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AW@L Radio - Smash the State Report: Feb. 08, 2013
Snowshoeing for safety, learning your history to avoid being racist, and stopping nuclear processing in toronto kick off the episode which continues on...
From the February 1st 2013 edition of AW@L Radio - Ranting about chilling out and slowing down, Dan recalls drivers in waterloo almost running down a deaf mute following a 1/2 metre snow dump which saw drivers stuck in tim hortons drive thrus across the city.. This after kitchener named the happiest city in the province, and waterloo the most romantic. When we need to dedicate a day to do "acts of kindness", you know any polls saying we are the best at something are pretty silly.
Jumping into other news, Dan reads an article from artist Rik Leaf called Racism is a High Price to Pay for Ignorance, which points out inaccuracies in the dominant narrative around canada's history and current responsibilities to the Indigenous of this land. Using arguments from actual stats, the author quickly shows some true costs of Canada's existence, concluding "Education is one of the strongest weapons against ignorance."
Next up we read a report about the shut down efforts of the GE-Hiatchi uranium processing plant in toronto including a rail line blockade near the plant and a petition to shut down the plant which has been operating since 1965 producing radioactive pellets from powder witouth any transparency.
A report back from the Giant Two-Row March that happened in St. Catherines where 150 people braved the snowy weather to honour the Two Row wampum, an agreement made between the Haudenosaunee and european settlers as they arrived on turtle island. 2013 marks the 400 year anniversary of the agreement based on the idea of a peaceful co-existence on this land built on respect and friendship where european settlers were allowed to establish a society here so long as they did not try to steer the Haudenosaunee canoe down the river of life, instead sticking to their boat in a parallel course. From plundered trust funds and stolen land, to residential schools and missing and murdered Indigenous women , the settlers pledge is ongoingly broken. There will be events around the grand river watershed and around ontario and new york state throughout the year to commemorate the agreement, and to start to rebuild the relationships needed to get our boats back on course.
Updating on #opThunderbird, anonymous canada has released a map to track missing and murdered indigenous women in canada, paying particular attention to the thunder bay area. Anon showed that tbay police are doing little to solve cases of indigenous victims, a claim the police deny. Christi Belcourt, a friend of a women recently abducted from tbay area says this map is simlar to harass map, a project from egypt used to track assaults of women. Mediacoop's Tim Groves views this crowd sourcing effort as a great way to fill in the gaps in the "official information", a way for people to take action when the government wont.
We move to the war for animal liberation with good news from the sea shepherds, who have started a blockade of the japanese refuelling ship in the antarctic ocean. The poachers will not be able to refuel their fleet of murder ships as the sea shepherds swarm them!
Next up is a piece from Juice Rap News: The War On Terra - canada vs austrailia which goes into the colonial states' war on thea earth and the people and other beasts who live on it.
We talk Food and fracking in the next segment which starts with a report looking at the fact that GMO companies do not allow independent testing of their seeds for safety, as part of their seed use contracts. this means that there are no studies showing there are no ling term or unintended impacts of genetically modified organisms, including pesticide resistant crops and terminator seeds. Following this is reprots from the anti-fracking world that big agribusiness in the states may become a powerful foe as their insatiable need for synthetic nitrogen has pusehd them towards big-oil. Massive fertiliser plants are being built near natural gas projects as the cheap gas is a key ingredient in producing synthtic N fertiliser. Finally staying with big-oil, NASA has released images of natural gas flares in north dakota's shale oil projects showing up from space. Turns out 35% of the natural gas in the ground in ND will be flared off as waste gas form the oil shale process.
A new game has become popular in europe after reports about Camover first appeared, coming out of Berlin. The game has masked players re-purposing CCTV cameras that they come across in the city, film the acts and uploading it to a website for points. While the game site keeps getting shut down, the winner will still get the "revolution instigator" prize :)
An audio break as we play the trailer for Israeli Apartheid Week 2013.
We come back with a Now Fear This! - turns out a cyber 9/11 is on the horizon in the states so the internet needs to be secured... then a report on the new project called Naming the Dead which is giving a voice to the civilians killed in drones strikes. In the past few years over 2000 people have been killed by american drone attacks as the war on terror continues - however based on those who have been named, the majroity are civilians, including many children. This crowd funded project will focus on pakistan for now where Obama has been unleashing terror from the skis unrelentingly.
Turns out canada was one of 54 states who helped the americans in their extraordinary rendition and torture flight program which flew alleged terror suspects to hidden and secret sites around the world to be tortured or given to torturers.
Next up is the blog.lawyer.com report of a Brooklyn women being arrested for filming cops who were harassing 3 youth. This women is now suing and will likely add to the 185$ million that new york tax payers have had to pay to people in the past year because of NYPD lawsuits.
We then read from the canadian labour council's report that large corporations and the people that run them are hoarding money even after they receive bailouts and subsidies from the canadian government. these companies including RIM also have increased the payouts to top executives even as the economy stagnates.
The show closes by noting the release by libcom.org of the Alexander Berkman Reader with a new forward by Howard Zinn, then we close the show with a message to teachers - Strange Arithmetic by the Coup :)
The Smash the State the Report is a segment on the weekly 2 hour AW@L radio (16:00-18:00est) on CKMS 100.3FM CKMS * Community * Co-op * Campus * Radio - Waterloo - http://soundfm.ca
About the poster
Dan Kellar (Dan Kellar)
Kitchener
Member since July 2009
About:
friendly neighbourhood anarchist, rad dad, land defence enthusiast, decolonial digger, radio pirate, indy journalist, systems geographer. noline9wr.ca chippewassolidarity.org
1101 words
bar baz
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