Tuesday 10 July 2012

Other people's posts that leave me humbled.

At present in Rio de Janeiro, The Second International Uranium  Film Festival is taking place. It's on until July 14th and if you visit their website, , the breadth and depth of coverage may surprise you.  This independent  film festival is, amongst  its other virtues, a rich source of the often unheard and certainly unseen history of people caught up in the nuclear legacy. http://www.uraniofestival.org/index.php/en/programme
When I was looking for some more background information about uranium mining, I came across an article written in 2009 by Winona LaDuke in Orion Magazine,  She begins by telling one of the Dine creation stories.... the people were gven the choice of two yellow powders.  They wisely chose the yellow dust of corn pollen and were told to leave the other yellow powder, uranium, in the soil and to never dig it up.  If it were to be taken from the ground, they were told, a great evil would come   http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4248/   This is someone writing who knows what they re talking about and has been involved in the outcome of uranium mining.
On Thursday, The return of Navajo Boy will be screened, in Rio de Janeiro, this film is already an acclaimed documentary, and there is a long list of others you can read about, some of which are world premieres. http://www.uraniofestival.org/index.php/en/programme  It is an exceptional list and I certainly had no idea of the range of issues covered, including uranium mining across the world.
What can I do about it all? Only what I can.  At the moment, the world waits while our future is being decided in one of the most consequential games of "Pick a sticks"  imaginable as the engineers face the problems with damaged reactors and the highly radioactive fuel rods in the spent fuel pools in Japan...
I can sign a couple of petitions.  One is for everyone to sign,  to the EPA: Don't Sacrifice Navajo Water for Uranium Mining   https://www.change.org/petitions/epa-don-t-sacrifice-navajo-water-for-uranium-mining  and the other one is for British citizens or a resident in the U.K. against nuclear power in the UK
It's the E petition  http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/1035

And I can leave you with the final question.. How many atom bombs have been dropped on the planet earth between 1945and 1989?  Is is 22...220...1212... or 2201?
The answer is in Peter Greenaway's film, nominated for a yellow Oscar, http://www.uraniofestival.org/index.php/en/programme/53-en/films/46-atomic-bombs-on-the-planet-earth