Does Europe still need NATO?

      The crisis in the Ukraine has called into question NATO's continuing role in Europe since the end of the Cold War, when it opposed the Warsaw Pact, now dissolved. Does it now heighten instead of lessen tension? A few years before his death in 2002, the late Professor John Erickson, for many years NATOs top adviser on Russia, consulted by US commanders and policy makers, and the West's leading authority on the Soviet Union for most of the Cold War, had himself questioned its post-Cold War role. "To question the utility and the viability of NATO is often construed as a form of heresy or unacceptable subversion. NATO did perform its Cold War functions admirably, as might be expected.....the issue is not simply that NATO has to define its mission, or even to consider that it may not have a future. There is the wider problem of delineating what must comprise Europe's defence interests, obligations and commitments, this time over a time span which will reach well into the next century."
        For the present, however, a 'bits and pieces' approach to European defence, in an arrangement which is part collaborative and part competitive, is plainly insufficient and no hiding behind NATO's ample bureaucratic skirts can conceal that. "NATO was only one bit of Europe," he said - a debate should now start on its new role. Which, in fact, it has. The latest issue of Peace News, one of the the main voices against nuclear weapons, carried the headline "Dissolve NATO to help Ukraine". Its editors write that Russian nationalism has popular support to a great extent "because of Western encirclement..... To help undo Russian imperialism, undo US/NATO imperialism and dissolve the military alliance that has advanced to the borders of Russia. Guarantee the neutrality of Ukraine. NATO is a machine for facilitating western domination. Dismantling it would be a step towards a more peaceful world and a valuable de-escalatory move in the current crisis."
        It's a view shared by many who are less extremely committed in their views than Peace News, thinking how the continued presence of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, with its lavish headquarters and many jobs in Brussels, and its expansion into the states formerly under the Soviet Union, might be seen as threatening by Russia. NATO, founded in 1949 with the specific purpose of taking massive retaliation with nuclear weapons if there was any Soviet attack on Europe, has evolved, in its own words, into an organisation with different aims.
       In the 1950's it was there for defensive purposes, in the 1960's as a political instrument for détente, and in the 1990's as a tool for stability in Europe and central Asia through new partners and allies. Now its new mission, it claims, is "to extend peace through the strategic projection of security". Necessity has forced them to accept that violent extremism may be the "defining threat" of the first half of the 21st century, and that this needs a co-ordinated international response which could be the foundation stone of transatlantic peace. So why not change the name to the North Atlantic Peace Organisation and ask Russia to join? And make sure the many Ukrainian oligarchs join in. ends

A Thorn in their Side

It is 30 years since a political scandal broke around the mysterious murder of Hilda Murrell, a rose grower of national fame in her Shropshire garden and an ardent campaigner for peace and against nuclear power and weapons. A new edition of the book about her murder "A Thorn in Their Side" has been published for the anniversary by her nephew Robert Green, who has devoted years to following his theory that she was killed because of her anti-establishment views and the fact that she had secret documents that could have threatened the security of the Thatcher and succeeding governments and that these documents are still at large. He wants the murder case - for which the man found guilty, Andrew George, is now in prison, to be reopened. Robert Green was a naval officer who had originally led the team providing top-secret intelligence support to the Polaris nuclear submarine on patrol in the surrounding seas. Previously, he had been in a "nuclear crew" with the capacity to drop a ten kiloton bomb on a military airfield near Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. He switched to anti-submarine helicopters, and finally became publicly opposed to nuclear weapons. Then in March, 1984, his aunt was killed. It was a long time before a murder suspect was charged and tried. "My experience of sitting through the five-week trial of Andrew George in 2005 was that the English adversarial judicial process proved woefully ineffective in discovering who had murdered Hilda," he writes. He thinks the book provides enough evidence to re-open the case. Michael Mansfield QC, writing a foreword to the book, has called for a Commission of Inquiry into Hilda's case. There was cross-party support for a Parliamentary early day motion tabled by Austin Mitchell supporting this. He points out that Hilda was killed shortly before she was about to deliver her paper entitled "An Ordinary Citizens' View of Radioactive Waste Management" to the first UK Public Inquiry into the nuclear power industry, focusing on the proposed Sizewell B plan in Suffolk. Her fundamental objection was to the dangers of dealing with high-level radioactive waste. This, in itself, was a danger to the established forces supporting nuclear energy. "Continuing pointers towards State complicity into Hilda's murder have been the endless and remorseless efforts to put the authors off their stride by harassment, surveillance and intimidatory intrusion. Even after publication of this book in New Zealand, this has not abated," Mansfield writes. "No one in the UK should be in any doubt about this reality following revelations in January 2011 about the extent of police undercover activities in relation to perfectly peaceful and legitimate protest groups." The brutal killing of Hilda Murrell by stabbing and blows to her body and face was assumed to be local. The police theory was that it had been committed by a lone, panicking burglar. Or it could have been committed by hired attackers for a different purpose - to silence her. Robert Green, now living in New Zealand, and his wife Kate Dewes, will not give up until their theory has been properly tested and investigated when, they believe, the real truth will finally emerge. ends

Stop the live export of animals

Kate Humble with the sheep and lambs in the springtime TV show was a popular item with viewers, not surprisingly. The lambs ran around happily, feeding from their mothers, the sheep safely grazing and tending to them. But this was not quite the whole story. Along with the cows and the pigs, many thousands of sheep would be later transported in crowded trucks with no room to lie down or even turn around,shoved together for journeys thousands of miles long to be eaten as "fresh meat" in foreign countries. Except that many of them would lie dead and dying in the cattle trucks, having been left without food and water. You don't hear much about this. It would be bad for trade. Nor do the newspapers tell you about it. The demonstrators at the port of Ramsgate, on the south coast, raise their banners for "Stop Live Exports" as they have been doing ceaselessly since the ban on live exports was lifted in 2010. At least someone cares. The EU now recognises animals as "sentient beings" ranking with humans in their capacity for suffering. This being so, logically live exports should be forbidden because of their likeness to the crowded rail trucks running captives to the Nazi concentration camps. The charity organisation Compassion in World Farming have been backing the protesters. They have had observers with the cattle. Once they are landed outside the EU, conditions become far more brutal. In this country it has been shown that rough handling, beating, excessive use of electric prods and lack of food and water are common, with a failure by the authorities to inspect transport and prosecute offenders. Exhaustion, no proper ventilation, transport of animals unfit to travel and unsuitable vehicles can kill them en route and many journeys from the UK take several days or even weeks. So the question is why transport them live? If they must be killed, why not in local abbatoirs before being loaded on to the trains? Is it justified simply so they can be classified as "fresh meat"? Millions are making these journeys which can last for days or weeks, including the huge numbers from this country. So how can it be stopped? Appeals to farmers, appeals to transport companies involved in the exports (a few of which have already been successful) and to the BBC programme makers might make a difference - a little more, perhaps, than appeals to M.P.'s. Then people can happily eat their roast lamb, pork or beef dinner and even some veal from the calf torn away from its mother when it is born, so she can produce even more calves and milk. At least it wasn't exported. ends