Greenland to export uranium & rare earth minerals to China?

Perhaps you have already heard oil corporations are looking for oil in the Arctic seas around Greenland. But also the Chinese show some interest in Denmark, Greenland's mineral wealth especially. Greenland holds untouched resources of uranium which pose a dilemma to the nuclear free kingdom. Recently, Hu Jintao visited Denmark and Danish politicians visited China.

"I hope we can soon change the zero tolerance [towards nuclear industries] and have the uranium that we have extracted, instead of being an Arctic open-air museum." - Doris Jakobsen, Greenland politician

"Such production will be a game changer for the otherwise non-nuclear kingdom that is uninformed and virginal in this area. It will raise the kingdom's importance internationally because it will be a [world top-10] producer. Historically we've been spared from considering this." - Cindy Vestergaard, researcher at DIIS

"I don't think there are countries eager to obtain uranium for nuclear weapons use. Despite that uranium could still be spread. But countries that would be interested in uranium for weapons have been able to get it all the time." - Per Kalvig researcher at GEUS

Quick Google Translate aided quotes from Information.dk / Skal Grønland være storeksportør af uran?

Greenland Mining and Energy Ltd looking for uranium in Narsaq, south Greenland.

"We were allowed to talk about Greenland's autonomy to the members of the local [Tibetan] government and Communist Party, and there was great interest from people in Yushu." - Doris Jakobsen, Greenland politician

Quick Google Translate aided quotes from Information.dk / Grønlandsk varsomhed over for Kina

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Nuclear waste dumped in Mediterranean

They have somehow maintained a romantic image while running a business of world wide drug distribution, assassinations and assorted corruption. But no description is too demeaning for the latest crime committed by the Italian mafia.

Francesco Fonti, a former member of the Calabrian Mafia, has told of sinking ships loaded with radioactive and otherwise dangerous waste in the Mediterranean Sea. They thereby solved one of the biggest problems of the nuclear industry - getting rid of the waste - and made loads of money while doing it for about 20 years.

Italian authorities have now found and even filmed such a wreck with yellow barrels labeled for toxic content inside it. The full extent of the unspeakable environmental crime is still to be investigated.


The view is nice. But what is below the surface? Photo: Grace and Godbeams by Daveness_98, Creative Commons license.

Sources: BBC / Mafia 'sank ships of toxic waste' (with video), Reuters / Italy finds wreck of toxic waste ship sunk by mafia, Al Jazeera / Italian mafia 'sunk toxic waste', AP / Robot sub hunts toxic waste off Italian coast.

Authorities vs Environmentalism

Full scale warfare isn't necessary for me to take note of a case of 'ecowar'. Far from it - for starters see the crime tag. Large scale covert conflict between states and their conscious populations however is a rather new thing. Or at least something that seems to be increasing.

In the UK authorities have been busted infiltrating legal environmental groups.

Undercover police are running a network of hundreds of informants inside protest organisations who secretly feed them intelligence in return for cash

[...]

"The methods employed are disturbing, and more worrying yet is the lack of any clearly identifiable body responsible for this. These individuals seem to have some kind of police support or at the very least connections with the police – the access to police stations confirms that – but my concern is the lack of accountability and the threat to the individual and her right to protest."

• Police caught on tape trying to recruit Plane Stupid protester as spy
• Police 'pay protester informers'

Basically France delivered an identical story of late...

French media reported that the largely state-owned French electricity company EDF has been caught spying on Greenpeace France.

[...]

spies have apparently infiltrated several anti-nuclear groups in France and reportedly sometimes with the blessing of the French secret services.

• France involved in another major nuclear scandal, accused of spying against Greenpeace

In the USA FBI is investigating suspected 'eco-terrorism'.

Fires gutted four multimillion-dollar model homes in a Seattle suburb on Monday, and authorities found a sign purportedly left by ecoterrorists that mocks claims that the homes were environmentally friendly.

• Seattle-Area Fires May Be Ecoterror, Authorities Say

I suspect a lot more of this type of news in the future. It won't suffice to say that Al-Qaida hasn't helped environmentalism. No doubt anti-terror laws will be utilized against people trying to save the planet now politicians aren't. And some activist cells will radicalise.

Europe illegally dumps toxic, nuclear waste in Somali waters

Just discovered an angle to the Somali fishing-oil-piracy trouble that I somehow entirely missed: Dumped toxic waste!

"[Our motive is] to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas."
- Sugule Ali, Somali pirate

So, on top of the Somali fishermen being robbed by Western colleagues they are dying from mysterious diseases as all sorts of toxic waste - including nuclear - washes up shore. It became too apparent to ignore as the Tsunami speeded up and aggravated the situation and about 300 died. Some waste has been traced to European industries who have paid the Italian Mafia to dispose of it.

"There's uranium radioactive waste, there's leads, there's heavy metals like cadmium and mercury, there's industrial wastes, and there's hospital wastes, chemical wastes, you name it [...] These problems range from acute respiratory infections to dry, heavy coughing, mouth bleedings, abdominal hemorrhages, what they described as unusual skin chemical reactions."
- Nick Nuttall, UNEP

• You are being lied to about pirates, by Johann Hari, February 2009.
• UN: Nuclear Waste Being Released on Somalia's Shores After Tsunami, February 2005.
  

In Niger, a war for what's beneath the desert

A battle is unfolding on the stark mountains and scalloped dunes of northern Niger between a band of Tuareg nomads, who claim the riches beneath their homeland are being taken by a government that gives them little in return, and an army that calls the fighters drug traffickers and bandits.

...new screenwriter badly needed... this plot won't make another news block buster!

Niger's northern desert caps one of the world's largest deposits of uranium, and demand for it has surged as global warming has increased interest in nuclear power. Growing economies like China and India are scouring the globe for the crumbly ore known as yellowcake. A French mining company is building the world's largest uranium mine in northern Niger, and a Chinese state company is building another mine nearby.

Uranium could infuse Niger with enough cash to catapult it out of the kind of poverty that causes one in five children here to die before their fifth birthday.

Or it could end in a calamitous war that leaves Niger more destitute than ever. Mineral wealth has fueled conflict across Africa for decades, a series of bloody, smash-and-grab rebellions that shattered nations. The misery wrought has left many Africans to conclude that mineral wealth is a curse.

[...]

The hardships of global warming and desertification, which eats away grazing land, further impoverished the Tuareg, forcing many to abandon herding. Yet as its fertility degraded, their land became increasingly sought after as the global price of uranium rose steadily. This paradox would prove explosive.