Distracted-Nukes and News

All these months later, I'm still watching nuclear bomb films and sorting through massive amounts of information on radiation, fall out, power plants, storage, history, and more. President Obama's nuclear reactor policy is frightening.  His approach to disarmament is good.  Leaking radioactive materials and the impossibility of finding a solution for radioactive waste is just.... baffling...scary...appalling.

I still have to wonder why three members of my own immediate family of five had cancer (two died, I'm still here), and why almost every person I know has either had it, or has a family member who has had it.  All of us have friends and family who have died from the disease, and too many died very young.  I'm very worried for my daughter and her  (future) children (she's only twelve now!).  I'm worried about all of you and your children.  If we don't do more to fight this environmental battle, future generations will be impacted even more than we have. Solutions don't exist yet for disposing with radioactive waste safely. Leaky nukes in Russia, here, and elsewere are really problematic and dangerous. The half life of plutionium and other man-made radioactive elements is beyond comprehension.  I'll talk about all of this in more depth in my forthcoming book.

A funny movie: Invasion USA (1951).  Wow.  If you want to see anti-USSR propaganda and a huge push for building up a nuclear arsenal, watch that one.  Actually not funny. That propaganda stuff worked wonders (and still does) and now we're dealing with the fall out (yes, pun intended).  Underground nuclear bomb testing only recently stopped in this country. Why were we so oblivious?  How could it have gone on for so many years?

Warren Hoskins is a great resource for nuclear material.  He sent me an interesting link:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/3/14/846116/-The-Environmental-Legacy-of-the-Cold-War:-Progress,-Problems,-and-the-Big-Picture

This week there is a conference on nuclear issues in Washington, D.C. organized by Nuclear Weapons Alliance.  Their site contains a lot of information on current nuclear legislation and issues.

So Laura G. wants a definition of ecofeminism.  I'm going to post a full answer to this question soon--I have an excerpt from an article and this will be in the book as well.  I'll share this, but for now here is a short and over-simplified explanation: Ecofeminists argue that there are important connections between the oppression of nature and women.  Karen Warren calls these "twin oppressions" in her collection, Ecofeminism: Women, Culture, Nature. Warren and other ecofeminists argue that within our western (patriarchal) culture, white males have been viewed (historically) as superior to all--women, people of color, and the natural world.  This patriarchal worldview situates and situated white males as possessing a "natural right" to justifiably control and dominate the world around them. Ecofeminists (this ecofeminist in particular) argue that in order for us to sustain our human existence on this planet, we must shift away from a masculinist 'power over the other' ideology, or we will destroy our earth as we know it. Carolyn Merchant, a key feminist environmental historian, suggests that human beings need to live in an equitable and balanced relationship with all living things in order to achieve a requisite ethic of care. Unless human beings come to a full recognition of the interrelationship and interconnectedness among all living things, we will continue to exploit, pollute and poison our earth and, ultimately, annihilate ourselves.  I recommend that anyone interested in this topic read Merchant's The Death of Nature.  She offers a deep and thorough history of the exploitation of nature and its connections to industrialism, science, women, indigenous people, and more.

The alarm clock is ringing!  Wake up!

My mind is swirling in red imagery---I'm writing about the powerful film, The Day the Earth Caught Fire.  It is a scorcher.