Return of the Bread Riots: Egypt spinning on its history

(photo of Egypt's bread intifada of 1977 from libcom.org)

There is a good reason why only Israel gets more American military money than Egypt. Both are vitally important countries at the centre of the world’s political, economic and religious fault lines. Stopping the two from tearing each other's throat has been a vital plank of US foreign policy for 40 years. US religiosity will keep Israel, the home of the bible, front and centre of their overseas donations. Americans may be less keen to celebrate the role of next door Egypt in the lives of Moses, Joseph and Jesus but their Government realises the importance of Cairo.

Though it was in decline by Jesus’ time, Egypt was an extraordinary civilisation in the ancient world. Alexandra had the largest library in the world and the Pyramid of Cheops was the tallest building in the world for 3800 years until one of the country's eventual colonial masters built Lincoln Cathedral in 1311.

The pyramids of Giza were cathedrals of their own and part of a rich culture. Egypt’s brilliance began after it mastered irrigation of the Nile and established a system of agriculture that built the foundation stones of western science: writing, mathematics and medicine. Its art and architecture were legendary and the pyramids were the result of advanced quarrying, surveying and construction techniques.

It was also created by slave labour and the Greeks inherited the Egyptian acceptance of slavery in its sense of democracy. This failure to see how the proper division of labour was crucial to a human’s sense of self importance would haunt Egypt to modern times. A succession of rulers including Romans, Arabs, Mamluks, Turks, an Albanian named Muhammad Ali, and later the English and Americans made sure it was the bondholders not the bonded that kept control in the country.

General Abdel Nasser was the first Egyptian in thousands of years to properly lead his country. He tried to steer an independent course but his attempt to nationalise the Suez Canal brought down the wrath of the UK, France and Israel in an opportunist war that crippled his state and brought the problems of Gaza to world attention. Israel's continued nagging killed him of a heart attack in 1970.

Vice President Anwar Sadat was Nasser’s logical successor. He was a senior member of Nasser’s Free Officers group that overthrew the hated royal regime and the one who announced Farouk’s removal on radio. Sadat was an astute president. When the Russians refused his request for more arms, he retaliated by agreeing to American terms for a peace settlement with Israel. He also courted senior Christian religious figures such as the Pope and Billy Graham to humanise himself with American voters. His visit to Israel in 1977 cemented his status as a senior Arab leader and earned him a Nobel a year later, even if it brought on the wrath of most of the Arab world.

But in the same year he went to Jerusalem, there were riots in Cairo. Sadat like other rulers before him tolerated no dissent on the home front and like Nasser he never put himself up for election. His economic policy “infitah” aimed at liberalising the economy saw cuts to subsidies to foodstuffs. The cuts to flour, rice, and cooking oil subsidies triggered the bread riots of 1977 forcing Sadat to backtrack. Despite its oil money, Egypt was caught between the demands of its people and the international bankers.

With rage growing over his Israeli peace deal, his opponents attempted a coup that was defeated by Sadat’s intelligence organisation. Their crackdown missed one key opposition figure Khalid Islambouli who murdered Sadat in a victory parade in 1981. Egypt executed Islambouli while the Ayatollah’s Iran celebrated him as a martyr. Sadat’s death brought his deputy Hosni Mubarak to the presidency where he tentatively remains to this day.

Mubarak kept to the Sadat agenda. He survived six assassination attempts and got his payday in 1991 when the US and its allies forgave Egypt $20 billion in debts for joining the war to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. By then Mubarak was able to play the “politically stable” card as a long-term leader in a country with few changes of power. The west was prepared to overlook it was a lack of democracy that led to this stability, in order to “deal with” the Egyptian regime.

Its oil industry, tourism and shipping made it a safe bet for western business that showed (just as it does with China, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere) it was prepared to export anything to the country except its political ideas. Mubarak held elections in 2005 but with the opposition Muslim Brotherhood banned it was a sham. The real source of his power was control over the media and enforcement by police intimidation.

As long as oil prices were high, Muburak could buy his way out of trouble. But the global crisis has hit Egypt hard with a triple whammy: high unemployment, rampant food inflation and low wages. The fuel was there and needed just a spark. That was provided in near-by Tunisia which exploded into riots against a similarly corrupt long-term leadership.

When Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire it was as if millions across the region shared his pain. His martyrdom set off a wave of discontent against Egypt and countless similar autocratic rules across the Arab world. The monied West which was happy to accept these countries' sacrifice of lack of democracy to keep the dollars rolling now finds itself in an awkward position of exposed hypocrisy and redundancy. They can only watch as Mubarak and other dominoes wobble and fall in a feverish show of people power. For once, the West can no longer control what will happen next.

Arms dealer BAE pleads guilty to hiding bribes

A British Magistrates Court heard on Tuesday how Europe’s largest defence company wilfully failed to keep proper accounting records of payments. The notorious BAE Systems is the largest arms manufacturer in Europe and the fourth biggest in the world with annual military sales of $15 billion. In a Magistrates Court hearing in London BAE lawyer David Perry said the company would enter a guilty plea at a higher court next month in a plea deal with the Serious Fraud Office. (Photograph: Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images)

The indictment charges BAE is charged with knowingly not keeping proper records that explain payments that relate to two contracts. The statement of offence against BAE read “between 01 Jan 1999 and 31 Dec 2005 BAE knowingly...failed to keep accounting records which were sufficient to show and explain payments made pursuant to (a) a contract between Red Diamond Trading Limited and Envers Trading Corporation, (b) a further contract between British Aerospace (Operations) Limited and Merlin International Limited.”

After the guilty plea, District Judge Caroline Tubbs said sentencing should be approved by a higher court. She sent the case to Southwark Crown Court. The next hearing will take place on December 20. At this unprecedented hearing a judge will be asked to confirm the final settlement. However, many believe the timing of the Crown Court hearing is deliberately close to Christmas in order to bury the bad news.

The legalese around the trial charge did not state the dodgy accounting was hiding bribes to procure the sale of a military radar system to Tanzania. BAE covertly channelled bribes through the Panama-registered Envers from its company, Red Diamond, to secure a contract in 1999 to supply Tanzania with a military radar system costing $40 million. However BAE avoided more serious charges after it struck an agreement with the SFO in February.


The deal splits jurisdiction with the US Department of Justice over the company’s misdeeds. The SFO got Tanzania and the DoJ got the rest. As a result BAE agreed to plead guilty in the Crown Court to an offence under section 221 of the Companies Act 1985 of failing to keep reasonably accurate accounting records in relation to its activities in Tanzania. The company had to pay $50 million comprising a financial order to be determined by a Crown Court judge with the balance paid as an ex gratia payment for the benefit of the people of Tanzania.

In return the SFO will drop all investigations into BAE deals in South Africa, the Czech Republic and Romania as well as Tanzania. An NGO called The Corner House have expressed deep concern the plea bargain means SFO has agreed to fetter its future prosecutorial discretion. “If further evidence came to light that was sufficient to mount a prosecution against individuals that necessitated making allegations concerning BAE’s conduct, the SFO would not be able to bring such a prosecution as it has undertaken not to do so,” said The Corner House.

The Campaign Against Arms Trade has also been implacable foes of BAE. They have joined The Corner House in trying to bring to the Court’s attention over the plea bargain’s apparent undertaking never to prosecute any individual in future if doing so involves alleging BAE Systems was guilty of corruption. CAAT’s Kaye Stearman said the new hearing date is so close to Christmas that “in the hackneyed phrase, this will be a good day to bury bad news.” “Yet there is still much about this whole sorry saga that the public deserves to know,” she said.

CAAT are responsible for much of what we do know about BAE’s arms dealings. They scored a major victory over BAE in 2007 after the High Court ordered the weapons dealer to produce a sworn affidavit divulging how it obtained a confidential and legally privileged document from CAAT. In 2003 the Sunday Times revealed how BAE paid a company to carry out an elaborate spying operation on its critics and infiltrate CAAT.

The 2007 affidavit followed the failed police investigation a year earlier of BAE’s illegal activities in Saudi Arabia. BAE chair Dick Evans had easy access to PM Tony Blair and the government bought pressure on the SFO to drop the corruption investigation into BAE's Saudi arms in December 2006. Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the relationship between BAE and the government was too close. "In my time I came to learn that the Chairman of British Aerospace appeared to have the key to the garden door to Number 10,” he wrote. “Certainly I never once knew Number 10 to come up with any decision that would be incommoding to British Aerospace".

US continues to dominate world military spending

I stumbled across a revealing pie chart today of global distribution of military expenditure in 2008. The source was the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook of 2009 and showed that the US spending alone was over two fifths of the entire total. China, France, the UK and Russia (the other members of the UN Security Council) account for another fifth, as do the next 10 countries with the rest of the world accounting for the last fifth. Among other things it confirms the old Eisenhower line that the US remains under the influence of the military-technological complex. And its dominance of world affairs is not about to end any time soon - unless it is undone Soviet-style by budget woes.

US military spend continues to rise. Earlier this month President Obama sought congressional approval for $708b in defense spending. The request included a 3.4 percent boost in the Pentagon's base budget and $159b for missions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan. The president’s spending freeze on other parts of the budget, designed to rein in the massive deficit, clearly did not apply to the military. The defense department said the funds are needed for a variety of costs including everything from health care to nuclear missiles. Obama said the budget proposal included cuts of "unnecessary defence programs that do nothing to keep us safe” but Defence Secretary Robert Gates claimed the overall increase was due to “broader range of security challenges on the horizon.”

As Chinese news agency Xinhua reasonably asks Why Does US Defence Spending Keep Growing? At a time of economic uncertainty and a national deficit of $1.6 trillion, and a scaled down presence in Iraq and Afghanistan the Pentagon remains immune from cutbacks. Xinhua notes Obama sought congressional approval for $708b in defense spending so it could keep up its role of “global policeman”.

The Department of Defense doesn’t use such emotive language. It said the funding increase allows them “to address its highest priorities, such as the president's commitment to reform defense acquisition, develop a ballistic missile defense system that addresses modern threats, and continue to provide high quality healthcare to wounded service members.” There is a focus on increasing funding of unmanned aircraft while the Pentagon strategy also moves away from the old focus on developing the capability of fighting two major wars simultaneously.

The other big reason for the increase is across the board pay rises. In the 2010 budget, Congress authorised an increase of 3.4 percent, which was 0.5 percent more than requested. This year defence officials will ask Congress to keep the pay raise capped at 1.4 percent. The Army’s base budget request of $143.4 billion is designed to support a force of 547,400 active-duty soldiers, 358,200 National Guardsmen and 205,000 Army Reservists. There is also an ongoing 22,000-soldier expansion of the active component that could bring the service’s personnel strength to nearly 570,000 by the end of 2011.

However nearly all of the increased spending of the last decade can be directly attributed to the impact of 9/11. The average Defense Department budgets has gone up by more than two thirds since the era between 1954 and 2001 according to Carl Conetta at the Project on Defense Alternatives at the Commonwealth Institute in a report titled "An Undisciplined Defense: Understanding the 2-trillion-dollar Surge in U.S. Defense Spending." It is difficult not to draw the conclusion that fighting the supposed bogey of terrorism has been good business for the Pentagon.

Non-Proliferation report calls for 90 percent reduction in nuclear weapons

The International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament used today’s meeting of the Japanese and Australian Prime Ministers to release a report asking the US and Russia to drastically reduce their nuclear arsenal. The report calls for the two biggest nuclear powers to reduce the number of warheads from 22,000 to 500 each by 2025. Australian and Japanese Commission Co-Chairs, Gareth Evans and Yoriko Kawaguchi, presented the report to Kevin Rudd and Yukio Hatoyama at a ceremony at the Japanese Prime Minister’s residence. Former Australian foreign minister Evans said the report set a target date of 15 years “to achieve a dramatic 90 per cent reduction in the world’s nuclear weapons.” (photo of Titan Nuclear Missile Museum, Tucson, Arizona by jmuhles)

The 230-page report entitled “Eliminating Nuclear Threats: A Practical Agenda for Global Policymakers” (see synopsis) says its finding are timely for four reasons. Firstly it says nuclear weapons are most inhumane weapons ever conceived and as serious a problem as global warming. Secondly it is sheer dumb luck they have not been used since 1945 and as long as any state has nuclear weapons others will want them. Thirdly, the status quo increases the possibility of nuclear weapon falling into the hands of rogue nations or terrorist groups. Lastly, there is a new opportunity presented by new US and Russian leadership “committed to disarmament action”.

The report concentrates on the US and Russia as together they own 96 percent of the world’s 23,000 nuclear weapons. The remaining 1,000 are owned by France, UK, China, India, Pakistan and Israel. Iran and North Korea may also have the technology. Half of all warheads are deployed and the two major powers have 2,000 weapons ready to deploy with a decision window to launch of five to ten minutes. The possibility of nuclear terrorism or a “dirty bomb” combing conventional explosives and radioactive isotopes can also not be discounted.

The report endorses the use of civilian nuclear energy as proven method of providing base load power without carbon emissions but says its likely expansion in the coming decades will present proliferation and security risks. The dangers will be exacerbated if accompanied by enrichment facilities at the front end of the process and reprocessing at the back end. The result could be “a great deal more fissile material becoming potentially available for destructive purposes”.

The key to success, says the report, is delegitimizing nuclear weapons as something marginal and unnecessary to national security. The authors prefer a phased approach to getting to zero nuclear weapons admitting it would be a ‘long, complex and formidably difficult process”. The short term goal to 2025 is to reduce warheads to 10 percent of current levels with agreed “no first use” doctrines among all players. The report was unable to specify a timeframe for complete elimination but argued “analysis and debate” on the matter should commence immediately.

The key policies from the document are: Next year’s Non-Proliferation Treaty review should agree on a new 20-point consensus for action replacing 2000’s “Thirteen Practical Steps”; the US and Russia should reduce their combined arsenal to 1,000 warheads and no other nation should increase its arsenal; all states should have a “no first use doctrine”; reduce the instant usage of warheads; Conventional weapons imbalances may need to be addressed; all countries (including the US) should ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban treaty immediately; and all nuclear-armed states should stop the production of fissile material for weapons production.

The report said the non proliferation efforts also needed to be beefed up. Key policies included: application of the IAEA Additional Protocol; IAEA compliance to concentrate on technical matters and stay out of politics; the UN Security Council should regard withdrawal from the NPT as a punishable threat to peace; and the IAEA should make full use of its powers. The report also acknowledged that that the three non-NPT states Israel, India and Pakistan are not likely to become members soon and they should be encouraged to participate in “parallel instruments and arrangements” to meet similar obligations to the NPT countries.

It also looked at the threat of terrorism. It recommended the adoption of the 2005 amendment to the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material which insists on greater information sharing between nuclear powers. It also urged a Code of Conduct for safety of radioactive sources to control “dirty bomb” material and supported the emerging science of nuclear forensics. The report supported civilian nuclear power and called for assistance to extend it to developing nations. It called for new technologies for spent fuel treatment, increased plutonium recycle and spent fuel take-back by suppliers (including Australia) to reduce accumulations in a large number of countries. It strongly supported spreading the fuel cycle process across nations to build global confidence and aid verification of sensitive fuel cycle activities.

Evans and Kawaguchi acknowledged the political difficulties of doing something that was difficult, sensitive and expensive. They said it needed leadership to prevent inertia, knowledge of the magnitude of the problem, confidence in the strategy moving forward, and having an international process to back it up. All will be difficult to achieve. While it was no surprise that non-nuclear nations Japan and Australia welcomed the report, the US and Russia were ominously silent. Getting the two major powers to see its sense will be a herculean task for the coming years. Nevertheless the report is welcome as a road-map, however optimistic, of how to get to a future without nuclear weapons. It is an important vision as nuclear weapons remain a deep and dangerous threat the world has taken too much for granted since the end of the Cold War.

Defiant Hamas continue rocket attacks under Israeli assault

Gaza militants have defied the Israeli ground invasion and have fired dozens of rockets across the border in the last 24 hours. Five Qassam rockets struck the town of Sderot causing one minor injury and another struck Ashdod but caused no known damage or casualties. A house in Ashkelon took a hit from a more powerful Grad rocket but there were no fatalities. 12 Qassam rockets hit the Sdot Negev area on Saturday; all landed in open fields and caused no injuries. The main impact of these strikes continues to be psychological, as it has been for the last seven years.

The Gaza Strip has been separated from Israel by a security barrier since 1996. In 2005 Israel withdrew its civilian and military presence according to its unilateral disengagement plan, but retained control over airspace and maritime access. The attacks began after the outbreak of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. The rockets were the only way that Gaza Palestinians could continue to carry the war into Israel. After Hamas won control of Gaza in June 2007 elections, Israel imposed a blockade on the Strip and its 1.5 million inhabitants. They allowed only basic humanitarian items in and permitted no exports paralysing the economy. The Israeli government declared Gaza a "hostile entity" in response to continued rocket attacks, and said it would start cutting fuel imports. The reduction in fuel supplies and a chronic lack of spare parts has severely impacted sewage treatment, waste collection, water supply and medical facilities. Aid agencies said the situation had become a humanitarian crisis.

Gaza began launching Qassam rockets in 2001. As of February 2008, they have killed 13 people, mostly in the nearby border town of Sderot. There has been no effort at negotiation in that time. Israel refuses to talk to Gaza’s rulers because Hamas in turn refuses to acknowledge the Jewish state's right to exist, will not renounce violence and doesn’t adhere to previous peace agreements signed by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction. Nevertheless as recently as February 2008, Israel’s public attitude was that a large scale ground operation would not put an end to the rocket fire.

But as the frequency has increased, Israeli public pressure had been mounting on the government to stop the rockets. With an Israeli election and a less friendly US administration in the wings, the Israeli government finally believed the time was right to react. In the past week, IDF artillery bombs have killed more than 480 Palestinians and injured 3,000 in Gaza. In same period, four Israelis have been killed and 59 wounded in Hamas rocket attacks. The rockets remain the Palestinians most potent, albeit random, weapon of retaliation.

Qassam rockets are named for the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas’s military wing) which in turn was named for the 1930s Palestinian leader Mojahed Izz ad-Din al-Qassam. Bombmakers supplied the first prototype in 2001 and a year later produced the Qassam 2, an improved version which attacked nearby Israeli settlements and towns. The rockets consist of a warhead, an engine and a tail segment. The warhead is filled with TNT and urea nitrate. They are fuelled by mixture of sugar and potassium nitrate (which is widely available as a fertiliser). Often they are crudely made explosives-packed pipes with metal fins welded onto the end. Qassam rockets are free-flying and lack any guidance system. As a result, they are notoriously inaccurate and many fail to even cross the border into Israel.

The rockets have a range of four to forty kilometres and spread their submunitions over a broad area. A large number remain unexploded and become defacto landmines. But they rarely cause any injuries, and they did not kill an Israeli until 28 June, 2004. The main success of the rockets has been psychological and has created an atmosphere of fear in all of the Southern Israeli border towns. The number of attacks has increased dramatically in recent years. By November, Israel had indicated it had lost patience: PM Ehud Olmert ominously told his audience "The question is not whether there will be a confrontation, but when it will take place, under what circumstances, and who will control these circumstances, who will dictate them, and who will know to exploit the time from the beginning of the ceasefire until the moment of confrontation in the best possible way.” Israel has begun the confrontation but the question will be whether it can control the consequences.

Gorbachev blasts increasing US military spend

As the US looks to push through 1980s-style missile defence shields in Eastern Europe, the last Soviet Cold War leader blamed the downturn in the world economy on increased American military spending. Writing in the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Mikhail Gorbachev said the US has primarily addressed its problems through “threats and pressure” and needed an alternative approach to international action. According to Gorbachev the current talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament is an example of an alternative, more effective policy, which, he said, Washington finally started “after several years of belligerent rhetoric”.

Gorbachev is certainly someone who deserves to be listened to. His leadership of the Soviet Union between 1985 and 1991 not only halved the number of strategic nuclear weapons but also hastened the end of what Eric Hobsbawm called the shorter twentieth century (1914-1991). His was a short but an extraordinarily active regime which tried to transform the USSR economically and socially. His slogans for economic reform ("perestroika") and the end to censorship ("glasnost") became known the world over. What it set in motion spun out of control politically and ended with a Nobel Peace Prize, the destruction of the Warsaw Pact, the defeat of Communism, and its own state disintegrated into 15 constituent republics.

All these events seemed an unlikely prospect when Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in March 1985. Gorbachev was then 54 years old. While that might regarded as peak political age in the West, the Soviet Union was a gerontocracy and Gorbachev was one of the youngest members of the ruling Politburo. But what went in his favour was the death of the three previous party secretaries in less than three years, Leonid Brezhnev in November 1982, Yuri Andropov in February 1984 and Konstantin Chernenko in March 1985. Their deaths left a large vacuum at the top and it was the protégé of Andropov, Gorbachev, who rose to fill it.

Both Andropov and Gorbachev had been promoted to the inner sanctum of the Politburo at the same time in 1980. Both men were natives of the southern city of Stavropol and knew each other well. However the KGB leader was 17 years Gorbachev’s senior and it was he who anointed boss when Brezhnev’s long and undistinguished reign came to an end in 1982. Under Andropov, the younger man shined as the new leader tried to shrug off the lethargy that had dogged the Communist nation through the 1970s and early 80s. But just as Andropov was about to implement drastic changes, he died suddenly of acute renal failure. Konstantin Chernenko, Brezhnev’s backroom fixer, took the reigns and reversed all the previous reforms.

Gorbachev, an ally of the former leader, was on the outer, but remained on the Politburo. He gained fame in the West with two overseas trips in 1984. In June he attended the funeral in Rome of Enrico Berlinguer, the Italian Communist leader. There he told bewildered local Communists looking for direction from Moscow that they were free, independent and “there was no centre”.

Later than year Gorbachev led a Soviet parliamentary delegation to the UK and met Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. He began by telling Thatcher he admired her values and principles but was of the same ilk. He assured her he was no under instruction to persuade her to join the Communist Party. She burst out laughing and the pair began to strike up a good relationship.

But greatness still lay ahead for Gorbachev as the new year dawned in 1985. Chernenko proved no healthier than Andropov and died in March, aged 74. Gorbachev was quickly appointed his successor despite grumblings from Politburo member and Council of Ministers chair Nikolai Tikhonov, who six years older than Chernenko. Gorbachev moved quickly in the new role to institute reform. The CPSU adopted a course towards “acceleration of the social and economic development of the country”. Gorbachev opened up competition in industry and allowed farmers to buy out their land plots. His reforms were supported by the general population but caused outrage among vested interests and party bosses.

His reforms also ran into stormy waters as food prices increased. Gorbachev abolished wage controls and many salaries rose unduly. Too much money was printed and destabilised the consumer market. As a result, basic consumer items such as sugar, tobacco, soap and washing powder disappeared from supermarket shelves. The results made Gorbachev look for even more rapid reforms. A new theme of openness would be needed and took its name from the Russian word for transparency: “glasnost”.

But Glasnost worked both ways and allowed others to be open in their criticism of the regime. Slowly but surely dissident voices, which had previously lurked in Soviet corners, came out to denounce Communism and all who sailed in her; even those like Gorbachev who sailed her into very stormy waters. Intoxicated by the new freedoms, many were quick to denounce the current government as the inheritors of the tradition of terror most associated with the Stalin regime but never dismantled under Khrushchev and Brezhnev. The tragedy of Chernobyl added to the country’s economic stagnation and made it easier to condemn the man than allowed himself to be condemned.

While troubled stirred at home, his reputation flourished abroad. To most people in the West, it was obvious Mikhail Gorbachev was the genuine article and represented the best chance to end the Cold War in a generation. The US then, as now, had grandiose plans to install a missile shield. Then it was Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) or Star Wars, as it was dubbed. But Gorbachev formed substantial relations with Thatcher, Germany’s Helmut Kohl, and finally Reagan as they met in Reykjavik and Geneva. Their arms talks made significant breakthroughs in nuclear arms and set about the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In 1988, Gorbachev rolled back the Brezhnev Doctrine and allowed Eastern European countries to determine their own internal affairs. The floodgates opened in 1989 as a string of mostly peaceful revolutions overthrew the Communists in all the satellite states. When the Berlin Wall fell, Gorbachev ensured that all the Soviet troops in East Berlin remained consigned to barracks and did not interfere.

But the stones were loosening at home too. The Baltic nations were first to demand independence. Then Russia herself said it was no longer part of the Soviet Union. Led by the pugnacious former Mayor Moscow, Boris Yeltsin, it worked actively to smash the Union from the inside. Old-style Communists inside the Kremlin were alarmed and launched a coup against Gorbachev while he was on holidays in the Crimea in August 1991. For three tense days, the coup leaders pretended Gorbachev was too ill to rule as they tried to consolidate their power. But Yeltsin led the fightback from the Russian White House and the coup plotters surrendered.

Gorbachev returned to Moscow in what would prove to be a short-lived triumph. Yeltsin now had the taste of power and wanted more. As 1991 went by, he formed an alliance with the leaders of the Ukraine and Belarus to bypass the power of the Soviet Union. By December the writing was on the wall for Gorbachev. He was gradually squeezed out of power and resigned on Christmas Day. He handed over control of the Soviet military might that day to the Russian leader Yeltsin. The Soviet Union was no more.

Over the new few years, Gorbachev was persona non grata in the new country. Yeltsin used the state-controlled media to launch a personal campaign against him. The coup plotters against him were eventually all released without charge and Gorbachev had to rely on his huge reputation abroad to make a living on the circuit tour and from his books. It was not until the late 1990s that Gorbachev could speak freely in his native land. While his reputation has been mostly restored today, he remains a greater presence in the West than in Russia. More than most, he will look wryly at Russia’s burgeoning oil-fuelled wealth today and its desire to reclaim its military might.

While reminding the US of its obligations, Gorbachev is not frightened to do the same to Medvedev’s Russia. Writing in The Times after the new president's election in March, Gorbachev said Russia need to take advantage of the stability and confidence it achieved in the past few years and “move decisively on the path of modernisation”. He said Russia needed to modernise governance, as well as “create an innovative economy, re-emphasise education and health and, as top priority, work to narrow the gap between rich and poor while fighting corruption and bureaucracy.” Gorbachev prescribed a course of more democracy for Russia. But the practical-minded Putin and Medvedev are only too aware of what happened when their brilliant predecessor ordered more democracy for himself. It was always going to be the tragic fate of Gorbachev to fall on his own sword.

Lithuania looks to sign up for US missile shield

It looks increasingly likely that Baltic nation Lithuania has signed up to take on the US’s missile interceptor shield. The system is part of the US’s belligerent offensive policy and they have already threatened to use it on Iran. The US has already signed a deal with the Czech Republic to one half of its missile interceptor system and was initially dealing with Poland to site the second half. But after talks stalled with the Polish government, Lithuania moved in.

Poland President Donald Tusk wanted $1 billion in compensation for hosting the missile shield but Washington baulked at this demand. The US put a deadline of mid July for Poland to lower their price but Tusk has shown no interest in changing the Polish position. He said the American proposals were not satisfactory from a Polish perspective. “The United States, our ally, is completely free to make decisions,” he said. “We have the rights and we will exercise the right to formulate our own conditions, our expectations.”

Now it seems the US have found a willing alternative in Vilnius. US Defence Secretary Robert Gates travelled to Lithuania in February for a NATO meeting and has since met Prime Minister Kirkilas to discuss the shield deal. Pentagon press secretary, Geoff Morrell, said Lithuania was willing to consider hosting the interceptors” But he said the US preference was still to work out a deal with the Poles. “But prudent planning requires that we simultaneously look at backups, if necessary,” he said. “Lithuania would geographically serve as a good alternative.”

Polish diplomats were in Washington on Monday still aiming to hammer out a deal. Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorki met Condoleeza Rice to talk about hosting the interceptors a day before she was due to fly to Prague to sign the Czech end of the deal (an early warning radar). Sikorski wants to use the billion dollars he hopes the US will pay in order to modernise Polish air defences. He played coy with the media after the meeting saying the deal was still on track. Asked if he could salvage a deal, Sikorski said, "There is no need to salvage, because talks have continued all along and will continue."

The US insists the missile interceptor system is for dealing with what it euphemistically calls “rogue nations”. However nearby Russia is unimpressed. It rightly argues that if the intended target is supposedly Iran, then the missile site should be in Turkey or somewhere else nearby. Russia says the real purpose of the shield is to neutralise the Russian nuclear arsenal, and tilt the nuclear balance which exists in Europe in favour of Washington. New President Dmitri Medvedev criticised the shield on a recent visit to Berlin. He said American military expansion worried Moscow and could destroy relations between East and West "in a radical way, for a long time".

Lithuania, meanwhile, would need very little encouragement to rattle Moscow. Even before independence in 1990, then Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis needed very little prodding to provoke the Soviet Union. Gorbachev wrote in his memoirs how the Soviets acknowledged Lithuania’s right to self-determination and the desire to leave the Union. But, they were not interested in Gorbachev’s request to “respect legal procedures and a proper timetable for the divorce”. His heirs appear to want to continue to thumb their nose at its big neighbour, and likely at a much cheaper price than the Poles.

Fitzgibbon gives go-ahead to start building secret US air base in WA

Australian Defence Minister Joel Fitzgibbon announced yesterday that work would begin in the next month on a new US spy base in Western Australia. The satellite ground station will be sited in the existing signal intelligence facility near Geraldton 400km north of Perth. Unlike the existing operation, the new facility will be under US control and will provide satellite communications support for US Navy operations in Iraq and the Gulf. The US Navy had contracted Boeing Australia to provide construction services and when operational in 2011 will comprise of three buildings housing sophisticated electronic infrastructure, three 18m satellite dishes and two smaller antennas.

The deal was originally signed by the Howard Government in February last year after three years of secret negotiation with Washington. At the time, the Sydney Morning Herald revealed the facility would provide “a crucial link” for a network of military satellites to assist US's theatre of operations in the Middle East and Asia. They quoted Philip Dorling, a visiting fellow at the Australian Defence Force Academy who said that the base would make it “almost impossible for Australia to be fully neutral or stand back from any war in which the US was involved”.

Yet today’s confirmation announcement under a Labor Government went almost unnoticed. Tim Dunlop was one of the few to make comment today. Dunlop believes the story shows how defence has dropped off the political radar. He said “I can remember when this story would’ve got a lot more attention than it has” and reckons that in the past it would have generated more complaint from the left. “It’s almost like the alliance hasn’t collapsed since the change of government,” he concluded, presumably sarcastically.

Certainly other US spy bases are a target for left-wing protest, most notably Pine Gap near Alice Springs. This satellite tracking base employs nearly 1,000 American service personnel, mainly from the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office. It remains an extremely sensitive military resource and the US has never fully revealed to Australia its reasons for establishing the base. In the absence of hard information, wild theories have emerged about what is happening at the Gap. One involves the existence of a bore hole 6,000 metres beneath the facility containing an ultra low frequency antenna which is “used for secret experiments supposedly related to Nikola Tesla's resonance theories as well as low frequency communications throughout the world.”

What is true is that Geraldton facility is the first major US defence base to be established in Australia since Pine Gap was build in the 1960s. The new facility is called a Mobile Users Objective System (MUOS). In simple terms, MUOS is a satellite based mobile phone system. More technically it is a collection of high-tech satellites and associated ground facilities providing narrowband communication services for mobile and fixed site terminal users worldwide. It will provide global connectivity for voice, video and data for the US military. That’s as much as can be revealed about the Geraldton operation. The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Australian Defence Department and the US Navy is classified. Once again, Australians do not get to find out what others are doing on their soil.

Pine Gap Four trial starts today

A group of protesters demonstrated outside the Queensland Supreme Court today as four people face serious court charges in the Northern Territory. The Brisbane protesters held a vigil beside the scales of justice statue and handed out leaflets on behalf of the four defendants charged for allegedly trespassing at the Pine Gap military facility. The four are Jim Dowling, 50 and Adele Goldie, 29 from Brisbane, Donna Mulhearn, 37 from Sydney, and Bryan Law, 51 from Adelaide. They were due to appear today in the NT Supreme Court in Alice Springs, charged with breaking into the Pine Gap base on 9 December 2005.

The four are Christian activists who belong to a group called Christians Against All Terrorism (CAAT). They say they went to the base to carry out a Citizen’s Inspection in an effort to highlight its role in the Iraq War. The group believes it was the members' duty as citizens to protest against the US-Australian base, which is a key satellite intelligence facility for the Iraq war, because their Government was involved in "crimes against humanity". There, they cut through a fence, climbed onto the roof of a building, unfurled banners and took photographs of the facility.

The four now face a possible seven years in prison after breaking into the top-secret satellite tracking base. They are being charged with an obscure 1952 law after the Attorney General, Philip Ruddock, consented to charges under the Cold War era Defence (Special Undertakings) Act 1952 to be used for the first time. Under this law, the Attorney-General can declare any area a prohibited zone. The law was designed to keep people out of the then-nuclear test sites in remote Australia but has never been tested in the courts. High profile Melbourne lawyer Ron Merkel will lead the defence team.

Meanwhile his opposite number has made the extraordinary request to place the four defendants under house arrest for the duration of the trial. Crown prosecutor Hilton Dembo applied for a change in the bail conditions of the defendants so that they: “remain in the court 45 minutes after the court adjourns, and then go to their residences by the shortest available route and remain there”. He has also requested that they be prohibited from being within two kilometres of Pine Gap. Dembo made the application after receiving ‘intelligence’ about events the defendants had planned during the trial such as a daily procession to court with supporters and a demonstration at Pine Gap.

Pine Gap is the common name for a satellite tracking station located 20kms south-west of Alice Springs in central Australia. The station employs nearly 1,000 American service personnel, mainly from two intelligence agencies; the CIA and the National Reconnaissance Office. It is a sophisticated ground station for a satellite network that intercepts telephone, radio, data links, and other communications around the world. The station contains a 5,600 square meter computer room, and about 20 service and support buildings. Two of the station’s ground antennas are part of the U.S. Defence Satellite Communications System.

The chief distinguishing architectural component of the facility are its dozen radomes. Radomes are oversized golf-ball shaped weatherproof enclosures used to protect antennas. The word itself is a portmanteau of radar and dome. Radomes protect the surface of antenna from the elements and allow a relatively unattenuated electromagnetic signal between the antenna inside the radome and outside equipment.

Pine Gap’s origins date back to 1966. In October that year Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt invited President Lyndon Johnson to Australia for a three-day state visit. It was the first ever visit to Australia by a US President. Within two months, Holt increased Australia's military force in Vietnam and signed a secret agreement that would eventually become known as the Pine Gap treaty. According to federal ALP minister Clyde Cameron, it wasn’t until the Whitlam administration of the early 1970s that it was revealed that Pine Gap was a American installation led by CIA agent Richard Stallings.

The base started with two antennas and by the time the eighth radome was built in the late 70s, the base was one of the largest satellite ground facilities in the world. Despite the end of the Cold War in 1989, the facility expanded further. In 2001, John Howard offered Washington the renewal of the Pine Gap lease agreement in exchange for a bilateral free trade agreement which was eventually signed in 2004. Pine Gap remains an extremely sensitive military resource and is planned to be the nerve centre for the US’s “Son of Star Wars” National Missile Defence capability. It is also integral to American military intelligence and weapons delivery systems within the Asia, Pacific and Middle East regions.

Today’s court case is not the first time the Pine Gap activists have faced the law for their actions. In October last year the four had a Darwin court suppression order placed on them during the pre-trial hearings in relation to ASIO’s involvement in the arrest. Donna Mulhearn, one of the accused, said the charges are political and reflect the Government's persecution of citizens who oppose their war agenda. "We put an alternative view to the Australian people...secret American spy bases do not hold the key to Australia's security,” she said. "Our security lies in building better relationships."

Talisman Sabre Rattling at Shoalwater Bay

A public meeting in Brisbane was told today about the largest military exercise in Australia this year: Operation Talisman-Sabre 2007 (TS07) at north Queensland’s Shoalwater Bay. Kim Stewart from Peace Convergence told the meeting TS07 will involve nearly 14,000 US troops and over 12,000 Australian personnel, according to a Public Environment Report released last year.

The exercise is designed to improve combat readiness and interoperability. The field training portion of TS07 will be conducted from 19 June to 2 July, with force preparation and deployment of forces during the week of 12 to 18 June. Current planning shows Australian forces likely to participate are 20 ships and 25 aircraft while US forces likely to take part are 10 ships (including a carrier Battle Group) and 100 aircraft. Shoalwater is the major location with some events taking place at Townsville and Bradshaw (NT) bases.

This is the second major war games exercise in two years at Shoalwater. The purpose of Talisman Sabre 2005 (TS05) was to train American and Australian military in “crisis action planning for execution of contingency operations. TS05 brought together 11,000 US and 6,000 Australian under the command of Vice Admiral Jonathan W Greenert, Commander of the US Seventh Fleet. They practiced joint operations, test interoperability and also what was called “refined procedures and doctrines”.

Local residents are worried by the scale of these exercises and have complained about ongoing abuse of the Shoalwater Bay marine environment by military personnel. Local fishermen claim Army engineers used heavy explosives to blast a hole in the dunes on Freshwater Beach, lowered the local water table by 3 metres and drained a swamp into the sea. They also complain of heavy artillery firing in the water catchment, decimation of mangroves, deaths of dugongs due to bombings, and blasting of the Great Barrier Reef.

A local action group the Shoalwater Wilderness Awareness Group (SWAG) prepared a response (pdf) to the Department of Defence’s Public Environment Report for TS07. SWAG has five major concerns with the exercise. It claimed there was little public consultation, has serious omissions related to environmental impact, water catchment damage and lack of clean-up, identified risks in the document related to road damage and accidents, pointed out the dangers of nuclear weapons and depleted uranium to be used in the exercise, and lastly the failure to produce an Environmental Impact statement.

Shoalwater Bay is a wetlands of international importance. Vast mangrove forests, mudflats, sandflats and seagrass beds have formed on the sheltered western side of Shoalwater Bay. Half the wetland types found in Queensland exist in the Shoalwater and Corio Bays area. Threatened species which live in or visit these waters include dugong, saltwater crocodiles and various types of turtles including green, loggerhead, hawksbill and flatback. Almost half of Australia's recorded mangrove species are found in this area. They provide a nursery for fish and sheltered roosts for birds.

Australia is a signatory of The Ramsar convention on wetlands (signed in Ramsar, Iran in 1971). The convention is an intergovernmental treaty which provides the framework for national and international action for the use of wetlands. Shoalwater Bay is one of 64 Australian sites (pdf)registered with Ramsar and the fourth largest protected wetland after Coongie Lakes (South Australia), the Coral Sea islands territory and Kakadu.

Situated between Mackay and Rockhampton, the Shoalwater Bay area is a relatively undisturbed habitat area with significant flora and fauna. The mangrove, tidal mudflats and saltflats are internationally important habitats for resident and migratory waterbirds. The site regularly hosts over 20,000 birds. The entire 240,000 hectare area is within the Mackay-Capricorn Marine Park. The Shoalwater Bay Training Area has been listed on the Register of the National Estate since 1980 but is managed by the Department of Defence.

Dr Zohl dé Ishtar addressed the public meeting on the wider context of the Shoalwater Bay military exercise. dé Ishtar is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Queensland. She has wide-ranging experience in dealing with cross-cultural research and project collaboration with Indigenous Pacific and Australian women/communities. dé Ishtar recently returned from Guam where she observed first hand the US military influence on the island.

dé Ishtar explained how the US military now sees the North West Pacific region as its highest risk area with the ongoing tensions between China and Taiwan and to a lesser extent between the Koreas. The US intent to increase their military presence in the North Pacific but preferably in US controlled territory not in allied territory. The favoured locations are Alaska, Hawaii and Guam. As the commander of Guam’s Andersen Air Force Base said Guam is “big lily pad for leap frogging people, supplies, aircraft -- anything we need to sustain a conflict -- into the [Southwest Asia] region."

Not everyone in Guam is happy about the US presence. Guam is the southernmost of the Mariana Island and is four hours flight north of Cairns. It is a small island and an “unincorporated territory” of the US which means Guam residents don't vote for the US President and have no voting representation in the US Congress. Guahan (Guam) was settled by the Chamorros people at least 4,000 years ago and colonised by Spain in the 17th century. The US took control of the island after the Spanish-American war of 1898. It was captured by Japan for three years in World War II. Since that war, Guam has been vital in securing American military and economic interests throughout the Pacific and Asia.

The US Department of Defence occupies 30% of the island with the potential to expand. It is rapidly increasing the offensive capability of both the Air Force and Navy on the island. There are plans to establish a Global Strike Force on Guam, involving rotating 48 F-22 and F-15E fighter jets, six B-1, B-2, and B-52 bombers, adding another three nuclear submarines to the three Guam already houses and plans to become the home port of 60 per cent of the Navy's Pacific Fleet in the region. It will become the "largest, most forward US military installation in the Pacific theatre," which will inevitably make Guam a first-strike target in any Pacific war.

Ishtar pointed how Guam is becoming known as the tip of the spear of US Pacific forces. Guam's new priority is a result of the "unknowns" in East Asia - code language for Pentagon concerns about the rise of China - with its claims on Taiwan and rivalry with Japan - and a region with friction over oil rights, North Korea. Logistically it is far easier to support Guam from Australia than the US.

In 2005, the Australian Government entered agreements (under the auspices of Ausmin) with the US to provide long-term access and joint use of Shoalwater Bay Training Area. This agreement ties Australia to the rapid military build up in Guam. Talisman Sabre 2007 is a result. dé Ishtar pointed out how if Guam is the tip of the spear, then Australia prepares the hand that holds the spear.

Landmines and Lonrho

A South African and a British company have come together to develop a project for land mine clearance. The companies are Lonrho and Countermine and they have proposed a joint venture agreement to develop opportunities for land mine clearance. The environment will be sub-Saharan Africa in order to rehabilitate previously unusable land. Lonrho will provide the funding and its extensive African business network to build the African arm of Countermine’s land mine clearance business.

Anti-Personnel mines cause up to 20,000 casualties every year across the world. Large tracts of the world’s land are rendered unable by landmines. Even the suspicion of landmines is enough to keep humans away from land. The Lonrho/Countermine joint venture aims to reclaim this land. Lonrho will provide the finance and Countermine will provide the hardware. Countermine’s selling point is a product called ORACLE (Obstacle Removal and Clean Land Equipment). Developed in partnership with the American Caterpillar company, ORACLE works as a sort of giant armour-plated plough. It traverses fields tilling the ground to a depth of 50cm as it goes along. The machine uses a massive sharp-toothed rotor to shred mines before they go off. And even if they don’t go off, they are smothered.

Countermine has experience in the field. In 2000, it won a contract from the Croatian Government to clear landmines from Croatia after the war with Serbia. Countermine says ORACLE adheres to the International Mine Action Standard (IMAS). IMAS are an evolving set of standards in force for all UN mine action operations since 2001. This work is co-ordinated by the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD).

Anti-Personnel mines are often deliberately designed to injure rather than kill. Medics will be required; the injured will have to be evacuated. That way, they increase the logistical support burden on the opposing force. The 1997 Mine Ban Treaty (also known as the Ottawa Convention) compels 155 signatory countries not to manufacture, stockpile, transfer or use anti-personnel mines. However, as the cost of making a mine is US $2, while removing it costs US $1000 per mine, there are many notable omissions: the US, China, Russia, Israel, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, are all outside the treaty.

Under Clinton, the US refused to sign up unless it gained an exception to protect its troops in South Korea. However he did pledge to sign the Treaty by 2006. When Bush came to power, his administration initiated a review of U.S. landmine policy. That review concluded it was not in US interest to sign the treaty and the vague Clinton commitment was completely abandoned.

Landmines remain a staple of war on Earth. And their impact lasts long after hostilities have ceased. Almost 20 years after the Iran-Iran war, Iran still has 4 million hectares containing landmines. These mines are not only on the borders; some are planted inside Iranian cities. On average 2-3 people are injured or killed by landmines every day in Iran.

For now the joint venture is concentrating on Africa. Most African countries have signed up to the Ottawa Convention yet Africa is the most heavily land-mined continent in the world. There are at least 40 million mines and 140 million people live in countries where the risk of encountering mines is high or very high.

The most severely affected countries are ones that have all experienced post-colonial wars: Angola, Chad, Eritrea, Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda. The desert countries Egypt, Libya and Tunisia have also minefields dating back to World War II. In total, landmines kill or injure over 12,000 people per year in Africa.

And at first glance Lonrho seems an unlikely partner for this venture. They were once described by Edward Heath as an “unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism”. Heath made the comment in parliament in 1973 when he was Prime Minister. Then under the remarkable tutelage of Roland “Tiny” Rowland Lonrho ran into trouble for violating sanctions against white Rhodesia. Lonrho were not the only sanction-busting British company, but only the company of the German Rowland (birth name: Roland Walter Fuhrhop) suffered the consequences.

But while Rowland was making enemies in London, he knew how to do business in Africa and he made many friends among Black African leaders including Nelson Mandela and Zambia’s Kenneth Kaunda. Rowland sold a controversial stake in Lonrho in 1992 to Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafy, while Libya was being accused of the Lockerbie bombing. In 1994, Rowland financed a film “The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie” which disputed Libyan involvement in the bombing.

That same year Rowland was forced out of the company he had managed for 32 years. Commodity prices had slumped and the company's debts threatened profitability. The company was split into two: Lonmin and Lonrho Africa, the latter retaining all the African businesses and mining assets. While Lonmin thrived and is now worth $US 8 billion, Lonrho Africa stalled. In 2005, David Lenigas was appointed as an ebullient CEO and co-chairman with a brief to restore Lonrho Africa as a first port of call for investment in Africa.

Lenigas is quickly rebuilding the business and diversifying into hotels and casinos. He was typically upbeat about the new deal with Countermine saying the partnership will add value to Lonrho’s growth strategy. He was also quick to point out that “by rehabilitating large areas of valuable land we will make a significant difference to African communities that have suffered terribly as a result of landmines”. Lenigas is hoping the ORACLE will provide a match between profits and philanthropy.

CAAT gets BAE’s tongue

The High Court in London has ordered BAE Systems, Britain’s largest arms company, to produce a sworn affidavit divulging how it obtained a confidential and legally privileged document belonging to pressure group Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT). CAAT successfully argued judicial review proceedings could be severely prejudiced if BAE had access to their confidential legal advice. CAAT are seeking to uncover the truth of the bribes BAE paid to Saudi Arabia to underwrite its arms dealing. The British Government shut down a fraud squad investigation into the dealings last year. The landmark ruling is a major victory for freedom of information and a body-blow to the highly secretive arms industry as well as an embarrassment to the British Government over its clandestine dealings with the Saudi Royal Family.

BAE Systems was formed in 1999 as the merger of British Aerospace and Marconi Electronic Systems. The merged company is very big business. They manufacture warplanes, avionics, submarines, surface ships, radar, electronics, and guided weapons systems. According to their own website, BAE is the fourth largest defence company in the world. It has 88,000 employees, annual sales exceeding $22 billion and is ranked as the number 1 European defence company and number 7 in the US.

George Monbiot described BAE last month as a “small but untouchable domain that appears to be subject to a different set of laws.” BAE have been the intermediary in Britain’s lucrative arms dealing with Saudi Arabia that dates back to Margaret Thatcher’s leadership. In 2003 the Sunday Times revealed how BAE paid a company to carry out an elaborate spying operation on its critics and infiltrate CAAT.

CAAT were investigating BAE since the British Government closed down a police investigation into BAE activities in Saudi Arabia. These activities go back to the 1980s. Oil rich Saudi Arabia was looking to expand its military and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher successfully lobbied the Saudi Royal Family to buy British weapons. The British manufacture was contracted out to BAE, then known as British Aerospace.

The oil-for-arms deal known as Al Yamamah was born. Al Yamamah means ‘doves of peace’ in Arabic but this sale was all about war. In 1986 British Aerospace delivered the first weapons of Al Yamamah to the Saudis: 72 Tornado and 30 Hawk advanced fighter-bombers along with other tranches of military hardware. According to the terms of the sale, the Saudis were to purchase the armaments in payments of oil, over an unspecified period of time. The Saudis transferred the oil to BP and Shell, who paid the value of the oil into an escrow account where BAE received the money. 20 years later, the deals are still ongoing. And since the initial 1986 order, Saudi Arabia has purchased a staggering $33 billion worth of British arms. These massive deals (equivalent to the GDP of Cuba) have been fraught with bribery.

Much of the BAE profits from Al-Yamamah was recycled as kickbacks to members of the Saudi royal family and other intermediaries such as Wafic Said, the billionaire financier and benefactor of Oxford University’s business school. According to former CIA operative Robert Baer the deal was “a huge commission-generating machine”. He said British Aerospace overcharged for its hardware and spare parts and the difference went into the pockets of the Saudis.

But not all of the kickbacks stayed in Saudi Arabia. In 1994 MP Tam Dalyell produced a US intelligence report and an internal British Aircraft Corporation memo which revealed Margaret Thatcher’s son, Mark, had received a £12 million commission from Al-Yamamah. The then Tory government declined to investigate the charges. Less well protected was British Defence Procurement Minister Jonathan Aiken who played a key role in setting up Al-Yamamah II. He was jailed for 18 months in 1993 for letting the Saudis pay his bill at the Paris Ritz.

Aiken’s imprisonment didn’t stop the illegal flow of money and the Sunday Times began to report the allegations in 2003. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) was finally forced to investigate a year later. The SFO were making slow but steady progress until late last year when they tried to gain access to Swiss bank accounts with Saudi links. The Saudis were aghast and threatened to withdraw co-operation on security and cancel a supply contract for new aircraft. Under instruction from Tony Blair, Attorney-General Lord Goldsmith immediately told the SFO to drop the investigation on the grounds that it “lacked evidence and threatened national security”.

The Government decision was attacked by City fund managers who said it could compromise London’s standing as a financial centre due to lack of corporate governance. Top fund manager Hermes wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister saying “lack of credibility in the regulation of one company can spread to the rest of the stock market, creating higher-risk premiums and cost of capital.”

CAAT were also unhappy with the decision. They instructed their lawyers, Leigh Day & Co, to seek a judicial review of the government’s decision to drop the corruption case against BAE. Leigh Day sent CAAT an email containing advice on costs and tactics. However that email ended up in the hands of BAE. The arms company argued it was an unwitting recipient but refused to reveal how they got it. Now the court has decided they must tell CAAT how they obtained the information.

CAAT are understandably delighted about the High Court’s ruling. Spokesman Symon Hill said “This is a victory not only for Campaign Against Arms Trade but for all who care about democracy. When Tony Blair ended the Saudi corruption inquiry, he implied that BAE Systems were above the law. But today BAE have been prevented from behaving as they like. We are a step closer to the day when BAE can no longer get away with calling the shots."

Five Minutes to Midnight

The Doomsday Clock was moved forward two minutes earlier this week. According to the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the time is now 11.55pm – barely five minutes to nuclear annihilation. The Bulletin cited North Korean nuclear tests, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the US’s recent use of "bunker buster" nuclear bombs as the reasons for the change. They also cited human related climate change as a growing danger. "We stand at the brink of a second nuclear age," the group said in a statement read in New York and London. It was the first adjustment since 2002.

The Doomsday Clock is a peculiar hangover from the Cold War. The Clock evoked both an image of doom (midnight) and a nuclear launch (countdown to zero). Created in 1947, it was initially set to seven minutes to midnight. This week marks the 18th adjustment of the clock in the last 60 years. It has been as close as two minutes to midnight in 1953 when the US and USSR tested thermonuclear devices within nine months of one another, and as far away as seventeen minutes in 1991 after the same two countries signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (SALT).

The custodians of the clock are the board of directors of the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists”. Founded in 1945, the Bulletin is a magazine that covers global security and public policy issues, especially related to the dangers of nuclear weapons. The original founder and editor was biophysicist Eugene Rabinowitch, a professor of botany and biophysics at the University of Illinois near Chicago. It has an impressive list of contributors over the years that include Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Carl Sagan, Wernher von Braun, Al Gore, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke.


Bunker buster bombs are the newest threat identified by the Bulletin. These are bombs designed to penetrate hardened targets or those buried deep underground. Barnes Wallis designed the first bunker buster bombs for the British in World War II. The US military updated Barnes Wallis’s original designs for use in the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The American looked at plans to develop nuclear variants in order to access the so-called Al-Qaeda underground complexes in Tora Bora as well as Iranian nuclear industry which is also mainly underground. In 2005, the Bush administration requested Congress approval for $4 million dollars to research the technology. Congress refused and the idea was abandoned after criticism of potential nuclear fall-out. The military analysts Jane’s suspect however that the research may still be continuing under a different name.

The bulletin believes we are now at the cusp of a Second Nuclear Age. Many felt that the nuclear threat was eradicated by the fall of the Soviet Union as a world superpower in 1991. But many new dangers emerged to fill the void. The ex-Soviet states suffered a partial breakdown of command and control systems leading to the “disappearance” of former Soviet nuclear weapons. Israel nuclear ambitions are matched by many of its Arab enemies. The 50 year old feud between India and Pakistan is now a nuclear standoff. And Pakistan’s chief nuclear technician A Q Khan has sold secrets of nuclear technology to many smaller countries in Asia and Africa worried about American hegemony. Meanwhile the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NNPT) could disintegrate due to the lack of good will among its members.

The climate change rationale is also adding new relevance to the Cold War institution. The statement released this week claimed global warming poses a dire threat to human civilisation second only to nuclear weapons. It cited flooding, desertification and threats to habitats and agricultural resources which are likely to contribute to mass migrations and wars over land, water, and other natural resources. Stephen Hawking told the London gathering “as scientists, we understand the dangers of nuclear weapons and their devastating effects, and we are learning how human activities and technologies are affecting climate systems in ways that may forever change life on Earth. As citizens of the world, we have a duty to alert the public to the unnecessary risks that we live with every day, and to the perils we foresee if governments and societies do not take action now to render nuclear weapons obsolete and to prevent further climate change."

Clusters last stand?

There was a small victory today for that much-maligned force called international law. A Geneva conference led by Sweden announced a new law will soon come into force requiring countries to clear up unexploded bombs and mines or pay teams of de-miners to do it. Is this what they meant by carbon trading? The treaty covers ordnance such as land mines and cluster bombs. The US, China, Russia and the UK all oppose the outright banning of them at the moment or as Washington lawyer and leader of the US delegation to the Geneva conference Ronald Bettauer said the “time is not right to discuss a ban… because the bomb still plays an important military function”.

Simon Conway of the Landmine Action charity says the weapon is a redundant legacy of the Cold War, designed for use against mass Warsaw Pact army formations charging across the central European plain. The conference is taking place in Geneva as Switzerland and the UN back calls for cluster bombs to be outlawed. Debate over the use of the weapon intensified after Israel dropped them on southern Lebanon in its month-long war against Hezbollah militia earlier this year.

Cluster bombs are dispensed or dropped from an aircraft. Dropped ordnance is divided into three subgroups: bombs; dispensers, which contain submunitions; and submunitions. Submunitions are classified are “bomblets” , grenades, or mines. Some are very small and are delivered on known concentrations of enemy personnel, scattered across an area. They are used to primarily kill infantry. Cluster bombs were developed first by Germany in World War II with their "Butterfly Bomb." It was so called because it fluttered in flight. It was quckly copied by the Russians, US and Italians. They were used in 2003 in Iraq and earlier this year Israel used cluster bombs in several areas in South Lebanon, including the towns of Blida, Hebbariyeh and Kfarhamam.

The problem with cluster bombs is that some don’t explode immediately. Like land mines they leave a dubious legacy to the peacemakers after a war. It may seem puzzling that such an unreliable weapon, which makes no distinction between friend and enemy, is not banned. But as George Monbiot (via Taiwan!) said “The necessary resources, both economic and political, will always be found for the purpose of terminating life”.

Britain announced on 9 November is to phase out "dumb" cluster bombs and join negotiations aimed at imposing global limits on their use. That leaves the US, China and Russia to convince. And shame, if necessary.

mixed results for North Korea missile tests

On Wednesday July 5 (not July 4, US Independence Day, as incorrectly reported by many media), North Korea carried out nuclear missile tests which have caused a storm of worldwide reaction.

North Korea's most dangerous potential weapon is the Taepodong-2 (named by outside observers for the launch site) missile, the range of which is thought to include Australia and parts of Alaska and Hawaii however Pyongyang has a very limited number of these experimental long-range missiles. The Taepodong-2 launch was unsuccessful with the first stage engine burning for just 40 seconds, less than half its expected time. Several minutes later, the missile fell into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) which lies between North Korea, Russia and Japan. The Taepodong-2 is a larger version of the Taepodong-1, which was tested in 1998 in a probable failed attempt to place Pyongyang's Kwangmyongsong satellite into orbit. The Koreans claimed the launch was successful and the satellite was transmitting the melody of the immortal revolutionary hymns ‘Song of General Kim Il Sung’ and ‘Song of General Kim Jong Il’ and the Morse signals ‘Juche Korea’ in 27 MHz'. Despite these explict details no evidence could be uncovered by Western intelligence agencies that the spacecraft had actually reached orbit.

Though North Korea failed in its longer-term ambitions on July 7, the test two days earlier was more successful when they launched the short range Hwasong and the medium range Nodong missiles. They have up to 200 Nadong missiles which have a range of up to 1,300 kilometres (putting it in reach of Japan and Okinawa.) The Nadong is based on Scud technology and Pyongyang has sold the weapon to Iran, Syria and Libya.

Unlike the 1998 launch, few were surprised by this week’s activities. Though the exact launch date was unknown, North Korea did little to hide the exercise. In June, American satellite photographs revealed that the North was proceeding with the test-firing of the long-range missile at a launching pad on a remote east coast site. Just days before the launch, the Chinese tried to put together an "informal" meeting of the dormant six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program. The six parties are the US, Russia, China, Japan and the two Koreas. The North has boycotted the talks since September, citing American efforts to blacklist the Macau bank it uses for overseas financial transactions.

Because the long-range missile failed, the US has not played a large role in the response. US national security advisor, Stephen Hadley called the tests “provocative behaviour,” but added that they marked “no immediate threat” to the US. Japan, which views itself as the main military focus of the North Korean tests, reacted more strongly. It has implemented sanctions, including banning North Korean officials from visiting Japan and suspending the ferry from North Korea to Japan. Tokyo also took the North Korean missile tests to the U.N. Security Council. Japan asked the Council on Friday to ban international sales of North Korean missiles. The US States, Britain and France back the resolution but it is opposed by the other two permanent members China and Russia.

The South Korean response has been less clear-cut than Japan. Seoul political bickering and their desire for political unification mean that they have mixed threats of economic retaliation (withholding food and fertilizer shipments) with calls for dialogue with Pyongyang. Russia, who were not notified in advance, criticized the launch but called for a calm response. Russian President Putin was quoted as saying “We would prefer it if Russia and the international community did not receive such presents” but also cautioned "these events should not lead to emotions that would conquer common sense when considering such issues." Whereas China, which provides the North with its oil and much of its food, is apparently unconcerned by the launch despite the North's rebuff to their talks proposal. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said "we'll continue to work together with all the other parties and play a constructive role."

North Asia is a powderkeg. Since 2000, North Korea has more than quadrupled its suspected stockpile of plutonium, withdrawn from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and resumed flight testing of its missiles. China is arming heavily and South Korea and Japan are also keeping pace. The launch could increase support for hawkish candidates in the race to succeed Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who is scheduled to retire in September. The chief cabinet secretary Shinzo Abe is favourite to succeed Koizumi has built his popularity with a tough stance on North Korea and China. Abe said the tests were "a serious problem from the standpoint of our national security, peace and stability of the international community and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction."

The North, however, said it had the right to test missiles. South Korea's Yonhap news agency on Friday quoted Choe Myong Nam, councillor at the North's UN mission in Geneva, as saying the launches were successful and could be continued. "It's an unfair logic to say that somebody can do something and others cannot. The same logic applies to nuclear possession," Choe said. He continued, “the missile launches are not intended to strike anyone and it's the North position that missile launches could be continued,"

It is safe to say that the world has not heard the last of Taepodong-2. That is one of few things that are safe in the troubled Sea of Japan.