Waubra Foundation – Australia’s secretive front group for polluting industries
The trick with astroturfers is to create a large number of so-called community groups to gain disproportionate media attention. Further investigation often finds these to be “phantom” organisations of just one person with often the same person representing multiple groups.
At the mere sniff of a proposed wind farm, media releases go out from “local”
Landscape Guardian groups. Paid advertisements call for public meetings. At these, the forces behind the climate sceptic movement in Australia, such as the Institute of Public Affairs’ Australian Environment Foundation, call on the by now familiar list of Guardians and its plentiful supporters amongst the Lavoisier Group, the Liberal Party and other sceptic groups to be bussed in. With the emphasis on silencing any pro-wind supporters at a meeting….
The ugly Landscape of the Guardians, Independent Australia, Sandi Keane, 24 July 11, “……..Wind Turbine Syndrome, according to the Waubra Foundation. Symptoms claimed include sleep problems, headaches, dizziness, nausea, exhaustion, anxiety, anger, irritability, depression, tinnitus, concentration problems – and a new one – children refusing to go to school! Continue reading
Australia’s Prime Minister counters the untruths of the campaign against carbon pricing
to take just one point, a false claim was made about employment,” she told Australia Associated Press, adding “there was a suggestion that employment was somehow going to go slow or go backwards under pricing carbon. It’s simply not true.”
“Employment in this country will go up by 1.6 million jobs by 2020, half a million of those jobs in the next two years,” she said.
Australian PM dismisses anti-carbon tax campaign, People’s Daily, China, 24 July 11 Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Saturday dismissed a series of anti-carbon tax advertisements paid for by big business, saying the facts are on the government’s side. Continue reading
Two thirds of Japanese want to end nuclear power
Japanese support PM’s call to do away with nuclear power: poll, Jul 24, 2011, (Reuters) – More than two-thirds of Japanese support Prime Minister Naoto Kan’s call to do away with nuclear power, a media poll showed on Sunday, underscoring growing opposition to atomic energy in the wake of the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi plant
The Fukushima complex is still leaking radiation four months after the disaster and the public is growing increasingly anxious about the safety of other plants across quake-prone Japan.
A poll conducted this weekend by Kyodo news agency showed 70.3 percent support for Kan’s call to wean the county off atomic energy, which accounted for nearly a third of the country’s electricity output before the crisis.
Japanese utilities are operating 17 of the 54 reactors that had been available before the March 11 earthquake. All of those could be shut down by next May for maintenance if public worries over safety continue to stall reactor restarts.
In a development that could add to those worries, Kyodo separately reported that a report by researchers showed a reactor unit at Kyushu Electric Power’s Genkai plant in southwestern Japan may have a faulty pressure vessel……http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/24/us-japan-nuclear-support-idUSTRE76N0RU20110724
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1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 