Our children are still being fed racist messages by toy manufacturers and stockists. A recent browse through Northlands K-Mart toy department led me to wonder: If all Baby-Borns are white, where did Wrestler Action Man come from?
Despite catering to one of the most multicultural parts of Melbourne, Northlands K-Mart does not have a single non-white baby doll in its massive display.
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Sydney-based fringe magazine Spunk has announced it plans to use its latest fundraiser event, Possessed, to raise awareness and support for the Boomalli Aboriginal Artists Cooperative, which is threatened with imminent eviction by the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts.
What鈥檚 Wrong With Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History
By Marilyn Lake & Henry Reynolds
UNSW Press, 2010, 183 pages, $29.95 (pb)
On April 25 in Australia, it is humanly impossible to escape the slouch hats, the Dawn Service, the Last Post, the khaki uniforms and the military ceremonies endlessly recycled in the establishment media. The cult of Anzac Day is pervasive, the culture of war unavoidable.
Creation
Directed by Jon Amiel
Starring Paul Bettany & Jennifer Connelly
In cinemas
The life of Charles Darwin has all the elements of an engaging movie 鈥 adventure, conflict, insecurity, heartbreak and ultimately victory over entrenched ideas and institutions.
The film Creation takes up some of these issues, portraying Darwin (Paul Bettany) in the years preceding the publication of On the Origin of Species, grappling with his theory and confronting the religious conservatism of his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly).
On March 10 Veronnica Baxter, a 34-year-old Aboriginal woman from the Cunnamulla country, south-west Queensland, was arrested by Redfern police and held on remand. She dressed, appeared, and had identified as a woman for 15 years and was known by family and friends as a woman. Yet she was placed at the all-male NSW Silverwater Metropolitan Reception and Remand Centre. Six days later, after a 14-hour break between checking her cell, she was found dead, hanging in her single cell.
Right-wing candidate Juan Manuel Santos won the second round of the Colombian presidential elections on June 20. This re-affirms Colombia鈥檚 position as the US鈥檚 chief proxy in the region, playing a similar role to that of Israel in the Middle East.
Santos won 69% of the run-off election against Green Party presidential candidate and former Bogota mayor Antanas Mockus. However, IPS said on June 21 that, with just 45% of registered voters taking part in the poll, Santos won with a mere 30% of potential votes.
On June 25, federal trade minister Simon Crean signed a deal to export up to 20 million tonnes of dried brown coal to Vietnam. The deal was signed with ironically-named Victorian company Environmental Clean Technologies (ECT). Fifty people protested outside the venue in Southbank where the deal was signed, despite the rain and only a few hours notice of the event.
US intelligence services are closely monitoring the movements of Wikileaks鈥 founder, Julian Assange, after he said the website would soon release a classified Pentagon video showing a May 2009 US air strike in Afghanistan that killed up to 140 civilians.
The 鈥淕arani鈥 video, if released, would follow the video released by Wikileaks in May, which showed US soldiers in an Apache helicopter fatally shooting about a dozen civilians in Iraq, including a reporter from news agency Reuters.
That video received worldwide prominence and considerably heightened Wikileaks鈥 profile.
Duncan Roden is a member of . He was born in Fiji and is a leading member of the Parramatta Climate Action Network. He has been preselected by the Socialist Alliance to run in the federal seat of Parramatta in the coming election.
Below, Roden responds to rugby player Timana Tahu鈥檚 stand against racism.
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Australian Labor Party finance minister Lindsay Tanner announced on June 24 he would quit politics at the next election. His seat, the electorate of Melbourne, could become the first lower house seat one by the Greens in a federal election.
Greens candidate for Melbourne Adam Bandt is running a serious campaign. The Greens say only one in 10 people who voted ALP last time need to change to the Greens for Bandt to win the seat.
Bandt spoke to 麻豆传媒 Weekly鈥檚 Ben Courtice about his campaign.
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In late June, two important events related to renewable energy took place.
On June 24, the Senate passed changes to the government's renewable energy target, removing the bias towards small-scale energy systems that put many wind farm projects on hold. The scheme set a 20% renewable energy target by 2020.
As climate change compels us to reduce carbon emissions, urban gardens that provide locally produced food are becoming an increasingly important model. The African Food Project is an urban, organic farm that grows traditional African vegetables for the African community around the outer western suburb of Blacktown.
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