I don't know if anyone's mentioned this but on June 23rd (23/6/16) Britain voted to exit the European Union (EU) - The Brexit.
The day before the vote I said that this result would lead to one of the longest and most complicated political negotiations the World has ever seen. It appears that Britain has now decided on the strategy it is going to pursue during those negotiations.
Unfortunately that strategy seems to have been drawn up in that 30 minute meeting between the Prime Minister David Cameron and the Queen on the morning after the vote (24/6/16). When nobody had slept and everyone was still slightly in shock. As a result it seems rather militant.
As I also said the day before the vote there is nothing that stockmarkets and the business world in general hates more than uncertainty. It is for this reason that Britain seems to have made uncertainty the central plank of its negotiating strategy.
So for example we have this rather strange situation where Prime Minister Cameron has resigned but won't actually be leaving post until September. This a triggered a drawn out leadership contest in a Conservative Party that is bitterly divided between members who supported the Leave campaign and members who supported the Remain campaign.
When we get to September and a new Conservative Party leader has been chosen there is then the question of whether they will automatically become Prime Minister or whether a divided nation demands that a General Election needs to be held.
If there is to be a General Election the next becomes will the opposition Labour Party be in any position to fight it.
On Monday (27/6/16) almost the entire shadow cabinet resigned in order to put pressure on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn to resign triggering a Labour leadership contest. A new shadow cabinet was appointed on Tuesday (28/6/16) but on Wednesday (29/6/16) the first new appointee resigned in protest.
Today Labour MP Angela Eagle was supposed to announce that she was going to formally challenge Corbyn for the leadership triggering a contest. However she seems to have changed her mind at the last minute and is putting off that announcement at least until tomorrow.
Then of course there is the question of the UK regions - England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
On Saturday (25/6/16) the leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and First Minister in the regional Scottish (sub) Parliament Nicola Sturgeon announced that she intends to hold a referendum on Scottish Independence to allow Scotland to join the EU separately from Britain.
On Sturgeon's claim that Scotland voted to remain part of the EU that is entirely false.
This was a national referendum where every vote was counted regardless of where it was cast. So Scotland didn't vote to send a Remain delegate or Electoral College vote to the national count. In fact with more than 1 million Scots voting the Leave and the winning margin being roughly 1 million votes you could argue that actually Scotland voted to take Britain out of the EU.
When Sturgeon made her announcement on Saturday she was speaking only for herself and the SNP.
However on Sunday (26/6/16) the "Tsunami" rollercoaster at the M&D Amusement Park in Scotland crashed dramatically. The Eagle logo used on every single car of that rollercoaster looks suspiciously close to the Eagle logo used by the Egypt Air airline. This was the apparatus of the British state throwing its weight behind Scotland. Not to create an independent Scotland but to create uncertainty around the issue.
You will notice that no-one has been quite so keen to create that level of uncertainty around Northern Ireland's future.
That's because with the nation of Ireland only being partitioned less than 100 years ago Northern Ireland could very easily vote to return to being part of the Republic of Ireland and thus remain a member of the EU. I'm not saying they will do it or that they should do it. Just that if they decided to do it the mechanics of it would be relatively easy.
Then of course there is the issue of when Britain is going to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty formally starting the process of leaving the EU. The current joke being; "Are we invoking Article 50? Well, Theresa May." Incidentally don't get "Theresa May" and "Teresa May" muddled up. Particularly if you are at work.
The reason why the UK is trying to create all this uncertainty is because it wants to drive the global and the certainly the European economy into recession. The thinking being that this will strengthen Britain's position in negotiations with the EU.
Presiding over an economy in recession is extremely stressful for any political leader. However it will be particularly stressful for Eurozone leaders.
That's because quite apart from the ongoing economic carnage in Greece a number of other Eurozone economies such as Spain, Portugal, Italy and the Republic of Ireland are not exactly what you would term strong. Even France which along with Germany is likely to be expected to fill the gap in the EU budget left by Britain's exit spends most of its time between low growth and no growth.
As such the calculation is that if the Eurozone economy is in crisis then the EU is less likely to make that crisis worse by taking a tough line with the UK.
However the UK has more specific targets in mind - Elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany.
In May of 2017 France will be holding its Presidential election. It is widely accepted that the incumbent Francois Hollande will not be winning the election. It is even rumoured that his Socialist Party is going to force him to go through the primary procedure in an effort to stop him being their candidate.
The UK's hope is that a global economic collapse will help the fascist Front National/National Front (FN) will come to power in France. They too want to hold a referendum on leaving the EU. Therefore Britain's calculation is that the French FN will fight to give the UK very favourable Brexit terms in order to generate support for a French exit.
Even if the FN don't win there are still enough Eurosceptics in the centre-right Republican Party that a strong FN showing will allow them to give the UK favourable terms.
Before the French Presidential election there is a General Election in the Netherlands in March 2017. Amid a global financial collapse the equally fascist Dutch Party of Freedom (PVV) could win this election.
Like the FN in France they too want to hold a referendum on leaving the EU so would be prepared to give the UK extremely favourable Brexit terms to further their own cause. Even if they don't win an outright majority even as a minority coalition partner with a centre-right party the PVV would certainly exert pressure in the UK's favour.
In October 2017 Germany will hold its General Election. Although a global financial collapse coupled with an actual invasion by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) would not be enough for the far-right Alternative for Germany/Deutschland (AfD) to seize power Germany very much functions on the principle of coalition governments.
Therefore even a reasonable showing by the AfD would prevent Germany taking a hardline on Brexit. Particularly if that involved standing up to a French FN government and a PVV government in the Netherlands.
However the global financial markets seem to have already seen through the UK's "Hooligan Strategy."
So when the British stockmarket opened on Monday (27/6/16) two British banks - Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) - took an absolute thumping. So much so that trading in their shares had to be suspended to stop the businesses being driven into collapse.
Barclays is Britain's dirty bank. So if British intelligence need someone to subvert international sanctions of fund a "The Night Manager" style dodgy arms deal it will be Barclays who do it. The majority of RBS shares are owned by the British government making Britain's Chief Finance Minister (Chancellor) George Osborne its main shareholder.
As a result the losses by Barclays and RBS were not the result of some post-Brexit panic. Instead they were specifically targeted to send the message that if the UK tries trigger a global financial collapse as part of the negotiations then the UK will come off worst.
Later in the day the ratings agency Standard & Poors (S&P) cut the UK's credit rating from AAA to AA. Although independent S&P are on good terms with the US establishment. As such this was the US sending the message that it will not be assisting the UK in its efforts to engineer a global financial collapse. After all they've got Poland and Shamali Province to think about.
On Tuesday (28/6/16) Prime Minister Cameron attended the first day of the EU Council (EUCO) summit to discuss the Brexit vote and attempt to start informal negotiations prior to the invocation of Article 50. Sadly the UK did not get the message from the markets and attempted to continue its hooligan strategy.
So early on Tuesday morning the area around Saint Paul's Cathedral was evacuated following the discovery of a "suspect package." This both highlighted the UK's financial capital - the City of London - and that it is separate from the Greater London area that Sadiq Khan claims to be Mayor of. I hope the term; "Khanistan" sticks.
Later in the day another "suspect package" was discovered on Westminster Bridge forcing a similar evacuation. Westminster Bridge is of course right outside the Palace of Westminster aka; The Houses of Parliament.
On Tuesday evening there was a protest outside the Palace of Westminster called "London Stays." The protesters thought they were calling for Khanistan to stay as part of the EU. What they were actually doing was trying to informally negotiate the City of London remaining the European financial capital post-Brexit.
All through the day the Conservative Party were constantly issuing conflicting statements about when they would hold their leadership election.
Throughout this the EU made clear that it would be standing firm and would not be holding informal negotiations until the UK formally invokes Article 50.
With it being clear that the World will be taking Britain's hooligan strategy in its stride calm returned to the markets yesterday. The London FTSE 100 is now actually at higher levels than it was when the referendum was announced in February 2016 while the US Dow Jones was up 200 points.
Therefore it wasn't a "Brexit Crash" it was a "Oh My God. The UK's Going to do Something Very Stupid Crash."
You will notice how Britain's very pro-Remain media has suddenly stopped reporting on the financial markets.
Sadly with the search for the missing children on Wales' Brecon Beacons yesterday the UK doesn't seem to have fully got the message yet.
However today's announcement that Boris Johnson won't be standing for leader of the Conservative Party seems like a step in the right direction.
After all Boris is the sort of person who would forget where he'd parked the country during negotiations.
17:30 on 30/6/16 (UK date).
Thursday, 30 June 2016
Wednesday, 29 June 2016
So Erdogan's Thrown a Strop.
Yesterday evening three people launched an attack on Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey with assault rifles and explosive vests. At the time of writing they have succeeded in murdering 41 people and wounding 239 more.
If you've been even vaguely following politics in the region you would immediately understand why Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan desperately needed a distraction such as this.
Certainly since the summer of 2015 Erdogan has systematically weaponised refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria and Iraq against the European Union (EU). This means that Turkey has literally been picking refugees up from camps on the border and busing them to the Aegean coast where they are put aboard boats bound for the Greek islands.
For Erdogan and his goons this is simply a old fashioned protection racket. If the EU wants to conduct its business as usual it must pay Erdogan to stop using refugees as weapons.
Apart from handing over roughly 15% of its entire budget the big price Erdogan wants the EU to pay is to allow Turkey visa-free access to the EU's Schengen migration zone. This is of course will make it much easier for Erdogan to flood the EU with both refugees and terrorists.
The big EU Council (EUCO) Summit at which Turkey's access to Schengen is confirmed was supposed to start yesterday and continue into today. However on Friday (24/6/16) the UK voted to leave the EU - the Brexit - with Turkey's joining of Schengen being a major issue for voters. As a result talks on Turkey joining Schengen have been suspended indefinitely.
The big British political story in the run-up to the Brexit vote was the lawful killing of British Member of Parliament (MP) Jo Cox on June 16th (16/6/16).
Unfortunately British politicians are apparently as utterly self-absorbed as West Yorkshire Police are utterly incompetent so this became part of the referendum campaign. However it was intended to serve as a semi-public issuing of a Burn Notice against the "Friends of Syria" Parliamentary group that Jo Cox Chaired and all groups associated with that group. Particularly the Turkish based "Syria Civil Defence/White Helmets" group.
A Burn Notice is a formal notice sent by one intelligence agency to its allies. It informs them that a source of information previously considered reliable is now to be considered utterly unreliable. Therefore they should take any information provided by that source either in the past or in the future and destroy it. Ideally by burning it on a bonfire.
One of the most famous Burn Notices was issued on a source codenamed "Curveball" who provided the dodgy intelligence dossier that was used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
With Britain's politicians and West Yorkshire Police screwing up the UK was forced to emphasise that a Burn Notice was being issued. So on June 21st (21/6/16) a man was burnt alive at the high profile Glastonbury music festival.
That same day Victor Castigador killed a fellow inmate at Long Lartin prisoner where he is serving a whole life sentence. Castigador is considered one of Britain's more notorious killers because sometimes dubbed; "The Human Torch Killer" he's been known to kill his victims by burning them alive.
Even prior to the issuing of the Burn Notice Erdogan and his henchmen have been suffering a series of setbacks within Syria.
Erdogan's key area of concern is this 100km (60 mile) stretch of border between Azaz in the west and the Euphrates River in the east. Sometimes referred to as; "Erdogan's Pocket" or "Garvaghy Road" this area is used by Turkey to supply the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated groups - primarily Al Qaeda - within Syria.
On or around June 1st (1/6/16) the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) crossed the Euphrates River to launch an operation to liberate the town of Manbij from ISIL. This is the first step in sealing the Garvaghy Road.
I obviously need to cover that in detail separately. However under the orders of the US progress is being painfully slow. Rather than giving them permission to use overwhelming force to rapidly secure their objectives the QSD are only being allowed to creep forward a few 100 metres/yards at a time. Following every advance the US is waiting for a response from Turkey. If there is no response the QSD are allowed to creep a little further forward.
One group that remains remarkably unconcerned with what Erdogan thinks is the Syrian government and the Russians who are supporting them. Over the course of the last week or so they have launched a fresh operation to liberate the roads running between Azaz in the north and Aleppo City in the south. Although this won't completely close Garvaghy Road it will stop weapons travelling from Azaz to Aleppo City.
It is the weapons moving down Garvaghy Road from Azaz to Aleppo City that produce the horrific photographs I shared during the #LoveLikeJo memorial to Jo Cox. I get to see photographs like that every day. I'm really not happy about it.
Syria is not the only area where Erdogan's perceived authority has been severely undermined recently.
On Sunday (26/6/16) Erdogan was forced to re-establish diplomatic relations with Israel that were severed following the May 31st 2010 (31/5/10) Israeli raid on the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" - particularly the MV Mavi Marmara ship. At the risk of going off on a bit of a tangent many of the Turkish 'Peace Activists' to took part in the flotilla have since joined ISIL.
Erdogan's decision to break off diplomatic relations with Israel have been part of a wider, extreme foreign policy.
Thinking that he had installed a radical Islamist puppet regime in Israel's neighbour Egypt and would soon install a radical Islamist puppet regime in Israel's other neighbour Syria Erdogan's been excitedly telling his supporters how he's going to be the radical Islamist who finally wipes Israel from the map. This aggression caused the 2014 Gaza war delaying Israel's loosening of import/export restrictions on Gaza for two years.
The fact that Erdogan has now been forced to re-establish relations with Israel is a massive climb down for him showing that his plan has been defeated. Although the Israelis are far too diplomatic to say so publicly the much hated Grand Zionist Conspiracy has effectively just made Erdogan's its bitch.
Things got worse for Erdogan on Monday (27/6/16) when he was forced to apologise for the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 over Syria on November 24th 2015 (24/11/16).
As part of the apology Turkey has resumed criminal proceedings against Alparslan Celik who was the leader of Turkish groundforces within Syria at the time. Erdogan has since denied that an apology has been issued. However knowing Russian President Vladimir Putin it's clear he wouldn't be accepting Erdogan's phonecalls unless an apology had been issued.
Then of course there is the ongoing saga of Egypt Air flight MS804 which crashed over the Mediterranian Sea on May 19th (19/5/16). After taking a suspiciously long time to locate the aircraft's flight recorders French authorities have now succeeded in recovering them and repairing them. We are now waiting with baited breath for them to be downloaded and analysed.
Until the flight data is recovered we can't be sure what caused MS804. However one possibility that is definitely on the table is that Turkish intelligence breached security at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport to place a bomb on board. Primarily this would have been done to further undermine the Egyptian economy to speed the day that Erdogan could re-install a radical Islamist puppet regime in Egypt.
Obviously though the exposure of a massive security gap at France's main airport would have an extremely chilling effect in the run-up to the French hosted Euro 2016 football tournament. As that tournament reaches the quarter final stage due to events in Istanbul we are now talking urgently about gaps in airport security.
The immediate message of condolence that Brussels Zaventam Airport sent to Turkey last night should dispel any myth that Belgians don't do sarcasm once and for all.
At 12:00 on 29/6/16 (UK date) I have more to add. However I also have an urgent need to go put some trousers on.
Edited at around 14:40 on 29/6/16 (UK date) to add above and below;
Although it pains me to say I think what tipped the balance on this occasion was Rihanna. She is currently in London, UK as part of her "ANTI" US & Europe tour. On Monday (27/6/16) she released the Sia penned song "Sledgehammer" from the upcoming movie "Star Trek Beyond."
Back in January 2010 Erdogan and his Justice & Development Party (AKP) announced that they had uncovered a 2003 plot called "Sledgehammer."
This supposedly saw members of the Turkey's so-called "Deep State" or "Parallel State" who are sworn to uphold the secular values of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk planning to overthrow the Islamist AKP government of Erdogan.
The claim was that they would do this by carrying out a series of bomb attacks across Istanbul while bombing a Turkish aircraft out of the skies over the Aegean Sea which they would then be blamed on Greece. This would create the chaos that would force the Deep State to step in and take control of the country.
However the 'evidence' that Erdogan produced to support this claim was significantly flawed. For example many of the documents relating to this 2003 conspiracy were produced using Microsoft Office 2007. As such the Sledgehammer case is widely viewed as a fraudulent attempt by the AKP to purge the Turkish military and civil service of non-Islamists.
Although it is quite hard to do so the thing you need to understand about Erdogan and the AKP is they operate in a state that is extremely close to full blown delusional psychosis.
In Erdogan and the AKP's mindset even groups that are violently opposed to each other such as ISIL, the Syrian government and the QSD are all secret allies in a vast Zionist conspiracy against Erdogan, the AKP and all of Islam. As such it doesn't really matter which group Erdogan blames the Ataturk bombing on the subtext will always be that it was the work of the "Parallel State."
As such it was extremely unwise for Rihanna to release a song called "Sledgehammer" at this time. Not least because during her 2013 Diamonds World Tour the radical Islamist puppet regime in Egypt was overthrow due to the popular will of the people. However to this day Erdogan and the AKP still claim that this was an example of a Parallel state coup against Islam.
The only possible thing that can be said in the US' defence is that in the fall out of the Jo Cox neutralisation they killed the actor Anton Yelchin who plays the "Pavel Chekov" character in the Star Trek Beyond movie. A Russian born Jew Yelchin invokes memories of the infamous "Refusenik" generation who were refused permission to leave the Soviet Union.
As such it could be viewed as the US refusing Rihanna's record company Roc Nation and Paramount who own the rights to the movie permission to release "Sledgehammer." However it could be a bluff intended to draw our attention as we wait to see what action will be taken against Roc Nation and Paramount for reckless defying that instruction.
Erdogan's ultimate objective behind last night's attack is to rally the country and the World behind his as he leads the fight against 'terrorism.' He then plans to go marching down Garvaghy Road to secure ISIL's supply lines and slaughter anyone who opposes them.
In this context the reactions of current US President Barack Obama and presumptive progressive Democrat 2016 Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton were extremely alarming.
As part of the election campaign both Obama and Hillary have come in for stiff criticism for refusing to invoke the NATO's mutual defence Article 5 in response to the November 2015 Paris Massacres and the March 2016 Brussels attacks. As a result they last night fell over themselves to announce that as a NATO ally Turkey has their full support.
This is likely to be interpreted by Erdogan as both Obama and Hillary reaching for their sashes, flutes and bowler hats as they throw their full weight of NATO behind his plan to support ISIL by invading Syria.
I assume that both Obama and Hillary Clinton will now be going straight to prison.
15:35 on 29/6/16 (UK date).
If you've been even vaguely following politics in the region you would immediately understand why Turkish President/Prime Minister/Emperor Recep Tayyip Erdogan desperately needed a distraction such as this.
Certainly since the summer of 2015 Erdogan has systematically weaponised refugees fleeing the conflict in Syria and Iraq against the European Union (EU). This means that Turkey has literally been picking refugees up from camps on the border and busing them to the Aegean coast where they are put aboard boats bound for the Greek islands.
For Erdogan and his goons this is simply a old fashioned protection racket. If the EU wants to conduct its business as usual it must pay Erdogan to stop using refugees as weapons.
Apart from handing over roughly 15% of its entire budget the big price Erdogan wants the EU to pay is to allow Turkey visa-free access to the EU's Schengen migration zone. This is of course will make it much easier for Erdogan to flood the EU with both refugees and terrorists.
The big EU Council (EUCO) Summit at which Turkey's access to Schengen is confirmed was supposed to start yesterday and continue into today. However on Friday (24/6/16) the UK voted to leave the EU - the Brexit - with Turkey's joining of Schengen being a major issue for voters. As a result talks on Turkey joining Schengen have been suspended indefinitely.
The big British political story in the run-up to the Brexit vote was the lawful killing of British Member of Parliament (MP) Jo Cox on June 16th (16/6/16).
Unfortunately British politicians are apparently as utterly self-absorbed as West Yorkshire Police are utterly incompetent so this became part of the referendum campaign. However it was intended to serve as a semi-public issuing of a Burn Notice against the "Friends of Syria" Parliamentary group that Jo Cox Chaired and all groups associated with that group. Particularly the Turkish based "Syria Civil Defence/White Helmets" group.
A Burn Notice is a formal notice sent by one intelligence agency to its allies. It informs them that a source of information previously considered reliable is now to be considered utterly unreliable. Therefore they should take any information provided by that source either in the past or in the future and destroy it. Ideally by burning it on a bonfire.
One of the most famous Burn Notices was issued on a source codenamed "Curveball" who provided the dodgy intelligence dossier that was used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
With Britain's politicians and West Yorkshire Police screwing up the UK was forced to emphasise that a Burn Notice was being issued. So on June 21st (21/6/16) a man was burnt alive at the high profile Glastonbury music festival.
That same day Victor Castigador killed a fellow inmate at Long Lartin prisoner where he is serving a whole life sentence. Castigador is considered one of Britain's more notorious killers because sometimes dubbed; "The Human Torch Killer" he's been known to kill his victims by burning them alive.
Even prior to the issuing of the Burn Notice Erdogan and his henchmen have been suffering a series of setbacks within Syria.
Erdogan's key area of concern is this 100km (60 mile) stretch of border between Azaz in the west and the Euphrates River in the east. Sometimes referred to as; "Erdogan's Pocket" or "Garvaghy Road" this area is used by Turkey to supply the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and associated groups - primarily Al Qaeda - within Syria.
On or around June 1st (1/6/16) the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) crossed the Euphrates River to launch an operation to liberate the town of Manbij from ISIL. This is the first step in sealing the Garvaghy Road.
I obviously need to cover that in detail separately. However under the orders of the US progress is being painfully slow. Rather than giving them permission to use overwhelming force to rapidly secure their objectives the QSD are only being allowed to creep forward a few 100 metres/yards at a time. Following every advance the US is waiting for a response from Turkey. If there is no response the QSD are allowed to creep a little further forward.
One group that remains remarkably unconcerned with what Erdogan thinks is the Syrian government and the Russians who are supporting them. Over the course of the last week or so they have launched a fresh operation to liberate the roads running between Azaz in the north and Aleppo City in the south. Although this won't completely close Garvaghy Road it will stop weapons travelling from Azaz to Aleppo City.
It is the weapons moving down Garvaghy Road from Azaz to Aleppo City that produce the horrific photographs I shared during the #LoveLikeJo memorial to Jo Cox. I get to see photographs like that every day. I'm really not happy about it.
Syria is not the only area where Erdogan's perceived authority has been severely undermined recently.
On Sunday (26/6/16) Erdogan was forced to re-establish diplomatic relations with Israel that were severed following the May 31st 2010 (31/5/10) Israeli raid on the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla" - particularly the MV Mavi Marmara ship. At the risk of going off on a bit of a tangent many of the Turkish 'Peace Activists' to took part in the flotilla have since joined ISIL.
Erdogan's decision to break off diplomatic relations with Israel have been part of a wider, extreme foreign policy.
Thinking that he had installed a radical Islamist puppet regime in Israel's neighbour Egypt and would soon install a radical Islamist puppet regime in Israel's other neighbour Syria Erdogan's been excitedly telling his supporters how he's going to be the radical Islamist who finally wipes Israel from the map. This aggression caused the 2014 Gaza war delaying Israel's loosening of import/export restrictions on Gaza for two years.
The fact that Erdogan has now been forced to re-establish relations with Israel is a massive climb down for him showing that his plan has been defeated. Although the Israelis are far too diplomatic to say so publicly the much hated Grand Zionist Conspiracy has effectively just made Erdogan's its bitch.
Things got worse for Erdogan on Monday (27/6/16) when he was forced to apologise for the shooting down of a Russian Su-24 over Syria on November 24th 2015 (24/11/16).
As part of the apology Turkey has resumed criminal proceedings against Alparslan Celik who was the leader of Turkish groundforces within Syria at the time. Erdogan has since denied that an apology has been issued. However knowing Russian President Vladimir Putin it's clear he wouldn't be accepting Erdogan's phonecalls unless an apology had been issued.
Then of course there is the ongoing saga of Egypt Air flight MS804 which crashed over the Mediterranian Sea on May 19th (19/5/16). After taking a suspiciously long time to locate the aircraft's flight recorders French authorities have now succeeded in recovering them and repairing them. We are now waiting with baited breath for them to be downloaded and analysed.
Until the flight data is recovered we can't be sure what caused MS804. However one possibility that is definitely on the table is that Turkish intelligence breached security at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport to place a bomb on board. Primarily this would have been done to further undermine the Egyptian economy to speed the day that Erdogan could re-install a radical Islamist puppet regime in Egypt.
Obviously though the exposure of a massive security gap at France's main airport would have an extremely chilling effect in the run-up to the French hosted Euro 2016 football tournament. As that tournament reaches the quarter final stage due to events in Istanbul we are now talking urgently about gaps in airport security.
The immediate message of condolence that Brussels Zaventam Airport sent to Turkey last night should dispel any myth that Belgians don't do sarcasm once and for all.
At 12:00 on 29/6/16 (UK date) I have more to add. However I also have an urgent need to go put some trousers on.
Edited at around 14:40 on 29/6/16 (UK date) to add above and below;
Although it pains me to say I think what tipped the balance on this occasion was Rihanna. She is currently in London, UK as part of her "ANTI" US & Europe tour. On Monday (27/6/16) she released the Sia penned song "Sledgehammer" from the upcoming movie "Star Trek Beyond."
Back in January 2010 Erdogan and his Justice & Development Party (AKP) announced that they had uncovered a 2003 plot called "Sledgehammer."
This supposedly saw members of the Turkey's so-called "Deep State" or "Parallel State" who are sworn to uphold the secular values of Turkey's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk planning to overthrow the Islamist AKP government of Erdogan.
The claim was that they would do this by carrying out a series of bomb attacks across Istanbul while bombing a Turkish aircraft out of the skies over the Aegean Sea which they would then be blamed on Greece. This would create the chaos that would force the Deep State to step in and take control of the country.
However the 'evidence' that Erdogan produced to support this claim was significantly flawed. For example many of the documents relating to this 2003 conspiracy were produced using Microsoft Office 2007. As such the Sledgehammer case is widely viewed as a fraudulent attempt by the AKP to purge the Turkish military and civil service of non-Islamists.
Although it is quite hard to do so the thing you need to understand about Erdogan and the AKP is they operate in a state that is extremely close to full blown delusional psychosis.
In Erdogan and the AKP's mindset even groups that are violently opposed to each other such as ISIL, the Syrian government and the QSD are all secret allies in a vast Zionist conspiracy against Erdogan, the AKP and all of Islam. As such it doesn't really matter which group Erdogan blames the Ataturk bombing on the subtext will always be that it was the work of the "Parallel State."
As such it was extremely unwise for Rihanna to release a song called "Sledgehammer" at this time. Not least because during her 2013 Diamonds World Tour the radical Islamist puppet regime in Egypt was overthrow due to the popular will of the people. However to this day Erdogan and the AKP still claim that this was an example of a Parallel state coup against Islam.
The only possible thing that can be said in the US' defence is that in the fall out of the Jo Cox neutralisation they killed the actor Anton Yelchin who plays the "Pavel Chekov" character in the Star Trek Beyond movie. A Russian born Jew Yelchin invokes memories of the infamous "Refusenik" generation who were refused permission to leave the Soviet Union.
As such it could be viewed as the US refusing Rihanna's record company Roc Nation and Paramount who own the rights to the movie permission to release "Sledgehammer." However it could be a bluff intended to draw our attention as we wait to see what action will be taken against Roc Nation and Paramount for reckless defying that instruction.
Erdogan's ultimate objective behind last night's attack is to rally the country and the World behind his as he leads the fight against 'terrorism.' He then plans to go marching down Garvaghy Road to secure ISIL's supply lines and slaughter anyone who opposes them.
In this context the reactions of current US President Barack Obama and presumptive progressive Democrat 2016 Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton were extremely alarming.
As part of the election campaign both Obama and Hillary have come in for stiff criticism for refusing to invoke the NATO's mutual defence Article 5 in response to the November 2015 Paris Massacres and the March 2016 Brussels attacks. As a result they last night fell over themselves to announce that as a NATO ally Turkey has their full support.
This is likely to be interpreted by Erdogan as both Obama and Hillary reaching for their sashes, flutes and bowler hats as they throw their full weight of NATO behind his plan to support ISIL by invading Syria.
I assume that both Obama and Hillary Clinton will now be going straight to prison.
15:35 on 29/6/16 (UK date).
Saturday, 25 June 2016
"Don't Cry for Us Nicola Sturgeon
The truth is we never liked you//
All through the bad times//
There were no good times//
Now take your mad existence//
And please stay away."
That's right Euros are back. Unless you're Scottish.
I promise there is a point to this post. However before I get onto it I have to mention something from today's Euro 2016 football matches.
Today's second match in the second round was between Wales and Northern Ireland. About 80 minutes in Ashley Williams and Jonny Williams - they're Welsh by the way - collided knocking each other out.The medical staff obviously rushed onto the pitch and after they'd both been checked for spinal fractures and regained consciousness it became clear that the captain Ashley Williams could not move his left shoulder suggesting a fracture or dislocation. The medical staff wanted to take him off but he insisted in playing on until the end of the game.
Tonight's match is between Croatia and Portugal. In this game whenever another player or even the ball has come anywhere near Portugal's Nani he immediately falls to the ground clutching his left shoulder. So he's not just diving and feigning injury he's diving and feigning Ashley Williams' injury. I think the referees need to have a word.
That match is still going on as I write. After all it seems the only way players can score these days is when they're awarded a penalty.
Anyway. As for the point.
Between the UK's local elections in May and last Thursday's (23/6/16) EU referendum I feel like I've been slagging off Muslims constantly for the past two months. As such I think I should probably qualify my comments a bit.
In a democracy people vote for people and political parties who best represent them. The UK Labour Party seems to have decided that Muslims are an exciting and exotic novelty and become a bit obsessed with them. At the same time Labour seem to have decided that white working class people are dirty, smelly and only there to be laughed at. Funnily enough white working class voters are not voting for a Labour Party that has made quite clear that it doesn't want to represent them.
This is far from the first time that the Labour Party have got themselves all sweaty and excited over a minority ethnic group. In the 1980's when Labour were equally unelectable they became so obsessed with the black vote that they made ending apartheid in South Africa their main priority. As a result you had lots of scrawny white men like Jeremy Corbyn doing Zulu war dances in Trafalgar Square as if they were leading the Soweto uprising.
I find Labour's fetishism of ethnic groups to be in itself quite racist. If this was a post about the Oscars and we were talking about the 1970's I would describe it as; "Blackploitation."
Basically the Labour Party don't see Muslims as people. Instead they view them as ATM machines that they can use to dispense votes after pressing a few of the right buttons.
A prime example of this was the Rotherham and both the Rochdale child abuse scandals. Here the Labour Party let British Muslim men kidnap, torture and sexually abuse thousands of children. The reaction I got to these scandals from even conservative Muslim nations such as Qatar was along the lines of; "What the F*ck!"
However the British Labour Party's reaction was; "All Muslims are child abusing rapists. If we try and stop them they won't vote for us."
I would have liked to have made this point earlier today. However I was forced to delay lest I send out the wrong sort of message.
This morning I was having the first cigarette of the day while chatting to my father in the garden.
Suddenly a man wearing clearly Islamic dress decided to just let himself onto our property. When my father verbally challenged him he claimed the Fox cubs (we've got 4. They're too cute for me to make them a priority) had stolen his shoes and he demanded to search the entire property for them.
My father politely informed him that we'd checked the property and there were no shoes before asking him to leave. He refused so I politely but firmly explained that we were insisting that he left. I then turned away to finish my cigarette over by the tool shed where we keep the sledgehammers. He continued to argue with my father but when I turned around he decided to leave.
So I'm sure you can appreciate why when Labour MP's burst into tears on TV because someone's sent them a nasty email with some swear words in it I don't think that should be a policing priority.
Fortunately I've worked as both a traffic warden and football steward for 10 years so I can almost literally sh*t that sort of thing out before breakfast.
Today's little performance has it's roots in the June 12th (12/6/16) Pulse nightclub terror attack in Orlando, Florida.
Basically whomever was running Omar Mateen as an agent is really not happy about me standing up to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). They want my G4S/SIA 'Security Clearence' revoked. In short they want to go back to 2013 when I was applying force several times a week, breaking bones and spending night's in jail.
With Rihanna back in London and his constant urging for people to 'Find Their Park' US President Barack Obama seems to be more than willing to oblige. Or at least he was last week.
Anyway back to Brexit.
One of the nastier scare stories Labour put about during the referendum campaign - particularly in London - was that Brexit would lead to the mass deportations of EU migrants. This is what is know in political circles as an utter f*cking lie.
Under the law as it stands any EU migrant has been resident - working is the best way to prove residency - in the UK for 5 years can apply for UK citizenship and provided for example that they haven't been convicted of any serious criminal offences will be granted citzenship. Whether they then give up their original citizenship is really their business. At the earliest the UK won't be leaving the EU until 2018. Therefore even if you only arrived in 2013 there is nothing to worry about.
However you know those European Health Insurance Cards (EHICS). You know the ones you've handed out to all your friends and family back home so they can bill all their medical treatment to Britain's NHS? Yeah, that's not going to work anymore.
As for Nigel Farage's announcement that he can't guarantee that the GBP3bn that Britain saves by leaving the EU will be spent on the NHS he's quite right. What that money is spent on is decided by the elected government of the day.
As Farage is not currently part of that government he can no more guarantee what they're going to spend that money on then I can. It might be an idea for the Labour Party to take off the Burqa and pull their socks up though.
This mass deportation lie is now being circulated aggressively by the Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon.
As is the party's default position Sturgeon wants to exploit Brexit to hold a referendum on Scottish Independence. The promise being that an independent Scotland will be allowed to disregard every relevant EU and United Nation's (UN) treaty in existence and automatically become an EU member.
The problem is that no-one in the EU wants to talk to Nicola Sturgeon.
As a result she is deliberately spreading this scare story amongst EU migrants living in Scotland in the hope they will contact their national governments. The thinking being that this will put pressure on those EU governments to return Nicola Sturgeon's phonecalls.
22:20 on 25/6/16 (UK date).
All through the bad times//
There were no good times//
Now take your mad existence//
And please stay away."
That's right Euros are back. Unless you're Scottish.
I promise there is a point to this post. However before I get onto it I have to mention something from today's Euro 2016 football matches.
Today's second match in the second round was between Wales and Northern Ireland. About 80 minutes in Ashley Williams and Jonny Williams - they're Welsh by the way - collided knocking each other out.The medical staff obviously rushed onto the pitch and after they'd both been checked for spinal fractures and regained consciousness it became clear that the captain Ashley Williams could not move his left shoulder suggesting a fracture or dislocation. The medical staff wanted to take him off but he insisted in playing on until the end of the game.
Tonight's match is between Croatia and Portugal. In this game whenever another player or even the ball has come anywhere near Portugal's Nani he immediately falls to the ground clutching his left shoulder. So he's not just diving and feigning injury he's diving and feigning Ashley Williams' injury. I think the referees need to have a word.
That match is still going on as I write. After all it seems the only way players can score these days is when they're awarded a penalty.
Anyway. As for the point.
Between the UK's local elections in May and last Thursday's (23/6/16) EU referendum I feel like I've been slagging off Muslims constantly for the past two months. As such I think I should probably qualify my comments a bit.
In a democracy people vote for people and political parties who best represent them. The UK Labour Party seems to have decided that Muslims are an exciting and exotic novelty and become a bit obsessed with them. At the same time Labour seem to have decided that white working class people are dirty, smelly and only there to be laughed at. Funnily enough white working class voters are not voting for a Labour Party that has made quite clear that it doesn't want to represent them.
This is far from the first time that the Labour Party have got themselves all sweaty and excited over a minority ethnic group. In the 1980's when Labour were equally unelectable they became so obsessed with the black vote that they made ending apartheid in South Africa their main priority. As a result you had lots of scrawny white men like Jeremy Corbyn doing Zulu war dances in Trafalgar Square as if they were leading the Soweto uprising.
I find Labour's fetishism of ethnic groups to be in itself quite racist. If this was a post about the Oscars and we were talking about the 1970's I would describe it as; "Blackploitation."
Basically the Labour Party don't see Muslims as people. Instead they view them as ATM machines that they can use to dispense votes after pressing a few of the right buttons.
A prime example of this was the Rotherham and both the Rochdale child abuse scandals. Here the Labour Party let British Muslim men kidnap, torture and sexually abuse thousands of children. The reaction I got to these scandals from even conservative Muslim nations such as Qatar was along the lines of; "What the F*ck!"
However the British Labour Party's reaction was; "All Muslims are child abusing rapists. If we try and stop them they won't vote for us."
I would have liked to have made this point earlier today. However I was forced to delay lest I send out the wrong sort of message.
This morning I was having the first cigarette of the day while chatting to my father in the garden.
Suddenly a man wearing clearly Islamic dress decided to just let himself onto our property. When my father verbally challenged him he claimed the Fox cubs (we've got 4. They're too cute for me to make them a priority) had stolen his shoes and he demanded to search the entire property for them.
My father politely informed him that we'd checked the property and there were no shoes before asking him to leave. He refused so I politely but firmly explained that we were insisting that he left. I then turned away to finish my cigarette over by the tool shed where we keep the sledgehammers. He continued to argue with my father but when I turned around he decided to leave.
So I'm sure you can appreciate why when Labour MP's burst into tears on TV because someone's sent them a nasty email with some swear words in it I don't think that should be a policing priority.
Fortunately I've worked as both a traffic warden and football steward for 10 years so I can almost literally sh*t that sort of thing out before breakfast.
Today's little performance has it's roots in the June 12th (12/6/16) Pulse nightclub terror attack in Orlando, Florida.
Basically whomever was running Omar Mateen as an agent is really not happy about me standing up to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). They want my G4S/SIA 'Security Clearence' revoked. In short they want to go back to 2013 when I was applying force several times a week, breaking bones and spending night's in jail.
With Rihanna back in London and his constant urging for people to 'Find Their Park' US President Barack Obama seems to be more than willing to oblige. Or at least he was last week.
Anyway back to Brexit.
One of the nastier scare stories Labour put about during the referendum campaign - particularly in London - was that Brexit would lead to the mass deportations of EU migrants. This is what is know in political circles as an utter f*cking lie.
Under the law as it stands any EU migrant has been resident - working is the best way to prove residency - in the UK for 5 years can apply for UK citizenship and provided for example that they haven't been convicted of any serious criminal offences will be granted citzenship. Whether they then give up their original citizenship is really their business. At the earliest the UK won't be leaving the EU until 2018. Therefore even if you only arrived in 2013 there is nothing to worry about.
However you know those European Health Insurance Cards (EHICS). You know the ones you've handed out to all your friends and family back home so they can bill all their medical treatment to Britain's NHS? Yeah, that's not going to work anymore.
As for Nigel Farage's announcement that he can't guarantee that the GBP3bn that Britain saves by leaving the EU will be spent on the NHS he's quite right. What that money is spent on is decided by the elected government of the day.
As Farage is not currently part of that government he can no more guarantee what they're going to spend that money on then I can. It might be an idea for the Labour Party to take off the Burqa and pull their socks up though.
This mass deportation lie is now being circulated aggressively by the Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon.
As is the party's default position Sturgeon wants to exploit Brexit to hold a referendum on Scottish Independence. The promise being that an independent Scotland will be allowed to disregard every relevant EU and United Nation's (UN) treaty in existence and automatically become an EU member.
The problem is that no-one in the EU wants to talk to Nicola Sturgeon.
As a result she is deliberately spreading this scare story amongst EU migrants living in Scotland in the hope they will contact their national governments. The thinking being that this will put pressure on those EU governments to return Nicola Sturgeon's phonecalls.
22:20 on 25/6/16 (UK date).
Friday, 24 June 2016
The Lohan Effect.
Possibly the most bizarre thing about last night's European Union (EU) refendum results is that they were being live Tweeted. By US actress Lindsey Lohan.
Lohan is actually a long term resident of the UK. So long term in fact I suspect that she is trying to qualify for British citizenship in order to take advantage of the EU's free movement of people. As such it should come as little surprise that Lohan was very pro-Remain.
However it seems that she has not been resident in the UK long enough to realise that the entire country is slightly smaller that the US state of Oregon. As such unlike in the US we don't actually start counting votes let alone announcing results until every polling station in the country is closed. This means that by the time the first results start to emerge it is already several hours to late to try to influence the outcome.
With Britian's entire political/media class spending last night staring at Lindsey Lohan's Twitter feed collectively going; "What the actual f*ck" I got involved when Ms Lohan was reacting to the results from Sunderland.
This was considered one of the key bellweather consituencies in the referendum. Partly because it has a record for being one of the faster areas to complete the vote count making it one of the earliest to declare its result.
Sunderland is also a traditional white, working class heartland for the Labour Party. However unlike areas such as Yorkshire it doesn't have much of an immigrant - particularly Muslim - population. This means that Labour's seeming suicide quest to abandon white working class voters in favour of Muslim immigrants has really hurt them in areas like Sunderland with the pro-Leave UK Independence Party (UKIP) picking up a lot of votes.
As such we always knew that Sunderland was going to vote to Leave. The question though was by how much. Although we're talking rough guesstimates rather than precise calculations 10% was considered the magic number. If Sunderland voted to Leave by less then 10% then Remain would win nationally but if Sunderland voted to leave by more than 10% Leave would in nationally.
As it turned out Sunderland voted to Leave by 22%. Although voting had barely even started in parts of the country that made it seem extremely unlikely that Remain would win nationally.
Immediately prior to the Sunderland result the British Pound was worth 150 US cents. In the three seconds after the Sunderland result it lost 5 cents in value plunging to 145 cents per Pound. It was one of those situations where if a trader sneezed at the wrong second they would lose a fortune.
The other interesting thing about Sunderland is that the main employer in the area is the car giant Nissan. They're located there so they can access the EU's single market due to Britain's EU membership. Nissan itself has publicly warned voters not to support the Leave campaign.
Immediately after the Sunderland result Lindsey Lohan and a lot of others started really having a go at voters in Sunderland for wrecking the UK economy. Some even went so far as to mock Nissan employees to costing themselves their jobs.
What they seem to have failed to realise is that currency plunge could actually be a good thing for Nissan workers securing their jobs. A weak pound means that exports to the Eurozone become more profitable. This shifting margin might be enough to cancel out the cost of any potential export tariffs encouraging Nissan to remain in the UK. After all shifting entire factories and supply chains between nations is a major and expensive hassle.
Two of the first British economists to argue about the role of foreign currency exchange in export policy were Gerard de Malynes and Thomas Mun way back in the 16th Century. However the financial system they were discussing - based on actual gold and silver - is so far removed from the modern one as to be utterly irrelevent. It was interesting though to see who on TV such as Vince Cable immediately got that very old and obscure reference and who suddenly had to rush to Google.
The argument over whether Nissan workers in Sunderland have lost or secured their jobs by voting to Leave explains why the financial markets are in such turmoil at the moment. There is so much uncertainty that it's a bit like chucking a file of papers up in the air and trying to predict in which order they're going to land.
This is why I think that everybody needs to take a step back for a few days to let the news settle in. Sadly the EU has different ideas calling for Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty to be immediately invoked and negotiations on the UK exit to begin.
This actually helps highlight why people are now getting so p*ssed off with the EU. In their arrogance it never occured to EU leaders that Britain would vote to Leave. So for next week they've scheduled this big summit of the migrant deal and in particular Turkey's visa-free access.
Now Britain has voted to Leave this has thrown them into an absolute panic. So when they say they want Article 50 invoked urgently what they mean is they want an urgent leaders meeting to establish the EU's position before the Turkey summit. The problem being that its not even clear if the UK has a leader at the moment let alone whether they'll be able to participate in the summit.
Personally I would recommend not only cancelling the Turkey summit but the entire migrant deal. After all as I've been saying for years unless the EU is prepared to do things properly the whole thing is going to blow up in its face.
Also anthor thing that Lindsey Lohan may not be aware of is that the British people are very good at and take great pride in swearing. So much pride in fact they developed the "Profanisaurs" that lists various unusual swear words and terms of abuse.
My favourite is "Whore from Fife." This is considered a double insult. It suggests that you have sex with people for money. And that you come from Fife.
15:10 on 24/6/16 (UK date).
Lohan is actually a long term resident of the UK. So long term in fact I suspect that she is trying to qualify for British citizenship in order to take advantage of the EU's free movement of people. As such it should come as little surprise that Lohan was very pro-Remain.
However it seems that she has not been resident in the UK long enough to realise that the entire country is slightly smaller that the US state of Oregon. As such unlike in the US we don't actually start counting votes let alone announcing results until every polling station in the country is closed. This means that by the time the first results start to emerge it is already several hours to late to try to influence the outcome.
With Britian's entire political/media class spending last night staring at Lindsey Lohan's Twitter feed collectively going; "What the actual f*ck" I got involved when Ms Lohan was reacting to the results from Sunderland.
This was considered one of the key bellweather consituencies in the referendum. Partly because it has a record for being one of the faster areas to complete the vote count making it one of the earliest to declare its result.
Sunderland is also a traditional white, working class heartland for the Labour Party. However unlike areas such as Yorkshire it doesn't have much of an immigrant - particularly Muslim - population. This means that Labour's seeming suicide quest to abandon white working class voters in favour of Muslim immigrants has really hurt them in areas like Sunderland with the pro-Leave UK Independence Party (UKIP) picking up a lot of votes.
As such we always knew that Sunderland was going to vote to Leave. The question though was by how much. Although we're talking rough guesstimates rather than precise calculations 10% was considered the magic number. If Sunderland voted to Leave by less then 10% then Remain would win nationally but if Sunderland voted to leave by more than 10% Leave would in nationally.
As it turned out Sunderland voted to Leave by 22%. Although voting had barely even started in parts of the country that made it seem extremely unlikely that Remain would win nationally.
Immediately prior to the Sunderland result the British Pound was worth 150 US cents. In the three seconds after the Sunderland result it lost 5 cents in value plunging to 145 cents per Pound. It was one of those situations where if a trader sneezed at the wrong second they would lose a fortune.
The other interesting thing about Sunderland is that the main employer in the area is the car giant Nissan. They're located there so they can access the EU's single market due to Britain's EU membership. Nissan itself has publicly warned voters not to support the Leave campaign.
Immediately after the Sunderland result Lindsey Lohan and a lot of others started really having a go at voters in Sunderland for wrecking the UK economy. Some even went so far as to mock Nissan employees to costing themselves their jobs.
What they seem to have failed to realise is that currency plunge could actually be a good thing for Nissan workers securing their jobs. A weak pound means that exports to the Eurozone become more profitable. This shifting margin might be enough to cancel out the cost of any potential export tariffs encouraging Nissan to remain in the UK. After all shifting entire factories and supply chains between nations is a major and expensive hassle.
Two of the first British economists to argue about the role of foreign currency exchange in export policy were Gerard de Malynes and Thomas Mun way back in the 16th Century. However the financial system they were discussing - based on actual gold and silver - is so far removed from the modern one as to be utterly irrelevent. It was interesting though to see who on TV such as Vince Cable immediately got that very old and obscure reference and who suddenly had to rush to Google.
The argument over whether Nissan workers in Sunderland have lost or secured their jobs by voting to Leave explains why the financial markets are in such turmoil at the moment. There is so much uncertainty that it's a bit like chucking a file of papers up in the air and trying to predict in which order they're going to land.
This is why I think that everybody needs to take a step back for a few days to let the news settle in. Sadly the EU has different ideas calling for Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty to be immediately invoked and negotiations on the UK exit to begin.
This actually helps highlight why people are now getting so p*ssed off with the EU. In their arrogance it never occured to EU leaders that Britain would vote to Leave. So for next week they've scheduled this big summit of the migrant deal and in particular Turkey's visa-free access.
Now Britain has voted to Leave this has thrown them into an absolute panic. So when they say they want Article 50 invoked urgently what they mean is they want an urgent leaders meeting to establish the EU's position before the Turkey summit. The problem being that its not even clear if the UK has a leader at the moment let alone whether they'll be able to participate in the summit.
Personally I would recommend not only cancelling the Turkey summit but the entire migrant deal. After all as I've been saying for years unless the EU is prepared to do things properly the whole thing is going to blow up in its face.
Also anthor thing that Lindsey Lohan may not be aware of is that the British people are very good at and take great pride in swearing. So much pride in fact they developed the "Profanisaurs" that lists various unusual swear words and terms of abuse.
My favourite is "Whore from Fife." This is considered a double insult. It suggests that you have sex with people for money. And that you come from Fife.
15:10 on 24/6/16 (UK date).
The Cox That Lost It.
As I rub the sleep from my eyes I discover that the UK has indeed voted to the Leave the European Union (EU).
This entire referendum really has its roots in the May 2010 Coup d 'etat. Emboldened by that success the British Monarchy got it into its head that all it needed to do was threaten to leave the EU and the EU would throw itself at Britain's feet essentially turning the EU into an extension of the British Empire.
However by the time Britain's bluff had finally been called and it was forced to hold a referendum the Monarchy dramatically changed its position.
The problem is that by that point it had already stoked the fires of Leave for too long and they were starting to burn out of control. At the same time Britain's political classes had become so utterly self-absorbed and detached for reality that no-one believed anything they said. This became a particularly urgent problem when the deeply unpopular Labour Party threw its weight behind the Remain campaign.
With the Leave campaign surging into a double digit poll lead last week dramatic action had to be taken to rescue the situation. This occurred in the form of the lawful killing of the Labour MP Jo Cox on June 16th (16/6/16). As I explained at the time this was done essentially to end the referendum campaign a week early. It was particularly intended to stop the Labour Party campaigning for Remain by exposing Jo Cox and their links to radical Islamist terrorism.
The problem is that the Labour Party immediately went on the defensive heaping pressure on the police investigating the case to cover up their links to terrorism by charging Cox's killer with murder. The police crumbled under that pressure and an unsustainable murder charge was filed.
If anything this re-energised the Labour Remain camp who disregarded the suspension on campaigning to start campaigning even harder. They even held an obnoxiously self-indulgent memorial event to Jo Cox on Wednesday (21/6/1/6) - the day before the vote. This was so offensive and easy to troll that even I pulled my punches.
So it appears that while the Jo Cox killing did damage the Leave campaign and break its momentum it didn't do enough damage to the Remain campaign. In fact their instinct to try and exploit it probably only ended up helping the Leave camp.
As a result Leave have won with 51.9% of the vote versus Remain's 48.1% based on a 72% voter turnout.
In terms of what this means now I genuinely can't tell you.
Scotland may decide to hold another independence referendum and try to join the EU as a new nation. Or it may not. Likewise Northern Ireland may vote to leave the UK and re-join the EU as part of a united Irish Republic. Or again it may not. Starved of British funding the Eurozone economy may collapse and the entire EU might break up. Or it might not.
One thing we do know is that British Prime Minister and lead Remain campaigner David Cameron is in the process of tendering his resignation to the Queen. However we don't even know if that resignation will be accepted let alone whether it will bring down the government leading to a fresh General Election.
The key thing to listen out for is news that Article 50 of Lisbon has been invoked. This will formally start the process of Britain leaving the EU.
I suggest we let things cool down at least over the weekend. After all Britain could find itself in full riot mode by this evening.
10:30 on 24/6/16 (UK date).
This entire referendum really has its roots in the May 2010 Coup d 'etat. Emboldened by that success the British Monarchy got it into its head that all it needed to do was threaten to leave the EU and the EU would throw itself at Britain's feet essentially turning the EU into an extension of the British Empire.
However by the time Britain's bluff had finally been called and it was forced to hold a referendum the Monarchy dramatically changed its position.
The problem is that by that point it had already stoked the fires of Leave for too long and they were starting to burn out of control. At the same time Britain's political classes had become so utterly self-absorbed and detached for reality that no-one believed anything they said. This became a particularly urgent problem when the deeply unpopular Labour Party threw its weight behind the Remain campaign.
With the Leave campaign surging into a double digit poll lead last week dramatic action had to be taken to rescue the situation. This occurred in the form of the lawful killing of the Labour MP Jo Cox on June 16th (16/6/16). As I explained at the time this was done essentially to end the referendum campaign a week early. It was particularly intended to stop the Labour Party campaigning for Remain by exposing Jo Cox and their links to radical Islamist terrorism.
The problem is that the Labour Party immediately went on the defensive heaping pressure on the police investigating the case to cover up their links to terrorism by charging Cox's killer with murder. The police crumbled under that pressure and an unsustainable murder charge was filed.
If anything this re-energised the Labour Remain camp who disregarded the suspension on campaigning to start campaigning even harder. They even held an obnoxiously self-indulgent memorial event to Jo Cox on Wednesday (21/6/1/6) - the day before the vote. This was so offensive and easy to troll that even I pulled my punches.
So it appears that while the Jo Cox killing did damage the Leave campaign and break its momentum it didn't do enough damage to the Remain campaign. In fact their instinct to try and exploit it probably only ended up helping the Leave camp.
As a result Leave have won with 51.9% of the vote versus Remain's 48.1% based on a 72% voter turnout.
In terms of what this means now I genuinely can't tell you.
Scotland may decide to hold another independence referendum and try to join the EU as a new nation. Or it may not. Likewise Northern Ireland may vote to leave the UK and re-join the EU as part of a united Irish Republic. Or again it may not. Starved of British funding the Eurozone economy may collapse and the entire EU might break up. Or it might not.
One thing we do know is that British Prime Minister and lead Remain campaigner David Cameron is in the process of tendering his resignation to the Queen. However we don't even know if that resignation will be accepted let alone whether it will bring down the government leading to a fresh General Election.
The key thing to listen out for is news that Article 50 of Lisbon has been invoked. This will formally start the process of Britain leaving the EU.
I suggest we let things cool down at least over the weekend. After all Britain could find itself in full riot mode by this evening.
10:30 on 24/6/16 (UK date).
Thursday, 23 June 2016
The Pulse Terror Attack: The Motives.
On June 12th (12/6/16) the US suffered its worst terror attack since September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) when a gunman walked into the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida and murdered 49 people while attempting to murder 53 others. He was killed in the course of the attack.
Due to the time difference this attack was unfolding as I got up on that Sunday morning. At that time the police were not releasing many details of the attack as they first tried to respond to it. With no initial reports of any fatalities this sounded to me like the sort of stunt a government stages to send coded messages to other governments.
Encountering around one story a day like that at the moment I decided that events in Orlando were something I could get back to once I'd woken up a bit and more details had become available.
By the time I returned to the story about six hours later the extent of the slaughter had become clear. With possibly more than 100 people killed it was obvious this was not something that the US would do to itself.
In situations as traumatic as this is becomes all too easy to fixate on strange little details and see hidden meaning in random coincidences.
The example that always sticks with me is of an older Irish woman who was in Church when a naked swordsman attacked the congregation. All she could remember about the attack was being outraged that a man had exposed his circumcised penis in a Church. It was obviously easier for her brain to process being outraged at that than the extreme and bloody violence that surrounded it.
With the Pulse nightclub being a gay nightclub the fact that 49 people were killed provides another example. In American Football/Super Bowl code gay people are represented by the San Francisco 49's. Therefore the death toll of 49 could be viewed as a reference to that.
However I gather from local medical professionals that the attacker had an extremely good go at killing a lot more than 49 people. Therefore this coincidence seems to be just that. A random coincidence.
Being aware of how easy it is to find false meaning in random coincidence once I'd realised that the Pulse attack was a genuine attack I sort of dismissed all the things that sounded like intentional references out of hand.
However I have since considered it more carefully and there are number of elements of the attack that seem both intentional and planned.
The Eurovision Song Contest: It was two days prior to the Pulse attack that I finished my marathon coverage of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest which took place in mid-May. Although there is much more to it than that the Song Contest has a very large gay following. You could almost joke that it is the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Global Gay Conspiracy.
Due to them being small in number and the often irrational hatred of homophobia the gay community has long learnt to be self-sufficient and to look after itself. The Pulse nightclub seems to be a perfect example of this. Far from being just a place where people go to drink and hook-up the Pulse nightclub is almost the centre of the Orlando gay community advocating on behalf of that community and providing support to its members.
For example the funerals of the attack victims held last Friday (17/6/16) were protested by the always charming Westboro Baptist Church and their "God Hates Fags" signs. It was Pulse's clientele that arranged for people carrying Rainbow coloured billboards to block the mourners view of the protests.
Therefore you could almost say that if the Eurovision Song Contest is the AGM of the Global Gay Conspiracy than the Pulse nightclub is its Orlando branch office.
The big topic at this year's Song Contest was the Shamali (Northern) Province of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This was created in the broad geographic area of what used to be known as Ukraine when the US overthrew the elected government in February 2014.
Apart from creating a brutal civil war and the refugee crisis they always produce this was done to provide the US with an excuse to place economic sanctions on Russia for opposing ISIL without the US being forced to formally admit that it supports ISIL.
The creation of Shamali Province was done as a US apology for preventing Saudi Arabia continuing with its plans to launch terrorist attacks against the February 2014 Winter Olympics that were taking place in near-by Sochi, Russia.
If you've read my marathon coverage of this year's Song Contest you would know that with the possible exception of Latvia there was absolutely no support for Shamali Province within Europe. In fact the Eurovision juries seemed to have conspired together to punish Shamali Province by forcing it to host the 2017 contest.
Almost immediately this reckless decision by the Eurovision juries had very dramatic consequences.
Clearly misreading the insult as a compliment the junta that controls Shamali Province responded to the Song Contest by abandoning the standing ceasefire and launching a fresh offensive to seize control of Donetsk Airport. With Donetsk Airport more or less being opened for the Euro 2012 football tournament the fact that it is now a war damaged wreck works quite a few nerves in Europe. Particularly as the continent prepares for the Euro 2016 football tournament.
In response to the junta's offensive Russia lashed out by releasing Nadiya Savchenko from custody allowing her to return to Shamali Province. A convicted war criminal and member of the illegal neo-Nazi Aidar Battalion Nadiya Savchenko is an absolute nutcase. However she remains extremely popular amongst all the other nutcases in Shamali Province. As such there is a real risk that she will move to overthrow the junta's declared President Petro Poroshenko who has got to be one of the few sane people left in Shamali Province.
The big concern with Shamali Province hosting the 2017 Song Contest though is security.
Shamali Province is populated by a heady mix of old fashioned Nazis, neo-Nazis and Turkish backed Islamic extremists all of whom take an extremely dim view of the global gay conspiracy. Being an active warzone Shamali Province is absolutely awash with military grade heavy weapons. Taking the 2017 Song Contest there is like taking it to Baghdad, Iraq or Damascus, Syria. I actually think it might be slightly safer to take Eurovision to Damascus at the moment.
Despite being the creator and sole sponsor of Shamali Province even the US is extremely concerned about Eurovision's plans.
Two days before the Pulse attack on June 10th (10/6/16) a black man was shot and killed by police at Texas' Love Field Airport in a domestic violence incident. This obviously picked up the theme of Donetsk Airport while acknowledging the domestic violence/terrorism risk in Shamali Province and mocking US President Obama's Black Lives Matter (BLM) anti-police campaign.
The day before the Pulse attack on June 11th (11/6/16) former contestant on the US version of "The Voice" Christina Grimmie was shot and killed as she met fans following a concert at a nightclub in Orlando close to the Pulse nightclub.
Grimmie looks similar to the singer Jamala who represented Shamali Province at Eurovision this year. As such that seemed to be the US - at the very least - acknowledging the security challenges to Shamali Province hosting the 2017 Song Contest. That sort of attack by a deranged fan would probably be considered the least of the security threats.
As such the Pulse terror attack seemed to be a clear warning to the US in particular - Continue to support ISIL and Shamali Province or else.
In the worst response imaginable the US immediately caved into the threat and two days later (14/6/16) an extra USD220million in financial support for Shamali Province.
At around 17:20 on 23/6/16 (UK date) have barely started. I shall continue after dinner and possibly into tomorrow.
Edited at around 19:40 on 23/6/16 (UK date) to add;
The Euro 2016 Football Tournament: Starting two days before the Pulse terror attack this is the next big pan-European event following the Eurovision Song Contest.
In the run-up to Euro 2016 the big fear has been of radical Islamist terrorism.
This is because of the November 30th 2015 (30/11/15) Massacres in Paris, the capital of Euro 2016 host nation France. Although 130 people were murdered in total that night across various locations the most significant loss of life occurred at the Bataclan concert venue/nightclub where gunmen slaughtered 89. The connection between that and the Pulse nightclub attack should be self-evident.
The Pulse attack was carried out by a Muslim man called Omar Mateen. There is a very famous Belgian footballer called Dries Mertens. When Mertens took to the field in Belgium's opening game against Italy on June 13th (13/6/16) the BBC commentators could barely bring themselves to say his name.
The ISIL cell that carried out the Paris Massacres was based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels.
As such the Pulse nightclub attack also seemed to be a warning to the European nations - particularly France - to continue supporting ISIL and Shamali Province or face the consequences.
As with the December 2nd 2015 (2/12/15) San Bernardino attacks it carried the added threat that because US President Barack Obama is not prepared to protect the US from radical Islamist terrorists he's not going to be prepared to protect America's allies. Even its oldest one.
With the US seeming to payout a $220m reward to the Pulse nightclub attackers the European Union (EU) also seems to have decided that it would be prudent to obey.
Despite the performance of Eurovision in which Italy appeared to formally recognise Crimea as part of Russia on June 21st (21/6/16) the EU decided to extend sanctions on Russia over Shamali Province for a further six months. However this is a provisional decision that still needs to be confirmed at a meeting next week.
The 2016 Summer Olympics: Omar Mateen had previously worked for British private security firm G4S.
G4S is a company that has been involved in many scandals. However probably the most high profile one was when they failed to deliver on a contract to provide security for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, UK. This forced the British hosts to send in the military to fill the gap.
This of course occurred at a time when ISIL were being referred to simply as the "Saudi Irregular Army (SIA)." Following the Olympics scandal G4S was fined heavily by the Security Industry Authority (SIA) regulator. There was even talk of the SIA itself being disbanded but I feel I'm going off on a bit of a tangent.
Obviously the thought that someone like Omar Mateen could pass the background checks to become an armed security guard at the 2016 is utterly terrifying for both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the 2016 hosts Brazil.
On the night it was attacked Pulse was hosting a Latin theme night. Along with the fact that Florida has a high Hispanic population this meant that most of those killed or wounded in the attack were of Hispanic heritage. In what I myself consider to be a small form of racism I assumed that all these Hispanics were also American citizens.
However a significant proportion of them were either holiday makers or first or second generation migrants that all South American governments were immediately forced to go on alert in case any of their nationals had been killed or wounded. This included 2016 Olympic host Brazil.
Five days after the attack on Friday June 17th (17/6/16) the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) met to decide whether Russian Track & Field athletes should be banned from the 2016 Olympics. As with the gay-rights-for-gays protests during the 2014 Winter Olympics this is seen as a politically motivated attempt to embarrass Russia over its longstanding opposition to ISIL.
Therefore the Pulse terror attack also seemed to be a clear threat to Brazil and the IOC - Boycott Russia or the games are getting blown up like Volgograd was just before the Sochi games.
British Parliamentarian Sebastian Lord Coe's success as an athlete comes from the 1980 Summer Olympics which were boycotted by the US and the 1984 Summer Olympics which were boycotted by the Soviet Union. Therefore without political boycotts Lord Coe is more accurately described as "Olympic Loser Sebastian Coe."
Obviously then "Killer Coe" didn't need any more encouragement to issue a political boycott.. The matter is currently been considered by the IOC.
The Fight For Climate Change: Curiously for a gay nightclub Pulse is not owned by a gay person. Instead it is owned by Barbara Pomo who opened it in honour of her gay older brother John who died of AIDS. The "Pulse" of the name is a reference to his heart pumping HIV+ blood through his veins.
For reasons that are too convoluted to get into here the issue of HIV/AIDS has long been synonymous with international efforts to combat climate change. Particularly the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus (REDD+) program.
One of the big battles at the COP21 Summit that immediately followed the Paris Massacres was between the US and Brazil over whether REDD+ should be included as a funding mechanism named what has gone on to be known as the "Paris Agreement." As part of this discussion the US announced that actor Charlie Sheen is HIV+. Henceforth that part of the agreement has become known as "The Sheen Clause."
The US itself has cited the dispute with Brazil over REDD+ as one possible reason why the Paris Agreement is a failure. After all I think you can see how negotiators might have got confused during the negotiations.
Four days after the Pulse attack US Secretary of State John Kerry began a trip to the Danish Arctic to generally stare at glaciers and fraudulently promote the Paris Agreement as a way to combat climate change. At the same time Charlie Sheen has been visiting the UK and I presume other European nations to talk about his HIV diagnosis.
I can quite easily see how someone with prior knowledge of these two trips who supports global warming might get a little paranoid and start thinking the US was encouraging nations to dump the Paris Agreement in order to resume work on something that might actually combat change.
As such the Pulse attack also seemed to be a general threat to the World to ratify the Paris Agreement like good little boys and girls and not dare to mention the notion of combating climate change ever again.
I think there is at least a second part to this post. Provided the EU referendum doesn't suck up to much of my time I will try and publish that tomorrow. I'm sure you can appreciate why I really want to avoid sitting here writing during Euro 2016 matches.
As for Obama's claim that there is nothing indicating that Mateen had outside help in planning and carrying out the attack. Well I genuinely think that is an indicator that he's finally been stripped of his National Security Clearance and is therefore no longer allowed to attend briefings.
21:15 on 23/6/16 (UK date).
Due to the time difference this attack was unfolding as I got up on that Sunday morning. At that time the police were not releasing many details of the attack as they first tried to respond to it. With no initial reports of any fatalities this sounded to me like the sort of stunt a government stages to send coded messages to other governments.
Encountering around one story a day like that at the moment I decided that events in Orlando were something I could get back to once I'd woken up a bit and more details had become available.
By the time I returned to the story about six hours later the extent of the slaughter had become clear. With possibly more than 100 people killed it was obvious this was not something that the US would do to itself.
In situations as traumatic as this is becomes all too easy to fixate on strange little details and see hidden meaning in random coincidences.
The example that always sticks with me is of an older Irish woman who was in Church when a naked swordsman attacked the congregation. All she could remember about the attack was being outraged that a man had exposed his circumcised penis in a Church. It was obviously easier for her brain to process being outraged at that than the extreme and bloody violence that surrounded it.
With the Pulse nightclub being a gay nightclub the fact that 49 people were killed provides another example. In American Football/Super Bowl code gay people are represented by the San Francisco 49's. Therefore the death toll of 49 could be viewed as a reference to that.
However I gather from local medical professionals that the attacker had an extremely good go at killing a lot more than 49 people. Therefore this coincidence seems to be just that. A random coincidence.
Being aware of how easy it is to find false meaning in random coincidence once I'd realised that the Pulse attack was a genuine attack I sort of dismissed all the things that sounded like intentional references out of hand.
However I have since considered it more carefully and there are number of elements of the attack that seem both intentional and planned.
The Eurovision Song Contest: It was two days prior to the Pulse attack that I finished my marathon coverage of the 2016 Eurovision Song Contest which took place in mid-May. Although there is much more to it than that the Song Contest has a very large gay following. You could almost joke that it is the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Global Gay Conspiracy.
Due to them being small in number and the often irrational hatred of homophobia the gay community has long learnt to be self-sufficient and to look after itself. The Pulse nightclub seems to be a perfect example of this. Far from being just a place where people go to drink and hook-up the Pulse nightclub is almost the centre of the Orlando gay community advocating on behalf of that community and providing support to its members.
For example the funerals of the attack victims held last Friday (17/6/16) were protested by the always charming Westboro Baptist Church and their "God Hates Fags" signs. It was Pulse's clientele that arranged for people carrying Rainbow coloured billboards to block the mourners view of the protests.
Therefore you could almost say that if the Eurovision Song Contest is the AGM of the Global Gay Conspiracy than the Pulse nightclub is its Orlando branch office.
The big topic at this year's Song Contest was the Shamali (Northern) Province of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This was created in the broad geographic area of what used to be known as Ukraine when the US overthrew the elected government in February 2014.
Apart from creating a brutal civil war and the refugee crisis they always produce this was done to provide the US with an excuse to place economic sanctions on Russia for opposing ISIL without the US being forced to formally admit that it supports ISIL.
The creation of Shamali Province was done as a US apology for preventing Saudi Arabia continuing with its plans to launch terrorist attacks against the February 2014 Winter Olympics that were taking place in near-by Sochi, Russia.
If you've read my marathon coverage of this year's Song Contest you would know that with the possible exception of Latvia there was absolutely no support for Shamali Province within Europe. In fact the Eurovision juries seemed to have conspired together to punish Shamali Province by forcing it to host the 2017 contest.
Almost immediately this reckless decision by the Eurovision juries had very dramatic consequences.
Clearly misreading the insult as a compliment the junta that controls Shamali Province responded to the Song Contest by abandoning the standing ceasefire and launching a fresh offensive to seize control of Donetsk Airport. With Donetsk Airport more or less being opened for the Euro 2012 football tournament the fact that it is now a war damaged wreck works quite a few nerves in Europe. Particularly as the continent prepares for the Euro 2016 football tournament.
In response to the junta's offensive Russia lashed out by releasing Nadiya Savchenko from custody allowing her to return to Shamali Province. A convicted war criminal and member of the illegal neo-Nazi Aidar Battalion Nadiya Savchenko is an absolute nutcase. However she remains extremely popular amongst all the other nutcases in Shamali Province. As such there is a real risk that she will move to overthrow the junta's declared President Petro Poroshenko who has got to be one of the few sane people left in Shamali Province.
The big concern with Shamali Province hosting the 2017 Song Contest though is security.
Shamali Province is populated by a heady mix of old fashioned Nazis, neo-Nazis and Turkish backed Islamic extremists all of whom take an extremely dim view of the global gay conspiracy. Being an active warzone Shamali Province is absolutely awash with military grade heavy weapons. Taking the 2017 Song Contest there is like taking it to Baghdad, Iraq or Damascus, Syria. I actually think it might be slightly safer to take Eurovision to Damascus at the moment.
Despite being the creator and sole sponsor of Shamali Province even the US is extremely concerned about Eurovision's plans.
Two days before the Pulse attack on June 10th (10/6/16) a black man was shot and killed by police at Texas' Love Field Airport in a domestic violence incident. This obviously picked up the theme of Donetsk Airport while acknowledging the domestic violence/terrorism risk in Shamali Province and mocking US President Obama's Black Lives Matter (BLM) anti-police campaign.
The day before the Pulse attack on June 11th (11/6/16) former contestant on the US version of "The Voice" Christina Grimmie was shot and killed as she met fans following a concert at a nightclub in Orlando close to the Pulse nightclub.
Grimmie looks similar to the singer Jamala who represented Shamali Province at Eurovision this year. As such that seemed to be the US - at the very least - acknowledging the security challenges to Shamali Province hosting the 2017 Song Contest. That sort of attack by a deranged fan would probably be considered the least of the security threats.
As such the Pulse terror attack seemed to be a clear warning to the US in particular - Continue to support ISIL and Shamali Province or else.
In the worst response imaginable the US immediately caved into the threat and two days later (14/6/16) an extra USD220million in financial support for Shamali Province.
At around 17:20 on 23/6/16 (UK date) have barely started. I shall continue after dinner and possibly into tomorrow.
Edited at around 19:40 on 23/6/16 (UK date) to add;
The Euro 2016 Football Tournament: Starting two days before the Pulse terror attack this is the next big pan-European event following the Eurovision Song Contest.
In the run-up to Euro 2016 the big fear has been of radical Islamist terrorism.
This is because of the November 30th 2015 (30/11/15) Massacres in Paris, the capital of Euro 2016 host nation France. Although 130 people were murdered in total that night across various locations the most significant loss of life occurred at the Bataclan concert venue/nightclub where gunmen slaughtered 89. The connection between that and the Pulse nightclub attack should be self-evident.
The Pulse attack was carried out by a Muslim man called Omar Mateen. There is a very famous Belgian footballer called Dries Mertens. When Mertens took to the field in Belgium's opening game against Italy on June 13th (13/6/16) the BBC commentators could barely bring themselves to say his name.
The ISIL cell that carried out the Paris Massacres was based in the Molenbeek district of the Belgian capital Brussels.
As such the Pulse nightclub attack also seemed to be a warning to the European nations - particularly France - to continue supporting ISIL and Shamali Province or face the consequences.
As with the December 2nd 2015 (2/12/15) San Bernardino attacks it carried the added threat that because US President Barack Obama is not prepared to protect the US from radical Islamist terrorists he's not going to be prepared to protect America's allies. Even its oldest one.
With the US seeming to payout a $220m reward to the Pulse nightclub attackers the European Union (EU) also seems to have decided that it would be prudent to obey.
Despite the performance of Eurovision in which Italy appeared to formally recognise Crimea as part of Russia on June 21st (21/6/16) the EU decided to extend sanctions on Russia over Shamali Province for a further six months. However this is a provisional decision that still needs to be confirmed at a meeting next week.
The 2016 Summer Olympics: Omar Mateen had previously worked for British private security firm G4S.
G4S is a company that has been involved in many scandals. However probably the most high profile one was when they failed to deliver on a contract to provide security for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, UK. This forced the British hosts to send in the military to fill the gap.
This of course occurred at a time when ISIL were being referred to simply as the "Saudi Irregular Army (SIA)." Following the Olympics scandal G4S was fined heavily by the Security Industry Authority (SIA) regulator. There was even talk of the SIA itself being disbanded but I feel I'm going off on a bit of a tangent.
Obviously the thought that someone like Omar Mateen could pass the background checks to become an armed security guard at the 2016 is utterly terrifying for both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the 2016 hosts Brazil.
On the night it was attacked Pulse was hosting a Latin theme night. Along with the fact that Florida has a high Hispanic population this meant that most of those killed or wounded in the attack were of Hispanic heritage. In what I myself consider to be a small form of racism I assumed that all these Hispanics were also American citizens.
However a significant proportion of them were either holiday makers or first or second generation migrants that all South American governments were immediately forced to go on alert in case any of their nationals had been killed or wounded. This included 2016 Olympic host Brazil.
Five days after the attack on Friday June 17th (17/6/16) the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) met to decide whether Russian Track & Field athletes should be banned from the 2016 Olympics. As with the gay-rights-for-gays protests during the 2014 Winter Olympics this is seen as a politically motivated attempt to embarrass Russia over its longstanding opposition to ISIL.
Therefore the Pulse terror attack also seemed to be a clear threat to Brazil and the IOC - Boycott Russia or the games are getting blown up like Volgograd was just before the Sochi games.
British Parliamentarian Sebastian Lord Coe's success as an athlete comes from the 1980 Summer Olympics which were boycotted by the US and the 1984 Summer Olympics which were boycotted by the Soviet Union. Therefore without political boycotts Lord Coe is more accurately described as "Olympic Loser Sebastian Coe."
Obviously then "Killer Coe" didn't need any more encouragement to issue a political boycott.. The matter is currently been considered by the IOC.
The Fight For Climate Change: Curiously for a gay nightclub Pulse is not owned by a gay person. Instead it is owned by Barbara Pomo who opened it in honour of her gay older brother John who died of AIDS. The "Pulse" of the name is a reference to his heart pumping HIV+ blood through his veins.
For reasons that are too convoluted to get into here the issue of HIV/AIDS has long been synonymous with international efforts to combat climate change. Particularly the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation plus (REDD+) program.
One of the big battles at the COP21 Summit that immediately followed the Paris Massacres was between the US and Brazil over whether REDD+ should be included as a funding mechanism named what has gone on to be known as the "Paris Agreement." As part of this discussion the US announced that actor Charlie Sheen is HIV+. Henceforth that part of the agreement has become known as "The Sheen Clause."
The US itself has cited the dispute with Brazil over REDD+ as one possible reason why the Paris Agreement is a failure. After all I think you can see how negotiators might have got confused during the negotiations.
Four days after the Pulse attack US Secretary of State John Kerry began a trip to the Danish Arctic to generally stare at glaciers and fraudulently promote the Paris Agreement as a way to combat climate change. At the same time Charlie Sheen has been visiting the UK and I presume other European nations to talk about his HIV diagnosis.
I can quite easily see how someone with prior knowledge of these two trips who supports global warming might get a little paranoid and start thinking the US was encouraging nations to dump the Paris Agreement in order to resume work on something that might actually combat change.
As such the Pulse attack also seemed to be a general threat to the World to ratify the Paris Agreement like good little boys and girls and not dare to mention the notion of combating climate change ever again.
I think there is at least a second part to this post. Provided the EU referendum doesn't suck up to much of my time I will try and publish that tomorrow. I'm sure you can appreciate why I really want to avoid sitting here writing during Euro 2016 matches.
As for Obama's claim that there is nothing indicating that Mateen had outside help in planning and carrying out the attack. Well I genuinely think that is an indicator that he's finally been stripped of his National Security Clearance and is therefore no longer allowed to attend briefings.
21:15 on 23/6/16 (UK date).
Wednesday, 22 June 2016
I Just Don't Get the EU Referendum
Tomorrow (23/6/16) voters in the UK will go to the polls in a referendum to decide whether to remain as members of the European Union (EU) or to leave.
This represents one of the more important decisions in British history. Certainly the most important since the UK voted to join the EU back in 1972. As something of a political blogger you would expect me to have an opinion on the issue.
The problem is. Well the first problem is that I've been extremely busy at the moment. For pretty much the last six months I've been sitting there going; "I need to do something about that tomorrow." Right before another terrorist attack or some related crisis suddenly develops. The main problem though is that I simply don't understand what all the fuss is about.
What I would have liked to have done is discuss this renegotiation agreement that British Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled back in February 2016.
I would have begun by explaining that in order to decide whether any negotiation had been a success or failure you would first have to look at what the objectives were going into that negotiation. I would then explained that this is where I find myself stuck because I genuinely have no idea what the British government has been trying to achieve when it comes to the EU.
One thing we do know for sure is that if Britain votes to remain then things will remain exactly as they are now.
An area of EU policy I have been following extremely closely is the agreement between the EU and Turkey over the migrant crisis. One thing that is obvious to all on that issue is that the agreement that was published on March 18th (18/3/16) bears absolutely no relation to the plan that has been put into action.
For example the published agreement requires that all migrants on the Greek islands go through the asylum process. Those who are successful have to be relocated from the Greek islands before the EU can start sending those who failed back to Turkey. This was completely ignored and the EU started returning migrants just two weeks later.
Therefore I think it is safe to assume that Cameron's renegotiation agreement is not worth the paper that it is written on. As such it can be completely excluded from the discussion and if you look at the discussion it is clear that it already has been.
It is the migrant deal with Turkey that has really undermined my confidence in the entire discussion surrounding the referendum debate. A key part of the deal is that Turks are to be given visa-free access to the EU. Although it is being frantically debated as I write this is expected to go into force next week.
Throughout the referendum debate whenever the Remain campaign have been asked about this issue they've replied; "Turkey won't be joining the EU." That may be the case but that's not the question that is being asked. The question being asked is whether Turkish migrants will be able to freely travel to the UK. I'm still waiting for the Remain camp to answer that question.
It is of course much harder to predict what will happen if Britain votes to leave the EU.
Due to the way in which the World has become much closely interlinked and globalised a vote to leave does not suddenly mean that the UK will end its relationship with the EU. For example the British and French military's are very closely linked together under an agreement that has nothing to do with the EU. As such a vote to leave simply means that the UK will begin to renegotiate its relationship with the EU.
This is likely to be one of the most complicated political negotiations ever seen. It took the Czech Republic and Slovakia five years to negotiate their separation and that was two federal regions attempting to separate rather one nation trying the separate from 27 others. During these negotiations you will see various complex issued being leveraged against each other.
For example the EU might be prepared to take a very tough line on the UK agreeing to the free movement of people and increased workers rights in order to reduce the tariffs UK business will have to pay to export to the EU. However that almost laughably understates the almost infinite number of variables and possible outcomes that these negotiations will produce.
As with most divorces this division of assets and discussions of visitation and access rights is likely to take place in the acrimonious atmosphere of old scores being settled.
These negotiations that will last for an absolute minimum of five years will create a lot of uncertainty. It is for this reason that many business leaders are backing the Remain camp. It has long been said that business can cope with good news and it can cope with bad news. What it cannot cope with is uncertainty. What they seem to have failed to factor into their decision though is that it is extremely unlikely that the existing trade relationship will come to an end before the new relationship is agreed.
Also the UK seems to have quite a strong hand in these negotiations.
Although it's due more to mistakes made by the EU rather than the success of British government policy the British economy is in a stronger position than the Eurozone economy. Take for example the Greek bailout. If Britain leaves the EU and takes its prime AAA credit rating with it this will cause the EU's entire credit rating to fall. That will make borrowing more expensive and there the Greek bailout less likely to succeed.
Then there is the issue of the poorer, newer EU member states such as Poland and Romania. If you take away the UK's vast contribution to the EU development funds these nations receive at the same time taking away the remittances they receive from migrants working in the UK they more or less don't have economies. As such a British exit will plunge those nations into recession bringing down the Eurozone economy as a whole.
Obviously the UK exports a lot of goods to the EU. However the EU also exports a lot of goods to the UK. With the already weak Eurozone economy being plunged into further difficulties by a British exit it is likely that the EU is going to be a lot more desperate to trade with the UK than the UK is going to be desperate to trade with the EU.
However as always in economics there is no such thing as good and bad. It really depends on your individual circumstances and how they are affected.
Therefore it seems likely that I will be voting to Leave tomorrow. However I may still change my mind at the last minute and vote to Remain.
Alternatively I might just abstain and stay at home.
13:10 on 22/6/16 (UK date).
This represents one of the more important decisions in British history. Certainly the most important since the UK voted to join the EU back in 1972. As something of a political blogger you would expect me to have an opinion on the issue.
The problem is. Well the first problem is that I've been extremely busy at the moment. For pretty much the last six months I've been sitting there going; "I need to do something about that tomorrow." Right before another terrorist attack or some related crisis suddenly develops. The main problem though is that I simply don't understand what all the fuss is about.
What I would have liked to have done is discuss this renegotiation agreement that British Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled back in February 2016.
I would have begun by explaining that in order to decide whether any negotiation had been a success or failure you would first have to look at what the objectives were going into that negotiation. I would then explained that this is where I find myself stuck because I genuinely have no idea what the British government has been trying to achieve when it comes to the EU.
One thing we do know for sure is that if Britain votes to remain then things will remain exactly as they are now.
An area of EU policy I have been following extremely closely is the agreement between the EU and Turkey over the migrant crisis. One thing that is obvious to all on that issue is that the agreement that was published on March 18th (18/3/16) bears absolutely no relation to the plan that has been put into action.
For example the published agreement requires that all migrants on the Greek islands go through the asylum process. Those who are successful have to be relocated from the Greek islands before the EU can start sending those who failed back to Turkey. This was completely ignored and the EU started returning migrants just two weeks later.
Therefore I think it is safe to assume that Cameron's renegotiation agreement is not worth the paper that it is written on. As such it can be completely excluded from the discussion and if you look at the discussion it is clear that it already has been.
It is the migrant deal with Turkey that has really undermined my confidence in the entire discussion surrounding the referendum debate. A key part of the deal is that Turks are to be given visa-free access to the EU. Although it is being frantically debated as I write this is expected to go into force next week.
Throughout the referendum debate whenever the Remain campaign have been asked about this issue they've replied; "Turkey won't be joining the EU." That may be the case but that's not the question that is being asked. The question being asked is whether Turkish migrants will be able to freely travel to the UK. I'm still waiting for the Remain camp to answer that question.
It is of course much harder to predict what will happen if Britain votes to leave the EU.
Due to the way in which the World has become much closely interlinked and globalised a vote to leave does not suddenly mean that the UK will end its relationship with the EU. For example the British and French military's are very closely linked together under an agreement that has nothing to do with the EU. As such a vote to leave simply means that the UK will begin to renegotiate its relationship with the EU.
This is likely to be one of the most complicated political negotiations ever seen. It took the Czech Republic and Slovakia five years to negotiate their separation and that was two federal regions attempting to separate rather one nation trying the separate from 27 others. During these negotiations you will see various complex issued being leveraged against each other.
For example the EU might be prepared to take a very tough line on the UK agreeing to the free movement of people and increased workers rights in order to reduce the tariffs UK business will have to pay to export to the EU. However that almost laughably understates the almost infinite number of variables and possible outcomes that these negotiations will produce.
As with most divorces this division of assets and discussions of visitation and access rights is likely to take place in the acrimonious atmosphere of old scores being settled.
These negotiations that will last for an absolute minimum of five years will create a lot of uncertainty. It is for this reason that many business leaders are backing the Remain camp. It has long been said that business can cope with good news and it can cope with bad news. What it cannot cope with is uncertainty. What they seem to have failed to factor into their decision though is that it is extremely unlikely that the existing trade relationship will come to an end before the new relationship is agreed.
Also the UK seems to have quite a strong hand in these negotiations.
Although it's due more to mistakes made by the EU rather than the success of British government policy the British economy is in a stronger position than the Eurozone economy. Take for example the Greek bailout. If Britain leaves the EU and takes its prime AAA credit rating with it this will cause the EU's entire credit rating to fall. That will make borrowing more expensive and there the Greek bailout less likely to succeed.
Then there is the issue of the poorer, newer EU member states such as Poland and Romania. If you take away the UK's vast contribution to the EU development funds these nations receive at the same time taking away the remittances they receive from migrants working in the UK they more or less don't have economies. As such a British exit will plunge those nations into recession bringing down the Eurozone economy as a whole.
Obviously the UK exports a lot of goods to the EU. However the EU also exports a lot of goods to the UK. With the already weak Eurozone economy being plunged into further difficulties by a British exit it is likely that the EU is going to be a lot more desperate to trade with the UK than the UK is going to be desperate to trade with the EU.
However as always in economics there is no such thing as good and bad. It really depends on your individual circumstances and how they are affected.
Therefore it seems likely that I will be voting to Leave tomorrow. However I may still change my mind at the last minute and vote to Remain.
Alternatively I might just abstain and stay at home.
13:10 on 22/6/16 (UK date).
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