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0m00s
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Theme for CKMS Community Connections ccc
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CKMS Community Connections
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Steve Todd
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0m51s
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Will You Come Over The Mountain?
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Homemade
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Michael Darcy & The Atlantic Tramps
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4m48s
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Tamara Lorincz introduces herself: A PhD candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at Wilfrid Laurier University, finishing up her (very long) dissertation, linking climate change and geopolitics.
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5m36s
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Talking about the F35 fighter jets (Lockheed Martin stealth fighters) that Canada is planning on buying for $19 billion, but the lifecycle costs will be $74 billion dollars. Purchase is expected in 2026 or 2027. There is controversy, not just over the cost, but that they are under the control of the US. Both software and hardware are entirely managed by Lockheed Martin; Canada does not have the expertise or facilities to repair or manage them. And, they’re bad planes, there are still 800 open deficiencies after 25 years of development. There are great risks to our finances because of their high operational costs. Canada will need to cut social programs to afford these fighter planes. The F35 fighter plane program is the costliest weapons program in human history. Parts for the plane are manufactured and assembled in the US, but there are companies here in Waterloo Region that are supplying components, to be sent to the US. These strategic agreements for supplying parts are intended to secure commitments for purchasing the completed fighter jets. But Lockheed Martin has the final control over the workings of the F35; not even the Pentagon has that level of control. Tamara has been saying for the past 15 years that the F35 fighter jets program is a boondoggle, costly, out-of-control, exacerbates the climate crisis, and risks nuclear war (these planes are designed to carry nuclear weapons). Canada does not have sovereign control over this fighter jet. It’s a single-engine aircraft, and it is vulnerable to crashing. Canada intends deployment on stolen Indigenous land, flying low over Indigenous communities, disrupting those communities with noise, and the danger of crashing. There are no F35s in Canadian service, but they are being used in the US, in the air strikes on Iran. And Israel has been using F35s to bomb Gaza.
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16m00s
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Canada is complicit in the genocide in Gaza. Not just by supplying F35 components, but also sending millions of dollars of weapons systems to Israel for many decades. Tamara refers us to the Global Affairs Canada Export of Military Goods Report. These weapons are used to kill Palestinian people, not just in Gaza but in the West Bank. In 2019 Canada joined the “Arms Trade Treaty”, which prohibits Canada from supplying weapons to any country involved in human rights violations. But Israel is the “state extraordinaire” for human rights violations, and Canada has been supplying weapons to Israel for a very long time. Canada also gives moral and public support to Israel such as the Israel-Canada Free Trade Agreement, Canada has its embassy in Israel; if Canada wants to sanction Israel there is a lot more that Canada should be doing like closing the embassy and cancelling the Free Trade agreement. Tamara has a list of many of the human rights violations that Israel has committed.
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21m10s
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The International Criminal Court has announced arrest warrants for crimes against humanity and war crimes against members of the Israeli government, including Benjamin Netanyahu. But Israel and the United States are not parties to the International Criminal Court, so they are not accepting jurisdiction. But Canada is a member of the International Criminal Court by virtue of the ratification of the Rome Statute of 25 years ago. Canada was very supportive of the establishment of the International Criminal Court, which did make the right decision to pursue the prosecution of Israel. There are a lot of sanctions by the United States and Israel against the International Criminal Court, but Canada can exert jurisdiction, for example, if Netanyahu should come to Canada, Canada should turn him over to the court. Bob doesn’t believe that will happen, Tamara agrees that both Liberals and Conservatives have supported Israel for many decades by supplying weapons, financial, and moral support. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, just before he stepped down, said “I am a Zionist.” And Prime Minister Marc Carney has said that a new Palestinian state should be a Zionist state. The NDP is a little bit better, but they have not been standing up for Palestinian rights either, neither federally or provincially. The federal NDP is selecting a new leader, Tamara believes that the NDP’s position on Palestine will attract people to support their leadership race.
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28m37s
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Bob comments that he hasn’t seen much in the media about the leadership race. Tamara says that in the past five years there has been a narrowing of the public discourse in the mainstream media. So much of our media is corporate controlled so the debate is very limited, and any type of ideas, people, views that are more radical, or progressive, or divergent from this very limited dominant mainstream position is ignored. Bob makes a pitch for more volunteers to come to Radio Waterloo to help with reporting on these issues from a local perspective.
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30m17s
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Bob asks if Tamara was at Palestine Day on Sunday; Tamara did a lot of promotion and publicity, but was under an intense deadline with her dissertation and so wasn’t able to attend. Bob describes what the event looked like, Tamara gives more details of the destruction as an example of the war crimes Israel is committing. We’re not hearing the condemnation that Canadians should from Canada or Canada’s universities. In contrast, the universities did issue statements after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Why were universities so quick to condemn what Russia did in Ukraine, but were silent on what the U.S. and Israel did against Iran, and what Israel, the U.S. and all of the other NATO countries are doing against the Palestinians.
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34m53s
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Bob is baffled why, when Israel keeps bombing Lebanon, this is not considered an act of war. Tamara says people need to understand what is going on in the broader Middle East and West Asia, and when Israel is bombing Lebanon, and Syria, and Iran, and Yemen, and the Palestinians, it is part of a larger strategy that is supported by the United States and NATO to crush all of the resistance in the Middle East to Israel, and also to China and Russia. We have to see this as one of the fronts of a broader war. Israel is acting as a proxy for the United States and NATO. Chancellor Merz of Germany has said “Israel is doing our dirty work.” The leader of the British Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, has also said “Israel and the Ukraine are proxies, and doing the dirty work of the west.” What is this dirty work? They want to crush the resistance in the Middle East: Lebanon, Iran, Syria. This is to stop China and Russia. It is for broader control of Eurasia, a plan for thirty years. And Canada is using Ukraine in Europe to degrade Russia, and using Taiwan as another proxy against China. This is the reason we’ve been arming Taiwan with the other NATO allies, and why Canada sends warships into the South China Sea with the British and the Americans. Canada is planning a war against China. We are at the beginning stage of a global war. For those who don’t believe it, ask “Why is Canada not bringing about a diplomatic solution to this war in Ukraine? Why is Canada continuing to escalate it? Why is Canada continuing to arm and fund Ukraine? What is really going on here? Why is Prime Minister Carney talking about being in a coalition of the willing with the British and the French and the Europeans?” The U.S. Secretary of Defense and the U.S. Secretary of State have said that China is a threat, and have built American bases encircling Russia and China. Why has Canada continued to re-arm Europe? Why is Canada now going to be spending 5% of GDP on NATO? Canadians need to ask critical questions. Our politicians should be asking what’s going on. Canadians should be calling for peace, and saying “No” to this militarization, “No” to this increase in military spending. Canada needs to find ways to work collaboratively with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and all countries on the planet because we are facing catastrophic climate change.
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40m15s
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Bob points out that all conflicts, international, domestic, even traffic tickets, are always settled through negotiation. Why does Canada continue to pour money into the escalation of violence instead of negotiated settlement? Tamara says that countries like Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and Nicaragua are sovereign countries, and do not want to follow the dictats of the United States and NATO; this is seen as a threat to the United States and NATO. NATO is comprised of 32 countries that control 50% of the global economy, and they want to keep it that way. Countries like Russia and China have been able to rapidly develop over the past 25 years, creating dynamic economies and becoming economically powerful, and so seen as threats to the United States. This is what the Ukraine war is all about. Tamara has been to Russia twice in the past two years to meet with faculty from Moscow State University to find out their position about this confict. Her impression of Russia was very much challenged; all of her negative assumptions were wrong. They have high speed rail from Moscow to St. Petersburg, whereas Canada and the U.S. don’t have one kilometre of high speed rail!
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46m10s
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Tamara says that we cannot afford to be in a long global war with these countries. If we care about climate change, if we care about children and youth, the best thing is to peace-build, to end these conflicts, and find ways that we can live cooperatively together on this shared planet.
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46m40s
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Finland and Sweden have just joined NATO, but people in those countries believe this was a coup by the political elite as a result of manoevering by NATO for many years. There was no public referendum, there was no public debate on joining NATO. There is much public opposition to NATO in Finland. A new initiateve was started about three years ago called Global Women For Peace United Against NATO led by Finnish women. Sweden and Finland are very close to Russia: Finland shares a border; there were trains going four times a day between Helsinki and St. Petersburg; there are family and friend connections between Finland and Russia. This is a manufactured conflict by the political elite that are very close to the American political elite. Joining NATO is not in the best interests of either the people of Finland or Russia to have this new enmity and these borders between the countries. Bob points out that Russia’s Putin has said the war in Ukraine is to stop the advancement of NATO, yet NATO has now moved closer to Russia. Tamara has done research on NATO expansion, this has been planned since the 1990s. She has discovered records from inside the Canadian government that show that Canada and the United States were arming and training neo-Nazis in the Ukraine since 2014 to attack the Donbas (south-eastern area of Ukraine with a Russian-speaking minority population) in order to provoke a civil conflict to draw in Russian troops coming to protect Russian speaking people. Tamara has other details of Canada’s support for Ukrainian fascism, arming neo-Nazis in Ukraine, and supporting a Nazi collaborator in parliament. Bob and Tamara both question the silence of the mainstream Canadian media on the involvement of the Canadian government. Tamara raises a number of related issues.
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50m58s
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How can we help? Tamara lists a number of web sites (Online, above) and lists some upcoming events.
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52m10s
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Bob gives the end credits.
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