Two of the central figures in a major media and government scandal that erupted in the lead-up to the launch of the Northern Territory intervention will speak in Sydney on September 3, in their first public engagement together.
Tjanara Goreng Goreng, a former Howard Coalition government official-turned-whistleblower, and Chris Graham, the founding editor of the National Indigenous Times, will speak address a public forum, at the University of Technology, Sydney, hosted by the Stop the Intervention Collective Sydney (STICS).
850
The fight is on at Bluescope Steel, in Western Port Hastings, where 86 maintenance workers from the Australian Manufacturing Workers鈥 Union (AMWU) are holding their picket lines in the face of scab labour.
The workers are under attack from their employer Silcar and Bluescope Steel, which contracts its plant maintenance to Silcar.
The steel manufacturing plant employs around 1400 people full-time and produces more than a million tonnes of steel products a year.
On August 23, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) reported that a 30-year-old man found unconscious in the Curtin Immigration Detention Centre in Western Australia had died.
After his collapse on August 21, the man was taken to Derby hospital, 40 kilometres away. That night, he was transferred to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in Perth, more than 2000km south of Derby. He died the next day.
DIAC would not tell 麻豆传媒 Weekly the man鈥檚 name, but said it didn鈥檛 believe there were suspicious circumstances surrounding his death. A Coronial inquiry
The Gulf of Mexico is still threatened with an ecological catastrophe, but the US government and British Petroleum (BP) are trying to cover up the scale of BP鈥檚 Macondo oil well disaster.
About 4.9 million barrels of oil escaped into the sea after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers. BP capped the well on July 15, but work on the relief well to permanently plug the spill is expected to be delayed until early September, Bloomberg.com said on August 20.
On July 26, Wikileaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past.
Dick Smith鈥檚 Population Puzzle, a documentary that aired on ABC1 on August 12, made no modest claims. It went for the direct, hard sell. Its message: 鈥淐utting immigration to Australia is a great product, and you should buy it.鈥
It said a smaller Australia would not solve just one or two social problems, but more than a dozen.
For most queer rights activists, the most pressing issue is queer marriage rights. Denying this basic right to a large number of Australians is abhorrent.
In a democracy, the elected officials are supposed to represent the views of the people who elect them. The majority of Australians are in favor of giving same-sex couples the right to marry, but both major parties have shown their contempt for the opinions of the majority.
Greg Eatock, a well-known Indigenous activist in Sydney, passed away aged just 51 on August 24. His early death, from chronic health problems, was more proof of the shameful 11.5-year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous males in Australian.
One of Greg's brothers, Ronald, had already passed away, aged 27.
Greg came from a family with a four-generation history of political activism. His great grandmother, Lucy Eatock, and her husband William were veterans of the great 1890s shearers鈥 strike. Lucy later moved to Sydney from Queensland.
The following statement was released on August 20 by the Labour Party Pakistan (Karachi) and Pakistan鈥檚 National Trade Union Federation. See for more information.
* * *
The recent floods represent the worst disaster in Pakistan鈥檚 history. The country has been devastated from the northern areas to its southern tip.
"It seems that the whole narrative of politics is going through a seismic shift鈥, said Greens lead candidate for the NSW upper house at the 2011 state election, David Shoebridge at an August 25 forum discussing the post-election political landscape.
Shoebridge told the meeting, which was organised by Socialist Alliance, that the result would impact on upcoming state elections in Victoria and NSW. In NSW, Labor is particularly hated.
Ben Kohler, a year 11 student and member of the Socialist Alliance and Resistance, is running for the position of school captain at Woonona High, in Wollongong's northern suburbs. He spoke with 麻豆传媒 Weekly鈥檚 Patrick Harrison about his campaign.
* * *
What motivated you to run for school captain?
I was reading Stupid White Men by Michael Moore. He talks about schooling, and basically encourages students to take over the school. He also said we should 鈥渕ock the vote鈥 and I thought, 鈥淚 have to do that!鈥
With floods caused by the heaviest ever recorded rainfall sweep down the Indus River toward the Arabian Sea, a fifth of Pakistan was under water by late August.
More than 16,000 people have been killed and 20 million displaced. The death toll is likely to rise due to hunger and disease. Food insecurity and malnutrition were endemic in Pakistan before the catastrophe.
On August 25, the United Nations reported 120,000 cases of suspected dengue fever and malaria and more than 600,000 cases of acute diarrhoea.
The outlook for farmers who have lost all means of livelihood is grim.
- Page 1
- Next page