On December 25th (25/12/16) a Russian airforce Tupolev Tu-154B-2 - tail number RA-85572 - crashed over the Black Sea.
In the western Christian world December 25th every year is of course Christmas day - the second most important festival in the Christian calender and the biggest public holiday.
However in 1054 the Russian Orthodox Christian Church spilt away from the Roman Catholic Christian Church. Known as; "The East-West Schism" this occurred around 300 years before "The Western Schism" within the Romans Catholic Church and around 500 years before the Protestant Christian Church was invented and then spilt from the Catholic Church.
As they continue to use the Julian calender the Russian Orthodox Church doesn't celebrate Christmas until January 7th. It is also celebrated as the anniversary of the Norse King Vladimir the Great being baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church in 867 bringing Christianity to Kievan Rus' which is where the nation of Ukraine used to be.
So this crash was primarily intended as a big "F*ck You!" from Russia to the west.
It forced people to cancel their planned day off with their family to instead look for references to a nearly thousand year old theological argument over whether God or Jesus is the source of the Holy Spirit as re-told through the complexities of aviation engineering.
The crash then went on to list some of the hardships the west has put Russia through over Russia's long-term opposition to Islamist terror groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and the Al Qaeda-led, Turkish backed Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition.
For example the crash occurred over water after departing from Russia's Sochi airport.
This was a reference to the way Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on March 8th 2014 (8/3/14) in an effort to disrupt the 2014 Winter Olympics being held at the time in Sochi.
Flight MH370 has still not been found and the cause of the disappearance still remains a mystery. This is due in no small part to both Malaysia Airlines and the nation of Malaysia itself repeatedly and systematically giving false and incorrect information about the aircraft's route.
The disappearance of MH370 was of course not the only pressure placed on Russia during the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
There was also the two Islamist terrorist bombings in the city of Volgograd in December 2013. Sochi is quite a small city so if you are visiting it from abroad you would fly into either Volgograd or Moscow and then take an internal flight to Sochi. RA-85572 had itself originated in Moscow and had only stopped in Sochi to refuel before flying on to Latakia in Syria.
Then of course there was the frenzy of gay rights protests that accompanied the games.
Although it probably doesn't mean as much as it does in somewhere like the US or the UK Sochi is actually Russia's gay capital. The legacy element of awarding the games to Sochi was so that it could be used as an opportunity to tackle homophobia within Russian society. They even went so far as to make a range of deliberate mistakes in the construction of the athletes village in order to raise awareness of the endocrinological basis for homosexuality.
Unfortunately as the games arrived we discovered that many in the west just don't give a damn about furthering the cause of gay rights. Instead they just want any excuse to insult Russia and Russians.
The big pressure placed on Russia during the 2014 Sochi games though was events in Sochi's immediate neighbour on the Black Sea - Ukraine.
After the European Union (EU) had withdrawn its offer for Ukraine to seek membership the US backed Ultranationalists, neo-Nazis and some just actual WW2 Nazis to overthrow Ukraine's democratically elected government.
Having overthrown the government these Fascists did what Fascists always do - they set about trying to cleanse the nation of its ethnically Russian minority. I'm sure all those commenting on the situation are experts in the history of Vladimir the Great.
This attempt at ethnic cleansing obviously caused a massive refugee crisis at the Russian border. Despite frequently asserting their commitment to the doctrine of "Responsibility to Protect" western nations led by the US did not call for a UN mission to protect the ethnic minority and restore Ukraine's government. Instead they took the bizarre step of imposing sanctions on Russia.
So on February 22nd (22/2/14) the nation sate of Ukraine ceased to exist. In it's place there now stands the Shamali or Northern Province of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). On March 16th 2014 (16/3/14) the people of Crimea rather sensibly voted to rejoin Russia. Much to the annoyance of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Since the events of late 2013/early 2014 a brutal religiously and racially charged war has raged in Shamali Province as it has in all of ISIL's 'provinces'.
This civil war has seen the junta based in Kiev use modern fighter aircraft to bomb civilians in the east of their country. As is their right those civilians have used weapons mostly liberated from the Voldarsky facility to defend themselves. Despite the ferocity of this civil war the Kiev based junta did not see a need to stop civilian aircraft flying into the combat zone - including areas the junta itself was bombing from the sky.
Almost inevitably on July 17th 2014 (17/7/14) this led to Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 being shotdown over eastern Shamali Province. With the loss of 298 lives this was the worst disaster in Malaysia Airlines history since the disappearance of MH370 just four months earlier.
The international response to the crash of MH17 was as instant as it was hysterical.
Even before any attempt at an investigation had been launched it was blamed on Vladimir Putin personally and of course more sanctions were imposed against Russia. The Dutch civilians lost in the crash were unusually granted the military honour of flag draped coffins at their funerals. That would normally indicate that they had chosen to sacrifice their lives in the cause of the Netherlands' war against Russia.
US President Barack Obama even went so far to as to invite Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to holiday privately with his family in Hawaii over the Christmas of 2014. That "Thank You" seems to have come on top the USD1bn that mysteriously appeared in Razak's personal bank account in early 2015 as part of the 1 Malaysia Development Bank (1MDB) scandal.
On October 13th 2015 (13/10/15) the Dutch Transportation Safety Board published its final report into MH17.
It found what we'd known all along - untrained civilian volunteers had accidentally shot down the aircraft thinking that it was another of the aircraft the junta had sent to bomb them. The main causes of the crash was the criminally negligent way the aircraft had been operated by Malaysia Airlines and the criminally negligent way the airspace had been operated by the junta.
The results of the Dutch investigation seem to have been completely disregarded as the US and Malaysia in particular continue to push for prosecutions of those responsible for the firing of the missile and only those people. Even if investigators do identify and capture not only the specific individual responsible for pressing the button and the specific individual responsible for giving the order they are still going to have to explain what is, in any way, illegal about using a weapon of war during a war.
The international response to the MH17 crash has been in sharp contrast to a number of other recent air crashes.
For example the October 4th 2001 (4/10/01) crash of Siberia Airlines flight 1812 en route from Tel Aviv, Israel to Novosibirsk, Russia over the Black Sea some 190km (114 miles) south-west of Sochi. This Tupolev Tu-154M - tail number RA-85693 - was shot down by the Ukrainian airforce. After initially lying about the incident the then Ukrainian government finally admitted this in 2003.
Despite compensation payments being made to the victims no attempt has ever been made to prosecute anyone over that accidental shooting down.
The international response to the MH17 crash has also been in sharp contrast to the October 31st 2015 (31/10/15) crash of Metrojet flight 7K9268 over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. It is well established that this aircraft was blown out of the sky by a bomb killing 224 Russian civilians. ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack while the entire espionage world quietly coughed; "Erdogan."
In response to the bombing of 7K9268 there has been no international investigation, no talk of prosecution and certainly no sanctions.
It's almost as if the western world seems to think that blowing civilian airliners out of the sky is perfectly acceptable behaviour. Providing it's Russian civilians being killed in ISIL's cause.
At around 17:30 on 31/12/16 (UK date) I may - if I'm been really dull - pick this up after dinner. Tomorrow seems more likely though.
Edited at around 19:55 on 31/12/16 (UK date) to add;
Amongst the 92 killed in the RA-85572 were 64 members Alexandrov Ensemble Choir. Sometimes known as; "The Red Army Choir" this is an extremely famous Russian military choir. I think they performed at all of the Sochi Olympic ceremonies. However there inclusion here seems to be a reference to the Eurovision Song Contest.
At the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest Shamali Province took the unusual step of not representing themselves. Instead they chose to be represented by someone from the Crimea region of Russia.
An ethnic Turk Jamala's song; "1944" was a reference to Stalin's expulsion of ethnic Turks from what was then the Soviet Union in 1944. Obviously no mention was made of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror's expulsion of ethnic Crimeans to make way for the ethnic Turks in 1475.
Shamali Province's 2016 Eurovision entry broke many of the Song Contest's rules. However it crucially broke the golden rule that entries may not contain overt political messages.
Obviously it's easy to see why the event organisers decided to waive their own rules on this occasion.
After all Shamali Province was one of the big political talking points that year. If they'd been asked to comply with the rules there is a good chance that Shamali Province would simply have refused to attend thus defeating the purpose of the exercise. However judging from the mood at the contest I got the impression we would be witnessing the first time in history an entry had ended up with a negative score.
While I think it naively came from a good place the decision to declare Shamali Province the winners of the 2016 contest and therefore hosts of the 2017 Song Contest was one of utter madness.
By holding the 2017 Song Contest in Shamali Province the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is effectively demanding that Russia interferes in the country in order to provide security to the participants.
Although US President Obama will be a distant memory by then we know from MH17 that the Kiev junta will think nothing of attacking the Song Contest in the hope that it will be blamed on Russia. Even if the junta has no plans to attack the contest itself it is unlikely to be able to control the illegal neo-Nazi battalions such as the Azov Battalion and convicted war criminal Nadiya Savchenko's Aidar Battalion.
Then of course you have the out-and-out Islamist terrorism of Shamali Province's ethnic Turkish population. Taking their orders from Turkey's President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the bombing of 7K928 and the November 2015 bombing of Crimea's power supply demonstrated they are both an unknown quantity and an extremely violent one.
Russia will have to manage all those threats to the Song Contest while many members of the EBU alongside the US are looking for any excuse to impose more sanctions on Russia for interfering in Shamali Province.
So if the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest does take place in Shamali Province and none of the participants are killed or injured I assume the EBU won't be asking Russia to pay membership dues until at least 2020.
The end of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest was marked by yet another air crash. This time the May 19th (19/5/16) crash of Egypt Air flight MS804 over the Mediterranean Sea en route from Paris, France to Cairo, Egypt with the loss of 66 civilian lives.
From what we know of the investigation MS804 suffered an explosion like event at the base of it's starboard side cockpit. This location is hemispherically opposite to where MH17 suffered an explosion like event at the top of it's port side cockpit.
At the 2016 Song Contest hemisphere's were often used to discuss transgenderism without breaking the no politics rule. After all hemispheres might be non-binary but gender certainly is. Belarus - as in the Minsk Protocol - were even more explicit in their criticism of Shamali Province with a song entitled; "Help You to Fly."
The other main talking point at the 2016 Song Contest was Europe's refugee/irregular migrant crisis. This is fed by two main routes; the Balkan route from Turkey and the Mediterranean route from north Africa. Prior to the Song Contest on May 1st (1/5/16)
British Airways flight BA108 from Dubai to London, UK had to be escorted
by Swedish made military jets after straying into Hungary's airspace to highlight the Balkan route.
Aboard MS804 was a British victim by the name of Richard Osman. This of course was not the rather famous British quizshow presenter Richard Osman who gave Britain's scores at the Song Contest. Instead it was a Richard Osman from Wales. Specifically the exact same part of Wales as my notorious grandmother.
Due to Erdogan's famously thin skin Turkey did not participate in the 2016 Song Contest. As a result the downing of MS804 certainly bore all the hallmarks of Erdogan using Islamist terrorism to muscle his way into the conversation. While celebrating Shamali Province's success with yet another attack on Egypt.
Of course we don't definitely know what happened to MS804. That's because unlike MH17 there has been no international outrage, no international investigation and certainly no talk of prosecution. In fact French investigators have actually come out and said that they won't be issuing a report into the crashing claiming it would be too difficult for them to do so.
On December 15th (15/12/16) - shortly before they released the bodies of the dead for burial - Egyptian investigators announced that they had found traces of explosives on some of the victims. That tallies with an unofficial statement by French investigators on September 16th (16/9/16) that they too had found traces of explosives.
I can certainly see why admitting that Turkish backed Islamist terrorists had managed to breach airside security at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport is something France would find extremely embarrassing.
Another high profile life lost aboard RA-85572 was that of famous Russian humanitarian Yelizaveta Glinka M.D (AKA; "Dr Liza). In part this was a reference to the 6 leading figures in the fight against HIV/AIDS who were aboard MH17 en route to the 20th International AIDS conference in Melbourne, Australia.
However the death of Dr Liza was a reference to some very specific aspects of current military operations within Syria. Rather than trying to explain them here it would be better for me to explain them fully as part of my posts on that war. In fact the reason why I'm working on this on New Year's Eve is so I can get back to that as soon as possible.
That said on December 12th (12/12/16) Erdogan staged a bombing at the Besiktas Stadium on the European side of the Bosporus Strait in through Istanbul. That was intended as a threat to Russia that unless it drops is opposition to ISIL and the JAF Erdogan could close the Bosporus cutting off sea access from Russia's Black Sea ports to Syria's Mediterranean ports such as Latakia.
Obviously even with sea access cut off Russia could still supply Latakia via the air. However that would be very expensive and as this crash demonstrates possibly extremely dangerous. Particularly if Erdogan also activates Turkey's air defences.
Also Dr Lisa was said en route to help children in Tishreen in Syria's Latakia province. That is not to be confused with Tishrin Dam which is in Syria's Aleppo province. Depending on who you're talking to locations in Syria are given in either Arabic, Kurdish, Turkish, English, Russian and sometimes French. As a result it can be quite easy to get confused.
Tishrin Dam is important because it is where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) crossed the Euphrates River into the area known as; "Garvaghy Road" in December 2015. In August 2016 Erdogan sent Turkish forces to formally invade and occupy Garvaghy Road. This was done specifically to prevent the SDF cutting both ISIL and the JAF's supply lines to and from Turkey.
Over the course of the last weak Erdogan has been significantly increasing Turkish forces within Garvaghy Road. Officially this is being done to capture the town of al-Bab from ISIL. However from experience we know that these ISIL fighters will simply be absorbed into the ranks of the Turkish irregular forces which fight as part of the Army of Conquest.
The big concern is that following the capture of al-Bab Erdogan will turn his attentions to SDF positions in the town of Manbij. Around 50km (30 miles) north-east of al-Bab along the M4 Motorway Manbij is the town the SDF liberated from ISIL after liberating the Tishrin Dam and crossing the Euphrates.
Amongst the SDF's ranks at Manbij there are certainly US Special Operations Forces (SOF). There are also rumoured to be French and British SOF's located there. That is alongside the citizens of many western nations who fight as part of the SDF's Quinta Brigada international brigade. So a Turkish attack on Manbij would put it in direct combat against other members of the NATO coalition.
Up until yesterday (30/12/16) the US-led air coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - had been refusing to provide air support to Erdogan's invasion and occupation force. This has obviously slowed down their efforts to capture al-Bab.
On Thursday (29/12/16) Russia started providing air support to Erdogan's forces at al-Bab. This is the first time ever that Russia has provided combat support to the military of a NATO member. With NATO being set up specifically to fight Russians it is hard to overstate how significant that is. It would seem to be the first step in Erdogan withdrawing Turkey from NATO to pursue a military alliance with Russia.
That fear obviously played on CJTFOIR's mind. So yesterday (30/12/16) CJTFOIR started providing air support to Erdogan's forces at al-Bab. This seems to have been done specifically to prevent Russia from providing further air support. It remains what I think is termed a; "Dynamic" situation.
Attempting to play NATO and Russia off against each other has clearly been Erdogan's plan for quite some time.
As such it is hard to overstate how ridiculous, childish and detached from reality President Obama's decision to expel 35 Russian diplomats on Thursday (29/12/16). Hopefully over the remaining 20 days US Establishment will follow Putin's example and just ignore him.
At around 21:50 on 31/12/16 (UK date) I will now be picking this up tomorrow. Possibly in a seperate post.
Saturday, 31 December 2016
Friday, 30 December 2016
National Action: Domestic Terror Group.
All I seem to talk about these days is how the Cold War was fought by proxy. The Soviet states would support Communist revolutionary groups and the NATO nations would support Ultranationalist and Fascist groups to counter them.
So for example in Turkey you had the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Both of these political parties remain active and each have an armed wing - the People's Defence Forces (HPG) and the Grey Wolves respectively.
Due to the Northern Irish Troubles Britain actually had various different groups. However on the British mainland the main NATO backed group was Combat 18.
Taking their name from the 1st and 8th letter of the Latin alphabet to signify Adolf Hitler Combat 18 were an extreme neo-Nazi group. They were closely linked to the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) in Northern Ireland and at the very least inspired David Copeland in his April 1999 bombing campaign which included the bombing of the Admiral Duncan gay bar in central London. Following the September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) terror attacks in the US Combat 18 were rapidly disbanded as the nature of terrorism changed.
Between roughly 2010 and 2015 the UK did try to to resurrect this Cold War strategy with the creation of the English Defence League (EDL) - an Ultranationalist but not strictly speaking neo-Nazi group. The intention being to pit white working class nationalists against the political left in order to stop them uniting to fight the government's austerity program.
The EDL spawned a smaller group called National Action. Primarily aimed at people aged 18-35 National Action is an extreme neo-Nazi group very reminiscent of Combat 18 whose members not only embrace violence but seem to see it as an end into itself.
National Action really started to set off alarm bells in January 2015 when one of it's members - Zack Davies - brutally and randomly attacked a Sikh man - Dr Sarandev Singh Bhambra - with a machete a supermarket in Wales. Despite the fact that Dr Bhambra was a Sikh Davies said he committed this attack to avenge the Muslim terrorists who murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby in May 2013.
Obviously I can no more speak for all the World's Sikhs then I can for all the World's Muslims. However as a general rule they really hate each other. So attacking a Sikh in revenge for Islamist terrorism is possibly the dumbest thing you can do.
In September 2015 Zack Davies was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to a minimum of 14years in prison. At the end of the trial Dr Bhambra and his family along with many on Britain's political left were demanding to know why the police and Courts weren't treating the attack as an example of neo-Nazi terrorism and policing National Action accordingly.
The reason for this is that National Action had already been passed over to Britain's domestic Security Service - MI5 - who were conducting a covert operation against National Action.
Part of that covert operation seems to have been the June 2016 killing of Jo Cox MP. That of course had nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with eliminating a woman who was channelling funds to groups at war with the UK. The public campaign that Jo Cox was planning on groups like National Action would have blown the covert operation apart.
On December 16th (16/12/16) National Action were formally proscribed as a terrorist group for the purposes of the Terrorism Act 2000. As a result membership of or support for National Action became a criminal offence on December 19th (19/12/16). I took that as a sign that MI5 had gathered all the information they needed to completely dismantle the group.
So this is something that's been bugging me since the Davies trial.
Although delayed I wasn't going to let France's antics at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that weekend make me forget about it entirely.
17:15 on 30/12/16 (UK date).
So for example in Turkey you had the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Both of these political parties remain active and each have an armed wing - the People's Defence Forces (HPG) and the Grey Wolves respectively.
Due to the Northern Irish Troubles Britain actually had various different groups. However on the British mainland the main NATO backed group was Combat 18.
Taking their name from the 1st and 8th letter of the Latin alphabet to signify Adolf Hitler Combat 18 were an extreme neo-Nazi group. They were closely linked to the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) in Northern Ireland and at the very least inspired David Copeland in his April 1999 bombing campaign which included the bombing of the Admiral Duncan gay bar in central London. Following the September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) terror attacks in the US Combat 18 were rapidly disbanded as the nature of terrorism changed.
Between roughly 2010 and 2015 the UK did try to to resurrect this Cold War strategy with the creation of the English Defence League (EDL) - an Ultranationalist but not strictly speaking neo-Nazi group. The intention being to pit white working class nationalists against the political left in order to stop them uniting to fight the government's austerity program.
The EDL spawned a smaller group called National Action. Primarily aimed at people aged 18-35 National Action is an extreme neo-Nazi group very reminiscent of Combat 18 whose members not only embrace violence but seem to see it as an end into itself.
National Action really started to set off alarm bells in January 2015 when one of it's members - Zack Davies - brutally and randomly attacked a Sikh man - Dr Sarandev Singh Bhambra - with a machete a supermarket in Wales. Despite the fact that Dr Bhambra was a Sikh Davies said he committed this attack to avenge the Muslim terrorists who murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby in May 2013.
Obviously I can no more speak for all the World's Sikhs then I can for all the World's Muslims. However as a general rule they really hate each other. So attacking a Sikh in revenge for Islamist terrorism is possibly the dumbest thing you can do.
In September 2015 Zack Davies was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to a minimum of 14years in prison. At the end of the trial Dr Bhambra and his family along with many on Britain's political left were demanding to know why the police and Courts weren't treating the attack as an example of neo-Nazi terrorism and policing National Action accordingly.
The reason for this is that National Action had already been passed over to Britain's domestic Security Service - MI5 - who were conducting a covert operation against National Action.
Part of that covert operation seems to have been the June 2016 killing of Jo Cox MP. That of course had nothing to do with the EU and everything to do with eliminating a woman who was channelling funds to groups at war with the UK. The public campaign that Jo Cox was planning on groups like National Action would have blown the covert operation apart.
On December 16th (16/12/16) National Action were formally proscribed as a terrorist group for the purposes of the Terrorism Act 2000. As a result membership of or support for National Action became a criminal offence on December 19th (19/12/16). I took that as a sign that MI5 had gathered all the information they needed to completely dismantle the group.
So this is something that's been bugging me since the Davies trial.
Although delayed I wasn't going to let France's antics at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that weekend make me forget about it entirely.
17:15 on 30/12/16 (UK date).
Thursday, 29 December 2016
Operation Featherweight: Month 30, Week 2, Day 1.
Bear with me for a minute.
Every year at Christmas I have a choice;
I can go down Salisbury to visit my mothers. There I can celebrate a very traditional Christmas with my extended family, a Turkey dinner with all trimmings and long walks with dog in the country before curling up in front of an open fire.
Alternatively I can stay at home and celebrate a small Christmas with my father.
The problem is if I go down to Salisbury I'm constantly worrying about my father and what for him will be no Christmas at all. Plus an increasingly old man rattling around in a big empty home is too much of a target for some of Croydon's more unsavoury elements.
So this year I stayed up with my father. Then on the 27th (27/12/16) I went down to Salisbury. I've just returned this evening.
Primarily this was to see the mother I've barely spoken to in the best part of two years. Now she's retired from the civil service and is no longer bound by confidentially agreements her views on Brexit are certainly informative. Also you remember my cousin that's in the army? Well apparently he was discharged on the 19th (19/12/16) and is about to start doing something mechanical and clever with engines in the private sector.
Although I'd made my plans beforehand the December 27th (27/12/16) was of course the original date set for these Russian-led talks on Syria.
At the time I said these talks were scheduled for then to take advantage of the quiet. That remains true.
In the week between Christmas day (25/12/16) and New Year's day (1/1/17) most people in the west are at home on holiday with their families
As a result something would have to be extremely serious to get a public statement from the Prime Minister, other head of government or Ambassador to the UN.
Parliaments and Congress' are also on holiday meaning that the likes of Andrew Mitchell MP are denied a platform to spew their hate. Plus even if they were talking nobody would be listening or bothering to read the newspapers.
I seriously think that one of the main reasons why Tunisia's revolution was a success is because it occurred during this period. That meant there weren't enough western spies, politicians and diplomats on duty to screw it up.
As one of those people paying at least some attention no matter the day I can't help but think December 27th was chosen specifically because it clashed with my travel plans. If that sounds like a boast trust me, it really doesn't feel like one.
Although it's normal to me I understand that my family can seem somewhat confusing to outsiders. Let's be honest, I had most of you at; "Lesbian Mothers."
While I don't like discussing other people's medical issues on the Internet one of those mothers has been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. That is when the immune system attacks the soft tissue of the joints causing severe pain and mobility problems. However the new - very expensive - treatment seems to be doing its job. I'm sure you could get something about NHS funding and Obamacare out of that issue.
That mother's dream for when she retired was to get a small job in a supermarket to keep her busy. This year that dream finally came true with her taking a seasonal job.
She has since discovered that in reality minimum wage jobs in supermarkets are not what dreams are made of. Her manager really screwed about with her hours meaning I only got to see her after she'd finished at lunchtime. It would be extremely cheeky of me to suggest I really need to send her manager a thank you gift.
Then of course there is my apparently cryogenically frozen sister. There is also my brother's Muslim girlfriend. Although she's not particularly observant we're all secretly a little bit worried that one day her sister's going to turn up in Raqqa.
That's all before we get onto the topic of my mothers' Turkish neighbours who I only learnt of back in October.
In a world where talks on the Syria war are organised around my Christmas plans that could be any number of things;
Erdogan could have dispatched them to spy on and possibly assassinate my mothers, myself or any number of my extended family.
As a condition of their immigration status the UK could have enticed them to live near my mothers so they could spy on them. Their frequent trips back to Turkey would certainly an interesting topic as that nation becomes increasingly Islamist under Erdogan.
Or alternatively it could be nothing at all.
With Turkey being a NATO ally during the Cold War there's hardly a shortage of Turks living in the UK including some of my friends and associates. Although I lacked the time, energy and social skills to speak to them in person these particular Turks have been living in Salisbury longer than my mothers. They've been neighbours since before this war - or my involvement in it at least - kicked off.
It is though Irish Catholic lesbians discussing child rearing with heterosexual Muslim Turks. Even I have to admit that sounds a bit weird. Mind you most sentences starting with the phrase; "Irish Catholic lesbians" tends to sound a bit weird.
So in scheduling the Astana talks for December 27th Russian President Vladimir Putin was hoping that these confusing issues would exert a huge amount of pressure on all the participants. That would allow Putin to impose whatever agreement he wanted. Then Putin would be able to present himself as an all powerful global statesman in the hope that would distract Russians from an economy collapsing under their weight of Putin's cronyism.
The cheapness of this trick was I think pretty obvious to all participants. There has also been growing concern over Putin's commitment to a secular, stable and democratic Syrian state. This is particularly true in the face of France's recent nonsense at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). So the meeting was brought forward to the December 20th (20/12/16). And Putin got a sharp lesson in the type of lunatic he's trying to reason with.
This did not go down at all well with Britain. After all my peculiar family is apparently there to serve the glory of Britain. Not the glory of Russia.
At around 20:15 on 29/12/16 (UK date) I will pick this up after dinner. I have just walked in the door after all.
Edited at around 20:30 on 29/12/16 (UK date) to add;
So immediately after the December 19th (19/12/16) terror attack in Berlin, Germany it was announced that security would be stepped up around Buckingham Palace in London, UK during the changing of the guard ceremony. Last Christmas I joked about Britain's Special Air Service (SAS) staking out my home. This Christmas I think we were on the brink of that actually happening.
Then on the 21st (21/12/16) it was announced that the Queen would be delay her traditional train journey to her Sandringham Castle due to a cold. Due to strike action or just bad weather the big concern was that I might get trapped in Salisbury. I actually took the step of making sure my brother could travel back to London before I attempted to travel to Salisbury.
Obviously discretion, misdirection and some just out-and-out lying are key parts of a security plan. However I suppose I could have reassured people that not only does Salisbury have electricity now they also have the Internet too. Weirdly though cellphone reception is apparently better at Stonehenge then at my mothers' house.
The Queen of course did go on to travel to Sandringham via helicopter.
I would have also liked to have reassured people that Salisbury is also home to a very big British military base. The truth though is that it's home to the military's Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA). So there are actually like nine bases of all branches of the military in the local area. This year I'm pretty sure that I even bumped into some off-duty members of the French military.
So I got the impression that if things had got really bad the Army Air Corp would've delivered me home. Landing a Chinook in the local park would certainly have sent a strong message to some of the more unsavoury neighbours. Particularly if they'd dressed it up as a training mission and sent an Apache escort.
On (western) Christmas day Russia delivered it's big; "F*CK YOU!" to the world in the form of the military Tu-154 crash in the Black Sea off the coast of Sochi. This forced the British Queen to miss her made-up Church with a very, very cold.
Obviously the Black Sea crash warrants a post of its own. However it was essentially a list of all the hardships Russia has been subjected to over the Syria issue. So for example the fact that it was a crash over water referenced the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 during the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Aside from the choir in reference to the Eurovision Song Contest one of the most high profile fatalities was famous Russian humanitarian Yelizaveta Glinka M.D (AKA; "Dr Liza). This was a reference to the way the reckless operation of the skies over Shamali Province (nee; Ukraine) caused 6 leading doctors in the fight against HIV/AIDS to be killed in the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
However the important detail you may have missed is that Dr Liza was on her way to treat refugee (technically; Internally Displaced People/IDP) children in the Tishreen area of Syria. The entirely seperate Tishrin Dam is where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) crossed the Euphrates River into the area known as; "Garvaghy Road."
Within Garvaghy Road Erdogan has been building up his illegal invasion and occupation force around the town of al-Bab. This is being done on the pretext of capturing al-Bab from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). However due to experience everybody knows that the ISIL fighters will simply be absorbed into the Al Qaeda-led, Turkish-backed Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) Islamist terror coalition.
As a result everybody is deeply concerned that Erdogan will soon turn his attentions to attacking SDF positions in Manbij which is around 50km (30 miles) north-east of al-Bab along the M4 Motorway.
Amongst SDF ranks at Manbij you have at the very least have US Special Operations Forces (SOF). You also have members of the SDF's Quinta Brigada international brigade including the British Bob Crowe division.
Up until now the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - have been refusing to provide Erdogan's forces with air support at al-Bab which has certainly slowed their progress.
Today Russia has announced that it's glorious, statesman-like leader Vladimir Putin had succeeded in brokering a ceasefire in Syria. This announcement came literally the moment I switched on my computer today. However it has been stated that the ceasefire does not apply to what are being described as; "Terrorist Groups." Erdogan's irregulars fighting at al-Bab have made clear that it does not apply to the SDF which they consider to be a; "Terrorist Group."
Shortly after the ceasefire was announced the Russian air force started providing Turkish forces with air support at al-Bab. This is the first time ever that Russia has provided combat support to the military of NATO member state.
Literally as I walked in the door this evening outgoing US President Barack Obama announced that the US was expelling 35 Russian diplomats over the Hillary Clinton campaign's pathetic cover story about Russian computer hacking.
So I'm inclined to think that we should hear no more from Obama until he personally can provide a solution to that question I posed on behalf of GCHQ yesterday.
In terms of an update of the gifts exchanged between my mothers and I it can probably wait until a later date. However it is often said that it is not the gift itself but the thought that went into that gift which counts.
If that is true I'm inclined to think that my mere presence was the most generous gift the world has ever seen.
Good luck convincing my mothers of that though.
22:40 on 29/12/16 (UK date).
Every year at Christmas I have a choice;
I can go down Salisbury to visit my mothers. There I can celebrate a very traditional Christmas with my extended family, a Turkey dinner with all trimmings and long walks with dog in the country before curling up in front of an open fire.
Alternatively I can stay at home and celebrate a small Christmas with my father.
The problem is if I go down to Salisbury I'm constantly worrying about my father and what for him will be no Christmas at all. Plus an increasingly old man rattling around in a big empty home is too much of a target for some of Croydon's more unsavoury elements.
So this year I stayed up with my father. Then on the 27th (27/12/16) I went down to Salisbury. I've just returned this evening.
Primarily this was to see the mother I've barely spoken to in the best part of two years. Now she's retired from the civil service and is no longer bound by confidentially agreements her views on Brexit are certainly informative. Also you remember my cousin that's in the army? Well apparently he was discharged on the 19th (19/12/16) and is about to start doing something mechanical and clever with engines in the private sector.
Although I'd made my plans beforehand the December 27th (27/12/16) was of course the original date set for these Russian-led talks on Syria.
At the time I said these talks were scheduled for then to take advantage of the quiet. That remains true.
In the week between Christmas day (25/12/16) and New Year's day (1/1/17) most people in the west are at home on holiday with their families
As a result something would have to be extremely serious to get a public statement from the Prime Minister, other head of government or Ambassador to the UN.
Parliaments and Congress' are also on holiday meaning that the likes of Andrew Mitchell MP are denied a platform to spew their hate. Plus even if they were talking nobody would be listening or bothering to read the newspapers.
I seriously think that one of the main reasons why Tunisia's revolution was a success is because it occurred during this period. That meant there weren't enough western spies, politicians and diplomats on duty to screw it up.
As one of those people paying at least some attention no matter the day I can't help but think December 27th was chosen specifically because it clashed with my travel plans. If that sounds like a boast trust me, it really doesn't feel like one.
Although it's normal to me I understand that my family can seem somewhat confusing to outsiders. Let's be honest, I had most of you at; "Lesbian Mothers."
While I don't like discussing other people's medical issues on the Internet one of those mothers has been suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. That is when the immune system attacks the soft tissue of the joints causing severe pain and mobility problems. However the new - very expensive - treatment seems to be doing its job. I'm sure you could get something about NHS funding and Obamacare out of that issue.
That mother's dream for when she retired was to get a small job in a supermarket to keep her busy. This year that dream finally came true with her taking a seasonal job.
She has since discovered that in reality minimum wage jobs in supermarkets are not what dreams are made of. Her manager really screwed about with her hours meaning I only got to see her after she'd finished at lunchtime. It would be extremely cheeky of me to suggest I really need to send her manager a thank you gift.
Then of course there is my apparently cryogenically frozen sister. There is also my brother's Muslim girlfriend. Although she's not particularly observant we're all secretly a little bit worried that one day her sister's going to turn up in Raqqa.
That's all before we get onto the topic of my mothers' Turkish neighbours who I only learnt of back in October.
In a world where talks on the Syria war are organised around my Christmas plans that could be any number of things;
Erdogan could have dispatched them to spy on and possibly assassinate my mothers, myself or any number of my extended family.
As a condition of their immigration status the UK could have enticed them to live near my mothers so they could spy on them. Their frequent trips back to Turkey would certainly an interesting topic as that nation becomes increasingly Islamist under Erdogan.
Or alternatively it could be nothing at all.
With Turkey being a NATO ally during the Cold War there's hardly a shortage of Turks living in the UK including some of my friends and associates. Although I lacked the time, energy and social skills to speak to them in person these particular Turks have been living in Salisbury longer than my mothers. They've been neighbours since before this war - or my involvement in it at least - kicked off.
It is though Irish Catholic lesbians discussing child rearing with heterosexual Muslim Turks. Even I have to admit that sounds a bit weird. Mind you most sentences starting with the phrase; "Irish Catholic lesbians" tends to sound a bit weird.
So in scheduling the Astana talks for December 27th Russian President Vladimir Putin was hoping that these confusing issues would exert a huge amount of pressure on all the participants. That would allow Putin to impose whatever agreement he wanted. Then Putin would be able to present himself as an all powerful global statesman in the hope that would distract Russians from an economy collapsing under their weight of Putin's cronyism.
The cheapness of this trick was I think pretty obvious to all participants. There has also been growing concern over Putin's commitment to a secular, stable and democratic Syrian state. This is particularly true in the face of France's recent nonsense at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). So the meeting was brought forward to the December 20th (20/12/16). And Putin got a sharp lesson in the type of lunatic he's trying to reason with.
This did not go down at all well with Britain. After all my peculiar family is apparently there to serve the glory of Britain. Not the glory of Russia.
At around 20:15 on 29/12/16 (UK date) I will pick this up after dinner. I have just walked in the door after all.
Edited at around 20:30 on 29/12/16 (UK date) to add;
So immediately after the December 19th (19/12/16) terror attack in Berlin, Germany it was announced that security would be stepped up around Buckingham Palace in London, UK during the changing of the guard ceremony. Last Christmas I joked about Britain's Special Air Service (SAS) staking out my home. This Christmas I think we were on the brink of that actually happening.
Then on the 21st (21/12/16) it was announced that the Queen would be delay her traditional train journey to her Sandringham Castle due to a cold. Due to strike action or just bad weather the big concern was that I might get trapped in Salisbury. I actually took the step of making sure my brother could travel back to London before I attempted to travel to Salisbury.
Obviously discretion, misdirection and some just out-and-out lying are key parts of a security plan. However I suppose I could have reassured people that not only does Salisbury have electricity now they also have the Internet too. Weirdly though cellphone reception is apparently better at Stonehenge then at my mothers' house.
The Queen of course did go on to travel to Sandringham via helicopter.
I would have also liked to have reassured people that Salisbury is also home to a very big British military base. The truth though is that it's home to the military's Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA). So there are actually like nine bases of all branches of the military in the local area. This year I'm pretty sure that I even bumped into some off-duty members of the French military.
So I got the impression that if things had got really bad the Army Air Corp would've delivered me home. Landing a Chinook in the local park would certainly have sent a strong message to some of the more unsavoury neighbours. Particularly if they'd dressed it up as a training mission and sent an Apache escort.
On (western) Christmas day Russia delivered it's big; "F*CK YOU!" to the world in the form of the military Tu-154 crash in the Black Sea off the coast of Sochi. This forced the British Queen to miss her made-up Church with a very, very cold.
Obviously the Black Sea crash warrants a post of its own. However it was essentially a list of all the hardships Russia has been subjected to over the Syria issue. So for example the fact that it was a crash over water referenced the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 during the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
Aside from the choir in reference to the Eurovision Song Contest one of the most high profile fatalities was famous Russian humanitarian Yelizaveta Glinka M.D (AKA; "Dr Liza). This was a reference to the way the reckless operation of the skies over Shamali Province (nee; Ukraine) caused 6 leading doctors in the fight against HIV/AIDS to be killed in the crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.
However the important detail you may have missed is that Dr Liza was on her way to treat refugee (technically; Internally Displaced People/IDP) children in the Tishreen area of Syria. The entirely seperate Tishrin Dam is where the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) crossed the Euphrates River into the area known as; "Garvaghy Road."
Within Garvaghy Road Erdogan has been building up his illegal invasion and occupation force around the town of al-Bab. This is being done on the pretext of capturing al-Bab from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). However due to experience everybody knows that the ISIL fighters will simply be absorbed into the Al Qaeda-led, Turkish-backed Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) Islamist terror coalition.
As a result everybody is deeply concerned that Erdogan will soon turn his attentions to attacking SDF positions in Manbij which is around 50km (30 miles) north-east of al-Bab along the M4 Motorway.
Amongst SDF ranks at Manbij you have at the very least have US Special Operations Forces (SOF). You also have members of the SDF's Quinta Brigada international brigade including the British Bob Crowe division.
Up until now the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - have been refusing to provide Erdogan's forces with air support at al-Bab which has certainly slowed their progress.
Today Russia has announced that it's glorious, statesman-like leader Vladimir Putin had succeeded in brokering a ceasefire in Syria. This announcement came literally the moment I switched on my computer today. However it has been stated that the ceasefire does not apply to what are being described as; "Terrorist Groups." Erdogan's irregulars fighting at al-Bab have made clear that it does not apply to the SDF which they consider to be a; "Terrorist Group."
Shortly after the ceasefire was announced the Russian air force started providing Turkish forces with air support at al-Bab. This is the first time ever that Russia has provided combat support to the military of NATO member state.
Literally as I walked in the door this evening outgoing US President Barack Obama announced that the US was expelling 35 Russian diplomats over the Hillary Clinton campaign's pathetic cover story about Russian computer hacking.
So I'm inclined to think that we should hear no more from Obama until he personally can provide a solution to that question I posed on behalf of GCHQ yesterday.
In terms of an update of the gifts exchanged between my mothers and I it can probably wait until a later date. However it is often said that it is not the gift itself but the thought that went into that gift which counts.
If that is true I'm inclined to think that my mere presence was the most generous gift the world has ever seen.
Good luck convincing my mothers of that though.
22:40 on 29/12/16 (UK date).
Wednesday, 28 December 2016
Accidental Hanukkah!
To me Christmas represents a logistical nightmare. To the extent that even the reasons for this are too convoluted to go into here.
However you may have noticed that I've not yet done a joyful post detailing all the gifts I've received and given. The reason for this is that up until now I've not received any. All I've got is a pile of presents waiting to be sent out to the people they're for.
In fact the whole thing seems to be developing into the Jewish tradition of Hanukkah which this year coincides with Christmas. There rather than get lots of gifts on one day you end up getting lots of gifts spread out over eight days.
However my brother has finally been up to visit his dear old father and his poor old brother. So I can now break the seal on the gift that seems to have been causing so much suspicion and suspense.
In December 2015 we of course had the COP22 Summit in Paris, France that was supposed to result in a comprehensive global agreement to not only combat but defeat Climate Change. Between Obama's decision to scrap five years of preparatory work and all the terrorism this started in October and stretched all the way through into February.
As a result I was forced to cancel Christmas. It was all I could do to get some food in to cook on the day. Immediately after lunch I went to bed. And stayed there for about three days.
So I hit on a cunning plan: Celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas instead.
That would've meant the celebrations in January would've had a slight Russian theme to them. Which would've fitted in with the BBC's big production of "War & Peace." The fact my brother and his girlfriend got me the first two seasons of; "The Americans" really sealed the deal.
Unfortunately we didn't manage to get it together for Chinese New Year let alone Russian Christmas. However having got an idea in my head I wasn't going to let it go.
So this year I decided to get my brother some nice Russian vodka - with Ginseng - and the nicest caviar Croydon could muster.
It was with his girlfriend though that my well honed sense of mayhem really kicked in. She is of course a Muslim albeit not a particularly observant one.
What I would have liked to have done is get her a nice, not quite silk scarf decorated in something of a Russian style. Due to the brutality of their winters they tend to be very into the imagery of spring such a wild flowers, ears of corn and migratory birds.
The joke being that this could double as a hijab. Or a Russian Orthodox headscarf if she ever decided to fully convert.
This too turned out to be massively complicated because retailers tend not to put out their spring stock until after the Christmas sales. So while I thought it was a funny joke it probably wasn't funny enough to instruct a screen printer.
Obviously I can't tell you what I did get her because she was working meaning we're still waiting for my brother to pass it over on my behalf. I can assure you though that it was nowhere near as imaginative as the scarf idea.
I do know though that in retaliation they got me the first four seasons of "House of Cards" on DVD. So you'll probably hear from me next sometime around June.
They also gave me the Penguin published "GCHQ Puzzle Book." Judging by that and Channel 4's upcoming; "Spies" reality-show style documentary there must be a recruiting drive on.
A sample question;
"42° 15'N, 72° 15'W, 53° 52'N, 44° 50'E, 37° 49'N, 85° 29'W, 39° 37'N, 75° 56'W, 49° 57'N 40° 17E, 51° 54'N, 02° 04'W."
Although the final results aren't yet in it seems my sister has once again won Christmas.
She gave me a Now TV box which is a Video Over Internet device similar to Apple TV. The main attraction though is that rather than having to buy a subscription you can use it on a pay-per-view basis. So if there's a particular football match I want to watch I can pay to watch just that match.
Obviously due to the chaos I can cause with just YouTube I have been hesitant to use this type of system. However as it seems to be emerging as the new industry standard resistance seems to be becoming increasingly futile.
I think I'll wait until the New Year before plugging it in though. It seems to have more sums in it then the puzzle book.
20:20 on 28/12/16 (UK date).
However you may have noticed that I've not yet done a joyful post detailing all the gifts I've received and given. The reason for this is that up until now I've not received any. All I've got is a pile of presents waiting to be sent out to the people they're for.
In fact the whole thing seems to be developing into the Jewish tradition of Hanukkah which this year coincides with Christmas. There rather than get lots of gifts on one day you end up getting lots of gifts spread out over eight days.
However my brother has finally been up to visit his dear old father and his poor old brother. So I can now break the seal on the gift that seems to have been causing so much suspicion and suspense.
In December 2015 we of course had the COP22 Summit in Paris, France that was supposed to result in a comprehensive global agreement to not only combat but defeat Climate Change. Between Obama's decision to scrap five years of preparatory work and all the terrorism this started in October and stretched all the way through into February.
As a result I was forced to cancel Christmas. It was all I could do to get some food in to cook on the day. Immediately after lunch I went to bed. And stayed there for about three days.
So I hit on a cunning plan: Celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas instead.
That would've meant the celebrations in January would've had a slight Russian theme to them. Which would've fitted in with the BBC's big production of "War & Peace." The fact my brother and his girlfriend got me the first two seasons of; "The Americans" really sealed the deal.
Unfortunately we didn't manage to get it together for Chinese New Year let alone Russian Christmas. However having got an idea in my head I wasn't going to let it go.
So this year I decided to get my brother some nice Russian vodka - with Ginseng - and the nicest caviar Croydon could muster.
It was with his girlfriend though that my well honed sense of mayhem really kicked in. She is of course a Muslim albeit not a particularly observant one.
What I would have liked to have done is get her a nice, not quite silk scarf decorated in something of a Russian style. Due to the brutality of their winters they tend to be very into the imagery of spring such a wild flowers, ears of corn and migratory birds.
The joke being that this could double as a hijab. Or a Russian Orthodox headscarf if she ever decided to fully convert.
This too turned out to be massively complicated because retailers tend not to put out their spring stock until after the Christmas sales. So while I thought it was a funny joke it probably wasn't funny enough to instruct a screen printer.
Obviously I can't tell you what I did get her because she was working meaning we're still waiting for my brother to pass it over on my behalf. I can assure you though that it was nowhere near as imaginative as the scarf idea.
I do know though that in retaliation they got me the first four seasons of "House of Cards" on DVD. So you'll probably hear from me next sometime around June.
They also gave me the Penguin published "GCHQ Puzzle Book." Judging by that and Channel 4's upcoming; "Spies" reality-show style documentary there must be a recruiting drive on.
A sample question;
"42° 15'N, 72° 15'W, 53° 52'N, 44° 50'E, 37° 49'N, 85° 29'W, 39° 37'N, 75° 56'W, 49° 57'N 40° 17E, 51° 54'N, 02° 04'W."
Although the final results aren't yet in it seems my sister has once again won Christmas.
She gave me a Now TV box which is a Video Over Internet device similar to Apple TV. The main attraction though is that rather than having to buy a subscription you can use it on a pay-per-view basis. So if there's a particular football match I want to watch I can pay to watch just that match.
Obviously due to the chaos I can cause with just YouTube I have been hesitant to use this type of system. However as it seems to be emerging as the new industry standard resistance seems to be becoming increasingly futile.
I think I'll wait until the New Year before plugging it in though. It seems to have more sums in it then the puzzle book.
20:20 on 28/12/16 (UK date).
Tuesday, 27 December 2016
You'll Never Guess Who Won Strictly.
In the UK the BBC has a show called; "Strictly Come Dancing." In the US you may know this as; "Dancing With The Stars" or in France as; "Danse Avec Les Stars."
Regardless of the country or the name the format always remains more or less the same. Celebrity contestants are partnered with a professional dancer who over the course of the show teaches them different forms of ballroom dancing. But always Strictly Ballroom. Every week one contestant leaves the show until eventually a winner is crowned.
In the UK this is one of the big entertainment shows that everybody watches and everybody talks about. So it can be helpful to the producers to cast contestants that reflect social issues that are relevant in their viewers lives.
For example in the 2016 series they cast Laura Whitmore. A model and sometimes TV presenter her main job seems to be to get paid to attend parties a look pretty.
Then there was Daisy Lowe who was also a model. If you search for her on the Internet her 2011 Playboy shoot is one of the first things that will pop up. However Daisy Lowe has since given up her life as a sexy and sultry party girl to become a mother.
Motherhood has certainly changed Ms Lowe. It would be easier to say that she's put on weight but the truth is more complicated then that. Her body shape has changed and she now has the demeanor of someone who spends their entire life crouched over telling toddlers their crayon drawings are the most amazing piece of artwork ever seen. And loving every minute of it.
Next there is Louise Redknapp. She was considered the sexy one in 1990's girl band "Eternal" before leaving to get married and having children. Now her babies have grown into teenagers her appearance on the show is part of her rediscovering her sexuality and remembering how to talk to adults.
Also amongst the female contestants there is Anastasia - another 1990's popstar. However older than Louise Redknapp Anastasia is around the age that women tend to go through the menopause. She is also recovering from breast cancer having undergone a mastectomy. The is a very obvious loss of one of the outward signs of female sexuality.
Finally there is Leslie Joseph. although the term hadn't been invented the she played a 'Cougar' in the 1980/90's sitcom;"Birds of Feather." Now in her 70's she seems to be in the autumn of her life.
So amongst the 2016 female contestants you've sort of had a cross section of the various stages of a woman's life.
The producers have also clearly been heavily influenced by the; "Oscars So White Campaign" and the entertainment industry's long standing obsession with diversity.
So this year there have been three black contestants - the most ever. That is alongside professional dancer Oti Mabuse who is not only black but a black South African.
The problem was that two of the black contestants Melvin Odoom and Tameka Empson were the first to be voted off by the public. This led to a social media campaign accusing the show of racism.
That sent the producers into something into a blind panic. They started doing everything to keep the last remaining black guy - Ori Oduba - in the show. So where the judges would be honest and constructive in their criticism suddenly every week became; "10 Points to the Black Guy!"
The big star of the show though was former UK Home Secretary (interior minister) Ed Balls. Knowing full well that he can't dance Ed Balls entered the show thinking he'd follow in a long tradition of giving everybody a good laugh before being voted out early.
However the public disagreed constantly voting to keep Ed Balls in. I like to think people were doing this to punish the producers for wrecking the show to force through their politically correct agenda. I would certainly make an interesting talking point about the Donald Trump/Brexit wave of populism.
By the time of the semifinals it had looked as if the show had learned to laugh at itself. Ori Oduba was partnered with Joanne Clifton who is white. Oti Mabuse was partnered with Danny Mac who is also white making them both examples of a mixed race couple.
The show also featured Caudia Fragapane who actually is mixed race. Also as an Olympic gymnast she is pretty tiny. Almost child sized in comparison to the other contestants.
To see who would be voted off in the semifinal it came down to Ori Oduba, Danny Mac and Claudia Fragapane. It was almost a test of who the audience hated the most; black men with white women, black women with white men or mixed race kids.
Sadly though hopes of the producers finally gaining a sense of humour were dashed. Fragapane was voted off with the black man and the black woman going through to the final.
Then to the surprise of absolutely no-one the final was won by ..... THE LAST REMAINING BLACK GUY!
On Christmas Day (25/12/16) they did a special one off show. That was won by Melvin Odoom - the other black guy who was voted off in the first week.
Well that's what I was going to write before I finally looked up Daisy Lowe on Wikipedia and discovered she's not a new mum. Apparently she's just put on weight and is a bit dim.
In fact I'm only writing this now to test out a new word processing app and because even I was getting bored of looking at the last thing I wrote.
18:25 on 27/12/16 (UK date).
Regardless of the country or the name the format always remains more or less the same. Celebrity contestants are partnered with a professional dancer who over the course of the show teaches them different forms of ballroom dancing. But always Strictly Ballroom. Every week one contestant leaves the show until eventually a winner is crowned.
In the UK this is one of the big entertainment shows that everybody watches and everybody talks about. So it can be helpful to the producers to cast contestants that reflect social issues that are relevant in their viewers lives.
For example in the 2016 series they cast Laura Whitmore. A model and sometimes TV presenter her main job seems to be to get paid to attend parties a look pretty.
Then there was Daisy Lowe who was also a model. If you search for her on the Internet her 2011 Playboy shoot is one of the first things that will pop up. However Daisy Lowe has since given up her life as a sexy and sultry party girl to become a mother.
Motherhood has certainly changed Ms Lowe. It would be easier to say that she's put on weight but the truth is more complicated then that. Her body shape has changed and she now has the demeanor of someone who spends their entire life crouched over telling toddlers their crayon drawings are the most amazing piece of artwork ever seen. And loving every minute of it.
Next there is Louise Redknapp. She was considered the sexy one in 1990's girl band "Eternal" before leaving to get married and having children. Now her babies have grown into teenagers her appearance on the show is part of her rediscovering her sexuality and remembering how to talk to adults.
Also amongst the female contestants there is Anastasia - another 1990's popstar. However older than Louise Redknapp Anastasia is around the age that women tend to go through the menopause. She is also recovering from breast cancer having undergone a mastectomy. The is a very obvious loss of one of the outward signs of female sexuality.
Finally there is Leslie Joseph. although the term hadn't been invented the she played a 'Cougar' in the 1980/90's sitcom;"Birds of Feather." Now in her 70's she seems to be in the autumn of her life.
So amongst the 2016 female contestants you've sort of had a cross section of the various stages of a woman's life.
The producers have also clearly been heavily influenced by the; "Oscars So White Campaign" and the entertainment industry's long standing obsession with diversity.
So this year there have been three black contestants - the most ever. That is alongside professional dancer Oti Mabuse who is not only black but a black South African.
The problem was that two of the black contestants Melvin Odoom and Tameka Empson were the first to be voted off by the public. This led to a social media campaign accusing the show of racism.
That sent the producers into something into a blind panic. They started doing everything to keep the last remaining black guy - Ori Oduba - in the show. So where the judges would be honest and constructive in their criticism suddenly every week became; "10 Points to the Black Guy!"
The big star of the show though was former UK Home Secretary (interior minister) Ed Balls. Knowing full well that he can't dance Ed Balls entered the show thinking he'd follow in a long tradition of giving everybody a good laugh before being voted out early.
However the public disagreed constantly voting to keep Ed Balls in. I like to think people were doing this to punish the producers for wrecking the show to force through their politically correct agenda. I would certainly make an interesting talking point about the Donald Trump/Brexit wave of populism.
By the time of the semifinals it had looked as if the show had learned to laugh at itself. Ori Oduba was partnered with Joanne Clifton who is white. Oti Mabuse was partnered with Danny Mac who is also white making them both examples of a mixed race couple.
The show also featured Caudia Fragapane who actually is mixed race. Also as an Olympic gymnast she is pretty tiny. Almost child sized in comparison to the other contestants.
To see who would be voted off in the semifinal it came down to Ori Oduba, Danny Mac and Claudia Fragapane. It was almost a test of who the audience hated the most; black men with white women, black women with white men or mixed race kids.
Sadly though hopes of the producers finally gaining a sense of humour were dashed. Fragapane was voted off with the black man and the black woman going through to the final.
Then to the surprise of absolutely no-one the final was won by ..... THE LAST REMAINING BLACK GUY!
On Christmas Day (25/12/16) they did a special one off show. That was won by Melvin Odoom - the other black guy who was voted off in the first week.
Well that's what I was going to write before I finally looked up Daisy Lowe on Wikipedia and discovered she's not a new mum. Apparently she's just put on weight and is a bit dim.
In fact I'm only writing this now to test out a new word processing app and because even I was getting bored of looking at the last thing I wrote.
18:25 on 27/12/16 (UK date).
Saturday, 24 December 2016
So Jo Cox Didn't Make it Then.
You may remember that Jo Cox was the British MP for the Labour Party who chaired the Parliamentary Syria group.
In this role she provided both political and material support to the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) terror coalition in Syria. This made Jo Cox both morally and legally responsible for literally hundreds of thousands of deaths along with numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On June 16th (16/6/16) Jo Cox was shot and killed. This had nothing to do with the EU referendum.
In response her widower husband set about using her martyrdom to raise more money to help the Army of Conquest kill more people, commit more war crimes and commit more crimes against humanity. Part of this effort was releasing a single in the hope of it reaching the once converted Christmas Number 1 slot in the music charts.
This is really a hangover from the days when singles were sold on 7 inch discs. Before Christmas people would buy these as gifts so you could give people the excitement of unwrapping lots of little parcels without spending too much money. As a result the single that sold the most copies in the week before Christmas was often the biggest selling single of the year.
The song chosen to honour Jo Cox was a cover version of the Rolling Stones song; "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
This is essentially a mockery of the self-obsessed bourgeois, bohemian political rebels of London's 1960's art and music scene. The contemporary equivalent of this are those people constantly telling us that Refugees Are Welcome.
They're the type of people that when you go up to them and ask;
"I agree that we have a duty to protect and care for refugees. Surely though you can't object to someone like Anis Amri being placed in prison whilst awaiting deportation. After all we'd established that he wasn't a refugee and surely we also have a duty to care for and protect those 12 people he murdered?"
They will respond;
"RACIST!!!!!"
Likewise if you ask;
"What about that obviously anonymous Yezidi woman who escaped sex slavery and sought refuge in Germany. Only one day in June she's in a market in Baden when suddenly she's confronted with her rapist and captor who has also been granted refugee status. Surely we owe it to her to bring that man to justice or at least make sure she's not forced to face him every day?"
They will respond with a blank stare.
That's because they don't care about refugees enough to learn anything about the subject. They only care about sounding like good people in front of their friends at the trendiest dinner parties. Or at a reception with a glass of wine in their hand.
They're the sort of people who clearly know what they want. Even if other people have different opinions about what they need.
In short the song is a 7 minute mockery of everything Jo Cox was and everything that she stood for. It even features the line; "You can tell from her bloodstained hands."
Therefore I really wanted that song to be the Christmas Number 1. It would have been the most subversive Christmas Number 1 since 2009 when Rage Against the Machine topped the charts with: "Killing in the Name Of."
Plus rather than going to the Army of Conquest any proceeds from the single would have been seized under terrorism legislation and given to a good cause. Maybe the NHS or even helping refugees rather than helping to make more people refugees.
The single's actually had quite a difficult journey. When it was released last Friday (16/12/16) the government announced that it would be supporting it by waiving sales tax amid a blaze of publicity.
When the mid-week sales charts came out on Tuesday (20/12/16) it was languishing in - I think - 60th place with little to no hope of making it to the Number 1 slot. In what was admittedly a busy week I heard a rumour that at that point the song was quietly withdrawn from sale - "deleted" in the jargon.
If that were true and they'd called at least some attention to it that would certainly have signalled a possible shift in the UK's position on those who raise money for the Army of Conquest.
The Christmas Number 1 was announced yesterday (23/12/16) at around 16:00.
Earlier in the day we got a much clearer signal of a shifting in the British position. Two men - Syed Hoque and Mashoud Miah - were convicted and imprisoned for using humanitarian aid convoys to support terrorism in Syria.
So, yeah. Sometimes I do worry about Britain's elected representatives.
17:30 on 24/12/16 (UK date).
In this role she provided both political and material support to the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) terror coalition in Syria. This made Jo Cox both morally and legally responsible for literally hundreds of thousands of deaths along with numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity.
On June 16th (16/6/16) Jo Cox was shot and killed. This had nothing to do with the EU referendum.
In response her widower husband set about using her martyrdom to raise more money to help the Army of Conquest kill more people, commit more war crimes and commit more crimes against humanity. Part of this effort was releasing a single in the hope of it reaching the once converted Christmas Number 1 slot in the music charts.
This is really a hangover from the days when singles were sold on 7 inch discs. Before Christmas people would buy these as gifts so you could give people the excitement of unwrapping lots of little parcels without spending too much money. As a result the single that sold the most copies in the week before Christmas was often the biggest selling single of the year.
The song chosen to honour Jo Cox was a cover version of the Rolling Stones song; "You Can't Always Get What You Want."
This is essentially a mockery of the self-obsessed bourgeois, bohemian political rebels of London's 1960's art and music scene. The contemporary equivalent of this are those people constantly telling us that Refugees Are Welcome.
They're the type of people that when you go up to them and ask;
"I agree that we have a duty to protect and care for refugees. Surely though you can't object to someone like Anis Amri being placed in prison whilst awaiting deportation. After all we'd established that he wasn't a refugee and surely we also have a duty to care for and protect those 12 people he murdered?"
They will respond;
"RACIST!!!!!"
Likewise if you ask;
"What about that obviously anonymous Yezidi woman who escaped sex slavery and sought refuge in Germany. Only one day in June she's in a market in Baden when suddenly she's confronted with her rapist and captor who has also been granted refugee status. Surely we owe it to her to bring that man to justice or at least make sure she's not forced to face him every day?"
They will respond with a blank stare.
That's because they don't care about refugees enough to learn anything about the subject. They only care about sounding like good people in front of their friends at the trendiest dinner parties. Or at a reception with a glass of wine in their hand.
They're the sort of people who clearly know what they want. Even if other people have different opinions about what they need.
In short the song is a 7 minute mockery of everything Jo Cox was and everything that she stood for. It even features the line; "You can tell from her bloodstained hands."
Therefore I really wanted that song to be the Christmas Number 1. It would have been the most subversive Christmas Number 1 since 2009 when Rage Against the Machine topped the charts with: "Killing in the Name Of."
Plus rather than going to the Army of Conquest any proceeds from the single would have been seized under terrorism legislation and given to a good cause. Maybe the NHS or even helping refugees rather than helping to make more people refugees.
The single's actually had quite a difficult journey. When it was released last Friday (16/12/16) the government announced that it would be supporting it by waiving sales tax amid a blaze of publicity.
When the mid-week sales charts came out on Tuesday (20/12/16) it was languishing in - I think - 60th place with little to no hope of making it to the Number 1 slot. In what was admittedly a busy week I heard a rumour that at that point the song was quietly withdrawn from sale - "deleted" in the jargon.
If that were true and they'd called at least some attention to it that would certainly have signalled a possible shift in the UK's position on those who raise money for the Army of Conquest.
The Christmas Number 1 was announced yesterday (23/12/16) at around 16:00.
Earlier in the day we got a much clearer signal of a shifting in the British position. Two men - Syed Hoque and Mashoud Miah - were convicted and imprisoned for using humanitarian aid convoys to support terrorism in Syria.
So, yeah. Sometimes I do worry about Britain's elected representatives.
17:30 on 24/12/16 (UK date).
Friday, 23 December 2016
Operation Featherweight: Month 30, Week 1, Day 3.
This should be read as a direct continuation of; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/operation-featherweight-month-30-week-1_22.html
There I think I'd just got up to the point where German authorities had announced that they'd arrested a Pakistani asylum seeker over Monday's (19/12/16) terror attack in Berlin.
I'd then explained how Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been trying to intimidate Pakistan into giving him nuclear weapons. I also explained how the US has indicated its support for using the strategy of the Balkan wars in the 1990's - Balkanisation - to help Erdogan absorb parts of Syria into the new Ottoman Empire he is hoping to build.
Then on Tuesday (20/12/16) evening German authorities announced that they'd released their Pakistani suspect having cleared him of any wrong doing. That raised obvious questions about the relevance of everything I'd written about the suspect being Pakistani.
On Wednesday (21/12/16) German authorities announced that they'd found fingerprints and identity documents belonging to another man in the truck used in the attack.
From what I know of police tactics I suspect this evidence was found within a matter of hours of the attack. However I also know that it can be extremely useful to the police to have everybody reporting that the suspect is in custody and the manhunt is over. It certainly gives them the element of surprise as the manhunt continues.
So while I think that the German police did genuinely arrest this Pakistani man in good faith thinking he could be the attacker I also think they may have had held onto him for a little longer then was needed in order to provide a cover story. As part of that cover story it was Germany who was raising the issues of Pakistan and US support for the Balkanisation of Syria that I'd mentioned.
With there being quite the delay between the Pakistani suspect being released and any explanation as to why being offered I think in their cover story the Germans were attempting to raise what has been a big domestic issue in both Germany and within the European Union (EU).
In the summer of 2015 German Chancellor (Head of Government) Angela Merkel threw her nation's borders wide open to anyone from anywhere in the World seeking refugee status.
In Chancellor Merkel's defence this really her only mistake in 11 years as Germany's leader. However it is an absolutely massive one forcing the Germany security services to identify and resolve a massive growth in terrorist threats to the nation.
What has unsettled a lot of people is that despite all the evidence Chancellor Merkel has not been prepared to admit that she has made one mistake and apologise for that one mistake. Instead she's been desperately trying to cover up any evidence of what a mistake she has made.
The prime example of this was the July 18th (18/7/16) Wurzburg train attack. Here a teenage asylum seeker from Pakistan attacked passengers aboard a train wounding five.
Germany immediately denied that this was in any way a terror attack or related to Chancellor Merkel's mistake. Then the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) released a video in which the attacker announced that he was about to carry out the attack in the name of the group. This not only made it impossible to deny that this was a terror attack it also showed how ISIL was radicalising people and then directing their attacks over the Internet.
Then of course there was the July 22nd (22/7/16) attack at the Olympic Shopping Mall in Munich. Here an Iranian Muslim immigrant shot and killed nine people and wounded four others.
This occurred on the site of the Black September group's very famous terror attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics. It occurred two weeks to the day before the start of the 2016 Rio Olympics in Brazil. It rapidly emerged that the attacker was deeply into both computer games and the Internet's so-called "Dark Web." As the Wurzburg attack showed ISIL's use of particularly the Dark Web has been of growing concern to those attempting to defeat them.
So the Munich shooting bore all the hallmarks of not only an ISIL terror attack but one that had been closely held and precisely directed.
However the German authorities denied and continue to deny that it was a terror attack. They did this before they'd had time to search through the vast amount of the attacker's encrypted electronic communications. So Germany's assessment that this was not a terror attack is based entirely on their refusal to look for any links to terrorism.
At one point the Germans even tried to claim that the Persian Muslim attacker was a white supremacist neo-Nazi inspired by Anders Breivik. This was done deliberately to shout down anyone suggesting that terrorist - no matter what their stripe - may in fact be quite dangerous people by declaring anyone to make that point to be a racist.
So given the track record quite a lot of people would find it extremely easy to believe that Chancellor Merkel would order the release of a terrorist simply because she didn't want to be accused of racism or admit to her mistake.
Obviously the German authorities have been using their cover story to lobby for more powers to fight terrorism. This presents what is known as a moral hazard. If we give the security services more power to fight terrorism it actually gives them an incentive to support terrorists making us all less safe.
The German authorities have since identified the suspect whose fingerprints and identity documents were found in the truck as Anis Amri. A 24 year old originally from Tataounie, Tunisia.
Although I know far more about geography and Islamist terrorism than I do about the "Star Wars" movie franchise I bet that had a lot of people going; "What?! Really?!"
Amri first entered Europe as an irregular migrant landing in the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011. There he fraudulently claimed to be a child and applied for political asylum (refugee status).
While his asylum application was being processed Amri was housed in an irregular migrant reception and accommodation centre. There he participated in what is being described as a particularly violent riot which led to him serving four years in prison.
Upon release in 2015 Amri appears to have travelled to Germany where he appears to have applied for political asylum six times using multiple names and nationalities. While waiting for those multiple applications to be processed Amri was apparently left free to roam the streets of Germany dealing drugs and getting into bar fights. He also came under police surveillance due to his links to Islamist terrorism but no action was taken.
As such I think it is fair to describe Amri as being a "Frequent Flier" on what is termed the Mediterranean migrant route. This runs across the Mediterranean Sea from north African nations - particularly Libya - to the Italian islands such as Lampedusa and the island state of Malta.
Since March 2016 the European Union (EU) has had an agreement with Turkey covering irregular migrants on what is termed the Balkan route. This runs across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece and then up through the Balkan nations to Germany where Chancellor Merkel has invited everybody in.
On November 24th (24/11/16) the European Parliament voted to suspend negotiations with Turkey over it joining the EU. Since then Erdogan has been threatening to once again flood the EU with irregular migrants and terrorists via the Balkan route. By highlighting the Mediterranean route Erdogan also appears to be threatening to use that route to flood the EU with irregular migrants and terrorists unless his demands are met.
Tunisia was of course the first Arab nation to overthrow their dictator in January 2011. They were rapidly followed by Egypt later that same month. The wars against Libya and Syria that followed were not part of the revolutionary movement. Instead they were designed to crush it ending any hope of a democratic Arab world.
For example as I've said throughout rather than the war and the chaos that has followed I think it would have been better for Libya if Muammer Qaddafi has simply stepped aside and his son Saif al-Islam be allowed to manage a transition to democracy.
Likewise the main problem in Syria seems to be that Bashar al-Assad is far more committed to the idea of a transition to democracy then any of the terror groups fighting him. As a result he's often made the mistake of trying to negotiate when he should have been using extreme violence to win the war. If you are shocked by the current moderate violence in Syria you really have no idea what it means to go to war.
Beyond the wars against Libya and Syria there is also a constant battle going on to protect the democratic gains made in Tunisia and in particular Egypt.
Initially Erdogan tried to install the Islamist puppet regime of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt to make it part of the new Ottoman Empire. However in July 2013 the Egyptian people decided that they didn't want to be part of the new Ottoman Empire and kicked Morsi out of power. Since then Erdogan has been backing terrorist groups - particularly ISIL's Sinai Province - to wage a low-intensity war to overthrow Egypt's secular state.
In Tunisia the gains of the revolution seem equally vulnerable.
One of the main problems in Tunisia is that as part of their war against Tunisia's neighbour Libya various foreign powers led by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set up numerous Islamist terrorist training camps across the country. When Muammer Qaddafi was overthrown those training camps were simply left in place giving Islamist terrorists a solid base from which to try and destabilise Tunisia's secular state.
Another big problem in Tunisia is that the economy has not grown in the way that many hoped it would following the revolution. This has been caused in no small part by the damage the terrorist training camps have done to the tourism sector. For example since the June 26th 2015 (26/6/15) terror attack in Sousse the UK has banned tourists from visiting Tunisia.
As a result the Tunisian government has being forced to introduce a program of austerity cutting wages and raising taxes. This means we are once again starting to see the sort of mass protests that led to the 2011 revolution.
On December 15th (15/12/16) a man by the name of Mohammed al-Zawari was shot and killed outside his home in the Tunisian town of Sfax. Widely believed to an Israeli assassination of a member of Hamas this has provided Islamist factions within Tunisia to stir up more public anger against a government they accuse of failing to protect a Tunisian from the evil Zionists.
Both when he was released from prison in Italy and when his final asylum application was rejected in Germany attempts were made to deport Amri back to Tunisia. However as they were unable to prove that Amri was a Tunisian national Tunisia quite reasonably refused to accept to him. After all they don't want foreign terrorists any more than we do.
By contacting his family back in Tunisia the Germans however were able to establish that Amri was a Tunisian citizen and back in July started the long process of applying for a new passport and then getting that passport sent to Germany. By an unfortunate coincidence that passport arrived in Germany on Tuesday (20/12/16) - the day after the attack. Given how many of these what are complex cases the Tunisians have to process I think it was just a coincidence
However I think that Erdogan was hoping that German authorities would accuse the Tunisian authorities of deliberately delaying the sending out of the new passport in order to allow Amri to carry out the attack. They would then respond by trashing Tunisia's reputation in the press, banning German tourists from the country and imposing sanctions.
Sadly the EU has a bit of a track record for this sort of thing.
On January 25th (25/1/16) Italian student Giulio Regeni went missing in Cairo, Egypt. His body was discovered on February 3rd (3/2/16). Despite the fact that the body was found in a dumping ground used by Erdogan backed terror groups the EU and in particular Italy absolutely went for the Egyptian government accusing the government of committing the murder, trashing the nation in the press and even threatening sanctions.
It seemed that nobody in Italy or the EU could even entertain the idea that maybe the terrorists Erdogan backs had committed the murder specifically to provoke such a reaction. Nor could they even entertain the idea that maybe he'd been murdered by criminals who were simply trying obtain his bank details in order to rob him.
Instead the EU and Italy became utterly fixated on the idea that Regeni must have been murdered by the Egyptian government. Because that's what Erdogan was telling them had happened.
Rather than repeating those mistakes in the Amri case I think the question Germans should be asking themselves is why wasn't he being held in prison while awaiting deportation?
After all by rejecting his asylum claim Germany had concluded that Amri had committed the criminal offence of illegally entering the country.
This morning - at around 0:300 local time - Amri was stopped by police officers in the Italian city of Milan where he no doubt felt comfortable. After being challenged to identify himself Amri pulled out a pistol and started a gun fight which he promptly lost. He was confirmed killed this morning.
In terms of analysis there's not much more I can add to that.
However at around 16:20 on 23/12/16 (UK date) I'll be back to cover some other developments overnight.
Edited at around 17:30 on 23/12/16 (UK date) to add;
Last night German authorities announced that they had foiled another terror attack. This time against the Centro Shopping Mall - I think the nation's largest - in the city of Oberhausen.
The two brothers arrested have been described as; "Kosovan." However there is no further information as to whether that means they are Serbs from that nation's southern province or part of the group of thieving Albanian Muslim extremists who are currently trying to take a bite out of Macedonia.
I think though we can safely add the Balkanisation of Syria to the list of Erdogan's demands. Mind you we could have done that last week with no help from the French. Erdogan has even started referring to Aleppo City's civilian population as; "Aleppans." As if that was some sort of ethnic or national group.
Also last night ISIL released on the Internet a 19 minute video entitled; "The Cross Shield."
This video was almost immediately removed from the Internet. Not only that but in response large sections of the Internet were then removed from Turkey. Western news outlets like the BBC and CNN have barely been prepared to acknowledge that the video exists let alone report on it. As a result I have not seen it for myself.
However the video is said to show two Turkish servicemen being burned alive. This is said to be punishment for the "Euphrates Shield" operation which is how Turkey refers to it's invasion and occupation of northern Syria. ISIL claims this operation is "burning Muslims." The two men are believed to be intelligence officers working for the Turkish Gendarmerie which is responsible for border security.
That may well be why western news outlets are refusing to report on the video.
To do so would force them to admit this "popular rebellion against the Assad regime" they've been reporting on for the past five years is in fact nothing more than a Turkish war against Syria. They would also be forced to acknowledge that Turkey's border with Syria has already moved 5 to 10km (3-6miles) inside of Syrian territory.
This latest video is of very similar to the video; "Healing the Believer's Chests" that ISIL released in January 2015. In that video they burned alive captured Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasabeh.
On Sunday (18/12/16) there was a terror attack in the Jordanian city of Karak. Here 10 people were killed as gunmen took hostages in the city's old castle which is now a tourist destination. I can see why - even though they've claimed responsibility for it - ISIL would remain very interested in this.
However it is not a topic I am prepared to discuss further until the US has an administration capable of holding a grown up conversation. Their outgoing one remains trapped in the redundant thinking that a Turk can speak for all Arabs.
You may remember that Erdogan has recently had some problems with the Turkish Gendarmerie.
Particularly the 2014 MIT scandal. On January 1st 2014 (1/1/14) and again on January 19th (19/1/16) the Gendarmerie stopped MIT trucks smuggling weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria. Erdogan's response was particularly furious ordering the arrest of many members of the Gendarmerie, local Judges and any journalist who dared to report on the story.
You may also remember that Erdogan has recently had some problems with Turkey's Kurdish population. At least one of the serviceman - Seftar Tas - is/was Kurdish.
Therefore it is entirely possible that Erdogan authorised ISIL to set fire to these two Turkish servicemen.
Aside from settling old scores Erdogan's reason for doing this would be twofold;
Firstly Erdogan has just assassinated a Russian Ambassador and carried out a mass casualty terror attack in Germany. It would certainly help him try to deny this on the international level if Turkey too was seen to suffer an ISIL atrocity.
Following Tuesday's (20/12/16) meeting in Moscow, Russia on Wednesday (21/12/16) Turkish forces launched a final push to capture to Syrian town of al-Bab. In launching this operation back in August Erdogan's objectives were twofold; To establish a supply line to ISIL in Raqqa and to establish a supply line to the Army of Conquest in Aleppo City.
On December 12th (12/12/16) Aleppo City was liberated from the Army of Conquest. Erdogan now has two options. He can either try to smash through Syrian lines at Aleppo City or he can get ISIL to establish a supply line from Raqqa to Army of Conquest positions in south of Aleppo City via Palmyra.
That second option is militarily going to be hard work and politically extremely difficult.
Annoyingly at around 18:35 on 23/12/16 (UK date) the dinner I put in the oven an hour ago is now starting to burn. So I'll pick this up later.
Edited at around 20:25 on 23/12/16 (UK date) tidy up and add;
You could almost say that the Euphrates Shield operation is at a crossroads. And Erdogan is really not happy about that.
The Jordanian response to the murder of Muath al-Kasabeh was, as you would expect, furious. At one point King Abdullah II pulled on his old flight suit and announced that he personally was going to start bombing ISIL in revenge.
Funnily enough nobody in the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - was prepared to argue with them. So Jordan got to take whatever they wanted off the Air Tasking Order (ATO) and blow it up. Under US President Obama CJTFOIR's problem has always been that it's got more aircraft than ISIL targets it's permitted to bomb.
Erdogan has of course time and time flatly refused to allow Turkey to join CJTFOIR's ATO. However I assume he was expecting to receive similar treatment to the Jordanians.
So with nobody prepared to stop him in light of this great ISIL atrocity Erdogan thought he would have been free to send Turkish jets to smash their way through Syrian lines at what I am going to insist on calling; "Drumcree Church."
21:10 on 23/12/16 (UK date).
There I think I'd just got up to the point where German authorities had announced that they'd arrested a Pakistani asylum seeker over Monday's (19/12/16) terror attack in Berlin.
I'd then explained how Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been trying to intimidate Pakistan into giving him nuclear weapons. I also explained how the US has indicated its support for using the strategy of the Balkan wars in the 1990's - Balkanisation - to help Erdogan absorb parts of Syria into the new Ottoman Empire he is hoping to build.
Then on Tuesday (20/12/16) evening German authorities announced that they'd released their Pakistani suspect having cleared him of any wrong doing. That raised obvious questions about the relevance of everything I'd written about the suspect being Pakistani.
On Wednesday (21/12/16) German authorities announced that they'd found fingerprints and identity documents belonging to another man in the truck used in the attack.
From what I know of police tactics I suspect this evidence was found within a matter of hours of the attack. However I also know that it can be extremely useful to the police to have everybody reporting that the suspect is in custody and the manhunt is over. It certainly gives them the element of surprise as the manhunt continues.
So while I think that the German police did genuinely arrest this Pakistani man in good faith thinking he could be the attacker I also think they may have had held onto him for a little longer then was needed in order to provide a cover story. As part of that cover story it was Germany who was raising the issues of Pakistan and US support for the Balkanisation of Syria that I'd mentioned.
With there being quite the delay between the Pakistani suspect being released and any explanation as to why being offered I think in their cover story the Germans were attempting to raise what has been a big domestic issue in both Germany and within the European Union (EU).
In the summer of 2015 German Chancellor (Head of Government) Angela Merkel threw her nation's borders wide open to anyone from anywhere in the World seeking refugee status.
In Chancellor Merkel's defence this really her only mistake in 11 years as Germany's leader. However it is an absolutely massive one forcing the Germany security services to identify and resolve a massive growth in terrorist threats to the nation.
What has unsettled a lot of people is that despite all the evidence Chancellor Merkel has not been prepared to admit that she has made one mistake and apologise for that one mistake. Instead she's been desperately trying to cover up any evidence of what a mistake she has made.
The prime example of this was the July 18th (18/7/16) Wurzburg train attack. Here a teenage asylum seeker from Pakistan attacked passengers aboard a train wounding five.
Germany immediately denied that this was in any way a terror attack or related to Chancellor Merkel's mistake. Then the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) released a video in which the attacker announced that he was about to carry out the attack in the name of the group. This not only made it impossible to deny that this was a terror attack it also showed how ISIL was radicalising people and then directing their attacks over the Internet.
Then of course there was the July 22nd (22/7/16) attack at the Olympic Shopping Mall in Munich. Here an Iranian Muslim immigrant shot and killed nine people and wounded four others.
This occurred on the site of the Black September group's very famous terror attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics. It occurred two weeks to the day before the start of the 2016 Rio Olympics in Brazil. It rapidly emerged that the attacker was deeply into both computer games and the Internet's so-called "Dark Web." As the Wurzburg attack showed ISIL's use of particularly the Dark Web has been of growing concern to those attempting to defeat them.
So the Munich shooting bore all the hallmarks of not only an ISIL terror attack but one that had been closely held and precisely directed.
However the German authorities denied and continue to deny that it was a terror attack. They did this before they'd had time to search through the vast amount of the attacker's encrypted electronic communications. So Germany's assessment that this was not a terror attack is based entirely on their refusal to look for any links to terrorism.
At one point the Germans even tried to claim that the Persian Muslim attacker was a white supremacist neo-Nazi inspired by Anders Breivik. This was done deliberately to shout down anyone suggesting that terrorist - no matter what their stripe - may in fact be quite dangerous people by declaring anyone to make that point to be a racist.
So given the track record quite a lot of people would find it extremely easy to believe that Chancellor Merkel would order the release of a terrorist simply because she didn't want to be accused of racism or admit to her mistake.
Obviously the German authorities have been using their cover story to lobby for more powers to fight terrorism. This presents what is known as a moral hazard. If we give the security services more power to fight terrorism it actually gives them an incentive to support terrorists making us all less safe.
The German authorities have since identified the suspect whose fingerprints and identity documents were found in the truck as Anis Amri. A 24 year old originally from Tataounie, Tunisia.
Although I know far more about geography and Islamist terrorism than I do about the "Star Wars" movie franchise I bet that had a lot of people going; "What?! Really?!"
Amri first entered Europe as an irregular migrant landing in the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011. There he fraudulently claimed to be a child and applied for political asylum (refugee status).
While his asylum application was being processed Amri was housed in an irregular migrant reception and accommodation centre. There he participated in what is being described as a particularly violent riot which led to him serving four years in prison.
Upon release in 2015 Amri appears to have travelled to Germany where he appears to have applied for political asylum six times using multiple names and nationalities. While waiting for those multiple applications to be processed Amri was apparently left free to roam the streets of Germany dealing drugs and getting into bar fights. He also came under police surveillance due to his links to Islamist terrorism but no action was taken.
As such I think it is fair to describe Amri as being a "Frequent Flier" on what is termed the Mediterranean migrant route. This runs across the Mediterranean Sea from north African nations - particularly Libya - to the Italian islands such as Lampedusa and the island state of Malta.
Since March 2016 the European Union (EU) has had an agreement with Turkey covering irregular migrants on what is termed the Balkan route. This runs across the Aegean Sea from Turkey to Greece and then up through the Balkan nations to Germany where Chancellor Merkel has invited everybody in.
On November 24th (24/11/16) the European Parliament voted to suspend negotiations with Turkey over it joining the EU. Since then Erdogan has been threatening to once again flood the EU with irregular migrants and terrorists via the Balkan route. By highlighting the Mediterranean route Erdogan also appears to be threatening to use that route to flood the EU with irregular migrants and terrorists unless his demands are met.
Tunisia was of course the first Arab nation to overthrow their dictator in January 2011. They were rapidly followed by Egypt later that same month. The wars against Libya and Syria that followed were not part of the revolutionary movement. Instead they were designed to crush it ending any hope of a democratic Arab world.
For example as I've said throughout rather than the war and the chaos that has followed I think it would have been better for Libya if Muammer Qaddafi has simply stepped aside and his son Saif al-Islam be allowed to manage a transition to democracy.
Likewise the main problem in Syria seems to be that Bashar al-Assad is far more committed to the idea of a transition to democracy then any of the terror groups fighting him. As a result he's often made the mistake of trying to negotiate when he should have been using extreme violence to win the war. If you are shocked by the current moderate violence in Syria you really have no idea what it means to go to war.
Beyond the wars against Libya and Syria there is also a constant battle going on to protect the democratic gains made in Tunisia and in particular Egypt.
Initially Erdogan tried to install the Islamist puppet regime of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt to make it part of the new Ottoman Empire. However in July 2013 the Egyptian people decided that they didn't want to be part of the new Ottoman Empire and kicked Morsi out of power. Since then Erdogan has been backing terrorist groups - particularly ISIL's Sinai Province - to wage a low-intensity war to overthrow Egypt's secular state.
In Tunisia the gains of the revolution seem equally vulnerable.
One of the main problems in Tunisia is that as part of their war against Tunisia's neighbour Libya various foreign powers led by then US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set up numerous Islamist terrorist training camps across the country. When Muammer Qaddafi was overthrown those training camps were simply left in place giving Islamist terrorists a solid base from which to try and destabilise Tunisia's secular state.
Another big problem in Tunisia is that the economy has not grown in the way that many hoped it would following the revolution. This has been caused in no small part by the damage the terrorist training camps have done to the tourism sector. For example since the June 26th 2015 (26/6/15) terror attack in Sousse the UK has banned tourists from visiting Tunisia.
As a result the Tunisian government has being forced to introduce a program of austerity cutting wages and raising taxes. This means we are once again starting to see the sort of mass protests that led to the 2011 revolution.
On December 15th (15/12/16) a man by the name of Mohammed al-Zawari was shot and killed outside his home in the Tunisian town of Sfax. Widely believed to an Israeli assassination of a member of Hamas this has provided Islamist factions within Tunisia to stir up more public anger against a government they accuse of failing to protect a Tunisian from the evil Zionists.
Both when he was released from prison in Italy and when his final asylum application was rejected in Germany attempts were made to deport Amri back to Tunisia. However as they were unable to prove that Amri was a Tunisian national Tunisia quite reasonably refused to accept to him. After all they don't want foreign terrorists any more than we do.
By contacting his family back in Tunisia the Germans however were able to establish that Amri was a Tunisian citizen and back in July started the long process of applying for a new passport and then getting that passport sent to Germany. By an unfortunate coincidence that passport arrived in Germany on Tuesday (20/12/16) - the day after the attack. Given how many of these what are complex cases the Tunisians have to process I think it was just a coincidence
However I think that Erdogan was hoping that German authorities would accuse the Tunisian authorities of deliberately delaying the sending out of the new passport in order to allow Amri to carry out the attack. They would then respond by trashing Tunisia's reputation in the press, banning German tourists from the country and imposing sanctions.
Sadly the EU has a bit of a track record for this sort of thing.
On January 25th (25/1/16) Italian student Giulio Regeni went missing in Cairo, Egypt. His body was discovered on February 3rd (3/2/16). Despite the fact that the body was found in a dumping ground used by Erdogan backed terror groups the EU and in particular Italy absolutely went for the Egyptian government accusing the government of committing the murder, trashing the nation in the press and even threatening sanctions.
It seemed that nobody in Italy or the EU could even entertain the idea that maybe the terrorists Erdogan backs had committed the murder specifically to provoke such a reaction. Nor could they even entertain the idea that maybe he'd been murdered by criminals who were simply trying obtain his bank details in order to rob him.
Instead the EU and Italy became utterly fixated on the idea that Regeni must have been murdered by the Egyptian government. Because that's what Erdogan was telling them had happened.
Rather than repeating those mistakes in the Amri case I think the question Germans should be asking themselves is why wasn't he being held in prison while awaiting deportation?
After all by rejecting his asylum claim Germany had concluded that Amri had committed the criminal offence of illegally entering the country.
This morning - at around 0:300 local time - Amri was stopped by police officers in the Italian city of Milan where he no doubt felt comfortable. After being challenged to identify himself Amri pulled out a pistol and started a gun fight which he promptly lost. He was confirmed killed this morning.
In terms of analysis there's not much more I can add to that.
However at around 16:20 on 23/12/16 (UK date) I'll be back to cover some other developments overnight.
Edited at around 17:30 on 23/12/16 (UK date) to add;
Last night German authorities announced that they had foiled another terror attack. This time against the Centro Shopping Mall - I think the nation's largest - in the city of Oberhausen.
The two brothers arrested have been described as; "Kosovan." However there is no further information as to whether that means they are Serbs from that nation's southern province or part of the group of thieving Albanian Muslim extremists who are currently trying to take a bite out of Macedonia.
I think though we can safely add the Balkanisation of Syria to the list of Erdogan's demands. Mind you we could have done that last week with no help from the French. Erdogan has even started referring to Aleppo City's civilian population as; "Aleppans." As if that was some sort of ethnic or national group.
Also last night ISIL released on the Internet a 19 minute video entitled; "The Cross Shield."
This video was almost immediately removed from the Internet. Not only that but in response large sections of the Internet were then removed from Turkey. Western news outlets like the BBC and CNN have barely been prepared to acknowledge that the video exists let alone report on it. As a result I have not seen it for myself.
However the video is said to show two Turkish servicemen being burned alive. This is said to be punishment for the "Euphrates Shield" operation which is how Turkey refers to it's invasion and occupation of northern Syria. ISIL claims this operation is "burning Muslims." The two men are believed to be intelligence officers working for the Turkish Gendarmerie which is responsible for border security.
That may well be why western news outlets are refusing to report on the video.
To do so would force them to admit this "popular rebellion against the Assad regime" they've been reporting on for the past five years is in fact nothing more than a Turkish war against Syria. They would also be forced to acknowledge that Turkey's border with Syria has already moved 5 to 10km (3-6miles) inside of Syrian territory.
This latest video is of very similar to the video; "Healing the Believer's Chests" that ISIL released in January 2015. In that video they burned alive captured Jordanian pilot Muath al-Kasabeh.
On Sunday (18/12/16) there was a terror attack in the Jordanian city of Karak. Here 10 people were killed as gunmen took hostages in the city's old castle which is now a tourist destination. I can see why - even though they've claimed responsibility for it - ISIL would remain very interested in this.
However it is not a topic I am prepared to discuss further until the US has an administration capable of holding a grown up conversation. Their outgoing one remains trapped in the redundant thinking that a Turk can speak for all Arabs.
You may remember that Erdogan has recently had some problems with the Turkish Gendarmerie.
Particularly the 2014 MIT scandal. On January 1st 2014 (1/1/14) and again on January 19th (19/1/16) the Gendarmerie stopped MIT trucks smuggling weapons to Al Qaeda in Syria. Erdogan's response was particularly furious ordering the arrest of many members of the Gendarmerie, local Judges and any journalist who dared to report on the story.
You may also remember that Erdogan has recently had some problems with Turkey's Kurdish population. At least one of the serviceman - Seftar Tas - is/was Kurdish.
Therefore it is entirely possible that Erdogan authorised ISIL to set fire to these two Turkish servicemen.
Aside from settling old scores Erdogan's reason for doing this would be twofold;
Firstly Erdogan has just assassinated a Russian Ambassador and carried out a mass casualty terror attack in Germany. It would certainly help him try to deny this on the international level if Turkey too was seen to suffer an ISIL atrocity.
Following Tuesday's (20/12/16) meeting in Moscow, Russia on Wednesday (21/12/16) Turkish forces launched a final push to capture to Syrian town of al-Bab. In launching this operation back in August Erdogan's objectives were twofold; To establish a supply line to ISIL in Raqqa and to establish a supply line to the Army of Conquest in Aleppo City.
On December 12th (12/12/16) Aleppo City was liberated from the Army of Conquest. Erdogan now has two options. He can either try to smash through Syrian lines at Aleppo City or he can get ISIL to establish a supply line from Raqqa to Army of Conquest positions in south of Aleppo City via Palmyra.
That second option is militarily going to be hard work and politically extremely difficult.
Annoyingly at around 18:35 on 23/12/16 (UK date) the dinner I put in the oven an hour ago is now starting to burn. So I'll pick this up later.
Edited at around 20:25 on 23/12/16 (UK date) tidy up and add;
You could almost say that the Euphrates Shield operation is at a crossroads. And Erdogan is really not happy about that.
The Jordanian response to the murder of Muath al-Kasabeh was, as you would expect, furious. At one point King Abdullah II pulled on his old flight suit and announced that he personally was going to start bombing ISIL in revenge.
Funnily enough nobody in the US-led coalition - Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - was prepared to argue with them. So Jordan got to take whatever they wanted off the Air Tasking Order (ATO) and blow it up. Under US President Obama CJTFOIR's problem has always been that it's got more aircraft than ISIL targets it's permitted to bomb.
Erdogan has of course time and time flatly refused to allow Turkey to join CJTFOIR's ATO. However I assume he was expecting to receive similar treatment to the Jordanians.
So with nobody prepared to stop him in light of this great ISIL atrocity Erdogan thought he would have been free to send Turkish jets to smash their way through Syrian lines at what I am going to insist on calling; "Drumcree Church."
21:10 on 23/12/16 (UK date).
Thursday, 22 December 2016
Operation Featherweight: Month 30, Week 1, Day 2.
This should be read as a continuation of; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/operation-featherweight-month-30-week-1.html
In those previous two posts I explained how Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been desperate to find out where he stands following the November 8th (8/11/16) Presidential election.
With President Obama's designated successor Hillary Clinton having been defeated Erdogan is understandably concerned this could mean an end to the support and protection he's enjoyed under Obama.
Erdogan's concerns were obviously added to on November 24th (24/11/16) when the European Parliament voted to suspend talks with Turkey over it's plan's to join the European Union (EU).
On December 12th (12/12/16) the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was liberated from the Al Qaeda-led, Turkish-backed Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) terrorist coalition.
This development seems to have tipped Erdogan over the edge from mere threats into violence.
On Monday (19/12/16) Erdogan sent one of his personal police bodyguards to assassinate the Russian Ambassador to Turkey in an Ankara art gallery.
Literally three hours after that a hijacked truck drove through crowds of pedestrians at a Christmas market in the Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, Germany. So far this attack which has been claimed by the Army of Conquest's main ally - the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - has killed 12 people and left another 49 people injured - some very seriously.
This was very obviously an attack at the heart of Europe. Therefore it shows that not only is Erdogan prepared to issue threats he is prepared to follow through on them.
Apart from being an attack on Europe this was very clearly an attack on the heart of Germany.
In the summer of 2015 the German Head of Government (Chancellor) Angela Merkel threw her nation's doors open to all those seeking refugee status from anywhere in the World but particularly Syria.
In making this bold announcement Merkel didn't bother consulting with any of Germany's European neighbours. Nor did she seem to give a single thought to the logistics of accommodating that many asylum seekers. Particularly not security screening to make sure that they are not terrorists.
As a result since the summer of 2015 Merkel's popularity both at home and aboard has been in a nosedive.
Germany will be going to the polls in a national election in August 2017 at the earliest and October 2017 at the latest. You would expect that a mass casualty terror attack carried by what has since been found to be a fraudulent asylum seeker would do significant damages to Merkel's chances of re-election.
So beyond being an attack on Europe and Germany generally this was a very specific threat to Angela Merkel: Give Erdogan exactly what he wants or he will end your career.
The truck used in the attack was registered in Germany's immediate neighbour Poland.
Due to the EU freetrade zone that Erdogan is desperate to access it is perfectly normal for a truck to pick up goods in one EU member state and then drive them to a warehouse on completely the other side of the EU without any import/export tariffs or border inspections. As a result this could be a coincidence simply reflecting the fact that truck was the easiest to hijack.
However I think it was intended as a reference to the sanctions that have been imposed upon Russia. These sanctions were of course imposed to punish Russia for its opposition to ISIL and the JAF in Syria and Iraq.
The US and the EU obviously couldn't say that they were imposing sanctions in support of ISIL and the JAF. After all that would be in violation of numerous UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions along with domestic US and EU laws.
So what the US has done is start a civil war in the broad geographic area east of Poland that used to be known as "Ukraine" in order to provide an excuse for these sanctions in support of ISIL and the JAF.
These sanctions and the continuing violence in what is now more properly known as ISIL's Shamali (northern) Province that is being used to justify them are extremely important to Erdogan.
Basically Russian President Putin has given up on the idea of trade with either the US or the EU for the foreseeable future. So instead he's decided to focus on growing the Russian economy by trading with its immediate neighbours. This includes Turkey. As they often do these trade links make it less likely that Russia and Turkey will go to war over Erdogan's support for ISIL and the JAF.
A large part of the Russian economy are natural gas exports to EU nations whose economies rely on what are to them imports. The problem is that the junta in charge of Shamali Province has this nasty habit of simply stealing that gas from the pipelines before it reaches the EU.
This has forced Russia to find a new route to supply the EU with gas. As no-one's going to go tunnelling under the Black Sea that means Turkey and the proposed Turkish Stream pipeline. Again this makes it less likely that Russia and Turkey will go to war over Erdogan's support for ISIL and the JAF.
Incoming US President Donald Trump was elected on a mandate to defeat ISIL and the Army of Conquest. Not to fight for them like Obama did. Therefore it is unlikely that US sanctions on Russia will continue.
In fact Trump has already announced as his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. An expert in the oil and gas industry Tillerson actually signed a USD300bn deal with Russian oil giant Rosneft which had to be suspended because of the sanctions. That could well be a sign that these sanctions won't make it as far as February 2017.
If and when the US scraps its sanctions against Russia that raises the question of whether the EU will continue its sanctions.
The EU's main diplomatic effort to resolve the Shamali Province crisis allowing the Ukrainian nation to be reestablished is known as; "The Normandy Four." This process very noticeably excludes Obama and the US. Therefore I think that it is unlikely that EU sanctions on Russia will continue without the US.
The problem is going to be Poland. Their Justice & Law Party (PiS) is increasingly sharing the anti-Russian neo-Nazi ideology that is causing all the problems in Shamali Province.
Therefore there is likely to be some coming tension between Poland and the rest of the EU on the issue of sanctions against Russia.
At around 18:25 on 22/12/16 (UK date) I'll pick this up after dinner.
Edited at around 19:40 on 22/12/16 (UK date) to add;
The Breitscheidplatz where the attack took place is a very important location within Berlin. It marked the centre of West Berlin when both the city and the German nation were divided in two during the Cold War. At it's centre is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
This was built by the German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1891 in honour of his grandfather - Kaiser Wilhelm I. Wilhelm II was of course the Emperor that led Germany during the First World War. The German Empire's main ally during that war was the Ottoman Empire. Defeat in that war of course led to the fall of both of those empires.
As such an attack at this location seemed to be an attempt to remind the faithful of the power of the Ottoman Empire and a promise that Erdogan will soon build a new Ottoman Empire.
Also I may be over thinking this but it also seems to touch on the complex issue of war reparations.
Erdogan's big threat to the EU has been that unless he's allowed to do exactly as he pleases he will once again flood Europe with irregular migrants/refugees. Hidden amongst them will be terrorists instructed to carry out attacks just like this one.
If that were to happen the first thing the EU should do is simply stop paying for the millions of Syrians currently living in Turkey. Despite all his claims of support for the Syrian people Erdogan flatly refuses to classify these people as refugees.
The second thing the EU should do is move to make Turkey pay to support all the irregular migrants/refugees it has sent to Europe. Particularly the security costs.
Also as has been pointed out at length during the liberation of Aleppo City Erdogan's now nearly six year war against Syria has done extensive damage to the nation's infrastructure. Traditionally in a war the losing side pays for all the damage.
Due to the liberation of Aleppo City Erdogan is now looking very much like the losing side in this war. That along with the fact that Erdogan's war was completely illegal to begin with makes Turkey liable for an absolutely massive reparations bill.
The issue of war reparations is one that I'm sure every German has been taught about at school.
Following the German Empire's defeat in the First World War the victors imposed crippling reparations in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. In his rise to power Adolf Hitler used the issue of these preparations as an example of how this once great nation and had been utterly humiliated and thus needed a strong leader named Adolf Hitler.
Following the defeat of Hitler's Third Reich (Realm/Empire) in 1945 the victors were keen not to repeat the same mistake. So rather than imposing massive reparations on Germany the victors - primarily the US - actually paid to rebuild Germany under the Marshall Plan. Great steps were also taken not to humiliate the German people in defeat.
For example in 1945 a British documentary was made about the holocaust called "Night Will Fall." Using footage shot during the liberation of the death camps this shows the true horror of an actual holocaust. However the film was not released until 2014 over fears it would stir up hatred against the German people.
Likewise the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was damaged in a 1943 airstrike. However the victors chose not to demolish it and even let it keep its original name as a memorial to Germany's war dead.
As he seems to face defeat in Syria I think it's clear that Erdogan would much prefer a Marshall Plan rather than a Treat of Versailles.
However I say I might be over thinking this because surely Erdogan must know the price of a Marshall Plan; The dictator commits suicide, his deputies are tried and executed for crimes against humanity and the victors are allowed to militarily occupy the defeated nation for as long as they like.
Initially the German authorities announced that they had caught the attacker and identified him as an asylum seeker from Pakistan - specifically the Balochistan province.
As you would expect from a man who is trying to build the next Islamist Caliphate Erdogan has been very keen to portray himself as one of the leaders of the global assembly of Muslims - the "Jumu'ah" in Arabic. Through this he has tried to build very strong links with Muslims in Pakistan.
If there's a terror attack in Turkey or Pakistan you will see lots of Muslims on social media offering their sympathy to the respective country. However they're not doing that to another nation but to their brother Muslims who they see as part of one nation.
As he threatens to fight Syria, Iraq, Russia, the EU and the US Erdogan is obviously very keen to exploit this notion of Muslim brotherhood to get access to Pakistan's nuclear weapons. In fact by invoking the Peshawar school massacre Erdogan seemed to be threatening the Pakistani military; Either they give him nukes or he'll stage a popular uprising and steal them.
Pakistan's Balochistan province is a particularly interesting one.
As I seem to keep mentioning during the Cold War there was this sort of arc of resistance with various groups in different countries being united by the idea of Communism. The NATO nations combated this by establishing a network of extreme nationalist groups such as Combat 18. The successful groups such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) managed to cross the divide between Communism and nationalism.
Some of these nationalist groups claim to nationality are ridiculous. For example Combat 18 talk about the ancient Celtic Nation. This is something that was invented in Victorian times by people looking for an excuse to get drunk.
Obviously when the Cold War ended and Communism fell the arc of resistance pretty much fell apart. However the NATO nations just kept going.
The big example of this is the Balkan wars in the 1990's that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia.
In 1991 Yugoslavia was in the process of allowing what is now Croatia to peaceful cede from Yugoslavia in much the same way that the Czech Republic and Slovakia peacefully decided to go their separate ways. However this would have left Yugoslavia more or less intact which was clearly unacceptable to the US. So the US backed Croat Ultranationalists to withdraw from the talks starting the Croatian civil war.
Proving that only the victors get write history the Croatian civil war quickly became the Croatian war of independence and the horrors of the Balkan wars snowballed from there.
When it was all over where there had once stood one nation there were suddenly seven small nations. With small economies and small militaries these were very tasty little morsels that NATO could easily gobble up.
The current example of this process which has become known as; "Balkanisation" is of course Shamali Province. However with the ethnic Russian population symbolically restating the fact that they don't consent to being subject to a genocide by the US backed Slavic Ultranationalist who actual fought as part of the Waffen SS that example is perhaps a little warm.
A cooler recent example is Serbia's southern Kosovo province. In 1998 then US President Bill Clinton was indicted for perjury - lying under oath. So to get him out from under the scandal the US backed Albanian Ultranationalists to invade Serbia. Ever since then the US has been trying to convince us there's a nation called; "Kosovo."
If you're looking for a movie reference "Wag the Dog" seems particularly appropriate to so many current events. However if pop music is more your thing check out the current Rita Ora, Bebe Rehxa, Dua Lipa triangle.
In the wake of the liberation of Aleppo City US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power indicated the US' support for a Balkanisation of Syria in Iraq - known to everyone else as the new Ottoman Empire - by suggesting on Twitter that Serbia's Kosovo province be given its own international dialling code.
In responding to this I got into a bit of a tangle with one of Ambassador Power's acolytes. After all I felt the need for a bit of weekend sport.
With Ambassador Power frequently needing to have explained to her UN discussions about things like South Sudan and Gambia I think you can guess how this went for her intern. My highlight was when she claimed the Nazi holocaust had nothing to do with the Nazi holocaust.
Obviously I put a stop to that as the severity of the Berlin attack started to sink in. I hope to get back to it though. I feel we were just on the verge of her trying to cite "The Da Vinci Code" as credible evidence of a Kosovan nation.
Balochistan is an example of one of these fake nationalist movements. Primarily it's been used by the US to exert pressure on Iran. However recently it seems to be getting used more and more to exert pressure on Pakistan suggesting Erdogan's influence.
However the following day (20/12/16) the German authorities released their Pakistani suspect and I assume apologised for describing his as a suspect.
So while all I've just written on the subject might be true it might not be relevant.
Of course German authorities then announced that they'd immediately found the fingerprints and identity documents of another suspect in the truck. I will have to deal with that tomorrow.
However I will say that from a policing perspective it's incredibly helpful for all the World's media to be reporting that the suspect is in custody and the manhunt is over. While you're kicking in the front door of the actual suspect.
21:35 on 22/12/16 (UK date).
In those previous two posts I explained how Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been desperate to find out where he stands following the November 8th (8/11/16) Presidential election.
With President Obama's designated successor Hillary Clinton having been defeated Erdogan is understandably concerned this could mean an end to the support and protection he's enjoyed under Obama.
Erdogan's concerns were obviously added to on November 24th (24/11/16) when the European Parliament voted to suspend talks with Turkey over it's plan's to join the European Union (EU).
On December 12th (12/12/16) the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was liberated from the Al Qaeda-led, Turkish-backed Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) terrorist coalition.
This development seems to have tipped Erdogan over the edge from mere threats into violence.
On Monday (19/12/16) Erdogan sent one of his personal police bodyguards to assassinate the Russian Ambassador to Turkey in an Ankara art gallery.
Literally three hours after that a hijacked truck drove through crowds of pedestrians at a Christmas market in the Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, Germany. So far this attack which has been claimed by the Army of Conquest's main ally - the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) - has killed 12 people and left another 49 people injured - some very seriously.
This was very obviously an attack at the heart of Europe. Therefore it shows that not only is Erdogan prepared to issue threats he is prepared to follow through on them.
Apart from being an attack on Europe this was very clearly an attack on the heart of Germany.
In the summer of 2015 the German Head of Government (Chancellor) Angela Merkel threw her nation's doors open to all those seeking refugee status from anywhere in the World but particularly Syria.
In making this bold announcement Merkel didn't bother consulting with any of Germany's European neighbours. Nor did she seem to give a single thought to the logistics of accommodating that many asylum seekers. Particularly not security screening to make sure that they are not terrorists.
As a result since the summer of 2015 Merkel's popularity both at home and aboard has been in a nosedive.
Germany will be going to the polls in a national election in August 2017 at the earliest and October 2017 at the latest. You would expect that a mass casualty terror attack carried by what has since been found to be a fraudulent asylum seeker would do significant damages to Merkel's chances of re-election.
So beyond being an attack on Europe and Germany generally this was a very specific threat to Angela Merkel: Give Erdogan exactly what he wants or he will end your career.
The truck used in the attack was registered in Germany's immediate neighbour Poland.
Due to the EU freetrade zone that Erdogan is desperate to access it is perfectly normal for a truck to pick up goods in one EU member state and then drive them to a warehouse on completely the other side of the EU without any import/export tariffs or border inspections. As a result this could be a coincidence simply reflecting the fact that truck was the easiest to hijack.
However I think it was intended as a reference to the sanctions that have been imposed upon Russia. These sanctions were of course imposed to punish Russia for its opposition to ISIL and the JAF in Syria and Iraq.
The US and the EU obviously couldn't say that they were imposing sanctions in support of ISIL and the JAF. After all that would be in violation of numerous UN Security Council (UNSC) resolutions along with domestic US and EU laws.
So what the US has done is start a civil war in the broad geographic area east of Poland that used to be known as "Ukraine" in order to provide an excuse for these sanctions in support of ISIL and the JAF.
These sanctions and the continuing violence in what is now more properly known as ISIL's Shamali (northern) Province that is being used to justify them are extremely important to Erdogan.
Basically Russian President Putin has given up on the idea of trade with either the US or the EU for the foreseeable future. So instead he's decided to focus on growing the Russian economy by trading with its immediate neighbours. This includes Turkey. As they often do these trade links make it less likely that Russia and Turkey will go to war over Erdogan's support for ISIL and the JAF.
A large part of the Russian economy are natural gas exports to EU nations whose economies rely on what are to them imports. The problem is that the junta in charge of Shamali Province has this nasty habit of simply stealing that gas from the pipelines before it reaches the EU.
This has forced Russia to find a new route to supply the EU with gas. As no-one's going to go tunnelling under the Black Sea that means Turkey and the proposed Turkish Stream pipeline. Again this makes it less likely that Russia and Turkey will go to war over Erdogan's support for ISIL and the JAF.
Incoming US President Donald Trump was elected on a mandate to defeat ISIL and the Army of Conquest. Not to fight for them like Obama did. Therefore it is unlikely that US sanctions on Russia will continue.
In fact Trump has already announced as his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. An expert in the oil and gas industry Tillerson actually signed a USD300bn deal with Russian oil giant Rosneft which had to be suspended because of the sanctions. That could well be a sign that these sanctions won't make it as far as February 2017.
If and when the US scraps its sanctions against Russia that raises the question of whether the EU will continue its sanctions.
The EU's main diplomatic effort to resolve the Shamali Province crisis allowing the Ukrainian nation to be reestablished is known as; "The Normandy Four." This process very noticeably excludes Obama and the US. Therefore I think that it is unlikely that EU sanctions on Russia will continue without the US.
The problem is going to be Poland. Their Justice & Law Party (PiS) is increasingly sharing the anti-Russian neo-Nazi ideology that is causing all the problems in Shamali Province.
Therefore there is likely to be some coming tension between Poland and the rest of the EU on the issue of sanctions against Russia.
At around 18:25 on 22/12/16 (UK date) I'll pick this up after dinner.
Edited at around 19:40 on 22/12/16 (UK date) to add;
The Breitscheidplatz where the attack took place is a very important location within Berlin. It marked the centre of West Berlin when both the city and the German nation were divided in two during the Cold War. At it's centre is the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church.
This was built by the German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1891 in honour of his grandfather - Kaiser Wilhelm I. Wilhelm II was of course the Emperor that led Germany during the First World War. The German Empire's main ally during that war was the Ottoman Empire. Defeat in that war of course led to the fall of both of those empires.
As such an attack at this location seemed to be an attempt to remind the faithful of the power of the Ottoman Empire and a promise that Erdogan will soon build a new Ottoman Empire.
Also I may be over thinking this but it also seems to touch on the complex issue of war reparations.
Erdogan's big threat to the EU has been that unless he's allowed to do exactly as he pleases he will once again flood Europe with irregular migrants/refugees. Hidden amongst them will be terrorists instructed to carry out attacks just like this one.
If that were to happen the first thing the EU should do is simply stop paying for the millions of Syrians currently living in Turkey. Despite all his claims of support for the Syrian people Erdogan flatly refuses to classify these people as refugees.
The second thing the EU should do is move to make Turkey pay to support all the irregular migrants/refugees it has sent to Europe. Particularly the security costs.
Also as has been pointed out at length during the liberation of Aleppo City Erdogan's now nearly six year war against Syria has done extensive damage to the nation's infrastructure. Traditionally in a war the losing side pays for all the damage.
Due to the liberation of Aleppo City Erdogan is now looking very much like the losing side in this war. That along with the fact that Erdogan's war was completely illegal to begin with makes Turkey liable for an absolutely massive reparations bill.
The issue of war reparations is one that I'm sure every German has been taught about at school.
Following the German Empire's defeat in the First World War the victors imposed crippling reparations in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. In his rise to power Adolf Hitler used the issue of these preparations as an example of how this once great nation and had been utterly humiliated and thus needed a strong leader named Adolf Hitler.
Following the defeat of Hitler's Third Reich (Realm/Empire) in 1945 the victors were keen not to repeat the same mistake. So rather than imposing massive reparations on Germany the victors - primarily the US - actually paid to rebuild Germany under the Marshall Plan. Great steps were also taken not to humiliate the German people in defeat.
For example in 1945 a British documentary was made about the holocaust called "Night Will Fall." Using footage shot during the liberation of the death camps this shows the true horror of an actual holocaust. However the film was not released until 2014 over fears it would stir up hatred against the German people.
Likewise the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was damaged in a 1943 airstrike. However the victors chose not to demolish it and even let it keep its original name as a memorial to Germany's war dead.
As he seems to face defeat in Syria I think it's clear that Erdogan would much prefer a Marshall Plan rather than a Treat of Versailles.
However I say I might be over thinking this because surely Erdogan must know the price of a Marshall Plan; The dictator commits suicide, his deputies are tried and executed for crimes against humanity and the victors are allowed to militarily occupy the defeated nation for as long as they like.
Initially the German authorities announced that they had caught the attacker and identified him as an asylum seeker from Pakistan - specifically the Balochistan province.
As you would expect from a man who is trying to build the next Islamist Caliphate Erdogan has been very keen to portray himself as one of the leaders of the global assembly of Muslims - the "Jumu'ah" in Arabic. Through this he has tried to build very strong links with Muslims in Pakistan.
If there's a terror attack in Turkey or Pakistan you will see lots of Muslims on social media offering their sympathy to the respective country. However they're not doing that to another nation but to their brother Muslims who they see as part of one nation.
As he threatens to fight Syria, Iraq, Russia, the EU and the US Erdogan is obviously very keen to exploit this notion of Muslim brotherhood to get access to Pakistan's nuclear weapons. In fact by invoking the Peshawar school massacre Erdogan seemed to be threatening the Pakistani military; Either they give him nukes or he'll stage a popular uprising and steal them.
Pakistan's Balochistan province is a particularly interesting one.
As I seem to keep mentioning during the Cold War there was this sort of arc of resistance with various groups in different countries being united by the idea of Communism. The NATO nations combated this by establishing a network of extreme nationalist groups such as Combat 18. The successful groups such as the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) managed to cross the divide between Communism and nationalism.
Some of these nationalist groups claim to nationality are ridiculous. For example Combat 18 talk about the ancient Celtic Nation. This is something that was invented in Victorian times by people looking for an excuse to get drunk.
Obviously when the Cold War ended and Communism fell the arc of resistance pretty much fell apart. However the NATO nations just kept going.
The big example of this is the Balkan wars in the 1990's that led to the break-up of Yugoslavia.
In 1991 Yugoslavia was in the process of allowing what is now Croatia to peaceful cede from Yugoslavia in much the same way that the Czech Republic and Slovakia peacefully decided to go their separate ways. However this would have left Yugoslavia more or less intact which was clearly unacceptable to the US. So the US backed Croat Ultranationalists to withdraw from the talks starting the Croatian civil war.
Proving that only the victors get write history the Croatian civil war quickly became the Croatian war of independence and the horrors of the Balkan wars snowballed from there.
When it was all over where there had once stood one nation there were suddenly seven small nations. With small economies and small militaries these were very tasty little morsels that NATO could easily gobble up.
The current example of this process which has become known as; "Balkanisation" is of course Shamali Province. However with the ethnic Russian population symbolically restating the fact that they don't consent to being subject to a genocide by the US backed Slavic Ultranationalist who actual fought as part of the Waffen SS that example is perhaps a little warm.
A cooler recent example is Serbia's southern Kosovo province. In 1998 then US President Bill Clinton was indicted for perjury - lying under oath. So to get him out from under the scandal the US backed Albanian Ultranationalists to invade Serbia. Ever since then the US has been trying to convince us there's a nation called; "Kosovo."
If you're looking for a movie reference "Wag the Dog" seems particularly appropriate to so many current events. However if pop music is more your thing check out the current Rita Ora, Bebe Rehxa, Dua Lipa triangle.
In the wake of the liberation of Aleppo City US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power indicated the US' support for a Balkanisation of Syria in Iraq - known to everyone else as the new Ottoman Empire - by suggesting on Twitter that Serbia's Kosovo province be given its own international dialling code.
In responding to this I got into a bit of a tangle with one of Ambassador Power's acolytes. After all I felt the need for a bit of weekend sport.
With Ambassador Power frequently needing to have explained to her UN discussions about things like South Sudan and Gambia I think you can guess how this went for her intern. My highlight was when she claimed the Nazi holocaust had nothing to do with the Nazi holocaust.
Obviously I put a stop to that as the severity of the Berlin attack started to sink in. I hope to get back to it though. I feel we were just on the verge of her trying to cite "The Da Vinci Code" as credible evidence of a Kosovan nation.
Balochistan is an example of one of these fake nationalist movements. Primarily it's been used by the US to exert pressure on Iran. However recently it seems to be getting used more and more to exert pressure on Pakistan suggesting Erdogan's influence.
However the following day (20/12/16) the German authorities released their Pakistani suspect and I assume apologised for describing his as a suspect.
So while all I've just written on the subject might be true it might not be relevant.
Of course German authorities then announced that they'd immediately found the fingerprints and identity documents of another suspect in the truck. I will have to deal with that tomorrow.
However I will say that from a policing perspective it's incredibly helpful for all the World's media to be reporting that the suspect is in custody and the manhunt is over. While you're kicking in the front door of the actual suspect.
21:35 on 22/12/16 (UK date).
Wednesday, 21 December 2016
Operation Featherweight: Month 30, Week 1, Day 1
This should be read as a direct continuation of yesterday's post; http://watchitdie.blogspot.co.uk/2016/12/operation-featherweight-month-29-week-5_20.html
In that post I detailed how Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been feeling the pressure ever since Hillary Clinton was defeated in the November 8th (8/11/16) US Presidential election. It is extremely unlikely that America's next President, Donald Trump will give Erdogan anywhere near the level of support as outgoing US President Barack Obama.
I also explained how the December 12th (12/12/16) liberation of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has caused Erdogan's world to start collapsing around his ears. With Aleppo City liberated not only have the Syrians and their Russian backers secured the country's largest city it now makes it virtually impossible for Erdogan to supply the Al Qaeda-led Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) Islamist terror coalition in their positions south of Aleppo City.
Since December 12th (12/12/16) Erdogan has been engaged in a mad scramble to forcibly transfer Aleppo city's civilian population to the area around the city of Idlib - some 60km (35 miles) south-west- which remains under Army of Conquest occupation. This area has been designated as; "The Sudetenland."
This transfer of civilians is still ongoing and subject to almost constant negotiation. Therefore it is really too early to start talking properly about what Erdogan wants to do with those civilians once they've been transferred to the Sudetenland.
However I think that it is pretty obvious that the minimum Erdogan expects is that these civilians will serve as human shields. The idea being that this will prevent the Syrians from now going on to liberate the Sudetenland.
I think Erdogan's dream scenario is that the Army of Conquest will be able to use the Sudetenland as a base of operations. The hope being that with Erdogan's support the Army of Conquest will one day be able to fight their way out of the Sudetenland and conquer all of Syria overthrowing the secular Syrian state.
Between all out victory and all out defeat Erdogan is likely to turn his attentions north of the Sudetenland.
This will bring the Army of Conquest into an area controlled by the moderate Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) which is known as the; "Afrin Canton." If the Army of Conquest is able to conquer the Afrin Canton they will link up with the regular Turkish forces currently occupying the roughly 100km (60 mile) stretch between Azaz/Kilis and the Euphrates River which is known as; "Garvaghy Road."
So even if he is not able to fully conquer Syria as part of his new Ottoman Empire Erdogan will certainly attempt to absorb these border areas into Turkey. Hence the comparison with the Sudetenland.
Of course in order to achieve any of these scenarios Erdogan must gain the consent of the Syrians and their Russian and Iranian allies. Either by simply defeating them on the battlefield or through negotiation.
The first round of these negotiation talks were scheduled to take place in Astana, Kazakhstan on December 27th (27/12/16).
However due to the disruption caused by France trying to raise the issue of the Aleppo City transfers at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that meeting was brought forward to yesterday (20/12/16) and was held in Moscow, Russia.
Ahead of that meeting Erdogan made an extremely bold opening play.
On Monday (19/12/16) Erdogan sent one of his personal police bodyguards - Mevlut Mert Altintas - to assassinate the Russian Ambassador to Turkey - Andrei Karlov - as he was opening an exhibition on Russian photography at an art gallery in Turkey's capital Ankara.
Under the terms of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations Turkey's failure to protect the Ambassador let alone that they carried out the assassination themselves constitutes an act of war by Turkey against Russia. If Russia chooses to treat it as such.
This type of strategy is something that I very much remember from my football days.
Although it sounds counter intuitive if you've got someone who is being aggressive or otherwise unruly sometimes the best thing to do is the moment you approach them say or do the most offensive thing you can think of. I once approached someone from behind, pressed my thumbs into the pressure points in their armpits and lifted them off the ground turning them around 180 degrees in the process.
Obviously if the person reacts to that provocation by throwing a punch at you then you've got the excuse you were looking for to punch them straight back. It must be said though if you were being arrogant in thinking you could win the ensuing fight only to discover that you can't things are not going to end well for you.
However more often then not the speed of the sudden escalation knocks the person off balance and they don't retaliate. Having not retaliated to the extreme provocation it then becomes almost impossible for them to retaliate when you tell them to do something much more reasonable. As a result you then control the situation and the person does what you want them to do.
From his sharp suit, the way he handled his gun and his general demeanour Altintas reminded me of Ilich RamÃrez Sánchez (AKA: "Carlos the Jackal"). Or perhaps more accurately the way that he was portrayed by Edgar Ramirez in the 2010 movie "Carlos." Being some six hours long that movie is normally shown in three parts.
Although he's still alive and in prison in France Carlos the Jackal was a very famous terrorist in the 1970's.
During this golden age of international terrorism barely a week went by without gunman hijacking a plane or taking hostages in a building. They would then negotiate the release of these hostages in return for the release of prisoners - often Palestinian ones. More often than not some ropey third world leader would try to boost their international profile by offering to broker the exchange.
Erdogan's attempts to transfer civilians from Aleppo City in exchange for the release of hostages from Foua and Kefraya certainly bring back memories of that era. Those green buses were everywhere in those days.
As I've mentioned before this golden age of terrorism was the result of this arc of resistance that featured the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey, the Red Army Faction (RAF) in Germany and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). They were countered by similar NATO backed groups such as the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in Turkey and Combat 18 in the UK and parts of Europe.
However there were also those who set out to imitate those groups in the arc of resistance. So while Germany had the RAF it also had the Revolutionary Cells. The PLO were rivalled by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Carlos the Jackal functioned as the middleman linking these imitation groups together. First as part of the PFLP before branching out on his own as effectively a mercenary.
Annoyingly at around 18:25 on 21/12/16 (UK date) I'm going to have to pick this up after dinner.
Edited at around 20:20 on 21/12/16 (UK date) to add;
The PFLP's probably most famous operation was the June 27th 1976 hijacking of Air France flight 139 from Tel Aviv, Israel to Paris, France shortly after it had made a scheduled stop in Athens, Greece. The hijackers redirected the flight to Entebbe in Uganda where eccentric Ugandan President Idi Amin offered to help them negotiate the release of the hostages in return for 53 prisoners mostly held in Israeli jails.
However the Israelis were in no mood to negotiate. So on July 4th 1976 they conducted what is still considered one of the most spectacular special forces operations in history. This resulted in the deaths of all the hijackers and the safe release of 102 of the 106 hostages. The operation was led by Yonatan Netanyahu
who was killed during the rescue. Yonatan Netanyahu is/was the brother of Benjamin Netanyahu - the current Israeli Prime Minister.
On December 15th (15/12/16) a man by the name of Mohammed al-Zawari was shot and killed outside his home in the Tunisian town of Sfax. An aviation engineer al-Zawari had been working with the Palestinian group Hamas to help them develop military drones.
One effect of Erdogan's interference in Egypt has been to cause a split between Sunni Hamas and their traditional Shia ally Hezbollah. Hamas falling under Erdogan's rather than Iran's influence has caused two wars with Israel in 2012 and 2014. It almost goes without saying that Israel won both of those wars.
So in comparing the current situation in Aleppo City with the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis I may have inadvertently touched a nerve. After all that went very badly for the hostages. It went even worse for the PFLP backed Black September group who planned the attack.
Having been suddenly promoted within the PFLP Carlos the Jackal's probably most famous operation was seizing delegates at a meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) at a meeting in Vienna, Austria on December 21st 1975.
The plan was that after a ransom had been paid and green buses provided the hostages would be transported to an airport where a waiting plane had been supplied.
The hostages would then be flown to their respective countries and then released after they had made a public statement condemning Yasser Arafat's PLO's attempts to make peace with Israel. The kidnappers would then fly to Aden in what is now Yemen and make good their escape.
Unfortunately the plane - a DC-9 - that Carlos the Jackal had insisted upon didn't have the range to fly to all these countries. So the plan fell to pieces and Carlos the Jackal was expelled from the PFLP in disgrace.
The 2010 movie "Carlos" starts with a disclaimer pointing out that the exact details of these criminal acts backed by Cold War intelligence agencies aren't exactly in the public domain. As such they acknowledge that they've made up large sections of the story.
However the movie claims that the OPEC siege had nothing to do with the Palestinian cause. Instead it claims that the Iraqi government of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr had paid the PFLP to carry out the operation on its behalf.
The movie goes on to claim that this was done because al-Bakr wanted to start a war with pre-Revolution Iran whose Shah was backing Iraqi Kurdish separatists led by Mustafa Barzani - the father of current President of Iraq's Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani.
However in order to fund this war al-Bakr needed OPEC to raise the oil price. Saudi Arabia wouldn't allow this so the true mission of the OPEC siege was to kill the Saudi representative while making it look like an accident.
Obviously I cannot in any way comment on how truthful the movie's claims are. However the fact the story exists means that referencing it allows Erdogan to bring all of those issues to the negotiating table.
Erdogan is obviously very interested to know whether Iran will use its influence in both Syria and Iraq to protect the Kurds or will they allow Erdogan to bulldoze his way through the Afrin Canton and Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
Following yesterday's meeting a bomb went off in the offices of the Iranian branch of Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDPI) in the town of Koya just east of Erbil. Now this could be a sign that Iran's is prepared to allow Erdogan to go after the Kurds. However it could also have been a signal that is what was being discussed at the meeting.
Either way the Kurds - particularly Barzani - should consider it a warning. After all despite two years of airstrikes they still seem to view Erdogan as their friend and Shias as their enemy. That sort of attitude hardly encourages Iran to do him the sort of favours they did for his father.
The December 2016 OPEC meeting was also quite interesting. Both Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to cut production to drive up the oil price. However Iran will be allowed to grow its production meaning that it will benefit the most from the price rise.
The reason why Saudi Arabia has made this concession to its great regional rival that its current war against Yemen is bleeding it dry.
Saudi Arabia is currently struggling to honour its contracts and has been forced to cut the support it gives to Egypt in return for Egypt participating in the Yemen war. In nations like the UK and the US there have been moves to stop supplying advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia. Rather than being over humanitarian concerns that is the result of a growing doubts that Saudi Arabia can no longer afford to pay for those weapons.
So adding to Erdogan's headaches if he does decide to go to war with Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Europe and the US he can't rely on Saudi Arabia to support him. They can't afford it.
Yesterday (20/12/16) there were rumblings that Erdogan intended to blame the assassination of Karlov on the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). That of course would allow Erdogan to crack down on the MHP alongside the People's Democratic Party (HDP) meaning that only Erdogan's Justice & Development Party (AKP) will get to vote on this constitutional reform bill.
However today Erdogan has come out and fully blamed the assassination of the Fettulah Gulen movement.
Turkey is currently trying to extradite Gulen from the US. Linking him to the assassination of an Ambassador would certainly increase pressure on the US to comply.
Erdogan seems to be gambling on Russian President Putin having such a deep hatred of the US that the opportunity to embarrass them will be compensation enough for the murder of one of his Ambassadors.
It is the equivalent of Erdogan slapping the weeping Putin he's just raped on the backside and telling him; "Stop your crying. I'll buy you something nice to make up for it."
Meanwhile there are rumblings that Russia is about to set Ramzan Kadyrov on Erdogan. If Erdogan does not know that name I suggest that he learns it quickly.
21:55 on 21/12/16 (UK date).
In that post I detailed how Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been feeling the pressure ever since Hillary Clinton was defeated in the November 8th (8/11/16) US Presidential election. It is extremely unlikely that America's next President, Donald Trump will give Erdogan anywhere near the level of support as outgoing US President Barack Obama.
I also explained how the December 12th (12/12/16) liberation of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo has caused Erdogan's world to start collapsing around his ears. With Aleppo City liberated not only have the Syrians and their Russian backers secured the country's largest city it now makes it virtually impossible for Erdogan to supply the Al Qaeda-led Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) Islamist terror coalition in their positions south of Aleppo City.
Since December 12th (12/12/16) Erdogan has been engaged in a mad scramble to forcibly transfer Aleppo city's civilian population to the area around the city of Idlib - some 60km (35 miles) south-west- which remains under Army of Conquest occupation. This area has been designated as; "The Sudetenland."
This transfer of civilians is still ongoing and subject to almost constant negotiation. Therefore it is really too early to start talking properly about what Erdogan wants to do with those civilians once they've been transferred to the Sudetenland.
However I think that it is pretty obvious that the minimum Erdogan expects is that these civilians will serve as human shields. The idea being that this will prevent the Syrians from now going on to liberate the Sudetenland.
I think Erdogan's dream scenario is that the Army of Conquest will be able to use the Sudetenland as a base of operations. The hope being that with Erdogan's support the Army of Conquest will one day be able to fight their way out of the Sudetenland and conquer all of Syria overthrowing the secular Syrian state.
Between all out victory and all out defeat Erdogan is likely to turn his attentions north of the Sudetenland.
This will bring the Army of Conquest into an area controlled by the moderate Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) which is known as the; "Afrin Canton." If the Army of Conquest is able to conquer the Afrin Canton they will link up with the regular Turkish forces currently occupying the roughly 100km (60 mile) stretch between Azaz/Kilis and the Euphrates River which is known as; "Garvaghy Road."
So even if he is not able to fully conquer Syria as part of his new Ottoman Empire Erdogan will certainly attempt to absorb these border areas into Turkey. Hence the comparison with the Sudetenland.
Of course in order to achieve any of these scenarios Erdogan must gain the consent of the Syrians and their Russian and Iranian allies. Either by simply defeating them on the battlefield or through negotiation.
The first round of these negotiation talks were scheduled to take place in Astana, Kazakhstan on December 27th (27/12/16).
However due to the disruption caused by France trying to raise the issue of the Aleppo City transfers at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that meeting was brought forward to yesterday (20/12/16) and was held in Moscow, Russia.
Ahead of that meeting Erdogan made an extremely bold opening play.
On Monday (19/12/16) Erdogan sent one of his personal police bodyguards - Mevlut Mert Altintas - to assassinate the Russian Ambassador to Turkey - Andrei Karlov - as he was opening an exhibition on Russian photography at an art gallery in Turkey's capital Ankara.
Under the terms of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations Turkey's failure to protect the Ambassador let alone that they carried out the assassination themselves constitutes an act of war by Turkey against Russia. If Russia chooses to treat it as such.
This type of strategy is something that I very much remember from my football days.
Although it sounds counter intuitive if you've got someone who is being aggressive or otherwise unruly sometimes the best thing to do is the moment you approach them say or do the most offensive thing you can think of. I once approached someone from behind, pressed my thumbs into the pressure points in their armpits and lifted them off the ground turning them around 180 degrees in the process.
Obviously if the person reacts to that provocation by throwing a punch at you then you've got the excuse you were looking for to punch them straight back. It must be said though if you were being arrogant in thinking you could win the ensuing fight only to discover that you can't things are not going to end well for you.
However more often then not the speed of the sudden escalation knocks the person off balance and they don't retaliate. Having not retaliated to the extreme provocation it then becomes almost impossible for them to retaliate when you tell them to do something much more reasonable. As a result you then control the situation and the person does what you want them to do.
From his sharp suit, the way he handled his gun and his general demeanour Altintas reminded me of Ilich RamÃrez Sánchez (AKA: "Carlos the Jackal"). Or perhaps more accurately the way that he was portrayed by Edgar Ramirez in the 2010 movie "Carlos." Being some six hours long that movie is normally shown in three parts.
Although he's still alive and in prison in France Carlos the Jackal was a very famous terrorist in the 1970's.
During this golden age of international terrorism barely a week went by without gunman hijacking a plane or taking hostages in a building. They would then negotiate the release of these hostages in return for the release of prisoners - often Palestinian ones. More often than not some ropey third world leader would try to boost their international profile by offering to broker the exchange.
Erdogan's attempts to transfer civilians from Aleppo City in exchange for the release of hostages from Foua and Kefraya certainly bring back memories of that era. Those green buses were everywhere in those days.
As I've mentioned before this golden age of terrorism was the result of this arc of resistance that featured the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey, the Red Army Faction (RAF) in Germany and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO). They were countered by similar NATO backed groups such as the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) in Turkey and Combat 18 in the UK and parts of Europe.
However there were also those who set out to imitate those groups in the arc of resistance. So while Germany had the RAF it also had the Revolutionary Cells. The PLO were rivalled by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Carlos the Jackal functioned as the middleman linking these imitation groups together. First as part of the PFLP before branching out on his own as effectively a mercenary.
Annoyingly at around 18:25 on 21/12/16 (UK date) I'm going to have to pick this up after dinner.
Edited at around 20:20 on 21/12/16 (UK date) to add;
The PFLP's probably most famous operation was the June 27th 1976 hijacking of Air France flight 139 from Tel Aviv, Israel to Paris, France shortly after it had made a scheduled stop in Athens, Greece. The hijackers redirected the flight to Entebbe in Uganda where eccentric Ugandan President Idi Amin offered to help them negotiate the release of the hostages in return for 53 prisoners mostly held in Israeli jails.
However the Israelis were in no mood to negotiate. So on July 4th 1976 they conducted what is still considered one of the most spectacular special forces operations in history. This resulted in the deaths of all the hijackers and the safe release of 102 of the 106 hostages. The operation was led by Yonatan Netanyahu
who was killed during the rescue. Yonatan Netanyahu is/was the brother of Benjamin Netanyahu - the current Israeli Prime Minister.
On December 15th (15/12/16) a man by the name of Mohammed al-Zawari was shot and killed outside his home in the Tunisian town of Sfax. An aviation engineer al-Zawari had been working with the Palestinian group Hamas to help them develop military drones.
One effect of Erdogan's interference in Egypt has been to cause a split between Sunni Hamas and their traditional Shia ally Hezbollah. Hamas falling under Erdogan's rather than Iran's influence has caused two wars with Israel in 2012 and 2014. It almost goes without saying that Israel won both of those wars.
So in comparing the current situation in Aleppo City with the 1972 Munich Olympic hostage crisis I may have inadvertently touched a nerve. After all that went very badly for the hostages. It went even worse for the PFLP backed Black September group who planned the attack.
Having been suddenly promoted within the PFLP Carlos the Jackal's probably most famous operation was seizing delegates at a meeting of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) at a meeting in Vienna, Austria on December 21st 1975.
The plan was that after a ransom had been paid and green buses provided the hostages would be transported to an airport where a waiting plane had been supplied.
The hostages would then be flown to their respective countries and then released after they had made a public statement condemning Yasser Arafat's PLO's attempts to make peace with Israel. The kidnappers would then fly to Aden in what is now Yemen and make good their escape.
Unfortunately the plane - a DC-9 - that Carlos the Jackal had insisted upon didn't have the range to fly to all these countries. So the plan fell to pieces and Carlos the Jackal was expelled from the PFLP in disgrace.
The 2010 movie "Carlos" starts with a disclaimer pointing out that the exact details of these criminal acts backed by Cold War intelligence agencies aren't exactly in the public domain. As such they acknowledge that they've made up large sections of the story.
However the movie claims that the OPEC siege had nothing to do with the Palestinian cause. Instead it claims that the Iraqi government of Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr had paid the PFLP to carry out the operation on its behalf.
The movie goes on to claim that this was done because al-Bakr wanted to start a war with pre-Revolution Iran whose Shah was backing Iraqi Kurdish separatists led by Mustafa Barzani - the father of current President of Iraq's Kurdistan Region Masoud Barzani.
However in order to fund this war al-Bakr needed OPEC to raise the oil price. Saudi Arabia wouldn't allow this so the true mission of the OPEC siege was to kill the Saudi representative while making it look like an accident.
Obviously I cannot in any way comment on how truthful the movie's claims are. However the fact the story exists means that referencing it allows Erdogan to bring all of those issues to the negotiating table.
Erdogan is obviously very interested to know whether Iran will use its influence in both Syria and Iraq to protect the Kurds or will they allow Erdogan to bulldoze his way through the Afrin Canton and Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
Following yesterday's meeting a bomb went off in the offices of the Iranian branch of Barzani's Kurdish Democratic Party (KDPI) in the town of Koya just east of Erbil. Now this could be a sign that Iran's is prepared to allow Erdogan to go after the Kurds. However it could also have been a signal that is what was being discussed at the meeting.
Either way the Kurds - particularly Barzani - should consider it a warning. After all despite two years of airstrikes they still seem to view Erdogan as their friend and Shias as their enemy. That sort of attitude hardly encourages Iran to do him the sort of favours they did for his father.
The December 2016 OPEC meeting was also quite interesting. Both Russia and Saudi Arabia agreed to cut production to drive up the oil price. However Iran will be allowed to grow its production meaning that it will benefit the most from the price rise.
The reason why Saudi Arabia has made this concession to its great regional rival that its current war against Yemen is bleeding it dry.
Saudi Arabia is currently struggling to honour its contracts and has been forced to cut the support it gives to Egypt in return for Egypt participating in the Yemen war. In nations like the UK and the US there have been moves to stop supplying advanced weapons to Saudi Arabia. Rather than being over humanitarian concerns that is the result of a growing doubts that Saudi Arabia can no longer afford to pay for those weapons.
So adding to Erdogan's headaches if he does decide to go to war with Syria, Iran, Iraq, Russia, Europe and the US he can't rely on Saudi Arabia to support him. They can't afford it.
Yesterday (20/12/16) there were rumblings that Erdogan intended to blame the assassination of Karlov on the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). That of course would allow Erdogan to crack down on the MHP alongside the People's Democratic Party (HDP) meaning that only Erdogan's Justice & Development Party (AKP) will get to vote on this constitutional reform bill.
However today Erdogan has come out and fully blamed the assassination of the Fettulah Gulen movement.
Turkey is currently trying to extradite Gulen from the US. Linking him to the assassination of an Ambassador would certainly increase pressure on the US to comply.
Erdogan seems to be gambling on Russian President Putin having such a deep hatred of the US that the opportunity to embarrass them will be compensation enough for the murder of one of his Ambassadors.
It is the equivalent of Erdogan slapping the weeping Putin he's just raped on the backside and telling him; "Stop your crying. I'll buy you something nice to make up for it."
Meanwhile there are rumblings that Russia is about to set Ramzan Kadyrov on Erdogan. If Erdogan does not know that name I suggest that he learns it quickly.
21:55 on 21/12/16 (UK date).
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