Sara Hudson, a research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, recently wrote a comment piece on ABC’s Drum Opinion that supported the Northern Territory intervention. It also attacked public land title in remote Aboriginal communities.
The article was what you might expect from a research fellow from the conservative think tank. "Public bad, private good", and so on. But one passage stood out to me, given I had visited many remote Aboriginal communities recently.
Anti-racism
Federal police raided the rooms of asylum seekers in the Christmas Island detention centre in the early morning on July 22. Refugee advocates said some refugees "have been beaten" and "dragged out of the compounds".
Violent attacks and rioting, orchestrated by terrorist Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), have targeted communities of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland in recent weeks.
The family of Rex Bellotti Junior have called a rally for July 23 in Albany where Aboriginal youth Bellotti, then 15 years old, was run over by police driving on the wrong side of the road in March 2009.
The family organised the protest to call for a public inquiry into alleged police misconduct and the failure of the state government and the Western Australian police to provide adequate compensation and support for Bellotti and his family. State politicians and legal bodies have left the family to fend for themselves.
More than 40 Aboriginal delegates attended the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) to refute the Australian government’s reporting on its treatment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Indigenous rapper Caper says a backlash from his fans caused Facebook to reverse their banning of the video to his song "How Would You Like To Be Me?" (lyrics below). The song, which addresses racism in Australia, has enjoyed extensive radio airplay, becoming one of the most requested songs on Magic FM. The 30-year-old musician, otherwise known as Colin Darcy from Whyalla in South Australia, said in a post on the social networking website: "Whoever reported my new video 'How Would You Like To Be Me' as offensive has actually stopped it from being promoted on facebook.
An emergency phone tree on June 6 mobilised the extra support needed to stop workers coming on-site to begin demolishing part of Melbourne’s only Aboriginal school, Ballerrt Mooroop College (BMC).
The workers from the demolition company, ADCO ,decided, as long as there were people staffing the picket line, not to cross it. The Building Industry Group of unions, including the Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union, the Electrical Trades Union, the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and the Plumbers Union are considering banning work on the site.
Again.
Yes. Again.
Another again to join a conga-line of agains going back decades.
Again, another victim of the callousness of the NSW Department of Corrective Services.
In this case, the unnecessary and useless death of 33-year-old Adam Grant le Marseny, also known as Adam Grant Morrison, who died in the corrective services cells of the Sydney police centre on, I believe, the night of May 28, 2011.
Since the 1980s, Friends of the Earth's (FoE) annual Radioactive Exposure Tour has exposed thousands of people first-hand to the realities of “radioactive racism” and to the environmental impacts of the nuclear industry.
The tour is a 10-day journey into the heart of the breathtaking semi-arid landscapes of South Australia and its atomic history and current uranium mining operations.
Alice Springs is a town unlike any other and to an outsider its racial tensions are noticeable. Walking through the shopping centre one sees security guards tell Aboriginal people to move on when they are window shopping.
Poverty and homelessness are visible — and visibly black.
It has always been a town that has struggled with dealing with this visible poverty — and the less visible disadvantage of the communities in the town camps.
It has been back in the spotlight with a rise in social problems caused by an influx of Aboriginal people from other places.
On June 1, formal Israeli festivities were held around the country to commemorate “Jerusalem Day”. One of the main events of the “Jerusalem Day" celebrations is the “Dance of Flags”. Tens of thousands of people, waving Israeli flags, march through Palestinian parts of the city. This year, the marchers chanted slogans such as “butcher the Arabs”, “burn their villages”, and “death to the leftists”. The marchers also surrounded a mosque, frantically chanting “Muhammad is dead” and “They are only Arabs, they are only fleas”.
On June 27, 1985, four anti apartheid activists were brutally murdered on behalf of the South African government. Twenty five years later, their killers still walk free.
The murders of these four men illustrate one of the darkest passages of South Africa’s history.
South African filmmaker David Forbes has directed, edited and produced the film The Cradock Four to tell the story of these four extraordinary men.
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