TALIBAN'S BFF

China Says Taliban Government Must Reform to Get Recognized

Bloomberg News
Tue, 5 December 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- China said the Taliban government in Afghanistan should make major changes to its style of governance in order for Beijing to officially recognize it.

“We expect Afghanistan to respond to the expectations of the international community and apply moderate policy, have friendly exchanges and engagement with regional countries and other countries in the world, and return back to the big family of the world as soon as possible,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a regular briefing Tuesday in Beijing.

If those conditions were reached, “it would be natural for China to recognize the government of Afghanistan,” Wang said. “China always believes that Afghanistan should not be excluded from the international community.”

The comments mark a subtle shift in China’s stance toward the Taliban because Beijing has previously said it won’t interfere in Afghanistan’s affairs. Since ousting the US-backed government and taking power in 2021, Taliban-led Afghanistan has yet to gain full diplomatic recognition from any country largely because of its repressive policies toward women, including banning them from education and work.

A handful of nations, like China, Pakistan and Russia, have accepted Taliban diplomats in their countries even though they don’t formally recognize the government. The Taliban also took control of Afghan diplomatic missions in India late last month.

Read: Taliban Gets Diplomatic Lift as China Envoy Presents Credentials

Beijing is building closer ties with the Taliban as it seeks to gain influence in the South Asian country after the US withdrawal. In September, China became the first nation whose ambassador presented diplomatic credentials to the Taliban. A subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corp. also signed an agreement with the Taliban to extract oil from the northern Amu Darya basin.

Afghanistan sent Alhaj Nooruddin Azizi, the minister of industry and commerce, to the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing in October. Chinese leader Xi Jinping used the event to woo emerging economies known as the Global South to his infrastructure initiative — and also make his case for challenging the US-led world order.

Azizi said his government wanted to prioritize investment from China in agriculture, mining and energy.

More: How New Taliban Crackdown Fits in Afghan Women’s Saga: QuickTake

(Updates with more context.)

Opinion

Centrists are out of favour. But as the Netherlands is learning, the alternative is far worse

Arnon Grunberg

THE GUARDIAN
Wed, 6 December 2023

Photograph: Jeroen Jumelet/EPA

It has become something of a cliche to reflect on the state of your country after you have woken up to – putting it somewhat euphemistically – disappointing election results.

Be it the Brexit referendum in 2016, Donald Trump’s victory mere months after that, or the election victory of Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, the reactions were very similar. Analysts claimed that voters hadn’t been properly listened to and that neoliberalism had left a trail of destruction, and the failure of the left was pointed out. Then came the obligatory mention of the elite, who are said to have alienated part of the electorate. The citizen no longer recognises himself in the administrators. As if citizens would have done so a few decades ago.

To be fair, the Netherlands was once “pillarised”. Before being secularised, people were Catholic, Protestant, Reformed, socialist or liberal, and for as long as most citizens remained loyal to those pillars, they sought politicians for whom the same applied. Secularisation and depillarisation were considered a great liberation – the somewhat sentimental sense that something had been lost in that liberation only set in later. What was left of you without a pillar to cling to? “Dutch” turned out to be too feeble as an identity on its own. As Queen Máxima put it in 2007, when she was still a princess: “The Dutchman does not exist.”


And it is equally uncertain whether such a thing as Dutch politics even still exists. Since 2001, the year of the attacks in New York and Washington, so-called centrist parties have been steadily weakening in almost all countries in the west. In France, first Jean-Marie Le Pen and now Marine Le Pen, with her National Rally, hollowed out the electorate of both the socialists and the traditional right, and in Flanders the far-right Vlaams Belang proved particularly alluring to many voters – so alluring that many Flemish people wanted to liberate themselves not only from foreigners but from the Belgian state itself.

In the US, as Trump and then Trumpism took over the Republican party, some American evangelists probably saw and see in Trump the antichrist who brings the coming of the messiah closer. Some Americans appeared charmed by Trump’s uninhibited “honesty”; something that the Dutch populist Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered in 2002, also prided himself on: “I say what I think.”

Although certain aspects of Wilders’ win particularly pertain to the Dutch context, it fits within a wider international development. The western nation state appears to be less unique than many of its residents had hoped, although many Dutch people like to look at their own country through a narrow lens, undoubtedly in the hope of preserving some of their uniqueness.

Larry Bartels, an American political scientist, has claimed that the pool of Europeans willing to vote for anti-democratic parties is stable, so that there is no question of a jerk to the right. But the results in the Netherlands still point towards a gradual erosion of the left, and towards the almost complete decimation of the centrist parties. The Christian Democratic CDA landed a historically poor result, with five seats (out of 150), and the merger of the social democratic PvdA and the liberal-ecological GroenLinks got less than half of what both parties tallied separately in the 1970s and 1980s. A large minority or a small majority of the Dutch electorate finds progressive ideals, to use a populist turn of phrase, zum kotzen.

After freeing themselves from the church, people want to liberate themselves from the secularised counterpart of Christianity, humanism, also called social democracy. It is not without reason that the right wing of the electorate likes to use the phrase, always with mild disgust, “leftist church” to refer to their opponents inside politics and beyond. Unlike in the US, many Dutch people believe that religion is something for the stupid, for people who are not yet enlightened.

This does not refute Bartels’ theory, but in the Netherlands the claim can be made: if the pool of antidemocratic or extreme rightwing voters is indeed stable and not growing, then this reservoir comprises at least 25% of the Dutch electorate. What matters is that this minority is so large that, for some time now, every election has contained the real risk of a pivotal disruption.

Bartels exonerates the people as a group; it is the politicians who must lead the sheep in the right direction. After all, the voter is being seduced. It is a sympathetic idea: people are susceptible to temptation, and perhaps it is a characteristic of an ageing democracy that there is never a shortage of people willing to seduce them. The era when politicians accepted that there were limits to how they could mobilise voters, that breaking taboos didn’t guarantee liberation, undoubtedly also upheld by the memory of the massacres of two world wars, is behind us.

The centre is drying up, in some countries faster than in others, but the trend is observable almost everywhere. That centre is all too easily portrayed as elitist, oblivious to the concerns of the so-called ordinary citizen, sometimes even as the corrupt extension of the business world or as a proxy for foreign powers. Some of these accusations are justified. The Netherlands has seen government officials leaving politics only to become lobbyists for the industry they were formerly supposed to regulate. Not good. But to dismiss the entire centre is an antidemocratic reflex that can only cause harm. That reflex is also present in the left knee: some progressive analysts, thinkers and politicians have seemed in recent years to have a keen desire to declare the Dutch universe the worst of all possible universes, undoubtedly in the hope of bringing about the desired revolution. They are unwilling to see that their rhetoric did not help the progressive cause, but provided antidemocratic and far-right forces with new ammunition and new impulses.

For this reason, in 2021, I spoke up for the Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, who was facing the prospect of resigning because he was accused of lying about the process of forming his government. I believed that Rutte was the katechon, a concept from the New Testament, the opposing force that delays the arrival of the antichrist (the far-right parties). In practice, Rutte was a relatively left-leaning rightwing politician who, in terms of pragmatism, prudence and strategic finesse, had much in common with Angela Merkel, still a hero for many progressive Dutch people. Where Rutte participated in elections, he kept the PVV reasonably small; that was his merit.

This summer, Rutte announced his departure, thereby bringing an end to the katechon in Dutch politics. Who should take his place in countering the antidemocratic forces in the Netherlands is unclear. Wilders’ party has grown so large that it will be difficult to govern without him.

Ironically, most electoral arsonists never intended to start a wildfire. They merely wanted to modestly express their understandable dissatisfaction, which also entails expectations no government will ever be able to meet. Perhaps only a god could. But in the Netherlands and its surroundings, God has finally been declared dead, for ever.

Arnon Grunberg is a Dutch novelist and essayist

Russia sees shrunken, neutral Ukraine as basis for peace 

SAME OLD, SAME OLD


AFP
Wed, 6 December 2023 

Maria Zakharova said for any peace deal to happen, Ukraine should have neutral status

 (Roman PILIPEY)

Russia believes a lasting peace with Ukraine can only happen if the West stops sending arms and if Kyiv accepts "new territorial realities", Russia's foreign ministry told AFP.

Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in an interview that Moscow was open to negotiations but added: "At the moment, we do not see the political will for peace either in Kyiv or in the West".

She also said that, for any deal to happen, Ukraine should have neutral status and the rights of Russian-speaking residents should be protected.

"We will not allow the existence on our borders of an aggressive Nazi state from whose territory there is a danger for Russia and its neighbours," she said.

Russia has for years tried to paint the pro-Western Ukrainian government led by President Volodymyr Zelensky -- who is Jewish -- as neo-Nazi and used this as a pretext for its offensive in Ukraine.

Zakharova also dismissed the "peace formula" proposed by Zelensky which includes a stipulation that Russian troops must leave all of Ukraine.

She said Kyiv's proposal put forward last year "has nothing to do with peace and is an array of ultimatums for Russia to justify continued military action".

- Ukraine wants Russian 'capitulation' -

Zakharova accused Kyiv of not wanting to "take into account current realities and... pursuing a completely different aim -- the capitulation of our country with the help of the West".

"Of course, based on these conditions, we will not speak with anyone from the Ukraine leadership," she added.

Zakharova added however that Moscow could restore a grain deal that allowed Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea, but only if Western sanctions on Russian agriculture companies were lifted.

"The possibility of reviving the Black Sea initiative remains," she said in a series of written answers to questions.

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022, triggering unprecedented Western sanctions that have largely isolated Russia from the West.

Zakharova said that those sanctions had "boomeranged" on the West and had instead had the effect of "confirming the Russian state's international authority".

Moscow has since redirected much of its vital oil and gas exports to China and India, and imposed currency controls to prop up its volatile currency, the ruble.

- Western sanctions 'boomeranged' -

The Russian economy shrank in 2022, but started to grow again in the second quarter of this year despite rising inflation rates.

"The collective West's illegal restrictions have not diminished Russia's geopolitical influence," Zakharova said.

On the first anniversary of the conflict this year, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a full Russian withdrawal from Ukraine.

The resolution was backed by 141 member states, with 32 countries including China and India abstaining, and seven countries including North Korea voting against.

But Zakharova pointed out that a large majority -- 80 percent -- of the world's population lived in countries that have not adopted any sanctions against Russia.

Instead, she said Moscow's ties with many countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America are developing "steadily" despite "desperate" efforts by the West to turn them against Russia.

She said new systems for interbank relations, international settlements and trade routes not tied to the West were "being actively developed and set up".

In Asia, she said China was "a like-minded partner" with whom Russia was pursuing ties based on "comprehensive partnership and strategic co-operation".

She said Russia was also strengthening relations with North Korea and accused the US of "pursuing a path of escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula by increasing miliary activity".

"This US course is dangerous and fraught with serious consequences," she said.

During a visit to Seoul in November, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that military ties between North Korea and Russia are "growing and dangerous", and urged China to restrain Pyongyang.

Zakharova said Russia would support any country with a foreign policy not aligned with the West, offering "honest and good-faith co-operation not based on diktat".

bur/rox

How Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for hollow security guarantees

The New Voice of Ukraine
Wed, 6 December 2023

DRAMATIS PERSONAE


Mikhail Gorbachev
Leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991

Leonid Kuchma
The second president of Ukraine


Bill Clinton
42nd President of the United States

Leonid Kravchuk
Ukrainian politician


George H. W. Bush
President of the United States from 1989 to 1993



LONG READ



Preparation of the SS-19 ballistic missile for dismantling at the base in Vakulenchuk, Zhytomyr region

For three years in the early 1990s, Washington encouraged Kyiv to abandon its nuclear arsenal. In December 1994, having finally gotten the upper hand, the United States provided Ukraine with vague promises of assistance should the young country face military aggression.

On the occasion of the 29th anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum, NV is re-releasing material from its archives which was first published in Issue No. 4 of NV magazine dated February 2, 2018.

Under four hundred words was all that it took to decide the fate of the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, which Ukraine had inherited from the Soviet Union.


These words were packaged into six paragraphs, and the entire document, known as the Budapest Memorandum, took up only one and a half pages. It was signed on December 5, 1994, by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, the United States, and the UK.

From that moment, Kyiv recognized its non-nuclear status and as such joined the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).

In the memorandum signed by then-President Leonid Kuchma, the procedure for the protection of the country voluntarily renouncing its most powerful weapons was merely outlined. In addition, in the Ukrainian and Russian versions, the text was titled as Memorandum on Security Guarantees, whereas in English, it used the word “assurances.” And in the following five points of the document, the United States and the UK did not guarantee, but only confirmed their commitment to: 1) respect the independence of Ukraine within its existing borders; 2) never use any weapon against its territorial integrity; 3) refrain from economic pressure on Ukraine which would threaten its sovereignty; 4) to provide assistance to the country in case of aggression against it; 5) not use nuclear weapons against the country. The sixth and last commitment of the signatories was a promise to advise Ukraine if any of the above five situations arise.

Two days after the summit, the secretariat of the UN General Assembly registered a letter from the permanent representatives of the four signatory countries. "We would be grateful if you had the text of this letter and its appendix (in fact, the memorandum itself), accepted for circulation as a document of the General Assembly," the officials wrote in the message. From Russia, the letter was signed by Sergey Lavrov, the current head of the Russian Foreign Ministry, who recently assured: "We continue to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine in those borders that were formed after the referendum in Crimea and after the reunification of Crimea with the Russian Federation."

Ukrainian Tu-22 strategic bomber being dismantled AP

Catching the moment

On Sunday, February 12, 1989, three weeks after his inauguration, President George H. W. Bush gathered six leading experts on the Soviet Union at his home in Kennebunkport. They consulted in the bedroom — the only room that was heated in winter. "I am not very interested in political recommendations regarding the USSR. That can wait," Bush said. "First, we need to know what's going on there and what we're dealing with."

At that time, the Soviet Union was already crumbling before our eyes. Opposition movements had recently declared themselves in all the sister republics. The Kremlin suppressed their activity by force.

The January 1991 events in Lithuania were the most revealing. There was an uprising in Vilnius, during which Soviet paratroopers and the Alpha special forces unit stormed the opposition-held television center. Fifteen protestors were killed, the Kremlin blocked gas deliveries to the republic, and all of this was shown live by the Western media. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev denied giving the order to fire on the protestors, but his worldwide popularity as a reformer suffered greatly because of the events.

On the eve of the London Summit of the Seven World Leaders (G-7) in May 1991, the world press trumpeted the economic collapse of the Soviet Union and its astronomical foreign debts. Gorbachev, who had been invited to attend, was called a "poor communist." Reluctantly, he went to London.

Ed Hewett, Bush's aide, then persuaded his Soviet colleague Andriy Kokoshin, with whom he was preparing a meeting: "For God's sake, just don't ask for money." But the Kremlin urgently needed financial assistance and debt restructuring to strengthen the ruble and to purchase consumer goods.

The humiliated Gorbachev hoped for at least a hint of possible membership in the G-7, but he was dismissed as a careless schoolboy. Then he started talking about reducing nuclear weapons with the confidence that this was his "trump card". Bush was waiting for exactly that, and on July 30, he was already in Moscow.

The first conversation with Gorbachev, already the president of the USSR, was spoiled by the news of the murder of six Lithuanian customs officers by a group of unknown persons. “Indignant at the fact that it was Bush who informed him about the violence committed on what was, in his opinion, still Soviet territory, Gorbachev declared: 'This is the first I've heard of this’ and ordered his subordinates to find out what happened,” writes Strobe Talbott (Bush's adviser on the USSR) in the book At the Highest Levels: The Story of the End of the Cold War.

In private conversations at Gorbachev's dacha, Bush gently insisted that Moscow recognize the independence of the three Baltic republics. The master of the Kremlin asked to give him one more day to think, but at the end of the visit, he did not budge on this issue.

However, the leaders of the two countries signed an agreement on the reduction of strategic offensive weapons (START-1) on 47 pages and 700 sheets of protocols. Both signed the document with fountain pens made of the same metal as the medium-range missiles banned by the treaty.

The next day, August 1, Bush left for Kyiv.

1990 cartoon depicting Gorbachev begging H.W. Bush for cash AP

Chicken Kyiv

In March 1991, nine republics of the USSR held a referendum on the renewal of the Union Treaty. The Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia, and Moldova did not participate. In the referendum, 70% of Ukrainians voted to preserve the Union.

But at the same time, in the Lviv, Ternopil, and Ivano-Frankivsk oblasts, the referendum also included the question, “Do you want Ukraine to become an independent state?” 88% of citizens answered "yes." In particular, and because of these sentiments, Kyiv was in no hurry to sign the updated union treaty.

Bush flew to the Ukrainian capital to calm these centrifugal forces, but in fact only intensified them. Gorbachev refused to fly with Bush so as not to be in his shadow. In his stead, he sent Vice President Gennady Yanaev, an old apparatchik. “The Ukrainians took advantage of his presence to show their guts to the Kremlin,” writes Talbott. Hewett noted that they treated him more like ‘the head of the All-Union Association of Lepers.’ During the breakfast held between the U.S. and Ukrainian delegations, the languages ​​of communication were English and Ukrainian. Yanaev did not speak either of them, and his face sometimes showed boredom, then irritation.”

Then came Bush's historic address to the Verkhovna Rada, the Ukrainian parliament. It had been prepared over the course of several weeks, and the final text was drawn up by Condoleezza Rice, then an assistant to the president. The head of the White House did not condemn Ukrainians’ desire for independence, but directly called on them to remain in union with Russia.

"Freedom is not the same as independence," said Bush. “Americans will not support those who seek independence to replace tyranny from the center with local despotism. They will not help those who promote suicidal nationalism based on ethnic hatred.”

Although the Rada responded to Bush's speech with applause, the last sentence angered many in the chamber. Ivan Drach, the leader of the People's Movement, the most powerful party which stood for Ukraine’s sovereign rights, declared, “Bush came here as an envoy of Gorbachev. He spoke about Ukrainian independence no less radically than our own communists!"

Soon, the New York Times published a column by William Safire, a speechwriter for former President Richard Nixon. He accused Bush of pandering to Moscow's hegemony against the course of history. As an illustration, Safire mentioned the president's speech in the Rada, calling it "stunning, in the style of Chicken Kiev speech.” This moniker soon became a meme and continued to affect the president greatly.

Just a few days later, on Aug. 18, 1991, Communist Party officials, led by the same Yanaev, tried to force Gorbachev out of office and curtail the perestroika. But by Aug. 22, the conspirators were in handcuffs, and one by one the Soviet republics declared independence.

Kravchuk and H.W. Bush in Kyiv's St. Sophia Cathedral, 1991 AP

A difficult divorce

In December 1991, the leaders of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus reached an agreement on withdrawing from the USSR. Since Presidents Leonid Kravchuk, Boris Yeltsin, and the Chairman of the Parliament of the Belarusian SSR Stanislav Shushkevich signed the document late at night, they informed Bush about it immediately. While it was daytime in the United States, Gorbachev was asleep, and would have to wait until morning.

A couple of weeks later, the Soviet president resigned.

The West won the Cold War, but now, in addition to Russia, the successor of the USSR, independent Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan joined the ranks of nuclear powers.

As of the end of 1991, Kyiv inherited 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles: 130 liquid-fueled SS-19s with six warheads each and 46 solid-fueled SS-24s with ten warheads per missile. It also had about 40 strategic bombers, along with 1,514 to 2,156 strategic nuclear warheads and from 2,800 to 4,200 tactical ones.

With economic carrots and sticks, Washington led Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus to joining START-1 in Lisbon in May 1992. Alma-Ata and Minsk soon accepted the NPT, after which they immediately began to get rid of their nuclear arsenals. Kazakhstan even managed to sell 600 kg of uranium from dismantled warheads to the United States.

The Verkhovna Rada ratified the Lisbon Protocol only six months later, agreeing to surrender 42% of the nuclear arsenal with thirteen conditions on safety and financial compensation.

Russia has constantly provoked resistance to giving up nuclear weapons. In 1992, the Russian Supreme Soviet began to study whether Crimea was legally transferred to Ukraine. A year later, Moscow parliamentarians declared Sevastopol to be a Russian city. Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federation, said that he was ashamed of this decision, but the confrontation only grew.

In November 1993 in the Crimean town of Massandra, the presidents of Russia and Ukraine agreed on a 50/50 division of the Black Sea Fleet. Kyiv did this in order to repay an $800 million natural gas debt to Moscow. However, 80% of the ships in the fleet raised Russian flags, and Yeltsin did not react to this in any way.

In March 1994, referenda were held simultaneously in Crimea and Donbas, despite Kyiv's declarations that they were illegal. More than 80% of the inhabitants of the peninsula demanded dual citizenship — Ukrainian and Russian — and wanted greater powers for the Crimean President. In February, Yurii Meshkov was elected to this post. Residents of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts voted in favor of a federal system and Russian as a second state language.

Bill Clinton and Leonid Kravchuk in 1994 AP

Vain hopes

Throughout 1992, Kyiv and Washington assessed the cost of disposing of Ukraine's nuclear arsenal. Kravchuk eventually put the sum at $174 million. Washington added another million. But the Kyiv soon realized that it had greatly underestimated the price.

With the inauguration of Bill Clinton in January 1993, Kyiv had hopes for Washington being more generous.

Roman Popadyuk, the first U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, wrote in a report: on January 20, on the day of President Clinton’s inauguration, the ambassador was visited by Dmytro Pavlychko, the head of the international affairs committee of the Verkhovna Rada. He handed Popadyuk a draft treaty, according to which the United States would undertake to provide military aid to Ukraine in the event of an attack on it.

The ambassador also reported on Kravchuk's phone conversation with the White House on June 12, 1993: “[Clinton] expressed his willingness to extend food credits and grants. From the G-7, Kravchuk requested funding in the amount of $100 million for small businesses, a stabilization fund between $1 and $1.5 billion, and $300 million for privatization and solving problems with Chornobyl.”

But back in March, the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Anatolii Zlenko, called for an amount of $2.8 billion. His subordinate, Oleh Bilorus, who was Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, had already announced $3 billion in compensation and the same amount for disposal costs.

Meanwhile, then Prime Minister Leonid Kuchma convinced the Rada to keep 46 solid-fuel missiles, which were the most effective ones.

The statement from Kuchma –the previous director of Pivdenmash, the missile factory at which the nuclear power of the USSR was forged – alarmed the West for good reason.
Stops on the way

Clinton paused until Kravchuk tried to take an even stronger position. On January 14, 1994, a summit of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and the United States on disarmament issues was scheduled in Moscow. But on the eve of the meeting, the press reported that Kravchuk was unlikely to take part in it, as he would be busy receiving the President of Kazakhstan.

Clinton apparently found out about this while already on the way to Russia on January 12. He dialed a Ukrainian colleague directly from aboard Air Force One, informing him that he would fly to Kyiv before Moscow. In Boryspil, Kravchuk waited half an hour in the cold for his guest to disembark his plane. They spoke for an hour and a half right there at the airport.

“Clinton and Christopher [Warren, the Secretary of State], who were not in the habit of reprimanding heads of state, made an exception this time,” They told Kravchuk as bluntly as possible that if he reneged on the agreement already reached, it would be a serious step backwards in Ukraine's relations with both Russia and the United States." Kravchuk, who, according to Talbott, was "shaking all over," promised Clinton not to throw out any tricks at the last minute.

Two days later, in the Russian capital, the three presidents signed a joint statement on the conditions for the accession of Russia and Ukraine to the NPT. Moscow received $60 billion for reducing its nuclear arsenal, while Kyiv agreed to completely dismantle its own in exchange for assurances of U.S. support and $900 million.

“I said that we should agree: the word guarantee in the English document will be understood as an assurance,” writes ex-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Stephen Pifer, who was a member of the commission for the preparation of the statement. “It was important for us, as in our language, guarantees are like a commitment to NATO or Japan – it presupposes a response by U.S/ forces. We explained to the Ukrainians that in case of a violation of the memorandum, we are not ready to give Ukraine military guarantees. Kyiv understood this. It was their choice."

The statement fundamentally contradicted the Lisbon Treaty on the partial disarmament of Ukraine. The Verkhovna Rada accused Kravchuk of exceeding his powers, and he agreed to early presidential elections, which he lost to Leonid Kuchma.

The former Pivdenmash director quickly forgot about the 46 missiles. In November, four months after his election, new Ukrainian President Kuchma convinced the Rada to have Ukraine join the NPT as a non-nuclear country. For some reason, he spoke about the closed cycle of production of nuclear warheads, for which ten years and $200 billion would be needed. “Who will stand up and say to whom all the property of Ukraine should be pledged in order to make it happy with its own nuclear arsenal?” asked the new president.

On November 18, the Rada approved the decision to abandon the country’s nuclear weapons, but with the caveat that the NPT would be ratified only after clear security guarantees from the United States and Russia.

December 1994 summit where Ukraine agreed to dismantle its nuclear arsenal AP

Behind the scenes of the summit

At the beginning of December 1994, the heads of 53 states arrived in Budapest. Despite all the interest in the summit, its organization was not up to par. The negotiations took place in the four-star Novotel hotel, where there were only six rooms for official meetings.

Dmytro Tkach, the Ukrainian ambassador to Hungary, was responsible for arranging the Ukrainian delegation. The organizers provided only one car – just for the president. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had no money, so the delegation was accommodated at the hotel itself. The head of Kuchma’s administration at the time, Dmytro Tabachnyk, ordered only the presidential suite in the old Gelert Hotel for Kuchma himself.

Tkach asked the Novotel's director for his office for meetings of the head of the Ukrainian delegation. In two days, Kuchma held 26 negotiations there.

On the eve of the signing of the memorandum, the Kazakh diplomats made a fuss, arguing that the United States should give guarantees to their country and Belarus, as well. Kyiv did not agree to accept Minsk and Alma-Ata into its company, since they had given up their weapons earlier. Tkach succeeded in persuading the Americans to have Clinton and Yeltsin separately sign security assurances with the Kazakhs and with the Belarusians. "[Alexander] Lukashenko and [Nursultan] Nazarbayev each owe us a bottle," Kuchma blurted out after learning about it.

But even so, one of the Ukrainian diplomats drank too much during the summit and fell asleep in the bathroom with the tap open, flooding the three lower floors. “The repairs cost a lot of money,” recalls Tkach. “I explained to the director that this diplomat will be fired from his job, and even if he sells an apartment in Kyiv, he won’t be able to settle the bill. It's good that we had a good relationship with the hotel, and that it was owned by the state at the time. The case was settled.”

After signing a memorandum that duplicated the Moscow statement, the different understanding of the guarantees was soon forgotten – first and foremost because none of the strategists of the signatory countries was able to aticipate possible threats to Ukraine at that time.

MAKING THE HEGEMON BLUSH

Putin seeks to humiliate Biden by showing him that attempts to isolate Russia have failed


Tom Porter
Updated Wed, 6 December 2023

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) and Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman attend the G20 Leaders' Summit in Buenos Aires, on November 30, 2018

.LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP via Getty Images

Russian President Vladimir Putin is making a rare trip to the Middle East.


He'll visit the UAE and Saudi Arabia, traditionally US allies.


Putin is seeking to show attempts to isolate him over Ukraine have failed.

Only months ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin's grip on power appeared to be loosening.

The Russian president faced a coup from the Wagner mercenary force in Ukraine. At the same time, he was battling spiraling domestic economic woes caused by sanctions imposed in punishment for the Ukraine invasion and was the subject of an international arrest warrant over alleged war crimes committed by his forces.

It appeared that President Joe Biden's bid to weaken Putin and make him a global pariah over the Ukraine war was beginning to work.

But the Russian president is clawing back the initiative. He is making a rare trip to the Middle East today as he seeks to embarrass Biden by showing him that attempts to isolate Russia have failed.

Putin is visiting the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, traditionally two of the US' closest allies in the Middle East.

It's among the first trips Putin has made abroad since the International Criminal Court issued the arrest warrant in March, with neither of the Gulf states signatories of the Rome convention.

Analysts told Business Insider that he will use the visit to try and drive a wedge between Washington and the Arab states, and expose the limits of US power.

Putin exploits Arab rage over US support for Israel

Near the top of the agenda will likely be the Israel-Hamas war, where Putin has sought to exploit rage in the Arab world over Biden's support for Israel's bombing of Gaza in response to Hamas' terrorist attacks.

Hamas' attacks on October 7th killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities. Gazan health authorities say Israel's subsequent strikes killed more than 16,000 people.

Putin has said the West's support for Israel exposes its hypocrisy, with the US having sought to rally global support for isolating Russia by citing the Russian massacre of civilians in Ukraine.

He has even sought to compare Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine to the Palestinian fight against Israel's US-backed government, as part of a battle against broader US global dominance.

"Putin's government has reacted to the carnage in Gaza in ways that serve to boost Russia's soft power influence in the wider Arab-Islamic world, while also taking advantage of an opportunity to have international attention shift away from the Russian invasion and occupation of parts of Ukraine," explained Giorgio Cafiero, CEO of Washington, DC, consultancy Gulf State Analytics.

Putin will also be seeking to expose how Western attempts to isolate Russia economically have failed.

Despite Western attempts to cut off Russia's oil exports, Russia is recording record oil profits, as nations including India and Brazil — which have refused to take part in the Western embargo of Russia — buy up cheap Siberian oil.

The Kremlin has worked closely with Gulf states to control oil production and keep prices competitive. The Saudis even got into a diplomatic spat with the White House last year when they rejected demands to increase production and instead sided with the Kremlin to reduce it.

Arab states defy the US

The wealthy Gulf states, and much of the so-called "global south" of poorer developing nations, have largely rejected US appeals for them to isolate Russia.

Instead, the UAE and Saudis have sought to use the conflict to assert their independence on the global stage. By hosting the West's arch-enemy Putin in Abu Dhabi and Riyadh, they are sending a very clear message.

"They are not taking orders from the United States, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia working very closely with Russia sends a message to Washington about the ways in which Abu Dhabi and Riyadh are conducting foreign policy in a less West-centric and much more multipolar world," said Cafiero.

But they are treading a fine line. While keen to assert their independence, they're wary of aggravating the US, whose military and economic might they depend on.

"Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE will maintain opportunistic relations with Russia but will be careful that their economic ties with Moscow don't cross US sanctions, given how important their ties with Washington remain," said Graeme Thompson, an analyst with the Eurasia Group.

Saudi Arabia's ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, has also sought to act as a mediator between Ukraine and Russia, securing prisoner exchange deals, and even hosting peace talks last year which Russia did not attend.

It's an issue the crown prince will likely raise with Putin during the visit, as he seeks to burnish his reputation as a champion of nations with little interest in either US or Russian views of Ukraine.

"Most countries in the 'global south' are more interested in a peaceful resolution to the war, given its negative effects on food and energy prices, than on buying a particular narrative – either from Russia or the West," said Thompson.

Video shows Israeli soldier shooting mentally disabled Palestinian in West Bank




Kareem Khadder and Celine Alkhaldi, CNN
Wed, 6 December 2023 

The Israel Defense Forces has launched an investigation after a video emerged of an Israeli soldier shooting and wounding a mentally disabled Palestinian near the occupied West Bank city of Hebron.

Tarek Abu Abed, known to friends and family as “Ghazzawi,” was on his way home Tuesday when he was stopped by three soldiers and asked for identification, Tarek’s brother Diaa Abu Abed told CNN by telephone on Tuesday.

“Anybody who meets Tarek can tell immediately he has special needs,” Diaa Abu Abed said. “His brain works like a child’s does.”

When Tarek Abu Abed told the men that he did not have identification, an argument ensued that culminated in Tarek being shot, according to his brother.

The IDF confirmed to CNN that Israeli soldiers had been involved in the incident shown in the video said its military police were investigating the encounter.

“Based on the initial information available, it appears that during a check that was conducted earlier today near the city of Hebron, a Palestinian was shot in the leg and was evacuated to receive medical treatment,” the IDF said in a statement.

The video, which is filmed down a street from the incident, appears to show the moments after Tarek said he did not have identification. It shows three men in military fatigues standing over a man who is on his hands and knees, and next to a man in a red shirt, identified by Diaa as Tarek’s friend.

“The man in the video wearing red came to defend him to tell the Israeli soldiers that my brother has special needs,” Diaa Abu Abed said. “He’s known amongst the community for his mental disabilities. The soldiers refused to listen.”

The men had their rifles aimed at Tarek Abu Abed, and shouting can be heard. Abu Abed appears to be attempting to stand up as several local residents look on. He then stands up and approaches one of the men, seemingly agitated. A second man then approaches Abu Abed from behind.

A gunshot rings out, and Abu Abed collapses to the ground. He writhes in pain, as two of the men continue to point their weapons at him.

Diaa Abu Abed said that an onlooker called him, and he arrived on the scene soon after.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society said in a statement on Tuesday that it had transported a 34-year-old man with a bullet wound in his leg from Qalqas to the hospital.

Tarek Abu Abed suffered heavy bleeding and has undergone surgery on his leg, his brother said.

The Israel-Hamas war has increasingly spilled over into the West Bank with settler attacks and clashes leaving hundreds of Palestinians dead.

At least 256 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli troops or Israeli settlers in the West Bank and east Jerusalem since October 7, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.

This story has been updated to clarify the IDF’s statement of its role in the incident

Opinion
Israel’s use of disproportionate force is a long-established tactic – with a clear aim

Paul Rogers

THE GUARDIAN
Tue, 5 December 2023 

Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images

How to make sense of the sheer intensity of Israel’s war in Gaza? One understanding is that it is the result of the enduring shock of the 7 October massacre combined with a far-right government that includes extreme elements. Yet this ignores another element: a specific Israeli approach to war known as the Dahiya doctrine. It’s also one reason why the “pause” was never going to last for very long.

First, let us take stock of the state of Gaza. After a seven-day pause in the airstrikes, the war resumed on Friday. In the last three days, bombing has been heavy, and the total death toll since 7 October has risen to 15,899, according to the Gaza health ministry, with at least 41,000 wounded. Among the dead are 6,500 children, including hundreds of infants.

Physical destruction in Gaza has been massive: 60% of the territory’s total housing stock (234,000 homes) is damaged, 46,000 of which are completely destroyed. The seven-day pause may have provided limited relief from the comprehensive siege but there are still serious shortages of food, clean water and medical supplies.


Despite massive Israeli attacks backed by a near-unlimited supply of bombs and missiles and intelligence support from the United States, Hamas continues to fire rockets. Moreover, it retains a substantial paramilitary ability with 18 of the original 24 active paramilitary battalions intact, including all 10 in southern Gaza.

Palestinian support for Hamas may also be growing in the West Bank, where armed settlers and the Israel Defense Forces have killed scores of Palestinians since the war started. The Israeli government is absolutely determined to continue and is accelerating the war, despite US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s blunt warning to limit casualties and vice-president Kamala Harris confirming that “under no circumstances will the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, the besiegement of Gaza, or the redrawing of the borders of Gaza”.

That will count for little, given the extreme position of Benjamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet, where the aim is to destroy Hamas. How this will be attempted relates to the specific Israeli way of war that has evolved since 1948, through to its current Dahiya doctrine, which is said to have originated in the 2006 war in Lebanon.

In July of that year, facing salvoes of rockets fired from southern Lebanon by Hezbollah militias, the IDF fought an intense air and ground war. Neither succeeded, and the ground troops took heavy casualties; but the significance of the war lies in the nature of the air attacks. It was directed at centres of Hezbollah power in the Dahiya area, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, but also on the Lebanese economic infrastructure.

This was the deliberate application of “disproportionate force”, such as the destruction of an entire village, if deemed to be the source of rocket fire. One graphic description of the result was that “around a thousand Lebanese civilians were killed, a third of them children. Towns and villages were reduced to rubble; bridges, sewage treatment plants, port facilities and electric power plants were crippled or destroyed.”

Two years after that war, the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University published Disproportionate Force: Israel’s Concept of Response in Light of the Second Lebanon War. Written by IDF reserve Col Gabi Siboni, it promoted the Dahiya doctrine as the way forward in response to paramilitary attacks. The head of the Israeli military forces in Lebanon during the war, and overseeing the doctrine, was General Gadi Eizenkot. He went on to be the IDF chief of general staff, retiring in 2019, but was brought back as an adviser to Netanyahu’s war cabinet in October.

Siboni’s paper for the institute made it crystal clear that the Dahiya doctrine goes well beyond defeating an opponent in a brief conflict, and is about having a truly long-lasting impact. Disproportionate force means just that, extending to the destruction of the economy and state infrastructure with many civilian casualties, with the intention of achieving a sustained deterrent impact.

The doctrine has been used in Gaza during the four previous wars since 2008, especially the 2014 war. In those four wars, the IDF killed about 5,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, for the loss of 350 of their own soldiers and about 30 civilians. In the 2014 war, Gaza’s main power station was damaged in an IDF attack and half of Gaza’s then population of 1.8 million people were affected by water shortages, hundreds of thousands lacked power and raw sewage flooded on to streets.

Even earlier, after the 2008-9 war in Gaza, the UN published a fact-finding report that concluded that the Israeli strategy had been “designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population”.

The situation now, after two months of war, is far worse. With the ground offensive in southern Gaza under way, it will not stop, exacerbated by tens of thousands of desperate Gazans repeatedly trying to find places of safety.

The immediate Israeli aim, which may take months to achieve, appears to be eliminating Hamas while corralling the Palestinians into a small zone in the south-west of Gaza where they can be more easily controlled. The longer-term aim is to make it utterly clear that Israel will not stand for any opposition. Its armed forces will maintain sufficient power to control any insurgency and, backed by its powerful nuclear capabilities, will not allow any regional state to pose a threat.

It will fail. Hamas will emerge either in a different form or strengthened, unless some way is found to begin the very difficult task of bringing the communities together. Meanwhile, the one state that can force a ceasefire is the US, but there is little sign of that – at least so far.

Paul Rogers is emeritus professor of peace studies at Bradford University and an honorary fellow at the Joint Service Command and Staff College

Israel is reportedly investigating claims of anomalous stock trading ahead of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks


Filip De Mott
Updated Tue, 5 December 2023 

Israel continues to deploy soldiers, tanks and armored vehicles near the Gaza border in Sderot, Israel on October 14, 2023.

Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu via Getty Images

Reuters reported on Monday that Israel is investigating claims of anomalous trading ahead of the October 7 terrorist attacks.

A paper by US researchers cites a significant increase in short selling activity in the days ahead of the attacks.

Short interest trades exceeded spikes in Israel's previous crises, such as the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict.

Israel is looking into claims by researchers in the US of increased short selling activity ahead of Hamas's attacks on Israel on October 7, Reuters reported on Monday.

The Israel Securities Authority told the outlet that authorities are aware of the matter, which "is under investigation by all relevant parties."

ISA did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

The newly published study states that in the days ahead of the October 7 assault, the MSCI Israel Exchange Traded Fund underwent a significant spike in short selling, while short interest on hundreds of Tel Aviv Stock Exchange securities also "increased dramatically."

Short selling, which occurs when investors bet that an asset's price will drop, exceeded levels seen during previous crises in Israel, the study added. This includes the 2008 recession, the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Our findings suggest that traders informed about the coming attacks profited from these tragic events, and consistent with prior literature we show that trading of this kind occurs in gaps in U.S. and international enforcement of legal prohibitions on informed trading," researchers Robert J Jackson Jr. and Joshua Mitts wrote.

The study referred to Bank Leumi, a TASE-listed company, as one example. The researchers say that 4.43 million of the bank's shares were sold short between September 14 and October 5. The trades yielded over 30 million Israeli shekels, or about $7.8 million based on the exchange rate in early October before the attack.

The paper says similar patterns occurred in April, when reports emerged that Hamas was planning an attack on Israel. Short volume the EIS fund peaked April 3 at similar levels to those seen on October 2.

"Taken together, this evidence strengthens the interpretation that the trading observed in October and April was related to the Hamas attack rather than random noise," the researchers wrote.

UK

COVID VICTIMS FAMILIES

People removed from COVID inquiry as Boris Johnson apologises for 'pain and suffering'

Sky News
Updated Wed, 6 December 2023 



Boris Johnson was interrupted by protesters as he apologised for the "suffering" caused by COVID.

During his appearance at the official inquiry into the pandemic on Wednesday, four people were removed from the public gallery after holding up pictures, along with the words: "The dead can't hear your apologies."

Mr Johnson told the hearing he was "deeply sorry for the pain and loss and suffering".


But he said he hoped the probe would be able to "get answers to those very difficult questions" that victims and their families were "rightly asking".

Boris Johnson COVID evidence - as it happened

During the evidence session, that will continue on Thursday, the inquiry heard varied testimony from the former prime minister, including:

• The government "underestimated the scale and pace of challenge" from COVID - thinking the peak would come in May or June;

• The tone of private WhatsApp exchanges was a "reflection of the agony" the country was going through;

• A denial he was on holiday over the half-term break in February 2020 - as claimed by former aide Dominic Cummings

• Mr Johnson explaining that he "can't say" whether he would have "gone earlier" in ordering the first lockdown, but that he took "full responsibility" for the decisions made;

• The former prime minister offering an apology to sufferers of long COVID, having described the condition as "b*****ks" in 2021;

• He stood by Matt Hancock, saying the then health secretary did "a good job" whatever his "defects".

Read more:
Whatever Boris Johnson said, the evidence pointed to leadership failures

Key points from Boris Johnson's evidence

Speaking on his first day of questioning at the COVID inquiry he set up to learn the lessons of the pandemic, Mr Johnson said "unquestionably" mistakes were made by his government, adding that he took "responsibility for all the decisions that we made".

Within that included the lockdown decisions and their timeliness, the circulation of the virus in the residential care sector, and the Eat Out to Help Out scheme.

The ex-prime minister, who was ousted from Downing Street in the summer of 2022, said he acknowledged that "so many people suffered, so many people lost their lives".

But he said the government was "doing our best at the time, given what we knew, given the information I had available to me at the time, I think we did our level best".

Mr Johnson placed some blame on the different messaging coming from the different governments in the devolved nations of the UK.

"There was far, far more that united us than divided us," he said. "[But] understandably they're looking to talk directly to their own electorates, there were going to be times when they differed from the main UK government message.

"And I thought that was sometimes at risk of being confusing at a time when we really needed to land messages simply."

But Hugo Keith KC, who led the questioning for the inquiry, asked Mr Johnson why he did not foresee the scale of destruction the COVID pandemic would cause in early 2020, given that the inquiry had seen evidence to suggest others in Westminster were concerned as early as February.

Mr Johnson admitted the wider government "underestimated" the threat posed by the virus, saying the "concept of a pandemic did not imply to the Whitehall mind the kind of utter disaster that COVID was to become".

He said in the "early days of March", government figures and officials "were all collectively underestimating how fast it had already spread in the UK" and thought the peak would be in May or June which turned out to be "totally wrong".

"I don't blame the scientists for that at all," he said.

"That was the feeling and it just turned out to be wrong."

Long COVID

Mr Johnson was also questioned about his remarks over long COVID - a condition which, according to Oxford University, affected up to 10% of people who caught the virus.

Documents shown to the inquiry had scribbles alongside by the prime minister, referring to it as "b*****ks" and "Gulf War Syndrome stuff".

Mr Johnson said he realised the remarks had "caused hurt and offence", adding: "I regret very much using that language and should have thought about the possibility of future publication".

But he claimed he was trying to "get to the truth of the matter" and to get officials "to explain to me exactly what the syndrome was".

Hancock criticism

A running theme of the inquiry has been criticism of the then-health secretary Mr Hancock, with former advisers and civil servants having revealed they called for Mr Johnson to fire him for his performance during the pandemic.

But when asked about these calls for Mr Hancock to go, the former prime minister appeared to stand by his decision to keep the secretary of state in post.

He said he was "aware" that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) was "under fire from loads of people", but added: "The point is you have got a lot of very talented, sometimes super-confident, sometimes egotistical people, who are crushed with anxiety about what is happening to their country, who are wracked secretly with self-doubt and self-criticism, and who externalise that by criticising others and it is human nature.

"When you are the leader in those circumstances, your job is to work out what is justified and what is people sounding off, and what is political nonsense, and my judgement was that Matt was, on the whole, doing a good job in very difficult circumstances and there was no advantage in moving him as I was being urged to do."

Pushed again on the other calls for him to go and reports of "chaos" in the DHSC, Mr Johnson said he thought his health secretary was "intellectually able" and "top of the subject", adding: "Whatever his failings may or may not have been, I didn't see any advantage to the country at a critical time… in moving him in exchange for someone else when I couldn't be sure that we were necessary going to be trading up."

Missing WhatsApps

In the days leading up the inquiry there were reports anticipating Mr Johnson's apology and the fact that not all of his WhatsApps would be made available to the inquiry - with about 5,000 messages on his phone from January 30, 2020 to June 2020 missing.

Baroness Hallett, who is chairing the inquiry, raised the issue of people briefing the press ahead of a witnesses' appearance, arguing that a leak "undermines the inquiry's ability to do its job fairly, effectively and independently".

Mr Johnson said he did not know the "exact reason" the messages had not been located, but said it was "something to do with the app going down and then coming up again, but somehow automatically erasing all the things between that date".

"Can I, for the avoidance of doubt, make it absolutely clear I haven't removed any WhatsApps from my phone and I've given you everything that I think you need," he said.

Mr Keith told Mr Johnson that other figures' WhatsApp messages that have previously been shown to the inquiry "paint an appalling picture, not all the time but at times, of incompetence and disarray".

Mr Johnson argued that plenty of successful governments have "challenging and competing characters whose views about each other might not be fit to print but who get a lot done".

Read more:
Gove apologises for pandemic 'errors'

The former prime minister said the tone of the private messages was a "reflection of the agony" the country was going through.

"It was a very difficult, very challenging period," he said. "People were getting - as you can see from the WhatsApps - very frazzled because they were frustrated."

Mr Johnson is the latest in a line of government ministers to have appeared in front of the inquiry, including Mr Hancock, former deputy prime minister Dominic Raab and Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, but by far the most anticipated.

He will return to the hearing on Thursday morning to continue to give evidence.

Opinion

Lazy and fraudulent: we saw the true Johnson at the Covid inquiry – and why his like must never have power again

Martin Kettle

THE GUARDIAN
Wed, 6 December 2023 


François Mitterrand once said that the most essential single attribute for success in politics is indifference. France’s former socialist president possessed that quality to his core. His views could turn on a centime, from right to left to centre and back again, as the political situation and his own power required. Indifference, skilfully translated into policy and action, was an essential driver of his 14-year presidency.

Boris Johnson is blessed – which may not be the right word – with an indifference of his own. Johnson is lightly encumbered with political principles, since he believes in little except himself. He famously wobbled about which side to take on Brexit. His instinctive capacity for indifference took him right to the top of the greasy pole. If that is his blessing, his curse is that, unlike Mitterrand, he could not then turn it into effective government action.

On his first day giving evidence to the UK’s Covid-19 inquiry, Johnson wrapped himself in the cloak of indifference. In the middle of the morning, the inquiry counsel, Hugo Keith, confronted Johnson with a list of angry WhatsApp verdicts from No 10 insiders about his government’s failure to take the right decisions at the right time during the pandemic. He quoted the cabinet secretary Simon Case – Johnson’s choice for the job, remember – saying that he had “never seen a bunch of people less well-equipped to run a country”.


Related: Boris Johnson says it is nonsense to claim he kept Matt Hancock in post so he could be ‘sacrifice’ for the UK Covid inquiry – live

For any other figure facing a public inquiry of this kind, this would be a genuinely perilous moment, exposing them to charges of indecisiveness and failure to lead. Yet Johnson revelled in it. This was what politics is like, he replied, visibly relaxing after some sticky earlier exchanges. Angry views were wholly to be expected, he said. If WhatsApp had existed when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, the mandarinate would have been revealed as equally angry and critical with her.

Except that they would not. Johnson was wrong about that. In their different ways, prime ministers such as Thatcher, Clement Attlee or Tony Blair – the trio of postwar premiers whom Keir Starmer invoked this week for their achievements – all knew their own minds, perhaps to a fault at times. If WhatsApp had existed back in Thatcher’s 1980s pomp, there might have been complaining ministers and advisers. But every one of them would have been complaining about the firmness or wrongness of her views – not that they were unclear, as they were in Johnson’s case.

Whatever else you can say about Thatcher, Attlee or Blair, they were all up to the job of being prime minister. Inside their heads, all three had an idea of Britain that they were in Downing Street to try to achieve. The same is not true of Johnson. Unlike fanatical Brexiteers, he lacked any idea of the kind of Britain he sought to create, except one that would glorify and gratify him. He was in Downing Street not because of what he wanted to do but because of what he wanted to be. He was there because he wanted to be prime minister.

Unlike Attlee, Thatcher and Blair, however, Johnson was not up to the job. Michael Gove told the inquiry last week that Johnson liked to listen to contending arguments about courses of action before coming to a decision. He called it a gladiatorial method of policymaking. It was sometimes the way Attlee governed too. But it is useless if you don’t take the decisions once the arguments have been laid out. And in a crisis like a pandemic, it is fatal.

Yet this was what happened with Johnson. Much of Wednesday’s afternoon session returned to the question of whether the first lockdown in March 2020 should have been called earlier. Keith led Johnson through the crucial days in mid-March, when the argument inside government moved more decisively towards lockdown – a moment at which, according to Matt Hancock last week, 30,000 otherwise lost lives could have been saved by an earlier imposition.

Johnson told the inquiry that he was “more or less in virus-fighting mode” by 15 March. Note the slippery language. Not so, countered Keith, you were oscillating. There was a “seemingly perennial debate in your own mind”. Dominic Cummings was still complaining on 19 March that Johnson “still won’t absorb it”. My job was to test the policy, Johnson countered. The lockdown did not start until 23 March. Perhaps it was a poor example of leadership, Keith whispered gently, as his stiletto went in.

The historian AJP Taylor once wrote that the first world war-era prime minister, David Lloyd George, could arouse “every feeling except trust”. The same is true of Johnson. The two prime ministers, a century apart, had other things in common too. “He cared nothing for the conventional rules – neither the rules of personal behaviour nor those economic rules of free enterprise,” adds Taylor. “Lloyd George lived in the moment, a master of improvisation.” He could almost be describing Johnson there.

But there is one absolutely crucial difference. Unlike Lloyd George, Johnson was lazy. Lloyd George could also take a decision. He may not have had a plan, and he certainly did not have a system. In that respect, he was quite similar to Johnson. But, as Taylor puts it: “When faced with a difficulty, he listened to the ideas of others and saw, in a flash, the solution.” It is the difference between a great national leader who saved his country in a crisis and a fraudulent one who did not.

Johnson suffers from a fatal combination of qualities in any leader. He combines indifference to principles and disregard for others with disorganisation of mind and behaviour, and indecisiveness and laziness in action. These qualities have never been hidden. They are part of the role he played in public life. Yet in the unlikely event that anyone switched on the live coverage of the inquiry to see Johnson for the first time, they will have been aghast.

Seeing him in action once again, and with more to come on Thursday, it is the reckless incompetence and manifest unsuitability that stand out most. Three-quarters of this country thinks Johnson handled Covid badly. The Conservative party members who gave Britain such a leader, and the electors who then voted him into office, will have to carry the shame of it with them to their graves.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Fact Check: NASA Prepares To Install 'Internet' on the Moon?

Madison Dapcevich
Wed, 6 December 2023 

NASA

Claim:

NASA is installing internet on the moon.

Rating:

Rating: Mostly True

Context:

NASA is indeed bringing a celestial internet of sorts to the moon, but it is not the same internet we know on Earth. The technology employs a “protocol suite” of new networking technologies for transmitting information between astronauts in space and those on Earth. Additionally, Nokia announced plans to bring LTE/4G to the moon to support communication between the lunar lander and rover.

In March 2023, NASA took to Instagram to share the space agency’s plans to install an internet-like network in space that will connect astronauts with researchers on Earth.



Though the notion may seem like a concept straight out of a lunar-colonizing, science-fiction flick, NASA is indeed bringing a celestial internet to the moon with help from telecommunications giant Nokia. To support the space agency’s communication goals, the Finnish company also announced in 2022 plans to deploy LTE/4G communications to the lunar surface.

However, this connectivity is not the same version of the internet or LTE/4G connectivity — that is, the fourth generation (or Long Term Evolution, LTE) of broadband cellular network technology — that we know and use on Earth.

Both of the above-listed initiatives will support the objectives of the Artemis Mission, an initiative to establish a base camp on the moon to be launched by 2025.

Here’s how.

Nokia To Launch LTE/4G on Moon To Facilitate Communication Between Lunar Lander and Rover

In 2022, Nokia first announced plans to launch LTE/4G connectivity on the moon to establish communication between the lunar lander and rover.

The technology will be incorporated with an LTE base station equipped with a “fully integrated cellular network” to allow the base camp lander to communicate with its lunar rover as a means to provide “lunar surface connectivity.”

Range tests will be conducted up to a .6-mile radius between the lander and rover, to have the entire system monitored and configured from Earth eventually.

Though this project supports the goals of the Artemis Mission, it is separate from NASA’s newly developed space “internet.”

NASA To Expand Its Space 'Internet' Program to Enhance Data Distribution

In a news release dated March 1, 2023, NASA detailed a new tool to overcome signal disruption: a communications networking protocol called High-Rate Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) that employs a “protocol suite” of new networking technologies for transmitting information between astronauts in space and people on Earth. The space agency wrote:

DTN automatically ensures information is delivered using a process called “store-and-forward,” which allows data to be forwarded as it is received or stored for future transmission if the signal becomes disrupted. Data store-and-forward capability enables internet-like concepts in space.

DTN is essentially the cosmic version of the internet and is described as a “similar concept of internet networks,” in which space missions will begin to use optical, or laser, communication systems that allow for more data to be communicated. The technology serves as a conduit for bringing information from space to Earth.


Spacecraft communicate using a series of relaying satellites that circle the planet. Experts estimate that up to 95% of that data is not transmitted back to Earth and will never be recovered. DTN builds on existing technology by employing a combination of radio frequency and laser communications to send information between spacecraft, astronauts, and potential planets. Data is modulated to be placed within the laser beam before it is transmitted between devices.

The technology has been in development for over a decade, and its proof of concept was unveiled during the 2013 lunar laser demonstration, in which NASA used lasers to send an image of the Mona Lisa to the moon and back to Earth.

A version of DTN is now used on the International Space Station. This transition to a more connected space internet will potentially clean up space communications for a more efficient, secure, and reliable method of communication.

“We’ve been working on developing DTN implementations that will revolutionize space communications by extending internet-like capabilities found on Earth into space,” said Daniel Raible, principal project investigator, in the news release.

“High-Rate DTN is designed with speed and efficiency to keep up with the data rates of newer laser and radio frequency communications systems.”
Sources:

Artemis III: NASA’s First Human Mission to the Lunar South Pole - NASA. 13 Jan. 2023, https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/marshall/artemis-iii-nasas-first-human-mission-to-the-lunar-south-pole/.

“High-Rate Delay Tolerant Networking (HDTN).” Glenn Research Center | NASA, https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/scan/acs/tech-studies/dtn/. Accessed 3 Dec. 2023.

“Https://Www.Nasa.Gov/Wp-Content/Uploads/Static/Artemis/NASA: Artemis.” Https://Www.Nasa.Gov/Wp-Content/Uploads/Static/Artemis/NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/index.html. Accessed 3 Dec. 2023.

NASA | Mona Lisa on the Moon. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXeENwPr1Ic. Accessed 3 Dec. 2023.

NASA Develops Advanced Space Communications Process - NASA. 1 Mar. 2023, https://www.nasa.gov/humans-in-space/nasa-develops-advanced-space-communications-process/.

NASA Glenn’s Integrated Radio and Optical Communications (iROC) Project. www.youtube.com, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOrSlNm-SCY. Accessed 3 Dec. 2023.