S.A.N.D. - do you remember ?

Had a SAND shirt! Wore it to rags. I've even got a video of the SAND tag-team contest at D'bah: MR, Nicky Wood, Cheyne, Chuy Reyna etc etc. I really should get that converted.

The threat of nuclear warfare somehow turned into nuclear energy - cheap and *ahem* clean.

I remember being bummed that I couldn't get down to Cooly to see the Oils as a youngster but I do remember recording the channel 9 piece off the tele with the Oils rockin' and clips of the (can't remember what it was called- Surfing Super Series?) tag team event.

I maybe completely wrong but wasn't there the 'double whammy' wave where the competitor had to nominate their best wave by raising both hands?

Relevence to Fukushima? Activism is virtually not existent here. Heaps of Fukushima surfers down my way now Sid as it's only a 30 minute drive from there to here. Not long back a mate and I went for a drive to check out a Fukushima spot we knew would be on in certain conditions. It was certainly on, but nobody out and the Tsunami had washed away all the buildings along the foreshore. It was surreal, just dozens of house slabs and big mounds of debri bulldozed into big piles. Smashed cement walls and buckled roads. Nobody on the beach. The only people we saw were a couple of cars surreptitiously cruising around. Believe it or not, a little tourist industry has sprung up in my area and further north with people driving around looking at the destruction and lack of progress since then.

Even though the Daiichi plant is another 20 mins up the road from this spot we checked and very close to a really good breakwall spot, there was no way I was going anywhere near that place.

You wanna know why there isn't much of a stink kicked up about Fukushima compared to past nuclear activism?

Here goes...

SAND style nuclear activism railed against destruction caused by aggression. It was the 80's, the Cold War was in full swing and the enemy, or, as it were, enemies, were easy to identify. It was either the USSR or it was the USA. Simple. Subjects neatly identified and delineated. They was the target(s) of your rage and activism.

Fukushima, however, wasn't a result of state aggression but rather an unfortunate side effect of energy creation in a world addicted to it. Particularly cheap energy. Nuclear may be a wayward, short sighted and irresponsible form of energy but fact is, we need the energy. You, me, the Japs, everyone needs to use energy. So if you rage against nuclear energy what alternatives are you putting forth? Fossil fuels...? Well, there's another problem.

The nuclear issue isn't as clear cut as it was in the 80's 'cos it impinges upon a lot of other issues and to one extent or another we're all complicit in them. The target therefore isn't neatly identified. We all use energy, ergo we're all to blame.

Godspeed You, Black Emperor said it best: "We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death."