Green movement is in partnership with Aboriginal people to preserve our land
Marcia Langton’s promotion of the resource industry as the primary way to empower indigenous communities is a dangerous and fraught path. The historical experience of the interface between the resource sector and our first peoples is one of profound and adverse impact.
White occupation of Australia was based on the legal fiction of Terra nullius, coupled with a utilitarian economic thinking that saw this ”empty land” as fair game for any activity that could generate ”ownership” and income. Then, as now, mining could do that. Times, people and expectations have changed, but there is still a massive structural imbalance weighted in favour of mining giants.
Green movement is here to help, not hinder, Aborigines, The Age, December 21, 2012 Leah Talbot and Dave Sweeney A CONSISTENT theme running through Professor Marcia Langton’s recent Boyer Lectures is the idea that the environment movement is standing in the way of indigenous empowerment and that conservationists are ”new colonisers under a green flag”.
The accusation is way off the mark.
Long ago, the Australian Conservation Foundation recognised that the best way to protect the environment in this country was in partnership with those who have done this for thousands of years, the Aboriginal traditional owners.
We have a positive vision for northern Australia that aims to respect culture, protect the environment and put forward appropriate solutions to issues affecting indigenous communities. The policy of free, prior and informed consent from traditional owners underpins our work. Continue reading
South Korea’s nuclear bungles
A Year Of Nuclear Bungles, New Matilda, By Jim Green, 19 Dec 12“……In South Korea, five engineers were charged with covering up a potentially dangerous power failure at the Kori-I reactor in May. The accident occurred because of a failure to follow safety procedures. The manager of the reactor decided to conceal the incident and to delete records, despite a legal obligation to notify the Nuclear Safety and Security Commission.
In early November, the South Korean government shut down two reactors at Yeonggwang to replace thousands of parts that had been supplied with forged quality and safety warranties. Plant owner Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power (KHNP) has acknowledged possible bribery and collusion by KHNP officials as well as corruption by firms supplying reactor parts. In late November there were further revelations and the current total stands at 8601 reactor parts, 10 firms and six reactors. Inadequate and compromised regulation has been a key contributor to the problems in South Korea’s nuclear industry — just as it was a key factor behind the Fukushima disaster in Japan.
South Korea wants to develop uranium enrichment technology (a direct route to nuclear weapons material) in violation of its commitments under the 1992 Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula……. http://newmatilda.com/2012/12/19/year-nuclear-bungles
Julian Assange promises new revelations and will stand for Senate in 2013
The WikiLeaks boss also mentioned his plans to run for a seat in the Australian Senate, indicating confidence that he would win in next year’s federal election. “In Australia, an unelected senator will be replaced by one that is elected,” he stated.
‘We continue to stand up to bullies’ ‘ every day ordinary people teach us that democracy is free speech.’
(includes video )Assange: WikiLeaks to release over a million new docs in 2013
http://rt.com/news/assange-wikileaks-christmas-speech-511/ 20 December, 2012, Despite all the difficulties the WikiLeaks faced in 2012, Julian Assange vowed to publish some 1,000,000 new documents in the coming year. In his Christmas speech he called for people to continue fighting for democracy “from Tahrir to London.” Continue reading
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops urges practical diplomacy with Iran
The international community should affirm Iran’s “right to enrich uranium” in exchange for an Iranian commitment to “limit enrichment convincingly short of weapons-grade potential, as confirmed by verifiable inspections,” he said.
U.S. Bishops Call for Nuclear Negotiations With Iran http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/u.s.-bishops-call-for-nuclear-negotiations-with-iran/ Bishop Richard Pates, chairman of USCCB’s justice and peace committee, voices ‘deep concern’ over the current ‘dangerous situation.’ 20 Dec 12, ASHINGTON — The U.S. bishops’ leader on international peace issues said that dialogue is the path to a peaceful resolution of nuclear concerns between the United States and Iran.
“Bold steps must be considered to counter this unfortunate and continually rising tide of aggressive posturing between our own nation and Iran,” said Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, Iowa. In a Dec. 18 letter to Thomas Donilon, national security advisor to the Obama administration, he explained that a “peaceful resolution will require direct, sustained negotiations over a considerable period of time.”
The bishop, who chairs the Committee on International Justice and Peace for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, voiced “deep concern” over the “dangerous situation facing our nation, the international community and Iran.”
Speaking on behalf of his committee, he urged the U.S. to immediately begin direct negotiations with the nation in order to avoid further escalation. “Initiating such talks should be done without preconditions and might include extending to Iran some relief from current international sanctions,” he said. Continue reading
Australian security scholar Des Ball saved us all from nuclear war
Des Ball: the man who saved the world, The Age, December 21, 2012, David Wroe, THAT America could launch a limited nuclear strike against Russia was a fashionable belief in US strategic theory of the 1970s. Policymakers thought that if Cold War tensions boiled over, they could hit selected Soviet targets in a way that controlled further
escalation and forced Moscow to back down.
It took the iconoclastic Australian security scholar Des Ball to point out that the theory was bunkum. In his influential essays of the early 1980s, Ball argued that reasoned strategic theory was likely to go out the window once the missiles started flying. Among the first targets would be the other side’s command and control centres – its eyes and ears. Once blinded, a superpower – consisting of real people responding with human instincts – would not distinguish a ”controlled” strike from a full-scale attack and would retaliate with everything it had.
A controlled exchange would quickly become all-out nuclear war. Today, none other than former US president Jimmy Carter says that Ball’s work helped save the world from potential holocaust. In a new book of essays honouring Ball’s four decades helping to keep Australia and the world a safer place, Carter says Ball’s ”counsel and cautionary advice, based on deep research, made a great difference to our collective goal of avoiding nuclear war”.
Released last week, the book, Insurgent Intellectual: Essays in Honour of Professor Desmond Ball, is an extraordinary outpouring of praise for a colossus of strategic thinking in Australia – albeit one who stands out as an odd fit among his generation of largely conservative colleagues.
Ball, who is marking his 25th year as a special professor at the Australian National University’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, cuts an unusual figure with his beard, rumpled clothing and rat’s tail hair………
http://www.theage.com.au/national/des-ball-the-man-who-saved-the-world-20121220-2bpdd.html#ixzz2FiJCmAdw
Nuclear bungles in USA in 2012
A Year Of Nuclear Bungles, New Matilda, By Jim Green, 19 Dec 12“……In the United States, the New York Times reports that security guards at a nuclear weapons plant who failed to stop an 82-year-old nun from reaching a bomb fuel storage building were also cheating on a “security knowledge test”. At least 99 nuclear accidents — resulting in the loss of human life and/or more than US$50,000 (AU$47,000) of property damage — occurred worldwide between 1952 and 2009. Most of them — 56 out of 99 — occurred in the US.
In August, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) announced the suspension of all reactor licensing decisions until political and legal disputes regarding high level nuclear waste management are resolved. Former NRC commissioner Peter Bradford said that “the reactors awaiting construction licenses weren’t going to be built anytime soon … Falling demand, cheaper alternatives and runaway nuclear costs had doomed their near-term prospects”. Over AU$10 billion and over 20 years effort was wasted on plans for a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, before the scandal-plagued project was cancelled by the Obama Administration in 2009……. http://newmatilda.com/2012/12/19/year-nuclear-bungles
Now – thin solar panels that can stick on to anything
The researchers have been able to attach their decal solar panels to paper, glass and plastic
Peel and Play – Stick On Solar Panels http://www.energymatters.com.au/index.php?main_page=news_article&article_id=3523 21 Dec 12 Stanford University scientists have developed a decal-type system for solar panels that can be stuck on practically any surface. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 