Australia’s part in the USA war machine, and the arms bazaar
Happy Christmas (the war is not over) The Drum, Kellie Tranter 22 Dec 11 “……..You’ll be chuffed to know our country is doing its bit for ‘world peace’ this Christmas.
The Australian Army is preparing for longer “campaigns”; we voted against Palestine’s admission to the UNESCO and we lobbied to weaken the international ban on cluster bomb munitions.
We also decided to sell uranium to India, a country standing outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a country whose nuclear program is stimulated by its neighbour (Pakistan) having the fastest-growing nuclear weapons program in the world, and a country whose government has been prepared to bribe MPs to secure the votes for a nuclear future, as evidenced by the Indo-US nuclear deal in 2008.
Last but not least, Australia was the fourth largest purchaser of US arms in the 2011 fiscal year.
Tune into the radio for the morning history trivia question. Seldom does a day pass when the answer doesn’t relate to the beginning of a war, the fighting of a war, the ending of a war or some remembrance of a war. Is mankind preordained to a fate of perpetual war mongering?
Mainstream media reports “voila”, the end of the Iraq war, as promised. But the public announcements don’t mention that the United States has left behind in Iraq the world’s largest “embassy”, housing 16,000 people. Or that private security contractors (which may include the infamous Blackwater, renamed Xe and now Academi) will be returning to Iraq because the United States government failed to negotiate immunity for its troops or to renegotiate the Status Of Forces Agreement which requires all US forces to be gone from Iraq by January 1, 2012. And we don’t hear a peep about the rules of engagement for private US security contractors.
But are the US soldiers going home? Or are they joining the US and NATO forces who allegedly have landed outside of Syria and are training militants to overthrow the regime of president Bashar al-Assad. Don’t worry about that – it’s Christmas time: we’ll just have to wait for the White House to spin the bottle on the world map to find out which country our young soldiers will go to next. Syria? Iran? China?
In the spirit of “dealing toughly with your banker” earlier this year the Pentagon revealed a new battle concept – The Air Sea Battle concept- which reportedly is the “start of what defence officialssay is the early stage of a new Cold War-style military posture toward China”.
Naturally Australia and the United States each attempted to reassure China that expanding military US ties with Australia are not aimed at containing China, and so far China has remained rather stiff upper lipped, but wars are fought on borrowed money so it will be interesting to see how US Treasury Bonds go (or don’t). Guan Jianzhong, the head of China’s biggest ratings agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating, offered a fairly frank assessment of the US economy.
But fortunately we should be kept safe and warm this Christmas by the Australian Intelligence Community. ASIO costs us $438 million per year, but we have the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Office of National Assessments, the Defence Intelligence Organisation, and the Defence Imagery & Geospatial Organisation as well! And the list is growing: the relatively newCyber Security Operations Centre is housed inside the Defence Signals Directorate, an organisation that partners with the United States National Security Agency, now notorious for itsOrwellian domestic spying program…. http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3742938.html
New report shows steady growth of renewable energy in Victoria, despite Baillieu govt
Sustainability Victoria reports wind generation from the existing 432MW of installed capacity has increased to 1,280GWh on a 12 month rolling basis to September 2011. Another 537 MW of capacity is under construction at three locations and due to be on line by 2013. Unfortunately these projects are likely to be the last to make it out of the planning pipeline due to the draconian new rules introduced by the Baillieu government to give a veto to any resident within 2km of a proposed wind project.
The whole story on Victorian renewables Climate Spectator, Andrew Herington, 22 Dec 11 In April 2011, the Victorian Auditor-General tabled a report Facilitating Renewable Energy Development which took a dim view of the potential of renewable energy.
There was widespread media coverage of this report, which focussed heavily on his finding that the proportion of electricity from renewable sources has only increased from 3.6 per cent in 2002 to 3.9 per cent in 2009. This was widely taken as proof that attempts to expand renewable energy had failed and is now often quoted by renewable opponents.
A new Clean Energy Australia 2011 report from the Clean Energy Council demonstrates the Auditor General’s conclusions were flawed and that renewable energy is strongly growing and is now providing around 11 per cent of Victoria’s electricity consumption. Continue reading
Culture of coverup – Japanese at health risk as govt changes the radiation rules
Public health fallout from Japanese quake, CMAJ, Lauren Vogel, 22 Dec 11, A “culture of coverup” and inadequate cleanup efforts have combined to leave Japanese people exposed to “unconscionable” health risks nine months after last year’s meltdown of nuclear reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant, health experts say.
Although the Japanese government has declared the plant virtually stable, some experts are calling for evacuation of people from a wider area, which they say is contaminated with radioactive fallout.
They’re also calling for the Japanese government to reinstate internationally-approved radiation exposure limits for members of the public and are slagging government officials for “extreme lack of transparent, timely and comprehensive communication.” Continue reading
Low intensity ionising radiation to cause many cancers this summer.
In all the nuclear lobby’s push to say that low level radiation is harmless, people seem to quite forget that Ultraviolet (UV) rays from the sun are well known to cause skin cancers. Non melanoma skin cancers can kill, too, if left unchecked. UV rays are a form of ionising radiation that, while not penetrating deeply, do cause cancer
Sun’s rays likely to kill 80 in summer months NZ Herald, By Martin Johnston, 22 Dec 11 Skin cancer is New Zealand’s most common form of cancer and with Australia we have the world’s highest rates of melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.
During the three months of summer it is likely, based on annual trends, that about 80 people will die of melanoma in New Zealand and 550 will be diagnosed as having the disease. The Cancer Society estimates that non-melanoma skin cancers are
diagnosed in 67,000 people each year and cause 100 deaths.
A Health Sponsorship Council survey has found that one in five people reported being sunburned during the preceding weekend, and half said they had in the past been moderately to severely sunburned, resulting in blisters or pain for two or more days. “That’s the sort of sunburn that raises your risk of developing melanoma later in life quite a lot,” the council’s Sun-Smart spokesman, Wayde Beckman, said yesterday…… http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10774742
Japanese nuclear industry faces a determined threat – mothers!
The leadership of women in civic movements is also unprecedented. Mothers have been leading the demonstrations, with many of them coming out for the first time to gain sympathy and support for their campaign to prevent exposing children to the dangers of radiation…..Mothers Rise Against Nuclear Power , IPS News, By Suvendrini Kakuchi TOKYO, Dec 22, 2011 – Japan’s nuclear power industry, which once ignored opposition, now finds its existence threatened by women angered by official opaqueness on radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant after it was struck by an earthquake- driven tsunami on Mar. 11.
“Mothers are at the forefront of various grassroots movements that are working together to stop the operation of all nuclear plants in Japan from 2012,” Aileen Miyoko Smith, head of Green Action, a non- governmental organisation (NGO) that promotes renewable energy told IPS. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 