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Files linking Britain to Israel’s nuclear weapons go missing from National Archive

RT | August 3, 2016

Official documents on Britain’s relationship with Israel, including papers on “military and nuclear collaboration” in the 1970s, have disappeared from the National Archives in the last four years.

More than 400 records have gone missing from the repository in Kew, southwest London, including a 1947 letter from Winston Churchill and a Home Office document on the 1910 Suffragettes “disturbances.”

The Archives reassured the public it is following a “robust” plan to find the lost files.

The loss of the documents was uncovered following a BBC freedom of information (FoI) request, which found the last recorded knowledge of the 402 historical dossiers was January 2012.

Among them is a Foreign Office file titled ‘Military and nuclear collaboration with Israel: Israeli nuclear armament,’ in which the British government notes Israel’s intention to purchase nuclear weapons.

The document is thought to be linked to a United Nations resolution from 1978 listing the “increasing evidence” of the Middle Eastern country’s attempts at acquiring weapons of mass destruction.

This is not the only National Archives paper to report on Anglo-Israeli nuclear agreements. A 1958 document, made public by the BBC a decade ago, showed how Britain sold 20 tons of heavy water – one of the ingredients needed to generate plutonium – to Israel, to be used in the country’s top secret Dimona nuclear reactor.

The lost file is believed to have been part of a portfolio of official 1970s documents on arms control and nuclear disarmament.

Israel neither admits nor denies its possession of nuclear weapons and has never publicly tested one. It is universally believed to have them, however, but its official secrecy means it is unclear exactly how many.

It is thought that the files may have simply been misplaced and will soon be found. National Archives officials highlighted that less than 0.01 percent of the library’s 11 million public records disappear, accounting for around 100 files each year.

“We are a working archive with a robust, ongoing program dedicated to locating misplaced documents and many are subsequently found again after a thorough search,” a spokesperson for the Archives said.

Around 1,600 documents were reported missing between 2005 and 2011.

“The challenge is to ensure that you’ve got the systems to prevent that, because with every loss of a potential piece of archive you’re losing some history and understanding,” said Labour MP and All-Party Parliamentary Group on Archives and History vice-chair Tristram Hunt.

“You’re losing a sense of connection and you’re losing the fabric of the past.”

August 3, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Oh the Joys of Dimona!

By Richard Silverstein | Tikun Olam | June 14, 2016

dimona website

Happy shiny Dimona’s website home page

The subtitle of this post might be the same as the subtitle of the film, Dr. Strangelove: “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.” Dimona’s bombs, that is.

In the past year, the Israeli Atomic Energy Agency launched a website dedicated to extolling the virtues of its Dimona. Not the place itself, which is a bit of a backwater company town devoted to the community’s main (perhaps only) industry. But to Israel’s plutonium reactor around which the town coalesced. That’s the reactor that churned out its first nuclear weapon around 1970 just in time for Moshe Dayan to suggest it should be used as a warning shot during the 1973 War when the fighting was going badly for Israel in the initial stages. It’s the same reactor which churned out another 200 or so nuclear weapons since then, making Israel the most dangerous–and so far, the only–nuclear power in the region.

This report on the world nuclear arsenal indicates Israel has only 80 nuclear weapons. But it adds that Israel is testing a new generation of ballistic missile, which is a substantial escalation of the regional nuclear arms race.

Dimona is also the same reactor which has poisoned hundreds or even thousands of workers who’ve died of various cancers. The same one which has poisoned the water in the plant’s vicinity. None of which may be reported openly by the Israeli press.

But if you examine the website you wouldn’t know any of this. From the “History” page, you wouldn’t know Dimona produced nuclear weapons at all; which is the main, indeed only reason it exists.  You’d see bright shiny faces; the pretty blond locks of a female white-coated scientist presumably seeking a cure for cancer.  Or the delicate toes of a baby held in the firm, supporting hands of an adult under the caption: “a secure, responsible place of work.” You’d see flowers. You’d see copy that reads like a Hallmark greeting card.  Copy which extols Dimona’s mission as a “matter of national social responsibility.” That is, the authors of this tripe would have you believe that the production of nuclear weapons in Dimona is done in a manner that is environmentally responsible. This is real Alice in Wonderland stuff. Where words mean what the liar speaking them wants them to mean, “nothing more, nothing less.” It’s something like extolling Alamagordo or Auschwitz as environmental sanctuaries.

The website’s About page is titled: “Vision and Values, a Social Responsibility.” It continues: “In recent years the values of the Negev Center for Nuclear Have Been Articulated Anew.” Those values include the reactor staff volunteering in various projects to make their communities better places. Not a single word about the mass destruction Dimona’s products are capable or raining down on the world.

The launch of the website is in itself interesting. It indicates that some bureaucrats running the nuclear program felt it was important to join the modern age and feature a website to promote Dimona. That’s a break from six decades of total opacity regarding the nuclear program. Six decades of lies and denial regarding the purpose of the reactor. Avner Cohen notes in his recent Haaretz op-ed that Israel’s nuclear program isn’t even ratified under law. Rather, it exists in a netherworld called “residual powers.” This means the government may engage in any activity which the law doesn’t preclude it from doing.

Though on the surface, the new website does mark a break from the past, in reality the change is little more than cosmetic. Little has changed. Israel and the website still live in a state of denial. Israel can’t even admit in its website what the real purpose of this place is. … Full article

June 14, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

JFK vs Israel and Dimona – The Stand, Murder, and Takeover

July 5, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

Nuclear warheads in US, Europe threaten all of humanity, Soltanieh says

Press TV – April 24, 2013

The Iranian ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in the United States and around Europe pose a direct threat to humanity.

Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh made the remarks in a speech at meeting of the Preparatory Committee for the 2015 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in Geneva on Tuesday.

“The continued existence of tens of thousands of nuclear warheads in the stockpile of the nuclear-weapon states, most of them on high-trigger alert, and their day by day modernization, constitute the most serious threat to the survival of mankind,” Soltanieh told the committee.

He also condemned the US for conducting its 27th subcritical nuclear test in Nevada in December 2012, saying the experiment was “a flagrant violation” of Washington’s “international obligations” and “a recipe for global destabilization.”

“Such subcritical tests and computer simulations to design new weapons, a case of non-compliance by the United States with its international obligations under the NPT, could be a resumption of the nuclear arms race and a revival [of the] risk of global disaster,” the Iranian ambassador stated.

The US National Nuclear Security Administration said the experiment, known as Pollux, was conducted to ensure that the United States “can support a safe, secure and effective stockpile” of nuclear weapons.

According to the United Nations, the US — which is the only country that has ever used nuclear weapons against human beings — has conducted over 1,000 nuclear tests since 1945.

Soltanieh noted that spending on nuclear weapons has increased dramatically since 2010 and will reach at least one trillion US dollars over the next decade, adding, “The United States itself will spend untold billions of dollars to operate its nuclear armada during its 50-year planned lifespan (from 2030 to 2080).”

He added that the British government’s plan to spend 100 billion pounds to upgrade its Trident nuclear-armed submarines is a “clear breach of Article VI of the NPT and the commitments [made] during the 2010 NPT Review Conference.”

He went on to say that the sale of German-made Dolphin-class submarines to the Israeli regime, which is not a signatory to the NPT, is “an unconcealed case of proliferation and non-compliance,” since the submarines are capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

Since 1958, when Israel began building its Dimona plutonium- and uranium-processing facility in the Negev desert, it has secretly manufactured over 200 nuclear warheads, making it the only player in the Middle East that possesses nuclear weapons.

Related article

April 24, 2013 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Vengeance—Not a very Enlightened Strategy for Success

By Richard Edmondson |  War and Politics | February 22, 2013

Today, nearly nine years after his release from prison, Israeli nuclear whistle blower Mordechai Vanunu still has not been granted the one wish he desires now more than any other—the freedom to leave Israel and live elsewhere. Does the Israeli government plan to continue this policy forever? Or perhaps until the man is aged and sick and approaching death? Will he finally be granted his freedom then?

10_jpgIsrael insists it must keep Vanunu a prisoner of the Jewish state out of fear he might disclose further nuclear secrets. But come on. The man hasn’t seen the inside of a nuclear plant since 1986. That was the year he was charged with turning over photographs of Israel’s Dimona facility to a British newspaper. After serving an 18 year sentence, Vanunu was released in 2004, but still today government officials refuse to grant his petitions to leave the country. It’s hard to view this as other than an Israeli thirst for vengeance against any and all deemed enemies.

With two films currently up for Oscar nominations in the “best documentary” category—both highly critical of Israeli policies—you would think those running the Jewish state would have figured out by now that vengeance—against Palestinians, or nuclear whistle blowers, or anyone else for that matter, even the bogeyman—is not overall a very enlightened strategy for success. And of course, what else can you call the repeated destruction of Palestinian infrastructure and demolishing of peoples’ homes other than a campaign of vengeance? What else can you make of Vanunu being forced to spend most of his 18 year sentence in solitary confinement than that it was an impious exercise of wrath?

Eileen Fleming has written an article offering quite a bit of insight into Vanunu’s struggle for freedom and also announcing a global day of action on the whistle blower’s behalf. Fleming is the author of the recently-released book Imagine: Vanunu’s Wait for Liberty, and her newest article offers revealing quotes from letters written by Vanunu during his years of solitary confinement and sent to Australian priest David B. Smith. As you’ll see, Vanunu is in fact quite a prolific letter writer, and Fleming also provides us with links to some of his poetry.

Vanunu’s Latest Message and 2nd Annual Global Day of Action

February 23, 2013 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | Leave a comment