Saturday Morning for Saturday 14 October 2023

 

8.10 Robin Wright: Israel Gaza war explained

Civilians are fleeing northern Gaza in anticipation of an Israeli ground offensive, following retaliatory air strikes.

Palestinian militant group Hamas launched surprise attacks an Israel on Saturday, including on a music festival near the Gaza Strip, where 260 people were killed and over a hundred hostages were taken into Gaza.

Robin Wright is a long-time writer for The New Yorker covering political and military dynamics in the Middle East.  As a journalist she reported from more than 140 countries.

She was a fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and is currently a distinguished fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

Wright is the author of several books, including the widely acclaimed Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World.

9:05 Ian Urbina: slavery on the high seas

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Urbina's latest investigations into the Chinese distant-water fishing fleet has uncovered human rights and labour abuses.

The Chinese foreign fishing fleet is an armada of over 4,600 vessels, including in the Pacific, accounting for 14 percent of worldwide marine catch, by value.  

For this investigation, Urbina has boarded Chinese vessels and exchanged messages in bottles with crew.

Ian Urbina heads The Outlaw Ocean Project, a non-profit journalism organization based in Washington, D.C. focusing on reporting environmental and human rights crimes at sea.

9:40 Reporting from Israel: Lyse Doucet

The BBC's chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet is reporting in Southern Isreal, currently in the coastal city of Ashdod, which is coming under fire from Hamas.

Doucet says the Israel Gaza war is "a situation Israel has never confronted before", and that the shock and anger in Israel in reflected in a sense of now doing whatever it takes, including going in on the ground.

 

10.05  Reggae maestro Dennis Bovell headed downunder

One of the UK’s foundational black music producers Barbados-born Dennis Bovell was an instigator of the slow-reggae love song genre Lovers Rock, producing songs such as Janet Kaye's 1979 hit Silly Games.

From the early influence of Calypso and Caribbean culture in the UK in the 1950s and '60s through to the rise of soundsystem culture and British reggae in the 70s, Dennis Bovell has been a pivotal player in the emergence of Lovers Rock, dub and reggae as West Indian musicians and producers began to influence the sound and style of modern Britain.

Dennis is coming to New Zealand next week - playing DJ sets in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

10.35 David & Conor Kershaw: 150 years of Martinborough's P&K store 

This month marks 150 years of business for a Wairarapa store that's been in the hands of one family for four generations. 

Martinborough's Pain and Kershaw traces its origins to the late 19th century with a hawker who travelled the region on horseback.

At the turn of the 20th century, Pain was joined by John Kershaw. John's great-grandson Conor Kershaw runs it today.

 

10:45  Frank Gardner on Israel's lack of preparedness

BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner on Israel's failure of intelligence, "and imagination", not to anticipate the Hamas attacks.

11.05 Cristina Rivera Garza: grief demanding justice

It took Mexican scholar, novelist, and poet Cristina Rivera Garza 30 years to be able to write about what happened to her younger sister.

Liliana Rivera Garza was murdered by her abusive boyfriend in an act of femicide.

Rivera Garza's book Liliana's Invincible Summer has became part of a collective call for justice in Mexico, one of the most dangerous countries for women.

 

11.30 Rebecca Priestley: navigating end times 

Rebecca Priestley's new memoir End Times moves between recollections of teen punk nihilism and a flirtation with born again Christianity, to a modern day climate anxiety-fuelled South Island road trip. Her playlist from the trip is here. 

Priestley is professor of Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington. She is the author or editor of six previous books, including Fifteen Million Years in Antarctica.

Rebecca will be appearing at The Nelson Arts Festival on Oct 21.

 

 

 

Books featured on the show

Liliana's Invincible Summer
By Cristina Rivera Garza
Published by Penguin Random House
ISBN 9780593244098

End Times
by Rebecca Priestley 
Published by Te Herenga Waka University Press
ISBN 9781776921188

 

Music played in this show

SONG: Silly Games
ARTIST: Janet Kaye
Time played: 10:05

SONG: Brother Louie
ARTIST: Matumbi
Time played: 10:20

SONG: Typical Girls
ARTIST: The Slits
Time played: 10:30

Song: Regga Fi Peach
Artist: Linton Kwesi Johnson
Time Played: 10:55