Good evening!
The rain is pouring, it's rather chilly, and I am drinking a very pleasant bucket of ordinary tea.
But beneath the internet-geek, tea-sipping facade is a rather tense person.
I have relatively recently arrived home from an hour and forty-five minutes of drama doom. I HATE THE CASTING PROCESS FOR SCHOOL PLAYS. This particular play, "The Diary of Anne Frank," has already been a long, drawn-out affair. Firstly, the initial auditions at the beginning of June. Secondly, the call-back auditions a week ago. Thirdly, the publication of the cast list, without specification of individual roles. Then, this evening, the read-through. It was essentially a reverse witch-hunt: a search for shining talent. It was hideous, nerve-wracking, and now I have been assured I will finally find out my part tomorrow after one month of DOOM, my stomach is tight with nerves.
Still, there's nothing like a bit of tension in the world. My schoolgirl tension is nothing in comparison to the international tension that bubbles under the surfaces of all of our little lives.
However, according to this morning's Independent, THE COLD WAR IS OVER. This is an interesting idea. Firstly, the Cold War is generally acknowledged to have finished in the early 90s, although it has become fashionable to discuss the concept of whether the Cold War is still a reality or not. Let's face it, Russia has thousands of nuclear warheads, and the states still has only slightly less than their traditional Eastern enemy. George Bush and Putin were hardly the best of friends. Perhaps, though the Doomsday clock was turning its wrathful attention to climate change as opposed to nuclear holocaust, we were in a state of Cold War throughout the last twenty years, which brings us to the second point. Why is the Cold War now completely over if it wasn't before? Well, Obama and Medvedev have had nice, pleasant discussions and have posed for a few pretty pictures in the usual stage-set fashion that is so familiar in international relations. Oh yes, and they have agreed to reduce the number of nuclear warheads.
Perhaps the risk of the Americans being blown up by the Russians, or the whole world being blown up by the Americans, has diminished as a result of today. But the fact remains that those horrible, disgustingly evil WMDs are still lurking in the submarines of the world's seas, and it is still possible for either nation to wipe the world out several times over. What happens the next time a Republican is elected to the Presidency?
Maybe the headline should have been phrased differently. THE COLD WAR IS OVER. FOR NOW.
J xxx
p.s. Please look into CND. I'm wanting to join Liberty at the moment, so I can't afford to join CND as well, and I'm a bit unsure as to what to do with all that nuclear waste once you've disarmed, AND I'm a bit unsure how you can prove that a nation has entirely disarmed, and without a deterrent it is possible the world could be blown to smithereens. But I agree with them on principle! http://www.cnduk.org/
p.p.s Wish me luck in the play!
Good luck for the play, J! I hope you get a good part - you really deserve one!
ReplyDeleteThe whole concept of the Cold War and nuclear bombs really quite scares me. It's like our lives are (/were?) constantly on the edge.
It seems quite impossible for such a war to be over just like that - though I really hope that it is. But I think you could be much closer with the verdict 'the Cold War is over, for now', unfortunately.
I suppose we have to be grateful for the fact that Obama and Medvedev are different personalities to Bush and Putin and that means that this sort of development is possible, now, if this can be slowly but surely built on they perhaps one day the Cold War will be over, but whilst any country in the world has a weapon that can take out the whole world, then cold war if not the 'Cold War' definitely exists! The thing that really scares me even more than the Russian and US governments having these weapons is the idea that nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of religious extremists who actually believe that destroying the world would be the right thing to do! For them, nuclear weapons wouldn't be a political, defensive weapon, they would be a weapon to be used, now that really scares me! As usual very interesting and well written J! xxx Ellie
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