The Nobel Prize is proving to be Donald Trump's Moby Dick

The F word makes its debut at the lexicon of presidential press conferences

- VIJAYA CHANDRASOMA

The USA was compelled to detonate uranium and plutonium bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on August 6 and 9 August 1945, respectively, to compel the surrender of Japan and end World War II. These bombs razed and burnt over 70% of these cities, and claimed the lives of at least 210,000 people. Ground temperatures reached 4,000 degrees Celsius, radioactive rain poured down and the effects of radiation lasted for years, with an increased incidence of leukemia, thyroid, breast and lung cancer among survivors.

US President Harry Truman was faced with the most agonizing decision a human being can face. Whether to kill and maim hundreds of thousands of human beings to end a brutal war, which had already claimed the lives of an estimated 50-85 million people. Or continue with that war which would continue to exact deaths of millions more. Truman's decision has proved to be tragically correct.

Since the end of World War II, and the development of ever more sophisticated nuclear weapons with the capacity of destroying the planet, it has become obvious that a World War III could well bring about the long-awaited Rapture.

So the powers that be had to decide which nation should be responsible enough to possess this earth-shattering nuclear power: The United States, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the USSR, as Russia was then named), Britain and France were the obvious choices. After all, they defeated the evil Nazi menace of Germany, Italy and Japan.

Of course, these same heroes were guilty of such atrocities themselves in the past, and even after the end of WW II. The US with genocide, slavery and Jim Crow apartheid laws, Britain and France with continuing pillaging of their colonies, the USSR with post revolution purges. A blind-eye was turned on these atrocities. As the old saying goes, winners write the history books.