Yesterday an Iranian operated McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II crashed in Sistan and Baluchestan Province near the border with Pakistan killing both crew members.
Obviously some people may be a little surprised that the Iranian air force operates US made aircraft. However this particular model dating back to the 1960's was sold to Iran prior to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Since 1979 Iran has been under varying degrees of US and international sanctions. These have particularly affected the technology sector making it extremely difficult for Iran to not only import spare parts for aircraft but also the precision equipment needed to engineer spare parts. The main reason for Iran's nuclear program has been to build up their domestic science and technology sector.
So when I heard about yesterday's crash I simply dismissed it on the basis that Iranian aircraft do tend to be a bit crashy.
However the F-4 Phantom has played a significant role in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria. Specifically on June 22nd 2012 (22/6/12) Turkey flew an F-4 Phantom into Syrian air-space without permission and it was promptly shot down. Turkey's intention here was that the shooting down would give it a pre-text to invade Syria.
This is just another in a long line of incidents where the international community have been forced to apply pressure to stop Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan doing something stupid and dangerous.
With US President Barack Obama continuing to refuse to join the international community in restraining Erdogan Turkey continues to behave in a stupid and aggressive manner. It is currently waging war against its own Kurdish minority and is attempting to use it's irregular Turkmen battalions to attack anti-ISIL forces in northern Syria. Yesterday Turkey carried out a bomb attack that killed 10 German tourists.
As such people in the US clearly assumed that yesterday's crash was a reference to Turkey's aggressive and reckless behaviour. So in response they sent 10 US sailors into Iranian waters near Farsi Island forcing the Iranian navy to rescue them. One of the big differences between Arabs and Persians such as Iranians is that Persians speak Farsi rather than Arabic.
This was an attempt to recreate a similar incident in 2007 when 15 British sailors were captured by Iran. What happened there was that the US who control the Global Positioning System (GPS) sent false co-ordinates to the British sailors so they genuinely thought that they were in international waters when in fact they'd illegally strayed into Iranian waters.
The US' intention then was to trigger a confrontation between Iran and the UK would lead to the UK demanding that the US helped it invade Iran. The US neo-conservatives who brought you the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have of course always wanted to invade Iran.
Despite what he may claim in public such as last night's State of the Union (SOTU) address US President Obama does not see ISIL as an enemy. Instead he views them as a vital ally in continuing this neo-conservative rampage against Iran. That is why ISIL have still not been defeated and Obama still can't see Erdogan for the maniac he is.
Clearly I really do need to get around to giving an update on the fight against ISIL in Iraq. However that is a large task and not one I'm going to be able to get done tonight.
17:35 on 13/1/16 (UK date).
Wednesday, 13 January 2016
Tuesday, 12 January 2016
Operation Featherweight: Month 18, Week 3, Day 3.
On August 9th 2015 (9/8/15) Turkey ordered the Al Qaeda affiliated Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) coalition to cede the town of Marea to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The JAF followed Turkey's instructions and ISIL duly took control of Marea on August 27th (27/8/15).
Turkey's intention was that ISIL occupying a town just 20km (12 miles) from Syria's border with Turkey would provide a pre-text for a Turkish invasion of Syria to remove the 'ISIL threat.'
The true objective of the invasion though was to re-establish ISIL's supply lines through Turkey and eliminate the Kurdish dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) that had cut those supply lines by establishing a vast buffer-zone between Turkey and ISIL's de facto capital in Raqqa.
The date for this Turkish invasion was set for December 16th 2015 (16/12/15). However the diplomatic backlash against a smaller scale Turkish invasion of northern Iraq on December 4th (4/12/15) led to it being cancelled.
Being prevented from invading Syria in support of ISIL Turkey instead declared war on it's own Kurdish population. This seems to be a clear example of Turkey following ISIL's advice to its supporters that if they are unable to travel to Syria or Iraq to fight for ISIL they should carry out attacks at home in support of ISIL.
Since December 15th (15/12/15) most of Turkey's aggression has been focused on the Sur district of the city of Diyarbakir in southern Turkey around 65km (40 miles) north of the border with Syria.
Here Turkish combat troops have surrounded the city sealing it off while pounding it with tank and artillery fire along with air-strikes. When I first saw the footage coming out of Diyarbakir I assumed it had been shot in Syria.
So far Turkey claims that it has killed 578 people in this operation all of whom Turkey accuses of being members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). However Turkey has a decades long reputation for simply murdering Kurdish civilians and then planting weapons on the bodies to claim they are members of the PKK who were killed in combat.
A particularly controversial example of this occurred in 1993 when Turkey accused the PKK of setting fire to a home in the village of Mus - around 150km (90 miles) north-east of Diyarbakir - killing a family of 10 including 7 children aged between 3 and 13.
In late 2014 even a Turkish Court was forced to admit that the Ogut case as it's sometimes known was not the work of the PKK but the Turkish military who murdered the family as punishment for the death of a Turkish officer hours earlier.
What we do know is that since the start of the Diyarbakir operation less then four weeks ago Turkey has murdered at least 130 Kurdish civilians.
With it being made clear to Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he will not be getting permission to formally invade Syria he has simply changed tactic of Marea. Rather than using conventional Turkish forces to invade Syria Erdogan is now attempting to use what are termed Syrian Turkmen forces to complete the task.
The Syrian Turkmen forces are essentially an unconventional branch of the Turkish military recruited and trained in Turkey. For example Alparslan Celik who acted as the Syrian Turkmen's spokesman following the Turkish downing of a Russia Su-24 over Syria on November 24th (24/11/15) is the son of a former Mayor of the Turkish city of Gaziantep.
On Saturday (9/1/16) Turkish forces opened fire on ten villages around Marea in support of advance by Turkmen forces. This included the use of heavy, blind weapons such as artillery and tank fire which is know to place civilians at great risk. To its eternal discredit this operation was supported by Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - the US led coalition.
The loss of Marea will of course have little impact on ISIL because supplies and fighters will continue to cross in and out of Turkey through Turkmen controlled territory. Turkey is being quite open about the fact that the ultimate objective of the operation is not to defeat ISIL but to attack the QSD controlled buffer-zone that sits beyond Marea to the east of the Euphrates River.
The two main Turkmen groups used in Saturday's operation were the Levant Front/Jabhat al-Sham and the Levant Legion/Faylaq al-Sham. This highlights I find the western media's refusal to refer to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as an act of support for the group.
The reference to the "Levant" is key to ISIL nihilist and sectarian ideology. By attempting to cover it up by referring to them as "Islamic State" or "ISIS" the media are preventing their audience - this includes politicans and decision makers - realising that groups like the Levant Legion and the Levant Front have exactly the same ideology as ISIL.
Turkey's original order to cede Marea to ISIL was issued through the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar al-Sham) section of the JAF coalition.
If protests were to spring up against Turkey's brutal behaviour in Diyarbakir and it's support for ISIL they are most likely to start in Germany.
Due to Turkey's appalling record on human rights and its brutal suppression of political dissent that goes back more then 40 years Germany automatically grants political asylum or refugee status to people from Turkey - particularly Kurds. As a result Germany has an extremely large ethnically Turkish/Kurdish population. The World Cup winning Arsenal mid-fielder Mesut Ozil is probably the most famous example of this. Even if he does look a bit like a frog.
Germany of course is already in the midst of widespread protest against Chancellor/Head of State Angela Merkel's refugee policy in the wake of the New Year's Eve (NYE) sex attacks in Cologne and elsewhere. It is of course this refugee policy that led to the European Union (EU) to giving Turkey USD3bn and visa-free travel as reward for flooding Europe with refugees and terrorists.
It is also Merkel's refugee policy that has forced Germany to base it's anti-ISIL aircraft at USAF base Incirlik in Turkey. This obviously makes it much more difficult for Germany - and indeed CJTFOIR - to put pressure on Turkey to drop its support for ISIL.
Yesterday (12/1/16) we were given yet another example of the dangers of the EU's policy towards Turkey when France experienced it's third terror attack of 2016. Here a 15 year old boy attacked a Rabbi outside a Synagogue in the southern city of Marseilles with a machete in the name of ISIL. Fortunately the 35 year old was only slightly injured after smashing his attacker over the head with a copy of the Torah.
Apparently the attacker is registered as a Kurdish refugee from Turkey. However it is a common practice for Turks to lie about being Kurdish in order to claim asylum in the EU.
Amid growing, EU-wide pressure it appears that Merkel is now on the brink of reversing her disastrous policy of engagement with Turkey over refugees.
It should come as no surprise then that today Turkey has suffered another 'terrorist attack.'
On this occasion a female suicide bomber blew herself up amid a crowd of tourists close to the Blue Mosque in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul. Although details are still emerging it appears that 10 tourists - including 9 Germans - were killed on what seems to be a targeted attack on German citizens.
This was done in an effort to convince the world that Turkey is an ally in the fight against ISIL when in reality Turkey's ruling Justice & Development Party (AKP) and ISIL are at this point essentially the same organisation. No doubt Turkey will be making much about how it is being forced to suffer because German aircraft are stationed at Incirlik and demanding more money from the EU in compensation.
The fact that German citizens were targeted of course forces Germany into a diplomatic dialogue to facilitate the return of the dead and wounded to Germany. Turkey obviously intends to exploit this to assess Merkel's position post-Cologne.
Elsewhere in the conflict following being granted entry to the much talked about town of Madaya yesterday the United Nations (UN) have identified 400 civilians who need to be immediately evacuated for medical treatment. We are waiting to see if the JAF who control the town will give permission for those evacuations to take place or whether they'll cling on in the hope the footage of their hostages slowly dying can be blamed on the Syrian government.
I would now like to move on to cover the liberation of Ramadi and the wave of terror attacks it has triggered in Iraq. However because the Erdogan situation has still not been properly squared away I don't have time for what will be a long post because once again I'm being dragged into dealing with yet another Turkish crisis in northern Syria.
I can't even say I'll make time to get on with it tomorrow. After all that's what I said last night.
17:35 on 12/1/16 (UK date).
Turkey's intention was that ISIL occupying a town just 20km (12 miles) from Syria's border with Turkey would provide a pre-text for a Turkish invasion of Syria to remove the 'ISIL threat.'
The true objective of the invasion though was to re-establish ISIL's supply lines through Turkey and eliminate the Kurdish dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) that had cut those supply lines by establishing a vast buffer-zone between Turkey and ISIL's de facto capital in Raqqa.
The date for this Turkish invasion was set for December 16th 2015 (16/12/15). However the diplomatic backlash against a smaller scale Turkish invasion of northern Iraq on December 4th (4/12/15) led to it being cancelled.
Being prevented from invading Syria in support of ISIL Turkey instead declared war on it's own Kurdish population. This seems to be a clear example of Turkey following ISIL's advice to its supporters that if they are unable to travel to Syria or Iraq to fight for ISIL they should carry out attacks at home in support of ISIL.
Since December 15th (15/12/15) most of Turkey's aggression has been focused on the Sur district of the city of Diyarbakir in southern Turkey around 65km (40 miles) north of the border with Syria.
Here Turkish combat troops have surrounded the city sealing it off while pounding it with tank and artillery fire along with air-strikes. When I first saw the footage coming out of Diyarbakir I assumed it had been shot in Syria.
So far Turkey claims that it has killed 578 people in this operation all of whom Turkey accuses of being members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). However Turkey has a decades long reputation for simply murdering Kurdish civilians and then planting weapons on the bodies to claim they are members of the PKK who were killed in combat.
A particularly controversial example of this occurred in 1993 when Turkey accused the PKK of setting fire to a home in the village of Mus - around 150km (90 miles) north-east of Diyarbakir - killing a family of 10 including 7 children aged between 3 and 13.
In late 2014 even a Turkish Court was forced to admit that the Ogut case as it's sometimes known was not the work of the PKK but the Turkish military who murdered the family as punishment for the death of a Turkish officer hours earlier.
What we do know is that since the start of the Diyarbakir operation less then four weeks ago Turkey has murdered at least 130 Kurdish civilians.
With it being made clear to Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan that he will not be getting permission to formally invade Syria he has simply changed tactic of Marea. Rather than using conventional Turkish forces to invade Syria Erdogan is now attempting to use what are termed Syrian Turkmen forces to complete the task.
The Syrian Turkmen forces are essentially an unconventional branch of the Turkish military recruited and trained in Turkey. For example Alparslan Celik who acted as the Syrian Turkmen's spokesman following the Turkish downing of a Russia Su-24 over Syria on November 24th (24/11/15) is the son of a former Mayor of the Turkish city of Gaziantep.
On Saturday (9/1/16) Turkish forces opened fire on ten villages around Marea in support of advance by Turkmen forces. This included the use of heavy, blind weapons such as artillery and tank fire which is know to place civilians at great risk. To its eternal discredit this operation was supported by Combined Joint Task Force: Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTFOIR) - the US led coalition.
The loss of Marea will of course have little impact on ISIL because supplies and fighters will continue to cross in and out of Turkey through Turkmen controlled territory. Turkey is being quite open about the fact that the ultimate objective of the operation is not to defeat ISIL but to attack the QSD controlled buffer-zone that sits beyond Marea to the east of the Euphrates River.
The two main Turkmen groups used in Saturday's operation were the Levant Front/Jabhat al-Sham and the Levant Legion/Faylaq al-Sham. This highlights I find the western media's refusal to refer to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as an act of support for the group.
The reference to the "Levant" is key to ISIL nihilist and sectarian ideology. By attempting to cover it up by referring to them as "Islamic State" or "ISIS" the media are preventing their audience - this includes politicans and decision makers - realising that groups like the Levant Legion and the Levant Front have exactly the same ideology as ISIL.
Turkey's original order to cede Marea to ISIL was issued through the Islamic Movement of the Freemen of the Levant/Harakat Ahrar ash-Sham al-Islamiyya (FML/Ahrar al-Sham) section of the JAF coalition.
If protests were to spring up against Turkey's brutal behaviour in Diyarbakir and it's support for ISIL they are most likely to start in Germany.
Due to Turkey's appalling record on human rights and its brutal suppression of political dissent that goes back more then 40 years Germany automatically grants political asylum or refugee status to people from Turkey - particularly Kurds. As a result Germany has an extremely large ethnically Turkish/Kurdish population. The World Cup winning Arsenal mid-fielder Mesut Ozil is probably the most famous example of this. Even if he does look a bit like a frog.
Germany of course is already in the midst of widespread protest against Chancellor/Head of State Angela Merkel's refugee policy in the wake of the New Year's Eve (NYE) sex attacks in Cologne and elsewhere. It is of course this refugee policy that led to the European Union (EU) to giving Turkey USD3bn and visa-free travel as reward for flooding Europe with refugees and terrorists.
It is also Merkel's refugee policy that has forced Germany to base it's anti-ISIL aircraft at USAF base Incirlik in Turkey. This obviously makes it much more difficult for Germany - and indeed CJTFOIR - to put pressure on Turkey to drop its support for ISIL.
Yesterday (12/1/16) we were given yet another example of the dangers of the EU's policy towards Turkey when France experienced it's third terror attack of 2016. Here a 15 year old boy attacked a Rabbi outside a Synagogue in the southern city of Marseilles with a machete in the name of ISIL. Fortunately the 35 year old was only slightly injured after smashing his attacker over the head with a copy of the Torah.
Apparently the attacker is registered as a Kurdish refugee from Turkey. However it is a common practice for Turks to lie about being Kurdish in order to claim asylum in the EU.
Amid growing, EU-wide pressure it appears that Merkel is now on the brink of reversing her disastrous policy of engagement with Turkey over refugees.
It should come as no surprise then that today Turkey has suffered another 'terrorist attack.'
On this occasion a female suicide bomber blew herself up amid a crowd of tourists close to the Blue Mosque in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul. Although details are still emerging it appears that 10 tourists - including 9 Germans - were killed on what seems to be a targeted attack on German citizens.
This was done in an effort to convince the world that Turkey is an ally in the fight against ISIL when in reality Turkey's ruling Justice & Development Party (AKP) and ISIL are at this point essentially the same organisation. No doubt Turkey will be making much about how it is being forced to suffer because German aircraft are stationed at Incirlik and demanding more money from the EU in compensation.
The fact that German citizens were targeted of course forces Germany into a diplomatic dialogue to facilitate the return of the dead and wounded to Germany. Turkey obviously intends to exploit this to assess Merkel's position post-Cologne.
Elsewhere in the conflict following being granted entry to the much talked about town of Madaya yesterday the United Nations (UN) have identified 400 civilians who need to be immediately evacuated for medical treatment. We are waiting to see if the JAF who control the town will give permission for those evacuations to take place or whether they'll cling on in the hope the footage of their hostages slowly dying can be blamed on the Syrian government.
I would now like to move on to cover the liberation of Ramadi and the wave of terror attacks it has triggered in Iraq. However because the Erdogan situation has still not been properly squared away I don't have time for what will be a long post because once again I'm being dragged into dealing with yet another Turkish crisis in northern Syria.
I can't even say I'll make time to get on with it tomorrow. After all that's what I said last night.
17:35 on 12/1/16 (UK date).
Monday, 11 January 2016
Operation Featherweight: Month 18, Week 3, Day 2.
In the extremely rare moments that it manages to tear itself away from the death of David Bowie the media in the UK has been reporting that an aid convoy belonging to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has managed to enter the Syrian town of Madaya which is 'being cruelly starved to death by the Assad regime.'
As always with western reporting on events in Syria that's not quite what's happened.
The ICRC have actually sent three aid convoys to Madaya and to the villages of Foua and Kefraya. However it seems that no-one wants to talk about either Foua or Kefraya because for a long time they were under the control of the Army of Islam/Jaish al-Islam (JAI) which is a particularly brutal branch of the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF).
As with the near-by city of Zabadani along with the town of Madaya conditions have been particularly brutal in Foua and Kefraya since the JAI/JAF took over. Their main tactic is has been to seize control of the areas food supplies in order to create an artificial shortage to drive up prices. This is done both for financial gain and to create images of starving children that can be blamed on the Syrian government.
In September 2015 the United Nations (UN) thought that it finally agreed a cease-fire deal with JAI/JAF that would see them release their civilian hostages. However when the ICRC convoys moved in on September 26th (26/9/15) they were blocked by civilians from Madaya and Saraqeb who also demanded to be evacuated. Then on September 27th (27/9/15) JAI/JAF pulled out of the agreement entirely triggering the Russian military intervention of September 30th (30/9/15).
After two months of the Russian military intervention on December 28th (28/12/15) JAI/JAF again changed their minds and allowed the ceasefire in Zabandani, Foua and Kefraya to go through. These ceasefire allowed JAI/JAF to leave with their families and more moderate fighters to remain on condition that they ceased their attacks against the government and the civilian population. The JAI/JAF obviously took most of the area's food supplies with them.
However despite there being no fighting in Zabadani, Foua or Kefraya and the situation being just as bad as it is in Madaya the ICRC have been refusing to deliver aid to these areas for almost a month now. It seems that the ICRC's official policy is no to starve the vast majority of Syrians who support the Syrian government in the hope of overthrowing that government.
Likewise we're not hearing anything about the similar situation in the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in the Damascus suburbs. That's because on December 26th (26/12/15) the JAI/JAF rejected a similar ceasefire agreement that would have forced them to release their civilian hostages.
As for Madaya the first thing that happened when the JAI/JAF allowed the ICRC access to the camp civilians started flooding out demanding to be granted refuge in Syrian government controlled areas. This is despite the JAI/JAF holding many of their family members prisoner as a sort of guarantor who will be executed if they do not return.
Now it has arrived the interesting question is how the ICRC will be distributing aid in Madaya. Will they be giving directly to the civilian population or will they be handing it to the JAI/JAF who will keep it out of the hands of the civilians in the hope of producing more atrocity propaganda. If the ICRC does that latter it will be facilitating a crime against humanity which I assume it will be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to answer for.
Also today the UK Parliament has been discussing Madaya as an urgent question. Therefore I should probably comment on the suggestion by former Royal Marine Commando and former MI6 agent Paddy Lord Ashdown that Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) airdrops supplies to the JAI/JAF in Madaya. This is of course a completely mad suggestion.
However the UK Prime Minister David Cameron has proved himself rather keen on completely mad ideas when it comes for Syria. For example in 2013 he wanted to bomb Syria in support of the JAF's use of Sarin gas in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus. The source of that Sarin gas has now been traced back to Turkey and Turkish MP Eren Erdem is currently being prosecuted for treason for revealing that detail.
Therefore while I'm sure Lord Ashdown will deny it this suggestion seems to have been a test of whether Prime Minister Cameron has had an outbreak of rational thought or is still committed to mad ideas like using his Christmas message to announce that the UK is waging a Christian Crusade/Jihad against Muslims.
Sadly based on a quick look at the debate it seems this has gone right over the heads of most MP's. Fortunately though the government spokeswoman stuck to the position that it is not the Syrian government that is starving people to death in Syria.
No wonder BBC News is clinging to the Bowie obituary like a life-raft.
18:10 on 11/1/16 (UK date).
As always with western reporting on events in Syria that's not quite what's happened.
The ICRC have actually sent three aid convoys to Madaya and to the villages of Foua and Kefraya. However it seems that no-one wants to talk about either Foua or Kefraya because for a long time they were under the control of the Army of Islam/Jaish al-Islam (JAI) which is a particularly brutal branch of the Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF).
As with the near-by city of Zabadani along with the town of Madaya conditions have been particularly brutal in Foua and Kefraya since the JAI/JAF took over. Their main tactic is has been to seize control of the areas food supplies in order to create an artificial shortage to drive up prices. This is done both for financial gain and to create images of starving children that can be blamed on the Syrian government.
In September 2015 the United Nations (UN) thought that it finally agreed a cease-fire deal with JAI/JAF that would see them release their civilian hostages. However when the ICRC convoys moved in on September 26th (26/9/15) they were blocked by civilians from Madaya and Saraqeb who also demanded to be evacuated. Then on September 27th (27/9/15) JAI/JAF pulled out of the agreement entirely triggering the Russian military intervention of September 30th (30/9/15).
After two months of the Russian military intervention on December 28th (28/12/15) JAI/JAF again changed their minds and allowed the ceasefire in Zabandani, Foua and Kefraya to go through. These ceasefire allowed JAI/JAF to leave with their families and more moderate fighters to remain on condition that they ceased their attacks against the government and the civilian population. The JAI/JAF obviously took most of the area's food supplies with them.
However despite there being no fighting in Zabadani, Foua or Kefraya and the situation being just as bad as it is in Madaya the ICRC have been refusing to deliver aid to these areas for almost a month now. It seems that the ICRC's official policy is no to starve the vast majority of Syrians who support the Syrian government in the hope of overthrowing that government.
Likewise we're not hearing anything about the similar situation in the Yarmouk camp for Palestinian refugees in the Damascus suburbs. That's because on December 26th (26/12/15) the JAI/JAF rejected a similar ceasefire agreement that would have forced them to release their civilian hostages.
As for Madaya the first thing that happened when the JAI/JAF allowed the ICRC access to the camp civilians started flooding out demanding to be granted refuge in Syrian government controlled areas. This is despite the JAI/JAF holding many of their family members prisoner as a sort of guarantor who will be executed if they do not return.
Now it has arrived the interesting question is how the ICRC will be distributing aid in Madaya. Will they be giving directly to the civilian population or will they be handing it to the JAI/JAF who will keep it out of the hands of the civilians in the hope of producing more atrocity propaganda. If the ICRC does that latter it will be facilitating a crime against humanity which I assume it will be referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to answer for.
Also today the UK Parliament has been discussing Madaya as an urgent question. Therefore I should probably comment on the suggestion by former Royal Marine Commando and former MI6 agent Paddy Lord Ashdown that Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) airdrops supplies to the JAI/JAF in Madaya. This is of course a completely mad suggestion.
However the UK Prime Minister David Cameron has proved himself rather keen on completely mad ideas when it comes for Syria. For example in 2013 he wanted to bomb Syria in support of the JAF's use of Sarin gas in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus. The source of that Sarin gas has now been traced back to Turkey and Turkish MP Eren Erdem is currently being prosecuted for treason for revealing that detail.
Therefore while I'm sure Lord Ashdown will deny it this suggestion seems to have been a test of whether Prime Minister Cameron has had an outbreak of rational thought or is still committed to mad ideas like using his Christmas message to announce that the UK is waging a Christian Crusade/Jihad against Muslims.
Sadly based on a quick look at the debate it seems this has gone right over the heads of most MP's. Fortunately though the government spokeswoman stuck to the position that it is not the Syrian government that is starving people to death in Syria.
No wonder BBC News is clinging to the Bowie obituary like a life-raft.
18:10 on 11/1/16 (UK date).
Saturday, 9 January 2016
Ms Merkal Regrets.
Germany's Chancellor/Head of Government Angela Merkel was declared Time Magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2015.
Although the award acknowledged her central role in keeping the Eurozone together amid the economic crisis caused by Greece's calamitous SYRIZA government it was primarily given in response to Ms Merkel's response to the refugee crisis caused by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The magazine labelled that response generous, compassionate and tolerant.
Although a magazine which in 2014 declared Beyonce to be the most influential person in the world perhaps lacks credibility this struck me as something of a surprise. That's because Angela Merkel's response to the refugee crisis has always seemed to me an extremely rare error of judgement on her part.
Back in July 2015 Chancellor Merkel was attending what Americans would term a televised town hall event in the German city of Rostock.
One of the questions she faced was from a 14 year old Palestinian girl named only as Reem who wanted to know why her family were not being granted permanent refugee status in Germany. As the Chancellor began to explain Germany's immigration policy Reem burst into uncontrollable tears forcing Merkel to awkwardly try and comfort her.
The video of this meeting went viral on the Internet - Google "Merkel Makes Girl Cry" - and led to Angela Merkel's government being dubbed "The government without empathy."
This more than anything else seems to have triggered Merkel's decision in late August 2015 to announce that all Syrian refugees would be welcomed in Germany.
Although this no doubt allowed Merkel to feel better about herself it was probably one of the worst things that could be done. As with all other aspects of war the refugee crisis created by ISIL requires hard-headed and well thought through solutions rather than easy hashtags and campaign slogans that make us feel better about ourselves.
As I've said throughout what the European Union (EU) needs to do in response to the refugee crisis is to set up what are effectively refugee embassies in Syria, Iraq and the neighbouring states of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
It is from there that asylum applications are processed before those granted refugee status are transported to the EU and distributed fairly amongst the 28 member states. This removes the need for those refugees to make the extremely dangerous sea crossing into the EU and allows the EU to better process them in the key areas of security and integration.
On that first issue of security I have absolutely no doubt the overwhelming majority of those seeking asylum are not a threat to national security.
However it has so long been accepted that those with nefarious intent will try and abuse the asylum process that Article 1(f) of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees makes quite clear that refugee status cannot be granted to those suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity, other crimes against peace or other non-political crimes in their country of origin.
Although there does seem to have been a concerted effort to down-play the risks there is a growing list of those claiming refugee status in the EU being linked to serious terrorist activity.
The most significant of these were the two attackers in the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres who although it turns out were EU citizens had re-entered the EU from Syria posing as asylum seekers.
Then of course there was the case of Osama Abdul Mohsen who became famous after being filmed being kicked by a Hungarian reporter and was rewarded with asylum in Spain and a job at Real Madrid.
Shortly afterwards it emerged that Mohsen has been a member of the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) and had participated in numerous crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity particularly against the Kurdish minority in northern Syria. I am still waiting to hear that the Mohsen family have been expelled from Spain to face justice.
In Finland alone at least 300 asylum seekers have been found to have links with terrorist groups. This figure includes two Iraqi brothers who were arrested on December 10th (10/12/15) not only for being members of ISIL but for personally killing 11 Iraqi soldiers during the Camp Speicher Massacre in which ISIL slaughtered at least 1,700.
This problem is even occurring as far afield as the US. On July 16th (16/7/15) Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez - a refugee from Kuwait - attacked several military installations in and around Chattanooga, Tennessee killing 5 and wounding 2.
Just yesterday (8/1/16) the US confirmed that over the past week it had arrested two Iraqi refugees in California and Texas. One had been planning to travel to join ISIL while the other had fought for ISIL before claiming asylum in the US. However in an effort to cover this up the US is only prosecuting him for lying on his application.
With the US being some 6,000km (3,600 miles) and an entire ocean away from Syria it shouldn't be aiding and abetting ISIL in their crime against humanity of ethnic cleansing by taking in refugees at all. Instead it should be supporting the refugees by doing all it can to destroy ISIL and end the war.
The EU though being closer most certainly does have an obligation to take in refugees from ISIL. However a large part of that obligation is to make sure that terrorists are not allowed to hide amongst those genuinely needing asylum.
The EU not only owes that responsibility to itself but also to the genuine asylum seekers. After all there is no point them taking up refuge in the EU if the EU is just going to let in the people they are fleeing from.
On the issue of integration as I write there a protests going on in Cologne, Germany over the more then 100 sexual assaults on women during the city's New Years Eve (NYE) celebrations. These are said to have been carried out by between 500 and 1000 Arab men who were all either seeking or had been granted asylum. This has widely been viewed as the result of a failure to integrate the massive influx of Syrian refugees.
However as more information has emerged this doesn't actually seem to be the work of a large group of out of control men. Instead it seems to be a co-ordinated criminal enterprise using a tactic which is known in the US as; "Flashmob Robbery" or in the UK by the slang term; "Steaming."
Although this isn't the sort of thing you can do a training course to be certified in it tends to involve a gang of robbers ploughing - like a steam train - through anywhere a crowd is confined such as on a train or at an event such as a NYE celebration. As they force their way through the crowd the gang rob people of whatever they can.
In Cologne the sexual assaults only seem to have been used as a form of violence to facilitate theft. After all a woman who is terrified that she is going to be raped isn't going to be that worried about what happens to her cellphone, purse or jewellery.
This type of robbery is actually pretty common in the US and parts of London, UK particularly on the rail network and at the Notting Hill Carnival. Therefore if the Cologne attacks had happened in London we'd probably be talking about how the refugees had become too well integrated with the black thug culture that has been imported from the US. Curiously "Black Lives Matter" came fourth on Time Magazine's poll.
As such I'm inclined to think that the attacks in Cologne weren't so much a failure to integrate refugees as a failure on the part of the police to identify the threat from criminal elements and put in place an effective security plan.
However it does seem that the police failed to act and then tried to cover up the incident because they were afraid of being seen to saying anything negative about refugees. It is that cover up that people seem to be most angry about.
At around 18:30 on 9/1/16 (UK date) I'll be back to add more detail on that after dinner.
Edited at around 20:10 on 9/1/16 (UK date) to tidy up the above and add;
As information about the incident has been slowly trickling out did seem reasonable to assume that it could have been the result of some cultural integration problem.
I think it's well established that one area where European culture and Arab culture differ is the lower status granted to women in Arab culture. This is particularly true in societies which subscribe to the particularly nasty Whabbist perversion of Sunni Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia.
In Arab societies that were run by secular dictators such as Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt and to a lesser extent Qaddafi in Libya women were largely protected by the very aggressive policing of secular laws. When those dictators and their security apparatus were overthrown the new found freedom did sort of go to everybody's head and even reasonable laws against things like rape and sexual assault were widely ignored.
Egypt's Tahrir Square became notorious for rape and sexual assault particularly when it was used as a deliberate tactic of intimidation by the Muslim Brotherhood during the 2013 revolution.
Even in comparison to somewhere like the US or the UK German society actually has a very open and mature attitude towards sexuality. For example prostitution is legal and pornography is hardly considered a dirty secret.
As a 13/14 year old boy I actually went on a school trip to Cologne. Due to a clerical oversight we ended up being booked into a hotel in the middle of the cities red-light district. I still remember walking past all the prostitutes, brothels and sex shops being quite a head-spinning experience. I imagine the experience would probably worse for a young man arriving from somewhere like Iraq or Syria.
The other big cultural difference between Arab and European societies is of course alcohol. This is widely banned in Arab societies but in European societies - particularly Germany - people drink a lot.
In preparation for the 2015 Oktoberfest which is essentially just everybody getting really drunk throughout the month of October the Bavarian city of Munich actually went to great lengths to make sure that refugees from Arab nations wouldn't be overwhelmed of frightened by seeing large numbers of very drunk people out in public.
The bigger problem probably arises though if the refugees decide they want to integrate with the local culture and try alcohol for themselves. Alcohol of course lowers inhibitions and impairs judgement so everybody who is familiar with it has stories about making ill-judged sexual advances that have earned them a slap in the face or even worse advances that haven't been rebuffed leading to many a morning of regret.
With many of the attackers being reported to be either drunk or smelling heavily of alcohol it would be easy to imagine a situation where some naive young men had been overwhelmed by the local culture and started making some extremely poor decisions. After all I'm pretty sure that's what led to Jeremy Jackson being kicked off the January 2015 season of Celebrity Big Brother UK (CBBUK).
How best to integrate refugees is of course a huge topic to the point where I understand it supports an entire scientific discipline known as Social Anthropology. However I suppose the first big question is what sort of society you are trying to integrate them into.
Until the late-1990's the London borough of Croydon where I grew up was the only port of call for asylum seekers into the UK. Even now it remains the main one. As a result if you talk about Eritrean refugees I immediately think of about a dozen kids I went to school with. If you mention Angola you're talking about a couple of the teachers. Apparently getting the Ugandan guy in and out of Cologne was a major headache.
Working in the local hospital during the Balkan war my mother is actually surprisingly knowledgeable about how to treat the long term effects of battlefield injuries and wounds sustained during torture.
Having retired my mother now lives in Salisbury, Wiltshire. Due to its Cathedral this is technically considered a city but compared to London is a small town in the country. It has also been selected as the new home of a group of asylum seekers that the UK is taking in separately from the EU. I have to say that both my mother and I experience quite a lot of bafflement at all the local excitement about when the refugees are coming and where they're going to stay.
I think the only advice either of us can offer is to get over the excitement of them being refugees and just interact with them the way you would anybody else. If they're about to do something stupid, dangerous or that British people would find offensive politely point out their mistake to them. If they become aggressive walk away or call the police.
The other big question of course is who are you trying to integrate. After all a babe in arms who is being adopted is unlikely to know that they were born and orphaned in a different culture. However a 13/14 year old orphan will probably need more help but that will be done by the adoptive parents. A complete family unit of a mother, father and three of four children is a completely different proposition again. As always though young men between the ages of 16 and 30 always present the biggest problems.
If I was to try and draw up a general rule though I would say that you would try and disperse them in groups that aren't so small that people who don't speak the language are completely isolated but not such large groups that they're not forced to interact with the local population.
After all as any social anthropologist will tell you culture comes not from the laws that are passed by the government and enforced by the police but from that quiet peer pressure of; "That's just not how we do things around here."
Although it may have given her a warm and fuzzy feeling Angela Merkel's emotionally driven response to the refugee crisis seems to have made it more difficult to solve these problems.
The refugee crisis is being caused by the fact that there is a vicious and nasty war being allowed to drag on in Syria and Iraq. Therefore regardless of what Chancellor Merkel or any other EU politicians says or doesn't say it is not a problem that is going to go away until the war is brought to an end with ISIL and associated groups being utterly destroyed.
However by throwing open Germany's doors in welcome Merkel appears to have given many of the refugees the entirely false impression that they will be allowed to start entirely new lives within the EU. The won't. Apart from some extreme exceptions such as orphaned children they will be cared for at the subsistence level until the war ends. They will then be sent back to Iraq and Syria to help rebuild their battered nations.
If the refugees were being told this truth it is likely that they would be in less of a rush to get to Germany instead opting to stay in the first safe country where their money runs out. This would mean far more refugees settling in places like Hungary in Poland. If that happened then those nations would be banging on Germany's door demanding that the EU takes collective action.
As it is with Merkel throwing open Germany's doors eastern EU states are seeing the refugees merely as people passing through. Many of them seem to genuinely believe that the refugee crisis is caused by and began with Chancellor Merkel's invitation. As a result rather than demanding that the EU takes collective action nations such as Hungary are actually trying to block the EU from taking that collective action.
The bonkers demands from Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban in particular has forced the EU into a dangerous level of engagement with Turkey.
Back at the end of November 2015 the EU was forced to agree to give Turkey USD3bn and visa-free travel in return for tackling the flow of refugees into the EU. As you would expect Turkey is completely failing to live up to its end of this bargain.
Despite it being winter the flow of refugees out of Turkey has not even slowed. The first death of a refugee in 2016 occurred on just January 3rd (3/1/16) when an infant child drowned in the Aegean in scenes that were every bit as harrowing as Aylan Kurdi. With another 47 drowning in a single sinking just on Tuesday (5/1/15) the monthly death toll is already close to exceeding 100.
Just today 14 refugees have been killed in road accidents in Turkey. That is a clear sign that Turkey isn't even attempting to stop the refugees reaching the coast.
I've long said that rather than rewarding Turkey for all the refugees it keeps sending us the EU should be fining it USD100,000 for every Muslim it sends to drown at sea. That penalty can be paid directly or through visa fees and custom duties.
Perhaps more alarmingly then that on December 4th (4/12/15) Germany voted to deploy its military in a non-combat role to support the fight against ISIL. Due to the diplomatic efforts to keep Turkey onside over the refugee issue Germany has made the mistake of deploy those military assets to Turkey. This of course increases Turkey's influence over the anti-ISIL coalition.
This is a problem because Turkey is one of the main supporters of ISIL and one of the main obstacles to defeating. Since the liberation of the Tishan Dam on December 26th (26/12/15) Turkey is now extremely concerned about the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) advancing on what the Turkish Justice & Development Party (AKP) are openly referring to as; "The ISIL safe-zone."
Despite all these dangerous and counter-productive concessions to Turkey and with Hungary's objections to an EU-wide refugee policy tied up in the courts the crisis doesn't look like it is going to be solved any time soon.
As a result many EU nations are suspending the Schengen agreement and following Hungary's lead by throwing up border controls threatening what Chancellor Merkel considers one of the core elements of the EU.
Quite how we get the situation back on track is still rather beyond me. However I think it would help if Chancellor Merkel produced that rarest of things from a politician; An apology and an admission that they made a mistake.
22:10 on 9/1/16 (UK date).
Although the award acknowledged her central role in keeping the Eurozone together amid the economic crisis caused by Greece's calamitous SYRIZA government it was primarily given in response to Ms Merkel's response to the refugee crisis caused by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The magazine labelled that response generous, compassionate and tolerant.
Although a magazine which in 2014 declared Beyonce to be the most influential person in the world perhaps lacks credibility this struck me as something of a surprise. That's because Angela Merkel's response to the refugee crisis has always seemed to me an extremely rare error of judgement on her part.
Back in July 2015 Chancellor Merkel was attending what Americans would term a televised town hall event in the German city of Rostock.
One of the questions she faced was from a 14 year old Palestinian girl named only as Reem who wanted to know why her family were not being granted permanent refugee status in Germany. As the Chancellor began to explain Germany's immigration policy Reem burst into uncontrollable tears forcing Merkel to awkwardly try and comfort her.
The video of this meeting went viral on the Internet - Google "Merkel Makes Girl Cry" - and led to Angela Merkel's government being dubbed "The government without empathy."
This more than anything else seems to have triggered Merkel's decision in late August 2015 to announce that all Syrian refugees would be welcomed in Germany.
Although this no doubt allowed Merkel to feel better about herself it was probably one of the worst things that could be done. As with all other aspects of war the refugee crisis created by ISIL requires hard-headed and well thought through solutions rather than easy hashtags and campaign slogans that make us feel better about ourselves.
As I've said throughout what the European Union (EU) needs to do in response to the refugee crisis is to set up what are effectively refugee embassies in Syria, Iraq and the neighbouring states of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
It is from there that asylum applications are processed before those granted refugee status are transported to the EU and distributed fairly amongst the 28 member states. This removes the need for those refugees to make the extremely dangerous sea crossing into the EU and allows the EU to better process them in the key areas of security and integration.
On that first issue of security I have absolutely no doubt the overwhelming majority of those seeking asylum are not a threat to national security.
However it has so long been accepted that those with nefarious intent will try and abuse the asylum process that Article 1(f) of the 1951 Convention on the Status of Refugees makes quite clear that refugee status cannot be granted to those suspected of war crimes, crimes against humanity, other crimes against peace or other non-political crimes in their country of origin.
Although there does seem to have been a concerted effort to down-play the risks there is a growing list of those claiming refugee status in the EU being linked to serious terrorist activity.
The most significant of these were the two attackers in the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres who although it turns out were EU citizens had re-entered the EU from Syria posing as asylum seekers.
Then of course there was the case of Osama Abdul Mohsen who became famous after being filmed being kicked by a Hungarian reporter and was rewarded with asylum in Spain and a job at Real Madrid.
Shortly afterwards it emerged that Mohsen has been a member of the Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front (ANF) and had participated in numerous crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity particularly against the Kurdish minority in northern Syria. I am still waiting to hear that the Mohsen family have been expelled from Spain to face justice.
In Finland alone at least 300 asylum seekers have been found to have links with terrorist groups. This figure includes two Iraqi brothers who were arrested on December 10th (10/12/15) not only for being members of ISIL but for personally killing 11 Iraqi soldiers during the Camp Speicher Massacre in which ISIL slaughtered at least 1,700.
This problem is even occurring as far afield as the US. On July 16th (16/7/15) Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez - a refugee from Kuwait - attacked several military installations in and around Chattanooga, Tennessee killing 5 and wounding 2.
Just yesterday (8/1/16) the US confirmed that over the past week it had arrested two Iraqi refugees in California and Texas. One had been planning to travel to join ISIL while the other had fought for ISIL before claiming asylum in the US. However in an effort to cover this up the US is only prosecuting him for lying on his application.
With the US being some 6,000km (3,600 miles) and an entire ocean away from Syria it shouldn't be aiding and abetting ISIL in their crime against humanity of ethnic cleansing by taking in refugees at all. Instead it should be supporting the refugees by doing all it can to destroy ISIL and end the war.
The EU though being closer most certainly does have an obligation to take in refugees from ISIL. However a large part of that obligation is to make sure that terrorists are not allowed to hide amongst those genuinely needing asylum.
The EU not only owes that responsibility to itself but also to the genuine asylum seekers. After all there is no point them taking up refuge in the EU if the EU is just going to let in the people they are fleeing from.
On the issue of integration as I write there a protests going on in Cologne, Germany over the more then 100 sexual assaults on women during the city's New Years Eve (NYE) celebrations. These are said to have been carried out by between 500 and 1000 Arab men who were all either seeking or had been granted asylum. This has widely been viewed as the result of a failure to integrate the massive influx of Syrian refugees.
However as more information has emerged this doesn't actually seem to be the work of a large group of out of control men. Instead it seems to be a co-ordinated criminal enterprise using a tactic which is known in the US as; "Flashmob Robbery" or in the UK by the slang term; "Steaming."
Although this isn't the sort of thing you can do a training course to be certified in it tends to involve a gang of robbers ploughing - like a steam train - through anywhere a crowd is confined such as on a train or at an event such as a NYE celebration. As they force their way through the crowd the gang rob people of whatever they can.
In Cologne the sexual assaults only seem to have been used as a form of violence to facilitate theft. After all a woman who is terrified that she is going to be raped isn't going to be that worried about what happens to her cellphone, purse or jewellery.
This type of robbery is actually pretty common in the US and parts of London, UK particularly on the rail network and at the Notting Hill Carnival. Therefore if the Cologne attacks had happened in London we'd probably be talking about how the refugees had become too well integrated with the black thug culture that has been imported from the US. Curiously "Black Lives Matter" came fourth on Time Magazine's poll.
As such I'm inclined to think that the attacks in Cologne weren't so much a failure to integrate refugees as a failure on the part of the police to identify the threat from criminal elements and put in place an effective security plan.
However it does seem that the police failed to act and then tried to cover up the incident because they were afraid of being seen to saying anything negative about refugees. It is that cover up that people seem to be most angry about.
At around 18:30 on 9/1/16 (UK date) I'll be back to add more detail on that after dinner.
Edited at around 20:10 on 9/1/16 (UK date) to tidy up the above and add;
As information about the incident has been slowly trickling out did seem reasonable to assume that it could have been the result of some cultural integration problem.
I think it's well established that one area where European culture and Arab culture differ is the lower status granted to women in Arab culture. This is particularly true in societies which subscribe to the particularly nasty Whabbist perversion of Sunni Islam promoted by Saudi Arabia.
In Arab societies that were run by secular dictators such as Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt and to a lesser extent Qaddafi in Libya women were largely protected by the very aggressive policing of secular laws. When those dictators and their security apparatus were overthrown the new found freedom did sort of go to everybody's head and even reasonable laws against things like rape and sexual assault were widely ignored.
Egypt's Tahrir Square became notorious for rape and sexual assault particularly when it was used as a deliberate tactic of intimidation by the Muslim Brotherhood during the 2013 revolution.
Even in comparison to somewhere like the US or the UK German society actually has a very open and mature attitude towards sexuality. For example prostitution is legal and pornography is hardly considered a dirty secret.
As a 13/14 year old boy I actually went on a school trip to Cologne. Due to a clerical oversight we ended up being booked into a hotel in the middle of the cities red-light district. I still remember walking past all the prostitutes, brothels and sex shops being quite a head-spinning experience. I imagine the experience would probably worse for a young man arriving from somewhere like Iraq or Syria.
The other big cultural difference between Arab and European societies is of course alcohol. This is widely banned in Arab societies but in European societies - particularly Germany - people drink a lot.
In preparation for the 2015 Oktoberfest which is essentially just everybody getting really drunk throughout the month of October the Bavarian city of Munich actually went to great lengths to make sure that refugees from Arab nations wouldn't be overwhelmed of frightened by seeing large numbers of very drunk people out in public.
The bigger problem probably arises though if the refugees decide they want to integrate with the local culture and try alcohol for themselves. Alcohol of course lowers inhibitions and impairs judgement so everybody who is familiar with it has stories about making ill-judged sexual advances that have earned them a slap in the face or even worse advances that haven't been rebuffed leading to many a morning of regret.
With many of the attackers being reported to be either drunk or smelling heavily of alcohol it would be easy to imagine a situation where some naive young men had been overwhelmed by the local culture and started making some extremely poor decisions. After all I'm pretty sure that's what led to Jeremy Jackson being kicked off the January 2015 season of Celebrity Big Brother UK (CBBUK).
How best to integrate refugees is of course a huge topic to the point where I understand it supports an entire scientific discipline known as Social Anthropology. However I suppose the first big question is what sort of society you are trying to integrate them into.
Until the late-1990's the London borough of Croydon where I grew up was the only port of call for asylum seekers into the UK. Even now it remains the main one. As a result if you talk about Eritrean refugees I immediately think of about a dozen kids I went to school with. If you mention Angola you're talking about a couple of the teachers. Apparently getting the Ugandan guy in and out of Cologne was a major headache.
Working in the local hospital during the Balkan war my mother is actually surprisingly knowledgeable about how to treat the long term effects of battlefield injuries and wounds sustained during torture.
Having retired my mother now lives in Salisbury, Wiltshire. Due to its Cathedral this is technically considered a city but compared to London is a small town in the country. It has also been selected as the new home of a group of asylum seekers that the UK is taking in separately from the EU. I have to say that both my mother and I experience quite a lot of bafflement at all the local excitement about when the refugees are coming and where they're going to stay.
I think the only advice either of us can offer is to get over the excitement of them being refugees and just interact with them the way you would anybody else. If they're about to do something stupid, dangerous or that British people would find offensive politely point out their mistake to them. If they become aggressive walk away or call the police.
The other big question of course is who are you trying to integrate. After all a babe in arms who is being adopted is unlikely to know that they were born and orphaned in a different culture. However a 13/14 year old orphan will probably need more help but that will be done by the adoptive parents. A complete family unit of a mother, father and three of four children is a completely different proposition again. As always though young men between the ages of 16 and 30 always present the biggest problems.
If I was to try and draw up a general rule though I would say that you would try and disperse them in groups that aren't so small that people who don't speak the language are completely isolated but not such large groups that they're not forced to interact with the local population.
After all as any social anthropologist will tell you culture comes not from the laws that are passed by the government and enforced by the police but from that quiet peer pressure of; "That's just not how we do things around here."
Although it may have given her a warm and fuzzy feeling Angela Merkel's emotionally driven response to the refugee crisis seems to have made it more difficult to solve these problems.
The refugee crisis is being caused by the fact that there is a vicious and nasty war being allowed to drag on in Syria and Iraq. Therefore regardless of what Chancellor Merkel or any other EU politicians says or doesn't say it is not a problem that is going to go away until the war is brought to an end with ISIL and associated groups being utterly destroyed.
However by throwing open Germany's doors in welcome Merkel appears to have given many of the refugees the entirely false impression that they will be allowed to start entirely new lives within the EU. The won't. Apart from some extreme exceptions such as orphaned children they will be cared for at the subsistence level until the war ends. They will then be sent back to Iraq and Syria to help rebuild their battered nations.
If the refugees were being told this truth it is likely that they would be in less of a rush to get to Germany instead opting to stay in the first safe country where their money runs out. This would mean far more refugees settling in places like Hungary in Poland. If that happened then those nations would be banging on Germany's door demanding that the EU takes collective action.
As it is with Merkel throwing open Germany's doors eastern EU states are seeing the refugees merely as people passing through. Many of them seem to genuinely believe that the refugee crisis is caused by and began with Chancellor Merkel's invitation. As a result rather than demanding that the EU takes collective action nations such as Hungary are actually trying to block the EU from taking that collective action.
The bonkers demands from Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban in particular has forced the EU into a dangerous level of engagement with Turkey.
Back at the end of November 2015 the EU was forced to agree to give Turkey USD3bn and visa-free travel in return for tackling the flow of refugees into the EU. As you would expect Turkey is completely failing to live up to its end of this bargain.
Despite it being winter the flow of refugees out of Turkey has not even slowed. The first death of a refugee in 2016 occurred on just January 3rd (3/1/16) when an infant child drowned in the Aegean in scenes that were every bit as harrowing as Aylan Kurdi. With another 47 drowning in a single sinking just on Tuesday (5/1/15) the monthly death toll is already close to exceeding 100.
Just today 14 refugees have been killed in road accidents in Turkey. That is a clear sign that Turkey isn't even attempting to stop the refugees reaching the coast.
I've long said that rather than rewarding Turkey for all the refugees it keeps sending us the EU should be fining it USD100,000 for every Muslim it sends to drown at sea. That penalty can be paid directly or through visa fees and custom duties.
Perhaps more alarmingly then that on December 4th (4/12/15) Germany voted to deploy its military in a non-combat role to support the fight against ISIL. Due to the diplomatic efforts to keep Turkey onside over the refugee issue Germany has made the mistake of deploy those military assets to Turkey. This of course increases Turkey's influence over the anti-ISIL coalition.
This is a problem because Turkey is one of the main supporters of ISIL and one of the main obstacles to defeating. Since the liberation of the Tishan Dam on December 26th (26/12/15) Turkey is now extremely concerned about the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) advancing on what the Turkish Justice & Development Party (AKP) are openly referring to as; "The ISIL safe-zone."
Despite all these dangerous and counter-productive concessions to Turkey and with Hungary's objections to an EU-wide refugee policy tied up in the courts the crisis doesn't look like it is going to be solved any time soon.
As a result many EU nations are suspending the Schengen agreement and following Hungary's lead by throwing up border controls threatening what Chancellor Merkel considers one of the core elements of the EU.
Quite how we get the situation back on track is still rather beyond me. However I think it would help if Chancellor Merkel produced that rarest of things from a politician; An apology and an admission that they made a mistake.
22:10 on 9/1/16 (UK date).
Friday, 8 January 2016
Operation Featherweight: Month 18, Week 2, Day 6.
Yesterday (7/1/16) authorities in the US announced that in the past week they had arrested two men for supporting the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). One of the these men was arrested in Dallas, Texas while the other was arrested in Sacramento, California.
As with Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez who carried out the July 16th (16/7/15) Chattanooga terror attack both of these men had been born in Palestine before claiming refugee status in neighbouring countries - in both case Iraqs. They then claimed refugee status again in order to enter the US.
I had been planning to incorporate this information into a wider post about the challenges of screening and then integrating refugees from ISIL that included the mass of sexual assaults carried out by asylum seekers in Cologne, Germany on New Years Eve (NYE). However the security screening and integration of refugees are both very broad subjects and I'm still feeling distinctly woolly headed.
Last night though the US experienced another terror attack this time in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a police car was making a turn into a residential street a man standing on the corner opened fire 13 times on the vehicle eventually getting close enough to reach inside the drivers window.
Despite being hit three times the police officer - Jesse Hartnett - was able to exit the vehicle and chase the suspect eventually shooting him the butt. During questioning the suspect - Edward Archer - declared that he had carried out the ambush in the name of ISIL because the US police enforce laws that contradict Islamic Sharia law.
In terms of analysis of this type of self-radicalised, lone-wolf attack it doesn't really matter whether they occur in Paris, France, Brussels, Belgium, London, UK or Philadelphia, US. The priority remains eliminating ISIL's propaganda by defeating on the battle fields of Syria and Iraq.
However the US does have the added problem of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign.
For almost exactly as long the international fight against ISIL has been going on BLM have been pumping out the message that the police and the law are the enemy and any tactic - no matter how violent - is perfectly acceptable to fight them. Both ISIL and BLM have specifically targeted black people to join their campaigns. As a result black America is effectively getting a double dose of terrorist agitation.
What is most interesting about last night's attack though is that it occurred around mid-night local time (05:00GMT). However it was not until roughly 13hrs later that a single US news agency reported on it. Even then the reporting only seems to be in response to the Philadelphia Mayor, the police commissioner and the local FBI office calling a press conference on the attack.
The primary reason for the silence of the US media seems to be a desire not to embarrass US President Obama.
Although the link to ISIL has only emerged today the story was immediately about a young black man attempting to assassinate police officers. This is a repeat of the December 20th 2014 (20/12/14) ambush of two police officers in New York City which was carried out in the name of the BLM campaign.
The story is also hugely embarrassing for Obama because through the Walter Scott case in South Carolina and the Laqan McDonald case in Chicago, Illinois it is clear that the BLM campaign Obama supports would now like to see Officer Hartnett prosecuted for his actions.
Rather then allowing police officers to shoot fleeing felons it's clear that BLM think that Mr Archer should have been allowed to escape triggering a situation similar to the one they've had in Tel Aviv, Israel following last Friday's (1/1/16) shooting. Here schools and businesses have been closed for the past week amid a massive manhunt for the attacker.
Finally last night, just before the attack CNN had granted Obama an hour long special program to justify his executive order to expand background checks on gun purchases. By comparison CNN's NYE coverage looked like an example of a rigorous political examination.
The gun used in last night's attack - like most guns used in crime in Philadelphia - had been stolen. As a result Mr Archer did not buy it from a registered gun dealer and did not have to pass a background check.
There is absolutely nothing in Obama's executive action that would have changed that fact or prevented last night's attack.
21:20 on 8/1/16 (UK date).
As with Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez who carried out the July 16th (16/7/15) Chattanooga terror attack both of these men had been born in Palestine before claiming refugee status in neighbouring countries - in both case Iraqs. They then claimed refugee status again in order to enter the US.
I had been planning to incorporate this information into a wider post about the challenges of screening and then integrating refugees from ISIL that included the mass of sexual assaults carried out by asylum seekers in Cologne, Germany on New Years Eve (NYE). However the security screening and integration of refugees are both very broad subjects and I'm still feeling distinctly woolly headed.
Last night though the US experienced another terror attack this time in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a police car was making a turn into a residential street a man standing on the corner opened fire 13 times on the vehicle eventually getting close enough to reach inside the drivers window.
Despite being hit three times the police officer - Jesse Hartnett - was able to exit the vehicle and chase the suspect eventually shooting him the butt. During questioning the suspect - Edward Archer - declared that he had carried out the ambush in the name of ISIL because the US police enforce laws that contradict Islamic Sharia law.
In terms of analysis of this type of self-radicalised, lone-wolf attack it doesn't really matter whether they occur in Paris, France, Brussels, Belgium, London, UK or Philadelphia, US. The priority remains eliminating ISIL's propaganda by defeating on the battle fields of Syria and Iraq.
However the US does have the added problem of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign.
For almost exactly as long the international fight against ISIL has been going on BLM have been pumping out the message that the police and the law are the enemy and any tactic - no matter how violent - is perfectly acceptable to fight them. Both ISIL and BLM have specifically targeted black people to join their campaigns. As a result black America is effectively getting a double dose of terrorist agitation.
What is most interesting about last night's attack though is that it occurred around mid-night local time (05:00GMT). However it was not until roughly 13hrs later that a single US news agency reported on it. Even then the reporting only seems to be in response to the Philadelphia Mayor, the police commissioner and the local FBI office calling a press conference on the attack.
The primary reason for the silence of the US media seems to be a desire not to embarrass US President Obama.
Although the link to ISIL has only emerged today the story was immediately about a young black man attempting to assassinate police officers. This is a repeat of the December 20th 2014 (20/12/14) ambush of two police officers in New York City which was carried out in the name of the BLM campaign.
The story is also hugely embarrassing for Obama because through the Walter Scott case in South Carolina and the Laqan McDonald case in Chicago, Illinois it is clear that the BLM campaign Obama supports would now like to see Officer Hartnett prosecuted for his actions.
Rather then allowing police officers to shoot fleeing felons it's clear that BLM think that Mr Archer should have been allowed to escape triggering a situation similar to the one they've had in Tel Aviv, Israel following last Friday's (1/1/16) shooting. Here schools and businesses have been closed for the past week amid a massive manhunt for the attacker.
Finally last night, just before the attack CNN had granted Obama an hour long special program to justify his executive order to expand background checks on gun purchases. By comparison CNN's NYE coverage looked like an example of a rigorous political examination.
The gun used in last night's attack - like most guns used in crime in Philadelphia - had been stolen. As a result Mr Archer did not buy it from a registered gun dealer and did not have to pass a background check.
There is absolutely nothing in Obama's executive action that would have changed that fact or prevented last night's attack.
21:20 on 8/1/16 (UK date).
Thursday, 7 January 2016
Operation Featherweight: Month 18, Week 2, Day 5.
I have declared the first sick day of 2016. All I'm suffering from is a bit of a chill and the suggestion of a sore throat. However that's as far as I want things to progress so I'm trying to take things easy today.
It would have been nice if my immune system had checked it's diary in advance though.
Today France has marked the first anniversary of the January 7th 2015 (7/1/15) attacks on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This was of course the start of three days of terror in Paris that culminated with attack on the Jewish Hypercacher supermarket and claimed the lives of 16 people.
Around 45 minutes after a ceremony marking the Charlie Hebdo anniversary had ended France experienced its second terror attack of 2016.
The year's first attack occurred on January 1st (1/1/16) when a Muslim man drove his car into soldiers guarding a Mosque in the southern French city of Valence.
Fortunately the soldiers were able to react quickly shooting the man meaning that only three soldiers and one Muslim passer-by who'd been attending the Mosque were injured in the attack. Only being wounded the attacker under questioning later declared that he'd carried out the attack to avenge the Muslims that French soldiers are murdering in Syria and Iraq.
Today's attack was similarly small scale with a Muslim man attempting to force his way into a police station on Paris' Goutte d'Or street armed with a meat cleaver. He was promptly shot and killed by the police. As the man was wearing a inert suicide vest with wires but no explosives the area had to be shut down until it had been cleared by the bomb squad.
Aside from the meat cleaver and the suicide vest the man was carrying with him a flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and manifesto justifying the attack - the details of which have not been released.
Displaying the extremely negative effect that US President Barack Obama and his Black Lives Matter campaign is having on the fight against terrorism French authorities still do not feel confident enough to claim that this was an ISIL inspired terror attack.
Both of these low-tech terror attacks carried out by self-radicalised lone-wolfs are almost identical to the type of attacks that Israel has been experiencing on an almost daily basis since September 2015.
Although the situations are in many ways very different both Israel and France have a large, predominately young Arab-Muslim population that does not feel as though it is part of mainstream society. This makes them extremely susceptible to the propaganda of ISIL.
Therefore I think that sadly until the international community - particularly US President Obama - gets serious about shutting down ISIL's propaganda France like Israel is just going to have to learn to live with these continuing attacks.
A prime example of how to address ISIL's propaganda is provided by the case of Junaid Hussain a British born ISIL fighter who was one of their most prolific online recruiters. However he's been remarkably quiet since August 25th (25/8/15). On account of being shot in the face.
I still think though that the best first step would be for western media outlets to stop operating as ISIL's propaganda arm. Today Britain's Sky News have provided us with a prime example of this.
The story that Sky News have been promoting all day today is of the dire humanitarian situation in the Syrian town of Madaya which sits close to the border with Lebanon less 5km (3 miles) south of the town of Zabadani and 36km (20 miles) north-west of the capital Damascus.
Sky News has - as always - been mawkishly revelling in harrowing images of extremely emaciated civilians and telling us how the residents of this Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) occupied town are being forced to eat grass, leaves and even household pets like cats. Curiously though Sky News then goes and blames of this suffering on the Syrian government.
The scenes coming out of towns like Madaya no longer shock people who have been following Syria's civil war. Nor do they provide any mystery. We've been watching scenes like this for the past five years now and we all understand the cause. Even if none of us are prepared to say it.
As I've said before the JAF coalition is made up roughly 7,000 different armed groups. Many of these function as criminal street gangs fighting over territory with populations they can tax and supply resources to for profit. Like everywhere else in the world one of the most important resource is food.
What many of the armed groups do is seize the entire food supply in an area under their control - particularly that which is given for free by international aid groups. They then restrict the supply of this food to the local population to create an artificial shortage massively driving the prices up. In Madaya 1kg (2.2lbs) of rice currently costs around USD170 whilst here in the UK is costs around USD0.75.
The armed groups then use the profits from these massively inflated profits to buy weapons and pay fighters to seize control of more areas with populations they can tax. Perversely they openly circulate this type of harrowing footage of the people they are starving to death as atrocity propaganda in the hope people will be tricked into blaming the Syrian government and giving the armed groups more aid.
The fact that previously respectable international aid agencies such as the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC), the UN's World Food Program (WFP) and particularly the UK's Save the Children have been prepared to supply these armed groups with free resources rather than distributing it directly to the civilian population is further evidence of how they have crossed the line from being humanitarian organisations into being happy warriors in ISIL's war machine.
Some of you may remember that in mid-September 2015 a deal was reached between the Syrian government and the JAF that would see the civilians in Zabadani and some of the surrounding villages set free.
However when the convoys arrived on September 26th (26/9/15) they were blocked by residents of towns such as Madaya and Saraqeb demanding to know why some hostages were being allowed to leave while they were being left at the mercy of the JAF.
Reacting to ill-advised comments by the US that what at that point was a Russian military build-up was a sure sign that the Syrian government would fall at any moment the JAF pulled out of the deal entirely and decided to keep all the civilians hostages.
It was this more than anything that triggered the Russian military build up to become a Russian intervention on September 30th (30/9/15).
I seem to remember Sky News and others protesting loudly against that Russian intervention. But then I suppose it was intended to deny them more snuff movies to masturbate over.
17:20 on 7/1/16 (UK date).
Edited at around 21:05 on 7/1/15 (UK date) to add;
This is probably easier than arguing with CNN's Arwa Damon directly.
As you would expect from a market controlled by armed groups that function much like street gangs the economics of food in Syria is very much like the economics of the illegal drug trade. Most people can't afford 1kg of rice in much the same way that most people can't afford a kilo of cocaine of a kilo of heroin.
However the people who are supplied with this ki's by groups such as the ICRC, WFP and Save the Children divide them down into 1g baggies that they sell daily for about USD1 per time. This provides them with a steady daily income adding up to USD1000 per kilo. As they're being supplied with the product for free this is all pure profit. Ground wheat is preferred because it can be cut with brick dust turning 1kg in 2kgs and a USD2000 per profit which is a nice new assault rifle.
Can't imagine why Obama and Black Lives Matter don't see a problem with this.
As for the rest of the diplomats and the reporters the Syria conflict really reminds me of the infamous Milgram experiments. At the start they were happy to tell the small lie that the protesters were unarmed. After 5 years of incremental increases they now seem happy to lie to starve children to death.
It would have been nice if my immune system had checked it's diary in advance though.
Today France has marked the first anniversary of the January 7th 2015 (7/1/15) attacks on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This was of course the start of three days of terror in Paris that culminated with attack on the Jewish Hypercacher supermarket and claimed the lives of 16 people.
Around 45 minutes after a ceremony marking the Charlie Hebdo anniversary had ended France experienced its second terror attack of 2016.
The year's first attack occurred on January 1st (1/1/16) when a Muslim man drove his car into soldiers guarding a Mosque in the southern French city of Valence.
Fortunately the soldiers were able to react quickly shooting the man meaning that only three soldiers and one Muslim passer-by who'd been attending the Mosque were injured in the attack. Only being wounded the attacker under questioning later declared that he'd carried out the attack to avenge the Muslims that French soldiers are murdering in Syria and Iraq.
Today's attack was similarly small scale with a Muslim man attempting to force his way into a police station on Paris' Goutte d'Or street armed with a meat cleaver. He was promptly shot and killed by the police. As the man was wearing a inert suicide vest with wires but no explosives the area had to be shut down until it had been cleared by the bomb squad.
Aside from the meat cleaver and the suicide vest the man was carrying with him a flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and manifesto justifying the attack - the details of which have not been released.
Displaying the extremely negative effect that US President Barack Obama and his Black Lives Matter campaign is having on the fight against terrorism French authorities still do not feel confident enough to claim that this was an ISIL inspired terror attack.
Both of these low-tech terror attacks carried out by self-radicalised lone-wolfs are almost identical to the type of attacks that Israel has been experiencing on an almost daily basis since September 2015.
Although the situations are in many ways very different both Israel and France have a large, predominately young Arab-Muslim population that does not feel as though it is part of mainstream society. This makes them extremely susceptible to the propaganda of ISIL.
Therefore I think that sadly until the international community - particularly US President Obama - gets serious about shutting down ISIL's propaganda France like Israel is just going to have to learn to live with these continuing attacks.
A prime example of how to address ISIL's propaganda is provided by the case of Junaid Hussain a British born ISIL fighter who was one of their most prolific online recruiters. However he's been remarkably quiet since August 25th (25/8/15). On account of being shot in the face.
I still think though that the best first step would be for western media outlets to stop operating as ISIL's propaganda arm. Today Britain's Sky News have provided us with a prime example of this.
The story that Sky News have been promoting all day today is of the dire humanitarian situation in the Syrian town of Madaya which sits close to the border with Lebanon less 5km (3 miles) south of the town of Zabadani and 36km (20 miles) north-west of the capital Damascus.
Sky News has - as always - been mawkishly revelling in harrowing images of extremely emaciated civilians and telling us how the residents of this Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) occupied town are being forced to eat grass, leaves and even household pets like cats. Curiously though Sky News then goes and blames of this suffering on the Syrian government.
The scenes coming out of towns like Madaya no longer shock people who have been following Syria's civil war. Nor do they provide any mystery. We've been watching scenes like this for the past five years now and we all understand the cause. Even if none of us are prepared to say it.
As I've said before the JAF coalition is made up roughly 7,000 different armed groups. Many of these function as criminal street gangs fighting over territory with populations they can tax and supply resources to for profit. Like everywhere else in the world one of the most important resource is food.
What many of the armed groups do is seize the entire food supply in an area under their control - particularly that which is given for free by international aid groups. They then restrict the supply of this food to the local population to create an artificial shortage massively driving the prices up. In Madaya 1kg (2.2lbs) of rice currently costs around USD170 whilst here in the UK is costs around USD0.75.
The armed groups then use the profits from these massively inflated profits to buy weapons and pay fighters to seize control of more areas with populations they can tax. Perversely they openly circulate this type of harrowing footage of the people they are starving to death as atrocity propaganda in the hope people will be tricked into blaming the Syrian government and giving the armed groups more aid.
The fact that previously respectable international aid agencies such as the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC), the UN's World Food Program (WFP) and particularly the UK's Save the Children have been prepared to supply these armed groups with free resources rather than distributing it directly to the civilian population is further evidence of how they have crossed the line from being humanitarian organisations into being happy warriors in ISIL's war machine.
Some of you may remember that in mid-September 2015 a deal was reached between the Syrian government and the JAF that would see the civilians in Zabadani and some of the surrounding villages set free.
However when the convoys arrived on September 26th (26/9/15) they were blocked by residents of towns such as Madaya and Saraqeb demanding to know why some hostages were being allowed to leave while they were being left at the mercy of the JAF.
Reacting to ill-advised comments by the US that what at that point was a Russian military build-up was a sure sign that the Syrian government would fall at any moment the JAF pulled out of the deal entirely and decided to keep all the civilians hostages.
It was this more than anything that triggered the Russian military build up to become a Russian intervention on September 30th (30/9/15).
I seem to remember Sky News and others protesting loudly against that Russian intervention. But then I suppose it was intended to deny them more snuff movies to masturbate over.
17:20 on 7/1/16 (UK date).
Edited at around 21:05 on 7/1/15 (UK date) to add;
This is probably easier than arguing with CNN's Arwa Damon directly.
As you would expect from a market controlled by armed groups that function much like street gangs the economics of food in Syria is very much like the economics of the illegal drug trade. Most people can't afford 1kg of rice in much the same way that most people can't afford a kilo of cocaine of a kilo of heroin.
However the people who are supplied with this ki's by groups such as the ICRC, WFP and Save the Children divide them down into 1g baggies that they sell daily for about USD1 per time. This provides them with a steady daily income adding up to USD1000 per kilo. As they're being supplied with the product for free this is all pure profit. Ground wheat is preferred because it can be cut with brick dust turning 1kg in 2kgs and a USD2000 per profit which is a nice new assault rifle.
Can't imagine why Obama and Black Lives Matter don't see a problem with this.
As for the rest of the diplomats and the reporters the Syria conflict really reminds me of the infamous Milgram experiments. At the start they were happy to tell the small lie that the protesters were unarmed. After 5 years of incremental increases they now seem happy to lie to starve children to death.
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
COP21 Terrorism Update #15.
On December 12th 2015 (12/12/15) the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21)
to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
broke up after agreeing a draft global agreement to combat climate
change.
The agreed draft was so poor that it is only since COP21 ended that discussion over what to do about it has been able to begin. Following a short break over Christmas to assess its position the US has kicked off 2016 with a comprehensive contribution to the discussion.
This has taken the form of a well regulated militia led by the son - Ammon - of somewhat famous Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy staging an occupation of the Headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the US state of Oregon.
This is intended as a protest against the conduct of the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and in particular its prosecution of two Oregon based ranchers - Steven and Dwight Jr Hammond - for arson on land that makes up part of the Malheur Refuge.
There are so many things wrong with the COP21 draft or "12/12 Atrocity" that it is hard to focus in on just one.
However much of the discussion so far has been centred on how the draft places an undue burden on less capable or developing nations by requiring them to keep a full inventory of greenhouse gas (ghg) emitters and sinks in accordance with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) standard while submitting a new Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) plan every 5 years.
This point has been illustrated by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Despite lacking a government whose writ extends across the entire country the 12/12 Atrocity requires the DRC to keep a full IPCC standard inventory of the Congo Rainforest. This is the second largest Rainforest in the World and occupies a space roughly the same size as the nation of Spain or the US state of Oregon.
Within climate change negotiations forests - particularly Rainforests - are considered hugely important. That's because at the moment roughly 20% of all the ghg emissions that are produced by things like burning fossil fuels are immediately absorbed by Rainforests rather then entering the atmosphere causing the temperature to rise.
Therefore if we could increase the amount of Rainforests - say by 20% - then we would be able to emit 20% more ghg's without changing the climate. That means rather then cutting our emissions to zero by completely eliminating fossil fuels we would only have to cut them by 80% allowing us to continue to use some fossil fuels - such as gasoline for transport - without causing climate change.
The problem is that rather then growing the amount of Rainforests is actually shrinking as people cut them down to make money off the land. Cattle ranching is a big driver of this deforestation but the Oregon ranchers made specific reference to logging and mining which are also huge drivers of deforestation.
Therefore before we start talking about increasing the amount of Rainforests we first have to protect the ones we've already got. The obvious way to do this is for governments to take control of areas of Rainforest to protect them from logging, ranching and mining. I suppose they could then name them wildlife refuges.
However this practice of governments taking over large sections of land is always complicated forcing the government to manage the demands of competing groups from the land. Often the big confrontation is between the need for conservation and the need for economic growth and the jobs that it brings.
The other big challenge is that of the rights of indigenous people to use the land in the way that ancestors have always used the lands. As I think I've mentioned before US President Obama's argument over whether we refer to Mount McKinley as "Mount McKinley" or by its indigenous name "Denali" is deeply stupid. Not least because the indigenous name for the mountain has never been "Denali."
However in many Rainforest rich nations - particularly the largest, the Amazon - you do have indigenous tribes living remotely within the forest. Some of these tribes are so remote we probably don't even know that they exist yet. As these tribes entire survival depends on the forest they have become very good at sustainably managing it with practices handed down over generations.
Obviously the government coming along and telling these tribes they've got to move off the land they lived on for thousands of years because it's becoming a wildlife reserve strikes me as deeply unfair. Also it strikes me as counter-productive to remove the people who know how to manage the forest rather then working with them to use their experience to protect the forest.
Even once you've established areas of protected forest how best to manage them is also a vast and complicated topic. Despite the best scientific research we still don't have a definitive answer and different types of forest in different areas need to be managed in different ways.
Take forest fire suppression with in the US as just a small aspect of a very large topic.
Following the Great Fire of 1910 the US Forestry Service mandated a policy of complete suppression. That meant that every forest fire that ignited had to be immediately extinguished. However it's now emerged that these small naturally occurring fires do an important job clearing plant litter - fallen leaves etc - and nourishing the soil.
The policy of complete suppression was preventing this litter clearance from taking placing causing it to build up. So where before you would have small, controllable fires in areas where they were actually helping nature instead the US now experiences massive, uncontrollable fires which threaten wildlife, human life and property. As a result the US Forestry Service is trying to move away from the complete suppression policy.
A nation which has really embraced the idea of using fire to nourish the soil is Indonesia. This leads to an annual smog across the entire region which has become notorious within UNFCCC circles.
A large part of the reason why Indonesians continue with these fires and the government is forced to defend them is the huge inertia that comes from "the way we've always done things." I suppose you could argue that the Indonesian fires are an indigenous rights issue.
The arson that the Hammond's are being imprisoned for was of plant litter in the wildlife reserve. The federal government is claiming that this traditional forest management technique increased the risk of forest fires. It would appear that the federal government is wrong although as with all geography related matters you do need the specific case study in front of you.
In the five years of negotiation prior to COP21 what was envisaged was a standardised format for INDC's. These standardised case studies would then be submitted through both an ex ante and ex post peer review process. This was intended as an extremely low cost mechanism to allow extremely intelligent people to share their best ideas in the hope of creating solutions that are greater then the sum of their parts.
In COP21's rush to get any old crap agreed this vital capacity building mechanism has been stripped out entirely in what I consider an act of mindless vandalism.
It's long been understood that the best way to resolve the competing interests between the needs to conserve forests and those who wish to use them for monetary gain is to find a way to monetise the forests. In short turn them into an economic resource that makes money without chopping them down.
Within UNFCCC negotiations there has long been two, often competing theories of how to do this.
The most well defined approach is the Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation Plus (REDD+). This is what it termed a non-market based mechanism and essentially involves nations such as the US giving nations such as Brazil large sums of money every year to establish and maintain Rainforest reserves.
The other approach is a free market based mechanism known as Carbon Trading Scheme (CTS). Essentially this involves viewing Rainforests as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) factories. If a business anywhere in the World wants to emit ghg's they must pay the owner of one these forest factories to scrub those ghg's out of the atmosphere to stop global warming. This is done through the purchasing of a carbon credit.
Obviously with such a complex problem as climate change the most successful solution is probably going to involve a bit of both approaches. However I must say that I tend to prefer the CTS approach. That's not because it's capitalist but because it better helps affirm the more dippy hippy truth that the natural environment has its own intrinsic value.
One of the big arguments at COP21 was whether REDD+ would be included in the agreement as a core method to protect Rainforests - the "Sheen Clause" as I dubbed it. The nation leading that charge to have REDD+ included was obviously Brazil which has more Rainforest then any other nation on earth. Leading the charge to have REDD+ excluded in favour of CTS was the US. Eventually Brazil won and the US lost with REDD+ being included and CTS being excluded.
What I've always found troubling about Brazil's position is that while they support REDD+ they are equally opposed to CTS which I think deprives nations of a supplementary solution.
It is very tempting to assume that Brazil is opposed to CTS because they simply don't understand how the free market principle works.
After all as part of the Cold War - specifically the School of the Americas - Brazil had a Fascist military dictatorship imposed on it by the US between 1964 and 1985. Although not Communist this type of military dictatorship is probably as far away as it's possible to get from a free society let alone a free market.
As is the case across many South American nations as a backlash to the School of the Americas voters in Brazil have tended to lean slightly to the left of centre to avoid the risk of returning to the bad old days of dictatorship. As a result "Free Market Capitalism" is still something of a dirty word.
This attitude is perhaps highlighted by the ongoing impeachment proceedings against current Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
What Rousseff is accused of doing is taking money from the oil company Petrobras and using it to prop up the national accounts to make it appear as though her governments economic policies are more effective then they actually are. This along with the fact that Petrobras is a Sate Owned Enterprise (SOE) suggests that Brazilians don't quite understand that government and private enterprise are two separate things.
Mind you the fact that Rousseff has got into trouble over this suggests that this belief isn't as widespread as it is in, say, Venezuela. As the largest nation in South America Brazil is of course expected to be mindful of the interests of its smaller neighbours in this type of negotiations.
The fact that the Brazilian President is currently involved in a corruption scandal of course makes it tempting to assume that Brazil is opposed to CTS because it's easier for them to rip-off the REDD+ donors. After all in 2010 Norway gave Indonesia USD1bn under REDD+. After banking the check Indonesia then pretty much shut down their REDD+ program and we assume spent the money on sweets.
However I think the reason why Brazil is opposed to CTS is that they understand free market economics a little too well. Under that economic model businesses are always trying to cut their costs and avoid paying bills they don't have to. In the US in particular there is still a lack of real recognition that carbon credits are a necessary cost of doing business like liability insurance or employee wages.
With the cost of carbon credits under CTS being fixed by simple supply and demand if there is no demand and a glut of supply these credits will be worthless. This will leave Brazil with no money or jobs but a huge unemployed population moving to cities to engage in drug abuse, violent crime and all the other problems associated with young men with too much time on their hands.
In the past it has been suggested that CTS wouldn't operate as a totally free market instead with a minimum carbon price. However by forcing through a non-binding agreement that he can pass through executive order US President Obama has removed any demand for carbon credits utterly destroying the CTS market.
It appears to me that the point the US is trying to make is that with it and Brazil getting bogged down in the detail of the REDD+ argument they've missed the bigger picture and the effects the draft agreement has on nations such as the DRC.
The English expression for this is; "Failing to see the wood (forest) for all the trees."
At around 18:00 on 5/1/16 (UK date) I'm only about two thirds of the way through. I may add more later but realistically I think we're looking at tomorrow.
Edited at around 15:20 on 6/1/16 (UK date) to tidy above and add;
On Tuesday (5/1/16) Brazil responded to this perceived slight by the US by announcing that the Joao Havelange stadium which is the be the centrepiece of the upcoming 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics has had its electricity and water supplies cut off over unpaid bills. This of course makes the point that in a free market capitalist system nobody can expect to be provided with a service without paying for it. As such Brazil's concerns about CTS are far from anti-capitalist or irrational.
Therefore I should point out that the general tone I got from the US announcement was to not make accusations and assign blame. Instead it was to acknowledge that mistakes had been made on all sides and asking for help to rectify them. After all it's obvious to all that the only thing that matters in US politics at the moment is whether President Obama gets to build that extension to his Presidential museum. Whether he's done the work to deserve it doesn't come into the equation.
As such the story also includes plenty of elements highlighting how Obama has turned into an ego mad tyrant rather than a credible political leader.
Throughout COP21 this point was repeatedly made through the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign particularly the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, Maryland and the Laquan McDonald case in Chicago, Illinois.
As I've mentioned numerous times before Obama's main aim of the Black Lives Matter campaign was to sweep the Democrats to control of both houses of Congress at the 2014 on a wave of anti-racist anger.
The secondary objective though was to portray all Republicans as racists in order to prevent them opposing Obama's immigration reforms. This is an attempt to gerrymander the political map of the US by planting Hispanic immigrants like seeds across various Republican states in the hope of harvesting a crop of votes at election time.
So no, it's not a mistake that I've assigned Black Lives Matter the same acronym as the Bureau of Land Management.
However the Black Lives Matter campaign was far from the first time that Obama has used the apparatus of state to silence his political opponents.
Almost immediately after taking control of the organisation in 2009 the Obama administration stopped the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) from issuing tax exempt status - Section 501(c)(4) - to groups that appeared to support a conservative or Republican agenda. This of course made it much more difficult and expensive for those groups to campaign for causes that the Obama administration disapproved of.
Various members of the IRS including Lois Lerner were later found to have lied under oath during Congressional hearings on the matter. However the Obama controlled Department of Justice (DoJ) is still refusing to take action against them.
What is highly controversial about the legal case at the heart of the Oregon protest is that the Hammonds were convicted of this questionable arson offence - was a value placed on the property destroyed? - in 2012 and sentenced to 3 months and 12 months in prison. They served those sentences and were released. It was more than 2 years later that Obama's DoJ decided to re-try them as terrorists and sentence them both to 5 years in prison.
It has long been a cornerstone of the US and many other legal systems that an individual cannot be held accountable twice for the same offence. This is known as the Double Jeopardy principle and is laid out in the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution. Two of the specific things it prohibits is retrial after conviction and multiple punishment.
By putting the Hammonds on trial for a second time and imposing a second punishment it is quite clear that the DoJ has acted wholly unlawfully in this case and has done so to punish people who hold a different political opinion.
The abuse of the legal system to silence opponents rather than as a mechanism to resolve the sort of disputes over competing claims to land use is the mark of a tyrant.
To further emphasise that point on Monday (4/1/16) police officer Micheal Slager had his bail reduced from USD1million to USD500,000 and was released from prison. Slager of course was in prison awaiting trial on a charge of murder over the death of Walter Scott on April 4th 2015 (4/4/15). This case seem to represent one the most grievous abuses of the justice system by the Obama administration.
In the US there is a common law principle known as; "The Fleeing Felon Rule." This holds that if a felon is fleeing the scene of a crime you are entitled to kill them in order to stop them. With it being clear that Mr Scott and Mr McDonald in Chicago were both felons and both fleeing the scene it is hard to understand why their deaths are being considered criminal acts.
This common law principle was tightened in Tennessee V Garner (1985) case so that a person must have an honest belief that the fleeing felon posed a serious risk to the safety of either the person chasing them or the wider public.
It is extremely difficult to prove that an honest belief does not exist and normally involves proving that there was a previous dispute between the actors before the killing had taken place and the fleeing felon rule was merely being used as an excuse to cover up a murder. There is no indication that Slager and Scott had any contact prior to the shooting. Therefore a properly directed jury has no option other then to conclude that Slager's belief was honest.
The rule was tightened again in Graham V Connor (1989) which changed the requirement for an honest belief to a reasonable belief. This means that the person not only has to have an honest belief that a risk was posed but was also acting as a reasonable person in making that assessment.
However if it is found that the individuals belief was honest but unreasonable they cannot be convicted of murder. Instead they can only be convicted of manslaughter by way on imperfect self-defence.
We have video of Scott snatching a weapon from Slager - making him both armed and dangerous - and then turning to flee. I think a properly directed jury would find it extremely difficult to conclude that it was unreasonable for Slager not to notice that the weapon had slipped from Scott's hand during the heat of a hot pursuit.
As such the murder charge against Slager is completely unsustainable under law and even the lesser charge of manslaughter doesn't seem to have a realistic chance of success.
It appears that prosecutors are aware of this so have decided to punish Slager before his trial and inevitable acquittal. They've done this by repeatedly denying him access to legal counsel in defiance of the 6th Amendment and by setting his bail so unreasonably high that he has been forced to spend nearly 9 months in prison without being convicted of any crime.
This has a direct bearing on the Dylann Roof case. If the people that Roof is alleged to have killed in the Mother Emanuel AME Church had engaged in activity to intimidate South Carolina to abuse the rule of law in the Slager case then Roof's actions in killing them was not criminal. Rather then being imprisoned - again without conviction or access to proper legal counsel - he should be commended for his service to society.
In an interesting development the Republican Party have nominated South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to give the parties response to President Obama's final State of the Union (SOTU) address next Tuesday (12/1/16).
This is unusual because Ms Haley is a state Governor rather than a national Congresswoman. She appears to have been chosen so we can discuss whether she has gone along with Obama's tyranny because she believes in it or out of fear she'd be the next one subjected to it.
In response to the Oregon protest Black Lives Matter - whose favoured tactics include occupations, arson and the occasional shooting - have all lined up on Twitter to confess to the World that they are indeed terrorists and need to be punished.
It is a worry that Anonymous seem to think that trolling was invented with the Internet.
The agreed draft was so poor that it is only since COP21 ended that discussion over what to do about it has been able to begin. Following a short break over Christmas to assess its position the US has kicked off 2016 with a comprehensive contribution to the discussion.
This has taken the form of a well regulated militia led by the son - Ammon - of somewhat famous Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy staging an occupation of the Headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the US state of Oregon.
This is intended as a protest against the conduct of the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and in particular its prosecution of two Oregon based ranchers - Steven and Dwight Jr Hammond - for arson on land that makes up part of the Malheur Refuge.
There are so many things wrong with the COP21 draft or "12/12 Atrocity" that it is hard to focus in on just one.
However much of the discussion so far has been centred on how the draft places an undue burden on less capable or developing nations by requiring them to keep a full inventory of greenhouse gas (ghg) emitters and sinks in accordance with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) standard while submitting a new Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) plan every 5 years.
This point has been illustrated by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Despite lacking a government whose writ extends across the entire country the 12/12 Atrocity requires the DRC to keep a full IPCC standard inventory of the Congo Rainforest. This is the second largest Rainforest in the World and occupies a space roughly the same size as the nation of Spain or the US state of Oregon.
Within climate change negotiations forests - particularly Rainforests - are considered hugely important. That's because at the moment roughly 20% of all the ghg emissions that are produced by things like burning fossil fuels are immediately absorbed by Rainforests rather then entering the atmosphere causing the temperature to rise.
Therefore if we could increase the amount of Rainforests - say by 20% - then we would be able to emit 20% more ghg's without changing the climate. That means rather then cutting our emissions to zero by completely eliminating fossil fuels we would only have to cut them by 80% allowing us to continue to use some fossil fuels - such as gasoline for transport - without causing climate change.
The problem is that rather then growing the amount of Rainforests is actually shrinking as people cut them down to make money off the land. Cattle ranching is a big driver of this deforestation but the Oregon ranchers made specific reference to logging and mining which are also huge drivers of deforestation.
Therefore before we start talking about increasing the amount of Rainforests we first have to protect the ones we've already got. The obvious way to do this is for governments to take control of areas of Rainforest to protect them from logging, ranching and mining. I suppose they could then name them wildlife refuges.
However this practice of governments taking over large sections of land is always complicated forcing the government to manage the demands of competing groups from the land. Often the big confrontation is between the need for conservation and the need for economic growth and the jobs that it brings.
The other big challenge is that of the rights of indigenous people to use the land in the way that ancestors have always used the lands. As I think I've mentioned before US President Obama's argument over whether we refer to Mount McKinley as "Mount McKinley" or by its indigenous name "Denali" is deeply stupid. Not least because the indigenous name for the mountain has never been "Denali."
However in many Rainforest rich nations - particularly the largest, the Amazon - you do have indigenous tribes living remotely within the forest. Some of these tribes are so remote we probably don't even know that they exist yet. As these tribes entire survival depends on the forest they have become very good at sustainably managing it with practices handed down over generations.
Obviously the government coming along and telling these tribes they've got to move off the land they lived on for thousands of years because it's becoming a wildlife reserve strikes me as deeply unfair. Also it strikes me as counter-productive to remove the people who know how to manage the forest rather then working with them to use their experience to protect the forest.
Even once you've established areas of protected forest how best to manage them is also a vast and complicated topic. Despite the best scientific research we still don't have a definitive answer and different types of forest in different areas need to be managed in different ways.
Take forest fire suppression with in the US as just a small aspect of a very large topic.
Following the Great Fire of 1910 the US Forestry Service mandated a policy of complete suppression. That meant that every forest fire that ignited had to be immediately extinguished. However it's now emerged that these small naturally occurring fires do an important job clearing plant litter - fallen leaves etc - and nourishing the soil.
The policy of complete suppression was preventing this litter clearance from taking placing causing it to build up. So where before you would have small, controllable fires in areas where they were actually helping nature instead the US now experiences massive, uncontrollable fires which threaten wildlife, human life and property. As a result the US Forestry Service is trying to move away from the complete suppression policy.
A nation which has really embraced the idea of using fire to nourish the soil is Indonesia. This leads to an annual smog across the entire region which has become notorious within UNFCCC circles.
A large part of the reason why Indonesians continue with these fires and the government is forced to defend them is the huge inertia that comes from "the way we've always done things." I suppose you could argue that the Indonesian fires are an indigenous rights issue.
The arson that the Hammond's are being imprisoned for was of plant litter in the wildlife reserve. The federal government is claiming that this traditional forest management technique increased the risk of forest fires. It would appear that the federal government is wrong although as with all geography related matters you do need the specific case study in front of you.
In the five years of negotiation prior to COP21 what was envisaged was a standardised format for INDC's. These standardised case studies would then be submitted through both an ex ante and ex post peer review process. This was intended as an extremely low cost mechanism to allow extremely intelligent people to share their best ideas in the hope of creating solutions that are greater then the sum of their parts.
In COP21's rush to get any old crap agreed this vital capacity building mechanism has been stripped out entirely in what I consider an act of mindless vandalism.
It's long been understood that the best way to resolve the competing interests between the needs to conserve forests and those who wish to use them for monetary gain is to find a way to monetise the forests. In short turn them into an economic resource that makes money without chopping them down.
Within UNFCCC negotiations there has long been two, often competing theories of how to do this.
The most well defined approach is the Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation Plus (REDD+). This is what it termed a non-market based mechanism and essentially involves nations such as the US giving nations such as Brazil large sums of money every year to establish and maintain Rainforest reserves.
The other approach is a free market based mechanism known as Carbon Trading Scheme (CTS). Essentially this involves viewing Rainforests as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) factories. If a business anywhere in the World wants to emit ghg's they must pay the owner of one these forest factories to scrub those ghg's out of the atmosphere to stop global warming. This is done through the purchasing of a carbon credit.
Obviously with such a complex problem as climate change the most successful solution is probably going to involve a bit of both approaches. However I must say that I tend to prefer the CTS approach. That's not because it's capitalist but because it better helps affirm the more dippy hippy truth that the natural environment has its own intrinsic value.
One of the big arguments at COP21 was whether REDD+ would be included in the agreement as a core method to protect Rainforests - the "Sheen Clause" as I dubbed it. The nation leading that charge to have REDD+ included was obviously Brazil which has more Rainforest then any other nation on earth. Leading the charge to have REDD+ excluded in favour of CTS was the US. Eventually Brazil won and the US lost with REDD+ being included and CTS being excluded.
What I've always found troubling about Brazil's position is that while they support REDD+ they are equally opposed to CTS which I think deprives nations of a supplementary solution.
It is very tempting to assume that Brazil is opposed to CTS because they simply don't understand how the free market principle works.
After all as part of the Cold War - specifically the School of the Americas - Brazil had a Fascist military dictatorship imposed on it by the US between 1964 and 1985. Although not Communist this type of military dictatorship is probably as far away as it's possible to get from a free society let alone a free market.
As is the case across many South American nations as a backlash to the School of the Americas voters in Brazil have tended to lean slightly to the left of centre to avoid the risk of returning to the bad old days of dictatorship. As a result "Free Market Capitalism" is still something of a dirty word.
This attitude is perhaps highlighted by the ongoing impeachment proceedings against current Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
What Rousseff is accused of doing is taking money from the oil company Petrobras and using it to prop up the national accounts to make it appear as though her governments economic policies are more effective then they actually are. This along with the fact that Petrobras is a Sate Owned Enterprise (SOE) suggests that Brazilians don't quite understand that government and private enterprise are two separate things.
Mind you the fact that Rousseff has got into trouble over this suggests that this belief isn't as widespread as it is in, say, Venezuela. As the largest nation in South America Brazil is of course expected to be mindful of the interests of its smaller neighbours in this type of negotiations.
The fact that the Brazilian President is currently involved in a corruption scandal of course makes it tempting to assume that Brazil is opposed to CTS because it's easier for them to rip-off the REDD+ donors. After all in 2010 Norway gave Indonesia USD1bn under REDD+. After banking the check Indonesia then pretty much shut down their REDD+ program and we assume spent the money on sweets.
However I think the reason why Brazil is opposed to CTS is that they understand free market economics a little too well. Under that economic model businesses are always trying to cut their costs and avoid paying bills they don't have to. In the US in particular there is still a lack of real recognition that carbon credits are a necessary cost of doing business like liability insurance or employee wages.
With the cost of carbon credits under CTS being fixed by simple supply and demand if there is no demand and a glut of supply these credits will be worthless. This will leave Brazil with no money or jobs but a huge unemployed population moving to cities to engage in drug abuse, violent crime and all the other problems associated with young men with too much time on their hands.
In the past it has been suggested that CTS wouldn't operate as a totally free market instead with a minimum carbon price. However by forcing through a non-binding agreement that he can pass through executive order US President Obama has removed any demand for carbon credits utterly destroying the CTS market.
It appears to me that the point the US is trying to make is that with it and Brazil getting bogged down in the detail of the REDD+ argument they've missed the bigger picture and the effects the draft agreement has on nations such as the DRC.
The English expression for this is; "Failing to see the wood (forest) for all the trees."
At around 18:00 on 5/1/16 (UK date) I'm only about two thirds of the way through. I may add more later but realistically I think we're looking at tomorrow.
Edited at around 15:20 on 6/1/16 (UK date) to tidy above and add;
On Tuesday (5/1/16) Brazil responded to this perceived slight by the US by announcing that the Joao Havelange stadium which is the be the centrepiece of the upcoming 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics has had its electricity and water supplies cut off over unpaid bills. This of course makes the point that in a free market capitalist system nobody can expect to be provided with a service without paying for it. As such Brazil's concerns about CTS are far from anti-capitalist or irrational.
Therefore I should point out that the general tone I got from the US announcement was to not make accusations and assign blame. Instead it was to acknowledge that mistakes had been made on all sides and asking for help to rectify them. After all it's obvious to all that the only thing that matters in US politics at the moment is whether President Obama gets to build that extension to his Presidential museum. Whether he's done the work to deserve it doesn't come into the equation.
As such the story also includes plenty of elements highlighting how Obama has turned into an ego mad tyrant rather than a credible political leader.
Throughout COP21 this point was repeatedly made through the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign particularly the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, Maryland and the Laquan McDonald case in Chicago, Illinois.
As I've mentioned numerous times before Obama's main aim of the Black Lives Matter campaign was to sweep the Democrats to control of both houses of Congress at the 2014 on a wave of anti-racist anger.
The secondary objective though was to portray all Republicans as racists in order to prevent them opposing Obama's immigration reforms. This is an attempt to gerrymander the political map of the US by planting Hispanic immigrants like seeds across various Republican states in the hope of harvesting a crop of votes at election time.
So no, it's not a mistake that I've assigned Black Lives Matter the same acronym as the Bureau of Land Management.
However the Black Lives Matter campaign was far from the first time that Obama has used the apparatus of state to silence his political opponents.
Almost immediately after taking control of the organisation in 2009 the Obama administration stopped the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) from issuing tax exempt status - Section 501(c)(4) - to groups that appeared to support a conservative or Republican agenda. This of course made it much more difficult and expensive for those groups to campaign for causes that the Obama administration disapproved of.
Various members of the IRS including Lois Lerner were later found to have lied under oath during Congressional hearings on the matter. However the Obama controlled Department of Justice (DoJ) is still refusing to take action against them.
What is highly controversial about the legal case at the heart of the Oregon protest is that the Hammonds were convicted of this questionable arson offence - was a value placed on the property destroyed? - in 2012 and sentenced to 3 months and 12 months in prison. They served those sentences and were released. It was more than 2 years later that Obama's DoJ decided to re-try them as terrorists and sentence them both to 5 years in prison.
It has long been a cornerstone of the US and many other legal systems that an individual cannot be held accountable twice for the same offence. This is known as the Double Jeopardy principle and is laid out in the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution. Two of the specific things it prohibits is retrial after conviction and multiple punishment.
By putting the Hammonds on trial for a second time and imposing a second punishment it is quite clear that the DoJ has acted wholly unlawfully in this case and has done so to punish people who hold a different political opinion.
The abuse of the legal system to silence opponents rather than as a mechanism to resolve the sort of disputes over competing claims to land use is the mark of a tyrant.
To further emphasise that point on Monday (4/1/16) police officer Micheal Slager had his bail reduced from USD1million to USD500,000 and was released from prison. Slager of course was in prison awaiting trial on a charge of murder over the death of Walter Scott on April 4th 2015 (4/4/15). This case seem to represent one the most grievous abuses of the justice system by the Obama administration.
In the US there is a common law principle known as; "The Fleeing Felon Rule." This holds that if a felon is fleeing the scene of a crime you are entitled to kill them in order to stop them. With it being clear that Mr Scott and Mr McDonald in Chicago were both felons and both fleeing the scene it is hard to understand why their deaths are being considered criminal acts.
This common law principle was tightened in Tennessee V Garner (1985) case so that a person must have an honest belief that the fleeing felon posed a serious risk to the safety of either the person chasing them or the wider public.
It is extremely difficult to prove that an honest belief does not exist and normally involves proving that there was a previous dispute between the actors before the killing had taken place and the fleeing felon rule was merely being used as an excuse to cover up a murder. There is no indication that Slager and Scott had any contact prior to the shooting. Therefore a properly directed jury has no option other then to conclude that Slager's belief was honest.
The rule was tightened again in Graham V Connor (1989) which changed the requirement for an honest belief to a reasonable belief. This means that the person not only has to have an honest belief that a risk was posed but was also acting as a reasonable person in making that assessment.
However if it is found that the individuals belief was honest but unreasonable they cannot be convicted of murder. Instead they can only be convicted of manslaughter by way on imperfect self-defence.
We have video of Scott snatching a weapon from Slager - making him both armed and dangerous - and then turning to flee. I think a properly directed jury would find it extremely difficult to conclude that it was unreasonable for Slager not to notice that the weapon had slipped from Scott's hand during the heat of a hot pursuit.
As such the murder charge against Slager is completely unsustainable under law and even the lesser charge of manslaughter doesn't seem to have a realistic chance of success.
It appears that prosecutors are aware of this so have decided to punish Slager before his trial and inevitable acquittal. They've done this by repeatedly denying him access to legal counsel in defiance of the 6th Amendment and by setting his bail so unreasonably high that he has been forced to spend nearly 9 months in prison without being convicted of any crime.
This has a direct bearing on the Dylann Roof case. If the people that Roof is alleged to have killed in the Mother Emanuel AME Church had engaged in activity to intimidate South Carolina to abuse the rule of law in the Slager case then Roof's actions in killing them was not criminal. Rather then being imprisoned - again without conviction or access to proper legal counsel - he should be commended for his service to society.
In an interesting development the Republican Party have nominated South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to give the parties response to President Obama's final State of the Union (SOTU) address next Tuesday (12/1/16).
This is unusual because Ms Haley is a state Governor rather than a national Congresswoman. She appears to have been chosen so we can discuss whether she has gone along with Obama's tyranny because she believes in it or out of fear she'd be the next one subjected to it.
In response to the Oregon protest Black Lives Matter - whose favoured tactics include occupations, arson and the occasional shooting - have all lined up on Twitter to confess to the World that they are indeed terrorists and need to be punished.
It is a worry that Anonymous seem to think that trolling was invented with the Internet.
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