Archive for August, 2015


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Senator Scott Ludlam…

With opposition to the Perth Freight Link mounting, a Senate inquiry underway and the government’s credibility crumbling, it’s time to encourage the three main companies bidding to build this toxic freeway to walk away.

The Perth Freight Link is a $1.6 billion project to construct 14km of freight freeway through our communities and bushland, including the Beeliar Wetlands.

More than 30 separate community groups are fighting to stop this incredibly expensive and unnecessary road from being built.

With mounting opposition and doubt hanging over the project it’s guaranteed that any company involved in the Perth Freight Link will face costly delays and tarnished reputations.

It’s time to let the companies tendering for the contracts know that this is one tender they don’t want to win.

We’ve also produced a series of postcards to send to the tender companies. To request some postcards phone 08 9335 7477 or email aimee.smith@aph.gov.au  with your postal address and the number of cards you can use.

With contracts to build Roe 8 due to be signed in October we must act now and let these companies know their reputation and legacy is at stake if they continue with WA’s most hated project.

A toxic freeway that would cause permanent and irreparable harm…

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via GreaterGood + logo links on through…

With Australia enduring the mysery of Murdoch-Minion rule, and Fox News launching Bush III out of the US, we believe that now is the time to counter the mendacious mantras of perpetual war, sacred markets and Iraq revisionism with an evidence-based reality check.

To get the ball rolling, here’s a heads up from former CIA analyst, Paul R. Pillar, via Consortiumnews.com…

 

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“Having escaped accountability for the Iraq War disaster, U.S. neocons are urging the use of more military force in the Mideast, in line with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s demand to block the Iran nuclear deal. From their important perches of power, these war hawks also twist the history of their catastrophic misjudgments…” writes ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.

“Now the Republican presidential candidate who is the front-runner for the nomination among those whose name is not Trump has joined in the promoting of the Iraq War myth.”

Paul R. Pillar, in his 28 years at the Central Intelligence Agency, rose to be one of the agency’s top analysts. He is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University for security studies. 

Image cc 3.0 by Jason Girvan

It’s all happening in WA, with a large campaign to stop a freight link destroying local wetlands, wins and losses in animal welfare and a roundtable on urban forests.

 

Candidate for Higgins, Jason Ball

Being the first was never his goal. But amid the deafening silence, Jason Ball knew someone had to speak.

 

Mehreen Faruqi, NSW MP

As a member of parliament, I receive plenty of racist comments. But the tone of abuse has recently changed. I believe racism is becoming legitimised in Australia.

 

The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) is the biggest trade deal in Australia’s history. However, it is being negotiated in total secrecy. What will it mean for our future?

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RECENT ISSUES

30 JULY 2015

The author and pioneering University of Texas psychologist explains how awareness of your own thoughts and feelings can lead you to be kinder toward yourself—and why this self-compassion brings a host of mental and physical health benefits.

More about Kristin Neff.

via GreaterGood

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A former CIA officer described as the latest victim of the Obama administration’s war on whistleblowers has issued a scathing open letter to civil rights groups asking, “Where were you?”…

In the letter published at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Jeffrey Sterling, who is black, specifically calls out the NAACP, National Action Network, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and Congressional Black Caucus, writing “I saw you when other black faces were either killed or mistreated.” But, to these civil rights groups, he writes, he is “invisible.”

In a case that relied on circumstantial evidence, Sterling was convicted in January on nine separate felony charges, including seven counts of espionage.

He was given a 42-month sentence in May, which Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and coordinator of whistleblower advocacy organization ExposeFacts.org, described as “the continuation of a war on whistleblowing and journalism, to clamp down on the absolutely essential flow of information for democracy.”

::: click here or banner for piece in full @ CommonDreams :::

艺术界 LEAP 33…

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blurb…

Contemporary art always encompasses various disciplines. As art becomes a central part of mainstream culture in China and elsewhere, our plea is that it can contribute in a subcultural sense—not necessarily as the politically vigilant gadfly it was once imagined to be, but as a challenger of a new type. LEAP 33’s cover package “the Ends of Culture” stems from our observations on subculture. The premise is simple: rather than approaching art through cultural and conceptual matrices, we read it through its objects, artifacts, and images. In this cover package, we provide a cluster of keywords that act as a conduit towards the edge of the cultural imagination; like the catalysts and enzymes that encourage a system to grow from within, we hope to create the conditions for the creation, misinterpretation, disruption, and total collapse of an entire cognitive structure.

In addition to the cover feature’s 43 entries of subcultural keywords, this issue’s middle section includes the inaugural edition of LEAP Forum. LEAP Forum / Venice 2015: New Pavilions for a Global Asia brings together artists, curators, and other participants in projects across Venice—from the international exhibition to the national pavilions and collateral shows—to discuss and explore the rapidly changing state of Asian visual culture in the world today. Also featured are two in-depth artist profiles. Colin Siyuan Chinnery analyzes the ways artist Wang Yin incorporates Chinese avant-garde theater and modern culture into his paintings, drawing up a narrative of contemporary China’s cultural ideology and national memories. Matthew Shen Goodman offers an incisive account of recent Hugo Boss Prize winner Paul Chan’s practice, and his tongue-in-cheek attitude towards the art world.

::: click cover to access :::

The newly unveiled logo for Sea Shepherd’s Operation Henkaku

Sea Shepherd, August 10, 2015:

The newly unveiled logo for Sea Shepherd’s Operation HenkakuThe Campaign, to be Called ‘Operation Henkaku,’ Translating to ‘Metamorphosis’ or ‘Transformation,’ Reflects Sea Shepherd’s Evolving Efforts to End the Capture and Slaughter of Dolphins and Small Whales and the Growing Global Opposition to this Brutal Hunt…

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and its team of Cove Guardians will officially launch the sixth consecutive season of Sea Shepherd’s Dolphin Defense Campaign on Sept. 1, 2015 in Taiji, Japan. Titled Operation Henkaku (Operation Metamorphosis), preparations are underway for the campaign, during which Sea Shepherd will once again have an international team of volunteer Cove Guardians stationed along the infamous cove, documenting and live streaming the brutal capture and slaughter of dolphins and pilot whales for the world to see.

In the drive hunt conducted by the Taiji Fishermen’s Union, typically spanning from September until March, more than a thousand cetaceans are driven into the cove each year – some ruthlessly killed before the eyes of their family members and others torn away from their family pods to be sold to captive facilities in Japan or overseas. As Sea Shepherd has documented time and time again, the captive selection process occurs simultaneously to the slaughter – and the lucrative international trade in live dolphins for captivity is the economic fuel that drives the hunting boats in search of pods…

…more seashepherd.org

 

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August 2015

…special report: Greece, Germany and the EU; who is a jihadi and why? North Korea, consumers on the move; gridlock in MoscowGuadeloupe remembers slavery; Ebola, and corruption, in Sierra Leone; Frank Gehry’s monument to money; Armenian art at Venice Biennale

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