Reflections on Australian nuclear and climate news
All very quiet on the nuclear/uranium front – except for renewed media efforts by the South Australian nuclear promotion nest, and nuclear enthusiasts from overseas to push the ever more wobbly nuclear barrow.
So I give myself license to wander off the point (?perhaps), in considering Queensland’s new and draconian anti-bikie laws. Well, we’re all supposed to hate bikies, aren’t we? So that’s OK? Similar laws might come in other States. This is how erosion of civil liberties proceeds – as Queenslanders should well know – those who remember the Joh Bjelke Petersen era.
Not so quiet on the climate front. In the face of extreme weather in Australia, and overseas, the Australian government is more firmly than ever wedded to serving its masters – fossil fuel corporations. Tony Abbott hides behind the extraordinary climate denialist statements of his top business advisor, Maurice Newman.
Treaty with Aborigines needed – Pilger’s new film “Utopia”
John Pilger’s damning new film about indigenous Australia SMH, Julian Drape, December 31, 2013 “……London-based Pilger returns to outback Australia for this documentary film to find little has changed since his 1985 work The Secret Country.The Utopia of the title refers to the Northern Territory region north of Alice Springs…….
Pilger, 74, sees a treaty and genuine land rights as the key to improving the position of the original owners of Australia. Anything less, including the current talk of constitutional recognition, is simply a “distraction”, he says.
The film opened in the United Kingdom in mid-November and screens in Sydney on January 17. Subsequent limited dates include Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Alice Springs. Pilger would have been delighted to show Utopia in Australia first but no local distributor offered a cinema run.
“One Australian distributor refused to take the film because he said it was ‘too dark’ and ‘it might upset people with its myth-busting’,” the veteran journalist says.The film was commissioned by ITV in Britain and funded entirely in the UK…..
Pilger doesn’t apologise for taking such an uncompromising view.”Unlike the US, Canada and New Zealand, no treaty was ever negotiated between the lawful owners of Australia and those who took their land,” he says. “International law is clear – there has to be a treaty.
“If the Australian political establishment believes it can continue to look the other way and deny the first Australians their basic rights they are seriously mistaken.”……
Pilger reminds the viewer that Bob Hawke in the 1980s walked away from genuine land rights in the face of a racist scare campaign from the mining industry. He draws parallels with Julia Gillard’s decision to fold on Labor’s mining tax in 2010.
“The revenue lost is estimated at $60 billion,” the director says in the film. “Enough to fund land rights and to end Aboriginal poverty.”……
Child abuse is one of the rationales for taking children away, yet the NT has one of the lowest rates of reported child abuse in Australia, Pilger says. He argues Australians shouldn’t still need educating about the plight of indigenous Australia, but if they do he hopes Utopia helps.
“Utopia tells them the truth,” he says. “If people choose to ignore the research and evidence in this film then their prejudice is unshakeable.”….. Utopia is on limited released in Australia from January 17. Details at utopiajohnpilger.co.uk http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/john-pilgers-damning-new-film-about-indigenous-australia-20131231-303tf.html#ixzz2povi3A9Z
The climate madness of Conservative White Males like Maurice Newman
Tony Abbott’s advisor Maurice Newman shows a different kind of climate change madness’ Guardian, Graham Readfearn, 7 Jan 14 What might be the cause of the extreme climate science denial on public display from the Australian government’s top business advisor? ” ……Maybe the documented CWM effect – the high prevalence of climate change denialism among conservative white males – is especially strong in the 75-year-old former stockbroker, banker and chair of the ABC and the ASX?
Whatever the cause, Newman has turned his conspiracy theory dial well passed 11 with his latest outburst.
In a column published in The Australian newspaper he wrote that the “climate change establishment” (whatever that is) is intent only on “exploiting the masses and extracting 
more money”. Newman wrote that the United Nations “has applied mass psychology through a compliant media” (he really did write that) to fool the world into thinking the activities of industrialised countries have changed the climate.
“The scientific delusion, the religion behind the climate crusade, is crumbling,” wrote Newman, before citing Dr Roy Spencer, a research scientist at the University of Alabama……
Spencer concluded that the “theory of creation actually had a much better scientific basis than the theory of evolution”…….
Mr Newman could have asked Australia‘s science minister about that, if only we had one……
Newman is just one of a clutch of climate change scepticswhich have the ear of the Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Newman says Australia has “become hostage to climate change madness”.
Now, given Australia has just experienced its warmest year on record at a time when the world – with Australia’s help – is pumping CO2 into the atmosphere at a rate not seen in at least 65m years, I’d say he’s probably right about the “madness” part.
Just, not in the way he meant. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2014/jan/07/maurice-newman-climate-change-denial-tony-abbott-roy-spencer
Mainstream media praises nuclear power, omits bad news about it
Major Media Sing Nuclear Praises Washington Spectator, January 7, 2014 | by Joe Mangano The nuclear power industry is having its roughest time since reactors were first conceived in the 1950s. Health risks are at the core of the problem……Closer to home, things are not going well. U.S. reactors are aging and leaking more often as they reach the end of their operating lives…..Chief executives of utilities, faced with high costs of maintaining old reactors and skidding stock prices, say they’re considering more closings.
But recent major media stories make one think that all is rosy………
But in addition to what big media is reporting, an equally disturbing trend is what it is omitting—especially at Fukushima, including:
-The ongoing story about the perilous attempt to move rods at containing high-level nuclear waste
-Last week’s study by Fukushima Medical University which documented 26 actual and 33 suspected thyroid cancer cases in local children since 2011 (one or two is normal), and that a staggering 56 percent of the children have pre-cancerous thyroid nodules or cysts
-A November 2 story by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation announcing University of Alaska-Fairbanks scientists’ discovery of rising radiation levels in Alaskan waters from Japanese fallout—which they estimated will match the high levels at the apex of above-ground atomic bomb testing in the 1960s
Major media coverage has ignored or made deceptive claims on nuclear health and safety issues………..
The fault lies with a media that fall short of standards of good journalism so integral to a free society. Along with Fukushima and other meltdowns, a growing number of scientific studies link routine emissions from aging, leaking reactors to high local cancer rates. This “dirty laundry” terrifies leaders of the powerful nuclear industry. Fearing this information will speed the demise of their product, they encourage the all-too-obliging media to say anything to stop the current slide.http://washingtonspectator.org/index.php/Media/major-media-sing-nuclear-praises.html#.Us2hYdJDt9U
Plutonium and caesium isotopes in upper atmosphere, from bomb testing
Nuclear weapon test debris ‘persists’ in atmosphere By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC World Service, 7 Jan 14, Radioactive particles from nuclear tests that took place decades ago persist in the upper atmosphere, a study suggests.
Previously, scientists believed that nuclear debris found high above the Earth would now be negligible.
However this research shows that plutonium and caesium isotopes are still present at surprisingly high concentrations…The work is published in the journal Nature Communications……..http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25641310
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 