Red dust blown in from Australia‘s parched interior blankets Sydney in 2009. Australia and its region are experiencing the hottest 60 years in a millennium, scientists have determined. Photograph: Greg Wood/AFP/Getty link to article http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/17/australasia-hottest-60-years-study The last 60 years have been the hottest in Australasia for a millennium and cannot be explained by natural causes, according [...]
East Timor: a lesson in why the poorest threaten the powerful 5 April 2012 Milan Kundera’s truism, “the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”, described East Timor. The day before I set out to film clandestinely there in 1993, I went to Stanfords map [...]
Anti-War ANZAC Day APR 25, ’124:03 PM By Alice Barricadas Today is a sad day. It is probably a good thing that the hundreds of old men, who used to line the pub walls on ANZAC day as an act of both remembrance and to forget, are mostly dead. Many [...]
Australia ‘world’s worst’ for online bullying Study places Australia as the world’s worst country for bullying on social networking sites. Social network sites can leave one vulnerable to being humiliated in a public sphere by people unknown to the user. For cyber bullies, it is a bit [...]
Cigarette Companies and Their Underhanded Tactics Sunday, 29 April 2012 11:10By David Donovan, Independent Australia | Op-Ed (Photo: guitargirl8022)The world’s biggest cigarette companies made their case in the [Australian] High Court, battling the Federal Government’s attempts to impose plain packaging on their product, fearful it may set a worldwide precedent. Already, the UK is making plans to adopt similar legislation. [...]
To lay any fears to rest it seems that the recent police shooting in Kings Cross will see the beginning of comments from various sources confirming just how racist this country is. We here in Australia have at least one commentator who thinks that the public is more concerned about violent indigenous [...]
Racism in Australia link http://rsp.org.au/content/racism-australia White Australia Policy – The Background In the simplest means, White Australia Policy was a restrictive immigration policy pursued in Australia. But if we dig deep, it was a systematic racial approach by the capitalist ruling class. In the mid-19th century there was a shortage of labour [...]
These are but a few reports on the chameleon attitudes and thoughts of the unelected PM of Australia, Julia Gillard. At least what she seems to be taking as a jaunt in the Afghan photos has caught up with even this princess of poor ideas and even worse decisions. After shedding a sufficient [...]
Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP A lawyer for the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has said she was stopped at Heathrow airport and told she was on a watch list requiring official approval before she could return to her native Australia. Jennifer Robinson said a member of airport security told her she [...]
Yusuf is currently working on a musical featuring songs he wrote as Cat Stevens [GALLO/GETTY] The artist formerly known as Cat Stevens is starting a new chapter – one that has been in the making since the day he first picked up a microphone.Rock icon Yusuf Islam – who goes by the single name Yusuf [...]
Enlarge (Photo: University of Copenhagen) Malcolm Fraser, University Report Score Govt’s Aboriginal Intervention Program By ERIK PINEDA: Subscribe to Erik’s RSS feed March 8, 2012 9:22 PM EST The Australian government has been accused of conducting sham dialogues that were supposed to back its Stronger Futures legislation for the indigenous communities of the Northern Territory. Former Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser was convinced [...]
This is a better copy of material I posted in another article. George Ikners ikners.com Differentiating Aboriginal suicide “Think different” is the wording of a current Apple Macintosh computer advertisement. The phrase could well apply to the suicides of Aboriginal youth. Their suicide has different wellsprings, histories, sociologies, patterns, and even [...]
e Can Non-Belief Become Mainstream? The Weaponization of Atheism by JEFF SPARROW In a few days time, the Global Atheist Convention meets in the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, a huge building sprawling out next to the Yarra River, just south of the central business district of Australia’s second biggest [...]
Preventing Suicide among Indigenous Australians Sven Silburn, Belle Glaskin, Darrell Henry and Neil Drew OVERVIEW This chapter begins with an overview of the recent epidemiological trends in suicide and attempted suicide for Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and how this compares with the situation in other post-colonial English-speaking nations such as [...]
US says Australia not leaving Afghan early AAPApril 18, 2012, 3:04 am A senior US defence official is insisting that Australia remains a solid combat partner in Afghanistan and is not pulling out early. The official says that Australia’s plans to gradually turn over frontline fighting in strategic Uruzgan province to Afghans [...]
The environment and climate patterns have long been topics of conversation and discussion. From the cordial greeting to more serious research there has been a long tradition of viewing the environment as something fixed or unchangeable all part of what is often called mother nature. Since we all live iin the same [...]
Why We Should Empathize With Asylum Seekers By Adnan Al-Daini (about the author) Asylum seekers are those, in the main, who are escaping war and/or have stood up to tyranny and injustice from their rulers. They are courageous people that need to be admired, not vilified. Additionally, they are those who have the [...]
Australia removed Thein Sein from the sanctions list, but military officers remained [Reuters] Australia’s government has announced an easing of sanctions and moves to normalise trade ties with Myanmar following recent reforms by the country’s civilian government. But Bob Carr, Australia’s foreign minister, said on Monday that sanctions would remain in place against about 130 military [...]
Ever since this site started what has been suggested in the strongest possible terms is that Bob Brown is the only representative of decency and dignity in Australian politics. This is despite anarchist leanings from ikners.com that suggests quite strongly that politicians are little better than leeches feasting on whatever they [...]
EnlargeTim Winborne/Reuters /LandovNews Limited is the Australian arm of Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire. How Murdoch’s Aussie Papers Cover Climate Change by DAVID FOLKENFLIK Listen to the Story All Things Considered [5 min 25 sec] Add to Playlist Download Transcript text size A A A April 6, 2012 Part 4 of four Some weeks ago, I paid a visit to [...]
Burping cows have become the comic relief of the global warming debate, but livestock emissions are no laughing matter. Every year, the world’s 1.2 billion ruminants produce 80 million tonnes of methane, or 28 per cent of global methane emissions. Just one grazing dairy cow belches around 600 litres per day. Methane [...]
Gareth Evans, former attorney-general and foreign minister in Australia. Photo Credit: London School of Economics Library/Wikimedia Commons Despite being ‘idolised’ as some sort of peace advocate Gareth Evans was a long way from anything like that description. The Australian support for the murderer Suharto is a matter of national disgrace, the stealing or at least [...]
East Timor: A Lesson in Why the Poorest Threaten the Powerful by John Pilger, April 06, 2012 Print This | Share This Milan Kundera’s truism, “the struggle of people against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting,” described East Timor. The day before I set out to film clandestinely there in 1993, I [...]
All the present rumblings coming from politicians in Canberra about our great friends the US and what we do about China is at the least stupid and at the worst downright cowardice on a massive parliamentary scale. The real issue is “why can’t we get on with our own neighbours free from [...]
Keeping an eye on China? First US Marines arrive in Australia. As a continuing part of the repulsive subservience of the Australian government to US hegemony the arrival of troops at Darwin was hardly a ripple. But it is the start of a concerted campaign by the US to defend oil supply lines through the Straits of [...]
This article deals with a ‘doctrine’ that has and still does affect the indigenous people of Australia. While some view the Australian attitude to the indigenous as “paternal” that word carries with it some concept of actually caring for and being concerned about the peoples being made the subject of some or any [...]
News Corp’s Australian unit, News Limited, strenuously denied the claims in a statement on behalf of NDS Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Australian minister wants News Corp hacking claims investigated Communications minister wants police to look into accusations News Corp software firm NDS engaged in ‘dirty tricks’ Australia‘s communications minister has called for a police investigation [...]
For those of you that had to or chose to endure the pain of watching our esteemed unelected Prime Minister declare that a new solar facility would be the biggest in the world, that moment of crass stupidity has come back to haunt the project. Why does it have to be the [...]
During submissions on turning part of Australia into a nuclear dumping ground this emerged..”He said the government’s new radioactive waste law requires only that a land council present evidence of who the traditional owners are — not that the evidence be true.” Ever since the stupid decision to give a murder corporation like the [...]
Oppose Garrett’s sell out — leave uranium in the ground Sunday, July 19, 2009 – 10:00 By Leslie Richmond He occupied a (somewhat self-appointed) position as a hero of Australia’s environment and Indigenous rights movements for decades. Yet these days, former Midnight Oil frontman and current ALP environment minister Peter Garrett works [...]
Up, Up And Away: How Money Power Works Down Under By John Pilger March 22, 2012 “Information Clearing House” — One of my first jobs as a junior reporter was to meet flights bringing famous people to Australia. Growing up in a country far from everywhere (except, as my father would [...]
dapd A German soldier watches a helicopter land in Afghanistan in Oct. 2011. It has to be a tragic and sad moment when a corrupt leader starts talking some sense about the effect of imposing democracy on an invaded country. There seems little doubt that Karzai and his family are very closely associated with the [...]
Julian Assange is on bail awaiting a UK court decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden [Reuters] Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, plans to run for the Australian senate in elections next year, despite being under virtual house arrest in the UK and facing extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations, according to the [...]
Australia‘s diplomatic relations with China – Fact sheet 247 Australia has a long history of contact with China, but formal relations between the two countries only consolidated more recently. The first Chinese Consul-General to Australia arrived in Melbourne in 1909, but it wasn’t until 1921 that Australia established representation in [...]
Australian Govt Votes to Make Aboriginal Land Nuclear Dumping Ground The Australian government has passed legislation today that allows nuclear waste to be stored at a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, a decision Aboriginal groups and environmentalists have vowed to fight. The Australian government has passed legislation today that allows [...]
Following the shooting of Afghans by the US trained killer soldier there has been some ridiculously limp and very tame statement form an acting Minister in the racist Gillard led Labor Party that manages to rule with the assistance of some independent loonies and a Labor member in deep trouble [...]
Julia Gillard’s rise marks the triumph of machine politics over feminism 8 March 2012 In 1963, a senior Australian government official, A.R. Taysom, deliberated on the wisdom of deploying women as trade representatives. “Such an appointee would not stay young and attractive forever [because] a spinster lady can, and very often [...]
Remember that China fills a curious role in Australian politics. As a country with a long history of racism particularly directed at the Chinese, Australia is trying to play on both sides of the net. On the one hand we are trying to say they as [...]
Most attention has focussed on China’s first aircraft carrier, the former Soviet ship the Varyag. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images What is China doing that is different to what the US and others have been doing for a few centuries? The answer is nothing. Once you encircles a country and place all manner of war items around [...]
The Australian dollar fell to a six-week low. Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty Images The global financial crisis has been blamed by Australia‘s government for helping to drive a sharp slowdown in economic growth at the end of an otherwise strong year. GDP grew just half as fast as expected in the final quarter of 2011, rising 0.4%, [...]
by Stuart Rees ABC – The Drum 6 March 2012 In the Khan Younis area of southern Gaza, the Qdeh family’s modest rabbit farm is one of several Australian trade union humanitarian aid (Apheda) projects which is bolstering food security for poor families. On a Spring evening in April 2011, Najah Qdeh and [...]
It seems that the present situation regarding Iran and the US and Israel is a question of two differing views about an armed Iran. Iran has been armed for some time. Israel is armed to the eyeballs with nuclear capacity hat they refuse to acknowledge. But there seems little doubt that thIsrael can deliver a nuclear [...]
Further evidence of secret US indictment of Julian Assange http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/mar2012/wiki-m01.shtml EXCERPT: “…The Stratfor emails undoubtedly reflect sentiments inside the Obama administration to exact revenge on Assange and destroy WikiLeaks for having exposed US war crimes all over the globe…. It is clear that Australian authorities, acting on the [...]
. “Indicting Assange represents a dramatic assault on the First Amendment, journalists and the public right to know.” (Photo: AP) The email was from Fred Burton, Stratfor’s vice-president for counterterrorism and corporate security, and former deputy chief of the Department of State’s counterterrorism division for the Diplomatic Security [...]
In a way the following article deals with a lot of matters that concern not just the US. The central theme is expressed as an “image problem”. Unfortunately the US and other lappdog toadies like Australia share the same problem. The real question is whether it can be so simply classified as [...]
Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are providing a masterclass in how to alienate voters. Photograph: Daniel Munoz/REUTERS Echoes of UK politics in showdown between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard John Major’s ‘put up or shut up’ challenge to Tory right and wars between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown playing out in Australia Tony Blair has been [...]
In the book “Walking With The Comrades by the exceptional Indian activist and writer Arundhati Roy you are given an outstanding analysis of Indian life, politics and culture as only she can write. There is so much to recommend this book that any description is too much like those previews that virtually tell [...]
George Orwell (Eric Blair) was a towering figure when there was a drastic shortage of people that could be relied on, but that is probably a universal position. However, a close reading of most of what he said was full of very accurate predictions, from purely political matters to saying that people would [...]
If you are feeling bored try looking at the Australian political non event happening now between the present unelected PM and a former PM. It seems that the unelected one has called the former PM to task and a ballot to decide who captains a sinking boat will happen next Monday. It seems that the rats [...]
If you really are interested in a feather fight between two non entities keep tuned to Australian events. In the continuing saga a former PM has resorted to confrontation with the unelected present PM. Gillard or Joolya as she should be known is once again called on to get her loyal [...]
