Official Leftfield Announcement

[Memory Man]

In a way, is lots of different countries having access to nuclear weapons a kind of good deterrent as no one will ever actually use one for fear of retaliation?

If Everyone having them means nobody uses them…. Is that a good thing? I honestly dont know!

i would of course prefer full disarmament and nobody has them, but thats not realistic sadly

[jump]

43 minutes ago, Memory Man said:

In a way, is lots of different countries having access to nuclear weapons a kind of good deterrent as no one will ever actually use one for fear of retaliation?

If Everyone having them means nobody uses them…. Is that a good thing? I honestly dont know!

i would of course prefer full disarmament and nobody has them, but thats not realistic sadly

A lot of Americans use similar logic to justify everyone having guns however statistically it just shows it escalates incidents to be more violence compared to when guns aren’t used as well as the availability of guns makes spree shootings more frequent in America.

Maybe the behaviour of an average American is different to the elected leaders of the world who you would expect to act better but in the last few years complete twats have managed to get elected in the UK and USA, France was very close to getting an alt-right president etc so I fuck trusting anyone with them.

[DeanoL]

9 hours ago, Florian Saucer Attack said:

If the mad man fires the nuclear missiles at the UK (I'm Irish but presumably we'd be fucked too) I will in no way feel comforted by they fact Britain has retaliated by firing missiles at Russia and killing tens of millions of innocent people.

But would you be comforted in that situation by knowing we couldn't retaliate either? is my point.

[stuie]

10 hours ago, Kurosagi said:

Didn't think I'd come across this kind of view on a Leftfield thread on a Glastonbury forum.

Of course, I'd love to live in a world where nuclear weapons didn't exist.  Sadly, that's not going to happen so we have to face the reality and keep the deterrent. 

[blutarsky]

13 minutes ago, jump said:

A lot of Americans use similar logic to justify everyone having guns however statistically it just shows it escalates incidents to be more violence compared to when guns aren’t used as well as the availability of guns makes spree shootings more frequent in America.

Maybe the behaviour of an average American is different to the elected leaders of the world who you would expect to act better but in the last few years complete twats have managed to get elected in the UK and USA, France was very close to getting an alt-right president etc so I fuck trusting anyone with them.

More guns = more gun deaths. More roads = more cars. More nukes = higher chance of nuclear armageddon. 

Time to get rid. 

8 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

But would you be comforted in that situation by knowing we couldn't retaliate either? is my point.

When you're about to die, what does it matter whether someone else will to? 

[rubick]

If a nuclear weapon exploded on Belfast I would simply jump out of the way at the last moment.

 

[kemosabe]

13 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

But would you be comforted in that situation by knowing we couldn't retaliate either? is my point.

Probably. At least I'd know that innocent civilians on the other side of the world aren't going to be eviscerated  as well. While anyone from another by standing country won't suffer generations of trauma from the radiation and/or starvation from crop failure as a result of a potential nuclear winter 

Edited May 4, 2022 by kemosabe

[Kurosagi]

16 minutes ago, stuie said:

Of course, I'd love to live in a world where nuclear weapons didn't exist.  Sadly, that's not going to happen so we have to face the reality and keep the deterrent.

You've missed the point I was trying to make, my apologies if I wasn't clear enough.

The CND quote about Michael was for context about how the festival got famous on the back of wholeheartedly embracing CND 40 years ago. The view about having nukes for self protection is the exact opposite to the one Michael expressed when there were just as many nutty world leaders back then, like Reagan (FFS) with his b-movie trigger finger on the button.

I don't see what's changed in the world today to warrant embracing nuclear proliferation now whilst ignoring the festival's idealistic principles that are still alive and well in Leftfield and the green fields.

Maybe it's an age thing: I'm old enough to remember being in school in the late 70s and early 80s and being taught how long we had once nukes had been launched and what immediate actions we had to take (not much beyond getting under a table and not looking at the flash). Four minutes, that was what was drilled into us...and in a young kid's mind it was whether you could run fast enough to get home to your family before the apocalypse started.

That kind of MAD nonsense sticks with you and I'd argue is the reason that many people early on in the festival were of like minds coming together to both party and debate how to change things so that future generations blah, blah, blah...

[stuie]

9 minutes ago, Kurosagi said:

You've missed the point I was trying to make, my apologies if I wasn't clear enough.

The CND quote about Michael was for context about how the festival got famous on the back of wholeheartedly embracing CND 40 years ago. The view about having nukes for self protection is the exact opposite to the one Michael expressed when there were just as many nutty world leaders back then, like Reagan (FFS) with his b-movie trigger finger on the button.

I don't see what's changed in the world today to warrant embracing nuclear proliferation now whilst ignoring the festival's idealistic principles that are still alive and well in Leftfield and the green fields.

Maybe it's an age thing: I'm old enough to remember being in school in the late 70s and early 80s and being taught how long we had once nukes had been launched and what immediate actions we had to take (not much beyond getting under a table and not looking at the flash). Four minutes, that was what was drilled into us...and in a young kid's mind it was whether you could run fast enough to get home to your family before the apocalypse started.

That kind of MAD nonsense sticks with you and I'd argue is the reason that many people early on in the festival were of like minds coming together to both party and debate how to change things so that future generations blah, blah, blah...

Thanks for your response but I didn’t miss the point, I just don’t agree with it! I feel stronger about this now than I did at the beginning of February! 

[DeanoL]

12 minutes ago, Kurosagi said:

You've missed the point I was trying to make, my apologies if I wasn't clear enough.

The CND quote about Michael was for context about how the festival got famous on the back of wholeheartedly embracing CND 40 years ago. The view about having nukes for self protection is the exact opposite to the one Michael expressed when there were just as many nutty world leaders back then, like Reagan (FFS) with his b-movie trigger finger on the button.

But Reagan governed in a legit democracy where there were controls on power. Putin is basically an autocrat, quite ill and... I was going to say "likely to do something crazy" but he's already done that, he invaded Ukraine.

The likes of Putin is *exactly* why CND were right all along, this is the nightmare scenario come true. But at this point, we've failed, we can't convince Putin to stop bombing civilians in Ukraine, we're not going to convince him to give up his nukes. And people do have a point when they're saying that maybe the threat of retaliation on Russia is holding him back from using them. Because he certainly doesn't seem bothered about taking Ukraine while it's still standing. 

I think it's still possible to be in support of worldwide nuclear disarmament, while acknowledging that right now, like, this year, it might be a bad idea for NATO to just give them all up. 

[Kurosagi]

4 minutes ago, stuie said:

Thanks for your response but I didn’t miss the point, I just don’t agree with it! I feel stronger about this now than I did at the beginning of February! 

I hope the question of nukes gets raised in the opening debate about Ukraine. Hadn't planned on going to that one, but may well pop by now to see how widespread your view is these days.

[Kurosagi]

3 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

I think it's still possible to be in support of worldwide nuclear disarmament, while acknowledging that right now, like, this year, it might be a bad idea for NATO to just give them all up.

A good post DeanoL for setting out your view, lots for other people to get into there.

It's idle speculation I suppose, but I reckon that if the Russia/Ukraine conflict had played out 40 years ago my money would be on Michael being more not less convinced that he needed to promote and fund CND.

I think the quote above is at the very nub of our ideological differences. I would argue that now is exactly the best time to be doing this, but possibly not for the reasons you may think...faced with an existential climate crisis playing out in real time, everything that is happening at a national level that is not involved in coming together as a global community to solve this and fast is an alarming distraction.

[steviewevie]

2 hours ago, Memory Man said:

i would of course prefer full disarmament and nobody has them, but thats not realistic sadly

maybe it could have been done after collapse of soviet union in the 90s as part of the non prolifieration thing...and they would become like chemical/bioloical weapons.

I'm on board with Kurosagi, old enough to remember the fear of nuclear war, and was a member of cnd back in the 80s. Maybe nukes do stop major wars and are one reason that the cold war never became a hot war...but at same time if there is nuclear war, and that is not such an outlandish idea at the moment, we are all fucked.

[steviewevie]

This programme in the 80s...

 

[DeanoL]

8 minutes ago, Kurosagi said:

I think the quote above is at the very nub of our ideological differences. I would argue that now is exactly the best time to be doing this, but possibly not for the reasons you may think...faced with an existential climate crisis playing out in real time, everything that is happening at a national level that is not involved in coming together as a global community to solve this and fast is an alarming distraction.

I kind of don't disagree with that but then equally, isn't keeping the status-quo nearly always the lowest effort choice? Like, it seems equally logical to me to say "we haven't got time to be dealing with disarmament now, as climate is a bigger issue". 

(Accepting that, y'know, we live in a democracy that for better or worse, means there is no easy way to disarm even if the PM really wanted to - it'd be another Brexit-sized distraction)

(And unless there's some fancy and quick way to convert nuclear weapons into power stations in which case then we should absolutely do that!)

[Kurosagi]

13 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

This programme in the 80s...

 

Think I might just take myself back home to bed and close the curtains for a little while, thanks steviewevie.

[Florian Saucer Attack]

22 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

maybe it could have been done after collapse of soviet union in the 90s as part of the non prolifieration thing...and they would become like chemical/bioloical weapons.

The Russians suggested to the US they both disarm and the American's refused 

[gigpusher]

1 hour ago, Florian Saucer Attack said:

The Russians suggested to the US they both disarm and the American's refused 

Trouble is the lack of trust now means I can't see it happening in my lifetime and this latest war will set the CND movement back because if Ukraine hadn't disarmed you can bet Russia wouldn't have invaded. We are a truly fucked up species because it should be a no brainer that the world shouldn't have nuclear weapons.