The Nuclear Winter of Our Discontent
Andrew Denton is something like the Dick Cavett of Australia: bright, witty, and gets good interviews on television. Last night on the ABC, he interviewed Dr. Helen Caldicott, a renowned anti-nuke activist. Dr. Caldicott is a pediatrician, and her activism stems from her medical practice. I haven’t previously heard any of what she’s got to say, but her intelligence was evident last night, and although she is obviously a very compassionate person, she doesn’t much suffer fools. Her account of meeting with Ronald Reagan was priceless, recounting that his foreign policy was derived from the Reader’s Digest and describing him otherwise as a “nice old man.” Nuclear war is an unimaginable event for most people, so vast and devastating that we often fail to grasp just how terrible it would be, despite the accounts available from Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the atomic testing we spent 30 years thereafter on. Dr. Caldicott’s analysis of the current situation is worth keeping in mind. After the Cold War, the world thought it was safe, but we are as close to disaster as ever. We must not allow the Bush government to produce more weapons, let alone a policy that would encourage their use, but this is the path the U.S. is presently undertaking. It’s too easy for us to let the news accounts fall into the pile of “it’s just the Pentagon’s war games, not an active plan,” when in fact it is a plan and Bush wants to fight and win a nuclear war. Why else build a useless missile shield? We also need to encourage and support the Russians in accounting for and locking away or destroying the radioactive materials in their country, as the accessibility by terrorists is a very serious concern.

Denton also interviewed the Wiggles, which was a great relief.