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The coming week marks the 40th anniversary of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, one of the most significant and sustaining political protests in the history of Australia.

A series of events on the lawns of the Old Parliament House in Canberra will pay tribute to the Aboriginal rights agenda that acted as a rallying call for communities throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s.

The commemoration and celebration will highlight current debates around sovereignty and self-determination, but will also act as a showcase for political performance.

The original tent embassy set up on the eve of Australia Day in 1972 was as much about theatre as it was about land rights.

Four activists from Sydney wanted to draw attention to injustices perpetrated against Indigenous Australians by not allowing Aboriginal title to land based on traditional association.

Michael Anderson, Billy Craigie, Bertie Williams and Tony Coorey travelled to Canberra from Sydney to campaign where the politicians lived and to hopefully get their photos taken holding political placards.

As they made their way from Redfern one of the four decided they were heading to the city of embassies so they would demonstrate how they were treated like foreigners in their own land by erecting an ‘Aboriginal Embassy’.

The turning point came when they realised they were legally entitled to camp on Commonwealth land in front of the Parliament.

The police couldn’t move them, so they settled in and put up more tents.

Collectively, we Australians can be a cowardly bunch, so scared of an unknown invader that we will sell our sovereignty for the illusion of protection. This fear is symbolised in the movie ‘Tomorrow When the War Began,’ a film of dubious quality that portrays an Australia under invasion from some shadowy Asiatic power.

The foundation-stone of Australia’s defence policy is our alliance with the United States. Known as the ANZUS treaty, on paper this alliance guarantees mutual defence. In practice, the friendship is far from equal.

As with their treatment of sovereign nations the world over, the Americans have no qualms about interfering in our domestic politics and local legal systems. The kind of behaviour that, if reciprocated, would swiftly end the alliance. The latest front in this meddling is the crossover between file-sharing and intellectual property.

Individually, Australians can show enormous courage. Currently, an Australian is enduring a lengthy legal battle that may see him end up as an inmate at Guantanamo Bay, or worse.

Julian Assange and the Wikileaks organisation he help found shone a sterilising light on the behaviour of the US Embassy in Australia’s capital, Canberra. For his bravery Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, a trained lawyer, prejudiced any future legal action by prematurely labelling Assange’s actions “illegal.” She has since sacked the Attorney-General whose job it was to give legal advice on the Wikileaks matter, but the damage has been done and the comment has never been retracted.

While the Gillard Government was quick to shoot the messenger, it has remained eerily silent on the message – one of potential interference in domestic legal affairs by a foreign power and so-called ally.

The Canberra Wikileaks cables revealed the US Embassy sanctioned a conspiracy by Hollywood studios to target Australian communications company iiNet through the local court-system, with the aim of establishing a binding common-law precedent which would make ISPs responsible for the unauthorised file-sharing of their customers.

Hacktivists with the collective Anonymous are waging an attack on the website for the White House after successfully breaking the sites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA and Motion Picture Association of America.

In response to today’s federal raid on the file sharing service Megaupload, hackers with the online collective Anonymous have broken the websites for the FBI, Department of Justice, Universal Music Group, RIAA, Motion Picture Association of America and Warner Music Group.

“It was in retaliation for Megaupload, as was the concurrent attack on Justice.org,” Anonymous operative Barrett Brown tells RT on Thursday afternoon.

Only hours before the DoJ and Universal sites went down, news broke that Megaupload, a massive file sharing site with a reported 50 million daily users, was taken down by federal agents. Four people linked to Megaupload were arrested in New Zealand and an international crackdown led agents to serving at least 20 search warrants across the globe.