Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone – an Aboriginal puppet and show pony for the Australian government?
Michael Anderson condemns Peris-Kneebone “steamrolling” Dubbo, central NSW, 23 January 2013 – A prominent Aboriginal sovereignty campaigner has condemned Prime Minister Gillard’s choice of former athlete, Nova Peris-Kneebone, for the Northern Territory Senate seat.
“I do not have confidence in her ability to stand up for and fight the hard fight that is coming our way,” writes Michael Ghillar Anderson in a media release.
“Ms Peris-Kneebone is only being used as a public relations exercise for Labor.
“After all, what role has Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone played in fighting the hard political fights that we are currently involved in?
“Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone has not been involved in major political processes, rallies or otherwise. She has been missing in political action all the time,” Mr Anderson writes.
Mr Anderson is the last survivor of the four young Black Power men who founded the Aboriginal embassy in Canberra 41 years ago and now speaks for the Sovereign Union of First Nations Peoples set up at its 40th anniversary last January 26th.
“The question that has to be asked of Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone is, if she is going to be involved in politics at this level, is she going to be a Julia Gillard puppet with little to no power or opinion, but instead, fall in line with Julia Gillard’s personal and political ambitions?
“The other horror will be that Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone will be put up and used as a show pony for the Labor party at an international level,” the media release says.
“I appeal to Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone to rethink this offer so as to ensure that she is not a puppet of Julia Gillard’s Labor party, otherwise we need her to come out and simply say that just because she is Aboriginal she is not our voice.
“She is the voice of the Labor party and their policies. She cannot argue that she has an Aboriginal mandate to speak for what our people want.
“I condemn Julia Gillard’s action of steamrolling Ms Nova Peris-Kneebone into the Northern Territory Senate seat.”
Mr Anderson’s release in full: Continue reading
Balance freedom and security or put both in danger – Greens
23 January 2013. Australian Greens communications spokesperson Senator Scott Ludlam warned the 
Federal Government to avoid jeopardising civil liberties and human rights in the pursuit of security in the wake of the Prime Minister’s national security announcements today.
“It’s a positive that the Prime Minister recognises that a secure international environment is built on trust, and reaffirmed the nation’s commitment to multilateralism, but some of her statements and much of the Government’s ‘security’ agenda causes concern.
“The notion that online security threats are ‘the new terrorism’ is already generating an expensive overkill in cyber security measures. The Government has touted a series of troubling measures including the proposed retention of the electronic communications data of all Australians for a period of two years. What’s next?
“We are concerned by the implications of greater collaboration between Government and the private sector on online matters. While the idea sounds innocuous, what will be the implications for privacy, copyright, and freedom of communication?
“The Prime Minister glosses over Australia’s legislative response to the crimes of 9/11 as though it was a resounding success. The Howard-Ruddock ‘anti-terror’ laws were extreme, damaged civil liberties and undermined our justice system. The tripling of security budgets the Prime Minister cited has entailed the expanded apparatus seeking new ways to justify its huge and growing money pot.
“We will continue to subject the Government’s cyber security plans to intense scrutiny, to ensure the human rights and civil liberties of Australians are not sacrificed in the fervent pursuit of a largely questionable agenda.”
Not happy, Julia, about pre-selection of Nova Peris
AUDIO Some internal ALP unrest over Nova Peris pre-selection http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-23/some-internal-alp-unrest-over-nova-peris-pre/4479622?section=nt
The Prime Minister Julia Gillard has sidelined the sitting Northern Territory Labor Senator Trish Crossing by intervening in the Territory’s pre-selection process to have Indigenous Olympian Nova Peris selected. The move has raised the hackles of some within Labor ranks, who say it was not only politically brutal but has marginalised NT Labor members…..
MARION SCRYMGOUR: I think people are cranky. It just robs the territory of the right to have a say.
LEXI METHERELL: Darwin-born Indigenous woman Marion Scrymgour has been involved with the NT Labor Party for many years and was deputy chief minister.
MARION SCRYMGOUR: At the end of the day, yes the Prime Minister has her way. But she had her way with Warren Mundine, she had her way with Kevin Rudd. And I’m a bit sick of this National Executive who aren’t the elected arm to make these decisions…..
DOUG CAMERON: If we have got a problem in the Northern Territory with Indigenous representation we should have been dealing with this six months ago or longer. We should be looking at how we can attract talented Aboriginal people into the party, how we can make the party relevant to them.
I don’t think it’s relevant just to be parachuting people in and saying that that soothes our conscience in terms of Aboriginal representation, because it’s a short term fix that belies the deeper problem….. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-23/some-internal-alp-unrest-over-nova-peris-pre/4479622?section=nt
Japan: proposal to cut funding for terminally ill patients, so they “can die quickly”
Cut state funding to terminal patients so they “can die quickly”: Aso,
Japan Times, 21 Jan 13 By REIJI YOSHIDA
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso caused a stir
Monday in talks on social security reforms when he said the medical
system should be changed so that the many terminal patients now using
“government money” for expensive treatment “can quickly pass away.”…
“I cannot sleep well when I think of (myself receiving expensive
treatments) by using government money,” the gaffe-prone Aso reportedly
said, apparently referring to massive government expenditures for the
public health insurance
system……..http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20130122a5.html
Injustice of Britain’s refusal to recognise harm done by atomic bomb testing in South Australia
UK servicemen, Australian soldiers and civilians, including Indigenous people, all exposed to radiation as a result of British atomic weapons testing in South Australia’s outback.
“We had a skin rash, sore eyes, diarrhoea, vomiting and a lot of people got sick, and we couldn’t prove that, because we never had doctors.”
The Australian Greens’ nuclear spokesman Scott Ludlam says the dangers of radiation are well known and it’s unfair to ask Aboriginal people with scant medical records to prove a direct link between exposure to fallout and subsequent sickness.
Senator Ludlam says legalities aside, Britain should do what’s morally right, by way of an Act of Grace – a discretionary payment to remedy the suffering he says is evident.
AUDIO Aboriginal people exposed to British nuclear tests in South Australia during the 1950s are being told they have no hope of compensation. http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1729400/Maralinga-compo-collapse-prompts-calls-for-Act-of-Grace 23 JAN 2013, – SOURCE: KAREN ASHFORD, SBS
(Transcript from World News Australia Radio
Aboriginal people exposed to British nuclear tests in South Australia during the 1950s are being told they have no hope of compensation.A British law firm says their cases cannot proceed because medical science cannot conclusively prove that fallout from the tests made people sick. But while legal arguments may not prevail, pressure for a settlement on moral grounds is growing. It’s pressure that the UK government is so far resisting, as Karen Ashford reports. Continue reading
Australian government did admit harm to people exposed to British atomic bomb tests
Legal advisors to the The Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement have said that they cannot proceed in a legal case on the effects of Atomic bomb testing in the 1950’s and 60’s, because there is no proof of harm to the Aboriginal people from atomic radiation. Paul Langley has unearthed a document from Australia’s Minister of Health 2001, which shows that evidence of harm did, and does exist. An excerpt from this document is shown at the bottom of this post.
The results of the global research effort showed that humans were being adversely affected by radioactive fallout from atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons
Proof of Harm imposed by Nuclear Fallout, Paul Langley’s Nuclear History Blog, 23 Jan 13, “……It is weird day indeed when people acting in the interests of Aboriginal Legal Rights claim a case cannot proceed because of lack of proof, when a Federal Minister of the Australian Government, and Liberal and National Party Government at that, provided a body of proof in 2001.
The documents released by Wooldridge and ARPANSA in 2001 were extensive and included detailed information pertaining to Strontium 90 uptake by the people of Australia and New Guinea…..
Minister Wooldridge confirms that the Atomic Weapons Test Safety Committee was actively engaged in Project Sunshine. The first 11 pages of the Minutes of the AEC Committee, which sat in August 1953, remain deleted and restricted from public view. In this document the Committee considered the risks of those close in to nuclear test areas and the vulnerability of such populations. The committee pondered the adequacy of the limits set in terms of the ICRP derived tolerance dose for Strontium 90, based as it was on the radium standard.
In the 1980′s Titterton, Chair of the Safety Committee admitted that he could not share all he knew in relation to the hazards of nuclear weapons testing with the rest of the Committee and hence could not share this information with the government and people of Australia because he was subject to the secrecy provisions of both the United States of America and the United Kingdom…….
It is past time for the world to know the contents of pages 1 – 11 of the August 1953 AEC minutes. Titterton for sure was in on it. What did he take to the grave? Continue reading
Chinese warning to Australia not to join in USA militarism
Colonel Liu said the US was building ”a
mini-NATO” to contain China, with the US and Japan at its core and
Australia within its orbit.
China colonel raises nuclear spectre, SMH, January 23, 2013 John
Garnaut, Beijing A CHINESE military officer has raised the spectre of
nuclear weapons and warned Australia not to side with the United
States and Japan as a territorial dispute in the East China Sea
continues to escalate.
Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu, of the National Defence University, blamed
America’s ”orchestration” and Japan’s ”militarism” for rising
tensions Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 