Blowin' in the Wind (Film)
Blowin' In The Wind reveals that Iraqi babies are now being born with major birth defects. Bradbury wonders whether Australians living downwind from the military testing ranges will be next. He argues that we were lied to by the British over the Woomera and Maralinga atomic tests. Can we trust another equally powerful partner in our 'war on terror'? With a cash budget of just $12,000 Blowin' In The Wind raises pertinent questions which cannot be ignored by the Australian public. The film shocked, angered and surprised large audiences recently when shown at the Sydney and Brisbane Film Festivals.
MAKING THE DOCUMENTARY
When filmmaker David Bradbury found out last year that the United States and Australia had signed a secret treaty to allow the US military to train and test its latest weaponry here, he decided to visit the prime training areas. He soon learned of the potentially devastating environmental and health consequences for Australia. Bradbury discovered that the treaty makes Australia an integral part of the "Son of Star Wars" US missile programme with severe hidden costs.
The US military has an abysmal track record in other parts of the world where it has trained and tested its chemical and nuclear weapons. Citizens of Vieques, Puerto Rico, are outraged that the United States has used depleted uranium and other carcinogenic weapons on their island. Cancer rates amongst its children are 256% higher than on surrounding islands. Japanese and Filipino communities near US military bases are also up in arms at the poor environmental and social consequences of having the Americans on their soil. The US lied that they were not using Depleted Uranium (DU) rounds in weapons testing off Okinawa in Japan. But confronted with the facts they had to admit that there had been 'an accidental firing' of the clearly labelled and specially handled DU rounds.
The use of depleted uranium by the US military in its weaponry is a cause of grave concern to the Australian filmmaker. He concludes that the term 'depleted' uranium is a misnomer. Its use in the first and second Gulf wars, in Afghanistan and the Balkans has put us all in the nuclear firing line forever. The half-life of depleted uranium is 4.5 billion years. Bradbury seeks further insights from world authorities on depleted uranium and from Australian servicemen suffering the effects of DU poisoning from the first Gulf war. Armed with information about this new nuclear weapon, that cuts through tanks and thick concrete bunkers like a hot knife through butter, David Bradbury dares to expose the moral complicity of Australia in this war-crime, where our uranium is now ending up on distant battlefields infecting unborn children and civilians. When he discovers a deformed baby that was born last year right next to the US military training and testing grounds at Shoalwater Bay, he asks whether the chickens might now have come home to roost.
Bradbury argues that this agreement will inevitably lead to further weapons testing in various parts of Australia, including testing of weapons containing 'depleted' uranium and other heavy metal carcinogenic materials. The consequences of this will be devastating to our environment and to the health of the people of Australia.
The film argues that Australia has covertly become an unofficial US military base, with no consultation with the Australian people.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Last year Australia signed a 20-year agreement (the terms of which most Australians are yet to see or even hear), which allows the US to test its new weaponry and to use our military bases, our airfields and our naval ports.
The United States has been forced to withdraw its bases from Puerto Rico, Japan and the Philippines, where they have created a toxic nightmare that will cost billions to clean up and take a conservative 300 years to complete. But the Americans have skipped town and there is no legal obligation on them to repair the areas they have destroyed.
The facts of high rates of cancer and serious illness wherever American bases have been set up has made a number of Australians ask how this deal will ultimately benefit their country.
The agreement waives Environmental Impact Studies and carries immunity from our criminal laws.
What weapons will the US be testing here? What will be the long-term consequences for our people and for the environment in giving the Americans virtually carte blanche to intrude on our most pristine environments?
Already under the agreement, the US government has the green light to begin shelling military training grounds at Shoalwater Bay in Queensland, in the Northern Territory and at Lancelin in Western Australia.
In June of this year, 11,000 US soldiers sailed into Shoalwater Bay in their nuclear warships to join 6,000 Aussie troops in Queensland for military exercises known as "Talisman Sabre 2005". They stormed our beaches for three weeks and pounded our coastline and offshore islands with live aerial bombing and ship-to- shore shelling. No journalists were 'embedded' during those exercises, so they could not see what was used or how our most pristine environments were blasted by US warships and aircraft.
Two weeks after signing the agreement last year the Minister for Defence, Senator Hill and the Minister for the Environment, Senator Ian Campbell, came to an understanding, now formalised, that an EIS - an Environmental Impact Study - no longer has to be conducted inside a military training area, either before or after training exercises.
A basic environmental safeguard for the Australian people - that their most pristine environments have not or will not be contaminated by the Americans testing their latest weaponry - has been terminated under the guise of being in the 'national interest'.
Shoalwater Bay near Rockhampton on the Queensland coast is a jewel in the environmental crown of Australia. With its mountains and mangroves, its sweeping beaches and bays, its ancient sand dunes it is home to a wide variety of flora and fauna. It's a huge area of biodiversity. 56 % of Australia's bird species are found here. Whales, dolphins, dugongs, sea turtles and countless species of fish swim in its waters which border or include the Great Barrier Reef.
Shoalwater Bay has been home to Australia's defence forces since the Vietnam War. It has been used as a training ground for military exercises and the Army has done a reasonably good job in the past of protecting most of the untouched areas. Under this new arrangement with the US, we will allow them to come in here and test their latest laser guided weapons (the so-called smart bombs).
The locals in the nearby town of Yeppoon (where the American military will R&R) are split between those who think that the influx of Americans will lead to more jobs and economic prosperity for the townsfolk and those who don't want them there, no matter what.
"If we have a large American contingent housed in Shoalwater Bay, it's going to grow. The big question is, does this community want that? The inevitable nightclubs and bars and what surrounds large numbers of troops. I don't know anybody who came here for that sort of lifestyle."
"The Americans aren't going to ruin a perfectly good US training area by using radioactive equipment. They want to turn somebody else’s into radioactive mud."
"If people knew the US used depleted uranium here, it would decimate the tourist industry. People wouldn't want to come here. It would be like saying, we'll build a tourist destination at Chernobyl." (Paul Hoolighan, State Member, Queensland Parliament)
DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT
This is a film that very much wanted to find me. I tried to fend it off, exhausted from making environmental and political films on shoestring budgets that told hard truths to my fellow Australians that they needed to hear but preferred to ignore. In today's climate of self censorship, and public broadcasters who fear that their political masters in Canberra will still further cut their budgets if they support these sorts of films, fellow filmmaker Peter Scott and I pushed on regardless. With a hard cash budget of $12,000 and a beg, borrow or make do philosophy...and a lot of favours, we've pulled together this doco I know you'll never see on 'your ABC'. The picture it paints and the consequences for us all if we don't raise our protest loud and long to this new military alliance with the United States is too devastating to ignore.
The Paddy McGuinness's, the Gerard Henderson's and Greg Sheridan's of this world with their sycophantic attitudes towards their media masters and ruling class elite will have a field day in attempting to put this film down, to write it off as 'propaganda', typical anti-American sentiment with no substance. It's time for all of us to draw a line in the sand, to acknowledge whether we are in fact happy to be the 51st state of America.
More than ever, it's time for us all to stand up and be counted for the decency and genuine moral values of what I believed as a kid it meant to be 'a fair dinkum' Australian. Not a false, jingoistic patriotism that is built on fear, that justifies war crimes in the name of the so-called War on Terror. Rather, I embrace a healthy nationalism that acknowledges who we are as Australians with compassion for the underdog and giving everyone a fair go. In a humble but sincere way, I hope this film made with a lot of heart and commitment can play a small but important role in galvanising a lot of us to do just that.
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INFORMATION ON THE CAST
Retired US veteran and DU inspector, Doug Rokke
"The United States is being forced to abandon its military training sites in Puerto Rico and the mainland because of all the total gross environmental contamination. They’ve totally trashed it and they don't care. Now they want to go into Lancelin in WA, into the Northern Territory and Queensland, set up military bases there and come in and trash them and blow them up. What do you want for Australia? That's the reality. Make the choice. Its your country and your future."
Retired Army Captain Dr Doug Rokke
Doug Rokke is a veteran of two major wars, the Vietnam and first Gulf Wars. Doug's pedigree as an all American boy and proud product of the military establishment is impeccable. The US military commissioned Rokke to go into Iraq at the end of the first Gulf War, take samples of DU destroyed vehicles and report directly back to the Pentagon. In charge of a team of 100 personnel, Rokke wrote the field manual for the Pentagon on the 'safe' handling and retrieval of depleted uranium destroyed targets. He concluded that there was no safe way of handling the substance.
"If I can detect high levels of radioactivity in the deserts of Iraq ten years after the bombing and I can take ordinary road dust from Kosovo where children are playing 13 months after the bombings there, then this stuff is going to stay around for a very long time to come. All I can say is that this is a complete disaster not only for the people of Iraq but for people who live anywhere in the world. "
Tired of the US government's failure to recognise the detrimental effects of DU weapons on soldiers and civilians, now Rokke campaigns around the world against DU. From his work in the field, Rokke suffers from life threatening DU poisoning.
Nuclear weapons scientist, Leuren Moret
Weapons scientist Leuren Moret worked with the Livermore Nuclear weapons lab in California until l989 when she realised she was being contaminated herself with radioactivity and could no longer go along with the perversion of science. "I decided that scientists are either prostitutes for the military or for big corporations. So I just packed my bag one day and drove out that gate and never came back."
With dramatic footage shot in Iraq Moret explains how the tiny DU particles can play havoc with the ova and the sperm, leading to birth defects. "Right after the first Gulf war maybe one or two babies a day were being born with defects. Now it's seven, eight, nine, ten babies a day who are born without heads, without limbs, horrible tumours. Just lumps of jelly." She rightly declares, "It's a nightmare!" more...
Ex-Gulf War Australian Veteran Ed Grant
Ed Grant knows he's dying. He believes he has depleted uranium poisoning which he got serving as a medic with the Australian army in northern Iraq. Now living as a single parent with his two young kids on Queensland's Sunshine coast, he has an unexplainable disease. He experiences depression, mood swings and chronic fatigue. He was working in an area where the Americans used depleted uranium and there were a lot of burnt out vehicles and dust storms. Through photos, archival and on-camera interview he tells us all of this. He's angry that the government won't take his claims seriously. There are no testing facilities for DU in Australia so he would have to travel overseas for the expensive tests. Most importantly, he's worried about the future of his kids and what he may have passed onto them. When they have kids, Ed's grandchildren might have birth defects like the children now born in Iraq.
The film also features interviews with residents living near Australian training bases, and horrific footage of what these weapons, in the hands of the US military, have done during recent wars.