On the ground floor of the Art Gallery of NSW I saw one of the most moving pieces of sculpture I can remember visiting. It did not surpass the sublime La Pieta, Michaelange ...
January 22, 2013
#IdleNoMore is a growing movement of indigenous activism that started with Canada's First Nations taking a stand against a long history of systematic, institutionalized abuse from the Canadian authorities. ...
December 6, 2012
Let us venture to advance another truth, a truth useful to the Minister himself. There exists among the officers of the Marine, an intractable esprit de corps, a pretended point of honour, equally false and arrogant, which leads them to consider as an insult to the whole navy, the discovery of one guilty individual. This inadmissible principle, which is useful only to insignificance, to intrigue, to people the least worthy ...
November 1, 2012
Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation—BULLETIN http://yindjibarndi.org.au/ Wednesday 31 October 2012 No amount of corporate spin, bulldust or threats can save Fortescue Metals Group (FMG) from the continuing revelations of whistleblowers and freedom on information documents that show the under-handed tactics and bullying they ply for profit. * Today Solicitor Kerry Savas, who spent more than a year representing the interests of the splinter Wirlu-murra Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation, told The National Indigenous Times that the ...
July 19, 2012
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. Milan Kundera One of the first Communist texts I read, following the French edition of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung, also known as, The Little Red Book, was Victor Hugo’s novel Les Miserables. For those purists among my colleagues who may object to me referring to Les Miserables as a Communist text, I offer the following in ...
July 14, 2012
PT Freeport Indonesia’s newly appointed president director, Rozik B. Soetjipto, announced this week that the company is willing to renegotiate its contract with the Indonesian government for the continuation of its giant Grasberg mine complex and for the expansion of underground mining at the site. In interviews with the Jakarta Post this week, Rozik stressed Freeport Indonesia is racing to secure and build massive underground mining facilities ahead of the ...
July 11, 2012
To penetrate the basic human predicament is more important than to fly to the moon Friedrich Durrenmatt Swiss-German playwright and novelist I’ve spent the last few days reading through the court documents relating to Mr Cathal Lyons ongoing saga with one of the world’s most powerful Hyenas of Capitalism, Ernst & Young (“E&Y”). Prior to his falling out with E&Y, Mr Lyons was Managing Partner of Operations and Chief Financial ...
July 8, 2012
Business is no place for friends and it doesn’t matter if you’re in Canberra, London, New York or Moscow. Whilst Cathal Lyons as the Managing Partner of Operations and Chief Financial Officer of the Ernst & Young CIS Practice with his office in Moscow, probably knew this maxim, he learned the lesson first hand when he found himself marginalized by the Big4 accounting firm. The E&Y CIS Practice includes various ...
July 5, 2012
Nataraja dances, his right foot supported by a crouching figure, his left foot elegantly raised. Of his four arms, one swings downwards, pointing to the raised foot; another with palm held up signals, “Do not fear!” In his other hands he holds aloft a drum and a flame. The river Ganga sits in his hair. A Cobra uncoils from his lower right forearm, and the crescent moon and a skull ...
June 22, 2012
Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they cannot trace how, rather than to root them out. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves. Yet the imperfect conclusions thus drawn, are frequently very plausible, because they are ...
May 31, 2012
It will be a marvellous thing – the true personality of man – when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flower-like, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by ...
May 9, 2012
Fragments from the Alfoxden Notebook There he would stand In the still covert of some rock, Or gaze upon the moon until its light Fell like a strain of music on his soul And seemed to sink into his very heart. Why is it we feel So little for each other, but for this, That we with nature have no sympathy, Or with such things as we have no ...
March 28, 2012
You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be – usually are – on the whole generous and right; but it has no foundation for them; you may tease or tickle it into any, at your pleasure; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit ...
March 7, 2012
This case arises from the petitioners’ claim that Azzam Rahim was detained, tortured, and killed by “the security forces of the Palestinian Authority” in late 1995, around the time the Palestinian Authority assumed responsibility for certain territories pursuant to internationally brokered peace agreements. The Palestinian Authority had its genesis in the 1993 Oslo Accords, in which Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (“PLO”) agreed that it was: time to put ...
March 1, 2012
Crimes against humanity, torture, prolonged arbitrary detention, extrajudicial executions — all of those human rights norms are defined by actions. They’re not defined by whether the perpetrator is a human being or a corporation or another kind of entity. Paul Hoffman representing the 12 Nigerian petitioners in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum The issue in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum an issue central to the lives of many indigenous people ...
February 22, 2012
Invaded by Indonesia in 1961, West Papua is the crisis on Australia’s doorstep. The conflict generated by the usurpation of the former Dutch protectorate is not recognized as anything other than a separatist movement by those in power in the international community, but it is so very much more. Since the Act of No Choice in 1969 in which 1025 West Papuans voted under extreme duress unanimously in favour of ...
February 21, 2012
Little fly, Thy summer’s play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength and breath, And the want Of thought is death, Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die. William ...
February 4, 2012
The TNI under Suharto was seen as different from other armies because: Indonesian army sees itself as quite different from other armies in the world, because it was never created as an instrument of the state, but was itself involved in the creation of the state. Thus the military considers itself the embodiment of Indonesian nationalism. In theory, it remains above the state, and technically does not consider itself answerable ...
January 5, 2012
Following is a response to the statement published by Ernst & Young. People with things to hide generally sneak around, aiming to placate those who can advance their situation. They avoid speaking to the victim of their wrong doings, unless it is to inflict further hurt and they certainly never admit to having been wrong in the first place. These are the hallmarks of a narcissist. They are also the ...
December 19, 2011
The current humanitarian crises in West Papua, formally West New Guinea (“WNG”), has at its roots Western colonial greed and paranoia over Soviet influence in the region. WNG was and remains culturally, ethnically and economically separate from the rest of the Javanese Empire which replaced the Dutch East Indies Empire in the area that is currently known as Indonesia. WNG’s links lay naturally with the Australian New Guinea and the ...
November 24, 2011
As most readers of Blak and Black, indeed as most readers of any daily paper in Australia will be aware there has been an ongoing dispute between Fortescue Metals Group Limited (FMG) and two affected Aboriginal groups – the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (YAC) and the Wirlu-murra Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation (WYAC) – over FMGL’s Solomon Hub mine in the Pilbara. The arguments center on cultural significance versus corporate greed. Adding confusion ...
Design by ITS
