There has never been a case like this in UK Courts. BAe were guilty of corruption in relation to Tanzania. I say this in defiance of the sentence, because as Mr Justice Bean makes clear, because the serious Fraud Office had been forbidden from prosecuting the case, he could not try it properly. If the case had been as claimed in the BAe/SFO deal, he would not have fined them more than £5,000. As it was he fines them £500,000. Within the trial agreement with SFO BAe systems is given immunity from SFO investigation and prosecutions in any other case in their murky history. The pay-off is £30 million to Tanzania, which was actually paid late. So this is the UK Courts of Justice cooking a bribery trial with the Justice powerless to do anything about it. Such is the power of the arms establishment in Government and the Justice System. This is Justice Bean’s summing up, full of irony and not a little anger at the way he has been stitched up.

REGINA V BAE SYSTEMS PLC
Mr. Justice Bean:

1. On 23rd November 2010 at the City of Westminster Magistrates Court. BAE Systems PLC (“the Company”) pleaded guilty to one offence of failing to keep accounting records “sufficient to show and explain the transactions of the company” contrary to Section 221 of the Companies Act 1985. District Judge Tubbs committed the case to the Crown Court for sentence.

2. The laying of the information on 5th November 2010 came after a Settlement Agreement between the Company and the Serious Fraud Office. This provided, so far as material, as follows:
2) The Company shall plead guilty to a charge in the form attached of one count under section 221 Companies Act 1985.
3) The basis of plea in relation to that charge shall be in the form attached. The Company shall admit the facts set out therein and enter a plea in mitigation. The SFO will provide a copy of its opening note by 19 February 2010.
4) The fine for the offence admitted shall be imposed by the Court.
5) The Company shall make an ex gratia payment for the benefit of the people of Tanzania in a manner to be agreed between the SFO and the Company. The amount of the payment shall be £30 million less any financial orders imposed by the Court.
6) The SFO shall not prosecute any person in relation to conduct other than conduct connected with the Czech Republic or Hungary.
7) The SFO shall forthwith terminate all its investigations into the BAE Systems Group.
8) There shall be no further investigation or prosecutions of any member of the BAE Systems Group for any conduct preceding 5 February 2010.
9) There shall be no civil proceedings against any member of the BAE Systems Group in relation to any matters investigated by the SFO.
10) No member of the BAE Systems Group shall be named as, or alleged to be, an unindicted co-conspirator or in any other capacity in any prosecution the SFO may bring against any other party.

3. The basis of plea attached to the Settlement Agreement included the following:-
“2.1 The SFO commences its investigation into BAE Plc in July 2004. The SFO has investigated a number of issues as part of that investigation.”
2.2 One of the transactions that the SFO has investigated is the sale of a radar system to the government of Tanzania, (the radar contract)…
3.4 On 10 September 1999 a new contract for the sale was signed between the government of Tanzania and British Aerospace Defence Systems Limited with a price of $39.97m.
4.1 From the outset of the negotiations, Siemens Plessey Electronic Systems Ltd had retained a third party marketing advisor, Shailesh Vithlani (“Vithlani”) in Tanzania to assist with the negotiation and sale process. The agreement was between Vithlani personally and a Siemens Plessey subsidiary, Plessey Systems Export SA.
4.2 Following the acquisition of Siemens Plessey Electronic Systems Ltd by the BAE Systems group, in spring 1998, the BAE Systems group also engaged Vithlani as a marketing advisor. From October 1999, the written agreement was between two companies controlled by BAE plc and two companies controlled by Vithlani called Merlin International Ltd (Merlin) and Envers Trading Corporation (Envers). Merlin was a Tanzanian company and Envers was incorporated offshore. Under these arrangements, Merlin was to receive 1% of the Radar Contract price and Envers was to receive 30% of the Radar Contract price. The appointment of Merlin and Envers was approved by senior BAE employees.
4.3 After signature of the Radar Contract, payments of approximately $12.4 million were made to Merlin and Envers. [I interpose that in the case of Envers, payments were made by Red Diamond Trading Ltd, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands and controlled by the Defendants.]
4.4 These payments were recorded in accounting records of British Aerospace Defence Systems Ltd as payments for the provision of technical services by Vithlani.
4.5 Although it is not alleged that BAE plc was party to an agreement to corrupt, there was a high probability that part of the $12.4 million would be used in the negotiation process to favour British Aerospace Defence Systems Ltd. The payments were not subjected to proper or adequate scrutiny or review. Further, British Aerospace Defence Systems Ltd maintained inadequate information to determine the value for money offered by Vithlani and entities controlled by him.
4.6 The case is that the financial position of British Aerospace Defence Systems Ltd was not stated with reasonable accuracy, since it was not possible for any person considering the accounts to investigate and determine whether the payments were properly accounted for and were lawful. The failure to record the services accurately was the result of a deliberate decision by one or more officers of British Aerospace Defence Systems Ltd. In the circumstances in which the British Aerospace Defence Systems Ltd was carried out, this default was inexcusable.
4.7 It is not known who at British Aerospace Defence Systems Ltd was responsible for creating the relevant inaccurate accounting records or for the commission of the offence. However, it was known by BAE plc that such inaccurate accounting records were in existence and BAE plc failed to scrutinise them adequately to ensure that they were reasonably accurate and permitted them to remain uncorrected. BAE plc is therefore also guilty of a section 221(1)(a) offence.”

4. The form of words in paragraph 4.5 of the basis of plea echoes paragraph 29 of the information laid against BAE by the United States Department of Justice. This alleged that “BAES paid payments to certain advisors through offshore shell companies, even though in certain situations there was a high probability that part of the payments would be used in order to ensure that BAES was favored in the foreign government decisions regarding the sales of defense articles”.

The Settlement Agreement
5. The Settlement Agreement is, with respect, loosely and perhaps hastily drafted. In paragraph 6 “any person” is not defined, and paragraph 10 is not, at least expressly, confined to conduct preceding the agreement. But the heart of the matter is paragraph 8, whereby the SFO agreed that there would be “no further investigation or prosecutions of any member of the BAE Systems Group for any conduct preceding 5 February 2010.” It is relatively common for a prosecuting authority to agree not to prosecute a defendant in respect of specified crimes which are admitted and listed in the agreement: this is done, for example, where the defendant is an informer who will give important evidence against co-defendants. But I am surprised to find a prosecutor granting a blanket indemnity for all offences committed in the past, whether disclosed or otherwise. The US Department of Justice did not do so in this case: it agreed not to prosecute further for past offences which had been disclosed to it.

6. I have no power to vary or set aside the Settlement Agreement. Indeed, an attempt by the pressure group Campaign Against the Arms Trade to challenge it by way of judicial review, arguing that the SFO should have brought corruption charges, was rejected by Mr Justice Collins on 24 March 2010. The judge held that it was not arguable that the decision to limit the charge to one under s 221 was unlawful.

7. I also cannot sentence for an offence which the prosecution has chosen not to charge. There is no charge of conspiracy to corrupt, nor of false accounting contrary to section 17 of the Theft Act 1968. More obviously still, the Court does not decide who should be prosecuted. Although in opening the case for the SFO Mr Victor Temple QC submitted that the default by BAEDS, authorised by its parent company BAE Systems plc, “was the result of a deliberate decision by one or more officers” of BAEDS, and the reappointment of Mr Vithlani in November 1998 was approved personally by the chairman of BAE, no individual has been charged.

8. The basis of plea records in paragraph 4.5 that “although it is not alleged that BAE plc was party to an agreement to corrupt, there was a high probability that part of the $12.4m would be used in the negotiation process to favour BAEDS”. Indeed there was. Otherwise, it is inexplicable, on the material before me, why the payments to Mr Vithlani’s companies exceeded $12m; and even more inexplicable why 97% of that money should have been channelled via Red Diamond, an offshore company controlled by BAE, and paid to Envers, another offshore company controlled by Mr Vithlani.

9. That being so, I was astonished to find that the prosecution opening, after citing paragraph 4.5 of the basis of plea, went on:
“Accordingly, BAE has accepted that there was a high probability that the payments to Vithlani were intended to compensate him for work done in seeking to persuade relevant persons to favour BAEDS in respect of the radar project. It is not now possible to establish precisely what Vithlani did with the money that was paid to him. However, it is no part of the Crown’s case that any part of those payments were in fact improperly used in the negotiation process to favour BAEDS nor is it any part of the Crown’s case that BAE was party to any agreement to corrupt. To lobby is one thing, to corrupt another.”

10. I accept the second of these four sentences, namely that it is not now possible to establish precisely what Mr Vithlani did with the money that was paid to him. But on the basis of the documents shown to me it seems naïve in the extreme to think that Mr Vithlani was simply a well-paid lobbyist.

11. I also accept that there is no evidence that BAE was party to an agreement to corrupt. They did not wish to be, and did not need to be. The fact that money was paid by them to Red Diamond, by Red Diamond to Envers and by Envers to Mr Vithlani placed them at two or three removes from any shady activity by Mr. Vithlani.

12. In any event, the suggestion that Mr. Vithlani was merely a well paid lobbyist using his valuable time to hold legitimate meetings with decision-makers in Tanzania with no money changing hands is inconsistent, in my view, with the wording of the basis of plea that “there was a high probability that part of the $12.4m would be used in the negotiation process to favour BAEDS”.

13. The Consolidated Criminal Practice Direction section IV.45 and the decision of the Court of Appeal in R v Underwood [2004] EWCA Crim 2256 establish that whether or not pleas have been agreed the judge is not bound by any such agreement, and that any view formed by the prosecution on a proposed basis of plea is deemed to be conditional of the Judge’s acceptance of the basis of plea. Once the criminal courts are involved, sentence cannot be passed on an artificial basis. I accept the basis of plea itself. I remind myself that were I to hold a Newton hearing the criminal burden and standard of proof would apply. However, I indicated that I could not, without hearing evidence, accept any interpretation of the basis of plea which suggested that what BAE were concealing by the Section 221 offence was merely a series of payments to an expensive lobbyist. Such evidence might, for example, have involved witnesses who could testify, if it really is the case, that legitimate lobbyists could be paid 30% of the value of a $40 million contract simply as recompense for their time and trouble. Neither side sought to call evidence, although I indicated that I was prepared to grant an adjournment for them to do so.

14. I asked Mr. Temple what should have been in the accounting records instead of the phrase “provision of technical services”. He replied that something along the lines of “public relations and marketing services” would have been a more accurate description. If that had been a true and accurate description of the services which Mr. Vithlani was going to provide then I question whether it would have been appropriate to prosecute at all. Certainly the s 221 offence would have been suitable for being sentenced in the magistrates’ court. I would myself have imposed a fine of at most £5,000.

15. I therefore propose to sentence on the basis that by describing the payments in their accounting records as being for the provision of “technical services” the Defendants were concealing from the auditors and ultimately the public the fact that they were making payments to Mr Vithlani, 97% of them via two offshore companies, with the intention that he should have free rein to make such payments to such people as he thought fit in order to secure the Radar Contract for the defendants, but that the defendants did not want to know the details.

16. For the defendants Mr. David Perry QC made some important points in mitigation:
1) The company is charged with a single offence, not stated to be a specimen charge (though it continued for a 7 year period).
2) The Defendant cannot be sentenced for an offence, such as conspiracy to corrupt, which it has not admitted.
3) The company was prosecuted and fined the sum of $400m in the United States for offences in countries other than Tanzania.
4) The period over which the offence took place ended in December 2005. In 2007, by which time the SFO had been investigating the BAE Group’s affairs for some time, the company appointed a distinguished committee chaired by Lord Woolf, the former Lord Chief Justice, to identify the high ethical standards to which a global company should adhere, identify the extent to which BAE may currently meet these standards and recommend the action that BAE should take to achieve them. The committee reported in May 2008. The BAE Code of Conduct, which has been in effect since January 2009, now states that “we will not make facilitation payments and will seek to eliminate the practice in countries in which we do business”.
5) Both Mr. Temple and Mr. Perry emphasised the significance of the voluntary reparation which the company agreed to make “for the benefit of the people of Tanzania” as part of the settlement agreement. This payment will be £30 million, less any financial orders imposed by the Court”. The victims of this way of obtaining business, if I have correctly analysed it, are not the people of the UK, but the people of Tanzania. The airport at Dar-es-Salaam could no doubt have had a new radar system for a good deal less than $40million if $12million had not been paid to Mr. Vithlani. The structure of this Settlement Agreement places moral pressure on the Court to keep the fine to a minimum so that the reparation is kept at a maximum.

17. I have no power in this case to order confiscation or compensation.

18. Both Mr Temple and Mr Perry have decades of experience at the Criminal Bar. Neither of them was able to point me to any previous decision on the proper sentence for a case of this kind under s 221. Perhaps this is because there has never been one.

19. Taking the mitigating factors identified by Mr Perry into account I consider that the appropriate fine is £ 500,000. In addition, by consent, I order the Defendants to pay £225,000 towards the prosecution’s costs.

There is a long critique of economics that looks at the value-free way it totals product, expenditure and income. If I buy, it is expenditure, but if I do unpaid (make a cup of coffee, build a house or help a child grow up) it is economically invisible in most analyses.

More than this we buy “goods”, but lots of them are bads or indifferents for those consumers and perhaps for all consumers – foods, drugs, addictive goods and activities, damaging or dangerous products and activities which spoil relationships or lifestyles. They add to GDP, but really reduce our standard of living. It is not difficult to come up with a list comprising perhaps a fifth of all expenditure of things which are bad, or not good for, the people who buy them.Clearly, this is vastly important to real economics.

We look at, perhaps, the biggest failure of see straight of all value-free economics – the world military system. Let us look at its “value-free” size. Something like $1.7 trillion is directly spent on the military world-wide each year.

But, more than this, perhaps 10% of all government expenditure is gathered around security, espionage, defence, international tensions and the business related to the military. So, for example, the CIA, the Department of Homeland Security, NASA, the Nuclear Research Agencies, etc are not in the US military budget, and other military budgets must be similarly understated around the world. If world GDP is £83 trillion and Government Expenditure Worldwide is 17%, this extra is $1.4 trillion.

Next we take into account the damage caused by wars and attacks in any year through killing, injury, damage to property, infrastructure, resources and other economic valuables. It is difficult even to guess this. During the World Wars it might have been as high as 20-30% as vast areas were destroyed and dragged back in economic development. Other periods have higher and lower levels of damage and destruction. If we bear in mind that killing a young person takes out perhaps a $1 million of work earnings, these calculations are vast. At a very conservative estimate we could say this figure is 3-5% of GDP.

There are other less tangible figures, like the trading and economic development loss vcaused by militarism and wars, the costs of military and war generation of CO2, perhaps 5% of all CO2 generation, but we exclude these. Overall the costs of these bads are some 6.5% of World GDP, or $5.4 trillion a year – more than the economies of the UK and India together each year.

World disarmament, getting rid of all these costs, and the chronic negative impacts on people’s lives and lands, would be the biggest conceivable benefit to the world economy. We could spend the economies of India and the UK on all kinds of good things. This shows the stupidity of militarism, banging our collective heads against exploding devices, and the eminently sensible route of multilateral world disarmament, MWD.

Of course, those who sell weapons want to hide this reality, so that we can continue attacking and frightening one another, but soon the victims will see through the crack in their visors and start shaking hands with their putative enemies, because spending $1.7 trillion annually on destruction, even if it adds to GDP, is dumb in any language.

This is a request you sign a petition, but more, it shares a strategy and understanding you may want to own. The points are not new, but putting them on the table together points the way ahead. It’s about addressing the world-wide military situation, something we rarely dare think about, but should. If a thousand or so of us share this strategic understanding and articulate it well before 11/11/2018, things might change quite radically. The points are not original or difficult to agree with.

1. MILITARISM IS GROWING. World military spending is now some 70% higher than at the end of the Cold War and looks to increase further. Sophisticated arms industries in the US, UK, Russia, France, China, Japan and other states are expanding and supplying most countries with lethal arrays of weapons. Companies push their wares avidly.

2. THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX IS INSIDE GOVERNMENT. The military and arms companies are (undemocratically) inside most governments, especially the heavily armed members of the UN Security Council. The military-industrial complex is in political control, and shapes most of the media with scares, distrust, nationalist themes and rumours of wars.

3. ARMS ARE THE PROBLEM, NOT THE SOLUTION. THEY CAUSE MOST WARS. Arms, not territorial gain, cause most wars. WW1 was precipitated by four arms races. Arms pressure in the 1920s and 30s opened the way for Hitler. The flooding of the Middle East with arms (for oil) has made much of it into an area of failed, war-ridden states. Both Iraq Wars were caused by arms. ISIS was founded on looted western arms. If nothing is done, arms sales and macho politics will cause more wars, deaths and devastation. Refugees (50-70M now) and dire poverty will be even more serious and insoluble. Big power confrontations would destroy much of the world.

4. MILITARISM IS THE BIGGEST FAILED EXPERIMENT ON THE PLANET. It has caused 200 million deaths this last century and wasted perhaps 10-20% of all economic activity on the planet. Most people, given space to reflect, know wars and arming do not work especially if they have direct experience of war. All sides lose wars. All States waste through militarism. The power to destroy is no power at all to thinking people. All countries, except the US, have a policy of internal disarmament because it is safer. In an inter-dependent world, militarism is tragically stupid. Weapons have shot their bolt.

5. MOST OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION IS FOR PEACE AND DISARMAMENT, were they not frightened by the militarists and told peace is not practical. Vast industries of fear, east and west, keep this fragile militarism in place, when the old nationalist and patriotic idea of enemy is merely a myth for the military. In November 2018 they will reflect on the War to End all Wars and the possibility of peace. Football across no man’s land is now much more sensible than going back to the trenches.

6. FULL WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT – ARMING DOWN – IS EASIER AND MORE PRACTICAL THAN ARMING UP. If all nations disarm together, threats, dangers, costs and damage fall for all, and no-one needs “defence”. A clear proposal for decreasing military spending accepted by all states makes eminent sense for all, except the militarists. It needs backing by open and required inspection, a (decreasing) UN police force and a subsidized end to arms production. War and destruction are impractical, and most of the defence arguments are myths, hiding the fact that aggression does not work. The idea that wars are won is idealised. Deliberate world-wide disarmament is not difficult if the major powers back it together and work with the United Nations.

7. THE MILITARY MUST NOT BE IN CHARGE. Disarmament was proposed seriously in 1899, 1907, 1918, 1932 and the 1960s, but never actually tried, because the military-industrial complex sabotaged it and dominated political leadership. Especially in the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference the military establishment and arms company agents stopped President Hoover’s radical disarmament plan. Turkeys do not vote for Christmas. The military-industrial complex will try every which way to stop disarmament. Disarmament will be a fight against them, but not to kill and maim. Similarly, the militarists cannot be in charge of implementing it; They will create problems to break it down, though they owe it to their soldiers not to. Reliable political control of the military is a necessity.

8. THE ROUTE TO WORLD MULTILATERAL DISARMAMENT, SIDE-STEPPING MILITARY CONTROL, IS POPULAR WORLD-WIDE DEMOCRATIC PETITIONS. Not “petitions” in the sense, “we beg you”, but petitions in the sense, “We the undersigned insists this should happen.” We go round military control of the system. These petitions can grow in every nation, east and west, and we, the little people, can say, “This is where we stand – disarmament for everybody.” There will be problems with military dictators, superpowers, fearmongers and terrorists, but these problems are far smaller than weapons and war, and can be handled under the rule of law. So world multilateral disarmament and peace must be made, and we can make it, as Jesus suggested. Faith can move mountains, even the one of world militarism.

9. NOVEMBER 2019 IS A CRUCIAL TIME. The First World War was to be the War To End All Wars, and Disarmament for All was built into the Treaty of Versailles. It was frozen out by the military-industrial establishments and not tried, opening the way for Hitler. Now is the time to learn the deep lesson of this Pointless War and disarm the nations. We, little people, have to do it and you, in your own way, with your friends and contacts, are invited to take it on by word and action. You are invited to sign this proposal to the UK Government, pass it on and undertake your own initiatives.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/226728

It needs to be 10,000 or 100,000 by the beginning of November to start the process with some élan. We can, one by one, help disarm the world and make peace.

In November this year – the centenary of the end of the Great War – much of the world’s population will be wondering why WW1 was not the “War to end all Wars”. They will probably not hear an answer. Many will be cynical of the very idea. Actually, the policy understood in 1918 by most of the people and world’s statesmen has been pushed off the road of human history, trashed and buried without trace in the national consciousness. It was Multilateral Disarmament and built into the Treaty of Versailles. Germany immediately, but then all nations, were to disarm to secure the end of war and worldwide peace.

Hear some of the world’s leaders on the problem. Here is Lord Grey of Fallodon, British Foreign Secretary for the decade leading into the War, and at the centre of all that was going on. ”The moral is obvious; it is that great armaments lead inevitably to war. There are armaments on one side, there must be armaments on other sides…” He carries on, “But although all this be true, it is not in my opinion the real and final account of the origin of the Great War. The enormous growth in armaments in Europe, the sense of insecurity and fear caused by them – it was these that made war inevitable. This, it seems to me, is the truest reading of history, and the lesson that the present should be learning from the past in the interests of future peace, the waring to be handed on to those who come after us.” Lloyd George came to a similar conclusion.

Even the leading military staff saw the problem and the answer. Field Marshall Sir William Robertson, or Wully to his friends… “I prefer to believe that the majority of people in the world in these days think that war hurts everybody, benefits nobody – except the profiteers – and settles nothing…. As one who has passed pretty well half a century in the study and practice of war, I suggest to you that you should give your support to Disarmament and so do your best to ensure the promotion of peace.” Admiral Lord Wymess: “The evil is intensified by the existence of international armaments rings, the members of which notoriously play into each others’ hands. So long as this subterranean conspiracy against peace is allowed to continue the possibility of any serious concerted reduction of armaments will be remote.” Lord Trenchard, Chief of Air Staff 1919-29 while in post, talking about Multilateral Disarmament: “if I had the casting vote, I would say abolish the Air. I feel that it is an infinitely more harmful weapon of war than any other.” These military men obviously saw World Disarmament as the necessary way ahead.

There were others who had already seen the tragedy that the Great War would bring. With almost prophetic insight, Gladstone saw the way British naval aggrandisement would lead to a great European War. Keir Hardie led the Labour Party with a keen sense of how militarism was pushing Europe to the edge and over it. He desperately trying to prevent the War. Pope Benedict clearly signalled in 1914 the catastrophe the War would bring. Leo Tolstoy railed at the stupidity of spending millions on fighting, as if mass murder was more justified than a single murder. Then those who fought saw war as it was, and poets, artists or ordinary injured soldiers vowed that war should end and those who made the instruments of war should be put out of work and profits.

The American President, Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points Speech was made early in 1918. (and largely ignored in the media in January). After the War, it was built into the Treaty of Versailles. It spoke against secret treaties, indeed the need for any treaties, and armed alliances. It was based on reducing arms to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety, effectively to a policing level. Lenin hoped for this outcome in the war-torn USSR. The people, from king to paupers, looked for Disarmament as the end to War.

They were not proved wrong, but the militarists and war people slipped this policy off the agenda. In the States vast profits had been made out of arms, and the Du Ponts and others made sure that the ailing Wilson’s policy of disarmament would not be tried and quit the League of Nations. Military distrust and hanging on to weapons defeated the disarmament move, not by argument, but by burying the issue in vagueness until 1932 when it was defeated, again through private cabals and, as Noel-Baker who witnessed it argues, the arms companies’ agents. Multilateral Disarmament has been buried, because it is too dangerous for the military-industrial establishments in charge from the late 19th century until now. It brings world peace but the horrific possibility that the merchants of death will sell nothing. It is time now to try swords into ploughshares properly, without the military in charge.

There is a concerted campaign to smear Corbyn with anti-Semitism. here are some source materials to 2014 and the Commons Debate on recognising both the State of Israel and the State of Palestine.

Jack Straw
A moment’s thought will allow us to appreciate just how ill-founded the Government of Israel’s assertion is. Israel has been occupying Palestinian land for nearly 50 years. It fails to meet its clear international legal obligations as an occupying power. In the last 20 years, as we have heard, it has compounded that failure by a deliberate decision to annex Palestinian land and to build Israeli settlements on that land. There are now 600,000 such Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem and the west bank. The Israelis are seeking to strangle East Jerusalem by expropriating land all around it, and two months ago, they announced the illegal annexation of a further nearly 1,000 acres of land near Bethlehem. The Israeli Government will go on doing this as long as they pay no price for their obduracy. Their illegal occupation of land is condemned by this Government in strong terms, but no action follows. The Israelis sell produce from these illegal settlements in Palestine as if they were made or grown in Israel, but no action follows.

Israel itself was established and recognised by unilateral act. The Palestinians had no say whatever over the recognition of the state of Israel, still less a veto. I support the state of Israel. I would have supported it at the end of the 1940s. But it cannot lie in the mouth of the Israeli Government, of all Governments, to say that they should have a veto over a state of Palestine, when for absolutely certain the Palestinians had no say whatever over the establishment of the state of Israel.

Today’s debate will, I hope, send a strong signal that the British Parliament stands full square behind the two-state solution set out in the road map. The current impasse can be broken, in my view, only by actions, not simply by words, and the recognition of Palestine by the international community would further, not hinder, these aims.

Sir Gerard Kaufmann
There are 6 million Israeli Jews. There are 1,600,000 Palestinians in Israel, 2,700,000 on the west bank and 1,800,000 in Gaza. The Palestinians now outnumber the Israeli Jews, and that is without taking into account the 5 million Palestinians in refugee camps and in the diaspora. The big difference, of course, is that the Israelis have a secure state and the Palestinians live under oppression day after day.

The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) wove a fantasy that the Jews were reunited when the state of Israel was created and that the Palestinians were split, and we have just heard again about the wickedness of Hamas—I do not condone what Hamas does, and I realise that it is a useful tool for those who wish to portray the Palestinians as divided and unreliable. His fantasy was that all was harmonious when Israel was created, but the Israelis were divided into three warring factions at that time: the Haganah, representing the official Jewish agency; the terrorist organisation Irgun Zvai Leumi; and the terrorist Stern gang. Israel nearly broke out into civil war immediately after it was founded because Irgun insisted on having its own army in an independent state, so the idea that Israel was somehow born in a moment of paradise and that all that surrounds the Palestinians is stress and damage is a fantasy.

Where are we now? The situation was not ideal for Israel then, and it is not ideal for the Palestinians now, but divided Israel survived and survives even though it is still divided. Look at the amazing divisions in the Israeli Government, with the extraordinary extremism of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, which makes the UK Independence party look like cosy internationalists, yet it is part of the Government.

The Israelis are harming the Palestinians day after day. Last week the US State Department denounced a settlement expansion of 2,600 that the Israelis are planning. Last week the new president of the New Israel Fund, Talia Sasson—Jewish and pro-Israel—denounced the expansion of settlements again in the west bank. The Israelis, with the checkpoints, the illegal wall and the settlements, are making a coherent Palestinian state impossible.

It is essential to pass this motion, because it would be a game changer. The recognition of Palestine by the British House of Commons would affect the international situation. This House can create a historic new situation. I call on right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House to give the Palestinians their rights and show the Israelis that they cannot suppress another people all the time. It is not Jewish for the Israelis to do that. They are harming the image of Judaism, and terrible outbreaks of anti-Semitism are taking place. I want to see an end to anti-Semitism, and I want to see a Palestinian state.​

Jeremy Corbyn

I thank the Minister for what he has said so far. During his discussions, was there at any point a serious debate about the problem of the lives faced by many Palestinian refugees in camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and other places? They too must surely be part of a long-term peace equation. They have spent more than 60 years in those camps, and it cannot go on for ever like that.

This is how the House of Commons voted:

Resolved: 274 in favour and 12 against
That this House believes that the Government should recognise the state of Palestine alongside the state of Israel, as a contribution to securing a negotiated two state solution.

The Palestinian representative to the UK, Manuel Hassassian was heartened by the debate and result, and was criticised by Zionists. Corbyn’s response to them was”One is they don’t want to study history, and secondly, having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, they don’t understand English irony either.” To make this into an accusation of anti-Semitism is malignant, and part of a potent distraction from the wrongs committed by the Israelis against the Palestinians as described in the debate. (Sir Gerard Kaufman was a Jew)

Later the PM was asked
Q7. The Palestinian ambassador, Mr Hassassian, has described Monday’s vote on the recognition of the Palestinian state as “a momentous vote”. Indeed it was. He has also said:“Now is the time for the UK government to listen to its democratically elected parliament and to take decisive political action by recognising the State of Palestine and upholding its historical, moral and legal responsibility towards Palestine”.Does the Prime Minister agree? [905381]

The Prime Minister, David Cameron

“Of course, I look forward to the day when Britain will recognise the state of Palestine, but it should be part of the negotiations that bring about a two-state solution. That is what we all want to see—a state of Israel living happily and peacefully alongside a state of Palestine—and that is when we should do the recognition.”

Cameron thus ducked the vote, and avoided recognition of the Palestinian State.

Corbyn as a supporter of recognising both the states of Israel and Palestine is being attacked by those who want the issue of oppression to Palestinian oppression to disappear. This is why the accusations of anti-Semitism against Corbyn appear like the drip of a leaky tap.

US is involved in Tariff War with China and aggressive deals with others.
US has substantial long-term trade deficits, so that China and Japan have come to own a lot of US assets.There is an accumulated Current Account Deficit of $3 trillion in the last three decades.
If China loses US markets, if will market strongly in other parts of the world, usually with price advantages.
US Federal Budget is in deep deficit. If the Federal Government is to raise money domestically interest rates will have to rise.
There is long-term pressure on the $ to fall.
World-wide liquid funds can send currencies moving fast.
China has about $1 trillion in US Government Securities. If the $ falls, it loses, and loses trade advantages as well, but it has discretion in that market.
The $ is the main world reserve currency, which gives the US a seigniorage bonus, but it is declining in that role. The Euro and Chinese yuan are also widely used and there could be a more sudden move out of the $.
Trump is declaring trade War on Iran and others, using US market clout. Immediately it may work, but many will learn to do without the US. Iran will sell its oil.
Costs of global warming are increasing world wide.
The rich move their money fast when they will lose out through currency moves. They have holdings in tax havens of perhaps £20 trillion; this may stabilize or destabilize the $.
Disparities of wealth and income across the world make much of the population living precariously and predispose to recessions, because the rich spend less of their income.
The US has spent and will spend several $ trillion on wars and the military. Useless burden.
The 1917 fall in the $ did not help its trade position much immediately.

In the light of these the $ looks weak. A fall creates more problems than it solves for a couple of years – higher costs, difficult Federal Govt funding, etc. There could be trouble ahead.

Art Exhibition: God’s Creativity and ours.
Coton Village Hall, Parish Room, Church and Churchyard
Sunday, 20th May, 10.00-5-00
Alan Storkey.

The complex language of creation
We see each day and breathe each hour.
We artists get above our station.
Time to paint Your Creative power.

We Cambridge people think things through a bit,

While you make light of light and then switch off.

So photons travel 60 trillion miles,

without much fuel, nearly straight ahead,

while we are merely going round the Sun.

They thread a needle’s eye but are diffuse,

And seem to be quite light, and do not fight.

They give us paintings, colours, tone and line,

and, subtle, bounce some six or seven times.

So did this all evolve, our retinas

from sense cells formed in early slime?

No, this exquisite universe alight,

Was made before the animate was born,

before all eyes had ever come to form.