Greens urge PM to raise human rights and nuclear safety on India tour
Senator Scott Ludlam. 16 September 2012. The Australian Greens have urged the Prime Minister to use her impending visit to India to speak out on the ongoing repression of Indian communities opposed to nuclear power.
Massive protests against new reactors in India are adding to the global pressure on the slumping nuclear power industry.
Greens Senator Scott Ludlam said the democratic right to protest was being steamrolled by the Indian police.
“In Koodankulum nuclear reactors are being forced on local residents at gunpoint, and uranium fuel loading is imminent despite 10 safety guidelines having not been met. Brutal repression has been carried out by the police against tens of thousands of peaceful protestors at the reactor. Two people have been shot dead by police, most recently Anthony Samy just five days ago. There have been at least five deaths in the struggles against Koodankulam, Jaitapur (Maharashtra) and Gorakhpur (Haryana) nuclear power plants since 2010.
“In 2011 one of India’s pioneer nuclear scientists and formerly a member of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, Dr MP Parameswaran, said India should suspend its entire nuclear program because of safety risks and the unresolved problem of nuclear waste.
“Earlier this year India was ranked 28th out of 32 countries in terms of the security of their nuclear stockpiles. Making matters worse, the new Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority (NSRA) has fewer powers and less independence than the previous Atomic Energy Regulatory Board. The NSRA is a puppet body: answerable to a handful of government ministers who can issue orders to the body, and sack its members.”
Senator Ludlam will move a motion for the Senate to call on the Prime Minister to make nuclear safety, nuclear proliferation, and the human right to peaceful protest major issues in her October visit to India.
Media Contact: Giovanni Torre – 0417 174 302
More details:
Nuclear safety in India: http://greensmps.org.au/content/media-releases/indian-nuclear-security-ranked-among-worst-world-will-labor-persist-uranium-s
The anti-nuclear struggle in India: http://greensmps.org.au/content/media-releases/greens-urge-uranium-rethink-anti-nuclear-movement-besieged-india
India and nuclear proliferation: http://greensmps.org.au/content/media-releases/labor-backflip-uranium-sales-india-unethical-illogical-and-probably-illegal
Australia – a media backwater
Some elements of the mainstream media do try hard.
But this week, I’m amazed at the news that is NOT in the media – anywhere.
I agree that the anti USA protests around the world, and here in Sydney – ARE news.
But – the Duchess of Cambridge being photographed topless – what a crime! I don’t think so.
Of course, it IS footee final week in Australia – we all know that this takes precedence over anything, local or international.
But WHY – no mention of the brave fight of Indian villagers against the Kudankulam and other nuclear power projects? The repression of their protest by government-ordered violent police tactics? The support of their protest from leading scholars?
Is it because Australia is to sell uranium to India? Is it because we might offend the USA, who is desperate to flog off their nuclear technology to India? Or is it just a case of our slack media?
Australia’s Institute of Public Affairs campaigning to deny climate change
IPA goes up the greasy Delingpole for cash http://www.independentaustralia.net/2012/environment/ipa-goes-up-the-delingpole-for-cash/ 14 September, 2012 The IPA are grubbing for donations to fund their tireless campaign to stymie action on climate change — and are happy to fly out even the most obnoxious deniers from the UK to assist. Graham Readfearn reports.JAMES DELINGPOLE is a UK columnist waging a long personal jihad against wind farms, environmentalists and climate science.
A resident blogger and columnist at London’s Daily Telegraph, Delingpole is probably best known for being among the first mainstream columnists to declare – wrongly, of course – that emails illegally hacked from an influential climate research unit showed scientists were trying to con the public.
So he is the perfect person to be appealing for people to donate their cash to the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs, a free market think tank which has been working for about 20 years on a campaign to mislead the public about climate science and the impact of carbon pricing.
In the appeal, Delingpole lauds the IPA’s campaign against climate science and action on climate change. Readers of the appeal might be forgiven for thinking the IPA is struggling for cash. Says Delingpole:
James Delingpole
‘Their budget is always stretched. If you don’t give them money they’ll go broke.’
Yet the IPA’s most recent financial returns to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission suggest that, rather than scrambling around for spare change, the think-tank is, in fact, in rude financial health.
For the year ending June 2011, the ASIC documents show the IPA declared a before-tax profit of $217,000 with an income of $2.42 million. In 2010, the IPA’s income was $1.72 million, with before-tax profit of $203,000.
The IPA’s executive director John Roskam refuses to declare where the IPA’s money comes from……
Professor Bob Carter, the IPA’s science policy advisor, is also an advisor to the GWPF (as well as at least seven other climate sceptic groups), alongside fellow Australian “sceptic” Professor Ian Plimer, who has also made personal appeals for people to hand over cash to the IPA.
As I revealed in a story for The Guardian in March, the only known funder of the GWPF is Michael Hintze, an Australian-born, UK-based, hedge fund manager, donor to the UK Tory Party, and a man with a personal fortune of $1.4 billion, according to Forbes.
The IPA also has close ties to the billionaire set in the form of Gina Rinehart, the coal and iron ore mining magnate and world’s richest woman. In an address to “IPA members and friends”, Rinehart recently declared her concern that Australia was becoming too expensive, given that “Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per day”. The comments prompted a Ugandan television personality to declare Rinehart was “removed from reality“.
The IPA is currently working in partnership with Rinehart’s lobby group Australians for Northern Development & Economic Vision, which wants a separate low-tax economic zone for the north of Australia to make it cheaper to run major mining projects.
Despite the evidence, THE AUSTRALIAN newspaper claims that wind power does not help reduce CO2 emissions
Wind power abates greenhouse gasses in the UK, why should we believe Lloyd and Cumming’s claims that, for some reason, it is not working in Australia. See Beyond the bluster: Why wind power is an effective technology by the UK Institute of Public Policy Research.
The Australian’s Graham Lloyd pushes hard against the winds of change Independent Australia 10 September, 2012 The Australian newspaper – and its environment editor, Graham Lloyd, in particular – have a vendetta against wind power, says Dave Clarke, who reviews their latest unbalanced report. GRAHAM LLOYD, the ‘environment editor’ for The Australian has got together with Hamish Cumming, an opponent of the proposed Mortlake Wind Farm, to write a creative and imaginative piece about wind power and carbon dioxide emissions.
An environment editor who has a grudge against one of the world’s most successful forms of renewable energy must be quite a rare bird. But for an employee of the Murdoch News empire it is probably a wise career choice. Opposing the huge and powerful fossil fuel/mining industry would not be good for Lloyd’s future prospects in that system.
Lloyd relies heavily on what he calls Cumming’s ‘two year analysis of Victoria’s wind farm development’, but does not say where or how this analysis has been published, nor can I find it on the internet.
They claim that, while Victoria’s wind farms have displaced a significant amount of Victoria’s coal-fired power, this has not resulted in any less greenhouse carbon dioxide being generated by said coal-fired power stations. Lloyd and Cumming claim that when the wind blows and Victoria’s wind farms are generating at a high level, the coal-fired power stations cut back their generation, but go on polluting the atmosphere at the same rate as they would at full power.
What they are implying, but not saying, is that the coal-fired power stations are so poorly designed, poorly managed, or simply so inherently inflexible that they cannot reduce their rate of pollution, even when they are generating less power!
Where Lloyd and Cumming get really creative and imaginative is in claiming that this is not any fault of the coal-fired power stations, but of the wind farms. Somehow we are to believe that the (alleged by Lloyd and Cumming) failure of Victoria’s coal-fired power stations to reduce their emissions in response to reduced demand on their generation is all to be blamed on the wind power industry. Continue reading
NSW govt pushes ahead in promoting uranium exploration
map shows (yellow) area where uranium might be explored for
NSW explores uranium mining, Australian Mining, September, 2012 Vicky Validakis NSW Resources Minister Chris Hartcher announced on Saturday the government was open to expressions of interest from miners wanting to
explore Group 11 minerals, which includes uranium and thorium, The Australian Financial Review reported. ..
… The announcement follows the government’s controversial move to overturn the state’s 26-year ban on uranium exploration.
Legislation overturning the exploration ban passed through the state’s upper house unamended, despite opposition from Greens and Labor MPs, who said the government had no mandate…… Applications will close
on November 13. http://www.miningaustralia.com.au/news/nsw-explores-uranium-mining
Queensland’s LCP govt backflips on its election promise to keep ban on uranium mining
Environmentalists says LNP reneging on uranium ban agreement THE AUSTRALIAN 17 September, 2012 Cole Latimer Green groups say the Queensland Government has backflipped on its promise to ban uranium mining after opening discussions on the metal’s future on Friday.
QLD mines minister Andrew Cripps opened the floor for discussion last week after the Queensland Resources Council and the Australia Uranium Association called on Campbell Newman’s Government to make a decision on uranium’s future…… ACF spokesperson Dave Sweeny said the LNP has previously pledged to keep the uranium ban in place, The
Australian reports .
“We remind the Queensland government and the LNP they went with a clear commitment to the people they had no intention to expand or facilitate the uranium industry in Queensland,” he said.
We will actively take part in this debate highlighting the costs and consequences both here and overseas,” he said.
“Don’t forget Australian uranium was inside Fukushima (nuclear reactors in Japan) when it melted down. “Rocks from Kakadu are now causing radioactive fallout.”
It comes only days after Australian uranium miner Energy Resources of Australia (ERA) was accused of ‘stealthily’ attempting to mine uranium.
Australia’s Renewable Energy Target: dubious, unreliable, advice from ACIL Tasman
TRUenergy RET confessions, CLIMATE SPECTATOR Tristan Edis , 17 Sep 2012 Earlier this month, TRUenergy used modelling work by ACIL Tasman to spearhead an effort to have the Renewable Energy Target watered down.
This analysis suggested that the cost of the RET would be an eye popping $53.3 billion (strangely expressed in nominal dollars when just about everyone normally adjusts for inflation).
Yet why would anyone take analysis from economic consultancy and energy modellers ACIL Tasman seriously?
Let’s consider its track record.
– In a 2010 report for the Department of Climate Change it forecast that cumulative installed capacity for solar PV would reach 1348MW by 2029-2030. We actually reached that amount around the end of 2011.
– In a 2008 report for the oil and gas companies Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Exxon Mobil and Woodside Petroleum, ACIL tried to suggest that the carbon pricing scheme would put at risk LNG project development in the country. Since that report was issued, over $150 billion has been committed to construction of LNG investments including by Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil.
– In modelling for the ESAA, ACIL Tasman predicted that just about all Latrobe Valley coal generators would shut by 2020 as a result of the emissions trading scheme. Perhaps that should have happened if we were genuinely worried about climate change, but now the government can’t even pay these guys to shutdown……
let’s face it, sometimes it’s hard to know where the polluters end and ACIL Tasman starts.
This is an organisation that used to share the same office as the chief umbrella lobby group for large emitters of greenhouse gases – the Australian Industry Greenhouse Network (aka the Greenhouse Mafia according to ABC’s 4 Corners). In addition, the AIGN’s last two chief executives were also consultants at ACIL Tasman, one of them being a director at the firm.
What I think tops it all off was a story told to me by Ric Brazzale, head of Green Energy Markets. Back when Mark O’Neill was the head of the Australian Coal Association, he was unable to make it to a government-industry stakeholder meeting on climate change policy. Not to worry, an ACIL Tasman staff member attended in his place to represent the coal industry.
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/renewable-energy-target-australia-climate-change-t-pd20120917-Y82HH?OpenDocument&emcontent_spectators&src=rot
All nuclear projects in India meet public opposition, despite govt’s terror tactics to silence critics
India’s Judiciary creates scam over Kudankulam The Canadian, 17 SEPTEMBER 2012 There is no reason why the judiciary, the conscience of the nation, should willingly play pro-regime roles by opposing people’s and humanity concerns……
as national support for the five-year-long campaign against the Jaitapur plant snowballed. The National Committee in Solidarity with the Jaitapur Struggle – comprising leaders like Prakash Karat, AB Bardhan, Sitaram Yechury and Ram Vilas Paswan, independent experts and intellectuals – trenchantly criticised the project, based on French company Areva’s troubled European Pressurised Reactors (EPRs).
……..The Manmohan-Joyalalitha regime has not yet realized that it’s pointless to try and silence the masses by state terror techniques. The state frustration in not being able to impose nuclearism on people has led to repression, including lethal firing, unleashed on peaceful protesters against the Kudankulam nuclear plant , on top of FIRs over many months charging thousands with sedition. People are terrorized by the state which makes two things clear. Nuclear projects in India can only be thrust on unwilling citizens at gunpoint.
Extreme arrogance of Indian state terrocracy is in full display in Kudankulam. Erection of human chains in the Sea by the Jalsatyagraha shows, people will resist them tenaciously, because they are aware of their hazards. That’s true of every nuclear project, whether Jaitapur (Maharashtra), Gorakhpur (Haryana), Mithi-Virdi (Gujarat), Kovvada (Andhra Pradesh), Haripur (West Bengal), Chutka (Madhya Pradesh) or Banswada (Rajasthan). For instance, at Gorakhpur, there has been a daily dharna against four proposed reactors for two years, unbeknownst to Delhi, which lies in their potential radiation-fallout zone. Manmohan regime has decided that multiple reactors will be erected at Jaitapur, aggravating hazards, as in Fukushima.’
At the people’s hearing, activists vented their apprehensions about the safety hazards of nuclear power, heightened by the catastrophe at Fukushima and the poor safety record of India’s Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Nuclear Power Corporation of India (NPCIL). They exchanged their experience of the nuclear establishment’s non-transparent and authoritarian ways, its refusal to share information of vital importance to public safety, and police vindictiveness. They also discussed how to develop common strategies. The NPCIL has no plans for long-term storage of nuclear wastes……http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/news/intrnational/2012/09/17/4465.html
America’s nuclear arsenal Los Alamos in disrepair
Aging U.S. nuclear arsenal slated for costly and long-delayed modernization WP, By Dana Priest, September 15 “…….Situated on a remote mesa in the Jemez Mountains of northern New Mexico, Los Alamos National Laboratory was built secretly in early 1943 for the sole purpose of designing and building America’s first atomic bomb. In the decades since, the lab has emerged as one of the nation’s premier nuclear weapons design and research facilities, with 11,000 employees. But parts of Los Alamos are in serious disrepair. Continue reading JAPAN, BELGIUM, SPAIN, FRANCE, USA, CANADA, INDIA, GERMANY, ITALY, SWITZERLAND all dumping nuclear power
The Worst Week for the World’s Nuclear Industry Dianuke.org, 16 Sept 12 Anamika Badal JAPAN, BELGIUM, SPAIN, FRANCE, USA, CANADA, INDIA, GERMANY, ITALY, SWITZERLAND By all signs, it appears that the whole of planet Earth has at once decided to shun nuclear energy. The popular sentiment was definitely negative towards the use of nuclear power, and now it seems that governments have had to bow to people’s wishes.
Within one week, the industry has been dealt such a severe body blow that it will have to struggle hard to even survive. Let us take a look at the week’s news:…….
If one adds the fierce opposition to the start of the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant in southern India, the future of the nuclear energy industry itself is at stake.
Long accustomed to shoving its way out of trouble by using a mix of mis-information, powerful lobbying, and other dubious means, the industry is now faced with a popular dissent from the citizens of the countries it operates in.
This will be difficult, if not impossible, to conquer. After all, Governments depend on their voters to get them elected to power and going against such a vociferous and strident people’s movement would mean certain electoral losses. No government in its right mind would want to take such a suicidal step. http://www.dianuke.org/the-worst-week-for-the-worlds-nuclear-industry/
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 