It makes no sense to pay for one’s pension by investing in companies that make sure we won’t have a planet to retire on Earlier this month, the trustees of the city graveyard in Santa Monica, California (final resting place of actor Glenn Ford and tennis star May Sutton) announced they were selling their million dollars worth of [...]

Making the world a more dangerous place The Australian parliament building reeks of floor polish. The wooden floors shine so virtuously they reflect the cartoon-like portraits of prime ministers, bewigged judges and viceroys. Along the gleaming white, hushed corridors, the walls are hung with Aboriginal art: one painting after another as in a monolithic gallery, divorced [...]

How the chosen ones ended Australia’s sporting prowess and revealed its secret past The ferries that ply the river west of Sydney Harbour bear the names of Australia’s world champion sportswomen. They include the Olympic swimming gold-medalists Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould, and runners Betty Cuthbert and Majorie Jackson. As you board, there is a photograph [...]

One of my first jobs as a junior reporter was to meet flights bringing famous people to Australia. Growing up in a country far from everywhere (except, as my father would say, “where you come from”),  I was led to believe that Australia’s honour was at risk unless a well-known person from Over There said [...]

This week’s Supreme Court hearing in the Julian Assange case has profound meaning for the preservation of basic freedoms in western democracies. This is Assange’s final appeal against his extradition to Sweden to face allegations of sexual misconduct that were originally dismissed by the chief prosecutor in Stockholm and constitute no crime in Britain. The consequences, [...]

The illegal eavesdropping on famous people by the News of the World is said to be Rupert Murdoch’s Watergate. But is it the crime by which Murdoch ought to be known? In his native land, Australia, Murdoch controls 70 per cent of the capital city press. Australia is the world’s first murdochracy, in which smear [...]

Floods, earthquakes, landslides: 2011 is a year of disasters. Bill McKibben asks: are we to blame? Plus, survivors tell their tales At least since Noah, and likely long before, we’ve stared in horror at catastrophe and tried to suss out deeper meaning – it was but weeks ago that the Tokyo governor, Shintaro Ishihara, [...]

When you fly over the earth’s oldest land mass, Australia, the view can be shocking. Scars as long as European countries are the result of erosion. Salt pans shimmer where once native vegetation grew. This is almost impossible to reverse. The first to die are the most vulnerable species. According to the International Union for [...]

Source: New Statesman Kevin Rudd’s apology to the Aborigines has changed little. White Australia must offer its first people universal land rights and a proper share of resources by John Pilger November 26, 2009 I remember the boys dressed in army surplus, the girls in hessian, their silhouettes framed in beach shanties, staring across an abyss. You were not [...]

by Bryan Farrell November 20, 2009 Hundreds of climate activists swarmed down a hill toward Britain’s largest coal-burning power plant Oct. 17 with the intention of shutting it down. Within minutes, dozens had broken through the perimeter fence, erected specifically for this protest, and entered the site, known as Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station. But 650 police officers rapidly [...]