Liberation through acquisition

Mon 20 May 2013
By Anonymous

By Gary Foley writing in The Tracker

Melbourne was recently privileged to receive a visit from Queensland’s most famous Lutheran since peanut farming Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson. I refer, of course, to the corpulent and verbose Aboriginal Man of the Moment- Mr Noel Pearson.

Scientists condemn Queensland land clearing changes, warn of biodiversity loss

Tue 14 May 2013
By takver

Leading Queensland environmental scientists are up in arms over changes to Queensland's Vegetation Management Act and the Water Act which will enhance land clearing and destruction of native vegetation important for preserving biodiversity values, ecological services such as clean water and flood mitigation, and carbon sink potential.

Related: Leaked doc says Newman Government opening up logging destruction in Queensland native forests | Biodiversity decline from climate change affects huge range of common species

Aussie coal industry "ripe for financial implosion"

Mon 13 May 2013
By radioecoshock

Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock interviews John Connor, Exec. Dir. of the Climate Institute in Sydney. Their new report shows the Australian coal industry can only burn a fraction of their reserves before the climate spins out of control. The big coal companies are over-valued, based on reserves that are "unburnable" - a big risk for the Australian economy. Listen to/download this 19 minute interview here: http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/climate2013/ES_JConnor_LoFi.mp3

Related articles: Coal ship boarded by Greenpeace activists off the Great Barrier Reef | Philippine climate activists expose risks of dirty coal | Australian based company Ambre Energy pushing coal export in Oregon | Coal dust and climate change: Newcastle residents march against proposed T4 coal loader | Time to cease expansion of coal to reduce climate change says Ad

South Africa, 20 years after Apartheid, doing better than Australia

Sat 11 May 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

by Gerry Georgatos - May 11th, 2013
Australia incarcerates its Aboriginal youth at the world’s highest rates, it imprisons one in 14 Western Australian Aboriginal adult males and it removes one in 14 children from Western Australian Aboriginal families into the care of the State, and for Aboriginal peoples the whole of the Northern Territory is a prison built brick by brick by the Commonwealth, and this prison is loosely known as the ‘Intervention’.

Since 1992, the rate of Aboriginal incarceration in Australia has grown 14 times faster than that of non-Aboriginal incarceration.

Fracking the Canning Basin

Thu 09 May 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos - Western Australia’s Canning Basin (photo abc.net.au) will soon be talked about as the next resources mining frontier. The James Price Point $40 billion gas hub proposal for all intents and purposes has been dumped but the State’s Premier, Colin Barnett, will pitch the extraction of natural gas from the Canning Basin as the way to go in the pursuit of State revenue. Most of the gas will be exported.

The shale gas deposits of the Canning Basin are among the richest in the world.

Australia’s Aboriginal children detained at the world’s highest rates

Thu 02 May 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

By Gerry Georgatos - courtesy of The Stringer - http://thestringer.com.au/

In the United States, the Annie Casey Foundation’s report ‘No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration,’ has an assembly of juvenile crime statistics that evidence why locking up children does not work. The United States has the highest documented incarceration rates of adults and children than any other nation.

Don’t sign your sovereign rights away, Aboriginal leader warns

Thu 02 May 2013
By Anonymous

A prominent Aboriginal leader warns Aboriginal and Torres Strait people against signing Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUA), saying they cede their sovereignty for a few crumbs if they do. Michael Ghillar Anderson writes in a media release from Germany that state and Territory governments are trying to coerce Aboriginal peoples into signing ILUAs. “This is an act of bastardry on the governments’ part as they are NOT informing our peoples of their deceitful intent.

A poor man’s treaty: the ‘con’ in constitutional reform

Sun 28 Apr 2013
By Anonymous

CONSTITUTIONAL recognition for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples seems to have captured the imagination of many white Australians, writes CHRIS GRAHAM. But are the motives really all pure?

Immigration slams Manus asylum centre

Sun 21 Apr 2013
By Anonymous

You know something isn’t right when even the Australian Immigration Department is criticising immigration policy.

The Immigration Department's assessment of its own detention centre this past week has found what we've known all along - the conditions in the Manus Island asylum seeker processing centre are inhumane.1

It's time to close Manus for good.

First uranium mine in WA may mean 40 uranium mines by 2030

Thu 04 Apr 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

Courtesy of The Stringer - http://thestringer.com.au/first-uranium-mine-in-wa-may-mean-40-uranium-m...
Western Australia will be exporting uranium within two years after the Federal Government granted environmental approval to Toro Energy’s Wiluna project – To many people this was unexpected, including to Wiluna’s Aboriginal peoples and to anti-uranium mining and anti-nuclear advocates nationwide.