Over 75 tons of essential medical supplies have been safely transported to Lebanon via sea, following a joint operation between Greenpeace and Medecins Sans Frontieres, in which three voyages were made by the Rainbow Warrior between Larnaca in Cyprus and Beirut.
The Rainbow Warrior has returned to Larnaca, Cyprus, after its second trip to Beirut delivering a total of 60 tonnes of urgently needed humanitarian supplies on behalf of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). A further hundred tonnes are still scheduled to be transported.
The Nobel Peace Prize, founded on a fortune made from explosives, has gone to the agency whose job it is to promote nuclear power without promoting nuclear weapons, and the man who heads it. Anybody with that job probably deserves some kind of prize.
The Howard government seems to think so after it removed American teacher and peace activist, Scott Parkin, from Australia this morning.
His crime: advocating peace, which the government views as a threat to national security.
No one wants to see another Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Even so, there are 30, 000 nuclear weapons on this planet and the countries with these nuclear weapons refuse to disarm them.
That is why last month we asked the public to speak up for peace and demand an end to the on-going nuclear weapons threat by creating a peace flag to fly at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki peace commemorations, which took place (August 6-9) throughout Australia.
Australian Peace and Disarmament campaigner, Kieran Longridge writes from Hiroshima, where she attended the commemoration ceremonies and a Mayors for Peace conference.
On 6 August 1945 the US dropped the world’s first nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, and then another three days later on Nagasaki. The death, suffering and destruction that followed were unprecedented in the history of war. More than 100,000 people died instantly, generations were afflicted and died of illnesses caused by radiation.
To mark the twentieth anniversary of the bombing of the Greenpeace flagship, the Rainbow Warrior (II) is in Matauri Bay, New Zealand to join in a moving Maori ceremony.
Three US naval ships in Sydney harbour received a different sort of welcome yesterday, when peace groups including church leaders, doctors and environmentalists united to question naval commanders over the weapons that may be carrying.
