Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items

Jo Vallentine looks forward to the shutdown of the nuclear industry

“….[the nuclear industry] was a dreadful failed experiment of the 20th century,….WHAT NEXT? Nailing the nuclear industry. Shutting it down. I’m chairwoman of the Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia….

The boomers at 65, The Age, Julie Szego, January 1, 2011“.….JO VALENTINE, POLITICIAN/NUCLEAR ACTIVIST “……….What got me elected to the Senate in 1984 was the single issue of nuclear disarmament. I was passionate about that then, and I’m still actively working on it.

The conversation is over 65 years old, so it’s time we moved on … with nuclear disarmament a reality, rather than a pipe dream. I look forward to that. Something else that worked really well was the formation of the Greens in WA – a challenging job, but hey, from being all on my own in the Senate to the upcoming balance of power, with 10 MPs altogether, is a joy to witness. Since resigning from the Senate in 1992, I have come full circle, back to community groups, where power for change really lies.

As Quaker Rufus Jones said: “I pin my hopes to quiet processes and small circles in which vital and transforming events take place.” And it was Margaret Mead who said: “Never doubt the power of small groups of committed people to change the world – indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

…..And of course, I’d like to have been part of shutting down the nefarious nuclear industry. That’s still to come. I believe it was a dreadful failed experiment of the 20th century, which has brought us lasting damage from nuclear tests, contamination to downwinders where uranium mining has taken place, thousands of nuclear bombs that continue to threaten our very existence, the added scourge of so-called depleted uranium weapons which spew radioactivity around war zones, producing cancers and deformities, and, of course, the absolute certainty of mountains of nuclear waste as a shocking legacy for future generations to contend with. How dare we allow that?

WHAT NEXT? Nailing the nuclear industry. Shutting it down. I’m chairwoman of the Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia.

We have a renewed struggle on our hands with the Liberal government pushing hard to get uranium mining up and running here in this term of office. We are very determined to prevent that from happening.

The boomers at 65

January 1, 2011 - Posted by | people, Western Australia

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