COP21 Terrorism Update #7.

The COP21 Summit is scheduled to end at 17:00 (GMT) today.

If a COP Summit has ever ended on schedule I certainly don't remember it.

However on this occasion there is no viable draft of an agreement on the table. Even the draft that is on the table admits that there is still so much work left to do there is no possibility of a viable agreement until the COP22 Summit which is to be held at the end of 2016.

Therefore I thought there was a very realistic chance that COP21 would end on schedule allowing the remaining work to be brought forward.

Unfortunately though it seems that egos are still ruling the day and COP21 has been extended until Saturday (12/12/15). This seems to be an attempt to re-create the P5+1 talks on Iran's nuclear program that occurred in late March of 2015 and became known as the "Siege of Lausanne."

Essentially the US refuses to allow anyone to leave the negotiations until the US gets exactly what it wants no matter how ridiculous. Then as time passes and sleep deprivation mounts the other participants get broken down psychologically, abandon rational thought and eventually give in.

It's not actually that far off from the type of enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA is famous for.

Aside from COP21 reaching its climax diplomatic tensions are also increasing over Turkey's continued invasion and occupation of Iraq. As I've previously mentioned this was scheduled to be brought before the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) yesterday (10/12/15).

It now turns out that the UNSC did address the issue in a closed door session on Tuesday (8/12/15). I am not a fan of closed door sessions because they make my life near impossible. However I understand that because of the severity of the issues the UNSC deals with it is sometimes necessary to allow delegates to speak freely without free of their comments being taken out of context.

My understanding of Tuesday's meeting is that the US made clear that it would not support any condemnation of Turkey's actions. The argument put forward is that if Turkey's dangerous escalation was condemned it would lead to Turkey escalating the situation further. This is the type of circular non-logic that is impossible to argue with.

As a result it was a clear US attempt to kill off any discussion. The US went even further in its efforts to block UNSC discussion by making sure that Thursday's business was used up on a discussion of the human rights record of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK/North).

The US of course has long used the DPRK as the bogeyman that the rest of Asia needs the US to defend them from. However that's really a separate issue.

The US was though to use the secrecy surrounding UNSC closed sessions and the uncertainty over whether the session on Turkey would take place to ratchet up the pressure on COP21 delegates.

So on Wednesday (9/12/15) night the US warned Turkey that the CIA had picked up intelligence that terrorists linked to the October 31st (31/12/15) bombing of Russian Kogalymavia airlines flight 7K9268 over Egypt were planning an attack in Turkey.

This of course was intended to link Turkey to 7K9268 while being seen to send the message that Turkey that it too was under threat from the terrorists.

However at the same time the US was sending a warning to Switzerland that the CIA had picked up intelligence that terrorists were plotting imminent attacks against Geneva, Toronto, Canada and Chicago, US.

On Tuesday (8/12/15) an Air France jet to San Francisco, US had to be diverted to Montreal, Canada in what was seen as a French enquiry as to Canada's position on Turkey's aggression. The city of Chicago is currently being gripped by Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests against US President Obama's former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in an effort to highlight Obama's radical agenda and his failure to understand concepts such as equality and justice.

The fact that these terrorists were French speaking also brings in France and Belgium and there was an eternal question over whether the threat was linked to the November 13th (13/12/15) Paris Massacres. This was intended to pose the question of whether Turkey is now considered responsible for those attacks as well as the bombing of 7K9268.

Later in the day the HQ of the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in New Jersey, US had to be evacuated after a package containing a white powder - suspected of being anthrax - was discovered. It was quickly discovered to be flour.

The explosive used to bring down 7K9268 and in the suicide bombs in the Paris Massacres was TATP. This is a powdery substance similar to flour. So ever since the November 26th (26/11/15) discovery of a package of flour at the Grand Mosque in Brussels, Belgium "flour" has been used to discuss Turkey's support for terrorism.

CAIR were chosen because much like the UK based "CAGE" group which helped Mohammed Emwazi (AKA: Jihadi John) travel to Syria despite their claims of being a peaceful civil rights organisation CAIR have been linked to some pretty dodgy stuff recently.

A prime example of this was the February 10th (10/2/15) Chapel Hill shootings in North Carolina. Here CAIR linked up with Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan to demand that the incident was declared an Islamaphobic hate crime despite the fact that it was just a dispute over car parking.

It would appear that CAIR's motivation for staging these protests was to put pressure on the FBI to end an investigation into the father of two of the victims and the Mosque that all four attended over support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) plotting attacks against the US.

Also yesterday the University of Arkansas, Arkansas, US was briefly placed on lock-down over reports of an active shooter. 

The campus is located in the township of Jonesboro so I suppose it could have been a reference to Johannesburg, South Africa. With much of COP21's work stemming from the "Durban Platform" South Africa is closely linked to the entire process.

The campus is also located close to an airport. Therefore I suppose it could be linked to the aviation element(s) of climate change negotiations.

However even on short order both of these references struck me as too clunky to be intentional.

It seems instead then that the University administration simply over-reacted. The way that the issue of student 'safety' has been hijacked in US universities to suppress freedom of speech and expression is long running complaint amongst academics.

For example students at a college in Pennsylvania are demanding that the campus' "Lynch Memorial Hall" - named after former college President "Clyde A. Lynch" - is re-named because the word "Lynch" reminds them of "lynchings" and makes them feel 'unsafe' on campus.

It is clear therefore that US students are getting far dumber with every passing year. This isn't a specific COP21 issue though.

Earlier the day there was the news that a over-ground train on the Red Line in Boston, Massachusetts, US had runaway and travelled for a time without a driver but with passengers.

Primarily this seemed be a reference to Rihanna who was that evening hosting some charity ball that the US clearly hoped would have received a lot more attention. The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was of course intended to pique interest in Rihanna's Diamonds World Tour in preparation for that year's COP19 Summit.

Also there is this 2010 movie "Unstoppable" about a runaway train with the callsign "777." I first watched this during Rihanna's 2012 "777" mini-tour so found all the dramatic dialogue about needing to stop 777 before it killed millions unintentionally hilarious.

In negotiations such as the one currently going on at COP21 "Red Lines" are frequently used describe issues that parties won't compromise on. As a result any discussion about any Red Line is always a bit stressful.

One of the most famous "Red Lines" in recent discussion is the Red Line that US President Obama set over the use of chemical weapons in Syria which was broken - by an unknown party - in 2013.

You can't help but wonder whether Obama's support for ISIL now is because it's easier for him to do that then admit that he made a huge mistake calling for the illegal overthrow of the Syrian government.

The big news from the UK yesterday is that a decision to expand London's Heathrow airport has been put off to allow for further Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA's) to be carried. I think you would struggle to find an element of an EIA that doesn't relate to an environmental conference such as COP21.

However this primarily seems to be a reference to the fact that the UK doesn't actually sign up to climate change agreements. Instead the European Union (EU) signs up on its behalf. During the UK's mad years this has actually been something of a life-saver to the process.

However now the UK's position has begun to shift there is concern that if the EU does what it did over Ukraine, ISIL and the refugee crisis by simply giving Obama what he wants - no matter how stupid - the EU signing the UK up to a bad climate change agreement would simply increase calls for the UK to leave the EU.

Although I probably have more reason then most not to trust them I have to say that the UK's opposition to climate change action has slowly started to soften of late.

At around 14:05 on 11/12/15 (UK date) I would like to come back and expand on that more but it's clear that it's going to be a delicate afternoon.

Edited at around 16:30 on 11/12/15 (UK date) to add;

The UK has long been what I would term a climate rebel.

Although it has signed up to things like the Kyoto Protocol is have never accepted that climate change is man-made. As such it has only participated in the hope of being able to hijack negotiations into discussions about something else entirely.

While I certainly still do not fully trust them I have noticed that recently the UK's position has started to soften somewhat.

The primary factor driving this shift is that the evidence of climate change is now undeniable. Not only that but the evidence of the damage that climate change can do to the UK has become undeniable.

While COP21 has been taking place the Cumbria region has been devastated by flooding. This is the second such 100-year flood event that Cumbria has experienced in less then 10 years. It is also something that was entirely predicted by climate change models that showed melting ice masses accompanied by warmer seas would lead to more frequent and more violent storms.

I think the really big event though was the widespread flooding that occurred at the end of 2013 around the time of COP19. Initially the UK tried manipulating its coverage of those floods to argue that nations should abandon mitigation actions in favour of purely following adaptation actions.

So for example we had lots of temporary flood barriers dividing up cities into sectors rather like Berlin, Germany was divided at the start of the Cold War. This was all a few weeks before the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Eventually though the rain became so constant and the flooding became so bad that the flooding stopped being caused by rivers bursting their banks. Instead it was driven by the water table rising to above ground level. This made it impossible to predict which area would be flooded next let alone erect flood defences to adapt to it.

Although I might be in danger of overstating my role another factor has been me. The UK's climate change deniers have also been the people who've long been saying that I'd be defeated by now. The fact that I'm still here does rather force the question of what else have they been wrong about?

Another major factor in the UK's softening position has been this shift away from the binary differentiation seen in the Kyoto Protocol. This forces developed nations listed in Annex I - such as the UK - to cut their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to zero. Meanwhile non-Annex parties can do as they like.

What has been proposed a lot in preparation for COP21 is a shift away from reducing national emissions to reducing total global emissions.

Obviously living in the UK it is quite difficult for me to discuss the UK's position while remaining impartial.

However as I have lived in the UK all my life I know that its primary energy needs are to provide heat and light when it is cold and dark. I also know that it has a relatively small land-mass and a high population density meaning that there isn't the space to build vast solar or wind farms. There is some possibility to build off-shore but that is extremely expensive and with international shipping lanes space is also limited.

As such it would be extremely expensive for the UK to eliminate fossil fuels and therefore ghg emissions entirely and it may not even be possible at any price.

However not every country on earth is the UK so they don't have the UK's problems.

For example Algeria is a country that is largely made up of that vast expanses of nothing known as the Sahara. Also their main energy needs are things like water desalination which almost begs to be powered by tidal energy and to provide air conditioning when the sun is beating down. In the age of solar energy setting fire to something to cool down is just as crazy as it sounds.

Therefore rather then forcing nations like the UK to cut their emissions to zero climate change would be more effectively tackled by getting nations like the UK to pay for nations like Algeria to leap-frog over the fossil fuel stage of economic development and move straight to the renewable stage.

In the meantime nations like the UK continue to cut their own emissions as far as possible. For example the UK's neighbour Denmark is already talking about becoming 100% carbon neutral but only during the summer months.

On a recent Prime Ministerial trip to Iceland the UK did announce that it is seriously considering importing geo-thermal electricity directly.

The deal currently on the table in Paris is still rooted in binary differentiation. By refusing to include things like a standard format for INDC's and a peer review process along with the obstructive language on back-sliding that I mentioned yesterday it actually prohibits the type of solutions I mentioned above.

As a result every nation on earth has my full permission not to sign up to the current proposal.

If the EU does force the UK to sign up I may even join the calls for the UK to leave the EU.

17:05 on 11/12/15 (UK date).