GLW issue number 887

Remand centre rapper gets released

Face the Fire Jimblah Obese Records Buy now on iTunes www.myspace.com/jimblah01 If James Alberts, better known as Adelaide-based rapper Jimblah, hadn't discovered hip hop, he could well have ended up serving time in prison. Instead, he now serves prisoners in prison, by teaching them. "In my early teens, I just wanted a place to fit and I looked up to the older lads who were [committing crimes]," Alberts, a 27-year-old Larrakia man, tells Green Left Weekly.

Film details Britain's forced child migrant scandal

Oranges & Sunshine Written by Rona Munro, directed by Jim Loach Starring Emily Watson, Hugo Weaving & David Wenham Showing now in selected cinemas Oranges and Sunshine is a film adaptation of the book Empty Cradles, written by Margaret Humphries. Humphries was a Nottingham part-time social worker (played by Emily Watson), who investigated the forced relocation of British children to Australia from British orphanages.

Australian News

Israel: Gaza flotilla activists released after groundbreaking court win

Two Australian Palestine solidarity activists, former NSW Greens MP Sylvia Hale and Jews Against the Occupation activist Vivienne Porzsolt, were released from immigration detention by an Israeli court on July 13. The court ordered they not be deported. The judge ruled that while they had not broken any rules, they had a limited time to apply to the Israeli Defence Force to visit Bethlehem and Ramallah in the West Bank. The pair had told immigration on entry to Israel that they wanted to visit Palestine.

Flotilla activist: ‘The people of Gaza just want their freedom’

Michael Coleman is keen to rejoin a Gaza Freedom Flotilla at any time (although his parents would say something different). The youth worker from Sydney has just returned from taking part of the international protest against Israel’s illegal siege on Gaza. Coleman narrowly avoided a jail term for trying to help a Canadian boat — the Tahrir — leave a port on the Greek island of Crete as part of the Freedom Flotilla 2. He is very proud to have been part of an international protest which has again put the spot light back on to Israel.

Further Australian News

International News

Mark Steel: Watching Murdoch crisis so much fun

Oh this is such fun. And every few hours it gets better, but always with an announcement there’s “still worse to come”, leaving us struggling to imagine what they might have done that’s worse. Presumably by tomorrow it will turn out they planted a bug in Heather Mills’s false leg and hacked into Stephen Hawking’s voicebox. The only thing that tarnishes it slightly is now everyone hates Murdoch. It’s like when you follow an obscure band and they become famous.

WikiLeaks vs News Ltd: Jail Murdoch, not Assange

When it comes to comparing the cases of two publishers of secret information — WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange and billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch — the hypocrisy from politicians and media is huge. The key difference between the two is obvious — one seeks to challenge the establishment, the other exerts huge control over it. See also: Murdoch scandal: Hypocritical warmongers exposed Watching Murdoch crisis so much fun

Further International News

Comment and Analysis

Gillard’s carbon price: not a serious response

Action on climate change is one of the most important issues of all. But the Gillard government’s carbon price plan is not a serious response, grounded in the climate science. The biggest problem is that it aims to take ten years to cut Australia’s emissions by just 5% (based on 2000 levels). This is nowhere near enough. It’s so far from enough that even if it succeeds, the world will still be pushed into an unstable, dangerous climate system. See also: Carbon price: what’s in it for renewables?

Carbon price: what’s in it for renewables?

Climate campaigners have been understandably happy about the funding bodies for renewable energy contained in the carbon price package. It seems that these measures are largely in place because of strong campaigning by the grassroots climate movement and the Greens MPs in negotiations.

Further Comment and Analysis

Letters

Letters to the editor

Carbon price not effective It is unbecoming for the Greens and major environmental organisations to be supporting the Gillard government’s carbon price, which promises to be so palpably ineffective in reducing Australian emissions. Even treasury modelling indicates that it will be over a decade before Australian emissions begin to fall, whereas climate science indicates that we need big reductions beginning now.

Cultural Dissent

Memoir of meeting resistance fighter

Finding Santana By Jill Jolliffe Wakefield Press, 2010 177 pages, $24.95 (pb) Jill Jolliffe's encounter with the Komodo Dragon, a carnivorous, aggressive, pre-historic lizard, was "hair-raising". But even more threatening were the murderous agents from the Indonesian secret police, with their de facto uniform of "cropped hair, trim moustache, Rolex watch and Ray-Ban sunglasses".

Film details Britain's forced child migrant scandal

Further Cultural Dissent

Remand centre rapper gets released

We kid you not

US right-winger: Gay bullying 'healthy peer pressure' “Anti-gay bullying is not bullying at all; in fact, it is 'peer pressure and is healthy.' That’s according to Rich Swier, an activist with the Tea Party Nation. “Swier was responding to a report from a Florida group that showed that '77% of all bullying victims are picked on due to sexual orientation, gender identity, or the perception of either.' The report also pointed out that 'LGBT youth are up to five times more likely to commit suicide than their straight counterparts.'

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