The Climate Question (BBC) Seeing the cascade of concrete rubble in Lebanon, and the belching smoke from missile and drone attacks on oil and gas infrastructure across the Middle East, I can’t help thinking about the environmental implications of America and Israel’s war on Iran. I’m obviously not alone. In this episode, What’s the Climate Cost of War host Graihagh Jackson chats to two leading experts ( Neta Crawford, Professor of International Relations, University of St Andrews and Dr. Benjamin Neimark, Associate Professor at Queen Mary, University of London) about the carbon footprint of battle itself – the jets, the bombs, the supply lines – and the impact of maintaining armies and bases during peacetime. They discuss Gaza and Ukraine, as well as the current US-Israel war with Iran. They point out that militaries have a huge climate impact even in peacetime, because they are always mobilized, and the procurement of highly engineered weapons has a climate impact too. They point out that the military doesn’t have to report emissions because they received a carveout in the Kyoto accord, and reporting was made voluntary under the Paris climate accord. However, the military are reducing emissions because they are concerned about extreme weather and the instability it causes, and the mass migration which might result.
The Rest is Classified Episode 122 Kim Philby: An Assassin in Spain (Episode 2) By now Philby’s Soviet handlers had charged him with the task of infiltrating the British state- starting with his own father, who was a rather eccentric Arabist. Kim and his friend Tim Milne (the nephew of Winnie the Pooh writer AA Milne) travelled in Europe and witnessed the rise of fascism. He began working as a journalist, and was sent on assignment to hang around with the Nazis. From there he was sent to the Spanish Civil War to cover the right wing forces for the ‘Times’ and was encouraged to get close to Franco. In 1937-8 many Soviet handlers were purged by Stalin, and he was cut loose for a while, with little or no contact with his handlers. In 1939 Germany and Russia signed the Nazi-Soviet pact, which must have really done in the heads of anti-Nazi Communists- all of a sudden they were on the same side! He met Litzi, a sexually liberated Communist, and they married. and went back to England together. Then he was sent by the Times to report on the British army, which of course he fed to Russia, which was still too involved in its own purges to take much notice of him. At this stage, the other Cambridge Five were more successful in infiltrating the British Establishment- for example Guy Burgess was working at the BBC, where he was very well connected. When Burgess was recruited by MI6, he lobbied to get Philby in, although Burgess himself was soon sacked and returned to the BBC and then the Foreign Office. Philby joined the British Secret Intelligence Service after his father vouched for him.
The Rest is History Episode 405 The Nazis in Power: The Nuremburg Rallies (Part 2) From their website
““We did not lose the war because our artillery gave out, but because the weapons of our mind didn’t fire” In September 1934, the Nazis held their sixth annual party conference in the Bavarian city of Nuremberg. The location held a symbolic resonance for the party, being not only the embodiment of an uncorrupted medieval Germany, and the centre of the First Reich, but also a bedrock of anti-Semitism. It was therefore here that Hitler would lay out his terrifying vision for the mighty new empire’s future, promulgating the superiority and purity of the Aryan bloodline. The rally was a pageant of ritualised fanaticism, recalling the majesty of Germany’s mythic past and all the heroism of classical antiquity. It was the first of many such extravagant displays, replete with parades of marching workers, bonfires, and swastikas, as the Nazi propaganda machine, under the leadership of the grotesque Joseph Goebbels, tightened its stranglehold over Germany. Through the popularisation of the radio, Nazi youth organisations, cinema, and even the Olympic Games, German minds were being steadily remoulded…”
There were 700,000 participants at the rally which included speeches, stage performances and parades. By 1935 Hitler announced that the swastika would be the national flag, and very cheap radios were distributed so that people could listen at home. Radio propaganda was also installed in offices, cafes and stairwells. Women were cloistered within a separate sphere, based on inequality and pseudo-scientific theories. They were moved out of legal and educational positions, and in 1934 were limited to 10% of the enrolment at grammar schools, and soon there would be no female enrolment at all. There were no non-Nazi youth groups: instead provision for young people was funnelled through the Hitler Youth and the League of Nations
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 