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…or the nuclear industry and my part in its downfall.

There’s a big story breaking at Greenpeace today. Despite assurances from the nuclear industry that things had been cleaned up, Greenpeace has found that the villages near the uranium mines in Niger are still contaminated with radiation…

I’m extremely pleased to say that I played a small part in helping bring the scandal to light. Back in January I wrote a rather strident post for Greenpeace’s Nuclear Reaction blog about just what the French nuclear company AREVA had been getting up to at its uranium mines in Niger.

AREVA weren’t very happy about that and in their response they invited Greenpeace to go to Niger and see what was going on for themselves. The Greenpeace nuclear campaign accepted the invitation and this month, after much hard work and planning, sent a team to Niger. And they certainly did see for themselves… AREVA nuclear scandal: Greenpeace finds radiation on the streets of Niger.

I’ve lived in Hove and Portslade for ten years. There are a lot of foxes around and about the place. I like them very much. I was once woken in the night by five of the cheeky so-and-sos having a Mexican stand-off in the street. It was ace.

In the time before the fox-hunting ban I don’t once recall seeing a contingent of red-jacketed horse-riders galloping across Hove and Portslade’s urban parks in pursuit of a foxy quarry. So I’m a little puzzled as to why the local MP Celia Barlow, who has a hyper-marginal majority of just 420 votes, is taking the time in the middle of a recession to remind her constituents that it’s the 5th anniversary of the less than incredibly successful fox hunting ban.

(I’m less puzzled as to why she copy’n'pasted her template press release like other New Labour lobby fodder automatons such as Clive Betts, Wayne David, Gillian Merron, Vera Baird, Jacqui Smith, Nick Ainger. The unreachable in pursuit of the immaterial.)

The Sun newspaper is 40 today. Forty years of lies, tits and an all-round lowering of our standards, morality and expectations. To mark this inauspicious occasion I’d like to dedicate this excerpt from Saturday Night Fry to Rupert Murdoch’s tool…

Out in the sea between France and Finland, the transport ship Happy Ranger is taking construction parts to Olkiluoto in Finland.

Some of my friends are aboard.

It’s very good news that the thousands of children sent to the British colonies in the mid 20th century, only to suffer terribly at the hands of those supposed to care for them, are about finally receive some small recognition.

It also means that another group of migrant children, taken against their will and abused in government institutions only have forty or fifty years to wait for their own apology.

And there there’s… These children shouldn’t worry either. We as a nation will one day – sometime mid-century if the convention is followed properly – also look back on their treatment with a sense of shame. Today, not so much.

So the Home Secretary Alan Johnson sacks Professor David Nutt as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs because Nutt’s recent pronouncements ‘cause confusion between scientific advice and policy‘.

There you have it in black and white – the writ of the Daily Mail reading classes trumps science. As Jamie Kenny says, ‘what does it say about any scientist who would agree to work for the government under these conditions?’

Still, we can probably expect a rush of new policy initiatives from the Home Office now they’re being open about the dissonance between policy and science…

- Alan Johnson bans antibiotics saying ‘we must instead trust to the graces of Saint Dymphna and not confuse scientific advice with policy.’

- Alan Johnson says prospective female MPs are to be vetted with trial by drowning. ‘We must not confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

- Alan Johnson announces the introduction of daily human sacrifices to ensure sun comes up. ‘We must not anger the Fire Gods or confuse scientific advice with policy,’ he says.

- Alan Johnson says he is to have Galileo exhumed so he can sack him because his scientific advice does not reflect policy.

That damned science. You just can’t trust it. I mean, where’s it got us, all that scientific study? Poor Alan. The whole world must have him in a constant state of terrified confusion. I bet he keeps running around the back of his telly so he can try and catch the little Eastenders inside it. My dog does the same whenever a cat comes on.

Still, at least scientific advisers to the government know where they stand now. They can tailor their advice to the counter-Enlightenment mores of little Englanders – and the prejudices of desperate ministers with their eyes on the dole queue – or sling their hooks. As Jack Pickard says, this government cherry-picking of science makes it difficult to trust any of its scientific advisers to tell the truth. Unless, that is, they are immediately sacked afterwards for telling it.

One is a fat, wonkey-eyed loser with repugnant attitudes towards immigration, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs break down foreigners’ doors at dawn, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs intern foreigners and their children, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs regularly and frequently beat foreigners, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One has his thugs traumatise foreigners’ children, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

One is loading darkies on to planes and sending them back to some of the world’s worst hellholes, and the other is the leader of the British National Party.

As the Yarls Wood door clanged shut on her, no doubt Adeoti Ogunsola said to herself, ‘thank God Gordon Brown isn’t a fascist’.

As the life drained out of him, no doubt Manuel Bravo said to himself, ‘thank God Gordon Brown isn’t a fascist’.

As the bullets thudded into him, no doubt Adam Osman Mohammed said to himself, ‘thank God Gordon Brown isn’t a fascist’.

Half the country seems up in arms that Nick Griffin is being allowed near a television studio but when a man, who has done things to foreigners that would give Griffin wet dreams from here to eternity goes, goes on GMTV barely anybody squeaks. Hell, a huge chunk of them voted for him.

Some fat wannabe-Nazi pillock goes on the telly and you’d think the barbarians were at the gates. The Prime Minister is shipping darkies off like so much freight and we’re more worried about whether the one with all the teeth from Girls Aloud is lip-synching on Saturday night TV. And yet Griffin’s never going to wreck the number of lives Brown has – not if he lives to be a thousand.

Griffin’s a bastard in a small, squalid way. You want to see a proper scumbag? He’s running the bloody country.

Why history is against the government’s decision to allow nuclear reactor operators to dump low-level nuclear waste in landfill sites…

Trafigura. Gagging. Injunctions. Suppressed reports. Caustic Soda. Freedom of Speech. Carter-Ruck. The Minton Report. The Ivory Coast. Birth defects, miscarriages and deaths…

All you need to know is right here.

(Via Nick Barlow on Twitter)

You need to have a serious talk to someone about how the Internet and search engines work. This was the first page of Google.co.uk search for Trafigura earlier this morning…

Click for the bigger picture

For those coming in late…

‘London solicitors Carter-Ruck, who specialise in suing the media for clients, who include individuals or global corporations,’ have gagged the Guardian from reporting parliamentary proceedings. That’s the parliamentary proceedings that you and I are completely free to read by simply going to the online version of Hansard.

So why have lawyers stopped a newspaper publishing quotations from the record of our democracy? It’s all to do with a company called Trafigura and what it may or may not have got up to in Africa.

It seems the Guardian has been prevented from publishing this written parliamentary question tabled by Paul Farelly MP…

61 N Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme): To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura.

You can download your own copy of the Minton report from Wikileaks.

It appears that some or all of these slops were disposed of at waste sites in and around Abidjan, Ivory Coast approximately in August 2006. This is alleged to have caused, or in part contributed to, a high incidence of health problems being reported, including nausea, breathing difficulties, vomiting, diarrhea.

Read section 3 in particular – ‘Health and Environmental impacts’ – all kinds of horrible stuff were involved.

Nick Barlow has more, as do many others. There’s also much being said on Twitter (if you want to Twitter about this, use the #Trafigura hashtag – it’s currently trending on Twitter’s front page). You might also be tempted to blog about Trafigura.

This is what Trafigura doesn’t want you to know. Now you do. If they hadn’t gone running to their lawyers, it’s very possible you wouldn’t. The Streisand is well and truly out of the bag.

More background:

Independent: Call for murder charges to be brought over toxic dumping

The settlement of the High Court case, expected to be finalised within weeks, concerns claims by victims who suffered short-term illnesses. But it does not apply to allegations, which will now not be tested in the British courts, that the dumped waste caused more serious problems, including deaths, miscarriages and birth defects.

Video: Newsnight – Dirty tricks and toxic waste in Ivory Coast

George Monbiot (on September 17): Trafigura’s attempts to gag the media prove that libel laws should be repealed

In Britain, libel (or defamation) is used as the rich man’s sedition law, stifling criticism and exposure of all kinds of malpractice. Dating back to the 13th century, it was reframed during the past 200 years specifically to protect wealthy people from criticism, based on the presumption that any derogatory remark made about a gentleman must be false. The law of defamation is the only British instrument which places the burden of proof on the defendant. Given the inordinate costs involved, it’s not surprising that it discourages people from investigating abuses of power.

Guardian: How UK oil company Trafigura tried to cover up African pollution disaster

The UN human rights special rapporteur, Professor Okechukwu Ibeanu, criticised Trafigura for potentially “stifling independent reporting and public criticism” in a report the oil trader tried and failed to prevent being published in Geneva this week.

He wrote: “According to official estimates, there were 15 deaths, 69 persons hospitalised and more than 108,000 medical consultations … there seems to be strong prima facie evidence that the reported deaths and adverse health consequences are related to the dumping.”

Ministry of Truth: TRAFIGURA AND THE MINTON REPORT

The concentrated sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) is one, as anyone coming into contact with it on the waste dump would be likely to suffer severe chemical burns to the skin or lungs, from vapour inhalation, and as, I’m afraid to say, scavenging from waste dumps is not that uncommon a practice in the developing world… Do I really need to spell out the rest?

Greenpeace: Trafigura background

On July 2, 2006, the Probo Koala (chartered by Trafigura) attempted to unload waste in Amsterdam. Noting the strong-smelling nature of the waste and probable toxic nature, harbour authorities told the ship that the waste would be more expensive to dispose of. The ship refused to pay extra treatment costs and left Amsterdam…

Econsultancy: Social media turns toxic avenger for The Guardian (#trafigura)

This tidal wave of tweets makes for particularly bad PR, given the banning order against the newspaper. It’s a bit like an artist achieving a Radio 1 ban, which can result in chart success. What you seek to suppress only generates further interest.

Update @ 13.00: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger has just posted this to Twitter:

Victory! #CarterRuck caves-in. No #Guardian court hearing. Media can now report Paul Farrelly’s PQ about #Trafigura. More soon on Guardian…

Wikileaks: Ivory Coast toxic dumping report behind secret Guardian gag

Statements made in parliament, including those of Paul Farrelly MP, traditionally enjoy an absolute exemption from molestation by the regular judiciary. Parliament does not, insomuch as it believes itself to be an expression of the national will, subordinate itself to any other court.

Knowing this, lawyers for Trafigura, Carter-Ruck, obtained a second, secret media injuction to prevent reporting of Paul Farrely MP’s questions. That this alleged order was granted is a bold and dangerous move by the High Court towards the total privatization of censorship. Is a multi-billion pound commodities trader a truer expression of the national will than the House of Commons? The question is no longer rhetorical.

Wikileaks: The Independent: Toxic Shame: Thousands injured in African city, 17 Sep 2009

The PDF presents a copy of an article originally published in UK newspaper The Independent, but censored from the Independent’s website.

Well, it’ll save us all a walk to the local primary school next May, if nothing else. Screw the voters, the results of next year’s affront to democracy are in. Those who really matter have declared their verdict. Here’s state-funded gossip-monger, the BBC’s Nick Robinson…

Asked what Cam[eron] was going to focus on in his speech tomorrow, Robbo replied:

“Well, the Prime Minister will once again want to focus on the big issue that George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor was talking about..the deficit…”

And advertising-funded gossip-monger…

ITV’s Tom Bradby has called George Osborne “the Chancellor”.

Why else would Tories propagandists have the balls to start publishing this kind of guff.

‘We’re all in this together,’ said the heir to the Osborne baronetcy of Ballentaylor in his party conference speech – a previously undeclared hankering for inclusion (AKA ivory tower buck-passing). It’s just some of us are deeper in than others.

Were you one of those liberal-lefty types that rallied to David Davis’ banner when he made his pointless and self-aggrandising publicity stunt principled stand over civil liberties last year? Your erstwhile leader thinks you’re a coward and an appeaser…

“If we had relied on Guardian-reading vegetarians to defend liberty,” he reckoned, “we’d all be speaking German.”

One of course wonders how many gin-swilling Tories joined the International Brigade in 1936. And how many ‘Guardian-reading vegetarians’ will join Davis on his next ego-buffing fool’s errand.

The best response was the first comment to the above piece:

More accurately, if we’d have relied on the Daily Mail’s 1930s editorial stance to defend liberty, we’d all be speaking German.

Welcome to the United Kingdom, 2009…

Reading the high court judgment, you have to pinch yourself and remember that this isn’t Kenya under Daniel arap Moi, but good old Blighty, where the police are impartial, the civil service disinterested and a minister’s word is his bond. In a civilised country, at least half a dozen senior officials would now be charged with perjury, the secretary of state for defence would be facing impeachment hearings and a number of soldiers would be on trial for torture and murder. But in the United Kingdom, where we see only what we choose, the judgment sinks without a ripple. We carry on believing what we have always been told: that unlike other countries, we do things properly here.

But anyway. What’s Jordan been up to lately?

…The Sun was one of the principal cheerleaders and propagandists for it.

See also, courtesy of Alex Ross.

John Prescott, bluff working-class figleaf, together in sisterhood…

I suppose, if I was being honest about it, I think too much of the emphasis has been on female rights, which I have supported all my life, and we’re not getting other messages across. Most of it is about the equality issue. It is very important, but it is not our biggest campaigning issue, whatever they say about it.

‘Female rights, which I have supported all my life’? Rights to what, John? To live in the creeping fear of your meaty fingers? Let’s ask Linda McDougall, wife of Austin Mitchell…

It was 1978, just after my husband had become an MP. I was 35. There was a memorial lecture for his predecessor, Anthony Crosland, and we were welcoming guests into our house. I opened the door to Prescott and showed him in. It was the first time I’d met him. As he came through the door, he pushed me quite forcefully against the wall and put his hand up my skirt.

Things were different in those days. It was not uncommon for men to take their chances. He was just trying it on. There was no big fuss. I just rebuffed him politely. He shrugged and winked and we all carried on. But from that day I knew what sort of man he was.

Ah yes, the classic actions of someone who’s supported ‘female rights’ all his life. ‘John is John,’ said Tony, another revolting old fraud.

Remember this story in The Sun from earlier in the year?

Fears grew last night that hate-filled Islamic extremists are drawing up a “hit list” of Britain’s leading Jews – bringing the Middle East conflict terrifyingly close to home.

TV’s The Apprentice boss Sir Alan Sugar and Amy Winehouse record producer Mark Ronson are among prominent names discussed on a fanatics’ website. Labour Peer and pal of Tony Blair Lord Levy, Foreign Secretary David Miliband and Princess Diana’s divorce lawyer Anthony Julius are also understood to be potential targets.

In a very fine piece of investigative journalism (remember that?) Tim Ireland of Bloggerheads, with help from Richard Bartholomew, discovered this story to be a massive hoax perpetrated by a man called Glen Jenvey, a man who has in the past worked with Tory MP Patrick Mercer, the parliamentary counterterrorism subcommittee chairman.

Tim’s reward? To be smeared, to have his mental health impugned, to be accused of being a paedophile, lied about, vilified, stalked, and finally his home address made public on the internet. He has had to involve the police. The harassment continues. Those in a real position to help him put an end to this have, disgracefully and unforgivably, refused to do so.

I’m proud to know Tim well and know something of what he’s been through in the last few months. And all for calling someone on their dangerous bullshit. He deserves much better for doing what a far better resourced press and media should have been doing themselves. He deserves full credit and any damage to his reputation restored.

To those who have helped do this to him or stood by and done nothing by allowing petty disputes get in the way of doing the right thing: it won’t be forgotten. This isn’t a game or an inter-blog spat – this is about a person’s safety and well-being and that of his family. The behaviour of some of the prominent Tories involved in all this is gut-churning.

Tim could do with a hand. You could start here.

An ‘eccentric‘ ‘rant‘ given by a ‘crackpot‘. Oh how we laugh at this buffoon, Gadaffi. Hahahahahaha. Who’d want to be seen dead in such a thundering arse’s company?

Oh wait…

- Political help behind Libya arms trade, says official
- Al-Megrahi’s release ‘would free BP’ to join the rush for Libya’s oil
- Libya oil deals were factor in Megrahi talks, says Straw

Yes, let’s all laugh at the funny man while he gives our balls a squeeze.

Just what tickled my fancy in the last few days…

• Perils bog down troops on Afghan frontline » Kuwait Times Website – This is by a friend of who's embedded with US Marines in Afghanistan
• Trident: Brown’s no peacenik (Dave’s Part) – 'This is a cost-free cheap stunt dressed up as a grab for the unilateralist moral highground that Labour vacated at least two decades ago.'
• Thomas Friedman on nuclear energy: wrong again – "It’s an odd kind of debating tactic to be sure, this juvenile machismo. Was anyone ever won over in an argument by being called a ‘wimp’?"
• The enemies of reason: The anti-immigration pissing competition – 'It's become an anti-immigration pissing competition in the middle-market papers to see who can muster the most outrage and fear, and today's effort in the Express is pretty typical…'
• British paratroopers re-enact Battle of Arnhem – Shouldn't these lot have been *enacting* the Battle of Helmand?
• John Pilger: For Britons, the party game is over – 'This is largely why the game of parliamentary politics is over for so many Britons, especially the young…'
• The design of Tony Blair’s potential new office – Seems very apt: a stonking great bollock…
• Giant farm dog saves baby pig’s bacon by adopting it as one of its own – Insert media/Tory Party metaphor here
• Warren Ellis: Thunderbirds will grow a generation of mad engineers – 'Put Thunderbirds back on, you bastards, and help grow a new generation of mad and frightening engineers.'
• The Yorkshire Ranter: ‘I have some problems with "10:10"’ – 'Nobody is saying: Let's do BETTER this time. Let's build something BIGGER and SHINY and DRAMATIC and FANTASTIC and OUTRAGEOUS that doesn't just meet a 10% target but SMASHES it.'
• Operation Motorman: the full story revealed – Getting the press we deserve…
• The Appendix – not so useless in the developing world | UN Dispatch – Why appendicitis rates are lower in the developing world
• BBC NEWS | Politics | We’re the progressives – Osborne – If only saying you were something made it so… I am GRAVARX, immortal ruler of the galaxy. See? No joy.
• High Court shields database state from blame • The Register – Wrong details on a government database ruin your life? Tony Blair's brother says tough shit…
• Greenpeace BlackPixel – What if you turned off a little square on your monitor?

Posted from my delicio.us links.

A short history of moral compromises…

Thatcher

Musharraf

Abdullah

Gaddafi

Kissinger

Hewson

It’s to be accepted and expected that, in an age of so-called realpolitik (the euphemism we use when politicians set aside their morality), Brown has to lick the claws of monsters in the name of arms sales and securing the future career prospects of his cabinet colleagues. But how desperate for admiration does someone have to be to take a lump of glass from Henry Kissinger?

(The Case Against Henry Kissinger part one and part two.)

Update: Alastair Campbell thinks getting a glass bird from Henry ‘illegal bombing‘ Kissinger is something to crow about. Birds of a feather, I suppose…

Update updated: Speaking on BBC Five Live this afternoon Gordon Brown said he wouldn’t shake hands with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. There’s clearly a complex and subtle calculation that Brown performs before he sticks out his paw. BAE plus BP times the number of potential directorships available divided by the number of New Labour cabinet ministers and special advisers, perhaps. In the case of Ahmadinejad the numbers come up short.

Witness the Tory fightback…

More cutting edge counter-propaganda here and here.

There’s a crude British idiom – ‘All fur coat and no knickers’ – that we use to describe something that is all style and no substance, something that is superficially impressive but lacking the fundamentals underneath.

Take for example, the recently launched Indian nuclear submarine, the INS Arihant (Destroyer of Enemies). Just how many enemies the Arihant could be the destroyer of right now is debatable, for you see…

…the Arihant was launched without its nuclear reactor, which will not be ready for another year, or so. No one is saying for sure when the reactor will be ready…

Ladies and gentlemen, the world’s first non-nuclear nuclear submarine. The reason the Arihant was launched without its reactor seems to be one of prestige – it’s taken more than ten years to get this far and presumably someone in the Indian government said, ‘just get the thing in the water, we’re starting to look like idiots’. In an added comedy twist, the Arihant’s launch tubes aren’t wide enough to accommodate any current designs of sea launched ballistic missiles.

Of course, it’s not the first time a flagship nuclear project has launched without vital components being in place. French nuclear berks AREVA have been building their so-called state of the art OL3 EPR reactor at Olkiluoto in Finland for four years ‘without a proper design that meets the basic principles of nuclear safety’. The EPR may be coming to Britain as part of Gordon Brown’s nuclear ‘renaissance’. There’s going to be all manner of fun.

Still, the Indian government could be really on to something here – they’re showing the way forward. If we can have the non-nuclear nuclear submarine why not the non-nuclear nuclear weapon and the non-nuclear nuclear reactor? Imagine the day when scientists unveil the AFCANKPWR (All Fur Coat And No Knickers Pressurised Water Reactor).

(More tales of nuclear insanity can be found at Nuclear Reaction.)

Update: ‘Launch’ is probably not the word an impartial bystander would have used…

Yesterday, the Arihant, which is Indian for “Destroyer of Enemies”, made first contact with water, when the Navy flooded a dry dock in the southern port city of Visakhapatnam. According to Indian officials, the submarine must now undergo extensive sea trials in the Bay of Bengal. The nuclear powered, 112-meter (367 feet) long submarine is intended to carry ballistic missiles and will be operated by a crew of some 100 men. However, the Arihant still is far from reaching operational status, as it currently is little more than a floating hull. Its key capability of nuclear propulsion is not yet available, as the nuclear reactor still has to be fitted. Also, significant systems, such as surveillance equipment as well as ordnance, are still missing, according to Uday Bhaskar, a former naval commander and director of the National Maritime Foundation. It will, therefore, probably take India a further three to five years before the Arihant is fully operational.

Well stripe me orange. While out walking the dog just now, I actually saw a team of guys out in high-visibility jackets with ‘COMMUNITY PAYBACK‘* printed on them. That New Labour has nasty, vindictive little ideas running through it like shit through a goose should be news to nobody. The fact that they’ve managed to find the practical wherewithal to actually put one into action – and one of Hazel Blears’ to boot – comes as a bit of a shock.

Apparently these jackets exist ’so you can see that they’re paying back your community for their crimes’. But surely, if non-custodial sentences for crimes are enforced properly, that’s implicit without the need for bright orange signs? These jackets are merely and only a manifestation of revenge-by-proxy that New Labour divines the British public (or at least the right-wing paper reading faction) yearns for.

So what happens now? I’ve identified several small time lawbreakers that live in my community. These jackets are clearly meant to mark these people as ‘others’, not like you and me. What should my reaction be if I meet them without their jackets? Shun them? What if I meet one in the park walking his dog? Turn my back? What if I were a local businessman and one turned up for an interview for a job? Should he be shown the door?

Just what purpose does my new knowledge serve?

* The website slogan is ‘JUSTICE SEEN, JUSTICE DONE’. Somebody should tell these marketing pricks they haven’t been commissioned by Judge sodding Dredd.

Sixty-four years ago today, the Nuclear Age began…

At 8.15am on August 6 1945, over the Japanese city of Hiroshima, the B-29 Superfortress bomber Enola Gay opened its payload doors. The payload was the first atomic bomb, codename ‘Little Boy’.

Here’s something I didn’t know.

In April 1945, General Groves was instructed to pick targets for the nuclear bombs… “To enable us to assess accurately the effects of the bomb, the targets should not have been previously damaged by air raids.”

I doubt many people become General without being a stone-cold, sociopathic bastard. To think that the people of Hiroshima probably thought they’d had a lucky escape when, all along, General Groves had something special planned for them.