Europe: stay or leave? Focus on Fact - 3

One of the curious things about the UK's EU referendum is how the anti-Europeans claim to be patriotic. In fact, not a single ones of our allies and friends abroad want us to leave Europe. The only people who want us to leave are our enemies – ISIS and President Putin.

These facts are particularly inconvenient for the Brexiters because they claim that once we have dumped Europe, we can cosy up to the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Good luck with that one. All those countries have told us we need to stay in Europe.

If they manage to drag us out of Europe, the anti-Europeans load most of their hopes on America. So how are they preparing the ground? By insulting President Obama, and telling America to shut up. There is a worrying bullying streak to some of the Brexiters, particularly Boris Johnson and the disgraced former defence secretary Liam Fox, who try to silence anyone who says anything positive about Europe.

Now they have told Obama that he must not dare express his views on the subject. I trust we can count on the president to ignore the bullies.

Europe: stay or leave? Focus on fact - 2

I saw Boris Johnson on tv the other night saying he wanted an honest debate about Europe. So why does he keep telling lies? As the Treasury Select Committee found, Boris has no scruples about just making stuff up (which was what got him sacked by The Times, of course). http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/mar/23/very-interesting-boris-johnson-brexit-treasury-select-committee

Boris and his fellow Brexiters were up in arms because the government is going to send out a letter explaining some of the facts about EU membership. If we are going to have a fair referendum, this is, of course, vital, as the right wing tabloids spew out a relentless tide of anti-European propaganda, and have long ago given up any idea of covering the issue in a balanced, factual way.

But the Brexiters want to silence anyone who speaks up for Europe. They tried it on President Obama. His advice to Britain to stay in the EU was particularly inconvenient, because the anti-Europeans claim we will be able to cosy up to America once we leave Europe.

Boris also tried to ban anyone at City Hall from saying anything nice about Europe. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/boris-johnson-forced-humiliating-climbdown-7518231

Also interesting this week: the ‘Jagger backs Brexit’ claim (so apparently do the Queen, and probably God, according to the anti-European tabloids). If you actually read what Mick said, he argues that for the first 20 years, leaving will damage us. Then in the ‘long term’ it might be ‘beneficial. ‘ As the great economist John Maynard Keynes said: ‘In the long term, we are all dead.’

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mick-jagger-says-brexit-at-eu-referendum-may-be-in-long-term-interests-of-uk_uk_5702ecdee4b0c5bd919b90d0

Tornadoes - poor Moore

 

Lightning may not strike the same place twice, but tornadoes do.  Moore, Oklahoma, which was devastated yesterday, was also hit in 1999 and 2003.

This time winds of up to 200 mph flattened whole neighbourhoods.  Schools were destroyed, and at least 24 people have been killed.  President Obama has declared it a major disaster.  Tornadoes, hail and high winds also hit Iowa and Kansas. 

The 1999 tornado (pictured) caused devastation for nearly 40 miles, killing 41 people, destroying thousands of homes, and inflicting damage that cost more than $1 billion.    In 2003, houses, businesses, two hotels and a church were among the buildings destroyed or damaged.

The most devastating twister in US history was the Great Tri-State Tornado of 1925, which wrought havoc in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, killing around 700.  

* The fourth video in my series on Britain’s 20 Worst Military Disasters – the Anglo-Saxon Conquest is now up - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVC0oEVukmA

BP - Of spills and compensation

Before BP, America’s worst offshore oil accident was the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska. That was much smaller than BP (11 million gallons against 184 million so far). However, many experts believe the BP spill is likely to cause less damage because the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico will break up the oil much quicker.

The Exxon Valdez spill is reckoned to have killed more than 20 whales and a quarter of a million sea birds. Fishermen in the affected area say that herring were wiped out permanently, destroying their livelihood. So far the BP spill is known to have killed just less than 1,400 birds. But while BP is having to pay $20 billion in compensation, Exxon had to shell out just half a billion.

Here’s another interesting fact. President Obama has appointed Kenneth Feinberg to administer BP's $20 billion BP fund. Mr Feinberg also administered the compensation fund for 9/11, when nearly 3,000 people were killed. That paid out just $7 billion.

America’s, and the world’s, worst oil spill, incidentally, was probably the Lakeview Gusher in California, which released more than 370 million barrels over 18 months in 1910-11, flooding an entire valley.

A tale of two disasters - BP and BhoPal

BP has just put a new cap on its leaking oil well in the Gulf Of Mexico. It’s not clear yet whether this latest attempt to halt the flow of oil will work. The US government has been uncompromising in its punishment of BP. The clean-up has cost the company $3.5bn so far, and the Obama administration has forced it to set aside another $20bn to pay for further clean-up, compensation and other costs.

When an American company is the guilty party, though, US attitudes are rather different. Yesterday, protestors in India demanded the extradition from America of Warren Anderson. Mr Anderson was the boss of US company Union Carbide when cyanide gas leaked from its plant in Bhopal in 1984, and the Indian authorities have a warrant out for his arrest. The US has resisted all their efforts.

While the BP accident killed 11 people, Bhopal cost the lives of at least 3,800 in the immediate aftermath, while up to 20,000 more may have perished since, and perhaps another 120,000 are still suffering ill effects – making this probably the deadliest industrial accident in history.

So how many billions in compensation did Union Carbide pay? Er, no billions actually - just $470 million.

(See also my blogs of June 9 and Aug 1, 2009; March 17, April 24, May 1, June 7 and 9, 2010.)

Israel: "we're a bit sorry"

A year after its merciless assault on Gaza that killed 1,400 people, Israel has agreed to pay $10 million compensation to the United Nations for destroying or damaging stores, schools, offices and vehicles funded by the organisation in the desperately impoverished besieged enclave.

Israel claimed that Hamas fighters were operating near or in UN buildings, but a UN inquiry rejected its arguments, and accused the Israeli military of “negligence or recklessness”, saying that the deaths of civilians should be investigated under international law. In one of the worst incidents, Israel fired mortars in the "immediate vicinity" of a school being used to shelter Palestinians who had fled from their homes, killing up to 40 people.

Meanwhile, life for the Palestinians goes on much as usual. On Friday, three people, including a 14 year old boy, were killed by Israeli air strikes, the Egyptians have been preventing an aid convoy carrying much-needed clothing and medical equipment from crossing into the territory, and President Obama’s half-hearted attempts to establish a Palestinian state have got precisely nowhere.

Native Americans

President Obama is holding the first ever conference for all of America’s native Indians. Delegates from all 564 tribes have been invited to the White House as the president promised them a better deal.

Estimates of the number of native Americans before the appearance of the white man range as high as 18 million. Then they were killed in wars or by being driven from their lands, but most of all by disease.

With no immunity to the infections brought from Europe, they died in their thousands, from chicken pox, smallpox, measles. In 1618, smallpox wiped out 90% of the Massachusetts Bay native Americans.

A century and a half later, the disease reached the northwest coast, and killed off 30% of the Indians there. In the Puget Sound area, a population of 37,000 was reduced to just 9,000, and epidemics continued on into the nineteenth century. Today, there are about 2 million Indians left in the United States and about 1 million in Canada.

Lockerbie - fight for the truth

The fight to get to the bottom of what really happened 31,000 feet over Lockerbie on December 21st, 1988(see my blogs of July 27, Aug 16 and 22) has taken a fresh turn. Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was killed in Britain's worst ever terrorist outrage, has joined forces with the UN observer at Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi's trial, Hans Koechler, and Professor Robert Black, one of the architects of the trial, to urge the UN General Assembly to hold an inquiry into the bombing.

Prof Black says the normal approach would be to ask the Security Council to instigate such a move, but that the UK and the US would block it. However, they have no power of veto over the General Assembly.

Meanwhile al-Megrahi has posted a huge dossier on the internet as part of his own campaign to establish his innocence. It casts serious doubts on the evidence of the Maltese shopkeeper who was the only witness to link al-Megrahi to the bombing.

Scotland's top prosecutor has protested about the release of the documents, but the Libyan's lawyers may be about to make further revelations. Lockerbie is proving a bigger and bigger test for the Obama regime. Are we really going to get a new US politics based on honesty and openness or the same old deception and cover-up?

Bhopal, America and extradition + 1,000th anniversary

Almost 25 years after the world’s worst industrial disaster, a new arrest warrant has been issued for the former boss of the company responsible. When the Union Carbide pesticide plant at Bhopal in India leaked poison gas in the early hours of December 3, 1984, 2,000 people were killed in the next few hours, followed by at least 15,000 over the next few weeks. How many more have died from its effects in the years that followed is not known, but it is thought that more than half a million have been damaged in some way.

Warren Anderson was arrested soon after the disaster, but got bail, left India and has never returned. Now a court at Bhopal has asked the Indian government to seek his extradition from the United States. In view of the Obama regime’s intransigence in demanding the extradition of the British computer hacker Gary McKinnon, it will be interesting to see how it reacts if a request comes from another government to surrender a US citizen for alleged wrongdoing abroad.

On this day…..1,000 years ago, a fearsome Danish army landed in England. Over the next two and a half years, the Danes harried the land mercilessly – ravaging fifteen counties and burning down towns such as Oxford and Northampton.

Eventually in April 1012, they accepted £48,000 – an enormous sum in those days – to leave the country in peace, but not before they had murdered the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Danes had demanded a separate ransom for him, but he bravely insisted that nothing more should be paid, so they pelted him, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, with the “bones and heads of cattle” then split his skull open with an axe.

Palestine - a scandal ignored

The western media is devoting lots of space to the shenanigans over who is going to be Israel’s next Prime Minister, but suppresses news of how Israel continues to oppress the Palestinians in the territories it illegally occupies. People like the BBC present Benjamin Netanyahu as the right-wing Israeli candidate, with Tzipi Livni as the “centrist”! (Yes, that is the same Tzipi Livni who just a few short weeks ago massacred 1,300 Palestinians.)

What you can be sure of is that the outcome in Tel Aviv will make no difference to life for the millions of Palestinians living under an occupation that has now gone for 10 times as long as the Nazi occupation of France during World War Two. If you listen to those who support and bankroll the Israelis – Barrack Obama, Britain’s Labour government, the European Union – you will hear the refrain that if the Palestinians would just bow down to the Israelis, like Fatah has done in the West Bank, rather than resisting them, like Hamas is doing in Gaza, everything would be o.k.

Events on the ground constantly give the lie to that, but fortunately for our leaders, our media largely ignores them. Last week, Israeli troops invaded a West Bank village called Jayyous. They did the kind of things they did in the parts of Gaza they managed to penetrate – vandalising homes and schools, beating up local people, looting. They also kidnapped up to 90 people, to join more than 11,000 Palestinians they have already interned. These kidnappings go on the whole time. Last week the Israelis also abducted people from Jenin, Nablus, Ramallah and two other West Bank towns.

The reason for the assault on Jayyous appears to have been that local people had dared to mount peaceful protests against Israel’s Berlin-style wall which has robbed the village of thousands of olive and fruit trees in addition to a crucial part of its water supply. The Israelis are reportedly planning to use some of the land they have stolen to expand one of their settlements.

Israel breaks the ceasefire + a stormy anniversary

Just imagine if Hamas had fired off a rocket and injured an Israeli, what a song and dance there would have been from the British media and from Labour ministers. Well, on Friday, the Israelis shot another two Palestinian children and at least another three Palestinian adults and there was barely a peep. The adults do not even appear to have been part of the Palestinian resistance. Some of the victims were in a fishing boat which, according to the Israelis, had “strayed off course.” The Israeli gunboat also hit a number of other boats and a house on the shore.

And where is the Silent President? Mr Obama excused his uncharacteristic lack of loquacity during the massacre in Gaza on the grounds that he was not yet in office. But, I seem to remember he assured us, he would have much to say once he was. Well, we’re still waiting Mr President, and time is running out.

On this day.....250 years ago, of course, Robbie Burns was born. More significant for the disaster history blog, though, is that on January 25, 1990, the “Burns’ Day” storm hit southern England. Gusts of 87 miles an hour were recorded in London, and altogether, 47 people were killed, while the actor Gordon Kaye, star of ‘Allo, ‘Allo was seriously injured. The winds were less strong than in the “Great Storm” of just over two years before, but the death toll was much higher because this time the winds came during the day when there were more people out and about.

See The Disastrous History of London for the full story.