Goolarabooloo law bosses lift the ante in battle with Woodside over gas hub

Sun 20 Jan 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos - Story
Damien Kelly - Photo - Goolarabooloo Law Bosses, Phillip Roe and Richard Hunter with Eric Hunter in traditional pelican head dress - the pelican is the head dress of their particular Goolarabooloo group and symbolic of Walmandan (James Price Point) country.

Traditional custodians, Goolarabooloo Law Bosses Phillip Roe and Richard Hunter have responded to State Government authorisation of sacred site trespass with anger and the will to fight them in the Courts and at Walmandan in standing their ground. Last week Department of Indigenous Affairs Chief Heritage Officer Aaron Raynor said that the State Minister for Indigenous Affairs Peter Collier authorised Woodside access and the right to commence work on sacred sites as part of its exploration and assessment at the controversial James Price Point proposed gas hub site.

Related: Save the Kimberley | Hands off country Blog | Goolarabooloo people | e-Petition Tony Burke: Protect sacred Aboriginal burial grounds in the Kimberley | Greenleft - PHOTOS: Protest Woodside drilling in the Kimberley | Peter Botsman on Beware the stingray: Indigenous heritage and WA's gas plans

Lobby restaurant incident – January 26, 2012 – Will Prime Minister Gillard finally admit the truth and apologise?

Sun 20 Jan 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos - On the 26th of January last year headlines rocketed around the world out of Canberra from the Lobby restaurant incident where more than 200 protestors descended from the nearby 40th Aboriginal Tent Embassy celebrations and vigil. The Prime Minister’s Office, despite its public denials, tried to stage manage a confrontation between Federal Opposition leader Tony Abbott and some of Aboriginal Tent Embassy’s high profile figures, including legendary co-founder of the Embassy, Michael Anderson.

200 Aboriginal Maralinga victims denied compensation

Sun 20 Jan 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos
Maralinga’s and Emu Field’s long suffering Aboriginal victims of the British atomic tests have been told by lawyers that a class action for compensation would fail and that the fight in the courts is over because apparently it is impossible to adequately prove radiation from the atomic blasts specifically caused their illnesses and the premature deaths. Maralinga victim Yami Lester said this is “rubbish” and that his blindness was caused by nothing else other than the fallout from the blasts. He was a young child at the time.

Tour Down Under sponsor Santos told 'on ya bike' over CSG in the Pilliga

Sat 19 Jan 2013
By takver

The Santos sponsored Tour Down Under was visited today by anti-CSG activists from the Pilliga Forest near Gunnedah in New South Wales. The protesters on bicycles took their protest to Santos Head Office in Adelaide today. Santos is the major sponsor of the Tour Down Under, so activists such as @thepilligamouse and several koalas hoped on their bikes to ride around Adelaide this morning to protest Santos’s destructive and toxic coal seam gas operations in Eastern Australia’s largest remaining temperate woodland and surrounding farmlands. They were joined by NSW politician and grazier David Quince.

Related: Total Fire Ban exemption for Santos CSG plant riles Pilliga residents

Time to cease expansion of coal to reduce climate change says Ad

Mon 14 Jan 2013
By takver

Prominent scientists and environmental organisations have published a full page ad in Monday's Australian Financial Review calling for the cessation of the expansion of coal exports from Australia.

Background: Read Melbourne University Associate Professor Peter Christoff's article on Why Australia must stop exporting coal. Or watch this 2010 lecture by Dr. Guy Pearse from the University of Queensland on Queensland's coal addiction | Greens Leader says 'Look at the damage to humanity caused by people who bankroll coalmines' | Australian Heatwave part of global warming trend says IPCC head Pachauri

Bushfires strike with extreme heatwave blanketing most of Australia

Fri 04 Jan 2013
By takver

Jan 8: Climate Change: Records tumble in extreme heatwave as temperature scale adjusted upwards

Jan 8: Julia Gillard links intensity of bushfires with climate change as NSW survives catastrophic fire conditions

Jan 5: Tasmanian Bushfires catastrophic but no confirmed loss of life

Jan 4: Hobart recorded it's highest recorded minimum temperature Thursday night and highest recorded daytime temperature on Friday. Bushfires are currently raging in Tasmania destroying houses and forcing evacuations (see below).

Jan 3: Elevated temperatures in an extreme heatwave are occuring across a brought sweep of Australia, with the heatwave expected to last at least a week. It is very unusual that a heat wave covers such a large area of the continent at one time, according to Karl Braganza, manager of climate monitoring at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Australia's weather has switched to hot and dry after one of the wettest two year periods in Australia's history influenced by an extremely strong La Nina event.

Related: Scientists outline health limits of heat stress with Climate Change (May 2010) | Flooding rains now burning plains - Bushfire risk and climate change (Oct 2011) | Logging of Victorian mountain ash forests increases bushfire risk (Oct 2011) | Intact native Forests mitigate bushfire in a warming climate (Nov 2011) | CSIRO - Climate change impacts on fire weather

Brutal gang-rape in India is a call to everyone, worldwide, to ensure changes

Tue 01 Jan 2013
By Gerry Georgatos

Gerry Georgatos - Inhumanity knows no bounds just as equal to humanity's limitlessness. Recently, in Pakistan a fourteen year old school girl was shot the in head by the Taliban for speaking up for the right of young girls to an education. They stopped the school bus bringing home the children and shot the young Malala. On March 31 a Ukranian teenager died after a brutal gang rape. On December 16 the ugliest inhumanity was broadcast to the whole world when a 23 year old physiotherapy intern was gang raped on a bus in Delhi.

Howard knew Aborigines had a sovereignty based land right

Thu 27 Dec 2012
By Anonymous

Tamworth, 23 December 12 - - A prominent Aboriginal sovereignty campaigner argues that former prime minister, John Howard, amended the Native Title Act in 1998 because he was fully aware of the inherent power of Aboriginal peoples based on their continuing sovereignty.

“With the passage of time it is now painfully obvious that former Prime Minister, John Howard, fully realised that Aboriginal peoples maintain a very powerful position in Australia,” Michael Anderson writes in a media release.

Aboriginal nations should form nations within Australia

Tue 18 Dec 2012
By Anonymous

14/12/2012 by >

IMAG0068Dr Jean-Paul Gagnon is a social and political philosopher currently working at the University of Queensland where he is affiliated with the School of Political Science and International Studies as well as the school of Maths and Physics.

He founded and edits the Journal for Democratic Theory and has been involved with The Centre for Strategic Research and Analysis and Centre for Greater China Studies housed by the Hong Kong Institute of Education.

Coal protest: activists scale Yallourn power station cooling tower

Tue 18 Dec 2012
By takver

Late last week two intrepid climate change activists scaled one of the cooling towers at Yallourn coal fired power station in Victoria's La Trobe Valley. In the end they spent 30 hours on the cooling tower, the longest power station occupation of it's kind in Australia, finally coming down voluntarily to be arrested and charged with various offences. The protest highlighted the enormous multi-million compensation being given by the Australian Government to power operators for the imposition of the carbon tax. The brown coal fired power stations in Victoria's La Trobe valley are some of the dirtiest most carbon emissions polluting power stations in Australia and the world.

Related: Quit Coal | Latrobe Valley Coal power and Climate change | Further subsidies for Victorian coal by Victorian and Federal Governments | Electricity Demand and Emissions Falling in Eastern Australia | Climate IMC: Doha climate change talks fail to cut emissions while weakened Kyoto Protocol extended to 2020