Random historical interlude #4: Long history of protest on Anzac day

In my previous post I stated that there has been a long history of intolerance of anti-war opinions in New Zealand, with the treatment of conscientious objectors being one example.

Today is the 30th anniversary of an action taken by four Wellingtonians on Anzac Day 1967, where they attempted to lay a wreath "To the dead and dying on both sides in Vietnam. Why must their blood pay the price of our mistakes?"

They were prevented from placing the wreath at the Cenotaph like other citizens. Despite one Returned Services Association (RSA) representative indicating they could lay it later (which they did), on doing so university lecturer Christopher Wainwright and student Christopher Butler were arrested by the police for disorderly behaviour and resisting the police. A judge later quashed the later charge, but upheld the other charge because they had presented "a point of view, however sincerely held, which they knew would be annoying to some and offensive to many". So much for free speech.

In 1970 the Christchurch Progressive Youth Movement (PYM) made a wreath from the poster of the My Lai massacre with the words "To the victims of Fascism in Vietnam". The Mayor of Christchurch at the time, Ron Guthrey, tore the wreath from the memorial and threw it away. It was put back later, only to be removed by the police. A Hamilton veteran of the Korean war turned his medals into Guthrey as a protest against the betrayal of the values for which he had fought.

A later Mayor of Christchurch, Neville Pickering, refused to attend the 1972 service as he believed the attempts the RSA to control the service, such as placing a cordon between the memorial and the crowd and vetting all inscriptions meant the ceremony was no longer a citizens service. The PYM attempted to place their wreath for the third successive year, only to have it thrown down, stamped on and utterly destroyed by the mob.

Mayor Pickering said "I can fully understand the sensitivity of former servicemen who watched their comrades being killed. But the older generation should show greater restraint and tolerance".

- Material sourced from Elsie Locke's excellent book 'Peace People'

Random Historical Interlude #3: UK helped Israel develop nuclear weapons

In September 1958 the UK agreed to supply heavy water without safeguards against military use, enabling Israel to produce nuclear weapons. This revelation follows an investigation by BBC newsnight reporters of documents in the British National Archives. Other files on the matter remain classified.

The 20 tonnes of heavy water were part of a consignment which Britain bought from Norway in 1956, but the UK later decided this was surplus to requirements. While UK officials attempted to make it look like sale from Norway to Israel, the heavy water was loaded onto Israeli ships docked in a British port, half in June 1959 and half a year later (for some reason 5 tonnes was left outstanding).

These officials also attempted to conceal the deal from the US, according to the files, and may not have consulted their own ministers before approving the sale. It appears civil servants in the Foreign Office and the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) approved the sale, without safeguards to prevent the heavy water from being put to military use, with one official scrawling that "It would be somewhat over-zealous for us to insist on safeguards".

The heavy water was a vital ingredient for the production of plutonium at Dimona, a secretly build underground reactor in the Negev desert of southern Israel (near Beersheba), built with French assistance. Frank Barnaby, who worked on the British bomb project in the 1950s says he had "no idea" about the sale, "heavy water was crucial for Israel...Therefore it was a significant part of their nuclear programme".

Like any country with a secret nuclear weapons programme, Israel lied about the true purpose of Dimona, and claimed it was a "manganese plant", yet the security measures employed suggest Dimona was far more important (a Libyan civilian airliner and a Israeli fighter were shot down for getting too close).

The released documents suggest money was the primary motivation for the sale. At the time the consignment of heavy water was worth £1.5m, or £20m in today's money.

In 1960 the UK Daily Express exposed the Israelis' work at Dimona, and highlighted the fact Israel was probably making a bomb. The following March, the UKAEA told the Norwegians they thought it was unlikely Israel could have the outstanding five tons, although the deal was commercially "attractive". This was, wrote Peirson, because of "the political sensitivity of Israel's nuclear activities".

Israel is thought to have exploded its first nuclear devices in the mid-1960s, possessing several dozen deliverable atomic bombs by the time of the 1973 war (when Israel went on full nuclear alert).

While the Guardian reports that the Eisenhower administration was "hostile to proliferation" and President Kennedy and his defence secretary Robert McNamara "strived" to stop Israel acquiring nuclear weapons, John Steinbach says the United States also helped Israel develop the bomb (Chomsky says the same thing).

Although the French and South Africans were primarily responsible for the Israeli nuclear program, the U.S. shares and deserves a large part of the blame. Mark Gaffney wrote (the Israeli nuclear program) "was possible only because of calculated deception on the part of Israel, and willing complicity on the part of the U.S.." From the very beginning, the U.S. was heavily involved in the Israeli nuclear program, providing nuclear related technology such as a small research reactor in 1955 under the "Atoms for Peace Program." Israeli scientists were largely trained at U.S. universities and were generally welcomed at the nuclear weapons labs. In the early 1960s, the controls for the Dimona reactor were obtained clandestinely from a company called Tracer Lab, the main supplier of U.S. military reactor control panels, purchased through a Belgian subsidiary, apparently with the acquiescence of the National Security Agency (NSA) and the CIA. In 1971, the Nixon administration approved the sale of hundreds of krytons(a type of high speed switch necessary to the development of sophisticated nuclear bombs) to Israel.

Israel has over 200 nukes, and people wonder why Iraq, and now Iran want weapons of mass destruction? In 2003 George Bush and Tony Blair attempted to use Security Council resolution 687 as a justification for the invasion of Iraq. While 687 provided no such authorisation, it did call for the elimination of Iraqi WMD and delivery systems as a step towards "the goal of establishing in the Middle East a zone free from weapons of mass destruction and all other missiles for their delivery and the objective of a global ban on chemical weapons." (Article 14). So if 687 is really to be upheld, then pressure must be put on Israel to disarm.

BBC - How Britain helped Israel get the bomb
Guardian - US kept in the dark as secret nuclear deal was struck
Guardian - How the UK gave Israel the bomb

Categories: Nuclear, Antiwar, Politics, Peace, Israel, International Law

Random Historical Interlude #2: Roman Emperor Constantine

Just watched an interesting documentary about Constantine the Roman Emperor, part of the BBC 'I, Caesar' series. I normally find I am not as interested in ancient as opposed to modern history, I suspect it came from the tendency of classics at school to emphasise 'storytelling' over historiography, and I have always had a preference for the later. But I did enjoy this episode of 'I, Caesar' :)

Constantine was the first Roman Emperor to take steps to remove the persecution of Christians in the Empire, effectively adopting Christianity as his imperial cult following the battle of Milvian Bridge on October 28, 312. The 'Edict of Milan' promoted religious freedom, whether it be Christian or Pagan, returned Church property and established Sunday as a day of worship (Sunday being a reference to the Sun God - so paganism was still a big influence). Christianity was very much a minority religion at this time, some of its unpopularity being due to its rejection of other peoples gods (has that changed?) and the clear preference of soldiers for paganism. It was estimated that only 2% to 10% of the population were Christian around this time.

The way Constantine went about his unofficial sponsorship of Christianity allowed him to achieve his political objectives, with his convoking of the Council of Nicaea in 325, a very deliberate mixer of Church and State. While those that continued to follow Paganism continued to gain appointments, right up to the end of Constantine's life, it was pretty clear that adopting Christianity could be a very shrewd political move for the elites surrounding the Emperor. Leading families who refused Christianity were denied positions of power. Yet most of the ordinary people/peasants kept to the old Pagan faith, some for a generation, some for a few more hundred years.

What struck me was the uncanny similarities to the European Reformation some 15 centuries later, where elites were the first to convert to Lutheranism (and then Calvinism), many for reasons of political expediency, some to ensure their head remained attached. Leading families who refused to 'recant their Catholism' were denied positions of power, while the peasants stayed with the Pope.

Near the end of his life Constantine went a bit paranoid, accused his eldest son Crispus and second wife Fausta of having an affair and had both of them killed (they were not mother and son so its not as Freudian as you might think). Constantine was baptised on his deathbed, thereby gaining absolution for his sins. There is something pretty cynical there (and a bit of Pascal's old wager). I guess Pope Urban’s promise of absolution for killing Muslims during the first crusade was another step worse.

Random Historical Interlude #1 Pissed pollys along the ages

As a new feature on this blog I thought I would start an infrequent series of 'random historical interludes' - incidents that may have happened long ago but have pertinant and/or amusing relevance for current events. Being somewhat of a history nut myself I often think a historical perspective is often entirely missed by a mainstream media obsessed with today at the expense of forgetting yesterday.
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#1 Pissed Polly's Along the Ages
In one of my favorite episodes of 'Yes, Minister' the Right Honourable Jim Hacker thinks of a cunning way to get through a long state function in Kumran where there is no alcohol. "You mean, Islamic law?"..."Five hours, without a single drinkie?"

He instructs Humphrey to set up an 'special communications room' and fill it cases of booze bought in from the British embassy to "liven up the orange juice". During the reception he receives a number of urgent 'messages' from the communications room, from notable lumanaries such as Mr Haig and John Walker (from the Scotch office). "The Soviet embassy is on the line Sir Humphrey, a Mr Smirnoff".

It was with some amusement I found a remarkably similiar incident described in Rob Muldoon's 1974 autobiography 'The Rise and Fall of a Young Turk'. Labour MP Mabel Howard told Muldoon that Walter Nash had a jug of orange juice on the table at state functions - laced with gin. Muldoon also recalls a reception where he went to take a glass of orange juice from a tray only to be told by the Scottish head waitress, 'Oh no, Mr Muldoon, that's for Mr Nash, that's the one with the gin in it'.

Having a couple of drinkies at a function or reception is one thing, but making decisions on behalf of the country while drunk is quite another. Ten years after the publication of 'Young Turk' Muldoon would call a snap election while chemically inconvenienced, in the full glare of TV cameras to capture his glaze.

During the National/NZ First coalition it was widely rumoured that Jim Bolger and Winston Peters ran the country over a whisky bottle.

If politicians feel the need to pontificate about the dangers of mind altering substances, perhaps there needs to be an audit of how much booze there is in certain parliamentary offices. In the day and age of EFTPOS and credit card transactions it would be relatively simple to add up how much each MP spent in 3.2 in a year. When MPs are conducting important state business, in or out of the house, should they be as dry as Kumran?

With attention on the contents of their own drug cabinets, perhaps MPs would suddenly lose interest in shallow politically motivated campaigns to raise the drinking age, especially as the problems associated with NZ drinking culture predated the lowering of the age to 18, demonstrating any causal link to be a sideshow at best.