Sunday 4th June

I used to read those spy novels by John Le Carre and Len Deighton.  I was amazed by the duplicity of spies, each side as bad as each other.  I sort of, stupidly of course, thought that that would all be consigned to History with the fall of Communism.  But, if anything, it is worse today.  What with cyber attacks and secret deals and funding and arming different groups, it seems that our Nation States are obsessed with interfering in other countries business.  Before the Iraq war we and the Americans (and it always seems to be that way, America barks and our tails wag) had encouraged the Marsh Arabs in the south of Iraq (possibly with arms and money) to rebel against Saddam.  Then we of course condemned Saddam for (viciously I must admit) defeating them.  And as the threat from Russia seems to have diminished (at least on paper, though Putin is still perceived as  an enemy) we have turned our attention completely to the Middle East.

There is a huge battle within Islam’s Arabs between Sunni and Shi’ite.  Essentially also a power struggle between Saudi Arabia (nominally our friends – because they buy lots of our weapons) and Iran (our enemy because they don’t).  it has fueled the rise of ISIS and most of the rebel groups in Syria and Libya.  But we are not innocent bystanders at all.  Our secret services are funding and helping to arm (along with America) most of these rebel groups.  The aim is to get rid of dictators we don’t like; Saddam, Gadhafi, Assad, and protect those we do like the – Saudi’s, the Bahraini’s and the military regime in Egypt – repressive and undemocratic as they are.

But it doesn’t stop there.  Yesterday I read in JohnPilger.com (once a respected journalist) that the bomber in Manchester was part of a Libyan rebel group fighting Gadhafi. Our own security services were directly funding them, and knew who they were.  They were allowed to travel to and from Libya as they liked, presumably to fight or help those fighting the pro-Gadhafi forces in that now wrecked country.  I have no way of verifying this, but if true it means that our own Security Services aided and abetted a man who killed 22 young people in Manchester.  It really is a dirty world.