War

It is perhaps fitting that I post something from Scotland.

The Scotsman is reporting 12 dead and 150 injured from the bombings in London.

The same newspaper quotes Paul Wilkinson, a terrorism expert from St Andrews University, saying “It is quite clear that a major terrorist attack has been carried out on London. The attack has all the trademarks of the al Qaeda network,” he said.

The timing of the incidents came on the opening day of the G8 summit in Scotland.

Tony Blair says the terrorist attack will not stop the meeting or change the agenda at the summit.

Information on the summit including agenda and summit papers can be found at
http://www.g8.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1097073730902 .

Greenpeace co-founder and its first President Bob Hunter died yesterday aged 63 following a battle with prostate cancer.

Hunter was a journalist by training. He wanted to stop whaling and nuclear testing and in many ways succeeded with his brand new environment group Greenpeace where others had failed.

He wanted to “affect the attitude of millions”. He approached the issues from the perspective of a media war and unashamedly used propaganda.

In an insightful review of Greenpeace’s early years, Fred Pearce has written “Greenpeace was far from being the first green group to oppose whaling. But it was the first green group to ignore the scientific arguments about whale reproduction rates, population dynamics, and how large a sustainable cull might be, in favour of an undiluted ethical argument: save the whale.”

The media war was effectively reduced to the simple issue of whether or not “whales are good”.

On the issue of nuclear testing Hunter admitted “we painted a rather extravagant picture .. tidal waves, earthquakes, radioactive death clouds, decimated fisheries, deformed babies. We never said that’s what would happen, only that it could happen”.

I have previously written about attending People for Nuclear Disarmament rallies in the early 1980s. It is for relentlessly pursuing the French and their nuclear testing program in the Pacific that I would like to thank Bob Hunter.

Messages of condolence are being posted at an online BBC site.

Noeline Franklin (High Country crusader and member of the Miles Franklin family) emailed that today we might also remember the horses that went to war.

About 160,000 horses from Australia went to WWI.

Australia’s mounted soldiers included stockmen from the High Country – mostly volunteers who took their own horses.

The story goes, that at war’s end, many of these men were asked to shoot their horses. The horses could not come home.

For Noeline, the brumbies that now roam the High Country are their descendants and represent “the free spirit of our people and the horses who never returned”.