SNEAKY FLYING SPY CAMERAS PROVOKE CIVIL LIBERTY FEARS
By Rod Mills | Express | March 29, 2010
CIVIL liberties groups have condemned a sinister new plan for Scottish police forces to spy on ordinary citizens using unmanned surveillance drones.
The Big Brother-style move will mean the public could be monitored constantly, under the pretext of a crime crack-down.
The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland (ACPOS) has joined forces with their English counterpart to form the Unmanned Aerial Systems Steering Group, which meets regularly to discuss the use of the planes, and reports to the Home Office.
The drones have already been tested by Strathclyde Police who used one in rescue operations in rural Argyll.
Scotland’s largest police force is keen to be at the forefront of the new technology. But pressure groups yesterday warned the step was being taken without the consent or support of the public and risked transforming Scotland into a “surveillance state”.
Alex Deanie, of Big Brother Watch, said: “It’s pretty scary that more and more police forces are considering using these.
“They invade our privacy and are being brought in without proper public consultation or support. We need a proper debate about the use of this type of surveillance and its effect on civil liberties before the police start to use these devices.”
There are two types of the military-designed drones that are being looked at by police. The first is a remote-controlled helicopter with CCTV cameras and infra red imaging built in. Flying up to 300 feet at 30mph, they are being tested by Merseyside Police.
But it is the second type that is causing the most concern – flying at 20,000 feet it is invisible to the human eye.
Patrick Harvie, leader of the Scottish Green Party, said: “Some people in the Home Office won’t be happy until they have everyone under 24-hour surveillance and every step towards that should be resisted.” Yesterday Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken backed the plans, adding: “There are perhaps civil liberties questions, but basic and more important questions are whether or not we want to cut crime.”
Arms manufacturer BAE Systems is adapting the planes – currently used by the Army in Afghanistan – for the police forces to test. A spokesman for ACPOS yesterday said: “The steering group was set up to consider the implications for policing of such technology.”
How government cash created the Climategate scandal
Australian climate scientist policy analyst Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen tells the British parliamentary inquiry into Climategate just how much global warming science is corrupted by politics and money. Excerpts:
I was peer reviewer for IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)… Since 1998 I have been the editor of the journal, Energy & Environment (E&E) published by Multi-science, where I published my first papers on the IPCC. I interpreted the IPCC “consensus” as politically created in order to support energy technology and scientific agendas that in essence pre-existed the “warming-as -man-made catastrophe alarm.”…
3.2 Scientific research as advocacy for an agenda (a coalition of interests, not a conspiracy,) was presented to the public and governments as protection of the planet… CRU, working for the UK government and hence the IPCC, was expected to support the hypothesis of man-made, dangerous warming caused by carbon dioxide, a hypothesis it had helped to formulate in the late 1980s…
3.3 … In persuading policy makers and the public of this danger, the “hockey stick” became a major tool of persuasion, giving CRU a major role in the policy process at the national, EU and international level. This led to the growing politicisation of science in the interest, allegedly, of protecting the “the environment” and the planet. I observed and documented this phenomenon as the UK Government, European Commission, and World Bank increasingly needed the climate threat to justify their anti-carbon (and pro-nuclear) policies. In return climate science was generously funded and required to support rather than to question these policy objectives… Opponents were gradually starved of research opportunities or persuaded into silence. The apparent “scientific consensus” thus generated became a major tool of public persuasion…
4.1 … As editor of a journal which remained open to scientists who challenged the orthodoxy, I became the target of a number of CRU manoeuvres. The hacked emails revealed attempts to manipulate peer review to E&E’s disadvantage, and showed that libel threats were considered against its editorial team…
4.4 Most recently CRU alleged that I had interfered “maliciously” with their busy grant-related schedules, by sending an email to the UKCIP (Climate Impact Programme) advising caution in the use of CRU data for regional planning purposes. This was clearly reported to [CRU head Phil] Jones who contacted my Head of Department, suggesting that he needed to reconsider the association of E&E with Hull University. Professor Graham Haughton, while expressing his own disagreement with my views, nevertheless upheld the principle of academic freedom…
4.5 The emails I have read are evidence of a close and protective collaboration between CRU, the Hadley Centre, and several US research bodies such as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where former CRU students had found employment. Together they formed an important group inside IPCC Working Group 1, the science group…
The CRU case is not unique. Recent exposures have taken the lid off similar issues in the USA, the Netherlands, Australia, and possibly in Germany and Canada… It is at least arguable that the real culprit is the theme- and project-based research funding system put in place in the 1980s and subsequently strengthened and tightened in the name of “policy relevance”. This system, in making research funding conditional on demonstrating such relevance, has encouraged close ties with central Government bureaucracy. Some university research units have almost become wholly-owned subsidiaries of Government Departments. Their survival, and the livelihoods of their employees, depends on delivering what policy makers think they want. It becomes hazardous to speak truth to power…
Postglacial climatic history is by no means well understood and the human contributions cannot yet be assessed.
Saturday 20 March 2010
1 Declaration of Interest
I have no financial interest in this enquiry; I am no longer asking for research grants and have no close personal relationships with any of the people involved.
My interests are purely academic, professional and political. I am interested in the value and misuse of the peer review process. The negative attitudes of the IPCC/CRU people to my often sceptical journal have harmed it. Its impact rating has remained too low for many ambitious young researchers to use it, and even sales may have been affected. However, this is not an interest as my work is voluntary and the publisher has remained supportive. As a member of the Labour Party and deeply politically engaged person, I have not found life as a ‘climate sceptic’ always easy, but have kept my MP and MEP informed. I have been somewhat offended but not surprised by the ‘CRU-hack’ revelations.
2 Introduction: My Involvement as Researcher and Editor
2.1 Since the late 1980s I have been a researcher of the politics and science of climate change, and especially the IPCC, from the perspective of energy policy and international politics. (See publications, APPENDIX). I was peer reviewer for IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), peer reviewer for Working Group 3 (responses, emission scenarios, economics) for two of its reports and I studied the science and politics of IPCC under a 3-year grant from the ESRC.
2.2 Since 1998 I have been the editor of the journal, Energy & Environment (E&E) published by Multi-science, where I published my first papers on the IPCC. I interpreted the IPCC “consensus” as politically created in order to support energy technology and scientific agendas that in essence pre-existed the “warming-as -man-made catastrophe alarm.”[1]
2.3 I have published peer-reviewed papers and opinion pieces by all the best known ‘sceptics’ and know a number of them personally. My own views being known, E&E therefore attracted, inter alia, papers from IPCC-critical and therefore IPCC-excluded scientists. This did not please the senior CRU members, a number of whom I know personally.
2.4 Since the mid-1990s I have taught environmental management at the Geography Department, Hull University, after a decade as Fellow and Senior Research Fellow at the Science and Technology Research Unit (SPRU) at Sussex University. Previously, I had studied physical geography, including some climatology (as well as geology and German literature) atAdelaide University and married into a well known family of Australian scientists. Science and research have been a major part of my life. I now consider climate scepticism my (unfunded) research area but have published a great deal on the IPCC, climate science and energy policy in the past. (See Appendix)
3 My Understanding of the Issue
3.1 I have no reason to believe that most of the scientists involved in the CRU affair (and this a group reaching beyond the UK) did anything but act in good faith, doing their duty to science, bureaucracy and the public as they saw it and as they were funded to do. It is important, however, for you check my observation, that most climate change since the late 1980s has been government- and grant- funded with the clearly stated objective that it must support a decarbonisation agenda for the energy sector.
3.2 Scientific research as advocacy for an agenda (a coalition of interests, not a conspiracy,) was presented to the public and governments as protection of the planet. This cause of environmental protection had from the start natural allies in the EU Commission, United Nation and World Bank. CRU, working for the UK government and hence the IPCC, was expected to support the hypothesis of man-made, dangerous warming caused by carbon dioxide, a hypothesis it had helped to formulate in the late 1980s and which became “true” in international law with the adoption of the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.
3.3 This treaty and its protocol does not define “climate”, and applies only to anthropogenic warming assumed to be dangerous. In persuading policy makers and the public of this danger, the “hockey stick” became a major tool of persuasion, giving CRU a major role in the policy process at the national, EU and international level. This led to the growing politicisation of science in the interest, allegedly, of protecting the “the environment” and the planet. I observed and documented this phenomenon as the UK Government, European Commission, and World Bank increasingly needed the climate threat to justify their anti-carbon (and pro-nuclear) policies. In return climate science was generously funded and required to support rather than to question these policy objectives. This policy was of course challenged by those unhappy with the proposed government-stimulated replacement of carbon fuels, but this need not concern this Committee beyond noting that it increased the anger of climate “sceptics” who saw science misused for policies they doubted. Others liked the policy and kept quiet. Opponents were gradually starved of research opportunities or persuaded into silence. The apparent “scientific consensus” thus generated became a major tool of public persuasion.
4 Energy & Environment and CRU
4.1 I inherited the editorship of Energy & Environment from a former senior scientist at the Department of the Environment (Dr. David Everest) because we shared doubts about the claims made by environmentalists and were worried about the readiness with which politicians accepted these claims, including ‘global warming’ which followed so seamlessly from the acid rain scare, my previous research area. As editor of a journal which remained open to scientists who challenged the orthodoxy, I became the target of a number of CRU manoeuvres. The hacked emails revealed attempts to manipulate peer review to E&E’s disadvantage, and showed that libel threats were considered against its editorial team. Dr Jones even tried to put pressure on my university department. [2] The emailers expressed anger over my publication of several papers that questioned the ‘hockey stick’ graph and the reliability of CRU temperature data. The desire to control the peer review process in their favour is expressed several times. Benny Peiser, the Guest Editor of a special issue will report to you on his experience.
4.2 I was sent about 20 emails (e.g. 125655744.text, 1256765544, 12565500876, 125510086, and 125558481) that concern me or the journal E&E. I have not spent time searching for more but have followed the wide debate in several countries. (See Fuel for Thought attachment). The emails also cover events which I have followed since the late 1980s and concern people and institutions I am to some degree familiar with.
4.3 CRU clearly disliked my- journal and believed that “good” climate scientists do not read it. They characterised it as a journal of choice for climate sceptics. If this was so, it happened by default as other publication opportunities were closed to them. Email No. 1256765544, for example nevertheless shows that they took the journal seriously. An American response to McIntyre’s and McKitrick’s influential paper I published in 2005 challenging the “hockey stick” says, “It is indeed time leading scientists at CRU associated with the UK Met Bureau explain how Mr McIntyre is in error or resign.”
4.4 Most recently CRU alleged that I had interfered “maliciously” with their busy grant-related schedules, by sending an email to the UKCIP (Climate Impact Programme) advising caution in the use of CRU data for regional planning purposes. This was clearly reported to Professor Jones who contacted my Head of Department, suggesting that he needed to reconsider the association of E&E with Hull University. Professor Graham Haughton, while expressing his own disagreement with my views, nevertheless upheld the principle of academic freedom. I therefore have no reason to complain against theUniversity of Hull and I am still working from the Geography Department.
4.5 The emails I have read are evidence of a close and protective collaboration between CRU, the Hadley Centre, and several US research bodies such as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where former CRU students had found employment. Together they formed an important group inside IPCC Working Group 1, the science group.
5 UK Policy Context
5.1 Having recently attended a business lunch addressed by our Minister for Regional Development (Rosie Winterton) and a manager from EON (UK) in charge of offshore wind farm development (Humber Gateway, to be completed by 2014, subject to planning permission), I am fully aware of this Government’s commitment to a decarbonisation agenda as the way towards British reindustrialisation, job creation and regional development, including related research and teaching by universities. At this gathering, the problems with IPCC science[3] and CRU (UEA) had not yet registered or were dismissed. More generally, judging by the most recent statements from leading spokesmen from all major parties, it seems that belief in IPCC science remains the primary justification for an energy policy that so obviously needs much more examination. TheUK clearly hopes to continue to “lead the world” in the decarbonisation of energy. Is this wise? What other consequences might arise? When has competitive advantage been secured by making our energy differentially more expensive? Unless of course, Britain can succeed in effecting a regulatory capture in energy markets on a global scale…
6 Your Specific Questions
6.1 Terms of Reference
The four terms as set out seem appropriate and should establish useful foundations. There is, however, a broader context. The CRU case is not unique. Recent exposures have taken the lid off similar issues in the USA, the Netherlands, Australia, and possibly in Germany and Canada. There may be a systemic problem here, and it would be neither fair nor helpful to make CRU and the UK Meteorological Office the sole fall-guys. It is at least arguable that the real culprit is the theme- and project-based research funding system put in place in the 1980s and subsequently strengthened and tightened in the name of “policy relevance”. This system, in making research funding conditional on demonstrating such relevance, has encouraged close ties with central Government bureaucracy. Some university research units have almost become wholly-owned subsidiaries of Government Departments. Their survival, and the livelihoods of their employees, depends on delivering what policy makers think they want. It becomes hazardous to speak truth to power. In the area of energy policy, there are particular problems since the familiar lobbies of the privatised energy industries have been joined by new pressure groups. As the justification for policies comes to rely increasingly on “environmental” arguments, a host of NGOs, often with electorally appealing single-issue concerns and deceptively simple solutions, begin to raise their voices. The politics have become very difficult, and it is not clear that the traditional structures can cope. The responsibility for excessive pressure on “science” to deliver the desired answers must also lie with the relevant research councils, NGOs, and Parliament itself. Have politicians kept a close eye on the science debate? Have they understood what kind of a body the IPCC really is? Professor Benfield has recently begun to move the debate in an interesting direction by suggesting that that bureaucracy will have to attune itself better to the recognition of the value of diversity in scientific advice. They need to accept that policy advisors and Ministers cannot abdicate responsibility for making balanced judgements by relying on project-funded research in the hope that it will produce settled solutions. I should be happy to discuss this with you.
My suggestions for action would be to expand this enquiry to include the funding of climate science and consider the pressure put on scientists by policy-makers and assorted lobbies.
6.2 How Independent Are The Other Two International Data Sets?
I am no expert here but from the large amount of material I have read, some of it mentioned in Fuel For Thought paper 21/2, I do not think that they are independent but rely on the same primary sources. All have tended to serve the same master (IPCC/ policy-makers) and ‘cause’ (saving the planet) and seem affected either by similar shortcomings (the available measurement periods, changing measurement technology and above all the declining and limited number of measuring points, not to mention the urban heat island effect. These data sets may soon be replaced by better and more reliable data to demonstrate the Earth’s postglacial temperature history (which says little about attribution/causation). Postglacial climatic history is by no means well understood and the human contributions cannot yet be assessed.
Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
Reader Emeritus, Hull University,
Department of Geography
February 2010
Appendix: Relevant Publications
Refereed journal articles
· ‘The role of IPCC as driver of international climate policy’ paper to Hamburg Institute of International Economics Conference “Critical elements of international climate policy” submitted to Geoforum, May 2004. To be revised/rejected.
· What drives the Kyoto Process?, translated by Kirril Kondratyev into Russian, Proceedings of the Russian Geographical Society, April 2004. Published in Russian
· Climate Policy: Interest driven, Culture Bound or based on Science? Submitted to Area April 2004./rejected
· ‘Investing Against Climate Change: Why Failure Remains Possible’, Environmental Politics: Autumn 2002; 11(3), pp.1-30.
· Journal of Science, Technology and Human Values: ‘Science, Equity and the War against Carbon’. Winter 2003.28 (1) Differentiation since Kyoto: An Exploration of Australian Climate Policy in Comparison to Europe, Energy & Environment, 11 (3), 2000, p.343-353.
· ‘Climate Change and the World Bank: Opportunity for Global Governance? Energy & Environment, Vol.10, No.1, January 1999, pp.27-50.
· ‘A winning coalition of advocacy: climate research, bureaucracy and ‘alternative’ fuels’, Energy Policy, Vol. 25, No. 4., 1997
· (with Z Young), ‘The Global Environment Facility: In Institutional Innovation in Need of Guidance?’, Environmental Politics, Vol. 6, No.1, Spring 1997
· ‘Political Pressures in the Formation of Scientific Consensus’, Energy & Environment, Vol.7, No.4, 1996 pp. 365-375;
· ‘Britain and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The impacts of scientific advice on global warming: Integrated policy analysis and the global dimension.’ Environmental Politics, Vol.4, No. 1, Spring 1995, pp.1-18
· ‘Britain and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: The impacts of scientific advice on Global warming Part II: The Domestic Story of the British Response to Climate Change, Environmental Politics, Vol.4, No.2, Summer 1995, pp.175-196.
· ‘Reflections on the Politics linking Science, Environment and Innovation’, Innovation, Vol.8, No.3, 1995 pp.275-287.
· ‘Global climate protection policy: the limits of scientific advice – Part I.’ Global Environmental Change, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1994,
· ‘Global climate protection policy: the limits of scientific advice – Part II.’ Global Environmental Change, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1994
· (with J F Skea) ‘The Operation and Impact of the IPCC: Results of a Survey of Participants and Users’. STEEP discussion paper no. 16, SPRU, Brighton 1994.
· ‘A scientific agenda for climate policy?’ Nature, Vol. 372, No.6505,1 December 1994
· ‘Science policy, the IPCC and the Climate Convention: the codification of a global research agenda.’ Energy and Environment; Vol. 4, No. 4, 1993, pp. 362-408.
BOOKS AND MONOGRAPHS
· With A. Kellow, Hobart, International Environmental Policy: Interests and the Failure of the Kyoto Process, Edward Elgar Publishing, October 2002.
Acid Politics: Environmental and Energy Policies in Britain and Germany, with J F Skea, Belhaven Press, London/New York, p 296, January 1991 (paperback April 1993)
BOOK CHAPTERS
o ‘Epilogue: Scientific Advice in the world of power politics’, final chapter (10) in Pim Martens & Jan Rotmans (eds.) (1999), Climate Change: An Integrated Approach. (Advances in Global Change Research), Kluwer Academic
Publishers, Dordrecht, December 1999, pp. 357-397. 0-7923 5996-8ISBN
o ‘Who is driving Climate Change Policy?’ In J.Morris (ed.), Climate Change: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom, The Institute of Economic Affairs, 1998, London
o Uncertainty in the Service of Science: Between Science Policy and the Politics of Power, in Gunnar Fermann, International Politics of Climate Change, Scandinavian University Press , Oslo 1997;pp 110-152. ISBN- 82-00-22711-
o ‘Science, power and policy.’ In: M Imber and J Vogler (eds.), Global Environmental Change in International Relations; London: Routledge, 1996, pp. 171-195
Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
——————————————————————————–
[1] Since the late 1990s I have contributed a lengthy ‘Fuel for Thought’ item to the journal which documents the relevant developments/discussions in IPCC critical climate science alongside the latest development in policy, technology and finance selected and sorted from a large variety of sources and sorted. The most recent item is attached to the submissions. It deals in some length with the CRU affair and reactions to it around the world, as well as with Copenhagen.
[2] On 26 October in a confidential message also addressed to Dr. Mann , the ‘creator’ of the hockey stick, Jones complained that E&E was to published a paper critical of Mann’s methodology and saw this as a part of a political campaign against energy legislation in the USA. Note (Paul Chesser, GlobalWarming.org, 15 January 2010): “Professor Mann is currently under investigation by Penn State University because of activities related to a closed circle of climate scientists who appear to have been engaged in agenda-driven science. Emails and documents mysteriously released from the previously-prestigious Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom revealed discussions of manipulation and destruction of research data, as well as efforts to interfere with the peer review process to stifle opposing views. The motivation underlying these efforts appears to be a coordinated strategy to support the belief that mankind’s activities are causing global warming Glosser has called for the return of over $ 6million state funding stimulus funds received by Prof. Mann and about whom US Senator Jeffrey Piccola has said: “The allegations of intellectual and scientific fraud like those made against Dr. Mann are serious against anybody involved in academics, but the impact in this case is significantly elevated. The work of Dr. Mann and other scientists at the CRU is being used to develop economic and environmental policies in states and countries across the world. Considering the saliency of the work being conducted by the CRU, anything short of the pursuit of absolute science cannot be accepted or tolerated.”(http://spectator.org/blog/2009/12/03/heat-on-mann-at-home)
[3] See http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2010-01/28/content_9388032.htm and the attached Fuel for Though 21/2 which conveys many of the reactions around the world , including from other scientists. Note Mike Hulme from UEA:
Atlantic conveyor belt – still going strong and will be the day after tomorrow
March 29, 2010 | Watts Up With That?
The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.
Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend.
A slow-down – dramatised in the movie The Day After Tomorrow – is projected by some models of climate change.
The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The stream is a key process in the climate of western Europe, bringing heat northwards from the tropics and keeping countries such as the UK 4-6C warmer than they would otherwise be.
It forms part of a larger movement of water, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is itself one component of the global thermohaline system of currents.
Between 2002 and 2009, the team says, there was no trend discernible – just a lot of variability on short timescales.
The satellite record going back to 1993 did suggest a small increase in flow, although the researchers cannot be sure it is significant.
“The changes we’re seeing in overturning strength are probably part of a natural cycle,” said Josh Willis from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
“The slight increase in overturning since 1993 coincides with a decades-long natural pattern of Atlantic heating and cooling.”
Short measures
The first observations suggesting the circulation was slowing down emerged in 2005, in research from the UK’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC).
Using an array of detectors across the Atlantic and comparing its readings against historical records, scientists suggested the volume of cold water returning southwards could have fallen by as much as 30% in half a century – a significant decline.
The surface water sinks in the Arctic and flows back southwards at the bottom of the ocean, driving the circulation.
However, later observations by the same team showed that the strength of the flow varied hugely on short timescales – from one season to the next, or even shorter.
But they have not found any clear trend since 2004.
===
Read the rest of the story at the BBC here
Or feel free to laugh at this movie:
James Lovelock on the value of sceptics and why Copenhagen was doomed
Excerpts from Guardian interview with James Lovelock | March 29, 2010
Lovelock’s reaction to first reading about the stolen CRU emails:
I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.
…
Careers have been ended by this affair and the reputation of the institution [CRU] will go down for a while. It’s sad because there are some good people there. They have to clean their house if they know people are behaving badly. They have got a rotten job ahead, but it will blow over in a few years.
…
I would only have been too pleased if someone had asked me for my data. If you really believed in your data, you wouldn’t mind someone looking at it. You should be able to respond that if you don’t believe me go out and do the measurements yourself.
On the over-reliance on computer modeling:
I remember when the Americans sent up a satellite to measure ozone and it started saying that a hole was developing over the South Pole. But the damn fool scientists were so mad on the models that they said the satellite must have a fault. We tend to now get carried away by our giant computer models. But they’re not complete models. They’re based more or less entirely on geophysics. They don’t take into account the climate of the oceans to any great extent, or the responses of the living stuff on the planet. So I don’t see how they can accurately predict the climate. It’s not the computational power that we lack today, but the ability to take what we know and convert it into a form the computers will understand. I think we’ve got too high an opinion of ourselves. We’re not that bright an animal. We stumble along very nicely and it’s amazing what we do do sometimes, but we tend to be too hubristic to notice the limitations. If you make a model, after a while you get suckered into it. You begin to forget that it’s a model and think of it as the real world. You really start to believe it.
On climate sceptics:
The great climate science centres around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. If you talk to them privately they’re scared stiff of the fact that they don’t really know what the clouds and the aerosols are doing. They could be absolutely running the show. We haven’t got the physics worked out yet. One of the chiefs once said to me that he agreed that they should include the biology in their models, but he said they hadn’t got the physics right yet and it would be five years before they do. So why on earth are the politicians spending a fortune of our money when we can least afford it on doing things to prevent events 50 years from now? They’ve employed scientists to tell them what they want to hear. The Germans and the Danes are making a fortune out of renewable energy. I’m puzzled why politicians are not a bit more pragmatic about all this.
We do need scepticism about the predictions about what will happen to the climate in 50 years, or whatever. It’s almost naive, scientifically speaking, to think we can give relatively accurate predictions for future climate. There are so many unknowns that it’s wrong to do it.
On the influence of vested interests:
We shouldn’t let the lobbies influence science. Whatever criticism might befall the IPCC and the UEA, they’re nothing as bad as lobbyists who are politically motivated and who will manipulate data or select data to make their political point. For example, it’s deplorable for the BBC whenever one of these issues comes up to go and ask what one of the green lobbyists thinks of it. Sometimes their view might be quite right, but it might also be pure propaganda. This is wrong.
…
I don’t know enough about carbon trading, but I suspect that it is basically a scam. The whole thing is not very sensible. We have this crazy idea that we are setting an example to the world. What we’re doing is trying to make money out of the world by selling them renewable gadgetry and green ideas. It might be worthy from the national interest, but it is moonshine if you think what the Chinese and Indians are doing [in terms of emissions]. The inertia of humans is so huge that you can’t really do anything meaningful.
Israel gags news of soldier turned journalist under arrest
By Ron Kampeas · JTA · March 29, 2010
WASHINGTON — Israel has held a journalist under secret house arrest since last December based on allegations that during her military service she leaked classified documents suggesting that the Israeli army violated laws dealing with targeted killings.
Anat Kam, 23, was arrested last December and charged under Israel’s espionage and treason laws, JTA has learned. Prosecutors are seeking a 14-year sentence, which is considered severe by Israeli standards.
Mordechai Vanunu, who revealed the existence of Israel’s nuclear weapons capability, was sentenced to 18 years, eventually serving the full amount.
At the time of her arrest, Kam was working as a reporter for the Israeli Internet site Walla, which was partially owned by Haaretz until last week. But the charges relate to Kam’s service in the Israeli army, when she is alleged to have photocopied sensitive documents. Bloggers have speculated that those documents served as the basis for a November 2008 Haaretz story suggesting alleged army violations. Kam has denied the charges.
Her arrest has been under a gag order in Israel, which Haaretz says it is appealing. With the gag order in place, it is impossible to know the prosecution’s reasoning for a 14-year sentence. …
Continue at source
Report: British MPs call for review of arms export to Israel
Ma’an/Agencies – 30/03/2010
Bethlehem – A group of British lawmakers will call on Tuesday for a review of the way arms deals to Israel are approved, after the government admitted British equipment was “almost certainly” used during Israel’s Operation Cast Lead, British media reported.
The British daily The Guardian quoted a House of Commons report on strategic exports controls, which stated, “it is regrettable that arms exports to Israel were almost certainly used in Operation Cast Lead [the attack on Gaza].
“This is in direct contravention to the UK government’s policy that UK arms exports to Israel should not be used in the occupied territories,” the report read.
Those MPs making the call for a review said they welcomed the British government’s decision to revoke five export licenses for equipment “destined to the Israeli navy,” the daily wrote, with lawmakers adding that “broader lessons” must be learned from such a review to “ensure British arms exports to Israel are not used in the occupied territories in the future.”
British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told the House of Commons following Israel’s devastating assault on the Gaza Strip between December 2008 and January 2009 that left some 1,400 Palestinians dead, that all future arms exports to Israel “will be assessed taking into account the recent conflict,” adding that Israeli equipment used during its war on the coastal enclave likely used British-supplied parts such as cockpit displays in US F16 combat aircraft, fire control and radar systems, navigation and engine assemblies for US Apache helicopters, the daily reported.
Additionally, arms sold to Israel included parts for guns and radar in Israeli Sa’ar-class corvettes which took part in the operation, and armored personnel carriers adapted from Centurion tanks sold to Israel in the 1950s.
The government-approved exports to Israel are estimated to be over 27.5 million British pounds for 2008, the House of Common’s report said, with various governmental departments approving nearly 4 million British pounds worth of export licenses for weapons and equipments with both military and civil use in the nine months following the attack on Gaza, The Guardian reported.
“Though this suggests a significant drop, the figures show Britain was continuing to sell Israel a wide range of military equipment, including small-arms ammunition and parts for sniper rifles,” the daily added.
Approved exports include remote ground-sensors, electronic warfare equipment “components for snipers,” “small arms ammunition” and “test equipment for recognition/identification equipment,” the report said.
The report further revealed that the British government decided to revoke a number of arms sales’ licenses to Sri Lanka, saying it regreted that British arms were sold during the ceasefire periods in the conflict with the Tamil Tiger rebels.
The call for a review on the way the British government approves arms deals with Israel follows their decision to expel an Israeli diplomat over the use of forged UK passports in an alleged Israeli hit of a Hamas leader in Dubai in January.
Stuck between a wall and an occupation
Nora Barrows-Friedman writing from Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, Live from Palestine, 29 March 2010
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Bilal Jadou standing atop a home in the Aida refugee camp. His house, on the other side of the wall, can be seen off in the distance. |
When Bilal Jadou’s grandmother was sick last year, and in need of immediate medical care, the family called the Jerusalem emergency service and requested an ambulance — only to hear on the other end of the line that no Israeli ambulances would be permitted to reach the house without permission from the Israeli military. “Try the Bethlehem ambulance service,” the emergency dispatcher told Jadou. When he called the Bethlehem ambulance, they told him to have his grandmother meet them at the other side of the main Bethlehem-Jerusalem checkpoint because they weren’t allowed to cross. Jadou’s house is on the other side of the sprawling apartheid wall, separated from his community and the West Bank, and in a permanent state of oppressive bureaucratic and administrative limbo as nearby settlements are intended to spread onto his land.
The Electronic Intifada correspondent Nora Barrows-Friedman interviewed Jadou, 26 years old, about his situation. They spoke inside Aida refugee camp, in Bethlehem.
Nora Barrows-Friedman: Tell us about your situation and why this story is so important in the context of what’s happening here in the Bethlehem area, especially in Aida camp, which is right up against the wall, cutting the land of families here in half.
Bilal Jadou: My family is separated from each other. We used to live in the refugee camp here and in our other house that used to be within five minutes walking distance from here. Since the wall was built, we can’t communicate as a family. Some of us live in this house in Aida, and the others live in our other house on the other side of the wall.
I have six brothers and three sisters. Two of the brothers, including me, and one of our sisters, are allowed by Israel to live in the house on the other side of the wall. No one else is allowed to be there. Now it sometimes takes two hours to cross the checkpoint in Bethlehem to see our family in Aida camp. Other times, the Israelis close the checkpoint entirely and we can’t see each other at all.
NBF: How did the Israelis choose who was able to live in the house on the other side of the wall?
BJ: They said it was purely because of “security reasons,” and we still don’t know why some got permission and some didn’t. Also, we can’t add anything to the house; we can’t build onto the house. At any time, they can come and take my permission and say it’s for “security reasons.”
NBF: Do you have a special ID card now? Such as a Jerusalem residency card? How are you identified as someone who lives on the other side of the wall?
BJ: I still have a West Bank Palestinian ID, with a special permission slip for just the Tantur area [where the house is]. If Israeli police catch me anywhere else other than at my house, or if they catch me working inside Jerusalem, they will take my permission away. I can just be inside the house, and nothing more.
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The Israeli wall runs along the Aida refugee camp |
NBF: So, if you want to buy groceries, or go to the bank, or get gasoline for your car, or get to the hospital, what do you do?
BJ: We can’t do any of these things. I can’t even drive a car inside the area near the house. We’re not allowed. We can’t even take a taxi to the checkpoint. We have to walk. If we want to buy groceries, we can only buy them inside the Palestinian territories. But we are not allowed to bring anything from inside the Palestinian territories to my house. So the only way I can get food and supplies to my house is to have friends inside Jerusalem buy our groceries, or whatever we need, and bring them to us.
We have no services except water and electricity, which come from the Palestinian side of the wall. Israel won’t allow us to have anything else. It’s a way to push us to leave this area and go to the other side of the wall. This is the only reason they’re doing this to us.
My grandmother got sick and we called the Israeli ambulance. They told us to coordinate with the Israeli soldiers, who then refused to allow the ambulance to reach us. The Palestinian ambulance told us that since they couldn’t cross the checkpoint, we had to bring my grandmother to the checkpoint and they would take her to the hospital in Bethlehem. Since we couldn’t use a car to bring her to the checkpoint, we put her on a donkey and walked her over there. But before we reached the checkpoint, my grandmother died.
NBF: On the other side of the wall, there is a lot of land that was cultivated by families in Beit Jala and Aida camp until the wall was completed in 2004. And then you have Gilo and Har Gilo settlements, right next to your house on the other side. Talk more about this policy of taking land, using the wall to separate communities, and forcing Palestinians to stay inside these ghettos in the West Bank.
BJ: There is a lot of land near our house owned by Palestinians. But we’re the last family who are allowed to stay there. Just a few months ago, we tried to expand our house a little bit; we built a shed that was only two meters squared. The Israeli police came and told us that we had to stop building. If we want to fix the house, the police come. If we paint our house, the police ask us to remove the paint. But then you look across the street, and you see Gilo settlement with their cranes and bulldozers and construction teams building all the time, expanding all day long.
NBF: The police come often to check to see if you have put paint on the walls. But what about the treatment you receive by settlers?
BJ: The settlers attacked us once. They built a fence around our house and told us to leave. But we went to the court to prove that this was our house, with deeds and documents since the Ottoman period. The court gave us back our land and the permission to stay on our land. Most of the time, though, we get the most terrible treatment from the Israeli soldiers. They come and attack us. Once, they came and took all of our furniture from inside the house and threw it outside. They told us, “find another place to live!” They sometimes come at 2:00 in the morning, taking us outside of the house, and searching to make sure we haven’t built anything or fixed anything inside the house.
I was once told by a soldier, after he took my ID card one night, to go to the checkpoint to retrieve it. I got to the checkpoint, and the soldier called me on my mobile phone, telling me that he was outside of the house, and I should come back to get it. I went back to the house, and then he called and said that he was at the checkpoint. This went on until 6:00 in the morning. Sometimes they take my ID card to other checkpoints so I’m forced to travel a long distance to retrieve it. They’re trying to put a lot of pressure on us so that we leave the area and they can expand the settlement.
NBF: Tell me about your family’s history. We’re sitting inside your home in the refugee camp. Where was your family from, originally, before they were expelled in 1948?
BJ: Originally, we’re refugees from al-Malha. It’s just one kilometer away, five minutes away by car. Some of my family fled in 1948 and came here. Even part of the refugee camp is on al-Malha land, inside the West Bank borders. When the Israelis invaded and occupied the West Bank in 1967, some of the family decided to go back to the house in al-Malha, inside the so-called Israeli area. So now we’re separated into three parts — my family in Aida camp, my brothers and sisters inside the house on the other side of the wall, and the rest in al-Malha. We haven’t been together as a family — we haven’t all sat down to dinner together — for six years.
Sometimes, if something is happening inside the camp, like a wedding for a friend or neighbor, we have to leave our house at nine in the morning to be sure we’re at the wedding by three in the afternoon. We’re affected a lot by the separation.
NBF: It used to take you five minutes to get to the camp from the house before the wall was built.
BJ: Yes, five minutes, not more. Sometimes, if I walk quickly, it used to take three minutes. Now, it’s half an hour just to walk to the checkpoint. Then I spend sometimes two, three hours inside the checkpoint.
NBF: What do you think about the next generation of Palestinians who are facing similar situations? When you get married and have children, what do you want for them?
BJ: I hope everything changes. The situation is extremely difficult, and I hope that the new generation can live in peace without any conflicts. Actually, when you mentioned marriage, this is a very depressing issue for me. I tried to get married recently. But I can’t, because I’m living in this area. If I marry a girl from Bethlehem, I can’t live with her in Bethlehem because then I’d have to move to the city and lose my land and my house. If I want to marry a girl from Jerusalem, she’d refuse. I don’t have an Israeli ID and I can’t go anywhere inside Jerusalem. This is no way to make a family. So I’m stuck.
I think I’ll never get married, because I need to protect my house. Maybe there’ll be a solution soon, and things will change.
All images by Nora Barrows-Friedman.
Nora Barrows-Friedman is the co-host and Senior Producer of Flashpoints, a daily investigative newsmagazine on Pacifica Radio. She is also a correspondent for Inter Press Service. She regularly reports from Palestine, where she also runs media workshops for youth in the Dheisheh refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.
How’s life on the planet of Israeli hasbara, Thomas Friedman?
By Alex Kane on March 29, 2010
Thomas Friedman lives on a different planet, that of Israeli hasbara.
In an Op-Ed piece today for the New York Times about Israeli-American relations and different perceptions on the “peace process,” Friedman repeats standard Israeli talking points. Let’s take a look.
Friedman writes:
The collapse of the Oslo peace process, combined with the unilateral Israeli pullouts from Lebanon and Gaza — which were followed not by peace but by rocket attacks by Hezbollah and Hamas on Israel — decimated Israel’s peace camp and the political parties aligned with it.
At the same time, Israel’s erecting of a wall around the West Bank to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from entering Israel (there have been no successful attacks since 2006), along with the rise of the high-tech industry in Israel — which does a great deal of business digitally and over the Internet and is largely impervious to the day-to-day conflict — has meant that even without peace, Israel can enjoy a very peaceful existence and a rising standard of living.
If I didn’t know better, I would think that the Palestinians caused the collapse of the Oslo “peace process,” that Israel’s “unilateral pullouts” were really about making peace with Israel’s Arab neighbors, that the wall is only innocently “around” the West Bank in order to protect from suicide bombing attacks, and that Israel is an amazing country to live in because of their “high-tech industry.”
On the planet of reality, we can see that Israel had no intention of making peace with the Palestinians during the “peace process,” as they accelerated the building of illegal Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank. We can see that Israel never “pulled out” of Gaza and instead redeployed around the periphery but remains the occupying power and imposes a crippling blockade. We can see that those nefarious rocket attacks have killed a much smaller number of Israelis compared to the high number of innocent Lebanese and Gazans killed by one of the most advanced armies in the world. During “Operation Cast Lead,” the proportion of Palestinians killed to Israelis killed was a stunning 100:1, and the majority of Palestinians who died were innocent civilians.
Perhaps the most brazen of Israeli hasbara points Friedman repeats is that Israel has erected “a wall around the West Bank.” I wonder if Friedman has ever been to the areas that the separation barrier encompasses. In fact, he doesn’t even have to go there. Friedman should just look at the map that the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has published, which shows clearly that the wall doesn’t just go “around” the West Bank, but that it snakes into occupied Palestinian territory, effectively encompassing large illegal settlement blocs and annexing portions of the West Bank.
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Turkey opposes Iran sanctions, blasts Israel
Press TV – March 29, 2010
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has once again dismissed sanctions as a proper solution to the Iranian nuclear issue.
Erdogan said at a Monday joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Ankara that he was opposed to new sanctions against Iran. He said diplomacy was still the best possible means of solving the issue.
“We are of the view that sanction is not a healthy path and… that the best route is diplomacy.”
Erdogan then wondered why the international community refused to impose sanctions against the Middle East’s sole nuclear weapons power, in an apparent allusion to Israel.
“We are against nuclear weapons in our region. But is there another country in our region that has nuclear weapons? Yes, there is. And have they been subjected to sanctions? No,” Erdogan said.
The US, which accuses Iran of seeking nuclear weapons, has been lobbying for more UN Security Council (UNSC) sanctions against Tehran.
Turkey, a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, is among countries that are opposed to imposing sanctions on Iran. Ankara has made it clear that any coercive measure against Tehran over its nuclear work would be of no avail.
This is while Merkel, whose country is working with the five permanent UNSC members over the Iranian nuclear issue, called on Turkey to support fresh sanctions against Tehran.
“We would be happy if Turkey votes in April on the Iran issue together with the United States and the European Union,” she said.
Iran says any punitive measures against the country are legally baseless as Tehran’s nuclear work is being fully monitored by the UN nuclear watchdog.
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With apparently fabricated nuclear documents, Netanyahu pushed the US towards war with Iran
By Gareth Porter | The Grayzone | April 29, 2020
President Donald Trump scrapped the nuclear deal with Iran and continued to risk war with Iran based on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim to have proven definitively that Iran was determined to manufacture nuclear weapons. Netanyahu not only spun Trump but much of the corporate media as well, duping them with the public unveiling of what he claimed was the entire secret Iranian “nuclear archive.”
In early April 2018, Netanyahu briefed Trump privately on the supposed Iranian nuclear archive and secured his promise to leave the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That April 30, Netanyahu took the briefing to the public in a characteristically dramatic live performance in which he claimed Israel’s Mossad intelligence services had stolen Iran’s entire nuclear archive from Tehran. “You may well know that Iran’s leaders repeatedly deny ever pursuing nuclear weapons…” Netanyahu declared. “Well, tonight, I’m here to tell you one thing: Iran lied. Big time.”
However, an investigation of the supposed Iranian nuclear documents by The Grayzone reveals them to be the product of an Israeli disinformation operation that helped trigger the most serious threat of war since the conflict with Iran began nearly four decades ago. This investigation found multiple indications that the story of Mossad’s heist of 50,000 pages of secret nuclear files from Tehran was very likely an elaborate fiction and that the documents were fabricated by the Mossad itself. … continue
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