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The burning issue of deaths in custody - Aboriginal people die 5 times the rate of Apartheid South Africa

PHOTO: Roebourne Prison inmates - for crimes like ‘absconding’ from ‘blackbirding’ - slavery. Those who resisted strongly were sent to Wadjemup (Rottnest Island) and Fremantle Prison - most never to return. The word they used for policeman was “Marndamarangga” and means “chainhand” and is still used today. (Photo: Battye Library, WA)

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Queensland 2013 bigwet floods, tornados and climate change

Ex-tropical cyclone Oswald has left a trail of damage and destruction from it's origins in the Gulf of Carpentaria to crossing Cape York and working it's way down the Queensland Coast. The storms brought destructive winds, tornados, rough seas, storm surge and torrential rain, followed by flooding. Quite a few rain records were broken for 24 and 48 hour periods in Rockhampton, Gladstone and Bundaberg with some rain gauges recording well over one metre of rain in 48 hours. Now flood level records are being broken for many river basins and towns like Bunderberg and Gympie.

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Michael Anderson condemns Peris-Kneebone “steamrolling”

Dubbo, central NSW, 23 January 2013 – A prominent Aboriginal sovereignty campaigner has condemned Prime Minister Gillard’s choice of former athlete, Nova Peris-Kneebone, for the Northern Territory Senate seat.

“I do not have confidence in her ability to stand up for and fight the hard fight that is coming our way,” writes Michael Ghillar Anderson in a media release. “Ms Peris-Kneebone is only being used as a public relations exercise for Labor. After all, what role has Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone played in fighting the hard political fights that we are currently involved in? Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone has not been involved in major political processes, rallies or otherwise. She has been missing in political action all the time,” Mr Anderson writes.

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Goolarabooloo law bosses lift the ante in battle with Woodside over gas hub

Gerry Georgatos - Story
Damien Kelly - Photo - Goolarabooloo Law Bosses, Phillip Roe and Richard Hunter with Eric Hunter in traditional pelican head dress - the pelican is the head dress of their particular Goolarabooloo group and symbolic of Walmandan (James Price Point) country.

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Lobby restaurant incident – January 26, 2012 – Will Prime Minister Gillard finally admit the truth and apologise?

Gerry Georgatos - On the 26th of January last year headlines rocketed around the world out of Canberra from the Lobby restaurant incident where more than 200 protestors descended from the nearby 40th Aboriginal Tent Embassy celebrations and vigil. The Prime Minister’s Office, despite its public denials, tried to stage manage a confrontation between Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott and some of Aboriginal Tent Embassy’s high profile figures, including legendary co-founder of the Embassy, Michael Anderson.

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200 Aboriginal Maralinga victims denied compensation

Gerry Georgatos
Maralinga’s and Emu Field’s long suffering Aboriginal victims of the British atomic tests have been told by lawyers that a class action for compensation would fail and that the fight in the courts is over because apparently it is impossible to adequately prove radiation from the atomic blasts specifically caused their illnesses and the premature deaths. Maralinga victim Yami Lester said this is “rubbish” and that his blindness was caused by nothing else other than the fallout from the blasts. He was a young child at the time.

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Tour Down Under sponsor Santos told 'on ya bike' over CSG in the Pilliga

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

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Time to cease expansion of coal to reduce climate change says Ad

Prominent scientists and environmental organisations have published a full page ad in Monday's Australian Financial Review calling for the cessation of the expansion of coal exports from Australia.

Background: Read Melbourne University Associate Professor Peter Christoff's article on Why Australia must stop exporting coal. Or watch this 2010 lecture by Dr. Guy Pearse from the University of Queensland on Queensland's coal addiction | Greens Leader says 'Look at the damage to humanity caused by people who bankroll coalmines' | Australian Heatwave part of global warming trend says IPCC head Pachauri

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Bushfires strike with extreme heatwave blanketing most of Australia

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

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Brutal gang-rape in India is a call to everyone, worldwide, to ensure changes

Gerry Georgatos - Inhumanity knows no bounds just as equal to humanity's limitlessness. Recently, in Pakistan a fourteen year old school girl was shot the in head by the Taliban for speaking up for the right of young girls to an education. They stopped the school bus bringing home the children and shot the young Malala. On March 31 a Ukranian teenager died after a brutal gang rape. On December 16 the ugliest inhumanity was broadcast to the whole world when a 23 year old physiotherapy intern was gang raped on a bus in Delhi.

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