As I was writing that post a Saudi Arabian private jet flying from Milan, Italy to a small, private airport just outside London, UK crashed on landing killing all on board. Saudi Arabia and it's ruling al-Saud family are very much like the big brother that Turkey's President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan wishes he could be. Therefore this was Saudi Arabia establishing a line of communication with the UK over the Turkey issue. After all there will be constant dialogue between the two nations as the investigation into the crash progresses.
Although I think it was primarily just an attempt to establish the dialogue channel there are a few little details of the crash that could be significant;
Firstly the crash occurred at the "Blackbushe Airport." When he first won the Presidency in 2008 many people compared Barack Obama to British Prime Minister Tony Blair because they both seemed to place style over substance when it came to politics. Obama campaigned on vague slogans such as "Hope" and "Change" while in 1997 Blair used the D:Ream song "Things Can Only Get Better" as his campaign anthem. This was really the first and only time that a campaign anthem has been used in UK politics.
Also both Obama and Blair seem to share this naive idea that in international politics all you need to do is come up with a good idea and lay out a strong argument supporting that idea for people to agree to it. In reality it is bribery, blackmail, intimidation and coercion that make the world go round.
Irish drinks manufacturer Bushmills make this world famous brand of whiskey called "Black Bush." This added level of confusion makes it the perfected coded way to discuss the similarities between Blair and Obama who has, in the past, been referred to as; "The Black Blair."
I should point out though that this could just be a coincidence because that's the airport the flight always uses.
Secondly the pilot of the jet who was killed in the crash was a Jordanian national. The burning alive of Jordanian pilot Muath al-
Again though I should point out that this was the pilot who is always piloting that particular plane.
Thirdly after missing the runway the plane crashed into a mass of parked cars that were being stored at a vehicle auction site. As arguments of Qatar's hosting of the 2022 World Cup have revealed at this time of year it is brutally hot across the middle-east. For example on Friday (31/7/15) it hit 74C (165F) in Iran. What many wealthy people from the Gulf States do to counter this is to travel to European destinations such as London, UK to spend the summer where the weather is much cooler.
In the Knightsbridge area of London in particular these young Gulf millionaires have a reputation for behaving like complete a*seholes driving around in their supercars showing absolutely no respect for anyone or anything. In response to this the local council is proposing a raft of measures that would make it much easier to seize these cars and ban their owners from the area.
Again though it could just be that the car auction site was just what happened to be at the end of the runway. After all no-one would build houses or a school there for a very obvious reason.
The most interesting detail though was that the jet was owned by the family of Osama bin Laden - the Al Qaeda leader who plotted the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the US in 2001 - and three of his relatives were killed in the crash. In light of those attacks the relationship between the bin Laden family and the American Bush family is what you would describe as uncomfortably close.
Whilst George H Bush was US President between 1989 and 1993 the bin Laden family brought out a failing Texas oil company by the name of "Arbusto Energy" that was founded by George W Bush. After the take over the bin Laden family kept George W Bush on the board of directors for what we assume was his family connections rather then his business acumen.
As President of the US on September 13th 2001 (13/9/01) - two days after the 9/11 attacks - George W Bush arranged for the US government to provide private jets to fly hundreds of Saudi nationals out of the US. This included at least 24 members of the bin Laden family who you would have assumed the US authorities would have liked to have questioned over the attacks.
All of these uncomfortable links are likely to be brought back to the public's attention as US victims of the 9/11 attacks sue for compensation. 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi nationals and at least one of them was housed by the Saudi government on Embassy property when he arrived in the US to carry out the attacks. As such the relatives are claiming compensation against Saudi Arabia as a whole.
If they are successful it will cost Saudi Arabia billions if not tens of billions of dollars in compensation not only to the victims but also to all the US companies and taxpayers that lost money due to the attacks. Needless to say Saudi Arabia are fighting this motion in the US Courts just as hard as they can.
Where Obama would probably have responded to this Saudi challenge by bursting into tears and immediately promising to block the 9/11 lawsuit the UK simply responded in kind getting straight back in the Saudis face with a series of air-crashes of their own yesterday (1/8/15).
The most high profile of these occurred at the "CarFest" classic car show in Cheshire, UK when a pilot of the Heritage Aircraft Trust display team was killed. Being in the rare situation where I seem to be largely agreeing with the UK I don't want to go into too much detail. However I think the connection with the BBC TV Show "Top Gear" is well established with it being mentioned in almost all media reports of the incident.
Essentially just a show about three middle-aged men messing about with cars Top Gear has somehow become a massive global hit generating around half a billion dollars for the BBC every year. It has also found itself at the centre of numerous diplomatic incidents - most notably between the UK and Mexico in 2011 and between the UK and Argentina in 2014.
In the last series the three presenters were tasked with buying three cheap classic sportscars and driving them to a classic car show. The presenter who was deemed to have won by buying the best car was 'rewarded' with a bone-shaking flight with the air display team that were booked to perform as part of the car show.
During this recording one of the presenters - Jeremy Clarkson - had a fight with one of the shows producers leading to him being sacked and the other presenters quitting in protest. The UK talked about little else for most of the month.
Chris Evans has since been appointed as the new lead host of Top Gear and it was he who organised CarFest in order to raise money for the BBC charity "Children In Need."
As Erdogan never seems to tire of reminding us the rise of ISIL has creating a refugee crisis with millions of people - including many children - being forced into refugee camps. With the Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia refusing to bring their vast oil wealth to bear against the problem the United Nations High Commissions for Refugees (UNHCR) is currently being forced to shut down many of these camps across Iraq due to a lack of funding.
The oft repeated official response to the CarFest crash was that despite the nasty air incident the show must go on for the sake of the Children in Need.
In the second of yesterday's crashes the engine of a Spitfire aircraft decided that it couldn't be bothered to pull the airframe through its mission forcing it to make a rough landing at the Biggin Hill airfield. The Spitfire is of course the iconic aircraft of the 1940 Battle of Britain in which a small number of British fighter's repelled wave after wave of a vastly superior German airforce saving the nation from Nazi invasion. Biggin Hill was one of the main airfields used in this battle.
At the end of the Battle of Britain then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave a famous speech in which he said; "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." A year into the war against ISIL with little changing you could almost say the opposite is true because never before in the field of human conflict has so little been achieved by so many against so few.
Despite these intense diplomatic exchanges the US' continued silence on the issue has only served to further emboldened Turkey. As I mentioned between Thursday (30/7/15) and Friday (31/7/15) Turkey carried out 30 air-strikes against Kurdish positions in Iraq. Between Friday and Saturday (1/8/15) Turkey carried out 98 air-strikes all against Kurdish positions in the Dohuk area of Iraq.
I am still waiting for yesterday's figure but in comparison on Friday the US-led coalition carried out just 30 air-strikes against ISIL positions across all of Syria and Iraq.
In one of the Turkish strikes on the village of Zarkel the Kurds claim that nine civilians were killed. I have seen photographs of the aftermath of the strike and at least one of those killed was an infant child far below military age. Turkey has pledged to investigate this along with Thursday's (30/7/15) air-strike on a hospital/medical clinic in village of Amediye. I suspect though they won't be applying the standard that Erdogan has so frequently applied to the Syrian government and the Israeli government that a regime that wilfully kills children has lost all legitimacy.
Turkey had been furthered emboldened by a closed door meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that took place on Friday (31/7/15). Here the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon took the unusual step of declaring that Turkey's action was done in accordance with Article 51 of the UN's Charter authorising self-defence and therefore lawful. Article 51 reads as follows;
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."
As you can quite clearly see Article 51 only allows a nation to act in unilateral self-defence against attack until the UNSC can meet to take measures such as a passing a resolution on the original attack. This creates a rather looped logic whereby Turkey's action is only considered legal at this time because the UNSC has failed to take action to condemn it.
However even this is not the case because the UNSC has already taken measures on the issue - specifically resolution 2170 (2014). This forbids any member nation from providing active or passive support to ISIL.
Although Turkey may claim that it's campaign is against ISIL there is scant evidence that anything it is doing is actually targeting ISIL. Nor is there any evidence that any alleged attack by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has taken place in Turkey has been carried out from either Syria or Iraq.
There is though a mountain of evidence that Turkey's actions are providing passive support to ISIL by hindering the fight against ISIL by targeting the Kurds - the main opposition force against ISIL. As part of it's campaign Turkey is also undertaking action which is unnecessary in it's claimed fight against the PKK. For example in order to reach PKK camps in Iraq there is absolutely no need for Turkey to fly aircraft over positions held by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Syria.
Also with there being no ISIL positions in range there can be no explanation for Turkey's shelling of those YPG/FSA positions other then to provide direct support to ISIL by weakening those forces.
As such Turkey's actions cannot be justified as lawful under Article 51 because the UNSC has already deemed it necessary to prohibit Turkey's actions.
In short the UNSC needs to rapidly meet again on the issue and get it right this time.
16:45 on 2/8/15 (UK date).
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