Friends of the Earth Nuclear Free Art Auction 2024
The emblematic Friends of the Earth Nuclear-Free Art Auction this year is happening on Saturday August 31 at Catalyst Social Centre on 146 Sydney Rd, Coburg. We also have an onlne auction with some of the bigger works from August 16-30. The Art Auction has been an enormous support to keep our work going over the decades.
This coming year we have our plate full with Dutton’s delusional nuclear dreams and proposed nuclear power plant sites in every state, the AUKUS military deal with its nuclear submarines, its subsequent high level weapons-grade radioactive waste and new proposed uranium mines in SA. As always, the biggest burden will lie on First Nations communities, front-line communities and workers.
There will be an online auction via Gala-bid from August 16-30 with the bigger works. Please let your art collector/ gallery friends and friends with deep pockets know. A link to the catalogue will be put up shortly.
The in-person event on Saturday August 31 will feature music by Uncle Winiata 7.30pm. Live auction 8pm. Food by some of the lovely people at Food Not Bombs and drink at the bar.
We have a lot of art works this year and are extremely grateful for the generosity of the artists that have donated their work. And special gratitude to Jane Brownrigg, FOE lifetime member and general absolute legend, who has chosen to (re-)donate a large part of her collection to this years auction.
Isle of Wight-size iceberg breaks from Antarctica
BBC News, Jonathan Amos, Science correspondent, 20 May 24
Another big iceberg has broken away from an area of the Antarctic that hosts the UK’s Halley research station.
It is the third such block to calve near the base in the past three years.
This new one is not quite as large, but still measures some 380 sq km (145 sq miles) – roughly the size of the Isle of Wight.
The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) took the precaution of moving Halley in 2017 because of concerns over the way the local ice was behaving.
Its buildings were shifted on skis to take them away from immediate trouble.
The station is also now routinely vacated during the long dark months of the southern winter. The last personnel were flown out in February.
Halley sits on top of the Brunt Ice Shelf, which is the floating protrusion of glaciers that have flowed off the continent into the Weddell Sea.
This shelf will periodically shed icebergs at its forward edge and it is currently going through an extremely dynamic phase.
In 2021, the shelf produced a berg the size of Greater Paris (1,300 sq km/810 sq miles) called A74, followed in 2023 by an even bigger block (1,500 sq km/930 sq miles) the size of Greater London, known as A81.
The origin of the new berg goes back to a major crack that was discovered in the shelf on 31 October, 2016. Predictably, it was nicknamed the “Halloween Crack”.
A further fracture perpendicular to Halloween has now cut a free-floating segment of ice that has already begun to drift out into the Weddell Sea………………..
Satellite imagery confirms the GPS data. The berg is surrounded by seawater on all sides.
The loss of so much ice from the Brunt structure these past three years has triggered a rapid acceleration in the shelf’s seaward movement.
Historically, it has flowed forward at a rate of 400-800m (1,300-2,600ft) per year. It is now moving at about 1,300m (4,300ft) a year………………………….
“This latest calving reduces the Brunt Ice Shelf to its smallest observed size,” commented remote sensing specialist Prof Adrian Luckman, from Swansea University…………………………………………… more https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c033wr32ewno
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 