Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded April 2nd and 5th, 2023.
Just thirty years since the fall of the USSR and end of the Cold War, the atomic Mexican stand-off between East and West is hotter than its ever been. At this moment, nervous fingers hover above buttons and toggles that once triggered mean the end of everything we know. Worse, with the advent of AI, human agency is no longer required; its messy, indecisive moral acid removed from the Earth-ending equation.
Helen Caldicott in the first half
And; Reporters Without Borders was to pay a visit to Julian Assange, the journalist wasting in Belmarsh Prison, London this week but in yet another example of arbitrary cruelty at the last moment authorities refused the RSF visit, barring too for good measure Assange’s wife, Stella.
April 11th marks the four year anniversary of Julian’s incarceration, under the harshest measures the British penal system can mete out. He’s held not for any crime committed in Britain, or against Britain, but because an American warrant seeking his extradition is “in process”.
June 6, 2019, I recorded an interview with Nils Melzer, then the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Melzer visited Assange in May of that year and subsequently issued a public call for Assange’s immediate release, along with a searing rebuke of both his current jailors in Britain and those in America who would be if their extradition petition is executed.
Nils Melzer and the continued call for Julian Assange’s release in the second half.
Song: Behind These Prison Walls
Artist: David Rovics
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, broad/webcasting since 1999. Check out the Archive at Gorilla-Radio.com, GRadio.Substack.com, and the GR blog at: