Praise be for the tabloid press. On the cover of today's Current Bun, they've illustrated their report on the North Korean nuke test not with the seismograph that adorns most other papers, nor even a considered portrait of enigmatic premier, Kim Jong Il. Instead they've plumped for his marionette double as seen in puppet political satire, Team America: World Police. Not that I'm trying to show the Sun up as a reactionary rag pumped full of stereotypes and dangerous generalisations. If I was, I'd be tarred with the same brush because as I watched the reports on last night's news, exactly the same images were going through my head.
However, Kim is not the only smarting from being painted with an extremely broad brush (I'm assuming here that he gets to see our red tops). John Bolton, begrudging US ambassador to the UN, has been defending his nation's foreign policy. "Get a life," he told the Today programme when asked if Iraq and other misadventures had provoked the North Koreans into testing their device (listen to the interview on the BBC's Listen Again service). And it's true when he said that the US is not solely responsible for the world's problems, but neither are they helping.
He also claimed that Kim would get a warmer reception in the "community of civilised nations" if it abandoned its nuclear ambitions - this from a nation that currently has over 10,000 warheads. But no mention was made of the Non-Proliferation Treaty or the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. In fact, in all the condemnation of yesterday's test, I've not seen one single diplomat or government official mention them.
Why? It can only be because, with the US actively pursuing the development of smaller, more usable nukes and the UK developing the Orion laser to perform simulations of nuclear explosions, this civilised community has as much commitment to ending the threat of nuclear Armageddon as North Korea, Iran and other aspiring members of the nuclear club. But to paraphrase Groucho Marx, if this is the kind of club that would have you as a member, would you really want to join?
