Antinuclear

Labor’s dangerous new uranium policy – but it’s really about career moves for Labor heavies

... Kevin Rudd is filthy with Prime Minister Gillard’s uranium decision and thinks India ought to have been forced to make some concessions in return for uranium sales, such as ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. If so, Rudd ought to say so publicly…..

South Asia is a dangerous nuclear minefield. All the more so in the wake of the US-India agreement, and all the more so in the wake of Labor’s decision to sell uranium to India with no conditions which would curb its weapons program or de-escalate the South Asian nuclear arms race. 

Labor Signs Up To The Arms Race, New Matilda, 5 Dec 11, Paul Howes might think the Cold War is over but the nuclear arms race hasn’t slowed. South Asia is a nuclear minefield and Labor’s decision to sell uranium to India makes it more dangerous, writes JimGreen….. Of all the idiotic, asinine contributions to Labor’s faux-debate on uranium sales to India, Howes trumped the lot with his assertion that “The Cold War is over and it’s time for Labor to embrace that fact”.

Since the end of the Cold War the existing weapons states have been busily “modernising” their nuclear arsenals:

Pakistan and North Korea joined the nuclear weapons club by testing nuclear bombs for the first time. France, India, the US and Russia have also tested weapons. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty remains in limbo, with the culprits
including India and some of Australia’s existing uranium customers. Pakistan has spread weapons technology (originally stolen from a European consortium) to Iran, North Korea, Libya and probably
elsewhere.
The tradition of bombing nuclear plants in the Middle East is alive
and well with strikes on nuclear plants in Iraq in 1991 and 2003 and
Israel’s attack on a suspected secret reactor in Syria in 2007.
South Korea (one of Australia’s uranium customers) ‘fessed up to a
secret nuclear weapons research program.
Japan continues to separate and stockpile obscene amounts of plutonium
(some of it produced from Australian uranium).
The International Atomic Energy Agency still doesn’t have reliable
“core” funding even for its basic inspection program let alone a
rigorous safeguards program; and so on.
No point trying to explain any of that to Howes — as an AWU member
said of him, he’s quicker to send than to receive. And he deals in Bob
Katter-like revelations (“the Cold War is over”) and straw-man
inanities (“working people have a right to speak out”; “Indians have a
right to power”) rather than conventional, logical argument. All the
better to paper over the breadth and depth of his ignorance and
indifference…….
A reliable source — well, a journo — tells me Kevin Rudd is filthy
with Prime Minister Gillard’s uranium decision and thinks India ought
to have been forced to make some concessions in return for uranium
sales, such as ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. If so,
Rudd ought to say so publicly…..
The US-India agreement contains no requirement for India to curb its
weapons program. The consequences have been predictable. Pakistan is
citing the US-India agreement to justify its intransigent attitude
towards a Fissile Material Cut-off Treaty. China is using the
precedent of the US-India agreement to justify plans to sell more
reactors to Pakistan.

Both India and Pakistan continue to develop nuclear-capable missiles;
both are expanding their capacity to produce fissile material; both
refuse to sign or ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; both are
estimated to have increased the size of their weapons arsenals by
25-35 per cent over the past year alone.

US cables released by Wikileaks warn of the potential for incidents
such as the Mumbai terror attacks to escalate into warfare and for
warfare to escalate into nuclear warfare. Scientists warn that a
“limited” nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan could cause
catastrophic climate change in addition to the direct impacts.
Wikileaks cables reveal Kevin Rudd privately urging the US to ignore
its NPT disarmament obligations and to maintain a ”reliable” and
”credible” nuclear arsenal, and to be prepared to use force against
China.

South Asia is a dangerous nuclear minefield. All the more so in the
wake of the US-India agreement, and all the more so in the wake of
Labor’s decision to sell uranium to India with no conditions which
would curb its weapons program or de-escalate the South Asian nuclear
arms race. It is spineless, cringeworthy sycophancy which puts
Australia to shame and makes the world a more dangerous place.
http://newmatilda.com/2011/12/05/labor-signs-up-arms-race

December 5, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, uranium