Aboriginal elder saves priceless Koongarra from uranium minng
Aboriginal elder spurns million dollar offer from uranium miners http://www.mining.com/aboriginal-elder-spurns-millions-of-dollars-from-uranium-miners-58963/Marc Howe | February 6, 2013 An elder from the Djok aboriginal community has hailed a move by the federal government to prevent the mining of uranium on his ancestral lands.
On Wednesday the federal government introduced a bill to incorporate 1228 hectares of the Koongarra, the traditional land of the Djok people, into the Kakadu National Park, thus preventing efforts by uranium mines to develop the area’s resources.
Jeffrey Lee, an elder of the Djok people, welcomed the decision after fighting for over three decades to prevent uranium extraction in the area, as well as spurning million dollar offers from miners.
“I have said no to uranium mining at Koongarra because I believe that the land and my cultural beliefs are more important than mining and money,” said Mr. Lee.
A French company reportedly offered Mr. Lee $5 million to withdrawn his opposition to uranium development plans.
Although Koongarra lies within the Kakadu area, a ruling in 1979 prevented its inclusion in the park, in order to leave open the possibility of development of its uranium resources, estimated to stand at around 14,000 tonnes.
Former Prime Minister Bob Hawke as well as Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke joined Mr. Lee to make the announcement as well as hail the government’s decision.
Even Australia might fight for its uranium companies Paladin and Rio Tinto
What have interested Australian companies, or the Australian government, done to address these concerns?…….
what should we make of Australian Defence Force chief General David Hurley’s alarming indication that there might be a role for the ADF in protecting “Australian interests” in Africa?
Multinational miners: magnanimous or malevolent? Kellie Tranter – lawyer and Humna Rights Activist, FEBRUARY 1, 2013 BY KELLIE TRANTER “……..Malawi “…….Minister Carr praised the work of Australian mining company Paladin, referring to its strong corporate social responsibility. Paladin operates Malawi’s biggest uranium mine, the Kayelekera.
In June 2008, The Bench Marks Foundation released a report ‘Corporate Social Responsibility and the Mining Sector in Southern Africa’ which suggested that when Paladin struck its deal with the Malawi government to mine uranium, it was agreed that it would get a 100% capital write off, a reduction in corporate tax from 30% to 27.5% and a scrapping of the 10% resource rent tax. Paladin was also to be exempt from the standard 17.5% import VAT or duty and a royalty rate reduced from 5% to 1.5% in the first three years and 3% thereafter.
Now Malawi’s opposition party, the People’s Transformation Movement (PETRA), have given the Malawi Government a 14 day ultimatum to explain why the Kayelekera deal cannot be renegotiated. However, there are reports that the agreement with the previous government (of late President Mutharika, a former World Bank economist) includes a clause that the government will not take any action that will seriously change the financial aspects of the project for the period of 10 years. Residents are also concerned that the Malawi Government retains only a 15% equity in Paladin (Africa) Limited (PAL) a subsidiary of Paladin and has given “breathing space” on taxes for 10 years. Continue reading
Australian uranium company ERA closed its only mine, made big loss
Australia uranium miner ERA books steep 2012 loss http://www.marketwatch.com/story/australia-uranium-miner-era-books-steep-2012-loss-2013-01-31 By Ross Kelly SYDNEY–-Energy Resource of Australia Ltd. said Thursday annual losses deepened to 218.8 million Australian dollars (US$227.4 million) due to weak uranium prices, a high Australian dollar and the cost of rehabilitating a recently-depleted mine bordering Kakadu National Park.
The company, which counts Rio Tinto Ltd. as its largest shareholder, said the net loss for the year to Dec.31 compared to a A$153.6 hole in 2011.
ERA stopped mining at its only producing pit, Ranger, in November and will process stockpiled ore while it decides whether to build a new underground mine there. The company produced 3,710 metric tons of uranium oxide in 2012 and forecast production sourced from stockpiles in 2013 of between 2,700 and 3,300 tons.
ERA also announced that its chairman, David Klinger, would retire next month and be replaced by current non-executive director Peter McMahon.
Australian uranium companies use taxpayer funds to set up overseas aid, and look good
Paladin, which has been the subject of some controversy in Malawi over job cuts, was last year linked to a funding application through its employees’ charity – Friends and Employees of Paladin for African Children.
Paladin’s (African) Ltd general manager, international affairs, Greg Walker, who was invited late last year to be Australia’s honorary consul to Malawi, was involved in the process, according to 2012 correspondence from Australia’s ambassador to Zimbabwe, Matthew Neuhaus, to Mr Walker. The letter obtained under freedom of information confirmed Mr Walker’s successful application for the employees’ charity funding proposal.
The Aidwatch director Thulsi Narayanasamy said it was not the place of the Australian aid program to fund the corporate social responsibility programs of wealthy mining companies.
Firms use tax money for aid projects : http://www.smh.com.au/money/tax/firms-use-tax-money-for-aid-projects-20130129-2ditd.html#ixzz2Jbp0RzOT January 30, 2013 Rory Callinan
WEALTHY resource companies operating overseas are tapping into Australian taxpayer funds to set up aid projects potentially benefiting their corporate social responsibility credentials.
Aid and mining watchdogs have expressed concerns about the practice, arguing the corporations are wealthy enough to bankroll their own aid and that linking donations to controversial mine operations is a conflict of interest.
Nine mining companies all operating in Africa have been linked to the successful applications via the Foreign Affairs Department’s Direct Aid Program – a scheme that allows heads of missions to give up to $30,000 to local causes.
About $215,000 of taxpayers’ money went to the mining company-conceived projects last financial year, including a school for the deaf, providing trade skill training to local workers, establishing women’s groups and digging wells. Two applications involved uranium mining companies, Paladin Energy in Malawi and Bannerman Resources in Namibia. Continue reading
Australia has lost its moral compass on nuclear disarmament and non proliferation
despite the window of opportunity that Australia has open to it as chair of a number of relevant committees on the UN Security Council, Carr’s recent statements are devoid of any talk of global disarmament, or of a just dialogue between Iran, Israel and the West. The Australian government instead seems intent on reforging the policy bonds of the “Coalition of the Willing” which proved so morally, politically and economically disastrous in 2003.
Julia Gillard must not continue to take Australia further down the path of moral decay in the area of non-proliferation and disarmament as I’ve elsewhere argued she has done. Now on the Security Council, Australia must use its role to push for what Prime Minster Gillard herself promised in the candidate brochure:
… a lead role in advancing disarmament and non-proliferation efforts and continuing our longstanding efforts to promote respect for international law.
The decay of Australia’s nuclear ethic, Aljazeera, NAJ Taylor, 26 Jan 13, Australia must use its new position in the UN Security Council to push for conciliation with Iran. Within three days of Australia taking the chair of the UN Security Council committees overseeing “Iran’s WMD proliferation activities”, Foreign Minister Bob Carr announced that Australia is to adopt severe economic sanctions against Iran that are “broadly aligned” with those already actioned by the US, Britain and European Union.
Thursday’s announcement is bitterly disappointing, for it draws to the fore a deep moral inconsistency in Australia’s recent nuclear dealings.
Simply put, Iran is alleged to have an active nuclear weapons programme, despite it having undertaken a number of international obligations – including the primary instrument of the nuclear regime, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Continue reading
Australian government kept secret on atomic bomb tests’ effects on Aborigines
a detailed description of how nuclear authorities denied diagnosis for decades, “lost” medical records, when diagnosis of survivors was made 3 decades after the event, the event which caused the symptoms was not referenced and specifically in relation to recurrent local radiation injury to skin, which can become a chronic and cyclic event, outbreaks of symptoms recurring in cycles over decades. This is diagnosed in at least some cases, one specifically known to me, not as local radiation injury (beta burn) but as psoriasis.
It is an easy thing to deny diagnosis, as was done – affected people asked for diagnosis in 1953 and later and doctors in Australia REFUSED to give a diagnosis.
Now, in 2013, British authorities claim nothing can be proven to show it is liable for the suffering and death it visited by its actions and in concert with Australian authorities upon Aboriginal people
Aboriginal Truth Buried Under Atomic Fudge, Paul Langley’s Nuclear history Blog, 19 Jan 13 The refusal of British authorities to acknowledge that British nuclear weapon testing in Australia in the 1950s and related “minor trials” which continued into the 1960s (including some which contravened the spirit if not the bones of the LTBT) and the Operation Brumby “cleanup” which resulted in a worsened situation of contamination on Aboriginal land.
For many years a sign on the road from Maralinga to Oak Valley warned people to stay in their vehicles.
On this same land Aboriginal people hunted and hunt and gather.
A Vulcan bomber fired a loaded but disarmed nuclear missile over the Maralinga Range. The missile overshot its target, resulting in the missile disintegrating and spreading plutonium dust over a wide area off of the Range.
In the 1980s the Adelaide Advertiser reported on the discovery of plutonium in the Oak Valley school yard and buildings. The white teachers refused to work and returned to Adelaide. The people of Oak Valley had to continue to live there. Continue reading
UK secretly to exploit Australian outback again, testing killer drones
Drones have become a mainstay of warfare but are shrouded in secrecy. The US, ramping up its drone program under President Barack Obama, has used them against “kill list” targets in place such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.
Britain’s Taranis tests Australia appealed because it contains a lot of wide open spaces with next to no electromagnetic signals. He believed the tests would take place around Woomera in South Australia…..
It is estimated about 3000 people have been killed in US drone strikes, including hundreds of civilians
$190 million drone coming to Australia, The Age Asher Moses, January 16, 2013 An unmanned British stealth drone that can fly faster than the speed of sound and go undetected by radar will soon have its first test flight in Australia.
The £125 million ($190 million) Taranis, named after the Celtic god of thunder, can attack targets across continents, automatically dodge missiles and other efforts to bring it down and independently identify targets. It can refuel in mid-air and carry weapons including laser guided bombs and missiles.
Designed to avoid having to put human lives at risk (?) Continue reading
The Western lifestyle is not our only choice, we can change
the visionary realm of the Aborigines represents one of the great experiments in human thought
Studies of the human genome leave no doubt that the genetic endowment of humanity is a single continuum. Race is a fiction. We are all cut from the same genetic cloth, all descendants of a relatively small number of individuals who walked out of Africa some 60,000 years ago and then, on a journey that lasted 40,000 years, some 2,500 generations carried the human spirit to every corner of the habitable world.
It follows, as Boas believed, that all cultures share essentially the same mental acuity, the same raw genius. …..
The Victorian notion of the savage and the civilised, with European industrial society sitting proudly at the apex of a pyramid of advancement that widens at the base to the so-called primitives of the world, has been thoroughly discredited – indeed, scientifically ridiculed for the racial and colonial notion that it was, as relevant to our lives today as the belief of 19th-century clergymen that the Earth was but 6,000 years old….. Continue reading
How Australia betrayed its nuclear non proliferation principles
The Lowy Institute’s dangerous nuclear propaganda, Online Opinion, Jim Green, 28 December 12 “……India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea are the four nuclear weapons states outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Five countries are ‘declared’ nuclear weapons states within the NPT − the USA, Russia, UK, France and China. The declared weapons states are obliged under the NPT to seriously pursue nuclear disarmament, though none of them do so and nothing is done to hold them to account.
For many years it was bipartisan policy in Australia to permit uranium sales to NPT states (including declared weapons states) but not to countries outside the NPT. Continue reading
Julian Assange’s Christmas speech
The WikiLeaks boss also mentioned his plans to run for a seat in the Australian Senate, indicating confidence that he would win in next year’s federal election. “In Australia, an unelected senator will be replaced by one that is elected,” he stated.
‘We continue to stand up to bullies’ ’ every day ordinary people teach us that democracy is free speech.’
(includes video )Assange: WikiLeaks to release over a million new docs in 2013
http://rt.com/news/assange-wikileaks-christmas-speech-511/ 20 December, 2012, Despite all the difficulties the WikiLeaks faced in 2012, Julian Assange vowed to publish some 1,000,000 new documents in the coming year. In his Christmas speech he called for people to continue fighting for democracy “from Tahrir to London.” Continue reading
Is Australia “The Ugly Australian” in Africa – aid money going to mining companies?
AID MONEY USED TO SUPPORT MINING CSR PROJECTS http://acan.org.au/2012/10/aid-money-used-to-support-mining-csr-projects/ A group of Australian and international civil society groups, lead primarily by AID/WATCH, have written an open letter to Foreign Minister, Bob Carr, expressing concern that Australian aid money is supporting the CSR initiatives of Australian mining firms, particularly in Africa. Continue reading
Desperate uranium mining companies squabble as price falls
Did rivals try to scupper BHP’s uranium sale to Cameco?Mining.com, Frik Els | November 23, 2012 The West Australian reports rumours have been circulating in the state’s mining community that Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO) and Paladin Energy
(TSX:PDN) attempted to sabotage BHP Billiton’s (LON:BHP) $448 million sale of uranium property Yeelirrie to Canada’s Cameco (TSX:CCO)….. The paper said Rio denied the rumours while none of the other parties commented, and that the deal is likely to be OK’d in any event.
Spot uranium prices have been drifting towards the $40 per pound level this year – well below the $66.50 prior to Fukushima disaster in Japan and down from historic high levels above $130 in 2007.
Last year nuclear power consumption declined 4.3%, the largest drop-off on record, said BP in its annual study of global energy use. Japan cut back nuclear power by 44.3%, and Germany reduced nuclear consumption by 23.2%.
http://www.mining.com/did-rivals-try-to-scupper-bhps-uranium-sale-to-cameco-87504/
Australia’s Aboriginal Mirrar people warn about uranium mining
Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation November 23rd 2012 Traditional owners directly affected by uranium mining in the Northern Territory, the Mirarr people of Kakadu, have rejected suggestions that the Ranger uranium mine provides a model for Queensland to follow and called on others to heed their experience.
Supporters of the LNP’s decision to open Queensland to uranium mining, including the Australian Uranium Association head Michael Angwin, have made public claims about the ‘excellent’ track record of Ranger uranium mine.
“The suggestion that Ranger provides a blueprint for Queensland must be contested,” said Justin O’Brien, executive officer of Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, the organisation established and operated by the Mirarr to represent their rights and interests.
The Mirarr, traditional owners of lands in the Kakadu region, including the Ranger and Jabiluka uranium deposits, have the longest lived experience of uranium mining in Australia. The Ranger mine was imposed on Mirarr against their strong opposition and has been operating for 30 years.
“Despite three decades of mining royalties, the socioeconomic standing of local Indigenous people remains below that of the NT average and well below the national standard. It is only in very recent years that income from Ranger has been adequately invested in social and cultural development programs,” Mr O’Brien said.
“The suggestion that Ranger’s track record confirms the high environmental standard of Australia’s uranium mining industry is in stark contrast to the Mirarr experience of mining on their land. Water and tailings management at the mine continue to cause serious concerns and what environmental gains we have secured have been hard fought for over decades.
“In addition, the Mirarr hold grave concerns about the legacy of uranium mining as well as the impact of its products. The fact that Australian uranium was in the failed reactors at Fukushima that have caused so much damage and human misery remains a source of great sadness for the Mirarr.
Gloomy times: Australia’s uranium companies, like Paladin
Given a downturn in nuclear reactors globally, the oversupply and stockpiling of uranium in Japan and the launch of new uranium mining projects in Canada, there is little evidence to indicate any meaningful revival in the uranium price.
Paladin’s continuing failings a warning for small uranium miners http://ccwa.org.au/blogs/paladin%E2%80%99s-continuing-failings-warning-small-uranium-miners#.UK-2DuR9JLt November 22nd 2012 by Mia.Pepper The Conservation Council of WA has been following the activities of Perth based uranium miner Paladin in collaboration with a number of other environmental NGO’s and social justice groups globally. In consultation with local groups in Malawi and Namibia, where Paladin have operating mines, we have prepared a number of questions that we will be asking at their Annual General Meeting on the 22nd November 2012.
CCWA are concerned that Paladin’s proposed cost cuts will exacerbate existing problems at the company’s mines in Africa. Given the poor economic climate for uranium mining and with some indication from the board that the company is in trouble – we are concerned that the company may abandon projects in the future with no compensation or effective clean up of their existing mine sites.
Background information on Paladin’s operations: Continue reading
Australian Senator puts searchlight onto government’s messed up nuclear waste dump plan
21 November 2012. A new earthquake hazards map produced by Geoscience Australia reveals Tennant Creek – near the proposed site for a nuclear waste dump – is an area of high earthquake risk. Report: http://www.ga.gov.au/earthquakes/
Following revelations that an alternative site for the waste dump was under active consideration, Australian Greens spokesperson for nuclear policy Senator Scott Ludlam noted the Federal Government appeared increasingly desperate on the issue.
“The Government is now scrambling to solve a mess of its own creation, repeating the same errors as before. Parking Australia’s radioactive waste on Muckaty station, far from centres of technical expertise and against the wishes of local people, that’s bad enough. Doing it in an earthquake zone compounds the offence.
“What we need is an independent commission with the technical expertise to find a world’s best standard solution for Australia’s inventory of radioactive waste. What we’re getting is a shed with two security guards, stuck on a site chosen by politicians – which happens to be in an earthquake zone.”
Senator Ludlam today put extensive questions through the Senate to Minister Martin Ferguson on what consultation is underway for selecting an alternative site: http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/content/questions-notice/questions-relating-site-selection-nuclear-waste
Senator Ludlam’s speech yesterday asking why questions asked one month earlier had not been answered: http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/content/speeches-parliament/unanswered-questions-notice-regarding-muckaty-nuclear-waste-dump And answers received today: http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/sites/default/files/sqon2389_answer.pdf
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