Having saved the world economy by re-labelling various huge sums of money they are going to print, our glorious leaders have now moved on for another showpiece event in Strasbourg, a summit on the 60th anniversary of NATO.

In the shadow of the ludicrously over-egged G20, they are trying desperately to raise the hyperbole still further, with President Sarkozy declaring that the freedom of mankind is dependent on the outcome of the conflict in Afghanistan.

As NATO is fighting in Afghanistan to keep in power a puppet government whose ministers include the largest heroin barons in the World, whose President’s family are deeply involved in drug smuggling, and which has just passed legislation to roll back the rights of women, including enshrining the right of a husband to force sex upon his wife (or wives, as the legislation in fact specifies but has not been generally noted), it is a little bit difficult to understand how freedom depends upon all this. Especially when a key part of the strategy is an alliance with President Islam Karimov of Uzbekistan, undeniably one of the World’s worst dictators, who provides the NATO German airbase at Termez and with whom the US is in negotiation to resume its alliance.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/03/obama_making_yo.html

The occupation of Afghanistan is of course part of the so-called “War on Terror”. It is a good pointer to the flaws in the whole concept, because the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. For every civilian killed by aerial bombardment, for everyone tortured in Baghram, for everybody pushed around by alien coalition forces, there is a reaction of growing opposition to the invasion and increasing support for fundamentalism, especially among the Pashtun population of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The whole conflict is in a dizzying downward spiral which threatens to undermine Pakistan, with highly destabilising consequences for the sub-region.

It is a crazy concept, unless you are in the security or armaments industries, where the last eight years of war have been extremely profitable, just as conflict increased energy prices have been for the oil industry. It is a disaster for the ordinary taxpayer, but a huge and never-ending payday for some.

Angela Merkel has stated that Afghanistan points the way to the future of NATO. To which some may reply that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation plainly has a poor sense of direction. The idea that the way to defeat terrorism is to point the largest conventional forces in the World at it, is plainly nonsense. Asymmetric warfare thrives and recruits just on that mismatch.

I was Head of the Foreign Office Maritime Section when the Berlin Wall came down, and shortly afterwards was First Secretary Political at the British Embassy in Warsaw. I recall all the policy papers on the future of NATO, as the opposing Warsaw Pact evaporated. The question the papers all tried to answer was “How do we find a new role for NATO?”. The prior question “Is NATO needed any more?” was never asked. At that time the consensus was that the future focus of NATO would be on drug-smuggling, though how you stop drug-smuggling with tanks was something about which my scepticism was not entirely ill-received. (It is worth noting – and I am no Tory – that dissenting opinion was welcomed and discussed in the thirteen years I worked in the FCO under the Tories. Under New Labour dissent very quickly became viewed as disloyalty).

Throughout the 90s NATO then moved into a situation when Eastwards expansion became, in itself, the raison d’etre of the organisation. There was so much work to do in ensuring that all the Eastern European militaries could communicate in English, share radio frequencies and fire the same ammunition as their Western NATO colleagues, that there was no time for any thought as to why we were doing it. But even before Putin came to power, the signs that we were stoking nationalism in a now encircled Russia became clear.

Then 9/11 and the War on Terror solved the existentialist gap. NATO became the more respectable wing of the “coalition of the willing”. Ironically, as in the early 90s it had been positioning itself as an anti drug smuggling organisation, NATO presided over and protected the great ever opium harvests and heroin production levels in human history. It expanded into Central Asia. Under the NATO Partnership For Peace alrrangements, British troops trained Uzbek forces in marksmanship before they carried out the Andijan massacre.

Now here we are, with a real disaster unfolding in Afghanistan – a state which failed because the Cold War was fought there by proxy over twenty years, with the US fostering the very fundamentalist forces it now is losing to. And NATO, having drifted into this mess, declares sonorously that this is its future.

Ironically, President Obama made some more hopeful progress while in London by agreeing with President Medvedev to restart talks on nuclear disarmament. Compare that to Bush’s apparent eagerness to kickstart a new arms race, which suited Putin’s authoritarian agenda just fine.

But Obama’s new disarmament initiative points up still further the utter folly of New Labour’s plans to spend £120 billion on a replacement of the Trident nuclear weapon system, thus adding massively to mankind’s capacity for self-destruction at a time when the UK is broke, and when we need to be spending many. many times more than we are on renewable energy.

I am a harsh critic of Russia’s government, which has no respect for human rights or democracy. But Russia is not the Soviet Union and we d not need to face it in terms of massive blocs and mutually assured destruction. The time for the British nuclear deterrent is gone. And so is the time for NATO.

STOP PRESS

Added into comments by Alba, and making my point perfectly: “The US today has signed an agreement with the butcher of Uzbek people to transit goods through Uzbekistan”.

There can be no doubt that, at the G20 protests, at times the police were unnecessarily violent towards non-violent protestors. Yet at other times they were puzzlingly non-violent towards inexcusably violent protestors.

I postulated that one explanation might be that the small number of “protestors” who were theatrically and irrationally violent, were not actually protestors at all. I could think of other explanations, but no better ones, as to why police would not arrest a small, isolated and outnumbered group who were attacking them with sticks.

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/death_of_a_demo.html#comments

There is a website called Harry’s Place which exists to promote New Labour and a particularly virulent and sometimes openly racist strain of Zionism. That website has this morning put up a post called “Craig Murray Latest Lunacy”, where they assert that even to imagine that our security services might employ agents provocateurs is a symptom of madness.

It is not that Harry’s Place have a naive faith in their political masters. It is rather that they are engaged in a cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion. What do they expect us to believe that 4,500 people at MI5 actually do for a living, and why is it Top Secret?

Amid all the pomp and hyperbole of the G20 summit, Gordon Brown said something that was actually true.

“Today’s decisions, of course, will not immediately solve the crisis.”

Unfortunately that statement is just as true if you omit the word “immediately”.

The outcome of the summit was exactly as I predicted, with everyone claiming they had “won”. I can leave Brown his ten days of reflected glory. As the economy plunges again thereafter he will look pretty silly.

Brown has told the truth before, when he said his economic policies had “Brought an end to boom and bust.” He was telling the truth about the boom bit.

The media are going full volume now to churn out lies that policemen attempting to treat the dying man were pelted with bottles. The blogosphere is attempting to fight back with the truth – with the exception of the mainstream media’s favourite bloggers, Iain Dale, Derek Draper, Alex Hilton and Paul Staines. Which is of course precisely why they are the mainstream media’s favourite bloggers.

There is an important eyewitness account here:

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/Death-in-the-City

Justin has also an interview with an eyewitness:

http://www.chickyog.net/2009/04/02/sky-news-not-learning-lessons/#comments

All of which leads me to resurrect this bit I wrote in a comments thread in reply to someone asking why I hadn’t mentioned the possibility of agents provocateurs:

There was a fascinating and drawn out scene outside the Bank of England yesterday when a distinct group of some thirty were attacking the police, one hitting the police with a long pole. Prominent was a group of young Asian lads.

I recognised them because I was crushed up hard for a good while against the same bunch of young Asians outside the Israeli Embassy a couple of months ago, where again they were being inexcusably violent.

The very strange thing was that, plainly from Sky’s overhead cam, the Police had the ability to isolate and snatch this group of obviously violent individuals, and the police would have had my support in doing so. But they didn’t.

So who are they?

My prediction of the police tactics – written before the protests started – seems to have been entirely accurate and almost certainly the direct or indirect cause of this death:

“Each demonstration will be split up into several separated groups. Each group will be tightly corraled, penned in with barriers in an uncomfortable crush that feels threatening to those inside. Occasionally groups will be shuffled between pens. Most demonstrators will not be allowed to the destination point to limit the appearance of numbers at the rallies. Once it is over, people will be kept corralled for several hours, with no refreshment or (this is critical and no joke) toilet facilities. The tactic appears designed to create confrontation as people try to get out of penned areas to hear the speeches they came to hear, to escape the crush or just to find a loo. At the same time the argie-bargie thus deliberately sparked is confined to small numbers the police can contain.”

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2009/04/the_field_of_pe.html#comments

Sadly there is no kind of inquiry under this government in which the public will have the slightest trust.

There was a 5% chance that it would fall to the UK to host this particular G20 meeting, but the timing of it plays to Brown’s obsession with being cast as the man who saved the World. As we plunge into depression, I can guarantee you that come next year people will see that it made no difference. It also will not fulfil its primary purpose of getting Brown re-elected.

As I explained yesterday, the final communique will have been agreed some time ago between senior officials (believe me, it used to be my job), so the media’s playing along with the “suspense” of whether agreement will be reached is rubbish. Brown said as much in Downing Street yesterday: “When the communique is released to you tomorrow, you will see that…”

Which doesn’t rule out some grandstanding by politicians looking to win votes at home, and there is a 0.1% chance that will lead someone to refuse to sign it, but don’t hold your breath. It will contain something for every leader to hold up as “their” negotiating victory. The negotiating officials understand that need very well; it will be a beautiful and pointless construct.

Brown’s vanity is enormous. I still have many friends in the FCO,and staff in the UK Mission to the European Union (UKREP Brussels) were horrified to receive an instruction from the FCO to ensure that the situation when Gordon Brown was obliged to hear a speech against him in the European Parliament from MEP Daniel Hannan, could not happen again. No. 10 reasoned, quite unrealistically, that other EU leaders would not want to suffer potential embarassment the same way, so there should be wide support for such a measure.

This was unrealistic because, while there may be some sympathy in the unelected Council of Ministers, it would be the elected European Parliament which would have to make any procedural changes. There is institutional tension between the two bodies, and to convince MEPs that they cannot criticise members of the Council of Europe in their presence, is an impossible task.

So our poor men and women in Brussels duly put out some feelers and found that, not only was there no sympathy, but nobody else thought that anything bad had happened. Wasn’t this democracy? Isn’t parliament for debate?

Of course, the Westminster one isn’t, with Brown only swanning in for half an hour a week for Prime Minister’s questions, half of which are planted and rehearsed, and the whole chaired by an outrageously biased pro-New Labour Speaker.

Anyway, my friends in our mission in Brussels consoled themselves that Prime Ministerial pique would die down, and with the G20 summit keeping Brown frenetically busy in London, the whole thing would be forgotten. But no! As they opened their offices at 8am Brussels time this morning, there was a missive from No 10, demanding to know what progress has been made. An affront to the great Gordon is an affront to the great Gordon. It cannot go unpunished. Even if the Dear Leader is busy saving the world, there is always time for such vital detail.

There has been an astonishing hype in the British media for the last fortnight around the “Riots” which have been predicted for the G20 summit for the last two weeks. It is a fortnight since the first “Riots” newspaper billboards appeared in London. The news bulletins yesterday were dominated by the boarding up of shops and by earnest “security consultants” advising that people in suits are likely to be attacked.

The BBC reported fears that demonstrators would “Create unrest” in the capital.

Actually they won’t create unrest. What they may do is manifest the unrest that already exists in the capital.

The entire torrent of demonisation of protest is part of a process of limiting the area of legitimate debate to the tiny gap that exists between the Labour and Conservative parties, with all other ideas portrayed not just as illegitimate but as disorderly and threatening. That governs the opinions which journalists are allowed to express and the selection of voices heard on the media. It is the intellectual equivalent of playing a game of cricket confined to the square, with the outfield behind the ropes.

This will be mirrored in the physical constraints placed on demonstrators today. The Metropolitan Police now have a well rehearsed system for dealing with such events. Each demonstration will be split up into several separated groups. Each group will be tightly corraled, penned in with barriers in an uncomfortable crush that feels threatening to those inside. Occasionally groups will be shuffled between pens. Most demonstrators will not be allowed to the destination point to limit the appearance of numbers at the rallies. Once it is over, people will be kept corralled for several hours, with no refreshment or (this is critical and no joke) toilet facilities.

The tactic appears designed to create confrontation as people try to get out of penned areas to hear the speeches they came to hear, to escape the crush or just to find a loo. At the same time the argie-bargie thus deliberately sparked is confined to small numbers the police can contain.

As for the G20 summit itself, diplomats designated as “Sherpas” will already have worked out and agreed between all participants the draft of a bland communique. It will be all things to all men and enable everyone to claim victory. Brown will tell us he saved the World again.

I am in favour of fiscal stimulus of the Keynsian kind, with public spending and jobs helping boost demand in recession. The problem is that Obama and Brown have conflated that idea with massive bail-outs to the bankers, which is a completely different thing.

No amount of banking regulation will compensate for the fact that we have created a position where the financial services industry is featherbedded above all others. It has no downside. Success brings individual rewards on levels you and I can only dream of, while failure means you and I will pick up the tab with – on average – 14% of our total personal wealth donated to the bankers so far.

The bank bailouts have been the biggest transfer of funds from the poor to the rich in human history. That is a fundamental and an irrecoverable disaster. We are going to get a depression whatever this summit does.

The real interest of this summit will take place in the behind the scenes meetings. It won’t be mentioned in the official communique, but China, Brazil and Russia, quietly egged on by France, will be chattering about replacing the dollar as the currency of note. It is China, which has a lot of eggs in the dollar basket, which is pivotal here.

Britain is nowhere near its climate change targets on renewable energy. In fact it is so far out as to be laughable. Climate change ought to be high on the agenda. But here there will be a divergence between public support for existing agreements, and behind the scenes talks which will focus on how to use the recession to excuse relaxing the targets.

Of all the issues the public are demonstrating about today, climate change is the one where the G20 will be most shameful and most hypocritical.

The appalling lackey “Sir” Stuart Bell MP was popping up all over the media yesterday attempting to divert attention from Jacqui Smith’s ripping off of the taxpayer. His first tactic was to claim there was a hunt for the mole who had leaked the information about Jacqui Smith’s expenses. Not one reporter in our grovelling media had the sense to ask hm whether this spending of our money should not be public anyway. To diminish any public feeling of gratitude to whoever leaked the information about Smith (in fact without payment) Bell was making “Off the record” the ridiculous claim that the informant was demanding £300,000.

But Bell’s really breathtaking claim was his fallback on the cover-all excuse of anti-terrorism. Bell argued that if information about MPs expenses were released, that could help terrorists. For example if they knew which MPs habitually took taxis.

Obviously a grave danger – we wouldn’t want Osama Bin Laden inserting subliminal messages into Jacqui Smith’s porn videos now, would we?

If I were married to Jacqui Smith, I would probably watch a lot of porn too. The alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Meantime I see the police have arrested some teenage “Terrorists” in an “anti-terror raid” in Plymouth to foil “an attack on the G20”. They have discovered “explosives, weapons, imitation firearms and extremist literature”. Why do I suspect these to be knives in the kitchen, fireworks, a toy gun and something by Kropotkin?

By and large, it is better to protest without making anything go bang. It scares cats.

Like so many harumphing political commentators, I am feeling really sorry now for Sir Fred Goodwin. So here is a nice song to cheer him up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI2k6aseNqg

So now the government are training a Stasi of 60,000 selected nutters to spy on potential terrorists. The government is still trailing in the opinion polls, so we have Home Secretary Jacqui Smith taking a break from filling in expense claims on her sister’s home, to warn us a terror attack is “Very likely”.

Listen up everybody. You have more chance of winning first prize in the National Lottery than you have of being killed by a terrorist. On average, each year in the past decade approximately 150 people drown in their own bath in the UK. On average, each year in the past decade approximately eight people are killed in the UK by terrorists. One death is too many, but it is one of the very least likely ways you might die. Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith are trying to panic you for political reasons. Your kettle, your stepladder, a kitchen cupboard falling on your head, all much more likely to kill you than a terrorist. Terrorists do exist, but they are much, much less dangerous than your staircase.

Two excellent comments, one from Gerard Mulholland posted on the BBC website:

For 30 years we -under both Labour and Tory governments- combated serious, organised US-financed Irish terrorism.

We lost 3000 civilians and 2000 soldiers.

We had car bombs.

We had truck bombs.

We had pub bombs.

We had shopping-centre bombs.

We had letter-box bombs.

We had shoot-outs.

We had sieges.

We were mortared.

We didn’t panic.

Nu-Labour are panic-stricken wimps, stampeded into unbelievable panic.

They stir up fear and dread.

Stupid Al Qa’ida nutters aren’t the enemy.

Nu-Labour is.

One from Anticant on this website

I’m old enough to remember the Blitz in WW2, when 40,000 people were killed in a single year. They [my parents’ generation] just got on with their lives and said “sod it” when a bomb fell. They didn’t scare themselves witless with phantom plots and plotters like this daft lot, who resemble kids at hallowe’en giving themselves cheap thrills with pumpkin bogies.

Yes, there IS a threat – but this government doesn’t seem to have the least clue as to what it actually is. They can’t see that they are a large part of the problem, not the answer. That is what really scares me.