Minister Macfarlane and Muckaty radioactive waste dump
Statement from Muckaty Traditional Owner Penny Phillips re: meeting Minister Ian Macfarlane. We have heard through Senate questions that Ian Macfarlane is making plans to come and meet with Muckaty Traditional Owners (1).Earlier this year I travelled a long way to Canberra by myself to talk to former Minister Gary Gray. At the same time the Northern Land Council was taking a group of people to Spain to look at the nuclear waste dump there. I invited Gary Gray to Tennant Creek to meet us, but the NLC mob didn’t ask me to come and meet him. They didn’t tell a lot of people about that meeting, just the ones they wanted to go along.
I went to the meeting in my own vehicle and told Gary Gray he could have stopped it then, but now we have to go around in circles again and tell the new Minister the same thing. I sent a letter to Minister Macfarlane, along with my mum Bunny Nabarula and my sister-in-law Dianne Stokes, to come here and meet with us. If he comes, we want the NLC to invite everyone to come along and meet him, not just pick one little group.
We all want to have our say. We aren’t going to let the dump go ahead because we are strong and want to protect the land from being destroyed. Contact Penny Phillips: 0459 715 223
For background on the Muckaty radioactive waste dump proposal: Natalie Wasley 0429 900 774
Graphic and shocking pictures of world’s 10 most radioactive places
PHOTOGRAPHY, Ten Most Radioactive Places on Earth Mapped Out [GRAPHIC], CV News November 24, 2013 by Jim Lee “……While the 2011 earthquake and worries surrounding Fukushima have brought the threat of radioactivity back into the public consciousness, many people still don’t realize that radioactive contamination is a worldwide danger. Radionuclides are in the top six toxic threats as listed in the 2010 report by The Blacksmith Institute, an NGO dedicated to tackling pollution. You might be surprised by the locations of some of the world’s most radioactive places — and thus the number of people living in fear of the effects radiation could have on them and their children.10. Hanford, USA radioactive sludge from plutonium processing. Many of the tanks have leaked, tainting groundwater.The Hanford Site, in Washington, was an integral part of the US atomic bomb project, manufacturing plutonium for the first nuclear bomb and “Fat Man,” used at Nagasaki. As the Cold War waged on, it ramped up production, supplying plutonium for most of America’s 60,000 nuclear weapons. Although decommissioned, it still holds two thirds of the volume of the country’s high-level radioactive waste — about 53 million gallons of liquid waste, 25 million cubic feet of solid waste and 200 square miles of contaminated groundwater underneath the area, making it the most contaminated site in the US. The environmental devastation of this area makes it clear that the threat of radioactivity is not simply something that will arrive in a missile attack, but could be lurking in the heart of your own country. More information available at the Hanford Site, Department of Energy website…….. 9. The Mediterranean
Mafia sinks toxic waste ships in the Mediterranean
8. The Somalian Coast
Nuclear Waste Dumping at Sea “paid” – Somalia
7. Mayak Chemical Combine, Russia
6. Sellafield, UK Continue reading
Australia lags in acknowledging the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons
The next conference addressing the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons will be held in Mexico City in February 2014. Australia should strongly support recognition of the following four points being argued by the Red Cross: 1) the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons; 2) the lack of any adequate humanitarian response capacity; 3) the incompatibility of any use of nuclear weapons with the rules of international humanitarian law; and 4) the need for concrete action leading to a prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons and their elimination.
Underlining the horror of nuclear arms http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2013/11/26/commentary/underlining-the-horror-of-nuclear-arms/#.UpY1NNJwo7o BY RAMESH THAKUR NOV 26, 2013CANBERRA – Because of the unique destructive capacity and uncontrollable effects of nuclear weapons, the almost indescribable horror associated with their use informed the very first resolution of the U.N. General Assembly in 1946 and has been a recurring theme ever since in blue ribbon international commissions, NPT review conferences and preparatory committee meetings, and General Assembly committee debates.
Given the presently stalled nuclear disarmament agenda, the most productive way forward for both committed state and civil society actors to generate political momentum for the cause may be to emphasize the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons. The only way to guarantee their non-use ever is their total, irreversible and verifiable elimination under effective international control.
On Oct. 21, speaking in the U.N. General Assembly’s First Committee on behalf of 123 countries and the Holy See, New Zealand’s outgoing disarmament ambassador Dell Higgie issued a statement on the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons.
It noted that the broad participation at the March 2013 Oslo Conference, with attendance by 128 states (but not one nuclear-armed state nor most who shelter under their nuclear umbrellas), the ICRC, and several U,N, and civil society humanitarian organizations, reflected the recognition that the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons are a major global concern. Yet no country or international body has the capacity to address the immediate humanitarian emergency caused by a nuclear weapon detonation or provide adequate assistance to victims.
Intriguingly because of their close relations on so many issues, on the same occasion Australia’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, Peter Woolcott, issued a parallel statement on behalf of 17 countries, mainly those protected by U.S. nuclear weapons under extended nuclear deterrence (Belgium, Canada, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Turkey, etc.).
Japan was the only country to sign both statements. The Australia statement emphasized “both the security and the humanitarian dimensions of the nuclear weapons debate.”
It is not clear that the different Australian position was actually ever signed off by the minister in the last Labor government, as opposed to being official Australian policy as determined and articulated by the bureaucracy. Continue reading
Trashy unnecessary Christmas gifts trash the planet
So you need that smart cuckoo clock for Christmas, do you?, George Monbiot, Guardian, 26 Nov 13
A global bullshit industry recruits the values with which we’d like the festival to be invested – to sell things no one wants Guilt is good. It’s the feature that distinguishes the rest of the population from psychopaths. It’s the sensation you are able to feel when you possess a capacity for empathy. But guilt inhibits consumption. So a global industry has developed to smother it with a 13-tog duvet of celebrities and cartoon characters and elevator music. It seeks to persuade us not to see and not to feel. It seems to work.
The 2012 Greendex survey found that people in poorer countries feel, on average, much guiltier about their impacts on the natural world than people in rich countries. The places in which people feel least guilt are, in this order, Germany, the United States, Australia and Britain, while the people of India, China, Mexico and Brazil have the greatest concerns. Our guilt, the survey reported, exists in inverse proportion to the amount of damage our consumption does. This is the opposite of what a thousand editorials in the corporate press tell us: that people cannot afford to care until they become rich. The evidence suggests we cease to care only when we become rich.
“Consumers in countries such as Mexico, Brazil, China and India,” the survey tells us, “tend to be most concerned about issues like climate change, air and water pollution, species loss and shortages of fresh water … In contrast, the economy and the cost of energy and fuel elicit the most concern among American, French and British consumers.” The more you have, the more important money becomes. My guess is that in poorer countries empathy has not been so dulled by decades of mindless consumption.
Watch the latest advertisement for Toys R Us in the US. A man dressed up as a ranger herds children on to a green bus belonging to “the Meet the Trees Foundation”. “Today we’re taking the kids on the best field trip they could wish for,” he confides to us. “And they don’t even know it.”
Did Toys R Us Just Make an Anti Science Education Ad?
On the bus he starts teaching them, badly, about leaves. The children yawn and shift in their seats. Suddenly, he announces: “But we’re not going to the forest today …” He strips off his ranger shirt. “We’re going to Toys R Us, guys!” The children go berserk. “We’re going to get to play with all the toys, and you’re going to get to choose any toy that you want!” The children run, in slow motion, down the aisles of the shop, then almost swoon as they caress their chosen toys.
Nature is tedious, plastic is thrilling. The inner-city children I took to the woods a few weeks ago would tell a different story, but hammer home the message often enough and it becomes true.
Christmas permits the global bullshit industry to recruit the values with which so many of us would like the festival to be invested – love, warmth, a community of spirit – to the sole end of selling things that no one needs or even wants…….
Are we so bored, so affectless, that we need to receive this junk to ignite one last spark of hedonic satisfaction? Have people become so immune to fellow feeling that they are prepared to spend £46 on a jar for dog treats or £6.50 a bang on personalised crackers, rather than give the money to a better cause? Or is this the western world’s potlatch, spending ridiculous sums on conspicuously useless gifts to enhance our social status? If so, we must have forgotten that those who are impressed by money are not worth impressing.
To service this peculiar form of mental illness, we must wear down the knap of the Earth, ream the surface of the planet with great holes, fleetingly handle the products of that destruction then dump the materials into another hole. A report by the Gaia Foundation reveals an explosive growth in the pace of mining: cobalt production up 165% in 10 years, iron ore by 180%, a 50% increase in nonferrous metals exploration between 2010 and 2011.
The products of this destruction are in everything: electronics, plastics, ceramics, paints, dyes, the packaging in which our fatuities arrive. As the richest deposits are mined out, ever more land must be attacked to maintain production. Even the most precious and destructive materials are junked when a new dopamine hit is required: the UK government reports that a tonne of gold embedded in electronics is landfilled in this country every year…… A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.com http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/25/christmas-selling-things-nobody-wants
Abbot government has not bothered to do any modelling to compare its carbon policies with the ones they’re abolishing
Lack of carbon models ‘shocks’ Xenophon, Herald Sun AAP NOVEMBER 26, 2013
INDEPENDENT Senator Nick Xenophon is “shocked” Treasury hasn’t done modelling to see if taxpayer dollars would be better spent reducing high greenhouse gas emissions activity or boosting clean energy generation.
That is what he told a Senate inquiry on Tuesday that was investigating laws to abolish the carbon tax, the Climate Change Authority and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation after the coalition government used its numbers to pass the package of repeal bills in the lower house……
A Treasury official said the department had not undertaken an analysis of the effectiveness of different programs for delivering abatement and its impact on prices, but would do so if the government asked……..
Senator Xenophon told the inquiry chairman he was surprised the modelling had not been done.
“I must say, chair, I am quite surprised, shocked in fact, that the treasury hasn’t taken any modelling in respect of this.” http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/lack-of-carbon-models-shocks-xenophon/story-fni0xqi4-1226769046270
Grave financial cost of shutting down Clean Energy Finance Corporation
Clean Energy Finance Corp warns shutdown will hit budget ABC News 27 Nov 13 The Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) has warned that the Federal Government’s plan to shut it down could cost the budget hundreds of millions of dollars. The Corporation was set up by the previous government to invest up to $10 billion in renewable energy projects and to help attract private sector investment.
The Coalition wants to shut it down, but Labor and the Greens have vowed to use their numbers in the Senate to block the move.
CEFC chair Jillian Broadbent says the fund has so far invested $500 million, which will help cut greenhouse gas emissions.She told a Senate hearing the fund’s contribution could be very significant if it was allowed to invest the full $10 billion, while at the same time returning $200 million per annum to government coffers.
“This would contribute more than 50 per cent of the emissions abatement that’s required for the bipartisan 2020 target,” she said.”And it would be done so with a $200 million per annum return to the taxpayer after having covered the operating costs.”……
She went on to say that the Government’s replacement direct action plan, in which companies and landholders bid for funding for emissions reduction projects, will have a net cost to the taxpayer.
“We’re investing and trying to develop the market’s appetite for participating in this field,” she said.”Grants have a very different role, and when you’re investing, you’re going to get the funds repaid and you’re earning a return on your money.
“Making a grant is just a straight expense. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-26/clean-energy-finance-corp-warns-of-budget-cost-of-shutdown/5118212
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 