This is old news in the sense that it was published as early as January 2005 in the report from the United Nations Environmental program (UNEP) about the consequences of the tsunami in December 2004. The report revealed that nuclear waste, among other things, has been dumped in the oceans. But the tsunami also stirred up hazardous waste deposits on the beaches of Somalia. According to the UNEP's report

"Somalia is one of the many Least Developed Countries that reportedly received countless shipments of illegal nuclear and toxic waste dumped along the coastline. Starting from the early 1980s and continuing into the civil war, the hazardous waste dumped along Somalia’s coast comprised uranium radioactive waste, lead, cadmium, mercury, industrial, hospital, chemical, leather treatment and other toxic waste. Most of the waste was simply dumped on the beaches in containers and disposable leaking barrels which ranged from small to big tanks without regard to the health of the local population and any environmentally devastating impacts."

At the time, not many noticed this piece of information. But Vladislav Marjanovic from the Vienna-based Radio Afrika International did. He wrote:

"warum schloss man Augen vor der Tatsache, dass gerade in den achtzigen Jahren zahlreiche Industriestaaten den Regierungen armer Länder riesige Summen für die Lagerung ihres Atommülls boten?" ("why did one close one's eyes before the fact that, already in the 1980s, numerous industrial states had offered the governments of poor countries huge sums of money for the stockpiling of their radwaste?" - transl. mb)

Marjanovic quotes sources, which, not very surprisingly, connect the nuclear waste trade with the Italian mafia. His original article is no longer available at the website of Radio Afrika. However, it is found via Archive.org, a California-based archive of webpages on the other side of the Ocean.

The Gorleben Rundschau also reprinted Marjanovic's article. We should all participate in the protests at Gorleben next Sunday. Gorleben is situated in Europe, somewhere between Hamburg and Berlin. As we have previously announced (in these pages of the Lovisa Movement based on the shores of the Baltic Sea) , the demonstration on November 9, 2008, is called STOPP-CASTOR-Gorleben-vermASSELn. The "CASTOR" , which the demonstrators will symbolically try to stop (in spite of the police and the military forces which might be trying to stop the demonstrators), is is shorthand for ''cask for storage and transport of radioactive material''.

The European nuclear businessmen and women, who are desperately trying to find places for the final deposit of their radioactive waste, and who prefer to close their eyes before the operations of the mafiosi, seem to think that Gorleben will be a safe place. But, it will not. Nuclear waste can only be "safely" dumped in failed states, and failed states are not safe places.

Mikael Böök
for www.lovisamovement.eu