In August 2013 a young female American aid worker by the name of Kayla Mueller was kidnapped near Aleppo Province by one of Syria's 'moderate' opposition groups before being sold to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). In February 2015 ISIL executed Ms Mueller but because their own rules prevented her, as a woman, being featured in an execution video they claimed that she had been killed in an air-strike by the US-led coalition.
On Friday (14/8/15) the New York Times - citing sources within the Mueller family - reported that during her captivity Kayla Mueller had been repeatedly raped by ISIL's leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Although this is clearly unpleasant news for the Mueller family it hardly comes as a surprise.
In early December 2014 ISIL released a guide for its members entitled; "Questions and Answers for Taking Captives and Slaves." Differing wildly from Islam this guide declared it the duty of ISIL fighters to make slaves of people who do not believe in Islam including Christians and Jews. It went on to make clear that any female virgins can be raped immediately after being kidnapped while non-virgins must first prove that they are not pregnant before being raped. Even young girls who have not reached puberty can be sexually assaulted and even raped provided that it is physically possible.
To aid with the selling of women as sex slaves ISIL holds monthly slave auctions in it's de facto capital Raqqa. Here women and very young girls are sold in groups of three or four often for as little as USD5 each. Once a buyer gets bored of their purchase after a couple of months they can simply sell them on as second, third, fourth or even 22nd hand. These auctions also tend to trigger a massive increase in demand for the drug Viagra from ISIL members who need a little help to rape more women more often.
So in any given week I could tell you half a dozen stories exactly the same as Kayla Mueller's. This is simply what ISIL do and what ISIL are.
Within the US this latest revelation has stirred up fresh controversy over the decision at the start of August 2015 to transfer of Nasrin As'ad Ibrahim from American custody to that of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Better known by the assumed named "Umm Sayyaf" Ibrahim was captured in May by US Special Forces during a raid near Deir-er-Zour in eastern Syria in which her husband Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi was killed. Like his wife al-Tunisi had assumed the name Abu Sayyaf. In Arabic "Abu Sayyaf" and "Umm Sayyaf" are the masculine and feminine versions of the phrase "Bearer of the Sword" making the couple the "Parents of the Sword."
It has since emerged that for periods of her captivity Kayla Mueller was held at a compound under the control of the Sayyaf's and it was here that at least some of the rapes by al-Baghdadi took place. As such there is a strong feeling that rather then being transferred to the KRG Umm Sayyaf should have been tried and punished within the US for her crimes against a US citizen.
At the time of the raid it was claimed that Abu Sayyaf was a senior figure with ISIL and the man in control of their oil smuggling operations. The problem is that ISIL actually take great pride in presenting themselves as an organised state even going so far as to publish who is in charge of particular regions or in charge of particular ministries such as oil production or foreign fighters. Prior to the American raid Abu Sayyaf's name had not come up before and to this day most people only know him as the guy US Special Forces killed.
While the raid was taking place US Secretary of State John Kerry was embarking on a tour of South-East Asia which included stops in China and the Republic of Korea (RoK/South Korea) as part of US President Barack Obama's grand "Pivot Towards the Pacific" policy. In this part of the world the name "Abu Sayyaf" is much more famous as an Al Qaeda linked terror group that was formed in 1995. Based primarily in the Philippines Abu Sayyaf have also been active in Malaysia and linked to smaller groups across the region including in Thailand and Indonesia.
Since the days of Rihanna's 2013 "Diamonds World Tour" which featured stops in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Singapore, Thailand and a visit to the Philippines that was actually disrupted by a series of attacks by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which spawned Abu Sayyaf the US has been very interested in the differences in the way that Islam is interpreted in Arab nations and Asian nations.
This interest is only likely to have increased in the summer of 2014 when Abu Sayyaf pledged allegiance to ISIL and started sending fighters from across South-East Asia to fight in Syria and Iraq.
As such I would go so far to say that Fathi ben Awn ben Jildi Murad al-Tunisi's only value to US intelligence was his assumed name and it's links to South-East Asia. With ISIL operating a very male dominated society his wife would be of even less value.
Also it is worth pointing out that while I believe the allegations regarding Kayla Mueller to be true they are based entirely on the hearsay evidence of a 14 year old girl. It will take lot more then that to secure a conviction in a civilian Court in the US. However Iraq and the KRG can charge Umm Sayyaf - an Iraqi national - with crimes such as treason and waging war against the country before putting her before a military tribunal which would find it much easier to convict and impose the death penalty as punishment.
Although returning someone to their own country to face justice for crimes committed in that country doesn't go anywhere near as far this sending of suspect to a country with a more accommodating legal system harks back to the practise of extraordinary rendition in which the CIA would not torture terror suspects. Instead the CIA would send them to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt which would quite happily torture them on the CIA's behalf.
This flags up the problem with Obama's seeming obsession with closing the Guantanamo facility regardless of fact or circumstances.
While no-one wants to go back to the days of torture ISIL fighters such as Umm Sayyaf are members of a military force that have been captured on the battlefield. As such rather then attacking the protections of the civilian justice system in order to accommodate them it is better to try them in front of military tribunals and imprison them in military prisons such as Guantanamo Bay. After all this is the protection afforded to them under international law.
Rather then closing Guantanamo Bay the scale of the problem is getting such that it might be time for Obama to ask the United Nations to look at setting up a special tribunal to deal with ISIL fighters as it did with the Yugoslavia and Rwanda conflicts.
To my mind the Sayyaf raid is indicative of the problem with Obama's entire attitude towards ISIL. Rather then seeing them as a significant threat both to the region and humanity as a whole that needs to be destroyed by military means Obama is still viewing ISIL as a problem with the news cycle. As such he thinks that all he needs to do is do the occasional big, sexy and spectacular special forces raid or drone strike and voters will be convinced that he is doing all he can allowing Obama to continue to completely ignore the problem.
Even sending Umm Sayyaf to the KRG rather then the Iraqi government shows an arrogant disregard for the situation. With the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi recently reshuffling his cabinet amid widespread protests it is clear that there are tension within Iraq's national government. These tensions are exacerbated by the relationship with the KRG. The KRG itself is under pressure with it today debating whether to allow President Masoud Barzani to extend his term due to the war which I think is the right thing to do because this is clearly no time to train a replacement.
Dumping a high profile and controversial case like that of Kayla Mueller on the KRG at this time and expecting them to sort it out does not strike me as the actions of a supportive ally.
17:10 on 17/8/15 (UK date).
Monday, 17 August 2015
Thursday, 13 August 2015
The Almighty Dollar.
There is a 1999 film about Air Traffic Controllers called "Pushing Tin." In one scene one of the characters comes home and his wife asks him what he wants for dinner. He responds by having a massive meltdown ranting about how he has to make thousands of split-second, life-or-death decisions every day and how when he got home it would be nice if someone could make even the simplest decision themselves.
That is pretty much where I am at the moment. So you'll excuse me if the rest of this seems distinctly half-a*sed.
Almost since the beginning to time the value of money has been determined by how much gold a nation holds in reserve to back its currency. Banknotes effectively functioned as IOU notes that could be exchanged for a similar amount of gold.
This really changed in 1933 when US President Franklin D Roosevelt did a deal with Abdualaziz Ibn al-Saud - the founder and first king of Saudi Arabia. In return for the US pretending that Saudi Arabia was a country al-Saud would only sell Saudi Arabia's oil in US Dollars (USD). This meant that anybody wishing to buy oil - so basically everybody - would have to build up reserves of USD's. As a results nation's currencies stopped being determined by how much gold they had in reserve but how many USD's they had in reserve.
This contradiction of the value of the USD being determined by the USD has fuelled hundreds of massively oversimplified "Fiat Money" conspiracies on the Internet which worryingly have started to become actual economic policy in places like Greece. However this arrangement protects the US from the becoming embroiled in a Greek-style debt crisis because if any nation were to force the US into default it would collapse the value of the USD wiping out the value of the reserves supporting the value of all other global currencies.
It also means that in any dispute between Saudi Arabia and the US the Saudis have the nuclear option of no longer trading oil in USD's leaving the currency completely unsupported. However as always with moves this dramatic it would not be without consequence for Saudi Arabia because a plunge in the value of the USD will automatically wipe out the vast reserves of USD's that the Saudis have built up from trading in oil.
Also there is no guarantee that a change in policy by Saudi Arabia alone would be enough to dislodge the USD as the global reserve currency. With the USD having been the global reserve currency for the past 80-odd years at this point pretty much all global trade is done in the currency. For example all the financial aspects of climate negotiations are currently calculated in USD's. Switching to another currency at this point would be completely exhausting.
Another thing that helps maintain the status quo is that there isn't really another currency ready to step into the USD's place. The closest is probably the Euro Dollar (Euro) but as the recent Eurozone crisis has demonstrated even that is far from a viable alternative. The US of course has recently been working hard to keep it that way by trying to damage the Eurozone economy further through its demands for sanctions on Russia and it's idiotic contributions to the Greek debt crisis.
While the US has been working hard to keep the Euro down it has also been working equally hard punching itself in the face with the sanctions of Iran. These sanctions have prevented China from buying Iranian oil instead making it dependent on Saudi oil. China's vast purchasing power has led to the Saudis partially reneging on their deal with Roosevelt and accepting payment from China in it's currency the Renminbi (Yuan).
Along with China's growing exports this has helped the Yuan grow to the point where it is beginning to be considered a possible global reserve currency. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is currently in advanced negotiations with China to have the Yuan included in the basket of currencies that are used for the funds Special Drawing Rights (SDR). This would allow nations to make payments to the IMF in Yuan and more importantly allow the IMF to make huge payments to nations in Yuan rather than USD's.
The main problem the Yuan faces is that SDR currencies must be free-floating meaning that their value is determined by the price paid on the open market. The value of the Yuan is currently set by the Chinese government. On Tuesday (11/8/15) China announced that it would be changing the way that it sets the value of the Yuan to take into account market forces causing the value of the currency to plunge. This moves obviously brings the currency closer to the IMF standard but the fact that China is still setting the value of the Yuan means that it does not yet meet that standard. So although this move poses more questions then it answers it certainly served to highlight the issue.
Yesterday (12/8/14) there were two very large explosion in the port city of Tianjin in China's north-east. The initial Chinese reports suggested that these were the result of an oil explosion although oil doesn't explode like that. The explosions have also been likened by some to a nuclear explosions although even small nuclear explosions are about a thousand times more powerful then that.
The explosions were also significantly smaller then those typically experienced in Syria. For example in May 2014 fighters from what has since become the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition detonated a bomb in a tunnel in Aleppo province. That bomb had the equivalent power of 60 tonnes of TNT while the largest Tianjin explosion was only around 21 tonnes TNT equivalent. The US currently views JAF as the 'moderate' opposition even though their behaviour doesn't strike me as particularly moderate.
Also there is a lot of concern over whether toxic chemicals such as sulphur compounds were released in the Tianjin explosion. The United Nations is currently setting up a tribunal to examine chemical weapons use in Syria. It will be interesting to see if the US will allow it to consider all chemical weapon attacks including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) frequent attacks using both chlorine and sulphur mustard gas.
15:25 on 13/8/15 (UK date).
That is pretty much where I am at the moment. So you'll excuse me if the rest of this seems distinctly half-a*sed.
Almost since the beginning to time the value of money has been determined by how much gold a nation holds in reserve to back its currency. Banknotes effectively functioned as IOU notes that could be exchanged for a similar amount of gold.
This really changed in 1933 when US President Franklin D Roosevelt did a deal with Abdualaziz Ibn al-Saud - the founder and first king of Saudi Arabia. In return for the US pretending that Saudi Arabia was a country al-Saud would only sell Saudi Arabia's oil in US Dollars (USD). This meant that anybody wishing to buy oil - so basically everybody - would have to build up reserves of USD's. As a results nation's currencies stopped being determined by how much gold they had in reserve but how many USD's they had in reserve.
This contradiction of the value of the USD being determined by the USD has fuelled hundreds of massively oversimplified "Fiat Money" conspiracies on the Internet which worryingly have started to become actual economic policy in places like Greece. However this arrangement protects the US from the becoming embroiled in a Greek-style debt crisis because if any nation were to force the US into default it would collapse the value of the USD wiping out the value of the reserves supporting the value of all other global currencies.
It also means that in any dispute between Saudi Arabia and the US the Saudis have the nuclear option of no longer trading oil in USD's leaving the currency completely unsupported. However as always with moves this dramatic it would not be without consequence for Saudi Arabia because a plunge in the value of the USD will automatically wipe out the vast reserves of USD's that the Saudis have built up from trading in oil.
Also there is no guarantee that a change in policy by Saudi Arabia alone would be enough to dislodge the USD as the global reserve currency. With the USD having been the global reserve currency for the past 80-odd years at this point pretty much all global trade is done in the currency. For example all the financial aspects of climate negotiations are currently calculated in USD's. Switching to another currency at this point would be completely exhausting.
Another thing that helps maintain the status quo is that there isn't really another currency ready to step into the USD's place. The closest is probably the Euro Dollar (Euro) but as the recent Eurozone crisis has demonstrated even that is far from a viable alternative. The US of course has recently been working hard to keep it that way by trying to damage the Eurozone economy further through its demands for sanctions on Russia and it's idiotic contributions to the Greek debt crisis.
While the US has been working hard to keep the Euro down it has also been working equally hard punching itself in the face with the sanctions of Iran. These sanctions have prevented China from buying Iranian oil instead making it dependent on Saudi oil. China's vast purchasing power has led to the Saudis partially reneging on their deal with Roosevelt and accepting payment from China in it's currency the Renminbi (Yuan).
Along with China's growing exports this has helped the Yuan grow to the point where it is beginning to be considered a possible global reserve currency. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is currently in advanced negotiations with China to have the Yuan included in the basket of currencies that are used for the funds Special Drawing Rights (SDR). This would allow nations to make payments to the IMF in Yuan and more importantly allow the IMF to make huge payments to nations in Yuan rather than USD's.
The main problem the Yuan faces is that SDR currencies must be free-floating meaning that their value is determined by the price paid on the open market. The value of the Yuan is currently set by the Chinese government. On Tuesday (11/8/15) China announced that it would be changing the way that it sets the value of the Yuan to take into account market forces causing the value of the currency to plunge. This moves obviously brings the currency closer to the IMF standard but the fact that China is still setting the value of the Yuan means that it does not yet meet that standard. So although this move poses more questions then it answers it certainly served to highlight the issue.
Yesterday (12/8/14) there were two very large explosion in the port city of Tianjin in China's north-east. The initial Chinese reports suggested that these were the result of an oil explosion although oil doesn't explode like that. The explosions have also been likened by some to a nuclear explosions although even small nuclear explosions are about a thousand times more powerful then that.
The explosions were also significantly smaller then those typically experienced in Syria. For example in May 2014 fighters from what has since become the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition detonated a bomb in a tunnel in Aleppo province. That bomb had the equivalent power of 60 tonnes of TNT while the largest Tianjin explosion was only around 21 tonnes TNT equivalent. The US currently views JAF as the 'moderate' opposition even though their behaviour doesn't strike me as particularly moderate.
Also there is a lot of concern over whether toxic chemicals such as sulphur compounds were released in the Tianjin explosion. The United Nations is currently setting up a tribunal to examine chemical weapons use in Syria. It will be interesting to see if the US will allow it to consider all chemical weapon attacks including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's (ISIL) frequent attacks using both chlorine and sulphur mustard gas.
15:25 on 13/8/15 (UK date).
Monday, 10 August 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 13, Week 2, Day 7.
I had been hoping to take a couple of days off because frankly my brain hurts.
Unfortunately US President Barack Obama has b*ggered off on holiday without informing Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan that his plan to invade Syria in support of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) won't be receiving US support. As a result Erdogan has been pressing ahead with plans for that invasion.
Yesterday (9/8/15) Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria the Al Nusra Front (ANF) announced that it will be withdrawing from positions along the Syria/Turkey border. In theory this will leave the other members of the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition to fight ISIL in these areas. This has clearly been done in an attempt to circumvent the problem that the US in particular is forbidden from providing support to any Al Qaeda linked group by a host of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and its own domestic laws.
It is widely understood that Turkey was able to exert this influence on ANF through the other big group within the JAF which Turkey supports - the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML). Formed in Egypt in 2011 the FML's stated aim is to overthrow the Syrian government in order to establish an Sunni Islamic State in the Levant. To most people this sounds remarkably similar to ISIL's stated aim of overthrowing the Syrian government in order to establish an Sunni Islamic State in the Levant.
You may even suspect that the reason why most western - particularly US - news outlets insist on referring to this mythical "ISIS" group is to trick people into thinking that the second "S" refers to "Syria" rather then "Sham" - the Arabic word for "Levant" - in order to disguise the connection between the two groups.
Despite receiving international support from Turkey and the Gulf States on the basis that they are the moderate opposition who are to fight ISIL neither the FML nor ANF or when they are working together as the JAF have show much desire to actually fight ISIL. In fact in areas such as the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in Damascus there has been very clear evidence of both co-ordination and collaboration between ISIL and the JAF coalition.
As a result the best outcome of this news that ANF are to withdraw from the Syria/Turkey border regions is that absolutely nothing will change. However it is much more likely that the FML sections of the JAF will not only avoid fighting ISIL but will actively assist them in turning the area into a safe haven in which ISIL can re-group and re-gain strength.
Erdogan's hope is clearly that a stronger ISIL will provide an excuse to invade Syria on the pre-text of removing this ISIL safe haven but in reality provide more support to JAF and ISIL in an effort to defeat both the Syrian government and the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).
This really serves to highlight the problem with the US' plan to train Sunni-Arab fighters in Jordan but particularly in Turkey. Numbering just 60 the US' own contribution to this effort - known as Division 30 (D30) - are in practical terms an irrelevance against an ISIL force of around 30,000. However by participating in the program the US has given permission for Turkey to provide it's own training and support to groups within Syrian and rather unsurprisingly Turkey is being far less rigorous in screening the groups it supports.
As a result with Turkey's support the JAF seem to have absolutely no interest in fighting ISIL. Instead they are focused on fighting the Syrian government and have made recent gains pushing out of Aleppo and Idlib Provinces to attack Latakia Province which sits on Syria's border with Lebanon. This is where the majority of Syria's religious and ethnic minority groups including Assyrian Christians, Druze and Alawite Muslims are located.
By fighting the Syrian government rather then ISIL the JAF have reduced the Syrian government's own ability to fight ISIL and this is allowing ISIL to gain ever more territory. Last Thursday (6/8/15) ISIL succeeded in forcing the Syrian government from the town of Al-Qaryatain which sits around 65km (39 miles) south-east of the city of Homs and around 120km (70 miles) north-east of the Syrian capital of Damascus. As they always do when then enter a new town ISIL immediately burned the homes of some 100 Christian families and rounded up some 230 members of religious minorities who are presumably to be executed or sold into slavery.
Today within Turkey the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) killed four Turkish police officers with a roadside bomb and a Turkish soldier when they shot down a Turkish military helicopter both in the southern province of Sirnak. The PKK are actually a political rival of Democratic Union Party (PYD) which is the political wing of the YPG but this fits in very much with their traditional guerrilla warfare tactics of ambushes against military personnel.
Since July 24th (24/7/15) Turkey has been carrying out multiple, daily bombing attacks against PKK positions in it's southern provinces - particularly Sirnak. Although it is never a good sign when a nation starts conducting air-strikes against its own population I have refrained from commenting on these because I see it as an internal Turkish matter unrelated to the fight against ISIL in Syria and Iraq.
Also today there were twin attacks in Turkey's largest city Istanbul. The first of these attacks was a largely failed car bombing that caused a fire that badly damaged a police station in the Sultanbeyli district. The second attack was a gun attack on the US Consulate which resulted in no injuries.
With the ongoing PKK attacks in response to the Turkish air-strikes you would immediately suspect that the Istanbul attacks were also the work of the PKK and the by-standers who started chanting anti-Kurdish slogans certainly thought so. You would also think that an attack against a US diplomatic building would so enrage the US that it would immediately join Turkey in attacking those believed to be responsible.
Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it Turkish police were able to capture alive one of the US Consulate attackers at the scene. This rendered it impossible for Erdogan to suggest that either attack had been carried out by the PKK and blame was quickly placed on the Revolutionary People's Liberation Army Front (DHKP-C) instead.
The DHKP-C are a mysterious group who have previously been linked to one of the vast military conspiracies that Erdogan is always accusing of trying to overthrow him. In the run-up to Turkey's June 7th (7/6/15) General Election the DHKP-C suddenly sprung back into life being blamed for a suicide bombing at and Istanbul police station in January and an attack on a Court house also in Istanbul back in March.
Despite these fears that his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) were about to be unseated by a military coup Erdogan was unable to generate the wave of support he needed to change Turkey's constitution to make him President for life. The AKP are once again threatening to withdraw from coalition negotiations in order to trigger a fresh round of elections.
17:15 on 10/8/15 (UK date).
Unfortunately US President Barack Obama has b*ggered off on holiday without informing Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan that his plan to invade Syria in support of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) won't be receiving US support. As a result Erdogan has been pressing ahead with plans for that invasion.
Yesterday (9/8/15) Al Qaeda's affiliate in Syria the Al Nusra Front (ANF) announced that it will be withdrawing from positions along the Syria/Turkey border. In theory this will leave the other members of the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition to fight ISIL in these areas. This has clearly been done in an attempt to circumvent the problem that the US in particular is forbidden from providing support to any Al Qaeda linked group by a host of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions and its own domestic laws.
It is widely understood that Turkey was able to exert this influence on ANF through the other big group within the JAF which Turkey supports - the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML). Formed in Egypt in 2011 the FML's stated aim is to overthrow the Syrian government in order to establish an Sunni Islamic State in the Levant. To most people this sounds remarkably similar to ISIL's stated aim of overthrowing the Syrian government in order to establish an Sunni Islamic State in the Levant.
You may even suspect that the reason why most western - particularly US - news outlets insist on referring to this mythical "ISIS" group is to trick people into thinking that the second "S" refers to "Syria" rather then "Sham" - the Arabic word for "Levant" - in order to disguise the connection between the two groups.
Despite receiving international support from Turkey and the Gulf States on the basis that they are the moderate opposition who are to fight ISIL neither the FML nor ANF or when they are working together as the JAF have show much desire to actually fight ISIL. In fact in areas such as the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in Damascus there has been very clear evidence of both co-ordination and collaboration between ISIL and the JAF coalition.
As a result the best outcome of this news that ANF are to withdraw from the Syria/Turkey border regions is that absolutely nothing will change. However it is much more likely that the FML sections of the JAF will not only avoid fighting ISIL but will actively assist them in turning the area into a safe haven in which ISIL can re-group and re-gain strength.
Erdogan's hope is clearly that a stronger ISIL will provide an excuse to invade Syria on the pre-text of removing this ISIL safe haven but in reality provide more support to JAF and ISIL in an effort to defeat both the Syrian government and the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).
This really serves to highlight the problem with the US' plan to train Sunni-Arab fighters in Jordan but particularly in Turkey. Numbering just 60 the US' own contribution to this effort - known as Division 30 (D30) - are in practical terms an irrelevance against an ISIL force of around 30,000. However by participating in the program the US has given permission for Turkey to provide it's own training and support to groups within Syrian and rather unsurprisingly Turkey is being far less rigorous in screening the groups it supports.
As a result with Turkey's support the JAF seem to have absolutely no interest in fighting ISIL. Instead they are focused on fighting the Syrian government and have made recent gains pushing out of Aleppo and Idlib Provinces to attack Latakia Province which sits on Syria's border with Lebanon. This is where the majority of Syria's religious and ethnic minority groups including Assyrian Christians, Druze and Alawite Muslims are located.
By fighting the Syrian government rather then ISIL the JAF have reduced the Syrian government's own ability to fight ISIL and this is allowing ISIL to gain ever more territory. Last Thursday (6/8/15) ISIL succeeded in forcing the Syrian government from the town of Al-Qaryatain which sits around 65km (39 miles) south-east of the city of Homs and around 120km (70 miles) north-east of the Syrian capital of Damascus. As they always do when then enter a new town ISIL immediately burned the homes of some 100 Christian families and rounded up some 230 members of religious minorities who are presumably to be executed or sold into slavery.
Today within Turkey the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) killed four Turkish police officers with a roadside bomb and a Turkish soldier when they shot down a Turkish military helicopter both in the southern province of Sirnak. The PKK are actually a political rival of Democratic Union Party (PYD) which is the political wing of the YPG but this fits in very much with their traditional guerrilla warfare tactics of ambushes against military personnel.
Since July 24th (24/7/15) Turkey has been carrying out multiple, daily bombing attacks against PKK positions in it's southern provinces - particularly Sirnak. Although it is never a good sign when a nation starts conducting air-strikes against its own population I have refrained from commenting on these because I see it as an internal Turkish matter unrelated to the fight against ISIL in Syria and Iraq.
Also today there were twin attacks in Turkey's largest city Istanbul. The first of these attacks was a largely failed car bombing that caused a fire that badly damaged a police station in the Sultanbeyli district. The second attack was a gun attack on the US Consulate which resulted in no injuries.
With the ongoing PKK attacks in response to the Turkish air-strikes you would immediately suspect that the Istanbul attacks were also the work of the PKK and the by-standers who started chanting anti-Kurdish slogans certainly thought so. You would also think that an attack against a US diplomatic building would so enrage the US that it would immediately join Turkey in attacking those believed to be responsible.
Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it Turkish police were able to capture alive one of the US Consulate attackers at the scene. This rendered it impossible for Erdogan to suggest that either attack had been carried out by the PKK and blame was quickly placed on the Revolutionary People's Liberation Army Front (DHKP-C) instead.
The DHKP-C are a mysterious group who have previously been linked to one of the vast military conspiracies that Erdogan is always accusing of trying to overthrow him. In the run-up to Turkey's June 7th (7/6/15) General Election the DHKP-C suddenly sprung back into life being blamed for a suicide bombing at and Istanbul police station in January and an attack on a Court house also in Istanbul back in March.
Despite these fears that his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) were about to be unseated by a military coup Erdogan was unable to generate the wave of support he needed to change Turkey's constitution to make him President for life. The AKP are once again threatening to withdraw from coalition negotiations in order to trigger a fresh round of elections.
17:15 on 10/8/15 (UK date).
Thursday, 6 August 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 13, Week 2, Day 3.
The greatest lie told in the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is that there was a popular uprising that the Syrian government brutally suppressed.
Instead there are the Gulf Monarchies who led by Saudi Arabia oppress their people using a perversion of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism. Invented in the 18th century this demands that followers live as people did during the time of the friends (Salafi) of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century.
What makes Wahhabism so effective in oppressing people is it that bans any questioning of authority. Even drawings of the Prophet preforming his charitable works are strictly forbidden. As a result there are a worrying number of Saudi Arabians who genuinely believe that the sun orbits the earth.
In contrast there is Syria. Although this is not a part of the world that is famed for liberal governments and free populations Syria has long been considered to be one of the most modern democracies in the region. For example its secular constitution has long allowed Shia and Sunni Muslims to worship freely alongside Christians and other religious minorities such as the Druze and the Yazidi and has given women equal status within society.
Further infuriating the al-Saud family that rules Saudi Arabia the Assad family who govern Syria come from the Alawite sect of Shia Islam. This represents almost the polar opposite of Wahhabism. Not only are its followers encouraged seek answers to the great philosophical questions such as man's role within society they also worship 12 Imans who have examined the Prophets teachings and added to them almost in the same way that Catholic Christians worship saints.
With the people of Tunisia and Egypt rising up to demand full democracy in early 2011 the al-Saud family became extremely worried that this type of thinking could catch on - particularly in Syria - and spread throughout the region ending their very lucrative reign. So in response they recruited Wahhabist fighters from across the world and sent them to Syria to destroy the country. The idea being to convince the world that Arabs are to stupid for democracy and freedom so need brutal Monarchs to keep them in line.
Amid the constantly shifting battlefield allegiances the Whabbist fighters backed by Saudi Arabia along with Qatar and Turkey morphed into ISIL. In August 2014 it became impossible for the world to ignore ISIL's brutality any further and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed resolution 2170 (2014) authorising the world to fight ISIL under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.
Since then Saudi Arabia has been desperately trying to convince the world that it isn't backing ISIL and that the US-led coalition should follow their lead by backing the 'moderate' Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) to fight ISIL. After all US President Obama clearly can't see any hint of ideological similarity between the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)" and the Saudi-backed "Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant (FML)" who make up a large part of JAF.
The other ludicrous story the Saudis have been selling is that ISIL are allied with the Syrian government. ISIL's entire ideology is that they need to establish an Islamic State in the Levant so God can descend to earth to fight the apocalyptic war that will wipe out all the Shias. It seems extremely unlikely that the Shia dominated Syrian government would rush to support that ideology. Given their numerous beheadings of Syrian government troops and their attacks on Syrian government positions in Hasakah city and today in the town of Al-Qaryatain in Homs province ISIL don't seem to be behaving much like an ally of the Syrian government.
With the Iran deal threatening to end Saudi Arabia's regional dominance and the looming 9/11 lawsuit in the US pressure on the al-Saud family is starting to grow. In fact - rather like the bin Laden jet that crashed in the UK last Friday (31/7/15) - you could say that alarm bells are sounding all over the flight deck.
So it came as little surprise then when today ISIL claimed to have carried out a suicide bombing at a Sunni Mosque in the Saudi city of Abha which killed 15 members of the Saudi security forces. This was intended to allow the al-Sauds to turn to the world and say; "Look we're the enemies of ISIL too!" while reinforcing the idea locally that ISIL are allied not only with the Alawite Shia Syrian government but also the Houthi Shia Yemen government that Saudi Arabia is also currently trying to overthrow.
While I'm here I should tidy up by pointing out that on Tuesday (4/8/15) and Wednesday (5/8/15) shots were fired at the Camp Shelby military base in Mississippi, US which is currently home to elite US Army Rangers. No-one even came close to being injured in either incident but the key detail was that the vehicle used was emblazoned with the slogan "Broken Arrow." Although US military codewords are subject to change for a very long time "Broken Arrow" was the term used when a US base was being over-run and all available air-strikes being called into assist.
It appears that a similar set of circumstances led to Obama changing the rules of engagement to allow coalition air-strikes against the Syrian government. Last Thursday (30/7/15) it was announced that a group of US-backed fighters in Syria known as Division 30 (D30) had been kidnapped by JAF although this may have been cover for another series of defections. Apparently on Friday (31/7/15) night the D30 base became over-run by JAF - a Broken Arrow. In his panic Obama may well have been tricked into crossing the line and entering into an illegal war against the Syrian government.
Also yesterday there was a strange incident in Tennessee where a man released tear gas in a movie theatre whilst waving an axe and a BB-gun around before being shot and killed by the police. Initially this was reported as a mass shooting. When there was a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina Obama attended the funerals of the deceased and led the nation in calls to end racism and ban guns. A recent shooting at a movie theatre in Louisiana triggered celebrities and members of Obama's Democrat Party to call for guns to be banned.
When 5 US military personnel were recently killed in a terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee the silence from Obama was deafening. Apparently he is now trying to deny medals and associated death benefits to those killed because awarding them would involve admitting that a terror attack had taken place. Obama has been equally silent on the October 2014 terror attack in which two New York City police officers were attacked with an axe.
The film playing in Tennessee yesterday was "Mad Max: Fury Road." If you've not seen it it's about this group of women who have been held as sex slaves who need help as they make their escape.
I'm sure that Obama also can't see any connection between that and the plight of the Yazidi at the hands of ISIL.
20:15 on 6/8/15 (UK date).
Instead there are the Gulf Monarchies who led by Saudi Arabia oppress their people using a perversion of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism. Invented in the 18th century this demands that followers live as people did during the time of the friends (Salafi) of the Prophet Muhammad in the 7th century.
What makes Wahhabism so effective in oppressing people is it that bans any questioning of authority. Even drawings of the Prophet preforming his charitable works are strictly forbidden. As a result there are a worrying number of Saudi Arabians who genuinely believe that the sun orbits the earth.
In contrast there is Syria. Although this is not a part of the world that is famed for liberal governments and free populations Syria has long been considered to be one of the most modern democracies in the region. For example its secular constitution has long allowed Shia and Sunni Muslims to worship freely alongside Christians and other religious minorities such as the Druze and the Yazidi and has given women equal status within society.
Further infuriating the al-Saud family that rules Saudi Arabia the Assad family who govern Syria come from the Alawite sect of Shia Islam. This represents almost the polar opposite of Wahhabism. Not only are its followers encouraged seek answers to the great philosophical questions such as man's role within society they also worship 12 Imans who have examined the Prophets teachings and added to them almost in the same way that Catholic Christians worship saints.
With the people of Tunisia and Egypt rising up to demand full democracy in early 2011 the al-Saud family became extremely worried that this type of thinking could catch on - particularly in Syria - and spread throughout the region ending their very lucrative reign. So in response they recruited Wahhabist fighters from across the world and sent them to Syria to destroy the country. The idea being to convince the world that Arabs are to stupid for democracy and freedom so need brutal Monarchs to keep them in line.
Amid the constantly shifting battlefield allegiances the Whabbist fighters backed by Saudi Arabia along with Qatar and Turkey morphed into ISIL. In August 2014 it became impossible for the world to ignore ISIL's brutality any further and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed resolution 2170 (2014) authorising the world to fight ISIL under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter.
Since then Saudi Arabia has been desperately trying to convince the world that it isn't backing ISIL and that the US-led coalition should follow their lead by backing the 'moderate' Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) to fight ISIL. After all US President Obama clearly can't see any hint of ideological similarity between the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)" and the Saudi-backed "Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant (FML)" who make up a large part of JAF.
The other ludicrous story the Saudis have been selling is that ISIL are allied with the Syrian government. ISIL's entire ideology is that they need to establish an Islamic State in the Levant so God can descend to earth to fight the apocalyptic war that will wipe out all the Shias. It seems extremely unlikely that the Shia dominated Syrian government would rush to support that ideology. Given their numerous beheadings of Syrian government troops and their attacks on Syrian government positions in Hasakah city and today in the town of Al-Qaryatain in Homs province ISIL don't seem to be behaving much like an ally of the Syrian government.
With the Iran deal threatening to end Saudi Arabia's regional dominance and the looming 9/11 lawsuit in the US pressure on the al-Saud family is starting to grow. In fact - rather like the bin Laden jet that crashed in the UK last Friday (31/7/15) - you could say that alarm bells are sounding all over the flight deck.
So it came as little surprise then when today ISIL claimed to have carried out a suicide bombing at a Sunni Mosque in the Saudi city of Abha which killed 15 members of the Saudi security forces. This was intended to allow the al-Sauds to turn to the world and say; "Look we're the enemies of ISIL too!" while reinforcing the idea locally that ISIL are allied not only with the Alawite Shia Syrian government but also the Houthi Shia Yemen government that Saudi Arabia is also currently trying to overthrow.
While I'm here I should tidy up by pointing out that on Tuesday (4/8/15) and Wednesday (5/8/15) shots were fired at the Camp Shelby military base in Mississippi, US which is currently home to elite US Army Rangers. No-one even came close to being injured in either incident but the key detail was that the vehicle used was emblazoned with the slogan "Broken Arrow." Although US military codewords are subject to change for a very long time "Broken Arrow" was the term used when a US base was being over-run and all available air-strikes being called into assist.
It appears that a similar set of circumstances led to Obama changing the rules of engagement to allow coalition air-strikes against the Syrian government. Last Thursday (30/7/15) it was announced that a group of US-backed fighters in Syria known as Division 30 (D30) had been kidnapped by JAF although this may have been cover for another series of defections. Apparently on Friday (31/7/15) night the D30 base became over-run by JAF - a Broken Arrow. In his panic Obama may well have been tricked into crossing the line and entering into an illegal war against the Syrian government.
Also yesterday there was a strange incident in Tennessee where a man released tear gas in a movie theatre whilst waving an axe and a BB-gun around before being shot and killed by the police. Initially this was reported as a mass shooting. When there was a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina Obama attended the funerals of the deceased and led the nation in calls to end racism and ban guns. A recent shooting at a movie theatre in Louisiana triggered celebrities and members of Obama's Democrat Party to call for guns to be banned.
When 5 US military personnel were recently killed in a terrorist attack in Chattanooga, Tennessee the silence from Obama was deafening. Apparently he is now trying to deny medals and associated death benefits to those killed because awarding them would involve admitting that a terror attack had taken place. Obama has been equally silent on the October 2014 terror attack in which two New York City police officers were attacked with an axe.
The film playing in Tennessee yesterday was "Mad Max: Fury Road." If you've not seen it it's about this group of women who have been held as sex slaves who need help as they make their escape.
I'm sure that Obama also can't see any connection between that and the plight of the Yazidi at the hands of ISIL.
20:15 on 6/8/15 (UK date).
Monday, 3 August 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 13, Week 1, Day 7.
On or around June 21st (21/6/15) the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) launched an offensive to dislodge the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) from the city of Hasakah. Sitting around 165km (100 miles) north-east of the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa the City of Hasakah is the capital of Syria's Hasakah province and makes up part of the southern border to the humanitarian buffer-zone that has been established between ISIL positions and Turkey.
Following 39 days of battle which claimed the lives of 386 ISIL fighters the group were finally expelled from the city on Saturday (1/8/15) leaving Hasakah fully under YPG control. 21 YPG fighters gave their lives in the operation.
On Sunday (2/8/15) Turkey accused the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) of carrying out a suicide bombing against a police station in Dogubayezit, Agri province which sits around 300km (180 miles) north of Turkey's border with Iraq where Turkey is bombing PKK bases. If this is true then it would mark a dramatic change in tactics for the PKK who have never before used suicide bombers.
It would though fit in with a pattern of behaviour that has been taking place in Turkey throughout 2015. This began on January 6th (6/1/15) when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in a police station in Istanbul. On March 31st (31/3/12) amid widespread disruption across Turkey two armed men stormed a Courthouse in Istanbul taking prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz hostage before all three were eventually killed in a police raid. The following day (1/4/15) a man burst into the HQ of the Islamist Justice & Development Party (AKP) brandishing a sword and a Turkish flag.
Both the police station attack and the taking of Mehmet Selim Kiraz hostage were blamed on the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party Front (DHKP-C) who are a hardcore Communist group that really died out in 1996. In a nation such as Turkey which is prone to military coups and fake terror attacks to justify those coups the re-emergence of a group like the DHKP-C after an almost 20 year hiatus would lead many people to conclude that the attacks were actually carried out by what is referred to in Turkish politics as the "Deep State." The Turkish nationalist storming the AKP HQ would certainly feed the idea that the DHKP-C attacks were faked in an effort to dislodge the AKP from power.
However the woman who carried out the police station attack was eventually identified as a devout Salafi Muslim who is extremely unlikely to be accepted by either the atheist DHKP-C or the aggressively secular deep state. She though would have been right at home in the Islamist AKP. Therefore is seems much more likely that the AKP carried out these attacks in an effort to trick the Turkish people into thinking that the deep state were trying to dislodge the AKP.
That way the AKP could campaign as the protector of the Turkish people sweeping them to the victory in June 7th (7/6/15) General Election that party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan needed to change the constitution to allow him to continue to run Turkey despite the expiration of his term limits.
Obviously this failed with the AKP being unable to secure a Parliamentary majority. As such you can't help but think that the AKP are provoking and faking PKK attacks in the hope of building them up into a bogeyman the AKP can campaign to protect the Turkish people from during a fresh round of elections. It also provides a pretext for Erdogan to provide support for his ISIL allies by attacking Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq.
Unfortunately I don't have the time address either of those issues in anywhere near the level of detail I would like because we are still dealing with the fallout of US President Barack Obama's disastrous phonecall with Erdogan on July 22nd (22/7/15).
Rather then fully disclosing what was promised during that conversation the US is instead letting information leak out in dribs and drabs with fresh revelations - each as terrible as the last - emerging nearly every day. This makes it hard to assess the scale of the mistake that Obama has made let alone try and develop a solution to the problem.
However it is clear that the first step is getting Obama to admit that he has made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Although it has been frequently denied by the White House it is widely accepted that the purpose of the conversation was use the July 20th (20/7/15) ISIL bombing of Kurds in Suruc as a way to get Turkey to agree to allow the Incrilik airbase to be used in the fight against ISIL.
Incrilik is an United States Air Force (USAF) base that was opened in 1951 as part of Turkey's membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). As such the discussion is not about what concessions the US will make to Turkey in return for permission to use the base but what things the US will take away if Turkey continues to refuse to allow the base to be used.
Despite going very far down the concessions route it's emerged that Obama has still not managed to secure the use of Incrilik. Turkey has given permission for US aircraft to fly from the base but those aircraft are not permitted to attack ISIL targets in Syria in order to protect the buffer-zone that the YPG and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have established. As the YPG/FSA are currently the only non-Syrian government force fighting ISIL in Syria this is almost exactly the same as saying that the US cannot use Incrilik in the fight against ISIL.
Apart from allowing Turkish strikes against Kurdish forces it's emerged that the most dangerous concession Obama has made is to change the US-led coalition's rules of engagement to allow them to carry out strikes to defend Syrian opposition groups from attack - including from the Syrian government.
The first problem that this creates is that it is far from clear what is meant by "opposition groups." With the exception of the YPG/FSA that the US-led coalition has time and time again refused to support the only group opposing ISIL in Syria is the Syrian government and it seems unlikely they'll need the US' help to avoid attacking themselves.
The US has apparently trained and equipped a full 59 fighters in Syria who call themselves "Division 30 (D30)." Last Thursday (30/7/15) D30 announced that they had been kidnapped by the Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front (ANF). This struck me as a very convenient way for D30 to cover up the fact that they had defected to join ANF just like the US-backed Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) and Harakat Hazm did back in November 2014 while keeping the US weapons flowing. It appears not to be working because the US has since come out and denied ever being involved with D30.
Apart from the Syrian government, ISIL and the YPG the only other group operating in Syria is the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF). This was formed in the spring of 2015 when the Islamic Front (IF) coalition of Islamist terror groups such as the Islamic Movement of Freemen of the Levant/Ahrar ash-Sham (FML) and the Brigade of Islam/Jaish al-Islam (JAI) joined up with ANF.
The JAF group has shown absolutely no interest in fighting ISIL and have on occasion worked alongside them particularly at the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in the Damascus suburbs back in April and in the attack on the Druze village of Khadar in mid-June. JAF also made clear that it shares both ISIL methods and ideology when on July 1st (1/7/15) they released a video of hostages being executed and accusing ISIL of not being radical enough.
Although it has some presence in the south of Syria JAF's main area of operations is in the north-western Aleppo and Idlib provinces. Here it is constantly attacking the Syrian government in an effort to advance in the opposite direction from ISIL positions.
The JAF is headed by ANF who are named alongside ISIL on United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 2170 (2014) that authorises military action. As such they are a declared threat to international peace and security meaning that even if they were fighting against ISIL rather then alongside them the coalition is prohibited from supporting them. Also ANF's affiliation with Al Qaeda means that Obama would be breaking a host of domestic US laws if he were to attempt to assist them in any way.
Although it grants the use of military force in Syria against ISIL and the ANF with or without permission from the Syrian government Resolution 2170 (2014) most certainly does not allow for Syrian government forces to be attacked. In fact it specifically prohibits it by affirming Syria's sovereignty. As such if the US-led coalition were to attack Syrian forces those forces would be well within in their rights to shoot down coalition aircraft and they certainly have the weapons systems needed to do so.
Therefore unless Obama is going to change those rules of engagement back so they comply with international law we may have to see the breaking up of the coalition. The US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia will go ahead with an illegal war against Syria whilst the rest of the coalition - possibly backed by Russia - continue to fight ISIL.
16:10 on 3/8/15 (UK date).
Following 39 days of battle which claimed the lives of 386 ISIL fighters the group were finally expelled from the city on Saturday (1/8/15) leaving Hasakah fully under YPG control. 21 YPG fighters gave their lives in the operation.
On Sunday (2/8/15) Turkey accused the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) of carrying out a suicide bombing against a police station in Dogubayezit, Agri province which sits around 300km (180 miles) north of Turkey's border with Iraq where Turkey is bombing PKK bases. If this is true then it would mark a dramatic change in tactics for the PKK who have never before used suicide bombers.
It would though fit in with a pattern of behaviour that has been taking place in Turkey throughout 2015. This began on January 6th (6/1/15) when a female suicide bomber blew herself up in a police station in Istanbul. On March 31st (31/3/12) amid widespread disruption across Turkey two armed men stormed a Courthouse in Istanbul taking prosecutor Mehmet Selim Kiraz hostage before all three were eventually killed in a police raid. The following day (1/4/15) a man burst into the HQ of the Islamist Justice & Development Party (AKP) brandishing a sword and a Turkish flag.
Both the police station attack and the taking of Mehmet Selim Kiraz hostage were blamed on the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party Front (DHKP-C) who are a hardcore Communist group that really died out in 1996. In a nation such as Turkey which is prone to military coups and fake terror attacks to justify those coups the re-emergence of a group like the DHKP-C after an almost 20 year hiatus would lead many people to conclude that the attacks were actually carried out by what is referred to in Turkish politics as the "Deep State." The Turkish nationalist storming the AKP HQ would certainly feed the idea that the DHKP-C attacks were faked in an effort to dislodge the AKP from power.
However the woman who carried out the police station attack was eventually identified as a devout Salafi Muslim who is extremely unlikely to be accepted by either the atheist DHKP-C or the aggressively secular deep state. She though would have been right at home in the Islamist AKP. Therefore is seems much more likely that the AKP carried out these attacks in an effort to trick the Turkish people into thinking that the deep state were trying to dislodge the AKP.
That way the AKP could campaign as the protector of the Turkish people sweeping them to the victory in June 7th (7/6/15) General Election that party leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan needed to change the constitution to allow him to continue to run Turkey despite the expiration of his term limits.
Obviously this failed with the AKP being unable to secure a Parliamentary majority. As such you can't help but think that the AKP are provoking and faking PKK attacks in the hope of building them up into a bogeyman the AKP can campaign to protect the Turkish people from during a fresh round of elections. It also provides a pretext for Erdogan to provide support for his ISIL allies by attacking Kurdish positions in Syria and Iraq.
Unfortunately I don't have the time address either of those issues in anywhere near the level of detail I would like because we are still dealing with the fallout of US President Barack Obama's disastrous phonecall with Erdogan on July 22nd (22/7/15).
Rather then fully disclosing what was promised during that conversation the US is instead letting information leak out in dribs and drabs with fresh revelations - each as terrible as the last - emerging nearly every day. This makes it hard to assess the scale of the mistake that Obama has made let alone try and develop a solution to the problem.
However it is clear that the first step is getting Obama to admit that he has made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Although it has been frequently denied by the White House it is widely accepted that the purpose of the conversation was use the July 20th (20/7/15) ISIL bombing of Kurds in Suruc as a way to get Turkey to agree to allow the Incrilik airbase to be used in the fight against ISIL.
Incrilik is an United States Air Force (USAF) base that was opened in 1951 as part of Turkey's membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). As such the discussion is not about what concessions the US will make to Turkey in return for permission to use the base but what things the US will take away if Turkey continues to refuse to allow the base to be used.
Despite going very far down the concessions route it's emerged that Obama has still not managed to secure the use of Incrilik. Turkey has given permission for US aircraft to fly from the base but those aircraft are not permitted to attack ISIL targets in Syria in order to protect the buffer-zone that the YPG and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have established. As the YPG/FSA are currently the only non-Syrian government force fighting ISIL in Syria this is almost exactly the same as saying that the US cannot use Incrilik in the fight against ISIL.
Apart from allowing Turkish strikes against Kurdish forces it's emerged that the most dangerous concession Obama has made is to change the US-led coalition's rules of engagement to allow them to carry out strikes to defend Syrian opposition groups from attack - including from the Syrian government.
The first problem that this creates is that it is far from clear what is meant by "opposition groups." With the exception of the YPG/FSA that the US-led coalition has time and time again refused to support the only group opposing ISIL in Syria is the Syrian government and it seems unlikely they'll need the US' help to avoid attacking themselves.
The US has apparently trained and equipped a full 59 fighters in Syria who call themselves "Division 30 (D30)." Last Thursday (30/7/15) D30 announced that they had been kidnapped by the Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front (ANF). This struck me as a very convenient way for D30 to cover up the fact that they had defected to join ANF just like the US-backed Syrian Revolutionary Front (SRF) and Harakat Hazm did back in November 2014 while keeping the US weapons flowing. It appears not to be working because the US has since come out and denied ever being involved with D30.
Apart from the Syrian government, ISIL and the YPG the only other group operating in Syria is the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF). This was formed in the spring of 2015 when the Islamic Front (IF) coalition of Islamist terror groups such as the Islamic Movement of Freemen of the Levant/Ahrar ash-Sham (FML) and the Brigade of Islam/Jaish al-Islam (JAI) joined up with ANF.
The JAF group has shown absolutely no interest in fighting ISIL and have on occasion worked alongside them particularly at the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in the Damascus suburbs back in April and in the attack on the Druze village of Khadar in mid-June. JAF also made clear that it shares both ISIL methods and ideology when on July 1st (1/7/15) they released a video of hostages being executed and accusing ISIL of not being radical enough.
Although it has some presence in the south of Syria JAF's main area of operations is in the north-western Aleppo and Idlib provinces. Here it is constantly attacking the Syrian government in an effort to advance in the opposite direction from ISIL positions.
The JAF is headed by ANF who are named alongside ISIL on United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 2170 (2014) that authorises military action. As such they are a declared threat to international peace and security meaning that even if they were fighting against ISIL rather then alongside them the coalition is prohibited from supporting them. Also ANF's affiliation with Al Qaeda means that Obama would be breaking a host of domestic US laws if he were to attempt to assist them in any way.
Although it grants the use of military force in Syria against ISIL and the ANF with or without permission from the Syrian government Resolution 2170 (2014) most certainly does not allow for Syrian government forces to be attacked. In fact it specifically prohibits it by affirming Syria's sovereignty. As such if the US-led coalition were to attack Syrian forces those forces would be well within in their rights to shoot down coalition aircraft and they certainly have the weapons systems needed to do so.
Therefore unless Obama is going to change those rules of engagement back so they comply with international law we may have to see the breaking up of the coalition. The US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia will go ahead with an illegal war against Syria whilst the rest of the coalition - possibly backed by Russia - continue to fight ISIL.
16:10 on 3/8/15 (UK date).
Sunday, 2 August 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 13, Week 1, Day 6.
In my previous post on the subject I spoke about a British Airways flight from Las Vegas, US to London, UK that had to be diverted to Montreal, Canada on Wednesday (29/7/15) over a security alert that turned out to be a hoax. I suggested that this could have been a sign that in light of it's attacks against the Kurds in Iraq and Syria Turkey was no longer welcome as part of the international coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
As I was writing that post a Saudi Arabian private jet flying from Milan, Italy to a small, private airport just outside London, UK crashed on landing killing all on board. Saudi Arabia and it's ruling al-Saud family are very much like the big brother that Turkey's President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan wishes he could be. Therefore this was Saudi Arabia establishing a line of communication with the UK over the Turkey issue. After all there will be constant dialogue between the two nations as the investigation into the crash progresses.
Although I think it was primarily just an attempt to establish the dialogue channel there are a few little details of the crash that could be significant;
Firstly the crash occurred at the "Blackbushe Airport." When he first won the Presidency in 2008 many people compared Barack Obama to British Prime Minister Tony Blair because they both seemed to place style over substance when it came to politics. Obama campaigned on vague slogans such as "Hope" and "Change" while in 1997 Blair used the D:Ream song "Things Can Only Get Better" as his campaign anthem. This was really the first and only time that a campaign anthem has been used in UK politics.
Also both Obama and Blair seem to share this naive idea that in international politics all you need to do is come up with a good idea and lay out a strong argument supporting that idea for people to agree to it. In reality it is bribery, blackmail, intimidation and coercion that make the world go round.
Irish drinks manufacturer Bushmills make this world famous brand of whiskey called "Black Bush." This added level of confusion makes it the perfected coded way to discuss the similarities between Blair and Obama who has, in the past, been referred to as; "The Black Blair."
I should point out though that this could just be a coincidence because that's the airport the flight always uses.
Secondly the pilot of the jet who was killed in the crash was a Jordanian national. The burning alive of Jordanian pilot Muath al-
Again though I should point out that this was the pilot who is always piloting that particular plane.
Thirdly after missing the runway the plane crashed into a mass of parked cars that were being stored at a vehicle auction site. As arguments of Qatar's hosting of the 2022 World Cup have revealed at this time of year it is brutally hot across the middle-east. For example on Friday (31/7/15) it hit 74C (165F) in Iran. What many wealthy people from the Gulf States do to counter this is to travel to European destinations such as London, UK to spend the summer where the weather is much cooler.
In the Knightsbridge area of London in particular these young Gulf millionaires have a reputation for behaving like complete a*seholes driving around in their supercars showing absolutely no respect for anyone or anything. In response to this the local council is proposing a raft of measures that would make it much easier to seize these cars and ban their owners from the area.
Again though it could just be that the car auction site was just what happened to be at the end of the runway. After all no-one would build houses or a school there for a very obvious reason.
The most interesting detail though was that the jet was owned by the family of Osama bin Laden - the Al Qaeda leader who plotted the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the US in 2001 - and three of his relatives were killed in the crash. In light of those attacks the relationship between the bin Laden family and the American Bush family is what you would describe as uncomfortably close.
Whilst George H Bush was US President between 1989 and 1993 the bin Laden family brought out a failing Texas oil company by the name of "Arbusto Energy" that was founded by George W Bush. After the take over the bin Laden family kept George W Bush on the board of directors for what we assume was his family connections rather then his business acumen.
As President of the US on September 13th 2001 (13/9/01) - two days after the 9/11 attacks - George W Bush arranged for the US government to provide private jets to fly hundreds of Saudi nationals out of the US. This included at least 24 members of the bin Laden family who you would have assumed the US authorities would have liked to have questioned over the attacks.
All of these uncomfortable links are likely to be brought back to the public's attention as US victims of the 9/11 attacks sue for compensation. 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi nationals and at least one of them was housed by the Saudi government on Embassy property when he arrived in the US to carry out the attacks. As such the relatives are claiming compensation against Saudi Arabia as a whole.
If they are successful it will cost Saudi Arabia billions if not tens of billions of dollars in compensation not only to the victims but also to all the US companies and taxpayers that lost money due to the attacks. Needless to say Saudi Arabia are fighting this motion in the US Courts just as hard as they can.
Where Obama would probably have responded to this Saudi challenge by bursting into tears and immediately promising to block the 9/11 lawsuit the UK simply responded in kind getting straight back in the Saudis face with a series of air-crashes of their own yesterday (1/8/15).
The most high profile of these occurred at the "CarFest" classic car show in Cheshire, UK when a pilot of the Heritage Aircraft Trust display team was killed. Being in the rare situation where I seem to be largely agreeing with the UK I don't want to go into too much detail. However I think the connection with the BBC TV Show "Top Gear" is well established with it being mentioned in almost all media reports of the incident.
Essentially just a show about three middle-aged men messing about with cars Top Gear has somehow become a massive global hit generating around half a billion dollars for the BBC every year. It has also found itself at the centre of numerous diplomatic incidents - most notably between the UK and Mexico in 2011 and between the UK and Argentina in 2014.
In the last series the three presenters were tasked with buying three cheap classic sportscars and driving them to a classic car show. The presenter who was deemed to have won by buying the best car was 'rewarded' with a bone-shaking flight with the air display team that were booked to perform as part of the car show.
During this recording one of the presenters - Jeremy Clarkson - had a fight with one of the shows producers leading to him being sacked and the other presenters quitting in protest. The UK talked about little else for most of the month.
Chris Evans has since been appointed as the new lead host of Top Gear and it was he who organised CarFest in order to raise money for the BBC charity "Children In Need."
As Erdogan never seems to tire of reminding us the rise of ISIL has creating a refugee crisis with millions of people - including many children - being forced into refugee camps. With the Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia refusing to bring their vast oil wealth to bear against the problem the United Nations High Commissions for Refugees (UNHCR) is currently being forced to shut down many of these camps across Iraq due to a lack of funding.
The oft repeated official response to the CarFest crash was that despite the nasty air incident the show must go on for the sake of the Children in Need.
In the second of yesterday's crashes the engine of a Spitfire aircraft decided that it couldn't be bothered to pull the airframe through its mission forcing it to make a rough landing at the Biggin Hill airfield. The Spitfire is of course the iconic aircraft of the 1940 Battle of Britain in which a small number of British fighter's repelled wave after wave of a vastly superior German airforce saving the nation from Nazi invasion. Biggin Hill was one of the main airfields used in this battle.
At the end of the Battle of Britain then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave a famous speech in which he said; "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." A year into the war against ISIL with little changing you could almost say the opposite is true because never before in the field of human conflict has so little been achieved by so many against so few.
Despite these intense diplomatic exchanges the US' continued silence on the issue has only served to further emboldened Turkey. As I mentioned between Thursday (30/7/15) and Friday (31/7/15) Turkey carried out 30 air-strikes against Kurdish positions in Iraq. Between Friday and Saturday (1/8/15) Turkey carried out 98 air-strikes all against Kurdish positions in the Dohuk area of Iraq.
I am still waiting for yesterday's figure but in comparison on Friday the US-led coalition carried out just 30 air-strikes against ISIL positions across all of Syria and Iraq.
In one of the Turkish strikes on the village of Zarkel the Kurds claim that nine civilians were killed. I have seen photographs of the aftermath of the strike and at least one of those killed was an infant child far below military age. Turkey has pledged to investigate this along with Thursday's (30/7/15) air-strike on a hospital/medical clinic in village of Amediye. I suspect though they won't be applying the standard that Erdogan has so frequently applied to the Syrian government and the Israeli government that a regime that wilfully kills children has lost all legitimacy.
Turkey had been furthered emboldened by a closed door meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that took place on Friday (31/7/15). Here the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon took the unusual step of declaring that Turkey's action was done in accordance with Article 51 of the UN's Charter authorising self-defence and therefore lawful. Article 51 reads as follows;
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."
As you can quite clearly see Article 51 only allows a nation to act in unilateral self-defence against attack until the UNSC can meet to take measures such as a passing a resolution on the original attack. This creates a rather looped logic whereby Turkey's action is only considered legal at this time because the UNSC has failed to take action to condemn it.
However even this is not the case because the UNSC has already taken measures on the issue - specifically resolution 2170 (2014). This forbids any member nation from providing active or passive support to ISIL.
Although Turkey may claim that it's campaign is against ISIL there is scant evidence that anything it is doing is actually targeting ISIL. Nor is there any evidence that any alleged attack by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has taken place in Turkey has been carried out from either Syria or Iraq.
There is though a mountain of evidence that Turkey's actions are providing passive support to ISIL by hindering the fight against ISIL by targeting the Kurds - the main opposition force against ISIL. As part of it's campaign Turkey is also undertaking action which is unnecessary in it's claimed fight against the PKK. For example in order to reach PKK camps in Iraq there is absolutely no need for Turkey to fly aircraft over positions held by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Syria.
Also with there being no ISIL positions in range there can be no explanation for Turkey's shelling of those YPG/FSA positions other then to provide direct support to ISIL by weakening those forces.
As such Turkey's actions cannot be justified as lawful under Article 51 because the UNSC has already deemed it necessary to prohibit Turkey's actions.
In short the UNSC needs to rapidly meet again on the issue and get it right this time.
16:45 on 2/8/15 (UK date).
As I was writing that post a Saudi Arabian private jet flying from Milan, Italy to a small, private airport just outside London, UK crashed on landing killing all on board. Saudi Arabia and it's ruling al-Saud family are very much like the big brother that Turkey's President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan wishes he could be. Therefore this was Saudi Arabia establishing a line of communication with the UK over the Turkey issue. After all there will be constant dialogue between the two nations as the investigation into the crash progresses.
Although I think it was primarily just an attempt to establish the dialogue channel there are a few little details of the crash that could be significant;
Firstly the crash occurred at the "Blackbushe Airport." When he first won the Presidency in 2008 many people compared Barack Obama to British Prime Minister Tony Blair because they both seemed to place style over substance when it came to politics. Obama campaigned on vague slogans such as "Hope" and "Change" while in 1997 Blair used the D:Ream song "Things Can Only Get Better" as his campaign anthem. This was really the first and only time that a campaign anthem has been used in UK politics.
Also both Obama and Blair seem to share this naive idea that in international politics all you need to do is come up with a good idea and lay out a strong argument supporting that idea for people to agree to it. In reality it is bribery, blackmail, intimidation and coercion that make the world go round.
Irish drinks manufacturer Bushmills make this world famous brand of whiskey called "Black Bush." This added level of confusion makes it the perfected coded way to discuss the similarities between Blair and Obama who has, in the past, been referred to as; "The Black Blair."
I should point out though that this could just be a coincidence because that's the airport the flight always uses.
Secondly the pilot of the jet who was killed in the crash was a Jordanian national. The burning alive of Jordanian pilot Muath al-
Again though I should point out that this was the pilot who is always piloting that particular plane.
Thirdly after missing the runway the plane crashed into a mass of parked cars that were being stored at a vehicle auction site. As arguments of Qatar's hosting of the 2022 World Cup have revealed at this time of year it is brutally hot across the middle-east. For example on Friday (31/7/15) it hit 74C (165F) in Iran. What many wealthy people from the Gulf States do to counter this is to travel to European destinations such as London, UK to spend the summer where the weather is much cooler.
In the Knightsbridge area of London in particular these young Gulf millionaires have a reputation for behaving like complete a*seholes driving around in their supercars showing absolutely no respect for anyone or anything. In response to this the local council is proposing a raft of measures that would make it much easier to seize these cars and ban their owners from the area.
Again though it could just be that the car auction site was just what happened to be at the end of the runway. After all no-one would build houses or a school there for a very obvious reason.
The most interesting detail though was that the jet was owned by the family of Osama bin Laden - the Al Qaeda leader who plotted the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the US in 2001 - and three of his relatives were killed in the crash. In light of those attacks the relationship between the bin Laden family and the American Bush family is what you would describe as uncomfortably close.
Whilst George H Bush was US President between 1989 and 1993 the bin Laden family brought out a failing Texas oil company by the name of "Arbusto Energy" that was founded by George W Bush. After the take over the bin Laden family kept George W Bush on the board of directors for what we assume was his family connections rather then his business acumen.
As President of the US on September 13th 2001 (13/9/01) - two days after the 9/11 attacks - George W Bush arranged for the US government to provide private jets to fly hundreds of Saudi nationals out of the US. This included at least 24 members of the bin Laden family who you would have assumed the US authorities would have liked to have questioned over the attacks.
All of these uncomfortable links are likely to be brought back to the public's attention as US victims of the 9/11 attacks sue for compensation. 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudi nationals and at least one of them was housed by the Saudi government on Embassy property when he arrived in the US to carry out the attacks. As such the relatives are claiming compensation against Saudi Arabia as a whole.
If they are successful it will cost Saudi Arabia billions if not tens of billions of dollars in compensation not only to the victims but also to all the US companies and taxpayers that lost money due to the attacks. Needless to say Saudi Arabia are fighting this motion in the US Courts just as hard as they can.
Where Obama would probably have responded to this Saudi challenge by bursting into tears and immediately promising to block the 9/11 lawsuit the UK simply responded in kind getting straight back in the Saudis face with a series of air-crashes of their own yesterday (1/8/15).
The most high profile of these occurred at the "CarFest" classic car show in Cheshire, UK when a pilot of the Heritage Aircraft Trust display team was killed. Being in the rare situation where I seem to be largely agreeing with the UK I don't want to go into too much detail. However I think the connection with the BBC TV Show "Top Gear" is well established with it being mentioned in almost all media reports of the incident.
Essentially just a show about three middle-aged men messing about with cars Top Gear has somehow become a massive global hit generating around half a billion dollars for the BBC every year. It has also found itself at the centre of numerous diplomatic incidents - most notably between the UK and Mexico in 2011 and between the UK and Argentina in 2014.
In the last series the three presenters were tasked with buying three cheap classic sportscars and driving them to a classic car show. The presenter who was deemed to have won by buying the best car was 'rewarded' with a bone-shaking flight with the air display team that were booked to perform as part of the car show.
During this recording one of the presenters - Jeremy Clarkson - had a fight with one of the shows producers leading to him being sacked and the other presenters quitting in protest. The UK talked about little else for most of the month.
Chris Evans has since been appointed as the new lead host of Top Gear and it was he who organised CarFest in order to raise money for the BBC charity "Children In Need."
As Erdogan never seems to tire of reminding us the rise of ISIL has creating a refugee crisis with millions of people - including many children - being forced into refugee camps. With the Gulf nations such as Saudi Arabia refusing to bring their vast oil wealth to bear against the problem the United Nations High Commissions for Refugees (UNHCR) is currently being forced to shut down many of these camps across Iraq due to a lack of funding.
The oft repeated official response to the CarFest crash was that despite the nasty air incident the show must go on for the sake of the Children in Need.
In the second of yesterday's crashes the engine of a Spitfire aircraft decided that it couldn't be bothered to pull the airframe through its mission forcing it to make a rough landing at the Biggin Hill airfield. The Spitfire is of course the iconic aircraft of the 1940 Battle of Britain in which a small number of British fighter's repelled wave after wave of a vastly superior German airforce saving the nation from Nazi invasion. Biggin Hill was one of the main airfields used in this battle.
At the end of the Battle of Britain then British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave a famous speech in which he said; "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." A year into the war against ISIL with little changing you could almost say the opposite is true because never before in the field of human conflict has so little been achieved by so many against so few.
Despite these intense diplomatic exchanges the US' continued silence on the issue has only served to further emboldened Turkey. As I mentioned between Thursday (30/7/15) and Friday (31/7/15) Turkey carried out 30 air-strikes against Kurdish positions in Iraq. Between Friday and Saturday (1/8/15) Turkey carried out 98 air-strikes all against Kurdish positions in the Dohuk area of Iraq.
I am still waiting for yesterday's figure but in comparison on Friday the US-led coalition carried out just 30 air-strikes against ISIL positions across all of Syria and Iraq.
In one of the Turkish strikes on the village of Zarkel the Kurds claim that nine civilians were killed. I have seen photographs of the aftermath of the strike and at least one of those killed was an infant child far below military age. Turkey has pledged to investigate this along with Thursday's (30/7/15) air-strike on a hospital/medical clinic in village of Amediye. I suspect though they won't be applying the standard that Erdogan has so frequently applied to the Syrian government and the Israeli government that a regime that wilfully kills children has lost all legitimacy.
Turkey had been furthered emboldened by a closed door meeting of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that took place on Friday (31/7/15). Here the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon took the unusual step of declaring that Turkey's action was done in accordance with Article 51 of the UN's Charter authorising self-defence and therefore lawful. Article 51 reads as follows;
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."
As you can quite clearly see Article 51 only allows a nation to act in unilateral self-defence against attack until the UNSC can meet to take measures such as a passing a resolution on the original attack. This creates a rather looped logic whereby Turkey's action is only considered legal at this time because the UNSC has failed to take action to condemn it.
However even this is not the case because the UNSC has already taken measures on the issue - specifically resolution 2170 (2014). This forbids any member nation from providing active or passive support to ISIL.
Although Turkey may claim that it's campaign is against ISIL there is scant evidence that anything it is doing is actually targeting ISIL. Nor is there any evidence that any alleged attack by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) that has taken place in Turkey has been carried out from either Syria or Iraq.
There is though a mountain of evidence that Turkey's actions are providing passive support to ISIL by hindering the fight against ISIL by targeting the Kurds - the main opposition force against ISIL. As part of it's campaign Turkey is also undertaking action which is unnecessary in it's claimed fight against the PKK. For example in order to reach PKK camps in Iraq there is absolutely no need for Turkey to fly aircraft over positions held by the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Syria.
Also with there being no ISIL positions in range there can be no explanation for Turkey's shelling of those YPG/FSA positions other then to provide direct support to ISIL by weakening those forces.
As such Turkey's actions cannot be justified as lawful under Article 51 because the UNSC has already deemed it necessary to prohibit Turkey's actions.
In short the UNSC needs to rapidly meet again on the issue and get it right this time.
16:45 on 2/8/15 (UK date).
How Embarassing.
Last night one of my neighbours threw a house party. We were all prepared for this because they took the trouble of putting a note through everyone's door warning us that there would you some mild disruption and begging our patience. You would think that people who took the trouble to do this would also have the sense that once it got to around 1AM/2AM to start winding things down and moving the party indoors to keep the disruption to their neighbours to a minimum.
As the evening wore on I was starting to worry that their party had turned into something of a damp squib because there was absolutely no noise, disruption or any sign of a party taking place. Then at around 1AM I announced - on Twitter - that I was going to bed. Suddenly the party sprang into life with everyone thronging into the garden and setting off fireworks. I'm sure that's the sort of thing a Magistrate would term "malicious intent" whilst fining them for nuisance behaviour.
Anyway despite some serious indigestion I drifted off to sleep about 40 minutes later to the sounds of laughter and frivolity becoming increasingly strained safe in the knowledge that I was the most important thing the lives of everyone at that party. I couldn't even remember their names.
14:15 on 2/8/15 (UK date).
As the evening wore on I was starting to worry that their party had turned into something of a damp squib because there was absolutely no noise, disruption or any sign of a party taking place. Then at around 1AM I announced - on Twitter - that I was going to bed. Suddenly the party sprang into life with everyone thronging into the garden and setting off fireworks. I'm sure that's the sort of thing a Magistrate would term "malicious intent" whilst fining them for nuisance behaviour.
Anyway despite some serious indigestion I drifted off to sleep about 40 minutes later to the sounds of laughter and frivolity becoming increasingly strained safe in the knowledge that I was the most important thing the lives of everyone at that party. I couldn't even remember their names.
14:15 on 2/8/15 (UK date).
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