COP21 Terrorism Update #19.

As I mentioned yesterday one of the big movies at the 2016 Oscars - "The Revenant" - is all about the COP21 Summit it and the global draft climate change agreement it produced.

With this being my 19th update on the issue it is fair to say that draft has become mired in Islamic inspired terrorism.

Last year the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) got rather fixated on the Oscars. In the run-up to the ceremony they released a series of murder videos. These seem intended to showcase ISIL's expertise in movie making and in particular special, visual effects.

As a result an Oscars ceremony where one of the movies is about climate change is a bit of a worry from a security perspective. In order not to spoil proceedings I've obviously tried to be discreet about this. After all the US pays people to worry about this sort of thing and they are certainly aware of the situation.

I have got the impression though that the US would like assurances from its allies that they are aware that it is aware of the issue. Given the US' response to the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres that strikes me as more than a little arrogant.

So yesterday numerous schools in Paris, France, London, UK and weirdly Cornwall, UK had to be evacuated amid a grand bomb hoax. This of course invoked memories of the December 15th (15/12/16) evacuated of Los Angeles school district amid a similar hoax. Later in the day the US confirmed they were responsible for the French and British hoaxes with a hoax shooting at the San Diego Naval Medical Centre. Los Angeles, San Diego and the Oscars are all located in the state of California.

However later on the US really started to build its part with the news they had prevented an Islamic inspired terror attack against a Freemasons Temple in Milwaukee. This was intended to spread confusion during US Secretary of State John Kerry's visit to Beijing, China. After all an Islamic inspired terrorist trying to attack a Jewish Temple makes sense. An Islamic inspired terrorist attempting to attack a Masonic Temple really does not.

This brings me on to the arrest of 8 and the killing of 1 of the protesters at the Malheur Wildlife Reserve in Oregon by the FBI.

That protest has been the US main way of highlighting the problem of the draft agreed at COP21. Following the January 20th (20/1/16) Islamic inspired terror attack against Bacha Khan University in Pakistan the US used the Oregon protest to pose the question of whether the COP21 draft needs to be withdrawn prior to its April 2017 deadline to prevent further terror attacks. Clearly this issue came up during Kerry's visit.

The Oregon protests also highlight a key difference between the regulatory environments in free market economies such as the US and command economies such as China. This has long been an issue within climate change negotiations because in command economies the government simply decides what the national plan will be and then carries out that plan. In nations like the US the private sector is pretty much free to do what it likes with the exception of specific activities that the government has passed laws against.

In the US the occupation of government property such as is happening in Oregon is considered free speech protected by the 1st amendment to the constitution. The open carrying of firearms in public is protected by the 2nd amendment. Therefore it's not clear what crimes the Oregon protesters have committed by the simple virtue that their behaviour is so unprecedented that up until now the government didn't see a need to make it illegal.

The FBI operation was pre-planned ambush. They invited the protesters to negotiations away from the Wildlife Reserve and simply pounced on them as they were en route. A huge failing of the COP21 draft is that it enshrines the principle of Binary Differentiation. This gives China license to emit as much greenhouse gases as it likes. The US clearly thinks China won this concession in a last minute ambush when in fact it was just the US negotiators screwing up.

What is odd is that although I've not seen any of them this type of ambush is apparently a major part of the plot in the mafia. movie "The Godfather." Abe Vigoda - the actor who plays the character who sets the ambush in the movie - died of natural causes just before the FBI mounted their own ambush.

Vigoda is also famous for playing a TV character called "Phil Fish" or simply "Fish." One of the lead voices in the Oscars So White campaign has been the actress Jada Pinket-Smith. Her most recent role was playing a mafia-style boss "Fish Moody" in the TV series "Gotham."

So yeah, that got weird quickly.

Rather demonstrating that the US really doesn't understand how to ask for favours today has also seen Rihanna releasing the single "Work" featuring Diamonds World Tour boyfriend Drake.

I've been too tired and hungover to bother with it. However politically it sounds less like a comeback and more like a death knell.

20:20 on 27/1/16 (UK date).

Edited at around 15:00 on 28/1/16 (UK date) to add;

The big concern ahead of COP21 was that the US would try and ambush proceedings with something random and wildly off topic. If they'd used something new this could have been a disaster. However if they sent a spent force like Rihanna it could be easily ignored.

So much of 2014 and 2015 was taken up with an elaborate con trick to convince the US that everybody was still super interested in Rihanna. This was led by South Korean electronics giant Samsung who put together this entire app/game to promote Rihanna's upcoming album "Anti."

It paid off when just before COP21 Rihanna used the Samsung app to announce a tour in support of the yet to be released Anti album. The support act is a very pretentious Canadian act that calls himself "The Weeknd." In the months prior to this announcement both the Weeknd and fellow Canadian "Drake" released songs about sneaking around in clandestine relationships with who we were supposed to speculate was Rihanna.

Due to some fantastic work on the part of the South Koreans this had absolutely no impact on COP21 whatsoever.

Therefore the intention of releasing the Rihanna single "Work" featuring Drake while John Kerry was visiting China was to confirm that knowing Rihanna is a spent force China had been able to flip the ambush on the US to win itself an opt out.

What actually happened is that the US had absolutely no interest in drawing up a functioning global agreement. Instead Obama wanted something he could pass by executive action to claim all the glory.

The specific wording that gives China and India their opt outs is Paragraph 4 or Article 4. This wording was not included until the absolute final draft. On the previous draft I flagged up a problem with it. This prompted the US to do a hasty re-write so I wouldn't be able to use it to criticise Obama. In the process they messed up and handed China and India their opt outs.

Clearly the US didn't get an answer to the question is posed yesterday so re-stated it today with a train crash in Florida - Can anyone confirm that the train is off the tracks and on fire?

Unfortunately overnight Rihanna has decided to go ahead and release Anti regardless.