Antinuclear 2013 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 72,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 3 days for that many people to see it.
Hot Australia has a sham climate change policy
Australia swelters under a sham climate change policy after hottest year on record The Guardian, Alex White 4 Jan 14 With 2013 confirmed as Australia’s hottest year on record, prime minister Tony Abbott must explain how “direct action” is credible…….
The full update is available from the BOM here……..Uranium mining’s harm to community and the land
Uranium mining: everything about it is negative http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/65674uranium_mining_everything_about_it_is_negative/ Dale DewarWynard, Sask.3 Jan 14, “There is probably fairly low probability that mining will even occur” NUNATSIAQ NEWS Youth should be congratulated on tackling the issue of uranium mining in Nunavut.
Both sides sound as though they did their research thoroughly. Unfortunately the “economic benefit” argument is based upon promise and not fact. What little research that has been done does not support the argument for local benefit. The few unskilled jobs that go locally provide money that accrues to individuals, not communities. The government of Nunavut may benefit from royalties — but as Saskatchewan recently discovered, even that was banked in Switzerland to avoid taxes.
What kind of legacy does uranium mining leave? The natural situation can never be restored; 85 per cent of the nuclear radiation bound up in the rock will be left on the surface.
The industry speaks of “reclamation” but even that is more an unfulfilled promise than fact. The area can never be normal again. Mines in northern Saskatchewan still spill toxic tailings into waters bound for the Arctic Ocean. Mining in Niger (North Africa) has been going on since 1968 with not a whisper of reclamation. Two million tonnes of radioactive tailings were dumped into local surface waters in Gabon (also Africa.)
Containment in Australia recently ruptured and is still spreading into the surface waters of the surrounding Indigenous lands. The mining company in Navajo Territory in the south-western United States transferred its assets and then declared bankruptcy.
Reclamation, such as it is, is extremely expensive. Germany began reclamation of a collection of mines referred to as WISMUT in the 1990s —to date, close to twelve billion dollars have been spent and the job is not complete.
The tailings from a proposed mine in Tanzania expected to produce uranium for 20 years has a clean-up price tag of four billion dollars.
Given that uranium has only two end uses — nuclear power and nuclear bombs — no renaissance for the first and no desire for the second, there is probably fairly low probability that mining will even occur.
The industry and the argument will serve only to divide a community that needs to work together to tackle challenging times.
Tony Abbott’s climate policy is an expensive con job
‘The policy he has is a con job that you have when you think that climate change is absolute crap,” acting Labor leader Penny Wong said.
“If we keep emitting (carbon dioxide) at the rates we are now, in another three or four decades, 2013 will look like an average year – perhaps even a cool year.
Record sparks hot debate on Tony Abbott’s climate policy The Age, January 4, 20146 reading now Peter Hannam and David Wroe The Bureau of Meteorology on Friday confirmed that last year was the hottest nationwide in more than a century of standardised records, with mean temperatures 1.2 degrees above the 1961-90 average.
The 12 months easily eclipsed the previous annual record set in 2005,…….The report sparked a heated political exchange, with Labor accusing Prime Minister Tony Abbott of remaining stuck in the belief that global warming was ”absolute crap” – a remark he infamously made in 2009. Continue reading
Secrecy pact between nuclear agency and Fukushima’s govt and University
Fukushima Govt. & Fukushima Medical University Signed Secrecy Pact With IAEA fukuleaks.org January 1st, 2014 Tokyo Shimbun is reporting the results of their investigation into the dealings of the Fukushima prefecture government, the medical university and the IAEA. There has been 
ongoing suspicion about the openness and honesty of what has been ongoing in Japan. Tokyo Shimbun has confirmed that these government entities did sign a secrecy agreement with the IAEA. The Fukushima Medical University has been the main source of all public data on exposure and had been dictating what medical care many in the region were allowed to receive related to radiation issues.
Both the prefecture and the medical university have been the subject of growing distrust from the public due to their efforts to downplay problems and withhold information from the public. Tokyo Shimbun’s work has confirmed this problem to be the case. A machine translation of the article is below.
………The Memorandum of Understanding with the IAEA, in December last year, Fukushima Prefecture were signed respectively in October this year, Fukui Prefecture.
In Fukushima Prefecture, Prefectural University of Medicine has concluded with the IAEA for the health impact study prefecture, radiation for the management of radioactive waste and decontamination. There are “exemplary arrangements” document as detailed MOU provisions marked to be “to ensure the confidentiality of information designated as confidential by the other party” is included in the document……..http://www.fukuleaks.org/web/?p=11993
Art in the service of understanding Fukushima’s children
Currently, the exhibitioncan be seen at the community center in Showa, Fukushima Prefecture, with pictures from a sister project in Toowoomba, Queensland
Drawing out the demons and dreams of Fukushima Artist’s work with the marginalized takes him around the world and back to the place he once called home JAPAN TIMES, BY KRIS KOSAKA 4 JAN 14, GEOFF READ, ARTIST AND ACTIVIST, HOPES ONE PORTRAIT CAN ECHO THOUSANDS OF MILES. HIS POIGNANT “ARTISTIC COLLABORATIONS” INDEED REVERBERATE WITH THE WHISPERS OF SOCIETY’S MARGINALIZED.
For more than 20 years, his collaborations have detailed the lives of homeless people from Mexico to England to Japan, and Read has also used art to help in drug rehabilitation and occupational therapy. His current focus: to broadcast the suspended dreams of Fukushima’s children.
As Read explains, “In my Strong Children Japan Project, the most important thing the pictures can do is to help these children to have a safer childhood.”…….. Continue reading
Exploding the anti climate change nonsense of Heartland’s paid shills
Tony Abbott ran a negative campaign for three years, aided completely by a print media dominated by right-wing Murdoch owned newspapers and a compliant mainstream television media and right-wing shock jocks on radio…. Hardly a convincing win and definitely no mandate as he claims.
In the end, what we have here is a paid shill writing garbage for more paid shills whose only goal is to misrepresent facts, lie and distort so the people who write their paycheques can continue to make money by polluting the Earth.
Heartland relying on more non-experts with vested interests to spin garbage uknowispeaksense 4 Jan 14 Normally I couldn’t care less what the privately funded (fossil fuels, pharmaceutical, tobacco etc) loony right-wing Heartland Institute have to say, but there’s only tennis on the television and I’m a little bored. Anyway, their blog, ironically called Somewhat Reasonable has a post entitled “There is no denying mother nature” written by some bloke by the name of Paul Crovo. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a larger pile of crap.
So, before we begin looking at this no doubt informative article about mother nature (biology, ecology, physics, chemistry etc) let’s check the credentials of the author. Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 