NATO And The EU

After a conference in which the SNP leadership's main aim was to convince the delegates that it was essential for an independent Scotland to join NATO and attained their goal by a very slim margin of consent, Alex Salmond and the rest of the leadership could have been forgiven for congratulating themselves and returning to the humdrum business of running the country.

Before I leave the NATO issue, I have yet to find verification for Angus Robertson's adamant statement in which he insisted 75 % of Scots want Scotland to belong to the organisation.  All I can find is reference to a poll dated July 2012 and commissioned by the SNP, in which 1,008 people in Scotland were asked a question about staying in NATO and 756 seemingly supplied an affirmative answer.  Is this one poll a suitable sample on which to base a complete change of policy from a party which has rightly been proud of being against nuclear weapons?

I struggled to understand why the issue had suddenly received so much prominence, particularly when no friend of mine had ever mentioned membership of NATO and many have voted SNP because of its non-nuclear stance.

On Monday, two list SNP MSPs tendered their resignation from the party in protest over its new NATO policy.   The departures of John Finnie and Jean Urquhart leave the SNP with 65 MSPs and an overall majority in the Scottish Parliament of just one.  Both MSPs will now represent their electorates as independents but will support the Yes campaign for independence.

I don't accept the majority of Scots want to belong to NATO and cannot understand why NATO membership is so essential to winning the independence referendum. It's not about silencing their opponents because NATO was seldom mentioned in political circles until the SNP suggest they may be considering a change of policy back in the summer. It could be about putting some meat on the bones of a weak defence policy but will that be enough to attract floating voters in the next two years?  Or will voters reject a party which now supports a nuclear alliance?

A couple of questions I would like to ask Alex Salmond - "Have you taken any specific legal advice from Scottish Government legal officers about your decision to include, in your new policy, that Scotland's membership was dependent on Trident nuclear weapons being removed from Scotland? Has NATO been informed of this and if so what was the response?"

For the past 24 hours Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon and other senior members of the party have been on a damage limitation round of the television and radio studios, in an effort to stem the flow of accusations about the First Minister being untruthful regarding membership of the EU.  It's my view he was ambiguous in the Andrew Neil interview but does it matter?

The average voter doesn't watch the Politics Show so probably was unaware of the controversy created by the implication that the Scottish Government had received legal advice about EU membership.

For those like me who are anti-EU membership, I always assumed that any government paper, prior to publication, is forensically examined by the best legal minds the Scottish Government can provide.  Being a trustworthy soul, I also assumed that SG legal beagles would have been in touch with their counterparts in the EU to ensure that what is made public meets their legal requirements.  However, that's not so and I've learned a good lesson; no government document is necessarily legally correct.

The First Minister, in the past 24 hours, has cited the Ministerial Code on several occasions, however it provides only guidance and is not a rulebook.  Does the citing of the Ministerial Code make it appear as if the First Minister is hiding behind a mysterious piece of Scottish Parliament documentation?  It would seem so.

How damaged is Alex Salmond from the last few days?  He may be able to ride the storm about his words in the Andrew Neil interview, but the loss of two loyal MSPs on a point of principle may do the party much more harm in the long term.

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Power Over Principle?

The above building is well on its way to completion for 2015 at a cost of a mere £105m to the UK taxpayers.

The resplendent glass structure is the new NATO HQ building, situated on the northern side of the dual carriageway leading from Brussels towards Zaventem Airport, in an area which previously could only be described as 'no man's land'.

No doubt Alex Salmond is pleased SNP delegates narrowly voted for his proposal for an independent Scotland to join NATO, but will the newly adopted  part of his defence strategy make independence more palatable to floating voters?

Time alone will tell but I was, like some of the speakers at the conference, very sceptical of the pro-speakers statistics.  Where are the 75% of Scots who want Scotland to belong to NATO? Most people of my acquaintance are against having Trident missiles in Scotland and against the principles of NATO - just like the SNP has been for the past 30 years.

Angus Robertson's argument had a populist slant to it rather than deeply thought out points and his Who Dares Wins remark after his very slim victory confirmed it was a policy engineered to gain votes, with the defence of the country secondary.

Why join NATO now? In Afghanistan the UK are providing three times more troops per head of population than other European NATO allies. Will an independent Scotland follow London's lead in any future operations?

But the NATO policy wasn't only about defence; assuring the country's safety was secondary to the necessity of the SNP leadership to consolidate its power.

Power over principle is a dangerous route for any politician to walk.  Luckily this time Alex Salmond won the argument, albeit by inches, but he must be careful to avoid the trap into which Labour fell in recent years when their preoccupation with power at all costs lost them two elections and the trust of the Scottish electorate.

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Organised Retreat Of Defeated Armies

Helmand is the largest of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan.  It is the world's largest opium producing region and responsible for 75% of the world's total production.  The NATO war has not reduced the production and some reports state that it has increased in recent years.

Since the attack on Camp Bastion in the past few days the GOC of ISAF and representatives of NATO decided to restrict operations with small Afghan forces to mitigate the threat of insider attacks.  This means fewer boots on patrols and a shift in how the US-led coalition will now fight the war they are losing.

Earlier this year the US military stopped training about 1,000 members of the Afghan Local Police and US commanders have asked some troops to be 'guardian angels' who watch over their comrades in interactions with Afghan forces and even as they sleep.  US officials also recently ordered American troops to carry loaded weapons at all times, even when they are on their bases.

On Tuesday Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, attempted to clarify the UK's approach to supporting Afghan troops following General Allen's (commander of ISAF) decision and he insisted that no major strategic change had been made in policy towards Afghan allies.

He also insisted that future UK joint patrols and mentoring would continue. I watched a little of Hammond's performance on Sky's Parliament channel and it was a pathetic attempt at bluff and bluster which only emphasised his ignorance of the latest strategy.

I will not reiterate my thoughts again about this disastrous war but suggest you read this article in Global Research.  Like Iraq, it suggests the Afghan war has been fought on lies and deceptions and the planned withdrawal will be nothing more that an organised retreat of defeated armies.  As if we didn't know. History is repeating itself in this far off land once again.

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No Sympathy From Cameron But Obama Knows What Side His Bread's Buttered On

Following the review in October, the MoD said it would reduce the number of military personnel by 17,000 over four years: 7,000 from the army and 5,000 each from the Navy and RAF.

Yesterday the MoD announced the numbers to be cut from Army and Navy personnel: both must lose 5,000 and 3,3000 respectively.  The Gurkhas are to be among the first victims of the Army's redundancy programme with around 150 troops facing the  end of their military careers. Money needs to be saved now that Gurkhas can now serve 22 years rather than the 15 to which they were previously restricted.

The MoD said that 1,000 soldiers had been told they would be redundant by September and 1,600 Royal Navy personnel were informed they too would lose their jobs.  In the Army alone it is expected that around half the redundancies will be compulsory.

The RAF listed its figures a month ago and although yesterday the Air Chief Marshall says forces will be in Libya for at least six months, there would appear to be little sympathy from the MoD or David Cameron.

Why has our involvement in the no-fly zone over Libya suddenly extended to a mid-term operation?  Because Barack Obama has pulled the US military out.  There are other factors of course but some of them have to do with the development of the situation in Libya itself, with others to do with the complicated relations between the US and its Europeans NATO allies.  But what is more important for Obama is that the war in Libya has a direct impact on internal US politics and bears directly on his 2012 prospects.  This week it's expected he will announce he intends to run for a second term.

Some say as time passes there are more and more indications that the Libyan rebels are not fighting for democracy and human rights as they were depicted at the beginning the campaign and intelligence reports advise of flickers about the presence of al-Qaeda and Hezbollah members among the anti-Gaddafi forces.  I'm sure few people in the UK will be surprised at that news.

Obama has a balancing act to do as no one in Washington would be happy to see Al Qaeda or the like taking the upper hand in Libya, yet Washington presently sees the situation as a stalemate and two US warships, of the initial eleven, have already been withdrawn. 90 US jets have ceased operating in Libyan airspace leaving only 143, (two-thirds of the initial warplanes), to impose the no-fly zone.  France and Britain are expected to carry the bulk of the load now the US jets are grounded with other NATO countries contributing in a smaller way, yet we don't have adequate hardware or, if the Air Chief Marshall is to be believed, enough manpower.

Yet David Cameron will continue to chop away and be happy to lose highly skilled military personnel in his quest to 'save' money.  The safety of the people of these islands has no part to play in his plans.  At least we know, but we've known that since Blair proclaimed war on Iraq.

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Another Expensive Alliance

Artist's impression

On 16 December, when most of Britain was caught in a big freeze, the NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen joined the Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme and the Belgian Defense Minister Pieter de Crem in Brussels on the site of the new NATO HQ to attend a ground-breaking ceremony.

Britain's contribution to this £841m state-of-the-art building is a mere £105m.  The building is scheduled to be finished in 2015.

John Glen, the Tory MP for Salisbury was frustrated at the spending of hundreds of millions of pounds on a building while British armed forces face severe reductions.

”I find it very difficult to square news of this expenditure alongside the painful cuts that the MOD has had to bear,” he said. “I would urge Liam Fox, the Secretary of State, to work with other defence ministers across Nato to reduce the burden on the exchequer. We cannot afford it.”

A British government spokesman said:

"The UK will contribute 12.5 per cent of this budget and we're scrutinising it closely for value for money. It is important that Nato has a good HQ,"


Like John Glen others will say it's shameful for the MoD to be spending this money while many military allowances will be cut from April this year, but it's all part of the great plan.  The UK government has no intention of protecting our armed forces and is blatantly carving them up as instructed by the EU Common Security and Defence Policy and laid down in Article 42 of the Lisbon Treaty.  (It should be noted Denmark has an opt-out from the CSDP).

The UK and France account for 50% of EU defence spending and about 65% of research and development spending, according to the BBC.  Both countries spent 2.32% of GDP on defence in 2009.

The new NATO HQ ought to be a pleasure to work in with its restaurant, leisure and sport facilities, shops and banks.  Sounds like it may be quite a pleasant visitor attraction for a wet day.

We shouldn't complain at a more £105m though because we didn't complain when the MoD spent £2.3bn on Whitehall offices back in 2007. Of course these refurbishments were funded by 30-year PFI contracts.

While MoD staff rest their bums on 'the most comfortable office chairs in the world - the kind used by David Dimbleby on the BBC's Question Time - military families live in damp homes without acceptable heating or insulation.

It's a pity NATO didn't put the welfare of their members' military to the fore but that would mean prioritising.  Military personnel are only the means to an end for these overpaid bureaucrats.

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War and the US-NATO Missile Shield

Is it because Afghanistan is so far away that we seldom flinch these days when we hear of another member of our military has been killed in the war in that desolate land?

Yesterday morning a serviceman, from 23 Pioneer Regiment,The Royal Logistics Corps, was killed in an explosion in Helmand province. He died as a result of clearing explosive devices.

Clearing IEDs in this war is a thankless task because it's well known that for every IED that is destroyed, it will be replaced within hours by the Taliban.  The whole country is blighted by IEDs, placed by Afghanis who purport to defend their countrymen.  These devices have caused far more harm to innocent Afghanis than any actions of our armed forces.

A total of 348 UK military personnel have died since the war in Afghanistan began.

Reading this blog yesterday rang a bell.  More NATO lies and yet little is said in the British MSM.  Our politicians are party to this 'plan'.

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Lisboa

As thousands of protestors marched through London against the war in Afghanistan  the great, the good and the incompetent strutted their stuff in Lisbon.

I wondered why Dmitry Medvedev, representing Moscow, chose to become involved.  Most probably it's because Russia is concerned about the Afghan opium trade and without the assistance of NATO Russian efforts to curb the corruption would not succeed.  Moscow is looking long-term  at the problem because it knows how damaging the poppy fields are to its economy and it needs the assistance of the west.  In return Moscow was invited to participate in a US-led missile defence programme intended to intercept long-range attacks launched from Iran.  This agreement also has implications for the Afghan conflict, because Russia will allow greater use of its territory for transporting NATO supplies to Afghanistan as well as help fund more transport helicopters.

Our Prime Minister, like many of our modern politicians, is looking no further than the next election. By announcing that the transition deal would 'pave the way for British combat troops to be out of Afghanistan by 2015', he considers he is sticking to a pledge to take British forces off the frontline before the election. Is his insistence upon setting a date sensible?  Do you tell the local burglars when you're going on holiday?  Much as I would like to see our armed forces out of this war, this is a move which could put the lives of our soldiers at risk because all this does is tell the Taliban exactly how long they have to hang on and gives them a psychological boost.

By contrast US officials insist that the NATO transition plan did not guarantee an end to American combat operations.  US forces could go on fighting the Taliban even after transition.  Barack Obama said he is pretty confident that US troops will still be maintaining a counter-terrorism capability after 2015.

David Cameron's firm stance has jarred with NATO's conditional plan as NATO's secretary-general insisted: "This process must be conditions-based and not calendar driven."

So who came out of this summit smiling?  Russia it would seem and of course Karzai, as he must be delighted to hear Britain will continue to pour billions of aid into his country long after our soldiers have left.

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Hoon Dismissed from NATO

The smiling Geoff Hoon (above) won't be smiling this week.

Apart from being rumbled in the Dispatches programme on Monday and suspended from the Labour party on Tuesday, he was kicked out of his advisory NATO post on Wednesday.

Hoon was one of a group of unpaid experts, led by the former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who were drawing up a report on the alliance's new strategy for a summit in Lisbon in November.

"It was the British government that nominated Mr Hoon to be one of the group..." said NATO spokesman James Appathural.

"However, given that it is clear the British government no longer supports Mr Hoon's participation, the secretary general has decided to ask Mr Hoon to end his participation in the group of 12."

Gordon Brown is understood to have contacted Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the NATO leader, saying Hoon no longer had his support.

Gordon's now had his revenge for Hoon's Iraq inquiry evidence and his part in the failed coup. Is it likely the PM could have a word with the chair of Boots on behalf of Ms Hewitt?

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A Fair Share

How often have I heard the words, "Other NATO countries will be supplying their share of troops to the Afghanistan conflict," from Bob Ainsworth or one of his side kicks?  Quite a few times. How often have we had a concise reply from him when he's been asked for the numbers each country is prepared to send to Afghanistan?  Not once.

However, the Jury Team political party has analysed the latest information from ISAF, the NATO Afghanistan military command and has come up with some startling facts.
They show that we are providing three times more troops per head of the population than our European NATO allies.

The UK with 9,500 troops has 154 soldiers per million of population.

France, Germany and Italy have a ratio of only 58, 54 and 52 per million respectively and Spain, Portugal and Greece only have 23, 10 and 1 per million.

We also have more than the US which has 152 per million.

Fatalities are even more agonising.  Relative to our size we have had over 12 times more deaths than our European NATO allies.  During 2006-09 Britain suffered 240 troops killed from its 61 million population.  In the same period all other European NATO countries combined have only had 169 deaths from a total population of 495 million.

The Jury Team believes their policy should be to limit the number of British troops sent to Afghanistan to the average number sent by other NATO countries (relative to their population).  I strongly agree with them.  We have soldiers who are battle-fatigued yet they are redeployed to this conflict over and over again without receiving a reasonable length of respite.

This war is costing us billions, money which could be spent wisely here at home, yet so few of us protest.  We are a part of NATO, one country from a total of 28 and we should be contributing on a fair basis.  It is well documented that many other NATO countries refuse to send more troops because they are conscious of public opinion.

It's time we ensured our politicians were aware of public opinion and telling them that they must reduce out troop numbers from 9,500 to around 4,000, in line with other countries, would be a good place to start.

Alan Wallace has the statistics from all NATO countries at his place.

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When War Becomes Peace and the Lie Becomes the Truth

I've unashamedly lifted the title for this post from Global Research which states 'We are at a crossroads of the most serious crisis of modern history. The US in partnership with NATO and Israel has launched a global military adventure which, in a very real sense, threatens the future of humanity.

At this critical juncture in our history the Norwegian Nobel Committee's decision to award the nobel peace prize to President Obama constitutes an unmitigated tool of propaganda and distortion, which unreservedly reports the Pentagon's 'Long War': a 'War without Borders' in the true sense of the word, characterised by the worldwide deployment of US military might'.

You can read the whole article here. It may give you food for thought, as it did me.

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Why is This being Publicised?

The MSM is publicising the start of a massive 'simulated war' involving ships, aircraft and submarine to be staged off the west coast of Scotland as part of a Nato military exercise.

The Royal Navy's flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious, will take the lead role in Exercise Joint Warrior.

Forces from the USA, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, Turkey and Brazil are also taking part in the 21-day exercise which starts on Monday.

The scenario involves three nations fighting over disputed territory.

State-sponsored terrorism will also be introduced to the exercise, along with a period of built-up tension,, followed by simulated war fighting and open hostilities.

Ships have already begun to arriving at the Faslane Naval Base, which will host more than 100 British personnel and their allied counterparts.

HMS Illustrious will be the biggest ship involved and lead a nine strong task group. Her Harrier GR9 jets will be among 50 warplanes flying about 75 sorties a day. Type 23 frigates HMS Northumberland and HMS Portland are also taking part.

The United States Navy is sending four ships, as is Canada and there will be other ships from Denmark, France, Turkey along with the Brazilian frigate BNS Defensora.

Helicopters will be deployed from the UK, Canada, Brazil the USA and Denmark, while planes will fly from the UK, Germany, France, Canada, Norway and the USA.

Ground forces will be provided by the UK, Belgium and the United States Marines.

Certain areas of Scotland are often used for military exercises but these are never given publicity. This one is different. Why? I understand the message but to whom is it directed? Iran, Russia, the middle east?

Source: BBC

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