Workers BushTelegraph discusses current and past events, books and film with the aim of sharing worker political education and consciousness.
WBT poses 3 questions: who owns the land, workers control of production and democratic rights.
This week’s Paradigm Shift 24 Jan 2021 is all about independent filmmaking to document activism and protect the environment. We chat to Sally Ingleton (director of the new film “Wild Things – A Year on the frontline of environmental activism”), Jane Hammond (director of “Cry of the Forests” about Western Australian forests and the fight to protect them), and Ramji (videographer for “Forest Defenders”, about Tasmanian old growth forest blockading). It’s like the greenie Oscars!
Part II is an extended part of the interview with Sally Ingleton.
Welcome to the Paradigm Shift on FM 102.1 4ZZZ Fridays at noon. We challenge the assumptions of our current society, to resist oppression … January 15, 2021
This week we hear from the environmental frontlines around the country. We speak to Miranda Gibson about Olney State Forest in New South Wales, Erik Hayward about protecting Tasmania’s ancient forests, and Leon Pateman about locking on to Adani’s bulldozers in central Queensland – all people putting themselves in the way of the machines destroying our planet.
Miranda Gibson is from Forrest defenders (New South Wales) talks about how, late 2020, loggers and machines went into the Olney state forest to begin cutting down native forest. In response Forest Defenders set up camp and began blockading the logging. She is trying to build a community support especially given the large impact that the bushfires had in 2020 where many animals and trees have been rescued. A blockade camp is a last resort it is a frontline action designed to slow down the companies attempting to log our native forests.
Eric Heywood from the Bob Brown foundation has been attempting to prevent the logging of native rainforest in the Tarkine in the North West and also in the Southwest.
Leon Pateman spent 10 hours locked-on to a large machine preventing a contractor (BMD) hello from building the road for the Adani mine in central Queensland. He went to court received a phone of $1000 with no conviction. Queensland Premier, AnastasiaPalaschuk, claims the mundane pipe he used is a dangerous attachment device. The Labour party has passed laws that can result in imprisonment.
Ian and Andy discuss weather the blockade of the Adani mine will be successful.
Playlist Paul Spencer – Make some music iNsuRge – Lock on Conation – Slow motion catastrophes Zelda Da – Never gonna build that mine
Major stories from Paradigm Shift in 2020 – Refugees, Aboriginal farming practices, Assange, & cuts at Qld College of Art.
Intro by Ian, Andy on Refugees and Aboriginal land use, Ian on the extradition of Julian Assange, Bec Mac on cuts to Qld College of Art.
Playlist Dorothy & friends – Down Under (satire) Mo’Ju – Native Tongue Sarah Calderwood and Paul Brandon – Exploring the Blue Jumping Fences – Satellites
This year past, 2020, saw a shift in priorities for people around the world. At the beginning of the year, climate change was in people’s minds; but, at the end, it has been all Covid pandemic. Both emergencies appear in tractable. It makes me wonder whether humans are capable of advancing much further in thinking and doing to solve our problems. A sustainable future with social justice at it’s core is a long way off. However people are questioning whether capitalism is capable of delivering the world that we need.
Like a turning river, direction is hard to find. Here in Australia we enter 2021 with a major trade war with the most productive country on earth, China. Morrison will have to back down on that one as Australia is but a flea on the elephant’s back.
There will be a conference of arms dealers in Brisbane in 2021 sanctioned by state and federal governments. Now that’s a pathway to peace.
2020 was a turning point in the Middle East with the apartheid state of Israel launching attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem itself supported by a deranged American president.
Cuba marks 60 years of resistance against capitalism with its Institute of Friendship celebrating its 60th birthday. During Covid, Cuban doctors have shown true solidarity with the people of the world.
4ZZZ (fm 102.1) celebrated it’s 45th birthday as one of Queensland’s nay Australia’s most independent radio stations, born from the anti-war movement in the 1970s and supporting progressive movements in the 2020s.
Refugees We saw a unique form of resistance to the Australian government’s inhuman treatment of refugees at a local Hotel come prison at Kangaroo Point in Brisbane. Paradigm shift was there on the ground when it all started with one of the longest picket lines in recent history. Here is Andy’s interview with Farhad whom the Australian government had locked up for 8 years for lawfully seeking asylum in Australia. Farhad was confined to his room in Kangaroo Point under the medevac laws which require that the government provide a duty of care to asylum seekers in Australia; he was then forcibly removed, firstly to Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation and then to Villawood in Sydney.
Aboriginal Land Use Next up was Bruce Pascoe talking with Andy about his theory that Aboriginal people were not hunters and gatherers but a society of sustainable horticulturalists growing grains, yams and tubers … his theory is corroborated by the early colonialists James Kirby, George Augustus Robinson, explorers: Mitchell and Sturt and my own ancestor Edward M. Curr. Curr wrote in his nostalgic memoir of squatting in Victoria that ‘his cartwheels turned up tubers‘. He recognised that it was his sheep that destroyed native aboriginal crops cultivated by tribes living along the Murray River. Some of these words awaken The Whispering in our hearts for first Nations people.
Assange and collateral murder This year saw the United States and the British governments combining to silence the independent press. It’s genesis was a video released by WikiLeaks about murders by American helicopter gunships of a writers journalists some Iraqi civilian and small children.
This is the infamous collateral murder tape released by Chelsea Manning who has served over 6 years in prison for her trouble. The video was published in 2010 by Julian Assange, an Australian citizen, and the authorities are still hunting him down in 2020! He told the truth about the dirty war prosecuted by the US, Britain, Australia and other suspects in Iraq.
One of the American soldiers on the ground, Ethan McCord, describes what happened during the attack by the helicopter gunship. Assange is due to be extradited to the US by the British courts soon. The judgement will be handed down on Monday the 4th of January and there has been a call for people to go to the Anzac memorial in Brisbane to protest the likely extradition order by the British judge. Assange has been deserted by the Australian government.
Griffith University to defund Queensland College of art. Both state and federal governments continue to attack public tertiary education. Here is a story that nearly slipped under the radar. A grassroots group at Griffith University have drawn to attention impact that the cuts will have on arts and culture both here in Brisbane and elsewhere in Australia the federal government has already up the fees to be paid by humanity students to double that what it was previously. Here is an interview by 4ZZZ’s Bec Mac who is talking with one of the lecturers at the QCA, Matthew Newkirk.
These are only some of the stories that made up 2020.
Paradigm shift will continue bringing independent coverage of important events in the coming year.
Why do Australia and New Zealand governments want the power to irradiate all fruit and vegetables? More trade, pure and simple. But what about human and animal health? Previously there was only one food irradiation plant at Narangba on the outskirts of Brisbane, now there are two. The second being at Vic Markets in Melbourne CBD where a 2018 $5 million X-ray facility to treat export-bound fruit and vegies destined for some of Australia’s largest horticultural export markets. They say they are phasing out Cobalt 60 irradiation like the one at Narangba, but do we believe anything the nuclear industry tells us?
Food Standards Australia New Zealand wants to make a blanket approval for the irradiation of all fresh fruits and vegetables. We’ve been fighting this since 1999, when the long-fought-for moratorium of the 80s was lifted. Argh!
Ian talks with Robin Taubenfeld (Friends of the Earth) and Bob Phelps (Gene Ethics). There is a statement from Rosemarie Severin (Just Peace and Friends of the Earth) and a speech from the vault by Sandra Bloodworth (Campaign Against Nuclear Power).
Here is the podcast of the show on “Food Irradiation” that puts the anti-uranium speech in context. I played Sandra Bloodworth’s speech from 4th march 1978 rally in King George Square after the interview with Bob Phelps because both Sandra and Bob were activists in Campaign Against Nuclear Power (CANP). At the time CANP was a broad based group campaigning against the nuclear industry, specifically, against Uranium Mining and Export supported by state and federal governments. Sandra makes the link between the nuclear industry and Democratic Rights during what turned out to be the longest campaign of mass defiance (Sept 77 – July 79) against a government in Australian history (with the exception of the Aboriginal Resistance, land never ceded). Over 2,000 people were arrested during that struggle. Interestingly the bottom fell out of the uranium market and Queensland never mined or exported uranium. Nevertheless the government still supports the nuclear industry retaining hazardous waste and condoning the transport of Cobalt 60 rods to the Narangba Food Irradiation plant.
Sadly we lost both struggles – Democratic Rights and opposition to Uranium Mining and Export.
Here’s what to do. Email the two people in parliament responsible. Yvette D’Ath and Mark Furner. Here is a pro-former letter.
I see you are the Queen and Prince of the Food Forum.
You may remember the 2008 controversy around Steritech in the Narangba Industrial Estate.
Please reconsider the proposed blanket irradiation of all fruit and veg. It goes against much of the science and will be detrimental to people’s health. For more info see https://www.foe.org.au/queensland_irradiation
Listen in to the experts on the Paradigm Shift (4ZZZ fm 102.1 Fridays at Noon)>
Trust all is going well with you.
Signed
Public opposition to Steritech Food Irradiation Plant Narangba
Playlist Formidale Vegetable Sound System – You are what you eat
Welcome to the Paradigm Shift on FM 102.1 4ZZZ Fridays at noon. We challenge the assumptions of our current society, to resist oppression … December 11, 2020.
With Julian Assange still facing extradition, this week we talk about secrecy and the Iraq war. Ian interviews Kasun Ubayasiri about significance of the campaign to free Assange.
We hear from Ethan McCord who was a soldier on the ground when the shooting depicted in the “Collateral Murder” video occurred. Ian also spoke to a psychologist about the ethics of secrecy and privacy when war crimes have been committed.
Here are my notes of the war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Iraq:
Two weeks ago (Sept 2010), I visited survivors of an Iraqi family who were shot on the streets of Baghdad by two drunken Australian soldiers.
Mother and son have horrible injuries to their faces. The father is traumatised, his life a painful agony.
He complains of his mind being ‘busy all the time, day and night‘.
And Western commentators talk of 9/11.
Only now, after 7 years of murder and terror, do we see on Australian TV acts of terror committed by American and British soldiers. But the ABC’s 4 Corners program ‘Secret Iraq – Insurgency’ broadcast last night (on 11/10/2010) still leaves out acts of terror like this committed by Australian soldiers sent there by the Australian government. Both Coalition and Labor are aware of these war crimes. They even glorify the job done by ‘our diggers’.
Why?
One of the soldiers who shot this family without reason is based at Enoggera Army barracks in Brisbane, Australia. As you know, the truth is individual soldiers from our country, our town were involved in murderous deeds in Iraq.
Let the record be truthful.
The family told me that they had been interviewed by Channel 7 about their being shot while parked in their family car in Baghdad. The oldest girl in the family, still at school and who did most of the translating from Arabic to English told me that ‘the family realises now that it (speaking to the media) doesn’t work’. Why can’t people learn from this girl, from her experience?
The girl said that she wore a scarf to school here in Brisbane until her friend who also wore a scarf was abused by fellow students.
Her father counselled her that it might be best to stop wearing the scarf. She said that after two years at school she knows her father’s advice was right.
‘Australians are racist‘ said her younger brother with one eye that cannot look straight because of a bullet wound inflicted by the drunken soldier who is now based at Enoggera army barracks.
Why weren’t these war crimes committed by Australian troops investigated by Mr Justice Brereton? Why did the government set the terms of reference of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry so that it included war crime in Iraq?
Ian Curr October 2020
Bring Julian Home Webinar at Trades Hall South Brisbane Thurs 10 Dec 2020. The screen at right shows the Collateral Murder video released by Chelsea Manning in 2010. Chelsea served 6 years in jail, the first was in solitary. Manning was then incarcerated again by a US grand jury in 2019 because she refused to testify against Julian Assange for his release of the video showing American war crimes in Iraq.
Welcome to the Paradigm Shift on FM 102.1 4ZZZ Fridays at noon. We challenge the assumptions of our current society, to resist oppression …
DECEMBER 4, 2020
Following the release of the Brereton report into war crimes committed by the Australian SAS, we speak with Alison Broinowski about the need to reform Australia’s war powers, and to Greg Rolles about the past and present of protesting the SAS.
Playlist BILLY BRAGG – The price of oil COMMON ENEMY – Scorched earth ANOMIE – Predator drones over Yemen
Image: Vice Admiral Griggs (Australian Navy) giving evidence to parliamentary committee on peace activists incursion into SAS base on Swan Island in Victoria in 2014.
Welcome to the Paradigm Shift on FM 102.1 4ZZZ Fridays at noon. We challenge the assumptions of our current society, to resist oppression … November 27, 2020
Following on from allegations of war crimes by Australian troops in Afghanistan Ian Interviews:
Senator Jordan Steele-Young, Greens Spokesperson for Peace, Disarmament and Veterans’ Affairs; and,
Broadcast on PShift (4ZZZ fm102.1) on 27 Nov 2020. Image: Protestors in Roma Street Forum (Emma Miller place) during Anti-Iraq war rally Roma Street Brisbane February 16, 2003. Photo held by John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. Over 100,000 people attended (not all shown here).
Playlist Peter Hunt – Carry Me Rita Martinson – Soldier, we love you
Remember how a few years ago, with support from both Labor and the LNP, Brisbane City Council forced dozens of people out of their homes and acquired their land to facilitate the unnecessary and ill-advised widening of Lytton Rd in East Brisbane?
Brisbane City Hall 1960s
Well today, BCC is voting on a motion to sell the remnant land back to private developers. The areas of vacant land circled in red will be sold off to the private sector, and are zoned for height limits up to 3 storeys.
I think it would be much better to retain public ownership of this land, preserving some of it as green space for a wildlife corridor, and using some of it for public housing for people on lower incomes.
Governments are always telling us that they’d like to provide more inner-city public housing but there’s no land available. Well here’s a location that’s close to public transport and a bikeway, where council already owns the land.
Considering how many low-income residents were forced out of this neighbourhood to make room for the road-widening, it would be great if some of this land could be repurposed as non-profit housing for more low-income residents…
“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change” – Giuseppe Di Lampedusa, The Leopard
We talk about the Brereton report (released yesterday) into war crimes committed by Australian SAS troops in Afghanistan. We interview academic John Blaxland about the report and Mark Davis, lawyer for prosecuted SAS whistleblower David McBride. Much of the report was redacted.
A number of court cases turn on the contents of the report. Given that the war crimes committed by Australian troops against civilians in another country, why hasn’t the matter been referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague? The ICC is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for war crimes. But the Australian government will not permit that, it wishes to contain their failure of embarking on a war of revenge for 9/11 at the request of the US government.
In 1968 there was a massacre at Mỹ Lai village in Vietnam where the Nixon government pardoned a guilty officer, Lieutenant William Calley. Colin Powell, then an major, helped the US army cover up the massacre. Powell later became US secretary of state and lied to the UN claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He did so to justify the 2003 Iraq war. Millions died as a result of his government’s lies.
Will an Australian government or courts end up doing the same. Will they let off the highly decorated Ben Roberts-Smith or the others accused of the murders of thirty-nine (39) Afghan civilians. These war crimes were identified by the Brereton Inquiry perpetrated by twenty-five (25) Australian soldiers mainly from the Special Air Services regiment (SASR). The Brereton Inquiry was instigated in response to the video evidence of murders after the ADF and successive governments tried to cover up the massacre of prisoners, farmers, civilians and unarmed people by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.
The cover-up was done (in part) by the Attorney General taking criminal proceedings against McBride in 2017 that could lead to his life imprisonment. McBride is due to go to trial in May 2021. Australian governments stood behind a wall of secrecy erected by the SAS inside the defence forces.
Belatedly the Scott Morrison government has claimed clean hands yet they continue to prosecute David McBride, Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery. The Morrison government refuses to stand up to US attempts to extradite Julian Assange to face life imprisonment for releasing evidence of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet allegations of a cover-up keep coming up. Nick Xenophon (McBride’s lawyer) on the ABC’s Q & A stated:
“It (McBride’s complaints about war crimes) went up the chain of command, including to the Major General [David] Hurley now — the Governor-General. He then went to the Australian Federal Police and made a formal complaint, that was ignored.” – on ABC’s Q & A Jun 22, 2020
The various court cases affected by the release of the much redacted Brereton Inquiry are summarised below:
(1) Potential criminal charges in the Federal Court against the SASR soldiers that carried out the murders of unarmed civilians in Afghanistan as shown on national TV programs such as the ABC’s Four Corners;
(2) A defamation case taken out by a soldier accused of war crimes. “Mr Roberts-Smith, a former Special Air Service soldier and Victoria Cross recipient, is suing The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald over reports he allegedly committed murder on deployments to Afghanistan and that he punched a woman in the face in Canberra.” – Sydney Morning Herald.
Mr Ben Roberts-Smith is suing various media outlets and certain journalists for defamation for claiming that he is a war criminal. Channel 7 owner Kerry Stokes is funding Roberts-Smith’s legal expenses using the Victoria Cross as collateral.
The rival media outlets being sued by the former SAS soldier have lodged a truth defence.
(3) The criminal trial of the SAS soldier and whistle-blower, David McBride. He exposed the murders that resulted in ABC revelations known as The Afghan Files.
Mr McBride is charged with theft and three counts of breaching the Defence Act, for being a person who is a member of the defence force and communicating a plan, document or information.
He is also charged under the Crimes Act, which make it an offence for a Commonwealth official to disclose information without authorisation.
Would it be a land of peace Near the orange light of dusk, Where no war was ever waged for corporate gain? Would we find the purest cause To point our lives towards, If I were to stay. – Franz Dowling
Next week we hope to follow-up with an interview with defence spokesperson for the Greens, Senator Jordon Steele-John, from WA.
Listen to the whole show at
They lost their lives at Mirabad last night
Jamie died, despite first aid,
unable to be saved
Gunshot wounds killed Sapper Larcombe
Air Vice Marshall Houston sighed
'Only 21 years old and his interpreter
Buried according to local custom'.
- Ian Curr, Last Train to Mirabad
Sapper Larcombe and his Partner
Playlist Killing Joke – Seeing red Bad Day Down – Haditha: Democracy assassinated the family here Buffy Saint-Marie – The universal soldier Combat Wombat – Star wars Franz Dowling – Drone lament (demons of hell)
Plus archive of Paradigm Shift (4ZZZ fm 102.1 Fridays at noon)
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