Put waste dump in advocate’s back yard Las Vegas Sun  Archie Weitman, North Las Vegas Mon, May 11, 2009. Now that it looks like the Yucca Mountain project is not going to happen, have the scientists or whatever group is responsible for finding a new and suitable location for nuclear waste thought about checking into a Texas locale?
After all, George W. Bush was all in favor of having a dump somewhere. What better place than his back yard. He could strut around in a hazmat suit and a hard hat, saying “nuc-u-lar” to his heart’s content.

The Threat of Climate Change The Yale Globalist Catherine Hart 11 May 09

Shifting weather patterns have produced deep fears as well as serious immediate consequences for the Inuit.

Peter Kulchyski, professor of Aboriginal Studies at the University of Manitoba, worries that the eventual environmental, economic, and cultural costs of climate change in Canada’s arctic will outweigh any gains the region can make through development……………………………………………Increased access to uranium deposits also threatens hunting. The Inuit living in Baker Lake, one of the few communities in inland Nunavut, recently allowed Aurora Energy Resources Inc., a fast-growing local mining company, to acquire the rights to explore the surrounding land for uranium. With the mines would come jobs and revenue for the province. But the mines could poison wildlife and divert caribou herd migration patterns. Such a development would devastate hunting and likely leave the land barren for years.

Aboriginals of Australia: Climate Change Threat  Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) 11 May 2009 Climate change will further marginalise Australia’s Aboriginal communities, forcing them out of their traditional lands, destroying their culture and significantly affecting their access to water resources, indigenous rights advocates warn.

40 Years After America’s Biggest Nuclear Blast, the Damage Continues Echoes of Amchitka counterpunch 10 May 09 By JEFFREY ST. CLAIRAmchitka Island sits at the midway point on the great arc of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, less than 900 miles across the Bering Sea from the coast of Russia…………………………ecological wonders were swept aside in the early ’60s when the Pentagon and the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) went on the lookout for a new place to blow up H-bombs. Thirty years ago, Amchitka was the site of three large underground nuclear tests, including the most powerful nuclear explosion ever detonated by the United States.

The aftershocks of those blasts are still being felt. Despite claims by the AEC and the Pentagon that the test sites would safely contain the radiation released by the blasts for thousands of years, independent research by Greenpeace and newly released documents from the Department of Energy (DOE) show that the Amchitka tests began to leak almost immediately. Highly radioactive elements and gasses, such as tritium, americium-241 and plutonium, poured out of the collapsed test shafts, leached into the groundwater and worked their way into ponds, creeks and the Bering Sea.

At the same time, thousands of Amchitka laborers and Aleuts living on nearby islands were put in harm’s way. Dozens have died of radiation-linked cancers. The response of the federal government to these disturbing findings has been almost as troublesome as the circumstances surrounding the tests themselves: a consistent pattern of indifference, denial and cover-up continues even today.