Tuesday, 26 August 2014
Scottish Referendum debate should not have been about political pugilism
In my view, the main problem with last night's "debate" between the SNP First Minister Alex Salmond and leader of the Better Together Campaign, Alistair Darling, was the abysmal failure to moderate by the extremely weak Glen Campbell, a BBC journalist, who should have intervened as soon as the debaters stated to speak over each other, rendering what each said incomprehensible. This was a major let down from our national public broadcaster, which should have facilitated reasoned hearable argument, as voters are voting for a possible change in our constitutional arrangements over the next several centuries, not for the best political pugilist, both of whom will be political history in the next decade, whatever the outcome of the referendum.
Sunday, 24 August 2014
Nuclear redundancy
I was intrigued by the launch by the Cabinet Office of its new Government Property Finder tool, to allow citizens to locate and nominate surplus publicly owned assets that could be sold off to top-up the national treasury. ("Government urges public to find sites it should sell," Guardian, 20 August).
I used the finder (https://www.epims.ogc.gov.uk/government-property-finder/SearchForSale.aspx) to search for the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland and the nearby Coulport storage site for the Trident nuclear weapons. Neither could be tracked down via the finder. The Aldermaston and Burghfield nuclear warhead production factories in Berkshire similarly could not be located on the site. All should be.
I used the finder (https://www.epims.ogc.gov.uk/government-property-finder/SearchForSale.aspx) to search for the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland and the nearby Coulport storage site for the Trident nuclear weapons. Neither could be tracked down via the finder. The Aldermaston and Burghfield nuclear warhead production factories in Berkshire similarly could not be located on the site. All should be.
Thursday, 21 August 2014
Iraq, 19 years ago: the key meeting the media persist in ignoring
Gen. Hussein Kamal, the former
director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, in charge of Iraq's
weapons programme, defected to Jordan on the night of 7 August 1995, together
with his brother Col. Saddam Kamal.
Both were sons in law of the then
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Hussein Kamal took crates of documents
revealing past weapons programmes, and provided these to UNSCOM, the United
Nations’ inspection team looking for WMDs in Iraq.
Iraq responded by revealing a major
store of documents that showed that Iraq had begun an unsuccessful crash
programme to develop a nuclear bomb (on 20 August 1995). Hussein and Saddam
Kamal surprisingly agreed to return to Iraq, where they were assassinated by
the thug and Saddam henchman known as ‘Chemical Ali’ on 23 February
1996).
Before their fateful return to Iraq,
they were interviewed in Amman on 22 August 1995, 15 days after Kamel left
Iraq. His interviewers were: Rolf Ekeus, the former executive chairman of
Unscom (from 1991 to 1997); Professor Maurizio Zifferero, deputy director of the
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and head of the inspections team in
Iraq; plus Nikita Smidovich, a Russian diplomat who led UNSCOM's ballistic
missile team and former Deputy Director for Operations of UNSCOM.
During the interview, Major Izz
al-Din al-Majid (transliterated as Major Ezzeddin) joined the discussion. Izz
al-Din was Saddam Hussein's cousin, and defected together with the Kamel
brothers. The full transcript of the interview may be read at: http://www.casi.org.uk/info/unscom950822.pdf.
The key output was the documented
revelation that : "all weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear
were destroyed"
Tony Blair in a misleading statement
to the House of Commons on 25 February 2003 said: "It was only four years
later after the defection of Saddam's son-in-law to Jordan, that the offensive
biological weapons and the full extent of the nuclear programme were
discovered." (www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page3088.asp)
Anti-war Labour MP Llew Smith, now retired, for
whom I then worked, asked the Prime Minister about the information
provided by Hussein Kamal on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and if Mr Blair
if he would place in the House of Commons Library the text of
the Kamal interview.
Mr Blair answered “Following his
defection, Hussein Kamal was interviewed by UNSCOM and by a number of other
agencies. Details concerning the interviews were made available to us on a
confidential basis. The UK was not provided with transcripts of the
interviews.” (Hansard, 26 March 2003: Column 235W)
But it was known to Blair and
his security advisors that eight years earlier Saddam’s son-in-law Hussain Kamal
had fessed-up in an interview with the UN’s international weapons inspectors
and intelligence agents to the destruction of Iraq’s chemical and biological
WMDs, and the nascent nuclear weapons programme too.
Saturday, 16 August 2014
Lauren Bacall and opposition to nuclear weapons
Although most obituaries of actress Lauren Bacall understandably concentrated on her professional career on screen and stage, she did have an important political hinterland.
She challenged the attempts to silence leftist voices in Hollywood in the early 1950s, when she bravely gave testimony to the Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee under the red-baiting Congressman McCarthy, despite being barely 20 and a Hollywood ingénue.
Three decades later, she gave very public, heartfelt and enthusiastic support to the US Nuclear Freeze Movement in the 1980s, speaking at meetings and rallies all over the country, helping to make this a key chapter in the history of the anti-nuclear weapons movement. Even in the 1980s, some critics on the Right in the United States claimed the Freeze was a Soviet front, aimed at freezing the US atomic arsenal, to allow the Soviet Union to outstrip US nuclear capability.
She challenged the attempts to silence leftist voices in Hollywood in the early 1950s, when she bravely gave testimony to the Congressional House Un-American Activities Committee under the red-baiting Congressman McCarthy, despite being barely 20 and a Hollywood ingénue.
Three decades later, she gave very public, heartfelt and enthusiastic support to the US Nuclear Freeze Movement in the 1980s, speaking at meetings and rallies all over the country, helping to make this a key chapter in the history of the anti-nuclear weapons movement. Even in the 1980s, some critics on the Right in the United States claimed the Freeze was a Soviet front, aimed at freezing the US atomic arsenal, to allow the Soviet Union to outstrip US nuclear capability.
She had, however, given strong support to Democratic President Harry S. Truman in the 1950s, notwithstanding the fact he had authorized the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan a decade earlier.
Wednesday, 6 August 2014
Open Sesame!
I have on my bookshelves a 230-page, lavishly produced volume entitled ‘Israel in the World: changing lives through innovation’, published in 2004.
I covers in detail many aspects of the good Israel does in the world through innovative communications, medical and agricultural research and demonstration projects, and the export of the fruits of this development.
The first, and only, mention of Palestinians in the book is on page 214, when the book talks about advanced medical care techniques to treat Israeli civilians hurt or maimed by Palestinian suicide bombers.
Now, depressingly, ten years on Israel’s main export to the Palestinians in Gaza is shells, bombs, tanks and high-tech supported invading troops.
However, there is a little known scientific collaborative project involving a most unlikely group including: Israel, Iran and The Palestine Authority
Last month Labour MP Paul Flynn was told by science minister Dr Greg Clark in a written parliamentary answer about the project, called SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East), which has also received some financial supor from the UK.
Dr Clark stresses the importance of “Spreading awareness of the existence and desirability of SESAME to existing and potential SESAME member countries.” (Hansard, 22 July 2014 : Column 1148W)
When the latest war in Gaza is over, perhaps such projects as SESAME give hope that despite all the deep seated differences, there are small successes on which to build co-operation between Israel and Palestinians.
I covers in detail many aspects of the good Israel does in the world through innovative communications, medical and agricultural research and demonstration projects, and the export of the fruits of this development.
The first, and only, mention of Palestinians in the book is on page 214, when the book talks about advanced medical care techniques to treat Israeli civilians hurt or maimed by Palestinian suicide bombers.
Now, depressingly, ten years on Israel’s main export to the Palestinians in Gaza is shells, bombs, tanks and high-tech supported invading troops.
However, there is a little known scientific collaborative project involving a most unlikely group including: Israel, Iran and The Palestine Authority
Last month Labour MP Paul Flynn was told by science minister Dr Greg Clark in a written parliamentary answer about the project, called SESAME (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East), which has also received some financial supor from the UK.
Dr Clark stresses the importance of “Spreading awareness of the existence and desirability of SESAME to existing and potential SESAME member countries.” (Hansard, 22 July 2014 : Column 1148W)
When the latest war in Gaza is over, perhaps such projects as SESAME give hope that despite all the deep seated differences, there are small successes on which to build co-operation between Israel and Palestinians.
Sunday, 3 August 2014
Ed Miliband, Tony Blair and silence over Gaza massacres
Labour leader Ed Miliband rightly criticized David Cameron
for not speaking out against the slaughter by the Israeli Defence Force of over
1,750 innocent Palestinian civilians - children, women and men- in just three
weeks military offensive.
But surely Mr Miliband should not have attended the lavish 60th birthday party for his wife Cherie thrown by
his former Party leader Tony Blair- now the middle east ‘Peace Envoy’ for
Palestine - at their £6 million grade
I-listed mansion on 25 July, while Palestinians were being slaughtered in Gaza.
Cherie’s birthday actually
does not fall until 23 September, so Mr Blair could easily have postponed such a
party event, and concentrated on the essential
mediating in the deadly mayhem in Gaza
from his Jerusalem base of the so-called Quartet Representative whose role
includes “promoting economic growth and job creation in the West Bank and the
Gaza Strip and supporting the institution-building agenda of the Palestinian
Authority.”
Mr Blair finally
returned to Jerusalem on 29 July. He has visited Ramallah in the Palestinian Authority territory on the
West Bank and Cairo since Israel began
its devastating attacks on 8 July in ‘Operation
Protective Edge’, but has not once visited Gaza. Why not? And why does Mr Miliband
not loudly complain about Mr Blair’s lack of intervention to save Palestinians?
Maybe he did at the lavish
party, but I doubt it.
Saturday, 2 August 2014
Atomic lunacy
James Hider’s intriguing story “Americans planned nuclear explosion on the Moon” in the
The Times,(July 26, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/americas/article4158080.ece) is based on what the describes as documents released by the National Security Archive (NSA) showing that the US Air Force dreamed up a “lunar-based earth bombardment system.”
Although the new NSA documents give details of this literal ‘atomic lunacy’, this is not the first time this extraordinary story has emerged. Fourteen years ago I worked with Antony Barnett, then investigations editor at the Observer, now a reporter with Channel Four’s Dispatches programme, on this very story. (“US planned one big nuclear blast for mankind,” Sunday May 14, 2000)
I first came across this barely believable, hitherto top-secret Project A119, when I read a letter by US space scientist, Leonard Reiffel (whom your own article cites) - and who worked with the Armour Research Foundation (which subsequently became the Illinois Institute of Technology Research) - in the prestigious natural science journal Nature in 2000.
Dr Reiffel described how Project A119, was benignly entitled 'A Study of Lunar Research Flights' to cover its real purpose, and explained how “It was clear the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of one-upmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be visible on earth,' he said yesterday,” adding “'The explosion would obviously be best on the dark side of the moon and the theory was that if the bomb exploded on the edge of the moon, the mushroom cloud would be illuminated by the sun.”
He told us that he made it clear at the time there would be a huge cost to science of destroying a pristine lunar environment, but the US Air Force, he insisted were mainly concerned about how the nuclear explosion would play on earth.
Another plan to detonate an atom bomb on the moon was drawn up secretly by the RAND Corporation in 1956, with code name “Red Socks”. (http://utenti.lycos.it/paoloulivi/redsock.html).
We should all be grateful this literal lunacy never took place.
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