This episode of It's the End of the World
as We Know it and I Feel Fine
was made possible by contributions from
slaves like you.
Spank you very much!
We have to maintain law and order
or we might as well be back in the jungle
Daws.... the ghetto is a jungle
always has been
understand? You cannot cage people
like animals and not expect them
to fight back some day.
It has always been an army occupation
here... with police, badges and uniforms.
You and me... a cop and a social worker?
We are keepers of this goddamned zoo.
Streets have to be safe.
Safe for who?
You're here to protect property,
not lives.
Well that's what it's all about
isn't it?
You worked hard to get what you got,
didn't ya?
And you wanna keep it
just like I do.
Bullshit!
Listen. You think because you got a badge
and I got a couple of degrees
that makes a difference?
Do you know what white folks
call people like you and me in private?
Niggers, Daws.
Niggers.
Gooooooooooood morning slaves,
and welcome to another sedition of
It's the End of the World as We Know it
and I Feel Fine,
the show that believes in showing
proper respect for the dead.
Into CNN to bring you
some very sad breaking news
on the death of US Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia
He died in his sleep, of natural causes
overnight.
I am your host the Stimulator,
and I gotta say me and my subMedia slaves
have had a fucking hoot sifting through
the mountains of hate mail we received
from ancaps and Bernie Sanders
supporters, pissed off by our
last two shows...
Well, you got egg on my face!
Buuuuuuuuuuut
while it's tempting to take yet
another swipe at a low-hanging fruit,
this week there’s more pressing
matters at hand.
Namely... actual motherfuckin resistance!
So, with that in mind,
we turn first to Hong Kong,
where on February 9th,
residents of the scrappy,
working-class neighbourhood of Mong Kok,
decided to ring in the Lunar New Year
by getting into a giant fucking
street brawl with the mothafuckin pigs.
Shit kicked off when the po-po moved in
to try and clear out illegal vendors,
hawking food
and assorted New Years trinkets.
In the heavy clashes that followed,
militants hurled bricks, garbage
and other random debris,
and beat cops the fuck down,
with sticks, poles
and motherfuckin street signs,
injuring nearly 90 of them!
Mong Kok
was the site of some of the
fiercest resistance during last year's
Umbrella Revolution,
when for two months,
pro-democracy activists set up
occupations and barricaded major streets
across the city.
The crushing of this movement
only increased the palpable animosity
many Hong Kong residents feel
towards the totalitarian regime in Beijing
and in the year that has followed,
tensions have continued to build.
Despite being technically ruled
by jack-booted Commies,
Hong Kong is a major artery
of global capitalism,
with some of the highest levels
of inequality found anywhere in the world
The city boasts over
200,000 fucking millionaires,
while 20 percent of its population
lives in poverty,
and over 50,000 of its residents
live in literal fucking cages.
As this powder keg of social contradiction
develops, hopefully Hong Kong's proles
will be able to avoid the lure
of right-wing nationalism,
and begin to join forces
with the insurgent workers and peasants
kicking shit off in mainland China.
I think there's been a massacre
of workers rights
for pensions.
People will die, and they will never
get a pension.
That's why there is mass resistance
against this policy.
Meanwhile, on February 4th,
workers in Greece
staged their third general strike
in four months,
with 40,000 peeps taking to the streets
to protest looming pension reforms,
which have been demanded
by the motherfuckin vampires
of the so-called Troika,
as a precondition to the latest
injection of cash into Greece's
cash-starved economy.
Once the demonstrations reached Parliament
Anarchists threw down hard,
lobbing rocks and molotov cocktails
at Athens riot pigs,
who responded with tear gas
and flash grenades
in what has by now become
an almost ritualistic display
of mutual fucking hatred.
Never gets old.
Anyway...
by now the Greek left's love affair
with Syriza,
and its weaselly fuck of a leader,
Alexis Tsipris, is long fucking over.
Despite this, Tsipiris is still trying to
play shit off like he's cool in the gang,
expressing his support for the strikes
being carried out against the very
policies that his government
has been ramming down peeps' throats.
Buuuuuuuut the Greek people
aren't fucking stupid, and they
are well aware that they're being fleeced.
Syriza's latest capitulation
to the country's insatiable creditors
comes in the form of a steep hike
to taxes and social security contributions
which will have many Greeks
poneying up to three-quarters
of their wages
towards paying off the country's debt.
Farmers in Greece
have been protesting these reforms now
for weeks,
blockading major highways,
and sealing off the country's borders
with Turkey and Macedonia.
On February 12th, a convoy of
pissed off farmers descended
onto the streets of Athens,
and attempted to storm the
Ministry of Agriculture,
leading to yet more clashes with the cops.
Check this shit out!
As the situation continues to get
even more fucking dire in Greece,
and with no solution to the country's
economic clusterfuck in sight,
it’s a safe fucking bet that
the footage of flaming riot cops
that the country has become
world famous for
won’t be stopping anytime soon.
Here in the United Snakes and Klanada,
February is celebrated as
Black History Month,
where for one month of the year,
tens of thousands of white elementary
and high school teachers
present awkward, obligatory,
and kinda fuckin racist lessons
for their students,
on historical Black figures,
such as Frederick Douglas
and Martin Luther King…
Who invented the air conditioner?
A Black man.
and then explain how George Washington
Carver invented peanut butter.
Well Doctor Carver's
two dinner guests...
Edward "Skippy" Williamson
and Frederick "Jiff" Armstrong
-- two white men.
Stole George Washington Carver's
recipe for peanut butter,
copyrighted it, and reaped
untold fortunes from it.
Given the tense state of racial dynamics
in the post-Ferguson United Snakes,
this year's Black History Month
has been more political than most.
All around the country,
Black peeps are rising up,
reconnecting with past histories
of struggle, and publicly challenging
the racist status fucking quo.
Even the holy grail of American spectacles
-- the motherfuckin Super Bowl,
featured a half-time lesson
on Black history,
compliments of none other than
Mrs. Black Bill Gates in the making
herself, Beyonce,
who performed alongside dozens of
back-up dancers
dressed in Black Panthers regalia.
It was really outrageous...
that she used it as a platform
to attack police officers.
Oh fuck! Fuck me in the dick!
Buuuuuuuuuut
while the right-wing corporate media
endlessly debates
whether Beyonce’s performance was racist
and the nuanced difference
between the Panthers and the KKK….
another story is going largely
under-reported…
Climatologists are saying
that this past year's El Niño
was the strongest on record,
and it's having devastating effects
on weather patterns across the globe.
Whereas in southern California,
it has led to heavy rains
that have replaced the region's
long-standing drought
with widespread flooding,
in Haiti, on the other hand,
it has exacerbated an existing drought,
leading to widespread crop failures
and food shortages,
which have put millions of people
at risk of starvation.
Every day is getting worse.
It is difficult to grow crops,
because of lack of water.
Many are malnourished
and they don't have food.
And the scale of the problem
is even more fucking dire
in South-eastern Africa…
where El Niño, combined with the
pre-existing effects
of global climate change,
have set the stage for a looming famine
of biblical fucking proportions,
with up to 14 million people
already suffering from food and/or
water shortages,
and some experts predicting
that up to 49 million people
are ultimately at risk of starvation.
Just let those numbers sink in for a second.
Everyone is in hardship.
We all have so little to eat
because there was no harvest this season.
Scorching hot temperatures,
combined with an almost complete lack
of rainfall,
has turned large areas of the region
into a parched wasteland,
decimating agriculture in South Africa,
Lesotho, Zimbabwe, Mozambique,
Zambia, Madagascar, Malawi,
and Ethiopia,
where upwards of 8.5 million people
are facing food shortages,
and 1 million children
are struggling with acute malnutrition.
This tragic situation
is a bleak fucking reminder
of the ways in which white supremacy
is interwoven into the very fabric
of globalized capitalism.
While rich fucking countries in the west
throw out an unconscionable amount
of perfectly good food
every fucking day,
large areas of the world are
starving to death
in front of our very eyes.
Capitalism is a man-made fucking disaster,
which makes it that much harder
for poorer countries to cope
with changes in weather patterns,
which are only going to get worse
as climate change continues
to do its thing.
While the scale and scope
of these problems can be hard
to wrap one's head around,
they are ultimately connected
to resistance to white supremacy
and capitalism here at home,
as they represent the global consequences
of these hierarchal systems,
projected abroad via imperialism
and neo-colonial trade policies.
So...
to learn more about some of the
local struggles against white supremacy
here in Klanada,
and how they’re connected to
the bigger picture,
I recently caught up with Ajamu Nangwaya,
an anarchist, educator and writer
from Toronto,
and an organizer with the Network
for the Elimination of Police Violence.
Hey Ajamu, how the fuck are ya?
I'm pretty good.
Just battling a cold....
but I'm getting better.
So... it’s February,
which means it’s Black History Month.
In the past, you've been critical
of this term, and the way it's
framed by the media, government officials
and social justice advocates alike.
Why is that?
It's a cultural celebration... and it
is not focused on the need for
social emancipation.
Therefore, it is a time for us to
engage in a name change - but
beyond the name change is the need
to focus on political ideology,
political organizing... for us to expose
the fact that there's still a need for us
to fight against capitalism, racism,
homophobia... in the present time
and.. we haven't achieved emancipation,
which history kind of focuses on the past,
and not the present and the future.
You were an early member of
the Black Action Defense Committee,
or BADC,
a Toronto-based organization
active in struggles against racist
police terror in the 1980s and 1990s.
For viewers who might not be familiar
with this group or its history,
can you give us a quick run-down?
Yes.. the Black Action Defense Committee
was created in August 1988.
It was a response to the killing
of an elderly African man
with mental health issues.
Well, a number of activists came together
and said "we need an organizational
response to the act of police violence."
And that led to BADC. And it is is
in the late 80s and 1990s,
the most prominent group in Ontario
that was pushing for police accountability
that was organizing against
police violence.
Up here in Klanada,
most of the news and analysis that we hear
about police brutality comes from the US.
How is the operation of white supremacy,
as it relates to state violence,
different in both countries,
and in what ways is it the same?
I would say, fundamentally,
there's no real difference between
police violence in the United States
and Canada.
Because we experienced slavery
in Canada. And the police, as always
are the coercive element in society.
That is, the police, the military
has always worked against African people.
In the US and also in Canada.
So our relationship with
law enforcement, as well as the judicial
system and prison system, has always
been a negative, oppositional one.
On a similar note,
many peeps in this country are generally
familiar with the history of
the Civil Rights
and Black Liberation movements in the US,
and more recent historical examples,
such as the LA Riots of 1992...
buuuuuuuut are often less familiar
with the history of struggles against
anti-Black racism here at home.
How do you think this affects
the perspective of revolutionaries
here in Klanada,
and are there specific movements
and events that you think peeps
here would benefit
from learning more about?
The media dominates our perception
of reality.
And African Americans are living in
the centre of world imperialism - the
United States.
So, whatever they do gets projected
across the world. In Africa,
in Latin America...
a lot of us end up using African Americans
as our reference point.
So, whatever African Americans do,
we tend to pick it up
in our own spaces.
But we also, here in Canada,
have a history of struggle and
resistance, which is documented
but it's not as widely known
as in the United States.
For example, we know about
the LA rebellion, or the Rodney King
rebellion in April-May 1992.
But we're not aware of the Yonge Street
Rebellion that took place around
the same time.
A march took place
and it was a solidarity march
with what's going on in LA at the time...
but it was also a march to protest
the police killing of a young
African man, you know, during the
same time.
But we had a rebellion here.
It's not as widely known
outside of Canada
-- even inside of Canada.
Over the past couple of years,
Black Lives Matter has burst
onto the political scene,
and as a popular rallying cry
for racial equality in the United Snakes.
There's also an active chapter
in Toronto, which has employed tactics
similar to their US counterparts,
such as highway blockades,
to protest police killings.
What is your take on Black Lives Matter,
and what role do you see them
playing as struggles against
white supremacy intensify?
Initially when the movement came out
on the scene, I was more openly critical
of it.
But at the same time, in terms of its
ideological direction, it's emphasis
on more mobilizing people in the
street, and not necessarily
organizing people who live in
communities - whether it's working-class,
highly segregated communities in the US,
where we work with people to build their
independent organization to struggle...
But I've kind of, tempered my critique
of the group, because a lot of folks
who are drawn into it are young people.
They're becoming involved
in an organizational context
for the first time... and
we have to remember that young people
are going to make mistakes.
No doubt you’ve seen the clips
of Beyonce’s Super Bowl performance
by now.
Generally speaking,
what are your thoughts
on the role that Black celebrities
can play in helping to frame
popular dialogues on race?
To me, it's not so much
"Black celebrities", but to me, it's
the role that African artists
and artists in general
must play in the struggle for
liberation. Especially if you're
from an oppressed community.
You have an obligation to use
your work to advance the stuggle.
To raise questions in the minds of the people.
But, the thing that's very clear to me
is that artists, in a lot of ways,
cup what's going on around them.
So you notice in the 60's, even people
were doing like pop music,
they were reflecting themes
of the movement around them.
So, what we see recently,
with Lamar performing about the
Prison Industrial Complex,
referencing Africa as a place of origin...
or Beyonce... Beyonce like exposing
young people to the presence
of the Black Panther Party,
with this year being the 50th
anniversary of it's founding....
These things are happening
because there's like a rumbling
on the ground, or there's a
conscientized section of the African
population in the US
that are pushing... politically.
And these people are
picking these things up.
Anything else you wanna add?
As anarchists, we need to
organize with, and among the people.
Anarchism is the solution
to oppression in society,
but we need to be among the people.
You know, we need to approach them
in a pragmatic way, that we may not even
tell them that anarchism is the solution,
but if we're working with the people,
and we're looking at "how do we
organize?" and you start to propose
a program of broad participation,
so we can introduce anarchist
principles to the people,
and then later on... as they become more
politically developed, or they come to our
meetings, they'll realize that
my God... we've been practicing
anarchism for so long we didn't know
that's what we were doing.
So I believe that we need to be strategic,
tactical in introducing anarchism
to the people.
Thanks Ajamu.
And that about does it for this sedition
of It’s the End of the World as we Know it
and I Feel Fine.
As it happens with most guests,
it breaks my fucking heart
to edit the interview down
to fit the format.
I really recommend that y'all listen
to my entire conversation with Ajamu.
His insight into movement and
power building are super solid.
To do so, just visit my fuckin website:
With that said, building this show
over the past 9 years is possible
through a lot of hard fuckin work
but also through small donations
from wage slaves like you.
So this week I want to give a shout out to
Laura, Justin, Robin, Guillaume,
Ranko, Hansen, Roman, Raul,
Max, Stephen, Karlis, Blade, Steve,
Jonathan, Jan, Jane, Samantha, Andrew,
Per, Flyn, Michael, Bear,
Leandre, Jesse, Agatha, Inca,
Scott, and Daniel
Empanadas
I also want to give a warm welcome
to the newest members of the taconspiracy
Sebastian and Anonymous
Stay tuned to this space
for more insurrectionary news
from the global muthafuckin resistance.
See you next time suckers.