Arms dealers inside the Brisbane Convention Centre clapped and cheered Queensland police as they arrested peace activists trying to stop more arms deals between Australia and Saudi Arabia, Elbit Systems and Israel, Rheinmetall and Indonesia. These people should be outlawed from Brisbane and their dirty deals banned. Watch the video below as the Queensland Government throws its police force behind the arms dealers.

It’s a bit like Bob Brown going with an anti-Adani convoy rolling through Central Queensland demanding voters shun coal. This was during the 2019 federal election, the convoy went straight into the heart of the beast. A play to the media, certainly? How are the mainstream media gonna help stop the merchants of death when mainstream papers, magazines and websites are full of arms dealers adverts?

Tactically, quite a question mark hangs over both Brown’s anti-Adani campaign decision and the Land Forces mob going into the convention centre. May have been better to concentrate on building a large crowd for a blockade from outside.

Nonetheless a game and spirited first try by Disrupt Land Forces at blockading these merchants of death.

Australian government supports arms deals

Documents released under Freedom of Information reveal Australia approved 103 military export permits to UAE and Saudi during the Yemen war – and denied just three permit applications. Michelle Fahy investigates Australia’s escalating export trade in weapons with the Saudi dictatorship, in defiance of its international commitments.

The Defence Department allowed local weapons-making companies to export to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two countries behind the disastrous Yemen war, even as the UN was pleading for the rest of the world to stop supplying weapons to these countries.

Drones
An Australian breakthrough in drone technology that makes it easier to locate hidden enemy on the battlefield could also be used to target civilian protesters. The US government has already used surveillance drones to monitor Black Lives Matters protests while Israel last week reportedly used small drones to drop tear gas on Palestinian protesters. Michelle Fahy investigates.

A lethal drone featuring breakthrough technology, developed by a Brisbane-based company, is causing a stir … https://www.michaelwest.com.au/breakthrough-aussie-war-drone-facial-recognition-may-target-civilian-protestors/

Ian Curr
4PR Voice of the People
4 June 2021

Paradigm Shift (4ZZZ fm 102.1) May 21, 2021

This week on the show we have more analysis on the weapons industry. With the Land Forces weapons convention coming up very soon in Brisbane, we talk to Elise West from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War about arms industry influence in schools, and with Marianne Hanson from the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons about the nuclear arms industry.

We also play an extract from Cynthia Cockburn’s “Breaking the gendered continuum of violence“, about how militarism extends violence against women.

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

Pictured below are Short Range Iranian missiles in Gaza that prevented a bloody incursion of Israeli land forces into Gaza. Knowing the difficulty of such an assault, Israel used the world media to fool people into thinking they were in Gaza, on the ground, attacking the resistance in Gaza on 20 May on 2021. Instead the Israeli army used missiles and artillery killing over 200 people many of them children. Meanwhile Israel used its total air supremacy dropping bombs on tunnels used to smuggle important goods and medical supplies through the blockade

Playlist

AKALA … Murder runs the globe

MOULDY LOVERS … Civilised crossfire

DECLAN KELLY FEAT. TINA HARROD … Put down that weapon

MYSTIKZ … Anti war dub

JUDY SMALL … Bridget

Bob: I heard from a couple of folks about your ZZZ cancelling. Would like to hear your version sometime.

Ian: I was not “cancelled”, I resigned from 4ZZZ on principle. I broadcast eight (8) speeches from international women’s day (IWD) rallies in Brisbane. Station management took exception to my IWD broadcast claiming concern about the issue of “transgender”.

Management reported that Paradigm Shift broadcast to the regulator, the Community Broadcasting Association of Australia (CBAA) saying the broadcast contains ‘hate speech’. I say the broadcast contains ‘honestly held belief’. But I think there is more to management’s objection than they are saying.

As you can imagine, this is not the first time 4ZZZ management (or board of management) has objected to my broadcasts. For example they did so in 1977 when Y and I interviewed Senator Neville Bonner to ask him why he went along with Fraser’s Uranium ‘decision’ when it was against his own people’s best interests. I did not make another appearance on 4ZZZ again till 2011, a ‘34 year suspension’.

4ZZZ went through some dark years politically because they wanted to be accepted for a high power licence in the late 70s and were prepared to ditch programs being made by the Left who were organising the longest period of mass defiance of a government in Australian history (1977-1979) [with the exception of the aboriginal resistance].

I turned up at the station with about six Latin Americans in 2012 and the Zed people inside wouldn’t let me in to do an interview with a Chilean student leader from Santiago. It took me about an hour to convince them to let us in.

A manager also objected when I broadcast a satirical interview I did with Pauline Hanson. On another occasion, a manager and board member objected when I challenged Dept of Children’s Services (DOCs) for stealing aboriginal kids … a director general in DOCs rang up the station, threatened the manager, making false claims about the legality of what I had broadcast. I think the was out-of-her-depth politically, panicked and rang me in the middle of a demonstration where people were being arrested, accusing me of breaching broadcasting guidelines. She even dragged me before a 4ZZZ board member insisting that I explain why I should continue broadcasting. An aboriginal woman who attended the meeting explained my broadcast and the manager and a board member relented, allowing the show to continue.

So as much as X. might try to cast me into the role of martyr, I do not fit his Christian narrative. This is one of the problems with the Bring Julian Assange home campaign.

You should listen sometime on radio 4PR – Voice of the People. You can hear it on all the major podcast platforms.

Bob: Did you ever watch the video I sent around a while back, and interview between Bobmy Dore and Glenn Greenwald?

Ian: Do you mean this interview between Dore and Greenwald ?

I don’t like Jim Dore, I think he is sanctimonious.

In solidarity
ian

Podcast
The Communist Manifesto
The Red Contingent

Playlist
Pete Seeger – L’Internationale
Billy Bragg – Internationale
Jumping Fences – Brisbane Barrio live at Foco Nuevo with intro by Lachlan Hurse

This week is a May Day special, asking the same question posed on the original May Day – should we be working less hours? Hear from Adrian McMahon about the potential benefits of a four day work week, and the late David Graeber on “bullshit jobs”, plus some great anti-wage labour songs!

12-1pm, 102.1fm or 4zzz.org.au (where you can also podcast it later).

http://ondemand.4zzzfm.org.au/paradigm-shift

After it absence from the airways since 12 March 2021 4ZZZ has reinstated Paradigm Shift.

Andy, as usual does a good job with this show, particularly the section about the Hunter Jobs Alliance where unions and climate climate change activists are co-operating to see the exit of coal from the economy without workers bearing the burden of the transition.

APRIL 2, 2021

This week we hear from people tackling the climate crisis in three very different ways – Teeka and Susan who locked themselves to Adani’s machinery, lawyer Jack McLean who is using litigation, and Warrick Jordan from the Hunter Jobs Alliance – where greenies are joining forces with unions and the Labor party to try to change the conversation about jobs and the environment in the Hunter region.

Listen @ http://4zzz.org.au/program/paradigm-shift

Playlist
JUDY SMALL – One voice in the crowd

RUTH MUNDY – Love in the time of coral reefs

CONATION – Bloody trail of humanity

BILLY BRAGG – King tide and the sunny day flood