The Daily GRRR! - November 14th, 2014 - Waves Through Walls: Prison Radio
dailyGrrr-2014-11-14.mp3Welcome, I am your host Dan Kellar and you are listening to The Daily GRRR! Waves Through Walls: Prison Radio, on 100.3fm, CKMS in Waterloo, Ontario. Soundfm.ca on the web, today is Friday November 14th, 2014.
We are broadcasting from the centre of the Haldimand Tract, the occupied Grand River Territory of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations).
The Daily GRRR! is a project of the Grand River Media Collective; and is supported by the Community Radio Fund of Canada and CKMS.
The clip that kicked off the show is from Mumia Abu-Jamal with his piece entitled Mexico: State of Corruption, State of Terror. Check prisonradio.org for more of Mumia’s podcasts.
Today’s feature is 2 parts from CKUT producer Camille Baker on sexual assault at McGill University, and the university's first policy on sexual assault.
Now we will start with today’s headlines:
The Daily GRRR!
HEADLINES for November 14th, 2014
1. Man Involved in Rehtaeh Parsons Rape Will Not Serve Jail Time
2. Toronto Cop Pleads Guilty to Child Porn and Sexual Interference
3. Poppies To Remember the War Dead Assembled by Prisoners
4. Canadian Cops Getting Facial Recognition Tech
5. Growing Support Around #JusticeForDeepan
6. Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Executive VP Resigns
7. Bringing Down The Walls in Jerusalem
1. Man Involved in Rehtaeh Parsons Rape Will Not Serve Jail Time
A now 20-year old man who is being allowed to remain anonymous, will serve no jail time and will avoid probation after pleading guilty of child pornograpghy charges related to the rape, harassment, and subsequent suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons, a teen from Halifax, Nova Scotia.
While Rehtaeh’s dad Glen Canning delivered a crushing victim impact statement, to the court which included the passage:
“It’s hard knowing that Rehtaeh, being the kind of person she was, would have forgiven you if you had only said you were sorry. When she was alive to hear it – you could have made a difference, yet you remained silent even when you knew her life had turned into a nightmare by your actions. You did nothing when it would have mattered.”
While the judge notes that the defendants actions led to Rehtaeh’s suicide, the man, who was 17 when he hosted a party at his house and took a picture of the rape, which he then shared around town,received a conditional discharge, and an order to submit his DNA to a database.
Writing on his blog that he did not expect much from the courts, Glen Canning wrote in his pre-verdict victim impact statement:
“My sense of justice has been shattered and replaced with doubt, cynicism, and a lack of faith. Rehtaeh is not here today to tell you what your actions did to her, but based on what I saw, you damaged her beyond repair.”
Only 1 other man, from the 4 present during the assault has been charged in relation to the rape, harassment and eventual suicide of Rehtaeh Parsons.
2. Toronto Cop Pleads Guilty to Child Porn and Sexual Interference
Facing 36 charges including multiple counts of sexual assault, sexual exploitation and sexual interference, in addition to failing to comply with bail conditions, now ex-Toronto cop Dariusz Kisielewski, faces 10 years in jail after coming to a plea deal with prosecutors.
Kisielewski, who has been a cop for 26 years in Toronto, will be sentenced on November 25th for his crimes which included secretly taping girls, who as the court records show, are “in circumstances that give rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy”, as well as touching minors for sexual pleasure.
Kisielewski made over 100,000$ for 4 of the past 5 years, and was being paid for a year while suspended following his arrest in april of 2013. The disgraced cop resigned in March of this year.
3. Poppies To Remember the War Dead Assembled by Prisoners
Many canadians wore a red poppy over the past few weeks in efforts to remember those who fought in the major wars of the 20th century, be it the imperial battle of world war 1 or the fight against nazis in world war 2 which i was taught i owe my freedom to. This year more than 19 million poppies were created to be sold as a fundraiser for local legion halls which are desperately low on funds as successive governments have cut services for veterans and soldiers returning from our current capitalist wars abroad.
In a strong move, veterans groups have been boycotting photo-ops with the Harper government as he grandstands around remembrance day, using recent attacks on soldiers in canada to push through laws further limiting freedoms.
While this year, only 2.4 million poppies were assembled by prisoners at 10 minimum security and healing lodge prisons in Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, Corcan, a division of Correctional Services Canada, had planned that nearly the whole batch be undertaken by prisoner labour. However, the guards union brought up concerns over 19 million needles flowing into prisons and forced officials to rethink the idea.
4.Canadian Cops Getting Facial Recognition Tech
With the calgary police announcing it is paving the way towards a full-scale automated biometric identification service, with the implementation of new facial recognition software, canada has brought into a regular police force the ability to scan facial images found in photographs and video against a database of known persons.
While the FBI’s own system only guarantees accuracy 85% of the time, and does not work well in low-light conditions Harley Geiger of the Center for Democracy and Technology said to Ars Technica. “In the US we have this idea of reasonable expectation of privacy which allows for some unreasonable searches. allows for tracking at a broad scale. It’s not just something that will identify criminals or suspects, it will be used to identify people with no relation to crime or wrongdoing.” He Added “From the perspective of a civil liberties advocate, the wide deployments that can identify individuals at a distance, is that this changes completely the dynamic of privacy in public.”
Calgary Police Inspector Rosemary Hawkins promised that the system would not be used other than for an open police investigation, and thats the same tone the Toronto police used when also announcing their plans to acquire facial recognition technology.
Similar tech was used during the Olympics in Vancouver and the G20 protests in Toronto in 2010 to try to catch individuals involved in property destruction and beating up pigs. At the time, the technology was being lent out by the banking industry.
5. Growing Support Around #JusticeForDeepan!
The Vice-President of the Canadian Labour Congress has come out with a video statement supporting canadian born Deepan Budlakoti in his ongoing struggle against deportation and forced statelessness at the hands of Harper’s canadian government.
Donald Lafleur, also of the Canadian Union of Postal Worker, shows solidarity and pushes people to ask immigration minister Chris Alexander to follow the canadian charter and international law and give Deepan his citizenship back. Check http://justicefordeepan.org for more on deepan and check out our past interviews with him.
here is the clip.
6. Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Executive VP Resigns
The executive vice president of Enbridge’s flailing Northern Gateway tarsands pipeline project has resigned as the project stalls amid inability to gain consent from affected Indigenous nations and communities. Janet Holder will be replaced by the president of the operation which the vancouver observer notes “suffered a public relations setback after 58.4% of Kitimat citizens voted conclusively against the project.”
Art Sterritt, the executive director of the Coastal First Nations said, in response to Holders departure: "I don't blame her for resigning. Obviously the project can't go ahead."
7. Bringing Down The Walls in Jerusalem
Earlier this week, on the 25th anniversary of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, Palestinian youth took sledgehammers and axes to the separation wall running through the Palestinian city of Jerusalem.
As Canada continues its support for the illegal and repressive actions of Israel, this attack on the wall is a significant action showing the continued resilience of the Palestinian people as they are attacked in their homes, their boats, their olive plantations, and now, with a new campaign underway by Zionist settlers, even their mosques.
The historic al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem has been under attack in recent weeks with settlers hoping to raze the building and build their own shrine. Efforts to fund the destruction are being undertaken on indegogo with a campaign to help build a “Third Jewish Temple” on the Haram al-Sharif.
The actions in occupied Palestine remind us that we need to bring down all walls of apartheid and end the violence of settler colonialism.
Thats all for the headlines, now for some
Midway Musichere is crowd favourite The Rebel Spell with the tune Breath off their album Last Run.
And we are back, you just heard The Rebel Spell with the tune Breath off their album Last Run. Check out http://therebelspell.com for info on their upcoming tour!
You are listening to Waves Through Walls edition of The Daily GRRR! Today is November 14th, 2014, my name is Dan Kellar and we are now moving into the feature portion of our broadcast.
Today’s feature is 2 parts from CKUT producer Camille Baker on sexual assault at McGill University, in part 1, Camille speaks with a student involved in efforts to define McGill's policy on sexual assault for the first time. And in part two the discussion is with the dean of students who's been involved in writing the university's first policy on sexual assault.
http://www.mediacoop.ca/audio/what-does-sexual-assault-mean-mcgill-unive...
http://montreal.mediacoop.ca/audio/looking-sexual-assault-mcgill-part-2/...
That was 2 parts of Camille Baker’s series looking into responses to sexual assault at McGill University
This has been the The Daily GRRR! for November14th, 2014. We are on weekdays from 9-10am on 100.3fm CKMS in Waterloo region, and http://soundfm.ca on the web. Check out all our past shows and other Grand River Media Collective work on our webpage http://grandrivermc.ca
The Daily GRRR! is supported by the Community Radio Fund of Canada and CKMS.
Stay tuned in for more Grand River Radical Radio after we close the podcast.
Thanks for Listening.