Welcome to Gorilla Radio, recorded August 25th and 27th, 2024.
Claiming it had information on impending attacks, Israel Saturday launched what it called "preemptive strikes" against targets in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah returned with rocket barrages and drone strikes aimed at enemy radar installations and army barracks in the Golan Heights and against the AMAN military intelligence Headquarters, located outside Tel Aviv. It was, the Islamic Resistance says, the first of a two phase response to the assassination of senior Hezbollah figure, Sayyed Fouad Shukr in Beirut last month.
Meanwhile, non-Western mediated information about what's going on in the region is becoming more difficult to come by for those in the West as local journalists are murdered in Gaza, independent reporters arrested and harassed by thuggish police services in Britain, and news platforms blocked and their principles arrested in France.
Laith Marouf is founder and Executive Director of FreePalestine.Video. He's a long-time multimedia consultant, producer, and frontline reporter who's been chronicling the escalation to war from his base in Beirut. Free Palestine Video says its purpose is to provide coverage of the region, “…in the absence of media supporting the resistance forces in the English language due to the ban in the West.”
Laith Marouf in the first half.
And; much is being made in the Western press of Ukrianian military success in its latest offensive in the Kursk Oblast. Though Russian media admits towns near the border have been overrun and prisoners taken, President Vladimir Putin is strangely sanguine about the lost territory, waving the incursion off. Newsweek quoted Putin as telling the governors of Kursk, Belgorod, the Bryansk regions, and Kremlin officials in a teleconference last week losses of territory to Ukrainian forces were, "...problems that are the responsibility of the security agencies."
Putin's apparent disengagement follows his back-pedaling last month on previous Russian demands of Ukraine that began the "Special Military Operation" in 2022. Specifically, Putin passed on to unofficial emissary to America, Hungarian president Victor Orban a message to former - and presumptive next - American president, Donald Trump stating he would abandon demilitarization and denazification conditions for peace in return for “the complete withdrawal of all Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and from the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.”
John Helmer’s a journalist and author who’s spent decades living in and reporting from Russia. He’s the principle behind the web news site, Dances with Bears, and has too been a professor of political science, sociology, and journalism, and served as advisor to governments at the highest levels.
Among his many book titles are: ‘The Man Who Knows Too Much About Russia,’ ‘The Lie That Shot Down MH-17’, and the lately released autobiography, ‘Dunce Upon a Time: A Life of Mistakes. His recent article at Dances with Bears is, 'KURSK, BELGOROD, BRYANSK — IS PRESIDENT PUTIN PREPARING FOR ISTANBUL-II?'
John Helmer and trying to make sense of President Putin's byzantine Ukraine policy in the second half.
But first, Laith Marouf and watching the war for West Asia expand from Lebanon.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing since 1998; in Victoria at 101.9FM, and on the internet at: GRadio.Substack.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com/
Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook, Laith Marouf, John Helmer August 25/27th, 2024