Bob Brown, possibly Australian government’s only sane member, wants scrutiny about USA military bases
Brown wants debate on rumoured US expansion, ABC News 12 Nov 11 Australian Greens leader Bob Brown wants the Federal Parliament to debate the prospect of the United States expanding its military presence in Australia. The White House has refused to confirm reports a deal has been made increasing American access to Australian army bases.
There is speculation an announcement may be made when the US president Barack Obama visits Darwin next week.
The reports say Australia and the US have been working on plans for increased cooperation, including bringing in more US troops to strategic areas including Darwin, as well as increasing the number of joint exercises and training.
Senator Brown says the Australian Parliament has an obligation to debate the pros and cons.”We are putting a clear point of view that Parliament should debate new foreign troop placements in Australia, whether they be in Darwin or Western Australia or anywhere else and that of course is responsible democracy,” he said.
But the Prime Minister Julia Gillard has refused to be drawn on the reports…..http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-12/brown-wants-debate-on-rumoured-us-military-boost/3662698
While USA sells nuclear technology to China, Australia gets USA military base against China
The full range of U.S. naval ships is expected to rotate through the joint facilities, stopping for exercises as well as repairs and other shore work. Naval aircraft also will have access to a base in Darwin.
The increased U.S. presence will be a rotating force, one person said. In September, Australian Defence Minister Stephen Smith said the enhance cooperation would be “more ships in, ships out; more planes in, planes out; more troops in, troops out.”….
U.S. to Build Up Military in Australia, WSJ, By LAURA MECKLER, WASHINGTON, 12 Nov 11—President Barack Obama will announce an accord for a new and permanent U.S. military presence in Australia when he visits next week, a step aimed at countering China’s influence and reasserting U.S. interest in the region, said people familiar with his plans. Continue reading
USA to sell nuclear technology to Chinese company involved in nuclear weapons
“It’s our first real entry into supporting this nuclear market, which for us is huge,”…
The cooperation with Exelon appears to be a significant pivot for CNNC, which in recent years unsuccessfully lobbied Beijing against embracing foreign nuclear technology standards. The company is also responsible for developing military nuclear capabilities for the People’s Liberation Army. China has embraced AP1000 reactor technology made by Toshiba Corp. unit Westinghouse….
Exelon to Provide Nuclear Advice to China, WSJ, 12 Nov 11, By BRIAN 
SPEGELE, BEIJING—Exelon Corp. will provide consulting and training services to an arm of state-owned China National Nuclear Corp., ……. As part of the deal disclosed on Friday, instructors from Chicago-based Exelon will be stationed at Qinshan Nuclear Power Station in China’s eastern Zhejiang province. The initial consulting deal is a small one…..Exelon said it could subsequently grow to include a variety of services for China’s nascent nuclear industry. Continue reading
Maralinga’s hidden legacy of radioactivity AND asbestos
Maralinga sites need more repair work, files show, The Age, Philip Dorling, November 12, 2011 MORE than a decade after the Howard government declared the clean-up of Maralinga to be finished, the Australian government is continuing to support remediation work at the former British nuclear weapons test site.
Confidential federal government files released under freedom of information also show Canberra bureaucrats have at times been primarily concerned with ”perceptions” of radioactive contamination, while rejecting a request by the Maralinga Tjarutja Aboriginal community for a site near the Maralinga village to be cleared of high levels of toxic uranium contamination.
Files released by the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism show that erosion of the massive Taranaki burial trench north of Maralinga, described by federal bureaucrats as ”a large radioactive waste repository”, has required significant remediation work. Other burial pits scattered across the former nuclear test range have also been subject to subsidence and erosion, exposing asbestos-contaminated debris…..
The Taranaki trench was excavated in the mid-1990s and used to bury radioactive-contaminated debris and soil, principally from numerous ”minor trials”, British nuclear weapons safety and development experiments conducted between 1956 and 1963 that caused the heaviest radioactive contamination at Maralinga. Records of a Maralinga Lands and Environmental Management Committee meeting in October last year show that ”erosion of the Taranaki trench was noted” and that repair work funded by the Commonwealth would be carried out by the Maralinga Tjarutja. An annual survey of 85 debris pits revealed that 19 pits had been subject to erosion or subsidence, with eight requiring ”major work” and at least four containing exposed asbestos…..
The released files also show that the Australian government declined requests by Maralinga Tjarutja to clean up the trials site closest to the Maralinga Village. Situated east of the Maralinga airstrip, the Kuli site was used by British nuclear weapons scientists to conduct 262 trials that explosively dispersed 7.4 tonnes of uranium into the environment……… http://www.theage.com.au/national/maralinga-sites-need-more-repair-work-files-show-20111111-1nbpp.html#ixzz1dck3m6z7
Australia’s Maralinga veterans and Aboriginals paid the price for nuclear bomb testing
Finally they can heal together, Adelaide Now, Bryan Littlely, From:The Advertiser, November 12, 2011 THEY are snapshots from a secret time. An insight into a life in one of the harshest and most secure places in Australia. The men who took these photographs at Maralinga during the series of British nuclear testing and clean-up from 1952 to 1967 carry them proudly. Most also carry another legacy of this land and the controversial atomic testing that went on here.
Cancers and other conditions linked to the radiation, plutonium, burilium-laced lands that were left after the testing has claimed the lives of many of the men who were at Maralinga. In 1985, a survey found that of the 12,500 people involved in the British nuclear testing program in Australia, 11,000 had died. Hundreds of Maralinga-Tjarutja people were also forced from their homeland during the testing.
Few of the veterans remain today but the handful who have gone back to Maralinga for the Remembrance Day reunion have done so with the blessing of the traditional owners, so the two groups of people for
whom Section 400 is so significant can heal together…. Australian Nuclear Veterans Association founder Avon Hudson, the Maralinga whistleblower and advocate for compensation claims for the men, said there were only about 50 members of that association left.
“We’re nearly buggered … most of our members are old buggers like me and we are dropping off the perch,” Mr Hudson, 74, said. “We can get a bit of healing coming back here. It brings back a lot of sad memories because almost all my mates are dead but it is mixed feelings because I have a lot of good memories, too.”…
“We were sent on to that Taranaki ground zero site to test some stuff… nobody knew it was contaminated,” he said…..
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/finally-they-can-heal-together/story-e6frea83-1226193206591
Malcolm Turnbull makes a strong case against Climate Change Denialists, and Koch brothers
THEY’RE LIKE SMOKERS: Malcolm Turnbull turns on climate change sceptics, Perth Now November 06, 2011 Turnbull highlights new study by climate sceptics It still found the planet was 1C warmer than in 1950s FORMER Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull has compared climate change sceptics with people who refuse to admit smoking causes lung cancer.
Mr Turnbull, who lost the Liberal leadership almost two years ago when he backed Labor’s old 
emissions trading scheme, has seized on a US study showing global temperatures are rising….. In his attack on climate-change deniers, Mr Turnbull highlighted a study of the world’s surface temperatures by Richard Muller, which was partially bankrolled by a foundation connected to global warming deniers.
But despite drawing funding from industrialist brothers David and Charles Koch, the study by the University of Berkeley
in California, still found the Earth was 1C warmer than in the 1950s. “One of the big financiers of the anti-climate change movement is a family called Koch, K-O-C-H, and they put a lot of money into these climate sceptic organisations and they’ve got big interest in fossil fuels,” Mr Turnbull told the Seven Network on Sunday.
Mr Turnbull said the backers of the study “presumably” hoped to demonstrate climate science was not reliable, and used the results to criticise people who continually question global warming. “They’re like the guy who gets told by his doctor to stop smoking, lose weight and decides not to do that,” he said. “He met a mate down the pub who said his Uncle Ernie had lived ’til 95 but he smoked a packet every day. It’s ridiculous.”….
http://www.perthnow.com.au/news/special-features/theyre-like-smokers-malcolm-turnbull-turns-on-climate-change-sceptics/story-e6frg19l-1226186990042
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 