When I was a kid in the '50s I was terrified by a Hollywood movie that was actually shot in Melbourne, "On the Beach", about the end of the world after a nuclear war. In the '60s my terror was renewed by a film by Peter Watkins called "War Games" about a nuclear attack on England. In the '70s I heard a talk given by Dr. Helen Caldicott, the anti-nuclear campaigner, describing the shocking injuries nuclear radiation creates and the number of children already suffering with cancer. All this instilled in me a great fear of nuclear technology, an ingrained disgust and determination to resist it however I could.
I joined a group of fringe-lunatics to riot on the docks of White Bay in Sydney and stop the export of uranium thru this city, and tho I was arrested 3 times we succeeded and the poison never came thru Sydney docks again, shifting instead to Darwin where the rednecks were more complacent. We also camped for months in protest outside the Lucas Heights Nuclear reactor on the edge of Sydney, eventually getting bulldozed by the reactionary workers and locals but, just as we warned, there have been many accidents over the years with radiation released into the environment. Thus this is a very emotive subject for me, maybe I'm not super-rational about it, yet I can't help but believe it's big business and profits that push nuclear power as an option, not the interests of the public or environment.
So it was with great sadness that conservationists witnessed this week the signing of contracts to sell uranium to China. John Howard and cabal don't mind throwing pensioners on the street and getting the working poor to live more poor or not work at all, for "They've" got vast lurks and perks to pad their fortresses, million dollar pensions, free travel, probably even got secret Swiss bank accounts, having sold their souls for filthy lucre. Maybe they were promised a berth in the VIP nuclear fallout shelters, but "They're" old scumbags, on their way out anyway, and so don't really care about "Their" grandchildren, or maybe "Their" millions will protect "Them" too. But the rest of humanity is doomed, for the nuclear cat is being shaken out of it's bag, the poisonous apple of nuclear knowledge has been well and truly bitten, and nuclear proliferation can only increase over the next century.
It's now on public record that China supplied nuclear know-how to Pakistan's successful A-bomb tests a few years back, and that a certain Pakistani nuclear scientist has been responsible for selling nuclear technology world-wide, specifically to Iran and North Korea. On top of these horrors, there's no way safe-guards can be installed on China's use of Aussie uranium, "They" can forge paper-work, make mock videos, whatever, and anyway divert the extra uranium from other sources into "Their" weapons program, or sell it to Korea, "Their" renegade client state, who have just test-fired more missiles capable of reaching Australia and Japan, and so the shit may indeed come back to haunt us.
America and the rest of the world are already worried about China's vast, growing military strength, wondering why "They" need such colossal armed forces if not for eventual world hegemony. Nogod help the world if another Genghis Khan should arise again, we've already got George Bush and that's bad enough!! India is particularly worried as She has gone to war twice with China not so long ago over border disputes and China would love to grab much of the Himalayan region and add it to Tibet, and "They" have many nuclear missiles aimed at India for that eventuality.
The nuclear power industry is now a fait-accompli all around the world, ignoring its terrible expense, safety and storage of waste problems, and the police state needed in the running of it, so that elitist class-ridden capitalism can keep making shit products we don't really need like electric bum-scrapers and nose-pickers. (On Bushy Brown-nose Howard's recent return from a junket in America, he announced it was time Auz considered building nuclear reactors for power, as if General Electric and Co had got his ear and scolded him for Auz being one of the few countries to eschew the nuclear power option, a bad example to high capitalism, and brainwashed him into brow-beating us Aussies into going for it, probably bribing him into ignoring our huge solar-power potential.
China is destroying It's environment chasing the holy dollar and flogging cheap crap to the rest of the world, dismantling our home-grown industries, such as shoe manufacturing with "Their" product which falls off the feet after 3 months. I've never wished to have children and grandchildren, for the future looks extremely bleak for further generations. There are too many people on the planet now, the Earth's environment can really only handle 2 billion, and the political/mercantile elite's answer will be to have wars, biological and nuclear wars, where a few billion can be bumped off without too much worry, "They and Theirs" will be ensconced in "Their" protective fall-out fortresses, the rest of us are just cannon fodder, sheep for the slaughter, blood and guts to fuel "Their" exorbitant lifestyles, yaghts with gold-plated taps, ozone-ripping private jets, arse-stuffing caviar etc.
As with the petroleum lobbies, so with the nuclear industries, there is no consideration or investment in alternative power sources, wind, solar, thermal, tidal, etc etc, it's more viable to invest in nuclear proliferation and thus risk nuclear war and truly return humanity to the stone-age where we the plebs can be neo-Neanderthals picking fleas from each others' hairy backs, if we're alive at all, with our skin intact. The vested interest's ventriloquist dummy, our Prime Minister John Howard, said this week that all those who opposed uranium sales were techno-neanderthals, out of touch with contemporary needs. His terminology was spot on and prescient for Neanderthals is what "Their" techno efforts will make us, an extinct species.
Maybe I come across as a crack-pot Luddite? To reiterate, nuclear power is a supposed "clean energy" and a fait-accompli but can we really afford it? This is just one more useless howl of frustration from the back alley by the Punk Pussy Cat with his lunatic fringe!
P.S. In the not too distant future the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan would blow up due to natural disaster and man-made error, poisoning the environment and threatening the people for eons to come,thus backing my forebodings.
