Oh And of Course

Talks over the devolution of policing powers to the Northern Irish Assembly are still ongoing at Hillsborough castle long after the deadline expired. Given that this phase of negotiations have been overshadowed by the London Conference on Afghanistan I would have thought that the participants would by now have agreed to take a few days or even weeks off to consider their positions before re-starting the negotiations anew. If a firm(ish) timetable exists for the negotiations to continue I don't think London will be prepared to attempt to impose its own agreement.

The IMF, Still Evil.

Following Haiti's massive earthquake earlier this month the International Monetary Fund (IMF) offered the country a USD 100million loan. The IMF claimed that this money had to be given as a loan because they had no mechanism to make a grant of that size that quickly and promised to review the arrangement at a meeting of their directors held yesterday (28/01). Despite the meeting being proceeded by IMF officials making all the right noises about some or all of this new loan being turned into a grant the IMF instead decided to screw Haiti over. They did this by increasing the loan to USD 114million and turning it into an Extended Credit Facility (ECF) loan which obligates Haiti to repay the entire loan plus interest and submit to IMF "policy support" and "structural benchmarking."

ECF loans are brand new, only coming into existence three weeks ago, but put simply they are rather like the overdraft facility you would get from a high street bank. If a country has an unexpected cash flow problem caused by say debtors failing to settle their accounts, economic production falling below predicted targets or, in Haiti's case an impossible to predict natural disaster flattening the country the ECF loan allows them to meet day to day expenses like paying staff or keeping essential services running. Also like an overdraft countries using ECF loans are charged a fee for doing so and are charged interest on till they repay the full amount. Unlike an overdraft though countries using ECF's have to give the IMF a say in how that money is spent and what changes the country should make to their economy in order to make sure that it can meet its interest payments.

Although only economically rather then legally binding and presented in more PR conscious language these policy support and structural benchmarking measures are an awful lot like the Economic Structural Adjustment Plans (ESAP) that the IMF inflicted on the developing world in the 1970's, 80's and 90's. These hit Haiti particularly hard when, in order to meet the interest payments on crippling debts run up by the Duvalier's, the IMF forced Haiti to turn over much of its farmland to grow crops like coffee, sugar and tobacco rather then food. This practice, known as cash-cropping, is done because crops like coffee and sugar can be sold at a high price to developed countries quickly bringing in enough cash to meet the interest payments on loan. The practice is near suicidal for the country doing it though because it causes a collapse of the farming industry creating food shortages, soil erosion and deforestation. In Haiti the consequences of these problems came to the fore spectacularly in 2008 when first food shortages led to seven days of rioting that left over 100,000 people dead and then four hurricanes combined with the environmental damage to cause flooding and landslides that killed another 4000 people. Even in this years earthquake you could see the IMF's hand amongst the dead with the thousands of people killed in the slums and shanty towns around the capital that had been built by ex-farmers who had moved to Port-au-Prince in the hope of escaping the collapsing farming industry.

In response to the events of 2008 both the UN's ad-hoc advisory group and Haiti's own government drew up reconstruction plans. While both of these plans highlighted the need for Haiti's internal private sector to take the lead in reconstruction efforts and, perhaps under pressure, the role of multi-national corporations the key need they unidentified was to re-build Haiti's farming industry. Done properly this would not only give Haiti some much needed food security it would also ease the countries security situation by getting people to move out of the shanty towns and back into more stable rural communities. Most importantly though, in a country prone to hurricanes, a return to small and medium scale farming would reverse the environmental damage done to the countryside by reintroducing the sort of husbandry that keeps rivers dredged and hedgerows maintained reducing the hazards of flooding and landslides. Prior to the earthquake, under the presidency of Rene Preval himself a specialist in agricultural economics, Haiti with the help of the UN has made great strides to achieving these objectives. They were helped immensely by the fact that events of 2008 were so horrific that they shamed the IMF and others into dropping the debts that Haiti owed them and withdrawing much of the economic development "assistance" they were providing.

It is a real shame then that the IMF seem to have exploited the recent earthquake as a way to buy themselves back into Haiti's economy in the hope of turning the entire country into one giant, unstable textile factory with dirt poor workers and even poorer working conditions. To put into perspective just how bad an idea this is the ECF is interest free until 2012 from which time it will be subject to a variable interest rate. However the first repayment is not scheduled until 2015. This enables the IMF to convince everyone that it is providing an interest free loan but still guarantee a minimum of three years of interest payments. It is this sort of irresponsible sales tactic that caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis that triggered the worldwide economic meltdown.

Instead of going down this unsustainable route it would be better for Haiti if the UN's ad-hoc working group was strengthened to include senior members of the Haitian government, possibly even the president under a UN special envoy like Bill Clinton or a statesman of a similar calibre. This group could then act as a sort of alternative government solely handling reconstruction and achieving the objectives laid out in its report E/2009/105. This would leave the actual Haitian government to concentrate on the day to day running of the country. That way the Haitian government could strengthen itself by preforming the normal tasks of government while the extraordinary tasks of reconstruction and national rehabilitation are done by a dedicated team of international specialists. If the IMF cannot find away to cancel some or all of the ECF or cannot find a way to make it the sole liability of the UN group then it would probably be better if they did nothing at all. This is because with the IMF out of the picture it will be easier to convince Venezuela to drop the debts it is owed by Haiti. This can only be a good thing because I for one cannot be bothered to raise money for a new disaster in Haiti every two years.

The only consolation out of the situation is that the Americans seem to be less happy about the IMF's decision then I am. This is because they no more want Haiti to be taken over by regimented Chinese garment factories then they want a failed state 600 miles off their coast.

IMF Meeting on Haiti.

From pretty much the time Haiti became an independent country in 1804 it has been plagued by debt and political strife. These problems were made much worse under the Duvalier regimes who stole international aid money, ran up huge international debts and forced some of the most talented and well educated Haitians to flee the country.

By the time the Duvalier's had been deposed globalisation and free market capitalism were on the rise. This meant that in order to pay it's debts Haiti was forced to turn much of it's main industry, farming, over to growing cash crops such as coffee and sugar cane. This left only the lowest quality farmland available to grow food to feed Haiti's population. It also, in part, led to massive deforestation that further degraded the available farmland. The economic re-structuring also brought an end to trade tariffs that meant Haiti was flooded by imports of cheap staples like rice from places like the USA. Although these food import were still very expensive for the Haitians they were produced by foreign farmers who were being paid subsidies which meant they were able to undercut the food being produced by Haitian farmers. This forced many of the farmers out of business and into shanty towns where they remained unemployed and dependent on international food aid as the struggled to exist in abject poverty.

While Haiti remains the poorest nation in the western hemisphere the situation has improved dramatically since the election of Rene Preval as President. The economy has grown steadily with the level of exports increasing while the level of imports has fallen. Social indicators such unemployment, literacy and mortality rates have also improved. In 2009, thanks in no small part to the Paris club of creditors Haiti was able to cut it's international debt from $1.8bn to just $428million. Crucially it also had no outstanding debts to the IMF.

Then the earthquake struck and the IMF provided Haiti with $100million loan to help with reconstruction. They have claimed that they were forced to offer this money as a loan because no mechanism existed for them give it as grant. Now the Directors of the IMF are meeting to discuss what, if any, help they can give to Haiti. Due to the immense progress that Haiti has made in recent years the answer is probably not much. Obviously they can keep their word and turn this reconstruction loan into a reconstruction grant by forgiving the re-payments. They could also allow Haiti to place tariffs on food imports while they slowly rebuild their farming industry. Apart that there is nothing else in the IMF's remit that can be done to help Haiti because the country seems to have very talented, if not charismatic, President who with the help of the UN is slowly and steadily rebuilding the nation.

It is crucial though that this new debt is cancelled so Haiti doesn't have to endure a decade of economic mourning for what has been a horrific natural disaster.

Northern Ireland: Close to the Edge.

In 1649 England invaded Ireland. Over the next 400 years this has caused numerous wars, invasions, counter-invasions, uprisings and massacres. The most recent of these, known as "the Troubles" began in the 1960's when street fighting gangs evolved into fully fledged paramilitary organisations. The mostly Catholic, Republican paramilitaries were fighting to make the six most northern counties of Ireland part of the Irish Republic while the mostly Protestant, Loyalist paramilitaries were fighting to keep the same counties part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The fighting continued for best part of the next part of 40 years with neither side achieving very much other then killing thousands of people.

Then in 1997 the newly elected British Government under Tony Blair came up with a possible "third way" to resolve the conflict - Devolution. Put simply this involved giving Northern Ireland it's own Parliament with the power to control local issues such as limited tax raising powers, healthcare spending, local development spending, control over policing and limited power to pass new laws. This would mean that although Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom and continue to be bound by UK laws it would have much more freedom to organise its society and spend public money. Two things that prior to the Troubles had both been heavily skewed in favour of Loyalist Protestants.

In order to make sure that devolution did indeed lead to peace in Northern Ireland the schedule at which powers and huge amounts of central government funding would be given to the Northern Irish Assembly (the technical name for the Northern Ireland Parliament) would be dependent on two main things. Firstly both Republican and Loyalist politicians had to agree on how these powers would be used and there had to be firm evidence that the various Republican and Loyalist paramilitary groups were dismantling their organisations and decommissioning their weapons. After a decade of this peace process most of the powers have been devolved and most of the weapons have been put beyond use leaving really just the huge issue of local policing and legal powers to be resolved. This is by far the most important and contentious power to be devolved because the British Establishment see control of the police and the unrestricted ability to deploy MI5 and the British Army to Northern Ireland as the most important way to maintain British rule over the province. It is also vitally important to the Republicans because prior to devolution policing in Northern Ireland was done by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) who were little more then a Loyalist paramilitary gang more concerned with beating the hell out of Catholics then upholding the principles of law and order.

Ahead of this very important and incredibly complicated negotiation the political landscape couldn't be more unstable if there was a sinister force pulling the strings from behind the scenes. As far back as the London G20 Summit in March/April 2009 dissident Republican groups like the Real IRA (RIRA) and the Continuity IRA (CIRA) had become active again carrying out shootings and the occasional bombing. At about the same time on the British mainland a group called the English Defence League (EDL) who, fascist politics aside, look and sound and a lot like the street fighting gangs that eventually evolved into the Loyalist paramilitary groups at the start of the Troubles. This has raised doubts over the extent to which Republicans have disarmed and the whether the Loyalist ever did disarm. On top of these unnerving developments the two key Republican and Loyalist politicians; Gerry Adams and Peter Robinson have both recently been involved in serious political scandals. In December 2009 it emerged that Gerry Adams younger brother was wanted by the RUC's replacement, the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) for sexually abusing children and had fled to the Irish Republic. This forced Gerry Adams to very publicly help the police by appealing for his brother to hand himself in and even more publicly announcing that their father, himself a senior figure in the Republican movement, was also a paedophile. In the old days these are two things that a Republican just would not do.

Then in January 2010 it emerged that Peter Robinson's wife, herself a senior member of the, Loyalist, Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) needed psychiatric treatment after trying and failing to commit the sin of suicide. The Robinson's credibility with their hard line religious party further dissolved when the scandal went on to reveal that Iris Robinson had an extra-marital affair and had abused her positions in the Westminister Parliament, Northern Irish Assembly and a local council to secure loans and planning permits for the business her lover was trying to open. The fact that the lover was a 19 year old boy made the 59 year old Mrs Robinson an all too easy target for ridicule. The scandal became so serious that Peter Robinson was forced to avert calls for his resignation by temporarily stepping down from his positions as First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the DUP for six weeks while the allegations of criminal misconduct were investigated.

Without all this extra pressure power sharing talks in Northern Ireland were always going to be difficult to the point of being impossible. With the political positions of the lead Republican and Loyalist negotiators in doubt these talks have rather predictably collapsed. This has prompted the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown and his Irish counterpart, Brian Cowen to fly to Northern Ireland and hold a marathon mediation session to see if the original talks can be saved. If they cannot then the expected change in British government could mean that their failure could have severe and dramatic consequences for Northern Ireland.

The most serious outcome could be that the entire peace process collapses, the paramilitaries re-arm and eventually we are all plunged into another endless cycle of violence. This would be as extreme as it sounds so a much more likely outcome would be that the peace process would survive but the Northern Irish Assembly would collapse. This would trigger an election that would certainly delay the peace process and produce a hard to predict result that could forever change the course of Northern Ireland's future. As things stand the Republican vote is united behind Sinn Fein while the Loyalist vote is spread out across a variety of Loyalist factions. If this remained the same it would mean that Sinn Fein would become the dominant party in the Parliament making the British Establishment even less keen to devolve power. Behind the scenes there have also been serious efforts made to unite all the Loyalist factions behind a single party with very close links to the British Conservative party. If these efforts are successful in time for any election then the Loyalist vote would be united behind it making this united Loyalist party the dominant party in the Northern Irish Assembly. As the Loyalists have little interest in devolution the process is unlikely to continue and if it did it would continue in such a way as to be completely meaningless to the Republicans forcing the Republican movement to seriously consider its options.

As if this situation wasn't difficult enough to complicate matters further tomorrow (27/01) London hosts an international summit on terrorism in Yemen and on Thursday (28/01) it hosts an international summit on the future of the war in Afghanistan. Aside from the security situation making everyone needlessly nervous the problem is that much of America's strategy in Afghanistan includes tricks and tactics that have been learnt in Northern Ireland and its peace process. Therefore if the Northern Irish peace process collapses or looks likely to collapse during these summits then Britain will find it hard to offer much support to America's strategy in Afghanistan. On top of that of course there's Obama's State of the Union address and the IMF meeting to discuss debt relief for Haiti.

Although I don't want to tempt fate because Northern Irish politics are tense at the best of times personally I think that the current crisis will sort itself out. This is because the politicians who will be making the decisions have all lived this war and truly know the cost of failure.

More From Haiti

Over the last two days there has not been much new to report from Haiti. The relief effort is continuing to expand with the UN now claiming to be able to provide 1 million people a day with emergency food and water. The death toll reached a grim milestone with the government putting the number of people killed at 150,000 in Port-au-Prince alone.

The big development though is that the government have announced that the rescue phase of the operation is over. This has led many people to think that relief workers will no longer be searching for and trying to rescue people who are still trapped, alive under the rubble. This is not the case. In situations like this the first priority of the people co-ordinating the relief effort is search and rescue meaning that this task takes up the majority of their time. When they announced that the rescue phase was over the Haitian government were simply announcing, to their own staff mainly, that search and rescue would now be given a lower priority then say delivering food and finding shelter for the homeless. They will continue to search through the rubble even if it is only to recover the dead bodies and they will continue to rescue people as they find them. If I am being brutally honest though 13 days after the earthquake the chances of finding anybody alive are very small.

Also many of the teams carrying out the search and rescue operations come from a wide array of countries many of who don't actually like each other and wouldn't normally work alongside each other. This creates diplomatic tensions which can slow down the relief effort. Therefore now the worst is over it would probably be better for Haiti and its independence if many of these foreign teams left allowing what remains of the task to be completed under a single coordinator like the Haitian government or for a short time the US Military.

Away from Haiti itself the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is making some very positive noises about cancelling the debt it is owed by Haiti. A cynic might suggest that this is because most Haiti's debt is owed to individual national governments rather then the IMF. I will be watching the IMF meeting that is scheduled for January 28th closely though to see if they can produce action to back up their words.

I've Been to the Pub!!!

Some of you may have predicted this when Britain raised the terror threat to severe.

In spite of that I have had very little trouble. I did meet a barman who had barred me from a pub further down the chain but that wasn't that pub I met him in so we were both a little bit confused. Apart from that I've discovered that the free lines of (nearly) quite good cocaine given out by random strangers in the pub toilets are really rather quite good even if the strangers do insist in indulging in conversations along the lines of;- "No it's shit. Some days the charities ask you to give three pounds a month to the donkeys then they ask you to give money to whatever earthquake or something. But if you give money to the niggers then you haven't got money to give to the donkeys and somehow that makes you racist!"

Now my hopes have been dashed and my ego has been boosted it's time to talk about my absolute favourite subject; Me, me, me.!

I've been pretty good and my worlds been pretty quiet. Now the stimuli have disappeared my grandmother's symptoms have pretty much gone with them. No doubt Britain have been claiming that leaving me alone is their great contribution to the Haiti relief effort. In reality their silence began about a week before the quake struck and their silence is really due to me nailing their operations to the wall. This has forced them to stop and re-evaluate their strategy which has included swapping two girls in the house next door for two new girls because the two original girls were behaving too nice so they needed to be changed for people that were prepared to be more
unpleasant.

Now I'm drunk, I'm tired and I've run out of words so my apologises but bring on the porn.

Good News From Haiti

Since my last post the relief effort in Haiti has increased and expanded. The UN is now able to deliver food and water to 100,000 people a day. This is mainly centred around the capital, Port-au-Prince although the USAF are carrying out airdrops to a large, secure distribution point at Mirebalais which is further inland. There are now also 18 hospitals and emergency medical centres operating in Port-au-Prince. The best way for Haitians to find out exactly where these aid and medical centres are and what assistance they are offering is to listen to the emergency broadcasts on Haitian radio which are far more reliable then this blog.

The US Navy medical ship, Comfort has arrived off the coast of Haiti. It brings the total US Navy medical capacity to 1000 fully equipped hospital beds along with over 1000 medical professionals who can treat casualties at sea and come ashore to treat patients in the local hospitals. The Canadian military have opened a second airport near Jacmel. It's a tiny airport with even less capacity then the Port-au-Prince but as airport that has been built in just four days it is nothing short of miraculous and it will certainly help to clear the back log of some 14,000 aid flights that are waiting to land in Haiti.

The big news though is that the sea-port has re-opened, just. Engineers there have managed to get 1 pier open allowing the port to operate at just over 10% of it's usual capacity. That means that it is unlikely to be able to bring ashore much aid from large container ships in the foreseeable future. Crucially though it will be able to start bring fuel ashore allowing the aid agencies to get their trucks moving and start distributing aid.

In Port-au-Prince something resembling normal life has started to return. Some shops, banks and food markets have begun to re-open. This is great news because the relief effort wants to avoid the Haitian people becoming too dependent on foreign aid. This is not because they don't want to give aid but because in past disaster relief efforts dependency has done more harm then good in the long term. So the fact that the Haitian economy is starting recover before the international aid effort has got fully up and running means that Haiti has already gone a long way to avoiding the problems of the past. It has though brought with it something that could potentially become a very big problem. Some local business owners have started to profiteer from the shortages of food and water. This pushed the local inflation rate up to 300% and some business owners are paying Haitian police officers to desert the force and protect their businesses instead. As the rogue officers are starting to randomly shoot people this needs to be stopped and if the Haitian police can't maintain discipline the government seriously needs to start thinking about pulling the officers off the streets. Also I think the business owners need to start contacting their insurance companies because I'm pretty sure pissing off the US Marine Corp invalidates their policies. Although this is only a small problem at the moment it could could go on to undermine the security situation and more violence will only slow down the relief effort even further.

Taken together these developments are really good news. Although it does not look like it and most certainly doesn't feel like it it means that the emergency phase of the relief effort is complete. Apart from the sea-port that could be more open everything that is needed to deliver emergency aid is in place and over the coming days and weeks that aid will slowly be delivered throughout the country just as quickly as supplies can be brought into the country. No-one can promise that life in Haiti will soon be better then it was before the earthquake struck. They can't even promise that it will be the same as it was before the earthquake struck but they can most certainly promise that life will be better then it has been over the last 11 days.

Now that the emergency relief effort is up, running and expanding the people planning the operation including the Haitian President, who believe or not is working very hard to get Haiti back on its feet, can concentrate on medium and long term objectives. In the medium term they are paying for people to leave the capital and are planning to move 400,000 of the people who have been made homeless in Port-au-Prince into properly organised temporary, tented camps. Apart from providing shelter this will reduce the risk of illness amongst the survivors and help speed up the distribution of food and water. If it begins with the people in the Cite Solei area it will also help mitigate the problems created by the criminals that escaped from jail as these organised camps will be easier to secure. In the longer term the government intend to make these camps more sturdy in order to survive the upcoming rainy and hurricane seasons. As with everything else I advise the Haitian people to listen to the emergency broadcasts to find out the details of when and how the government will start moving people.

There is also a meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) taking place on Monday to explore what can be done to help alleviate Haiti's debt problems. The World Bank no less are recommending a 100% cancellation of Haiti's national debt but I will be watching to see what will actually be achieved at this meeting.

Haitian Invasion.

On January 12th a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti. Apart killing a now confirmed 70,000 people it created one of the largest humanitarian crisis' ever seen. Although the entire worlds response has been immense the relief effort has been led by the United States who have dispatched it's military to in effect stage a full scale invasion of Haiti.

Rather then being something sinister this has been done for one pure and simple reason. Contrary to popular belief wars are not normally won or lost on who's got the best weapons or who can kill the most people. Instead they're won by the army who can best keep large numbers of their soldiers supplied with food, water, shelter and ammunition. It was Nazi Germany's failure to do this that lost them the battle of Stalingrad and ultimately the second world war. It was also the Viet Congs ability to keep the Ho Chi Min trail open that cost the USA the Vietnam war. Therefore moving large amounts of supplies over vast distances very quickly is something that the military is very good at and the best ones excel at.

Although it was without doubt the best thing to do for the Haitians America's decision to send in its military has led to tensions within the international relief effort. Far from being noble concerns for Haiti's independence most of these objections have been raised by nations who are worried that it will overshadow their own attempts to secure regional influence. These objections are now sadly starting to cause problems with the aid effort. As previously mentioned Port-au-Prince airport is seriously overloaded with the demand for landing slots massively exceeding the capacity of the airport. This has become the backdrop for diplomatic squabbling with the French government very publicly accusing the American military of blocking flights carrying French medical supplies in favour of flights carrying American food, water and equipment. Putting aside the argument of whether the situation in Haiti is so severe that protecting the healthy with clean water and sanitation should be more of a priority then treating the already sick with anti-biotics and analgesics the situation does highlight why it would be in the best interests of Haiti to allow the US military to be more aggressive in their relief efforts.

With the co-operation of the other aid agencies the USAF could close Port-au-Prince airport to all no-USAF traffic. Instead the international aid flights would be diverted to a much larger airport in the USA where they can be landed and unloaded in a much higher volume. The cargoes could then be sorted, separated and tactically loaded onto USAF transport planes that fly an air bridge into Haiti. This would mean that rather then having one plane landing with 10 pallets of water followed by another plane loaded with 10 pallets of food followed by another plane with 10 pallets of medical supplies etc you could have a series of planes all landing with 2 pallets of water, 2 pallets of food, 2 pallets of medical supplies, 2 pallets of tents and 2 pallets of rescue equipment. This would allow the ground controllers to know exactly what is coming in and when which would save time unloading and would allow the supplies to be more easily fitted into the cluster system that the aid agencies are meant to using in order to avoid bottlenecks and duplication.

Apart from Frances attempts to commit diplomatic suicide the aid effort in Haiti is continuing to expand the reach and volume of its operations as quickly as possible. There is still no word on when the sea port will be open but work on it is continuing. Aid flights are still landing at the single airports single runway and attempts are being made to double the number of road convoys coming in from the Dominican Republic although security concerns, a lack of warehousing space and shortages of fuel are hampering efforts. The UN has deployed an extra 3000 troops and the US have mobilised a further 4000 bring their total deployment to around 16,000. Canadian troops are attempting to create a second airport to deal with aid flights at Jacmel. In total aid agencies delivered aid to 400,000 people today and hope to increase that number tomorrow. There are small amounts of locally produced food available in the markets and rescue teams are still pulling people alive out the ruins.

The Haiti Relief Effort Must Be Going Well.

My usual four news channels have been cut down to BBC News and BBC News is no longer concentrating on Haiti. However the aid effort is slowly picking up pace and reaching more people.

Today (tuesday) relief workers have delivered food and water to 125,000 people within the capital. They are also operating several field hospitals where the seriously injured can receive medical attention. The main seaport remains non-operational but getting it back in working order remains the number 1 priority. The airport is still just one airport and the delivery of aid there has been slowed slightly by the need to bring in food and water for the relief workers in order to make sure that they do not die before they are able to re-open the sea-port.

The Americans have also experimented with parachuting supplies into aid points. If the security situation remains peaceful they will be able to expand this practice to include forward operating bases/aid points throughout the country.

Local radio has begun broadcasting messages warning Haitians not to attempt to take to the seas in order to escape. This is good advice because the USA will be able to reach survivors long before the survivors reach the USA.

Haiti Update.

The relief effort in Haiti is picking up pace. There are now a dozen or so aid distribution points throughout Port-au-Prince. Yesterday (Sunday) these distributed 200 tonnes of food and water to 95,000 people. By the end of today they hope to supply another 100,000 people and by tomorrow it is expected to rise to another 150,000. Work has already begun identifying aid distribution outside of the capital so the best advice to people in Haiti is to stay where they are because aid will come to them in the next couple of days if it hasn't done so already.

The biggest problem distributing aid is that there is still only one airport which still only has one runway. This means that the various countries and charities involved in the aid effort need to make getting the sea port open and working a major priority. They may also want to start seriously considering unloading aid supplies in Florida before repacking them on to US military aircraft who can shuttle down what is needed when it is needed to both the airport and the aircraft carrier.

There has been a little bit of social unrest/rioting but this is not yet a major problem. In fact there has probably been more serious unrest in the UK today outside Brighton's favourite bomb factory. In Haiti it would probably be a good idea if the police/security forces kept a low profile as possible until they actually have something helpful to contribute. Likewise it would be best if the Haitians could try and keep the violence to a minimum because it would be much better for all concerned if those soldiers and police officers were spending their time unloading aid from aeroplanes and loading it onto to trucks then having to force their way through the country with riot shields and baton rounds.

The US Propaganda Machine's Back

I think it's fair to say that some of my previous posts on the Haitian earthquake could be accused of being just a little bit pro-American or even electioneering for President Obama. That was not my intention because rather then being the work of any one politician the US response has been the success of a number of officials in departments like the State Department, FEMA and the Department of Defence. Also concentrating on the American effort overshadows the contributions made by countries including but in no way limited too France, Russia, Israel, Venezuela, Columbia and Cuba along with the large and long term contributions of Brazil and Jordan who were in Haiti long before the earthquake and have stayed there despite many of their own personnel losing their lives.

The Americans though do deserve special recognition because their response has been nothing short of a master class in how to respond to a natural disaster. Within hours of the 'quake striking they had taken a good guess at the damage it had done, identified the sort of aid that would be needed, identified the problems there would be distributing that aid and dispatched the resources necessary to solve those problems. It is just a shame that it take four days to sail a ship from the United States to Haiti and there is nothing anyone can do to get it done quicker.

The only possibly way that America could have done anymore is if they had diverted the first international aid flights to staging points in Florida, Brazil, Mexico, Cuba etc while they flew in a team to secure port-au-prince airport and get it open to co-ordinated flights in from the staging points. That though is easier said then done because sending in troops to secure a countries airport without the permission of it government is crossing the diplomatic line between aid effort and invasion. Besides if America took over the aid effort entirely it would lead from complaints from the other countries and aid agencies. Some of the more childish ones might even withdraw their efforts and there's no point having a first rate logistics operation if there's no supplies for it to move around.

In fact the American response is the main reason why I stayed so quiet in the first days of the disaster. I simply took one look at how they'd responded and what they were sending and simply decided there was nothing more for me to do other then wait for the charity appeals and donate some money;

https://www.donate.bt.com/dec_form_haiti.html where you should remember to say yes to gift aid because it won't cost you anything but will stop the Treasury stealing part of your donation.

Within the UK you can also donate £1 at a time directly to Doctors Without Borders by texting HELP to 61192.

If you live outside the UK or feel unable to donate to the DEC you can donate directly to;

Oxfam: http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/haiti-earthquake

Unicef: http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=9fLEJSOALpE&b=1023561

Medecins Sans Frontieres: http://doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/otheroffices.cfm

International Red Cross/Red Crescent: http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/helpicrc

Twelve Month Warning.

Sorry to confuse matters but just a quick warning to the Brits that if what I require to be done is not completed to my satisfaction within twelve months of today's date (15/1/10) all costs involved will quadruple. They will still though be much, much less then the costs of not doing them.

Anyway unpleasantness over. While I do not want to detract from the efforts of all the countries involved in the Haiti relief effort who are thankfully too numerous to mention the American response has been nothing short of fantastic. Anyone involved in its planning and execution rightly deserves a standing ovation. That is because they have provided exactly what is needed and couldn't be getting it to the people who need it if they were dipped in gold.

Haitian Earthquake Disaster.

Four days ago a magnitude 7 earthquake struck Haiti in the Caribbean. In all of ten seconds it had killed 40,000 people and razed the country to the ground. It left 200,000 people seriously injured and made 3 million homeless. Currently food, water and medical supplies are in very short supply and under the Caribbean sun the dead are lying unburied in the streets. That means that over the coming days thousands more will die from disease, dehydration and a lack of medical care.

To make matters worse the fragile Haitian government has all but collapsed and the UN mission in the country has been wiped out killing the head of the mission and destroying much of the aid supplies and equipment that were already in the country. Coupled with the fact the countries only sea-port and air-port were both badly damaged and many of the countries streets are blocked with rubble and the dead the relief effort has been forced to begin with worse then nothing.

Thankfully the international response has been as awesome as the scale of the disaster itself. The USA, China, Brazil, The EU and even almost bankrupt countries like Iceland and Chile immediately sent specialist rescue teams to Haiti. Although the first of these began to arrive within hours of the earthquake the chaos in the capital and the lack of heavy lifting equipment meant that their first days had to be spent clearing the air-port and sea-port so they could bring more manpower and equipment into the country. This essential work is now more or less complete and the aid effort is fast approaching full strength. This means that aid flights are landing every two to three minutes at the air-port and more supplies are beginning to be brought in by sea from depots in Florida, Paraguay, Mexico and Brazil while more supplies are being brought in by land on the only road running from the Dominican Republic. The aid effort is being helped immensely by the United States Navy who have sent an aircraft carrier with helicopters to reach the parts of Haiti that are inaccessible by road and an amphibious assault ship which will be able to land men and equipment almost anywhere along Haiti's coastline. Once they are joined by a hospital ship that is currently on route they will form the equivalent of an entire city floating off the coast. Along with 10,000 troops this means that the USA has committed more men and equipment to the relief effort is Haiti then Britain has committed to fighting the war in Afghanistan. The next step is for them to complete the painfully slow process of inching their way through the rubble and corpse strewn streets. This will not happen any quicker if they have to waste their time fighting gangs of armed looters.

While the relief effort in Haiti has begun in earnest the work there will need to go on for weeks, months and even years to come and it will need to be paid for somehow. The United Nations have put a figure of at least US$5000million and to help reach that target Britain's Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) have launched an urgent appeal that you can donate to here;

https://www.donate.bt.com/dec_form_haiti.html where you should remember to say yes to gift aid because it won't cost you anything but will stop the Treasury stealing part of your donation.

Within the UK you can also donate £1 at a time directly to Doctors Without Borders by texting HELP to 61192.

If you live outside the UK or feel unable to donate to the DEC you can donate directly to;

Oxfam: http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/haiti-earthquake

Unicef: http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=9fLEJSOALpE&b=1023561

Medecins Sans Frontieres: http://doctorswithoutborders.org/donate/otheroffices.cfm

International Red Cross/Red Crescent: http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/html/helpicrc

An Inane Detail.

Today in the UK Parliament the British government issued an apology to the victims of Thalidomide which was pregnancy drug that caused birth defects in the 1950's and 60's. The apology was given by junior government minister named Mike O'Brien. At my primary school there was a teacher called Mr O'Brien who was a Thalidomide victim. Despite being born without forearms he was also ginger making his decision to go into teaching all the more heroic.

There is better news today from the actual Haiti where the first phase of the relief effort now appears to be complete. The countries only airport is now open and an American aircraft carrier has arrived off the coast. This means that the rescue workers are now able to bring supplies ashore and have a helicopter platform to distribute them throughout the country. Therefore the relief effort should be up and running at full strength in the next 12-24 hours. Hopefully the 6000 or so soldiers won't need to be called upon to keep the peace.

Haitian Earthquake.

Last night a large earthquake struck Haiti in the Caribbean killing up to 100,000 people in one of the worlds poorest countries.

In English the name "Haiti" is pronounced the exact same way as the irregular adjective "hatey" which means either to dislike intensely or to be unwilling to do something. So I need to to bear that in mind when you decide just how distasteful what I'm about to say next is.

The Queen of England will receive no clearer sign from God as to what is to happen to the Haiti people and what is still left on the table for negotiation. If she does not have the stomach to deal with that then she should step down and rid our world of her tainted bloodline. I'm sorry to bring that up but given the religious demographics of Haiti I get the impression that the Brits are already beginning to interpret the event in the wrong way.

Dispatches

Here in the UK Channel 4, one of the 5 terrestial TV channels, has a documentary series that deals with current affairs called "Dispatches". Last night's (11/1) edition addressed the issue of Dementia, it's care and its effects on the families of sufferers. As this was pure factious porn I didn't bother watch it but my father most certainly did. He reliably informs me that not only did feature a segment on Croydon's Heavers Court in its role as Britain's flagship dementia centre it also feature lengthy interviews with the two members of staff that have extensively visited and diagnosed my grandmother. Annoyingly the episode is not available online but I think it's fair to say that when it was filmed the Brits thought they'd be winning by now.

Apart from that I would also like to take the opportunity to point out that while I have spent some money on some DVD's contrary to rumours I haven't actually brought any new clothes. What has happened is that I've lost enough weight to fit into the old clothes I'd previously had to consign to the wardrobe so hurray for me.

For 4 Days I have Done Absolutley Nothing.

Well not nothing obviously. I've still been doing the tedious day to day things like cooking, eating and watching a lot of TV but I've not do anything of any consequence. Although deep down I know this unexpected period of peace and quiet is simply due to the snow and when it melts the Brits will be back in full force making my life difficult it has got me thinking that perhaps I should start doing something productive with my time. The only question though is what exactly?

Obviously it can't be anything that involves me interacting with my local community in any way. Nor can it require the consent or accreditation of the British state. Most importantly though it can't cost any money or require any expensive or specialist equipment. I suppose that just leaves learning for the sake of learning which can be quite good because knowledge, once given can never be taken away. With that in mind I am quite interested in resuming the language studies I started at school but because languages are simply the mechanisms that humans use to communicate with each other trying to learn a new language with no-one to talk to can be very difficult and just a little bit futile. Of course I could try and teach myself computer code which is a form of language but I don't really trust this computer and I can't really afford to buy a new one. I suppose that just leaves learning about ancient Roman and Greek mythology that would only really equip me to tell long and complicated allegory's for modern life that no-one around me would really understand. Somehow that quite appeals to me even if I have no idea where to start.

Anyway while I was pondering the conundrum of my newly found leisure time the national soccer team of Togo got ambushed on their way to the African Cup of Nations. As Togo is where the Detroit bomber went to school and the decision to travel by bus was a major breach of security protocol this seems to be an attempt to plunge the tournament into paranoid chaos by baiting a small, local rebel group. Given the convergence of tactics and objective I think it's fair to say that Togo enjoys quite a close relationship with Britain.

Sorry Didn't Make That Clear.

Britain has stocks of natural gas to last 15 days. Therefore announcing that they've got 8 days left is basically saying that they're not even half way though.

Also the CIA/MI6 prison at Bagram airport in Afghanistan is meant to make Guantanamo Bay look like a holiday camp.

Gas Panic!

Back in February 2009 the United Kingdom was ravaged by a light dusting of snow that lasted for almost a week. Coming right at the end of winter this stretched Britain's supplies of natural gas to breaking point. Although the exact details will probably never be publicly known the consensus of rumour is that Britain came within four days of having to ration gas and electricity by cutting off the supply to millions of homes in order to re-direct it to key installations such as Army barracks, police stations and hospitals. As this breach of the social contract would have been as humiliating as it would have been lethal the British state made it a high level priority to secure gas supplies for this winter. Aided by some genuine luck from flaws in the Russian economic model Britain went into this winter so confident of their ability to maintain gas supplies no matter what the weather they felt comfortable enough to play on the issue.

As soon as the snow began to fall in the final week of the Copenhagen summit around half a dozen locations throughout the UK began reporting problems with their gas supply. The most high profile of these incidents and the one I'm most familiar with occurred in London. Here water somehow managed to get into the gas pipes meaning that the gas supply to around a thousand homes had to be cut off while the water was drained out. This is the sort of thing that would make a conspiratorially minded person think that Britain was discreetly trying to ration dwindling gas reserves. Over the next nine days Britain's various mouthpieces gave us daily updates on the poor families left without heating and the brave workmen battling hard to reconnect their supply. Fortunately all the homes affected had their gas supply reconnected on Christmas Eve leaving them able to cook their traditional Christmas Day lunch in the warm. Then just as most people in the UK returned to work after the Christmas holiday on January 4th the National power Grid issued a warning that Britain only had eight days supply of gas left. They went on to urge power stations to switch from gas-fired generators to coal-fired generators in order to help avert a crisis.

The purpose of running this gas panic strategy during the final week of the Copenhagen summit and starting it up again when even the most ardent delegates were sick and tired of the discussion was to discourage other countries from taking any action on climate change. Apart from making the discussion process as tedious as possible Britain was hoping to send the message that due to dwindling supplies of fossil fuels such as gas the only way that countries could tackle climate change is by denying their populations heat and light. While it is truly idiotic to try and use peak oil as an argument for not adopting a sustainable energy policy this position is the product of Britain's equally stupid response to the Kyoto protocol.

Back in 1998 Britain signed up to a legally binding target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 8% of 1990 levels. This presented Britain with a big problem because as I've previously mentioned Britain will not accept the idea of man-made global warming regardless of any scientific evidence. However internationally Britain likes to portray itself as a beacon of fairness, democracy that respects the integrity of the rule of law (no giggling at the back!) Therefore they had to find a way to meet their Kyoto targets without it impacting on any other aspect of their operations in any way. They did this by retro-fitting their existing power stations with gas-fired generators that burn cleaner then coal-fired generators. Crucially though they did build any new power stations and only paid lip service to energy saving strategies. This meant that while Britain was able to meet and exceed their emissions targets in the process they become very dependent on imported supplies of gas.

Although Britain's problems are Britain's problems and mainly due to its interesting relationship with reality its plight does highlight a couple of discussion points about the UN framework for tackling climate change;

Firstly it calls into question the need for legally binding targets. When it comes to targets and statistics governments are liars. If the crime rate is too high they simply start recording rapes as sexual assaults and not bother record the sexual assaults. If not enough people are passing exams they'll just make the exams easier and if they need sales figures that exceed predictions they simply make really low predictions. Therefore rather then setting fixed, quantitative targets for emissions cuts it might be a better idea to concentrate on more fluid, qualitative targets. That would mean that rather then being fixated on cutting the emissions from chimneys by a certain amount by a set date people would have more freedom to implement technologies and strategies that stop those emissions being absorbed into the atmosphere and bring about long term cuts. The Chinese are already beginning to think in this direction with their carbon density measure.

Secondly it highlights the need for a joined up, national strategy to cut emissions. It is simply not good enough to concentrate on cutting the emissions produced by energy production. It is also important to minimise the amount of energy that is used. This involves making sure that the power grid is up to a high as possible standard to cut the amount of electricity that is lost between producer and consumer. It involves making sure that new buildings are built to the highest standard of energy efficiency and old buildings are retro-fitted to that same standard. It can also involve making sure that local planning and zoning is done to minimise the distance people need to travel in order to get around and incorporates things like carbon sinks. It is on this last point that a carbon trading scheme would really come into its own.

Beyond those two large discussion topics I suppose Britain's failings also highlight the need to make sure that your country isn't being run by a bunch of mentals who believe in fairies. Also, while I'm on the subject I should point out that yes the special prisons that the Danish police set up to house summit protesters did look exactly like something out of Bagram airbase. This was done on purpose in order to put the American delegation off their game. I would have mentioned it at the time but I was unable to work how it had anything whatsoever to do with climate change.

Response From The Police

Today I received this letter from the police regarding my complaint;



As I hope you can see it is simply an acknowledgement that the complaint has been received and passed on to a Detective Inspector Anderson. What will happen now is that DI Anderson will sit on the complaint for as long as humanly possible while searching for reasons to reject it as unfounded.

Apart from that two Labour MP's have called for a secret ballot as to whether Gordon Brown should stand down ahead of the General Election. As the General Election is in a matter of months away I think it's fair to say that everyone's getting over excited during their first week back at school.

Yeah That Was the Big Push.

Following my last post my mother who is now working as a physiotherapist at Mayday hospital popped round for an unannounced visit. While she and my father spent about an hour trying to diagnose my grandmother's mystery illness I watched the 22nd episode of a certain series of a certain US medical drama. Once I'd eventually pried my father away from her we had a quick chat. I found her to be in the mood to try and negotiate some sort of settlement on behalf of her employers. I simply pointed out that her employers were no longer in a position to either threaten or negotiate so I can see no need for me to negotiate.

After my mother left my father went to meet my brother for dinner at the local pub. Although the pub was empty the service was slow but brother was tired and subdued. He explained this by pointing out that like most of the rest of the people in Britain today was only the second day he'd spent in the office since Christmas.

When we got back I watched a BBC2 show called the History of Now: The Story of the Noughties. It featured a prominent cameo from a "donk", apparently a genre of hard dance, act from the north of England who'd spent the summer working the white, working class youth up in to a frenzy. Although it wasn't mentioned the name of the act was "Blackout!" which proves that although the Crown can sort out a distribution deal they can't write a good song.

Of course while I was doing all that I didn't have the time to write an article about Britain's fake (natural) gas crisis. I'll try and do it tomorrow but I promise it's more the sort of thing to ponder in your quiet moments rather then the great panic Britain seem to think it is.

Someone's Feeling the Cold

Today, right on schedule, I went with my father to do the big food shop at the supermarket. The Croydon network were out in force clogging up the aisles and having loud but strange conversations like "Nanny would be ashamed if he heard you saying things like that!" This is a classic example of a group shaming. The idea being that after being exposed to all these little comments in a stressful I would become ashamed of what I have done and not do it again. The problem is that all I actually saw was members of the Croydon network aimlessly wandering around a supermarket looking lost, confused and a little bit scared. That's hardly the sort of thing that's going to intimidate me or put me to shame. I do however feel a little bit sorry for them so allow me to throw them a bone;

Oh My God! Britain is running out of Gas and Society is about to collapse!!!

That's not actually true but it is the story that the Brits are desperately pushing. Those in know have already been briefed that it's a lie so when they hear about it in the news and me react to the panic they'll get a little ego boost from feeling like they're privileged members of an all powerful secret society. If time permits I try and discuss the international reason why the Brits are telling this lie tomorrow because it is actually quite an interesting talking point about climate change, Kyoto and Copenhagen.

Today I also received this letter from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC);


It's pretty standard stuff simply acknowledging the complaint and explaining that as per the procedure it is now up to the police to investigate the complaint and if they fail to do so then the IPCC can step in. The fourth paragraph where it says;

"Please note if you are dissatisfied with a criminal investigation that the police are currently carrying out of have finished carrying out then the IPCC can consider a compliant"

is a little bit interesting though because I was under the impression that the complaint I made was to register my dissatisfaction with the handling of a criminal investigation. I wouldn't get too excited about the part where they say they can't re-open the criminal investigation because they don't need to. They merely need to open a new criminal investigation as to whether the original police officer committed the offence of attempting to pervert the course of justice. This is firmly within the IPCC's remit and something they actually did in December 2009 in the Stephen Lawrence murder case.

And just in case you had doubts over how contentious this was, yes the font on my blog has screwed up.

Today We Learnt Something.

That the Queens Road Memory Service team are indeed located on the Queens Road of shooting fame. There was some confusion because the Queens Road hospital has recently been torn down and rebuilt as one of Croydon councils many housing developments. While this was going on the Queens road obviously were actually physically located on the Queens road site but they've moved back now.

We know this because one of the Queens road team came to visit my grandmother today. Well she managed to walk half way before getting lost so my dad had to go and pick her up. As they were driving back they encountered my grandmother heading up the road in the opposite direction which sort of emphasised the need for the visit. Although I deliberately stayed out of the visit it appears that the Zebra hunt is still in full effect and rather then offering any effective treatment they intend to use my grandmother as a test subject for the independent living or "care in the community" services that the council have to offer.

As I'm always open to allowing the Brits back onto a better path if they so wish I got round to opening that letter from the Office of Public Guardians and sadly it was not good news. Mind you it wasn't bad news either and to be honest could barely described as news. It was simply an acknowledgment that I'd contacted them and a request for basic information such as address and date of birth in order to match the complaint to a case file. I'll get around to soon that but there's no great rush because I've still not heard from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (the other IPCC) about how their investigation is progressing.

I Told You This Would Get Hot.

In The last 24-36 hours have been two major incidents in the UK.

Firstly on Saturday night there was a fire in in one of the pump rooms at the infamous Kingsnorth Power Station. Fifteen fire engines and five specialist units attended the blaze which was extinguished after several hours. As a result the Kingsnorth power station and it's capacity to provide power to 1.5million homes in Kent has been shut down and taken off the National Power Grid. On Sunday morning a suspected gas explosion destroyed a building in Shrewsbury. The incident left twelve people injured, two seriously including a woman who had to be airlifted to the burns unit a Selly Oak hospital which famously treats British military personnel wounded in Afghanistan.

Although the jury's still out on the Shrewsbury explosion which could possibly be just an accident of which the most has been made the Kingsnorth fire was most certainly a desperate cry for attention that was staged by the British security services. The idea is that over the next couple of days and weeks they will be spun as examples of American retaliation for the Detroit bomb plot. That is of course nonsense because if they were an American retaliation we wouldn't be talking about survivors.

Also I've decided that for some funny reason I won't be enjoying Celebrity Big Brother this year even if it is obvious that the lesbian heavy production team have got a bet going on.

Shooting Update.

In the early hours of new years day there was a double shooting in Queens Road, Thornton Heath. This is really close to my house. So much so that my brother lives in the next street over and I believe it happened on the same road as the memory service team that my grandmother is being transferred to. Despite all this I think it was just a shooting. Similar incidents happen across London on an almost weekly basis so it would be more odd if one didn't happen near me every once in a while.

Detroit Plane Bombing

On Christmas day (December 25th) an alleged Islamic terrorist attempted to detonate a bomb aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam as it came into land in Detroit. The attack had been meticulously and professionally planned with a sophisticated bomb, made up of high grade PETN high explosives with a complex chemical detonator, first being smuggled on to a flight from Yemen to Nigeria and then on another flight from Nigeria to the Netherlands before being smuggled aboard the flight to Detroit. The crucial and elementary flaw in the plan was that the man whose job it was to set off the bomb had been given the wrong instructions on how to operate the chemical detonator so the bomb went off with a fizz rather then a bang. That means that the plot bears all the hallmarks of a false flag terrorist attack. Although rare and normally the preserve of conspiracy theorists false flag attacks do occasionally take place. They are designed to convince everyone that an attack has occurred without causing the loss of life and damage to property that comes from a terror attack. In short they produce the bang with none of the bodies. It is widely rumoured that Britain's intelligence services perfected the technique during the Northern Irish Troubles. This was because although they were under intense pressure to prevent IRA bombings they also had to make sure that their agents maintained the trust of the IRA cells they had infiltrated.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged bomber, is also something of an interesting character. Although a Nigerian national the 23 year old hasn't actually spent that much of his life in Nigeria. The son of a wealthy banker he was educated at the British International School in neighbouring Togo. This is not to be confused with Tojo, the son of the now deposed President of Madagascar who I briefly shared a house with at university or the British International School in Greece that one of my millions cousins currently attends. It was the British International School that first brought Abdulmutallab to London on a cultural exchange in 2001. These visits are a well worn path for MI6 to recruit sleeper agents in developing countries. They simply invite the brightest and best young minds in that country over to the UK on the promise of a unique educational experience. During the course of the visit the students are assessed and the suitable ones are, I suppose, groomed into loyalty to Britain. MI6 then simply let them return to their own countries and wait until and sometimes help the sleepers into key positions of power and influence in their native countries. They are then activated and used to supply intelligence and other forms of assistance to Britain. Given that Abdulmutallab went on to study mechanical engineering at University College London I suspect that he was being prepared for a position within Nigeria's oil industry in order to make sure that British companies received preferential treatment in the sale of oil concessions.

A similar sleeper style operation ran into trouble earlier in 2009. The MI6 backed Free Western Sahara Network attempted to bring a group of Moroccan students over to Britain but the Moroccan government objected and jailed the students. This caused MI6 to gather British MP's and celebrities and start a campaign for these student's "human rights" to spy against their country. A British value that I suspect doesn't flow both ways. The campaign became so high profile in spying terms that it generated a brief reference that most people would have been proud to spot in the most recent series of the TV show Spooks. As Nigeria is sub-Saharan Africa and has nothing whatsoever to do with the West Saharan Network looking back the reference in Spooks was probably placed there in an attempt at misdirection.

As for Abdulmutallab at around the time he was studying a University College London he began suffering from the sort of emotional maladies that afflict spoilt children of rich parents the world over. This made his handlers think that he was no longer suitable to operate as a sleeper and they started to look for another way to get their money's worth. It was at this point that Abdulmutallab's life really started to go wrong with him not getting the degree he felt he deserves, not getting onto the master course he wanted and being ripped off by a fake college that led to him being placed on an immigration rather then a terrorism watch list. In the background he was also no doubt being deliberately exposed to radical preachers and extreme versions of Islam. This meant that when he was offered the chance to visit Yemen his interest was piqued to go and learn more.

Much like his native Nigeria Yemen, where Abdullmutallab was radicalised and trained, is quite an unstable country with fighting between government troops and rebels who, since the start of the War on Terror, are said to be linked to Al Qaeda. For most of the twentieth century Yemen has actually been partitioned into two separate countries. Yemen which was under Yemeni control and Aden which was a British Colony maintained to guarantee access to the Suez Canal. In 1973 rebels defeated the British Army in a short war forcing Britain to abandon one of its last remaining pieces of Empire. After another twenty years of fighting that saw the rebels become the government and the government become the rebels and back again many times over Yemen was finally reunified. This didn't stop the tensions though and recently there has been an increase in fighting between government forces backed by Britain and rebels who are said to be backed by Al Qaeda.

It is one of these groups, Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP), who have claimed responsibility for training Abdulmutallab and carrying out the attack. AQAP are a new group about whom little is known. Prior to this plane bombing their only previous act was release a statement celebrating the Fort Hood shootings and calling on Muslims across the world to carry out similar attacks. As this statement played perfectly to the Armageddon scenario in the Department of Homeland Security's counter-terrorism strategy it, along with other aspects of AQAP's behaviour, leaves me convinced that rather then being a Al Qeada front AQAP are in fact a front for Britain's MI6. As with Al-Muhajiroun who are a British based MI5 front the main role of AQAP is twofold; firstly they attract radical, young Muslims who may otherwise become terrorists into a safe group from where they can be monitored and secondly they help create a threat of Islamic terrorism where not such threat exists.

Having considered all these things I am in no doubt that the Detroit plane bombing was planned and carried out by Britain's MI6. As this constitutes a declaration of war by Britain on the United States there is no one good reason behind it. There are though dozens of really bad ones including, in no particular order;

• To get America to recommit to the War on Terror. Over the last few years America's strategy in Afghanistan has been more focused on winning the war then killing as many Muslims as possible. This is unacceptable to Britain who are fighting a holy war.
• To bring American and Britain closer together by forcing US intelligence agencies to work closely with their British counterparts.
• To shake down the Americans in order to find out what they know about a current hot topic of conversation that it would be unwise for me to comment on here.
• To heap pressure on US President Obama who Britain hate for reasons I can't explain without being accused of playing the race card.
• To force through increased border controls. If there three things the British civil service are obsessed with they are; Immigration, gathering every possible piece of information on their citizens and paedophilia. The initial response to the Detroit attack was increase the use of full body scanners at airports despite concerns that the breach privacy and generate indecent images of children. Therefore I wouldn't be surprised if MI6 wanted to increase their use in order secure a supply of child porn for their network of pet paedophiles.
• To convince America to open up a new front on the War on Terror in Yemen. This would bring with it the resources that would allow the government forces to defeat the rebels increasing British influence in the region. Some of you may have noticed that the countries where Britain is most concerned about the spread of Islamic terrorism such as Pakistan and India also happen to be former British colonies.
• Perversely in the event that Britain was caught in the act the attack would create such a large rift between America and Britain that America would order British troops out of Afghanistan allowing Britain to withdraw from a war that it's loosing without having to suffer the humiliation of surrendering. Along with the surveillance state element of the body scanners this is what got the lefties/lesbians in the civil service and government to go along with the idea.

If I had to prioritise these reasons into a top three it would be;

1. To get America to recommit to Britain and Britain's objectives in the War on Terror.

2. To bring about tougher border controls

3. To heap pressure on the Americans especially their President whom the British despise.

There was also a Al Qaeda attack that killed 7 CIA operatives in Afghanistan. This was genuine but the CIA would have known that if they hadn't been wasting so much time trying to play me.