British RAF servicing Saudi jets bombing civilians in Yemen – UK armed forces minister
RT | March 18, 2019
Britain is providing “engineering support” for UK-supplied aircraft operated by the Royal Saudi Air Force, responsible for killing innocent people in Yemen, a British government minister has revealed.
Armed Forces Minister Mark Lancaster was responding to a question in parliament from Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle, on military personnel seconded to BAE Systems in Saudi Arabia, when he admitted that the RAF have provided engineering and “generic training” to the Saudi Air Force involved in the bombing of Yemen.
“RAF personnel on secondment to BAE Systems in Saudi Arabia have provided routine engineering support for UK-supplied aircraft operated by the Royal Saudi Air Force (RSAF), including aircraft engaged in military operations in Yemen.”
Lancaster insisted UK personnel were not involved in the loading of weapons for operational sorties, in response to Russell-Moyle’s claim that the “British support keeps Saudi’s air war going.”
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against the Arms Trade has branded the revelation “shocking but not surprising,” arguing that UK military personnel “should not be servicing Saudi jets or supporting the Saudi armed forces.”
It’s not just the UK that has been widely criticised for being party to the Saudi-led coalition’s bombardment of Yemen.
In December, the US Pentagon revealed that they were having to claw back $331 million of taxpayer-subsidized money gifted to Saudi Arabia and the UAE over a three-year period, when it ‘accidentally’ refueled their aircraft for free during their war on Yemen.
In November, Labour’s Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry accused the UK government of having “blood on its hands” after admitting that the RAF had trained over a hundred Saudi pilots in the past ten years.
Coalition forces led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have relentlessly bombed Yemen since 2015 in an effort to oust the Houthi rebels controlling the capital city of Sanaa.
They have reportedly targeted hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, leading to a massive cholera outbreak, and upwards of 60,000 people are believed to have died in the conflict since 2016 – with a further 85,000 estimated dead from famine and malnutrition.
Half of Yemen’s population relies on food aid to survive, placing them in immediate danger of starving to death after coalition forces blockaded the port city of Hodeidah last year.
The Zionists’ Fight Extends Beyond Palestine
By Miko Peled | Mint Press News | March 14, 2019
The Zionists’ suppression of freedoms extends beyond Palestine, particularly when it comes to freedom of speech about Israel. Zionist agents, planted in centers of power around the world, are busy silencing those who would criticize Israel. Using an array of highly effective methods, they have been successful at getting laws passed by legislators, getting major political figures falsely accused of making anti-Semitic statements, and establishing a new, Zionist-manufactured definition of what it means to be anti-Semitic.
Earlier this year the United States Senate passed Resolution S-1 that gives the federal government the right to penalize anyone calling to boycott Israel. Then — being a black, Muslim woman who dared to challenge the patriarchy, white supremacy, and Zionism and thus alienate the Washington establishment — Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) was targeted and accused of anti-Semitism.
As I had reported in 2017 and again in 2018, this disturbing political witch hunt is not limited to the U.S. In the U.K., members of the Labor Party, including the leader Jeremy Corbyn, have been under attack for several years, with the latest targets being MP Chris Williamson of the U.K. Labour Party and journalist Asa Winstanley. They are latest of a long list of members of the party who have been suspended from the party because of bogus accusations of anti-Semitism.
A campaign to bring down Corbyn
Israel is terrified of a Corbyn government in the U.K. and we can expect that it will stop at nothing in order to bring him down. The campaign to undermine him includes the office of the Israeli prime minister. This was made evident in August of 2018 when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that Corbyn receive “unequivocal condemnation” for attending “a memorial service for the Munich massacre terrorists.” Corbyn attended no such memorial, as I was able to demonstrate in a piece published by MintPress News at the time.
The Zionist fear of Corbyn is a result of his lifelong commitment to justice and his unwavering support for all oppressed people, including the Palestinians. He has said on more than one occasion, and as recently as this month, that the U.K. must freeze its arms sales to Israel. However, attacks aimed directly at Corbyn are not enough to get the job done. Israel and its agents around the U.K. have been engaged in a campaign of lies and smears, the results of which are shown in this report that was put out by the Labour Party and published by the BBC.
The report points out, among other things:
- 673 complaints of anti-Semitism by Labour Party members were received — a Labour spokesman said this represented about 0.1 percent of the membership;
- 96 members were immediately suspended after complaints were made, and a further 211 were told they would be investigated;
- 146 members received a first warning, and 220 cases did not have sufficient evidence of a breach of party rules for an investigation;
- Of the 307 who were suspended or notified of an investigation, 44 members left the party.
These are complaints that pertain to members of the party. An additional 433 complaints were received by the party that were not about Labour Party members. Clearly, the campaign by the pro-Israel groups aims to overwhelm the Labour Party into submission and bring about the fall of Corbyn by using a barrage of anti-Semitism accusations.
Jeremy Corbyn is a man who has stood against racism and injustice his entire career. His leadership has energized the party, which has gained more than half a million new members over that span. However, one has to wonder if there is an argument being made somewhere that Corbyn is the reason for this sudden outbreak of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party. Again, one can only guess that the Zionist goal is to bring the Labour Party to exhaustion, and to the conclusion that Corbyn is too much trouble for his worth and thus must be replaced for the good of the party.
Chris Williamson
Slated to be Corbyn’s number-two man, at least in the minds of Corbyn supporters, Williamson is no less principled and no less a fighter than Corbyn himself. He is charismatic and he and Corbyn could make a powerful progressive leadership team, which is why he had to be taken down.
The hope, one assumes, on the pro-Israel flank of the Labour Party is that Corbyn’s current deputy, Tom Watson — who is an avid Zionist and not at all a Corbyn supporter — will take over once Corbyn steps down, or rather, once Corbyn is taken down by Zionist agencies working for Israel. Watson, for his part, is already rallying supporters behind him in a new group he formed within the Labour Party, called “Future Britain.”
Williamson, like Corbyn, is dedicated to the idea of democratizing the Labour Party, which means taking control from the party establishment and giving it to the members. Combine that with his pro-Palestine views and he is the perfect target for an anti-Semitism smear.
Asa Winstanley
According to a report in the Electronic Intifada, a publication for which Asa Winstanley writes, the Labour Party has initiated disciplinary proceedings against Winstanley, who is also a member of the party. This was first published by a journalist from the Jewish Chronicle — which is a Zionist, anti-Palestinian publication. Winstanley is a journalist whose views on Palestine are clear, uncompromising and precise [he insisted on shunning Gilad Atzmon as ‘antisemitic’]. No doubt he was placed on the list of members to be smeared and suspended because of his honest writing on Palestine.
Zionist oppression and brutal tactics against the people of Palestine, and the attempts to silence their supporters around the world, are not going to end on their own. People of conscience must stand for Palestine; people whose right to free speech is being denied must stand up and stand together; steps must be taken to end the dominant influence and automatic legitimacy that Zionism and its agents enjoy around the world.
The Shame of It!
The UK failed to back a UN investigation into Israel’s shoot-to-kill-or-cripple policy against Gaza’s caged civilians. Will the Foreign Office also fail to adopt its findings?
By Stuart Littlewood | American Herald Tribune | March 17, 2019
Open letter to Alister Jack, MP for Dumfries & Galloway
cc Jeremy Hunt MP, Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs
Dear Alister,
Here’s something to take your mind off Brexit.
You’ll have heard of Dr Swee Ang. She is the first female Orthopaedic Consultant appointed to St Bartholomew (‘Barts’) and the Royal London Hospitals.
In the 1980s and 1990s Dr Swee worked as trauma and orthopaedics consultant in the refugee camps of Lebanon and later for the United Nations in Gaza, and the World Health Organisation in the West Bank and Gaza. She is Founder and Patron of the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).
She also treated the victims of the Pakistan (Kashmir) earthquake, and as consultant trauma and orthopaedic surgeon operated on and looked after the victims of the 7 July 2005 suicide bombing at the Royal London Hospital.
Dr Swee is co-author of War Surgery and Acute Care of the War Wounded; she also wrote From Beirut to Jerusalem documenting her experience in the Palestinian Refugee Camps in Lebanon and Gaza.
Last summer she was aboard the Al-Awda sailing to Gaza with urgently medical supplies when the vessel was violently assaulted and hijacked in international waters by our so-called friend and ally which, we’re repeatedly told, shares our values and whose enemies are our enemies. The Al-Awda was dragged to an Israeli port and her passengers and crew were roughed up (some seriously injured) and abused, thrown in an Israeli jail and had their possessions and money stolen. The precious cargo, as far as we can ascertain, never reached the desperate wounded.
Dr Swee has just emailed:
“The UN Commission for Human Rights will be concluding its investigation on the shooting of thousands of Palestinian civilians demonstrating within the borders of Gaza. At least 189 were killed (more now) and thousands shot with live ammunitions – with loss of limbs and still needing multiple surgeries if they were to keep their legs and arms. It is estimated that with conventional limb salvaging surgeries at least £39 million has to be found to prevent further amputations (figures put out by MAP).
“Last year the UK abstained from supporting the UN conducting such an investigation. However it went ahead and I was fortunate enough to attend the meeting at Amnesty International two days ago to hear the personal testimonies of Dr Tarek Loubani who was shot on 14 May 2018, and Dr Mahmoud Matar the head of the Limb Reconstruction Service in Gaza. They will be testifying to the UN Commissioner coming Monday in Geneva. There is an urgent request for us to write to Jeremy Hunt [Foreign Secretary] with copy to our local MP asking the UK Government to adopt the findings and recommendations of the UN Commissioner for Human Rights. In fact the concern is that UK might vote against it since last year we abstained.
“Please do so urgently. This is something we all can do. Email for Jeremy Hunt is:
jeremy.hunt@fco.gov.uk / juntj@parliament.uk
Even if you are not a UK national but are Palestinians you have the right to email him on behalf of your people. Please also ask your friends to support the UN Commissioner for Human Rights.
“Thank you all and God bless, Swee.”
Wounds “the size of a fist” causing lifelong disability
According to Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) who operate in Gaza, the Israelis have been using ‘dum-dum’ type rounds that cause wounds of “unusual severity”. This sort of ammunition is understood to be outlawed in warfare. Last year MSF surgeons in Gaza reported “devastating gunshot wounds” among hundreds of people injured during the protests, the huge majority – mainly young men, but also some women and children – having unusually severe wounds to the lower extremities.
MSF medical teams note the injuries include an extreme level of destruction to bones and soft tissue, and large exit wounds that can be the size of a fist. “Half of the more than 500 patients we have admitted in our clinics have injuries where the bullet has literally destroyed tissue after having pulverized the bone,” said Marie-Elisabeth Ingres, Head of Mission of MSF in Palestine. “These patients will need to have very complex surgical operations and most of them will have disabilities for life.”
She hadn’t seen these kinds of injuries before. The wounds appeared to be caused by ammunition with an expanding ‘butterfly’ effect. “Mass lifelong disability is now the prospect for young Gazans who merely gathered in unarmed protest”
Writing in the BMJ (British Medical Journal) the Head of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery in Gaza, Dr Nafiz Abu-Shaban, said that the hundreds of high energy compound tibial fractures from Israeli live fire are the most difficult of all open fractures to treat. They may require between 5 and 7 surgical procedures, each operation taking 3-6 hours. “Even with state-of-the-art reconstruction, healing takes 1-2 years. Most of these patients will develop osteomyelitis. A steadily increasing toll of secondary amputations is inevitable. They will also need intensive rehabilitation, but the only rehabilitation hospital in Gaza was destroyed by Israeli bombing in 2014….”
UK favours “whitewash toolkit” instead
The UN Human Rights Council in Geneva adopted a resolution to set up an independent, international Commission of Inquiry to investigate all violations of humanitarian and international human rights law in the occupied Palestinian territory, with particular focus on recent events in Gaza. The resolution was passed with only two states opposing (the USA and another of Israel’s poodles, Australia), 29 in favour and 14 abstentions. The UK was among the abstainers.
Trying to explain its pathetic stance, the UK Mission in Geneva called the resolution “partial and unhelpfully unbalanced” for not explicitly demanding an investigation into the action of non-state actors such as Hamas. But why should it? Hamas is not the invader, illegal occupier, aggressor and blockader. It governs the besieged Gaza Strip as best it can after being democratically elected in 2006. The UK Government then called on Israel to “make clear its intentions and carry out what must be a transparent inquiry into the IDF’s conduct at the border fence and to demonstrate how this will achieve a sufficient level of independence.” In other words, investigate itself.
However, Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem condemned the already-announced internal Israeli military probe as “part of the whitewashing toolkit”. The British Government was criticised in parliament for its limp-wristed attitude and reminded of Israel’s self-exoneration over the killing of four boys playing on a beach during its 2014 military offensive on Gaza.
The preamble to the UNHRC resolution states the reasons for a proper investigation brilliantly. It’s worth repeating here….
- Convinced that the lack of accountability for violations of international law reinforces a culture of impunity, leading to a recurrence of violations and seriously endangering international peace,
- Noting the systematic failure by Israel to carry out genuine investigations in an impartial, independent, prompt and effective way, as required by international law, into the violence and offences against Palestinians by the occupying forces, and to establish judicial accountability for its actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,
- Emphasizing the obligations of Israel as the occupying Power to ensure the safety, well-being and protection of the Palestinian civilian population under its occupation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem,
- Emphasizing also that the intentional targeting of civilians and other protected persons in situations of armed conflict, including foreign occupation, constitutes a grave breach of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and poses a threat to international peace and security,
- Recognizing the importance of the right to life and the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association to the full enjoyment of all human rights…
Despite all that, Theresa May and Boris Johnson (Foreign Secretary at the time) still couldn’t bring themselves to back the UN resolution.
In recent years this country has so abandoned it moral compass that failing to support a perfectly legitimate investigation into the Israeli military’s brutal behaviour towards the Palestinians they have robbed and abused and murdered for 70 years — a scenario we engineered — is unsurprising.
But many see no difference between the racist thugs who command the Israeli army and the degenerate responsible for the New Zealand mosque massacre. Let us hope Her Majesty’s Government eventually discovers its backbone and adopts the report and findings of the UN Human Rights Council lest we all die of shame.
Kindest regards,
Your constituent Stuart Littlewood
BBC’s Age of Denial
By Paul Homewood | Not A Lot Of People Know That | March 16, 2019
I doubt if a day goes past now without a blast of global warming propaganda from the BBC.
Isabel Hardman has a new five part series on Radio 4, called the Age of Denial.
Although it covers all forms of denial, it is clearly aimed at climate sceptics, as this opening episode makes obvious:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000357k
Hardman interviews Kari Marie Norgaard, a social scientist from Oregon, who has written a book about climate change denial.
You can listen to the first five minutes, but to give the gist, Norgaard visited a small town in western Norway in the winter of 2000/01, to do research for a book she was writing. She found that the winter that year was a mild one, with the snow arriving late.
But what really stunned Norgaard was that none of the locals wanted to talk about “climate change”, which she was convinced was to blame.
Hardman and Norgaard then discuss various reasons why this should be so, which amounted to no more than a load of psychobabble.
For some reason, it did not occur to either to ask what the locals knew already. That it was just the sort of weather event that they, or their forefathers, had seen in the past.
Indeed, when we check the actual data at Bergen, the longest running site in the region, we find that those winter temperatures in 2000/01, far from being unusual, were the norm in the 1930s and 40s, and not infrequent at other times either:
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/stdata_show.cgi?id=634013170000&dt=1&ds=5
In the remainder of the episode, Hardman discusses various theories from other psychoanalysts. But it is all just a spurious intellectual attempt to create a condition called ‘Denialism’. No doubt so that climate sceptics can be conveniently labelled and then ignored.
In reality, you don’t need to be a psychologist to understand why so many people are suspicious of what they are told about climate change.
The answer lies in the fact that they see no evidence on the ground to support the barrage of apocalyptic warnings showered on them.
People who live near the coast can see with their own eyes that they are not about to be inundated by the sea.
Temperature rise has been so small in the last century that most people would not even be aware of it if they were not told about it.
As for extreme weather, older people know that there have always been floods, droughts, heatwaves and storms. Sadly it is the younger generation, who have no such experience, that is vulnerable to propaganda.
In short, people are far more knowledgeable than the sneering Isabel Hardman gives them credit for. And they know when they are being sold a pup.
Moreover, these ordinary people have far more pressing concerns in their daily lives than to be paranoid about climate change. Perhaps if Hardman came out of her metropolitan BBC bubble and talked to ordinary people, she might find this out for herself.
Rather than trying to package sceptics as people with psychological problems, she might ask why others have become totally paranoid about climate change. When I see school kids questioning the point of going to school when “their future could be ruined by climate change”, I truly despair.
What on earth are we doing to these youngsters? Do we really want them growing up so indoctrinated and unable to use their own faculties that they cannot even check the facts for themselves? Do we really want them to grow up so neurotic that they are scared of the weather?
Are we happy to see them marching around like a bunch of zombies, full of meaningless slogans about topics that they don’t have the slightest understanding about?
It is a sort of mass hysteria that has unfortunately been all too common during human history. It used to be a matter of burning witches, or human sacrifices by the Aztecs. Now it is demonising CO2.
Perhaps Isabel might like to devote her next series to this.
May and Merkel Fiddle While Their Unions Burn
By Tom LUONGO | Strategic Culture Foundation | 16.03.2019
When it was reported by John Petley of the Bruges Group that German Chancellor Angela Merkel had, in effect, written the Brexit withdrawal agreement Theresa May has now twice had turned down by her parliament it should have come as no shock to anyone closely following the Brexit drama.
Uncorroborated? Sure. Most likely true. Of course.
The European Union doesn’t want Brexit to happen. And if it were to happen it would only be acceptable to them if it looks like the deal Mrs. May put before the House of Commons twice only to be rebuked by historic margins.
This was not a version of Brexit anyone had in mind. Not the softest-minded Labour voter and especially not the sovereignty-minded Leave voter of the Nigel Farage persuasion.
It was, in short, a betrayal of all things fundamentally nationalist.
For the past week I’ve been watching a lot of British Parliament as it debates, and I use that word very loosely, the situation Mrs. May and the MP’s themselves have put the country in. And, in a word, it is shameful.
May and Merkel both miscalculated terribly on what the British people would accept. It’s obvious that both only thought in terms of the kind of political leverage they could bring to bear on the House of Commons which would eventually force them to cave to supposed horror-show of a ‘No-Deal’ Brexit.
Make no mistake, the horror show would mostly fall on Germany – whose banking system, already teetering on collapse thanks to other rifts forming within the currency bloc – and export-driven economy would suffer from the Brits having more control over the exchange rate of the pound versus the euro.
A lower pound would be the first result of a no-deal Brexit. Good for long-suffering British manufacturing and bad for Germany’s, since the UK is Germany’s biggest export market.
Economically and philosophically, no-deal is the best deal for the UK But don’t tell that to the MP’s who are scared to death of it.
But what’s most important about all of this is that it is all just a symptom of a much deeper problem, the unwieldy nature of the European Union itself.
Germany and the elites who have pushed this project, the unelected financiers I like to call The Davos Crowd, are dead set against anything that obstructs its completion.
The wave of nationalist political fervor racing across the continent is, however, a consequence of their trying to form a political and fiscal union that far exceeds the original mandate sold to voters when they joined.
And that is threatening to tear Mrs. Merkel’s union to pieces. This is why she and her posse in Brussels are so committed to screwing the British people. They have to send the right message to Italy and Hungary. It’s why they want $39 billion.
It’s why they are using the non-issue of the Irish border to tie the UK into the customs union and single market forever. But, make no mistake, just like Merkel’s horrific treatment of Greece was seen as unconscionable by people across Europe in 2015 they are looking at how the Brits are being treated and are equally as appalled.
Merkel, Juncker et.al. all saw the divisions within the Labour and Conservative parties that have resulted from their planning and thought them to be assets. But they aren’t. Maybe in the short-run it will get them what they want, another moment to kick the can down the road a little bit further.
But in the long-run all it is doing is setting up for another round of Brexit in the future with a much less plastic set of circumstances. Because, as I said earlier, they have miscalculated. The British people are fed up with them and with their own government.
The Labour party is squealing out of both sides of its mouth trying to get themselves out of the corner they’ve painted themselves into. Because they can read the polls. And what was a solid Labour lead in the winter has become a solid Tory lead in the Spring.
Because as split as the Tories are, voters understand that there are more of them trying to implement their will than there are Labour MP’s. And that counts for something.
Mrs. May has made a mess of things thinking she could shoe horn a terrible deal through parliament that would satisfy the EU while blowing up the traditional two-party system in the House of Commons.
And this is why I say to hardened cynics who think these people are all-powerful that they aren’t. They are smart but they aren’t clever. They do the same thing that has worked before and run the same playbook. Brexit looks exactly like the Greek debt talks.
Merkel didn’t update her playbook for 2018. It wasn’t a short-term negotiation. It was a three-year process that tried the patience of 66 million Brits. And they have seen the real face of the EU and many more of them want no part of it.
Merkel and Juncker are trying to hold onto their manufactured leverage over the Brits to, in turn, hold onto a Union that is in the process of failing. May and her cabinet are trying to hold onto a relationship with the EU while the UK itself is now in danger of failing.
The Scots are pushing for independence to stay in the EU. Wales is beginning to consider it. Northern Ireland doesn’t like being anyone’s Trojan Horse.
They have thoroughly underestimated the will of the people and it will cost them what little cache they have left with voters. Remember, confidence lost in the institutions of government begets a loss of confidence in the money and their ability to manage it.
If you want a catalyst for a European sovereign debt crisis, look no further than Brexit now or the downstream effects of a delayed Brexit later.
If an extension is approved by the EU and given to the Brits, Euroskeptics will go from commanding a projected 32-33% of a 705 seat European Parliament to possibly 35-36% of a larger one that includes the Brits.
Because if Brexit is delayed and betrayed do you think Remainers will be elected en masse? Or do you think Farage et.al. will not storm into Brussels mad as hell?
Merkel and May may have won this battle using their useful idiots like Anna Soubry and Ian Blackford but they will lose the war as the rest of Europe comes to terms with being frog-marched towards a future they neither want, signed up for or are willing to pay for anymore.
No wonder the Yellow Vests keep showing up every weekend.
Market failures could see Britain suffering five-day power cuts
Today’s electricity infrastructure, driven by commercial forces, will find it hard to cope when things go seriously wrong.
By David Watson | Energy & Technology | March 11, 2019
Even in industrialised nations in the 21st century, the sort of electricity-grid system failure that’s been seen in parts of Australia in recent years is not uncommon. In the UK, the risk of total blackout or significant partial shutdown of the transmission network is increasing.
The rise in renewables is making failure more probable. Wind farm growth creates frequency-management issues arising from reduced system inertia, while declining network strength can cause longer, stability-risking, fault-clearance times. Then there are the challenges to match supply to demand following sudden variations in wind generation and the reduced one-hour notice of input variations from European interconnectors. Other risk factors include grid substation failure, lightning or overhead line faults and cyber attack.
For grid recovery following widespread collapse, a process known as ‘black starting’ is deployed where the UK is split into different areas. Being able to rapidly black-start the country is a public health priority and, rightly, a public expectation, but in Scotland, and probably London, it is unrealisable; it would take several days to re-establish networks. So serious has the issue become that I understand it has attracted the attention of the government’s Cobra civil contingencies committee.
Professional expectation for Scotland to black-start has now, I’ve been told, risen to five days, largely as a result of large-scale, dispatchable, on-demand generation being replaced with intermittent distributed renewables. London has experienced a similar progressive local reduction and will also take longer to recharge since much of its high-voltage grid uses cable and not overhead line transmission.
The Scottish Black Start Restoration Working Group reviewed its procedures in September 2018. These are based on local joint restoration plans that would see transmission operators powering up and stabilising local transmission islands, which would then have to be synchronised and progressively interconnected.
The group’s report warns that, following the 2016 closure of the Longannet coal-fired power station in Fife, there would be ‘severe delays’ to restoration. Peterhead gas-fired station, now Scotland’s only high-powered and high-inertia (essential to stabilise frequency) dispatchable power station, is seeking planning permission to install 31 diesel generators, capable of full power for seven days, to secure its restart. However, it has only half the capacity of Longannet and couldn’t restart all of Scotland without input from the pumped-storage capacity at Cruachan and Foyers and, crucially, from England, which arrangement is untested.
Nor would wind farms be able to black-start the grid. Main generator types in use need external power to start generating; some more recent designs are self-starting, but connecting to a dead grid via long offshore AC cable interconnections remains an unsolved problem as the turbines cannot provide enough reactive power to recharge what are, in effect, large capacitors. In any case, they wouldn’t be able to meet National Grid requirements for block loading, grid voltage or frequency control.
The first local joint grid-restoration activity is to disconnect all offshore generation. Onshore wind farms can be progressively reintroduced once the grid has been re-established, but only providing they are not frozen and there is wind. As with all nuclear stations, Scotland’s Hunterston and Torness could only be reconnected into a stable grid, this taking several days.
The new £2.4bn HVDC interlinks from Wales to the Hunterston area and from Moray Firth to Spittal have not been engineered to support black start as they do not include the latest voltage source converter (VSC) technology and cannot commutate into a dead network. Scotland is now literally at the end of the line and critical restart power would arrive only once the north of England grid had been re-established. Similarly, for London, the two HVDC interconnector links to France and the Netherlands cannot support black start.
National Grid confirmed in 2016 that the restoration strategy “must be adjusted” as “system strength and the number of black-start providers declines” and that black-start costs are “anticipated to increase by a 7-10 factor” over the next 10 years. While, like Ofgem, it favours the provision of up to seven new VSC interconnectors between Britain and the European mainland, these are not yet built and power availability from them would depend on market conditions. The UK is a net importer of electricity. And then there is Brexit…
The situation is clearly untenable. It exemplifies the need for proper governance of the UK electricity system to replace the present disparate, profit-driven weakening of the grid that ‘the market’ has caused.
Several of the engineering institutions are advocating change, including the IET, the IMechE and the Institution of Engineers in Scotland. We need to be heard.
David Watson is a chartered electrical engineer who before retirement was manager of projects at Foster Wheeler Energy, based in Glasgow.
Douma “Chemical Attack”: Still Waiting for an Apology
By James O’Neill | OffGuardian | March 13, 2019
On 7th of April 2018 an alleged chemical attack took place in the city of Douma in the Syrian Arab Republic. Dramatic footage of the “victims” was widely broadcast throughout the western mainstream media. Particularly prominent were images of children foaming at the mouth and being hosed down.
The footage for these dramatic depictions was almost entirely sourced from a group known as the White Helmets. They are invariably depicted in the western media as a form of civil defence organisation. They are in fact an arm of Britain’s MI6, trained by the British and financed by the UK and the United States.
The alleged “chemical attack” was used by the US, UK and French governments to make a missile attack upon Syrian targets. The approximately 100 missiles fired destroyed buildings and caused civilian casualties. Many of the missiles failed to reach their target, being either deflected or shot down by Syrian air defences.
Speaking to a press conference on the Sunday following the attacks, the then Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull made a series of unqualified assertions. He gave his government’s “strong support” for the military action, and urged Russia to exercise its authority to ensure that the chemical weapons were destroyed.
He further called on Russia to use its influence to ensure the “most recent chemical weapons attack is thoroughly investigated.” He blamed the Assad government for the incident and described the military action by the US, UK and France, “targeted, proportionate and responsible.”
He even attempted to link the Douma incident with the Skripal events in Salisbury, England, using both as a stick with which to beat the Russians over the head. Both the timing of and the linking of the two incidents were not a coincidence. They were clearly part of a campaign to discredit Russia, whose intervention in the Syrian war proved a decisive turning point, to the chagrin of the “regime changers” in Washington and London.
As is now almost invariably the case there is a marked distinction between the political rhetoric and the actual situation, both in terms of the relevant international law, and the facts on the ground. That has become glaringly obvious in the Skripal case, as has been well documented elsewhere, by for example, www.theblogmire.com 3 March 2019.
Dealing briefly with the legal situation in the Syrian bombing, there is no such thing as a “targeted, proportionate and responsible” bombing of a sovereign state unless two pre-conditions are met. It must either be in self-defence, if the countries taking the action have themselves been attacked, and that was manifestly not the case; and secondly, in the alternative, it must be an action authorised by the United Nations Security Council. That didn’t happen either.
As in so many of Australia’s military forays around the world, the legal basis for the Syria involvement is notably absent, although in this particular case their role was limited to being cheerleaders on the sidelines. Australia’s participation in the so-called coalition of forces fighting in Syria and allied to the United States, a serial offender against international law, has no legal foundation whatsoever. The Australian government has had legal advice on the matter, and has had such advice since 2014. If it was confident of its legal position, why then does it continue to refuse to release that advice?
The facts on the ground do not support the Turnbull position either. Turnbull criticized Russia for using its Security Council veto to block motions to investigate chemical weapons crimes. In fact, both Russia and Syria asked the Organisation for the Prevention of Criminal Weapons (OPCW) to investigate the Douma incident.
The OPCW fact-finding mission began their investigation on 21 April 2018, two weeks after the alleged attack. Jihadist groups blocked their initial investigation and they were only able to enter the relevant areas with protection provided by the Syrian army and the Russian military police.
An interim report was published on 6 July 2018 in which it concluded, “no organophosphate (sarin) nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or the plasma samples taken from the alleged casualties.” The use of sarin had been one of the principal accusations against the Syrian government. This interim conclusion received minimal media attention.
The OPCW Final Report of the investigation was released on 1st of March 2019 although one will hunt in vain for an accurate account of that report in the western mainstream media. The reason for the media silence is not difficult to discern. The 0PCW Report effectively destroys the arguments advanced by US President Trump, UK Prime Minister May and Turnbull.
The OPCW’s investigation was hampered in significant ways. The White Helmets and their jihadist allies had either cremated or buried all the deceased “victims” of the alleged chemical attack. Those burial locations were not disclosed to the investigators. No autopsy material was therefore available.
The evidence of the medical staff in attendance at the Douma hospitals at the time began receiving “victims” prior to the timing of the alleged chemical attack. None had symptoms of chemical or nerve agent attack.
The OPCW investigation team carried out a number of analyses from areas said to have been affected by the chemical attack. Again, they found no traces of any banned chemical substances.
They were shown two yellow cylinders claimed to have been responsible for the casualties. Even that “evidence” was compromised as the two cylinders had been moved by the jihadists and were located in two places and in such a manner that they had no probative value.
The OPCW team was unable to say how the cylinders might have been used to release any toxins. Given that no toxic traces could be found anywhere, the likely inference is that the two cylinders were simply stage props.
This inference is reinforced by the fact that the OPCW team did find a further yellow canister similar to the two mentioned above. That canister however, was found in a jihadist workshop that also contained a variety of chemicals and equipment associated with bomb production. Insofar as this finding received any media coverage, it was to suggest that the Syrian government had planted the material. The OPCW made no such suggestion.
What the OPCW team did find were traces of chlorine. Chlorine however, is a common household substance and for that reason it is not on the list of banned chemical weapons. Chlorine would not in any case be likely to cause death, much less the significant casualty figures claimed.
The evidence of the medical professionals interviewed by the OPCW team was that the victims they treated at the hospital were suffering from the effects of dust and smoke inhalation. None had life threatening injuries and none died in hospital.
There was accordingly no basis in fact for the missile attack by the US, UK and France (quite apart from its illegality) and therefore no justification for Turnbull’s unequivocal assertions of Syrian culpability and Russian complicity in a chemical weapons attack upon the civilian population.
Notwithstanding the OPCW’s demolition of the claims made by the US and others, including Turnbull’s ill-advised unequivocal support, the US and mainstream media still refer to Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons as a reason to justify their continued occupation of Syrian territory.
That occupation itself is a violation of international law. The “debate” within US ruling circles about whether Trump’s original professed desire to leave Syria (since resiled from) should be carried out or not has a surreal tone to it. It never seems to occur to them that they are neither welcome nor legally entitled to be there at all.
Perhaps the final word should go to a senior BBC TV producer, Riam Dilati. On 13 February 2019 he tweeted: “after almost 6 months of investigations I can prove without a doubt that the Douma hospital scene was staged.”
If our own media and politicians could show a similar degree of honesty and integrity, they would be offering Syria and Russia the long overdue apologies to which they are entitled.
That may however, be a long wait.
James O’Neill is a barrister at law and geopolitical analyst. He may be contacted at joneill@qldbar.asn.au.
Who really is Nazanin Zaghari?
Press TV – March 12, 2019
Nazanin Zaghari is an Iranian citizen who is currently serving a five-year jail term in Tehran on charges of espionage for the UK. Iran’s intelligence authorities arrested Zaghari, who also holds a British passport, at Imam Khomeini International Airport in April 2016 as she was about to board a plane to London.
The 39-year-old mother-of-one was arrested after it became clear that she had run an illegal course to recruit and train people for the BBC Persian Television, a channel Iran deems is an extension of Britain’s anti-Iran propaganda machine.
Ever since Zaghari’s arrest, British officials have provided several opposing accounts into who she really is and what she was doing during her stay in Iran.
A mother and wife on vacation
London first insisted that the double citizen, who works for Thomson Reuters Foundation, was in Iran for holidays.
The British media tried to add an emotional aspect to her case by constantly running stories about Zaghari’s husband and their only child.
But the public was not convinced.
Teaching journalism
That claim was proven problematic after then British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson admitted in 2017 that she was indeed in Iran to train journalists for unspecified purposes.
“When I look at what Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was doing, she was simply teaching people journalism as I understand it,” Johnson told the Foreign Affairs Committee in November 2017.
London tried to pass off Johnson’s remark as a simple “slip of tongue.”
Aid worker
The gaffe prompted a statement from Thomson Reuters Foundation, denying Johnson’s description of Zaghari.
“Nazanin has been working at the Thomson Reuters Foundation for the past four years as a project coordinator in charge of grants applications and training, and had no dealing with Iran in her professional capacity,” the London-based organization, which operates independently of Reuters News, said at the time.
After Johnson’s remarks, which were widely viewed as an unintentional confession into Zaghari’s real mission in Tehran, the Western media have mostly referred to her as an aid worker.
This is while her employer, Thomson Reuters, has already made it clear that it is in no way involved in business with Iran.
“The Thomson Reuters Foundation has no dealings with Iran whatsoever, does not operate and does not plan to operate in the country,” the foundation said in an announcement.
This means any suggestion that she was in Iran on a humanitarian mission doesn’t hold value.
Diplomatic protection
London’s contradictory explanations about Zaghari’s mission took an unexpected turn this month, after British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt announced that London had decided to give Zaghari diplomatic protection “as part of the Government’s continuing efforts to secure her release.”
Diplomatic protection is a rarely-used tool under international law, which gives a country the right to challenge another state over the treatment of one of its nationals or companies.
It is very different from diplomatic immunity, which applies to accredited diplomats and provides them with safe passage. It is also different from consular assistance, where a state offers assistance to its nationals in another country.
Iran has rejected the move by London as “illegal,” with Iranian Ambassador to Britain Hamid Baeidinejad arguing that the protection meant nothing as Iran does not recognize dual nationality.
Interestingly, Zaghari only had her Iranian passport with her when she was taken into custody.
London’s efforts ‘extremely unusual’: Ex-UK diplomat
Meanwhile, Craig John Murray, a British former diplomat who once served as the country’s ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote in an article on Monday that if anything, the London’s “unusual” attention to Zaghari’s issue has given more credibility to Iran’s case against her.
The former diplomat writes that even without the diplomatic protection, the UK government’s interest in the case had been “extremely unusual.”
“That the UK has now ‘adopted’ the case, raising it to the level of a state dispute, is something not just unusual, but which I don’t think has happened since the First World War,” he said.
Murray noted that the British government usually avoids getting involved in cases about its dual national citizens simply because doing so would overwhelm its consulates around the world.
According to Sky TV, Britain has not afforded diplomatic protection to anyone in living memory prior to Zaghari.
The last time the UK government is known to have used this power is in 1951, in support of a British-Iranian oil company.
The move elevates the case of the Iranian citizen from a consular issue to a formal matter between Iran and the UK and also opens up a number of legal and diplomatic routes.
Arms Sales to Middle East Have Increased Dramatically: US Top Exporter
Al-Manar | February 11, 2019
Arms flows to the Middle East have increased by 87 percent over the past five years and now account for more than a third of the global trade, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said in a report on Sunday.
The defense think-tank’s annual survey showed that Saudi Arabia became the world’s top arms importer in 2014-18, with an increase of 192 percent over the preceding five years. Egypt, Algeria, the United Arab Emirates and Iraq also ranked in the top 10 list of global arms buyers. Sipri measures the volume of deliveries of arms, not the dollar value of deals. The volume of deliveries to each country tends to fluctuate, so it presents data in five-year periods that offer a more stable indication of trends.
The new report shows how the United States and European nations sell jets, jeeps and other gear that is used in controversial wars in Yemen and beyond, SIPRI researcher Pieter Wezeman told Middle East Eye.
“Weapons from the US, the UK and France are in high demand in the Gulf, where conflicts and tensions are rife. Russia, France and Germany dramatically increased their arms sales to Egypt in the past five years,” Wezeman said.
The growth in Middle Eastern imports was in part driven by the need to replace military gear that was deployed and destroyed in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Libya, he said, adding that it was also driven by political tensions and a regional arms race.
The UAE, Saudi Arabia and ‘Israel’ are readying for a potential conflict with Iran, the 12-page report said. Also, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and others have been involved in a diplomatic crisis with Qatar since 2017.
In 2014-18, Saudi Arabia received 94 combat jets fitted with cruise missiles and other guided weapons from the US and Britain.
Over the next five years, it is set to get 98 more jets, 83 tanks and defensive missile systems from the US, 737 armored vehicles from Canada, five frigates from Spain, and Ukrainian short-range ballistic missiles.
In 2014-18, the UAE received missile defense systems, short-range ballistic missiles and about 1,700 armored personnel carriers from the US as well as three Corvettes from France, the report says.
Qatari weapons imports increased by 225 percent over the period, including German tanks, French combat aircraft and Chinese short-range ballistic missiles. It is set to receive 93 combat aircraft from the US, France and Britain and four frigates from Italy.
Iran, which is under a UN arms embargo, accounted for just 0.9 percent of Middle Eastern imports.
For Wezeman, “the gap is widening” between Iran and its foes across the Gulf, which have obtained more advanced weapons.
US remains top arms seller
The US has retained its position as the world’s top arms seller. Its exports grew by 29 percent over the past five years, with more than half of its shipments (52 percent) going to customers in the Middle East.
British sales grew by 5.9 percent over the same period. A total of 59 percent of UK arms deliveries went to the Middle East – most of it combat aircraft destined for Saudi Arabia and Oman.
Arming governments in the turbulent Middle East is increasingly controversial in the West, said Patrick Wilcken, an arms control specialist with Amnesty International, a UK-based rights watchdog.
He pointed to cases where sales are merited – such as re-tooling Iraq’s army after it lost much of its hardware and territory in the ISIL group’s attack in 2014.
Still, Western arms more often end up being used in human rights abuses, he said, pointing to Egypt’s crackdown on political opponents, Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land and the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
He blasted the “hypocrisy” of Western governments not following their own rules by continuing to supply authoritarian leaders who commit wartime abuses or violations against their own people.
In addition, “a critical problem for the region is the emergence of armed groups like ISIL”, Wilcken told MEE.
Brussels Shows Its Fear of Euroskeptics
By Tom LUONGO | Strategic Culture Foundation | 10.03.2019
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been under fire from the European Union for years for his opposition to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open immigration policy.
A policy which she herself has had to pull back on. And no matter how far Merkel has changed her stance and acceded to the reality of the damage her policy has created, Orban is still guilty of the sin of non-compliance.
Actually, he’s guilty of a whole lot more than that. Because Orban has not only stepped on the third-rail of European politics he’s stomped up and down while taking a massive dump on it.
That third-rail, of course, is naming names. Naming the very person who controls so much of EU policy through his co-opting large swaths of the European parliament.
That person, of course, is George Soros.
Now there is a push, ahead of May’s European Parliamentary elections, to kick Orban’s dominant Fidesz party out of the European People’s Party (EPP), a nominal center-right coalition and the largest single party within the EU parliament.
And with each victory over Soros Orban grows even bolder. After a successful re-election campaign predicated on the slogan, “Don’t Let Soros Win,” Orban has banned Soros’ major NGO, Open Society Foundation, as well as forced out his Central European University.
But his biggest sin was equating outgoing European Commission President Jean-Claude “When things get tough you have to lie” Juncker with Soros’ attempts to weaken Hungary’s border.
His reward for this, and building a border fence which thwarts Soros and Merkel’s tactic of tying immigrants in the host country in legal limbo for years by being inset from Hungary’s actual border, has been an Article 7 procedure opened up against Hungary for not abiding by the EU’s position on human rights.
Poland is in similar hot water with Merkel but thanks to one of the few reasonable things within the EU’s framework, each country can use the other to veto the actual censuring and concomitant removal of voting rights within the Union that comes with the full application of Article 7.
But this article isn’t really about Orban’s latest troubles with the faux democrats within the EU parliament. It’s about how scared those people are of the rise in Euroskeptics like Orban across the continent ahead of May’s elections.
Orban’s potential expulsion from the EPP is just another symptom of this fear. Recently, France’s Marine Le Pen, found out that the trial against her for tweeting out images of ISIS beheadings back in 2015, will go forward with the potential of landing her in jail for three years.
This is not much different than the kidnapping charge Sicilian prosecutors tried to bring against Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister, Leader of Lega and all-around bad boy Matteo Salvini in Italy. This was a lame attempt to split Italy’s Euroskeptic coalition and keep it focused on internal trivialities versus mounting a real challenge in May’s elections.
The same is true now for Le Pen. Her National Rally party is polling within the margin of error of President Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche with a real chance to send a plurality of French Euroskeptic MEPs to Brussels in a couple of months.
Merkel is struggling with the same thing. And even though support for Alternative for Germany (AfD) has waned in recent polling, down to just 13%, don’t underestimate the voters’ desire to send a strong message to Brussels by voting in stronger numbers for the new or alternative parties rather than how they would vote for them at home.
We’ve seen this in the past with UKIP who shocked everyone in the last European elections in 2014 with the size of the vote for them. It never translated into domestic momentum as typical prisoner’s dilemma concerns are more prevalent in Britain’s majoritarian voting system.
But for the EU parliament where the two-party system doesn’t hold sway and the direct benefits are harder to make a case to voters for, it’s much more likely voters will loosen up a little and throw their support for a smaller, less established party.
And that, along with some serious miscalculations about Brexit which I’ll get to in a minute, has the power elite in European political circles very scared. So scared that they are willing to devote serious resources in Quixotic endeavors of dubious value.
Expelling Orban from the EPP will only give him more strength. It will only give Euroskeptics more ammunition. Orban, like Salvini, revels in being the outsider. He’ll use it to rally others across Eastern Europe and pull a few more seats into that orbit.
According to the latest polling, which you can find an up-to-date tally of here, Euroskeptic parties will take between 215 and 225 seats out of the 705 up for grabs, assuming Britain actually leaves and doesn’t stand for MEP elections, which at this point doesn’t look likely.
If reports are true that Prime Minister Theresa May cut a deal with Merkel in July of last year on the withdrawal agreement. And if that agreement was structured so as to ease the way for the U.K. to rejoin the EU later are true, then there is no way Mrs. May will be able to forestall Brexit on WTO terms at this point, even if it takes another 90 days to do so.
A report from the Bruges Group, since taken down, had the details (see link above). And we’ll know if this is the case if suddenly Theresa May agrees to step aside as Prime Minister just after March 29th whether or not Britain leaves.
Because she will have either failed to scuttle Brexit and be sacrificed to save the Tories. Or she steps aside for a true Brexiteer in the event of Parliament voting for an extension.
We’ll know this was the case if she does so.
Lots of ifs, I know, but right now everyone is doing the Juncker-Two-Step, lying and cajoling to maintain the status quo and continue forward towards further European integration.
Mario Draghi at the European Central Bank did his part, going full dove for the rest of 2019 to keep markets from imploding.
And if Brexit is settled on WTO terms that opens up their worst nightmare going forward.
Watch Viktor Orban smile the smile of the just at that point.
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On ‘conflict’, ‘peace’ and ‘genocide’: Time for new language on Palestine
By Ramzy Baroud | MEMO | June 12, 2021
On 25 May, famous US actor Mark Ruffalo tweeted an apology for suggesting that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza.
“I have reflected and wanted to apologise for posts during the recent Israel/Hamas fighting that suggested Israel is committing ‘genocide’,” Ruffalo wrote, adding: “It’s not accurate, it’s inflammatory, disrespectful and is being used to justify anti-Semitism, here and abroad. Now is the time to avoid hyperbole.”
But were Ruffalo’s earlier assessments, indeed, “not accurate, inflammatory and disrespectful”? And does equating Israel’s war on besieged, impoverished Gaza with genocide fit into the classification of “hyperbole”? … continue
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