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Two young people who died in their car on July 25 after using a gas heater to keep warm had been homeless for some time. Dr Bruce Redman from the Salvation Army told the Ballarat Courier after the discovery of their bodies: β€œThe Salvos are finding more and more people who are resorting to live in their cars because of a lack of affordable accommodation options. β€œWhen it's summer, people tend to sleep on the beach or in their cars and no one really notices. But when it's cold, most people expect to have a roof over their heads, somewhere where they can stay warm.”
Here is the latest β€œdeal” from the self-proclaimed that you are not allowed to refuse: He'll withdraw his law change that will give people the right to be bigots and in return his spooks will have access to the past two years of your metadata. My meta-whaaat???
The Newcastle Resistance Centre was packed to capacity on August 3 to hear Shamikh Badra speak about what is happening in his home city of Gaza. Badra said his grandfather was forced from his village in 1948 and ended up in Gaza. He described the geography of the conflict, and how Israel exploits religion to cover the fact that it is occupying Palestinian land. β€œIn 1948,” he said, β€œthere was no Hamas, no rockets. Yet this did not stop them from invading and committing massacres.”
Ten years ago, on August 13 2004, the John Howard government, with the support of the Labor Party, passed legislation that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Queer people did not have the right to marry before the legislation was passed, but the new definition was brought in to close any loopholes and make it explicit that the Coalition government did not support civil rights for gay and lesbian people.
β€œThis political force should be liquidated,” said Pavlo Petrenko, Ukraine’s justice minister, quoted in the July 9 edition of Capital (Kiev’s equivalent of the Australian Financial Review). Petrenko was referring to the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU). For a time in the 1990s, it was the most supported party in Ukraine and it still won 13% of the vote at the 2012 parliamentary poll.
A dove that flew off just after the fall of Afghan Buddha Didn’t have enough Unoccupied airspace Unoccupied skies To flap its wings to restart the heart beats gone numb Of zillions resting in Graves Segregated apart as For the occupant and by the ccupied. The names on the tombstones of the graves of the occupied Could later become undecipherable, Though they Far outnumber that of the occupants. Hope the dead never wake up, to scrutinize their underrepresented statistics, to check the word limit of reports from Gaza,
Placard at an anti-nuclear action, Perth, 2009. Photo: Jim Green.

Former prime minister Bob Hawke is urging Australia to become the world's nuclear waste dump. But he has little hope of succeeding.

Cuba calls for US to end covert operations The Cuban government has called on Washington to halt hostile covert operations against it, the on August 7. An revealed that a US government program had sent young Latin Americans to Cuba on political missions posing as AIDS-awareness workshop organisers.
The largest coalmine ever built in Australia, and one of the biggest in the world, received from the federal environment minister Greg Hunt on July 28. The Carmichael coalmine in central Queensland, owned by Indian company Adani, is forecast to produce 60 million tonnes of coal a year over the next 60 years. This dwarfs Australia’s current largest mine, which produces 20 million tonnes a year.
In the same week that employment minister Eric Abetz announced the government would expand Work for the Dole to all job seekers under 50 and that job seekers would have to apply for than previously, billionaire miner Andrew Forrest released his own recommendations for welfare reform β€” some of the most punitive ever proposed.
The released this statement on August 7. *** About 30 farmers and residents of villages in the Gloucester Valley held a protest vigil on August 7 at the site where AGL plans to frack for coal seam gas on farmland in the area, vowing to begin a sustained campaign of peaceful direct action to stop the work after the NSW government failed to act on long-standing community concerns about the impacts of the project.
The 157 Tamil refugees who refused β€œa very good” deal to be deported to India now face the orchestrated despair of detention on Nauru. The refugees were delivered to Nauru on August 2 without the knowledge of their lawyers and reportedly showing β€œclear signs of manhandling and trauma”. Human rights lawyer George Newhouse said he had β€œnot had the opportunity to inform our clients of their rights and options.