Prison is a heartbreaking experience – a damaging one. In general it is my view that people come out of prison worse than what they went in. Wherever possible I would support any policy that ensures other options to jailing people. One quarter of the Western Australian prison population is comprised of poverty related fine […]
March 2015 – Page 2
For the last several years I have been relentlessly highlighting the extensiveness of suicide globally and nationally. In terms of ‘violent deaths’, suicide is the leading cause of death with on average annually more deaths by suicide than all deaths due to war, civil strife, domestic and other violence combined. For years, I have urged […]
I was recently invited by Edith Cowan University’s Anti Terrorism course to deliver a guest lecture that would look at the “Community response to Terrorism and Anti Terrorism issues”. This is not a subject that I have not tackled before. I started by indicating that much of what I was saying and talking about related […]
That is also us, the possibility of us, if the wonderful accident of our birth had taken place elsewhere: you could be the refugee, I could be the torturer. To face that truth is also our burden. After all, each of us has been the bystander, the reasonable person who just happens not to hear, […]
Robinson River’s Mungoorbada Aboriginal Corporation, which many of the Robinson’s communities depend on, is in a dire financial struggle. But rather than wind up the corporation and impact the communities, special corporate powers under the Corporations Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Act are to be enabled to assist Mungoorbada out of its financial slide. If […]
While the nine months strong Redfern Aboriginal Tent Embassy holds out against eviction threats by the Aboriginal Housing Company at one end of the continent, at the other end another Embassy celebrated its first week with a corroborree. At Matargarup, an island on the Swan River, in the heart of Perth, Nyungahs/Bibbelmun, Yamatjis, Wongi and […]
Suicidal behaviour does not mean that someone wants to die, this is another dangerous myth. Suicidal behaviour is a scream for help – people need people. It is a fallacy to presume ‘self-responsibility’ as a way forward for someone in a dark place. People need people to strengthen their resolve to the ways forward. Suicidal […]
Western Australia’s largest national park is facing its biggest threat – uranium mining. Last Thursday, the State’s Environment Minister approved a uranium mine proposal while in the background an investigation is plodding along into allegations of improper dealings by some Traditional Owners. Anti-uranium campaigner and conservationist Mia Pepper said, “The Minister, Albert Jacobs, approved the […]
One of The Stringer’s regular contributors is being recognised for his longstanding contributions in peace building. Following are excerpts from a report in the Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) News by Bonnie Price Lofton. A link to Ms Price’s report as published in the EMU News is at the end of this story. In May, Eastern Mennonite University (EMU) in marking […]
Last week, Western Australia’s Premier stated that an ‘audit’ on the ‘viability’ of remote communities – homelands – has commenced. In The Australian he thrashed out the outrageously unsubstantiated statement, “that people will be shocked by the emerging evidence of appalling mistreatment of children.” Premier Colin Barnett was criticised for propagandising the Government agenda on the intended […]
General News
- March 9, 2021
Australia’s governments must end health discrimination in its prisons. An incarcerated child must not be a second-class citizen. Nor any adult. We must ask, why are our governments dishing the vulnerable jailed, second-class healthcare? When evaluating the nation’s carceral system, we are […]
- February 2, 2021
When will the cries of the homeless be heard? Is there some sort of grotesque caste system in Western Australia? The anti-humanism is a brutal public spectacle. On the last day of January, the Western Australian Government actuated five days […]
- December 3, 2020
West Australia is the nation’s backwater. It is the mother of injustices, inequalities and the draconian. West Australia and the Northern Territory leave the have-nots that far behind, for many their lot appears irreparable. If there is a Mason-Dixon line […]
- September 22, 2020
There are many faces to homelessness. A 51-year-old woman walked into my Perth office. She has lived thirteen consecutive years street-homeless. Not long ago, she spent eighteen months sleeping her nights in the same park. She is weary, harrowed by […]
- September 3, 2020
Often beleaguered by international aid work I have lifelong been involved in; the increasing unmet needs, the mongrel injustices, I have argued the horrendous lie of our generation is that poverty is being reduced around the world. There are countries […]
- March 10, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – In 2014, I disaggregated to the Kimberley’s First Nations peoples, the nation’s highest suicide rate, one of the world’s highest, at over 70 suicides per 100,000 population (First Nations), thereabouts seven times the national rate. Fortunately, although […]
- February 18, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – More than 51 months ago I wrote an article on the imperatives of forgiveness and redemption. This remains true. We journey together in one form or another, we can either salt the earth or jag the road, […]
- January 29, 2020
By Gerry Georgatos – Trae lost his eleven-year-old brother to suicide. Nine months later he lost his mother to suicide. Trae was the last to see his brother. Half an hour later he went looking for his little brother. In the […]
- January 21, 2020
Gerry Georgatos – Children as young as 9 years have been lost to suicide, three in fact in recent years. Australians should ask, why? Proportionally, more children aged 14 years and less have been lost so far this century compared […]
- December 10, 2019
Gerry Georgatos – A mother suicides, a father suicides, their child was a suicide. Not once has this occurred but untold times. Over the years I have warned of mothers and fathers that would be near certain lost to suicide […]
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