick must suffer on too, medicines are proscribed and in short supply. The new president, who stood silent on the sidelines while Cast Lead spread death and despair across Gaza, his silence signaling the world he is all for Israel and minds little its bombing campaigns, says little still as Israeli jets drop pamphlets threatening more bombs over Gaza. He is not moved by the seizure of houses in Jerusalem, or lands in the West Bank. He is, like his predecessor, for Israel first and last, and God damn Palestine.   

5:55:00        3:21    Music David Rovics (They're Building a Wall)
5:58:30        1:00    Thanks to Janine, Guests, Station, and All the Good Listeners, Hal Sisson RIP; upcoming.
5:59:30        --:--                            -0-  

 

 

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, James J. Brittain, 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, 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, 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.