New South Wales

Sydney events: John Pilger's documentary The Secret Country + Appin Massacre Memorial Ceremony

Sydney and NSW Aboriginal rights events for your diary

Click on the links for details of the events ...

Event: Mon 8 April 2013: Chippendale, Sydney, NSW
Meaningful Movies:
The Secret Country - The First Australians Fight Back
"Amnesty NSW and the Demand Dignity Network
invite you to a free screening of John Pilger’s
seminal documentary, The Secret Country-
The First Australians Fight Back. Examining the
history of the persecution of Indigenous Australians,
this 1985 film explores issues that are still
pertinent to current dialogue surrounding

Militancy and collaboration at the USyd Strike

Tuesday March 26 marked the begining of a 48 hour strike at Sydney university. The strike was called by the NTEU with CPSU support as a continuation of the struggle against the uni administrations new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement, intended to undercut staff conditions, increase casualisation, micromanagement and surveillance under the familiar guise of "flexibility". In the early hours of March 26, some anarchists once again broke into the City rd Catholic college (or chapel of the Insurrection) and again dropped a massive banner reading
“WE ARE THE UNI WE CAN SHUT IT DOWN

Keywords: 

WGAR News: "Legal action launched today to quash decision to imprison children in adult prison"

Newsletter date: 4 April 2013

Contents:

* The Stringer: Legal action launched today to quash decision to imprison children in adult prison
* Tracker: Legal bid to get WA kids out of adult jail
* Background to Aboriginal imprisonment and Deaths in Custody

* Let's Talk's Tiga Bayles interviews Gary Foley
* NITV: Northern NSW clans create 'Murrawarri Republic'
* Sovereign Union: A fight against paying rates on ancient homelands
* Background to the Aboriginal sovereignty movement and the Aboriginal tent embassies

* 3CR Community Radio: Earth Matters

Tasmania feels the autumn heat breaking March temperature records

Tasmania, that small island state of Australia that protrudes into the Southern Ocean, has recorded it's hottest March on record in over 100 years of temperature record keeping.

The mean March temperature across the state was 15.7C, breaking the 1974 record by 0.3 degrees and 2.2 °C above normal. The Bureau of Meteorology said in a statement "The state average maximum temperature was a March record of 21.0 (2.9 °C above normal and 0.9 °C above the previous record from 1974), and minimum temperatures were the 3rd-warmest for March at 10.3 °C (1.6 °C above normal)."

Cuts to single parent payments lead to hardship

Courtesy of The Stringer - http://thestringer.com.au/cuts-to-single-parent-payments-lead-to-hardshi...
Gerry Georgatos - There are 630,000 Australian lone parent families with dependents – 84 per cent are single mothers and 16 per cent are single fathers. 54 per cent of these single parents have a youngest child less than nine years of age. Of the parents with a child less than 9 years of age 59 per cent were in some form of employment end of June 2011 according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (2011).

Promotion: 

Aborigines declare themselves an independent republic

The Murrawarri flag

The brown and blue represent mother earth, the sky where Murrawarri spirits wait until their return on the falling star, water and the people, the white star represents the return of the Ancestors’ spirits on which they return to earth and the eight points on the star represents the eight clan groups of the Murrawarri Nation and the future provinces that will make up the Murrawarri Republic.

Kevin Trenbeth on the 2011 sea level bump and Australia's wettest 2 year period

Did you know that during 2011 sea level rise went into reverse and lost 5mm from the global oceans? No? How about that since then, much to the chagrin of climate deniers, sea level rise has accelerated from 3.18mm per year - the rate from 1993 to 2010 - to increase to 10mm per year over the last two years. This acceleration more than makes up for the pothole. The primary cause of this sea level 'speed bump' was the back to back La Nina which moved a phenomenal amount of water from the global oceans to the land. The water has since been making its way back into the world's oceans.

The question arises, does this explain the 10mm per year increase in sea level rise over the last 2 years? Is ocean thermal expansion or ice sheet melting perhaps contributing more? This may also be the start to an exponential sea level rise which NASA climatologist James Hansen has argued is a possibility. Rob Painting on Skeptical Science says that there is no evidence yet to suggest that ice loss from Greenland or Antarctica has added to the speed bump in any significant manner. We will have to wait and see what the impact of future El Nino or La Nina (ENSO) will be on sea level rise, and keep watching the rate of mass loss from the ice sheets.

The Stringer weekly newsletter - March 30

Welcome to The Stringer’s weekly newsletter

The Stringer went live February 20 - http://thestringer.com.au/
Some of our stories from the last week include:

Australia’s pathway to poverty – bridging visas

March 30, 2013
The Australian Government’s hard on refugees policy is creating an underclass of people – many condemned to an itinerant lifestyle and many condemned to living on the streets.

According to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship since November 25, 2011, 12,765 people have been released from the detention centres and into community on bridging visas.

WGAR News: Jagath Dheerasekara: Manuwangku, Under the Nuclear Cloud: burn magazine

Newsletter date: 31 March 2013

Contents:

* burn magazine: Jagath Dheerasekara: Manuwangku, Under the Nuclear Cloud
* Canberra opening of 'Manuwangku - Under the Nuclear Cloud': Sun 7 April 2013
* Background to the proposed Muckaty nuclear waste dump

* Helen Musa, Canberra CityNews: Exhibition honours true believer
* Canberra opening of 'I Do Have a Belief' - Kevin Gilbert (1933-1993) Art Retrospective: Sat 6 April 2013
* Sovereign Union: The Murrawarri Republic declaration
* NITV News: Aboriginal activists meet Black Power founders