Happy Nuke Year

And so we begin a fresh new spin around the sun. Happy Nuke Year. 'Cos that's where the future (and its possible mushroom end) lies.

This is how it begins: first a trickle, then the flood.

Just a while ago, when the Iraq war was but a bitty embryo of an invasion plan, there was talk among memebers of the U.S. department of war of the need for a nuclear startup. The buzz was all very Rumsfeldian, of intelligent nukes that could seek out a highly specific target and smithereen the mother with a minimum of collateral calamity. There's been little (open) talk lately (also little Donald Rumsfeld, thankfully) of that; but I expect one/more of the empire's covert cabals is at work there.

Now, Tony Blair, that wide-mouthed peacemaker, wants to reignite the sunsetted empire's nuclear program. Then, of course, there's North Korea and Iran, friends of the capitalist patriot A.Q. Khan of Pakistan, that old friend of America's, whose new friend India waved the checkered flag for its despised neighbor to join its own despised neighbor's "I got a bomb, too" club.

But what starts as a dribble, could turn into a Gangetic overflow, spreading outward into virulent damnation.

The U.S., once vehemently opposed to India's nuclear aspirations, is now its benefactor. India is beside itself with joy for the attention and the acknowledgement of its purported global importance. But it forgets that the West couldn't give a rat's ass about any local disaster potential. Let's hark back to the Union Carbide disaster in Bhopal, India, in 1984. Safety regulations were criminally flouted, a chemical catastrophe ensued. Scores of people died, many more were maimed, generations of deformed children born in the disaster's wake paid (and continue to pay) the price. The legal outcome? A payoff, a pat on the back, criminals retired - some to their hometowns in India; fatter, richer ones to their estates in America. "Case closed," said the Indian courts, as did the American courts, and the repercussions were left for society's meekest to endure as they were swept under the rug.

But what's that got to do with nukes? Let a tiny story, which appeared in the regional language of a local newspaper translated and uploaded for the English-language readers, make the connection. Uranium tailings spilled into a lake in northern India. The creatures inhabiting the lake began to die. Locals noticed and alerted the authorities; little, if any, was done.

It's small, sounds relatively harmless - it did happen far away in some remote village in a distant country, after all. But let it stand as a portent of what's to come. India is a country where for a few bucks the authorities will turn a blind eye to the grimmest transgressions. In the past, the West (and the East) could look away - it was too far away to affect them. It's a different world today. These isolated incidents stand in danger of becoming a hail of frogs across the world.

India's nuclear ambitions should not encouraged or supported. Nor should those of any other country. The immediate strategic interests of any nation - subversive or bellicose - are not worth the consequences they threaten to wreak.