mike, also interesting is the recent sale of the rail line between adelaide and darwin to serco (specialists in nuclear waste transport).. waste?? Something does not seem right here. ready to sell? ready to lease? emma
>Interestingly, Halliburton, US Vice-President Dick Cheney's former company,
>constructed the railway line between Adelaide and Darwin, now owned by
>Serco Asia Pacific, a leader in the management and transport of Britain's
>nuclear waste.
http://www.ntnews.info/articles/article.php?section=waste&article=mon02jul07can
********************************* Hi emma,
I'm wondering whether the current foray into the Aboriginal land rights issues, by the Howard Government has something to do with the perception of a future need to find space to dump nuclear wastes and to mine more uranium for export and possible use in Australia. A vote for Howard will be a vote for nuclear power. He proposes to establish 25 nuclear reactors in a country which has plenty of sun, wind, wave and geo-thermal energy resources.
Why would the political elite go for this policy?
I suspect that the faction who Howard represents want to be able to avail themselves of the WMD option, like other ruling classes are doing. After all, Australia is a big country, with a large relatively unprotected coastline, with a small population facing a region of billions of people, soon to be living in failed States because of climate change.
>From the Occam's Razor article:
"Under the pretext of the war on terror, the threshold for use of nuclear weapons has been lowered: explicit threats to use nuclear weapons first, including pre-emptively, and in response to non-nuclear threats. The Orwellian contradiction of exploding nuclear weapons to prevent a possible attack with weapons of mass destruction or even their potential, is enshrined in military plans."
And:
"Half of weapons-usable fissile material, especially in the former Soviet Union, remains inadequately secured. 1400 tons of highly enriched uranium and 500 tons of plutonium are spread across 140 sites, including unguarded power plants, isotope production and research reactors. Only 5-10 kilograms of highly enriched uranium or 1-3 kilograms of plutonium is all that is needed for a bomb. The International Atomic Energy Agency has recorded over 650 instances of smuggling of radioactive materials, some involving sufficient quantities of fissile material for at least one nuclear weapon.
"The world's superpower has lurched in an aggressive unilateral direction, repudiating international law. The US has undermined the Non Proliferation Treaty, such as by its nuclear deal with India; been the first to withdraw from a nuclear arms control treaty; has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; failed to sign or undermined almost every international treaty, from the Kyoto Protocol, Landmines Treaty, Biological Weapons Convention, to the International Criminal Court; is investing in new more 'usable' nuclear weapons, and pressing ahead with destabilising missile defence, stimulating a renewed arms race with Russia and China.
"Nuclear terrorism in the form of a 'dirty' or radiological weapon has probably become inevitable. Terrorists have made efforts to buy, steal and build nuclear weapons; and have targeted nuclear facilities for attack. A conventional military assault on a nuclear reactor or spent fuel storage facility, well within the capacity of terrorist groups, risks catastrophic release of radioactivity akin to a nuclear explosion."
full: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2007/1995827.htm#transcript
Mike B)
Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the Earth.
http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml
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