Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT) shows big hurdles in selling uranium to India
Miles to go: exporting uranium to India http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=17665, By M V Ramana – 11 September 2015 Plans to export uranium from Australia to India may have hit their most significant hurdle so far in the form of Report 151 of the federal Parliament’s influential Joint Standing Committee on Treaties (JSCOT). After much deliberation and expert testimony, the Committee has put forward a number of recommendations that India has to abide by before Australian uranium is sold to India. The history of India’s nuclear programme and the country’s stand in various diplomatic fora suggest that there is little chance of India agreeing to these conditions.
The first three recommendations laid out in the JSCOT report are particularly important. The first and second recommendations pertain to India acceding to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and negotiating a fissile material cut-off treaty as well as a nuclear arms limitation treaty for the Indian subcontinent region. The third recommendation is focused on the safety and efficacy of the safeguards and standards of nuclear facilities in India arguing that a series of key checks and balances must be put into practice and proven to work before any uranium sales. If taken seriously, these recommendations will make it all but impossible for the Australian government to sell any uranium to India. Continue reading
Tony Abbott un-moved by Pacific islands plight with rising seas
Tony Abbott faces down Pacific island nations’ calls for tougher action on climate change
ABC Radio AM By Eric Tlozek in Port Moresby, 11 Sept 15 Prime Minister Tony Abbott has held his Government’s line on climate change despite pleas from low-lying Pacific island nations for a stronger stance on emissions and temperature rises.
Both Mr Abbott and New Zealand prime minister John Key refused to go further than their existing commitments on global warming at the Pacific Islands Forum in Port Moresby.
Some Pacific island leaders say they are disappointed in the leaders for putting economic growth ahead of the survival of communities in small Pacific nations.
“Australia and New Zealand have made no additional commitments when it comes to climate change,” Mr Abbott told reporters after the meeting last night……….
Nuclear lobby working hard to spin the lie that radiation is good for you
How might the commissioners of the NRC decide the issue? Like the Atomic Energy Commission which it grew out of, the NRC is an unabashed booster of nuclear technology and long devoted to drastically downplaying the dangers of radioactivity.
A strong public stand – many negative comments – over their deciding that ‘radioactivity is good for you’ could make all the difference.
Petition: ‘Protect children from radiation exposure!‘ (Change.org)
Comment online: The NRC has a set a deadline of 19th November for people to comment on the proposed change. The public can send comments to the US Government’s regulations website.
Is radiation good for you? The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission could decide it is http://extrasensoryprecepts.blogspot.com.au/2015/09/is-radiation-good-for-you-us-nuclear.html, The Ecologist | Sep 10, 2015 | Karl Grossman
The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission is considering a move to eliminate the ‘Linear No-Threshold’ (LNT) basis of radiation protection that the US has used for decades and replace it with the ‘radiation hormesis’ theory – which holds that low doses of radioactivity are good for people……..
In the wake of the Manhattan Project, the US crash program during World War II to build atomic bombs and the spin-offs of that program – led by nuclear power plants – there was a belief, for a time, that there was a certain ‘threshold’ below which radioactivity wasn’t dangerous.
But as the years went by it became clear there was no threshold – that any amount of radiation could injure and kill, that there was no ‘safe’ dose. Low levels of radioactivity didn’t cause people to immediately sicken or die. But, it was found, after a ‘latency’ or ‘incubation’ period of several years, the exposure could then result in illness and death.
Thus, starting in the 1950s, the ‘Linear No-Threshold’ standard was adopted by the governments of the US and other countries and international agencies.
The LNT standard has presented a major problem for those involved in developing nuclear technology Continue reading
Japan: former PM Koizumi calls for national movement against nuclear power
Koizumi calls for national movement to lead fight against nuclear power, September 13, 2015 HE ASAHI SHIMBUN by Shinichi Sekine and Takashi Funakoshi
Although he has no plans to return to national politics, former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi tells the electorate not to lose hope in the campaign against nuclear power. In an exclusive interview with The Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo, Koizumi called for a national movement to steer Japan away from nuclear plants. “We should patiently continue to make efforts toward such a movement,” he said on Sept. 9. “It is worth our efforts.”
In the first interview Koizumi, 73, has granted to a media outlet since he stopped down as prime minister in September 2006, the theme was nuclear power. The former prime minister denounced the Abe administration for pushing to rely on nuclear energy despite the 2011 Fukushima disaster, calling the recent restart of a nuclear power station “wrong.”
“Japan will be all right even if all its nuclear power plants are abandoned right now,” he said. Continue reading
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the ignorance and greed of Koch brothers’ policies
said Kennedy, “You will hear no criticism from the press, the supposed guardians of our democracy. And that’s because most of that money will go to media advertising—the 4th estate has been bought off.”
“Renewables fill the Koch brothers with fear. In order to compete, they have to rig the rules that govern energy in this country to favor the dirtiest, filthiest, most destructive, most poisonous and addictive fuels from hell over the cheap, clean, green, local and patriotic fuels from heaven. But even with market and utility rules against them, new renewable technologies are so efficient that the allow wind and solar to beat the carbon industry even in their rigged markets and slanted playing fields—the only way for carbon to survive is by massive subsidies. The Koch brothers cannot compete against renewables in a free market without their subsidies.”
A recent report by the International Monetary Fund said, global energy subsidies amounts to $5 trillion annually, with the U.S. providing $700 billion in subsidizes to big oil “the richest industry in the history of the planet,” remarks Kennedy.
Koch Brothers: Apocalyptical Forces of Ignorance and Greed, Says RFK Jr., EcoWatch Stefanie Spear | September 10, 2015 At this year’s Waterkeeper Alliance conference in Boulder, Colorado, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. delivered a provocative unscripted keynote that lambasted the carbon lobby for undermining democracy and subverting the common right to a healthy environment.
Speaking to a group of activists, including more than 200 Waterkeepers from 30 nations, Kennedy declared, “We are engaged, as Abraham Lincoln said, ‘in a great Civil War.’” This time, he said, “the conflict involves all the Earth’s peoples. It’s not just a battle to protect our waterways, our livelihoods, our property and our backyards. It’s a struggle for our sovereignty, our values, our health and our lives. It’s a battle for dignified humane and wholesome communities. It’s a defensive war against toxic and economic aggression by Big Oil and King Coal. It’s a struggle to break free of the ‘soft colonialism’ of carbon’s corporate tyranny and create an economic and energy system that is fair, rooted in justice, economic independence and freedom.”
He started by talking about the disproportionate impact of pollution on the poor and minorities. “Polluters,” he explained, “assault soft targets first—and that means the poor.” He recounted how the majority of toxic industrial sites and noxious facilities are in lower income communities where residents lack political power or connections to protect themselves. He gave examples of these environmental injustices including, Emelle, Alabama, which is home to the largest toxic waste dump in America—one of the country’s most impoverished regions where one-third of the residents live below the poverty line and more than 65 percent of the residents are black—Chicago’s south side, which has more toxic waste sites than any other American community and East Los Angeles, a primarily black and Hispanic community, which is the most contaminated zip code in America.
“In these communities,” he said, “Not just the land and water, but the people have been commoditized—and everything becomes expendable in the drive for corporate profits.”
But he added, “It’s not just the poor who are under assault. The corporate hunger for profit is threatening all people with loss of their natural world and the other assets of their patrimony.” Continue reading
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 