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Real men in government ...... use their position to sell weapons

 

by George Monbiot

 

Published in the Guardian (August 24 2006)

 

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/08/24/peace-is-for-wimps/

 

It's described by a senior official at the Ministry of Defence as "a dead duck ... expensive and obsolete". {1} The editor of World Defence Systems calls it "ten years out of date". {2} A former defence minister remarked that it is "essentially flawed and out of date" {3}. So how on earth did BAE Systems manage to sell 72 Eurofighters to Saudi Arabia on Friday?

 

One answer is that it had some eminent salesman. On July 2nd 2005, Tony Blair secretly landed in Riyadh to persuade the Saudi princes that this flying scrapheap was the must-have accessory every fashionable young despot would be buying {4}. Three weeks later the defence secretary John Reid turned up to deploy his subtle charms {5}. Somehow the deal survived, and last week his successor, Des Browne, signed the agreement. All of which raises a second question. Why are government ministers, even Blair himself, prepared to reduce themselves to hawkers on behalf of our arms merchants?

 

Readers of this column will know that British governments are not averse to helping big business, even when this conflicts with their stated policies. But the support they offer the defence industry goes far beyond the assistance they provide to anyone else.

 

Take the Defence Export Services Organisation (DESO), for example. This is a government agency founded forty years ago to smooth out foreign deals for British arms companies. From its inception, this smoothing involved baksheesh. It was established as a channel for "financial aids and incentives" to corrupt officials in foreign governments {6}.

 

In 2003, after bribery of this kind became illegal in the United Kingdom, the Guardian found an internal DESO document explaining its guidelines for arms sales. "In certain parts of the world", it said, "it has become commonplace for special commissions to be required. This is a matter for DESO, to whom all requests for special commission should be referred. If DESO confirm that such payments can be made, contracts staff may need to provide the means for payment" {7}. A "special commission" is civil service code for a bribe. The document suggests, in other words, that the British government is overseeing the payment of bribes to foreign officials.

 

BAE's previous deals with Saudi Arabia are surrounded by allegations of corruption. It is alleged to have run a GBP 60 million "slush fund" to oil the Al Yamamah contracts brokered by Margaret Thatcher. The fund is said to have been used to provide cash, cars, yachts, hotel rooms and prostitutes to Saudi officials {8}. One of the alleged beneficiaries was Prince Turki bin Nasser, the Saudi minister for arms procurement {9}. The Serious Fraud Office was bounced by the Guardian's revelations into opening an investigation. But among the conditions the Saudi government laid down for the new deal is that the investigation is dropped {10}. Let's see what happens.

 

With this exception, the big arms companies appear to have been granted immunity from inquiry or prosecution. Letters from the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, Sir Kevin Tebbit, show that he prevented the ministry's fraud squad from investigating the allegations against BAE; that he failed to tell his minister about the investigation by the Serious Fraud Office; and that he tipped off the chairman of BAE about the contents of a confidential letter the fraud office had sent him {11}. When the US government told him that BAE had allegedly engaged in corrupt practice in the Czech Republic, Sir Kevin failed to inform the police {12}.

 

For fourteen years, the government has suppressed a report by the National Audit Office into the Al Yamamah deals. Earlier this summer the auditor general refused even to hand it over to the Serious Fraud Office {13}. A parliamentary committee on arms exports published a report this month which expresses its repeated frustration over the government's reluctance to assist its inquiries {14}.

 

It also shows that Mark Thomas, the stand-up comedian, has done more to expose illegal arms deals than the Ministry of Defence, the Export Control Organisation and HM Revenue and Customs put together, simply by searching the internet and the trade press and attending the arms fairs the British government hosts. In response, the government has investigated not the companies, but the comedian. A confidential email from a civil servant suggested that the trade minister, Richard Caborn, was seeking to gather "background/dirt on him in order to rubbish him". {15} Caborn claims he was misrepresented.

 

The only arms dealers to have been prosecuted since 2000 are five very small fish. All of them escaped with a small fine or a suspended sentence, including a man who made repeated attempts to export military parts to Iran {16}. Compare this to the treatment of those who upset the arms industry. Nine anti-war campaigners in Derry who occupied the offices of the arms company Raytheon have just been charged with aggravated burglary and unlawful assembly {17}. If convicted, they could be imprisoned for years.

 

Every government policy designed to protect our national interests or promote world peace is torn up at the arms companies' request. They are not supposed to sell to dodgy regimes or countries in the midst of conflict. So let them first export their arms to the Channel Islands, from which they can be re-sold {18}. Weapons may not be exported to any country unless it shows "respect for human rights" {19}. So get the foreign office to note "a small but significant improvement" in the Saudi government's performance and use that as your excuse {20}.

 

Should we be surprised to find, as the Times revealed yesterday, that Israeli soldiers have found night-vision equipment made by a British company in Hizbullah bunkers? {21} Should we be surprised to discover that despite a government commitment to sell Israel "no weapons, equipment or components which could be deployed aggressively in the Occupied Territories" {22}, British companies have been supplying parts for its Apache helicopters and F-16 bombers? {23} The government seems to see the escalating dangers in the Middle East as nothing but an opportunity for business.

 

Perhaps most damning is this. Blair claims that Britain's security comes first. Yet one of the means by which his government managed to secure this deal was to speed it up. How? The Sunday Times reports that "the first 24 planes for the Saudis will be those at present allotted to the Royal Air Force, with the RAF postponing its deliveries until later in the production run". {24} In other words, the Saudis' perceived need for fighter planes takes precedence over our own.

 

So why does Her Majesty's Government behave like a subsidiary of BAE? A report by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) shows that 39% of all the senior public servants who go to work for the private sector are employees of the ministry of defence, moving into arms firms. In return, scores of arms dealers are seconded to the ministry {25}. The man who runs DESO, for example, previously worked for BAE, selling arms in the Middle East {26}.

 

CAAT lists the government committees stuffed with arms executives, the donations, the lobbyists, the Labour peers taking the corporate shilling, and I am sure all this plays an important role. But it seems to me that there is also something else at work. There appears to be a sense among some of those at the core of government that peace, human rights and democracy are for wimps, while the serious business, for real players, is war and the means by which it is enacted.

 

www.monbiot.com

 

References

 

1. No author, 9th November 2003. RAF's new Eurofighter force to be slashed by a third in defence cuts. The Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F11%2F09%2Fnmod09.xml&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=55495

 

2. ibid.

 

3. Alan Clark MP, 9th July 1997. In the House of Commons. Hansard Column

855. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199798/cmhansrd/vo970709/debtext/70709-02.htm

 

4. David Leigh and Ewen MacAskill, 27th September 2005. Blair in secret Saudi mission. The Guardian.

 

5. ibid.

 

6. Rob Evans, Ian Traynor, Luke Harding and Rory Carroll, 13th June 2003. Web of state corruption dates back 40 years. The Guardian.

 

7. You can find this document at the bottom of this page: http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,976559,00.html

 

See: DESO overview (page 2).

 

8. David Leigh and Rob Evans, 11th September 2003. BAE accused of arms deal slush fund. The Guardian.

 

9. David Leigh and Rob Evans, 6th October 2004. BAE denies GBP 60 million Saudi slush fund. The Guardian; Conal Walsh, 7th November 2004. BAE flies into storm over Saudi 'slush fund'. The Observer.

 

10. David Leigh and Ewen MacAskill, 27th September 2005, ibid.

 

11. David Leigh and Rob Evans, 13th October 2003. MoD chief in fraud cover-up row. The Guardian.

 

12. Rob Evans, Ian Traynor, Luke Harding and Rory Carroll, 12th June 2003. Politicians' claims put BAE in firing line. The Guardian; Rob Evans and Ian Traynor, 12th June 2003. US accuses British over arms deal bribery bid. The Guardian.

 

13. David Leigh and Rob Evans, 25th July 2006. Parliamentary auditor hampers police inquiry into arms deal. The Guardian.

 

14. House of Commons Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Trade and Industry Committees, 3rd August 2006. Strategic Export Controls: Annual Report for 2004, Quarterly Reports for 2005, Licensing Policy and Parliamentary Scrutiny. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmselect/cmquad/873/873.pdf

 

15. Rob Evans and David Hencke, 8th January 2001. Whitehall tried to smear comedian. The Guardian.

 

16. House of Commons Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Trade and Industry Committees, ibid.

 

17. Simon Basketter, 12th August 2006. Derry anti-war protesters, including Eamonn McCann, arrested after Raytheon occupation. Socialist Worker. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php?article_id=9465

 

18. House of Commons Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Trade and Industry Committees, ibid.

 

19. Criterion 2 of the EU Code on Arms Exports.

 

20. Foreign and Commonwealth Ofiice, 2005. Human Rights Annual Report. Cited by the House of Commons Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Trade and Industry Committees, ibid.

 

21. Bob Graham, Michael Evans and Richard Beeston, 21st August 2006. British kit found in Hezbollah bunkers. The Times.

 

22. House of Commons Defence, Foreign Affairs, International Development and Trade and Industry Committees, ibid.

 

23. Benjamin Joffe-Walt, 29th July 2006. Made in the UK, bringing devastation to Lebanon - the British parts in Israel's deadly attack helicopters. The Guardian.

 

24. Dominic O'Connell, 20th August 2006. BAE cashes in on GBP 40bn Arab jet deal. The Sunday Times.

 

25. Campaign Against the Arms Trade, February 2005. Who Calls the Shots? How government-corporate collusion drives exports. http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/government/who-calls-the-shots-0205.pdf

 

26. ibid; Rob Evans, Ian Traynor, Luke Harding and Rory Carroll, 13th June

2003, ibid.

 

 

Copyright (c) 2006 Monbiot.com

 

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Tuesday December 6, 2005 The Guardian (UK)

 

The most destructive crop on earth is no solution to the energy crisis

 

By promoting biodiesel as a substitute, we have missed the fact that it is worse than the fossil-fuel burning it replaces

 

by George Monbiot

 

Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic.

 

In 2003, the biologist Jeffrey Dukes calculated that the fossil fuels we burn in one year were made from organic matter "containing 44 x 1018 grams of carbon, which is more than 400 times the net primary productivity of the planet's current biota". In plain English, this means that every year we use four centuries' worth of plants and animals.

 

The idea that we can simply replace this fossil legacy - and the extraordinary power densities it gives us - with ambient energy is the stuff of science fiction. There is simply no substitute for cutting back. But substitutes are being sought everywhere. They are being promoted today at the climate talks in Montreal, by states - such as ours - that seek to avoid the hard decisions climate change demands. And at least one substitute is worse than the fossil-fuel burning it replaces.

 

The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent for my stance on the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they're not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel's destructive impact.

 

Before I go any further, I should make it clear that turning used chip fat into motor fuel is a good thing. The people slithering around all day in vats of filth are performing a service to society. But there is enough waste cooking oil in the UK to meet a 380th of our demand for road transport fuel. Beyond that, the trouble begins.

 

When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land use. Arable land that would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world's most carbon-intensive fuel.

 

In promoting biodiesel - as the EU, the British and US governments and thousands of environmental campaigners do - you might imagine that you are creating a market for old chip fat, or rapeseed oil, or oil from algae grown in desert ponds. In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

 

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia's federal land development authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant. His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam. Two foreign consortiums - one German, one American - are setting up rival plants in Singapore. All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

 

"The demand for biodiesel," the Malaysian Star reports, "will come from the European Community ... This fresh demand ... would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia's crude palm oil inventories." Why? Because it is cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.

 

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impact of palm oil production. "Between 1985 and 2000," it found, "the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia". In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest have been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares are scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5 million in Indonesia.

 

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting national park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orangutan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist. The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

 

Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they've cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.

 

The British government understands this. In a report published last month, when it announced that it would obey the EU and ensure that 5.75% of our transport fuel came from plants by 2010, it admitted "the main environmental risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and south-east Asia (for palm oil plantations)."

 

It suggested that the best means of dealing with the problem was to prevent environmentally destructive fuels from being imported. The government asked its consultants whether a ban would infringe world trade rules. The answer was yes: "Mandatory environmental criteria ... would greatly increase the risk of international legal challenge to the policy as a whole." So it dropped the idea of banning imports, and called for "some form of voluntary scheme" instead. Knowing that the creation of this market will lead to a massive surge in imports of palm oil, knowing that there is nothing meaningful it can do to prevent them, and knowing that they will accelerate rather than ameliorate climate change, the government has decided to go ahead anyway.

 

At other times it happily defies the EU. But what the EU wants and what the government wants are the same. "It is essential that we balance the increasing demand for travel," the government's report says, "with our goals for protecting the environment." Until recently, we had a policy of reducing the demand for travel. Now, though no announcement has been made, that policy has gone. Like the Tories in the early 1990s, the Labour administration seeks to accommodate demand, however high it rises. Figures obtained last week by the campaigning group Road Block show that for the widening of the M1 alone the government will pay £3.6bn - more than it is spending on its entire climate change programme. Instead of attempting to reduce demand, it is trying to alter supply. It is prepared to sacrifice the south-east Asian rainforests in order to be seen to be doing something, and to allow motorists to feel better about themselves.

 

All this illustrates the futility of the technofixes now being pursued in Montreal. Trying to meet a rising demand for fuel is madness, wherever the fuel might come from. The hard decisions have been avoided, and another portion of the biosphere is going up in smoke.

 

www.monbiot.com

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1659036,00.html

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