Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

COMING  SOON!

There is nothing better for stocking fillers and e-gifts than good reads! Lyndon Books offer via Amazon big Christmas sale bargains. Paperbacks from £4.99 or currency equivalent and Kindle downloads £0.77p incl VAT.

 From  TOR  RAVEN

Download all four fast reading thrillers now! Or buy paperbacks. Orders over £10 postage free.

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From MALCOLM  BLAIR-ROBINSON

These two mega thrillers are a must for those who love historical drama and political intrigue.

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The rather battered Andrew Mitchell and the highly respected Andrew Tyrie have both made strong calls for Cameron to appoint a judge led inquiry to establish to what extent Britain is seeking to cover up its involvement in the torture of prisoners or the rendition processes of which torture was the end purpose. This blog fully concurs with the cogent arguments both senior Tories advanced on the media today. This blog does not, however, agree with appointing a judge to lead it, nor that it should be outside parliament and the democratic process. The revelations of the American torture programme have become public because of the work of a Senate committee. Here a beefed up Select Committee with draconian discovery powers, compulsory witness attendance and evidence under oath would be far better than another of these public inquiries, which do not work for sensitive political issues.

Their record is dismal. The Scott inquiry had its conclusions watered down to save the Major government. Hutton made a laughing stock of the process. Leveson has come to nothing with the newspaper industry refusing to sign up to the resultant proposals. Chilcot has still not reported five years on. The child abuse inquiry cannot even get started. The public is fed up with this self serving pantomime. It is time to do things differently.

Once again we bumble forward on a military adventure not thought through to prop up a foreign policy which is dysfunctional. The Defence Secretary has announced that some hundreds of British troops are to go to Iraq to train local forces. What is the point of that? Where will this lead?

The talk of defeating ISIS by military means is way off the mark. It may be possible to contain its advance and this may have been done already. The Islamic State has fighters who have rampaged all over Syria and Iraq, but it  is not a military power whose defeat on the battlefield will put it out of business. It is an idea and an ideology born out of Sunni disaffection with post Saddam Iraq and repudiation of the Sykes Picot borders of the old Ottoman territories, which ignored tribal roots and which amounted to a colonial carve up of spoils.

The only military solution to the problems in the Middle East is for one power to occupy the whole region. This would require an occupation army of about three million crack troops and local allied forces of about the same number. This is a military and political non-stater. The alternative is to step back and let the Arab nations sort out their differences on their own, disengaging from everything except the purchase of their oil, which believe me, all the warring parties are as keen as mustard to sell.

But to tinker about at the margin training people who only switch sides later is utterly futile in terms of ending suffering and achieving peace. The failed state line up of Iraq and Libya, together with imploding Syria and tottering Afghanistan should teach us that.

COMING  SOON!