DCUK-Earth
Government approves ex-minister for oil company role after he lobbied two prime ministers for its CEO
Sir Alan Duncan, an oil salesman turned British foreign minister, has been approved by the UK government to take up a role at Vitol, the world’s largest petroleum trader. Declassified reveals the potential conflict of interests at the heart of the appointment.
The UK’s new nuclear strategy is illegal and dangerous to the world
Boris Johnson’s government has announced an increase in the UK’s arsenal of nuclear arms and now threatens to use it against non-nuclear-weapon states. These policies are illegal and are likely to increase global tensions.
Aircraft carrier base threatens endangered whales
British officials did not consider the environmental impact of a new naval base in the Indian Ocean, despite evidence it will have ‘large adverse’ consequences for a species of whale ‘at high risk of extinction’, Declassified has found.
Revealed: MI5 and MI6 are flouting environmental legislation
The new head of MI6 says his agency will monitor other countries’ climate commitments, but the UK’s intelligence agencies are refusing to provide any information on their own environmental footprint.
Revealed: The UK’s largest intelligence agency is a significant emitter of greenhouse gases
Declassified UK obtains first evidence of the environmental footprint of Britain’s surveillance agency, GCHQ, which shows its staff are flying nearly three times more than the average Briton annually, raising questions about the scale of its global base network, which has never been officially acknowledged.
Revealed: UK ignored Chechnya war crimes to push BP’s oil interests as it worked to get Vladimir Putin elected in 2000
The British government sought, in 2000, to integrate Putin’s Russia into the Western-ruled economic system, despite its brutal military campaign in Chechnya, documents obtained by Declassified show.
The British ambassador who supported a coup
Britain’s ambassador to Bolivia, Jeff Glekin, played a personal role in events leading up to the 2019 military-backed coup that deposed the country’s democratically elected president, Evo Morales — and strongly supported the new regime as it carried out two massacres of unarmed protesters, Declassified has found.
The final frontier: Could Britain’s new spaceports embroil the UK in future star wars?
Britain wants to put satellites into space from home soil next year. At first, the futuristic ‘spaceports’ were aimed at commercial users. But now they could become embroiled in star wars, with the military telling Declassified it has met entrepreneurs from more than half of the UK’s launch pad companies.
Revealed: The UK supported the coup in Bolivia to gain access to its ‘white gold’
After a coup in the South American country of Bolivia in November 2019, democratically elected president Evo Morales was forced to flee. Foreign Office documents obtained by Declassified show Britain saw the new military-backed regime, which killed 18 protesters, as an opportunity to open up Bolivia’s lithium deposits to UK firms.