July 2nd, 2009
Stuart Rintoul; 2/7/09
Australian governments suffer from a “deep monolingualism” that has discriminated against teaching in Aboriginal languages, according to a new report criticising the dismantling of bilingual education in the Northern Territory. In an assault on the territory’s decision last year to teach the first four hours of the school day in English, the report’s authors say the decision “could spell the death of the remaining endangered indigenous languages in Australia” and marked a return to the “English-only” approach of the assimilationist era of the1950s. The authors, Jane Simpson, Jo Caffery and Patrick McConvell, all of whom have long experience in Aboriginal linguistics, say bilingualism in remote NT schools was ditched “without apparent regard for the evidence from research on how monolingual children learn a second language, or on the positive value of bilingual education, or the language rights of indigenous peoples, or the evidence from schools which had abandoned bilingual education”.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Education
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July 2nd, 2009
Tony Barrass & Matthew Franklin; 2/7/09
West Australian Premier Colin Barnett will today tell state and territory leaders that the axing of the Aboriginal work-for-the-dole program and new ventures in northern Australia will create unprecedented opportunities to get young Aborigines properly trained and working. With Kevin Rudd due to be told by the Productivity Commission today whether his multi-billion-dollar assault on indigenous disadvantage is working, Mr Barnett will brief the Council of Australian Governments on recent developments in the Kimberley, including the go-ahead for stage two of the Ord River scheme and the proposed LNG processing hub north of Broome. He believes the big multi-billion-dollar projects will translate into a training and jobs bonanza for indigenous youth.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Workers
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July 2nd, 2009
Cnaan Liphshiz; 2/7/09; (2 Items)
Thousands of people this week signed a petition in support of the Israeli president of the World Medical Association, following a campaign to impeach him from the world ethical body for alleged complicity in torturing Palestinians. The impeachment campaign began shortly after Blachar assumed the presidency in November, but has picked up following last month’s publication of a report by Israeli human rights groups on alleged complicity by Israeli doctors in tortures. In June, 725 physicians from 43 countries signed a petition for Blachar’s removal, claiming that the Israel Medical Association which he heads has ignored evidence that doctors working in detention facilities are allowing torture. Blachar denies this. “We are fighting to immunize science from politics,” said Nancy Falchuk, who organized the petition to support Blachar as president of Hadassah ? A Zionist body heavily invested in medicine and the largest volunteer organization in the U.S.
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Tags: health, Israel, Terrorism, USA
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July 2nd, 2009
Mark Metherell; 2/7/09
Pressure is mounting for brand labels to be removed from cigarette packets – a move that the tobacco industry bluffed a previous Labor government out of pursuing, according to anti-tobacco campaigners. The Public Health Association, the Cancer Council and Heart Foundation yesterday swung behind Family First Senator Steve Fielding’s move to introduce legislation banning brand labels on cigarette packs. “There is no case for allowing any glossy brand promotion for a product that is lethal and addictive,” Senator Fielding said. The national preventative health taskforce in its report handed to the Government this week is expected to call for the branding ban – which the tobacco industry has fiercely resisted in the past.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, Trade
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July 2nd, 2009
2/7/09
A car-bomb has delivered the first deadly challenge to Iraq’s security forces after the US withdrew combat troops from cities. A blast devastated a food market in the city of Kirkuk yesterday, killing at least 33 people and wounding 92. The early-evening attack bore the hallmarks of Sunni extremist groups such as al-Qa’ida. The bombing highlighted the violence many Iraqis fear will increase with the departure of US troops from urban areas, despite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s confidence in his security forces. US President Barack Obama, who opposed the 2003 war ordered by his predecessor, George W. Bush, hailed the US withdrawal as an “important milestone” but warned of days of bloodshed and violence ahead.
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Tags: Iraq, Terrorism, USA
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July 2nd, 2009
Matthew Franklin; 2/7/09
Kevin Rudd will today pump $50 million into new projects to protect the Great Barrier Reef from chemical runoff from farms, in a major revamp of land management policy. The grants, which will fund action by land management and farm groups to minimise runoff of agricultural chemicals and nutrients, are among $400m in new spending to be unveiled by the Prime Minister today under the Caring for Our Country program. The $2 billion scheme, which replaces land management programs of the previous Howard government, aims to reduce red tape and encourage individual farmers and interested groups to work together to protect land and water catchments, rather than acting in isolation. Progress on the projects will be assessed annually against business plans.
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Tags: Australia, Environment, Trade
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July 2nd, 2009
James Madden; 2/7/09; (5 Items)
Eleven Indonesian men convicted of smuggling asylum-seekers into Australia will each spend a minimum three years in jail. The men, aged between 19 and 67, were crewmen on vessels picked up by Australian authorities between December 2008 and March this year. Appearing in the Perth District Court yesterday, eight of the men were sentenced to a maximum five years’ jail with a three-year non-parole period. The other three received a maximum five years’ and six months jail and will also be eligible for parole in three years.
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Tags: Australia, Evangelical Christianity, Indonesia, Malaysia, Refugees and Migrants, Sex Trade, Sri Lanka, Trade
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July 2nd, 2009
Angus Hohenboken; 2/7/09
A man alleged by police to be one of the “principal offenders” in a violent attack that left two Sri Lankan students with severe acid burns has been charged with attempted murder. Sinhalese Sri Lankan students Jayasri Watawala, 22, and Chathuika Weerasinghe, 27, suffered severe burns when they were doused with acid during a home invasion at Westmead in Sydney’s west on May 17. The attack followed a series of violent outbreaks in the area sparked by tensions between a pro-Tamil Tigers group and supporters of the Sri Lankan government over the end to Sri Lanka’s civil war. Amalathepan Srikantharajah, 25, from the western suburb of Girraween, was yesterday charged with attempted murder, break and enter with intent to commit murder and maliciously casting corrosive fluid with intent to maim. “Police will allege that this is one of the principal offenders in the home invasion,” Detective Inspector Albert Joseph said.
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Tags: Australia, Sri Lanka, Terrorism
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July 1st, 2009
Editorial: 1/7/09; (4 Items)
A couple of months ago, Israel’s controversial, very right-wing foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, was in London for talks with the British government as part of a four-nation European trip. It was his first visit abroad as foreign minister and it would have been interesting to have been a fly on the wall when he met British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, if only to have seen the body language. All the reports point to a cold get-together. Miliband who, only a couple of days earlier in Washington, had been effusive in his praise of President Barack Obama’s Middle East peace plans, calling them a once-in-a-generation opportunity to end the intractable Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is said to have been unhappy at having to meet Lieberman, who had virtually invited himself to London. The fact that there was almost no press coverage of the visit certainly implies that. It was the same during his visits to Paris, Rome and Berlin. No photo calls, no joint press conferences. None of the foreign ministers wanted to be seen near Lieberman. We cannot blame them.
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Tags: Europe, Israel, Settlers, USA
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July 1st, 2009
Antony Lawes; 30/6/09
At a time when the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy, has denounced the burqa, a film by a group of young Sydney women has taken on a particular resonance. In the animated short film Huriyya And Her Sisters, two bullies ask a character named Mariam if she showers with hers on. “I know many girls who wear the hijab who get these questions,” says Aya Sukkarieh, 16, who voices Mariam in the film. Sukkarieh says the film is trying to “open the world’s eyes to Muslim women because people have different misconceptions and this is just trying to verify everything and get people to realise we’re not that bad”. Huriyya And Her Sisters premieres on Sunday as part of the fifth Arab Film Festival, opening in Parramatta on Thursday. The film’s artistic director, Paula Abood, says few films give Muslim women a voice.
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Tags: Australia, Muslim, Womens Rights
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July 1st, 2009
1/7/09
The current debate around the alleged stretched capacity of the Christmas Island detention centre (”Biggest boatload to stretch detention centre”, 29/6) fails to acknowledge the basic flaws of the federal government’s excision policy. The offshore processing of asylum claims is a fundamentally unsustainable policy that is both expensive for taxpayers and traumatic for those people — including unaccompanied minors and children — that arrive in Australia after fleeing persecution. Limited capacity is always going to be a problem with such a remote facility as the Christmas Island detention centre. What should be examined now is the rationale for taking people to Christmas Island in the first place. People have a fundamental human right to seek asylum, and all people seeking asylum in Australia should receive equal treatment under the law, regardless of whether they arrive by boat or by plane.
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Tags: Australia, Migrants & Refugees
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July 1st, 2009
1/7/09
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has alleged that Israeli operators failed to verify targets of drone aircraft at least six times during the Gaza war, firing missiles that killed at least 29 Palestinians.In a 39-page report released on Tuesday, the New York-based group said that despite having advanced surveillance equipment, drone operators failed to exercise proper caution “as required by the laws of war” in verifying their targets. Israel has a fleet of spy drones, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), but does not discuss whether some of these aircraft also carry weapons.
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Tags: Human Rights, Israel, Terrorism, USA
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July 1st, 2009
1/7/09
Iraq’s long-awaited licensing round to develop some of its massive oil reserves has run into trouble as international oil and gas companies rejected all but one deal, demanding more money for their efforts than the government was willing to pay. Following Tuesday’s initial bids, of the six oil and two gas fields on offer, Iraq had only struck a deal with a BP-led consortium for Rumaila, the largest oil field available. Bids on the others came in far above the maximum fee the government was willing to pay for every extra barrel of oil produced. But as the auction closed, Iraq’s oil ministry said it had received seven revised bids from oil companies, not made public, which have been sent to the cabinet for consideration.
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Tags: Iraq, Trade, USA
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July 1st, 2009
1/7/09
Iraqi forces have assumed formal control of the capital, Baghdad, and other cities, six years after US-led coalition forces invaded Iraq. But as Iraq marked the occasion by celebrating Tuesday as Sovereignty Day, a car bomb killed at least 40 people in the northern city of Kirkuk, serving a grim reminder to the security challenges that Iraqis face following US troop pullout. US troops withdrew from the country’s major cities and towns as the midnight deadline passed on Tuesday, leaving security in the hands of Iraqi forces. “The withdrawal of American troops is completed now from all cities, after everything they sacrificed for the sake of security,” Sadiq al-Rikabi, a senior adviser to Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, said.
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Tags: Iraq, Terrorism, USA
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July 1st, 2009
Laura Bush; 1/7/09
For two weeks, the world has been transfixed by images of Iranians taking to the streets to demand the most basic human freedoms and rights. Watching these courageous men and women, I am reminded of a similar scene nearly two years ago in Burma, when tens of thousands of Buddhist monks peacefully marched through their nation’s streets. They, too, sought to reclaim basic human dignity for all Burmese citizens, but they were beaten back by that nation’s harsh regime. Since those brutal days Burma’s suffering has intensified. In the past 21 months, the number of political prisoners incarcerated by the junta has doubled. Within the past 10 days, two Burmese citizens were sentenced to 18 months in prison. Their offence: praying in a Buddhist pagoda for the release of the jailed opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.That is only the tip of the regime’s brutality. Inside Burma, more than 3000 villages have been “forcibly displaced” – a number exceeding the mass relocations in Darfur.
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Tags: Burma, Terrorism, Womens Rights
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July 1st, 2009
Cynthia Banham; 1/7/09
The Federal Government has written to the states, telling them of its plans to introduce laws banning them from ever reintroducing the death penalty, whether they like it or not. While all states have abolished the death penalty, there is nothing preventing a government from bringing it back. The Age has a copy of a letter sent from Federal Attorney General Robert McClelland to his state counterparts on June 16, informing them “of the Commonwealth Government’s intention to introduce legislation to prohibit the application of the death penalty throughout Australia”. The language of the letter is significant, as it indicates the Federal Government has opted to use the external affairs power in the constitution to put the prohibition in place.
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Tags: Australia, Capital Punishment
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