It's been almost fifty years since the popular revolution toppled the Batiste regime in Cuba; and, it's been almost as many years that the island nation has suffered an American led embargo, the longest siege in recorded history. Canada has so far refused to enjoin the starvation campaign against the revolution, but recent political developments here could well threaten the friendly relations enjoyed between Cuba and Canada. Fernando Gomez represents the Cuban Institute in Friendship with the People, and its outreach effort, the Che Guevera Work Brigade. He'll be speaking tonight at the BCGEU building tonight at 7pm. Fernando Gomez and the Canada's working relationship with Cuba in the first half.
And; Canada's foreign policy is altering its hue. Fighting its first "insurgency" war from the distant garrisons of Afghanistan is just one of the radical changes to what Canadian's would regard as the country's traditional role in world polity. Not the nation of Pierre Trudeau, hero to a generation of American asylum-seekers fleeing the war against Vietnam, today's conscientious objectors to the extra-legal occupation of Iraq fleeing to Canada face arrest, and expensive legal entaglements, likely ending in extradition rather than refuge; for others, the treatment is of a more sinister nature. Lee Zaslofsky is with the Toronto chapter of Canada's War Resisters Support Campaign, and he'll be here on a disturbing trend in Canadian policing that questions this nation's autonomy. Lee Zaslofsky and Resisting War: A Canadian tradition, in the second half.
And; Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us up to speed with some of the good things to get up to in and around Victoria this week.
