21/08/2017 Newsnight

The last solar eclipse to be seen on this continent in this century and

not until August the 21st, 2017, will an eclipse be visible from

North America,. That day was today -

the Great American Eclipse. Millions turned their faces

to the sky - from Donald Trump Millions turned their faces to the

sky. Why is this awe inspiring,

but rational mathematical event And does it have any

scientific value? We speak to Nasa's director

of planetary science. In just over three hours,

Donald Trump is due to make a major speech on military

policy on Afghanistan. And I am in Afghanistan as President

Trump reveals his new strategy for the war in Afghanistan.

We speak to the US's former Ambassador to Afghanistan.

After Grenfell - tonight we are finally getting some clarity

on how big a safety problem has been uncovered

The government now knows of more than 200 high-rises fitted

with cladding that does not meet our fire rules.

A pulverised city, Isis fighters still hiding out in pockets.

Can traumatised residents, and returning refugees

This is what liberation looks like. Iraq's second-largest city, just

ruins. The bulk of the city is completely destroyed and devastated.

There is nothing left. Millions across the United States

witnessed the Great American From the Oregon coast

to Charleston in South Carolina, people gathered in sport stadiums

and on beaches and city roofs as the country

was plunged into darkness, coast to coast, for the first

time in 100 years. It was said to be the most

documented such event in history. Centuries ago, an eclipse

was everything from a divine warning The ancient Chinese thought the sun

had been eaten by a dragon. No matter the rational explanation,

it is still for many an extraordinary moment,

when we realise we are just So what's the draw,

and can we actually learn We'll hear from Nasa in a moment,

but first here's Stephen Smith. I have seen grown men cry at solar

eclipses. Across a great swathe of America, and in a break from the

norm, people have been taking a holiday and rushing to get out of

the sun. A shadow cast by a once-in-a-lifetime solar eclipse.

For once, the president did not seem to mind being put in the shade. For

90 minutes the eclipse tracked east over 14 states, from one American

seaboard to the other, before heading out over the Atlantic. If

the eclipse is a highlight in the calendar, consider the men and women

who devote themselves to studying solar activity. For then it is a

real day in the sun, or rather shadow. I am working on how the sun

shines and we keep making progress and understanding how the sun

shines, but there are gaps and it is exciting to be outside and have the

universe dark and and have this fabulous stuff go on in the sky. The

view outside is fabulous. We have tried for a long time to explain

this to people and my conclusion is you have to see it to believe it. It

is unbelievable. On a red day like this, our earthbound concerns seem

suspended and it is possible to sense the war and terror our

ancestors must have felt at a celestial event like this -- awe.

Not until August the 21st 2017 will another eclipse be visible, 38 years

from now. Maybe shadow of the moon fall on a world of peace. ABC News

will bring you a report on the next eclipse. Even better, this is Evan

Davis on the spot in his eclipse chasing talks. A few observations.

The sound changes. Dogs start barking. We heard a cow in the

distance and the insect noise changes. Huge temperature drop. We

have been in the burning heat, 94 degrees in American money, and

suddenly it begins to cool down and become cool. Perhaps the most

exciting, just at the edge of the eclipse, as you look at the sun, you

catch a bead, which is the sun catching behind the hills and

valleys of the craters on the moon. You are seeing the sun deemed behind

the rough surface of the moon, as the shadow passes. It is really

extraordinary. They are calling this the American eclipse. At a

particular American moment. I suppose we do now have a president

who really enjoys being the centre of attention. And finds it hard to

be eclipsed, if you will. I found something maybe a little funny, that

we have moment here where we really are, as Americans, celestial li

required to look at something else, to look at something larger and

think of ourselves as members of the planet. Others say today is a

reminder of what man now understands about the heavens. I have heard

people say they are reminded of the awe of things but I think the

opposite, that it shows humans have been able to understand the workings

and predict this and understand how the stars shine with these details

we are trying to improve. This brings the universe to us and

humanises our son shows we can understand it.

I'm joined from Idaho Falls by Nasa planetary science director

And from Wyoming by David Baron, the author

Good evening. I can see David Baron in bright sunshine but Jim Greene,

you look happy. What was it like the experience? It is the first one I

have ever seen but I have to tell you there was not a cloud in the sky

and it got dark and it was just beautiful. What did you learn? You

have the awe and wonder, but what immediately are you learning from a

scientific perspective? Nasa has an array of instruments we tested, some

from planes, others from balloons we launched. We launched 57 balloons

along the path. They went up to more than 100,000 feet. We performed a

variety of experiments. What will that tell us and help us, that we do

not know now? I had as a planetary scientist and experiment. A

principal investigator David Smith had bacteria we put on two coupons.

One on the ground and one on the balloon and we did it to 30

balloons. We went to 100,000 feet. The reason we put the bacteria on

it, and it is a hardy, harmless bug, but pervasive in this world, is that

we wanted to see if it could survive the conditions. They were special

conditions. At 100,000 feet you are above ozone and you get ultraviolet

light. You also are at a temperature and pressure with the same

conditions as on the surface of Mars. The concept is, camber bugs

survive on the surface of Mars? David Baron, you have seen many

eclipses and have a rational response in a sense, but for you it

is still magical when you watch eclipses. Absolutely. I am a science

writer and my background is in science, but chasing eclipses is

about emotion. It is the most awe-inspiring spectacle anyone can

have on this planet and I'd tell you everyone in their life owes it to

themselves to see a total eclipse. After you have seen one you often

want to see more. Why? We have a rational response to it but in years

past it was seen to be a harbinger of doom, harbingers of happiness. We

interview the -- we imbue it with meaning. In ancient times you see

this beautiful shining ring of light and people were confused and even

today. We know that all is going on is the moon passing between us and

the sun but it messes with your head. It looks like no sky you have

seen and it just connects you with universe like nothing else because

you realise you are looking towards the centre of the solar system and

you see with the naked eye what a beautiful object the sun is. It is

not just a simple disc in the sky, it has like air. Beautiful tendrils

coming off you can only see in a total eclipse. Thank you.

It's being reported in the New York Times that

in a major foreign policy speech tonight, President Trump

will announce a new military push in Afghanistan.

One that will put more American military boots on the ground -

perhaps as many as 5,000 pairs - in order to ramp up the war

against against the mainly Taliban insurgents who have been

Trump has been accused by US lawmakers of dragging his heels

over an intensification, and a kite was flown that

suggested he might want mercenaries to do the job.

But tonight, at Fort Myer in Virginia, he is expected

to indicate the US military will be the ones

We'll hear from a former American ambassador to Afghanistan

First, I asked Secunder Kermani in Kabul what the security

The levels of violence have been steadily increasing.

And some of the statistics are really quite shocking.

Last year for example there were nearly 3500 civilian

And parts of the country that were previously

considered quite safe, like Kabul, for example,

Kabul has seen a number of high-profile, quite

In fact, not too long ago there was a rocket attack

And across the country the Afghan government only controls around

Insurgent groups, that's mainly the Taliban, control just over 10%.

And they contest nearly a third of the country.

One of the criticisms in the past has been that President Obama did

commit to sending large numbers of troops back in 2010, 2011,

there was around 100,000 American soldiers here in Afghanistan.

But he was also quite explicit in saying that he wanted America

to withdraw from Afghanistan and set a date for that.

And the argument goes that that encouraged

the Taliban to effectively wait the Americans out.

On the other hand it seems there is no real simple solution

The crux of the problem seems to be that whilst many in Afghanistan

and internationally believe that peace can only be achieved

through some kind of negotiated settlement with the Taliban -

because it is not going to be possible to defeat

at the moment the Taliban do not really seem to have much

of an incentive for coming to the table for talks

because they feel they have got the momentum behind them.

So what most analysts say needs to happen is there needs to be

a greater level of military pressure exerted on the Taliban to encourage

them to come and start meaningful negotiations.

So how will Afghans take the news this evening of a kind of beefed

Well we have to wait and see what exactly President Trump says

but certainly the figures in the Afghan government that I have

been talking to want to see more American troops here in Afghanistan.

Although at the same time they are quite clear

that they want to see them in that training and advisory role that most

American soldiers are primarily in in Afghanistan at the moment.

They want to see Afghan troops take the lead on the battlefield.

What they want to see more of is they want greater access

to American military technology and aerial capabilities.

One thing that many in the Afghan government I think would be quite

concerned about would be a greater role for private security firms

which is meant to be one of the options that

I think that would also cause a great deal of concern amongst many

Zalmay Khalilzad is a former Ambassador to Afghanistan and US

ambassador to the UN under George W Bush.

Good evening Ambassador. Reports coming out of the US of increased

troop deployment. Is that what you understand will happen? That is my

understanding as well but we will have to wait and see until we hear

from the President. He has inherited a difficult situation. He has been

very deliberate taking his time, looking at the US objective going

forward. Looking at alternative strategies. And we will see what the

result is. I hope the strategy he announces will be comprehensive as

the review has been. The word is it could be roughly about 5000 troops.

Do you think that in this situation when the Taliban seems to be back on

the front foot that 5000 US troops will be sufficient for the task? The

question is what is the task. If the task is as military leaders say, to

stop the momentum of the Taliban and also indicate unlike the previous

administration in the US which set a timetable for reducing the forces

that it had increased and was indicating it was anxious to get all

troops out, which encouraged to tell about not to come to the negotiating

table. That this increase plus giving more flexibility to the

commanders to use the force as they see fit, plus pressure on Pakistan

which is a diplomatic issue of great importance affecting Afghanistan,

might change the Taliban calculus, the power -- the Pakistani calculus

and therefore encourage negotiations. That is what the

objective is and they believe that the troop numbers associated with

the other things that I said could produce the results of a negotiated

settlement. But we will have to wait and see. Interesting that you talk

about pressure in Pakistan which is a US ally but it has been there for

a long time but the war goes back 16 years. And tonight not even the

whole of ten to say. Why has there been such a long term failure of

policy and indeed over the issue of Pakistan, why have they failed to

get to grips with Pakistan and its continuing harbour of the Taliban?

Afghanistan on the one hand is not what it was 16 years ago and I think

it is a mistake to say it has been a failure. Because now Afghanistan has

a large security force, it has state institutions that they did not have

16 years ago. We needed 100,000 troops only six or seven years ago

to prevent the Taliban from winning if you like or prevailing. Now the

military are saying we need only 4000, 5000. So that has been a

positive change but on the other hand you are right that the strategy

to encourage Pakistan to play a constructive role has failed. And we

need to and we will have to see what President Trump says about this

tonight, how to shed Pakistan from its comfort zone that it can be an

ally on the one hand and also act as an anniversary and support the

Taliban network. At the start of the interview you said President Trump

had been very deliberate and looked at reviews and taken is fine. Others

accuse him of dragging its heels. And there was also talk that part of

the announcement tonight, which may have come from the Steve Bannon win,

that it was not military force but mercenaries. What you think of that?

I think there is a role for contractors to assist the military.

At the present time we have more contractors in Afghanistan Ben

troops. But I do not think that you can subcontract the war to the

contractors. Their role is a limited role to be in support of the

military. And I believe that is where it will come out tonight.

Thank you very much. Today the results of the final

significant fire safety test triggered by the Grenfell

disaster were released. They seek to help us

work out which other buildings are safe or not,

by working out what sort of cladding The results make for

troubling reading. I'm joined by our Policy

Editor Chris Cook. I'll have we got here, just remind

us. Just after the Grenfell Tower fired the government began an audit

of tall buildings across England to work out of the buildings that had

aluminium cladding on the outside, what type of installation did they

have and what sort of aluminium facing they had on the exterior. The

reason why they wanted to know that was that it is possible to have some

kind of slightly combustible installation and some kind of

slightly combustible exterior cladding if you have them in the

right combinations. If they are properly designed and only used in

certain combinations. But they did not know what the safe combinations

where. So having done that audit, they have done six fire tests so

far, there will be seven, and these are to work out which combinations

of materials can be used. So what is the significance of this report?

This is the last of the ones that were in doubt, the conclusions are

that when you take all the test results together we now know the

right children 28 tall buildings across England that have designs of

cladding, combinations of integration and aluminium cladding

on the outside that is not fire safe. 200 buildings unsafe, how do

we get to a situation where we handle that. In principle under the

building regulations you should not be able to put up the stuff without

going through a rigorous fire test of the sword the government has been

doing. But the institutions that we rely on to police that requirement,

they basically let us down. One example, the longest standing

Private institution that has a lot to do building inspection in the UK,

the National house-building Council, Derry esteemed, not a jazzy company,

they released guidance last year saying they would sign off

combustible cladding and insulation without anyone needing to do any

test or any further requirement to show it was safe just because

culturally that is what was accepted. Institutions like that who

had a responsibility to the public to make sure buildings were safe

they basically dropped the ball. They took their eye off fire safety.

And now we discover many buildings to not read the rules that we set

up. The coalition forces who retook

Mosul from Isis have moved on west, where the battle is now for Tal

Afar. In their wake, they have

left a city, much of it Mosul suffered three years of Isis

occupation and then a nine-month 700,000 of the residents,

many of them traumatised, But is there anything to come home

to and is it really safe from Isis? This special report by Yalda Hakim

contains images some viewers The road to Mosul is

long and convoluted. To reach even the outskirts

of the city you have to navigate The Baghdad government

has declared victory. There are still pockets

of IS fighters in the old city. And this is what

liberation looks like. Iraq's second largest

city, just ruins. The bulk of the city is just

completely destroyed and devastated. I cannot even begin to imagine

what it would have been like for the people trapped

in this city. They were not allowed out,

Isis wasn't letting them. And there was constant

bombardment here. Trapped beneath these ruins

there are untold numbers of bodies. This woman is now homeless along

with a million other This is the ambulance that has

come to transfer me. This doctor is getting to work,

the only way he can. I am a volunteer doctor,

not a graduate doctor. And now I'm going to the hospital

in the west of Mosul. Mosul's only functioning

hospital is overwhelmed. There is no one checking the people

who are coming and going. And so the security forces

are concerned that some of these people could be Isis fighters

or Isis supporters. And I'm examining the site of the

shrapnel and the depth of the nail. At the height of the fighting

the doctor was treating up And not just from injuries

but illnesses caused due According to the Army,

retreating Isis fighters have rigged 90% of the buildings

with improvised explosive devices. Do you have the resources, I mean,

do you have enough men to...? But the Iraqi military is now

accused of targeting and killing people they suspect

of belonging to Isis. The government say they are

investigating these allegations. When Islamic State swept

into Mosul three years ago the world watched in horror

as they unleashed At first many saw them as liberators

from an oppressive Shia Mosul University, once home

to over a million books. Rare maps, ancient manuscripts

and a ninth century Koran This is the college

of computer and mathematics. This seat of learning represented

everything Isis stood against. Intellectuals like Ali Al Hadidi,

a renowned professor of law, I have come to visit

the doctor from Mosul Over lunch he explains

that it was his profession that ultimately saved him and his family

from the wrath of Did that make you nervous, though,

that your son would go out Is there fear then that there

could be another uprising? The people of Mosul now have to

rebuild a broken and divided city. But real reconciliation

will be a battle. And all the while, Isis fighters

are hiding amongst the population. When is it appropriate to remove

statues from our streets and squares and parks,

erected to men whose past glories When the city of Charlottesville

voted to remove a statue of General Robert E Lee,

who commanded the confederate army of North Virginia,

the ensuing furore saw KKK, white supremacists and

neo-Nazis on the streets, violent clashes with

counter-demonstrators, the death of one

young woman, and approbrium heaped on Trump for his failure to condemn

the actions of far-right groups. In Russia, it's the 80th anniversary

of the Great Terror, the purges in which Josef Stalin

killed and enslaved millions, and yet new statues to him

are springing up in the country, led by Vladimir Putin's

admiration of the dictator In a moment, we will be discussing

what to do with fallen idols and how But first, here's a Vewsnight

on the subject from Dr Rahul Rao, And Rahul Rao joins me now,

as does the historian Tim Stanley. Good evening. Let's have a

conversation about how you decide all this. He would suggested in his

piece that it is possible to consider bringing down the statues

of Washington and Thomas Jefferson. I admire him for his honesty and

logic because a lot of people would say they want to stop at one set of

statues but once you approach the subject from the principle of let us

eradicate those things from the past that were morally wrong and not

acceptable today, you cannot stop at Confederate statues, you put

everything on the table and the problem with that is you create an

artificial sense of the past. We try to cleanse it of all things that

make no sense morally today and therefore you rewrite the past and

create a past that simply was not real. You are rewriting the past?

Not at all, I think a lot of these movements objecting to statues are

not about rewriting the past. The rash of Confederate monument that

scars the American landscape were exercises in revisionist history and

built to nurture a view of the Civil War as a noble struggle fought

against Northern aggression and removing them help source right a

better history of the Civil War. Looking back at the Second World

War, and indeed looking at the Spanish Civil War, are you against

the removal as has been done, statues of Franco, Mussolini? It is

about contemporary culture and context and it must be a legal

process, not driven by a particular interest group. Ukraine is removing

statues of Lenin, which makes sense to me. By contrast, consider

Parliament Square because we are focused on Big Ben today. Who is in

the square? You have Winston Churchill, architects of Empire, men

with bigoted and unpleasant views. In Parliament Square you have Nelson

Mandela. Statues tell the full story. History does not start in

leaps and bounds, it is evolution and if you keep all the statues, you

then have a full history of Empire for people to read. You cannot

remove everything, obliterated his street. It is not about

obliterating, the ascetics of celebration are different from the

aesthetics of critique. It would be one thing to put the statues in a

museum. It is quite another thing to put them on a pedestal literally in

a public place. Where do you stop? I could say you would not want a lot

of statues of 19th century politicians because they stood

against suffrage for women. I do not think any historical figure should

be beyond examination and re-evaluation. Does that mean

removal? It could mean replacing those statues in a museum. If you

put them in private places you do not have a dialogue. Why put them in

a museum? These people are so fundamentally immoral, why not get

rid of the statue altogether? The objective is not to raise and skill,

it is to expose and the renaming of Robert E Leigh Park as an

emancipation park tells the history better, that does not glorify

slavery that recalls the struggles of those who were enslaved. That is

a particular contemporary context but my fear is a lot of the effort

to take down statues is not about correcting history but telling a

particular Buddhist school... -- a political political... What about

Oliver Cromwell. One section of the community to them he was a tyrant

and is remembered as a tyrant and to another section of the community in

he is not. When you have a divide, how do you decide? When putting up

the statue of Cromwell it almost brought the government down it was

so controversial. I am catholic and have Irish and my family and

Cromwell is a war criminal who shut down Parliament that 100 years on

from the statue being erected I understand it is part of British

identity and sometimes we lie to ourselves and tell national

fantasies and it is part of our identity that Cromwell stood up the

Parliamentary sovereignty. Russia, Vladimir Putin seems hell-bent on

rehabilitating Josef Stalin. The idea now that people in Russia will

look and see the man who murdered their ancestors put on a pedestal. I

think we are talking about different examples as if they are equivalent

and we need to distinguish between situations where those in power bill

statues to ratify their stranglehold and those wanting to put up statues

to get a toehold in a public sphere from which they are excluded. Thank

you. On a day when we looked

to the heavens, we sadly lost a giant of the science

fiction literary world. The great Brian Aldiss

passed away aged 92 today. One of the pioneers of the genre

who used sci-fi to hold up --

he counted everyone from Stanley Kubrick

to Agatha Christie, CS Lewis to Tolkein as friends

and colleagues. So in his honour, we dug

into the BBC interview archive to let him say goodbye

in his own words. Really, a novel takes

you about a year to write, so you have not got to be bored

by it, so you don't plan it. But Doris Lessing told me long ago,

no, sorry, it wasn't Doris, Iris said, you must never tell

anyone how much you enjoy writing. You must always make out that

it's really hard work. Well, it is hard work,

but it's also the second most Well, I don't agree with those

people who think that science fiction is some kind of prediction

of the future. I think it is a metaphor

and it is a metaphor There is certainly something in me

that urgently needs expression, and it doesn't quite tell me

what it is. Hello, Tuesday morning will dawn

mild but murky. A lot of