Uranium: very deadly always

["Hunter Gray" <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

There has  certainly never been any question in my mind about the deadly
nature of uranium -- and, given the history of its consistently tragic
consequences,  I'm never surprised to note the perennial efforts by the
governments of the world  and their military lackeys -- and the
corporations -- to minimize, even outrightly deny, the grave dangers
presented  and implemented by uranium "and all its works."  I come
originally from Northern Arizona -- the high Colorado River plateau
country -- from a family very deeply involved over several generations with
the Native nations in that setting: especially the Navajo [Dine' or Dineh]
people, with whom our family connections are extremely close.  This is the
setting  where most of the uranium in what is called the United States is
located.  The Great Uranium Rush which began very early in the post-World
War II period -- much of this in the Navajo country and almost all of the
rest in its environs -- and continued full-blown for several lethal decades,
has led to several thousand  deaths, many many thousands of continuing
crippling illnesses, countless devastated families, and vast amounts of
poisoned earth and water-- and air.  And the companies and the government
continue to deny and essentially stone-wall when it comes to meaningful
compensation -- and no "compensation," of course, can ever really compensate
in this blood-dimmed context.

A closely related, and just as hideous dimension, is the fall-out from
decades of nuclear testing at Desert Rock, Nevada -- which  has spread its
deadly effects throughout much of the Intermoutain West and even as far "up"
as parts of North Dakota. As I have friends and acquaintances who have died
as a direct result of uranium mining/milling/refining -- often grinding
lung and stomach cancer -- I have two very close friends who died as a
direct result of  Desert Rock nuclear testing.  One was an Army GI in 1959,
whose job was to tie domestic animals to stake-outs prior to the blasts --
and then retrieve their charred bodies and often simply ashes, immediately
after the explosions.  Though living in Arizona, I was in Utah  briefly in
the summer of '59 and my buddy visited me at Salt Lake while on leave.  He
was sickened by what was happening to the animals and planned to leave the
Army as soon as he could -- and he did.  I did not see him for many years
and then, while I was visiting my parents at Flagstaff in 1975, he dropped
by our house while up from the Phoenix area.  Although we were almost
precisely the same age, I  initially took the white-haired, badly-wrinkled
and shrunken man who faced me as simply another elderly tourist lost on the
way to the Grand Canyon.  My friend died of multiple cancer two years later.

 Carnotite -- the usual form of raw uranium ore -- is an attractive canary
yellow and I used to have big pieces in my ore collection as a kid.  But
when it proceeds through the mine/mill/refining process, its Pandora box of
diabolical [a word I don't use lightly since my theology certainly does not
involve a belief in supernatural devils] skull & cross-bones "tickets to the
Eternal."   There will, I'm sure, come a time when Humanity will have grown
up socially and otherwise, to a point where we-all can handle this entire
nuclear thing rationally and safely -- but that's a good ways off.
[Beginning when I was 15, I often bought -- for very good and sensible
purposes -- dynamite, caps, and fuse at Babbitt's Hardware Store at
Flagstaff.  But, in retrospect, I'm not at all sure that I'd be comfortable
with most kids having that easy access.]

I've been involved at various points in all of these issues for some good
time -- and I've done some writing on it all.  A few of my articles are
posted on my website  www.hunterbear.org  -- and two of them, rather short,
give the poisonous flavour very succinctly:  One, "Navajo Indians:  Oil and
Mining Buzzards Hover Overhead,"  appeared in Bert Cochran's always
excellent American Socialist, September, 1957.  That article discusses the
Machiavellian connivance between the uranium bosses and the US Bureau of
Indian Affairs in giving the corporations blank-check entrance onto  the
vast lands of the Navajo Nation.  At that time, the lethal dimensions of
carnotite "processing" were largely unknown.  The second article, " Navajo
Uranium Miners Dying of Lung Cancer," came out in the July 22, 1980 issue of
the always first-rate Labor Notes.  [Each of these is under my "original"
name of John R. Salter, Jr.]  Their link on my site is:

http://www.hunterbear.org/a_native_rights_sampling.htm

Hunter Gray [Hunterbear]
www.hunterbear.org