Kim crisis is real, but world dozes
HERE’S a disturbing thought. Imagine 80,000 Melbourne people killed instantly. In one massive blinding flash.
Imagine those people vaporised. Bodies left as shadowy silhouettes on concrete walls — if they’re lucky.
Imagine everyone from the MCG to Etihad Stadium then killed by the radiation after the blast.
It’s a horrific prospect. Human beings horribly burnt, skin peeling off them, bodies torn apart, broken and shattered — all in hideous Armageddon fashion. People simply vanishing into thin air.
If North Korea was to drop the bomb on Darwin, it would obliterate the whole city and its 20,000plus population. If they targeted Sydney with a similar 100-kiloton nuclear bomb, it would kill 126,000 people.
It’s all very well for experts to say North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is outdated and incapable, most likely, of reaching further into Australia than Darwin, but what do we know of Kim’s naval capability?
Imagine an enemy nuclear submarine roaming the east coast of Australia like the Japanese did at will with their subs during World War II. They got right into Sydney Harbour, they smashed the merchant navy off the coast of NSW.
We could be sitting ducks for all we know. And of course, they wouldn’t have to sneak into Port Phillip Bay, they could pop something up in the air from the Southern Ocean. Or the Indian Ocean. Or the Pacific.
It would be like shooting fish in a barrel. And we’d be fried.
I’ve seen what conventional war can do, it’s bloody awful. Nuclear conflict is almost imaginable, but read what happened in Hiroshima, you’ll be shocked.
This kind of threat is something people haven’t really worried about since the 1960s or ’70s during the Cold War when Russia and the US were at each other’s throats.
Glasnost and perestroika and a couple of forward-thinking world leaders might have changed that for a while, but we’re back in trouble again. The threat of nuclear annihilation is back and don’t kid yourself for a minute that it’s not real.
North Korea’s nutcase leader Kim Jong-un has made it clear Australia will be a target if we stick by the US. And Malcolm Turnbull has come out backing the US as Kim and Donald Trump trade threats and warnings, so the way I see it, we are a nuclear target.
And Geelong, with its biological liability, the CSIRO Animal Health Laboratories, has a pretty big bullseye target painted on its head. But it’s like no one is even contemplating the possibility we might be targeted.
It’s like terrorism. We don’t seem to think it might come to us — even though we’ve had terror organisers right in our midst. The lunatics jailed for planning to blow up the MCG were hatching their plans in Barwon Heads.
If Kim has long-range ICBMs he can hit Darwin or the US with, we shouldn’t consider ourselves out of range.
I think we’ve become very laissez-faire about nuclear attack. We all hear the prime minister when he says the nuclear threat is very serious. But we don’t appreciate the gravity of the situation.
And the fact is, any nuclear assault would be an absolute catastrophe. Just one nuclear detonation, one launch, would tear world finance markets apart. It would shatter trade, it would hammer physical trade routes and it would throw national economies into chaos.
So whatever you might think of him, Donald Trump is holding all the West’s cards in his hands right now. We can’t bury our heads in the sand to that fact.
We can’t have leaders playing silly buggers like Julie Bishop who says she’d have trouble working with MPs in New Zealand — or MPs like Christine Couzens saying Trump should stay away.
This is all real and we have to deal with it.
The way I see it, Trump is fac- ing down Kim the same way JFK had to face down Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis.
He can’t treat Kim like he’s the coyote in a Road Runner cartoon and hope the bombs will backfire.
He can’t just blast North Korea like his hawks want — JFK had the same problem.
World leaders need to hold proper talks with the president in a civil way.
Even if they don’t respect the many they must respect the office and seek a solution.
For all his shortcomings, I think Malcolm Turnbull can do this. Plonker Bill Shorten wouldn’t have a clue.
Here in Australia, we have to turn the political discussion about. Here’s this major global crisis and what are our leaders talking about? The ludicrous citizenship debate and the never-ending same-sex marriage debate.
Hello, there’s a moron out there threatening to blow up our whole world. And he’s fair dinkum about it.
Wake up, Australia!