Antinuclear

Uranium industry benefits billionaires, damages Aboriginals

to the direct benefit of billionaire mine-owners, including the uranium mine-owners Angwin represents. These measures include attempts to shut down smaller Indigenous communities and herd Aboriginal people into “hub towns”.

Leave uranium in the ground, Green Left, 8 Aug 11, @…….. Angwin slammed the eastern states’ uranium bans as “authoritarian”.   He said: “The Northern Territory and South Australia have encouraged the uranium industry for a long time. So it is not surprising that uranium development there proceeds without much fuss, despite the occasional hiccup.”

The “occasion hiccup” includes contaminating underground aquifers with radioactive tailings and the spread of radioactive dust.  Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory and South Australia suffer some of the worst effects of this radioactive contamination.

And far from enjoying the spectacular economic benefits that Angwin claimed were being denied residents of the non-uranium mining eastern states, these communities are among the poorest in Australia.

The Northern Territory intervention, perversely justified as a response to this terrible poverty, includes many measures that further take away Indigenous communities’ rights to control their ancestral lands.

This is to the direct benefit of billionaire mine-owners, including the uranium mine-owners Angwin represents. These measures include attempts to shut down smaller Indigenous communities and herd Aboriginal people into “hub towns”.

Radioactive waste, which cannot be stored safely, is inseparable from the uranium industry.

Countries with nuclear power also have growing nuclear waste stockpiles. Unsurprisingly, they are pressuring Australia, as a major uranium supplier, to host a nuclear waste dump… http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/48392

— 

August 9, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, spinbuster