ICAN summary of the Peace Boat and Making Waves speaking tour.
Last week we cruised into Sydney Harbour aboard 
Peace Boat for the final leg of the Making Waves speaking tour. Peace Boat, an ICAN partner organisation, visited Australia for the first time in 10 years. Equipped with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and a Nobel Peace Prize, Japanese and Australian nuclear survivors joined forces to demand both governments join the treaty without delay.
Hibakusha from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, former dairy farmers from Fukushima and nuclear test survivors from South Australia travelled aboard the “floating university” from Fremantle to Adelaide, Melbourne, Hobart and finally Sydney. The Making Waves tour combined public forums with political meetings, workshops and press conferences.
Thank you to everyone who participated in Making Waves, and especially all of the organisations that worked with us to amplify the message. Check out a couple of our favourite media reports from SBS News and the Guardian.
You can also click here to see more photos of the Making Waves tour
The “Doomsday Clock” was recently re-set to two minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to global catastrophe since 1953. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the custodians of the Clock, justified their decision on the current nuclear landscape and the threat of a new arms race. The new US Nuclear Posture Review reinforces that concern, by increasing the range of situations to which the US Government would consider responding with nuclear weapons.
Prime Minister Turnbull has not responded to these dangerous developments. As a country that claims protection from the US nuclear arsenal, Australia has a vital role to play. We can and must remove our consent for the US to threaten to use weapons of mass destruction on our behalf. The nuclear ban treaty is a vital part of the process to stigmatise and eliminate nuclear weapons.
Building political support for the nuclear ban treaty is especially important with an election nearing. While the current government is hostile to the treaty, two-thirds of federal Australian Labor parliamentarians have joined the Parliamentary Pledge in support. All Greens parliamentarians have joined the Pledge, along with a range of other cross-benchers. Please help us grow the list of signatories, which is updated regularly at www.icanw.org/projects/pledge.
It is inevitable that Australia joins the nuclear ban treaty, let’s make it sooner rather than later.
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1.This month.
The Road to War brings a sharp focus to why it is not in Australia’s best interest to be dragged into a war with China which will almost inevitably go nuclear very quickly. The filmmaker has interviewed some of Australia’s senior foreign policy analysts who have vast experience behind them in analysing what really is going on here as the United States rattles its sabres with China. And sets us up to be its proxy, like the poor Ukranians have been fed into the Meatgrinder. So America can remain the Top Dog. The Road to War reveals how the United States through its spy base at Pine Gap and by stationing six nuclear capable B52 bombers in the Top End (without permission from the traditional owners) is making Australia a prime nuclear target if the current war of words suddenly melts down into full scale war.
The Road to War shows the implicit connection between Carbon emissions (the US military uses a whopping 70% of America’s annual petroleum to move its armies and vast War Machine around the globe to its 800+ military bases..but under a loophole wangled at Kyoto, the US military does not have to report its C02 annual emissions). The Road to War starts screening at selected cities and regional centres in March. See the trailer end for details.
Antinuclear 
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