Article contributed by ‘D.W.’
(Military & international affairs adviser to thriller writer Terence Strong)

There is an old, typically-English (politically incorrect) joke about the Holy Land called ‘The Miracle’ and it goes something like this:
‘According to the New Testament of The Bible, Jesus was born in Bethlehem, in Palestine, a country where people are called Mohammed, Abdel, Mounir, Aziz, Ahmed, Farid, Omar, Youssouf, Mouloud, etc
‘And Jesus managed to find 12 buddies called John, Peter, Paul, Phillip,
Mark, Thomas, Luke, Mathew, Andrew and Simon ….all of whom drank wine !!!
‘That’s what I call A MIRACLE!’

When I was working in Ramallah for nearly a year, I used to live in Jerusalem. I still have many Palestinian and Israeli friends from that time, as well as many other Muslim and Jewish friends from other countries.

The Palestinians in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem and elsewhere have a high number of Christians (mostly Greek orthodox) among them. The Palestinians are the possibly most socially advanced and wonderful people amongst all Arabs. They are also extraordinarily well educated.

In my view, the state of Israel has become a cruel and racist machine which has the blind support of the US Government, and many other people who are scared to say anything against it – due to the background of the Holocaust and historical discrimination.

The simple fact is that #Gaza has all the appearance of a ghetto. It was created by Israel and is perpetuated by #Israel. Israel holds all the cards.

It is simply not the way it can sometimes look on TV. It is mostly lies told by a professionally manipulated media. I am not a soft reactionary, I am a veteran in my field of expertise. I am not given to allowing emotions to affect my judgement of political and geo-political matters. I know what I am talking about.

Of course, Hamas does not have the best of reputations and is recognised as a terrorist organisation by many international authorities. But at least in Palestine, it was democratically elected. In fact it was the only legitimate election in almost any Arab country.

And what did the rest of the world expect? Democracy is a process, and it must start somewhere. The residents of the open prison we call Gaza, a ghetto by any standards, were hardly likely to vote for a mild-mannered moderate like Nick Clegg.

Surrounded and imprisoned, over populated and denied access to anywhere – even to the sea – the population was bound to vote for someone who promised to fight back.

The only way Israel can stop the violence is to stop the violence! They need to be bold and take the imaginative steps that I suggest:

They have to recognise Palestine, dismantle the settlements, remove The Wall and take the boundary back to the 1968 line. And they should stop attacking the Palestinians.

Once they have done that, then the United Nations should send in a huge team of international observers/monitors/peacekeepers.

The ball is absolutely in Israel’s court and Israel owns the court – lock, stock and smoking barrel.

By the way, I know many Palestinians who have Christian names. That is because many of them are Christians!

This original article is contributed by one of my friends, who is a former soldier and professional administrative adviser in the region. Written by ‘DW’.

On a recent visit to Kiev the former President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, took to the airwaves to announce his predictions regarding Russia’s intentions in Europe and the Caucuses.

He warned that Russia will turn its attention to Moldova next. In Georgia meanwhile, the scaremongers – mostly from Saakashvili’s party – have been busy whipping people into a frenzy with messages of doom.

Saakashvili has not gained a reputation for understanding Russia, its plans and capabilities, as demonstrated when he gambled and lost by waging war in August 2008.

The general thrust of the doom forecasters is the prediction that Russia will attempt to expand, take over some small countries – including Latvia – and that this will only be stopped if the West (ie. the USA) engages its military.

But Russia is probably not behaving in an entirely unpredictable and irrational manner. To understand Putin’s intentions it is important to consider Russia’s recent history and, in particular, the effect of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

For Russians, the Soviet Union was seen as a natural extension of Russian influence. Under the Czars, Russia had grown in size and influence for hundreds of years. Following the revolution and the murder of the Romanov family, Moscow regrouped and Stalin then set about continuing that expansion process.

After the Second World War, Stalin went even further, grabbing parts of Europe formerly under Germany and Poland. The Warsaw Pact enabled Russia to have direct influence on more territory and people.

When the Soviet Union finally ceased, Russia shrank from having unchallenged authority from the Baltic and Adriatic in the west, and the borders with Iraq and Iran in central Asia, to being smaller than it had been at the start of the First World War.

By contrast, the huge British Empire was constantly diminishing.

Although the early loss of the American colonies under George III had been a blow to London’s prestige, the expansion continued into the 20th Century. During that time British-managed lands were successfully seeking varying degrees of independence.

Independence was granted to tens of future new countries, from Ireland to Nigeria and Hong Kong, a process which has not entirely finished. It has occurred over many generations.

There were genuine tears when Hong Kong was handed back to China. What will happen to Gibraltar and, indeed, what will happen to Scotland?

The significant fact is that the British are not traumatised by the loss of Empire, the loss of status. It is a gradual decline; and besides, Britain still sits permanently on the UN Security Council, is a member of G7 (or G8), and has an independent nuclear deterrent.

But for Russia the decolonisation process happened almost overnight.

It was followed by a period during which Russia was treated as a poor insignificant third world nation, despite being huge, having an enormous military and massive stockpile of nuclear weapons, and also being a permanent member of the Security Council.

There was a huge loss of status, influence, and prestige and it happened abruptly. It has taken years and the exploitation of carbon fuels – and the arrival of Putin – to put Russia back on the world stage.

The nation is now going through the painful process of trying to regain what it considers to be its former position in the world with what it considers to be its former status.

Russia is angry and hurt, and therefore dangerous.

All politics is domestic, it is said, and certainly Putin’s actions must be considered with that in mind. Many Russian people feel that they have lost their place in the world and Putin is getting it back. They love him.

Crimea, which was part of Russia for generations, holds a similar place in Russian hearts as does Kosovo for the Serbs. Russia is not looking for a war and Putin will probably annex a large part of Ukraine without a shot being fired.

Putin will not be too concerned that the world does not accept what he has done. Turkey has done pretty well without recognition of their Northern Cyprus ‘republic’. Indeed Turkey is a NATO member. The people of Northern Cyprus welcomed the arrival of Turkish paratroopers in much the same way as the people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are pleased to have Russian troops to ‘protect’ them from Georgians. The Russians prepared the ground well in Georgia, and have done the same in Crimea.

It will not all be plain sailing for the Kremlin in the years to come.

Non-Russians are not quite as happy, particularly the people of Dagestan who feel that their oil and gas wealth is being squandered by Moscow.

We will probably see further separatist violence. Similarly the Chechens have not forgotten their brutal suppression under Putin’s first reign (and the initial injustices under Stalin).

There is also the Muslim issue in the Caucuses, which is growing and dangerous. It will probably mean that in a few years neo-cons, and others less inclined to tolerate Islamic extremism will stand shoulder to shoulder with Russia, conveniently forgetting the events in Odessa and Simferopol.

What of Saakashvili and his pronouncements? The people of Abkhazia and South Ossetia will take a lot of persuading that their interests lie with Tbilisi rather than with Moscow.

Europe may talk about principles but it has little appetite to risk war or interruption of the oil and gas flow from Baku.

Now is the time for Georgia to stay quiet. Let the Russians focus their attention elsewhere. Saakashvili may yet get acknowledged by his own country for the great miracle he bestowed in the first years of his leadership, but not if his rampant scaremongering becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.©

Nelson Mandela has gone. It was the moment that many in southern Africa have dreaded.
The legacy he left was the African National Congress (the ANC) ruling political party and the notion of a so-called rainbow nation of reconciliation between blacks, whites and coloureds.

But the ANC, currently led by flamboyant President Jacob Zuma, is hardly recognisable as the same party that Mandela guided to political victory.

The party is considered now by many to be run by gaggle of rival warlords and gangsters. Open corruption can be witnessed by ministers, civil servants, municipal chiefs and even the police.

Despite its early elaborate promises, the party has singularly failed to deliver virtually any of its promises to its own black African followers. Unemployment is already topping 40% and the country relies desperately on outside foreign investment.

Yet it is happily cancelling investment protection treaties and has recently announced it intends to seize 51% of South Africa’s burgeoning private security sector. Together with new positive economic discrimination and black empowerment rules, it is not a situation that will encourage that investment from abroad.

Meanwhile interest on the country’s debts is so high that the government is having to borrow even more foreign money to pay its civil service and its social welfare bill. It is clear that the ANC does not have the political and administrative will or ability to run an efficient modern economy.

The ANC is increasingly reliant on its political support from the more rural tribal homelands as support grows slowly for the rival Democratic Alliance Party. But there is unlikely to be any change of political leadership any time soon.

Time for the ship of state to change course away from the rocks of economic disaster may be running out fast.

Some sixteen years ago, a story circulating in Westminster was that the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) had been set up under the influence or encouragement of the traditional British Establishment in order to lance the boil of ‘Euro-scepticism’ from the main political parties.

It would draw off the most serious and influential anti-European opinion from the centre of power politics in Westminster and banish all such negative energy to the political wilderness.

I doubt its creator in 1991, Alan Skedd – a former Liberal and Professor of International History at the London School of Economics – saw things that way. He changed its name from the rather unimaginative Anti-Federalist League in 1993 but resigned as leader shortly after the 1997 general election.

Apparently he was dismayed by party factionalism and a drift to the radical far-right, believing that it was ‘doomed to remain on the political fringes’. He also opposed plans for UKIP members to take up seats it won at the European Parliament.

It was at about this time that I quite literally came across the party and its now current leader Nigel Farage.

UKIP had an open-air stand at the Cuckoo Fair in deepest Wiltshire. Nigel and I got on well and I began listening to his message. Shortly after I joined the party and began working with its then leader Michael Holmes as a PR consultant.

The first task was to try to design a sort of Directory or Family Tree of the Party of exactly Who was Who and Who Did What-  with their positions in the party and contact details. Yes, back then it really was that primitive a communications exercise that was needed

I also worked with the remarkable Christina Speight on production of her eye-opening monthly newsletter Facts, Figures & Phantasies which revealed so many amazing and frightening facts about the EU and its history and its future plans that would affect – often secretly – all citizens of the UK.

The first point is that the inner core of the party, then as now, is paranoid about being seen or portrayed as xenophobic or racist. It has fallen over itself to attract and welcome foreign-born members and activists.

Secondly it has never believed that it might ever be a party of government. In that respect it accepted it was really a political pressure group that would persuade a Tory, Labour or Coalition government to do the right thing in its view – and negotiate an exit from the political European Union.

UKIP’s aim was to have a UK that was of Europe but not in it – a sort of offshore, independent Switzerland on steroids, trading with the EU, the Commonwealth and the world.

Accused of being a one-policy Party, UKIP’s reply has been that Brussels rules virtually every aspect of British politics, life and law, therefore leaving the EU is the only way to change any of it. Britain can rarely change anything by being in it, because it is only ever a small minority voter…and the Commission does not like outsiders trying to change its basic vision of a United States of Europe.

I believe the groundswell of political support for UKIP is going to astound the pundits. The party could find itself it the position of power-broker, although it is as yet to send a single MP to Westminster.

A high UKIP vote could let in Labour or help form a new type of coalition. It is a quandary for many voters, who may want to be careful of what they wish for. Could the inexperienced UKIP crew seriously negotiate the UK’s ultra-complex departure from the EU?

There is no single answer to these serious questions. But what might have started as a bit of political chicanery may well have back-fired on those who originally dreamt it up.

The only certainty is that we are about to live in interesting times over the next two years.

A READER’S LETTER

As a now retired ex ITN senior cameraman of 30+ years service mainly spent in the worlds sharp end conflicts I per chance picked up Wheels of Fire in a hotel in Cuba last week and thought I must congratulate you on a very accurate and moving (fictional) account of those days of the Sarajevo siege.

Reporter Mike Nicholson and I got young Natasha out from her hell hole orphanage in Sarajevo and I regularly drove in and out on the various back routes with no military assistance, just my armoured defender, soundman and reporter and strangely enough I would put Bat Out of Hell on when things or militia road blocks got ugly.

Your book took me back in time, which is a good thing, those bad days there and to many other places I ended up in should be remembered, thanks for reminding me.

I have to confess I had not heard of you before but look forward to reading more of your books.

Thanks and regards,

John Martin

There is little doubt that the so-called Arab Spring has been a mixed blessing for all concerned, the inhabitants of those countries caught up in it and the rest of the world.

We in the West are very fond of trying to impose our cultural values on others. And however high-minded we are about them (anti-nepotism, fascism and absolute monarchs, but pro-democracy, freedom of expression and fair trials) other cultures don’t necessary share our views.

 Freedom to march and protest against government or the ruling class in not always a priority with people. Just getting on with scratching a living and minding their own business is. Many countries have known nothing but totalitarian rulers since the beginning of time.

 Both Russia and China endured empirical authority followed by Communist people-power. Neither were much fun.

 Most of the Arab peoples endure under absolute monarchs or dictators of one sort or another.

Having been ‘freed’ by NATO intervention, Libya remains absolute in political chaos, with armed militias controlling different fiefdoms. Egypt’s democracy remained short-lived when the elected Islamist President, mostly supported by the working classes, started making overtures to Iran and upsetting the long-standing secular army powerhouse.

 US President Obama has shown his displeasure of the Egyptian Army’s undemocratic behaviour in arresting their elected President by cancelling US-Egyptian arms deals…thereby leaving a wide open invitation to President Putin of Russia to fill the vacuum.

 In fact Mr Putin is doing rather well out of the chaos of the Arab Spring by wrong-footing everyone diplomatically over the Syrian Civil War, in an allied country that provides its only naval port in the Mediterranean. It is appearing to lead the way on WMD reform on the battlefield.

 Here, Western military intervention is unlikely to help because the two sides in the country’s conflict are pretty much evenly divided down tribal lines between Assad supporters and his avowed enemies, who are backed by Iran.

Grand ideals of democracy rather overlook the fact that the regimes of most tyrants, absolute monarchs and dictators in the Middle East actually work in the interests of Britain and Western countries. If they fail, a large proportion of those countries will become swept up in a tide of radical Islamic power.

 That puts the UK, EU and USA in a very difficult and dangerous diplomatic situation.

THIS POSTING RECEIVED AS ANONYMOUS:

The Royal Navy is proud to announce its new fleet of Type 45 destroyers.

Having initially named the first two ships HMS Daring and HMS Dauntless,
the Naming Committee has, after intensive pressure from Brussels, renamed them HMS Cautious and HMS Prudence.

The next five ships are to be HMS Empathy, HMS Circumspect, HMS Nervous, HMS Timorous and HMS Apologist.

Costing £850 million each, they comply with the very latest employment, equality, health & safety and human rights laws.

The Royal Navy fully expects any future enemy to be jolly decent and to comply with the same high standards of behaviour.

The new user-friendly crow’s nest now has excellent wheelchair access.

Live ammunition has been replaced with paintballs to reduce the risk of anyone getting hurt and to cut down on the number of compensation claims.

Stress counsellors and lawyers will be on board, as will a full sympathetic industrial tribunal.

The crew will be 50/50 men and women, and will contain the correct balance of race, gender, sexuality and disability.

Sailors will only work a maximum of 37hrs per week as per Brussels Rules on Working Hours, even in wartime.

All the vessels are equipped with a maternity ward, a crèche and a gay disco.

Tobacco will be banned throughout the ship, but recreational cannabis will be allowed in wardrooms and messes.

The Royal Navy is eager to shed its traditional reputation for; “Rum, sodomy and the lash”; so out has gone the rum ration, replaced by sparkling water.

Sodomy remains, now extended to include all ratings under 18.

The lash will still be available on request.

Saluting of officers is now considered elitist and has been replaced by “Hello Sailor”.

All information on notice boards will be in 37 different languages and Braille.

Crew members will now no longer have to ask permission to grow beards and/or moustaches.

This applies equally to female crew.

The MoD is inviting suggestions for a “non-specific” flag because the White Ensign may offend minorities.

The Union Jack must never be seen.

The newly re-named HMS Cautious will be commissioned shortly by Captain Hook from the Finsbury Park Mosque who will break a petrol bomb over the hull.

She will gently slide into the sea as the Royal Marines Band plays “In the Navy” by the Village People.

Her first deployment will be to escort boatloads of illegal immigrants to ports on England ‘s south coast.

The Prime Minister said, “Our ships reflect the very latest in modern thinking and they will always be able to comply with any new legislation from Brussels.”

His final words were, “Britannia waives the rules.”

For some time I’ve wondered if we give people their pensions at completely the wrong end of life?

Say a man retires at 65 and is lucky enough to survive until 85 years old, he’ll be drawing a pension for two decades. Currently the Government would like to pay him £140 a week (although we’re not there yet). That would be £140 x 52 weeks x 20 years. My calculator tells me that’s around £145,000 per pensioner at a fairly low living standard.

However, if for each new baby born £1000 is paid by the State into a Personal Pension Pot (PPP) each year, he or she will have a PPP of £15,000 plus by the age of 15.
That PPP will be ring-fenced for the individual and manage-invested by a Commission of independent experts spread over five to seven portfolios (from property, retail, technology etc.) A good spread.

Fifteen thousand pounds over 50 years, earning say just 2% interest, will be a PPP valued at £4.5 million at retirement. Money for all later health needs and left overs for shopping and private investment.

Over the pensioner’s working life, that person will only have to pay back the original £15,000 into the system through National Insurance. Adjustments will apply, obviously. I imagine it would have to be phased in over time.

Any experts out there are welcome to shoot the idea down – I’m sure they will. But I wouldn’t mind a few million smackers on my retirement, that’s for sure!

I researched a lot about China when I wrote DEADWATER DEEP, set around the handover of Hong Kong to the Chinese government in the late 1990s.
Even then it was clear that the West was beginning to forget that the country is still a very authoritarian Communist state. It has arguably the largest armed forces in the world and more land disputes with its neighbours than any other nation
Because of all the cheap, yet good quality goods that have poured out of China and many of its people are clearly starting to enjoy the good life, we forget that thousands of political prisoners languish in gulags at the pleasure of their own people.
It’s still one baby per family and “all animals are equal, except that some are still more equal than others”.
The omnipotent People’s Liberation Army (PLA) runs covert psychological warfare operations to influence and dupe foreign military and political leaders. According to the Sunday Times, one such is the China Association for International Friendly Contact (CAIFC), which is an organisation that sets itself up as a forum for discussion with overseas nations. Its figurehead president is Li Zhaoxing, a former foreign minister.
Others serving on the board of the CAIFC are members of the PLA’s secret and powerful Liaison Department, or Lian Luo Bu, an innocuous-sounding unit whose mission is to wage “psychological, media and legal” warfare against China’s adversaries.
Sunday Times reporter Michael Sheridan says some of those attending CAIFC events last year included former leaders of the both the UK and USA.
The West has to be careful what it selects from the Chinese menu. It’s not always what it seems. Some stuff might seem sweet but ends up with a very sour after taste.

Computers now switched and everything seems to be up and running. Thanks for staying with me and hopefully you’ve been following on Twitter: TerenceStrong@AuthorSASplus…when it lets me in or forgets my Password. Yes, it forgets my password, not the other way round. Try telling it that! Grrr.
Look forward to a mix of serious debate and some fun at my favourite virtual pub, The Lying Toad, which may well feature in a future book.
Thought a new fun idea that might be useful is new SENSIBLE political policies for any Party that wants to think outside the box. Some accuse UKIP of not having enough apart from leaving Europe although, to be honest, that does solve a lot of problems at a stroke. Really. Creates some others too, of course. That’s what the Eurosceptics have to prove to the people…that the UK can survive…indeed thrive outside of the EU.