Uranium, China, Australia, Taiwan

Well why the bloody hell am I not surprised that the federal government is selling uranium to China? and why do I think its the most stupidest decison they have made (this week)?

First of all, second of all, and third of all: Money
Obviously domestic pressures would never see Australia have a nuclear power station (for all the right reasons ofcourse), so what are they going to do with all the stuff sitting in the ground (by the way, aboriginal land, where the traditional owners don't want a mine, and don't want a waste dump put back in there to pollute their land and their health either). Export it. Where? Anywhere where public information is limited and controlled, and political oppression is rife and demand for energy for a booming industrialising economy is high, and the government and the big businesses licking their arse can do whatever they want. The offshore businesses loves you, the onshore businesses loves you, you get a big chunk of GDP growth/foreign reserves, voters are happy cos the nuke waste isn't coming back here, wah lah, k'ching!

No empathy for the environment nor public health
The environmental impact of radio active activity and waste is obviously extremely severe. Areas near the Chinobyl disaster is still badly contaminated and highly radio active (researchers need to enter in high-level protection suits) after almost 20 years after the disaster, never mind the cancers and feotal deformities of the people exposed to the radio activity in that area. This is considered short term. So think about what the long term impacts will be of other nuclear accidents. Over 22 known nuclear accidents around the world from power stations and other experiments have happened since Chynobyl. Given the fact that the Australian Government wants to contrain Australia in an energy system from 2 centuries ago rather than investing more towards renewable energy research and development, its not really that surprising that the environment isn't given much consideration in this decision to sell uranium off to China. I refer you to "Blowing In The Wind", a documentary by David Bradbury about the environmental destruction and health affects to local indigenous ppl from uranium mining and nuclear waste storage in South Australia (and other places) for an Australia context of the issue.

And now comes China, the most accident prone country in the world. They are prone to easily avoidable disasters because of corruption and lack of stricter controls in their rapidly growing industries. over 5000 miners died in coal mine disasters in China last year alone. Imagine what's going to happen in a completely new field of nuclear fission with a much greater risk of destruction to human life compared to coal mining.

Bringing Cross-Strait Arms Race to a New High
Great - China and Taiwan hates each other, and have been building up their arms on both sides of the coast of the Taiwan Strait for over 50 years. US sells billions of dollars worth of (old/retiring) arms over to Taiwan to deter China's edging military buildup each year. China buys more from other sources so it could just top Taiwan. Next year Taiwan stocks up more. On it goes. I ask you, if you were Taiwanese, would you feel safer if you had MORE weapons or less? Not the point, but certainly a sad one I should point out.

So here Australia goes fuelling this whole thing. China "promises" that its not going to use the uranium for weapons (as a signatory of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty) but Taiwan, who is not a signatory to the NPT, (Only BY DEFAULT not cos they are a rougue state, but cos they got kicked out of the UN and China won't let them back in) does not have an obligation not to develop nuke weapons. How do you think this make China (who loves their bloody ugly face, on top of it all) feel? They could never be trusted at the first place not to develop nukes in secret anyway, and now Taiwan possessing more uranium is going to ENCOURAGE China to do so.

The Taiwan Strait is probably one of the biggest flashpoints for conflict in the Asia Pacific - neither side are quite desperate enough yet to start any war yet, but if you think about the human, environmental and economic casualties if these two countries go to war. And especially if both sides had nuclear war heads. (by the way I staunchly stand by my view that Taiwan is/always should be an independant country, and this mess with China could be easily sorted by peaceful means if they'd barge, rather by brutal force from either side).

Hypocricy - now that's new
Meanwhile Downer sits around counting his cash from his free trade agreement, not really particularly concerned about human rights, a country's sovereignty, environmental degredation, blah blah blah, not going to help Taiwan if China declares war on it, cos you know, its ok to go to a totally unjustified and illegal war in Iraq to promote so called Western Democracy, but its not particularly justifiable to stand on Taiwan's side cos its a fully fledged democracy that elects their own parliament and goes about their business without hurting anyone, and instead stand by China which is an autocratic, corrupt, human rights abusing freedom hating regime.

I love Australia, I love this government, and where the bloody hell are ya?