Articles 
Hiroshima Day August 6, 2011
Hiroshima Never Again
Ban Nuclear Weapons
Troops Home Now
No Uranium Mining!
Sixty-six years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki we remember the almost 200,000 lives that were sacrificed to test nuclear weapons on people. An examination of the historical record clearly shows that the bombings were unnecessary and the ‘excuse’ of saving allied lives was a lie. Today in Japan there is a grim kind of similarity to the events of 1945 where a different city, Fukushima is threatened with a nuclear catastrophe.
The Fukushima nuclear reactor hit by a tsunami after one of the biggest earthquakes on record is still some 4 months later suffering meltdown and spewing out radiation many times the accepted limit. The Government and the electricity company have ordered residents to abandon a 30 km exclusion zone known as the ‘zone of alienation’. Radiation has leaked into the sea and ships are advised to avoid the area by 30 kms but many shipping lines are sailing
some as much as 140 kms around the area.
Now more than ever, we must redouble efforts to campaign for peace and a nuclear free future.
There are still approximately 23,300 nuclear weapons in the world today, posing a direct and constant threat to global security and human survival. Thousands are kept on hair-trigger alert ready to be launched within minutes. They divert funds from health care, education and other services.
Australia as part of a US led coalition, continues to wage and threaten war across the globe, particularly in the Middle East and North Asia. While the war in Iraq may have wound down the war in Afghanistan continues to consume the lives of Afghani civilians, Australian and other military personnel as well using up $1.3 billion per year of Australia’s taxpayers’ money. New wars are opening up in Libya and Bahrain while the ever present threat of an attack on Iran and
North Korea is never far the US’s agenda.
Australia currently spends $70 million every day on the military and the new global arms race continues despite urgent economic and environmental crises.
Australia is part of the nuclear chain by supplying political support to the US and other nuclear states to continue with their nuclear weapons programs. It is directly involved in supplying the world with uranium which fuels nuclear power and facilitates supply of fuel for nuclear weapons. The proposal to bury domestic radioactive waste on Aboriginal land is increasing pressure for Australia to host an international dump.
Senior Mirrar Traditional Owner Yvonne Margurrula, whose country includes the Ranger uranium mine in Kakadu National Park has written, “(we) convey our solidarity and support with all those people across the world who see in the events at Fukushima a dire warning of the risks posed by the nuclear industry. This is an industry that we have never supported in the past and that we want no part of into the future. We are all diminished by the awful events now unfolding
at Fukushima. “
Resources Minister Martin Ferguson is pushing ahead with plans for a national radioactive waste dump at Muckaty in the Northern Territory against the express wishes of the Northern Territory Government and many Traditional Owners.
Join the events on August 6 and say no to war. It’s time to break the nuclear chain.
More information: www.hiroshimacommittee.org
