Operation Featherweight: Month 21, Week 2, Day 2 (cont).

This should be read as a direct continuation of; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/operation-featherweight-month-21-week-2_17.html

The Egypt Air hijacking seemed to send the US into a bit of a tizzy.

Within a couple of hours they'd evacuated the area around the US Capitol Building following the discovery of not one by two suspect packages that were later found to be harmless. The purpose here was to confirm that they had established that hijacker's suicide belt was indeed a fake.

They felt the need to do this because in the 1970's this type of hijack situation could drag on for days if not weeks. For example the very famous 1976 hijacking of Air France flight 139 lasted for a week with the aircraft sitting on the tarmac at Entebbe Airport. To this day it technically hasn't been fully resolved.

However in their haste the Americans seem to have forgotten that on Sunday (27/3/16) the Pavlof Volcano erupted in the state of Alaska which is commonly abbreviated to "AK." Supporters of Erdogan's Justice & Development Party (AKP) like to refer to the party simply as "AK" because that is the Turkish word for "Clean" or "Not Corrupt."

The Pavlof eruption seems to have inspired Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to claim, on a visit to Jordan the following day - Monday (28/3/16), that Turkey was surrounded by a "Ring of Fire" of terrorism. This was a reference to the "Pacific Ring of Fire" which is famous for its volcanic and other seismic activity.

With the words "Belt" and "Ring" being almost interchangeable the fact that the Egypt hijacker's suicide belt was a fake was intended to send the message that people simply do not believe either Davutoglu or Erdogan's claims. The US was tricked into agreeing with this. 

Having taken a few hours to compose themselves the US announced that it was withdrawing all non-essential personnel from United States Air Force (USAF) base Incirlik in Turkey due to the increased terrorist threat. 

On February 11th (11/2/16) the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) liberated the Menagh Air Base which sits around 7km (4 miles) south of the Syrian town of Azaz. This created a very real risk that the roughly 100km (60 miles) stretch of the Turkey/Syria border which acts as the main supply route for ISIL and associated groups and has become known as "Erdogan's Pocket" would be sealed.

In order to prevent that from happening ever since Turkey has been claiming that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in league with both Russia and ISIL are plotting an attack on Incirlik.

Ordering non-essential personnel out of Incirlik allows the US to send the message to Turkey that it is taking Erdogan's wild claims seriously.

However it also sent the message to the wider audience that the US must block the invocation of NATO's Article 5 mutual defence clause because to do so would led Turkey to shut down Incirlik. That is of course a nonsense argument because the invocation of Article 5 would mean that Turkey's continuing NATO membership would be entirely dependent on them keeping Incirlik open.

Shortly afterwards a US F-16 fighter jet crashed on take off at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan with the pilot ejecting safely. This acknowledged that the use of Incirlik is far from essentially to the US' fight against ISIL because the USAF is more than capable of operating for air bases within active warzones. In fact up until 2011 they were perfectly happy to operate from air bases within Iraq.

Demonstrating how US President Barack Obama's complete lack of leadership has got everyone on edge the Bagram crash was quickly followed up by crashes of enquiry not just in Russia but also the Republic of Korea (RoK/South).

In Thursday (31/3/16) a bridge/flyover collapsed in the Indian city of Kolkata (nee; Calcutta). Specifically it collapsed on Girish Park area of the city. This was a reference to last Sunday (27/3/16) suicide bombing in Lahore, Pakistan. In turn that suicide bombing was a reference to the March 13th (13/3/16) suicide bombing near Guvenpark in Turkey's capital Ankara. Apparently the bridge collapsed at its 60th pillar.

The five core obligations on any Muslim are known as; "The Five Pillars of Islam." However you suspect that in Diyanet run Mosques there are many more than five pillars. Or perhaps simply just one; "Obey Erdogan!"

Obviously if the nuclear armed government of Pakistan were to be overthrown by a groundswell of AKP-style Islamic extremism then that would be a big problem for Pakistan's neighbour India.

On Friday (1/4/16) there was a big gas explosion in the 6th district of the French capital Paris. Hopefully this was France acknowledging the problem because their response to the Paris Massacres left a lot to be desired. I have concerns that attitude might be catching on in Belgium.

Anyway I'm going to have to pick this up tomorrow because my brain has just completely given up.

16:40 on 3/4/16 (UK date).