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“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
Environment groups are organising a “peaceful community mass civil disobedience” at the Hazelwood coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley on September 13.
MELBOURNE— Locked-out Hazelwood power station workers and supporters staged a protest outside International Power’s offices on July 31. The Latrobe Valley emergency service officers employed by contractor Diamond Protection, were locked out after taking industrial action over a claim for pay parity.
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.

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

FigureheadBy Patrick AllingtonBlack Inc, 2009239pages, $29.95
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.
If the rhetoric of the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission’s report on Australia’s health system is taken at face value, health care in Australia will get an impressive overhaul courtesy of the federal government.
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.
Slaughterhouse FiveBy Kurt VonnegutFirst published in 1969224 pages, $24.95
Australian Coal Association (ACA) executive director Ralph Hillman believes the industry doesn’t want special treatment from the Rudd Labor government. It just wants the same “fair treatment” given to other big polluters under the proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).
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.