Review of the past week
Australia: poll shows Australian want renewable energy, not nuclear, and Australian Academy of Science agrees. Maralinga veterans join British vets’ legal action. Aboriginal victims’ health ignored, too, while Maralinga land returned to them. Climate sceptics continue to get media coverage, and John Howard joins Ziggy Sinowski in nuclear push.
International: China- France nuclear deal despite China’s bad record for secrecy and poor safety. Copenhagen a dud, but strong popular movement for action. Russia plans nukes in space. France’s nuclear electricity coping poorly in extreme weather. South African antinuke movement. Renewables going ahead in Scotland, and Taiwan.
Yes – I know that it was a crummy outcome. But what did you expect? If Obama, Rudd etc came up with even a half-decent agreement – they would be out of office in no time, with the domestic outcry. Then somebody worse would be in office.
(Shades of Hilaire Bellooc’s advice, on the boy who had his head bitten off by a lion – “always keep a hold of nurse, for fear of finding something worse”)
As long as the public, egged on by the media, see economic groswth and consumerism as the desirable lifestyle – there is no hope for reducing C02 emissions.
It’s Christmas – what a symptom of our public disease – with everybody rushing around buying more unnecessary stuff – to watch on their great plasma screens, in their McMansions etc. It’s US – the world public – who consume all the junk that keeps the factories and mines roaring.
I just hope that the world wakes up to this before catastrophe awakens us properly.
Book reveals SA land injustice BigPond News 21 Dec 09
A new book alleges South Australia was built on an unlawful land grab, which breached British laws protecting the rights of Aboriginal people.
The book, called Coming to Terms, says a rule requiring the settlers to obtain land from the indigenous people only with their consent was ignored.
It says by the end of 1836, the Aboriginal people had been stripped of all their land.
Former High Court justice Michael Kirby will launch the book in Adelaide.
Book reveals SA land injustice | National – Regional | Telstra BigPond News and Weather
Obama Accord a good thing amid Copenhagen fiasco The Age ROSS GARNAUT December 22, 2009 The United Nations meeting on climate change at Copenhagen was a fiasco. The several months of intense discussion among leading economies that culminated in the Obama Accord in Copenhagen last weekend were not. Continue reading
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 