posted on December 11, 2002 06:13:21 AM new
The demonic Bush & company has hit a new low in the world. The reponse to the use of Chemical or Biological weapons...complete and utter nuclear annihilation of the country and its population, INCLUDING THE WOMEN AND CHILDREN!!! Yes, the exhalted one and his evil henchmen have decided that the measured response to such a heinous attack using WOMD is a nuclear attack. Of course, the death and diesease inflicted on the innocents as the the radioactive cloud moves across the country is of no matter to the heartless one who rules with an iron fist, BUSH himself!
.................................................
We call them our heroes...but we pay them like chumps
posted on December 11, 2002 04:07:14 PM new Under the nuclear shadow
Arundhati Roy, Booker prize-winning author, looks at the conflict over Kashmir from her home in New Delhi
Observer Worldview
Sunday June 2, 2002
The Observer
This week as diplomats' families and tourists quickly disappeared, journalists from Europe and America arrived in droves. Most of them stay at the Imperial Hotel in Delhi. Many of them call me. Why are you still here, they ask, why haven't you left the city? Isn't nuclear war a real possibility? It is, but where shall I go? If I go away and everything and every one, every friend, every tree, every home, every dog, squirrel and bird that I have known and loved is incinerated, how shall I live on? Who shall I love, and who will love me back? Which society will welcome me and allow me to be the hooligan I am, here, at home?
We've decided we're all staying. We've huddled together, we realise how much we love each other and we think what a shame it would be to die now. Life's normal, only because the macabre has become normal. While we wait for rain, for football, for justice, on TV the old generals and the eager boy anchors talk of first strike and second strike capability, as though they're discussing a family board game. My friends and I discuss Prophecy, the film of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the dead bodies choking the river, the living stripped of their skin and hair, we remember especially the man who just melted into the steps of the building and we imagine ourselves like that, as stains on staircases.
My husband's writing a book about trees. He has a section on how figs are pollinated, each fig by its own specialised fig wasp. There are nearly 1,000 different species of fig wasps. All the fig wasps will be nuked, and my husband and his book.
A dear friend, who is an activist in the anti-dam movement in the Narmanda Valley, is on indefinite hunger strike. Today is the twelfth day of her fast. She and the others fasting with her are weakening quickly. They are protesting because the government is bulldozing schools, felling forests, uprooting handpumps, forcing people from their villages. What an act of faith and hope. But to a government comfortable with the notion of a wasted world, what's a wasted value?
Terrorists have the power to trigger a nuclear war. Non-violence is treated with contempt. Displacement, dispossession, starvation, poverty, disease, these are all just funny comic strip items now. Meanwhile, emissaries of the coalition against terror come and go preaching restraint. Tony Blair arrives to preach peace - and on the side, to sell weapons to both India and Pakistan. The last question every visiting journalist always asks me: 'Are you writing another book?'
That question mocks me. Another book? Right now when it looks as though all the music, the art, the architecture, the literature, the whole of human civilisation means nothing to the monsters who run the world. What kind of book should I write? For now, just for now, for just a while pointlessness is my biggest enemy. That's what nuclear bombs do, whether they're used or not. They violate everything that is humane, they alter the meaning of life.
Why do we tolerate them? Why do we tolerate the men who use nuclear weapons to blackmail the entire human race?
posted on December 11, 2002 05:08:20 PM new
I'm going to have to go mlecher on this one.
While it may indeed be S.O.P. to threaten TOTAL ANNIHILATION through our nuclear arsenal as a deterrent, it should stop. The actual use of it would be unforgivable.
Escalating the death and destruction to DEFCON-1 is NOT an appropriate response!
Instead, if chemical or biological weapons were used on us, the matter would better off being used for its great propaganda value and would help to try to give us a moral stance for this unprovoked attack. With it, we could use it to justify going after North Korea and others who need to get taken down a few notches. But once we initiate Nuclear Retaliation, the question of morality or justification for the unprovoked attack on ANY level goes out the window forever!
posted on December 11, 2002 07:21:07 PM new ... the matter would better off being used for its great propaganda value and would help to try to give us a moral stance for this unprovoked attack.
We don't need propaganda, certainly not at the price of U.S. servicemen suffering biological or chemical attacks.
But remember, we are trying to initiate a revolt from within Iraq. That would be most desirable. We are already at war. And that means, don't believe everything you read in the paper.
posted on December 11, 2002 08:15:51 PM new
I'm going to go a bit OT here, but it is related.
What is the big fuss over nuclear weapons? All they are is Big Bombs. One boom instead of many.
Over the years I have read countless lamentations about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki usually with lots of anguish about the horror of the effects.
Putting aside what I consider to be ABSOLUTE justification of leveling a pair of Japanese cities after their actions of the prior 10 years, why is using a nuclear weapon any different than using lots of conventional weapons?
More Japanese were killed in Tokyo in June 1944 during the concentrated firebombing of that time than died at either of the nuked cities. The destruction was far greater than the nuclear weapons of that era could cause -the second firestorm , but I have never heard any objection to that attack.
Likewise, the firebombing of Dresden in WW2, the city where the firestorm was first seen -damage went beyond nuclear both in property and life.
Nuclear weapons are just big bombs - and if destroying a city and everything in it is the goal, they're the way to get the job done.
posted on December 11, 2002 09:05:05 PM new They are radioactive big bombs.
This is a pretty good description of the damage that a nuclear explosion under various circumstances would produce.
"A nuclear explosion, as well as giving off a great pulse of radiation at the time, leaves everything in the vicinity radioactive. In the case of an "air-burst" as just described, most of the radioactive products would be gaseous, or completely vaporized, and would rise with the fireball and come down slowly, if at all. There might be a rainstorm containing radioactivity, as there was at Hiroshima; and the rubble within a kilometre or two of the ground zero would be radioactive. This might hamper later rescue efforts, and affect the very few survivors from that central area, but would not be a major factor. In any nuclear bomb explosion, a large fraction (a minimum of one-third) of the original fissile material (plutonium or U-235) does not get destroyed. This would result in widespread contamination, increasing the late risk of cancer for those who survived ten to twenty years. (These amounts of plutonium and uranium would have no immediate toxic effects.)
The estimates for a city of one million or two million struck by a single one-megaton bomb are that around one third of the inhabitants would be killed instantly or fatally injured, one third seriously injured, and the rest uninjured or only slightly injured. That number of injured, if they could be distributed throughout the hospitals of North America, would occupy something like a third of the total number of beds; and of course no hospital can deal adequately with such an influx of urgent cases within a few days. There might be fifty times as many cases of severe burns as there are burn beds in the whole of North America. A whole year's supply of blood for transfusion would be needed immediately, and of course is not available in storage nor could it be collected from volunteers in a few days. The injured who reached hospitals would have to be assayed for radioactivity, for the safety of the staff, which would cause a serious bottle-neck and delay in most hospitals. The result of this huge overload of cases is that most of the injured would die, even though prompt treatment might have saved them. Relatively few would even get reached by rescue teams before they were moribund or dead; the majority would probably die in
posted on December 11, 2002 10:09:40 PM new
Ok.
I read his whole page- and I see nothing to dispute what I said. Please keep in mind that bombs are WEAPONS used in wars.
A one megaton bomb at ground level is not essentially different than 1,000,000 one ton bombs at ground level- except that it is more efficiently delivered, one plane, one drop or one missile. There is the matter of radiation but to the people killed, instantly or after the fact, it really doesn't matter- dead is dead.
The residual ground radiation is of little concern at the time of the attack- and depending on the location, may never be a
concern.
Fallout is a difference but as a weapon is unreliable and as long as our troops are protected not of real concern on enemy territory.
About 100 square miles of Tokyo was razed by
300 planes with 1 1/2 tons of inciendiary bombs each. The 100,000 estimated dead in Tokyo were probably for the most part burned to death although later, early in the firestorm, some may have been asphyxiated. They were no less dead than those at Hiroshima. Actual losses will never be known - in the same way that deaths attributed to the bomb at Hiroshima have been overstated by the Japanese Government for political reasons, deaths in Tokyo have been understated.
When it's all said and done, what's the difference?
[ edited by Bob9585 on Dec 12, 2002 10:25 AM ]
posted on December 11, 2002 11:22:30 PM new
Aside from Bob, the rest of the Warmongers on this page have shown once again their complete inability to think things through. It is unfortunate that the prevailing powers in Washington are also not as astute.
>When it's all said and done, what's the difference?
There is quite a bit of difference, Bob. The immense indiscriminant destructive power of nukes is well known. That they cause radioactive pollution around the world when they go off above ground is also well known. That by protecting our troops in 1945, we ended up killing countless other Americans for many years after that, for the radioactive cloud settled over America. These effects are well known and documented. Nukes are weapons of last resort and are clearly marked, "Do Not Open Until Doomsday" for very good reasons. But those are the least of reasons not to use nukes.
The problem of nukes is one of escalation. During the Cold War, we could be reasonably sure that conflicts fought against the superpowers would be through the use of conventional weapons. By using nukes - a last resort weapon, we open the door to having nukes used on us. We may pick on fifth rate military powers for fun and profit, but it would be a different matter if they managed to deliver one of their own to New York or Washington DC or maybe even your own hometown. A fat lot of good protecting our troops, eh?
Right now, our opponents on any level won't use nukes as a matter of course; world sentiment would be against them if they used them first. The offending country, it is estimated, would become void of life for perhaps as long as 500,000 years or so. So it is no small matter to talk about using nukes.
Then you have Bush, who is famous for his incredibly naive and stupid comments to the press, going about talking how we'll retaliate if biological or chemical weapons are used against us. That is no different than Bush senior's ludicrous boast, but I don't think that we would do as well suffering the humiliation again.
What Humiliation?
In the Gulf War, Saddam did use chemical and possibly biological weapons against our troops. Saddam knew about Bush's boast and took him on. Bush did not retaliate with nukes because he COULD NOT, and that made Saddam a Hero in many people's eyes around the world. Now the same hot air is coming from his nutcase moronic son and people know it's just a lot of hot air meant to be used as propaganda from our government to us, not to them.
Unfortunately, we had a slight 'moral edge' last time in dealing with Saddam. This time, we have none. Once again, Saddam will use the chemical and biological weapons if he has to and once again, an American President will have to eat his own words. Does the title, "Laughingstock of the Planet" mean anything to you?
With our creditability shot down, it won't be long before the rest of the world begins to stand up and to defy the Evil Bush Empire. A complete disintegration of international cooperation is possible as well. And all of this because we DID NOT go through and use nukes.
But if we did?
Let me tell you that would be an absolute, 100% serious mistake on our part! Would you like to have a full nuclear exchange worldwide? One with a radioactive cloud that will surround the Earth and then sterilize all life on this planet, maybe permanently?
posted on December 12, 2002 01:32:16 AM new
But the indiscriminate TOTAL destruction is exactly the detterent effect we want from our nuclear weapons. No survivors, no way out, no quarter, no more threat.
If Iraq uses any N, B or C weapons against out troops or allies, then Iraq does so with the full knowledge that their major cities will be incinerated.
It is not war mongering to protect yourself and your allies.
posted on December 12, 2002 02:39:48 AM new
I have to point out that today Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not radioactive glassy plains.
There are people living there in a normal manner - not wearing lead BVDs.
If you airburst a weapon at a high enough altitude that the fireball does not suck up the soil then there is very little fallout generated. Also if you have a burrowing warhead that goes deep underground so the surface is not breached you get very little.
The radiation produced falls off very sharply for the first two to three days and almost all of it is goone in two weeks.
The radiation that lingers after that is usually only dangerous because it is from materials that concentrate biologically just as some chemicals like DDT, Mercury and dioxines do. For example the element Strontium has esentially the same chemistry as Calcium. So any dairy products produced for several years after a nuclear attack will cause a higher level of cancer in
the population eating them because they will have the strontium 90 concentrate in their bones.
All of us that grew up in the 50's when the US, Russia, France and Britain were all testing weapons in the atmosphere shared that risk. No doubt many of us, hundreds, or even thousands world wide died.
The newer weapons go both ways. Some are of improved design that burn almost all their fuel so efficiently that there is very little residue left to be radioactive and their neutron pulse is so weak that there is very little induced radioactivity even directly beneath them. They tend to yield the most blast effect because that's where the energy goes.
However you can deliberatly make a weapon put most of it's energy into a pulse of neutrons and hard gamma rays that will flood a huge area and penatrate through the walls of even stone buildings and tank armor so everyone is killed - but the explosion itself is so weak it will be doing good to bust a few windows like a sonic boom. If you deliberatly wrap that sort of bomb in a casing that will become radioactive when it is dicharged, such as cobalt, then you have deliberatly made a "dirty" bomb that can paint a plumb of material that will kill everything for a couple hundred miles wide halfway across a continent.
I do have to agree that dead is dead no matter how you get there. The scary thing about nuclear weapons is that they make destroying 50 square miles or so at a time cost effective. The Romans used to go into a town that really defied them and kill everything pull all the buildings down cut every tree and sow the fields with salt so nothing could grow
there for years. Just as devastating as a nuclear weapon but it took a huge commitment of will and work to do it. Not one guy one a half hour flight in a fighter plane.
posted on December 12, 2002 06:10:39 AM new
Do you bleeding hearts really think that if Iraq or any other country had nuclear weapons and used them that they would care one bit about you wives and children??!!
You spend so much time whining about the"poor people of Iraq" and all that crap, it's a shame you don't put all that bleeding to better use.
posted on December 12, 2002 06:17:35 AM new
The End of Imagination
The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created.
If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is four thousand, six hundred million years old. It could end in an afternoon.
Arundhati Roy on India's Nuclear tests
"The desert shook," the Government of India informed us (its people).
"The whole mountain turned white," the Government of Pakistan replied.
By afternoon the wind had fallen silent over Pokhran. At 3.45pm, the timer detonated the three devices. Around 200 to 300m deep in the earth, the heat generated was equivalent to a million degrees centigrade - as hot as temperatures on the sun. Instantly, rocks weighing around a thousand tons, a mini mountain underground, vapourised… shockwaves from the blast began to lift a mound of earth the size of a football field by several metres. One scientist on seeing it said, "I can now believe stories of Lord Krishna lifting a hill."
India Today
May 1998. It'll go down in history books, provided of course we have history books to go down in. Provided, of course, we have a future.
There's nothing new or original left to be said about nuclear weapons. There can be nothing more humiliating for a writer of fiction to have to do than restate a case that has, over the years, already been made by other people in other parts of the world, and made passionately, eloquently and knowledgeably.
I am prepared to grovel. To humiliate myself abjectly, because, in the circumstances, silence would be indefensible. So those of you who are willing: let's pick our parts, put on these discarded costumes and speak our second-hand lines in this sad second-hand play. But let's not forget that the stakes we're playing for are huge. Our fatigue and our shame could mean the end of us. The end of our children and our children's children. Of everything we love. We have to reach within ourselves and find the strength to think. To fight.
Once again we are pitifully behind the times - not just scientifically and technologically (ignore the hollow claims) but more pertinently in our ability to grasp the true nature of nuclear weapons. Our Comprehension of the Horror Department is hopelessly obsolete. Here we are, all of us in India and in Pakistan, discussing the finer points of politics and foreign policy, behaving for all the world as though our
governments have just devised a newer, bigger bomb, a sort of immense hand grenade with which they will annihilate the enemy (each other) and protect us from all harm.
How desperately we want to believe that. What wonderful, willing, well-behaved, gullible subjects we have turned out to be. The rest of humanity may not forgive us, but then the rest of the rest of humanity, depending on who fashions its views, may not know what a tired, dejected, heart-broken people we are. Perhaps it doesn't realise how urgently we need a miracle. How deeply we yearn for magic.
If only, if only nuclear war was just another kind of war. If only it was about the usual things - nations and territories, gods and histories. If only those of us who dread it are worthless moral cowards who are not prepared to die in defence of our beliefs. If only nuclear war was the kind of war in which countries battle countries, and men battle men.
But it isn't. If there is a nuclear war, our foes will not be China or America or even each other. Our foe will be the earth herself. Our cities and forests, our fields and villages will burn for days. Rivers will turn to poison. The air will become fire. The wind will spread the flames. When everything there is to burn has burned and the fires die, smoke will rise and shut out the sun. The earth will be enveloped in darkness. There will be no day - only interminable night. What shall we do then, those of us who are still alive? Burned and blind and bald and ill, carrying the cancerous carcasses of our children in our arms, where shall we go? What shall we eat? What shall we drink? What shall we breathe?
The Head of the Health, Environment and Safety Group of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in Bombay has a plan. He declared that India could survive nuclear war. His advice is that in the event of nuclear war we take the same safety measures as the ones that scientists have recommended in the event of accidents at nuclear plants. Take iodine pills, he suggests. And other steps such as remaining indoors, consuming only stored water and food and avoiding milk. Infants should be given powdered milk. "People in the danger zone should immediately go to the ground floor and if possible to the basement."
What do you do with these levels of lunacy? What do you do if you're trapped in an asylum and the doctors are all dangerously deranged?
Ignore it, it's just a novelist's naiveté, they'll tell you, Doomsday Prophet hyperbole. It'll never come to that. There will be no war. Nuclear weapons are about peace, not war. "Deterrence" is the buzz word of the people who like to think of themselves as hawks. (Nice birds, those. Cool. Stylish. Predatory. Pity there won't be many of them around after the war. Extinction is a word we must try to get used to.) Deterrence is an old thesis that has been resurrected and is being recycled with added local flavour. The Theory of Deterrence cornered the credit for having prevented the cold war from turning into a third world war. The only immutable fact about the third world war is that, if there's going to be one, it will be fought after the second world war. In other words, there's no fixed schedule.
The Theory of Deterrence has some fundamental flaws. Flaw Number One is that it presumes a complete, sophisticated understanding of the psychology of your enemy. It assumes that what deters you (the fear of annihilation) will deter them. What about those who are not deterred by that? The suicide bomber psyche - the "We'll take you with us" school - is that an outlandish thought? How did Rajiv Gandhi die?
In any case who's the "you" and who's the "enemy"? Both are only governments. Governments change. They wear masks within masks. They moult and re-invent themselves all the time. The one we have at the moment, for instance, does not even have enough seats to last a full term in office, but demands that we trust it to do pirouettes and party tricks with nuclear bombs even as it scrabbles around for a foothold to maintain a simple majority in Parliament.
Flaw Number Two is that deterrence is premised on fear. But fear is premised on knowledge. On an understanding of the true extent and scale of the devastation that nuclear war will wreak. It is not some inherent, mystical attribute of nuclear bombs that they automatically inspire thoughts of peace. On the contrary, it is the endless, tireless, confrontational work of people who have had the courage to openly denounce them, the marches, the demonstrations, the films, the outrage - that is what has averted, or perhaps only postponed, nuclear war. Deterrence will not and cannot work given the levels of ignorance and illiteracy that hang over our two countries like dense, impenetrable veils.
India and Pakistan have nuclear bombs now and feel entirely justified in having them. Soon others will too. Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Nepal (I'm trying to be eclectic here), Denmark, Germany, Bhutan, Mexico, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Burma, Bosnia, Singapore, North Korea, Sweden, South Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan… and why not? Every country in the world has a special case to make. Everybody has borders and beliefs.
And when all our larders are bursting with shiny bombs and our bellies are empty (deterrence is an exorbitant beast), we can trade bombs for food. And when nuclear technology goes on the market, when it gets truly competitive and prices fall, not just governments but anybody who can afford it can have their own private arsenal - businessmen, terrorists, perhaps even the occasional rich writer (like me). Our planet will bristle with beautiful missiles. There will be a new world order. The dictatorship of the pro-nuke elite.
But let us pause to give credit where it's due. Who must we thank for all this? The men who made it happen. The Masters of the Universe. Ladies and gentlemen, the United States of America! Come on up here folks, stand up and take a bow. Thank you for doing this to the world. Thank you for making a difference. Thank you for showing us the way. Thank you for altering the very meaning of life.
From now on it is not dying we must fear, but living. All I can say to every man, woman and sentient child in India, and over there, just a little way away in Pakistan, is: take it personally. Whoever you are - Hindu, Muslim, urban, agrarian - it doesn't matter. The only good thing about nuclear war is that it is the single most egalitarian idea that man has ever had. On the day of reckoning, you will not be asked to present your credentials. The devastation will be indiscriminate. The bomb isn't in your backyard. It's in your body. And mine. Nobody, no nation, no government, no man, no god has the right to put it there. We're radioactive already, and the war hasn't even begun. So stand up and say something. Never mind if it's been said before. Speak up on your own behalf. Take it very personally.
In early May (before the bomb), I left home for three weeks. I thought I would return. I had every intention of returning. Of course things haven't worked out quite the way I had planned.
While I was away, I met a friend whom I have always loved for, among other things, her ability to combine deep affection with a frankness that borders on savagery. "I've been thinking about you," she said, "about The God of Small Things - what's in it, what's over it, under it, around it, above it…"
She fell silent for a while. I was uneasy and not at all sure that I wanted to hear the rest of what she had to say. She, however, was sure that she was going to say it. "In this last year - less than a year actually - you've had too much of everything - fame, money, prizes, adulation, criticism, condemnation, ridicule, love, hate, anger, envy, generosity - everything. In some ways it's a perfect story. Perfectly baroque in its excess. The trouble is that it has, or can have, only one perfect ending."
Her eyes were on me, bright with a slanting, probing brilliance. She knew that I knew what she was going to say. She was insane. She was going to say that nothing that happened to me in the future could ever match the buzz of this. That the whole of the rest of my life was going to be vaguely unsatisfying. And, therefore, the only perfect ending to the story would be death. My death.
The thought had occurred to me too. Of course it had. The fact that all this, this global dazzle - these lights in my eyes, the applause, the flowers, the photographers, the journalists feigning a deep interest in my life (yet struggling to get a single fact straight), the men in suits fawning over me, the shiny hotel bathrooms with endless towels - none of it was likely to happen again. Would I miss it? Had I grown to need it? Was I a fame-junkie? Would I have withdrawal symptoms?
The more I thought about it, the clearer it became to me that if fame was going to be my permanent condition it would kill me. Club me to death with its good manners and hygiene. I'll admit that I've enjoyed my own five minutes of it immensely, but primarily because it was just five minutes. Because I knew (or thought I knew) that I could go home when I was bored and giggle about it. Grow old and irresponsible. Eat mangoes in the moonlight. Maybe write a couple of failed books - worstsellers - to see what it felt like. For a whole year I've cartwheeled across the world, anchored always to thoughts of home and the life I would go back to.
Contrary to all the enquiries and predictions about my impending emigration, that was the well I dipped into. That was my sustenance. My strength. I told my friend there was no such thing as a perfect story. I said that in any case hers was an external view of things, this assumption that the trajectory of a person's happiness, or let's say fulfilment, had peaked (and now must trough) because she had accidentally stumbled upon "success". It was premised on the unimaginative belief that wealth and fame were the mandatory stuff of everybody's dreams.
You've lived too long in New York, I told her. There are other worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is feasible, honourable, sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in which recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human worth. There are plenty of warriors I know and love, people far more valuable than myself, who go to war each day, knowing in advance that they will fail. True, they are less "successful" in the most vulgar sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled.
The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead. (Prescience? Perhaps.)
"Which means exactly what?" (Arched eyebrows, a little annoyed.)
I tried to explain, but didn't do a very good job of it. Sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a paper napkin. This is what I wrote:
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.
I've known her for many years, this friend of mine. She's an architect too. She looked dubious, somewhat unconvinced by my paper napkin speech. I could tell that structurally, just in terms of the sleek, narrative symmetry of things, and because she loves me, her thrill at my "success" was so keen, so generous, that it weighed in evenly with her (anticipated) horror at the idea of my death. I understood that it was nothing personal… Just a design thing.
Anyhow, two weeks after that conversation, I returned to India. To what I think/thought of as home. Something had died but it wasn't me. It was infinitely more precious. It was a world that has been ailing for a while, and has finally breathed its last. It's been cremated now. The air is thick with ugliness and there's the unmistakable stench of fascism on the breeze.
Day after day, in newspaper editorials, on the radio, on TV chat shows, on MTV for heaven's sake, people whose instincts one thought one could trust - writers, painters, journalists - make the crossing. The chill seeps into my bones as it becomes painfully apparent from the lessons of everyday life that what you read in history books is true. That fascism is indeed as much about people as about governments. That it begins at home. In drawing rooms. In bedrooms. In beds.
"Explosion of self-esteem", "Road to Resurgence", "A Moment of Pride", these were headlines in the papers in the days following the nuclear tests. "We have proved that we are not eunuchs any more," said Mr Thackeray of the Shiv Sena (Whoever said we were? True, a good number of us are women, but that, as far as I know, isn't the same thing.)
Reading the papers, it was often hard to tell when people were referring to Viagra (which was competing for second place on the front pages) and when they were talking about the bomb - "We have superior strength and potency." (This was our Minister for Defence after Pakistan completed its tests.) "These are not just nuclear tests, they are nationalism tests," we were repeatedly told.
This has been hammered home, over and over again. The bomb is India. India is the bomb. Not just India, Hindu India. Therefore, be warned, any criticism of it is not just ant-national but anti-Hindu. (Of course in Pakistan the bomb is Islamic. Other than that, politically, the same physics applies.) This is one of the unexpected perks of having a nuclear bomb. Not only can the government use it to threaten the Enemy, they can use it to declare war on their own people. Us.
When I told my friends that I was writing this piece, they cautioned me. "Go ahead," they said, "but first make sure you're not vulnerable. Make sure your papers are in order. Make sure your taxes are paid."
My papers are in order. My taxes are paid. But how can one not be vulnerable in a climate like this? Everyone is vulnerable. Accidents happen. There's safety only in acquiescence. As I write, I am filled with foreboding. In this country, I have truly known what it means for a writer to feel loved (and, to some degree, hated too). Last year I was one of the items being paraded in the media's end-of-the-year National Pride Parade. Among the others, much to my mortification, were a bomb-maker and an international beauty queen. Each time a beaming person stopped me on the street and said "You have made India proud" (referring to the prize I won, not the book I wrote), I felt a little uneasy. It frightened me then and it terrifies me now, because I know how easily that swell, that tide of emotion, can turn against me. Perhaps the time for that has come. I'm going to step out from under the fairy lights and say what's on my mind.
It's this: If protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti-Hindu and anti-national, then I secede. I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic. I am a citizen of the earth. I own no territory. I have no flag. I'm female, but have nothing against eunuchs. My policies are simple. I'm willing to sign any nuclear non-proliferation treaty or nuclear test ban treaty that's going. Immigrants are welcome. You can help me design our flag.
My world has died. And I write to mourn its passing. India's nuclear tests, the manner in which they were conducted, the euphoria with which they have been greeted (by us) is indefensible. To me, it signifies dreadful things. The end of imagination.
On the 15th of August last year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of India's independence. Next May we can mark our first anniversary in nuclear bondage.
Why did they do it? Political expediency is the obvious, cynical answer, except that it only raises another, more basic question: Why should it have been politically expedient? The three Official Reasons given are: China, Pakistan and Exposing Western Hypocrisy.
Taken at face value, and examined individually, they're somewhat baffling. I'm not for a moment suggesting that these are not real issues. Merely that they aren't new. The only new thing on the old horizon is the Indian government. In his appallingly cavalier letter to the US president our prime minister says India's decision to go ahead with the nuclear tests was due to a "deteriorating security environment". He goes on to mention the war with China in 1962 and the "three aggressions we have suffered in the last 50 years [from Pakistan]. And for the last 10 years we have been the victim of unremitting terrorism and militancysponsored by it . . . especially in Jammu and Kashmir."
The war with China is 35 years old. Unless there's some vital state secret that we don't know about, it certainly seemed as though matters had improved slightly between us. The most recent war with Pakistan was fought 27 years ago. Admittedly Kashmir continues to be a deeply troubled region and no doubt Pakistan is gleefully fanning the flames. But surely there must be flames to fan in the first place?
As for the third Official Reason: Exposing Western Hypocrisy - how much more exposed can they be? Which decent human being on earth harbours any illusions about it? These are people whose histories are spongy with the blood of others. Colonialism, apartheid, slavery, ethnic cleansing, germ warfare, chemical weapons, they virtually invented it all. They have plundered nations, snuffed out civilisations, exterminated entire populations. They stand on the world's stage stark naked but entirely unembarrassed, because they know that they have more money, more food and bigger bombs than anybody else. They know they can wipe us out in the course of an ordinary working day. Personally, I'd say it is arrogance more than hypocrisy.
We have less money, less food and smaller bombs. However, we have, or had, all kinds of other wealth. Delightful, unquantifiable. What we've done with it is the opposite of what we think we've done. We've pawned it all. We've traded it in. For what? In order to enter into a contract with the very people we claim to despise.
All in all, I think it is fair to say that we're the hypocrites. We're the ones who've abandoned what was arguably a moral position - ie. We have the technology, we can make bombs if we want to, but we won't. We don't believe in them. We're the ones who have now set up this craven clamouring to be admitted into the club of superpowers. For India to demand the status of a superpower is as ridiculous as demanding to play in the World Cup finals simply because we have a ball. Never mind that we haven't qualified, or that we don't play much soccer and haven't got a team.
We are a nation of nearly a billion people. In development terms we rank No 138 out of the 175 countries listed in the UNDP's Human Development Index (even Ghana and Sri Lanka rank above us). More than 400 million of our people are illiterate and live in absolute poverty, more than 600 million lack even basic sanitation and more than 200 million have no safe drinking water.
The nuclear bomb and the demolition of the Barbi Masjid in Ayodhya are both part of the same political process. They are hideous byproducts for a nation's search for herself. Of India's efforts to forge a national identity. The poorer the nation, the larger the numbers of illiterate people and the more morally bankrupt her leaders, the cruder and more dangerous the notion of what that identity is or should be.
The jeering, hooting young men who battered down the Babri Masjid are the same ones whose pictures appeared in the papers in the days that followed the nuclear tests. They were on the streets, celebrating India's nuclear bomb and simultaneously "condemning Western Culture" by emptying crates of Coke and Pepsi into public drains. I'm a little baffled by their logic: Coke is Western Culture, but the nuclear bomb is an old Indian tradition?
Yes, I've heard - the bomb is in the Vedas [ancient Hindu scriptures]. It might be, but if you look hard enough you'll find Coke in the Vedas too. That's the great thing about all religious texts. You can find anything you want in them - as long as you know what you're looking for.
But returning to the subject of the non-vedic 1990s: we storm the heart of whiteness, we embrace the most diabolical creation of western science and call it our own. But we protest against their music, their food, their clothes, their cinema and their literature. That's not hypocrisy. That's humour. It's funny enough to make a skull smile.
We're back on the old ship. The SS Authenticity & Indianness. If there is going to be a pro-authenticity/anti-national drive, perhaps the government ought to get its history straight and its facts right. If they're going to do it, they may as well do it properly.
First of all, the original inhabitants of this land were not Hindu. Ancient though it is, there were human beings on earth before there was Hinduism. India's tribal people have a greater claim to being indigenous to this land than anybody else, and how are they treated by the state and its minions? Oppressed, cheated, robbed of their lands, shunted around like surplus goods. Perhaps a good place to start would be to restore to them the dignity that was once theirs. Perhaps the government could make a public undertaking that more dams of this kind will not be built, that more people will not be displaced.
But of course that would be inconceivable, wouldn't it? Why? Because it's impractical. Because tribal people don't really matter. Their histories, their customs, their deities are dispensable. They must learn to sacrifice these things for the greater good of the Nation (that has snatched from them everything they ever had).
Okay, so that's out. For the rest, I could compile a practical list of things to ban and buildings to break. It'll need some research, but off the top of my head here are a few suggestions. They could begin by banning a number of ingredients from our cuisine: chillies (Mexico), tomatoes (Peru), potatoes (Bolivia), coffee (Morocco), tea, white sugar, cinnamon (China) . . . they could then move into recipes. Tea with milk and sugar, for instance (Britain).
Smoking will be out of the question. Tobacco came from North America. Cricket, English and Democracy should be forbidden. Either kabaddi or kho-kho could replace cricket. I don't want to start a riot, so I hesitate to suggest a replacement for English. (Italian? It has found its way to us via a kinder route: marriage, not imperialism.)
All hospitals in which western medicine is practised or prescribed should be shut down. All national newspapers discontinued. The railways dismantled. Airports closed. And what about our newest toy - the mobile phone? Can we live without it, or shall I suggest that they make an exception there? They could put it down in the column marked "Universal"? (Only essential commodities will be included here. No music, art or literature.) Needless to say, sending your children to university in the US, and rushing there yourself to have your prostate operated upon will be a cognisable offence.
It will be a long, long list. It would take years of work. I could not use a computer because that wouldn't be very authentic of me, would it?
I don't mean to be facetious, merely to point out that this is surely the short cut to hell. There's no such thing as an Authentic India or a Real Indian. There is no Divine Committee that has the right to sanction one single, authorised version of what India is or should be.
Railing against the past will not heal us. History has happened. It's over and done with. All we can do is to change its course by encouraging what we love instead of destroying what we don't. There is beauty yet in this brutal, damaged world of ours. Hidden, fierce, immense. Beauty that is uniquely ours and beauty that we have received with grace from others, enhanced, re-invented and made our own. We have to seek it out, nurture it, love it. Making bombs will only destroy us. It doesn't matter whether we use them or not. They will destroy us either way.
India's nuclear bomb is the final act of betrayal by a ruling class that has failed its people.
However many garlands we heap on our scientists, however many medals we pin to their chests, the truth is that it's far easier to make a bomb than to educate four hundred million people.
According to opinion polls, we're expected to believe that there's a national consensus on the issue. It's official now. Everybody loves the bomb. (Therefore the bomb is good.)
Is it possible for a man who cannot write his own name to even the basic, elementary facts about the nature of nuclear weapons? Has anybody told him that nuclear war has nothing at all to do with his received notions of war? Nothing to do with honour, nothing to do with pride. Has anybody bothered to explain to him about thermal blasts, radioactive fallout and the nuclear winter? Are there even words in his language to describe the concepts of enriched uranium, fissile material and critical mass? Or has his language itself become obsolete? Is he trapped in a time capsule, watching the world pass him by, unable to understand or communicate with it because his language never took into account the horrors that the human race would dream up? Does he not matter at all, this man?
I'm not talking about one man, of course, I'm talking about millions and millions of people who live in this country. This is their land too, you know. They have the right to make an informed decision about its fate and, as far as I can tell, nobody has informed them about anything. The tragedy is that nobody could, even if they wanted to. Truly, literally, there's no language to do it in. This is the real horror of India. The orbits of the powerful and the powerless spinning further and further apart from each other, never intersecting, sharing nothing. Not a language. Not even a country.
Who the hell conducted those opinion polls? Who the hell is the prime minister to decide whose finger will be on the nuclear button that could turn everything we love - our earth, our skies, our mountains, our plains, our rivers, our cities and villages - to ash in an instant? Who the hell is he to reassure us that there will be no accidents? How does he know? Why should we trust him? What has he ever done to make us trust him? What have any of them ever done to make us trust them?
The nuclear bomb is the most anti-democratic, anti-national, anti-human, outright evil thing that man has ever made. If you are religious, then remember that this bomb is Man's challenge to God. It's worded quite simply: We have the power to destroy everything that You have created.
If you're not religious, then look at it this way. This world of ours is four thousand, six hundred million years old. It could end in an afternoon.
This article was published in India, in Frontline and Outlook, last Monday (5 days earlier)
posted on December 12, 2002 06:52:48 AM new
quatermass
<quote>
"Do you bleeding hearts really think that if Iraq or any other country had nuclear weapons and used them that they would care on bit about you wives and children??!! You spend so much time whining about the"poor people of Iraq" and all that crap, it's a shame you don't put all that bleeding to better use."
<end quote>
My first reaction to your comment was, "What an ignorant statement". I thought about all the countries that are not in favor of this war - all the leaders who view George Bush as a moronic cowbow following his daddy's direction. I thought about all the good people all over the world who care about their country and their families, including, by the way, the people of Iraq. And I thought about all the people with sense enough to realize the threat of nuclear war and care about the people all over the world.
But then, I thought about George Bush who has no concern whatsoever about the number of families in Iraq who will be vaporized, and in your vernacular, "all that crap". So there is some truth in your statement and it makes me sick.
I have two questions for you.
1.What do you mean by a "bleeding heart"? when used in the context of your statement.
2.How do we "put all that bleeding to better use"?
posted on December 12, 2002 07:08:46 AM new
>If Iraq uses any N, B or C weapons against out troops or allies, then Iraq does so with the full knowledge that their major cities will be incinerated.
TErrific, REAMOND. HOw will you prevent escalation? How wll you prevent other arab countries who secretly have a so-called suitcase nuclear bomb from smuggling it into New York Harbor and then setting it off where it'll kill millions of Americans? Is that your sensible plan? Do you WANT to kill millions of Americans? What in the Hell makes you think that America is the ONLY country in the world with nukes?
posted on December 12, 2002 10:06:03 AM new
Man, all this conversation is making me want to see us go kick some Iraqi butt... hell let me push the button.
edited to add this profound quote:
I don't think it's sad at all. Life is a learning lesson. They are merely offering to teach.
--Borillar
Now that is a quote that belongs in this thread also
We will "teach" them about war...
Ain't Life Grand...
[ edited by Twelvepole on Dec 12, 2002 10:09 AM ]
posted on December 12, 2002 10:23:59 AM new
Helen,
I know but I wanted to point it out before someone else did and accused me of some
dastardly motive for making the change.
Bob
I have edited the correct number in and I'm adding this to say I will be back tonight with a long response to a number of posts here.
posted on December 12, 2002 01:03:53 PM new
Bob 9585
Don't worry much about the math.
A megaton is not really equal to a million individual ton charges of TNT.
The destructive power of a bomb goes up in proportion to the cube of it's power so two or three small weapons are really more destructive than one big one. That's why most missles are MIRV'd with several smaller warheads instead of a 50 or 100 mega ton single.
posted on December 13, 2002 04:43:29 AM new
If any Arabs have a suitcase nuke, they will use it no matter what we do or don't do- they want us destroyed regardless.
