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Posts Tagged India Israel US Nexus

Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons by Dr.Desmond Tutu

Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons

Dr.

The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians

  • Desmond Tutu is a Nobel peace laureate and a former archbishop of Cape Town

Benjamin Netanyahu has ‘a sense of power and impunity’. Photograph: Reuters

Thu 31 Dec 2020 11.00 EST

Every recent US administration has performed a perverse ritual as it has come into office. All have agreed to undermine US law by signing secret letters stipulating they will not acknowledge something everyone knows: that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal.

Part of the reason for this is to stop people focusing on Israel’s capacity to turn dozens of cities to dust. This failure to face up to the threat posed by Israel’s horrific arsenal gives its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a sense of power and impunity, allowing Israel to dictate terms to others.

But one other effect of the US administration’s ostrich approach is that it avoids invoking the US’s own laws, which call for an end to taxpayer largesse for nuclear weapons proliferators.

Israel in fact is a multiple nuclear weapons proliferator. There is overwhelming evidence that it offered to sell the apartheid regime in South Africa nuclear weapons in the 1970s and even conducted a joint nuclear test. The US government tried to cover up these facts. Additionally, it has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

Yet the US and Israeli governments pushed for the invasion of Iraq based on lies about coming mushroom clouds. As Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu said: the nuclear weapons were not in Iraq – they are in Israel.

Amendments by former Senators Stuart Symington and John Glenn to the Foreign Assistance Act ban US economic and military assistance to nuclear proliferators and countries that acquire nuclear weapons. While president, Jimmy Carter invoked such provisions against India and Pakistan.

But no president has done so with regard to Israel. Quite the contrary. There has been an oral agreement since President Richard Nixon to accept Israel’s “nuclear ambiguity” – effectively to allow Israel the power that comes with nuclear weapons without the responsibility. And since President Bill Clinton, according to the New Yorker magazine, there have been these secret letters.

 

US presidents and politicians have refused to acknowledge that Israel has nuclear weapons even though the law offers an exemption that would allow the funding to continue if the president certified to Congress that aid to a proliferator would be a vital US interest.

Israel’s per capita gross domestic product is comparable with that of Britain. Nevertheless, US taxpayer funds to Israel exceed that to any other country. Adjusted for inflation, the publicly known amount over the years is now approaching $300bn.

This farce should end. The US government should uphold its laws and cut off funding to Israel because of its acquisition and proliferation of nuclear weapons.

The incoming Biden administration should forthrightly acknowledge Israel as a leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation in the Middle East and properly implement US law. Other governments – in particular South Africa’s – should insist on the rule of law and for meaningful disarmament, and immediately urge the US government in the strongest possible terms to act.

Apartheid was horrible in South Africa and it’s horrible when Israel practises its own form of apartheid against the Palestinians, with checkpoints and a system of oppressive policies. Indeed another US statute, the Leahy law, prohibits US military aid to governments that systematically violate human rights.

It’s quite possible that one of the reasons that Israel’s version of apartheid has outlived South Africa’s is that Israel has managed to maintain its oppressive system using not just the guns of soldiers, but also by keeping this nuclear gun pointed at the heads of millions. The solution for this is not for Palestinians and other Arabs to try to attain such weapons. The solution is peace, justice and disarmament.

South Africa learned that it could only have real peace and justice by having truth that would lead to reconciliation. But none of those will come unless truth is faced squarely – and there are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.

Photographs –Courtesy

VANUNU’S PHOTOS OF DIMONA – 1985

Mordechai Vanunu brought his camera to work in late 1985, shortly before leaving his eight-year stint as a technician at Israel’s nuclear weapons factory at Dimona.

Acting on his conscience, he carefully took about 60 photos of the top-secret labs and unique production processes involved. When some of these photos were originally published in the London Sunday Times’ exposé, they confirmed his eyewitness testimony about the extent of Israel’s nuclear weapons program and revealed Israel to be one of the world’s top nuclear powers. To this day, the Israeli government refuses international inspection of Dimona and continues to deny the existence of its nuclear arsenal. [click here for more of Vanunu’s story: archive/story.html]

While their publication resulted in Vanunu being locked away for an 18-year prison sentence, his photographs of Israel’s nuclear weapons factory – a bold statement against nuclear secrecy and for the abolition of nuclear weapons – are here for all to see.

Click on the thumbnail views below to see the full-size photos in this selection.

1) Looking inside a glove box for tooling nuclear materials
2) Looking from outside into a glove box
3) Control panel
4) Control panel
5) Control panel for lithium 6 production
6) Control panel
7) Workshop
8) Looking inside a glove box at lathe for turning precision shaped pieces of plutonium or other components.
9) Laboratory model of nuclear weapons core
10) Looking inside a glove box at models of bomb components or containers for nuclear materials
11) Outside of glove box
12) Plutonium separation plant control room
13) Shielded viewing portal for observing nuclear reactions
14) Production model of nuclear weapons core
15) Production model of nuclear weapons core

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Pakistan’s external debt set to grow to whopping $90b :Pakistan Will Be Blackmailed to Rollback Nuclear Program if Imminent Default

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

DebtBomb

 

 

Pakistan’s external debt set to grow to whopping $90b

 

Pakistan Will Be Blackmailed to Rollback Nuclear Program if Imminent Default

Western nations with connivance of World Bank and IMF have a plan to Denuclearize Pakistan.

First part of the plan to which Nawaz Sharif,Ishaq Dar,and Asif zardari are privy to borrow heavily until debt reaches $200 Bn.

Second part ask Pakistani people to pay such enormous taxes,so they are forced to make a choice: 1) Nuclear Program Rollback or 2)Debt Relief

Then present demarche, either pay up or roll back Nuclear and Missile Programs

Nawaz Sharif & Asif Zardari are part of this Plan. Pakistan Military is unaware of this plan 2023′

Nawaz sharif will again be re-elected with considerable flow of funds from the United States, United Kingdom, India, and Israel.

 

 

 

Experts say country desperately needs to increase exports, arrest increase in debt. PHOTO: FILE

Experts say country desperately needs to increase exports, arrest increase in debt. PHOTO: FILE

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s external debt is projected to grow to a whopping $90 billion in the next four years and the country will need $20 billion a year just to meet its external financing requirements amid concerns that all constitutional arrangements put in place to manage debt have become ineffective.

The external debt figures compiled by renowned economist and the country’s former finance minister Dr Hafiz Pasha are about $14 billion higher than the projections made by the International Monetary Fund.

Moody’s report: International bonds weaken Pakistan’s debt affordability

Dr Pasha on Saturday shared his doomsday scenario in a National Debt Conference, arranged by the Policy Research Institute of Market Economy (PRIME) – an independent think tank.

Dr Pasha’s projections are based on official data. The $14 billion difference was mainly on account of foreign loans that will fly in to finance China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects. The government is not including CPEC loans in total public debt.

“At the moment, we do not have details about the loans that will be taken under the CPEC,” said Ehtesham Rashid, Director General of the Debt Office at the Ministry of Finance, while responding to these projections.

He said once details are available, the Office may have to re-do the entire debt management strategy.

There is enormous support for the CPEC in Pakistan but this game-changing corridor has financial implications for the country that have to be highlighted for better management of debt, said Dr Pasha. His comments come after State Bank of Pakistan governor Ashraf Wathra in an interview last week said there was a need to divulge more details on the debt and investment portions of CPEC, stressing the need for more transparency on part of the government.

Dr Pasha said by 2018-19 amortisation payments would double to $8.3 billion. The current account deficit – the gap between external payments and receipts – will exponentially widen to 4% of the total size of the economy against this year’s level of just under 1% of GDP, he said.

Pakistan to get another $502m IMF loan

The current account deficit will widen due to import of machinery and plants for CPEC projects, in addition to imported fuel like Liquefied Natural Gas and coal.

As against IMF’s projections of just $8.6 billion requirement, Dr Pasha said that total external financing needs, including bridging the current account deficit and repayment of loans, will alarmingly triple to $20 billion by 2018-19.

“This will push the total external debt to $90 billion by 2018-19, showing a growth of 38% over current volume of the foreign debt of over $65 billion,” said Dr Pasha.

He said Pakistan’s exports would have to improve to at least $36 billion if the alarming increase in debt was to be arrested. The country’s exports currently hover around the $24-billion mark.

Constitutional arrangements

The constitutional arrangements put in place to better manage debt are not effectively working as there is hardly any serious debate in the Council of Common Interests and National Economic Council on the debt issue, said Abdul Wajid Rana, former Secretary Finance. He said the Debt Management Office has become subservient to Secretary Finance and was not autonomous.

Transparency

Sakib Sherani, former Principal Economic Advisor to Ministry of Finance, said that the government was playing with debt numbers. His comments come after the government’s decision to exclude non-plan loans from public debt.

He said the debt-to-GDP ratio has become irrelevant in case of Pakistan as the country lacks the capacity to repay the debt even at its current 65% level of debt-to-GDP ratio.

Pakistan agrees to slap billions in new taxes

“In case of Pakistan, the debt-to-revenue ratio is more relevant. 350% would be the limit, beyond which it wouldn’t be sustainable. Currently, this ratio stands at an alarming 523%,” said Sherani.

“By 2018-19, the debt-to-revenue ratio will be over 750%,” said Dr Pasha.

In order to ensure transparency, there must be a law requiring government to take parliamentary approval of any deal signed with the foreign governments and lending agencies, said Dr Kaiser Bengali, an economic consultant to government of Balochistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 13th, 2015.

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