Hey, let’s Australia sell uranium to gentle, tolerant, Saudi Arabia!
Religious pilgrimage turns into nightmare The Age Maris Beck and Daniel Flitton December 8, 2011 ” ….. Mansor Almaribe, a father of five, who was last month charged with blasphemy while on a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, has been sentenced to a year in prison and 500 lashes. The Shepparton family said it was a death sentence. Mr Almaribe has diabetes, heart disease and was almost crippled in a 2004 car accident that broke his back in five places. “He won’t make 50 lashes,” son Mohammad, 16, told The Age….
..Mr Almaribe, a Shiite Muslim who was travelling in the majority Sunni kingdom, was found guilty of cursing two companions of the prophet Mohammed aloud in a public place…. a radical had reported Mr Almaribe to police after recognising him as Shiite from the green turban he wore. “He was just praying and reading the Koran to himself in an area known to be frequented by Shiites.”… http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/religious-pilgrimage-turns-into-nightmare-20111207-1ojbc.html#ixzz1g0DiYVsM
Prince Hints Saudi Arabia May Join Nuclear Arms Race, NYT, December 6, 2011 DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — A Saudi prince, in a remark designed to send chills through the Obama administration and its allies, suggested that the kingdom might consider producing nuclear weapons if it found itself between atomic arsenals in Iran and Israel. The prince, Turki al-Faisal, who has served as the Saudi intelligence chief and as ambassador to the United States, made the comment on Monday at a Persian Gulf security forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The remark confirmed Western fears about the potential for an arms race in the Middle East if Iran moves to produce a nuclear weapon…..
Prince Turki said at the forum on Monday that an Iranian quest for nuclear weapons and Israel’s presumed nuclear arsenal might force Saudi Arabia to follow suit. Most defense analysts believe that Israel has nuclear weapons, but it has refused to confirm or deny their existence.
“It is our duty toward our nation and people to consider all possible options, including the possession of these weapons,” Prince Turki was quoted as saying…http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-may-seek-nuclear-weapons-prince-says.html
Australian uranium to India – a move towards nuclear disaster
Uranium sales to India: a public health disaster? Crikey, 5 Dec 11 Dr Margaret Beavis, a Melbourne GP and Vice President of the Medical Association for the Prevention of War, writes: A world with a nuclear weapons “free for all” would inevitably lead to death and injury on an appalling scale. Conflict, terrorism, human error, greed and natural disasters all occur – and the more weapons there are, the higher the risk of catastrophic health outcomes.
On Sunday, the ALP conference voted to allow uranium sales to India. This significantly undermines the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is in breach of the Treaty of Rarotonga for a nuclear free Pacific. It also signals the ALP turning its back on previous leadership in advocating for nuclear disarmament.
India dishonestly acquired its nuclear weapons by breaching agreements with Canada and the US in the early 70s. India’s record on the “non-proliferation” of weapons is extremely poor – their testing in 1974 sparked an ongoing nuclear arms race with Pakistan (and indeed with China). This is not a stable part of the world.
Indian authorities have said explicitly that any imported uranium frees up domestic uranium for weapons production. So any safeguards are meaningless, particularly as India will only allow the IAEA to inspect 12 out of their existing 22 reactors.
India has existing supply agreements with five other countries. Even if Australia were to get 20% of India’s uranium imports, this would increase uranium sales by just 1.8% on 2007/8 levels.
Currently uranium provides jobs for just 0.03% of Australia’s workforce, and these workers have significantly higher rates of lung cancer. From a health perspective, uranium has a fair bit in common with asbestos.
In the wake of events at Fukushima, there are increasing levels of protest against nuclear technology in India. In Tamil Nadu there are 40,000 people living within a 5 km radius of the nearly complete Koodankulam reactor, and protests have been escalating since September. One local fisherman was quoted as saying “If a rich country like Japan can’t save their people from radiation up to 200 miles away, how will India save us?”
In a 2009 Lowy poll, 75% of Australians thought nuclear disarmament should be a top priority in Australia’s foreign policy, and in June this year the Lowy poll found 93% of Australians thought helping to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons was important, ahead of both controlling illegal immigration and tackling climate change.
We have weapons conventions for biological and chemical weapons, land mines and cluster bombs. The NPT is not perfect, but it is a lot better than no such treaty. Australia must continue to work towards nuclear disarmament. With hard work and leadership, this is achievable.
Selling uranium to India is selling out the NPT. And nuclear weapons are a preventable health disaster. End of story. http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2011/12/05/uranium-sales-to-india-a-public-health-disaster/
Northern Territory’s Environment Centre condemn’s Chief Minister’s support of uranium sales to India
The flip side of labour’s uranium back flip, 5 Dec 11 The decision at the ALP Labour conference to overturn policy to sell uranium to India, a country not signatory to the NPT and a known nuclear weapon state, will cause havoc for years to come.
While the The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is imperfect, it is the world’s best check and balance against the spread of the world’s worst weapons of mass destruction. Selling uranium to India will weaken the NPT and weaken Australia’s credibility on non-proliferation and global peace issues.
‘It is very disappointing that our Northern Territory’s Chief Minister Paul Henderson has welcomed this decision and seen it as an opportunity to profit. The reality is even if Australia supplied 20% of India’s current uranium demand, uranium exports would increase by just 2% above the 2008/09 figure. Very few if any jobs would be created as Indian demand would easily be met by existing mines.’ said Cat Beaton from the Environment Centre NT.
‘Mr Henderson also seems to forget that the one uranium mine we have is riddled with operational troubles and environmental and social challenges that are not going away’ ‘If the Australian Labour Party was serious about moving forward, they could look at ways to tighten our uranium exports and strengthen conditions around the use of uranium overseas. Instead they pushed forward a decision that will ensure our participation in international political tension and potential nuclear war’ said Cat Beaton from the Environment Centre NT.
Radioactive waste and the Australian Labor Party
The event is the premiere showing of a photo exhibition by Jagath Dheerasekara titled Manuwangku, Under the Nuclear Cloud, which documents the people and place targeted to host the radioactive waste facility. The photo project is supported by Amnesty International, Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning (UTS) and the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (Sydney University). – more information on this exhibition at http://beyondnuclearinitiative.com/ and at (video) http://www.pozible.com/index.php/archive/index/4118/description/0/0
Hot Politics: Radioactive waste and the ALP, Radioactive waste management in Australia will be under the spotlight this weekend at the Australian Labor Party (ALP) national conference being held at Darling Harbour.
Against a backdrop of growing community concern and action the Beyond Nuclear Initiative is hosting an important conference event at 7pm on Saturday December 3. The Hot Politics: Radioactive Waste Management in Australia forum and photo exhibition will take place at the Mori Gallery at 168 Day Street, five minutes walk from the Darling Harbour Convention Centre.
Hot Politics will be hosted by well-known journalist Jeff McMullen. Speakers include United Voice NT Secretary Matthew Gardiner, Muckaty Traditional Owner Dianne Stokes and Shine Social Justice Practice Counsel George Newhouse, who is involved in a Federal Court challenge to the Muckaty plan. Continue reading
At last, Labor frontbencher Peter Garrett will vote against uranium sales to India
Garrett opposes uranium to India, SMH December 3, 2011 Labor frontbencher Peter Garrett says he will not support a push by Prime Minister Julia Gillard to change the party’s stance on uranium sales to India.
Ms Gillard will ask the party on Sunday to overturn its ban on uranium exports to India, which is not a signatory to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
But Mr Garrett told reporters outside Labor’s national conference in Sydney on Saturday that he would not back the move. “Australia has a substantial and a reasonable position in the international community on disarmament,” said Mr Garrett, a former Nuclear Disarmament Party candidate. “It’s based on the fact that these treaties are signed for a reason and a purpose.”..,.
Julia Gillard “Obama’s Deputy Sheriff” – Julian Assange accuses
Assange takes aim at Australian PM Wilileaks founder Julian Assange accepts a 
Walkley Award. [ABC] Australia Network News, 27 Nov 11 The website Wikileaks has received a major award at the premier journalism awards in Australia, the Walkleys, held in the northern city of Brisbane on Sunday night.
Wikileaks Founder, Julian Assange, took the opportunity to criticise the Australian Prime Minister and the Government.
His whistle blower site was given the award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism. Mr Assange, appeared via a videolink, and told the audience Ms Gillard’s behaviour has been ’embarrassing.’
“What I cannot understand is the craven behaviour of the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard,” he said. “It is embarrassing, does she really think that she can become Obama’s deputy…
North Asia correspondent Mark Willacy, who was nominated in three categories, took home the award for radio news and current affairs for his reports on when March’s devastating tsunami hit the Japanese fishing community of Rikuzentakata and the aftermath of the TEPCO nuclear disaster. https://mail.google.com/mail/?tab=wm#compose
Victorian wind farm visited by Denmark’s Prince Frederik
Denmark’s Prince Frederik visits Victorian wind farm, Herald Sun November 26, 2011 A BOYISH Prince Frederik inspected the Macarthur Wind Farm in south-western Victoria yesterday…. For now, the site’s paddocks boast sheep, bulldozers and the half-built towers of windmills that will soar as high as 140m when completed.
The project, costed at $1 billion, will be the biggest wind farm south of the equator, and may power more than 220,000 average homes. An estimated 25 per cent of Denmark’s power is generated by wind.http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/denmarks-prince-frederik-visits-victorian-wind-farm/story-fn7x8me2-1226206401754
Need for independent analysis of economics of BHP’s planned new Olympic Dam uranium mine
It was reported in The Advertiser today, that the South Australian Parliament has adjourned debate on the Roxby Downs Indenture Bill until Tuesday 29 November
Greens pursue BHP ore processing plan ABC News 24 Nov 11 The South Australian Government says it has accepted at face value BHP Billiton’s assertion that processing all ore locally from an expanded Olympic Dam mine would not be viable.
Legislation to enable an expansion has passed State Parliament’s Lower House and is being debated in the Legislative Council, where the Greens are proposing dozens of amendments. Greens leader Mark Parnell has questioned in Parliament why the Government did not make an independent analysis, to verify that local processing would be too costly to pursue.
“The company has said they don’t want to process locally, the Government hasn’t asked them to justify it,” he said.
“They’ve simply accepted that most of this ore will go to China along with most of the jobs.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-24/olympic-dam-indenture-legislation-ore-processing/3691796
Australia does not need this economically risky uranium industry
Less than a third of one per cent of our export revenue comes from this toxic, destructive and obsolete trade. Yet somehow it has been painted as some sort of economic saviour, even as the mining boom is warping and damaging other parts of our economy.
What is happening here demonstrates a fundamental denial of the risk of the uranium trade. It glosses over the steep decline in nuclear capacity in Europe. The industry there has been in decline literally for decades—since the early 1980s—and it perpetuates the delusion that the safeguards regime actually provides meaningful safeguards
Greens dissenting report on Euratom Treaty criticises the inadequate discussion by Joint Standing Committee on Treaties , by Senator Scott Ludlam, 22 Nov 11 Before we raced down this path of shovelling this material to plants all across the Indian subcontinent, because the long and honourable history of the antinuclear movement in India will tell you there are very good reasons why people are staging sit-ins and hunger strikes at the moment at the site of a plant that is under construction by, of all people, the Russian government. Continue reading
Former IAEA chief condemns suggestion of Australian uranium sales to India
“Delegates to the Labor National Conference should heed Mr Walker’s warning. Uranium sales to India – a rogue nuclear state – will feed the dangerous nuclear arms race in South Asia. Moreover they would increase uranium export revenue by just two percent and would generate very few if any jobs.”
FORMER IAEA CHIEF DROPS NUCLEAR BOMB ON GILLARD, Dr Jim Green, 21 Nov 11, Friends of the Earth (FoE) has welcomed the strong warning against uranium sales to India by Australian Ron Walker, former Chair of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
In an article published by the Lowy Institute on Friday, Mr Walker states: “Yes, India is a democracy and yes we want to be in their good books, but that is no reason to drop our principles and our interests. To make an exception for them would be crass cronyism. If you make exceptions to your rules for your mates, you weaken your ability to apply them to everyone else. How could we be harder on Japan and South Korea if they acquired nuclear weapons? Could we say Israel is less of a
mate than India?”
He further states: “I am horrified that the media have not explained the enormity of this proposal. Perhaps even the public service has been so degraded, marginalised and cowed that the prime minister has not beentold of the far-reaching consequences.” Mr Walker’s article is posted at:
http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2011/11/18/Uranium-Were-selling-out-our-principles.aspx Continue reading
Shareholders grill BHP about environmental risks of planned new mega uranium mine at Olympic Dam
BHP Billiton AGM asked about mining radiation risk , ABC News, 17
Nov 11 The environmental credentials of the planned Olympic Dam mine expansion in outback South Australia have been questioned by some shareholders at BHP Billiton’s annual general meeting in Melbourne.
Dr Jenny Grounds from the Medical Association for the Prevention of War has questioned the BHP Billiton board about monitoring radiation exposure levels for Olympic Dam workers. She has also raised the issue of disposal of radioactive tailings by the company “with its open cut mine and the surface tailings piles and the potential for dispersion by dust storms and groundwater retention.”….
Water demands The board also was asked about water demands for the proposed expansion. A desalination plant will be built on upper Spencer Gulf near Whyalla to supply water for the huge mining expansion. Anne Kennedy from the Great Artesian Basin Protection Group says it will produce a surplus of 80 million litres of water daily.
She asked if it would replace water now being drawn from the basin. “To allocate half of that surplus would enable [the company] to return that same quantity of water to the Great Artesian Basin,” she told the meeting…. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-11-17/bhp-billiton-agm-environment-olympic-dam/3677110?section=sa
Majority of countries uphold the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty: Australia must not weaken it
only a minority of countries support the opening up of nuclear trade with countries that refuse to sign the NPT. The 118 countries of the Non-aligned Movement voiced strong objections during the NPT Review Conference in New York last year.
Gillard’s uranium sales push will have dangerous fall-out, Canberra Times, BY JIM GREEN, 16 Nov, 2011 Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s arguments in favour of uranium sales to India are dangerous and dishonest. She fails to even acknowledge the crucial problem – India’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT is the main international nuclear treaty and is routinely described by Australian political leaders as the ‘‘cornerstone’’ of the non-proliferation system. The NPT has its flaws, not least the failure of the nuclear weapons states to take seriously their disarmament obligations, but that is no reason to junk the treaty or to disregard it.
On the contrary, the NPT needs much greater support. The least we should expect is that Australia maintains its policy of requiring uranium customer countries to be NPT signatories and to take seriously their NPT obligations. Continue reading
Australia fawns over Obama, leader of a declining Power
Her new stance on uranium exports to India – – is a repudiation of many former statements.
The real measure of Mr Obama’s visit is that he is spending only 26 hours here
The most important part of the visit appears to be the announcement that marines will be based in the north,…..Mr Obama’s soft political leanings make him perfectly suited to oversee the decline of the American era. He wants to use us to exert some regional muscularity, having lost the ability to do it economically.
Let the fawning begin, The West, 16 Nov 11 Gillard’s fawning is on wrong side of history. An American president, reduced to the status of a media-driven celebrity rather than the political and economic saviour he promised to be, is on the eve of making his belated first visit to Australia.
Recent history will not repeat itself here so much as happen in reverse. What Mark Latham so delicately described as “a conga line of suckholes”… will now form on the flipside of politics in Canberra…..
Just for once, it would be nice if we kept our distance from America. Respectfully…… Ms Gillard has become a policy chameleon, rarely letting former principles stand in the way of a new position if it might advance her electorally. Continue reading
No reason for PM to change ban on uranium to India says Australian Conservation Foundation
With Prime Minister Julia Gillard saying she thinks Australia should start selling uranium to India the Australian Conservation Foundation has called on the Labor Party to retain the export ban while India refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
“The Labor Party has a long-standing, prudent and sensible policy of not supplying uranium to countries that will not sign the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty,” said ACF nuclear free campaigner Dave Sweeney. “The non-proliferation treaty, while imperfect, remains a key international legal mechanism in restricting the spread of nuclear weapons technology.
“Uranium is a dual-use fuel – it can be used in reactors and it can be used to power the world’s worst weapons.
“Australia, as a significant global uranium supplier, has a responsibility to acknowledge that India is a nuclear-armed state that obtained its weapons capacity in breach of international commitments. “Adding Australian uranium to the mix would not ease the long standing tensions between India and its nuclear-armed neighbours or improve the effectiveness of the global nuclear safeguards regime.
“There is no compelling or convincing reason for Labor to change its policy.” ACF opposes uranium sales to nuclear weapons states and has long campaigned for Australia to phase out uranium mining and exports, including to Russia, China and India.
Australia can move towards 100% renewable energy
100% renewable target achievable: Greens, SMH November 10, 2011 – Australian Greens leader Bob Brown has backed a colleague’s claim that Australia could be totally powered by renewable energy within a decade, despite others calling the claim unrealistic.
“(Senator) Larissa (Waters) is simply stating what is possible if we really want to ward off dangerous climate change,” he told ABC Radio on Thursday.”We’ve got – with the Gillard government – this quite remarkable (carbon tax) package through the parliament … but of course we can’t rest on our laurels and we’ll be looking at how we can improve on that in the future.”
Senator Brown insisted that putting a price on carbon did not mean putting an end to action on climate change, with a new international report showing the world is fast approaching the point of no return. “On current trajectory, the world’s going to lose the opportunity … the door will be shut,” he said. “We really need to be taking this seriously.”
Senator Waters said various studies showed the 100 per cent renewable energy target could be achieved in 10 years, however acting Queensland Premier Andrew Fraser disputed the claim and described the Greens as “delusional”…..http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/100-renewable-target-achievable-greens-20111110-1n84o.html
1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 