London Or Aleppo?

Over the night of Tuesday (13/6/17) into Wednesday (14/6/17) a massive fire tore through the Grenfell Tower on the Lancaster West housing estate in the Kensington area of the UK capital London.

Due to the way that embers reignite this fire is technically still not out. Therefore at this very early stage anything anybody has to say is really just speculation.

However I think the closest thing in recent British history the Grenfell Tower can be compared to his the 1988 Piper Alpha Disaster.

On July 6th 1988 (6/7/88) the Piper Alpha oil and gas drilling platform in the North Sea caught fire. This resulted in the deaths of 167 people including 2 rescuers. The bodies of 30 of those killed have never been recovered.

Obviously the scenes from Grenfell Tower are utterly appalling. However due to the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated groups in Iraq and Syria they are scenes that have become so common to me I seem to have become desensitised to them.

As I've mentioned on May 19th (19/5/17) ISIL were being forced from the 17 Tammuz district of Mosul in Iraq. Out of nothing but spite ISIL responded to this by setting fire to a building in which 8 families were sheltering burning them alive.

It took four days and the complete liberation of the district for the 23 bodies of those 8 families to be recovered. They were then buried together in a mass grave because there simply wasn't the time or resources to give them each individual funerals.

As ISIL have become restricted to small but densely populated areas of Mosul the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) priority has become evacuating civilians.

However as they do this ISIL use snipers to kill the fleeing civilians. In one five day period at the start of June ISIL snipers killed 70 fleeing civilians. Due to the ongoing combat their bodies were left to lie rotting in the streets.

ISIL's slaughter of civilians has become so bad that on June 3rd (3/6/17) the New Zealand were forced to use White Phosphorus to create a smokescreen to protect civilians from the snipers. When used as a weapon White Phosphorus is extremely nasty so to use it as a smokescreen in a densely populated civilian area is an extreme measure that is not taken lightly.

The situation is Syria is even more horrific. That's because you have a group called the White Helmets supporting the Al Qaeda led Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition.

Officially the White Helmets function as the Army of Conquest's emergency service. They provide fire and rescue services and participate in executions which the Army of Conquest consider to be; "law enforcement."

However from their inception the White Helmets true purpose has been to create what is known as; "Atrocity Propaganda."

This often involves them destroying a civilian building either by arson or through the use of a weapon known as a; "Hell Cannon" to mimic an airstrike in order to kill and wound as many people as possible. They then film and photograph the aftermath and circulate it widely.

This serves two purposes. The first is fuel anger against the government they are trying to overthrow. The second is to try and garner sympathy for themselves by showing them heroically rescuing civilians and gathering humanitarian aid in warehouses.

For the last couple of days my Twitter timeline has been a strange mix of footage from Grenfell Tower and footage from Iraq and Syria. I frequently find myself having to do a double take to work out which is which.

In my slightly darker moments I'm tempted to start a Twitter game of; "London Or Aleppo." I show you a picture and you have to guess whether it comes from London or Aleppo?

Amongst the sort of people who would play that game it seems widely acknowledged that the May 22nd (22/5/17) and June 3rd (3/6/17) terror attacks on the UK were planned to assist the campaign of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party at the UK's June 8th (8/6/17) General Election.

Since that election there has been a lot of speculation what ISIL and their associates are going to do next to assist Jeremy Corbyn and the UK Labour Party.

A lot of people have been thinking that they would produce something similar to the April 4th (4/4/17) Sarin attack on Khan Sheikhoun in Army of Conquest controlled Syria.

This would allow Corbyn to reject the notion of airstrikes helping to disguise the fact that there seems to be a relationship of mutual aid between the UK Labour Party and Islamist terror groups.

Meanwhile vast sums of money would continue to flow from UK Labour Party activists like Brendan Cox to those Islamist terror groups. In particular the White Helmets and the Army of Conquest.

The Grenfell Tower fire has certainly given the Labour Party a lot of martyrs. Jeremy Corbyn in particular has wasted absolutely no time in trying to exploit these martyrs for his campaign against the British government.

London's Metropolitan Police are currently on stand-by for serious rioting tonight connected to the Labour Party's call for anti-government protests over the fire.

Meanwhile London's Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan is still refusing to use his powers to assist the survivors of the fire. It seems those victim's suffering is extremely valuable to the Labour Party in terms of political capital.

The Grenfall Tower fire fits with the tactics used by Islamist terror groups. It also fits with the objectives of Islamist terror groups. Therefore the obvious next question is whether Islamist terror groups had the opportunity to set the fire.

This is a complicated question to answer.

Emergency services can only estimate the number of residents of Grenfell Tower as between 400 and 600. 30% or 200 people is a pretty huge margin of error. Added to the number of residents you also have all the people who simply had access to building over of a timeframe of several days. This produces a huge pool of people who needed to accounted for.

The first person to be identified as killed in the fire is Mohammad Alhajali a 23 year old refugee from Deraa, Syria. Initially I thought he had been brought to the UK from a refugee camp as a properly vetted refugee. However it has since been confirmed that he travelled along the well worn Balkan migrant route arriving in the UK without proper security checks.

Alhajali was also studying construction engineering at a London university. This makes him particularly well placed to understand the role that insulation cladding played in creating a chimney effect in the February 21st 2015 (21/2/15) Torch Tower fire, the January 1st  2016 Address Downtown Tower fire and the March 28th 2016 (28/3/16) fire at the Ajam One Tower.

All of those fires occurred in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). You may remember that one of the June 3rd (3/6/17) London Bridge attackers had; "EMIRATES" scrawled across his chest while he was carrying out the attack. This seems to have played a role in the UAE joining Saudi Arabia placing Qatar under economic blockade on June 5th (5/6/17).

As a construction engineering student Alhajali would also be well placed to understand the similar chimney effect caused by the stairwell ventilation system at Grenfell Tower.

I think it is probably best that I don't write an online guide of how to get away with arson. However the UK authorities seem to be laying the groundwork for blaming the Grenfell Tower fire on a well known trick involving fridges.

My first instinct was not that the Grenfell Tower fire was an Islamist terror attack. I certainly don't consider Mohammed Alhajali to be a suspect. However there are so many questions here that I think the UK's Counter-Terrorism Command need to be leading the investigation.

Amongst the missing and the dead there are a number of foreign nationals. This means that the UK's Foreign Office and Diplomatic service are heavily engaged in the events surrounding Grenfell Tower.

Alhajali is from an area of Syria where UK Special Operations Forces (SOF's) are currently active. The fact that he has travelled through Turkey and the Balkan migrant route means that Britain's foreign intelligence service is also heavily involved. If MI6 are involved in something that has happened within the UK then the domestic intelligence service MI5 is also involved.

In my experience this is all well above the pay grade of you typical PC Plod. Fire Officers have got absolutely no chance.

The other advantage of Counter-Terrorism Command leading the investigation is they are the best resourced and most skilled of Britain's police departments. They also have experience in complex multi-agency, multi-national investigations.

What we've got though is London's Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan insisting that there will be no criminal investigation. Instead he wants a Public Inquiry.

Public Inquiries have a deservedly poor reputation in the UK for taking a long time and producing no justice.

Following the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster the Cullen Public Inquiry was called. This did not report until 1990 and led to no criminal prosecutions.

In 1989 there was the Hillsborough stadium disaster. The led to the setting up the Taylor Public Inquiry. This was completed quickly in 1990 but produced a pack on lies.

In fact there was a second Hillsborough Inquiry to look at the failure of the Taylor Inquiry. This lasted for another two years only ending in 2016. There have still been no criminal prosecutions.

Then of course there is the Savile Public Inquiry. This looked at the events of January 30th 1972 in London/Derry Northern Ireland - "Bloody Sunday." This did not report until 2010 - 38 years after the events.

Although many of those involved in Bloody Sunday have now died of old age there are ongoing attempts to bring prosecutions.

However Jeremy Corbyn's cunning, stunning victory at the June 8th (8/6/17) election the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) will now likely block those prosecution attempts.

16:20 on 16/6/17 (UK date).