Paradigm Shift 4zzz fm 102.1 friday 7 April 2017.

As the U.S. bombs Syria the Paradigm Shift looks at the activists and campaigns against war from the 1960s till now. Features interviews with Larry Zetlin (Gulliver films) and Sam Castro (Whistleblowers, Activists and Citizens Alliance).

Ian interviews Larry Zetlin the producer of the documentary ‘Hell no, we won’t go!’ which is about the anti Vietnam War movement of the 60s & 70s. It features a clip from the film.

Is there a comparison with anti war and refugee activism of today?

Andy interviews Sam Castro from the whistleblowers activists and Citizens Alliance (WACA).
the interview is in four parts:

1. Introduction to whistle-blowers activists and Citizens Alliance
2. Direct action and structure of WACA
3. The ecological organising model for the whistle-blowers activists and Citizens Alliance and including a critique of NGO’s and liberalism. Sam uses the metaphor of a rhizome – the roots of a plant. Makes direct comparison with the structure of capitalist enterprises like Uber and Airbnb.
4. How WACA organises collectively and how it establishes relations with-in the group and between activists.

Interviews and clips are at

Playlist
Hannaka – Makeshift Ritual
Rita Martinson – Soldier, We Love You
Phil Ochs – We I’m Gone

A podcast of the entire show is at

[Paradigm Shift 4zzz fm 102.1 Friday 31 Mar 2017]

Ian interviews people whose lives have been at the mercy of the Queensland Public Trustee. In this exposé Theresa Creed, John Tracey, Rosslyn Mirciov and Doug Young reveal the misfortunes of vulnerable members of their families suffering at the hands of public trustee and the public guardian.

Theresa Creed (Woorabinda Mission, Kalkadoon and Pitta-Pitta) and John Tracey tell the story of the Theresa’s son Marli who received a compensation payment when he was 18 years old with which the family bought two houses and a block of land on the Sunshine Coast. By 23 years of age Marli was homeless and eventually jailed. The Public Trustee had kicked him out of home, rented then sold Marli’s property, charged exorbitant fees and lost much of the cash during the GFC in 2008-9.

Doug Young describes how his partner lost her assets due to incompetence and excessive fee charged to her for actions she did not wish to be a party to. Doug gives his proscription for reform of the Public Trustee, Public Guardian and Qld Civil and Administration Tribunal.

Rosslyn Mirciov tells how her mother Bernice was taken from her aged care home in Beaudesert, her family home was sold and how Bernice was given bad treatment in a facility in Hervey Bay resulting in her premature death.

Rosslyn, Doug and John are members of the Committee to Expose the Public Trustee which is a group of family, carers and friends of people who are clients (some prefer the word victims) of the Public Trustee. They are all struggling in their personal circumstances against the Public Trustee who, as substituted decision maker, has consistently and systematically ignored the needs and will of their loved ones.

Committee to expose the public trustee
Contact the committee by ringing Rosslyn on 0481 093 823 or
email committeetoexposethepublictrustee@outlook.com
Website: https://exposethepublictrustee.wordpress.com/

Notes by Ian Curr.

Playlist
Theresa Creed – Old People
Theresa Creed – Back Whats Mine
Matt Hsu – Every Step Is A Horizon
Theresa Creed – Choice
Theresa Creed – Mother Dear

Theresa Creed’s songs are from an album ‘Unfinished Business‘

Paradigm Shift 4zzz fm 102.1 Fridays at noon 17 March 2017.

Andy and Ian discuss the politics of recycling clothes.
Andy interviews Laurence Lewis, an engineer who is studying the recycling of textiles. Laurence is analyzing the effects of clothes donations given after Natural Disasters.

Points made by Laurence:
Textiles discarded as unwanted clothing ends up as landfill.

People donate textiles during natural disasters.

50% of goods donated are useless. Medicines have expired used by dates, toys are not suitable and food is often unusable. If there’s a flood supply lines of useless goods clog up roads and warehouses that have things people need.

If they fly goods into poverty stricken countries like Haiti they have to go through the Dominican Republic. Things that are needed are prevented from arriving. Peoples lives are lost. Goods need to be stored. For example, the Dominican airport becomes full of useless junk.

During Japanese tsunami there are harmful factors of sending clothes. The push factors are people are not informed. During a tsunami in Japan people sent 100,000 blankets and these became industrial waste because there were far too many.

We should be reducing, reusing clothing and regulating the consumer market.

In a recent New York hurricane people donated Halloween costumes thinking that children would not have them for Halloween which followed the hurricane.

A lot of these donations are made through companies in order to get a tax deduction. For example there was huge collection of undrinkable soft drinks stored in a warehouse so that the company could get a tax deduction.

Salvos have been going 130 years and they are been using used by people, disassociated from the actual victims, to donate to charity.

During hurricane Katrina trucks dumped donations into flooding waters.

The flow of money from poor to rich countries through clothing alone amounts to $US700 million dollars per annum. The impact is neo-colonial in places like Malawi or Tanzania and this system becomes the norm – a natural circumstance which reinforces neo-colonialism.

Laurence advised that the best thing to do is to cut up your clothing before you give them to charities so that the recyclers use them to make carpets or paper.

Don’t donate clothing in a natural disaster situation. Charity is done in a vacuum and it’s far from the actual circumstance that caused the disaster.

Remember that when you give clothing … it’s only going to get used one more time and then it’s going to end up as landfill. For example people donated ‘dog shoes’ after the 9/11 bombings.

Methane from landfill and help generates electricity but that only happens when the material is organic.

Playlist
Alien Virus – Consume and die
The Kinks – Dedicated follower of fashion
Slyngshot – Dirty spoon
Ghost Mice – House on fire
Joe Geia – Yil lul
Formidable Vegetable Sound System – No such thing as waste

Andy, Kathleen and Ian discuss International Women’s Day.

Kathleen from ‘unite‘ urges that there be more goal-oriented feminism including fair  wages and conditions. Spoke about the Women’s strike in the US. Need to get early childhood educators paid a fair wage.

Interviews
Andy interviews Kerriann Dear from the Working Women’s Service (QWWS) which has provided a women’s only service dealing with fairwork and gender sensitivities in Brisbane for the past 22 years. QWWS deals with unfair dismissal, discrimination in pregnancy, sexual harassment at work. Their funding of $500K from the Federal government has been cut on the eve of international women’s day 2017. The state government has stepped in to provide remedial funding till the end of the financial year. QWWS is presently looking for alternative models to make ends meet such as going into partnership with another organisation.
The service had a one day strike outside the Queensland Law Society building at 144 Adelaide Street Brisbane where they are housed. They closed their phone line and directed calls to the Federal Minister for women, Michaela Cash, in protest at the loss of funding for this standalone women’s service. QWWS is conducting an ongoing campaign to obtain resources instead of a lip service.

Andy interviews Hannah McGlade, a Noongar human rights lawyer and academic from Western Australia. Hannah describes the lack of respect, self-determination and sovereignty as major issues for aboriginal women. Hannah speaks of high rates of incarceration and high rates of removal of children from aboriginal people’s care. Andy asks whether the Northern Territory intervention was successful in addressing sexual violence against aboriginal women. Hannah acknowledges the voices of aboriginal women suffering domestic violence in the NT but says federal governments actions were not successful because the policies introduced were not based on the the empowerment of aboriginal women.
There is a national non-government organisation called SNAICC  which has been set up to fight the policy of ‘permanency‘ which is the permanent removal of aboriginal children from their families and their culture. So many children are being removed that it is bordering on genocide. Her answer to this social policy is to embrace human rights in this country from the bottom up. Hannah McGlade has written a book and thesis about this called Our Greatest Challenge: Aboriginal Children and Human Rights.

Discussion about the limitations of liberal feminism. Discussion of working class issues like unequal conditions for women in the workplace. Casualisation and conditions for women. The personal is the political has been taken too far.

Listen to a podcast of the whole show on Soundcloud

Playlist

Andy & Ian on the Paradigm Shift 3 Mar 2017.

Andy and Ian on 3 Mar 2017 after a busy week replay Andy interviewing Jacob Rice a whistle-blower from Manus Island detention centre. Jacob was a teacher on the island and witnessed activities at detention centre later deemed illegal by the PNG High Court. The interview took place in September 2015.

Photo: Two men were attacked by locals armed with an iron bar amid rising tension over the refugees’ presence on the island – The Guardian

Listen at https://soundcloud.com/ian-curr/manus-again

Jacob Rice worked as a teacher in the Manus Island detention centre. Under the Border Force Act he is risking arrest by speaking about the conditions in the detention centre, but he spoke with the Paradigm Shift about the conditions for the detainees, about what it’s like for teachers trying to do their job there and about speaking the truth.

Playlist
Tu P – Border force facts
Last Quokka – Girt by fear
Fear Like Us – Who killed Reza Berati
Tinariwen – Assawt

Andy and Ian talk about tactics to prevent Climate Change and to stop the Adani Mine. There is some philosophical discussion on the show as well.

Tactics so far
Wangan & Jagalingou people have challenged in the courts and gone around the world to convince banks to divest from providing finance. Many of the world’s largest banks have already ruled out funding this dangerous coal mine. Yet despite committing to avoid dangerous warming, three of Australia’s big four banks are yet to do the same.

EDO – legal challenges (mentioned in a previous show on Adani.

Listen to the show and the interviews @ https://soundcloud.com/ian-curr/sets/climate-change

NGOs
Andy interviews Ellen Roberts from GetUp.

Ellen talks about GetUp’s renewed efforts to prevent public funding of providing infrastructure for the Adani mine (Rail, Port). Making 10,000 phone calls because of lack of public support for public funding targeting liberal party marginal seats. Andy asks her why given that the Adani mine has bi-partisan support.

Ellen says that Malcolm Turnbull has a ‘long track record’ for accepting that climate change exists (as opposed to members of the LNP who are climate change deniers.) GetUp’s strategy is the challenge climate change project by project. Ellen previously worked in grass roots campaigns (like Friends of the Earth runs)

Ellen said that GetUp is having meetings at 6pm on 27 Feb 2017 at GetUp’s office in New Farm about making phone calls and protest against Westpac on Monday. Planing future public meetings on Adani. See http://350.org.au/stopadani/

Discuss ALP’s Kevin Rudd’s hypocrisy in 2007 in saying that climate change is the biggest moral issue of our time (but his government did nothing about it in International forums or in introducing a tax on carbon). No Scott Morrison (Treasurer) walks into parliament with a lump of coal. Can we talk about Coal in isolation – the economics or the moral imperative when the earth is being destroyed. Are GetUp politically naive, realists or opportunists? Need more localised energy, challenge the growth of the economy. Have to ask real questions. Practicalities of getting coal to the port. Finance $1B is on the table from the Federal Government. Andy asks Ben if Adani is the most important thing to do. Ben says that stopping big coal is the most important thing and that Carmichael will be the biggest coal mine in the southern hemisphere. Be talks about other mines proposed by Clive Palmer and proposals to build another coal fired power station in Queensland. They discuss direct action.

Direct Action
Andy interviews Ben Pennings about the Gallilee blockade. Ben says that Galilee Blockade  will entail:

• Grassroots groups undertaking local direct action against these ecocidal companies and organisations. Anywhere in the world they operate. These groups will be offered strategic, legal, promotional and other support by activist networks.
• Planning for the possibility of direct action or a blockade in the Galilee Basin. We will only promote or be involved in direct actions in the Galilee Basin if requested by the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Council, who are protecting their country.
• Building the capacity of the environment movement to undertake direct actions and be involved in blockades.
• Building a base of human, logistical and financial resources to quickly support direct action and blockades as needed. See http://galileeblockade.net/eco-warriors/the-campaign/

Andy and Ian discuss the role of NGOs and political parties like the Greens. Ben Pennings was guarded in giving details of specific actions but its plans is to challenge by direct action any company that has anything to do with Adani. Ian raises Simon Birrell’s  criticism of NGOs and the Greens in their challenge to logging in  the Otway ranges in Victoria. See https://workersbushtelegraph.net/2013/11/23/film-tells-tale-of-otway-forestry-battle/

Ian asks if stopping Adani is more important when Australia being the biggest exporter of  liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world that is a fossil fuel that is already having a dramatic impact on greenhouse gases in the atmosphere?

Playlist

The Lurkers – Environmental evangelism makes no friends
Imany – The rising tide
GDP – Carbon footprint
Flangipanis – Global warming makes my beer warm
RVIVR – The tide

Listen to the whole show on Paradigm Shift’s Souncloud @ https://soundcloud.com/ian-curr/sets/climate-change

Paradigm Shift 4zzz fm 102.1 broadcast on 10 Feb 2017

Andy and Ian host a show about BCC road widening at East Brisbane.

Intro
Interviews with residents Joy, Bernadette and Elizabeth
Jonathan Sri (councillor for the Gabba Ward)

Playlist
Jumping Fences – View from a wooden chair
Main Street Brats – 375
Spinifex Gum – Ms Dhu (feat. Felix Riebl and Marliya)
Highlife – Aware
Rip Rig & Panic – Storm the reality asylum

Andy, Tymek and Ian discuss social media art and activism.

Andy interviews Marcus Breen from Boston College and Glen  Todd from Action Skills.

Playlist

Andy and Ian [Paradim Shift 4zzz fm 102.1 on 20 January 2017]

Andy and Ian discuss whistleblower Chelsea Manning and the ‘politics of truth’ from the Spanish Civil War to Iraq.

Listen at http://www.4zzzfm.org.au/program/paradigm-shift

Playlist