Black Lives Matter Protest

Against themselves mainly.

It seems that the American disease of Black Lives Matter is continuing to infect the UK.

Today a number of protesters have targeted transport links in a number of British cities. Most notably tram/trolley car routes in Nottingham and roads into Britain's main Heathrow International Airport on the outskirts of the capital London.

Unlike in the US police in the UK are routinely unarmed. Last year the small proportion who are armed fired just 7 bullets. That doesn't mean that seven people were killed or even that seven people were shot. It means that just 7 bullets were fired. In a country of around 65 million people.

As such these Black Lives Matter protests in the UK seem intentionally ridiculous.

The spectacle seems to have been constructed to coincide with tonight's spectacle of the 2016 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony which is to be held in Brazil.

The histories of Brazil and the United States are closely intertwined. Particularly on the issue of slavery.

During the 1860's the US fought a civil war between the pro-Slavery Democrats of Jefferson Davis and the abolitionist Republicans of Abraham Lincoln.

Following their defeat the Democrats did not give up on slavery. Instead many of them simply moved their plantations and slaves to South American nations. Brazil being the last nation in the Americas to outlaw slavery in 1888.

Due to this shared history both Brazil and Democrat run cities and states in the US continue to share the problem of extremely violent, drug-ridden ghettos.

Through Black Lives Matter and its relentless war against the very concept of law and justice the US Democrats particularly under current President Barack Obama seem intent on turning the entire US in to one big extremely violent, drug-ridden ghetto.

Conversely as part of their efforts to move from an economically developing to a first world developed nation the Brazilians have been working very hard to eradicate their ghettos which are known locally as "Favelas."

Britain will assure you that a key event in Brazil's development was the shooting of Brazilian national Jean Charles de Menezes on July 22nd 2005 (22/7/05) in London, UK. Coming the day after the failed July 21st (21/7/16) terror attacks on London de Menezes was mistaken for a suicide bomber and shot and killed by the police.

Following de Menezes' death the Brazilian government protested the killing of one of its citizens extremely loudly to the British government over a number of years. The British government simply pointed out that at the time Brazilian police were actually being paid a bonus for every suspect they killed rather than arresting. It all got a bit bad tempered.

As I'm sure Britain will tell you it was their protests and their protests alone that forced the Brazilian government to change this policy of extra-judicial killing. This change in policy has been central in Brazil's attempts to eradicate their ghettos by what is known as; "Neighbourhood Pacification."

Rather than being an established doctrine Neighbourhood Pacification is really a new idea that the Brazilians are still trying to perfect.

Basically though it involves aggressively policing ghettos to expel the drugs gangs that occupy them. This almost combat phase is supposed to be followed up by social spending on things like neighbourhood police stations, hospitals, schools and utilities (electricity, sewers, etc) in order to reconnect the ghetto residents with mainstream society.

The success or failure of Neighbourhood Pacification is likely to be a big talking point at the Olympics. Unfortunately a lot of people are starting to think that it is starting to look more like a failure than a success.

The reason for this is simply the Olympics.

In order to get Rio de Janerio ready for the 2016 games Brazilian authorities have been forced to attempt to pacify more neighbourhoods than they've got the resources to deal with.

Due to the cost of the staging the Olympics those resources have reduced meaning that they often can't afford the social spending phase that needs to follow the combat phase.

Again I think I'll be boycotting these Olympics.

14:15 on 5/8/16 (UK date).