Australia’s coming emigration – from the Labor Party to the Greens
Christina Macpherson 6 Dec 11 First off, I want to express a personal opinion on the big debate about gay marriage. I think it was a bloody great political red herring. Didn’t the media love it! Didn’t even the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA – front for fossil fuel industries) love it! The latter loves it, because they don’t care what we all do in our private lives, just as long as we don’t conserve energy and switch to renewables.
The Australian public ? I bet that its predominant attitude is – “I don’t really care: they can marry if they want : now – what’s
happening with the cricket? ”
My own attitude – very similar. Except, when it comes to permission to marry, that I think it’s a bit like when women weren’t really allowed to smoke, by social taboo. And then they were allowed. And now heaps of them have got lung cancer. Why did these poor women ever want to smoke?
Never mind. That’s personal, and not really political. But the uranium to India issue. That’s political. But wow – the public carry on, the media fuss – just didn’t happen – so busy were we all discussing gay marriage, in the media frenzy on that topic.
So the Labor Party just morphed into the Laboral Party, on uranium, and other matters – a political marriage – they will surely be wed soon.
And where can they go – the Labor Party members of intelligence and conscience? Well fortunately – there’s The Greens!
Labor Party transforming Australia into John Howard’s dream
Labor invokes ghost of Coalition past, SMH, Russell Marks December 6, 2011 The party’s long-standing ban on exporting uranium to India reflected a principled commitment to the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and was a major point of difference with the Liberal Party. Principle and point of difference are now gone Despite expectations that it would reverse the Howard government’s paternalistic and racially discriminatory Northern Territory intervention, Labor retained the basic frame and actually extended it to encompass additional welfare recipients……..
The Rudd-Gillard administration has not changed Australia. Rather, it is changing the Labor Party to fit into John Howard’s Australia, and is rushing headlong towards electoral irrelevance. Given that the Liberal Party will always be a better fit for Howard’s frame, why would anybody vote Labor? .. http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/labor-invokes-ghost-of-coalition-past-20111205-1oeq9.html#ixzz1flx91dNW
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/labor-invokes-ghost-of-coalition-past-20111205-1oeq9.html
Australia’s uranium policy dictated by Washington
the actual reason for the shift, [ to sell uranium to India] which was strongly insisted upon by the Obama administration in the lead-up to the US president’s visit, and which dovetails with Washington’s efforts to promote India as a regional
counterweight to China……..Rudd had incurred the wrath of Washington in 2007 by reversing a decision by the previous Howard Liberal government to approve uranium sales to India, following a similar decision by the George W. Bush administration.
Australian Labor Party to enforce dictates of Washington, financial markets, World Socialist Website By Mike Head 5 December 2011 At its 46th national conference last weekend, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) committed itself to imposing the “hard decisions” required by the Gillard government’s unconditional alignment with Washington’s increasingly aggressive confrontation with China, ……
It was the first ALP conference since the June 2010 backroom coup in which Labor’s factional bosses, who had reported their preparations to the US embassy, installed Julia Gillard as prime minister at the expense of her predecessor Kevin Rudd. The conference was also convened just two weeks after President Barack Obama’s visit to Australia and the region, in which he mounted a diplomatic and strategic offensive against China. Not a single delegate referred to these developments, yet they dominated the entire proceedings.
Rudd was removed above all because he had sought to alleviate the tensions between the US, the Australian ruling elite’s military protector, and China, Australian capitalism’s biggest market. Upon her appointment, Gillard immediately made clear her unconditional alignment with Washington. She also quickly struck a deal with the three biggest mining companies to drop the Rudd government’s proposed mining super-profits tax,…. Continue reading
Greenpeace activists infiltrate French nuclear plant
Greenpeace said the incidents proved the sites aren’t safe. “With this nonviolent action, Greenpeace shows that French nuclear installations are vulnerable,” Greenpeace France activist Sophia Majnoni d’Intignano said. “It’s the patent proof that existing security systems aren’t sufficient.”…..
The opposition Green party, which wants France to completely exit nuclear power, said the incident proved again that nuclear energy was inherently unsafe.
Activists Enter French Nuclear Facilities WSJ, By GÉRALDINE AMIEL And INTI LANDAURO, 5 Dec 11 PARIS—French police on Monday arrested eleven activists with environmental group Greenpeace who broke into two French nuclear-power plants in an attempt to raise questions about reactor security.
Nine people broke into the compound of the Nogent-sur-Seine nuclear plant, south of Paris, at about 6 a.m. on Monday. Two of the protesters climbed onto the roof of one the two reactors before they were apprehended by police, said the plant’s owner, state-controlled power behemoth Électricité de France SA. All nine were arrested.
Late Monday, the police arrested two men who had hidden all day at EDF’s Cruas plant, in southern France, EDF said.
The incidents come as nuclear energy is becoming a central issue in the 2012 French presidential campaign, Continue reading
The comprehensive case against the “nuclear renaissance”
We’re Playing Nuclear Roulette, International to News, 06 December 2011 David Swanson The International Forum on Globalization has published the most concise, useful, readable, and damning denunciation of nuclear technology I’ve seen. And it’s available for free as a PDF right here: Nuclear Roulette: The Case Against a “Nuclear Renaissance”
Nuclear energy suffers from the following drawbacks: The energy put into mining, processing, and shipping uranium, plant construction, operation, and decommissioning is roughly equal to the energy a nuclear plant can produce in its lifetime. In other words, nuclear energy does not add any net energy.
Not counted in that calculation is the energy needed to store nuclear waste for hundreds of thousands of years. Continue reading
Labor federal Member of Parliament’s scathing criticism of change in uranium policy
Uranium decision a ‘moment of madness’ ABC News, December 05, 2011 Labor’s federal Member for Page says her party’s decision to export uranium to India was a moment of madness. The ALP national conference yesterday endorsed the Prime Minister’s plan to lift the ban on selling uranium to India.
The move sparked some fierce opposition from MPs worried that India has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Janelle Saffin says it was the wrong step to take. “Well I see it as a moment of madness,” she said.
“It overturns about four decades of a principal position that’s been taken in Australia on that issue and I just think it will be hard to implement with the stringent safeguards that have to be put in place.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-05/uranium-decision-a-moment-of-madness/3713358
Australia selling more of its (non radioactive) rice to Japan
Japan hungry for Aussie rice BY: SUE NEALES RURAL REPORTER The Australian December 06, 2011 AUSTRALIAN farmers are optimistic of boosting rice exports to Japan in the wake of its twin tsunami and nuclear disasters.
The Japanese government last month banned the sale of rice grown in the Onami district near the site of the Fukushima nuclear reactor meltdown in March after high levels of radioactive caesium were found in the food staple.
Three shipments each of 12,000 tonnes of Australian rice sold to Japan since April – already three times as much as last year – suggest it may require more imported rice this year.
As well, a recent study published in the National Academy of Sciences journal has concluded large tracts of arable land in northeastern Japan may not be safe for food production, including rice, for some time because of fallout from the radioactive cloud……http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/japan-hungry-for-aussie-rice/story-e6frg8y6-1226214563570
Reflecting on ALP conference, and on the 1976 Fox Report on uranium mining
The Fox Inquiry (often referred to as the Ranger inquiry) was comprehensive. It travelled around Australia, to hear evidence from 281 people, recorded in 12,575 pages of transcript.
The specific Fox recommendation that Labor decided to finally reject today was as follows:
“No sales of Australian uranium should take place to any country not party to the N[uclear] N[on]-P[roliferation] T[reaty]. Export should be subject to the fullest and most effective safeguards agreements, and be supported by fully adequate back-up agreements applying to the entire civil nuclear industry in the country supplied.” (Report No 1, 1976, p.186)
Then and now: Labor’s nuclear conflict, The Drum Dan Cass , 6 Dec 11, My father, Moss Cass, phoned just now and we talked about the Labor Party’s national conference decision to export uranium to India, a country not in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Uranium mining was a big issue in our household when I was growing up and it became the reason that I decided to not to follow Moss into the Labor Party…… In 1984 the Labor Party national conference adopted the ‘three mines policy’ which sanctioned the largest uranium mine in the world at Roxby Downs (Olympic Dam) and the Ranger and Nabarlek mines, while preventing any new mines from opening.
I knew then that it would not be possible for me to join Labor, on account of its ‘half-pregnant’ stance on this issue…..
In 1995 I finished at university and decided to join a political party: The Australian Greens.
Mr Fox and the nuclear industry Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 