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The North Koreans have placed their first weather satellite in orbit, although the device is reportedly “tumbling” and hardly a model of space age competence.
The Dec. 12 launch of North Korea’s rocket has brought a chorus of condemnation by nuclear-armed governments and military hawks. The nuclear weapons club has been testing H-bombs and nuclear missiles like mad itself lately, which puts its members in a clearly superior position from which to judge the authenticity of threats to peace.

British UN Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant declared, “In our view [the UN Security Council] should react, it should react quickly, and it should react strongly to this provocation.” Of course the provocation that Grant’s own navy provided October 23rd off the coast of Florida doesn’t merit any mention whatsoever. That sunny day, the Brits launched a Trident intercontinental ballistic missile from its giant HMS Vigilant, one of the Royals’ four Trident-class ballistic missile submarines. The British missile has a 7,000-mile range and could smash cities in Iran and Argentina from where it was lit up near NE Florida. Of course North Korea must be dealt with most sternly.

“We support a strong reaction by the [UN Security] council, it’s a clear violation,” France’s UN Ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters. The French have several hundred hydrogen bombs in their arsenal of bombers, jets and submarines, and know all about threats to peace from their defense of it in Algeria and Indo China.

“This launch is about a weapons program, not peaceful use of space,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. Well, Ms. Nuland ought to know since the US Air Force launched an intercontinental ballistic Minuteman-3 missile Nov. 20th from Vandenberg AFB in California. Col. David Lair, the Air Force’s 576th Flight Test Squadron commander, said of the launch, “The data we receive from these tests is vital in ensuring a safe, secure and effective ICBM force.” Col. Lair is a part of the Pentagon’s Global Strike Command. Not to worry, the name is really just a reference to delivery of Bayer aspirin, which is sometimes known as safe, secure and effective.

The same aspirin salesmen were at work under the Nevada desert new Las Vegas December 5, when the National Nuclear Security Administration blew off its latest US nuclear bomb test.

NNSA Deputy Administrator Don Cook told the press, “This type of data is critical for … the safety and effectiveness of the nation’s stockpile.” The so-called “sub-critical” bomb test was the 27th in a series and are said to avoid the “criticality” — that is a plutonium/hydrogen fusion explosion — and thereby get around the strict limits of the Limited Test Ban Treaty. However no independent inspection of these tests verify their sub-criticality. But really it’s those mysterious and secluded North Koreans that must be more transparent.  

In spite of the US Air Force’s appeal to safety and security, several critics emerged in Japan where the US first tested its atomic weapons on civilian populations in 1945. The benign nature of the December bomb test seemed to elude the Mayor of Hiroshima, Kazumi Matsui, who condemned the US test as a violation of a resolution, sponsored by a group of countries led by Japan and passed recently by the UN General Assembly, calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.

Just to show her country’s deep commitment to nuclear disarmament, US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice voted in favor of the resolution.

If only the North Koreans were as committed.