I have declared the first sick day of 2016. All I'm suffering from is a bit of a chill and the suggestion of a sore throat. However that's as far as I want things to progress so I'm trying to take things easy today.
It would have been nice if my immune system had checked it's diary in advance though.
Today France has marked the first anniversary of the January 7th 2015 (7/1/15) attacks on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This was of course the start of three days of terror in Paris that culminated with attack on the Jewish Hypercacher supermarket and claimed the lives of 16 people.
Around 45 minutes after a ceremony marking the Charlie Hebdo anniversary had ended France experienced its second terror attack of 2016.
The year's first attack occurred on January 1st (1/1/16) when a Muslim man drove his car into soldiers guarding a Mosque in the southern French city of Valence.
Fortunately the soldiers were able to react quickly shooting the man meaning that only three soldiers and one Muslim passer-by who'd been attending the Mosque were injured in the attack. Only being wounded the attacker under questioning later declared that he'd carried out the attack to avenge the Muslims that French soldiers are murdering in Syria and Iraq.
Today's attack was similarly small scale with a Muslim man attempting to force his way into a police station on Paris' Goutte d'Or street armed with a meat cleaver. He was promptly shot and killed by the police. As the man was wearing a inert suicide vest with wires but no explosives the area had to be shut down until it had been cleared by the bomb squad.
Aside from the meat cleaver and the suicide vest the man was carrying with him a flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and manifesto justifying the attack - the details of which have not been released.
Displaying the extremely negative effect that US President Barack Obama and his Black Lives Matter campaign is having on the fight against terrorism French authorities still do not feel confident enough to claim that this was an ISIL inspired terror attack.
Both of these low-tech terror attacks carried out by self-radicalised lone-wolfs are almost identical to the type of attacks that Israel has been experiencing on an almost daily basis since September 2015.
Although the situations are in many ways very different both Israel and France have a large, predominately young Arab-Muslim population that does not feel as though it is part of mainstream society. This makes them extremely susceptible to the propaganda of ISIL.
Therefore I think that sadly until the international community - particularly US President Obama - gets serious about shutting down ISIL's propaganda France like Israel is just going to have to learn to live with these continuing attacks.
A prime example of how to address ISIL's propaganda is provided by the case of Junaid Hussain a British born ISIL fighter who was one of their most prolific online recruiters. However he's been remarkably quiet since August 25th (25/8/15). On account of being shot in the face.
I still think though that the best first step would be for western media outlets to stop operating as ISIL's propaganda arm. Today Britain's Sky News have provided us with a prime example of this.
The story that Sky News have been promoting all day today is of the dire humanitarian situation in the Syrian town of Madaya which sits close to the border with Lebanon less 5km (3 miles) south of the town of Zabadani and 36km (20 miles) north-west of the capital Damascus.
Sky News has - as always - been mawkishly revelling in harrowing images of extremely emaciated civilians and telling us how the residents of this Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) occupied town are being forced to eat grass, leaves and even household pets like cats. Curiously though Sky News then goes and blames of this suffering on the Syrian government.
The scenes coming out of towns like Madaya no longer shock people who have been following Syria's civil war. Nor do they provide any mystery. We've been watching scenes like this for the past five years now and we all understand the cause. Even if none of us are prepared to say it.
As I've said before the JAF coalition is made up roughly 7,000 different armed groups. Many of these function as criminal street gangs fighting over territory with populations they can tax and supply resources to for profit. Like everywhere else in the world one of the most important resource is food.
What many of the armed groups do is seize the entire food supply in an area under their control - particularly that which is given for free by international aid groups. They then restrict the supply of this food to the local population to create an artificial shortage massively driving the prices up. In Madaya 1kg (2.2lbs) of rice currently costs around USD170 whilst here in the UK is costs around USD0.75.
The armed groups then use the profits from these massively inflated profits to buy weapons and pay fighters to seize control of more areas with populations they can tax. Perversely they openly circulate this type of harrowing footage of the people they are starving to death as atrocity propaganda in the hope people will be tricked into blaming the Syrian government and giving the armed groups more aid.
The fact that previously respectable international aid agencies such as the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC), the UN's World Food Program (WFP) and particularly the UK's Save the Children have been prepared to supply these armed groups with free resources rather than distributing it directly to the civilian population is further evidence of how they have crossed the line from being humanitarian organisations into being happy warriors in ISIL's war machine.
Some of you may remember that in mid-September 2015 a deal was reached between the Syrian government and the JAF that would see the civilians in Zabadani and some of the surrounding villages set free.
However when the convoys arrived on September 26th (26/9/15) they were blocked by residents of towns such as Madaya and Saraqeb demanding to know why some hostages were being allowed to leave while they were being left at the mercy of the JAF.
Reacting to ill-advised comments by the US that what at that point was a Russian military build-up was a sure sign that the Syrian government would fall at any moment the JAF pulled out of the deal entirely and decided to keep all the civilians hostages.
It was this more than anything that triggered the Russian military build up to become a Russian intervention on September 30th (30/9/15).
I seem to remember Sky News and others protesting loudly against that Russian intervention. But then I suppose it was intended to deny them more snuff movies to masturbate over.
17:20 on 7/1/16 (UK date).
Edited at around 21:05 on 7/1/15 (UK date) to add;
This is probably easier than arguing with CNN's Arwa Damon directly.
As you would expect from a market controlled by armed groups that function much like street gangs the economics of food in Syria is very much like the economics of the illegal drug trade. Most people can't afford 1kg of rice in much the same way that most people can't afford a kilo of cocaine of a kilo of heroin.
However the people who are supplied with this ki's by groups such as the ICRC, WFP and Save the Children divide them down into 1g baggies that they sell daily for about USD1 per time. This provides them with a steady daily income adding up to USD1000 per kilo. As they're being supplied with the product for free this is all pure profit. Ground wheat is preferred because it can be cut with brick dust turning 1kg in 2kgs and a USD2000 per profit which is a nice new assault rifle.
Can't imagine why Obama and Black Lives Matter don't see a problem with this.
As for the rest of the diplomats and the reporters the Syria conflict really reminds me of the infamous Milgram experiments. At the start they were happy to tell the small lie that the protesters were unarmed. After 5 years of incremental increases they now seem happy to lie to starve children to death.
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