This Week on GR

by C. L. Cook

There was a time in this country, Canada, before the War on Humanism took ascension in the late 1970's, when the prison system was considered not only a place to make safe the citizen's against the dangerous, but also a redemptive service, where rehabilitation was believed both a possible and practical. With the end of the quaint belief we can organize ourselves along humane lines, funding for programs that treat the poor and afflicted dried up.

 

Today, prisons provide where hospitals once did, and the care they administer falls far short of the Just Society we had so recently striven for. The situation is serious enough, that the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, or BCCLA, has mounted a campaign to bring change to the way prisons here treat inmates, especially those fallen through the mental health cracks. Carmen Cheung is a lawyer with the BCCLA, where she works on litigation and legal reform. Before coming here, she worked on criminal and regulatory defense in private practice in New York City. Carmen Cheung in the first half.

And; last Friday two journalists were gunned after a radio broadcast in Olancho, in eastern Honduras. Jose Bayardo and Manuel de Jesus Juarez became the sixth and seventh media workers killed in Honduras, the country Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just last month lauded for its great strides towards democracy following the 2009 Coup d'Etat that ousted the democratically elected reform president, Manuel Zelaya.

 

But it is not only media workers living in fear in the new democracy of Honduras. Dana Frank is a history professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author, among other books, of Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America, which focuses on Honduras. She is writing a book on the AFL-CIO's cold war intervention in the Honduran labor movement.

Of the country after Zelaya, Dana Frank writes;

"Two powerful forces have swept through Honduras since the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya: one magnificent, the other truly horrible. The first is the resistance movement that rose up to contest the coup, surprising everyone in its breadth, nonviolence and resilience. The second is the new regime's brutal repression in response. "It's been terribly painful, and a great awakening," reflects Ayax Irías, a sociologist at the National Autonomous University of Honduras.

Dana Frank and Hondurans' "Great Awakening" in the second half.

And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us a the bottom of the hour to keep us current with the city's vibrant and burgeoning street scene; but first, Carmen Cheung and the failing state of the province's prison system.

 

 

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.