Canadian uranium search will kill off the last Bushmen of Africa

Canada is now a superpower in the African mining sector.
According to the Ministry of Natural Resources Canada , only the Republic of South Africa, with over 35% of assets and investments, is just ahead of Canada in the African mining industry.

Canadian uranium search will kill off the last Bushmen of Africa thanks to Canada’s Xemplar Energy Corporation.

The Topnaar, a subtribe of the Nama minority, are southern Africa’s original hunter-gatherer San or Khoi-Khoi tribes — often referred to derogatively as Hottentots — who were pushed from their habitats around the Orange River in southern Namibia and northern South Africa in the mid nineteenth century by agriculturalist-settlers. Just like the Boers, the Topnaar also undertook a Great Trek north, led by their famous leader Jan Jonker Afrikaner. There are only about 60,000 Nama people left in all of Namibia. From DNA testing of 19th-century workers’ graves on Boer farms in South Africa in a Johannesburg University study, it has been established that these so-called ‘Bushmen’ indeed are the true forebears of the first Nation of southern Africa…

Canada has so much to be proud of these days, eh?  Ecological racism all over the planet…

Also being threatened is the ecologically-sensitive Garub-water hole — the main watering site for the giant Namib desert’s mysterious wild horses, the Shagyas, located inside this nature reserve about 120 km east of the Namibian harbour of Luderitz. The origin of the park’s protected desert horses is lost in time, the subject of endless speculation. Their DNA however links them to the Arabian Peninsula’s Shagyars horses.

Kill off people.  Kill off animals.  Just don’t kill off the right of Canadians to feed their greed.  Eh?

ACTION: Baird in Regina

The inbox is the source of all activity these days.  Check this out and then the following:

psst…pass it on…

Greet Federal Environment Minister John Baird

5:00 p.m. Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Canadian Italian Club
2148 Connaught Street, Regina

Bring banners, placards and noise-makers to make noise in support of a green Canada which meets its commitments to the Kyoto Protocol.

“Green is the colour,
The climate is the game
We’re all together
and reducing is our aim
So let’s all work to stop climate change
Saskatchewan Green Greeters is our name”

(adapted w/o permission)

Info gathered from here

Climate Change, Government of Canada

11 months in office and there’s been no action from Ambrose and the Harperites on the issue of Climate Change.

The Clean Air Act was a waste of our tax money, unless the parties in Opposition can do something with it. Ambrose must be listening closely to what her family’s big oil and big ass big gas friends said as she formulated the death of our children’s future.

Thanks to where’d that bug go? for the lead.

The Road to Peace

Nettie Wiebe has been in Regina this week, speaking at various events.  Today she was one of the guest speakers at Making Peace With Earth, a conference linking peace and environmental issues.  Nettie took an interesting approach, being a farmer.  She spoke about peace and ecology in terms of human security.  And she focused on food as a key component of that human security.  This woman is our new Tommy Douglas.  She gets it.  She gets social justice.  She gets environmental issues.  She gets women’s issues, agricultural issues, peace issues.  She just gets it all.

Notes from Nettie’s Speech 

Food is about human security; we cannot live without it.  Food is also about community.  Yet, we rarely hear a word about it in our news of war, devastation, and destruction.

Human Security 

To feel secure as a human we need to be able to go to bed at night knowing that when we rise in the morning our basic needs will be met.  We need also to feel safe in our environment.  And, we need to be able to participate, in a meaningful way, in the shaping of our future.

Palestine

In Palestine, however, people have been separated from not only the olive trees, but also from their water systems, by the building of the wall.  Trees have been uprooted, water systems have been destroyed, cisterns have been dug up.  This kind of destruction is just as lethal as property destruction.

Peace in the Middle East will not happen unless food, water and land are returned to proper production and people can return to it and live securely.

Afghanistan

In Afghanistan, many have always been poor.  The land doesn’t look farmable.  However, there are fertile river valleys.  In fact, pre-conflict (1970s) Afghanistan was the world’s major exporter of dried fruits and nuts.  And they also exported olives and dates and were near self-sufficiency in grains.

All that was destroyed by war.  When war came, poppy production grew in leaps and bounds until the Taliban took over, turning the land back to grains.

The huge anti-drug initiative spearheaded by the USA is supported by Canada.  However, the government in Afghanistan and Afghan soldiers ar actively supporting poppy growing.  And, there are now rumours that the Taliban are telling farmers to grow poppies in protest to the invasion.

Canadian Deaths

The area in which Canadian troops are active in Afghanistan is the area in which “reconstruction” is occurring.  Canadian soldiers are guarding the building of a 100 meter wide and 4 kilometer long stretch of road in a fertile valley.  Tens of thousands of people were evacuated from this farming area in the middle of the growing season!

When they came home, they returned to complete destruction.  Crops were devastated, animals were gone or dead and, worst of all, the road permanently cut off the water supply.  The road that Canadians are helping to reconstruct has devastated farming and the security of the people living their.  Some engineer gave no thought to human security when designing the road, focussed instead on how to move military equipment from point A to point B.

The Canadian government has promised grain to help the people of the region, but food aid is not a long-term solution.  And since when has the Canadian military become an expert on building roads?  Incidently, the area is full of roads.  But the roads are winding roads and not suitable for the transport of military equipment.

This is not the road to peace.

The Road to Peace

The new highway in the fertile Afghan valley is not the road to peace.  The road to peace is stopping the destruction, is negotiating, not handing out candy.  The road to peace is rebuilding imaginations so that dreams can live, grow and thrive.  The road to peace is in coming to sit at the table — not in a drive-by, fast food agenda.  The road to peace is a long, winding, and uncertain road that runs through all those Afghan villages.  It is not a road we can rebuild and run.

We have a responsibility in Afghanistan, but it’s not a military one.  We have a responsibility here, at our own tables, to remember that what we do in the world gathers around other tables; it reflects us.  As such, we should gather humbly, thoughtfully and ask for peace.

NAFTA highway

Just what we all wanted and needed, another highway! </end sarcasm>

And it is ready to begin construction next year.

New Multi-Modal Super Highway Planned By Bush

Craig Huckerby — SooNews.ca — Monday, June 19, 2006, 11:35AM

A new super highway serving all of North America is quietly being worked on by the Bush Administration.

What’s being called the NAFTA Super Highway, four football fields wide and stretching from Mexico to Canada along Interstate 35 is advancing by a number of agencies.

Human Events Online says those agencies include [v]arious U.S. government agencies, dozens of state agencies, and scores of private NGOs. They have formed the North America SuperCorridor Coalition Inc. (NASCO), a non-profit organization out to improve both the trade competitiveness and quality of life in North America.

And I have to ask, For whom?

A quick look at the list of Board Members opened my eyes. Representatives of big business and government coming together to form a non-profit organization just isn’t right.

And, it’s not only the Bushites who are working on this plan. Take a look at some of the names:

Andrew T. Horosko, P. Eng.
NASCO Vice President of Canada
Deputy Minister of Transportation
Manitoba Transportation and Government Services

William N. (Nick) Steele
President, Lockheed Martin Sygenex, Inc.

Gerardo (Gerald) Schwebel
Executive Vice President, International Division
International Bank of Commerce

Bryan Gray
Director of Policy/Manager of EPC Secretariat
City of Winnipeg

Thomas L. (Skip) McMahon
Director, Special Projects
Canadian Transit Company
Ambassador Bridge

I guess Lockheed Martin would benefit in having better routes to transport their war equipment. And the International Bank of Commerce would be involved to make sure everyone involved gets wealthier.

It’s interesting to note that, among other things, Skip is responsible for directing the Canadian External Affairs department and helping to develop new business opportunities. Interesting also is that in April the Harperites introduced legislation giving the federal government authority over all cross-border bridges and tunnels in the country — including the Ambassador Bridge, Windsor-Detroit tunnel and any new crossing.

The City of Winnipeg fellow, Bryan, is currently the head of policy and a senior political advisor to His Worship, Sam Katz, Mayor of Winnipeg. Take a look at NASCO’s map of the SuperCorridor and you’ll figure out why Winnipeg is interested in this venture. As well as the other Manitoban in the mix, Gary Doer’s DM of Transportation, Andy Horosko.

Note that former Prime Minister, Paul Martin, was in on this as well when he met with the Fox and Bush in March 2005.

Oh, it just gets soooo interesting, doesn it?

Even more so with this highlighted in the Gristmill:

Among other charming features, the highway is deliberately intended to bypass any involvement from unions, either the Longshoreman’s Union or the Teamsters Union.

And somewhere in all this there are questions about the 4,000 page Environmental Impact Statement on the project.

No one has yet commented on what the level of CO2 emissions created by this project and its aftermath will be. I suppose it’s buried somewhere in that report.

Thanks to timethief at stolen moments of island time for the lead.

Recommend this post at Progressive Bloggers

[Check out the post that updates this issue and makes a local connection]

Manufacturing Consent

Seems the NDP in SK are taking their campaign to mine more uranium to the next level. They’ve already manufactured consent within the provincial party. They’ve worked with the business community to create a clamour for it in some job-starved rural/northern communities. And, they’re offering incentives to AREVA (which has just formed a new joint venture with URENCO to create a Enrichment Technology Company. How convenient, now having been invited to build a uranium refinery in the province of Saskatchewan.)

My email friend, Ivan, says this:

I’d like to remind Mr. Calvert and Mr. Cline that when full cost accounting is used and not the voodoo economics of the uranium industry, Saskatchewan hasn’t made a single dime on uranium..

Uranium mines are abandoned ten years after shutting down and then go into the public domain. Our grandchildren pay for the security and for any future contamination from these highly dangerous sites. These future costs are conveniently ignored whenever expansion of any facet of the nuclear cycle is being promoted.

Spent reactors and refineries litter the world because no one knows what to do with them. They are so dangerous from radioactivity that their dismantling costs are phenomenal and there still is no where to put the material. Once again, our grandchildren are being left the bill.

Because Northern Saskatchewan is now being contaminated by acid rain from the Alberta tar sands and polluted by past, current and potential future contaminations from the uranium cycle, tourism and fishing have a limited future. What’s wrong, Mr. Calvert and Mr. Cline, with leaving a legacy for future generations of the last pristine forests and lakes on earth? Shouldn’t our governments be educating the public on all aspects of the nuclear cycle before selling out our children’s future?

Even if we’re going to be indecisive when dealing with the planet’s most dangerous substances we must remember to not serve our gluttony but always err on the side of safety. We owe that to future generations.

Let’s have real public debate and education on this issue, not the endless propaganda from big corporations and naive governments.

And I agree. I certainly don’t like how this is shaping up. SK doesn’t have a good track record where the north is concerned. Look at the environmental damage left in the wake of uranium mining.

Look at Weyerhauser — that multinational has pulled out of SK, but still maintains logging rights to the land which, in effect, stops small- to medium-sized loggers from going in.

So, yes, when there are kids to feed and when there is no work to be had, any work — even in a uranium mine or at a uranium refinery — starts looking pretty fine.

A clamour, indeed…

Nuclear power kills animals

Licensed to Kill: How nuclear power is killing endangered species and destroying marine life is online at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) website.