Losing hearts and minds

Self-defeating slaughter

Why does America always lie about civilian casualties? If they were deliberately trying to lose hearts and minds they could not do better. Last month and last week they hailed victories over Taliban fighters. Then the ‘good news’ had to be revised.

Last month it as an innocent wedding party of 47 people, mostly women and children, who were killed in three separate rocket strikes by American planes.

Now a bomb was dropped on a large group of mourners at a wake in Herat. The US had initially denied any civilians had died.  The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission said initial findings were that 78 civilians had been killed in the US raid, including women and children.

A local MP said Afghan security forces had fired on hundreds of people protesting against the raid on Saturday. He said at least one person had been killed.

Even on my recent visit to the Pentagon, nobody said they believed a military solution was possible. The only hope was to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of Afghans and convince them that Western ways are best. The accidental slaughter of more than 110 Afghans in four weeks will drive Afghans  further into the arms of the Taliban. Lying compounds the hurt of the tragedies.

There was some resentment but never an honest answer to the question I posed to American officials, ‘Do you believe you can bomb a country into democracy?’

Gwent’s secret army

Had a delightful afternoon with my great friend Richard Frame and his wife Ann. Polymath, social entrepreneur, historian and author, Richard’s career has taken a new turn into frantically busy
semi-retirement

.

The fascinating subject that he is researching is the role of the British Resistance movement in Gwent. They were recruited and trained to sabotage the occupying German army after the expected invasion of 1940.

Richard has discovered their secret lairs in Coed y Caerau east of Newport. He also has a wealth of revealing hand written documents that the members of the resistance movement signed.

They had to commit themselves to desert their families and take to the woods when the anticipated invasion occurred.  These brave souls were deeply committed. Their work was never recognised. In 1944 they were thanked by letter but told that their work must always remain a secret.

For many years after the war, the survivors held reunions in the pub in Gwent’s Llantrisant. A photograph of them hangs in one of the bars to this day.

I look forward to reading the fascinating book that Richard will write about this secret and enthralling chapter in Gwent's history.

Pharmas’ perks

The Guardian rang me on Tuesday about an exclusive they were about to run. It was pleasure to give them a quote to bolster another exposure of the wiles of Big Pharma.

Drug companies are spending millions of pounds every year on all-expenses-paid trips to conferences around the world for doctors and other hospital staff, in what critics say is a massive marketing exercise dressed up as medical education. The Guardian reports: -

“The Guardian can reveal the scale of pharmaceutical company sponsorship following an examination of the registers of gifts and donations to doctors that all hospitals are required to keep. They show considerable largesse - from drug companies regularly picking up hefty bills for travel to international conferences in Europe, Asia and America, to specialist nurses' salaries, and weekly sandwich lunches for hospital staff training sessions.

All-expenses-paid trips to conferences in the US, Vietnam or Hungary are a regular feature of the registers, costing the companies up to £5,000 per doctor.”

Nothing new perhaps but all of this was supposed to have been stopped after a damning Select Committee report in 2005. This is cynical marketing to persuade doctors to dispense their products.

When I was debating a hip prosthesis scandal ten years ago, a salesman told me his technique for selling them to physicians. ‘We divide them up into fossils, floaters and toads. The fossils will not change. They are happy with the prostheses they are using or they are afraid to change. We don’t waste time on them. The floaters can be persuaded with use of what we call in our technical way, ‘bribes’.’

‘What money” I asked aghast. ‘Nothing as crude as that. Usually it’s free trips on skiing holidays to the Alps or diving in Bermada. The toads are like Toad of Toad Hall. They want everything that is new. So we tell them our prostheses are computer designed or they are a sexy blue colour, or they have got bells on them. They’re a pushover.’

Little has improved. The patients’ interests still do not come first.