CB, that was my father's cousin, not mine. Ormond was over half a century older than me.
The British do have a tolerance for individuals and eccentricity. Eccentricity is almost a matter of pride. People who are quite normal like to appear eccentric.
Re Hiroshima. Whether it's nuke, chemical, biological or 100 kg bomb, hand grenade, gun or knife is all the same to me. Individuals suffer. If it's total war with civilians and supporting civilian infrastructure fair game, then it might as well be big time. Big bombs obliterating whole cities would actually reduce suffering by humane killing as there would be relatively few injured compared with things like the mass bombing of German cities and the Blitz on London.
When the Twin Towers were destroyed, there were few injuries [relatively] because people either lived or died. That's how 20 megatonnes over Washington would work. One big blam and then quiet. The periphery, where injuries would occur, would be in rural areas, so numbers of injured would be small compared with total dead. That's maths. Circumference = pi x diameter. Heh heh... Or, think of little soap bubbles joining up - one big bubble has less surface area than thousands of little ones. Same volume, smaller area.
Personally, I don't have a problem with noocular bombs as weapons. As far as I can tell, it was a reasonable idea to destroy Hiroshima. It made landing in mainland Japan a lot easier than it would have been without such a big shock. THAT was shock and awe. Whether surrender could have been reasonably achieved otherwise I don't know.
What I do have a problem with is the belligerent megalomaniac nation states which like to dominate other people. Like China wanting to murder Taiwanese if they decide to run their own show the way NZ runs its own show instead of being part of Oz.
If Islamic Jihad had more support, I would understand it if the USA levelled Mecca and Mad Mahathir's Malaysian Islamic Twin Towers. That would make them think twice. This tribal stuff is eons old. It does right back to competing chimp tribes who are into the odd bit of killing.
The way around it is how the USA is now thinking, which is to get the UN into gear, and preferably revamped into something constitutionally sensible which the vast majority of people will support. A PNAC and UN Denial [which should be illegal under German Law] isn't a good answer.
Maybe Women of the World could unite, hold a Coven Convention in Helengrad, with Helen presiding and Hillary in attendance, to do the deed. You could write the legal stuff. The blokes don't seem to have a clue. They just keep fighting over who's got the biggest willie, army, rockets and bank account.
Mqurice |
