The Pulse Nightclub Terror Attack.

In January 2011 the Tunisian people rose up and toppled their dictator Ben Ali. Later that same month the Egyptian people rose up and toppled their dictator Hosni Mubarak.

This sudden outbreak of democracy in Muslim nations posed a serious threat to the most dictatorial and extreme regime in the region - Saudi Arabia. So the Saudis immediately moved to crush these democratic movements. In Bahrain they did this literally by sending tanks across the causeway to kill protesters.

The actions of Saudi Arabia were fully supported by US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They dispatched US aircraft to bring down the Libyan government plunging that nation into civil war. That actively supported and equipped vile Islamist terror groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and their associates to invade Syria and wage war against its government.

Democracy will not be breaking out in either Libya nor Syria anytime soon.

The US even went so far as to overthrow the government of Ukraine in order to create ISIL's Shamali (northern) Province within Europe. Apart from starting a massive civil war right on Russia's border the US then used the creation of Shamali Province to impose sanctions on Russia in order to punish it for opposing what the US was doing in Syria.

All of Obama's wars are fuelled by a sectarian division within Islam between Sunnis and Shias. This brings out the worst and most dangerous elements of that religion. It is a propaganda message that has been pumped out relentlessly across the globe on the Internet and sadly even on mainstream news channels in non-Muslim nations such as the US.

The apparent global acceptance of this hateful ideology has exposed the World to a shocking increase in terrorism. The fighting in Libya, Syria and now Iraq has been relentless but the problem has spread much more widely than that with mass casualty terror attacks regularly occurring in places such as Kenya, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Algeria, Mali, Tunisia and Egypt to name but a few. It has also affected European nations with France suffering not one but two large terrorist attacks in 2015 including the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres.

The US itself has not been immune to this Islamist violence.

In October 2014 a Muslim convert who had pledged allegiance to ISIL carried out an attack with an axe on passers-by in New York City. On May 3rd 2015 (3/5/15) ISIL directed two of its American followers to attack an American Freedom Defence Initiative (AFDI) event in Garland, Texas. Fortunately both attackers where shot and killed before they were able to enter the building.In January 2016 an American Muslim who had pledged allegiance to ISIL ambushed a police officer in Chicago shooting him multiple times. In February 2016 a Muslim American who had pledged allegiance to ISIL carried out a machete attack against a Jewish owned restaurant in Ohio.

The most significant recent terror attack on the US occurred on December 2nd 2015 (2/12/15). Here an American Muslim and a recent Muslim immigrant to the US launched an attack on visitors to the Inland Regional Centre in San Bernardino, California. They murdered 14 people in the name of ISIL. As they were travelling to a second location to murder even more they were shot and killed by the police.

Apart from these successful attacks at even given point the US security services are monitoring at least half a dozen plots to make sure they do not go from aspiration to action. They are actively disrupting one credible Islamist terrorist plot a week.

Although the attacks in New York City, Ohio and Chicago were small in scale people in security circles have become increasingly concerned about them. That's because they know that with such a high number of plots underway it become inevitable that one will slip through the net with horrific consequences.

In the very early hours of the morning (local time) on Sunday (12/6/16) this is exactly what happened.

An American Muslim by the name of Omar Mateen attacked the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida with guns and at least one homemade explosive device. Having gained access to the building he proceeded to murder 50 people and attempted to murder 53 more in the name of ISIL before he was shot and killed by the police.

A very large part of the reason why this particular attacker was able to slip through the net is Barack Obama himself.

Despite all the evidence to the contrary Obama seems to genuinely believe that rather than being motivated by extreme religious hatred Islamist terrorists are peaceful people driven to violence by the way their being oppressed by nasty racists. As such over his nearly 8 years in office Obama  has made it much harder for the security services to disrupt terrorist plots because he thinks it would be racist to do so.

The prime example of the way that Obama is undermining national security was his response to the San Bernardino terror attack.

Here Obama refused to class it as a terrorist attack. Instead he wanted it labelled as an example of "Workplace Violence" in order to help promote his gun control agenda. With Obama blocking a terrorism investigation vital evidence and intelligence was lost.

For example it was several days before the police were able to interview Enrique Marquez Jr. because he had checked himself into a psychiatric hospital immediately after the attack. Marquez Jr is currently on trial for conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism - particularly unlawfully providing the weapons used in the attack.

Then of course there is Obama's own domestic terrorist group - Black Lives Matter (BLM). For the past two years that have employed violence and threat of violence to overrule the American media and the American legal system.

The most significant example of this was when Muslim American Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley ambushed and murdered two police officers in New York City on December 20th 2014 (20/12/14). He claimed this terrorist attack in the name of BLM the day after BLM leader Al Sharpton had called on members of the group to use a diversity of tactics in the fight against the police.

As such BLM should have years ago been classed as a terrorist group and policed accordingly. However with Obama being the leader of the group he prevented the American security services from doing this. With them being prevented from acting against the largest terrorist group in America it makes it much harder for them to act against any domestic terrorist group.

Another significant factor that may have allowed Mateen to slip through the net is that everyone in intelligence circles is extremely busy at the moment.

It is testament to just how busy things are that although I most certainly haven't forgotten about its been a month since I've had the time to comment directly on the fight against ISIL in Iraq and Syria. Following nearly two years of delays and blocking tactics by Obama that war has started to enter an interesting new phase.

Roughly three weeks ago the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) launched an operation to liberate Fallujah from ISIL. If they are successful it will completely remove ISIL from Anbar province. It then becomes a relatively simple matter of consolidating the area between Baghdad and Mosul before an operation to liberate Mosul can begin. When that is completed ISIL will have been completely expelled from Iraq.

ISIL themselves seem to know that the end is coming. It is rumoured that they are already drawing up plans to evacuate their remaining fighters from Iraq and Syria and move them to Libya. Despite years of blocking tactics and disruption by Obama people are already starting to gear up for the next war to remove ISIL from Libya.

Obviously with ISIL coming under increasing pressure on their supporters to launch terror attacks to avenge the groups battlefield losses. This is made much worse by the fact we are currently in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This is all about sacrafice and renewing your relationship with God. Unfortunately for Islamist terrorists this tends to mean blowing yourself up so you can kill non-Muslims.

The much more complex development is that in the past week of so the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) have crossed the Euphrates River to capture the town of Manbij. This is the first step in closing the 100km (60 mile) stretch of Syria's border with Turkey known as "Erdogan's Pocket" that Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been demanded is kept open so he can continue to supply ISIL.

The correct military approach to closing Erdogan's Pocket would be to use the QSD in the east and the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in the west to launch to cordinated attack to liberate the area cutting ISIL's supply line as quickly as possible. Unfortunately the US has decided to adopted a piecemeal approach with the QSD alone slowing inching into Erdogan's one step at a time. Following each creep forward the US is then closely monitoring Turkey's response.

For example today Thaddeus Borowicz a senior USAF officer attached to Incirlik Air Base was found dead in the garden of his home. His injuries are said to be consistent with a fall from the building. However no suicide note was recovered from the scene. US authorities will now have to investigate whether Borowicz was murdered as a threat to Incirlik in reponse to the QSD advance.

Regular readers of this blog will be well aware that the Eurovision Song Contest took place in May. This is an annual talking shop for general political issues affecting Europe. The main issues this year was the war against ISIL. Particularly the creation of Shamali Province, the increased threat of terrorism and the associated refugee/migration crisis.

Pretty much as punishment the Eurovision juries decided that they were going to force Shamali Province to host the 2017 Song Contests. This presents a host of complex security challenges.

Although their song was ineligible for competition Shamali Province were represented by Jamala who is a Crimean Turk. As such she is a Muslim.

Although Christianity's conscience is hardly clear on the issue Islam tends to be extremely homophobic.

Even the supposedly moderate Mayor of London Sadiq Kahn made it a large element of his campaign that he counts among his friends people who think that homosexuals should be beaten up in the streets. This comes after he recieved death threats from Muslim voters after his Labour Party supported the legalisation of gay marriage in the UK.

As within Syria Turkey has been using Crimean Turks to carry out acts of terrorism against Russia which opposes groups such as ISIL that Turkey supports. In November 2015 Crimea Turk terrorists attacked Crimea's powergrid taking it offline for much of the harsh winter.

The terrorist threat of Crimean Turks is supposed to be being controlled by the US backed junta in Kiev. This junta is not so much neo-Nazi in ideology as actual Nazis. They fought alongside Nazi Germany during the Second World War and where enthusiastic participants in the Nazi Holocaust. That holocaust saw at least 100,000 gay men exterminated. Therefore the Kiev junta's opposition to homosexuality goes beyond mere microagressions.

Shamali Province currently exists in a state of civil war. A such there is a vast amount of sophisticated military grade weaponary pretty much laying about for anyone to take. This was demonstrated by the recent arrest of a Frenchman attempting to smuggle weapons including two grenade launchers. five machine guns, numerous assault rifles and 125kg of TNT out of Shamali Province.

Therefore taking a large number of predominately homosexual Eurovision fans to Shamali Province and then keeping them safe let alone letting them enjoy themselves is a huge ask. It may well be impossible.

Basically we seem to be at the point where everybody is waiting for someone to file the first formal protest against the decision.

Whilst I was reading the initial reports from the Pulse nightclub - essentially man takes hostages, no fatalities - I actually thought this might have been the US reminding Eurovision of the security threat in Shamali Province. After all the fatal shooting of Jamaala-esque singer Christina Grimme at a near-by nightclub the day before certainly was.

However the deathtoll alone rules out that possibility. With 50 people killed the Pulse nightclub attack was more lethal than the Brussels attacks back in March. It is much closer to the 89 people who were killed in just the Bataclan nightclub part of the Paris Massacres. Although intelligence agencies aren't afraid to kill people to make a point if they kill more people than the threat they're warning against it completely defeats the purpose of the exercise.

This is simply the worst terror attack on US soil since the September 11th 2001 terror attacks. It is actually extremely likely that with all the focus in Orlando being on being on the Christina Grimme shooting it caused the threat posed by Mateen to be overlooked. 

There of course remains outstanding business from Eurovision in the form of the disappearence of EgyptAir flight MS804. With the Mediterranian Sea being relatively shallow in maritime salvage terms France's inability to recover the aircraft - particularly its black boxes - is fuelling speculation that they are trying to hide something.

The main issue in security circles at the moment though is the Euro 2016 football tournament currently being held in France. Not only did France suffer two largescale terror attacks in 2015 it has also seen a high number of small scale, lone-wolf attacks like in New York City, Ohio and Chicago. As such a lot of effort by a lot of people is going into making sure that Euro 2016 does not come under terrorist attack.

If that wasn't complicated enough the tournament organisers UEFA seem to have got confused and think they organising the Eurovision Song Contest. As such they seemed to have engineered quite a few political talking points into the tournament.

For example England and Russia are together in Group B. There is a lot of tension between England and Russia with England leading the campaign to have Russia stripped of the 2018 World Cup and kicked out of the 2016 Summer Olympics.

In Group C you have Shamali Province, Poland and Germany. Poland is Shamali Provinces main supporter within the EU while other member states - such as France - are calling for EU sanctions on Russia to end. It seems that Germany will have the deciding vote.

Also both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are in the competition during the centenary year of the Easter Rising that really brought those two nations into being.

The first few days of Euro 2016 have been marred by hooliganism. Particularly the England v Russia match on Saturday (11/6/16) night in the Stade Veldrome. This came dangerously close to recreating one of the worst stadium disasters ever to happen in European football.

On Sunday (12/6/16) morning amid the early reports of the Pulse nightclub attack I was becoming increasingly aware that due to the wider political context China in particular were becoming antsy for someone to explain the previous night's violence to them.

Later that day there were twin explosions in the Lebanese capital Beriut which injured no-one. That struck me as enquiry into the lighting of a flare that caused a small explosion in the crowd at Stade Veldrome.

That is actually quite a common thing in football and nothing to do with terrorism. However because of my experience of football I took it as a warning sign that for the sake of the England fans in the stadium Russia had better equalise quickly. Fortunately the Russian captain came to the same conclusion.

So against this extremely intense and complex backdrop I can very easily see how vital clues that could have prevented the Pulse nightclub attack being missed.

Demonstrating the almost insummountable workload I've not watch any football today. And at around 17:30 on 13/6/16 (UK date) I'm going to have to come back to this after dinner.

Edited at around 18:50 on 13/6/16 (UK date) to add;

Obama's response to this latest terror attack was sadly all to predictably absolutely appalling.

Learning the lessons from San Bernardino long before Obama had even bothered to get out of bed the FBI held a press conference where they announced to the World that this was an act of terrorism. This was done specifically to make it much harder for Obama to shut down yet another terrorism investigation.

When Obama finally issued a statement on the attack some 12 hours later he couldn't even be bothered to turn up on time. He didn't even manage to stick to his traditional 15 minutes of lateness instead not turning up until 40 minutes after he said he would.

Despite the FBI making it near impossible for him to claim that this was not an act of terrorism Obama still did not treat the attack as the sort of serious threat to national security that the President & Commander-in-Chief is obligated to take strong action to prevent. Instead Obama instead seemed to treat it as an opportunity to score cheap party political points in order to have Hillary Clinton crowned as his successor.

For example rather than referring to an act of Islamist terrorism Obama instead tried to protray the attack as a homophobic hate crime. It of course was a homophobic hate crime. However the list of people ISIL hate does not begin nor end with gay people. As such it was much more than a homophobic crime. To attempt to protray it as such is to attempt to minimise it.

For example the subtext to the Pope's response to the attack - which came much earlier than Obama's - was along the lines of; "I know that some of you may think that this is funny - Poland. However I most certainly do not."

The reason why Obama tried to portray this terror attack as just a homophobic hate crime is because he was cynically trying to Pinkwash the Democrat Party as the party of gay-rights so gay voters will be tricked into voting for Hillary Clinton.

Obama was also extremely keen to emphasises that those killed were Americans. Orlando, Florida is a very Hispanic area and at the time of the attack Pulse was holding a Latin themed night. As such he was trying to cynically protray the Democrat Party of the party of Hispanic rights while portraying the Trump and the Republicans as the party of racists. The hope being Hispanic voters will be tricked into voting for Hillary Clinton.

As with San Bernardino Obama treated the Pulse attack as a fresh opportunity to push his gun control agenda. Just like with San Bernardino and the Newtown massacre this argument is a non-starter.

The attacker Omar Mateen was employed by the security company G4S including amongst other roles as support staff for the New York Police Department. In order to get this job Mateen had to go through not one but two extensive background checks to clear him to work in sensitive areas. Furthermore Mateen had gone through further background checks in order to allow him to carry and use firearms as part of his work.

These background checks are far more extensive than even the enhanced background checks that the Obama administration is pushing for. As a result if you enhance background checks to the point that it would have prevented Mateen from purchasing a firearm you are talking about effectively banning the private sale of all firearms in the US. Even due to his access to firearms through work this would still have not stopped Mateen's obtaining weapons and carrying out the attack.

The Pulse attack actually reminds me of a similar attack that occured in Tel Aviv, Israel on January 1st 2016 (1/1/16). Again this saw a Muslim terrorist attack a nightclub/bar frequented by gay customers. Due to Israel's extremely tight gun contol laws the attacker Nasha'at Melhem could not legally buy a weapon. So he simply stole one from his father who was licensed to own one as part of his work as a security guard.

Last Wednesday's (8/6/16) terror attack in Tel Aviv also provides an example of the futility of Obama's gun control argument. Israel's extremely tight gun control laws means that there is little to no chance of potential Muslim terrorists obtaining guns legally or otherwise. So instead they simply make guns at home. The weapons used in this most recent Tel Aviv attack are nicknamed the "Carlo." Loosely based on the Carl Gustuv submachine gun they're made out of paintball guns and water pipes by anyone with a lathe.

Then of course there is March's attacks in Brussels, Belgium. Here 32 people were murdered. In three bomb blasts. Not a single firearm was used and not a single shot was fired.

Much of the fighting in Syria is actually being done with homemade weapons. What CNN and the Obama administration will try so hard to convince is a "Syrian regime barrel-bomb atrocity" is often actually the work of a weapon that has become known as "The Hell Cannon."

This is Propane cylinder that is packed with a homemade explosive that it fired up a metal tube like a traditional mortar. The 'moderate opposition' often fire them at residential buildings in order to fake a government airstrike. The Obama administration is inevitably on hand to condemn this 'regime atrocity.'

Although I would need to pick up a welding torch I could quite easily make a Hell Cannon at home.

Anyone who knows anything about terrorism will tell you that the problem is the mentality that causes people to launch these attacks. Not the tools they use. If Obama wants to defeat terrorism by banning guns he is also going to have to ban water pipes, Propane cylinders, nail polish remover and flour.

The main reason of course why Obama and Hillary Clinton are trying to deflect attention away from this terrorist attack onto the Republicans though is quite simple.

Omar Mateen is a registered member of the Democrat Party. Although I don't have his voting record to hand it will be interesting to find out if he actually voted for Hillary Clinton in the Florida primary.

19:55 on 13/6/16 (UK date).