Although I wasn't feeling great on Wednesday by last Thursday (10/9/15) I'd developed that sort of fuzzy-headed dizziness that normally marks the start of a cold. By Saturday (12/9/15) it had broken which is normally the point where other symptoms such as a sore throat, cough, runny nose etc start to emerge.
However I moved straight to the sort of lethargy that normally follows a cold or other sort of viral infection. So basically I seem to have had a cold without actually having a cold.
This is like the fourth or fifth time this has happened to me this year so I'm starting to think that it might be psychosomatic. Although to the uninitiated they're not much to look at a lot of work goes into my posts on the ADP negotiating text. Without a break I went from that into the migrant crisis which certainly saw me generate a lot of words.
Despite being tired I was planning to spend that Thursday getting a haircut, running errands and cleaning the bathroom before writing a post explaining how US President Obama's support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) with the associated murders of police officers and highly suspect criminal cases such as the Freddie Grey case were undermining confidence in the US signing up to an international climate change deal. However my body sort of went; "No, no. You'll be sitting quietly being outwitted by daytime TV."
I must say that I'm tempted to take more time off though. In explaining how the collapse in Obama's political capital threatens a global climate change deal I was going to point to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott's oft stated position that if the US fails to sign up to the agreement Australia will refuse to sign up. Whilst I was busy being ill Abbott has been replaced by Malcolm Turnbull as Australia's Prime Minister. Although the change was brought about by a general unease about Abbott in a range of policy areas Turnbull has in the past indicated that he is more open to action on climate change.
Obviously though I can't recommend that anybody signs up to a climate change deal that isn't good enough. From the way that Obama has found it easy to disregard core principles of justice, equity and governance for political gain in the BLM campaign it's clear that I'm going to have to do a lot of the work to make any climate change deal functional. After all the main outcome of the September ADP meeting is that the October ADP meeting will open with the unveiling of an entirely new negotiating text. I'm only about halfway through the existing one.
Before I embark on that though I should probably tidy up yesterday's murder at the Delta University in Mississippi, US as it relates to the current war on Yemen.
Last Tuesday (8/9/15) a British Airways jet caught fire in Las Vegas, Nevada, US. This was a reference to the way that the US has assisted Saudi Arabia in building up Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) by conducting drone strikes. I likened this to a CIA practice from the Cold War in which South American rebels backed by the US "School of the Americas" program would assassinate local, mayors, regional governors, police chiefs etc to create a vacuum. People loyal to the rebel's cause would then fill the vacuum bringing the targeted area into the rebel's sphere of influence.
In response to this criticism the US quickly acted to assure Saudi Arabia that it was still fully committed to the Yemen program by conducting fresh drone strikes against AQAP on Thursday (10/9/15).
Yesterday's murder at Delta University seemed to be the US seeking international reassurance over it's continued support for the Yemen program. The murder occurred in "Bolivar County" which was named in honour of Simon Bolivar who was essentially the original South American revolutionary. After leading a war of independence that expelled Spanish colonial rule Bolivar went on to establish the South American nations of Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia which is named after him.
A big part of Bolivar's political ideology was the role of the strong President (El Presidente) who leads from the front and is closely involved in all areas of government policy which is still seen across many South American nations. Although I've never been a student of history I doubt Bolivar would have made much of Obama's weak leadership.
Although concerns have been dramatically raised the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) position on Yemen remains unchanged - support 'peace talks' that provide diplomatic cover for Saudi Arabia to overthrow the Yemeni government. On Sunday (13/9/15) Yemen's former President refused to participate in those talks unless the Yemenis re-install him as President as a pre-condition.
The UNSC could respond to this by remembering it's own charter and recognising Yemen's current government. That of course would mean that Saudi Arabia's war to overthrow the Yemeni government in order to impose Hadi as their puppet would have to be treated as the illegal war of aggression that it is.
In fact people who believe in such things could view Friday's (11/9/15) crane collapse in Mecca, Saudi Arabia as a sign from God that it's time for Saudi Arabia's bin Laden backed construction plans for the Muslim world to come crashing down.
15:20 on 15/9/15 (UK date).
Tuesday, 15 September 2015
Sunday, 13 September 2015
So Labour Have Imploded Then.
In May this year the UK held it's General Election. Almost from the moment of the 2010 General Election and the introduction of fixed term Parliaments the plan was that in 2015 the Labour Party would return to power and under close supervision would repair the damage done to the country in the Conservative/Liberal Democrat (ConDem) coalition.
Unfortunately the Labour Party completely blew it and not only failed to win power but even managed to lose seats reducing their total number of MP's handing the Conservative Party an outright victory. Obviously there are a wide variety of reasons behind this epic failure by Labour which I only ever got halfway though. However I think one of the key ones was Labour's demand for greater press regulation through the "Hacked Off" campaign that led to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards.
Driven by the totalitarian wing of the Labour Party the purpose of the exercise was to introduce Soviet-style controls on the press preventing them from criticising the less then competent Labour Party in any way. Although it ultimately failed the multi-year campaign had an immediate and chilling effect on the media in the UK with everyone suddenly afraid to say anything even vaguely controversial. Instead they simply produced wall to wall coverage of the Leveson Inquiry itself. This was at a time when Britain was engaged in illegal wars of aggression in Libya and Syria whilst at home the ConDem's were slashing public spending and sending the national debt skyrocketing.
To my mind Labour's war against the press has been one of the key factors that has absolutely killed off any form of political discussion within the UK. Although I have very easy access to UK news I barely pay it any attention to it anymore because there's rarely anything there of any substance.
This Pravda-style campaign also meant that nobody in the UK media had any incentive in seeing a Labour government until the more grubby edges of the party had been removed. So when the Conservative Party started putting about a fanciful story about Labour trying to form a coalition with the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) in the run-up to the 2015 election no-one in the media felt the need to set the public straight.
The SNP are of course a symptom of this death of politics to the point where I don't even consider them to be a political party. Their entire existence is predicated on the rest of the UK being prepared to bail them out to the tune of USD18bn per year, every year. Obviously this cannot work on a national scale.
What the Labour Party should have done is look hard at what brought about their collapse and make the tough changes needed to avoid it being repeated. Instead they decided that they really needed a hug and elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader to tell them what they wanted to hear and position themselves to out SNP the SNP.
Prior to his ego getting the better of him I actually had a lot of respect for Corbyn. However I always understood that his role within the party was that of an outsider allowing him the freedom to meet with people like Hamas and Hezbollah that need to be heard even if mainstream politicians couldn't be seen to meet with them. This fanciful fringe of the party - which is often represented by Ron Paul in the US Republican Party - also plays a vital role in producing some of the wild ideas that although don't become policy themselves help shape the discussion within the political mainstream.
A prime example of this is a centrepiece of Corbyn's manifesto which would see USD140bn in so-called "business subsidies" cut every year. Although I don't think any of Corbyn's supporters have actually read it the report that produced this 140bn figure did so by counting health spending and education spending as subsidies for business. After all if the public is too sick or too thick to work then business wouldn't have any employees.
This type of thinking obviously highlights how important it is for the government to spend on things like health and education whilst promoting discussion about how much business should pay towards that government spending on health and education through taxation. However introducing it as an actual policy creates this rather lunatic Neo-Conservative world where there is no taxation and no public spending so if you want healthcare or to send your children to school you have to pay for it yourself.
I don't see it as the role of the Labour Party to give deluded private school boys like David Cameron and George Osborne anymore ideas in that direction.
The other centrepiece of Corbyn's economics- "People's Quantitative Easing" - is just bonkers and straight out of the SNP/SYRIZA economic school. It has it's roots in the 2008 economic crisis in which global debt markets seized up.
In response the members of the G20 agreed to together print money to buy debt from private banks to get the system moving again. This is known as quantitative easing. Although the bank debts would ultimately be repaid and this was considered a short-term move that was co-ordinated throughout the global economy there is continued concern that it will lead to higher inflation.
Corbyn's plan will see the UK central bank (Bank of England, BoE) issue bonds and then print money to buy those bonds off itself. This new money will essentially then just be handed out to the public. Being a permanent plan and one that it done without international co-operation this will obviously cause inflation to soar and the UK currency to collapse.
Corbyn's response to this is to simply get the BoE to write off the bonds it has issued to itself. This will have some effect in reducing inflation but it will destroy the credibility of the BoE massively undermining confidence in the UK likely leading to it being locked out of the global debt market causing the currency to collapse driving up inflation even further.
As if to underline that Labour has no intention of being party of opposition, let alone a party of government ever again at the same time they elected Corbyn as leader they elected Tom Watson as deputy leader. It was Watson who led Labour's war against the free press.
So basically Britain has gone back to the days of Margret Thatcher. To say that she was unpopular is an understatement because the miners strike saw pretty much the entire north of England and Wales rise up in insurrection against her. Barely a year went by without one or other of Britain's major cities exploding into rioting which really peaked of the Poll Tax Riots of 1989. Throughout Thatcher's rule all of Britain's local governments, councils and Mayors were stripped of their power for objecting to Thatcher's policies.
However Thatcher's Conservatives still manged to win four General Elections remaining in power for 18 years because despite all the opposition the Labour Party were incapable of providing a credible alternative.
16:40 on 13/9/15 (UK date).
Unfortunately the Labour Party completely blew it and not only failed to win power but even managed to lose seats reducing their total number of MP's handing the Conservative Party an outright victory. Obviously there are a wide variety of reasons behind this epic failure by Labour which I only ever got halfway though. However I think one of the key ones was Labour's demand for greater press regulation through the "Hacked Off" campaign that led to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards.
Driven by the totalitarian wing of the Labour Party the purpose of the exercise was to introduce Soviet-style controls on the press preventing them from criticising the less then competent Labour Party in any way. Although it ultimately failed the multi-year campaign had an immediate and chilling effect on the media in the UK with everyone suddenly afraid to say anything even vaguely controversial. Instead they simply produced wall to wall coverage of the Leveson Inquiry itself. This was at a time when Britain was engaged in illegal wars of aggression in Libya and Syria whilst at home the ConDem's were slashing public spending and sending the national debt skyrocketing.
To my mind Labour's war against the press has been one of the key factors that has absolutely killed off any form of political discussion within the UK. Although I have very easy access to UK news I barely pay it any attention to it anymore because there's rarely anything there of any substance.
This Pravda-style campaign also meant that nobody in the UK media had any incentive in seeing a Labour government until the more grubby edges of the party had been removed. So when the Conservative Party started putting about a fanciful story about Labour trying to form a coalition with the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) in the run-up to the 2015 election no-one in the media felt the need to set the public straight.
The SNP are of course a symptom of this death of politics to the point where I don't even consider them to be a political party. Their entire existence is predicated on the rest of the UK being prepared to bail them out to the tune of USD18bn per year, every year. Obviously this cannot work on a national scale.
What the Labour Party should have done is look hard at what brought about their collapse and make the tough changes needed to avoid it being repeated. Instead they decided that they really needed a hug and elected Jeremy Corbyn as leader to tell them what they wanted to hear and position themselves to out SNP the SNP.
Prior to his ego getting the better of him I actually had a lot of respect for Corbyn. However I always understood that his role within the party was that of an outsider allowing him the freedom to meet with people like Hamas and Hezbollah that need to be heard even if mainstream politicians couldn't be seen to meet with them. This fanciful fringe of the party - which is often represented by Ron Paul in the US Republican Party - also plays a vital role in producing some of the wild ideas that although don't become policy themselves help shape the discussion within the political mainstream.
A prime example of this is a centrepiece of Corbyn's manifesto which would see USD140bn in so-called "business subsidies" cut every year. Although I don't think any of Corbyn's supporters have actually read it the report that produced this 140bn figure did so by counting health spending and education spending as subsidies for business. After all if the public is too sick or too thick to work then business wouldn't have any employees.
This type of thinking obviously highlights how important it is for the government to spend on things like health and education whilst promoting discussion about how much business should pay towards that government spending on health and education through taxation. However introducing it as an actual policy creates this rather lunatic Neo-Conservative world where there is no taxation and no public spending so if you want healthcare or to send your children to school you have to pay for it yourself.
I don't see it as the role of the Labour Party to give deluded private school boys like David Cameron and George Osborne anymore ideas in that direction.
The other centrepiece of Corbyn's economics- "People's Quantitative Easing" - is just bonkers and straight out of the SNP/SYRIZA economic school. It has it's roots in the 2008 economic crisis in which global debt markets seized up.
In response the members of the G20 agreed to together print money to buy debt from private banks to get the system moving again. This is known as quantitative easing. Although the bank debts would ultimately be repaid and this was considered a short-term move that was co-ordinated throughout the global economy there is continued concern that it will lead to higher inflation.
Corbyn's plan will see the UK central bank (Bank of England, BoE) issue bonds and then print money to buy those bonds off itself. This new money will essentially then just be handed out to the public. Being a permanent plan and one that it done without international co-operation this will obviously cause inflation to soar and the UK currency to collapse.
Corbyn's response to this is to simply get the BoE to write off the bonds it has issued to itself. This will have some effect in reducing inflation but it will destroy the credibility of the BoE massively undermining confidence in the UK likely leading to it being locked out of the global debt market causing the currency to collapse driving up inflation even further.
As if to underline that Labour has no intention of being party of opposition, let alone a party of government ever again at the same time they elected Corbyn as leader they elected Tom Watson as deputy leader. It was Watson who led Labour's war against the free press.
So basically Britain has gone back to the days of Margret Thatcher. To say that she was unpopular is an understatement because the miners strike saw pretty much the entire north of England and Wales rise up in insurrection against her. Barely a year went by without one or other of Britain's major cities exploding into rioting which really peaked of the Poll Tax Riots of 1989. Throughout Thatcher's rule all of Britain's local governments, councils and Mayors were stripped of their power for objecting to Thatcher's policies.
However Thatcher's Conservatives still manged to win four General Elections remaining in power for 18 years because despite all the opposition the Labour Party were incapable of providing a credible alternative.
16:40 on 13/9/15 (UK date).
Wednesday, 9 September 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 14, Week 2, Day 7.
More details have begun to emerge of Turkey's ground invasion of Iraq that took place on Monday (7/9/15) night. It now turns out that Turkey sent 230 - roughly a company - Special Forces soldiers into Iraq as part of the six hours of air-strikes that were carried out by more then 50 aircraft. It has still not been confirmed if this operation has come to an end or whether the Turkish troops are still in Iraq.
Turkey's justification for this action was that of "Hot Pursuit." The problem with that is Hot Pursuit is more of a defence then a justification. Under the United Nations Charter one nation is not allowed to send its troops into another country without their permission - the principle of territorial integrity. If this does happen and the wronged party complains to an institution of the international community such as the UN Security Council (UNSC) one thing that may stop the international community from punishing the aggressor nation is them being convinced that it was a genuine accident.
After all in the heat of battle it is impractical for soldiers to stop get out their compasses and compare their maps to local landmarks to make sure they haven't crossed an unmarked border. This is what is known as Hot Pursuit. Obviously the expectation is that as soon as the troops realise their mistake they withdraw and issue an apology to the wronged nation.
What appears to have happened is that rather then accidentally crossing into Iraq in the heat of battle Turkey has planned this operation by assembling such a large number of Special Forces - I don't think Britain's SAS has 230 soldiers - and sending them into Iraq with close air-support. As such Turkey's actions are not covered by Hot Pursuit and seem to be an intentional violation of Iraq's territorial integrity. It also represents an escalation of Turkey's prior violations of Iraqi territory with attack aircraft. If the UNSC even continues to function as a body of the international community it must censure Turkey for it's violations of international law.
Today Australia which has been part of Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - as the US led coalition is formally known - and conducting air-strikes in Iraq since October 2014 announced that it will start conducting air-strikes within Syria as well. The Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott also announced that Australia will be accepting 12,000 refugees from Syria.
While I don't have the exact legal details it seems Australia's plan will be very similar to that of the UK's with the refugees being picked up from camps close to Syria's border and then granted Australia's equivalent of a humanitarian visa as part of a resettlement program. The key difference is that although no further details have been given Australia indicated that it would only be accepting refugees from "persecuted minorities" which sounds like a polite way of saying "No Muslims."
I find this extremely problematic because in the first instance it strikes me as extremely racist. Beyond that though the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have been very keen to portray CJTFOIR as a Zionist Crusade against Islam. Australia turning around and saying that it doesn't want Muslims in their country seems to be doing most of ISIL's propaganda department's work for them.
Also ISIL is openly trying to ethnically cleanse Syria of minorities such as Christians and the Yezidi. In order to counter that crime against humanity I would have thought that these minorities would be the last people we would want to move out of Syria and the first people we'd want to move back. We certainly shouldn't be rushing to moving them to Australia which is literally on the other side of the World from Syria.
Although I think is really the only word you can use when describing the huge masses of people we see on our TV screens every day now when we don't know who they are or where they are from the term "Irregular Migrant" can be extremely problematic when talking about the situation. That's because it covers everything from the illegal economic migration you see from Mexico into the US right the way through to the refugees fleeing war in Syria and a mind-boggling array of variations in between.
Australia's long running and often heated debate over immigration is much more similar to the situation of illegal, economic migration on the US/Mexico border then the debate within the European Union (EU). Although there is an issue with the treatment of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (Burma) there are several very large countries between Burma and Australia and in the opposite direction there is India and Bangladesh. In fact a large part of the reason why the Rohingya are persecuted in Burma is that the Burmese view them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Prime Minister Abbott campaigned and was elected on a platform of stopping these illegal economic migrants entering Australia. Although the name of his policy "Sovereign Borders" struck me as something of a personal insult I must say that he has broadly got the right solution to Australia's problem. The central part of the plan is that these migrants who arrive by boat will simply never step foot in Australia instead being sent to processing camps in near-by Papua New Guinea for processing and deportation. By removing the promise of a new life in Australia this policy removes the product that the often brutal people trafficking gangs are using to lure in their victims.
However it remains a very controversial topic within Australian politics with conditions in these processing camps said to be so bad the Abbott's government has actually passed a law making it illegal to report on the conditions in the camps.
By announcing that Australia is going to be accepting refugees from Syria it is clear that Abbott is extremely worried that his own party and supporters will see him as caving into his opponents. Therefore in what seems to be an effort to convince people that he's still a tough guy Abbott has also decided to approve a US request for air-strikes in Syria that Australia has been 'considering' for a couple of months now.
As with UK Prime Minister David Cameron and his drone strikes this is no way to run a war. As I mentioned on Monday (7/9/15) CJTFOIR is operating at only around 10% of its capacity. Therefore the reason why this war is dragging on with little sign of progress is not a lack of air-craft or nations to provide them. Instead the problem is that there is a complete lack of a strategy of how to use those resources to defeat ISIL.
I'm still of the opinion that members of CJTFOIR refusing to join in with air-strikes until that strategy has been formulated is probably the most effective way of exerting pressure on US President Barack Obama to pull his finger out and hurry up and draw up a plan.
On the subject of Prime Minister Cameron's own Rambo fantasies they continue to receive dramatic and intense criticism from the UK itself.
Last night, just as I was possibly too drunk to be commenting on it and possibly should have gone to bed, a British Airway's (BA) passenger jet flying to London, UK burst into flames on the runway at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, US. All passengers were evacuated safely with only a few minor injuries reported.
This plane was of course flying on the same route that saw a BA jet being diverted to Montreal, Canada on July 29th (29/7/15) over a hoax bomb threat that seemed to protest the start of Turkey's air-strikes against Iraq's Kurds. However the scene of a civilian jet in flames on a runway invoked scenes from the ongoing war in Yemen.
What has provoked so much alarm and concern over Prime Minister Cameron's new found fetish for drone strikes is a worry that he is following the example of US President Obama who is widely considered an idiot in military and most other matters.
Dubbed "The Drone Queen" by intelligence insiders Obama has got this idea into his head that almost any security problem in the World can be solved by simply crossing names off a kill list with drone strikes. After all his killing of Osama bin Laden was so successful it spawned an Oscar winning - albeit wildly inaccurate - blockbuster movie.
Israel has long practised this strategy of targeted assassination using teams of actual assassins, helicopter gunships and conventional strike aircraft long before anyone had even invented the drone. Although the Israelis are not famous for being overly concerned for Arab lives even they have began to question this type of strategy and warn others against it.
In Israel's experience it leads to what they term the "Treadmill of Killing." Essentially every time you kill a terrorist another simply steps in to their place and the situation remains the same. So then you have to kill that person too. Eventually you find yourself in a situation where you are killing people on a daily basis simply to stand still. This can have an extremely damaging effect on the psyche of the nation that is doing the killing by numbing them to the violence and making killing an everyday part of life. The ease at which Israeli settlers seem able to burn Arab children alive in their homes could well be the product of this normalisation of extreme violence.
Aside from the moral implications this strategy of targeted assassination simply will not work to defeat ISIL. Although ISIL are a terrorist organisation the way that they are operating in Syria and Iraq is as an army of occupation. Therefore the only way they will be defeated is by a larger, more powerful ground-force going in to force them from the territory they hold and freeing the local population they are holding hostage.
From the way he has completely refused to co-operate with the Kurdish People's Protection Force (YPG) and the way he seems to block every effort being made by the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to liberate parts of Iraq Obama seems utterly terrified of the notion that ISIL can be completely and rapidly defeated.
Obama's love affair with drones has caused a very particular set of problems within Yemen. When the US drone operation in Yemen began - admittedly under President George W Bush - Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as they've since become known were - in terrorist terms - essentially just a couple of guys sitting around talking about how they would like to liberate Mecca and the whole of Saudi Arabia from the ruling al-Saud family who they view as infidels.
Amid rumours of the greatest bomber maker the World has ever seen being based in Yemen Obama massively stepped up the drone operation there relying almost exclusively on intelligence provided by Saudi Arabia. Since then rather then weakening AQAP have grown into one of the most dangerous terrorist organisations in the World second only to ISIL.
It is my belief that Saudi Arabia has systematically been providing the US with selective and sometimes false information about AQAP's leadership. The idea being to get the US to kill AQAP leaders who are opposed to Saudi Arabia so Saudi Arabia can replace them with people loyal to the Kingdom. To borrow a phrase from a Peruvian General who was trained by the CIA's "School of the Americas" program; "Within AQAP the US has created a vacuum. Saudi Arabia has then filled that vacuum."
Under this new found supervision AQAP have begun to extend their operations across the Gulf of Aden into Somalia where they have helped build al-Shabaab into a much bigger and nastier organisation then they were when President W Bush attacked them in 2006. This new arc of terrorism is also threatening other east African nations such as Kenya and Ethiopia in what seems like a deliberate attempt to intimidate developing nations into not signing up to a climate change agreement that would benefit them greatly but perhaps damage the market for Saudi Arabian oil.
In January 2015 AQAP had grown to the point where they were able to carry out a week long series of terror attacks beginning with the attacks on the Charlies Hebdo magazine in Paris, France where this climate change agreement is set to be signed at the end of the year. Although it is difficult to speak on behalf of more then 7bn people the reaction to these Paris attacks across much of the Muslim World was exactly the same as it was in the rest of the World - outrage.
This was particularly true in Yemen where the people rose up to overthrow the government that they saw as sponsoring AQAP and their attacks. This made Saudi Arabia furious and they promptly gathered Arab states who owe them money along with the US to launch a brutal war to re-impose their puppet government. Although resources such as time didn't allow me to continue I did cover the start of this war which I dubbed "Operation Gold Beard."
Even in a World where we have become numbed by ISIL's violence Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen still manages to shock by the sheer scale of it's inhumanity. Yemen is a dirt poor country that imports around 90% of it's food. The first thing that Saudi Arabia did was to impose an air, sea and land blockade on Yemen preventing that food from being imported. Several months on what we are seeing is a man-made famine with people literally starving to death in the streets.
Despite this on April 28th (28/4/15) Saudi Arabia intentionally bombed a plane belonging to the International Red Cross on the runway of Sana'a international airport specifically to prevent them distributing humanitarian aid. This is despite the Red Cross being specifically protected under the Geneva Conventions. In fact it is the Red Cross that holds and advises the international community on the Geneva Conventions.
The scenes from Las Vegas yesterday would have been instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Saudi Arabia's attack on the Red Cross in Sana'a.
This week the Technical Executive Committee (TEC) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is holding a meeting in Bonn, Germany. Unlike last week's meeting this doesn't deal specifically with negotiating a new climate change agreement. However it seems extremely likely that many of the technical issues discussed will end up in the technology section of the new agreement in some form or another.
As such I was initially concerned that the UK was bringing up AQAP as a way to intimidate developing nations such as Kenya by reminding them that they are under threat. After all my current ceasefire is fragile and strictly limited to ISIL. For example there was Sunday's (6/9/15) antics and the Paula Radcliffe story seems intended to baffle experts in things like engineering with topics such as physiological chemistry.
However earlier of Tuesday a man was arrested at the Garden City Mall in Nairobi, Kenya carrying what appeared to be explosives in an apparent terrorist attack. Fortunately it has since emerged that this was a fake bomb.
Therefore far from needing to be reminded about the terror threat Kenya in particular is well aware of it and seemed to be passing it up the UK Commonwealth chain of command demanding something is done about it.
21:20 on 10/9/15 (UK date).
Turkey's justification for this action was that of "Hot Pursuit." The problem with that is Hot Pursuit is more of a defence then a justification. Under the United Nations Charter one nation is not allowed to send its troops into another country without their permission - the principle of territorial integrity. If this does happen and the wronged party complains to an institution of the international community such as the UN Security Council (UNSC) one thing that may stop the international community from punishing the aggressor nation is them being convinced that it was a genuine accident.
After all in the heat of battle it is impractical for soldiers to stop get out their compasses and compare their maps to local landmarks to make sure they haven't crossed an unmarked border. This is what is known as Hot Pursuit. Obviously the expectation is that as soon as the troops realise their mistake they withdraw and issue an apology to the wronged nation.
What appears to have happened is that rather then accidentally crossing into Iraq in the heat of battle Turkey has planned this operation by assembling such a large number of Special Forces - I don't think Britain's SAS has 230 soldiers - and sending them into Iraq with close air-support. As such Turkey's actions are not covered by Hot Pursuit and seem to be an intentional violation of Iraq's territorial integrity. It also represents an escalation of Turkey's prior violations of Iraqi territory with attack aircraft. If the UNSC even continues to function as a body of the international community it must censure Turkey for it's violations of international law.
Today Australia which has been part of Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - as the US led coalition is formally known - and conducting air-strikes in Iraq since October 2014 announced that it will start conducting air-strikes within Syria as well. The Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott also announced that Australia will be accepting 12,000 refugees from Syria.
While I don't have the exact legal details it seems Australia's plan will be very similar to that of the UK's with the refugees being picked up from camps close to Syria's border and then granted Australia's equivalent of a humanitarian visa as part of a resettlement program. The key difference is that although no further details have been given Australia indicated that it would only be accepting refugees from "persecuted minorities" which sounds like a polite way of saying "No Muslims."
I find this extremely problematic because in the first instance it strikes me as extremely racist. Beyond that though the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) have been very keen to portray CJTFOIR as a Zionist Crusade against Islam. Australia turning around and saying that it doesn't want Muslims in their country seems to be doing most of ISIL's propaganda department's work for them.
Also ISIL is openly trying to ethnically cleanse Syria of minorities such as Christians and the Yezidi. In order to counter that crime against humanity I would have thought that these minorities would be the last people we would want to move out of Syria and the first people we'd want to move back. We certainly shouldn't be rushing to moving them to Australia which is literally on the other side of the World from Syria.
Although I think is really the only word you can use when describing the huge masses of people we see on our TV screens every day now when we don't know who they are or where they are from the term "Irregular Migrant" can be extremely problematic when talking about the situation. That's because it covers everything from the illegal economic migration you see from Mexico into the US right the way through to the refugees fleeing war in Syria and a mind-boggling array of variations in between.
Australia's long running and often heated debate over immigration is much more similar to the situation of illegal, economic migration on the US/Mexico border then the debate within the European Union (EU). Although there is an issue with the treatment of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (Burma) there are several very large countries between Burma and Australia and in the opposite direction there is India and Bangladesh. In fact a large part of the reason why the Rohingya are persecuted in Burma is that the Burmese view them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.
Prime Minister Abbott campaigned and was elected on a platform of stopping these illegal economic migrants entering Australia. Although the name of his policy "Sovereign Borders" struck me as something of a personal insult I must say that he has broadly got the right solution to Australia's problem. The central part of the plan is that these migrants who arrive by boat will simply never step foot in Australia instead being sent to processing camps in near-by Papua New Guinea for processing and deportation. By removing the promise of a new life in Australia this policy removes the product that the often brutal people trafficking gangs are using to lure in their victims.
However it remains a very controversial topic within Australian politics with conditions in these processing camps said to be so bad the Abbott's government has actually passed a law making it illegal to report on the conditions in the camps.
By announcing that Australia is going to be accepting refugees from Syria it is clear that Abbott is extremely worried that his own party and supporters will see him as caving into his opponents. Therefore in what seems to be an effort to convince people that he's still a tough guy Abbott has also decided to approve a US request for air-strikes in Syria that Australia has been 'considering' for a couple of months now.
As with UK Prime Minister David Cameron and his drone strikes this is no way to run a war. As I mentioned on Monday (7/9/15) CJTFOIR is operating at only around 10% of its capacity. Therefore the reason why this war is dragging on with little sign of progress is not a lack of air-craft or nations to provide them. Instead the problem is that there is a complete lack of a strategy of how to use those resources to defeat ISIL.
I'm still of the opinion that members of CJTFOIR refusing to join in with air-strikes until that strategy has been formulated is probably the most effective way of exerting pressure on US President Barack Obama to pull his finger out and hurry up and draw up a plan.
On the subject of Prime Minister Cameron's own Rambo fantasies they continue to receive dramatic and intense criticism from the UK itself.
Last night, just as I was possibly too drunk to be commenting on it and possibly should have gone to bed, a British Airway's (BA) passenger jet flying to London, UK burst into flames on the runway at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, US. All passengers were evacuated safely with only a few minor injuries reported.
This plane was of course flying on the same route that saw a BA jet being diverted to Montreal, Canada on July 29th (29/7/15) over a hoax bomb threat that seemed to protest the start of Turkey's air-strikes against Iraq's Kurds. However the scene of a civilian jet in flames on a runway invoked scenes from the ongoing war in Yemen.
What has provoked so much alarm and concern over Prime Minister Cameron's new found fetish for drone strikes is a worry that he is following the example of US President Obama who is widely considered an idiot in military and most other matters.
Dubbed "The Drone Queen" by intelligence insiders Obama has got this idea into his head that almost any security problem in the World can be solved by simply crossing names off a kill list with drone strikes. After all his killing of Osama bin Laden was so successful it spawned an Oscar winning - albeit wildly inaccurate - blockbuster movie.
Israel has long practised this strategy of targeted assassination using teams of actual assassins, helicopter gunships and conventional strike aircraft long before anyone had even invented the drone. Although the Israelis are not famous for being overly concerned for Arab lives even they have began to question this type of strategy and warn others against it.
In Israel's experience it leads to what they term the "Treadmill of Killing." Essentially every time you kill a terrorist another simply steps in to their place and the situation remains the same. So then you have to kill that person too. Eventually you find yourself in a situation where you are killing people on a daily basis simply to stand still. This can have an extremely damaging effect on the psyche of the nation that is doing the killing by numbing them to the violence and making killing an everyday part of life. The ease at which Israeli settlers seem able to burn Arab children alive in their homes could well be the product of this normalisation of extreme violence.
Aside from the moral implications this strategy of targeted assassination simply will not work to defeat ISIL. Although ISIL are a terrorist organisation the way that they are operating in Syria and Iraq is as an army of occupation. Therefore the only way they will be defeated is by a larger, more powerful ground-force going in to force them from the territory they hold and freeing the local population they are holding hostage.
From the way he has completely refused to co-operate with the Kurdish People's Protection Force (YPG) and the way he seems to block every effort being made by the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to liberate parts of Iraq Obama seems utterly terrified of the notion that ISIL can be completely and rapidly defeated.
Obama's love affair with drones has caused a very particular set of problems within Yemen. When the US drone operation in Yemen began - admittedly under President George W Bush - Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) as they've since become known were - in terrorist terms - essentially just a couple of guys sitting around talking about how they would like to liberate Mecca and the whole of Saudi Arabia from the ruling al-Saud family who they view as infidels.
Amid rumours of the greatest bomber maker the World has ever seen being based in Yemen Obama massively stepped up the drone operation there relying almost exclusively on intelligence provided by Saudi Arabia. Since then rather then weakening AQAP have grown into one of the most dangerous terrorist organisations in the World second only to ISIL.
It is my belief that Saudi Arabia has systematically been providing the US with selective and sometimes false information about AQAP's leadership. The idea being to get the US to kill AQAP leaders who are opposed to Saudi Arabia so Saudi Arabia can replace them with people loyal to the Kingdom. To borrow a phrase from a Peruvian General who was trained by the CIA's "School of the Americas" program; "Within AQAP the US has created a vacuum. Saudi Arabia has then filled that vacuum."
Under this new found supervision AQAP have begun to extend their operations across the Gulf of Aden into Somalia where they have helped build al-Shabaab into a much bigger and nastier organisation then they were when President W Bush attacked them in 2006. This new arc of terrorism is also threatening other east African nations such as Kenya and Ethiopia in what seems like a deliberate attempt to intimidate developing nations into not signing up to a climate change agreement that would benefit them greatly but perhaps damage the market for Saudi Arabian oil.
In January 2015 AQAP had grown to the point where they were able to carry out a week long series of terror attacks beginning with the attacks on the Charlies Hebdo magazine in Paris, France where this climate change agreement is set to be signed at the end of the year. Although it is difficult to speak on behalf of more then 7bn people the reaction to these Paris attacks across much of the Muslim World was exactly the same as it was in the rest of the World - outrage.
This was particularly true in Yemen where the people rose up to overthrow the government that they saw as sponsoring AQAP and their attacks. This made Saudi Arabia furious and they promptly gathered Arab states who owe them money along with the US to launch a brutal war to re-impose their puppet government. Although resources such as time didn't allow me to continue I did cover the start of this war which I dubbed "Operation Gold Beard."
Even in a World where we have become numbed by ISIL's violence Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen still manages to shock by the sheer scale of it's inhumanity. Yemen is a dirt poor country that imports around 90% of it's food. The first thing that Saudi Arabia did was to impose an air, sea and land blockade on Yemen preventing that food from being imported. Several months on what we are seeing is a man-made famine with people literally starving to death in the streets.
Despite this on April 28th (28/4/15) Saudi Arabia intentionally bombed a plane belonging to the International Red Cross on the runway of Sana'a international airport specifically to prevent them distributing humanitarian aid. This is despite the Red Cross being specifically protected under the Geneva Conventions. In fact it is the Red Cross that holds and advises the international community on the Geneva Conventions.
The scenes from Las Vegas yesterday would have been instantly recognisable to anyone familiar with Saudi Arabia's attack on the Red Cross in Sana'a.
This week the Technical Executive Committee (TEC) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is holding a meeting in Bonn, Germany. Unlike last week's meeting this doesn't deal specifically with negotiating a new climate change agreement. However it seems extremely likely that many of the technical issues discussed will end up in the technology section of the new agreement in some form or another.
As such I was initially concerned that the UK was bringing up AQAP as a way to intimidate developing nations such as Kenya by reminding them that they are under threat. After all my current ceasefire is fragile and strictly limited to ISIL. For example there was Sunday's (6/9/15) antics and the Paula Radcliffe story seems intended to baffle experts in things like engineering with topics such as physiological chemistry.
However earlier of Tuesday a man was arrested at the Garden City Mall in Nairobi, Kenya carrying what appeared to be explosives in an apparent terrorist attack. Fortunately it has since emerged that this was a fake bomb.
Therefore far from needing to be reminded about the terror threat Kenya in particular is well aware of it and seemed to be passing it up the UK Commonwealth chain of command demanding something is done about it.
21:20 on 10/9/15 (UK date).
Tuesday, 8 September 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 14, Week 2, Day 6.
On Sunday (6/9/15) 16 Turkish soldiers were killed in Turkey's south-eastern Hakkari Province when their vehicle hit an explosive device. The Kurdistan Worker's Party (PKK) almost immediately claimed responsibility. However as, at the time, the soldiers were working to clear landmines that the Turkish military had laid there remains some debate as to the truth of this claim.
The incident immediately triggered a sharp intake of breath as those who've been following the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) waited to see how Turkey would react. Specifically they were waiting to see whether Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan had understood that his support for ISIL and in particular his military strikes against Kurdish positions in Iraq and Syria are completely unacceptable.
Apart from the continuing US support for those strikes a couple of things happened on Sunday and Monday (7/9/15) that could well have clouded Erdogan's judgement.
The first of these was an answer to journalists given by UK Finance Minister George Osborne at a meeting of G20 Finance Ministers which was being hosted by Turkey in the role of group President. Osborne said; You’ve got to deal with the [migration] problem at source, which is this evil Assad regime and the Isil terrorists, and you need a comprehensive plan for a more stable, peaceful Syria."
Erdogan may well have interpreted this as the UK giving it's full backing to his plan to invade Syria in order to assist ISIL in overthrowing the Syrian government. What Erdogan might be less aware of is that despite his close, personal friendship with the UK Prime Minister David Cameron elevating him to such a senior role in government George Osborne is widely considered to be an idiot.
Within two years of Osborne taking up the role former Finance Minister Ken Clarke was appointed as "Minister without portfolio" in order to supervise Osborne's work. A year after that Osborne was demoted to "the guy who reads out the opposition Labour Party's economic plan." The mere fact he was sent to Turkey could well have been considered an insult.
Yesterday (7/9/15) the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) announced that they were suspending meetings of the Executive Committee of Northern Ireland's power sharing National Assembly. Their excuse for doing this was recent claims that the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) "continue to exist but with a radically different purpose that no longer sees them involved in violence or terrorism."
This of course means that people who were members of the PIRA have not all suddenly been executed and some of them continue to speak to each. The reason for the very dramatic wording of the statement which came on the same day as the Shoreham Air Disaster (22/8/15) was to highlight just how ridiculous it was for Erdogan to respond to an ISIL attack by re-starting a war with the PKK bringing to an end a 10 year peace-process that is very similar to the Northern Irish peace-process.
Unfortunately we seem to have underestimated Northern Ireland's Unionists capacity for the ridiculous. This ever present threat of the Unionists pulling out of the power sharing agreement stems from a perverse quirk in the agreement which means that if one side pulls out of the agreement the Northern Ireland reverts to being ruled by the UK government in Westminster.
At a time when all other UK regions such as Scotland, Wales and even the north of England are desperate for devolved rule away from Westminster Northern Ireland's Unionists continue to crave it in their bones as a symbol of their Britishness.
As a result the Unionists are always trying to collapse the power sharing agreement. Last year the excuse was cuts to public spending. The year before that it was the "letters of comfort" sent to both Unionist and Republican terrorists - the "On The Runs" - telling that due to the peace-process they wouldn't be prosecuted.
Personally I think nearly 20 years on it's time for that quirk to be removed from the Northern Ireland Assembly. There is little chance of that happening though with the current Conservative government of Cameron and Osborne. Although we often shorten it to just "Tory" the full name of the party is the "Conservative and Unionist Party." The DUP is simply their Northern Ireland branch.
Today it has been confirmed that for whatever reason Erdogan has clearly not got the message. Overnight Turkey again conducted six hours of air-strikes which saw 53 aircraft bomb Kurdish positions across the northern Iraq region of Dohuk. It has also been confirmed in the last few hours that Turkey has conducted a small scale invasion of Iraq. Turkey is claiming that this invasion will be short-term and rather then being planned in advance was the result of what is termed a "hot pursuit." However while I'm still checking details I did hear rumours of this happening before it supposedly happened.
With Erdogan now seeming to be completely deaf to the advice of Turkey's allies we have reached the point where someone is going to have to table a motion at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) condemning Turkey's frequent and repeated violations of the territorial integrity of it's neighbours.
This current crisis with Turkey that is threatening to undermine the entire war against ISIL is entirely the result of US President Barack Obama's decision to telephone Erdogan on July 22nd (22/7/15) and re-engage him in the Turkish political process. Prior to that the Turkish civil service was doing just fine without a government while coalition negotiations were taking place. In fact their efforts to reduce ISIL's freedom to operate within Turkey were dramatically improving provoking the bombing in Suruc on July 20th (20/7/15) which prompted Obama's phonecall.
When I commented on this situation originally I may have made it sound a lot more sinister then it actually was. In a Parliamentary system such as Turkey's the largest party in Parliament appoints a Prime Minister. That Prime Minister then appoints a number of MP's to run specific government departments as part of the Cabinet.
If no government or cabinet exists such as during a period of coalition negotiations then all of these government departments don't suddenly just stop. Instead the tax department will continue to collect tax, the finance department will continue to pay salaries and the security department will continue to stop security threats. In Turkey, unless there is a minister to tell them otherwise, this means that the security ministry takes action against ISIL.
Here in the UK we have just emerged from a very similar period with the UK Parliament's 7 week summer recess (21/7/15 - 7/9/15) ending yesterday. As a result anything you might have seen during that period such as the CarFest air crash or the Shoreham Air Disaster has not been the work of the UK Government but the work of Her Majesty's (HM) Civil Service or Her Majesty's (HM) Armed Forces. After all I'm sure the minister would be most annoyed if their holiday was interrupted with every minor detail.
Prime Minister Cameron has returned from his long, tax-payer funded holiday to something of a baptism of fire with the public announcement that he had ordered the killing of British citizen Reyaad Khan, 21 - who had joined ISIL - by a British drone strike in Raqqa, Syria on August 21st (21/8/15).
Repeating what I said yesterday under international law this was entirely lawful because the UNSC has passed Chapter 7 resolution 2170 (2014) authorising military force against any and all members or supporters of ISIL or Al Nusra Front (ANF) regardless of where they are in the World. "Using military force" is a polite way of saying; "Killing People." If you don't understand that perhaps you shouldn't be in such a rush to call for it.
Raising very serious questions about his competence as a leader Cameron does not seem aware of this watertight legal argument. Instead Cameron attempted to justify his actions under the concept of "Pre-emptive Self-Defence." I have since discovered that following the disaster of the 2003 invasion of Iraq the UK's official legal position is that it does not recognise Pre-emptive Self-Defence as a legitimate reason to undertake military action.
As I said yesterday even amongst nations that do recognise Pre-emptive Self-Defence in order for it to apply it must be demonstrated that the threat is imminent. I thought it almost without saying that in order for a threat to be imminent it must first be credible. After all if a threat isn't real then it's not going to happen in the next hour, day, week or even the next year.
Although Cameron has yet to put forward the details on the case that convinced him that Khan posed an imminent threat from the rumours and some odd sounding statements at the time suddenly making sense it seems that the decision to carry out this drone strike was not the result of work by either the UK military or any of it's intelligence services. In fact it is the product of some civilian journalists working for Sky News.
What the journalists did was pose as potential ISIL recruits on the Internet. This brought them into contact with Kahn, Junaid Hussain (AKA; Abu Hussain al-Britani) who was killed by a US drone on August 25th (25/8/15) and Hussain's wife Sally Jones (AKA Sakinah Hussain). In their attempts to recruit the undercover reporters these three - and others - made lots of big claims about how wonderful life was under ISIL and how ISIL had plenty of terror attacks planned in the UK including a plan to kill the Queen at the August 15th (15/8/15) VJ Day commemorations.
This was all widely reported at the time but I dismissed it out of hand as essentially just trolls talking sh*t on the Internet. The fact that Cameron viewed it as a credible threat - particularly 10 days after the attack was supposed to have happened - is deeply worrying, particularly in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. After all if the UK government is going to kill every British citizen who tells a lie on the Internet then pretty soon there aren't going to be any British citizens left. Particularly not Conservative politicians.
Although Cameron is still sticking to his guns and refusing to apologise for this screw up it seems that the Crown is more then happy to point out his mistake to him.
Today a West Midlands police officer along with two other men has been arrested for giving false and misleading information relating alleged ISIL plan kidnap and behead a police officer in December 2014. This threat caused West Midlands police to take the dramatic step of recalling all their officers from patrol and police officers nationally to be warned not to travel to and from work in their uniforms.
It now turns out that this 'plot' was all just talk and not only wasn't there really a plan there was no-one with the means to carry out such a plan if it had existed. Apparently though David Cameron still wants to call in a drone strike.
Also today two Sussex police officers who attended the Shoreham Air Disaster have apparently got into trouble for sharing "inappropriate" jokes with each other via private SMS message about the crash. This strikes me as two people who spent several days combing through the charred remains of the crash victims engaging in that long standing British tradition of gallows humour by attempt to break the tension with some - what I hope were - extremely poor taste jokes.
What I think is telling is that although Sussex police went to the trouble of issuing a press release and holding a press conference they haven't felt the need to suspend either officer. Apparently though David Cameron still wants to call in a drone strike.
So I know we're only a few weeks into this five year Parliament but once again I feel I need to ask the British electorate;
"Are you sure you don't want a do-over?"
17:25 on 8/9/15 (UK date).
The incident immediately triggered a sharp intake of breath as those who've been following the war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) waited to see how Turkey would react. Specifically they were waiting to see whether Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan had understood that his support for ISIL and in particular his military strikes against Kurdish positions in Iraq and Syria are completely unacceptable.
Apart from the continuing US support for those strikes a couple of things happened on Sunday and Monday (7/9/15) that could well have clouded Erdogan's judgement.
The first of these was an answer to journalists given by UK Finance Minister George Osborne at a meeting of G20 Finance Ministers which was being hosted by Turkey in the role of group President. Osborne said; You’ve got to deal with the [migration] problem at source, which is this evil Assad regime and the Isil terrorists, and you need a comprehensive plan for a more stable, peaceful Syria."
Erdogan may well have interpreted this as the UK giving it's full backing to his plan to invade Syria in order to assist ISIL in overthrowing the Syrian government. What Erdogan might be less aware of is that despite his close, personal friendship with the UK Prime Minister David Cameron elevating him to such a senior role in government George Osborne is widely considered to be an idiot.
Within two years of Osborne taking up the role former Finance Minister Ken Clarke was appointed as "Minister without portfolio" in order to supervise Osborne's work. A year after that Osborne was demoted to "the guy who reads out the opposition Labour Party's economic plan." The mere fact he was sent to Turkey could well have been considered an insult.
Yesterday (7/9/15) the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) announced that they were suspending meetings of the Executive Committee of Northern Ireland's power sharing National Assembly. Their excuse for doing this was recent claims that the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) "continue to exist but with a radically different purpose that no longer sees them involved in violence or terrorism."
This of course means that people who were members of the PIRA have not all suddenly been executed and some of them continue to speak to each. The reason for the very dramatic wording of the statement which came on the same day as the Shoreham Air Disaster (22/8/15) was to highlight just how ridiculous it was for Erdogan to respond to an ISIL attack by re-starting a war with the PKK bringing to an end a 10 year peace-process that is very similar to the Northern Irish peace-process.
Unfortunately we seem to have underestimated Northern Ireland's Unionists capacity for the ridiculous. This ever present threat of the Unionists pulling out of the power sharing agreement stems from a perverse quirk in the agreement which means that if one side pulls out of the agreement the Northern Ireland reverts to being ruled by the UK government in Westminster.
At a time when all other UK regions such as Scotland, Wales and even the north of England are desperate for devolved rule away from Westminster Northern Ireland's Unionists continue to crave it in their bones as a symbol of their Britishness.
As a result the Unionists are always trying to collapse the power sharing agreement. Last year the excuse was cuts to public spending. The year before that it was the "letters of comfort" sent to both Unionist and Republican terrorists - the "On The Runs" - telling that due to the peace-process they wouldn't be prosecuted.
Personally I think nearly 20 years on it's time for that quirk to be removed from the Northern Ireland Assembly. There is little chance of that happening though with the current Conservative government of Cameron and Osborne. Although we often shorten it to just "Tory" the full name of the party is the "Conservative and Unionist Party." The DUP is simply their Northern Ireland branch.
Today it has been confirmed that for whatever reason Erdogan has clearly not got the message. Overnight Turkey again conducted six hours of air-strikes which saw 53 aircraft bomb Kurdish positions across the northern Iraq region of Dohuk. It has also been confirmed in the last few hours that Turkey has conducted a small scale invasion of Iraq. Turkey is claiming that this invasion will be short-term and rather then being planned in advance was the result of what is termed a "hot pursuit." However while I'm still checking details I did hear rumours of this happening before it supposedly happened.
With Erdogan now seeming to be completely deaf to the advice of Turkey's allies we have reached the point where someone is going to have to table a motion at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) condemning Turkey's frequent and repeated violations of the territorial integrity of it's neighbours.
This current crisis with Turkey that is threatening to undermine the entire war against ISIL is entirely the result of US President Barack Obama's decision to telephone Erdogan on July 22nd (22/7/15) and re-engage him in the Turkish political process. Prior to that the Turkish civil service was doing just fine without a government while coalition negotiations were taking place. In fact their efforts to reduce ISIL's freedom to operate within Turkey were dramatically improving provoking the bombing in Suruc on July 20th (20/7/15) which prompted Obama's phonecall.
When I commented on this situation originally I may have made it sound a lot more sinister then it actually was. In a Parliamentary system such as Turkey's the largest party in Parliament appoints a Prime Minister. That Prime Minister then appoints a number of MP's to run specific government departments as part of the Cabinet.
If no government or cabinet exists such as during a period of coalition negotiations then all of these government departments don't suddenly just stop. Instead the tax department will continue to collect tax, the finance department will continue to pay salaries and the security department will continue to stop security threats. In Turkey, unless there is a minister to tell them otherwise, this means that the security ministry takes action against ISIL.
Here in the UK we have just emerged from a very similar period with the UK Parliament's 7 week summer recess (21/7/15 - 7/9/15) ending yesterday. As a result anything you might have seen during that period such as the CarFest air crash or the Shoreham Air Disaster has not been the work of the UK Government but the work of Her Majesty's (HM) Civil Service or Her Majesty's (HM) Armed Forces. After all I'm sure the minister would be most annoyed if their holiday was interrupted with every minor detail.
Prime Minister Cameron has returned from his long, tax-payer funded holiday to something of a baptism of fire with the public announcement that he had ordered the killing of British citizen Reyaad Khan, 21 - who had joined ISIL - by a British drone strike in Raqqa, Syria on August 21st (21/8/15).
Repeating what I said yesterday under international law this was entirely lawful because the UNSC has passed Chapter 7 resolution 2170 (2014) authorising military force against any and all members or supporters of ISIL or Al Nusra Front (ANF) regardless of where they are in the World. "Using military force" is a polite way of saying; "Killing People." If you don't understand that perhaps you shouldn't be in such a rush to call for it.
Raising very serious questions about his competence as a leader Cameron does not seem aware of this watertight legal argument. Instead Cameron attempted to justify his actions under the concept of "Pre-emptive Self-Defence." I have since discovered that following the disaster of the 2003 invasion of Iraq the UK's official legal position is that it does not recognise Pre-emptive Self-Defence as a legitimate reason to undertake military action.
As I said yesterday even amongst nations that do recognise Pre-emptive Self-Defence in order for it to apply it must be demonstrated that the threat is imminent. I thought it almost without saying that in order for a threat to be imminent it must first be credible. After all if a threat isn't real then it's not going to happen in the next hour, day, week or even the next year.
Although Cameron has yet to put forward the details on the case that convinced him that Khan posed an imminent threat from the rumours and some odd sounding statements at the time suddenly making sense it seems that the decision to carry out this drone strike was not the result of work by either the UK military or any of it's intelligence services. In fact it is the product of some civilian journalists working for Sky News.
What the journalists did was pose as potential ISIL recruits on the Internet. This brought them into contact with Kahn, Junaid Hussain (AKA; Abu Hussain al-Britani) who was killed by a US drone on August 25th (25/8/15) and Hussain's wife Sally Jones (AKA Sakinah Hussain). In their attempts to recruit the undercover reporters these three - and others - made lots of big claims about how wonderful life was under ISIL and how ISIL had plenty of terror attacks planned in the UK including a plan to kill the Queen at the August 15th (15/8/15) VJ Day commemorations.
This was all widely reported at the time but I dismissed it out of hand as essentially just trolls talking sh*t on the Internet. The fact that Cameron viewed it as a credible threat - particularly 10 days after the attack was supposed to have happened - is deeply worrying, particularly in terms of freedom of speech and freedom of expression. After all if the UK government is going to kill every British citizen who tells a lie on the Internet then pretty soon there aren't going to be any British citizens left. Particularly not Conservative politicians.
Although Cameron is still sticking to his guns and refusing to apologise for this screw up it seems that the Crown is more then happy to point out his mistake to him.
Today a West Midlands police officer along with two other men has been arrested for giving false and misleading information relating alleged ISIL plan kidnap and behead a police officer in December 2014. This threat caused West Midlands police to take the dramatic step of recalling all their officers from patrol and police officers nationally to be warned not to travel to and from work in their uniforms.
It now turns out that this 'plot' was all just talk and not only wasn't there really a plan there was no-one with the means to carry out such a plan if it had existed. Apparently though David Cameron still wants to call in a drone strike.
Also today two Sussex police officers who attended the Shoreham Air Disaster have apparently got into trouble for sharing "inappropriate" jokes with each other via private SMS message about the crash. This strikes me as two people who spent several days combing through the charred remains of the crash victims engaging in that long standing British tradition of gallows humour by attempt to break the tension with some - what I hope were - extremely poor taste jokes.
What I think is telling is that although Sussex police went to the trouble of issuing a press release and holding a press conference they haven't felt the need to suspend either officer. Apparently though David Cameron still wants to call in a drone strike.
So I know we're only a few weeks into this five year Parliament but once again I feel I need to ask the British electorate;
"Are you sure you don't want a do-over?"
17:25 on 8/9/15 (UK date).
Monday, 7 September 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 14, Week 2, Day 5.
Today the British Prime Minister David Cameron gave a statement to Parliament outlining his plan to help Syrian refugees. This was really procedural to allow the plan he announced on Friday (4/9/15) to become official British government policy.
The headline of the announcement is that Britain will accept 20,000 refugees directly from camps neighbouring Syria by 2020. However with no more specific timetable provided a cynic might suspect that this means 1 Syrian refugee this year and 19,999 refugees in May 2020 if Cameron can't find a way to wriggle out of it.
What struck me as the most important part of the plan is that the UK doesn't intend to treat these people as refugees. Instead it intends to grant them 5 year humanitarian visas as part of what is being termed a "resettlement." The key difference between a refugee and someone with a humanitarian visa is that those holding the visa are free to work and access public funds such as social housing, schooling, welfare payments and Britain's cherished National Health Service (NHS) just the same as any British citizen.
Politically this strikes me as an extremely poor decision because I think the main opposition to Britain accepting more refugees is that the public don't understand the difference between economic migrants and those seeking asylum as refugees. Once these complex differences are explained I think a lot of the political pressure on the government to block refugees will disappear.
By blurring the distinction between economic migrants and refugees by using humanitarian visas the government has decided not to make it's case to the public and in the process made it's life much more difficult.
This failure to understand the difference between refugees and economic migrants - particularly by governments in some of the newer, eastern European Union (EU) states - is really what is crippling the EU's ability to respond to the crisis. For example just today the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban came out and declared that these Syrians weren't refugees but economic migrants. By using humanitarian visas Cameron has missed a prime opportunity - as an EU member -to help speed up an EU-wide solution to the problem.
Although most of Cameron's Conservative Party seem to think that they live on an entirely different planet to the rest of us an EU-wide solution is needed to solve the problems that have blighted Calais in France and by extension Kent in the UK over the summer.
Beyond sating the venom of bigots there is also a very strong humanitarian reason for not making this type of refugee too comfortable.
Through their mass executions, forcible displacement/deportation of groups like Shia Muslims, the Yezidi, the Druze and Christians and their destruction of cultural relics such as the temples at Palmyra the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are engaged in the crime against humanity of ethnic cleansing. Their objective to erase any member or symbol of any other ethnic/religious group from what they term the "Levant."
By welcoming vast numbers of these purged minorities in countries thousands of miles away for their homeland and giving them everything they need to start new lives the international community is essentially looking at ISIL and going; "Love what you're doing with the crime against humanity. How can we help?!"
Therefore while there is a clear humanitarian obligation to keep these people safe there is an equally important humanitarian obligation to keep them safe as close to their homes as possible in order to allow them to return as quickly as possible once the danger has passed. This is why you get things like the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees close to Damascus in Syria.
Although Yarmouk was established in 1957 and to a casual observer doesn't look any different from any other Damascus suburb even the people born there are not granted Syrian citizenship. That's because to do so would legitimise Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.
One person I would consider expert in the hard-headed realities of providing humanitarian support in the face of these types of crime against humanity is British former Colonel Bob Stewart who commanded the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslavia. He is currently an MP for Cameron's Conservative Party although I suspect he was not asked for his advice on this policy.
One thing that is perfectly clear from today's announcement is that Cameron has spent most of the past 6 years sacking most of the policy experts in the civil service while desperately trying to pretend that there is no refugee problem. In the past week the public mood has shifted dramatically away from him so he's been forced to draw up this entire policy in just 4 days. Needless to say none of the aspects of the policy have been considered in anything like the level of detail they need to be.
This amateurish and woolly minded thinking also seems to be threatening to invade and disrupt the military operation against ISIL which is of course essential to ultimately solving the refugee crisis.
After making his refugee announcement Cameron went on to inform Parliament that a British citizen - Reyaad Khan, 21 - who had joined ISIL had been killed by a British drone strike in Raqqa, Syria on August 21st (21/8/15).
I should start by making clear that in terms of international law this was all entirely legal. Due to their crimes against humanity on August 15th 2014 (15/8/15) the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed Chapter 7 resolution 2170 (2014) authorising the use of military force against ISIL and the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) in order to protect the territorial integrity of both Syria and Iraq and to protect civilians in those countries or any other country that the two groups may threaten in the future.
As a result regardless of who you are or where you are in the World if you are a member of or provide any support to either ISIL or ANF we can just shoot you in the face.
Unfortunately neither Prime Minister Cameron nor the UK Attorney General Jeremy Wright who was apparently consulted prior to the strike seem at all aware of this legal reality. Instead they attempted to argue that the strike was lawful under the UK's right to self-defence. This is much more of a legal grey area.
In order to invoke self-defence a nation must show both that the threat is imminent and that the action they take has a realistic chance of eliminating that threat. At the time he was killed Khan was in Raqqa which is about 5000km (3000 miles) and around 10 countries away from the UK. Therefore it is hard to argue that the threat he posed was so imminent that other action such as arresting him on the border couldn't have been taken instead.
From the information provided it appears that Khan was plotting with people already inside the UK to carry out these attacks. Unless these people have also been arrested/killed then it's hard to argue that the killing of Khan had a realistic chance of eliminating the threat to the UK.
Politically this argument of pre-emptive self-defence is extremely sensitive - particularly in the middle-east. After all it was the argument the US and the UK used to invade Iraq in 2003 without a UNSC resolution. Do I really need to remind you how well that went?
The argument is also used extensively by Israel for a host of attacks on the Palestinians and it's neighbours. The examples that spring to my mind are the 1981 Operation Opera against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor and the 2008/9 Operation Cast Lead which was the Gaza war that everybody was still protesting against during the 2014 summer war in Gaza.
So in announcing the death of Khan Cameron could either have said; "We have killed this man to protect Muslims for the infidels of ISIL" or "We have killed this Muslim because we are Zionist Crusaders at war with Islam."
With Cameron choosing the latter I don't understand why ISIL bother having a propaganda department because Cameron's clearly desperate to do their job for them.
These mistake are so elementary that they really highlight that Cameron's overwhelming desire to start air-strikes in Syria are not the result of any level of understanding of the problem or how to win the war. Instead they are the result of a soft-handed marketing man whose never been in a fight in his life desperately trying to prove - likely to his own wife - how tough and macho he is. That's the sort of attitude that loses wars and gets a lot of people killed in the process.
Although the killing of Khan was entirely legal under international law it may well cause Cameron a lot of problems under domestic, UK law.
When the British Parliament authorised air-strikes against ISIL in Iraq the wording of the motion made explicitly clear that any military action in Syria would require a separate Parliamentary vote. By conducting the killing of Khan without that vote Cameron has acted in contempt of Parliament.
Although the Speaker may immediately suspend Cameron from Parliament such an action normally leads to a vote of no confidence and the Prime Minister's resignation.
At around 20:15 on 7/9/15 (UK date) I'm clearly going to be at this for a while but this should be enough to get on with in the meantime.
Edited around 20:30 on 7/9/15 (UK date) to continue;
Further indication that the refugee crisis could provoke a reckless and knee-jerk change to the military operation against ISIL came today from France. After announcing that France will also accept 20,000 Syrian refugees - I've not checked on the specifics of their legal status - French President Francois Hollande announced that France will resume surveillance flights over Syria, This moves the country a step towards conducting air-strikes in Syria.
Over the past 13 months the problem with the fight against ISIL has never been a lack of aircraft. At last count Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - as the US-led coalition is formally known - had around 70 strike aircraft at it's disposal. Each one of these aircraft is capable of carrying out at least two air-strikes at a time. Yesterday (6/9/15) CJTFOIR managed to out 11 air-strikes in Iraq and just 4 air-strikes in Syria.
As such far from being over-stretched CJTFOIR is currently operating at only 10% of capacity.
The fact that I've still got access to these figures further underlines just how childish CJTFOIR's continued blocking of me on Twitter really is.
As of September 1st (1/9/15) CJTFOIR have flown 51,991 operations over Iraq and Syria conducting 6,550 air-strikes. However by the US' own admission although these strikes have killed ISIL fighters because the flow of recruits from overseas has not been halted it has made little to no difference in reducing the size of ISIL's force and there has been little to no progress in dislodging them from the territory they hold.
Within Iraq the core of the problem is the US' refusal to allow the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to actually fight ISIL let alone take territory off them. In March 2015 the Shia militia's that make up the Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF) got frustrated with this and led an operation to liberate the city of Tikrit. CJTFOIR provided no close air-support to this operation and the US made it perfectly clear that it had not given permission for the operation at one point telling journalists to "Ask Tehran" how it was going.
Although they were successful in liberating Tikrit as a militia the PMF are more then a bit chaotic so failed to complete the operation by liberating Baiji. Fighting in that town and the surrounding oil refinery continues.
After the ISF including the PMF began an operation to liberate all of the south-western Anbar province CJTFOIR did belatedly provide air-support. However such is the size of the task of liberating two cities and an entire province it will be a very long time until this operation produces concrete results. You suspect rather then advising them to concentrate on the Baiji-Kirkuk triangle CJTFOIR is secretly hoping that the Anbar operation fails to provide yet another excuse why the ISF couldn't possibly attempt to fight ISIL.
The most effective anti-ISIL force in either Iraq or Syria has been the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). Although CJTFOIR initially seemed happy to see the YPG wiped out during the Battle of Kobane they not only won that battle but went on to clear all the territory around Kobane City which is known as the Kobane Canton. By June 16th (16/6/15) the YPG had pushed out from Kobane Canton and liberated the town of Tel Abyad.
Quite apart from denying ISIL a vital supply route into Turkey the liberation of Tel Abyad allowed the YPG to link up the Kobane and eastern Cizire Canton establishing a 33,000km^2 (20,000mile^2) buffer-zone stretching from the Euphrates River in the west all the way across northern Syria and Iraq to Iraq's border with Iran. It also put the YPG within striking distance of Raqqa - ISIL's de facto capital in Syria.
Despite this CJTFOIR is still flatly refusing to supply the YPG with weapons or equipment or allow the buffer-zone they've established to be used as either a base for ground operations against ISIL or a safe-haven for refugees.
The main reason for this failure to fight ISIL is US President Barack Obama, as the Commander-in-Chief of CJTFOIR insistence on continuing to take advice from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Despite there being extremely strong suspicions that Erdogan directly supports ISIL the official reason for the delay is to provide time for a Sunni-Arab ground force to be created to fight ISIL.
That Sunni-Arab force is currently the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF). This is a coalition of around a dozen different Islamist insurgent groups. However the two main groups within the coalition are the Al Qaeda affiliated ANF and the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant (FML) which is a non-Syrian insurgent group that is ideologically extremely similar to ISIL.
Apart from the fact that ANF are subject to UNSC resolution 2170 making any support for them a crime under international law the main problem with JAF is that they have absolutely no interest in fighting ISIL with whom they are closely allied.
Instead JAF are using the support provided by CJTFOIR to fight the Syrian government who are not subject to any UNSC Chapter 7 resolution. Although the Syrian government continue to hold JAF in Idlib and Homs Provinces it's clear that JAF's objective is to push down through Latakia Province to occupy positions along the Lebanese border.
With the Syrian government having to fight JAF it is much harder for them to fight ISIL. As a result ISIL are continuing to gain ground. On August 27th (27/8/15) ISIL gained villages around Marea on the border with Turkey also this seems to have been the result of Turkey instructing JAF to hand the positions to ISIL. Today ISIL captured parts of the Jazal oil field in Homs Province which seems to run entirely contrary to CJTFOIR's oft-stated strategy of cutting ISIL off from it's profitable oil supplies.
If JAF do succeed in capturing Latakia Province then the several million Syrian Shia Muslims, Christians and Druze who are currently being protected by the Syrian government will have to become refugees in Lebanon where roughly 1 in every 4 people is already a refugee from Syria. With the Lebanese militia Hezbollah fighting alongside the Syrian government it is unlikely that JAF will stop at Latakia instead moving to invade Lebanon.
If that happens then the roughly 1.2 million refugees that are currently in Lebanon along with the roughly 3 million more refugees that the fall of Latakia will create along with Lebanon's own population of around 6 million will have to flee - likely across the Mediterranean creating 10 million extra refugees for the EU to deal with.
If the Syrian government is overthrown not only will it be an unlawful act of regime change it will also make the situation in Syria much worse. Not only will ISIL continue to operate JAF will likely fragment into different warring factions just the same as is currently happening in Libya. Alongside Syria Libya is currently the main contributor to the refugee crisis.
You may remember that Russia has opposed this wholly illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government from the start. This is why in the summer of 2013 Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar threatened to launch terror attacks against the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia unless Russia dropped it's support for international law.
The Saudis appear to have made good on this threat with several Islamist terror attacks striking around Sochi in the weeks running up to the games. Fortunately the international espionage community did seem to pull together to stop Saudi Arabia's plans at the last minute.
By way of an apology for stopping Saudi Arabia's terror attacks the US backed neo-Nazis to overthrow the government in Sochi's near neighbour Ukraine during the games. This provoked a civil war that has created more then 1 million refugees that have been taking in by Russia and providing the US with an excuse to place sanctions on Russia for it's opposition to ISIL.
In recent days rumours have begun to emerge that Russia has begun to increase it's long-standing military presence in Syria's Latakia Province. This seems intended to give the US a stark choice between actually trying to defeat ISIL or continue to support it through JAF and risk a military confrontation with Russia that could well go a bit nuclear.
If David Cameron wants to plunge the UK into the middle of this just because his wife doesn't find him attractive anymore I think it's time for him to resign.
21:50 on 7/9/15 (UK date).
The headline of the announcement is that Britain will accept 20,000 refugees directly from camps neighbouring Syria by 2020. However with no more specific timetable provided a cynic might suspect that this means 1 Syrian refugee this year and 19,999 refugees in May 2020 if Cameron can't find a way to wriggle out of it.
What struck me as the most important part of the plan is that the UK doesn't intend to treat these people as refugees. Instead it intends to grant them 5 year humanitarian visas as part of what is being termed a "resettlement." The key difference between a refugee and someone with a humanitarian visa is that those holding the visa are free to work and access public funds such as social housing, schooling, welfare payments and Britain's cherished National Health Service (NHS) just the same as any British citizen.
Politically this strikes me as an extremely poor decision because I think the main opposition to Britain accepting more refugees is that the public don't understand the difference between economic migrants and those seeking asylum as refugees. Once these complex differences are explained I think a lot of the political pressure on the government to block refugees will disappear.
By blurring the distinction between economic migrants and refugees by using humanitarian visas the government has decided not to make it's case to the public and in the process made it's life much more difficult.
This failure to understand the difference between refugees and economic migrants - particularly by governments in some of the newer, eastern European Union (EU) states - is really what is crippling the EU's ability to respond to the crisis. For example just today the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban came out and declared that these Syrians weren't refugees but economic migrants. By using humanitarian visas Cameron has missed a prime opportunity - as an EU member -to help speed up an EU-wide solution to the problem.
Although most of Cameron's Conservative Party seem to think that they live on an entirely different planet to the rest of us an EU-wide solution is needed to solve the problems that have blighted Calais in France and by extension Kent in the UK over the summer.
Beyond sating the venom of bigots there is also a very strong humanitarian reason for not making this type of refugee too comfortable.
Through their mass executions, forcible displacement/deportation of groups like Shia Muslims, the Yezidi, the Druze and Christians and their destruction of cultural relics such as the temples at Palmyra the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are engaged in the crime against humanity of ethnic cleansing. Their objective to erase any member or symbol of any other ethnic/religious group from what they term the "Levant."
By welcoming vast numbers of these purged minorities in countries thousands of miles away for their homeland and giving them everything they need to start new lives the international community is essentially looking at ISIL and going; "Love what you're doing with the crime against humanity. How can we help?!"
Therefore while there is a clear humanitarian obligation to keep these people safe there is an equally important humanitarian obligation to keep them safe as close to their homes as possible in order to allow them to return as quickly as possible once the danger has passed. This is why you get things like the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees close to Damascus in Syria.
Although Yarmouk was established in 1957 and to a casual observer doesn't look any different from any other Damascus suburb even the people born there are not granted Syrian citizenship. That's because to do so would legitimise Israel's occupation of Palestinian territory.
One person I would consider expert in the hard-headed realities of providing humanitarian support in the face of these types of crime against humanity is British former Colonel Bob Stewart who commanded the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslavia. He is currently an MP for Cameron's Conservative Party although I suspect he was not asked for his advice on this policy.
One thing that is perfectly clear from today's announcement is that Cameron has spent most of the past 6 years sacking most of the policy experts in the civil service while desperately trying to pretend that there is no refugee problem. In the past week the public mood has shifted dramatically away from him so he's been forced to draw up this entire policy in just 4 days. Needless to say none of the aspects of the policy have been considered in anything like the level of detail they need to be.
This amateurish and woolly minded thinking also seems to be threatening to invade and disrupt the military operation against ISIL which is of course essential to ultimately solving the refugee crisis.
After making his refugee announcement Cameron went on to inform Parliament that a British citizen - Reyaad Khan, 21 - who had joined ISIL had been killed by a British drone strike in Raqqa, Syria on August 21st (21/8/15).
I should start by making clear that in terms of international law this was all entirely legal. Due to their crimes against humanity on August 15th 2014 (15/8/15) the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed Chapter 7 resolution 2170 (2014) authorising the use of military force against ISIL and the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) in order to protect the territorial integrity of both Syria and Iraq and to protect civilians in those countries or any other country that the two groups may threaten in the future.
As a result regardless of who you are or where you are in the World if you are a member of or provide any support to either ISIL or ANF we can just shoot you in the face.
Unfortunately neither Prime Minister Cameron nor the UK Attorney General Jeremy Wright who was apparently consulted prior to the strike seem at all aware of this legal reality. Instead they attempted to argue that the strike was lawful under the UK's right to self-defence. This is much more of a legal grey area.
In order to invoke self-defence a nation must show both that the threat is imminent and that the action they take has a realistic chance of eliminating that threat. At the time he was killed Khan was in Raqqa which is about 5000km (3000 miles) and around 10 countries away from the UK. Therefore it is hard to argue that the threat he posed was so imminent that other action such as arresting him on the border couldn't have been taken instead.
From the information provided it appears that Khan was plotting with people already inside the UK to carry out these attacks. Unless these people have also been arrested/killed then it's hard to argue that the killing of Khan had a realistic chance of eliminating the threat to the UK.
Politically this argument of pre-emptive self-defence is extremely sensitive - particularly in the middle-east. After all it was the argument the US and the UK used to invade Iraq in 2003 without a UNSC resolution. Do I really need to remind you how well that went?
The argument is also used extensively by Israel for a host of attacks on the Palestinians and it's neighbours. The examples that spring to my mind are the 1981 Operation Opera against Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor and the 2008/9 Operation Cast Lead which was the Gaza war that everybody was still protesting against during the 2014 summer war in Gaza.
So in announcing the death of Khan Cameron could either have said; "We have killed this man to protect Muslims for the infidels of ISIL" or "We have killed this Muslim because we are Zionist Crusaders at war with Islam."
With Cameron choosing the latter I don't understand why ISIL bother having a propaganda department because Cameron's clearly desperate to do their job for them.
These mistake are so elementary that they really highlight that Cameron's overwhelming desire to start air-strikes in Syria are not the result of any level of understanding of the problem or how to win the war. Instead they are the result of a soft-handed marketing man whose never been in a fight in his life desperately trying to prove - likely to his own wife - how tough and macho he is. That's the sort of attitude that loses wars and gets a lot of people killed in the process.
Although the killing of Khan was entirely legal under international law it may well cause Cameron a lot of problems under domestic, UK law.
When the British Parliament authorised air-strikes against ISIL in Iraq the wording of the motion made explicitly clear that any military action in Syria would require a separate Parliamentary vote. By conducting the killing of Khan without that vote Cameron has acted in contempt of Parliament.
Although the Speaker may immediately suspend Cameron from Parliament such an action normally leads to a vote of no confidence and the Prime Minister's resignation.
At around 20:15 on 7/9/15 (UK date) I'm clearly going to be at this for a while but this should be enough to get on with in the meantime.
Edited around 20:30 on 7/9/15 (UK date) to continue;
Further indication that the refugee crisis could provoke a reckless and knee-jerk change to the military operation against ISIL came today from France. After announcing that France will also accept 20,000 Syrian refugees - I've not checked on the specifics of their legal status - French President Francois Hollande announced that France will resume surveillance flights over Syria, This moves the country a step towards conducting air-strikes in Syria.
Over the past 13 months the problem with the fight against ISIL has never been a lack of aircraft. At last count Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - as the US-led coalition is formally known - had around 70 strike aircraft at it's disposal. Each one of these aircraft is capable of carrying out at least two air-strikes at a time. Yesterday (6/9/15) CJTFOIR managed to out 11 air-strikes in Iraq and just 4 air-strikes in Syria.
As such far from being over-stretched CJTFOIR is currently operating at only 10% of capacity.
The fact that I've still got access to these figures further underlines just how childish CJTFOIR's continued blocking of me on Twitter really is.
As of September 1st (1/9/15) CJTFOIR have flown 51,991 operations over Iraq and Syria conducting 6,550 air-strikes. However by the US' own admission although these strikes have killed ISIL fighters because the flow of recruits from overseas has not been halted it has made little to no difference in reducing the size of ISIL's force and there has been little to no progress in dislodging them from the territory they hold.
Within Iraq the core of the problem is the US' refusal to allow the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) to actually fight ISIL let alone take territory off them. In March 2015 the Shia militia's that make up the Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF) got frustrated with this and led an operation to liberate the city of Tikrit. CJTFOIR provided no close air-support to this operation and the US made it perfectly clear that it had not given permission for the operation at one point telling journalists to "Ask Tehran" how it was going.
Although they were successful in liberating Tikrit as a militia the PMF are more then a bit chaotic so failed to complete the operation by liberating Baiji. Fighting in that town and the surrounding oil refinery continues.
After the ISF including the PMF began an operation to liberate all of the south-western Anbar province CJTFOIR did belatedly provide air-support. However such is the size of the task of liberating two cities and an entire province it will be a very long time until this operation produces concrete results. You suspect rather then advising them to concentrate on the Baiji-Kirkuk triangle CJTFOIR is secretly hoping that the Anbar operation fails to provide yet another excuse why the ISF couldn't possibly attempt to fight ISIL.
The most effective anti-ISIL force in either Iraq or Syria has been the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG). Although CJTFOIR initially seemed happy to see the YPG wiped out during the Battle of Kobane they not only won that battle but went on to clear all the territory around Kobane City which is known as the Kobane Canton. By June 16th (16/6/15) the YPG had pushed out from Kobane Canton and liberated the town of Tel Abyad.
Quite apart from denying ISIL a vital supply route into Turkey the liberation of Tel Abyad allowed the YPG to link up the Kobane and eastern Cizire Canton establishing a 33,000km^2 (20,000mile^2) buffer-zone stretching from the Euphrates River in the west all the way across northern Syria and Iraq to Iraq's border with Iran. It also put the YPG within striking distance of Raqqa - ISIL's de facto capital in Syria.
Despite this CJTFOIR is still flatly refusing to supply the YPG with weapons or equipment or allow the buffer-zone they've established to be used as either a base for ground operations against ISIL or a safe-haven for refugees.
The main reason for this failure to fight ISIL is US President Barack Obama, as the Commander-in-Chief of CJTFOIR insistence on continuing to take advice from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Despite there being extremely strong suspicions that Erdogan directly supports ISIL the official reason for the delay is to provide time for a Sunni-Arab ground force to be created to fight ISIL.
That Sunni-Arab force is currently the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF). This is a coalition of around a dozen different Islamist insurgent groups. However the two main groups within the coalition are the Al Qaeda affiliated ANF and the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant (FML) which is a non-Syrian insurgent group that is ideologically extremely similar to ISIL.
Apart from the fact that ANF are subject to UNSC resolution 2170 making any support for them a crime under international law the main problem with JAF is that they have absolutely no interest in fighting ISIL with whom they are closely allied.
Instead JAF are using the support provided by CJTFOIR to fight the Syrian government who are not subject to any UNSC Chapter 7 resolution. Although the Syrian government continue to hold JAF in Idlib and Homs Provinces it's clear that JAF's objective is to push down through Latakia Province to occupy positions along the Lebanese border.
With the Syrian government having to fight JAF it is much harder for them to fight ISIL. As a result ISIL are continuing to gain ground. On August 27th (27/8/15) ISIL gained villages around Marea on the border with Turkey also this seems to have been the result of Turkey instructing JAF to hand the positions to ISIL. Today ISIL captured parts of the Jazal oil field in Homs Province which seems to run entirely contrary to CJTFOIR's oft-stated strategy of cutting ISIL off from it's profitable oil supplies.
If JAF do succeed in capturing Latakia Province then the several million Syrian Shia Muslims, Christians and Druze who are currently being protected by the Syrian government will have to become refugees in Lebanon where roughly 1 in every 4 people is already a refugee from Syria. With the Lebanese militia Hezbollah fighting alongside the Syrian government it is unlikely that JAF will stop at Latakia instead moving to invade Lebanon.
If that happens then the roughly 1.2 million refugees that are currently in Lebanon along with the roughly 3 million more refugees that the fall of Latakia will create along with Lebanon's own population of around 6 million will have to flee - likely across the Mediterranean creating 10 million extra refugees for the EU to deal with.
If the Syrian government is overthrown not only will it be an unlawful act of regime change it will also make the situation in Syria much worse. Not only will ISIL continue to operate JAF will likely fragment into different warring factions just the same as is currently happening in Libya. Alongside Syria Libya is currently the main contributor to the refugee crisis.
You may remember that Russia has opposed this wholly illegal attempt to overthrow the Syrian government from the start. This is why in the summer of 2013 Saudi Arabia's Prince Bandar threatened to launch terror attacks against the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia unless Russia dropped it's support for international law.
The Saudis appear to have made good on this threat with several Islamist terror attacks striking around Sochi in the weeks running up to the games. Fortunately the international espionage community did seem to pull together to stop Saudi Arabia's plans at the last minute.
By way of an apology for stopping Saudi Arabia's terror attacks the US backed neo-Nazis to overthrow the government in Sochi's near neighbour Ukraine during the games. This provoked a civil war that has created more then 1 million refugees that have been taking in by Russia and providing the US with an excuse to place sanctions on Russia for it's opposition to ISIL.
In recent days rumours have begun to emerge that Russia has begun to increase it's long-standing military presence in Syria's Latakia Province. This seems intended to give the US a stark choice between actually trying to defeat ISIL or continue to support it through JAF and risk a military confrontation with Russia that could well go a bit nuclear.
If David Cameron wants to plunge the UK into the middle of this just because his wife doesn't find him attractive anymore I think it's time for him to resign.
21:50 on 7/9/15 (UK date).
The World is Collapsing Around Me.
Okay that might be over-stating it slightly. However over the last couple of weeks I seem to have been suffering from the worst possible luck whereby everything I touch seems to immediately break.
The big problem has been the kitchen door which I use as the main door in and out of my house. If you're that interested in the technical details the door is attached to the frame by metal hinges that are lined with a rubber "O-ring." After more then 15 years of use those O-rings failed about three weeks ago causing the hinges to seize preventing the door from being opened.
We immediately ordered a replacement which was delivered on Thursday (3/9/15) Luckily we were immediately able to get someone to install the new door and frame over the following two days with the cosmetic finishing touches being added today. Although this has been a lot less disruptive then not being able to use the door it has meant the last four days of my life have been spent under a thin film of brick dust thinking; "As soon as this is finished I'm going to have to start cleaning all this up."
One thing that did come out of it though is you may remember that back in April 2014 - during the Third Working Group meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in preparation of its 5th annual report - a young black man tried robbing my house. This was an absolutely terrible attempt at a robbery with me chasing the guy away and nothing being stolen.
However with this being such a common tactic by the UK it prompted a strong international response that involved a number of British citizens being killed in a host of countries. Probably the most significant of these was the killing of a London Metropolitan Police officer who was seconded to the United Nations (UN) operation in Somalia.
Despite this strong international pushback and everyone knowing exactly who this robber was the UK flatly refused to arrest or punish him insisting that conducting acts of violence of this type was it's right. Anyway the guy's now in prison over a string of other, unrelated robbery offences. To my mind that rather highlights the futility of the UK's attempts to protect him.
Unfortunately the UK still hasn't worked that one out and has continued to use concerns about my personal safety and security to draw attention to itself - particularly in the wake of last weeks UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, Germany.
Yesterday my father was invited to one of the World famous "Proms" concerts at the Royal Albert Hall which obviously got him out of the house for around 9 hours over the afternoon and evening. During that time there was - what is considered locally - a big fire that destroyed a row of flats in Sudbury, Suffolk, UK. Pictures from the scene slightly resembled images from the August 2011 riots, specifically the riots that hit Croydon where I live. The building at the end of the terrace was very ornate in a Victorian/pre-Victorian style which slightly resembled the Royal Albert Hall.
Also at around the same time police in my very specific area of Croydon launched a large manhunt for a young black boy who'd gone missing. As with the almost identical case of Malakhi Chijiutomi-Ghosh who went missing in March 2015 this was the UK attempting to revisit the events of March 2014.
15:25 on 7/9/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 15:40 on 10/9/15 (UK date) to add;
The other really annoying thing to break in my life at the moment was my main TV. Unfortunately I'm much more hazy on the exact technical details but I brought it for the start of the 2010 F1 season and between my father and I it has been in pretty much in constant use ever since. On almost exactly the same day the door broke the top of the screen started to fade making the picture much darker. On Saturday (5/9/15) I went to turn it on and it failed amid the stench of solder. Therefore my guess is that heat and use damaged many of the components.
It of course couldn't have happened at a worst moment I had been hoping to hide away on the sofa from all the building work. Instead I spent the day problem solving trying to get the broken TV stored away somewhere and come up with some sort of temporary replacement. That was basically a computer monitor which has made watching the recent Euro 2016 qualifiers extremely difficult and trying to watch any sort of TV ended up giving me a headache from eye strain.
Now those qualifiers are over I've just got a permanent replacement sorted out so feel free to tell this story. I am slightly freaked out though the TV newsreaders now appear to be close to actual size.
The big problem has been the kitchen door which I use as the main door in and out of my house. If you're that interested in the technical details the door is attached to the frame by metal hinges that are lined with a rubber "O-ring." After more then 15 years of use those O-rings failed about three weeks ago causing the hinges to seize preventing the door from being opened.
We immediately ordered a replacement which was delivered on Thursday (3/9/15) Luckily we were immediately able to get someone to install the new door and frame over the following two days with the cosmetic finishing touches being added today. Although this has been a lot less disruptive then not being able to use the door it has meant the last four days of my life have been spent under a thin film of brick dust thinking; "As soon as this is finished I'm going to have to start cleaning all this up."
One thing that did come out of it though is you may remember that back in April 2014 - during the Third Working Group meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in preparation of its 5th annual report - a young black man tried robbing my house. This was an absolutely terrible attempt at a robbery with me chasing the guy away and nothing being stolen.
However with this being such a common tactic by the UK it prompted a strong international response that involved a number of British citizens being killed in a host of countries. Probably the most significant of these was the killing of a London Metropolitan Police officer who was seconded to the United Nations (UN) operation in Somalia.
Despite this strong international pushback and everyone knowing exactly who this robber was the UK flatly refused to arrest or punish him insisting that conducting acts of violence of this type was it's right. Anyway the guy's now in prison over a string of other, unrelated robbery offences. To my mind that rather highlights the futility of the UK's attempts to protect him.
Unfortunately the UK still hasn't worked that one out and has continued to use concerns about my personal safety and security to draw attention to itself - particularly in the wake of last weeks UNFCCC meeting in Bonn, Germany.
Yesterday my father was invited to one of the World famous "Proms" concerts at the Royal Albert Hall which obviously got him out of the house for around 9 hours over the afternoon and evening. During that time there was - what is considered locally - a big fire that destroyed a row of flats in Sudbury, Suffolk, UK. Pictures from the scene slightly resembled images from the August 2011 riots, specifically the riots that hit Croydon where I live. The building at the end of the terrace was very ornate in a Victorian/pre-Victorian style which slightly resembled the Royal Albert Hall.
Also at around the same time police in my very specific area of Croydon launched a large manhunt for a young black boy who'd gone missing. As with the almost identical case of Malakhi Chijiutomi-Ghosh who went missing in March 2015 this was the UK attempting to revisit the events of March 2014.
15:25 on 7/9/15 (UK date).
Edited at around 15:40 on 10/9/15 (UK date) to add;
The other really annoying thing to break in my life at the moment was my main TV. Unfortunately I'm much more hazy on the exact technical details but I brought it for the start of the 2010 F1 season and between my father and I it has been in pretty much in constant use ever since. On almost exactly the same day the door broke the top of the screen started to fade making the picture much darker. On Saturday (5/9/15) I went to turn it on and it failed amid the stench of solder. Therefore my guess is that heat and use damaged many of the components.
It of course couldn't have happened at a worst moment I had been hoping to hide away on the sofa from all the building work. Instead I spent the day problem solving trying to get the broken TV stored away somewhere and come up with some sort of temporary replacement. That was basically a computer monitor which has made watching the recent Euro 2016 qualifiers extremely difficult and trying to watch any sort of TV ended up giving me a headache from eye strain.
Now those qualifiers are over I've just got a permanent replacement sorted out so feel free to tell this story. I am slightly freaked out though the TV newsreaders now appear to be close to actual size.
Sunday, 6 September 2015
Operation Featherweight: Month 14, Week 2, Day 4.
In the week since my previous post on the subject I'm sure that many things have happened on the ground in both Iraq and Syria in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
However before I deal with any of that I first have to address the huge refugee crisis that the conflict has created which has become the big, global news story of the week.
On Wednesday (2/9/15) a small inflatable boat set sail from the Turkish beach resort of Bodrum in the hope of crossing the Aegean Sea to the Greek island of Kos which is around 4km (2.5 miles) away. Unfortunately the boat soon overturned and 12 of those on board drowned.
Amongst them were Abdullah and Rehan Kurdi along with their two small children, Aylan (3) and Ghalib (5). Syrian Kurds from the city of Kobane the Kurdis had fled first to Turkey and in the wake of Turkey's crackdown on Kurds that have included mass arrests and air-strikes were trying to flee again to the European Union (EU).
Photographs of Aylan Kurdi's lifeless body both lying on the tourist beach and being carried away by a Turkish policeman have been beamed around the world and become the defining images of the week, if not the entire refugee crisis.
I still have extremely vivid memories of 562 fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) giving their lives in a 134 day battle so families such as the Kurdis would no longer have to flee Kobane. As a result I personally took the photographs of Aylan Kurdi as a punch in the guts.
This isn't really the time for "I told you so" but on December 30th 2014 (30/12/14) the "Blue Sky M" a cargo ship that had set sail from Korfez in Turkey days earlier radioed the Greek Coast Guard to tell them was out of control on the Ionian Sea and were set to crash into the Italian coast. This prompted an emergency rescue operation by both Greece and Italy that saw the ship and the 970 Syrian refugees aboard rescued the following day (31/12/15).
On January 1st 2015 (1/1/15) another cargo ship - the MV Ezadeen - reported that it was similarly out of control in the Ionian Sea. Again this prompted another emergency rescue operation by the Greek and Italian coastguards along with a civilian Icelandic ship that was in the area. On January 2nd (2/1/15) 360 Syrian refugees were taken ashore in Italy.
At the time both of these incidents were seen as a warning that due to the deteriorating situations in Syria and Libya along with the EU's decision to end "Operation Mare Nostrum" maritime patrol and rescue operation this summer would be absolutely brutal in terms of migrants trying and dying to seek sanctuary in the EU by crossing the Mediterranean, Aegean and Ionian Seas.
The EU responded by slightly increasing the resources of the much smaller "Operation Triton" which replaced Mare Nostrum but took no action to determine what would happen to the refugees once they arrived in the EU.
On April 14th (14/4/15) an unregistered boat from Libya sank in the Mediterranean with the loss of 400 lives - mainly refugees from the country. Five days later on April 19th (19/4/15) another unregistered boat from Libya sank in the Mediterranean - this time with the loss of 700 lives. By coincidence that very same day ISIL's Libya branch released a video showing the beheading of 30 Christians simply for the crime of being Christians.
Again this should have served as a warning to the international community and in particular the EU that due to the worsening situations in Syria and Libya this summer was going to be absolutely brutal in terms of refugees trying and dying to find sanctuary.
This time the EU did respond by suggesting that each of the 28 member states sign up to take a fair quota of refugees from nations in conflict with ISIL.
Despite the fact that this "fair quota" would be defined by a weighting system that would see poorer nations and nations with their own, internal political instabilities receive far fewer refugees then richer, stable nations the idea was shot down by the new, eastern member states such as Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the richer western nations of Denmark, the Republic of Ireland and the UK.
I think the main thing that has hampered the EU's response to the refugee crisis is a widespread - even at the highest levels of certain governments - confusion between those seeking political asylum as refugees and economic migrants who move around the EU.
Although on a Sunday afternoon I don't want to get bogged down in the legal specifics generally it is a condition of EU membership that a country agrees that citizens of all EU member states are citizens of all other EU member states. Therefore if someone in Warsaw, Poland decides they want to migrate to live and work in London, UK it is no different to someone in Manchester, UK deciding they want to migrate to live and work in London.
Due to the speed at which the EU has expanded eastward to include nations that are not politically, economically or socially developed as nations in the west this has seen a mass migration from poorer nations in the east to richer nations in the west.
This has created a lot of tension both in the nations in the west where the migrants are moving too and in the nations in the east where the migrants are moving from. For example Romania's 2015 Eurovision Song Contest entry was largely a plea for Romanian parents who had left the country looking for work to return in order to look after their children.
This economic migration within the EU is completely different from the refugees who are flooding into the EU from nations such as Syria in search of political asylum.
One of the big differences is that to be considered a refugee a person will first have to register with the host government. They will then have to prove that they have a legitimate fear of being persecuted in their own country and are therefore no longer able to live there.
It is not possible to say that people from certain countries are legitimate refugees and therefore worthy of asylum while people from other countries are not. After all Julian Assange is currently being granted asylum in Ecuador over fears of persecution at the hands of Sweden, Australia and the UK. Particularly during my legal issues of 2013 it was also suggested that if I were to claim asylum on the grounds of persecution at the hands of the UK I would be successful.
However if you have fled from a country such as Syria or Libya the current situation in those countries make it almost certain that you will be granted asylum. Unless of course you're a member of ISIL
If an asylum seeker is successful and granted refugee status then they do not automatically become a citizen of the country in which they've been granted asylum. Instead they are granted what is known as "temporary leave to remain."
Although things like summary execution and torture are definitely out a host nation is pretty much free to impose whatever conditions it likes on that leave to remain. For example a nation can impose the condition that a refugee must remain in a detention centre which although there are legal semantics is essentially just a prison. Short of that a nation can order that a refugee signs in at a designated police station every day as if the police had placed them on bail.
Amid the concerns about economic migration and those "job stealing migrants" I think some of the most important conditions that can be imposed are a ban on migrants working or accessing public funds. That last one means that refugees are not entitled to free housing, social welfare payments or medical care. However obviously there is little point granting someone refugee status if you're then going to watch them die of exposure or starve to death.
The biggest difference between economic migration and refugee status is that refugee status is temporary. That means as soon as the war is won or the dictator is overthrown and a person is no longer in fear of persecution they can be sent straight back to their home country.
What I find so infuriating about the EU's position is that if they would stop denying that the problem exists they could start working on a common set of rules about what conditions are imposed on refugees to remove the need for the refugees to effectively cherry-pick the nations that impose the strictest conditions.
For example if the UK were to cancel the 2016 Reading and Leeds music festival it could quite easily house some 260,000 refugees in temporary buildings on those camp sites. If Glastonbury disappeared we could host another 100,000 at little cost.
Within the UK the response to the death of Aylan Kurdi has been particularly dramatic. Although the "Daily Express" continues to waver even some of Britain's most right-wing newspapers have come out to support action to help refugees. This has prompted Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron who has long used the issue of EU migration to cover up the failings of his own incompetent economic and social policies to announce and increase in the support for Syrian refugees.
Aside from USD150million in extra funding for refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan Cameron announced on Friday (4/9/15) that the UK will accept an extra 4000 refugees directly from those camps but none of the refugees that are already within the EU.
Although I think it's pretty obvious that this distinction has been made because the UK intends to continue blocking an EU-wide response it is claimed that this is to avoid encouraging refugees attempting to leave the camps in an effort to enter the EU.
Here I have to say that Cameron does have something of a point because the deaths of refugees entering the EU by irregular means (technically it's not illegal) would be entirely eliminated if the EU arranged transport from Syria to their nations. However Cameron's idea that the UK accepting just 4000 refugees would stop the flow of refugees to the EU is nothing but a joke because the conditions in those camps are extremely poor.
Not counting the camps in Iraq - such as the Dohuk camps that Turkey keeps trying to bomb - it costs around USD1.2bn to run camps for Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan each year.
Due to the sheer number of refugees this works out at around USD0.30 (20 pence) per person, per day. This covers everything from shelter, water, food, clothing, medical treatment and education. It is only given to people who are so destitute that they have absolutely no money. Due to a massive spending shortfall the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is frequently forced to suspend even this tiny payment.
Although the Gulf State refuse to contribute any money to the running of these camps many of their wealthy 'elite' do take advantage of them to provide very young women for what are termed "pleasure marriages" (Nikah al-Mut'ah). In short these camps have become hotbeds of the sort of rape, sexual abuse and sex-trafficking that ISIL have very much made their calling card.
So no, the UK accepting 4000 refugees from those camps is not going to remove the massive push factors that see the other 3,996,000 refugees want to leave those camps. The only thing that is going to do that is ending this war.
Sadly I don't see US President Barack Obama having what it takes to do that. This is particularly true if he is taking advice from weak little men like David Cameron and his incompetent Finance Minister George Osborne.
17:50 on 6/9/15 (UK date).
However before I deal with any of that I first have to address the huge refugee crisis that the conflict has created which has become the big, global news story of the week.
On Wednesday (2/9/15) a small inflatable boat set sail from the Turkish beach resort of Bodrum in the hope of crossing the Aegean Sea to the Greek island of Kos which is around 4km (2.5 miles) away. Unfortunately the boat soon overturned and 12 of those on board drowned.
Amongst them were Abdullah and Rehan Kurdi along with their two small children, Aylan (3) and Ghalib (5). Syrian Kurds from the city of Kobane the Kurdis had fled first to Turkey and in the wake of Turkey's crackdown on Kurds that have included mass arrests and air-strikes were trying to flee again to the European Union (EU).
Photographs of Aylan Kurdi's lifeless body both lying on the tourist beach and being carried away by a Turkish policeman have been beamed around the world and become the defining images of the week, if not the entire refugee crisis.
I still have extremely vivid memories of 562 fighters from the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) giving their lives in a 134 day battle so families such as the Kurdis would no longer have to flee Kobane. As a result I personally took the photographs of Aylan Kurdi as a punch in the guts.
This isn't really the time for "I told you so" but on December 30th 2014 (30/12/14) the "Blue Sky M" a cargo ship that had set sail from Korfez in Turkey days earlier radioed the Greek Coast Guard to tell them was out of control on the Ionian Sea and were set to crash into the Italian coast. This prompted an emergency rescue operation by both Greece and Italy that saw the ship and the 970 Syrian refugees aboard rescued the following day (31/12/15).
On January 1st 2015 (1/1/15) another cargo ship - the MV Ezadeen - reported that it was similarly out of control in the Ionian Sea. Again this prompted another emergency rescue operation by the Greek and Italian coastguards along with a civilian Icelandic ship that was in the area. On January 2nd (2/1/15) 360 Syrian refugees were taken ashore in Italy.
At the time both of these incidents were seen as a warning that due to the deteriorating situations in Syria and Libya along with the EU's decision to end "Operation Mare Nostrum" maritime patrol and rescue operation this summer would be absolutely brutal in terms of migrants trying and dying to seek sanctuary in the EU by crossing the Mediterranean, Aegean and Ionian Seas.
The EU responded by slightly increasing the resources of the much smaller "Operation Triton" which replaced Mare Nostrum but took no action to determine what would happen to the refugees once they arrived in the EU.
On April 14th (14/4/15) an unregistered boat from Libya sank in the Mediterranean with the loss of 400 lives - mainly refugees from the country. Five days later on April 19th (19/4/15) another unregistered boat from Libya sank in the Mediterranean - this time with the loss of 700 lives. By coincidence that very same day ISIL's Libya branch released a video showing the beheading of 30 Christians simply for the crime of being Christians.
Again this should have served as a warning to the international community and in particular the EU that due to the worsening situations in Syria and Libya this summer was going to be absolutely brutal in terms of refugees trying and dying to find sanctuary.
This time the EU did respond by suggesting that each of the 28 member states sign up to take a fair quota of refugees from nations in conflict with ISIL.
Despite the fact that this "fair quota" would be defined by a weighting system that would see poorer nations and nations with their own, internal political instabilities receive far fewer refugees then richer, stable nations the idea was shot down by the new, eastern member states such as Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia and the richer western nations of Denmark, the Republic of Ireland and the UK.
I think the main thing that has hampered the EU's response to the refugee crisis is a widespread - even at the highest levels of certain governments - confusion between those seeking political asylum as refugees and economic migrants who move around the EU.
Although on a Sunday afternoon I don't want to get bogged down in the legal specifics generally it is a condition of EU membership that a country agrees that citizens of all EU member states are citizens of all other EU member states. Therefore if someone in Warsaw, Poland decides they want to migrate to live and work in London, UK it is no different to someone in Manchester, UK deciding they want to migrate to live and work in London.
Due to the speed at which the EU has expanded eastward to include nations that are not politically, economically or socially developed as nations in the west this has seen a mass migration from poorer nations in the east to richer nations in the west.
This has created a lot of tension both in the nations in the west where the migrants are moving too and in the nations in the east where the migrants are moving from. For example Romania's 2015 Eurovision Song Contest entry was largely a plea for Romanian parents who had left the country looking for work to return in order to look after their children.
This economic migration within the EU is completely different from the refugees who are flooding into the EU from nations such as Syria in search of political asylum.
One of the big differences is that to be considered a refugee a person will first have to register with the host government. They will then have to prove that they have a legitimate fear of being persecuted in their own country and are therefore no longer able to live there.
It is not possible to say that people from certain countries are legitimate refugees and therefore worthy of asylum while people from other countries are not. After all Julian Assange is currently being granted asylum in Ecuador over fears of persecution at the hands of Sweden, Australia and the UK. Particularly during my legal issues of 2013 it was also suggested that if I were to claim asylum on the grounds of persecution at the hands of the UK I would be successful.
However if you have fled from a country such as Syria or Libya the current situation in those countries make it almost certain that you will be granted asylum. Unless of course you're a member of ISIL
If an asylum seeker is successful and granted refugee status then they do not automatically become a citizen of the country in which they've been granted asylum. Instead they are granted what is known as "temporary leave to remain."
Although things like summary execution and torture are definitely out a host nation is pretty much free to impose whatever conditions it likes on that leave to remain. For example a nation can impose the condition that a refugee must remain in a detention centre which although there are legal semantics is essentially just a prison. Short of that a nation can order that a refugee signs in at a designated police station every day as if the police had placed them on bail.
Amid the concerns about economic migration and those "job stealing migrants" I think some of the most important conditions that can be imposed are a ban on migrants working or accessing public funds. That last one means that refugees are not entitled to free housing, social welfare payments or medical care. However obviously there is little point granting someone refugee status if you're then going to watch them die of exposure or starve to death.
The biggest difference between economic migration and refugee status is that refugee status is temporary. That means as soon as the war is won or the dictator is overthrown and a person is no longer in fear of persecution they can be sent straight back to their home country.
What I find so infuriating about the EU's position is that if they would stop denying that the problem exists they could start working on a common set of rules about what conditions are imposed on refugees to remove the need for the refugees to effectively cherry-pick the nations that impose the strictest conditions.
For example if the UK were to cancel the 2016 Reading and Leeds music festival it could quite easily house some 260,000 refugees in temporary buildings on those camp sites. If Glastonbury disappeared we could host another 100,000 at little cost.
Within the UK the response to the death of Aylan Kurdi has been particularly dramatic. Although the "Daily Express" continues to waver even some of Britain's most right-wing newspapers have come out to support action to help refugees. This has prompted Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron who has long used the issue of EU migration to cover up the failings of his own incompetent economic and social policies to announce and increase in the support for Syrian refugees.
Aside from USD150million in extra funding for refugee camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan Cameron announced on Friday (4/9/15) that the UK will accept an extra 4000 refugees directly from those camps but none of the refugees that are already within the EU.
Although I think it's pretty obvious that this distinction has been made because the UK intends to continue blocking an EU-wide response it is claimed that this is to avoid encouraging refugees attempting to leave the camps in an effort to enter the EU.
Here I have to say that Cameron does have something of a point because the deaths of refugees entering the EU by irregular means (technically it's not illegal) would be entirely eliminated if the EU arranged transport from Syria to their nations. However Cameron's idea that the UK accepting just 4000 refugees would stop the flow of refugees to the EU is nothing but a joke because the conditions in those camps are extremely poor.
Not counting the camps in Iraq - such as the Dohuk camps that Turkey keeps trying to bomb - it costs around USD1.2bn to run camps for Syrian refugees in neighbouring countries such as Lebanon and Jordan each year.
Due to the sheer number of refugees this works out at around USD0.30 (20 pence) per person, per day. This covers everything from shelter, water, food, clothing, medical treatment and education. It is only given to people who are so destitute that they have absolutely no money. Due to a massive spending shortfall the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is frequently forced to suspend even this tiny payment.
Although the Gulf State refuse to contribute any money to the running of these camps many of their wealthy 'elite' do take advantage of them to provide very young women for what are termed "pleasure marriages" (Nikah al-Mut'ah). In short these camps have become hotbeds of the sort of rape, sexual abuse and sex-trafficking that ISIL have very much made their calling card.
So no, the UK accepting 4000 refugees from those camps is not going to remove the massive push factors that see the other 3,996,000 refugees want to leave those camps. The only thing that is going to do that is ending this war.
Sadly I don't see US President Barack Obama having what it takes to do that. This is particularly true if he is taking advice from weak little men like David Cameron and his incompetent Finance Minister George Osborne.
17:50 on 6/9/15 (UK date).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)