Stay calm for Guam
POOR GGua Guam. I can only imagine the buz buzz zz t that’s pervaded every newsr newsroomroo in the days since tensio tensionsons rocketed between the UUS US a and North Korea. Where’sWhhere Guam? What is Guam? How fast can we get there? I had tot Google it. It’s It’ss a tiny US territory nearly 4,0004,0000 mi miles west of Hawaii and it looks lookks likelik a Pacific paradise. All Alll beachesbe and palm trees and a vibrantvibbran tourist trade. That, plus two eno enormous American bases, moremoore stealth bombers than a aanyo nyone will admit to and a hugehug nuclear arsenal. It’sI the home of the THAADTH – Terminal High AltitudeAlt Area Defense – system,s yst which l aunches missilesmisssile at incoming attacking ICBMs andd and the theoretically explodes them in the upperr upper atm atmosphere before they can do any harmm. harm. All very ColdCo War and supposedly reassuring ffor for t the locals, who know they are first inn in the firing line should the threats comming coming from Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un Jong-uun be become reality. North Koorea Korea, which by the way Fox News abbreviatesabbrevviate to NoKo, has threatened to launch ffour four missiles into the seas surroundingsurroundingg G Guam, 20 miles off shore. Trump has warned this will provoke US “fire and fury, the like of which has never been seen before”. That was meant to echo President Truman in 1942, after Hiroshima but before Nagasaki.
He warned Japan they “may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth”.
And then he gave the go-ahead for the second nuclear bomb – and the last one ever to be used in anger.
So was Trump’s rhetoric irresponsible bluster or strong, fierce leadership?
One islander said: “Trump doesn’t need to flex his muscles to show the US is strong. Yet if something happens, the thousands of us here on the island are the ones who will be hit.”
Nightmares
I remember as a child during the worst of the Cold War often having nightmares about how the world was going to end.
Since then I’ve always thought it such a miracle that we got through those years of escalating madness, with billions of pounds spent on weapons that could have devastated the earth several times over – the amazing, life-affirming miracle that human common sense prevailed and that we avoided mutual destruction.
It seems such a gigantic step backwards that our future once again seems to hang in the balance between two angry men spouting belligerent verbal diarrhoea. WHO knew that rich girls edit their fabulous diamonds and pearls? I’ve always imagined you wore a necklace or earrings as they came out of the jeweller’s shop window.
But it seems Princess Diana, like other wealthy women, spent many happy hours redesigning her precious gems and having them reset.
One extraordinary pearl necklace she often wore, named the Swan Lake Suite, was made with jewels she owned from childhood, as you do.
It recently sold for £10million.