Stop the refoulement of Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers

Thu 23 May 2013
By Anonymous

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.

Liberation through acquisition

Mon 20 May 2013
By Anonymous

By Gary Foley writing in The Tracker

Melbourne was recently privileged to receive a visit from Queensland’s most famous Lutheran since peanut farming Premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson. I refer, of course, to the corpulent and verbose Aboriginal Man of the Moment- Mr Noel Pearson.

More independent Aboriginal states in the pipeline

Mon 20 May 2013
By Anonymous

Goodooga, 20 May 2013 - - Aborigines who have just met for two days in Brisbane are looking to launching their own independent states, as the Murrawarri people have just done in northwest NSW and southwest Queensland.
“Clearly the people are now asking the pertinent questions relating to a process of asserting their continuing sovereignty as individual nations,” writes Michael Ghillar Anderson, Convenor of the Sovereign Union of First Nations and Peoples in Australia in a media release.

Heading for cooler waters - Climate change impact of warming oceans on global fish stocks

Sun 19 May 2013
By takver

For the first time scientists have demonstrated the impact of climate change on ocean warming and sea surface temperatures affecting global fisheries stocks. Previous studies were limited to individual fisheries. The changes have been occurring clearly since the 1970s, the scientists say. The implications of this research raises the need for timely changes in fisheries management practices and adaptation plans for communities dependant on fishing, particularly climate vulnerable developing countries in the tropics.

"Given global fisheries contribute hugely to the world's economy and food security, this is a significant finding," said co-author Dr Reg Watson from the University of Tasmania's specialist Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies."We are no longer talking about future hypotheticals - we are talking about impacts on a global scale that we can already demonstrate."

Scientists condemn Queensland land clearing changes, warn of biodiversity loss

Tue 14 May 2013
By takver

Leading Queensland environmental scientists are up in arms over changes to Queensland's Vegetation Management Act and the Water Act which will enhance land clearing and destruction of native vegetation important for preserving biodiversity values, ecological services such as clean water and flood mitigation, and carbon sink potential.

Related: Leaked doc says Newman Government opening up logging destruction in Queensland native forests | Biodiversity decline from climate change affects huge range of common species

Aussie coal industry "ripe for financial implosion"

Mon 13 May 2013
By radioecoshock

Alex Smith of Radio Ecoshock interviews John Connor, Exec. Dir. of the Climate Institute in Sydney. Their new report shows the Australian coal industry can only burn a fraction of their reserves before the climate spins out of control. The big coal companies are over-valued, based on reserves that are "unburnable" - a big risk for the Australian economy. Listen to/download this 19 minute interview here: http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/climate2013/ES_JConnor_LoFi.mp3

Related articles: Coal ship boarded by Greenpeace activists off the Great Barrier Reef | Philippine climate activists expose risks of dirty coal | Australian based company Ambre Energy pushing coal export in Oregon | Coal dust and climate change: Newcastle residents march against proposed T4 coal loader | Time to cease expansion of coal to reduce climate change says Ad

South Africa, 20 years after Apartheid, doing better than Australia

Sat 11 May 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

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.

Fracking the Canning Basin

Thu 09 May 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos - Western Australia’s Canning Basin (photo abc.net.au) will soon be talked about as the next resources mining frontier. The James Price Point $40 billion gas hub proposal for all intents and purposes has been dumped but the State’s Premier, Colin Barnett, will pitch the extraction of natural gas from the Canning Basin as the way to go in the pursuit of State revenue. Most of the gas will be exported.

The shale gas deposits of the Canning Basin are among the richest in the world.

Australia’s Aboriginal children detained at the world’s highest rates

Thu 02 May 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

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.

Don’t sign your sovereign rights away, Aboriginal leader warns

Thu 02 May 2013
By Anonymous

A prominent Aboriginal leader warns Aboriginal and Torres Strait people against signing Indigenous Land Use Agreements (ILUA), saying they cede their sovereignty for a few crumbs if they do. Michael Ghillar Anderson writes in a media release from Germany that state and Territory governments are trying to coerce Aboriginal peoples into signing ILUAs. “This is an act of bastardry on the governments’ part as they are NOT informing our peoples of their deceitful intent.