AW@L Radio - Smash the State Report: Feb 1, 2013
From the February 1st 2013 edition of AW@L Radio - Today's show kicks off with the day of action in the northeast of turtle island to protest the Line 9 pipeline on ontario and quebec that enbridge seeks to reverse the flow of, so the company can ship tar sands crude to the eastern coast. Over 1000 people marched in Portland, maine, to show their opposition to the plan which would likely result in the reversal of the flow right to their community. Actions also took place in Waterloo, Montreal, and several in Toronto as well as in other cities across the eastern provinces and north eastern states.
Next up is the reminder of the feb 2nd march in St. Catherines, ontario on february 2nd, where people will 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.
Going on with nations and borders, it seems that the people running canada's ministry for immigration in is again targeting the Roma population in hungary with "not welcome" signs, recently installing billboards in the country's 4th largest city trying to dissuade folks who need to use extra-regular means to cross borders due to racial, religious, sexual, or gendered persecution. The ministry recently put hungry on a 'safe countries' list which makes it nearly impossible to launch a successful refugee claim.
And while the government was attacking the Roma population, labour groups in BC have recently called for the end to the temp foreign workers program because foreign workers are "takin' our jabs". In response to the divide and conquer rhetoric of union leadership, No One is Illegal Vancouver wrote up a fine piece, it is read. We then jump into the opening paragraph from No One Is Illegal Toronto's year in review. Its long, as NOII did lots in 2012, so check out the whole thing here.
We then play a piece from Dawn Paley of the mediacoop, which looks at a new album put out by the Howl Arts Collective in Montreal called Duets for Abdelrazik. The album is a fundraising and awareness raising effort around the case of Abousfian Abdelrazik, a man canada helped torture. The interview is with musician and activist Stefan Christoff and includes serveral clips from songs on the album. For more info or to buy the album visit Howl's webpage.
Our next piece is new that elected Six Nations Band Council Chief Bill Montour has sent back his queen's diamond jubilee medal after her learned that anti-native agitator gary mchale was given on of the awards as well. Shamefully, gary was nominated by the canadian taxpayers federation.
Moving to the davos conference in switzerland, we play a clip from the president of Iceland, whose country is doing great after letting the banks and shoddy financial operations fail in the country. El Héfé says this could be done everywhere and we would all be fine (except useless bankers). Staying in the arctic, there is news that denmark will vote on whether or not to allow uranium mining in southern greenland. While there is homerule on greenland, uranium is considered a security issue and denmark still hold decision making powers over such things. If denmark decides to allow the mining, it is likely that the greenland assembly will also vote in favour making it the 5th largest producer of uranium in the world. Thankfully, Idle No More greenland has emerged and we play some audio from a recent protest.
Dan then reads the intro and suggests folks check out a piece looking into the motivations early american women's liberation thinkers - Haundenosaunee women, who were already free. We then jump forward a few centuries and we have anonymous canada launching #opThunderbird which is releasing information from the thunderbay police around the case of a recent missing an murdered indigenous women and others who anon (and many others) accuse of not caring about our indigenous sisters.
From egypt, there have been threats from 'those who would use religion as a weapon of violence' in the government to the newly surfacing anarchist organisations saying "the black bloc must die". In response: "Life - Freedom - Social Justice" - and another wave of firebombings against the offices of violent counter-revolutionary organisations.
We then note that political prisoner Alex Hundert has been thrown back in the hole in the penetang jail in ontarioas "a threat the to safety of the institution" after a guard told him that his blog was really good and a reason to be targeted. While the phones in isolation are atrociously bad quality, we do know that Alex is doing fine, and he notes how the security manager of the institution is treating this situation like the harper goverment - where bad public relations are a threat to security and must be hidden away.
Sticking with G20 detainees, we note the great new prison blog from artist Kelly Pflug-Back, presented on iconoclast. Again the whole piece is not read, but it is encouraged for folks to check it out.
We close out the show with news of the unfortunate firebombing of the Freedom Press info shop in the UK, who are looking for donations to rebuild, but are quite unlikely now to make it to the 1st ever Kitchener-Waterloo Anarchist Bookfair going down on saturday february 16th. The Mahones get the last word with The Revolution Starts Now!
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