"australian families deserve..."

no, they don't. what they've got is what they deserve.

if you want more, you must do more. stop playing oliver twist, get off your knees, demand democracy!

action, now! or i'll be really, really rude.

It is indeed a sobering and shocking thought that our politicians are ignoring the greatest threat of all - nuclear war, and its precursor, nuclear weapons.
As Sue Wareham points out - those who were previously "hawks" - ppeople like Robert MacNamara, have now joined with ICAN and the many proponents of peace to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. It is no longer a cause for the "tree-huggers" "greenies" "radicals" etc.

Just like concern about global warming, concern about nuclear weapons is now a "mainstream" matter. It is almost laughable to see the way this concern is ignored by our so-called leaders.

But - equally - opposition to the entire nuclear industry is completely bound up with opposition to nuclear weapons and concern about nuclear war.

It is no coincidence that democratic countries that have experienced nuclear power are finding that they just can't raise interest from investors in new nuclear plants. Nuclear power is just so expensive and impractical that it can only be set up with guaranteed tax-payer funding. Taxpayeres in Britain and U.S.A do not want to subsidise this industry. In France, the massive tax-payer subsidy is hidden. In Russia and China - well - again, the state pays the costs.

Why do these countries want nuclear power? It must surely be as just a fig-leaf for nuclear weapons programs.

And Australia's role in all this? Australia has the shameful role of flogging off our uranium, pretending we don't know that it will result in more nuclear weapons. For example - our present government wants to sell uranium to India, which hasn't even signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. Australia is to sell uranium to Russia, helping Russia not only to develop its nuclear weaponry, but also to supply Iran.

Australia - well placed to be a world leader in clean renewable technologies - is poised to become the nuclear quarry and waste dump of the world - as well as to promote nuclear weapons.

Shame on us!
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

A typical empty green rant - full of information, but totally lacking in any meaningful suggestion of what to do. I am as concerned as anybody that the international lunatic fringe (and here I particularly include North Korea, Iran, Pakistan and Israel) possesses, or is working to possess, nuclear weaponry. But what should, or could, we do. Not mining Australian uranium will not have any effect - uranium is quite ubiquitous in the earth's crust and a country determined enough to get some will mine and process their own regardless of the price. Saying "please play nicely with the other kids" won't do much either.

We in Australia need to realise that nuclear power generation is not necessarily linked to nuclear weaponry. Then we can move towards progressively replacing CO2 producing coal-fired power stations and replacing them with nuclear power stations. Climate change, to borrow a phrase, is a clear and present danger. CO2 emission must be halted. Neither the world as a whole not this country is going to reduce its energy consumption. The only solution present technology provides is nuclear power generation.

And hope that fusion is not too far behind.

Well-intentioned Person

Please consider.

Australian campaigns and policies on nuclear disarmament have obviously been irrelevant since 1945.

Russia has 16,000 nuclear warheads. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_weapons 6,000 more than the 10,000 you (selectively) quote for the US.

Soft left campaigns of making Western countries feel guilty are out of date as weapons have since proliferated to Pakistan, India, North Korea and soon Iran.

Japan could very quickly become a nuclear power http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_atomic_program#Current_nuclear_activities_in_Japan :

"...Japan has the third largest nuclear energy production after the U.S. and France, and plans to produce over 40% of its electricity using nuclear power by 2010. Significant amounts of Plutonium are created as a by-product of the energy production, and Japan had 4.7 tons of plutonium in December 1995...Japan has also developed the M-5 three-stage solid fuel rocket, similar in design to the U.S. LGM-118A Peacekeeper ICBM."

Hence, the Japanese may tire of their morally forgetful post Hiroshima status (Japan killed 30 million people in WWII) and start building their own Bombs.

Time to think up something more effective than attempting to shame Australia's governing parties.

Pete
http://spyingbadthings.blogspot.com/

Sue, thankyou for that article.

Pete, ICAN is a new International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear weapons with the aim of establishing a binding Nuclear Weapons Convention. See http://www.icanw.org/securing-our-survival for why and how this will work.

Renowned environmental journalist George Monbiot is right to go further than to agree that there should be no nuclear weapons in the Middle East (The Guardian, 20/7), that “Iran isn’t starting an atomic arms race, it is joining one”.

The nuclear power industry has continually demonstrated its complicity to nuclear weapons via infrastructure, expertise, covert research, nuclear fuels themselves and ineffective uranium “safeguards”, which neither guarantee inspections nor apply to military nuclear facilities.

Climate change seems to have surpassed the still-present, if not dangerously complacent, nuclear threat as far as being media “mainstream”, yet it remains in the interests of us all be tackled as an equal -- and pro-actively is our only option.

In the words of the Governator of a leading solar power state:
"A nuclear disaster will not hit at the speed of a glacier melting. It will hit with a blast. It will not hit with the speed of the atmosphere warming but of a city burning. Clearly, the attention focused on nuclear weapons should be as prominent as that of global climate change."

With Australia being a major world supplier of yellowcake to nuclear weapons nations, this Saturday Australians have a choice to vote
nuclear-free. I urge voters to see the scorecard at http://www.VoteNuclearFree.net or become a friend at http://www.myspace.com/votenuclearfree to help them decide.

And keep this in mind: just a fraction of today’s 27,000 nuclear weapons risks another most catastrophic climate change within minutes: nuclear winter.

I think that the possession by nuclear weapons by a few major countries was a force for peace, and I think that the chances of a major nuclear exchange between them are negligible. But the more recent proliferation is more dangerous. The Australian Government will never be a major player in this, but it has been involved in the positive developments in North Korea, and it’s justification for intervention in Iraq was based – at least in part – on Saddam’s apparent development of WMDs.

I’ve expressed scepticsim on the merits of the advanced global warming argument elsewhere, and won’t repeat it. But Nigel Lawson (former UK Chancellor and father of sexy chef Nigella) made some good points, quoted in The Australian today. He noted that humans prosper both in Helsinki (average temperature 5C) and Singapore (27C), so that an average rise of 2C or so over a century should not exceed our ability to adapt. He also notes that if the costs of warming estimated by the IPCC are correct, then in 2100 our descendants’ income will be 2.7 time ours if we ignore warming, 2.6x if we do. The figures for the developing world are 9.5x and 8.5x. Hardly disastrous, and indicating that future generations will have far higher resources than we do with which to address any issues.

Let’s keep some perspective here

Faustino quoted Helsinki and Singapore as places where people lived in apparent comfort in spite of extremes in temperature. I hardly consider either places as food bowls for the rest of the world and THAT is what climate change will effect so much, not to mention rising sea levels and resultant security.

For some perspective, Faustino, unfortunately "the chances of a major nuclear exchange between them are negligible" is based purely on hope and purely on what we know of the past - despite several documented accounts of coming close to nuclear conflict either by aggression, misunderstanding/false alarm or accident.

20 Mishaps That Might Have Started Accidental Nuclear War:
http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/issues/accidents/20-mishaps-maybe-caused-nuclear-war.htm

"The human race cannot coexist with nuclear weapons."
- Iccho Itoh, Mayor of Nagasaki, Nagasaki Peace Declaration, 9 August 1995

“To launch (nuclear) weapons against a nuclear-equipped opponent would be suicidal. To do so against a non-nuclear enemy would be militarily unnecessary, morally repugnant and politically indefensible.”
- Former US Secretary of Defence, Robert MacNamara, “Apocalypse Soon”, May/June2005

"You cannot simultaneously prevent & prepare for war. The very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war."
- Albert Einstein

http://www.VoteNuclearFree.net
http://www.myspace.com/votenuclearfree

Hey people! - assisted by their servile 'coalition of the willing', U$ warmongers have been continuing to wage nuclear war on innocent civilian populations in the former Democratic Republic of Yugoslavia, in Afghanistan and I-rak - Gulf War 1 and the current fiasco - deploying 84tons, 1000tons and some 4000tons of Depleted Uranium (DU) ordnance on those three theatres of war. Large areas of all three countries are today contaminated by radioactive waste that is not only killing untold numbers of innocent civilians and their horribly deformed newborn and aborted foetuses, AND foreign military veterans and peacekeeping personnel, but is being uplifted in dust-storms and encircling the globe.

This latest 'strategic initiative' has greatly assisted the owners and profiteers of the Nuclear Power Industry who have discovered the ideal way for saving costs in disposing of highly toxic nuclear waste ... by giving it away to the insatiably greedy owners, 'executive' employees and shareholders of the huge U$ weapons manufacturers ... for the cost of transportation!

How's THAT for management 'efficiency' and 'forward planning'?

Ah well, as they say in the MBA program ... "Waste not, want not".

What they WON'T say in the MBA program is "What goes around, comes around"!

I think that both of these 2 "HoT" issues can b solved by just ensuring that
*Rudd* doesn't bcome a *Bilby Traitor*

I put it to U all, is *Islam* supposed to believe that the world's worst WMD abusers,
who armed saddam with agents most vile to abuse Iraqi's, Kurds & Iranians alike
have anyone's other than their own interests at heart?

No, the political/military/industrial complex must answer to a civilian authority.

But when U have a turkey in *porkie's central* who appears to invariably follow the advice of blood shedders who have, it seems plain to me, gone "PitBull" & have no intention of leaving, U end up left in a situation of hatred being perpetually fuelled by the reaction of relatives to the shedding of innocent blood.

& don't b fooled on this issue *Poppets*

If U want to bay for the blood of the *Bali Bombers*
& reckon things by an "Eye for an Eye"
then do so in the knowledge that *Al'Quaida* has a lot of catch up to do.

well may we say:
" ... alas indeed the futility of war. ... "

(some *German Blue* perhaps, ChaMomile that is.)

I simply cannot understand the mental processes behind this article. I suppose that is because I do not subscribe to the soft-left position that human nature is steadily progressing. I happen to believe that human nature has stayed at the same level, admittedly at an abysmally low level, since the beginning of recorded history, and will not change any millenium soon. I don't know how anyone can read the last ten thousand years of recorded history without coming to the same conclusion. That is why I agree with some of the other posters that nuclear weapons, so far, have been one of the greatest forces for peace in history. But for nuclear weapons it is almost certain that a major war would have been fought between Russia and America during the period that, thankfully, can be called the cold war.

Why is it so hard for women, in particular, to realise that men LOVE war. A large part of popular entertainment is sport (pretend war), businesses conduct price wars, and so on. It is in the genes, and will not disappear quickly. The only way to prevent war is to guarantee that war will result in the destruction of each side.

We are about to enter a very dangerous period in world history when the standard of living everywhere will have to be reduced because of peak oil. The usual way for nations to decide who gets a scarce resource and who gets nothing is to have a little war. Coupled with the population explosion, and the resulting wave of refugees from the third world trying to enter the west, it will be a very trying time, when we can be grateful that we have a sea boundary.

It could be that mankind is doomed. What is clear, however, is that the only way I know to prevent nuclear weapons being used would be for Russia and the US to tell the other nuclear states that any use would be regarded as an attack on both of them, and that they would then combine to pulverise the offending state.