Australian government spied on Aboriginal activists: photographic exhibition
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS Exhibition dates: Wed 22 January to Sat 1 February 2014 View the artworks http://damienmintongallery.com.au/artists/asio-through-the-looking-glass
Australia spy photos: Australia stalked Aboriginal activists ‘Persons of Interest’ Australia stalked Aboriginals By Brenda Norrel Censored News, 23 Jan 14, Australian Aboriginals were secretly photographed under surveillance by the government of Australia. Now, the spy photos of Aboriginal land rights activists, authors, playrights and artists are the subject of a photo exhibit.
“The 70 photos of people such as author Frank Hardy, Aboriginal activists Eddie Mabo and Gary Foley, film critic David Stratton and actor Bob Maza, among a range of Australians who went on to become prominent in public life,” Business Insider reports.
The director of the documentary series, Haydn Keenan, said the photos are “… images with no author, created by the State, of those who threatened it. They are secret political images, stolen to gain power over the subject. Here is a machine aesthetic. No artful frame or composition proposed, but uncannily appears.”
The gallery said the photographs were created as documents and records of surveillance by secret ASIO operatives going about their work monitoring the activities and meetings of people who the state considered to be ‘a person of interest’……(PHOTOS below in the original article) http://bsnorrell.blogspot.com.au/2014/01/australia-spy-photos-australia-stalked.html
The Price Anderson Act – the road to nuclear fascism
Is Nuclear Experimentation Fascism? 1/22/2014 By Ethan Indigo Smith (about the author) opednews.com
“….Today, the United States of America is fascist. So is China, Japan, Russia, France, England, Japan and every single nuclear nation.
Australia is de facto fascist, being a major extractor of uranium for the nuclear fuel chain.
The United States of America is fascist by way of one single act: The Price Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act. There are many more acts and laws that strengthen nuclear fascism in the United States, but The Price Anderson Act seals the deal. Its main purpose is to indemnify the nuclear industry against liability claims arising from nuclear incidents. And other countries have their own nuclear deals which also guarantee that those who profit from the nuclear industry are not held accountable for their work.
The Price Anderson Act illustrates the U.S.A.’s fascist trail, and that nuclear experiment cleared the way for it in the first place. The Act makes it so that nuclear power generation experiments can operate at all, otherwise no insurance corporation would insure them. The insurance companies that deal with nuclear experimentation only do so because the Act limits their responsibility in the event of an accident, such as the Fukushima meltdown. If there is an accident that costs more than the capped amount, insurance companies pay out up to and including their cap, and communities and governments foot the bill for the remaining clean up costs. Put simply”. they profit, you pay. Not to mention the non-financial costs of human and planetary health.
The Price Anderson Act endorses fascism in the United States, and in the bigger picture, nuclear experimentation guarantees fascism no matter what nation is doing the experimenting — whether Israel, China, Iran or the U.S. or Japan. The nuclear power industry could not survive without placing all the risk on the shoulders of taxpayers. And by doing so, the Price Anderson Act enables nuclear oligarchical fascists to make a fortune by endangering everyone and everything on the planet.
Even if nuclear facilities operated to their original design specifications rather than running components on extended operation (by years) and over-crammed fuel pools, as is the case today, the industry is still unworkable. But today, most if not all nuclear power generation experiments in the U.S.A. have fuel pools loaded with waste material beyond original design specifications, but the nuclear industry and its regulators seem content continuing down this path — and waiting for our grandchildren to figure out what to do with the mess they leave behind…. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Is-Nuclear-Experimentation-by-Ethan-Indigo-Smith-Fukushima_Nuclear-Cover-up_Nuclear-Meltdown_Nuclear-Waste-140122-627.html
Japan’s breakthrough solar technology – offshore
Is Japan’s Offshore Solar Power Plant the Future of Renewable Energy? The densely populated nation has found a new way to harness the power of harness the power the sun By Vicky Gan SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 2014 Across Japan, 50 nuclear power plants sit idle, shut down in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. Nobody is certain when government inspectors will certify that the plants are safe enough to be brought back online. Anti-nuclear activists point to this energy crisis as evidence that Japan needs to rely more on renewables. One think tank has calculated that a national solar power initiative could generate electricity equivalent to ten nuclear plants. But skeptics have asked where, in their crowded mountainous country, they could construct all those solar panels
One solution was unveiled this past November, when Japan flipped the switch on its largest solar power plant to date, built offshore on reclaimed land jutting into the cerulean waters of Kagoshima Bay. The Kyocera Corporation’s Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar Power Plant is as potent as it is picturesque, generating enough electricity to power roughly 22,000 homes.
Kagoshima Nanatsujima Mega Solar Power Plant. (KYOCERA Corporation)
Other densely populated countries, notably in Asia, are also beginning to look seaward.
In Singapore, the Norwegian energy consultancy firm DNV recently debuted a solar island concept called SUNdy, which links 4,200 solar panels into a stadium-size hexagonal array that floats on the ocean’s surface.
….. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovations/Is-Japans-Offshore-Solar-Power-Plant-the-Future-of-Renewable-Energy-180949453/#ixzz2rFqExlFq
Aboriginal religions and the land
‘Dreamtime’ and ‘The Dreaming’ – an introduction The Conversation, Christine Nicholls Senior Lecturer at Flinders University 23 January 2014, In 2002, Jeannie Herbert Nungarrayi, formerly a Warlpiri teacher at the Lajamanu School in the Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory, where I worked for many years first as a linguist and then as school principal, explained the central Warlpiri concept of the Jukurrpa in the following terms:
To get an insight into us – [the Warlpiri people of the Tanami Desert] – it is necessary to understand something about our major religious belief, the Jukurrpa. The Jukurrpa is an all-embracing concept that provides rules for living, a moral code, as well as rules for interacting with the natural environment.
The philosophy behind it is holistic – the Jukurrpa provides for a total, integrated way of life. It is important to understand that, for Warlpiri and other Aboriginal people living in remote Aboriginal settlements, The Dreaming isn’t something that has been consigned to the past but is a lived daily reality. We, the Warlpiri people, believe in the Jukurrpa to this day.
In this succinct statement Nungarrayi touched on the subtlety, complexity and all-encompassing, non-finite nature of the Jukurrpa.
The concept is mostly known in grossly inadequate English translation as “The Dreamtime” or “The Dreaming”. The Jukurrpa can be mapped onto micro-environments in specific tracts of land that Aboriginal people call “country”.
As a religion grounded in the land itself, it incorporates creation and other land-based narratives, social processes including kinship regulations, morality and ethics. This complex concept informs people’s economic, cognitive, affective and spiritual lives…….. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 