This morning Sam Kiley, Sky News’ security correspondent, stated bluntly that the large bulk of Afghan heroin and opium production is controlled by members of the Karzai government.

That is a simple truth, and I have been publishing it repeatedly on this blog for the last six years, but it runs absolutely contrary to what has been an extraordinary and monolithic mainstream media narrative. The insistence for ten years by an almost unanimous mainstream media that it is the Taliban who contol the drugs trade has been perhaps the most remarkable example of a massive organised lie in modern media history. The question of how a false narrative like that becomes an accepted mainstream “truth” is a key element in control of the state by a rapacious elite using the brainwashing tcapabilities of modern mass communication.

The truly remarkable thing is the truth has somehow broken through. Then today in Parliament David Winnick, opposition defence spokesman, actually stated directly tthat people know longer believe that the presence of our troops in Afghanistan somehow protects us from terrorism, but rather might tend to inspire hatred of the UK.

Again, a blindingly obvious truth that I have been proclaiming for a decade. But absolutely not admissible as an argument on moanstream media in that period, and a truth whose denial was the dedicated work of Winnick’s party when it was in government.

The counter-productive and ruinously expensive nature of the Afghan War is something a high proportion of people fully understood even when they were never reinforced in their understanding by seeing that view reflected in “mainstream media”. Tens of thousands of children have died while arms suppliers and mercenary commanders got very rich. The last nine to be slaughtered in their beds have helped jolt people in the media and politics to talk some semblance of sense at last.

Urinating on dead Afghans, burning Korans and a nighttime killing spree are not the problem; they are symptoms of the problem. A vicious occupation by religious antagonists who repeatedly and continually launch massive violence on civilians, with the intent of imposing by force elements of an alien culture while establishing a massively corrupt and despised puppet government, is not a viable long term project. There is no way to undo the past. The best thing to do now is leave.

This speech in Berlin was to an interesting conference on freedom of expression at the Institute of Cultural Diplomacy. It proved useful in forcing me to pull together an overview of my current thoughts on events of the last year or so.

You can find video of other speakers here.