The greater threat?

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
– Buffalo Springfield

 

I saw a US warship in the port of Brisbane last week. It was part of Talisman Sabre War Games conducted in Rockhampton. I know the Brisbane City Council says that our city is nuclear free. But are we sure there were no nuclear materials/weapons on board? I mean shells tipped with depleted uranium or nuclear weapons or nuclear powered engines.

Anti-Uranium Demonstration 22 Oct 1977
Image: 5,000 people gather in King George Square on 22 Oct 1977 before the Big March where 418 people were arrested. Inset: Senator George Georges arrested by police early in the march

What council says is partly correct … not a single box of yellow cake has been mined in or exported from Queensland since the Anti-uranium mobilisation committee, Friends of the Earth, the Civil Liberties Co-ordinating Committee, the Civil Liberties Campaign Group, Campaign Against Nuclear Power and other groups waged the longest campaign of mass defiance in Australian history for democratic rights and against Uranium mining and export.  The only longer struggle is aboriginal resistance against colonisation.

From 4 September 1977 till July 1979,  2,000 people arrested, in Brisbane and elsewhere, there were 3,000 arrests in all with the largest of 418 people being arrested in a single afternoon of 22 October 1977.

Australia should never have exported uranium.

Chernobyl
The West is being run by ultra right-wing populists like Trump and Boris Johnson. The highest ever rating HBO series, Chernobyl, gives a realistic picture of the nuclear threat to all countries on the planet. Nuclear catastrophes like Chernobyl (Russia) and Fukushima (Japan) have not stinted proliferation of nuclear weapons. Nuclear war is possible if not imminent.

The greater threat
Military aircraft entered South Korean Air Defence on Tuesday morning. Missiles were exchanged between North and South. Several countries have an interest in the conflict. Four have nuclear weapons: the U.S., China, Russia and North Korea.

In the Gulf and Mediterranean sea, military personnel have boarded and impounded oil tankers. Four of the participants in the conflict have nuclear weapons: Britain, U.S., Israel and Russia. Yet where are the Peace movements of the West?

Nationalism
Meanwhile hundreds of Hong Kong and mainland Chinese students at the University of Queensland are now in a stand-off separated by police and University security guards. Fists were thrown. Several ‘nationalisms’ were on display: Australian, Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese.

“Those who can make you believe in absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Voltaire

Ian Curr
25 July 2019

2 thoughts on “The greater threat?”

  1. uncle tungsten says:

    Yes, a mighty good question: where are the peace movements? Can we gather in August to commemorate Hiroshima day of devastation? Now is the time to start promoting. Is WILPF still active? I recently quit supporting getup be ause of its silence on the issue of peace. It is too preoccupied gaslighting its members with distractions to bother with crimes against humanity like WAR!

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