Mau Mau legacy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14232049

Just read this interesting article about the attempts of victims of the Mau Mau repression to claim compensation from the British Government. It claims that, "Ministers say the UK government is not responsible for the actions of the colonial administration". I was initially a bit sceptical as no specific ministers are mentioned, however another article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12994190) goes into further detail and attributes the statement to Robert Jay, Foreign Office Counsel.

Needless to say this is untrue and inexcusable. True, Kenya was run by a colonial administration rather than directly from London. However, it was the British Army that led the campaign against the Kenyan rebels and committed the alleged atrocities. A British Governor declared the state of Emergency and the UK Government gave its implicit approval by not criticising these acts.

If home administrations cannot be condemned for the acts of their colonial governors we may need to rethink the Nuremburg trials. Many of the atrocities that the leading Nazis were executed for were committed in Hans Frank's 'Generalgouvernement' of Poland, which had a similar standing in relation to the Berlin government as that of Kenya in the 1950s did to London. However, while most of those who ran the death camps eventually received their just punishment it seems that the crimes against humanity of our own colonial empire are off limits and the victims ignored.

Ps - I really need to get round to reading 'Imperial Reckoning; The Untold Story of Britain's Gulags in Kenya'. I read a Guardian article written by the author about the Kenyan compensation claims and she really seemed to know her stuff and made a strong case for the legitimacy of the victim's claims.

History of a Joke

1952 - Evelyn Waugh - Men at Arms

"The normal relationship in the Halberdiers between platoon commander and sergeant was that of child and nannie. The sergeant should keep his officer out of mischief. The officer's job was to sign things, to take the blame and quite simply to walk ahead and get shot first".

1971 - Terry Pratchett - The Carpet People

"Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants — the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class brawl."

1972-1983 - M*A*S*H

Radar O'Reilly. Need I say any more?

2000 - 2011 - Schlock Mercenary

Running gag throughout the archive of this monster web comic. The message that a good officer always listens to their sergeant is muted a bit in practice because Captain Tagon is such a badass and generally competent if ethically-challenged and short sighted. Sergeant Schlock, on the other hand, is an all-round psychopath who should only be listened to when collateral damage is not an issue!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

- Compare and contrast with: relationship between civil servants and elected ministers as hilariously portrayed in 'Yes Minister', 'Yes Prime Minister' and the brilliant 'In the Loop' which often shares a similar dynamic.

Sign up for Socialism....

30 seconds on the 'Pravda' website and I'm confronted with the delightfully phrased, 'Will be connected to the Social Web?' banner, asking me to support their site on Facebook.

Skim reading this I, of course, read 'Social Web' as 'Socialist Web'.

Liebestraum and Lebensraum

Just back from the Condon family weekend and it was wonderful as usual. All of the family made it except Rob and it was great to see everyone again. The cumulative effect of alcohol, sleep loss and constant chaos took its usual effect and everyone was a bit groggy travelling back yesterday.

Still I am fairly well recovered now and enjoying my last full day of holiday. Normal schedule of updates should resume soon.

Economist foresees the end of the Space Age

Read this interesting article on the economist website: http://www.economist.com/node/18897425.

Basically it claims that today's nations lack the incentive to go into space and therefore the Space Age is coming to a natural end. It provides plenty of evidence for this thesis. America is decommissioning its shuttles as the International Space Station is reaching the end of its operational lifetime. Russia has exited the field entirely as it has had other things to worry about since its early Cold War triumphs.

This could just mean the drive for space research and exploration has shifted to more energetic developing nations but the author is sceptical about this. While China claims it will push some of its hefty economic muscle towards a Moon landing he sees it as none too eager to set concrete dates for this mission or contemplate further space exploration beyond this goal.

He sees private enterprise as no more promising. Space tourism has been bandied around as a concept for years but remains a high-end luxury for a wealthy minority. The costs become exorbitent once you leave low-Earth orbit, making it a bit of a dead end in view of long term space exploration or colonisation.

Instead the author pins his hopes on continued development of the 'technosphere'. With a smugness that could only come from someone accustomed to being on the right side of the satellite-guided smart bombs, he praises the advances in warfare and communication brought by the increasing artificial presence in near-Earth space.

This is all true as far as it goes. However, I think he underestimates the extent that we should be worried about this. He seems to believe that humanity has a viable future in further building up the 'technosphere' and rarely venturing beyond. He likens this possible future to Antarctic scientists who relax in heated research bases with food supplies and consumer luxuries between exploratory missions. In the same way, he says, man will predominantly stick to building in near-Earth orbit and only send the occasional probe beyond.

This would be fine if the analogy held. However, in the case of the Earth (and attendant satellite zone) it is unclear that it does. The author's hypothetical Antarctic base will continue to be provided with the food and goods it needs for as long as the owners can afford to run it. The population is kept stable or if not provisions are made for the feeding and comfort of new arrivals. Although this base may be expensive to heat and maintain there is little physical threat to it after it has been set up. Antarctica is demilitarized and engineers are ingenious in dealing with the challenges of extreme cold and changeable weather conditions.

Earth, in the long run, is in a completely different situation. Unlike the demographically stable Antarctic base it has to cope with the demands of a populations that seems to grow faster every century. Barring a super-Malthusian disaster, the population of the Earth is likely to eventually reach the stage where even if resources were distributed based on absolute necessity (a situation that certain influential sections of our society seem to have little interest in attaining anyway) there will not be enough to go around. The likely consequences of mass starvation, global war and spreading pandemics should surely be enough to motivate today's nation states to spend adequately on space exploration.

Earth is also vulnerable to physical attack. Not, of course, in the B-movie sense of alien invasion but from the far more likely threat of a collision with an asteroid. Scientists agree that there have been large impacts in the past, which may have contributed to mass extinctions. Space travel is the only credible way to escape this risk of total annihilation. If we do ever see an asteroid approaching I'm sure we will be glad if we have prepared methods for evacuation. At the very least settlements on other planets would have a chance of allowing the human race to survive such a catastrophe.

Therefore, the author might be better off attempting to drum up some support for projects that attempt to escape Earth's gravity well rather than focussing on past technological successes. The nationalist drive of the Cold War to inspire space missions may have faded but it is in the interest of the entire human race that such projects and research continue.

Maybe a hiatus....

Post frequency may well drop for a bit now, due to two main causes:

1) Valve made Team Fortress 2 free to play - If this is the future of PC gaming bring it on! A most excellent and addictive game and all you have to do to avoid paying for it in any way is resist the temptation to acquire an awesome hat for your character! I think I can just about manage that. Needless to say I've been playing this a lot this week and am not quite as clueless as I was originally although still flummoxed by some situations (mostly involving attacking entrenched sentry gun positions. You can get in as Spy to disable them but you then tend to die 2.7 seconds later as the surrounding infantry mow you down!). However, it has reduced my time available for more meaningful leisure time activities.

2) I am taking my first serious holiday since Easter! - Looking forward to some down time as I've been getting incredibly fatigued lately (although going eight days without a day off last week probably didn't help). Also means I'll be able to go to the Condon family reunion which is always an enjoyable affair. Bit scary as once I get back I'll only be a few weeks away from finishing this job.

So, so long and thanks for all the hits. This will almost certainly be a hiatus rather than a lingering death as I have rather enjoyed ranting on here about my eclectic interests and neurotic foibles.

WW2 era wrecks in the South Pacific - handling oil leaks

Ok, having said that I would confine my investigations into the environmental effects of WW2 to Europe and strictly to ecological effects I have immediately abandoned both of these limitations. The main reason for this change of plan is that the information available and my curiosity took me elsewhere. There is plenty of easily accessible data on environmental issues in the Pacific theatre and not so much information about environmental effects in Europe. Therefore, the first issue I will be examining is the wrecks of oil tankers in the South Pacific.

The South Pacific was not involved in the first stages of the war as before the bombing of Pearl Harbour (Hawaii) by the Japanese the 'global' war was predominantly confined to the European mainland, some minor colonial struggles in Africa and Asia, the battle for the Atlantic supply chains and Manchuria/China. However, after the American entry into the war the South Pacific became the site for the key battles of the Far Eastern theatre. Along with these large scale conflicts there developed an Atlantic-style form of submarine warfare as each side tried to derail the others logistical war effort by sinking their transports, oil tankers and warships.

Invariably this destruction of shipping had major environmental effects on areas of great marine biodiversity. To this day the governments of Pacific islands worry about the effects that oil discharges from long abandoned wrecks will have on sea birds, fish stocks and sea turtles. Some of the environmental issues involved can best be examined through a case study of the sinking and subsequent handling of the USS Mississinewa.

1) Environmental risks – Oil in submerged ships does not cease to be dangerous just because it has been down there for decades. A wide range of different types of fuel were used by WW2 era ships. Diesel, predominantly used by submarines, dissipates very quickly in Pacific waters but can still cause environmental damage if containers that have previously kept it from escaping are breached. Heavy fuel oil, generally carried by larger oil tankers and war ships, is more durable. While some elements of it quickly dissipate, others will spread widely where currents permit and can endanger birds, fauna and sea life over a wide area by smothering them in toxic oil. Even wrecks that seem to be secure can quickly become environmental crisis points as tropical storms are common in the Pacific and may cause breaches of previously sealed fuel tanks.

To take an example, the USS Mississinewa was carrying 3,780,000 US gallons of oil when it was sunk by a Japanese manned torpedo. SOPAC estimates that, after a tropical storm disturbed it in 2001, it was leaking 300-400 gallons of oil a day. They claim that 18-24,000 US gallons were dispersed before the clean up was complete, a serious amount of oil to release into a rich marine environment.

2) Responsibility for clean up – Obviously the nations with most reason to be concerned about potential oil spills are the island states of the South Pacific. It is their tourist industry and fishing activities that are endangered by pollution and they are responsible for protecting the local marine diversity. Their consciousness of this responsibility is shown by the development of the 'Regional Strategy' less than a year after the Mississinewa incident preparing for the management and safe handling of oil-carrying wrecks.

However, international law says that, unless a wreck was captured before sinking or is sold or granted to another party, it is still the property of the nation to which it belonged when it was in military service. This means that the nation in whose territorial waters the wreck ends up needs to ask permission before carrying out any salvaging or clean up operations. This means that responsibility for dealing with individual, high-risk wrecks generally extends beyond the nations of the South Pacific.

In the case of the Mississinewa the US SUPSALV organisation (contracted by the Navy for salvage, diving operations and environmental duties) took responsibility for the clean up of the oil spillage. They initially patched the leaks and pumped out the most unstable oil. However, in view of the high risk of further leaks, they decided to carry out a more comprehensive operation in February 2003. 'Hot tapping' through the hull was used to remove 2 million US gallons (virtually all the oil that remained on the wreck). This oil was separated from the sea water and sold to Singapore for reprocessing (showing just how resilient oil can be after decades of lying underwater in poorly sealed tanks!).

3) Difficulty of locating wrecks that were often lost in confusing war time conditions – While some wrecks have been known about for a long time (The USS Chehalis and the remains of its cargo of 400,000 gallons of petroleum were sold to American Samoa by the USA in 1955) others are still missing today.

Part of the regional strategy developed after the Mississinewa incident was a survey of the location of wartimes wrecks. 857 wrecks were located in the territorial waters of the participating countries and 35 of these were oil tankers. A risk evaluation was then carried out on these wrecks to work out what response was necessary in each case.

4) Aftermath – In the long term the regional strategy was abandoned in favour of bilateral negotiations between the nation owning the territorial waters and the nation owning the wreck. This was probably due to the positive response of the USA who assisted in the salvaging of both the USS Mississinewa and the later situation involving the USS Chehalis in 2009 (I don't know if the Japanese government or others that could conceivably be involved in wreck salvage operations show the same degree of responsibility). However, all in all this seems a good example of a strong regional approach to environmental damage caused by WW2. Vulnerable species have been protected and the potential for environmental catastrophes has been responsibly handled by international negotiation and agreements.

Sources -

-A Regional Strategy to Address Marine Pollution from WW2 Wrecks (July 2002), created by the South Pacific Applied Geo-Science Commission (SOPAC)

- South Pacific Regional Environment Programme website

-SUPSALV presentation on the USS Mississinewa situation.

-SUPSALV organisation website

- Wikipedia - USS Mississinewa, USS Chehalis