The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) slammed the policies of the Northern Territory intervention in a report released on August 27.
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In recent weeks, media commentary on the use of illicit drugs by professional sports players has exploded again.
The first cause was the recently retired Australian rules football star and recovering drug addict Ben Cousin鈥檚 documentary Such is Life: The Troubled Times of Ben Cousins. It aired on Channel 7 on August 25 and 26.
The second was the overdose on GHB of Travis Tuck, a player for Australian Football League (AFL) club Hawthorn, on August 27.
On September 13, construction worker Ark Tribe will face Adelaide Magistrates Court yet again.
He is facing six months鈥 jail for failing to attend an interrogation by the construction industry police 鈥 the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC), created by former Howard government as part of Work Choices, but left in place by the ALP.
With the symptoms of social and environmental crisis all around us 鈥 runaway climate change, Third World poverty, seemingly endless wars 鈥 it is sometimes easy to feel discouraged about our ability to change 鈥渢he way things are鈥. We can forget that millions of ordinary people have many times over said 鈥渆nough is enough鈥 and come together to take action to change history.
Review by Mat Ward
Fit to Print: Misrepresenting the Middle East
By Joris Luyendijk
Scribe Publications, 250 pages, $29.95
If you've ever felt like shaking your fist in anger at some of the reporting that comes out of the Middle East, this very honest book by a disillusioned Middle East correspondent will make you shake your head in wonder.
Joris Luyendijk says he had no journalistic experience when he was hired by a newspaper in his native Netherlands to report on the Middle East. He was taken on solely because he could speak Arabic.
Local residents in Marrickville are opposing the proposed expansion of Marrickville Metro Shopping Centre. The Metro Watch group has developed a website, held information stalls, collected signatures on petitions, door-knocked the local area, and held protests.
The effectiveness of this local campaign was demonstrated by the fact that a full-page ad promoting the expansion appeared on the second page of the September 2 Inner West Courier.
It is a film that advocates peace, yet the head of the ABC decided it was too controversial to be viewed by the Australian public.
In May, the ABC pulled the plug on an independent film documenting daily life of Palestinians living under Israel鈥檚 military occupation in the West Bank.
Now, thanks to the power of public pressure, the ABC is reconsidering whether to broadcast Inka Stafrace鈥檚 documentary Hope in a Slingshot.
Letters are flying thick and fast to the ABC, asking the broadcaster to air Stafrace鈥檚 film.
In 2007, federal election candidates made much of the seven vultures that were feeding on the carcass of the Howard government as it flailed around shifting further and further to the right.
Those seven vultures were:
鈥 the denial of climate change;
鈥 touting of the war in Iraq;
鈥 Work Choices;
鈥 policy failure on education spending;
鈥 poor vision of infrastructure;
鈥 destruction of research and development; and
鈥 persecution of refugees with the Pacific Solution.
The Socialist Alliance national office has produced its analysis of the August 21 federal election. It traces the precise mix by electorate of the increased Green, Coalition, independent and informal vote, produced as voters deserted Labor.
The differences among the seat-by-seat contests in an Australian federal election have never been so great. The general disillusionment with the two major parties expressed itself in quite different ways in different electorates and areas.
The scientific community has never been more united in its conviction that climate change is well on the way to rendering planet Earth a vastly less hospitable place for most species, including our own. Yet doubt about the gravity of the problem is, paradoxically, on the rise.
Recent polls in the US, Britain and Canada reveal that fewer people take the threat of climate change seriously than five years ago.
In scenes reminiscent of the Nazi German occupation, French police rounded up almost 1000 Romani people (sometimes called Gypsies) in August and deported them to Romania and Bulgaria.
The mass deportations were foreshadowed by President Nicolas Sarkozy in July in a series of inflammatory speeches in which he accused Romani people of being in an 鈥渦nacceptable situation of lawlessness鈥 linked to 鈥渋llicit trafficking, deeply unworthy living conditions and exploitation of children for begging, prostitution or crime鈥.
On September 1, Luke Foley, the newest Labor member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, rose to make his inaugural speech to the chamber.
Foley began: 鈥淚t is with pride and humility that I enter this place, Australia鈥檚 oldest Parliament, as a representative of Australia鈥檚 oldest, and greatest, political party 鈥 the Australian Labor Party.鈥
Oh dear. What a day for Foley to praise the ALP in NSW.
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