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

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 28/09/2012 - 6:31am

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.

 

27 September 2012

Your Excellency

Re:  Opposition to Australia’s application for a temporary position on the UN Security Council

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Coral reefs being pushed to extinction by global warming

Submitted by takver on Sun, 23/09/2012 - 3:17pm

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?

Geography: 
Global/International
Queensland
Keywords: 
climate change
global warming
Great Barrier Reef
marine
coral bleaching

Radiation exposure looming for Wiluna

Submitted by Gerry Georgatos on Sat, 22/09/2012 - 12:03pm

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."

Geography: 
Perth
Western Australia
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South Australian parliament in a middle of the night ram raid smashes Aboriginal rights

Submitted by Gerry Georgatos on Sat, 22/09/2012 - 11:10am

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.

Geography: 
Adelaide
South Australia
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Barnett's Browse Basin Bill is a Pandora's Box - Walmandan Tent Embassy continues

Submitted by Gerry Georgatos on Sat, 22/09/2012 - 10:58am

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.

Geography: 
Perth
Western Australia
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With constitutional change deferred, it’s time to negotiate a treaty

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri, 21/09/2012 - 9:15am

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”.

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The Story of David & Goliath - The Yindjibarndi and the Fortescue Metals Group

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 16/09/2012 - 4:46pm

"2012's Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji verse the Vestey Corporation."

by Gerry Georgatos, National Indigenous Times West Australian reporter

PART 1 (Part 2 will feature in the next edition)
Courtesy of the National Indigenous Times - http://www.nit.com.au/opinion/1825-the-story-of-david-a-goliath-the-yind...

Geography: 
Perth
Australia
Western Australia
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Anthony Axtell's death indicts everyone

Submitted by Gerry Georgatos on Sun, 16/09/2012 - 4:10pm

Gerry Georgatos – National Indigenous Times reporter & PhD researcher Custodial Systems and Deaths in Custody

Anthony Axtell is dead - he is now another Australian prison custodial death statistic however the manner of his death indicts so much of what is wrong with the Australian prison system. Australia has one of the world's worst deaths in custody records.

Geography: 
Perth
Brisbane
Australia
Queensland
Western Australia
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Saving Walmandan and saving the whales – more important than gas and money

Submitted by Gerry Georgatos on Sat, 08/09/2012 - 7:10pm

Gerry Georgatos, courtesy of The National Indigenous Times - photo courtesy of Damian Kelly/Broome - nit.com.au - http://nit.com.au/opinion/1775-saving-walmandan-and-saving-the-whales--m...

Woodside Board directors and executive managers and Woodside's former venture partner of Chevron in the $40 billion Browse Basin LNG development proposal on Walmandan country were angry at the compulsory acquisition threats by West Australian Premier, Colin Barnett, a source within Woodside claimed.

Geography: 
Perth
Australia
Western Australia
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