Last ditch Aboriginal effort to block UN Security Council seat

Wed 17 Oct 2012
By Anonymous

17 October 12 - - An Aboriginal sovereignty movement is making a last ditch effort to stop Australia getting a seat on the UN Security Council, where voting begins tomorrow (Thursday).

Michael Ghillar Anderson, Chair, Interim National Unity Government, Sovereign Union of First Nations and Peoples in Australia and Leader of the Euahlayi Nation, has sent the letter below to all UN Ambassadors in New York.

Understanding Brian Butler and Lateral Love

Fri 05 Oct 2012
By Gerry Georgatos

William Brian Butler was born 13th September 1938 at the Bagot Detention Centre in Darwin, Northern Territory

My mother Emily Anne was born Annie Lawrie and my grandmother Eliza Gordon was born Lady Wilson and are of the Aranda tribe and my grandfather Toby is of the Luritja tribe from the Uluru and Areyonga areas.

My tribal name is Jangala.

Nana Eliza Gordon and her sister Nana Mabel Smith, my mother Emily Ann Gordon and her sister, my auntie Mavis Webb were taken from their homeland at Altunga east of Alice Springs in central Australia.

CLIMATE of DEATH - justice denied means more will die

Sat 29 Sep 2012
By Gerry Georgatos

CLIMATE of DEATH - justice denied means more will die, by Gerry Georgatos (courtesy of the National Indigenous Times - nit.com.au)

"We have to get rid of racist cops. I don't want to dwell on the past but I have grown up bitter," said Nyungar Elder Ben Taylor. Mr Taylor is on the mark when he says, "They have been killing our people for two hundred years."

Aboriginal sovereignty movement asks UN to deny Australia a seat on the Security Council

Fri 28 Sep 2012
By Anonymous

Goodooga, northwest NSW, 28 September 2012 -- An Aboriginal sovereignty movement is asking the United Nations to deny Australia the seat on the Security Council it is seeking.

Below are letters sent to all the ambassadors to the United Nations, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon and Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

Coral reefs being pushed to extinction by global warming

Sun 23 Sep 2012
By takver

Increasing sea surface temperatures are imperilling coral reef ecosystems say Australian marine and climate scientists. A new scientific paper reveals that atmospheric warming of 2 degrees celsius is too much for nearly all the world's coral reef ecosystems, including the Great Barrier Reef. The scientists argue that to preserve greater than 10 per cent of coral reefs worldwide would require limiting global warming to below 1.5 °C. This equates to the goal of reducing carbon in the atmosphere to 350ppm, rather than a 2 degree rise or 450ppm that the UN Framwework Convention on Climate Change has adopted as the safe limit at several meetings.

Atmospheric concentration of CO2 currently stands at 392.41ppm. With current pledged reduction in emissions we are heading for 4.4 °C of warming by the end of the century according to the Climate Scoreboard.

Related: The True Cost of Australia's Coal Boom | Greenpeace report: Boom Goes the Reef: Australia's coal export boom and the industrialisation of the Great Barrier Reef (PDF) | The Conversation: - Climate change guardrail too hot for coral reefs?

Removing children is never the answer – we have a national disaster and national shame ongoing

Sat 22 Sep 2012
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos
(Photo - October 2008 during a visit to Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Canberra)

Radiation exposure looming for Wiluna

Sat 22 Sep 2012
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos - courtesy National Indigenous Times - nit.com.au
"They are going to kill our people, some will die quickly, some by a thousand cuts," said Wiluna Elder Glen Cooke.

"We don't want Maralinga all over again where our people will be hurt and die sick and young, and for decades the truth hidden."

"If they bring uranium out of the ground at Wiluna and radiation to our people many of our young children today will be tomorrow's Yami Lesters."

South Australian parliament in a middle of the night ram raid smashes Aboriginal rights

Sat 22 Sep 2012
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos - courtesy National Indigenous Times - nit.com.au
“The South Australian Lower and Upper Houses snuck through a Bill to steal away Indigenous rights in winding back the clock two decades. It was racism as Indigenous people were tossed aside,” said SA Indigenous Association president and Nunga Elder, Alison Thorne.

The SA Parliament stunned its Aboriginal peoples by voting to axe the right of Aboriginal peoples – Native Title holders and claimants – to negotiate over oil and gas activities on their Traditional Lands.

Barnett's Browse Basin Bill is a Pandora's Box - Walmandan Tent Embassy continues

Sat 22 Sep 2012
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos - courtesy National Indigenous Times - nit.com.au - photo courtesy Rod Hartvigsen/Broome
The $40 billion Browse Basin gas hub project at James Price Point (Walmandan) Is teetering but not if Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett will have anything to do with it. Premier Barnett, who also holds the portfolio of State Development, has introduced into Parliament the ‘Browse (Land) Agreement Bill 2012’, presumably to confine offshore gas processing to the single site on the Kimberley coast.

With constitutional change deferred, it’s time to negotiate a treaty

Fri 21 Sep 2012
By Anonymous

Goodooga, northwest NSW, 21 September 2012 - - Deferment of constitutional change means politicians of all stripes and their “negative Aboriginal collaborators” must now face the truth and back calls for negotiating a treaty, writes sovereignty campaigner, Michael Ghillar Anderson.

He sees an opportunity “to focus on the real issues and not band-aid programs and objectives that serve to soothe rather than deal with the hard matters that Australia has to face up to”.