Years ago I read an article by L. Fletcher Prouty, a top U.S. military man who likened the world to a room full of mousetraps. Toss in a ping-pong ball and one mouse trap triggers all the others. It was Prouty's way of describing the nuclear world. He insisted that there could be no such thing as a "limited" nuclear war. If one goes off, they all go off, and in a matter of hours most of the civilised world would be destroyed.

He also claimed that the only reason for the Vietnam war was to exhaust existing supplies of weapons. Shocking to believe but it seems logical to me that if a large chunk of your economy relies for its existance on the manufacture of armaments, from time to time you must use them or else the industry dies.

I also read a book called 'The Arms of Krupp' which describes how, in the early 1900s, the Krupp family sold shells to the Germans that could penetrate all known metals. Then they produced a steel strong enough to resist penetration which they sold to the British. Next they produced bigger cannons and larger shells which could penetrate the new steel. They sold those to the Germans. And so on until the outbreak of the first world war when these super shells and hardened-steel tanks were put to the test.

The fact that untold millions of people died in that war was of no concern to the Krupps, what mattered was that the family earned lots of money.

Nothing has changed. The American armament barons have, since the second world war, been reaping billions of dollars by duplicating the methods developed and perfected by the Krupp family. But the end of the "cold war" was a major set back for the barons. At all costs, they must rekindle old hatreds and suspicions. The arms race must be put firmly back on the agenda.

George W. Bush has scrapped the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and plans are under way to build the next generation of money earners. The biggest earner of all is the anti-ballistic, super-duper piece of nonsense — the Strategic Defense Initiative, or "Son of Star Wars."

The barons know that it cannot possibly work because the moment it looks like it might possibly succeed the Russians will mount their 4,000 nuclear warheds aboard new low flying, undectable by any means, 21st century rockets.

Which of course leads to the development of new radar systems capable of detecting such low flying rockets, which in turn leads to the development of cleverer rockets, sophisticated decoy systems... and so on.

It's 1914 all over again.

The latest master-stroke is the proposed "mini" nuke. America needs something big enough to destroy North Korea's nuclear facility without contaminating all of China. It's worth a punt. Read what Prouty has to say about such "miniature" weapons, further down.

Inevitably there will be a mistake. You can't run red lights for 55 — 60 years without crashing. Berlin, Suez, Korea, Cuba, these were near misses. Very soon, probably within the next ten years we will see the truth of Prouty's ping pong ball, room full of mousetraps scenario.

The arms barons, according to Prouty, already have their safe havens prepared. In places like South America and on islands like Deigo Garcia the barons are dug in and well prepared to survive for five years, ten years if necessary, until the fuss and radio activity dies down. Prouty doesn't claim that the barons want a nuclear war to happen. No, this isn't some weird James Bond movie. He claims that they enjoy the game of brinkmanship, pushing the world to the edge of the precipice so's they can make a quick few billion, and then — fingers crossed — the other side will back down. But if it doesn't, C'est la Vie. Or as the British say, "I'm alright Jack".

It's power poker, where you risk the population of the world on a hand of cards. You hope to win but if you lose, well, so what, the game was a blast while it lasted.

Unlike most people these days, I like Americans. Most of the Americans I've met have been decent and intelligent people. But I can't help wondering, how is it possible to convince intelligent people to risk their lives and the lives of their families on a throw of the dice, or a cut of the cards? The answer is — religion.

"Men who believe absurdities will commit atrocities"

Voltaire

You have to dumb people down with religion. Most Americans are chronically religious. For all their intelligence you can convince them of just about anything. Tell them that a god who murders children is a "merciful father" and they'll believe it. Tell them that a saviour who detests gentiles loves them and they'll believe it. You can convince Americans that they came from another universe and if they pay the Church of Gobbledegookology $100,000 they can rid themselves of the emotional gremlins they brought with them from planet Geekybock.

So it's easy to convince Americans that Armageddon — a nuclear war — is inevitable, and even desirable. God wants it to happen, and when it does, provided you belong to the right church, which they all do of course, they will be "raptured" up to heaven.

Americans can't lose. They are now actively involved in the game of nuclear poker. If they win America becomes more powerful and more wealthy, and some of them get to share in that power and wealth. But if they lose, no problem, because they are going to be "raptured" up to heaven. The evil Russians, Chinese, Koreans, Iraqis, Iranians, Germans and French will be burned to death and condemned to hell, but Americans will be alright Jack.

If this silliness was confined to southern hillbillies who holler and stamp and tango with rattle snakes we would have little to worry about. But this belief has spread like a plague until it has contaminated a significant percentage of the nation. Commanders of nuclear submarines believe it. The crews of stealth bombers believe it. Fresh faced Baptist boys, working in pairs down nuclear missile silos believe it. Pentagon computer programmers believe it. The President of the United States of America believes it. They've all got the faith!

This is serious shit!

We need to save Americans from themselves because if we don't they're going to take the rest of us with them. And there's nothing for Australians to feel smug about living in the southern hemisphere, out of harm's way. What happens to the "special relationship" when the U.S. navy arrives on our doorstep? Will thousands of armed matelots be content to move to the bush, into refugee camps? Or will they seize your home? And who will get what remains of the food? How will you and your family survive, bearing in mind that there will be no economy?

When the bombs go off we may end up envying the dead. So something needs to be done now!

To defend the world we must attack the mind!

Godists around the world — but particularly in America — must be made to realise that death is a reality and that no one is going to be "raptured" up to heaven. This isn't a party coming up, it's a nightmare.

It is no longer good enough to say, "Each to their own." The Qur'an instructs Muslims to slaughter "infidels" and for hundreds of years we've said, "Each to their own." September 11th 2001 proved the folly of that tolerance.

Most people reading this essay will already be sucked into some religious faith or other and they can clearly see how absurd are everyone else's beliefs. But they cannot see how absurd is their own portfolio of garbage.

So the survival of this planet rests on the shoulders of that small group of people known as atheists or agnostics. Religionists argue that atheism is just another system of belief, another religion, but atheism is no more a religion than bald is a hair style. Atheists are flexible, we acknowledge that we don't know everything and that some of what we do believe will change over the years as science discovers more about our universe.

A religion, on the other hand, is rigid, it claims to be all-knowing. Religionists communicate with "god", the force that created the universe. Atheists and agnostics say that such a claim is arrant and arrogant nonsense.

What can we do to undermine religious thought and to snap America out of its deadly trance? The first thing we need to do is to unite. A thousand little atheist groups, each pushing their separate agendas will achieve very little. Although it has to be said that Madalyn Murray O'Hair of the American Atheists did achieve heaps. If one woman can, for a time, get prayers kicked out of American schools, what could a million dedicated and united freethinkers achieve?

So my suggestion is that we form one, global freethought society. Freethought rather than atheist or agnostic because it encompasses both. We need a professional web site — the best — to spread the word of reason. Most atheist web sites are dry and dull and hold little appeal to young people. They preach to the converted. We need to reach out to young people. After all, it is the young generation which stands to lose most when the worst happens.

The world is drawing closer by the day to a nuclear, chemical and biological war. Wealth is the engine, power is the fuel and religion is the lubricant. Deprive the barons of lubricant and they've got a job on their hands convincing people that they and their families must die for Jesus.

Darwin Copernicus

"Mini" nukes "A one-megaton weapon, very small as atomic weapons go, dropped from the air and penetrating underground to a depth of 50 feet before exploding, will produce a crater 300 feet deep and nearly 1,400 feet across. Approximately 10 million tons of earth and rock would be hurled upward from the earth's surface." L. Fletcher Prouty

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