Sunday, June 29, 2008

Devilishly good

So they're called the Perth Demons, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve a little divine intervention. Tell me he's playing & I'm a convert...

Questions over investigation of WGV death

West journo, Michael Bennett, was no slouch when he spotted differences in police accounts of the circumstances surrounding the hanging death of a 24 y/o Aboriginal woman, Kirsty Anne Slater, in a park in White Gum Valley. Bennett's sporadic contributions vastly improve the daily's Indigenous affairs reporting, which tragically fall to lesser journos all too frequently & usually at the expense of 3% of the community.

'Seasoned' WAPOL investigator, Donald Campbell, explained in the Coroner's Court last Thursday, that it was because he had examined 'hundreds of suicides' that he did not enquire about the suspicious circumstances that the family and other officers had complained about, and failed to take the family's statements that the girl had not been suicidal prior to her death. One officer said he had been concerned by, 'the fact that she was laying backwards and her feet were flat on the ground.'

High profile Perth lawyer, John Hammond, who recently volunteered his services for the Fitzroy Crossing inquiry into foetal alcohol syndrome, was pointed in his questioning of Campbell, enquiring if the reason he had not followed up on the concerns was because the girl was Indigenous & a mental health patient. Campbell rebuked Hammond's line of questioning as 'repulsive' and 'offensive.' Readers can only speculate whether the Slater family may have been similarly affronted by Campbell's investigation.

Squares get bombed in Nimbin(that's news in Nimbin)


Nimbin Ban the Bomb Pic found here presumably by Tracey H
A chillout venue for Nimbin residents who don't take 'hard' drugs was bombed with a 'home-made' explosive device, that police claim was most likely to be a firecracker(& for the Irish contingent - yes, Nimbin is a small town). For a number of years there's been speculation about the encroachment of 'harder' drugs onto the grassy knolls of naughty Nimbin.

Is it possible that the atypical police raids(by the riot squad, no less) in April that were *allegedly* exclusively on pot heads while heavier dealers were left untouched, may have created greater division within the once happy hippie community?

Rather unsurprisingly, police claim this isn't the case.
"There is definitely not a gang problem in Nimbin," a police spokesperson said(are there enough people in Nimbin to form a gang?). Residents are suggesting rifts have formed between those who do, and those who don't, as a result of their actions to curb drug deals in the back alleys of the NSW town.

What do you stand for?



Mob 0141 Australia (WA) 5/6/2008
Perth - Convention Center, National Native Title Conference 2008


FARA tells us that the Burrup rock art is now on the national Aboriginal land rights agenda and participants of the Stand Up at the 2008 Native Title Conference, represented Aboriginal communities from all over Australia, including Gulf of Carpentaria Aboriginal activist Murrandoo Yanner.

A vigil was held before the NT opening dinner, for the 40,000 y/o Burrup rock art that to the West Australian government seemingly ranks a very distant second to industry in the state which annually produces a third of the nation's GDP.

Earlier at the conference, Ngarluma and Balyku Aboriginal custodians for the Burrup Peninsula and the Pilbara's Abydos/Woodstock region and members of FARA also presented "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt cheap: the WA Government's assault on Aboriginal cultural heritage".



The "Murujuga Declaration" by one of the traditional owners of Murujuga, Robyne Churnside(republished below in full)(thanks to FARA), outlines an ongoing threat to the cultural heritage on the Burrup by Woodside and other companies.





THE MURUJUGA DECLARATION
Statement by Robyne Churnside, traditional owner of Murujuga (the Burrup Peninsula) read at the protest against the Pluto project by Ngarluma and Yindjibarndi custodians at Woodside’s Pluto LNG lease, 17 November 2007.1

Woodside says they have not destroyed any rock art on the Burrup Peninsula, just‘moved’ it. My people say that once a piece of rock art left by our ancestors is removed, our song line, our sacred site, is destroyed forever. Aboriginal people believe that the Burrup is a powerful and dangerous place, and that bad things will happen to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people if it is disturbed.

For nearly forty years, Woodside and other companies have made billions of dollars from our country. But what benefits have we, the Aboriginal custodians of the Burrup, seen from the mining boom? While white mining executives live in luxury in Peppermint Grove in Perth, today, in 2007, there are still 15 Aboriginal families in Roebourne living in houses made of asbestos!

Our people said we were happy for Woodside to build the gas plant on our country, as long as they didn’t damage our rock art, our sacred sites, our library for future generations. We asked them to put the plant nearby, somewhere where our cultural heritage, our stories would be safe.That’s what we said to Woodside, the Western Australian Government and the Federal Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, but instead, they were too greedy, and didn’t listen to us. When our old people signed the BMIEA Agreement with the State government in 2003, we thought they would be true to their word. Woodside and the Western Australian Government promised to protect our cultural heritage, but instead they told us a lot of lies. Woodside has not even followed the section 18 conditions set down by State Minister, Michelle Roberts, legalizing Woodside’s destruction of our rock art.

The WA Aboriginal Heritage Act gives mining companies permission to legally destroy Aboriginal heritage in Western Australia under whitefella law, but doesn’t even follow whitefellas’ own law. It gives a right of appeal to white developers who ask the Minister for permission to destroy our heritage, but not to the Traditional Owners who own that heritage. So it goes against whitefellas’ own law, the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. WA Environment Minister David Templeman’s EPA approval for Woodside’s Pluto project was also probably invalid. Woodside paid archaeologists and anthropologists to come here and destroy our rock art on Pluto A and B leases. None of them got permission from our old people to do this.

1 For a news report on the protest, see ‘Protest at Pluto ruffles feathers’ Pilbara News, 21 November 2007.
2 By doing this, they breached their own professional codes of ethics, as well as the Burra Charter and the UNESCO Statement on the Intentional Destruction of Cultural Heritage.

When my goombarli [brother-in-law] Wilfred Hicks asked Federal Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull to protect our cultural heritage on Pluto B and move the Pluto plant somewhere else less dangerous, he waited until three days after his own Government was dissolved in October, and then told his offsider, Mr John Cobb, to send a fax to my goombarli telling his decision. John Cobb told Wilfred that in his opinion, ‘the Pluto B area does not meet the criteria under the Act for an Aboriginal protected area’. Woodside and the WA Government think they have the right to do whatever they like with our country here, which they call ‘Pluto B’, an area that is part of what we call‘Murujuga’.

We say Murujuga is still our country, through our ancestors and our dreaming. We say it is still our right under Aboriginal Law to come here, to hunt, collect bush tucker and bush medicine, light fires, conduct ceremonies and make decisions about this country. We have come here today to show people around the world that whatever Woodside, the State and Federal Governments say, we still have the right to enter our land, to exercise our native title rights here and to defend and protect it from the greed and destruction brought upon it by the Western Australian Government and Woodside.

Robyne Churnside is a member of the Ngarluma native title group, Pilbara Native Title Service Executive Committee, Equal Opportunity Commission Discrimination Committee and convenor of the Roebourne Strong Women’s Group.



Saturday, June 21, 2008

You Tube opens up people powered news



All too often the media's responsibility to inform (or entertain, for that matter) is out of balance with their need to generate revenue, with mainstream content considerably worsened by flacks' spin merely regurgitated by over-worked & underpaid hacks.

As newspaper and hard copy circulations decline, as is & will inevitably be the natural course of things, the internet offers a more diverse range of news and information sources.

Though even citizen news websites such as the national Norg network that was started in Perth by former 'The West Australian' journo Bronwen Clune, are susceptible to the nefarious spinners & spammers, the diligence of hard working grass roots indy media helps to keep a strong foundation in local real news & commentary that's more organic & sourced in alternative ways at a street-level.

You Tube has joined in the indy media networks by creating its own news hosting website, and though it is still in its early days, it promises to yield great opportunity to disseminate real news.

Old school journo Bill Rowlings, CEO and secretary of Civil Liberties Australia, delivers a comprehensive range of real news and views from a variety of authors and sources oozing street cred on the national body's website, relating to civil liberties, human rights, and the creep of Big Brother in Oz.

Other alternative news sources for people who actually want to know what's happening around them, can be found at sites like The City News from Sydney.

It was reported by The Australian that one journalist from the independent City News was arrested and charged under 'move along' laws, for monitoring (at a safe distance) the body search and arrest of youths in a public place.

Unbeknownst to Joe Public, there is a constant and monumental amount of pressure(not to mention sometimes downright intimidation) placed on freelance and independent journalists, in order to control and dictate content openly or by stealth, of what government media offices and larger corporations consider a somewhat renegade threat requiring pre-emptive damage control.

This is apparent, for example, in West Australia's GMO's policy to allow only journalists from mainstream media outlets rather than registered sole contractors(i.e. stringers and freelancers) to be informed in advance of media conferences and releases by state government ministers thus eradicating a level playing field in the media market so as to curb independent content. Although that is merely one way that original and independent content is stifled.

However, the bottom line is that if you're dissatisfied with your msm news content, have your say by taking your web traffic to indy media sites such as those listed and be free of brainwashing via advertising & spin.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

The Magician



It's funny the people you meet when you're on the road.