Opium production in Afghanistan has increased by 4,000% since the start of the US/UK/Others occupation. 4,000%. Really. For the first time, this year production of processed opium exceeded 7,500 tons. This industrial manufacture would be impossible without the active participation both of the puppet government we installed, and the command structures of our intelligence services. The Karzai and Dostum families, alongside other of our clients, have become terribly wealthy. Secret funds of intelligence services have swelled.
Opium production amounts to a staggering 60% of Afghanistan’s GDP. Yet we have that pompous fool Jon Simpson on the BBC opining what a great success our occupation was, how Afghanistan is transformed.
The UK spent 37 billion pounds of money we do not have on the occupation of Afghanistan, when our health service is creaking and hungry children are reliant on foodbanks. That 37 billion is a drastic underestimate – it is based on “marginal costing”, the extra cost of operating the troops and equipment in Afghanistan compared to the cost of keeping them on Salisbury Plain. The fact you would not need this massive offensive army and all that equipment, were you not conducting worldwide simultaneous invasions, is not taken into account at all. The true cost of the Afghan occupation is many times higher than 37 billion.
Bear that in mind when you see Cameron posturing about a routine EU subscription cost of 1.7 billion. There are unlimited funds for attacking and occupying Johnny Foreigner, but money spent on co-operation with other nations is an absurd waste. A view to be reinforced by increasing racist rhetoric about being “swamped” by the Eastern Europeans who are now adding so much to our economy and our culture.
There is an irony here because one of the major reasons for the EU contribution recalculation was the UK government’s decision to include, for the first time, an estimate for illegal trade – in drugs and prostitution – in UK GDP figures, thus producing a spurious blip in economic growth. Prostitution alone was estimated at 6.5 billion pounds, which makes it one of our major industries, while the drugs figure was still higher and represented a direct contribution to UK GDP from the result of our Afghan occupation.
So it was all worthwhile after all! Those soldiers did not die in vain! When you add to that, the fact that the prostitution figure itself is boosted by the many unfortunates, mostly women, who enter the trade to fund a heroin habit, you have a perfect circle of serendipity.
Who can possibly claim that UK policy is unplanned and immoral?
The CIA paid 2 million dollars to the shop keeper from Malta in the Lockerbie case.
I’m sure they did it to ensure that his testimony was 100% truthfull.I was driving over the border the day it happened.Just before Christmas too.To find out it wasnt who they said it was,makes you wonder over all the other plane incidents.I do anyway. Suddenly all the Black September shit looks suspect.
He’s talking about soldiers and civilians, Ben. Charles is a civilian. What’s your problem?
Huffpo;
“In Colorado, sales of retail marijuana have reaped about $18.9 million in state taxes (with a percentage to go to local governments) from January through June 30, according to the state Department of Revenue. That’s about 46 percent of what the Colorado Legislative Council, the nonpartisan research staff to the state’s General Assembly, predicted before legalization. But sales of retail marijuana are continuing to climb, and reached their best month yet in July.”
Once the government smells money, the game is over. When the US Tobacco settlement with AG’s of States recognized the cash cow they were helpless as to making it illegal. They became addicted.
“Charles is a civilian”
Chickenhawks always are.
“There go the chickenhawks again. They are filled with Patriotism as long as someone else’s boots are full of blood.”
_______________
You’re a fine one to talk, Ben.
The valiant, fire-breathing hero of Craig’s and Squonk’s blogs (and perhaps of others too?) who avoided the Vietnam draft “for medical reasons”.
Ben
Too many smokes today, perhaps?
Charles Crawford wrote:
“And civilians unwilling to champion their armed forces and to take on any risks from doing so do not deserve those soldiers’ protection.”
As a civilian, he is entitled to talk about civilians.
So your “chickenhawk” comment is otiose.
As you’re doing your best to drown it out, here’s Charles Crawford’s piece again.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Over in Canada we now see more extremist Islamist killing. Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper:
“… attacks on our security personnel and our institutions of governance are by their very nature attacks on our country, on our values, on our society, on us Canadians as a free and democratic people who embrace human dignity for all. But let there be no misunderstanding. We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated.”
Hmm. What does ‘intimidated’ mean?
One way of dealing with terrorism is to strike a bold pose. Another way is to try not to be ‘provocative’. Canada for now seems to be going for the latter: its service personnel have been told not to wear their uniforms in public:
And amid those increased tensions and the apparent increase in threat against those proudly serving in military uniforms, some soldiers are being warned to limit wearing those outfits to official duties.
Following the the shooting death of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo on Wednesday and the death of Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., on Monday, some military officials are warning soldiers to stay out of uniform whenever they are off duty.
CBC Montreal reports that an email was sent to local military personnel telling them to only wear their military uniforms when on base or while travelling to their homes. In all other cases, they should stay out of their gear. Another email to student soldiers warned them not to wear their uniforms at any time.
This approach of course has some merits: quick, be careful, stay calm, reduce risks in current circumstances! But it also effectively cedes ground metaphorically and literally to Islamist lunatics: their zeal to murder people is for the time being the über-value defining what free Canadians can do in public.
Note that this policy was also deployed temporarily in the UK in 2013 after the atrocious murder of Fusilier Drummer Lee Rigby.
Imagine what would happen if after such murders all service personnel were ordered to wear their uniforms in public as a mark of pride and respect for their fallen comrades. Yes, it would be ‘risky’. Some might even die in further Islamist murder outrages. As might civilians.
But if soldiers are not ready to take that risk, they should not be soldiers. And civilians unwilling to champion their armed forces and to take on any risks from doing so do not deserve those soldiers’ protection.
The first and last place to stand tall for one’s national values of freedom and civilisation is right out there in public, on one’s own streets.”
The invasion was nothing to do with equal rights for women and universal education. But that’s a frequently trumpeted post-justification. Those are two things that the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan had before the Mujahideen and Bin Laden overthew it with the help of the CIA. Starting 30 odd years of war.
a new BBC program – Charlotte Pritchard & Neal Razzell are the BBC pair in charge – but what i heard on World Sce today was more than “thought-provoking”. basically, it was a PR job for the partitioning of Iraq. extraordinary stuff:
Audio 24 mins: 28 Oct: BBC The Inquiry: Can Islamic State be stopped?
The Inquiry’s panel of experts have some thought-provoking ideas.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/inquiry
@ Habby
Re: Stephen Harper: “We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated.”
Proudly spoken from the safety of a broom closet. LOL.
No need to repeat the drivel from Crawfish Charles, the obsequious remote warrior with blood on his hands, none of it his own.
Cardboard patriots with no inkling of what war is like, preaching to soldiers abut their ethic. It’s crass and amoral.
Harper hiding like a harpie in a closet is the normal MO. When we elect leaders, we assume (like Commander in Chief) they are committed to the same principles as the troops they send to war. They are not. When JFK, in spite of his faults, said he would break the CIA into a million pieces, he knew the risk. He acted with an eye to a soldiers commitment. Why should leaders be exempt from acts of honor and principle?
Obama has no such principle, but not he alone. They just want the goodies, They want their pastoral life to continue. Bullshit. They should risk their lives just like our troops.
If (if because I read it but I don’t know) global arms trade is said to be $1.7T with 40% alleged to be bung how does that stack up against global drug trade?
“civilians unwilling to champion their armed forces and to take on any risks from doing so do not deserve those soldiers’ protection”
I think that may already be the case. I’ve never been protected by the armed forces. I always put it down to the fact that they were too busy killing brown people in resource-rich countries far away, but I’m beginning to wonder now.
With any luck Charles Crawford will now cease protecting us with his idiotic outgassings on the grounds that we all think he’s a twerp.
Those soldiers did die in vain. They cannot be brought back. Those who loved them will never see them again as the people they said goodbye to. Those who were wounded were wounded in vain. Likewise, they will never be the same. There is a song of the sixties “When will they ever learn”. But it is not their fault, not the soldiers’ faults or their families’ faults for letting them go. When there are no jobs the armed forces become an option. It is really hard for soldiers who have been demobbed to get a proper job. They are damaged goods.
always refreshing to read Craig, because, unusually for the public pronouncements of one with experience of the inside track. he is not afraid to express his feelings – and the delightful invective is a bonus! pompous fool is all that needs to be said about burkah Simpson’s broadcasts. it is fitting, also, that Craig has attracted and kept the loyalty of a very intelligent and well-informed bunch of commenters. even the chief resident troll on here is generally urbane and displays above-average intelligence.
@Oddie yes the Beeb is beyond the pale. have you noticed how there is now a daily quote of irrelevant mentions of various holocaustianity-related items? my only exposure, apart from a few non-current-affairs-related items which retain quality, is to sample radio4 in very brief snatches, so if i have noticed this trend i dread to think what dedicated listeners are exposed to. i switched off after only 90 seconds this morning on hearing the intrusive phrase Nazi death camps.
as an aspie all official lies make me feel nauseous. England is sinking into a swamp of mendacity. but as a senior i heed La Rochfoucauld’s sage remark “the only thing that surprises me is the fact that i have retained the capacity to be surprised”.
David Holden it is much worse than that. The BBC, and other channels, are running a four year (2014-18) celebration of war which we cannot get off our screens. I hardly ever watch television now.
‘Immigration is out of control’ is the theme in tomorrow’s Times, Sun and Guardian.
Playing to the UKIPper gallery?
Huhne has lost his appeal against an order to pay £77k prosecution costs in the case that led him to a prison sentence.
Chutzpah and no shame.
@JohnGoss yes, John, you are right. as Humpty Dumpty famously non-sequitured: there’sglory for you!. undeconstructed, the word “glory” has the sound of a mighty wind, with trumpets blaring somewhere over a corpse-strewn battlefield. it is shared between national jingoists and an abandoned tribe of Chriastian doxologists with a penchant for fancy dress. beneath the trappings of implausible heroism most war casualties are comparable to that other great tolerated homicide – the road traffic accident. unfortunate but inevitable collateral damage.
but why never any questions? when a policy produces millions of flea-ridden corpses it would be good to hear some attempt at a realistic explanation. or at least it would be good to hear people calling for one. the true history of the momentous twentieth-century still awaits its meticulous Gibbon, who might devote more attention, in the case of WW1, to the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, and the Bolshevik coup d’état of 1917, to the Armenian Medz Yeghern, to the final dismemberment of Ottoman polity and the rise of oil. i apologize for my own ignorance of these matters. we were taught, really, no history whatsoever in our fine English educational system
@ Mary
‘Immigration is out of control’ is the theme in tomorrow’s Times, Sun and Guardian.
Playing to the UKIPper gallery?
No, just playing to the 70% of the population that you and Craig Murray call “racists” because they object to being genocided by a combination of mass immigration and suppressed native reproduction.
“suppressed native reproduction”. Definitely not working on me. Giggle.
“suppressed native reproduction”. Definitely not working on me. Giggle.
Not statistically relevant. Anyhow, you’re too old to have received elementary school instruction in oral sex. But see the Huff Po:
White British Could Be Minority By 2070, UK To Be One Of World’s Most Ethnically Diverse Nations By 2050
Under which headline Oxford University Professor David Coleman is quoted as follows:
In England and Wales, censuses show that in 1841 just 0.25% of the population was “foreign-born”, rising to 4.4% in 1951. By 2010/2011, in the whole of the UK, immigrants made up 13% of the population.
The continuation of these trends in low-fertility countries would eventually lead to the majority ethnic group becoming a numerical minority of the national population.
… the UK has the highest migration projection and the point at which the country’s ethnic minority population overtakes the majority at around 2070.
The countries ethnic minorities have, of course, already overtaken the majority in London, Leicester, Luton and among school children in Birmingham despite your best efforts. Although actually your best efforts seem devoted to tipping the balance the other way by encouraging more foreigners to migrate to Britain while disparaging the cultural achievements of the people of Glasgow and elsewhere.
Oh here’s the link on non-reproductive sex education for five-year-olds. It seems to have turned the text above blue:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/233431/Sex-education-Five-year-olds-to-be-taught-about-oral-sex
@Charles Crawford: Did you really mean to “out” yourself as Habbabkuk quite so obviously?
@CanSpeccy: Might this not just be a function of better education, and female emancipation? I am pretty sure you are up for both. It’s long been recognised that an increase in rights and education for women coincides with a decrease in birth rate. She’s not just treated as some brood-sow, basically.
As immigrant populations arrive, and they indulge in our tolerance towards women doing whatever they want (sigh – for the better times, eh?) it’s highly likely they become a bit more interested in building their own lives.
So it’s highly possible they won’t just breed like fruit-flies until the UK is crushed under their weight. I feel reasonably assured.
There are a few points to consider, though. Such as the fact each 1st world child will require vastly more resources than a 3rd world child, we simply cannot support indefinite expansion of world population, and the aspirations of the most gifted and mobile in any country should not be to move away as fast as possible to the UK (or skulk around in Europe, until they can enter illegally).
Oh my, so certain smartphones have been covertly forwarding the fingerprint impressions left behind on their touchscreens to certain parties, even embedding them steganographically along with other data, in images and video taken with their integral cameras; no-one seems to have noticed that for all those extra megapixels, by the law of diminishing returns, perceptible image quality had hardly increased all that much, but the capacity for and of secondary channels certainly had increased considerably. I only communicate now using
extra
whitespace
in
text and markup language.
Though this blog tends to remove extra whitespace such as using two spaces after full-stops.
I think part of the immigration issue is that persons abroad have gathered a set of completely false impressions about the countries of the (dis)united Kingdom: democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law (equally applicable to all), opportunity to make good by merit or hard work, sanctity of human life, human rights, welfare state, health service and other absurd notions which very few, only the most blinkered and foolish of the natives could possibly still believe were ever sacred, but it doesn’t take long till such delusions are dis-spelled amongst those new citizens, experiencing the reality, grass is always less brown and patchy somewhere else, till they get there and find it’s a quagmire. Rather like the hapless soon dead seagulls and rats opting to bathe in the decaying weed and algae choked cracking spent fuel pools at Sellafield, it sure looked enticing, but comes at a cost.
29 October 2014 Last updated at 05:00
Care for UK military veterans is ‘flawed’, medical experts sayB
Sima Kotecha
Today programme
Simon Brown: “I have had to go through certain procedures that I think were inappropriate”
Veterans PTSD help service expands
Veterans ‘face compensation delays’
The government is failing to abide by its military covenant, medical experts who treat injured soldiers have said.
Leading professors in psychology and orthopaedics say the healthcare system is not providing veterans with the service they have been promised.
The Armed Forces Covenant, described as a duty of care to the armed forces, states veterans will be “sustained and rewarded” for the rest of their lives.
A Ministry of Defence spokesman said it was “fully committed” to the covenant.
“My cheek bones were obliterated, my jaw was broken in four places, I’d lost my left eye totally and there was very little hope of any sight returning to my right eye”
Simon Brown, a corporal in the Army for more than 10 years, was shot in the face by a sniper in 2006 and was medically discharged four years later.
[..]
The main principles of the military covenant were enshrined in law in the Armed Forces Act 2011.
The government says the defence secretary must report annually on the progress made by ministers in honouring the covenant.
However, Professor Neil Greenberg, from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said ministers were failing to keep their promise.
The 2010 government-commissioned report by Andrew Murrison – called ‘Fighting Fit’ – which looked into the care veterans received on the NHS made several recommendations, he said.
Some were implemented – such as the setting up of the Veterans Information Service – but he argues the service is not what they said it would be.
“In my view the government needs to be a bit more honest about what it is delivering and just what it says it’s delivering, because the two are definitely not the same,” Professor Greenberg said.
‘Should do better’
Freedom of information figures show almost 13,000 service personnel have been medically discharged for musculoskeletal disorders since 2001 – those who have lost limbs or have problems with ligaments and joints – with many requiring constant care throughout their lives.
Professor Tim Briggs, a leading orthopaedic surgeon, recently wrote the Chavasse report which outlined the problems former personnel face on the NHS.
Professor Briggs, who said he was “moved” by the sacrifice made by veterans who attended his clinics, said “we can do better and we should do better”.
“They weren’t aware of the Armed Forces Covenant and finding access to specialist care was sometimes proving difficult and as a result some veterans were falling through the net and we had to improve things.”
The military charity Help For Heroes has estimated that 75,000 service personnel could suffer mentally and physically as a result of operations in Afghanistan.
With some NHS staff unaware of the covenant – and veterans not always keen to tell their doctors about their past – the charity has said a government database would help to make sure they receive the care they are entitled to.
Earlier this year, the Conservative MP James Arbuthnot told the Defence Select Committee it he was disappointed the government kept detailed records of sheep and cows, but couldn’t do the same for veterans.
British troop The government says it works hard to ensure veterans are treated with “the dignity they deserve”
Simon Brown believes government ministers need to do more to integrate the covenant into the NHS system.
“I think the government do have that responsibility to make sure that that extra support that is from state is understood and accessible,” he said.
“Veterans signed the oath of allegiance and they kept their side of the bargain. It’s only fair that the other side of the bargain is kept too,” he said.
‘Proud and grateful’
Health minister Dan Poulter said the government had invested more than £22m in mental health and prosthetic services, “specifically for those most in need”.
The investment included 10 regional veteran mental health teams and nine veteran-focused prosthetic centres providing support and care for ex-servicemen and women.
An MoD spokesman said the government had “worked hard to ensure our serving personnel, veterans and families have the support they need and are treated with the dignity they deserve”.
“That is why we enshrined the covenant in law in 2011. Since then all local councils have signed up to the Community Covenant, and more than 300 companies have signed up to the Corporate Covenant – including Tesco just this week.
“We are very proud and grateful of the commitment that all those that have signed the Covenants have made and it demonstrates the immense amount of respect and gratitude there is for our armed forces,” the spokesman added.
More than 200,000 men and women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001.
The military covenant states that soldiers could be called upon to make the “ultimate sacrifice” but in return they and their families will be “sustained and rewarded by commensurate terms and conditions of service”.
The moral obligation to treat veterans should not stop when service ends, the covenant states, saying veterans should receive priority healthcare from the NHS when they are being treated for a condition dating from their time in the armed forces.
Once a veteran leaves the forces, their healthcare is the responsibility of the NHS.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-29807947
@TonyM
certain smartphones have been covertly forwarding the fingerprint impressions left behind on their touchscreens
Whilst I’m all in favor of steganography, the physics of current smartphone screens are related to a sensor resolution of millimeters, whilst fingerprint readers have resolutions of hundreds of line per inch, eg iPhone 6 = 500ppi. We may get to ‘leaky biometric’ phones but we’re not there yet!
Smartphones *do* leak vast amounts of metadata , which UK gov have admitted that GCHQ takes without necessarily needing a RIPA warrant, ” for non-selected bulk data “