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So far this year we've raised $36,811 for the 91������̳ Weekly Fighting Fund. This is a good effort, but well short of our running target. To reach our 2012 target of $250,000 we need to have raised about $80,000 by the end of this month.

Activist Marlene Carrasco says some organisations visit refugees in Sydney’s Villawood detention centre in the same way they might make a trip to the zoo. “You know, [some of the big NGOs], they just come in, say hello, then the zoo visit’s over and they leave,” Carrasco told 91������̳ Weekly outside Villawood on a gloomy Easter Sunday. The 42-year-old Muslim woman makes the short trip to Villawood every Sunday from Merrylands, the western Sydney suburb to which she migrated in the 1970s. She said visitors needed to do more than just visit refugees — and she should know.

The nuclear industry has been responsible for some of the crudest racism in Australia's history. This racism dates from the British nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s but it can still be seen today. The British government conducted 12 nuclear bomb tests in Australia in the 1950s, most of them at Maralinga in South Australia. Permission was not sought from affected Aboriginal groups such as the Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Tjarutja and Kokatha. Thousands of people were adversely affected and the impact on Aboriginal people was particularly profound.

Two officers identifying themselves as being from . If recent headlines are anything to go by () such surprise visits will become ever more frequent for anti-coal activists like me.

Coalmine workers employed by the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) in central Queensland's Bowen Basin are standing firm in the face of escalating attacks by their employer. In the latest round, BHP has announced the closure of its Norwich Park coalmine, south-east of Dysart. The move is clearly aimed at putting pressure on the mineworkers to settle their longstanding industrial dispute.