Newswire

Newsletter date: 23 December 2013

WGAR events postings for each State and Territory: http://indymedia.org.au/2013/01/03/about-wgar-news-wgar-events-postings

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

Events: various times during 2014: various locations around Australia
SNAICC Training Workshops will be held Nationally in 2014 -
Through Young Black Eyes & Working and Walking Together
SNAICC: Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care
Expressions of interest forms and flyers are available from the SNAICC training page:

November 2013 – Honduras coup (and now electoral fraud) update

On 24/11/13, the presidential election happened again in Honduras.

Twenty years ago models weighed six per cent less than the average woman, today they weigh 27 per cent less.
African-Americans are taught in schools that Jefferson was a great man, ignoring the fact that he owned 330 slaves and raped his female slaves.
The United States sells an average of $68 billion in weapons each year to middle eastern dictators and ‘kings’.
Since September 2001, terrorism has killed 4300 civilians, the war on terror has killed more than 2 million civilians.
Americans and Europeans throw away enough edible food to feed every starving person in Africa.

AUSTRALIA

Small Modular (Nuclear) Reactors (SMRs) for Australia ? ( Notice how they leave out that unpopular word”Nuclear” ). The Liberal Coalition government put SMRs on their Christmas wish list, while mouthing pieties about “no plans for nuclear”.

However. SMRs exist only as (already expensive) blueprints. The USA government has just given only modest funding to a University-linked research group, for SMRs, instead of funding big coprporations Westinghouse/Ameren, as the nuclear lobby had expected. And SMRs are not all that they’re cracked up to be.

Indefinite punishment for refugees. Thanks Kevin Rudd, Thanks Tony Abbott. What a disgrace.

Please read this message from Amnesty’s Graeme McGregor who has just finished a visit to the Manus Island detention centre:

While many journalists have been denied access, our Amnesty research team was let inside. Now for the first time we're able to reveal what life and conditions are like inside this secretive detention centre.

Newsletter date: 19 December 2013

Contents:

* SMH: Indigenous burning among ancient practices being studied to save eco-systems

* Anna Salleh, ABC Science: Bead currency used in Australia's first export industry

* Benedict Scambary, CAEPR: My Country, Mine Country: Indigenous People, Mining and Development Contestation in Remote Australia

* Tim Kroenert, Eureka Street: Coalition stirs the ghost of Jimmie Blacksmith [99-year leases]
* WGAR News: "Statement by Rev. Dr Djiniyini Gondarra OAM regarding MOUs on township 99 year leases" (11 Nov 13)

Argentina is expected to appeal to the US Supreme Court by mid-February in response to a US 2nd Circuit Court ruling ordering the country to pay $1.33 billion to predatory hedge funds. The precedent the case sets will hurt poor countries in financial distress and could allow a small group of hedge funds to target assets that benefit vulnerable populations. At the same time, debt holders who restructured their debt with Argentina have hired lawyers to help negotiate the dispute between holdout hedge funds and Argentina.

Newsletter date: 18 December 2013

Contents:

* 3CR Community Radio: Radioactive Show: Maralinga - Muckaty - Medicine
[Featuring Aunty Sue Coleman-Haseldine, Barb Shaw, Penny Phillips, Isobel Phillips & Michael Fonda]
* Background to Justice for Aboriginal victims of Maralinga nuclear tests
* Background to the proposed Muckaty nuclear waste dump

* RTRFM: Understorey: Regulating the Nuclear Village
[Featuring Uncle Kevin Buzzacott, Uncle Glen Cooke, Kado Muir & Della Rae Morrison]

* Tracker: Federal govt suspends Ranger operations

Newsletter date: 17 December 2013

Contents:

* Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA) open letter: Tenth anniversary of TJ Hickey death
* Gerry Georgatos, The Stringer: French Government presents human rights laureate to the Indigenous Social Justice Association
* YouTube: French government recognises Indigenous human rights - NITV SBS

* Deaths In Custody Watch Commitee WA: Build Communities Not Prisons Campaign

* Aboriginal Legal Service of WA: ALSWA hopes report will lead to Aboriginal people being In Safe Custody