Organisers are expecting about 400 people to descend on Adelaide for the Students of Sustainability (SoS) conference over July 4 鈥 8.
The conference is held annually for students and activists involved in environment and social justice movements. Over the four days, workshops will be held on topics as diverse as climate change, guerrilla gardening, Indigenous rights, campaigning for renewable energy on campus and many more.
SoS gives participants the confidence, practical skills and motivation needed to campaign for a cleaner and healthier Earth.
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Sydney-based fringe magazine Spunk has announced it plans to use its latest fundraiser event, Possessed, to raise awareness and support for the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, which is threatened with imminent eviction by the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
Our children are still being fed racist messages by toy manufacturers and stockists. A recent browse through Northlands K-Mart toy department led me to wonder: If all Baby-Borns are white, where did Wrestler Action Man come from?
Despite catering to one of the most multicultural parts of Melbourne, Northlands K-Mart does not have a single non-white baby doll in its massive display.
The deaths of three Australian commandos in a helicopter crash on June 21 should bring home the message: it's time to leave Afghanistan.
The deaths bring the total number of Australians killed in the occupation to 16. This, not to mention the countless thousands of Afghan deaths, should be enough reason to call an end to Australian participation in this war.
On March 10 Veronnica Baxter, a 34-year-old Aboriginal woman from the Cunnamulla country, south-west Queensland, was arrested by Redfern police and held on remand. She dressed, appeared, and had identified as a woman for 15 years and was known by family and friends as a woman. Yet she was placed at the all-male NSW Silverwater Metropolitan Reception and Remand Centre. Six days later, after a 14-hour break between checking her cell, she was found dead, hanging in her single cell.
What鈥檚 Wrong With Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History
By Marilyn Lake & Henry Reynolds
UNSW Press, 2010, 183 pages, $29.95 (pb)
On April 25 in Australia, it is humanly impossible to escape the slouch hats, the Dawn Service, the Last Post, the khaki uniforms and the military ceremonies endlessly recycled in the establishment media. The cult of Anzac Day is pervasive, the culture of war unavoidable.
On June 25, federal trade minister Simon Crean signed a deal to export up to 20 million tonnes of dried brown coal to Vietnam. The deal was signed with ironically-named Victorian company Environmental Clean Technologies (ECT). Fifty people protested outside the venue in Southbank where the deal was signed, despite the rain and only a few hours notice of the event.
Duncan Roden is a member of . He was born in Fiji and is a leading member of the Parramatta Climate Action Network. He has been preselected by the Socialist Alliance to run in the federal seat of Parramatta in the coming election.
Below, Roden responds to rugby player Timana Tahu鈥檚 stand against racism.
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In late June, two important events related to renewable energy took place.
On June 24, the Senate passed changes to the government's renewable energy target, removing the bias towards small-scale energy systems that put many wind farm projects on hold. The scheme set a 20% renewable energy target by 2020.
US intelligence services are closely monitoring the movements of Wikileaks鈥 founder, Julian Assange, after he said the website would soon release a classified Pentagon video showing a May 2009 US air strike in Afghanistan that killed up to 140 civilians.
The 鈥淕arani鈥 video, if released, would follow the video released by Wikileaks in May, which showed US soldiers in an Apache helicopter fatally shooting about a dozen civilians in Iraq, including a reporter from news agency Reuters.
That video received worldwide prominence and considerably heightened Wikileaks鈥 profile.
NASA climate scientist James Hansen has called them 鈥渇actories of death鈥. British columnist George Monbiot has said 鈥渆verything now hinges鈥 on stopping them. US climate writer Bill McKibben is prepared to be arrested to have them shut down.
But Australian state governments don鈥檛 get it 鈥 they are still enchanted by coal-fired power stations.
Climate campaigners say Australia should urgently replace existing coal-fired power plants with renewable energy, but 12 new 鈥渄eath factories鈥 are slated to be built in Australia over the next few years.
Creation
Directed by Jon Amiel
Starring Paul Bettany & Jennifer Connelly
In cinemas
The life of Charles Darwin has all the elements of an engaging movie 鈥 adventure, conflict, insecurity, heartbreak and ultimately victory over entrenched ideas and institutions.
The film Creation takes up some of these issues, portraying Darwin (Paul Bettany) in the years preceding the publication of On the Origin of Species, grappling with his theory and confronting the religious conservatism of his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly).
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