Greens could do well in New South Wales election – Abbott and Baird beware!
Tony Abbott, Mike Baird at risk of being washed away by GreensTHE Greens tsunami that has seen the minor party seize state and federal seats in Melbourne could be repeated in NSW. – (subscribers only)
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/tony-abbott-mike-baird-at-risk-of-being-washed-away-by-greens/story-fn59niix-1227257520728
Former New South Wales Governor condemns loss of farmland for mining
NSW state election 2015: Marie Bashir lashes out at loss of farmland for mining SMH, March 10, 2015 Former NSW governor Marie Bashir says the destruction of fertile Australian farmland for mining is a “crisis” that must stop, adding: “I have never been so emphatic or political in my life”.
It is the first time Dame Marie has spoken out against mining after 13 years in the traditionally apolitical role of NSW governor. The beloved dame, who retired late last year, also said her fears about foreign ownership of Australian land bring out her “nasty side”.
The conflict between faming and mining, including coal seam gas, has become a defining election issue in regional NSW, and may heavily sway results in seats on the north coast and in western NSW.
Speaking at an International Women’s Day event in Sydney on Sunday, Dame Marie said Australia was in the incredible position of being able to “help to feed the world”.
“And of course, what is the counter to that? Digging up precious farm land for coal …
Dame Marie said the situation was “a clarion call” to women, adding “I couldn’t be more passionate about a cause than this one. We must do something to protect our food-producing land”……
NSW Labor wants a permanent ban on coal seam gas in the Northern Rivers region. Labor leader Luke Foley said last week the region’s farm industries “depend on the purity of the fertile land and the purity of clean water. Both of those are at risk from coal seam gas.”
In Fukushima, bags of radioactive wastes pile up
The fruits of the laborers’ efforts are stacked in those giant sacks—5.5 million of them and counting. They are spread out across Fukushima province, along roadsides, in parking lots and backyards. They are tagged and bar-coded so authorities know what’s inside and how radioactive it is – and when the bags might start to wear out.
As the bags pile up and workers fan out across the landscape, some locals are questioning the cost-benefit analysis.
Fukushima nuclear plant cleanup has cost $13 billion and counting After 4 years, Fukushima nuclear cleanup remains daunting, vast LA Times, By JULIE MAKINEN contact the reporter 12 Mar 15 “…..Karimata is in charge of the work here in an evacuation zone about 12 miles north of the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant—part of the most extensive, and expensive, nuclear cleanup ever attempted.
The scale and complexity of what Japan is trying to do in the aftermath of the 2011 meltdown at Fukushima is mind-boggling. Decontamination plans are being executed for 105 cities, towns and villages affected by the accident at Fukusima Dai-ichi, 140 miles northeast of Tokyo.
Many Japanese regard this massive undertaking as a solemn obligation to right a terrible wrong. Others, even some of the people directly affected, question whether it’s a quixotic waste of resources.
Karimata’s delegation marches up a side street to check on a brigade of laborers wearing gloves, masks, helmets and fluorescent vests with radiation detectors tucked in their chest pockets. Some are spreading fresh soil in the yard of an uninhabited home. Next door, workers are up on a scaffold, preparing to wipe down the roof and gutters.
Across the street, near a bamboo grove, two men are erecting a plastic frame to support a massive double-lined garbage bag about the size of a hot tub. Dozens of identical black sacks, each weighing about a ton and stuffed with radiation-contaminated soil, leaves, wood chippings and other debris, stretch out behind them, awaiting transport at some uncertain date to a yet-unspecified final resting place.
Four years after the Great Tohoku Earthquake shook northern Japan to its core, touched off a deadly tsunami and precipitated the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster, hundreds of square miles remain off-limits for habitation due to radioactivity. Some 79,000 people still cannot return home.
But unlike the 1986 accident at Chernobyl, where authorities simply declared a 1,000 square-mile no-habitation zone, resettled 350,000 people and essentially decided to let the radiation dissipate over decades or centuries, Japan is attempting to make the Fukushima region livable again. It is an unprecedented effort.
The sheer manpower and money dedicated to the house-to-house effort is staggering: Continue reading
Fukushima four years after the catastrophe
All fouled up – Fukushima four years after the catastrophe Jim Green, 11th March 2015, The Ecologist Four years ago today the world’s biggest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl took place at Fukushima, Japan. Total clean-up costs are estimated around $0.5 trillion, writes Jim Green – but work to defuse the dangers has barely begun, the site is flooded with radioactive water making its way to the sea, and underpaid and illegally contracted workers are suffering a rising toll of death and injury.
Four years have passed since the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan. Around 160,000 people were relocated because of the Fukushima nuclear disaster and very few have returned to their homes. Apart from the radioactive contamination, there is little for them to return to.
The clean-up and decommissioning of the Fukushima Daiichi site will take decades to complete – but no-one knows how many decades. There is little precedent for some of the challenges TEPCO faces, such as the robotic extraction of damaged nuclear fuel from stricken reactors and its storage or disposal … somewhere.
Last October, TEPCO pushed back the timeline for the start of the damaged fuel removal work by five years, to 2025. Dale Klein, a member of TEPCO’s Nuclear Reform Monitoring Committee, said the decommissioning schedule is pure supposition until engineers figure out how to remove the damaged fuel.
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report
The IAEA completed its third review of the Fukushima clean-up operations in mid-February. The 15-member IAEA team released a preliminary report and the final report will be released by the end of March. The report does not consider contamination and clean-up operations outside the Fukushima Daiichi site. ………http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2782207/all_fouled_up_fukushima_four_years_after_the_catastrophe.html
Mainstream media minimised health risks of Fukushima nuclear catastrophe
“The mainstream media — in print and online — did little to report on health risks to the general population or to challenge the narratives of public officials and their experts,”
News coverage of Fukushima disaster minimized health risks to general population http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150311124202.htm
A new analysis by American University sociology professor Celine Marie Pascale finds that U.S. news media coverage of the disaster largely minimized health risks to the general population. Pascale analyzed more than 2,000 news articles from four major U.S. outlets following the disaster’s occurrence March 11, 2011 through the second anniversary on March 11, 2013. Only 6 percent of the coverage — 129 articles — focused on health risks to the public in Japan or elsewhere. Human risks were framed, instead, in terms of workers in the disabled nuclear plant.
Disproportionate access
“It’s shocking to see how few articles discussed risk to the general population, and when they did, they typically characterized risk as low,” Continue reading
Attacks, legal threats, as climate sceptics attempt to block film “Merchants of Doubt”
But behind the scenes, Fred Singer has lobbied fellow climate deniers to try to block the film, Merchants of Doubt, and raised the prospect of legal action against the filmmaker.
“It’s exactly what we talk about in the film. It’s a product of a playbook which is to go after the messengers and attack and try and change the conversation, and try to intimidate, and it is very effective,” said Robert Kenner, the filmmaker.
Since the film’s release, Kenner, and Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor and co-author of the book on which the documentary is based, have come under attack in climate denier blogs, and in email chains.
The backlash appears to have been initiated by Singer, 90, a Princeton-trained physicist who has a cameo in the film……http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/11/climate-sceptics-attempt-to-block-merchants-of-doubt-film
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 