The Campaigner of the Year title went to Vale of Glamorgan Labour MP John Smith. Dr Balsom said, “John Smith’s campaign to bring the Defence Academy to St Athan was a major success. ”
Absolutely disgracful Chairman of the judges Dr Balsom said, “John Smith’s campaign to bring the Defence Academy to St Athan was a major success. Well he would wouldn't he as Welsh Politician of the Year is a competition sponsored by the ITV Wales Yearbook operated by Balsom himself and his PR firm FBA Group PR firm works for Welsh Development Agency
which is promoting the St athan deal!! Oh how balanced and bias is that!Not to forget that they have a great deal of business from Wales Tourist Board & Welsh Assembly Government
Welsh Development Agency
Deputy is Politician of the Yearic Wales, - DEPUTY First Minister Ieuan Wyn Jones was last night named Welsh Politician of the Year in a competition sponsored by the ITV Wales Yearbook. ..
Each winner received a special Mumph cartoon. The awards ceremony will be shown on ITV1 Wales at 11.35pm tomorrow.
12/12/2007
No Date for St Athan decision
Defence Minister says no date set for St Athan decision
ic Wales - THE decision over the second stage of a £14bn defence contract awarded to a Welsh armed forces training centre is still to be made, Bob Ainsworth, Minister for the Armed Forces, said yesterday...And he was unable even to give a date when the decision over the second contract would be made, despite the first contract being awarded nearly a year ago.
Socialistworker.co.uk - ...The consortium also includes the giant US arms company Raytheon, and, quite obscenely, the Open University...It is intended to take over not just the training of the British armed forces, but to compete in a world market for privatised military training. The proposed St Athan Academy outside Cardiff will, the consortium hope, be a world leader – training soldiers from all over the world, starting with Iraq and Afghanistan.
10/12/2007
Will spending taxpayers money on Qinetiq at St Athans for military training be value for money?
Hasn't this Dame done well?
By Charlie Pottins(Charlie Pottins)
Former civil servant Graham Love, now chief executive of QinetiQ, saw his £110000 invested in the firm soar up to nearly £22 million when QinetiQ was floated on the share markets last year. Taxpayers were short changed, according to ...The current Private Eye(no.1199) wonders "Why are the Conservatives so reluctant to make political capital out of the QinetiQ scandal?"
It is referring to a report from the National Audit Office (NAO) saying that the public got a raw deal out of the sale of what used to be the government's Defence Evaluation Research Agency(DERA). A third of it went to the US-based Carlyle Group, nicknamed the President's club, in which the Bin Laden family used to be involved, for £42 million. The deal cost the taxpayer more than that in legal fees and consultancies. Then QinetiQ, as the DERA had become, sold off land and assets.
Privatisation was lubricated by fat salaries and juicy share options for top management. Former civil servant Graham Love, now chief executive of QinetiQ, saw his £110,000 invested in the firm soar up to nearly £22 million when QinetiQ was floated on the share markets last year.
Taxpayers were short changed, according to Tory MP Edward Leigh, while senior managers had "won the jackpot".
But while Tories have been making hay with Labour embarrassment over missing files and mystery donors, David Cameron has been muted over this one. You'd think he might have said something about Gordon Brown as Treasury head and then Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon failing to ensure the deal bolstered the Defence budget. Defence chiefs have been saying Labour is not spending enough.
The Eye says Dame Pauline, the former Foreign and Commonwealth Office political director who took a second career with NatWest Markets, advising Milosevic on how to privatise Serbian telecomms, - a task in which she was joined by her former boss Lord Hurd - and did well for herself then, has been "one of the jackpot winners".
From 2001 to 2005, on top of her little position at the BBC, Pauline Neville-Jones was part-time non-executive director at QinetiQ. Given the chance to invest in the company she made more than £350,000 from a £60,000 investment.
Good money. I guess you have got to be there. And it probably helps to have the right friends, whether for sound advice or that ring of confidence when talking to the media.
RandomPottins - http://randompottins.blogspot.com/
A Sense Of Shame
By Wat Tyler(Wat Tyler)
Last week Tyler attended the Public Accounts Committee hearing on MOD's bungled 2003-06 sale of QinetiQ (transcript here and see previous blogs, including here). BOM readers will be familiar with the huge profits made by the purchaser- ...
Burning our money - http://burningourmoney.blogspot.com/
09/12/2007
Universities anger over links to military firms
Anger over universities' links to military firms
Sunday Herald - Glasgow,Scotland,UK
The two organisations claim that Glasgow University has undertaken 82 projects with companies such as qinetiq, an international defence and security company ...
Sunday Herald - Glasgow,Scotland,UK
The two organisations claim that Glasgow University has undertaken 82 projects with companies such as qinetiq, an international defence and security company ...
08/12/2007
Rhodri Celebrates More militarisation of Wales with qinetiq
MOD awards qinetiq contract to deliver part of the major ...
Epicos.com (press release) - Switzerland
qinetiq's support for the development of the Welsh Assembly Government initiative at parcaberporth in West Wales as a "Centre of Excellence" for Unmanned ...
The £800million Watchkeeper project is designed to provide the UK armed forces with a specialised surveillance and reconnaissance capability and will be evaluated within the unique environment that exists in West Wales. The announcement follows 15 months of promotion and planning by a team comprising QinetiQ,
"MOD's decision to site Watchkeeper test and evaluation in
Qinetiq to test for UK mod's Watchkeeper UAV programme 
Flight International - USABarbara CockburnThe deal forms part of the Thales UK-led Watchkeeper UAV programme, and means that Qinetiq will carry out a variety of airborne test and .....................
Technology firm Qinetiq is to provide the UK Ministry of Defence with airborne and ground-based testing work for its unmanned air vehicle operations, in a contract worth £5m ($10.3 million).
The deal forms part of the Thales UK-led Watchkeeper UAV programme, and means that Qinetiq will carry out a variety of airborne test and evaluation elements at ParcAberporth, Wales, over the next 18 months, also using the MoD's adjoining Aberporth air range.
Raytheon Weather Weapon
Weather Warfare: Beware the US military’s experiments with climatic warfare by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Posted on December 7, 2007 by Dandelion Salad by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, December 7, 2007 The Ecologist, December 2007
Selected excerpts of article
Read complete article on Weather Warfare by Michel Chossudovsky, The Ecologist, December 2007 (pdf)
Rarely acknowledged in the debate on global climate change, the world’s weather can now be modified as part of a new generation of sophisticated electromagnetic weapons. Both the US and Russia have developed capabilities to manipulate the climate for military use.
Environmental modification techniques have been applied by the US military for more than half a century. US mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, started his research on weather modification in the late 1940s at the height of the Cold War and foresaw ‘forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined’. During the Vietnam war, cloud-seeding techniques were used, starting in 1967 under Project Popeye, the objective of which was to prolong the monsoon season and block enemy supply routes along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The US military has developed advanced capabilities that enable it selectively to alter weather patterns. The technology, which is being perfected under the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), is an appendage of the Strategic Defense Initiative – ‘Star Wars’. From a military standpoint, HAARP is a weapon of mass destruction, operating from the outer atmosphere and capable of destabilising agricultural and ecological systems around the world.
While the substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, debate on weather modification for military use has become a scientific taboo.
Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter and environmentalists are focused on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Neither is the possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader debate on climate change under UN auspices.the US Air Force points to the unthinkable: the covert manipulation of weather patterns, communications and electric power systems as a weapon of global warfare, enabling the US to disrupt and dominate entire regions.
Weather manipulation is the pre-emptive weapon par excellence. It can be directed against enemy countries or ‘friendly nations’ without their knowledge, used to destabilise economies, ecosystems and agriculture. It can also trigger havoc in financial and commodity markets. The disruption in agriculture creates a greater dependency on food aid and imported grain staples from the US and other Western countries.
HAARP was developed as part of an Anglo-American partnership between Raytheon Corporation, which owns the HAARP patents, and British Aerospace Systems (BAES).
The HAARP project is one among several collaborative ventures in advanced weapons systems between the two defence giants. The HAARP project was initiated in 1992 by Advanced Power Technologies, Inc. (APTI), a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Corporation (ARCO). APTI (including the HAARP patents) was sold by ARCO to E-Systems Inc, in 1994. E-Systems, on contract to the CIA and US Department of Defense, outfitted the ‘Doomsday Plan’, which ‘allows the President to manage a nuclear war’. Subsequently acquired by Raytheon Corporation, it is among the largest intelligence contractors in the World.
BAES was involved in the development of the advanced stage of the HAARP antenna array under a 2004 contract with the Office of Naval Research. The installation of 132 high frequency transmitters was entrusted by BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc. The project, according to a July report in Defense News, was undertaken by BAES’s Electronic Warfare division. In September it received DARPA’s top award for technical achievement for the design, construction and activation of the HAARP array of antennas.
BAES was involved in the development of the advanced stage of the HAARP antenna array under a 2004 contract with the Office of Naval Research. The installation of 132 high frequency transmitters was entrusted by BAES to its US subsidiary, BAE Systems Inc.
The project, according to a July report in Defense News, was undertaken by BAES’s Electronic Warfare division. In September it received DARPA’s top award for technical achievement for the design, construction and activation of the HAARP array of antennas. The HAARP system is fully operational and in many regards dwarfs existing conventional and strategic weapons systems. While there is no firm evidence of its use for military purposes, Air Force documents suggest HAARP is an integral part of the militarisation of space. One would expect the antennas already to have been subjected to routine testing.
Under the UNFCCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has a mandate ‘to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of climate change’. This mandate includes environmental warfare. ‘Geo-engineering’ is acknowledged, but the underlying military applications are neither the object of policy analysis or scientific research in the thousands of pages of IPCC reports and supporting documents, based on the expertise and input of some 2,500 scientists, policymakers and environmentalists. ‘Climatic warfare’ potentially threatens the future of humanity, but has casually been excluded from the reports for which the IPCC received the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
Read complete article on Weather Warfare by Michel Chossudovsky, The Ecologist, December 2007 (pdf)
Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky
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© Copyright Michel Chossudovsky, The Ecologist, December 2007, 2007
The url address of this article is: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7561
04/12/2007
Universities take money from Arms Companies
New report on university funding although it doesn't look at at the Open university which as we know is heavily involved with the Metrix consortium and bestowing respectability and credence to the arms companies Raytheon, Qinetiq
least £725 million over six years from arms companies and public military bodies. The report, Study War No More, is published jointly by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) and CAAT
Cardiff University
This is how they describe it “The University has signed a major partnership with leading defence security and technology company QinetiQ. The strategic partnership will enable QinetiQ to access University expertise and maintain an active involvement in its latest research innovations. In return QinetiQ, which has a strong UK customer base and is expanding in the USA, will provide expertise on technology transfer..”
- Cardiff University Website
Top 3 funders (by no. of projects) 1) QinetiQ 2)MoD 3)Dstl
A report published today reveals that 26 top UK universities have received contracts for atleast £725 million over six years from arms companies and public military bodies. The report, Study War No More, is published jointly by the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) and CAAT
Universities accepting millions from arms companies
Ekklesia, - By staff writers A report published today (Tuesday) has revealed that 26 top UK universities have received contracts for at least £725 million over six ...
UNIVERSITIES ACCEPTING MILLIONS OF POUNDS
FROM ARMS COMPANIES, STUDY SHOWS
A report published today reveals that 26 top
Examples of military projects include a scheme researching unmanned aerial vehicles over ten universities, funded jointly by BAE and public sources, which is run by a university professor and a project manager from BAE. In addition to research projects, arms companies were found to have sponsored numerous courses, bursaries, industrial placements and careers fairs.
Co-author Martha Beale said: "It was a huge struggle to unearth this information, due to a lack of transparency at many universities and the secretive nature of the arms trade. We were staggered to discover the depth of military involvement in higher education. It raises crucial questions about research funding and academic independence. It is vital that students, university staff and the general public tackle the alarming influence of military money."
Over two-thirds of identified military projects involved three leading
Ends
- Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) works for the reduction and ultimate abolition of the international arms trade. The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) is an international spiritually-based movement of people who commit themselves to active nonviolence as a way of life and as a means of personal, social, economic and political transformation.
- The report, Study War No More, is written by
- Study War No More considers 26 universities between 2001 and 2006. These are
- Copies of Study War No More are available on request.
- Spokespeople for CAAT and FoR are available for interview.
Media Contact Symon Hill - 020 7281 0297 or 07990 673 232
[PDF] File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML
FoR’s Martha Beale on military research taking place in .....
Military Involvement in UK Universities
Does your university work for the military?
Military organisations - including arms companies and the Ministry of Defence - annually sponsor hundreds of projects at UK universities.
The Study War No More report examines military involvement at 26 UK universities in order to highlight the impact military funding has on university departments. The report provides information about the funding of UK universities by military organisations, both governmental and industrial. It also intends to support students concerned about the impact their institutions have on international peace and conflict; and to encourage debate regarding the democratic deficit within academic institutions and the ends and ethics of research and research funding.
Study War No More: Military Involvement in UK Universities is a joint project between Campaign Against Arms Trade and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. The campaign website hosts full details of military involvement at 26 UK universities. You can download the Study War No More report, which exposes the ways in which the military sector is being pushed into UK universities, view in-depth data on each of the 26 universities we researched or find out more information on researching and campaigning in this area.
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