Australian government funds pro nuclear propaganda in schools – (even making it “fun”)
Education project focused on engaging next-generation nuclear science professionals in Australia and Japan.
ANSTO 11th October 2023 by ANSTO Staff
ANSTO has recently concluded up a successful cross-cultural nuclear science education project between Australia and Japan.
In collaboration with the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) and the University of Tokyo, the project brought together 200 university students, 180 secondary school students and 40 schoolteachers across the two countries.
Participants learned about the history, cultural perspectives, career opportunities and applications of nuclear science in Australia and Japan in interactive presentations, demonstrations and discussions.
Engaging next-generation nuclear science professionals in Australia and Japan was funded by the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s 2022-23 Australia-Japan Foundation grant.
Dr Bridget Murphy, Education Manager (Secondary) at the Discovery Centre, was the ANSTO lead on the project.
“University students from both Australia and Japan were very interested in future career opportunities in nuclear science. They also had a broad range of questions about communicating science to the public effectively, radiation safety, the use of nuclear energy in combating climate change, and international collaboration in nuclear,” Dr Murphy said………….
Teachers from both Australia and Japan valued a cross-cultural perspective on the methods for teaching this subject in the classroom, using videos, hands-on and data-based approaches to instruction in nuclear science.
Professor Takeshi Iimoto of the University of Tokyo emphasised the role of project-based learning and suggested that even humour can make nuclear more understandable for school students.
ANSTO is pleased to continue professional development with teachers in Asia, building on past experience working with teachers internationally through the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)………. https://www.ansto.gov.au/news/education-project-focused-on-engaging-next-generation-nuclear-science-professionals-australia
The case of Yaroslav Hunka, and its echoes in Australia’s history
Jayne Persian 9 Oct 23 https://overland.org.au/2023/10/the-case-of-yaroslav-hunka-and-its-echoes-in-australias-history/?fbclid=IwAR3fq-DqIxk7y61nKGzy77tlYkYp9vU9JaywMHQdzsQEcC6nrbU5dzrIrFk
Dr Jayne Persian is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Southern Queensland and the author of Fascists in Exile: Post-War Displaced Persons in Australia, forthcoming with Routledge Studies in Fascism and the Far Right.
On 22 September, during a visit to the Canadian Parliament by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Speaker Anthony Rota publicly introduced ninety-eight-year-old Yaroslav Hunka as a constituent ‘who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians’ as part of the First Ukrainian Division during the Second World War. He was ‘a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.’ Hunka received a standing ovation from all present.
This scene was reported two days later by an antifascist site on Twitter, who pointed out that the First Ukrainian Division was also known as the Waffen-SS Galizien Division. Canadian academic Ivan Katchanovski linked to a veterans’ webpage in which Hunka wrote that he had been a volunteer recruit to the Galizien Division in 1943. Hunka had also uploaded photographs showing him in uniform with the ‘boys’.
The Kremlin immediately reacted, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov arguing that ‘such sloppiness of memory is outrageous.’ Opposition Leader, Pierre Poilevre, described this incident as the worst diplomatic embarrassment in Canada’s history. Rota resigned, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was forced to apologise unreservedly.
These embarrassing episodes continue to occur in countries that resettled the post-war displaced persons of Central and Eastern Europe. This mass of around one million people had refused to return to homes that were under Soviet control. As well as concentration camp inmates and forced labourers, these political refugees included soldiers who had fought in German military units, as well as civilian collaborators. Security screening was difficult and there was also some sympathy from the Allied military authorities for veterans on the losing side. Whole cohorts were resettled in Britain, including 8,000 Ukrainian members of the Waffen-SS Galizien Division. Ukrainian nationalist declarations were also treated seriously. While all Ukrainian displaced persons held either Polish or Soviet Union citizenship, they were treated as a separate group quite quickly.
Many of these men should have been charged with war crimes. The German-led Holocaust had relied on the firepower and administrative skill of non-German Central and Eastern Europeans, including Ukrainians. Ukrainian anti-Soviet and anti-Polish nationalists were initially involved in individual and group paramilitary acts, including voluntary local pogroms and/or acts of murder before or beside the German occupation. One of the pogroms, which involved the massacre of 12,000 Jews, was named Aktion Petliura after the Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petliura, who had been assassinated by a Ukrainian Jew (this assassination itself framed as retaliation for earlier pogroms) in 1926.
After the initial wave of pogroms, Ukrainians became progressively involved with an institutionalised German genocidal machinery. Ukrainians joined a Ukrainian Auxiliary Police Force (Schutzmannschaft), the German security police (Sicherheitspolizei, SiPo) and the intelligence agency (Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, SD). Others hunted Jews in their forest warden jobs. Local policemen were empowered to kill anyone the Germans defined as enemies of the state, including Jews; indeed, the Germans relied on the dramatically increased numbers of local forces to do the dirty work of the Holocaust, including the shooting of children. Between 1941 and 1944, 1.6 million Jews had been murdered in Ukraine. In 1943, 100,000 of these men volunteered to join the Waffen-SS Galizien Division. In this capacity, they have been accused of murdering Polish civilians.
The United Nations’ International Refugee Organisation resettled the displaced persons in the United States, Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The western world was eager to use the labour of these healthy, white, and stridently anti-communistic young men. Australia resettled 170,700 displaced persons including Poles, ‘Balts’ (Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians), Yugoslavs, Ukrainians and Hungarians. There was immediate criticism by Jewish groups and sections of the press that the new migrants included war criminals but these were roundly dismissed as Soviet communist propaganda.
Decades later, all four of the main resettlement countries instituted judicial processes against the alleged perpetrators of the Holocaust who were now resident in their countries. In Australia, such men were guaranteed a fair criminal trial: the evidence, for crimes that occurred over forty-five years before, had to include documentary and material evidence and, ideally, eyewitnesses to the alleged individual perpetrator carrying out a war crime. Of course, the nature of the Holocaust was such that very few eyewitnesses to genocide survived in order to testify against individual killers.
After a flawed investigative process, only three men were charged. All three were Ukrainians who had resettled in Adelaide. Ukrainian auxiliary policeman Mikolay Berezowsky was accused of being party to a mass murder of 102 Jewish villagers. Henry Wagner, an ethnic German liaison officer between the German and Ukranian auxiliary police force, was charged with being party to two mass murders, including the shooting of nineteen part-Jewish children. Forest warden Ivan Polyukhovich was accused of hunting and killing Jews under the German occupation, and in taking part in a mass shooting. However, the evidence bar was so high that there were no convictions.
Immediately after the unsuccessful war crimes trials, Ukrainians again attracted attention with an award-winning novel by Helen Demidenko, purporting to be written by a Ukrainian-Australian and based on the life story a member of that community. To the great embarrassment of the Australian literati, Demidenko was soon unmasked as English-Australian Helen Darville, who had attended the Polyukhovich trial with a young man who was noticed to be repeatedly muttering ‘Jews’.
Many responses to Ivan Katchanovski’s tweets shedding light on this unsavoury history — one that Canada and Australia share — claimed that this was not the time to be critiquing Ukraine or Ukrainian nationalists. Ukraine was, of course, invaded by Russia in 2022 and that war is ongoing. Most in the West sympathise with, and support, Ukraine’s fight. And Russia has attempted to smear all Ukrainians with accusations of Nazism, which is simply not true. Dismissing inconvenient histories and the problematic pasts of individual migrants to both Canada and Australia, however, is not useful.
The complicity of the West in assisting perpetrators to escape justice should be acknowledged, and we must be wary of any attempt to normalise fascist views and actions in the public sphere.
We condemn atrocities from both Hamas and Israel – Veterans for Peace, and Roots Action
A Statement from RootsAction on the Gaza-Israel War
Tarak Kauff – NYC Veterans For Peace Veterans For Peace Ireland
Peace & Planet Newsby RootsAction.org October 08, 2023
We condemn the attacks by Hamas deliberately targeting Israeli civilians for killing and kidnapping. And we condemn Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza, which is again killing large numbers of Palestinian civilians. We grieve for all the lives lost and for all those injured and traumatized.
The root of today’s violence is the oppression and abuses suffered daily by Palestinian people as a whole under decades of cruel Israeli occupation and expansionism. Leading human rights groups — from Amnesty International to Human Rights Watch to Israel’s B’Tselem — have concluded that Israel’s occupation policies amount to a form of apartheid.
Until Israel’s military occupation is ended, these cycles of terror and war and trauma will repeat.
A huge obstacle to bringing an end to the Israeli occupation is the U.S. government. Under Democratic and Republican administrations, it has steadfastly made excuses for Israel as ever more Palestinian homes and villages have been destroyed or seized by right-wing settlers, as settlements have expanded, as Israeli soldiers have stormed Muslim holy sites, as Palestinian children have been militarily detained. And the violence from soldiers and extremist settlers toward Palestinians has worsened in the West Bank and East Jerusalem with the rise of the most openly racist, far-right government in Israel’s history.
We agree with Jewish Voice for Peace when it traces today’s bloodshed to U.S. complicity with Israel’s never-ending occupation: “The U.S. government consistently enables Israeli violence and bears blame for this moment. The unchecked military funding, diplomatic cover, and billions of dollars of private money flowing from the U.S. enables and empowers Israel’s apartheid regime. Those who continue calling for ‘ironclad’ U.S. support for the Israeli military are only paving the path to more violence.”
Background:
>> Amnesty International: “Crime of Apartheid: The Government of Israel’s System of Oppression Against Palestinians”
>> Human Rights Watch: “A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution”
>> B’Tselem: “This Is Apartheid”
>> United Nations: “Israel’s 55-year occupation of Palestinian Territory is apartheid – UN human rights expert”
>> New York Times:“Israel’s Push to Expand West Bank Settlements, Explained”
White House hopes to merge Ukraine and Israel aid – media
https://www.rt.com/news/584507-israel-ukraine-aid-package/ 11 Oct 23
The measure could push Republicans to support new assistance for Kiev
Top White House officials are considering whether to include more Ukraine funding in an emergency aid package for Israel, multiple news outlets have reported. One staffer suggested the move would force “far-right” lawmakers to authorize additional aid for Kiev.
Though President Joe Biden had already announced that military assistance was “on its way” to Israel following a surprise attack by Palestinian militants over the weekend, the White House has signaled that it would soon ask Congress to approve additional aid for the Jewish state.
Lawmakers in both parties and senior administration officials have hinted that the aid package could also include provisions for Ukraine, unnamed sources told the Washington Post, NBC News and other outlets on Monday.
Though no final decision has been made, one anonymous official told the Post that the move would be wise because it “jams the far right” – referring to Republicans who vocally support Israel but are skeptical of continued aid to Ukraine. White House spokesman John Kirby, meanwhile, declined to say whether the two aid packages would be linked, only stating “We believe both are important.”
While debate over the aid is likely to be contentious, the Pentagon has insisted that it has plenty of weapons for all US partners. During a background briefing on Monday, a senior defense official told reporters that Washington could “continue our support both to Ukraine, Israel, and maintain our own global readiness,” noting that the US has been able to meet “every request that our Israeli counterparts have made.”
Israel is among the largest recipients of US foreign aid, taking in some $3.3 billion in American tax dollars in 2022 alone – a comparable amount to previous years – according to US government statistics. Since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022, Ukraine has also become a major beneficiary, with the White House approving at least $45 billion in direct military aid through 47 separate transfers.
Both Republicans and Democrats have largely voiced support for Israel after the deadly Hamas attack early on Saturday morning, which has prompted harsh retaliation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and an intense bombing campaign on Gaza. More than 1,500 people have been killed on both sides of the conflict so far, while Palestinian fighters claim to have captured more than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages during their raids.
Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have evacuated their homes due to the violent flare-up, while the IDF has called on 300,000 reservists as it mobilizes for a larger conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country was in a state of “war” as the attack unfolded, and said on Monday that the military response was “just getting started.” #Ukraine
https://www.rt.com/news/584507-israel-ukraine-aid-package/ 11 Oct 23
The measure could push Republicans to support new assistance for Kiev
Top White House officials are considering whether to include more Ukraine funding in an emergency aid package for Israel, multiple news outlets have reported. One staffer suggested the move would force “far-right” lawmakers to authorize additional aid for Kiev.
Though President Joe Biden had already announced that military assistance was “on its way” to Israel following a surprise attack by Palestinian militants over the weekend, the White House has signaled that it would soon ask Congress to approve additional aid for the Jewish state.
Lawmakers in both parties and senior administration officials have hinted that the aid package could also include provisions for Ukraine, unnamed sources told the Washington Post, NBC News and other outlets on Monday.
Though no final decision has been made, one anonymous official told the Post that the move would be wise because it “jams the far right” – referring to Republicans who vocally support Israel but are skeptical of continued aid to Ukraine. White House spokesman John Kirby, meanwhile, declined to say whether the two aid packages would be linked, only stating “We believe both are important.”
While debate over the aid is likely to be contentious, the Pentagon has insisted that it has plenty of weapons for all US partners. During a background briefing on Monday, a senior defense official told reporters that Washington could “continue our support both to Ukraine, Israel, and maintain our own global readiness,” noting that the US has been able to meet “every request that our Israeli counterparts have made.”
Israel is among the largest recipients of US foreign aid, taking in some $3.3 billion in American tax dollars in 2022 alone – a comparable amount to previous years – according to US government statistics. Since the conflict with Russia escalated in February 2022, Ukraine has also become a major beneficiary, with the White House approving at least $45 billion in direct military aid through 47 separate transfers.
Both Republicans and Democrats have largely voiced support for Israel after the deadly Hamas attack early on Saturday morning, which has prompted harsh retaliation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and an intense bombing campaign on Gaza. More than 1,500 people have been killed on both sides of the conflict so far, while Palestinian fighters claim to have captured more than 100 Israeli and foreign hostages during their raids.
Thousands of Israelis and Palestinians have evacuated their homes due to the violent flare-up, while the IDF has called on 300,000 reservists as it mobilizes for a larger conflict. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that his country was in a state of “war” as the attack unfolded, and said on Monday that the military response was “just getting started.” #Ukraine
Ten reasons why nuclear power has no future
by Sam Arnold and Ann McAllister, https://nbmediacoop.org/2023/10/11/commentary-ten-reasons-why-nuclear-power-has-no-future/October 11, 2023
Nuclear power is dirty and dangerous now, and for many generations to come. The following ten reasons state why nuclear has no future.
- Nuclear power is too slow to help mitigate the climate crisis. A 2022 report by the National Academies of Science found that most advanced reactors, including small modular nuclear reactors (SMNRs), “will confront significant challenges in meeting commercial deployment by 2050.” In contrast, the Burchill Wind Farm near Saint John took three and a half years from partnership to full deployment. Canada’s target to reduce carbon emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 is looming. Renewables with storage, energy efficiency and conservation, demand-side management, and interties such as the Atlantic Loop can provide reliable baseload electricity. To wait for the SMNR silver bullet, which may never come, is to court climate catastrophe.
- Nuclear power is too expensive compared to alternatives. Wind and solar both undercut nuclear power rates. The authoritative Lazard energy analysis for 2023 costed storage-backed onshore wind and solar at US $42 to $114 per megawatt-hour, compared to nuclear power at US $141 to $221. Power from SMNRs will probably be more expensive than electricity from large nuclear plants with their history of cost increases. Crucially, SMNRs can’t take advantage of the economies of scale which large reactors do. There are orders for only single SMNRs, making it unlikely that multiple units will ever be built.
Chronic exposure to radioactive pollutants emitted from nuclear power plants can damage human health. The thyroid absorbs radioactive iodine as readily as non-radioactive iodine, putting children at particular risk of thyroid disease and cancer. Chronic exposure to radioactive materials, even at low doses, increases the incidence of cancer, leukemia, anemia, genetic damage, immune system damage, strokes, heart attacks, and low intelligence.- Liquid sodium and molten salt reactors pre-dating the ARC and Moltex SMR designs were unreliable and dangerous. Internationally, sodium reactors have not performed reliably; one in Russia experienced repeated fires. In the 1960s, the US Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (1965-1969) operated at only 40 per cent capacity compared to 90 per cent for the average US commercial nuclear power plant.
- Nuclear power does not work effectively with renewable energy. A University of Sussex study of 123 countries over 25 years found that countries that invested in renewable energy reduced more carbon emissions than countries with large percentages of nuclear power. Contrary to the claim that nuclear energy and renewables work well together, the study found that they “crowd each other out.”
- Radioactive waste remains an unsolved conundrum and will be an ongoing cost to taxpayers far into the future. Deep geological repositories (DGRs) for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste fuel are not operational anywhere in the world, including Finland and Sweden. The two locations Ignace and Saugeen Ojibway Nation under consideration in Ontario are opposed by many, including Indigenous peoples. A little-known fact is that while the waste fuel is the responsibility of the federal government, the provinces are responsible for the steel and concrete building materials which will ultimately become radioactive rubble. Would Canadians accept having a nuclear waste dump in or near their community?
- Many Indigenous leaders and First Nations are skeptical of nuclear reactors, nuclear waste, environmental risks, and groundwater contamination posed by the long-term storage of such wastes. First Nations in Ontario and Quebec do not want radioactive waste from New Brunswick in their territories. Federal and provincial governments have a history of not consulting First Nations and ignoring their concerns about nuclear installations. The Peskotomukhati Nation at Skutik and the Wolastoq Grand Council are firmly opposed to nuclear development. Nuclear does not align with their sacred principle of caring for the next seven generations.
- Transporting radioactive waste long distances to a proposed geological repository would come with higher costs and increased risk of accidents. The transport distance from Point Lepreau to a DGR proposed for northern Ontario could exceed 2,000 km. Considering the frequency of accidents involving transport trucks and freight trains, how would you feel about radioactive loads passing your home several times weekly for the next 40-plus years? To prevent such catastrophes, decommissioned nuclear reactors and their accumulated wastes must be stored safely in their present location.
- Nuclear weapons are dependent on energy from the plutonium produced at nuclear power plants, making them partners in all nuclear weapons produced. Moltex Energy’s technology for separating plutonium, the explosive in atomic bombs, from nuclear waste fuel increases the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. Moltex’s claim that the plutonium would be too impure for use in nuclear weapons has been discredited in a 2022 report from the US National Academy of Sciences and Medicine. The experts stated that the method might delay the plutonium’s use in weapons, but would not prevent it. Nine US non-proliferation experts who advised six US presidents warned the Trudeau government that plutonium separation “will undermine the global nuclear weapons non-proliferation regime that Canada has done much to strengthen.”
- The cost of decommissioning nuclear reactors must be added to all expenses incurred at every link in the nuclear chain, from mining and fuel fabrication to perpetual waste storage, from domestic safety and security to international proliferation prevention, from policy to regulation, from design to final disposition. Taxpayers are paying for these cumulative costs, so the tally must be made public.
- Knowing the environmental dangers and financial and social liabilities nuclear power will impose on us and our descendants should galvanize us to demand that government regulations act in the public’s best interest.
- Sam Arnold and Ann McAllister are with the Coalition for Responsible Energy Development in New Brunswick (CRED-NB). #nuclear #antinuclear #NuclearFree #NoNukes #NuclearPlants
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 