Peaches - Forever Dark Takeover
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Monday, 24 May 2010
Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons
The secret military agreement signed by Shimon Peres, now president of Israel, and P W Botha of South Africa. Photograph: Guardian
Secret South African documents reveal that Israel offered to sell nuclear warheads to the apartheid regime, providing the first official documentary evidence of the state's possession of nuclear weapons.
The "top secret" minutes of meetings between senior officials from the two countries in 1975 show that South Africa's defence minister, PW Botha, asked for the warheads and Shimon Peres, then Israel's defence minister and now its president, responded by offering them "in three sizes". The two men also signed a broad-ranging agreement governing military ties between the two countries that included a clause declaring that "the very existence of this agreement" was to remain secret.
The documents, uncovered by an American academic, Sasha Polakow-Suransky, in research for a book on the close relationship between the two countries, provide evidence that Israel has nuclear weapons despite its policy of "ambiguity" in neither confirming nor denying their existence.
The Israeli authorities tried to stop South Africa's post-apartheid government declassifying the documents at Polakow-Suransky's request and the revelations will be an embarrassment, particularly as this week's nuclear non-proliferation talks in New York focus on the Middle East.
They will also undermine Israel's attempts to suggest that, if it has nuclear weapons, it is a "responsible" power that would not misuse them, whereas countries such as Iran cannot be trusted.
South African documents show that the apartheid-era military wanted the missiles as a deterrent and for potential strikes against neighbouring states.
The documents show both sides met on 31 March 1975. Polakow-Suransky writes in his book published in the US this week, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's secret alliance with apartheid South Africa. At the talks Israeli officials "formally offered to sell South Africa some of the nuclear-capable Jericho missiles in its arsenal".
Among those attending the meeting was the South African military chief of staff, Lieutenant General RF Armstrong. He immediately drew up a memo in which he laid out the benefits of South Africa obtaining the Jericho missiles but only if they were fitted with nuclear weapons.
The memo, marked "top secret" and dated the same day as the meeting with the Israelis, has previously been revealed but its context was not fully understood because it was not known to be directly linked to the Israeli offer on the same day and that it was the basis for a direct request to Israel. In it, Armstrong writes: "In considering the merits of a weapon system such as the one being offered, certain assumptions have been made: a) That the missiles will be armed with nuclear warheads manufactured in RSA (Republic of South Africa) or acquired elsewhere."
But South Africa was years from being able to build atomic weapons. A little more than two months later, on 4 June, Peres and Botha met in Zurich. By then the Jericho project had the codename Chalet.
The top secret minutes of the meeting record that: "Minister Botha expressed interest in a limited number of units of Chalet subject to the correct payload being available." The document then records: "Minister Peres said the correct payload was available in three sizes. Minister Botha expressed his appreciation and said that he would ask for advice." The "three sizes" are believed to refer to the conventional, chemical and nuclear weapons.
The use of a euphemism, the "correct payload", reflects Israeli sensitivity over the nuclear issue and would not have been used had it been referring to conventional weapons. It can also only have meant nuclear warheads as Armstrong's memorandum makes clear South Africa was interested in the Jericho missiles solely as a means of delivering nuclear weapons.
In addition, the only payload the South Africans would have needed to obtain from Israel was nuclear. The South Africans were capable of putting together other warheads.
Botha did not go ahead with the deal in part because of the cost. In addition, any deal would have to have had final approval by Israel's prime minister and it is uncertain it would have been forthcoming.
South Africa eventually built its own nuclear bombs, albeit possibly with Israeli assistance. But the collaboration on military technology only grew over the following years. South Africa also provided much of the yellowcake uranium that Israel required to develop its weapons.
The documents confirm accounts by a former South African naval commander, Dieter Gerhardt – jailed in 1983 for spying for the Soviet Union. After his release with the collapse of apartheid, Gerhardt said there was an agreement between Israel and South Africa called Chalet which involved an offer by the Jewish state to arm eight Jericho missiles with "special warheads". Gerhardt said these were atomic bombs. But until now there has been no documentary evidence of the offer.
Some weeks before Peres made his offer of nuclear warheads to Botha, the two defence ministers signed a covert agreement governing the military alliance known as Secment. It was so secret that it included a denial of its own existence: "It is hereby expressly agreed that the very existence of this agreement... shall be secret and shall not be disclosed by either party".
The agreement also said that neither party could unilaterally renounce it.
The existence of Israel's nuclear weapons programme was revealed by Mordechai Vanunu to the Sunday Times in 1986. He provided photographs taken inside the Dimona nuclear site and gave detailed descriptions of the processes involved in producing part of the nuclear material but provided no written documentation.
Documents seized by Iranian students from the US embassy in Tehran after the 1979 revolution revealed the Shah expressed an interest to Israel in developing nuclear arms. But the South African documents offer confirmation Israel was in a position to arm Jericho missiles with nuclear warheads.
Israel pressured the present South African government not to declassify documents obtained by Polakow-Suransky. "The Israeli defence ministry tried to block my access to the Secment agreement on the grounds it was sensitive material, especially the signature and the date," he said. "The South Africans didn't seem to care; they blacked out a few lines and handed it over to me. The ANC government is not so worried about protecting the dirty laundry of the apartheid regime's old allies."
Chris McGreal @'The Guardian'
Gang of Four - You Don't Have to Be Mad
"We’re emerging blinking into the light after many months locked in Andy’s studio, clutching Gang of Four’s new album: Content. Later this summer you’ll be able to buy it on download or CD. But we’re offering weirder and more wonderful options to a limited number of GO4 aficionados. What about taking a helicopter trip to this summer’s Glastonbury Festival with us? Or you might enjoy a listen to our first ever gig (recorded in Leeds in May 1977), provided to you on a cassette inside a Walkman individually decorated by Andy and Jon. A private view of an exhibition of GO4 art combined with a gig in London’s ICA this June are just some of the other possibilities... Jon & Andy"
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Pot bust turns into yardwork
Like the old song goes, one of these things is not like the other...However, remind a police officer in Corpus Christi, Texas of those famed Cookie Monster lyrics and they're likely to give you an annoyed look.
That's because a recently discovered cache of plants, initially pegged by officials speaking to local news as "one of the largest marijuana plant seizures in the police department's history," turned out to be a relatively common prairie flower of little significance.
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@'Raw Story' Sunday, 23 May 2010
Review: Otis Redding - Live On Sunset Strip
Pop quiz: How many No. 1 hits did Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member Otis Redding score before his death in 1967 in a plane crash?
Answer: None.
The R&B and soul great’s only chart-topping hit was “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay,” which was recorded less than three weeks before his death and released shortly after. And it’s the one song that casual Redding fans might wonder why it doesn’t appear on the new “Otis Redding: Live on the Sunset Strip” album being released Tuesday.
That's because the two-CD set was recorded at the Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood in April 1966, well before he laid down the track for “Dock of the Bay.” At the time of these fiery performances, Redding’s star was streaking across the pop stratosphere thanks to a rapidly expanding catalog of soon to be classic songs he’d written and recorded including “These Arms of Mine,” “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long (To Stop Now),” “Mr. Pitiful,” “I Can’t Turn You Loose” and perhaps the only one on which he just might have been upstaged by another artist’s rendition, “Respect.”
Aretha Franklin’s version, however, was a little over a year away when Redding and his explosive 10-piece band powered through these shows, and you can practically feel the sweat in the room that night.
“Picture a calliope, spouting blasts of sound, and imagine a steam generator in the innards of the calliope, frantically driving the whole mechanism, and you have a fair vision of the 10-piece band led by Otis Redding, which opened at the Whisky A Go Go Thursday night with their massive Southern-style rhythm and blues sound,” Los Angeles Times staffer Pete Johnson wrote at the time in an article that’s reproduced in the 15-page CD booklet.
What’s great about the new Stax/Concord release is that it presents the complete three final sets from Redding’s four-day stint at the Whisky, which came right on the heels of his appearance at the Hollywood Bowl.
In 1968, some of the tracks surfaced on “Otis Redding In Person at the Whisky A Go Go.” In 1982, more of the Whisky performances were released, then in 1993 a CD, “Good To Me: Recorded Live At the Whisky, Vol. 2,” expanded on the previous LP. This is the first time the complete sets have been released in the chronological order in which they were performed.
There can’t be two fans any happier about this set than Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and not just because both were dyed-in-the-wool R&B and soul music fans. But because Redding’s recording of their “Satisfaction” was his latest hit when these shows took place, the song turns up no less than five times over the course of the three sets captured here.
He also detoured briefly from his own songbook to cover the Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” and James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” but it’s the made-in-Memphis stuff that is the heart and soul of these shows.
Redding’s opening act was the Rising Sons, an L.A. band featuring soon-to-be-celebrated players including Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder.
“After performing our act we couldn’t wait to get offstage to watch all the things the musician did,” Mahal recalls in the liner notes. “For a bunch of young guys in the business to just be around someone who had a national vibe like that, who put everything out on stage and wasn’t stuck up, that was totally fabulous.”
Another fascinating musicological tidbit in Ashley Kahn’s lively essay: “According to Redding’s manager, Phil Walden, Dylan offered Redding a listen to his recent recording ‘Just Like a Woman’ that evening with the hope that he’d cover it. Though Redding was open to performing the work of younger songwriters — besides ‘Satisfaction,’ the Beatles’ ‘Day Tripper’ was in his repertoire — he apparently thought Dylan’s song was too wordy.”
When you hear how much mileage he gets by bending the single word “time” in “I’ve Been Loving You,” almost to the breaking point, it’s easy to understand how quantity of words was simply irrelevant in Redding’s world. All he needed was one good, meaty one.
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