Are we on the verge of a new cold war?...........

In 1945 the WWII ended, but it was sadly also the beginning of another war; The Cold War.

In 1949, a movie titled "The Third Man" was released. It was a British film Noir, directed by Carol Reed, and written by Graham Green. Acting in it; among other greats; was Orson Wells (depicted in the image), and the story: Pulp novelist Holly Martins travels to a shadowy, postwar Vienna, only to find himself investigating the mysterious death of an old friend, Harry Lime. The movie is full of conspiracy theories, mystery and full-blown suspicious-ness toward everything and everyone.

This image, a poster for the movie, (although I have changed the text from German to English for the purpose of this post) was one of the posters I made for an Exhibition titled: "Cinefiend, a tribute to movie poster art".

The Cold War era some say began in 1945 and ended 1991, but considering what is happening right now with so many countries poised and armed with nuclear weapons stomping at the bit, I can't help but wonder if we are not now entering another Cold War era.

Why was it called the Cold War? In an essay titled "You and the atomic bomb" written by George Orwell and published in 1945 in the British newspaper "Tribune", he allegedly first used the term "cold war". In the essay Orwell contemplates "living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare" referring to such as "living in a permanent state of a cold war with one's neighbours".

As if life is not difficult enough for many of us, it seems as if those in power now see fit to add the fear of a nuclear war to it, I mean, really?! Poverty, starvation, millions of people facing incredible difficulties and hardships due to having had to flee their war torn countries, etc.etc. was not enough? 

Massive un-employment, factory shut-downs, rising numbers of people losing their homes, governments squabbling over issues without finding any solutions, an increasing level of in-equality between the "haves" and "have not's",  such realities are not as important as who has the most or biggest bombs?  At this point in time, considering the posturing by a a number of world leaders, I can't help but wonder if they have learned nothing from the bomb blasts in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

We; mankind; are doing a brilliant job at slowly destroying the very planet we are living on, a planet that has and still do provide us with so much, and yet, having no evidence that another planet just like Earth exists, some of us are still behaving as if there is one.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good people to do nothing", suggested Edmund Burke. For some of us the words "good" and "evil" may stick in our craw, so let me re-phrase: "All that is necessary for adverse/disastrous/terrible events to take place, is for people who knows about such, deem such as un-acceptable, yet chose to do nothing."

I am what they call a "baby-boomer", which means that "living in the shadow of the threat of nuclear warfare" is a shadow that has loomed large over me for most of my life. As a teenager, and through my early twenties, I used to take part in protest marches against Nuclear armament. We believed that if enough of us united in protest against the use of nuclear weapons, we would be able to make those in power take notice and hopefully rethink the use of them. And now....? There are so many adverse/disastrous/terrible events taking place across the globe it can be hard to know where to begin...., but, of all the threats against earth and her/its inhabitants/life forms (ALL, from the largest to the  microscopic ones) in my view, the threat of a nuclear war tops them all.

So what can we do about it?

Like in the 1960's, we can make our voices heard and with the help of technology we can organise protest marches world wide in a few hours. We can contact politicians, or other government officials both federally and locally, we can blog, we can Facebook, we can make flyers, etc.etc.....we can care and find some small way in which we can do something that supports peace and the well being of our planet.

"The human race cannot coexist with nuclear weapons." (Iccho Itho)

"It is my firm belief that the infinite and uncontrollable fury of nuclear weapons should never be held in the hands of any mere mortal ever again, for any reason."  (Mikhail Gorbachev)