blogging it real

It's taken barely a day for the new United States President Barack Obama to declare his support for an ideal New Zealand has staunchly cherished for the last two and a half decades - a world without nuclear weapons.

The other notable shift in US foreign policy announced today was a strategic decision to move towards a "nuclear free world", through bilateral and multilateral disarmament. "Obama and [Vice President Joe] Biden will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons, and pursue it," according to the agenda. It is a long term goal. The US will maintain a "strong deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist", but begin to take steps on the "long road towards eliminating nuclear weapons".
The development of new nuclear weapons will be stopped, a sharp change from the Bush administration that pushed for a new generation of warheads, and the new administration will work with Moscow to take US and Russian missiles off their current hair trigger alert, while seeking "dramatic reductions in US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons and material".

Big ups to the former Labour Prime Minister David Lange et al for standing strong for all those years in the face of massive criticism from international and domestic right wing fools.

Time will prove what visionary leaders these New Zealanders were.