View source for Britain's Secret Wars by T J Coles

{{infobox1
|title= Britain's Secret Wars  
|author=T J Coles
|reviewer= Andy Heath
|genre=Politics and Society
|summary=Britain's Secret Wars is chilling and disturbing. Far from the sanitised media portrayal of a nation responding to global events, it highlights the political, intelligence and military involvement in instigating many of them, all in the name of power and influence. 
|rating=5
|buy=Yes
|borrow=Yes
|pages=224
|publisher=Clairview Books
|date=May 2016
|isbn=978-1-905570-78-2
|cover=1905570783
|aznuk=1905570783
|aznus=1905570783
}}

Britain's Secret Wars is a chilling and disturbing book to read. With all four corners of the globe hell-bent on conflict, oppression and injustice, our sanitised media portrays Britain, as a nation, responding to harrowing global events. What is chilling, in T J Coles book, is that the political establishment, through the military and intelligence community appear to be complicit in instigating many of them. What is disturbing is that the majority of information he has used to form his analysis and conclusion is freely available and in the public domain.
 
Reading the book there does not seem to be any corner of the world where we have not trained and armed an oppressive, but compliant, regime. The definition of compliance seeming to be the willingness to hand over the nation's resources to Anglo-American corporations. With control in place the country is then plundered and its people subject to fear, persecution and oppression by the military and police, trained directly by British personnel, or in the case of a particularly unpalatable regime, by private contractors and mercenaries.
 
If a country refuses to comply, it is classed as a 'rogue nation'. As these nations have a mind of their own and show a desire to control their own destiny, terrorist groups are created, trained and armed to 'liberate' them. In Britain's Secret War, T J Coles makes the case that Al Qaeda and possibly ISIS started in this way. The irony being that the monster has grown and is now out of control.

Adding further complexity to the global picture is the conflict where Britain trains and equips both sides. Providing a win-win situation for the arms industry and a distraction while we pursue our own agenda free from scrutiny. It is also not confined to party politics. All political affiliations have followed the same agenda. The Labour party and New Labour under Tony Blair, The Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. All have come to power and continued with business as usual.

Reading this book is uncomfortable. It presents a worldview that is far removed from the one presented through our traditional media. For whatever reason, many things, carried out in our name, are kept from us. These can become the subject of the latest conspiracy, and certainly, the theories seem to be everywhere these days. What T J Coles has provided in this book is an academic analysis of the research and information available. It is not based on speculation and assumption and the conclusions that he draws make you angry. As a nation, we should be rightly proud of our democracy and its democratic institutions. We should also be rightly proud of our military in maintaining our security and freedoms. What we should not be proud of, is when the freedoms that we enjoy are denied to others by the manipulation of our institutions in pursuit of wealth and power.

If you enjoy ''Britain's Secret Wars'', you may also enjoy:

[[Interventions by Noam Chomsky]]<br>
[[Freedom Next Time by John Pilger]]<br>
[[Temptations of Power by Robert J Jackson]]

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