Aborigines will march for land rights on Invasion Day 26 January
Aborigines plan street protest to revive calls for sovereignty, SMH, Debra Jopson, January 21, 2012 ABORIGINES angry about having neither a place in the constitution nor a treaty are set to use Australia Day to revive street protests like those of 40 years ago that gave birth to the Canberra tent embassy, a leader of the nation’s peak indigenous body has warned.
”Next week people will be asked that question: will they want to start up political action, particularly with a hostile government, and go back to street demonstrations of 1972? And the answer is likely to be yes,” said Les Malezer, the co-chairman of the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples.
Mr Malezer, a firebrand who was elected as the co-chairman of the new body alongside the more moderate former NSW Department of Aboriginal Affairs head Jody Broun, said that the report commissioned by the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, recommending constitutional change would ignite a bigger debate.
But as thousands are expected to head to Canberra next week to commemorate the Australia Day occupation of the Parliament House lawns four decades ago, the government showed no intention of wanting to discuss wider issues of sovereignty, treaty and land rights, Mr Malezer said.
The congress, established by indigenous people themselves to succeed the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission as a national voice, is reviving long-time calls for sovereignty and self-determination with a two-day Canberra ”people’s forum” from Tuesday to coincide with tent embassy anniversary celebrations……
grassroots activists are planning a fresh sovereignty campaign and will march for land rights in Canberra on Thursday morning, the 224th anniversary of the First Fleet’s landing.
”The government is in for serious confrontation from the Aboriginal people this year … The political movement will be ramped up and will be more aggressive,” said an organiser, the tent embassy veteran Michael Anderson.
The only man living of the four protesters who first squatted on Old Parliament House lawn on Australia Day in 1972, he will sleep on the ground again in the tent city that will spring up for the commemoration.
On Thursday and Friday, campers from all over Australia will join separate men’s and women’s ”talking circles” to discuss sovereignty, a treaty and land rights, and will issue a charter of demands, Mr Anderson said.
Mr Malezer said native title had produced only small results in recognising Aboriginal ownership over lands and instead had often resulted in agreements with other groups such as mining companies over shared management……..
Australia’s continuing land grab from Aborigines
It’s the same the whole world over Online Opinion, By John Tomlinson – , 23 January 2012 “………..When the British came to Australia they “acquired” which had, until then, been communally owned by members of various Aboriginal language groups. With the exception of a few trinkets handed over by John Batman in Victoria the rights of the existing owners were entirely ignored. Various devices were put in place to give the appearance of civility to this brutal dispossession. Myths about Australia being “terra nullius” –a land belonging to no one – gained ascendency by the 20thcentury. The High Court’s Mabo judgements put a bit of a spike in that hoary one but politicians rushed through legislation cunningly called the Native Title Act to “legitimate” all prior alienation of Indigenous land and to legalise ways by which future governments could continue to acquire land.
Judges were able to find that “the tide of history had washed away” the Yorta Yorta people’s claim to Native Title. The High Court’s Wik judgement found to the dismay of the Howard Government that Native Title had not been totally extinguished on pastoral leases. Where the leases specified a pastoralist was entitled to do certain things on his or her property they were still able to carry out such activities but if they wished to extend the activities then Native Title considerations might apply. The Government legislated to “provide certainty” to pastoralists and delivered, in the words of Tim Fisher (the then Deputy Prime Minister), “bucket loads of extinguishment.” This Howard Government could not bring itself to acknowledge the reality of Aboriginal prior ownership; preferring instead to speak about Indigenous “custodianship” of the country.
……..Mal Brough may have been the one to introduce the Northern Territory Intervention but it has been continued and extended by Rudd, Gillard and Macklin. Macklin has even gone so far as to use the Aboriginal Benefit Account (into which mining royalties owed to Aboriginal communities are paid) as her own little slush fund……”
The case for Australia’s carbon tax now stronger than ever
The arguments of big polluters against a price on pollution and the CEFC are evaporating…… Remember when we couldn’t act because the US and China had no price on pollution? China has just announced its carbon tax will begin in 2015, while many US states (including California, an economy about 30 per cent larger than Australia’s) are establishing their own prices on pollution.
Slacking off on climate is just not cricket, IAN LOWE, ABC Environment, 23 JAN 2012 “….. we should be wary of short memories and predictions of doom when it comes to Australia’s price on pollution, which comes into force on 1 July this year. As the legislation was passed in October last year, we were subjected to big polluters’ predictions of apocalypse……
The risk we now face is that, in the wake of a ‘win’ in the form of the Clean Energy Future package, Australia will take its eye off the ball, even though the need to focus on a long-term goal remains crucial.
Now is the time to begin moving to a cleaner, healthier economy.
The price on pollution and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation will open up job opportunities in a range of new and existing industries. Research by the Australian Conservation Foundation and the ACTU in 2010 showed that shifting Australia to a cleaner economy will create 3.7 million new jobs across the country by 2030. Continue reading
Why is Canadian government silent about radioactive rainfall from Fukushima?
he’s asking questions about rain which fell on Calgary shortly after the nuclear disaster last March, containing radioactive iodine well above the Health Canada guidelines for drinking water.
“There are certain people who might be concerned — for instance, a
pregnant woman,”
Fukushima fallout hit home Nuclear critic says Health Canada should have issued warning on radioactive raindrops BY MICHAEL PLATT ,CALGARY SUN, 22 Jan 12, There’s no need to panic — probably.
But not knowing whether to shrug or cower over radioactive iodine falling on Calgary as a result of a meltdown in Japan last year has Canada’s top nuclear critic wondering why.
“There’s no need to be concerned, but what you should be concerned about is why the authorities are so quick to dismiss it,” says Dr. Gordon Edwards. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 