David Cameron's Speech to the UNGA.

I have to ask did the British Prime Minister's speech to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) co-incide with lunch because otherwise it kind of looks like he got snubbed. It was though nice to see the British news media finally admit that the UNGA is currently going on. Up to now we've been fed on a diet of the largely irrelevant Liberal Democrat party conference and the sort of odd stories that normally accompany big global summits. So far I've declined to comment on these on the assumption that the busy people involved in the UNGA probably wouldn't have the time to find them on their own. However today (22/9/11) one has come up that might be worth closer attention.

Britain's Ministry of Defence (MOD) has promised to pay compensation to the victims of the Bloody Sunday massacre where they have a legal duty to do so. Of course what they're actually referring to is the second Bloody Sunday massacre when in 1972 soldiers from Britain's Parachute Regiment opened fire on a civil rights march in LondonDerry killing 14. The first Bloody Sunday massacre occurred in 1920 when British soldiers marched into the Croke Park sports stadium in Dublin in what was then occupied Ireland and indiscriminately opened fire into the crowd gathered to watch a Gaelic football match killing 31 in revenge for the killing of British spies.

The main purpose of today's announcement was to make a lot of noise and generally spread confusion but it does touch on an important point. The 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre is synonymous with the Northern Irish (NI) troubles which were ended by a peace process led by US Senator, George Mitchell. Mitchell went on to become the US' lead negotiator in the Palestinian/Israeli peace negotiations but was recently removed from the post. The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) cite Mitchell's removal as evidence that the US is not committed to meaningful negotiations between Israel and Palestine. However the main reason why Mitchell was replaced was because he is still so heavily associated with the NI process it meant that every time Britain wanted to interfere and complicate the Israel/Palestine negotiations all they needed to do was set off a bomb, shoot a police officer or provoke a big old riot in NI. So the US had to remove Mitchell in order to protect the NI peace process if nothing else.

Also I wouldn't worry too much about today's turmoil on the world's financial markets. It's all part of the US' big plan increase pressure on China which has been they're main focus this year. The idea was that by putting an incompetent in charge of the IMF the Eurozone would get worse. This would force China to intervene in order to protect it's second largest export market and the US could sit back and watch China intervening. Today's plunges have be engineered to maximise the pressure on China ahead of tomorrows speeches by both the Palestinian and Israeli leaders to the UNGA.