Friday, March 3, 2006

The possibility of large-scale protests in the face of the 3,000 journalists covering the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, has event organisers and the Government worried.

The group “Black GST” – which represents Indigenous Genocide, Sovereignty and Treaty – are planning demonstrations at prominent Games events unless the Government agrees to a range of demands including an end to Aboriginal genocide, Aboriginal Sovereignty and the signing of a treaty.

The Black GST say they hope the focus of the world’s media will draw attention to the plight of indigenous Australians during the Games. Organisers say supporters are converging from across Australia and from overseas. Organisers say up to 20,000 people may take part in talks, rallies, colourful protests and many cultural festivities designed to pressure the Federal Government on Indigeneous rights issues. They want the Government to provide a temporary campsite for the supporters, saying “organised chaos was better than disorganised chaos.”

The 2006 Stolenwealth Games convergence, described by organisers as the “cultural festival of the 2006 Commonwealth Games,” was virtually opened on March 2nd with the launch of the official “Stolenwealth Games” website. Scoop Independent News and Perth Indymedia reported that the launch was held at Federation Square in Melbourne. The site contents were projected via wireless laptop by the Stolenwealth Games General Manager, and a tour of the website was given on the big screen. He said “overwhelming amusement was the response from the audience.” The group say permanent access points to the website are being set up at public internet facilities across Victoria during the coming weeks.

“Interest in the Stolenwealth Games is building all over the world and this fresh, exciting and contemporary site will draw in people from Stolenwealth Nations around the globe to find out about the latest news and events,” said a Stolenwealth Games spokesperson. “We have been getting many requests from around the world wanting to know about the Stolenwealth Games. We have provided many ways that individuals and organisations can support the campaign by spreading the word.”

The Victorian Traditional Owner Land Justice Group (VTOLJG) which represents the first nation groups of Victoria, has announced its support to boycott the 2006 Commonwealth Games until the Government “recognises Traditional Owner rights.” The group asserts that culture has been misappropriated in preparation for the Games.

Organisers of the campaign say they welcome the formal support from the Traditional Owners. “While some seek to divide and discredit Indigenous Australia, this support is further evidence that the Aboriginal people are united in opposition to the ongoing criminal genocide that is being perpetrated against the Aboriginal people” said Black GST supporter and Aboriginal Elder, Robbie Thorpe.

“We now have endorsement from the VTOLJG and the Aboriginal Tent Embassy for the aims and objectives of the Campaign and we are looking forward to hosting all indigenous and non-indigenous supporters from across Australia in March,” he said. The Black GST group have said “the convergence will be held as a peaceful, family-focussed demonstration against genocide, and for the restoration of sovereignty and the negotiations towards a Treaty.”

But the campaign has received flak in mainstream media, such as Melbourne’s Herald Sun, who wrote: “the proposal to allow BlackGST to set up an Aboriginal tent embassy at a site well away from the Commonwealth Games will be interpreted by some as the State Government caving in to a radical protest group. A major concern for the Government… is to protect the event from disruption… no chances should be taken…”

The Black GST has been planning the convergence for months, calling for Aboriginal people and their supporters to converge on Melbourne. The Melbourne-based Indigenous rights group have called on thousands of people concerned about the plight of indigenous Australians to converge on Melbourne during the Games, which they have dubbed “the Stolenwealth Games”. But the choice of Kings Domain has made conflict almost inevitable, as the area is one of the areas gazetted by the State Government as a “Games management zone”.

Under the Commonwealth Games Arrangements Act, any area gazetted as a management zone is subject to a range of specific laws – including bans on protesting, creating a disturbance and other activities. The protest bans will be in effect at different times and places, and offenders can be arrested. A spokeswoman for the Black GST, which advocates peaceful protest, said the site had been chosen because it was close to where the Queen will stay on March 15. “We figured that she is only in Melbourne for 27 hours or something like that so we thought we would make it easy for her to come next door and see us,” she said. “We are a very open, welcoming group, so she will be welcome to come and join us.”

Kings Domain is the burial site for 38 indigenous forefathers of Victoria. Black GST elder, Targan, said trade union groups have offered to install infrastructure at the site. The group initially worked with the State Government to find a suitable camp site, but the relationship broke down when the Government failed to meet a deadline imposed by the protesters. “While we are disappointed the ministers were not able to meet deadline on our request, we thank them for their constructive approach towards negotiations and the open-door policy exercised,” said Targan.

A spokesman for Games Minister Justin Madden said the Government was still investigating other sites. Victoria Police Games security commander Brendan Bannan said he was not convinced the Black GST represented the views of most indigenous people. “We are dealing with the Aboriginal community and they don’t seem to support it at all … the wider Aboriginal community don’t support disruption to the Games at all,” he said.

The Government was told that Black GST supporters would camp in Fitzroy Gardens and other city parks should it fail to nominate a site. A spokesman for Aboriginal Affairs Minister Gavan Jennings said the Government was taking the issue seriously, but had not been able to finalise a campsite before the deadline.

Under special Games laws, people protesting or causing a disturbance in “Games management zones” can be arrested and fined. While prominent public spaces such as Federation Square, Birrarung Marr, Albert Park and the Alexandra Gardens fall under the legislation, such tough anti-protest laws cannot be enforced in the nearby Fitzroy Gardens.

Games chairman Ron Walker has urged the group to choose another date for its protest march through the city, which is currently planned to coincide with the opening ceremony on March 15. The group believes that an opportunity to gain attention for indigenous issues was lost at the Sydney Olympics and has vowed to make a highly visible presence at the Games.

The Black GST said the Australian Aboriginal Tent Embassy’s sacred flame, burning over many years at the Canberra site will be carried to Melbourne before the Games, and its arrival would mark the opening of the protest camp from where a march will proceed to the MCG before the Opening Ceremony.

Black GST claims supporters from all over Australia, including three busloads from the West Australian Land Council, will gather in Melbourne during the Games for peaceful protests.

Aboriginal Affairs Minister Gavin Jennings had offered Victoria Park to the protesters. Victoria Park, former home of Collingwood Football Club, where one of the strongest statements of Aboriginal pride, when St Kilda star Nicky Winmar in 1993 raised his jumper and pointed to his bare chest after racial taunts from the Collingwood crowd.

Black GST, which has labelled the Games the Stolenwealth Games, said the State Government had failed to find a suitable venue. Black GST may encourage protesters to camp in prominent parks such as Fitzroy Gardens and Treasury Gardens. Graffiti supporting the action has also appeared in central Melbourne.

Melbourne City councillor Fraser Brindley has offered his home to the Black GST organisers. “I offered my home up to people who are organising visitors to come to the Games,” he said. Cr Brindley will be overseas when the Commonwealth Games are held and has offered the free accommodation at his flat at Parkville. He said he agreed with the protesters’ view that treaties needed to be signed with indigenous Australians. “I’m offering it up to the indigenous people who are coming to remind Her Majesty that her Empire took this land from them,” said Cr Brindlley. Nationals leader Peter Ryan said: “This extremist group has no part in the Australian community.” Melbourne councillor Peter Clarke said the actions were embarrassing and that he would try to discourage him. “It’s not in the spirit of the Games,” he said.

Aboriginal elder, Targan, said the possibility of securing Victoria Park was delightfully ironic. “There’s a lot of irony going on,” Targan, 53, a PhD student at Melbourne University, said. “GST stands for Genocide, Sovereignty and Treaty. We want the genocide of our people to stop; we want some sovereignty over traditional land, certainly how it is used, and we want a treaty with the government,” Targan said.

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

MIT has announced that Elwood “Woody” Norris, inventor of potentially revolutionary technologies of Hypersonic Sound beams and AirScooter flying vehicles, will receive this year’s Lemelson-MIT prize for invention this Friday, April 22. The prize comes with an award of US$500,000, making it the largest single award for invention given in the United States.

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

Rumours in London and Merseyside have linked Paul and Oliver Collyer, creators of the football management series Championship Manager, with a possible bid for Premiership football team Everton.

The Goodison Park club, under the chairmanship of former Coronation Street actor Bill Kenwright, were subjects of a failed takeover bid in August 2004. After suffering the blow of failing to get beyond the qualifying stage of the Champions League, Kenwright is known to have recently sought additional investments in the club.

While a move is not thought to be imminent, the recent takeover of the brothers’ games development company Sports Interactive by game giant SEGA could well prove the catalyst for action by the lifelong Evertonians. The company’s PR guru Miles Jacobson was forced into an official denial of the story soon after the takeover news broke on Tuesday morning. The Collyers themselves have as yet been unavailable for comment.

[edit]

Friday, September 8, 2006

From September 3 to 8, experts gathered at the 10th International Congress on Obesity in Sydney, Australia, to discuss what they call the worldwide “obesity epidemic”. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 1 billion people in the world today are overweight, and 300 million of those are obese. “Obesity and overweight pose a major risk for serious diet-related chronic diseases, including type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain forms of cancer“, a WHO fact sheet states. According to AP, experts at the conference “have warned that obesity is a bigger threat than AIDS or bird flu, and will easily overwhelm the world’s health care systems if urgent action is not taken”.

Of particular concern is the large number of overweight children. Dr. Stephan Rossner from Sweden’s Karolinska University Hospital, a leading obesity expert who was present at the conference, has warned that as a result of the increasing number of overweight children, “we will have, within a decade or two, a number of young people who are on kidney dialysis. There will not be organs for everybody”. UK-based International Obesity Task Force has said that junk food manufacturers target children, for example, through Internet advertising, chat rooms, text messages, and “advergames” on websites. Politicians are not doing enough to address the problem of obesity, including childhood obesity, the experts said.

According to Wikipedia, examples of junk food include, but are not limited to: hamburgers, pizza, candy, soda, and salty foods like potato chips and french fries. A well-known piece of junk food is the Big Mac. The US version of just one Big Mac burger contains 48% of calories from fat, 47% US Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) of fat, 52% RDA of saturated fat, 26% RDA of cholesterol, 42% RDA of sodium, and little nutritional value. It also has 18% of calories from protein. According to WHO, most people need only about 5% calories from protein. Staples such as rice, corn, baked potatoes, pinto beans, as well as fruits and vegetables such as broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, oranges, and strawberries, provide more than this required amount of protein without the unhealthy amounts of fats or sodium, without cholesterol, and with plenty of fiber, vitamins, and minerals.

Both WHO and the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) define overweight in adults as a Body Mass Index (BMI) of 25 or above, and obese as a BMI of 30 or above. To combat overweight and obesity, WHO recommends that, among other things, people should be taking the following steps

• eating more fruit and vegetables, as well as nuts and whole grains;
• engaging in daily moderate physical activity for at least 30 minutes;
• cutting the amount of fatty, sugary foods in the diet;
• moving from saturated animal-based fats to unsaturated vegetable-oil based fats.

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

SÃO PAULO, Brazil – The Landless Workers Movement (MST) inaugurated on Sunday the school Florestan Fernandes created by the movement. The school is located at the city of Guararema, 60Km (37.282 miles) from São Paulo and is about 30,000 m 2 {\displaystyle m^{2}} . Its estimated cost was about US$ 1,3 million, the money coming from the European Union, NGOs from France and Germany and the MST’s own finances.

The inauguration was attended by the Brazilian Minister of the Agrarian Development Miguel Rosseto, Venezuelan Education and Culture Ministeries delegates, the writer Fernando Morais among other international guests.

According to the MST the proposed courses for the school are: professorship and pedagogy (teaching), collective administration expert, general farming, movement leadership, and Human and Social Sciences.

João Pedro Stédile, a leader of the MST said:”This school is for taking the power for the workers. So that the friends transform the scientific knowledge into instrument of liberation and not of exploitation, as they do.”He also said: “Our enemies are the large farmers, the imperialism, the multinationals, the bankers, the capitalist exploitation and the ignorance. Against them we fight.” According to him the school has an ideological function.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Fifteen Italians including police officers, doctors and prison guards were found guilty of abusing and beating protesters at the G8‘s 27th summit in Genoa in 2001. A judge handed down jail terms between five months’ and five years’ imprisonment. The charges include abuse, fraud, criminal coercion and inhuman and degrading treatment. Another thirty defendants were cleared of charges, including assault.

In June last year former deputy police chief of Genoa, Michelangelo Fournier, belatedly admitted in court that police had “butchered” protesters. In a graphic description of the violence he said he had kept quiet until then “out of shame and a spirit of comradeship”.

The heaviest sentence was five years for Biagio Gugliotta in the penitentiary police department, the commander on duty at the camp at Bolzaneto. Twelve other police officers, eight men and four women, received jail terms of five to 28 months. Doctors Giacomo Toccafondi and Aldo Amenta were given 14 months and 10 months respectively. Dr. Toccafondi was accused of insulting detainees and failing to inform authorities after they were sprayed with asphyxiating gas in cells. The judges issued their verdicts after 11 hours of closed-doors deliberations.

All those convicted are expected to appeal and none will go to prison until the appeals process is complete, which normally takes years. The sentences totalled less than a third of 76 years what had been demanded by the prosecution. The BBC‘s David Willey in Rome says it is unlikely that any of those sentenced will actually serve time in prison because their offences will have expired under Italy’s statute of limitations before the appeal process is completed. It is expected the Italian government will be forced to pay out millions of pounds to those who were victims of police brutality during their detention.

Police were accused of organised and premeditated brutality at the Diaz High School which protesters were using as a dormitory during the summit. In another ongoing trial, 28 defendants, including some of Italy’s most senior police officers, face charges related to the raid on the school. The raid left seventy-three protesters injured with three in comas. A judge ruled that there was no evidence to show any of those demonstrators had been involved in the violence in Genoa.

More than 250 of those arrested were taken to a holding camp that had been created at Bolzaneto, six miles from Genoa. The detainees at Bolzaneto included about 40 who were arrested in a raid on the Diaz school. During the trial the court heard how the holding centre had been the scene for “episodes of torture that violated human dignity.” One of the prosecutors in the case, Patrizia Petruziello, said that 40 protesters who were arrested suffered “four out of five” of the European Court’s criteria for “inhuman and degrading treatment”.

Of the 252 demonstrators who claimed abuse, strong evidence emerged in at least 209 cases considered during the trial. Demonstrators said they were strip-searched, spat at, insulted, verbally and physically humiliated, beaten and sprayed with asphyxiating gas. Some were threatened with rape and sodomy. They were denied food, phone calls or access to consulates while detained. While being held they were forced to sing songs in praise of Italy’s late fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini and other antisemitic songs about Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, which which included the line “Death to the Jews.” The prosecution claimed that this was torture.

The 2001 summit in the northern Italian city was one of the most violent in the history of the G8. Between 100,000 and 200,000 demonstrators took part in anti-globalisation protests. A 23-year-old Italian demonstrator Carlo Giuliani was shot dead by a conscript Carabiniere and hundreds more injured as two days of riots erupted at the summit in the city of Genoa that was hosted by Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi. In December 2007, 24 demonstrators were found guilty of damage to property and looting. They were given sentences ranging from five months to 11 years.

The trial has lasted nearly three years.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

With this year’s November midterm elections fast approaching, three prominent United States Democrats announced their plans for retirement from public service on Wednesday.

Powerful and influential—yet controversial for his alleged close ties to the financial sector and his handling of last year’s bailout—Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut announced that he would not be seeking a sixth term this year.

In a speech to his supporters in East Haddam, Connecticut, the sixty-five-year-old senior senator—with his family at his side—said, “I have been a Connecticut senator for thirty years. I’m very proud of the job I’ve done and the results delivered. But none of us is irreplaceable. None of us is indispensable.”

He then went on to say, “Over the past twelve months, I’ve managed four major pieces of legislation through the United States Congress, served as chair and acting chair of two major Senate committees, placing me at the center of the two most important issues of our time—health care and reform of financial services.”

In addition to highlighting some personal travails, Dodd alluded to his precarious political situation, “I lost a beloved sister in July, and in August, Ted Kennedy. I battled cancer over the summer, and in the midst of all of this, found myself in the toughest political shape of my career.”

Despite this, Dodd adamantly maintained that none of the above reasons were the causes for his retirement. He said that his reasons were more “personal,” and that his retirement would hopefully give him a much-wanted opportunity to spend more time with his family.

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota announced that he would not run for re-election this year either.

“Although I still have a passion for public service and enjoy my work in the Senate, I have other interests and I have other things I would like to pursue outside of public life,” said the sixty-seven-year-old, three-term senator who said he came to this decision after discussing his future with his immediate family over Christmas.

Governor of Colorado, Bill Ritter announced that he too would not seek a second term. The fifty-three-year-old freshman governor said that although he felt his race was “absolutely winnable,” after some deep “soul searching,” he realized that he truly wanted to retire from politics nonetheless. This due to the fact that he felt his main priority should be to be a better husband to his wife as well as a better father to their four children.

When asked to comment on Senator Dodd’s retirement on behalf of the Administration, Vice President Joseph Biden said Dodd would “be long recognized as one of the most significant senators of my generation.”

He furthermore stated, “I believe the nation will miss his wisdom, wit and compassion. I count myself lucky because I know he’s not going too far and will always be a source of advice and counsel.”

Biden gave similar comments and expressed like sentiments about the retirement of his other two Democratic colleagues as well.

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Sri Lanka government forces repulsed an overnight offensive by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in the northern Jaffna peninsula in some of the fiercest fighting since the 2002 truce.

The LTTE attempted an amphibious attack arriving in a flotilla of gunboats. Government troops drove them off, supported by artillery and aerial bombing.

According to a military spokesperson, Major Rajapakse, the army killed at least 98 Tamil Tigers and wounded twice as many. The army suffered 6 killed and 60 wounded.

“The situation has calmed down now after heavy fighting till early this morning,” Rajapakse said.

The ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka is an ongoing conflict between the Government of Sri Lanka and the ethnic Sri Lankan Tamils on the island-nation of Sri Lanka. Since the 1983 “Black July” pogrom, there has been on-and-off civil war, mostly between the government and the LTTE who want to create an independent state of called Tamil Eelam in the north and east of the island. It is estimated that the war has left 65,000 people dead since 1983 and caused great harm to the population and economy of the country. A cease-fire was declared in 2002, but hostilities renewed in late 2005 following military operations against Tiger-controlled territory in the east.