Monday, August 09, 2004
Remember
"You cannot lead a credible international movement against nuclear proliferation while resisting inspections for everyone. Nor can you lead a credible international movement while you're pushing ahead aggressively in the development of new weapons systems like mini-nukes, as the U.S. currently is. You cannot, as for example France does, defy the entire world in nuclear testing, and then turn around and pretend to be useful in persuading other countries not to defy the entire world in nuclear testing. You cannot treat the possession of nuclear weapons as a mark of prestige that goes along with a certain stage of development and then persuade developing countries that nuclear weapons are not a mark of prestige that goes along with a certain stage of development. And so on."
Apropos of which (along with this strange and worrying report) there are worse things I could do than draw some attention to the quiet dignity of Hiroshima as it commemorated last Friday the 59th anniversary of August 6, 1945.
And of course today (Monday) was the same anniversary for Nagasaki, where, as the comrades starkly put it,:
"Tens of thousands of human beings were burned alive, and tens of thousands more received fatal doses of radiation, not to secure victory - since the Japanese government had already conceded defeat - but to ensure that the right inference was drawn, from London to Moscow, from Helsinki to Rome."*
*A still-debated historical thesis of course, and one I can neither refute nor endorse.
