Magic Mushrooms
The inhabitants of the site of the world's second urban nuclear test have been celebrating the day in their strange Japanese fashion. The mayor even made a rather cheeky mention of the 9/11 attacks. "We understand your anger and anxiety over the memories of the horror of the 9-11 terrorist attacks," he said. "Yet, is your security enhanced by your government's policies of maintaining 10,000 nuclear weapons, of carrying out repeated sub-critical nuclear tests, and of pursuing the development of new 'mini' nuclear weapons?"
Well, really. Exploiting the deaths of thousands to make a cheap political point - what civilised political leader would dream of doing such a thing?
Besides, everybody knows that nuclear weapons enhance security. Nuclear weapons have kept the peace in Europe for over sixty years. If it weren't for Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, Germany and France might never have started the Common Market; and if it hadn't been for all those American nuclear missiles in West Germany, the USSR might not have taken it into its head to station missiles of its own in Cuba, to the immeasurable advancement of world tranquility.
Nuclear weapons are a deterrent, you see. That's why Kashmir is so peaceful. Nuclear weapons keep the peace. Adam Ingram of the Ministry of Peace told me so himself when I wrote to my MP last year about Britain's flexible response to the non-proliferation treaty. Ingram said, in fact, that nuclear weapons are useful only as a deterrent, and then he said that "we would use nuclear weapons only in extreme circumstances of self-defence." In other words, they are useful only when not used, but we'll use them anyway if it suits us. I can't tell you how reassuring that was.
Combat use of our independent nuclear deterrent - with American permission, naturally - is justifiable because we are not Libyan or Iranian. Nuclear bombs in the hands of non-approved governments are not a deterrent. They are weapons of mass destruction and a threat to global peace and very naughty indeed. It is amazing that the citizens of Nagasaki continue to nag the United States, of all the countries in the world, about nuclear weapons when there are so many dangerous states, more than one of them Islamic, doing their damnedest to acquire the things for non-deterrent purposes.
As a matter of fact, I think Ingram was mistaken about nuclear weapons being useful only as a deterrent. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for Stalin's edification were useful in several other respects too. For example, one was an air burst and one a ground burst, so there was much useful information to be gathered about the different effects. They showed what nuclear weapons could do, and showed it far more effectively than all that tedious messing around in the desert. With a little extrapolation - for the Japanese did not, at the time, have their present honorary status - they showed what nuclear weapons could do to human beings.
Well, really. Exploiting the deaths of thousands to make a cheap political point - what civilised political leader would dream of doing such a thing?
Besides, everybody knows that nuclear weapons enhance security. Nuclear weapons have kept the peace in Europe for over sixty years. If it weren't for Britain's independent nuclear deterrent, Germany and France might never have started the Common Market; and if it hadn't been for all those American nuclear missiles in West Germany, the USSR might not have taken it into its head to station missiles of its own in Cuba, to the immeasurable advancement of world tranquility.
Nuclear weapons are a deterrent, you see. That's why Kashmir is so peaceful. Nuclear weapons keep the peace. Adam Ingram of the Ministry of Peace told me so himself when I wrote to my MP last year about Britain's flexible response to the non-proliferation treaty. Ingram said, in fact, that nuclear weapons are useful only as a deterrent, and then he said that "we would use nuclear weapons only in extreme circumstances of self-defence." In other words, they are useful only when not used, but we'll use them anyway if it suits us. I can't tell you how reassuring that was.
Combat use of our independent nuclear deterrent - with American permission, naturally - is justifiable because we are not Libyan or Iranian. Nuclear bombs in the hands of non-approved governments are not a deterrent. They are weapons of mass destruction and a threat to global peace and very naughty indeed. It is amazing that the citizens of Nagasaki continue to nag the United States, of all the countries in the world, about nuclear weapons when there are so many dangerous states, more than one of them Islamic, doing their damnedest to acquire the things for non-deterrent purposes.
As a matter of fact, I think Ingram was mistaken about nuclear weapons being useful only as a deterrent. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki for Stalin's edification were useful in several other respects too. For example, one was an air burst and one a ground burst, so there was much useful information to be gathered about the different effects. They showed what nuclear weapons could do, and showed it far more effectively than all that tedious messing around in the desert. With a little extrapolation - for the Japanese did not, at the time, have their present honorary status - they showed what nuclear weapons could do to human beings.
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