DONALD TRUMP has been spending large parts of August getting mixed up about whether he is playing a macho video game or trying to run a country which is involved in most of the inter-state conflict in the world.
It is worrying that North Korea may now be in possession of viable nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them – at least to overseas US territory if not deep into the USA itself. However, blustering and threatening North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un is unlikely to make him back off. Now Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn has warned the UK Government not to humour Donald Trump by offering to help him in the event of a military attack on North Korea.
Writing in the Sunday Mirror, Jeremy Corbyn points out that we are only a few days past the anniversary of the US dropping a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. That bomb was tiny compared with modern bombs – but it killed hundreds of thousands of people. We have to avoid nuclear conflict – and that means finding diplomatic, not military, solutions.
Corbyn calls on the UK Government to rule out any British military involvement – even in the form of joint exercises near Korea – and to speak out in favour of diplomatic moves to secure peace. “In the interest of sanity and safety for the whole world, global pressure for dialogue and diplomacy must be overwhelming,” he sid, before calling on Trump and Jong-un to “wind down the war of rhetoric”.
The British Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, said that the UK was working with its allies to find a diplomatic solution – but having opened his mouth he quickly put his foot in it. “The North Korean regime is the cause of this problem and they must fix it,” he said – sounding remarkably like a toddler telling his mother “he started it!”
ELN says: The Hiroshima bomb was exploded in the air, so there was relatively little contamination left on the ground and the city was soon re-inhabited. A nuclear bomb which exploded on the ground could leave a vast area uninhabitable for thousands of years. Ironically, some scientists believe that nuclear power stations are more dangerous than nuclear bombs. Some of them hold more radioactive material than a bomb – and the weather can take radiation to distant places. Parts of Scotland saw their levels of background radiation rise by a factor of 10,000 after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.
•Read Jeremy Corbyn’s article in the Mirror: Jeremy Corbyn urges Tory Government to stay out of any military action in North Korea
•Read more about it: Corbyn furious as Tories fail us on NHS Trump in yet another bigoted ruling
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