Greens MPs

This piece by Christine ran in Crikey's email today.

Late in August, while the Business Council of Australia was making its ambit claim to limit Australia's emissions reductions to no more than 10% cuts by 2020, the famous North-west Passage around the north of Canada opened.

A few days later, just as Martin Ferguson was circulating his "softened" emissions trading proposal to big polluters, the North-east passage, around Russia, also opened.

Both these historically and strategically significant events have occurred individually in recent years as the Arctic summer ice has progressively melted. But this is the first time in human history that both passages have been open simultaneously, making the North Polar ice cap an island, and the consequences are far-reaching.

August 6th is the 63rd anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city of Hiroshima. I've just spent four days in a city where the memories are not only fresh, but engraved in stone, protected in world heritage-listed monuments, and taught urgently to young and old, local and foreign alike.
The Japanese have a word for the survivors of the twin atomic attacks on August 6 and 9, 1945. They call them Hibakusha, those for whom nuclear weapons signify something other than peace marches.

Wonderfully uplifting news today that Colombian Green presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, has been freed! Betancourt, who had been taken hostage by FARC revolutionary guerillas 6 years ago, was finally released in an apparently extraordinary operation with no loss of life or even injuries.

The Chief of Defence Force (CDF) Air Marshall Angus Houston, told the Senate Estimates hearing today that the war in Afghanistan may last another ten years. Not only that, but the CDF said that without a lot more troops on the ground, we face "strategic failure" in Afghanistan.

Deep in the jungles of New Guinea the Melanesians of West Papua helped Australian diggers fight the Japanese. They carried wounded men, ammunition and supplies through difficult terrain. They provided food and worked at the massive naval base in Hollandia.

How does the Howard government, that rarely hesitates to wrap itself in the flag, repay this debt of honour? By turning away West Papuan asylum seekers who seek our protection, and turning a blind eye to the Indonesian military colonialism that many experts equate as genocide.