Published in French on 15 September 2020

On Tuesday 15 September 2020, France’s Airforce, recently re-named "the Army of the Air and Space" (for nobody halts the progress of militarisation) indulged once again in its favourite little game: poker. In the sky of France - the only sky where France is authorised to drop atom bombs (at present fictional ones) - France simulated a nuclear attack with about 15 aircraft, Rafale fighters and bombers, Awac E3-F radar-plane, a refueling plane, plus an apparent novelty: other fighter planes on the ground, supposedly representing the enemy’s defenses.

"Once again, on the order of the President or the Head of Military Command, the FAS [ Strategic Aerial Forces] will place their aircraft on alert on the air bases, including Avord (...), Istres, Saint-Dizier, Mont-de-Marsan...

"Once this phase of increased power is achieved, the planes will take off to converge towards Brest [Britanny] where the SNLE subs (missile-launching nuclear subs), the naval component of deterrence, are based at Ile-Longue.

"Fighters and support planes will gather off the tip of Britanny. The armada will then cross the Bay of Biscay, change course near Biarritz in the direction of Corsica, before turning left and heading for their target in the north of the Massif Central. But beware of the anti-aircraft defenses whose radars scan the sky and will track the assailants". (Ouest-France, 15/09/2020)

Let us wager that the assailants (good guys, because French) will succeed on foiling the baddies’ defenses and in delivering a nice little nuclear strike by way of "warning", as a preamble to a generalised massacre.

This is a "warning" of the nicest kind, since launched with an ASMPA missile carrying a warhead of 300 kilotonnes: 20 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb which caused at least 200 000 deaths.

So that’s how the FAS amuse themselves, under presidential orders and paid for by our taxes. The name our strategists give to this little game is "Poker". What exorbitant humour... despite their total lack of imagination. They do not imagine what these bombs will inflict on their victims (yet one can easily see what was done in the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki); they do not imagine that their imaginary enemy might retaliate with similar weapons against the French population, therefore against us and even themselves and their families; they do not imagine that their aberrant scenarios might really happen, their mad "concepts" become reality and provoke the end of humankind.

However an alternative exists, a very simple one: to force France and all the nuclear-armed states to negotiate the elimination of these arms, under mutual and international control that is strict and effective. Such negotiations are required under Article VI of the NPT [Non-Proliferation Treaty] which France has signed. That’s what the French people want, having obviously more good sense and imagination than their leaders.

It remains for us to see what Parliament wants: a shared-initiative referendum on this question, or else the pursuit of a policy that is absurd, illegal, criminal and suicidal until we die of it. It is high time for MPs and senators to wake up and listen to the will of France’s citizens, who are also their voters.

Cf. 75 years later: Moments of Emotion as Saintes commemorates the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

https://youtu.be/LYO_ktPk_BQ (5’ 28’’)