Thursday, April 16, 2015

John F Kennedy Deserved a Nobel Prize for Peace

Much focus has been given to how Obama did not deserve to get the Nobel Peace Prize and I fervently agree but relatively little attention has been given to the fact that John F Kennedy did not get one despite delivering on the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that stopped above-ground testing of nuclear weapons.

Republican generals in the Pentagon (i.e. all of them) have written this is survivable and this lunacy has come again since the start of U.S. interference in Ukraine.  Anyone who could even suggest such a thing isn't a warrior but rather an enemy of humanity.



Although battleships are now as obsolete as dodo birds, during WWII they were formidable and they were gigantic.  The photograph shows the Baker test at Bikini Atoll which was one of the dirtiest for fallout because they exploded it underwater and that column is made up of highly-radioactive seawater.

Even battleships not in the immediate kill range of the blast were found to have so much radiation that all sailors, even in the deepest, most-protected areas of the vessel, would be killed.


Here's another perspective on the same explosion:


Yes, only one megaton as this was in 1946.  The biggest one tested was the last exploded by the Soviets fifteen years later and that one was fifty times more powerful.  Relatively-speaking, the Baker test was just a firecracker.  What they have concocted in the labs since then is anyone's guess as the United States (among a few others such as China, Pakistan, Israel, etc) has failed, since 1999, to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

Above-ground testing was stopped by the Limited Test Ban Treaty signed in 1963 by JFK but there's nothing to stop additional below-ground testing because the U.S. won't ratify the treaty.  This makes America's protestations regarding North Korea's nuclear testing all the more ludicrous as the U.S. refuses to ratify the document to make it illegal before the United Nations.

Why not.

Answer:  the GOP


Note:  fairness to Dwight D Eisenhower is warranted as it took eight years to engineer the Limited Test Ban Treaty with the Soviets so any Nobel Prize for Peace should, in my view, be shared.  This was when America had leaders instead of the shabby parade of pissants we've seen ever since the advent of Fox News and CNN.

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