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As we ready to welcome Fall and the 2012 school year here at UVic, the Occupy movement is readying itself for a second year of mobilization against the gross disparities of the economic system. From ground zero at Wall Street in New York, and financial districts around the United States, (and in Canada too) last year’s explosion of dissent and demonstration leaves behind hundreds of stories. Many of these stories went viral on the internet as they happened, as they revealed police state styled repression and brutality most Americans haven’t seen since the Vietnam War protests of the 1960’s.
Arguably, the worst of that repression was witnessed at Occupy Oakland.
Kevin Pina is an American journalist and filmmaker who has reported from Haiti on and off for more than twenty years, and who lived in the capital for more than seven years. From his early days as a KPFA radio reporter documenting the human rights abuses in Port au Prince’s poorest neighbourhoods, to covering the initial 1991 coup d’état against populist president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide to his own imprisonment there in 2005, Pina has borne witness in a way few foreign correspondents can equal. His film titles include: ‘El Salvador: In the Name of Democracy,’ ‘Amazonia: Voices from the Rainforest,’ ‘Haiti: Harvest of Hope,’ ‘Haiti: The UNtold Story,’ and ‘HAITI: We Must Kill the Bandits.’
Kevin’s latest effort produced the documentary, ‘Occupy the Bay.’ Directed by Jonathan Riley, Occupy the Bay chronicles the Occupy Wall Street Movement in the San Francisco Bay Area. Kevin Pina in the first half.
And; nearly eighteen months have passed since the earthquake and tsunami disaster that killed tens of thousands in Japan, and rendered Fukushima’s Daiichi nuclear facility a smoldering wreckage. Though you would be hard-pressed to find the story in your local paper, or covered on the nightly newscasts; a year and a half later, the smashed plant spews radiation still into the sea and atmosphere with no near end to it in sight. Worse yet, there is tonnes of spent nuclear rods in cooling pools at Daiichi, pools that could fail catastrophically in another earthquake.
Steven Starr is a senior scientist at Physicians for Social Responsibility and an associate member of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is the Director of the Clinical Laboratory Science Program at the University of Missouri, and a medical technologist who has spent years detailing the real and possible effects of the nuclear weapons issue from his site, www.NuclearDarkness.org. Appearing at the UN and other fora to give expert testimony on the environmental consquences of waging, and readying for, nuclear war, Starr has, since the Fukushima calamity, collaborated with renowned Japanese diplomat Akio Matsumura, founder and Secretary General of the Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival, who famously warned recently of the precarious situation at Daiichi’s reactor #4.
Steven Starr and Fukushima’s present and continuing danger in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher and CFUV broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will be here at the bottom of the hour to bring us newz from the city’s streets and beyond. But first, Kevin Pina, welcoming the Fall and rise of Occupy the Bay.
Chris Cook hosts Gorilla Radio, airing live every Monday, 5-6pm Pacific Time. In Victoria at 101.9FM, 104.3 cable, and on the internet at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca. He also serves as a contributing editor to the web news site, http://www.pacificfreepress.com. Check out the GR blog at: http://GorillaRadioBlog.blogspot.com
