Former IAEA chief condemns suggestion of Australian uranium sales to India
“Delegates to the Labor National Conference should heed Mr Walker’s warning. Uranium sales to India – a rogue nuclear state – will feed the dangerous nuclear arms race in South Asia. Moreover they would increase uranium export revenue by just two percent and would generate very few if any jobs.”
FORMER IAEA CHIEF DROPS NUCLEAR BOMB ON GILLARD, Dr Jim Green, 21 Nov 11, Friends of the Earth (FoE) has welcomed the strong warning against uranium sales to India by Australian Ron Walker, former Chair of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In an article published by the Lowy Institute on Friday, Mr Walker states: “Yes, India is a democracy and yes we want to be in their good books, but that is no reason to drop our principles and our interests. To make an exception for them would be crass cronyism. If you make exceptions to your rules for your mates, you weaken your ability to apply them to everyone else. How could we be harder on Japan and South Korea if they acquired nuclear weapons? Could we say Israel is less of a
mate than India?”
He further states: “I am horrified that the media have not explained the enormity of this proposal. Perhaps even the public service has been so degraded, marginalised and cowed that the prime minister has not beentold of the far-reaching consequences.” Mr Walker’s article is posted at:
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2011/11/18/Uranium-Were-selling-out-our-principles.aspx Continue reading
Call to “Occupy” movement to prevent disastrous attack on Iran
Step one is to cut off the endless military spending that is the lifeblood of the 1%, and to begin starving out the warfare state. It’s the only way to a world built on social justice and ecological survival. So let’s find that fork in the road…and take it!!! SEE YOU IN THE STREETS! As the slaughters in Iraq and Afghanistan transform into something less visible, the 1% war machine must have a new profit center. The pretext for this latest war is the spectre of a nuclear-armed Iran. It’s a tawdry re-run of the lies George W. Bush used to sell the 2003 attack on Iraq. It’s no surprise those “Weapons of Mass Destruction” were never found—or that Bush could later joke about it.
The hypocrisy of the 1% railing against bombs allegedly flowing from Iran’s “Peaceful Atom” program comes in unholy tandem with the corporate push for a “nuclear renaissance” peddling these same reactors all over the world. (It helps to remember that the nuclear industry once tried to sell 36 “peaceful” reactors to the Shah).
STOPPING THE ATTACK ON IRAN IS ABSOLUTELY VITAL TO OUR HOPES FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY. THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT HOLDS THE KEY. Continue reading
Australia will lose all Non Proliferation credibility in selling uranium to India
India continues to give assurances that imported materials are solely for civilian use, yet it refuses to sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is yet to ratify the International Atomic Energy Safeguards Agreement.
Blindly following bad US policy is neither in our best interests nor the world’s. It would be a terrible compromise of our nation’s principles, and put at risk our enviable reputation as a responsible global citizen for very little short-term gain.
Gillard’s uranium-to-India play is a dangerous sellout, SMH, Senator Gavin Marshall, November 21, 2011 Australia risks contributing to the India-Pakistan nuclear arms race.
NEXT month’s ALP national conference will be asked to make a decision of global importance: whether to back Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s call for Australia to export uranium to India. Australia must decide whether to stand with the vast majority of nations in supporting the principle of nuclear disarmament, or to stand with those who continue to undermine it.
India is not the responsible nuclear citizen that many would have us believe. It has a long history of broken promises and reckless conduct relating to its nuclear programs. Continue reading
Poll shows Queenslanders reject uranium mining, and uranium sales to India
Queenslanders reject Julia Gillard’s uranium sales to India, Galaxy Poll finds, by:Steven Scott , The Courier-Mail November 21, 2011 PRIME Minister Julia Gillard’s plan to allow uranium sales to India has been rejected by a majority of Queensland voters. And only a third of the state’s Labor voters back Ms Gillard’s controversial plan, a Galaxy poll conducted exclusively for The Courier-Mail found….A meeting of left-wing Labor MPs in Canberra yesterday vowed to use the conference to fight against Ms Gillard’s plans to sell uranium to India because it has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. “It is a sell-out of everything we’ve stood for as a party over the last 40 years,” Left faction convener Doug Cameron said.
About 56 per cent of the state’s voters are opposed to selling uranium to India, according to the poll of 800 people on November 16 and 17. Opposition to the plans is even higher among Labor supporters, with 61 per cent rejecting it. The plans have pitted Ms Gillard against Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who has refused to lift a ban on mining the state’s considerable uranium reserves….. http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/poll-backs-ban-on-uranium/story-fn7kjcme-1226200652135
Australia’s uranium industry in Death Valley – despite suggested sales to India
Uranium bombs despite India move, BY: ROBIN BROMBY , The Australian, November 21, 2011, YOU couldn’t even call it a boomlet. It was more like a ripple on a lake, and lasted about as long. Julia Gillard’s volte-face on selling uranium to India caused a mild stir among the uranium stocks, but the sector is still doing a passable imitation of Death Valley. A few stocks bounced but the present price levels are woeful. Even the spot price rising $US4/lb was of little help; nor does the general bear market…..
Over the 12 months to November 15, Energy & Minerals Australia (EMA) was off 48 per cent, Toro Energy (TOE) down 50 per cent and, despite its well-advanced project in Western Australia, last traded at just 8.6c, while Bannerman Resources (BMN) was down 58 per cent.
There was minimal interest last week even in Uranium Equities (UEQ), which has produced grades up to an extraordinary 6.71 per cent at its Nabarlek project in the Northern Territory. Its 6c price remained unchanged. UEQ’s ground is just 10km from the high-grade Nabarlek mine, which closed in 1989…….
And the India news, should it go through the ALP conference, is not that big a deal anyway. There are plenty of countries supplying the Indians with uranium and will fight to keep their shares and get more of any additional business.
Small solar power thriving in Australia – the top 10 solar postcodes
Australia’s Top 10 Small Scale Solar Power System Postcodes, by Energy Matters, 21 Nov 11 Over half a million small scale solar power systems are now installed around Australia, adding up to more than a million kilowatts of solar electricity generation capacity. Is your postcode among the top ten for solar in the country?
In May this year we reported on Australia’s top solar towns and suburbs in terms of system installations as a percentage of households. We’ve compiled the following new top 10 list based on figures extracted from data recently released by the Office Of The Renewable Energy Regulator (ORER), showing the Australian postcodes with the largest numbers of small scale solar energy systems* installed.
The top 10 small scale solar power Australian postcodes as of September 2011 are (in descending order of number of systems installed):
1. Postcode 6210 – Western Australia – 3,643 systems – 6,270.317 kW capacity
Postcode 6210 incorporates Coodanup, Dudley Park, Erskine, Falcon, Greenfields, Halls Head, Madorah Bay, Mandurah (+ DC, East and North), Meadows Springs, San Remo, Silver Sands and Wannanup.
2. Postcode 4551 – Queensland – 3,184 systems – 5,545.973 kW capacity
Postcode 4551 incorporates Aroona, Battery Hill, Bells Creek, Caloundra (+ BC, DC and West), Currimundi, Dicky Beach, Golden Beach, Kings Beach, Little Mountain, Meridan Plains, Moffat Beach, Pelican Waters and Shelly Beach)
3. Postcode 2830 – New South Wales – 3,141 systems – 5,672.010 kW capacity
Postcode 2830 incorporates Ballimore, Barbigal, Beni, Boothenba, Brocklehurst, Bruah, Bunglegumbie, Burrabadine, Butler Falls, CoolBaggie, Cumboogle, Dubbo (+DC, Grove, East and West), Eschol, EuloMogo, Glengerra and Goonoo Forest.
4. Postcode 4655 – Queensland – 3,036 systems – 6,243.677 kW capacity…….
http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=1886
Diplomacy is the only choice in the issue of Iran and nuclear power
Let’s be clear: there is still no concrete evidence Iran is building a bomb.The latest report from the IAEA, despite its much discussed reference to “possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme”, also admits that its inspectors continue “to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at [Iran’s] nuclear facilities”.
The simple fact is there is no alternative to diplomacy, no matter how truculent or paranoid the leaders of Iran might seem to western eyes. If a nuclear-armed Iran is to be avoided, US politicians have to dial down their threatening rhetoric and tackle the very real and rational perception, on the streets of Tehran and Isfahan, of America and Israel as military threats to the Islamic Republic. Iranians are fearful, nervous, defensive – and, as the Middle East map shows, perhaps with good reason…
If you lived in Iran, wouldn’t you want the nuclear bomb? Mehdi Hasan, guardian.co.uk, 19 Nov 11 The best way for the US to stop Iran developing nuclear weapons is to dial down the rhetoric and adopt some diplomacy
Imagine, for a moment, that you are an Iranian mullah. Sitting crosslegged on your Persian rug in Tehran, sipping a cup of chai, you glance up at the map of the Middle East on the wall. It is a disturbing image: your country, the Islamic Republic of Iran, is surrounded on all sides by virulent enemies and regional rivals, both nuclear and non-nuclear…
1 This month
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