Sydney IMC

Melbourne 22 May 2013: The Australian government has separated 14 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers, 4 men, 3 women and 6 children (including a 6 month old baby), who arrived by boat and were detained in a remote immigration detention centre in Christmas Island from other asylum seekers and have informed them that:

a/ They are not going to be allowed to make an application for asylum.
b/. They are going to be forcibly deported to Sri Lanka.

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.

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.

On Sunday around 300 residents rallied in Campbelltown in western Sydney and called on the NSW state government and Federal Government to protect drinking water and drinking water catchments, and for local communities to protect their farmland and water resources from Coal seam gas (CSG) development. Jess Moore from Stop CSG Illawarra spoke passionately and outlined the campaign to stop coal seam gas mining in Sydney's water catchments and the threat it poses to the millions of people who live in greater Sydney area. Here is her speech with transcription.

Following the 2013 Mardi gras parade (the corporate gaystream shadow of a radical and militant queer protest in 1978) a video was released online that showed a young shirtless man being choked by a police officer, then slammed headfirst into the pavement while handcuffed.

Outrage quickly spread across the Queer community and far beyond. Within two days, Community Action Against Homophobia (CAAH) called for a demonstration against police brutality on Friday 8th of March. The rally was to gather at 6pm Taylor square, then to march to Surrey Hills cop shop then back.

"Allowing BHP to undermine our drinking water supply defies common sense and breaches a personal commitment by Premier O'Farrell to prevent mining in drinking water catchments," Nature Conservation Council of NSW Chief Executive Officer Pepe Clarke declared on Tuesday with the announcement that approval had been given to BHP Billiton's Mount Kembla Dendrobium coal mine to extend under part of Sydney's water catchment.

On Monday 11 February the New South Wales State Government Department of Planning and Infrastructure gave approval to BHP Billiton's Mount Kembla Dendrobium Area 3B long wall mine extension plan. This involves several underground excavations directly under Sydney's Woronora water catchments. The approval was strongly criticised by conservationists including Total Enviropnment Centre director Jeff Angel, and the NSW Conservation Council Pepe Clark who accused the Premier Barrie O'Farrell of breaking a key pre-election promise of not to mine in Sydney's catchments.

Related: Longwall mining, subsidence and damage to Sydney waterways and wetlands | Aboriginal Heritage: Water - Everyone's Future

The Santos sponsored Tour Down Under was visited today by anti-CSG activists from the Pilliga Forest near Gunnedah in New South Wales. The protesters on bicycles took their protest to Santos Head Office in Adelaide today. Santos is the major sponsor of the Tour Down Under, so activists such as @thepilligamouse and several koalas hoped on their bikes to ride around Adelaide this morning to protest Santos’s destructive and toxic coal seam gas operations in Eastern Australia’s largest remaining temperate woodland and surrounding farmlands. They were joined by NSW politician and grazier David Quince.

Related: Total Fire Ban exemption for Santos CSG plant riles Pilliga residents

Jan 8: Climate Change: Records tumble in extreme heatwave as temperature scale adjusted upwards

Jan 8: Julia Gillard links intensity of bushfires with climate change as NSW survives catastrophic fire conditions

Jan 5: Tasmanian Bushfires catastrophic but no confirmed loss of life

Jan 4: Hobart recorded it's highest recorded minimum temperature Thursday night and highest recorded daytime temperature on Friday. Bushfires are currently raging in Tasmania destroying houses and forcing evacuations (see below).

Jan 3: Elevated temperatures in an extreme heatwave are occuring across a brought sweep of Australia, with the heatwave expected to last at least a week. It is very unusual that a heat wave covers such a large area of the continent at one time, according to Karl Braganza, manager of climate monitoring at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Australia's weather has switched to hot and dry after one of the wettest two year periods in Australia's history influenced by an extremely strong La Nina event.

Related: Scientists outline health limits of heat stress with Climate Change (May 2010) | Flooding rains now burning plains - Bushfire risk and climate change (Oct 2011) | Logging of Victorian mountain ash forests increases bushfire risk (Oct 2011) | Intact native Forests mitigate bushfire in a warming climate (Nov 2011) | CSIRO - Climate change impacts on fire weather

Published at Indymedia courtesy of the National Indigenous Times (12.12.2012) - Photo courtesy of the National Indigenous Times, by Geoff Bagnall; January 26, Lobby Restaurant

JOIN US IN SAVING THE KOORI CENTRE

The Koori Centre puts their collective view.

The Koori Centre is a space in the University of Sydney on the ground floor of the Old Teachers' College that allows Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to gather in a community environment to study together.

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.

A banner drop at a construction site for a new coal loader terminal at the Port of Newcastle in the New South Wales Hunter Valley ended when police instructed the 60 metre crane be lowered to the ground. The Protestors say they were not given warning of this action and alledged it imperiled their lives.

“We are dismayed with the actions of police here today.” said spokesperson Steve Phillips. “We conducted a peaceful protest, with trained and experience climbers, and safety as our priority. NSW Police responded with gross negligence and dereliction of duty, and placed two lives at risk. Our climbers were not even warned before the crane was lowered.”

Related: Climate activists do banner drops in Boggabri and Melbourne against coal rush | Climate Citizen: Climate change causing increase in extreme weather in South Pacific | Not enough water: food production, carbon sequestration and climate change | Arctic sea ice Extent drops to lowest on record and still shrinking

Sydney Stop the War Coalition in Australia extends its solidarity the Philippines Stop the War Coalition and the other groups demanding that your country's Senate not to ratify the Republic of the Philippines-Australia Status of the Visiting Forces Agreement.

This is a military agreement, developed in secrecy by the governments and military chief of both our governments, that will allow the deployment of Australian military forces on Philippines territory for "combined training, exercises, or other activities mutually approved by the Parties".

This military deal is an attack on the peace, freedom and independence of the Filipino people, and the other peoples in Asia.

We understand that under this agreement, the Philippines cannot exercise primary jurisdiction over visiting Australian military personnel accused of a crime or other breach of the law if the Australian military claims that the action concerned was carried out in performance of an "official duty".
Related: Protests hit Phillipines-Australia Military Deal

On Jun 06, 2012 former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser delivered the 2012 Whitlam Oration to the Whitlam Institute in Sydney. Despite the chasm of differences and political ambitions of Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam they are both a far cry from the bottom of the barrel politics and personal ambitions of some our nation's contemporary crop of most prominent politicians.