Back From Holiday.

With the US/China talks forcing me to keep quiet for a couple of days I decided it was an opportune moment to take a break. So since my last post I've been on an exhilarating holiday to my house where the most adventurous excursion was to the fridge and the most exciting activity was sleeping. Basically I've just had that week off that most of the rest of the country took between Christmas and New Year.

Even this almost didn't get to happen because at dawn on January 20th there was a dramatic development in the Joanna Yeates murder inquiry. If you've not been following this story a young woman, Joanna Yeates went missing on December 17th from Bristol, UK. Her body was found on December 25th (Christmas day) leading to two weeks of overwhelming news coverage where we were all enthralled by the random and unanswered questions of the case such as what happened to the frozen pizza the she brought on the day she disappeared, why was one of her socks missing and most importantly who killed her. At one point her landlord, who lived in the same apartment building, was arrested and held by the police for several days before being released without charge.

At around 06:00 on January 20th the police announced that they'd arrested another man in the very early hours of that morning but refused to give any more details. This forced the media and anyone else who might be interested to risk exposing their Bristol based intelligence networks if they wanted to find out more. Clearly someone decided that the risk was worth it because it soon emerged that the new suspect was a 32 year old Dutch national with a PHD in architecture called Vincent Tabak who lived in the apartment next to Joanna Yeates. As I'm sure you all know Tabak is a Dutch word for Tobacco. Therefore the arrest was an attempt by the Brits to raise the question of what role tobacco played in the failure of the Bristol Abuse Case (BAC) with a view towards strengthening the case that smoking should be banned. Also I think it's fair to say that the phrase "Dutch Tobacco" could be considered a euphemism for cannabis. What probably fewer people know is that while I was at university I shared a house with an architecture student who would look a lot like Vincent Tabak if Vincent Tabak had a dodgy blonde dye job. Therefore the arrest was also an attempt to squeeze anything even vaguely resembling useful information out of the BAC and promote discussion about this housemate and the quality of the information he provided during the planning stages of the BAC.

Of course the fact that Mr Tabak has actually been charged with the murder is a little bit surprising. It was probably done because there are now people openly questioning whether or not the British Crown randomly kidnapped and murdered one of it's own subjects in order to justify a crime against humanity and divert attention away from events in the middle east. Having a foreign national convicted of the crime helps to suppress those questions. As to why Vincent Tabak was specifically chosen there are several possibilities;

1. Vincent Tabak is a Dutch dissident who has caused problems for the Dutch government. So having him framed for this murder and buried in a far off corner of a foreign land solves a problem for the Dutch and solves a problem for the British. I cannot over state how unlikely I think this is but if you don't think this sort of thing goes on try typing the words "Simon Chapman", "Womble" and Thessaloniki" into any Internet search engine.

2. Vincent Tabak is a Dutch spy sent to join the ever growing community of intelligence operatives in Bristol since the BAC begun. He was causing problems for the Brits so they framed him for this murder in order to take him out of the game. Again extremely unlikely because Britain and the Netherlands have enjoyed excellent diplomatic relations for the best part of 500 years. Plus even in espionage circles this is a very dramatic step to take especially with someone who appears to be so low level.

3. The Joanna Yeates murder was a joint operation between Britain and the Netherlands who most certainly gave their prior consent to the BAC. As such Vincent Tabak and the landlord, Chris Jefferies carried out the murder together but the situation evolved so someone had to take the blame it had to be the foreigner because the Brits couldn't be seen prosecuting one of their operatives for carrying out the instructions they'd given him.

Also on January 22nd nuclear talks with Iran ended without resolution or plans to hold future talks. Today (24/1) an Islamic Terrorist bomb killed at least 30 in Moscow preventing the Russian President travelling to the World Economic Forum in Davos. If I was conspiratorially minded I would think that these two events were connected.