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Months after the murder of prominent journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge in Sri Lanka, more journalists have been attacked as part of the Sri Lankan government’s war on free speech.
“Help us, do something for us — but the way we want them to be done. Talk to us”, Alice Springs town camp resident Audrey McCormack pleaded of ALP conference delegates.

Speakers from Micronesia, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Torres Strait Islands described how climate change affects their everyday lives at meetings of 180 people in Brisbane on July 28 and 170 people in Melbourne on July 30

MELBOURNE— On July 29, 40 supporters of Aboriginal rights gathered in front of the ALP Victorian headquarters in West Melbourne. They protested against the federal ALP government’s planned takeover of the Alice Springs town camps.
Siddique Abdullah Hasan is on death row in Ohio. He is one of the Lucasville Five, prisoners railroaded onto death row after a 1993 prison rebellion against abuses by prison authorities. Below, he writes about the July 21 execution in Ohio of Marvallous Keene — the 1000th prisoner to be executed by lethal injection in the US since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
“We've had the gun at our head.” This is what William Tilmouth, Tangentyere Council CEO, said in response to Aboriginal affairs minister Jenny Macklin's triumphant July 29 announcement that the council had agreed to lease Alice Springs town camps to the federal government for 40 years in exchange for $135 million in housing upgrades

“If you are still in the Labor Party today, you should be ashamed of yourself”, 71-year-old Aboriginal activist Pat Eatock called out to delegates entering the stage-managed proceedings of the first day of the ALP national conference.

The Spartacus WarBy Barry StraussWeidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009240 pages, $55 (hb)
The Religious Right at the Crossroads – The 2008 US presidential election was a watershed moment in US politics, shattering the decades-old alliance between the Republican Party and conservative evangelical Christians. SBS1, Monday, August 10,
FigureheadBy Patrick AllingtonBlack Inc, 2009239pages, $29.95
The Tasmanian Liberal Party, now in opposition, is running with a new youth-bashing policy in the lead-up to the next state election. The election will take place early next year.
Slaughterhouse FiveBy Kurt VonnegutFirst published in 1969224 pages, $24.95