COP21 Terrorism Update #11.

On Saturday (12/12/15) the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) ended with what has been widely and wrongly reported as the signing of a new global climate change agreement.

What actually happened is that COP21 delegates agreed the text of a draft agreement to be presented to their respective governments. Those governments now have until April 21st 2017 (21/4/17) to review the draft agreement and decide whether they wish to sign up to it.

In the days since COP21 the reason for this cooling off period has become increasingly apparently. A number of nations have indicated that there are problems with the agreement. This includes COP21 host nation France.

The most serious problem to emerge with the draft is that it enshrines in perpetuity what is known in the jargon as the principle of binary differentiation. Essentially this means that only nations who are designated as "Developed" have to make cuts to their greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions while nations that are designated as "Developing" don't.

Only 36 nations are designated as developed and this is essentially just the 28 member European Union (EU). The other 159 nations can carry on emitting as much ghg's as they like. This "developing" group includes the World's 2nd largest economy China and the World's 9th largest economy India.

It should come as little surprise then that both China and India are extremely keen for everybody to sign up to an agreement that will not only allow global ghg emissions and therefore global warming to increase but will also hold back the economies of China and India's main rivals.

Yesterday at Mumbai International Airport in southern India an airport worker was killed after being sucked into the jet engines of an Air India passenger jet. The incident occurred while the aircraft was being moved away from the terminal in a manoeuvre that is commonly known as; "Pushback."

As a result the incident seemed to be a rather threatening warning from India for nations not be drawn into the pushback against the COP21 draft.

While I'm here I should also take the opportunity to comment properly on the shooting dead of a man by police in the Wood Green area of London, UK last Friday (11/12/15).

Although this happened right at the death of the COP21 Summit I don't think it was related to the summit in any way.

On November 13th (13/11/15) 130 people were massacred in Paris, France by the Islamic State of the Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This group has been trying to attack the UK for the past 18 months now.

Fortunately up until now ISIL's attacks on the UK have been small scale like the attack at Leytonstone Underground railway station on December 5th (5/12/15) and have largely been thwarted by the police and security services.

However on June 26th (26/6/15) ISIL were able to murder 38 civilians on a beach in Sousse, Tunisia including 30 Britons. That was the worst terror attack on British citizens since the July 7 2005 (7/7/05) bombings in London.

Although I think that warning should have come a lot sooner the Paris Massacres were a massive wake up call to nations across Europe. As the attack leader appears to have links with the Britain's second city Birmingham it has created a degree of alarm that the UK is going to be the next nation to experience an ISIL attack on that scale.

The UK of course has some of the tightest gun control laws in the World. However despite this I have been lead to believe that if you move in the right circles it easier to obtain battlefield weapons such as assault rifles and grenades along with large quantities of ammunition then it is in many American cities such as San Francisco.

Therefore in response to the Paris Massacres police in the UK appear to have been cracking down hard on the illegal arms market. Where before they may have overlooked the low-level guys in the hope of gathering intelligence to take down the wider network the police now appear to be acting on everything they can get a search warrant for.

During the course of this crackdown the police uncovered a plot to help two men - Erwin Amoyaw-Gyamfi and Erun Izzet  - they'd previously arrested for possessing/supplying illegal firearms escape from custody during an appearance at Wood Green Crown Court.

It appears the plan involved four country men of the Turkish Amoyaw-Gyamfi and Izzet conducting an armed hijacking of the prison van transporting them to and from Court. Obviously the police moved in to prevent this from happening and while four Turks were arrested a fifth man - Jermaine Baker - was shot and killed.

This is obviously under investigation but it appears that Mr Baker was literally a hired gun and it almost goes without saying that a man who was participating in an armed hijacking was both armed and prepared to use lethal force.

Unlike in much of the rest of the World the British police are not routinely armed.

The small number who are know full well that the moment they discharge their weapon they will be suspended from duty - particularly if they haven't hit anything. If a person is killed or even wounded by a police officer the incident will be automatically investigated as a potential murder and the officer will likely be arrested.

However more often then not the investigation will quickly determine that the officer acted lawfully, the investigation will be closed and the officer will return to duty.

As a result it is quite hard to understand quite why the UK media have got so excited by the news that the Wood Green shooting is being investigated as a potential murder and that the officer has been suspended from duty and this evening arrested so he can be interviewed under caution in the presence of an attorney.

A large part of the reason for this is the way that the US has recently been tearing itself apart with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign. Although policing in the UK is very different to how it is in America it appears that the British media just want to feel included.

The police though do also appear to have been building their part. For example London's Metropolitan Police Commissioner has certainly been on hand to provide a quote every time the press ask for one which has certainly helped keep the story moving along.

The reason for this appears to be twofold;

Firstly the fact that the illegal gun traffickers in this specific case are Turkish helps to remind people that Turkey is currently one of the main security threats to Europe rather then one of Europe's allies.

For example the forged Syrian passports that two of the Paris attackers used to enter the EU's Schengen zone at the very least suggest that Turkey is still not doing anywhere near a good enough job disrupting the flow of ISIL fighters.

Secondly it serves to underline how US President Barack Obama's response to the December 2nd (2/12/15) terror attack in San Bernardino, California was not only poor also grossly negligent.

As is happening in response to the Wood Green shooting even if it is highly unlikely that a crime has been committed incidents of this type are investigated as the absolute worst crime they could possibly be. This is done to preserve evidence because it is much easier to disregard something at a later date then go back to find what is missing.

In response to the San Bernadino attack Obama seemed to do everything in his power to disguise the fact that it was an ISIL inspired attack and instead present it as an incident of work place violence that would support his gun control agenda. This included delaying the opening of a terrorism investigation for several days.

To see how the investigation was undermined by Obama's orders you need to look no further then Enrique Marquez who as I write has just been charged with trafficking the guns used in the San Bernardino attacks to the attackers in complete defiance of existing gun control laws.

While the San Bernardino attacks were still going on Marquez - a recent convert to Islam - was checking himself into a psychiatric hospital. As the attacks were not immediately being investigated as an act of terrorism this prevented the local and state police from interviewing Marquez.

However if a terrorism investigation had been immediately opened the FBI would have brought in their own psychiatrist and immediately questioned Marquez as hard as the law and that psychiatrist allowed.

We will probably never no what if any evidence was destroyed by co-conspirators during the delay in Marquez's questioning.

20:45 on 17/12/15 (UK date).