Walk for Peace and a Nuclear Free Cockburn Sound – Sunday 29 October
Sunday 29 October 2023 8.30am – 4.30pm
Walk schedule and key media opportunities:
8:30am – meeting at BAE Systems security gate at the northern end of the BAE compound Quill Way, Henderson walking south towards Kwinana Beach
1pm – lunch break at Wells Park, Kwinana Beach, the walk will continue along the Rockingham foreshore
4.30pm – finish at the HMAS Stirling Pass Office, Peron
On Sunday 29 October, concerned community members from the Cockburn Sound area will be joined by anti-nuclear, anti AUKUS and peace activists to walk approximately 24 kilometres from BAE Systems in Henderson to the HMAS Stirling Pass Office at Peron, opposite Garden Island.
The Walk is hosted by Nuclear Free WA and Stop AUKUS WA and aims to raise awareness of the nuclear and safety risks of the AUKUS trilateral security agreement between the US, UK and Australia.
The walk demonstrates strong opposition to the planned increased visits and future rotations (as of 2027) of US and UK nuclear powered submarines and the further AUKUS plan to home port* Australia’s acquired 3-5 Virginia Class nuclear powered submarines (as of 2030’s) at HMAS Stirling in Cockburn Sound.BAE Systems is one of the world’s largest weapons corporations and Australia’s largest defence contractor. BAE Systems UK is the key designer-builder of the new UK and Australian SSN-AUKUS class nuclear powered submarines.
KA Garlick, walk organiser and Co-Convenor of Nuclear Free WA said “The AUKUS pact was signed without a debate in Parliament. It threatens to undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which Australia is a signatory.
“We oppose the nuclearisation of Australia. The war in Ukraine has been a constant reminder of the devastation of war and the risks associated with nuclear reactors. Nuclear Powered submarines house naval reactors and the AUKUS ones use highly enriched uranium.
“We need dialogue and peace in our region – not to further increase the arms race which only benefits weapons companies. Current global tensions and the horrific genocide of Palestinians by a nuclear armed state as is Israel makes a Peace Walk in these times so important.”
Chris Johansen from Stop AUKUS WA’s Nuclear Free Cockburn Sound campaign said “Nuclear powered (and possibly armed) submarines and warships place our communities, public health and safety, marine life and environment at risk. If there is an incident the impacts will be huge and intergenerational.
“The increased presence of these submarines will change our access to Cockburn Sound for fishing and boating and there has been no assessment of the environmental impacts from the upgrades to HMAS Stirling and increased traversing of nuclear submarines through Cockburn Sound.
“Nuclear powered submarines in Cockburn Sound risks making us a military target should hostilities break out in our region involving the US.”
Rockingham resident and Stop AUKUS campaigner, Heike Kavanagh is concerned “people in Rockingham sit at cafes and swim at the Rockingham foreshore just a several kilometres from HMAS Stirling, oblivious to the risks of accidents, being a military target and possible future access restrictions in some areas in Cockburn Sound.”
“Our hospital and health workers are already under enormous strain without the increased probability of a radiation emergency brought about by foreign nuclear submarines. People are unaware of the response and emergency plans. Our community needs to be better informed about the risks and the emergency response plans.
“You don’t stop war by increasing arms.”
The Walk acknowledges the lands and waters of Derbal Nara (Cockburn Sound) are unceded and is a timely call for Peace.
Details about the walk can be found here: https://nuclearfreewa.com/event/peacewalk/
UN Agency Warns Humanitarian Operations in Gaza on Verge of Total Collapse
October 23, 2023 https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/23/un-agency-warns-humanitarian-operations-in-gaza-on-verge-of-total-collapse/
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries,” said the UNRWA. “Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance.”
By Jon Queally / Common Dreams
The U.N. agency responsible for humanitarian aid and protections in the occupied Gaza Strip—battered relentlessly by Israeli airstrikes for the past two weeks—said Sunday that if fuel supplies are not restored within a matter of days, its operations will collapse entirely.
“In three days, UNRWA will run out of fuel, critical for our humanitarian response across the Gaza Strip,” said Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the United Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.
“Without fuel, there will be no water, no functioning hospitals and bakeries,”
Lazzarini continued. “Without fuel, aid will not reach those in desperate need. Without fuel, there will be no humanitarian assistance. No fuel will further strangle the children, women, and people of Gaza.”
Noting that the UNRWA runs the largest humanitarian operation in the Gaza Strip, he said that without fuel, “we will fail the people of Gaza whose needs are growing by the hour, under our watch.”
Following the first “totally insufficient” convoy of aid trucks allowed to enter Gaza from Egypt on Saturday, another 17 trucks were permitted Sunday. Neither of the deliveries contained fuel, which medical personnel on the ground have said is vital if the health system is to remain capable of keeping the wounded and sick alive.
With Israeli officials saying the bombardment is set to intensify, not lessen, a global demand for a cease-fire has gone unheeded by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its powerful allies, including the United States.
With large demonstrations in numerous U.S. and European cities over the weekend delivering the same message for a cease-fire also ringing out across the Middle East and beyond, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday called for a stop in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza alongside a much larger delivery of aid.
“We must act now to end the nightmare,” Guterres said at the so-called Peace Summit in Cairo, Egypt.
Despite U.S. President Joe Biden’s continued backing of Israeli policy, including it’s bombardment of Gaza which legal scholars have said may amount to genocide—a poll last week showed two-thirds of U.S. voters back the call for a cease-fire.
As the civilian death toll continues to mount—with the latest weekend figures from the Gaza Ministry of Health putting the number killed at more than 4,600, nearly half of them children, and more than three times that wounded—UNRWA confirmed earlier on Saturday that 29 of its own staffers and volunteers, half of them school teachers, have been killed since the Israel bombing campaign began on Oct. 7.
“We are in shock and mourning,” the agency said in a social media post. “As an Agency, we are devastated. We are grieving with each other and with the families.”
In his statement on Sunday, Lazzarini called on “all parties and those with influence over them to immediately allow fuel supplies into the Gaza Strip and to ensure that fuel is strictly used to prevent a collapse of the humanitarian response.” #Israel #Palestine
A wall of silence: atom bosses remain tight-lipped over Fukushima whistleblower claims
collaboration between the IAEA and the Japanese Government over the Fukushima radioactive water releases was imperative as the continuation of sea dumping regardless of the adverse impact to the marine environment represents a ‘make or break issue’ for the nuclear industry.
Over seven weeks have passed without an acknowledgement or reply to a letter the UK/Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities co-signed which was sent to the UN International Atomic Energy Authority calling for transparency over claims that the organisation collaborated with the Japanese Government to ‘manage the message’ over the ocean dumping of 1.3 million tonnes of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear disaster site.
On 28 June, an anonymous whistleblower posted a document, seemingly issued by the Department of Nuclear Safety at the IAEA, to the website/blogsite dunrenard[1]. If genuine, the document, titled ‘IAEA REVISION PROPOSAL FOR THE FINAL REPORT OF HANDLING ALPS TREATED WATER AT TEPCO’S FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI NUCLEAR POWER STATION’, appears to indicate that the international agency has actively sought to downplay the dangers associated with discharging millions of barrels of water which remain contaminated with highly toxic tritium.
The NFLA’s first covered this story and our disquiet at the revelations in a media release dated 3 July:
https://www.nuclearpolicy.info/news/cover-up-did-atom-bosses-collude-to-manage-message-of-japanese-plan-to-poison-pacific/
One of the recipients of the leaked document was Mr Tim Deere-Jones, a graduate in Marine Studies from Cardiff University. Tim, an independent marine pollution researcher and consultant since 1983, is highly regarded by the many international organisations who have engaged him in their campaigns against the damage caused to our oceans and inland waterways by radioactive and other contaminants.
Tim was incensed that the Japanese Government was quick to condemn the claim that Japan had pressurised the IAEA to remove ‘negative information’ about the environmental impact that would result from the radioactive waste discharges from the final report, but also noted that on the claims themselves the IAEA made no comment.
Keen to seek clarification and action on the veracity of the whistleblower’s claims, Tim went right to the top of the IAEA and penned a letter to the head of the management office for the Deputy Director General. Here he explains why:
“To date there has been no detectable independent action to investigate and test the veracity of the whistleblower’s claims against the claim of non-interference made by the Government of Japan.
“I fear that if this is scenario is allowed to continue the whistleblower’s action and disclosure will be historically characterised by the Government of Japan statement, sink into obscurity and be forgotten and the whistleblower’s heroic action will have been wasted, while he/she is still under threat of investigation, identification, and penalty.
“My disclosure request to the IAEA is intended to elicit a direct response from the agency to the claims made by the whistleblower as to date my online media searches have yet to reveal any related statement made by the organisation.
“This creates the impression that the Government of Japan has been acting as the IAEAs mouthpiece in respect of the whistleblower disclosure and that the IAEA would prefer NOT to be associated in anyway with the issue, to the extent that it has not made any public statement”.
Tim’s request for disclosure, submitted by registered post to the IAEA’s Vienna office and by email to the official account on 1 September, was backed by five British anti-nuclear groups and individuals from Europe and the Pacific Ocean, representing commercial fishers, other marine stakeholders, and coastal zone and Pacific Island communities.
Although the registered letter was tracked as received at the Vienna office on 9 September, Tim has yet to receive any response from the agency, and on 16 October sent a reminder:
“I have concluded that the absence of a receipt or response is a clear indication of the IAEA’s resistance to any discussion of the issues raised.
“My reading critique of the IAEAs final report to TEPCO re the issue of the ALPs treated water release certainly supports the drift of the whistleblower statement”.
Amongst the co-signatories to the letter, which is reproduced at the end of this press release, were the NFLAs, which have objected in letters to Japanese Ministers, senior officials at TEPCO (the nuclear operator), and the United Nations to the discharge of radioactive water from Fukushima, and signed a partnership agreement with its counterparts, Mayors for a Nuclear Power Free Japan, to collaborate in opposing the plan.
Though disappointed at the continued wall of silence, Chair Councillor Lawrence O’Neill is unsurprised that the IAEA remains tight-lipped:
“Sadly, the duties of disclosure required of public bodies in the UK through the Freedom of Information Act do not apply to an international agency based in Vienna and the IAEA’s statutes appear to contain no provisions for transparency or external accountability, despite the agency being funded by the member states, and so the taxpayers, of the United Nations.
“Although the organization claims to want to become more open, the lack of a response, or even an acknowledgement, to our legitimate request for information belies the fact that, on controversial issues, a culture of secrecy still prevails.”
Tim believes that collaboration between the IAEA and the Japanese Government over the Fukushima radioactive water releases was imperative as the continuation of sea dumping regardless of the adverse impact to the marine environment represents a ‘make or break issue’ for the nuclear industry. He has produced a short paper explaining his reasoning, which also appears at the end of this media release.
For further information about this media release please contact NFLA Secretary Richard Outram by email to richard.outram@manchester.gov.uk or telephone 07583097793
1. https://dunrenard.wordpress.com/2023/06/28/will-this-whistleblower-be-heard-by-anyone/
Notes to Editors:
The reminder sent to Ms Margaret Doane, Head, Department of Management Office of the Deputy Director General, IAEA, 16 October 2023
#nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
White House Seeks $105 Billion To Arm Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan
The Biden administration released details about its massive proposal to provide arms to Israel and Ukraine, as well as funds to build up military assets in the region surrounding China.
SCHEERPOST By Kyle Anzalone / Antiwar.com, October 21, 2023
On Friday, the White House rolled out its proposed $105 billion bill to arm Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. The legislation also includes funding for the border and humanitarian assistance. US officials say over $50 billion will go to American weapons manufacturers.
The Biden administration is proposing a massive aid package as it has struggled to get Congress to appropriate more funds for the proxy war in Ukraine. The largest portion of money is for Ukraine at $61.4 billion. The White House wants enough money for Ukraine to fund Kiev through the 2024 election.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan described the aid as critical to American national security and demanded Congress pass the bill. “This budget request is critical to advancing America’s national security and ensuring the safety of the American people,” Sullivan said. “The world is closely watching what Congress does next.”
Israel will receive $14.3 billion in assistance, with $10.6 billion for air and missile defense support.The aid would be in addition to the $3.8 billion Tel Aviv from Washington in security assistance annually……………………………………………
The bill includes $7.4 billion for several initiatives to increase Washington’s military posture in the Indo-Pacific. That includes $2 billion in grants for foreign governments to buy American weapons. Taiwan will receive a portion of that money, although US officials did not provide a detailed breakdown.
Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Shalanda Young, explained that nearly half of the money will go to American arms makers. “This supplemental request invests over $50 billion in the American defense industrial base, ensuring our military continues to be the most ready, capable, and best-equipped fighting force the world has ever seen,” she said.
Young claimed that the spending would bolster the American economy and create jobs. However, a study indicated that military spending costs more jobsthan it creates……………..
A small number of Republican represenatives have hindered Congress from passing additional funds for Ukraine. The Biden administration hopes to push several GOP members of Congress to vote for the bill by combining funding for Taiwan, Israel, and the border with Ukraine. https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/21/white-house-seeks-105-billion-to-arm-israel-ukraine-and-taiwan/ #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes
Ralph Nader: Biden Returns Empty-handed, Except for a Huge Bill for the American Taxpayers
Biden wants Congress to approve $14 billion for Israel to address the colossal failure of Netanyahu’s extremist coalition to protect its own citizens on the border.
By Ralph Nader / Nader.org https://scheerpost.com/2023/10/22/ralph-nader-biden-returns-empty-handed-except-for-a-huge-bill-for-the-american-taxpayers/
If President Joe Biden were a pony, instead of a perennial warhorse (e.g., gung-ho for Bush/Cheney’s criminal destruction of Iraq), he would have his tail between his legs on his return from a one-day trip to Israel. He failed to achieve any immediate, critical objectives while the ongoing destruction of Gaza and the defenseless Palestinians continues.
Did Biden get Israel and Egypt to allow the exit of hundreds of American citizens fleeing the Gazan firestorm? No!
Did Biden open up corridors for humanitarian aid to the babies, children, women, elderly and other civilians in Gaza who had nothing to do with the October 7th Hamas homicide/suicide attack on Israelis? No!
To the contrary, earlier in the week he cruelly ordered his UN Ambassador to veto a widely supported resolution calling for a humanitarian ceasefire.
Did he forcefully double down on his earlier counsel to the Israeli government to obey the laws of war, then and now, being openly violated? No! He continued his silence after the Israeli Defense Minister ordered his soldiers with the genocidal command, “No electricity, no food, no fuel, no water…” That death sentence includes patients in hospitals who must endure the carpet bombing of this long-time blockaded tiny strip of desert land holding 2.3 million people. (See, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide).
Did Biden press for the exchange of Hamas’ hostages for the release of Palestinian prisoners, including young Palestinians, who have been in Israeli jails for years without due process or charges? No! Worse, Biden failed to object to the Israeli military stating that the release of over 200 Israeli hostages is a “secondary priority” to smashing Hamas and Gaza “into the Stone Age.” This policy flouts the moral codes of many venerable Judaic sages described in an October 19, 2023, New York Timescolumn by Mikahel Manekin titled “The Safety of the Hostages Must Come First.” Israel conducted two prisoners for hostages’ exchanges, one in 2004 and one in 2011.
Did Biden, in strong terms, tell the Israeli politicians that they have already exacted revenge many times over on the stateless people of Gaza – in civilian lives lost, injuries, related spread of disease, destitution and destruction? Did he say it is inhumane and counterproductive to bomb hospitals, clinics, schools, mosques, churches, apartment buildings, water mains, electric networks and ambulances, all of which is in violation of civilized norms and rules of war? Of course not. He greenlighted Israel’s genocidal warfare from the beginning of the Israeli assault and sent U.S. weaponry. He is enabling other actions of “co-belligerency” against the defenseless Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Did he even get the 20 trucks of humanitarian aid waiting at the Rafah crossing – also bombed by the Israelis – from Egypt into Gaza before he left? No!
Biden did come back with a bill for the American taxpayers – who for decades have been forced to pay for these Israeli wars. Now Biden wants Congress to approve $14 billion for Israel to address the colossal failure of Netanyahu’s extremist coalition to protect its own citizens on the border. (Adding only $100 million for Palestinian relief).
That sum of money, to be authorized without any Congressional hearings or Congressional oversight, is greater than the combined annual budgets of the FDA, OSHA, NHTSA and the section of HHS, whose missions are to reduce the loss of hundreds of thousands of preventable American fatalities in the workplace, on the highways, and in the marketplace and the hospitals. (See, the 2016 peer-reviewed study from the John Hopkins University of Medicine).
Lastly, still not calling a ceasefire, Biden is disregarding his own military’s private advice against an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza as raising the risk of a larger war in the Middle East that would clearly be against the national interests of the American people and U.S. security.
He could have done what President Eisenhower did in 1956, when he demanded that the Israeli, British and French attack on Egypt stop immediately.
And stop, they did!
After all, the U.S. has some influence over Israel, to put it mildly. The U.S. endorses all Israeli aggressions (including Israel’s admission to bombing hundreds of sites in Syria, mired in its civil war and no threat, in addition to striking Damascus International Airport). All with U.S. advanced weapons, and billions of dollars in annual aid to Israel, a prosperous military, technological and economic superpower. In fact, Israel’s social safety net is better than that of the U.S.!
Biden provides total diplomatic cover in the U.S. with Washington’s automatic UN vetoes, and pressures allies to follow the party line.
Moreover, Biden seems unwilling to recognize the historical origins of this conflict that now has mighty Israel occupying, colonizing, brutalizing and stealing land and water from the twenty-two percent of the original Palestine left for millions of Palestinians under Israeli daily control.
Biden should take a moment in the Oval Office to read page 121 of the book “The Jewish Paradox” by Nahum Goldman (January 1, 1978), the head of the World Zionist Organization. He quotes the leading Founder of the Israeli state, David Ben-Gurion as candidly saying to him: “If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country. It is true God promised it to us, but how could that interest them? Our God is not theirs. There has been Anti-Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: we have come and stolen their country. Why would they accept that?”
Today’s Israeli leaders refuse to demonstrate this degree of empathy. Instead, they provoke and deny the creation of a Palestinian state, envisioned by the Oslo Accords they signed in 1993, hurl the most racist epithets (“animals,” “vermin,” “snakes,”), and make sure the politicians in the U.S. Congress never utter the words “Palestinians also have a right to defend themselves” as violently subjugated victims of Israel the superpower.
Many members of Congress who demand giving Israel whatever money and weaponry it wants for whatever it does, violating human rights under international law in its illegal occupations and blockade, turn around and vote against the child tax credit, worker health and safety, universal healthcare, paid family leave and daycare for Americans. Their viciousness – as with the homicidal outburst of Gen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) against all Palestinians, and Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) a Harvard Law graduate, saying “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza…” set new levels of depravity.
A few Senators see it differently, especially Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) who noted “…it is no secret that Gaza has been an open-air prison” with “horrendous living conditions,” and that “children and innocent people do not deserve to be punished for the acts of Hamas.”
Little known is that Israel and the U.S. fostered and funded the rise of Hamas as a religious counterpoint to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO). It was established in 1987 following the first intifada uprising. A 2009 The Wall Street Journal article titled: “How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas” noted:
“Instead of trying to curb Gaza’s Islamists from the outset, says Mr. Cohen, Israel for years tolerated and, in some cases, encouraged them as a counterweight to the secular nationalists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and its dominant faction…”
To Biden and the Congressional “howlers” for the death of civilian innocents, historical facts matter little. Hamas’ lethal attack on October 7th was preceded by far greater numbers of Israeli violent attacks over the past decades taking four hundred times the number of innocent Palestinian lives, injuries and other casualties than inflicted on innocent Israelis.
Israel’s carpet bombing of Gaza will take twenty times or more lives of innocent Palestinians than those killed by Hamas on October 7th with the casualty toll of direct fatalities and the loss of life from the devastation of life-sustaining water, food, medicine, shelter and other hospital/clinic emergency infrastructure.
Also conveniently forgotten is the detailed peace offer to Israel in 2002, by 22 member states of the Arab League to establish diplomatic and trade relations with a recognized Israel in return for its retreating to the 1967 borders and creation of a Palestinian two-state solution. The Israel extremists in Congress and President G.W. Bush declined even to respond to this proposal. (See, the March 29, 2002 New York Times article: Mideast Turmoil; Text of the Peace Proposals Backed by the Arab League).
It is incumbent on the supreme military superpower in the region to take the initiative for peace over the powerless victims under its thralldom. That country is, of course, high-tech Israel, bristling with the latest weapons and nuclear atomic bombs.
Both the brave Israeli human rights groups and those courageous human rights Israelis standing shoulder to shoulder over the years striving to conduct non-violent civil disobedience at the besieged Palestinian village level, only to be dispersed by Israeli soldiers, know the real obstacle to peace. It is the plan by the right-wing Israeli parties to annex the entire Palestinian West Bank (nearly attempted under Donald Trump) and forcefully drive Palestinians into Jordan and Egypt.
Joe Biden is skilled at shedding tears at memorials of grief in this country. But he runs dry when the recurring catastrophes befalling Palestinians beg for his presidential compassion and actual deeds.
He will not escape history’s judgment. #Israel #Palestine
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 