Australia

The Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney released the statement below on August 15. * * * The Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS) has welcomed the release last week of The Land Holds Us, a report by Amnesty International. The report recommends the provision of government support and services for all Aboriginal Homelands and documents gross neglect and under-funding.
Boycott Israeli apartheid.

Fourteen Australian-based Palestine solidarity groups released the statement below on August 13.

The “free market” fanatics at the Productivity Commission have done their dirty job once again with their newly released Caring For Older Australians report. It would be more honestly titled Throw The Oldies To The Wolves because it follows vicious cuts to disabilities pensions.

For the last five days, Feli McHughes, Joel McHughes and Gregory Coffey from the Ngemba Billabong Restoration Project in Brewarrina, NSW, have been trying to hand over a $260,000 cheque to the head of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs.

Tracker magazine — Evidently there is progress in Northern Territory prescribed communities. The Prime Minister has visited and she says so. The mainstream media report so. Indeed what the Prime Minister says is remarkably similar to what Jenny Macklin has been saying for some time: there is progress.
Five activists from Anti-Nuclear NT (ANNT) gathered outside the offices of Energy Resources Australia (ERA) on August 9. They were congratulating the company on its decision to abandon plans to use acid heap leeching at its Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu national park. Acid heap leeching uses thousands of tonnes of highly toxic acid to release uranium oxide from the soil. It would have sent hundreds of acid-filled trucks along the Northern Territory’s Stuart Highway each day.
“Looking at racism and denial in Australia — do we have zero tolerance, or is it zero acknowledgement of racism?” Race Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes asked this question in an August 9 address to the National Press Club in Canberra.
The Refugee Advocacy Group (RAG) was recently formed by high school students in Geelong. The group organised a refugee rights protest in the city on August 13. Green Left Weekly’s Ben Peterson spoke to Max Hill, a year 11 student and founder of RAG. Tell us about RAG and how this all got started Max Hill: Basically, the group came about after [immigration minister Chris] Bowen planned to sign the "Malaysian solution".
Resistance will host the Melbourne campaign launch for Wear It Purple on August 27. Wear It Purple is an organisation which looks out for the interests of young people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI), and runs numerous campaigns around homophobic bullying, particularly in high schools.
Police snatched four Palestine solidarity activists from their houses in the early hours of August 9. Arrested for allegedly breaching their bail conditions by attending a protest against Israeli apartheid outside a Max Brenner shop on July 29, the activists had to pay outrageously high bail sureties to be released.
When the right-wing press isn’t hacking the voicemail of murdered teenagers, much of its energy goes to denouncing “green extremists”. You know, the ones who’d destroy our economy just to claw back a few tonnes of greenhouse emissions. So what would Rupert Murdoch, Andrew Bolt and their whole tribe prefer be done, in practice and in the near term, to stop global warming? Let’s be honest — nothing. Cutting emissions, they implicitly argue, will inevitably cost more than if society lets carbon polluters get on with what they do best.
The dilemma facing journalists in Australia today was addressed by Philip Castle, a veteran journalist for more than 30 years and Griffith University academic, at a public forum sponsored by Green Left Weekly at the Brisbane Activist Centre on August 9. The forum, titled “Murdoch vs Assange: Media corruption versus the truth”, also heard from Jim McIlroy, a long-time correspondent for GLW.