Head of Australia’s Non-proliferation Office pushed for nuclear power
Leaked cables show nuclear power push, SMH, Dan Oakes, September 20, 2011 THE HEAD of Australia’s nuclear safeguard authority advised the then prime minister Kevin Rudd that no scheme to limit carbon emissions would succeed without the building of civilian nuclear power stations, according to leaked US diplomatic cables.
A report on a 2008 meeting between US and Australian officials – released by WikiLeaks – records John Carlson, then director-general of Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office, as saying that he doubted there would be any shift in the Labor Party’s opposition to nuclear power…… Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/leaked-cables-show-nuclear-power-push-20110919-1ki2h.html#ixzz1YWyYtdBb
Time for Australians to act on Murdoch media’s distortion of news
Murdoch media in Australia: malign but excisable, Independent Australia, 9 sept 11, Alan Austin says that the Murdoch media network is a malicious influence on Australia — that the nation has a chance of eradicating.
Rarely is a nation faced with a malicious influence which it has the chance to eradicate. Such is Australia’s luck today with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, owner of The Australian, Sydney’s Daily Telegraph, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail, Melbourne’s Herald Sun and other ‘news’ outlets.
The Murdoch network in Australia has moved irretrievably away from being a legitimate news provider. It must go.
Essential to free enterprise and democracy is access to information free of distortion. Newspapers are free to say what they will in editorials and opinion pieces, of course. But news data must be untainted.
Most Murdoch publications now openly spruik for conservative politics. Not just in the opinion pieces, but news pages as well. Read more »
Australian scientists exposing Murdoch media’s climate denial spin
Nowhere has the reliance on spin been more apparent than during the coverage of the climate “debate” by the Murdoch media and allied shock jocks…
In response to all this, and in the absence of politicians with sufficient courage to take on the hate-mongers, some Australian academics have started to provide a platform for accountability by shining a light on the media’s practices.
Using the Conversation, the world’s first daily paper written primarily by academics in co-operation with journalists, academics are beginning to catalogue the excruciating and tortuous daily distortions of climate science by various papers, especially by the Australian, Murdoch’s flagship publication.
Australia’s climate scientists expose shock-jock distortion tactics, Academics catalogue the deluge of spin and misinformation of climate science by various Murdoch-owned papers, Stephan Lewandowsky 1 September 2011, Guardian UK, Australia has unwittingly become a social experiment. A ruthless experiment on the fate of a society when a single media conglomerate, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, owns 167 newspapers and controls around 70% of the printed media market. Read more »
How Murdoch news holds back Australia’s action on climate change
The only place that they can publish their junk science is in outlets such as The Australian, where they are welcomed with open arms…..
The Murdoch media empire has cost humanity perhaps one or two decades of time in the battle against climate change. Each lost decade greatly increases the eventual economic costs, the devastation to our ecosystems, and the suffering of future generations.
Murdoch media’s battle against climate change action | Independent Australia, 4 Sept 11, Professor Michael Ashley says the science underpinning anthropogenic climate change is rock solid and the Murdoch media empire has cost humanity one or two decades we could have used to battle it.
“………It is in this room that Chris Mitchell, editor-in-chief of The Australian, holds editorial meetings. And it is in this room that reality becomes so distorted that The Australian was able to state earlier this month, “it is in keeping with this newspaper’s rationalist pedigree that we have long accepted the peer-reviewed science on anthropogenic climate change,” while at the same time engaging in a campaign to misrepresent and distort climate science…..
The problem is that on one side of the debate you have 97% of the world’s published climate scientists and the world’s major scientific organisations, and on the other side you have fools. Read more »
Australia’s Channel 9 TV 60 Minutes- courageous program on Fukushima
Aussie 60 Min and Kaku: Fukushima and Chernobyl Radiation In All Of Us Asian Week, BY ARTHUR HU – AUGUST 14, 2011 As usual, US media is carrying next to zero coverage of the continuing nuclear mess as now radiation is affecting rice, mushrooms, hay, beef, tea, fish, seafood, sewage, playgrounds, compost, firewood, and now they can’t even drain swimming pools that are contaminated with fallout. …Australians urged to back inquiry into Murdoch media ownership
Rupert Murdoch has been allowed to become an unchallenged dictator of public opinion…and has free rein to spread his ideological agenda promoting wars, climate deniers and xenophobia.
But now the Australian Law Review Commission has recommended the adoption of new laws guaranteeing our privacy, and more and more voices are calling for a full inquiry on our media, including ownership concentration.
Gillard: Stand up to Murdoch, Avaaz, 11 Aug 11, Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited controls 70% of what Australians read in newspapers every day — and dismal media regulation give him a free rein to hold politics hostage, manipulate public opinion, and even hack phones. But now we have an opportunity to change that…..Avaaz members in the UK won an amazing victory, helping stop Murdoch from buying over 50% of UK media. Now, he is beginning to feel the heat here — PM Gillard is considering a full inquiry into Australian media that could place News Ltd under closer scrutiny and control. But Murdoch wields massive political influence and key members of both the cabinet and the Parliament are wavering.
Read more »
Australia’s democracy sinking under Rupert Murdoch’s media monopoly
Most troubling for our democracy is the Murdoch press. ….
the Murdoch media’s campaign against Kevin Rudd over the mining tax, with the support of the Minerals Council and mining billionaires such as Twiggy Forrest and Gina Rinehart (Australia’s richest person), spelled the end of Rudd’s prime ministership…..Murdoch has similarly set his sights on toppling Julia Gillard and seeing the end to Australian action on climate change.
Carbon tax and the News Limited parallel universe, Independent Australia, By David Donovan, 12 Jul 2011 , We live in a parallel universe. On one side, we have the Government, the Greens, the Independents (except Bob Katter), most of the business lobby, the renewables sector and pro-environment groups claiming the carbon tax will be a long term benefit for Australia and its economy and that, with the Government rebates, it will be a largely painless change.
On the other side, we have the Opposition, the big polluters and the Murdoch press declaring “we’ll all be rooned!”
Drifting around in the void in between is a baffled and confused Australian public. Read more »
Gillard and the Greens to scrutinise Murdoch’s media empire
Phone hacking: Australian PM promises ‘hard questions’, BBC News, 20 July 11, The Australian branch of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire will face “hard questions” in the wake of the phone hacking scandal in Britain, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said.
She said she was “disturbed” by revelations about his UK business.
The company dominates Australian media – it controls 70% of the newspaper readership and has extensive holdings in television, the internet, and other media….
The Greens, which hold the balance of power in the upper house, have called for a parliamentary inquiry into News Limited, Mr Murdoch’s Australian firm.,,,,, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-14212954
Australia a multi party democracy, but the media doesn’t “get this”
It reflects badly on journalists and commentators who run the Opposition line that minor parties have no legitimate rights to be major players in our parliamentary democracy….Australia is not, and has not been for decades, a two-party political system and old school members of the media who struggle with that are going to have to come to terms with the political reality.
Groundhog day as some media indulge in anti-Green spin Online Opinion, By Vivienne Wynter - , 20 July 2011 I nearly choked on my kangaroo curry the other night watching the commercialtelevision news anchor ask viewers: “Who is running this government?”
This question was posed in an introduction to a story about the Greens announcing the Renewable Energy Agency, prior to the Carbon Tax announcement. Read more »
Time to expose and remove Rupert Murdoch’s power over democracy
Avaaz , Ricken, Emma, Maria Paz, Giulia, Luis, Alice, Brianna and the rest of the Avaaz team, 14 July 2011“….. Murdoch is a global problem. He’s famous for dictating editorial positions to his papers. He corrupts and controls democracies by pushing politicians to back his extremist ideas on war, torture and a host of other planetary ills, and destroying the careers of politicians with smear campaigns unless they do his bidding. In the US, he helped elect George W. Bush and has most of the Republican presidential candidates actually on his payroll (see sources below). His Fox News Network spread lies to promote the war in Iraq, pushed resentment of Muslims and immigrants and spawned the right-wing tea party. Maybe worst of all, he has helped block critical global action on climate change.
How the nuclear lobby distorts Australia’s media coverage
Distorting the facts. Socialist Party Australia 17 June 11 The industry’s domination of the public debate around nuclear energy is clearly evident in Australia. In 2006 the Australian government commissioned the Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy Review, which was unbelievably blatant in its distortion.
The panel included no health professionals, no environmental experts and no leaders in the field of weapons proliferation. Not surprisingly the report expressed no serious concerns in any of these areas.
Within the report a table titled “Fatal accidents in the worldwide energy sector, 1969 –2000” indicated a total of 31 deaths
associated with nuclear reactor accidents during that period. A tiny footnote added that “These figures do not include latent or delayed deaths such as those caused by air pollution from fires, chemical exposure or radiation exposure that might occur following an industrial accident.”
One commentator pointed out that the tobacco industry could similarly claim that the number of deaths attributed to cigarette smoking equals the number of people who die in house fires caused by people smoking in bed, with a footnote stating that there may be some risk of cancer and heart disease also. Read more »
Beware the uses and misuses of opinion polls, like Galaxy’s on carbon tax
The problem lies with the following: “Does the PM have a mandate to introduce the tax or should she call an early election?” This gives respondents no outlet for the obvious third alternative: that while the Prime Minister does not have a mandate for a carbon tax (and given her position during the election campaign, it could hardly be argued otherwise), the government should nonetheless govern as it sees fit and face the music at the end of its term…
Considerably exacerbating the problem is that the poll was conducted for Australia’s most brazenly partisan metropolitan newspaper, the Daily Telegraph (UPDATE: The Herald-Sun is also selling it as its own work). And true to form, the Telegraph has today used the opportunity to run an editorial headlined “voters demand a carbon tax ballot”, in which it argues that “an election now is very necessary”.
Taxing credulity, June 6, 2011 – by William Bowe “….. today’s Galaxy poll, .. targeted a small sample of 500 respondents on behalf of the Daily Telegraph. For the most part, its results are of genuine concern for the government.
Australia’s media ignores the severity of Japan’s nuclear crisis
the vast majority of Australians who get their news from newspapers or commercial television or radio have no idea about the severity of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, or the danger to human health posed by this ongoing crisis.
VIDEOS Fukushima: Caldicott says Japan may become uninhabitable – media silent | Independent Australia Independent Australia David Donovan 31 May 11
Yesterday – the same day Germany announced it would close all its nuclear plants because of Fukushima, and dangerous levels of radiation were reported in Japanese clean-up workers – Independent Australia did a straw poll of 50 random people at a metropolitan shopping centre in Queensland. Each of them was asked: “were you aware that there had been a nuclear meltdown at Fukushima in Japan”. Almost all of these respondents recognised the name Fukushima but only 4 of the 50 – a mere 8 per cent – said they had heard of any meltdown. Read more »
How big money buys the media,and threatens democracy
Rupert has indicated very clearly, he is coming to buy the alternative forms of media, not only to have control, but to make money out of it.
I liked a little thing I saw in the paper where Gina Rinehart’s Dad, good old Lang Hancock, said decades ago that if we’re going to get anywhere, we have to buy the media. And Gina is dutifully moving to do [that] just now and what a difference that has made.
Bob Brown and the media: ‘I’ll take them on … they’ve crossed the line’ THE CONVERSATION, by John Keane 4 June 11, , “……Brown:’…it ought to be for the people to make and break governments and it is for the Fourth Estate to be informing them. …. I think it goes back to Jefferson, the very simple dictum: that information is the currency of democracy. So that information is gold and it is very important that the public has a right to be informed. But what they are getting it now is opined. They are getting an opinion coming from a multi-billionaire who cashed in his Australian citizenship because Australia didn’t serve accumulation of money well enough….. Read more »
News limited’s attack on Cate Blanchett does not reflect community’s attitude
Essential asked about trust in political coverage. Commercial radio was again the least trusted medium, with only 40% of voters saying they trusted it all or a lot, fewer than the 48% who said they had no trust or only a little trust. Newspapers fared better — 53% trusted them, better than commercial television, but still a distant third behind the ABC and SBS.
‘Carbon Cate’ and the confected outrage of News Limited, Crikey, 30 May 2011, by Bernard Keane News Limited’s hatchet job on Cate Blanchett hit all the right notes for this sort of confected outrage — indeed, it could be an exemplar of the form…….. interesting was the automatic connection made by News Ltd and its employee between the media outlet and the community.
Because a News Ltd editor was outraged, that necessarily meant the community was outraged, regardless of the fact that his employee couldn’t find any independent evidence of any outrage. Read more »
This month
For international news, go to nuclear-news ion for Western Australia’s energy future
http://ifyoulovethisplanet.org/?p=5755 Mary Olson on how women are more vulnerable to atomic radiation
- Muckaty Gathering 25 May 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1J9q-OeEO4 - NuclearKop http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpMhhzkeYjk
Anti nuclear action below: - more info at Action Australia « Antinuclear and at Event details « Antinuclear
- http://www.communityrun.org/petitions/put-the-brakes-on-toxic-trucks-no-nuclear-waste-at-muckaty
- Online Petition - against the proposed national radioactive waste dump at Muckaty Station in the Northern Territory http://www.gopetition.com.au/petitions/no-nuclear-waste-dump-at-muckaty.htmlUranium Free WA Sign the online charter saying no to uranium mining in Western Australia http://ccwa.org.au/takeaction/uraniumnotforsaleSIGN THE PETITION TO STOP LYNAS RARE EARTH EXPORTS TO MALAYSIA http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ban-rare-earth-exports/
EVENTS
- May 29 – Melbourne - Amnesty International panel on weapons and war .
- May 29 – 30 Melbourne - Wind Farms conference
- May 30 Darwin - expert Panel on Nuclear Waste Dump plan for Muckaty
- June 2 - Nuclear Abolition Day
- June 13 - Melbourne -Lizards Revenge -Shut Roxby Down
- June 14 Melbourne Beyond Zero Emissions ZCA 2020 plan.
- June 19 - Melbourne Public meeting US FORCES IN AUSTRALIA: SECURITY OR THREAT? USforcesflyer-2.pdf
The Nuclear/uranium industry and WOMEN - theme for May 2012
Deceptive information given to women about breast cancer. Women are repeatedly told about “genetic causes”, about “risks of obesity:. about “diet factors”, about “not having babies”, or “having a baby at a later age” even about “stress” – as causes of breast cancer. The not so subtle message is that it is THEIR FAULT – a problem caused by the individual woman, so – the only preventive actions must be those made by individual women.
The facts are otherwise. The single most proven cause of breast cancer is ionising radiation. After that, other environmental causes exist, amongst the wash of chemicals, and synthetic hormones, that pervade our environment. After that – probably some hereditary susceptability, amongst some women.
Why is this so? One could conclude that breast cancer is a growth industry. There’s money at every point in this sorry cycle – from the radiation from nuclear fuel through to the medical radiation used to detect and treat breast cancer. There is no money clearly involved in shutting down a toxic industry, and preventing millions of breast cancers.
How does ionising radiation cause breast cancer? Ionising radiation comes in several forms. for example, Gamma rays, x-rays, and some sub-atomic particles such as alpha particles and protons In ionising radiation, a tiny electron is released from an atom, and enters a body cell, hitting the DNA in the cell’s nucleus, and damaging it. The damaged DNA sends out ‘wrong’ messages telling the cell to divide in an uncontrolled manner – cancer develops.
“...the time between radiation exposure and breast cancer development is longest in young women and shortest for older women; young children do not show a detectable elevation in breast cancer occurrence for some 35 to 40 years after exposure. Radiation-induced breast cancers appear to occur later in life during the same ages when breast cancer rates, in general, begin to increase. It appears that a single exposure of sufficient dose during early life can increase breast cancer risk even 50 years later...
the relationship between radiation dose and breast cancer risk can be described by a straight line which implies that no matter how low the dose, there is some small risk associated with the exposure.…
The risk of subsequent breast cancer from very high doses is lower than that which might be expected from the effects of lower doses. This is because radiation at high doses is an effective killer of cells and dead cells are not able to develop into cancer…..
Young girls are at highest risk …when a young girl is exposed to radiation, she will have menstrual cycles for several decades that might enhance the development of any underlying damage caused by the radiation. There is evidence to suggest that exposure to the immature breast during early development, and around the age of beginning menstruation, carries a higher risk than at other times of a woman’s life.
It is unclear how radiation exposure of the breast during pregnancy affects a woman’s breast cancer risk. However, a recent study of women treated for Hodgkin’s disease concluded that pregnancy might be a time of increased sensitivity of breast tissue to the cancercausing effects of radiation……”
.” John D Boyce, Jr, DSc, Scientific Director,Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors in New York State.. Ionizing Radiation and Breast Cancer Risk
