weapons and war « Antinuclear

Candidates and MPs supporting the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Candidates behind the ban, ICAN, Candidates for the 2019 Australian federal election are joining their parliamentary colleagues in

declaring support for Australia to sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

If elected, candidates that “pre-pledge” will be listed as signatories to the Parliamentary Pledge (see text below). The following list of supportive candidates does not include incumbents, who are listed here.

Candidates that support the nuclear weapon ban treaty:……………

With the federal election just around the corner, candidates are committing to work for Australia to sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Parliament if elected. Ninety-two current federal parliamentarians have signed the ICAN Parliamentary Pledge, and an additional 46 candidates have “pre-pledged” their support.

Fifteen cities and towns across Australia have spoken out against nuclear weapons and called on the federal government to sign and ratify the TPNW. This groundswell of local activism in Australia and worldwide includes Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra, Washington DC, Geneva, Manchester and LA

Former Assistant Secretary of Arms Control and Counter-Proliferation at DFAT, Peter Hooton, has critiqued Australia’s position on the TPNW in this article for Charles Sturt University. He argues

“for the formal and complete renunciation of an instrument of war on which the United States continues to depend. We have done this already with respect to landmines and cluster munitions—and we are a party, too, to the nuclear-test-ban treaty, which the United States has not ratified. Australia can join the TPNW and remain a good friend and ally of the United States.”

A few days ago Panama became the 23rd country to ratify the TPNW, bringing it one step closer to entry-into-force!

Darebin Council in Melbourne has commissioned and launched a stunning new mural to honour local ICAN co-founders Dimity Hawkins and Dave Sweeney as well as nuclear test survivors and disarmament activists worldwide. It features the late Yankunytjatjara elder and nuclear test survivor Yami Lester. The Lester family, including Karina Lester , have advocated against nuclear weapons and nuclear waste for decades.

Pledge for the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons

We, the undersigned parliamentarians,warmly welcome the adoption of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons on 7 July 2017 as a significant step towards the realization of a nuclear-weapon-free world.

We share the deep concern expressed in the preamble about the catastrophic humanitarian consequences that would result from any use of nuclear weapons and we recognize the consequent need to eliminate these inhumane and abhorrent weapons.

As parliamentarians, we pledge to work for the signature and ratification of this landmark treaty by our respective countries, as we consider the abolition of nuclear weapons to be a global public good of the highest order and an essential step to promote the security and well-being of all peoples. http://www.icanw.org/au/candidates/?fbclid=IwAR2EbAmx4KEqDQvZx0sVwT7pGPoFFvyWWOOAqJqCBpKJVSzlOVj0e2Gc96M

April 18, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, election 2019, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Avalon Airshow, a registered charity (!!) hosts weaponized planes – entertainment for kids?

War, What Is It Good For… Besides Blood Lust And The Avalon Airshow? New Matilda, Dave Sweeney on February 26, 2019

The iconic Avalon Airshow kicks off next week. But events actually get underway today, with a special exhibition for those who like their planes weaponized for death and destruction, writes Dave Sweeney.Australians are generally lucky where it comes to the air – we have big skies and safe planes that routinely take off and land and relocate us for holidays, family re-unions and commerce.

Our airborne images are red kangaroos, flying doctors and grainy newsreels of early aviators breaking new records in old planes.

It is a world away from many other places experience of the sky as a hostile space that threatens rapid and remote destruction and death………

The Avalon Airshow is comprised of two concurrent events: the Australian International Aerospace and Defence Exposition is an industry-only trade-fest that runs for three days before merging with the co-located and more public Australian International Airshow for a further three days of ‘the ultimate family adventure’.

If websites could get breathless this one would need a respirator.

Experience the awesome power of military aviation. A high voltage array of combat aircraft takes centre stage with the thrust and grunt of the latest heavy metal. Marvel as jet fighters, strike bombers and heavy lift leviathans are joined by swarms of attack helicopters, from home and abroad, for a series of breath taking routines and simulated combat manoeuvres.

It’s free for the under-fives, Continue reading →

February 28, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, spinbuster, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK “reviewing” files on nuclear bomb tests in Australia- this smacks of a cover-up

“To now withdraw previously available documents is extremely unfortunate and hints at an attempted cover-up.”

“worrying that properly released records can suddenly be removed from public access without notice or explanation.”

Review or ‘cover up’? Mystery as Australia nuclear weapons tests files withdrawn https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/11/australia/uk-australia-nuclear-archives-intl/index.html, By James Griffiths, CNN

More than 65 years since the UK began conducting secret nuclear weapons testing in the Australian Outback, scores of files about the program have been withdrawn from the country’s National Archives without explanation.

The unannounced move came as a shock to many researchers and historians who rely on the files and have been campaigning to unseal the small number which remain classified.

“Many relevant UK documents have remained secret since the time of the tests, well past the conventional 30 years that government documents are normally withheld,” said expert Elizabeth Tynan, author of “Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story”.

“To now withdraw previously available documents is extremely unfortunate and hints at an attempted cover-up.”

Withdrawal of the files was first noted in late December. Access to them has remained closed in the new year.

Dark legacy The UK conducted 12 nuclear weapons tests in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s, mostly in the sparsely populated Outback of South Australia.

Information about the tests remained a tightly held secret for decades. It wasn’t until a Royal Commission was formed in 1984 — in the wake of several damning press reports — that the damage done to indigenous people and the Australian servicemen and women who worked on the testing grounds became widely known.

Indigenous people living nearby had long complained of the effects they suffered, including after a “black mist” settled over one camp near Maralinga in the wake of the Totem I test in October 1953. The mist caused stinging eyes and skin rashes. Others vomited and suffered from diarrhea.

These claims were dismissed and ridiculed by officials for decades — until, in the wake of the Royal Commission report, the UK agreed to pay the Australian government and the traditional owners of the Maralinga lands about AU$46 million ($30 million). The Australian authorities also paid indigenous Maralinga communities a settlement of AU$13.5 million ($9 million).

While the damage done to indigenous communities was acknowledged, much about the Totem I test — and other tests at Maralinga and later at Emu Field — remained secret, even before the recent withdrawal of archive documents.

“The British atomic tests in Australia did considerable harm to indigenous populations, to military and other personnel and to large parts of the country’s territory. This country has every right to know exactly what the tests entailed,” Tynan said. “Mysteries remain about the British nuclear tests in Australia, and these mysteries have become harder to bring to light with the closure of files by the British government.”

Alan Owen, chairman of the British Nuclear Test Veterans Association, which campaigns on behalf of former servicemen, said “the removal of these documents affects not only our campaign, but affects the many academic organizations that rely on this material.”

“We are very concerned that the documents will not be republished and the (Ministry of Defense) will again deny any responsibility for the effects the tests have had on our membership,” Owen told CNN.

Unclear motives Responding to a request for comment from CNN, a spokeswoman for the National Archives said the withdrawal of the Australian nuclear test files was done at the request of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), which has ultimate responsibility over them.

The NDA said that “a collection of records has been temporarily withdrawn from general access via The National Archive at Kew as part of a review process.”

“It is unclear, at this time, how long the review will take, however NDA anticipates that many of the documents will be restored to the public archive in due course,” a spokeswoman said.

Jon Agar, a professor of science and technology at University College London, said the withdrawal “is not just several records but two whole classes of files, many of which had previously been open to researchers at the National Archives.”

“These files are essential to any historian of the UK nuclear projects — which of course included tests in Australia. They have been closed without proper communication or consultation,” he added.

Agar shared correspondence he had with the NDA in which a spokeswoman said some files would be moved to a new archive — Nucleus — in the far north of Scotland. However the Nucleus archives focus on the British civil nuclear industry, and it is unclear why files on military testing would be moved there, or why those files would need to be withdrawn to do so.

Nucleus also does not offer the type of online access to its records as the National Archives does.

“Why not just copy the files if the nuclear industry needs them at Nucleus for administrative reasons? Why take them all out of public view?” Agar wrote on Twitter.

Information freedom In correspondence with both CNN and Agar, the NDA suggested those interested in the files could file freedom of information (FOI) requests for them.

Under the 2000 Freedom of Information Act, British citizens and concerned parties are granted the “right to access recorded information held by public sector organizations.”

FOI requests can be turned down if the government deems the information too sensitive or the request too expensive to process. Under a separate rule, the UK government should also declassify documents between 20 and 30 years after they were created.

According to the BBC, multiple UK government departments — including the Home Office and Cabinet Office — have been repeatedly condemned by auditors for their “poor,” “disappointing” and “unacceptable” treatment of FOI applications.

Commenting on the nuclear documents, Maurice Frankel, director of the Campaign for Freedom of Information, a UK-based NGO, said it was “worrying that properly released records can suddenly be removed from public access without notice or explanation.”

“It suggests that the historical record is fragile and transient and liable to be snatched away at any time, with or without good reason,” he added.

January 12, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, civil liberties, history, secrets and lies, weapons and war | 2 Comments

Nuclear arms race danger is increasing – Australia endorses it

Nuclear arms race risk grows, amid US and Russia tensions, Newcastle Herald , Damon Cronshaw , JANUARY 7 2019, The risk of a new nuclear arms race appears to have significantly increased through “fractured relations between the US and Russia”, a University of Newcastle academic says.

The Trump administration’s stated intention to develop a new generation of American nuclear weapons was “highly inflammatory”, said Associate Professor Amy Maguire, a senior lecturer in international law at the university.

“It is not yet clear whether it will be followed through, or whether the announcement of this intention was a strategic move to put pressure on Russia.”

She also considered the intention to be “disingenuous”.

“The US continually enhances its nuclear capability – it is not as though the US has had warehouses full of old bombs gathering dust for decades and now they are starting afresh,” she said.

Nevertheless, she said the global stockpile of nuclear weapons had been reduced significantly to 14,700. The Cold War arms race led to a stockpile of an estimated 70,000 weapons.

“However, arms control agreements that have been key to achieving this reduction are increasingly under pressure,” she said.

She said the US and Russia had repeatedly accused each other of violating various arms control treaties.

“In October this year, President Trump announced that the US will withdraw from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles [commonly known as the INF treaty].”

The US said Russia had violated the treaty by developing a new cruise missile. The US was also concerned about having no response to Chinese missiles. China is not part of the treaty.

“If Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable,” Mr Trump said in October.

Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev cited withdrawal from the INF treaty and the Iran nuclear deal as evidence that the US had declared a new nuclear arms race.

“This is of particular concern given the massive and growing rate of military spending globally,” Associate Professor Maguire said.

She said Australia’s refusal to endorse the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons “indicates how we see ourselves in relation to the world’s nuclear powers, none of which has endorsed the prohibition treaty”.

“Australia is one of 30 states that are regarded as nuclear weapons-endorsing states. This bloc of states rely on what they regard as the nuclear protection of allies.

“Australia’s government argues that a ‘building blocks’ approach to disarmament is preferable to the prohibition required by the treaty.”

But by refusing to participate in the drafting of the prohibition treaty, she said Australia “missed an opportunity to contribute positively to nuclear disarmament”. “The treaty is far from perfect, not least because it does not include the nine nuclear-armed states. Had countries like Australia participated in the drafting more productively, a different agreement could perhaps have been reached,” she said.

“Such an agreement might, for example, have allowed for a phase in which weapons stockpiles were reduced prior to full elimination and prohibition.”………. https://www.theherald.com.au/story/5833974/the-revived-menace-of-nuclear-arms-a-newcastle-researchers-take/?cs=12

January 6, 2019 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Why Labor is taking the right course on nuclear disarmament

Labor sets the right course on nuclear disarmament, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/labor-sets-the-right-course-on-nuclear-disarmament-20181224-p50o22.html, By Gem Romuld, 27 December 2018 On the final afternoon of the recent 48th Labor national conference, Anthony Albanese took to the podium to announce that a future Labor government will sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. He declared that “people who change the world are ones that are ambitious”, after three days of intense negotiations on nuclear policy among senior Labor parliamentarians.The Coalition government has not only refused to join the treaty, but boycotted the negotiating conference and opposed the process leading up to it. While claiming to wholeheartedly seek a world free of nuclear weapons, foreign affairs ministers Julie Bishop and Marise Payne have failed to act. Their preferred path is one that doesn’t challenge the nuclear-armed states, especially our powerful ally, and protects the status quo.

After words of caution from Senator Penny Wong and MP Richard Marles in October, supporters of the nuclear ban treaty within Labor had to move a mountain to get the leadership on side. Even with former foreign minister Gareth Evans warning against the treaty, out of deference to the United States, on the eve of the resolution the supportive majority won out. With 78 per cent of the federal caucus signed up to support the ban, 83 per cent of Labor voters on side, and two dozen unions adding their voice, Labor has a clear mandate.

Soon after the resolution passed unanimously, commentators rushed to dismiss the resolution as aspirational, ineffective and conditional upon whether nuclear-armed states join the treaty. This is not true; there are no binding caveats to the resolution. Labor must only “take account of” various factors ahead of signing and ratifying.

Conservatives within Labor tried to attach binding preconditions, but their attempts failed. As for whether the resolution is aspirational, in fact it is binding. Therefore, it is no longer a matter of whether a Labor government will join the TPNW – only when.

A recently published paper by Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic is clear that Australia joining the ban treaty would advance its stated goal of supporting nuclear disarmament without creating insurmountable legal obstacles to ongoing military relations with the United States. Australia signed up to the landmines and cluster munitions treaties when the United States did not, and still has not, signed on. The alliance relationship doesn’t bind us to include weapons of mass destruction in our defence policies. Further, the ANZUS Treaty contains no obligation to accept the policy of nuclear deterrence.

The threat posed by nuclear weapons is real and urgent. More than ever, our security depends on an effective rules-based international order and strong multilateral institutions. No nuclear-armed states have yet joined the treaty, but this will change. No treaty, whether on disarmament or human rights or climate change, has ever enjoyed universal support at the outset. Support is always built up over time. Monumental strides forward in human history rarely begin with all parties coming together to agree on a common course of action.

The majority of the world’s nations negotiated the TPNW based on their firm belief that it would have a profound impact on the behaviour of nuclear-armed states and their allies, even if its provisions would not, at the outset, be binding on those states. Treaties prohibiting other inhumane, indiscriminate weapons demonstrate this process; for example, the landmine ban treaty is widely regarded as a success, with massive reductions in use and production worldwide.

Within the nuclear weapon ban treaty’s first year of existence, money is moving. The Norwegian sovereign wealth fund and the largest Dutch pension fund have decided to exclude nuclear-weapon-producing companies from their investment portfolios, citing the treaty as their reason. The Australian Medical Association and the Australian Red Cross have urged the Australian government to sign and ratify the treaty as a humanitarian imperative. Cities within countries opposed to the treaty are also joining the call for national action, including Los Angeles, Toronto, Manchester, Melbourne and Sydney. The ban treaty is a powerful new tool for advocacy, and nuclear disarmament is back on the political agenda.

Since the treaty opened for signature in September 2017, 69 states have signed on and 19 have ratified. The 50th nation to deposit its instrument of ratification will enable the treaty to enter into force and become permanent international law. With dozens of nations currently undergoing domestic processes to sign and ratify, entry- into-force is expected by 2020.

It is beyond time for Australia to quit our role as nuclear enabler for the United States. The nuclear weapon ban treaty presents us with a persistent question; will we join the global majority and contribute to the consensus against these WMDs, or remain implicated in the nuclear threat? Labor’s commitment clears a pathway forward for the next Government.

Gem Romuld is the Australian director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear
Weapons and a recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize.

December 28, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Labor is right to support a nuclear ban treaty

The cold war is back. Labor is right to support a nuclear ban treaty https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/28/the-cold-war-is-back-labor-is-right-to-support-a-nuclear-ban-treatyTilman Ruff

Labor’s pledge to commit to nuclear disarmament puts the alternative party of government on the right side of history.

The gulf between the shenanigans of way too many politicians, and the growing urgency of grave and looming threats has rarely seemed wider. Action on crucial issues languishes while parliamentarians make naked grabs for power, acting in the interests only of themselves. Poor personal behaviour seems endemic. On the two unprecedented dangers looming over all humanity – nuclear war and climate disruption – Australia has been not just missing in action, but actively on the wrong side of history, part of the problem rather than the solution.

The government’s own figures demonstrate that our country, awash with renewable sun and wind, is way off track to meet even a third of its greenhouse gas emissions reduction target by 2030 – itself nowhere near enough.

Not only is nuclear disarmament stalled, but one by one, the agreements that reduced and constrained nuclear weapons, hard-won fruit of the end of the first cold war, are being trashed. All the nuclear-armed states are investing massively not simply in keeping their weapons indefinitely, but developing new ones that are more accurate, more deadly and more “usable”. The cold war is back, and irresponsible and explicit threats to use nuclear weapons have proliferated. Any positive effect that Australia might have on reducing nuclear weapons dangers from the supposed influence afforded us by our uncritical obsequiousness to the US is nowhere in sight. Our government has been incapable of asserting any independence even from the current most extreme, dysfunctional and unfit US administration. The US has recently renounced its previous commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT); we have said nothing.

The one bright light in this gathering gloom is the 2017 UN treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. For its role in helping to bring this historic treaty into being, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) was awarded the Nobel peace prize for 2017 – the first to an entity born in Australia. This treaty provides the first comprehensive and categorical prohibition of nuclear weapons. It sets zero nuclear weapons as the clear and consistent standard for all countries and will help drive elimination of these worst weapons of mass destruction, just as the treaties banning biological and chemical weapons, landmines and cluster munitions have played a decisive role in progressing the elimination of those other indiscriminate and inhumane weapons. The treaty lays out a clear pathway for all states, with and without nuclear weapons, to fulfil their binding legal obligation to accomplish nuclear disarmament. It is currently the only such pathway.

Regrettably, the Australian government was the most active “weasel” in opposing the treaty’s development at every step and was one of the first to say it would not sign, even though we have signed every other treaty banning an unacceptable weapon.

Hence the Labor party’s commitment at its recent national conference in Adelaide that “Labor in government will sign and ratify the Ban Treaty” is an important and welcome step. It is a clear commitment, allowing no room for weaselling.

The considerations articulated alongside this commitment are fairly straightforward and consistent with the commitment. First, recognition of the need for “an effective verification and enforcement architecture” for nuclear disarmament. The treaty itself embodies this. Governments joining the treaty must designate a competent international authority “to negotiate and verify the irreversible elimination of nuclear weapons” and nuclear weapons programmes, “including the elimination or irreversible conversion of all nuclear-weapons-related facilities”. Australia should also push for the same standard for any nuclear disarmament that happens outside the treaty.

Second, the Labor resolution prioritises “the interaction of the Ban Treaty with the longstanding Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty”. The treaty has been carefully crafted to be entirely compatible with the NPT and explicitly reaffirms that the NPT “serves as a cornerstone of the nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation regime”, and that its full and effective implementation “has a vital role to play in promoting international peace and security”. All the governments supporting the treaty support the NPT, and the NPT itself enshrines a commitment for all its members to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”. The UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, and the International Committee of the Red Cross are among those who have affirmed that the treaty and the NPT are entirely consistent, complementary and mutually reinforcing. Even opponents of the treaty recognise that prohibition is an essential part of achieving and sustaining a world free of nuclear weapons.

Third, the Labor resolution refers to “Work to achieve universal support for the Ban Treaty.” This too is mirrored in one of the commitments governments take on in joining the treaty, to encourage other states to join, “with the goal of universal adherence of all States to the Treaty.”

An Australian government joining the treaty would enjoy wide popular support in doing so – an Ipsos poll last month found that 79% of Australians (and 83% of Labor voters) support, and less than 8% oppose, Australia joining the treaty.

Australia would also stop sticking out like a sore thumb among our southeast Asian and Pacific Island neighbours and be able to work more effectively with them. Brunei, Cook Islands, Fiji, Indonesia, Kiribati, Laos, New Zealand, Malaysia, Myanmar, Palau, Philippines, Samoa, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Vietnam have already signed the treaty.

Most importantly, joining the treaty and renouncing nuclear weapons would mean that Australia would become part of the solution rather than the problem of the acute existential peril that hangs over all of us while nuclear weapons exist, ready to be launched within minutes. Time is not on our side. Of course this crucial humanitarian issue should be above party politics. The commitment from the alternative party of government to join the treaty and get on the right side of history when Labor next forms government is to be warmly welcomed. It is to be hoped that the 78% of federal parliamentary Labor members who have put on record their support for Australia joining the treaty by signing Ican’s parliamentary pledge will help ensure Labor keeps this landmark promise.

• Dr Tilman Ruff is co-founder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (Ican) and Nobel peace prize winner (2017)

December 28, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Australian government promoting Australia’s secret weapons deals to Saudi Arabia and UAE for murderous war in Yemen

Documents reveal Australia’s secret arms deals with nations fighting Yemen’s bloody war, ABC News

By Dylan Welch, Kyle Taylor, Dan Oakes and Rebecca Trigger, ABC Investigations 13 Dec 2018, The Australian Government has approved the export of dozens of shipments of military items to Middle Eastern countries embroiled in the bloody Yemen war, a conflict dogged by accusations of war crimes and indiscriminate civilian killings.

Internal Defence Department documents obtained under Freedom of Information (FOI) and from parliamentary hearings reveal since the beginning of 2016, Canberra has granted at least 37 export permits for military-related items to the United Arab Emirates, and 20 to Saudi Arabia.

They are the two countries leading a coalition fighting a war against Houthi rebels in the Middle East’s poorest nation, Yemen.

The four-year war in Yemen has killed tens of thousands and an air-and-sea embargo has led to more than 85,000 Yemeni children under five dying from hunger, according to one children’s agency.

Australia’s burgeoning exports to the UAE and Saudi Arabia may be connected to a plan announced by then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in January to drastically increase defence sales over the next decade.

Australia will spend $200 million between now and 2028 in order to make Australia the 10th-largest arms exporter in the world. It is currently the 20th largest.

The strategy states the Middle East is a “priority market” for defence exports.

The Government has tried to keep details of the exports secret, but New South Wales lawyer and human rights activist Kellie Tranter has spent a year trying to shed light on the sales. Continue reading →

December 28, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Why did Sir Mark Oliphant not speak out about nuclear bombs radioactively contaminating Maralinga?

Hiding Britain’s H-bomb secrets https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/dec/27/hiding-britains-h-bomb-secrets Sue Rabbitt Roff is alarmed at files being withdrawn by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority That the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has withdrawn files relating to the development of the British H-bomb in Australia 70 years ago (Nuclear weapons and energy files removed from archives, 24 December) is indeed alarming to those of us trying to get behind the smokescreens already set up by the Ministry of Defence’s closing access to files over the past decades.

My own research has been into why Sir Mark Oliphant, Australia’s premier nuclear physicist and a prime mover in the Tube Alloys group that showed the Americans how to build atomic bombs in time to use in the second world war, never spoke out about the contamination (from H-bomb tests) of his beloved home state of South Australia and further eastward just weeks before the 1956 Olympic Games took place in Melbourne.

He told me in 1993: “The Brits thought they could ensure any fallout or contamination was not too big. They were very pigheaded about it. The people in control were very haphazard about the estimates.” Why didn’t he speak out about the residual radioactive contamination at Monte Bello, Maralinga and Emu Field, even when he was governor of South Australia? He replied: “You can really decontaminate Maralinga by leaving it alone. Plutonium alpha particles contamination, I think, is grossly overplayed. The Aborigines are using it to the full. At the same time it was very naughty of the British to leave it, and to think of spreading it that way in the first place was very nasty. The British people were very reticent about revealing contamination, especially regarding food contamination. They hugged that to their chests very closely.”

I suggest that Sir Mark Oliphant was Australia’s – and Britain’s – J Robert Oppenheimer. The evidence is set out on my website www.rabbittreview.com and was mostly found in the files I accessed in the UK National Archives.

December 28, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Labor has-been Gareth Evans still pro nuclear, sabotaging the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty

That treaty is now considered a huge success with 164 state parties. Evans was wrong then and he is wrong again now on the nuclear weapon ban treaty.”

According to Ican, 78% of the federal Labor caucus have pledged to work for Australia to sign and ratify the treaty, including two-thirds of the shadow cabinet.

Labor set for nuclear showdown as Gareth Evans warns of risk to US alliance, Guardian, Paul Karp

@Paul_Karp, Mon 17 Dec 2018 Former foreign affairs minister says signing up to international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons would ‘tear up’ US alliance. Gareth Evans has warned signing up to the international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons will “tear up” the United States alliance ahead of a critical contested vote in an otherwise tranquil Labor conference.

The former foreign affairs minister made the comments to Guardian Australia on the sidelines of Labor’s national conference, intervening in a dispute over how to translate in-principle support for disarmament into practical action.

The showdown set for Tuesday pits the Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese against the party’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, two traditional Labor left allies divided by conditions to be put on joining the treaty.

Guardian Australia understands that Albanese has registered an amendment proposing to sign and ratify the nuclear weapons ban treaty immediately to send a strong signal in favour of disarmament and noting that Australia can seek changes after it joins. Continue reading →

December 18, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, politics, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The choice of Maralinga as nuclear bomb site – and the effects on Aboriginal people

‘Aboriginal people were still living close to the test sites and were told nothing about radiation.

‘High rates of cancer were eventually documented in the 16,000 test workers, but no studies were done on Aboriginal people and others living in areas of fallout. It’s been called the cancer capital of Australia.’

Although many Aboriginal people were forcibly removed from their land, more than a thousand were directly affected by the bombs.

Vomiting, skin rashes, diarrhoea, fevers and, later, blood diseases and cancer were among the common conditions caused by the testing.

How the Australian government offered up an outback Aboriginal settlement for nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s – saving a small English town but creating our ‘cancer capital’ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6466191/Australian-government-offered-outback-nuclear-testing-save-small-English-village.html

A remote Aboriginal settlement was used as a nuclear testing zone in the 1950s
Forces were initially intending to blow up a small seaside town in north England
Australian government instead offered up Maralinga, 200km north of Adelaide
Hundreds of bombs were dropped from 1956-1963, spreading deadly radiation
Area is Australia’s ‘cancer capital’ with Aboriginal locals susceptible to illness By JOSH HANRAHAN FOR DAILY MAIL AUSTRALIA, 9 December 2018 More than a decade after an atomic bomb decimated the Japanese city of Hiroshima a small English seaside town was about to be next. Continue reading →

December 10, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | aboriginal issues, AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, reference, weapons and war | Leave a comment

British scientists secretly used Australian population to test for radiation contamination after nuclear tests at Maralinga

the agency said it had detected varying levels of Strontium-90 in all Australian capital cities.

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/british-scientists-secretly-used-australian-population-to-test-for-radiation-contamination-after-nuclear-tests-at-maralinga/news-story/988651beb4e94e1a4fd1b4c4649b3f03

Colin James, The Advertiser, August 29, 2014, BRITISH scientists secretly used the Australian population to test for radiation contamination after the nuclear tests at Maralinga in the 1950s, a new book confirms.

Its author, Frank Walker, has obtained the minutes of a top secret meeting in England where the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment approved a program to determine the long-term effects of the tests on Australia and its citizens.

In his book, Maralinga, Walker details how the meeting at Harwell on May 24, 1957, decided to first obtain soil samples from pasture regions near Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth to check for fallout from the nine nuclear bombs detonated at Maralinga and the Monte Bello Islands, off WA.

The second phase was to test vegetation, particularly grass and cabbage, and milk for the presence of the radioactive isotope, Strontium-90, a fission by-product of nuclear explosions.

The meeting was chaired by Professor Ernest Titterton, the nuclear scientist who oversaw the British nuclear tests in Australia.

According to the document obtained by Walker, Professor Titterton told the meeting he wanted to collect animal bones “to see if Strontium-90 is getting into domestic animals”.

The meeting decided to take bone samples from 12 sheep stations along a 800km path of fallout tracked by Royal Australian Air Force planes which flew into the mushroom clouds following each nuclear explosion at Maralinga.

Professor Titterton told the meeting that the final phase of the testing would be to determine if Strontium-90 was being absorbed by the Australian population.

“We have to find out if Strontium-90 is entering the food chain and getting into humans,” says the document, which has the file number DEFE 16/608.

The scientists then agreed to start testing the bones of dead Australian infants and children for radiation contamination.

“As many bones as possible are to be obtained,” says DEFE 16/608.

“The bones should be femurs. The required weight is 20-50 grams wet bone, subsequently ashed to provide samples of weight not less than two grams. The date of birth, age at death and locality of origin are to be reported.”

Professor Titterton said the bones would be crushed into a powder and sent to the UK for analysis along with the soil, animal samples and vegetation collected from the Australian testing sites.

As The Advertiser has previously reported, hundreds of bones were subsequently collected from the bodies of 21,830 dead babies, infants, children, teenagers and young adults across Australia without the knowledge of their parents.

The Strontium-90 testing program in Australia was the longest of its kind in the world, finally ending in 1978.

In September, 2001, following an extensive investigation by The Advertiser, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency revealed it had kept ash samples from bones collected from hospitals in Adelaide, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane and Melbourne.

In a report to the then federal health minister, Michael Wooldridge, the agency said it had detected varying levels of Strontium-90 in all Australian capital cities.

November 17, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, secrets and lies, weapons and war | Leave a comment

“Project Sunshine” tested dead babies for radioactive fallout

Only baby bones used in nuke tests https://www.news24.com/xArchive/Archive/Only-baby-bones-used-in-nuke-tests-20010607 2001-06-07 Sydney, Australia – Bone samples from dead babies were shipped to the United States and Britain to be tested for radioactive fallout as part of an Australian government programme, officials said on Thursday.

The government’s Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) said from 1957 to 1978 Australia operated a programme to measure levels of “strontium 90” radioactive fallout in humans by testing corpses. Nuclear weapons tests were conducted in Australia and there was concern about radioactive fallout building up in the atmosphere.

In the early years of the study, known as Project Sunshine, hundreds of human bone samples from corpses of babies, children and adults aged up to 40 years were reduced to ash and sent to the United States and Britain for tests on radioactivity levels. Facilities were later constructed for the tests to be carried out in Australia.

ARPANSA chief executive officer Dr. John Loy said on Thursday that it was unlikely scientists sought consent to do the tests from relatives of the deceased.

Loy said the studies were “part of an overall programme to measure the impact on Australians of atmospheric nuclear testing throughout the world.”

“In the 1950s and 60s there were hundreds of nuclear explosions throughout the world and this led to contamination,” Loy told The Associated Press. “There were measurements of activity in water, air, food and … bone tissue,” he said.

Loy said human bone absorbs strontium 90 from the atmosphere. “So it was important to get a handle on what sort of exposure was resulting from these tests,” he added.

Project Sunshine was not kept secret by the government and reports on the study were published in scientific journals, Loy said.

Interest in the project was renewed this month by media reports that the bodies of stillborn babies from Britain and Australia were also used in the research.

The reports quoted documents from a meeting of the project’s scientists in 1955, during which project leader Dr Willard Libby said the supply of stillborn babies had been “cut off”.

“If anyone knows how to do a good job of body snatching, they will really be serving their country,” said Libby, a Nobel Prize laureate, according to The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper.

State governments across Australia have announced that they will hold inquiries into the reported export of stillborn babies for nuclear testing.

Loy said on Thursday that ARPANSA has “no evidence whatsoever” that stillborn babies’ bodies were used in tests, but only of bones.

“Conceivably it happened in some other way, I have no idea, but certainly we have no indication that it did happen,” he said.

Loy welcomed the inquiries as a chance to set standards for future nuclear testing. Currently, nuclear tests in Australia focus on radioactivity in plants, food and air only, he said.

“It’s a legacy of a bad time of nuclear testing in the atmosphere and I guess we’ve got to learn from that and the need to make sure that if these programmes are needed they are done with people’s proper consent,” Loy said.

November 17, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The horror legacy of Britain’s nuclear bomb tests

Britain’s nuclear bomb test legacy of early deaths and deformed children, Mirror, By

Susie Boniface 14 NOV 2018

The horrific story behind the UK’s nuclear experiments have been told in full for the first time. After the horrors of the Second World War, it was deemed necessary for Britain to have a weapon that could unleash hell.

When atom bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945, LIFE magazine reported: “People’s bodies were terribly squeezed, then their internal organs ruptured…….

Of the 22,000 scientists and servicemen who took part in radioactive experiments in Australia and the South Pacific, just a handful are alive.

Their families report cancers, rare medical problems, high rates of miscarriage – and deformities, disability and death for their children – and their grandchildren.

Now, the full story of Britain’s nuclear experiments has been told for the first time in a new Mirror website that details not only the scientific, military and political battles, but the human fallout.

DAMNED features top-secret documents, eyewitness accounts and searing testimonies.

The site takes its name from an editorial written in 2002 by Mirror editor Richard Stott, who thundered: “How many more generations of the damned will our politicians allow to suffer before they accept the calamities of their predecessors and the consequences of their own cowardice?”

In May, the Mirror called for an award for the veterans and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has ordered a medal review.

DAMNED begins with Operation Hurricane in 1952, when Britain exploded its first atomic bomb, covers the Minor Trials in South Australia, which left the landscape littered with plutonium debris for decades, and reports on Operation Grapple in 1958 when the UK detonated its biggest weapon.

It also details the human cost and shows how every other nuclear nation on Earth came to accept and recognise their nuclear heroes – leaving Britain the only one to deny a duty of care………

In May, the Mirror called for an award for the veterans and Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has ordered a medal review……….

DAMNED has a memorial section with the pictures and health problems of every veteran from our archives. Some of their stories can be read here: …… https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/britains-nuclear-bomb-test-legacy-13590455

November 15, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, history, weapons and war | Leave a comment

City of Sydney calls on Australian govt to sign up to the UN Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty

ICAN Australia, October 30

Last night, the City of Sydney unanimously adopted a motion calling on the Australian Government to sign and ratify the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Congratulations!
We hope many cities and towns will join Sydney and Melbourne in endorsing the ICAN Cities Appeal.

November 1, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | New South Wales, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuclear weapons for Australia? – at what cost?

Does Australia need a nuclear arsenal? And what would be the cost? ABC 24 Oct 18 RN By Joey Watson for Late Night Live Nestled in the native bushland of Jervis Bay on the New South Wales south coast are the concrete footings of a nuclear power station that was never built.The construction, which began during John Gorton’s brief prime ministership in the late 1960s, was to be Australia’s first foray into nuclear energy generation.

The reactor would have been able to generate plutonium which, under the auspices of the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, could be used to manufacture nuclear weapons.

But the project did not survive an abrupt change of leadership and Australia ended up riding out the remainder of the Cold War as a non-nuclear player.

Five decades later the nuclear anxieties which coloured Mr Gorton’s foreign policy outlook are creeping their way back into international relations.

US President Donald Trump has announced that he will pull the US from the Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, as both countries expand their nuclear arsenals.

India is locked in a nuclear tit-for-tat with neighbouring Pakistan, while China has developed nuclear weapons capable of reaching anywhere in the US.

Historically Australia has sought shelter under the US ‘nuclear umbrella’, but is it time for that to change?

In a recent essay, Dr Stephan Fruhling, the Associate Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at the ANU, contemplated the “unthinkable option”, and suggested that a nuclear-armed Australia is more likely than ever before.

Fortress Australia

According to Dr Fruhling, Australia’s continuous coastline makes it uniquely positioned to ‘spike the moat’ with tactical, short-range nuclear weapons that could be used against air and maritime forces.

“In air and naval battle on the high seas, nukes can now be employed without significant risk of collateral damage, much like conventional war heads,” he told Late Night Live.

“Australia could establish a maritime exclusion zone in wartime, to increase the military risk for any country planning a major attack against the continent.”

But what would be the cost?

The strategic benefits of any nuclear capability would have to be balanced against the possible implications of breaking out of the US nuclear umbrella.

Australia’s access to US intelligence, technology, and weapons systems may be compromised if it chose to take on a defence strategy that was less reliant on the US.

“Before investing in a nuclear program I think we would have to make a genuine attempt at trying to draw closer to the United States and its nuclear arsenal,” Dr Fruhling said.

If Australia chooses to remain under the US nuclear umbrella, Indonesia presents a unique case in which American and Australian interests may not intersect.

Indonesia is also a US ally, and if it decided to begin its own nuclear program, the implications for the US security guarantee for Australia are not clear.

“Should Indonesia acquire nuclear weapons, relying on US deterrence against a nuclear attack would require a leap of faith about the alignment of Australian and US interests,” Dr Fruhling said..

An Australian nuclear program could lead to Indonesia following suit.

“Indonesia has regional leadership ambitions, and a strong sense of independence and will, in coming years, tower over Australia economically as well as in population terms,” Dr Fruhling said.

“Australian acquisition of nuclear weapons would strengthen Indonesia’s reasons to reciprocate, for status as well as security.”

In the meantime, however, Australia’s non-nuclear status is important in discouraging Indonesia and other regional players from going down the nuclear path……..https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-24/should-australia-have-a-nuclear-weapons-program/10407610

October 25, 2018 Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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Antinuclear

Australian news, and some related international items