I have declared the first sick day of 2016. All I'm suffering from is a bit of a chill and the suggestion of a sore throat. However that's as far as I want things to progress so I'm trying to take things easy today.
It would have been nice if my immune system had checked it's diary in advance though.
Today France has marked the first anniversary of the January 7th 2015 (7/1/15) attacks on the offices of the Charlie Hebdo magazine. This was of course the start of three days of terror in Paris that culminated with attack on the Jewish Hypercacher supermarket and claimed the lives of 16 people.
Around 45 minutes after a ceremony marking the Charlie Hebdo anniversary had ended France experienced its second terror attack of 2016.
The year's first attack occurred on January 1st (1/1/16) when a Muslim man drove his car into soldiers guarding a Mosque in the southern French city of Valence.
Fortunately the soldiers were able to react quickly shooting the man meaning that only three soldiers and one Muslim passer-by who'd been attending the Mosque were injured in the attack. Only being wounded the attacker under questioning later declared that he'd carried out the attack to avenge the Muslims that French soldiers are murdering in Syria and Iraq.
Today's attack was similarly small scale with a Muslim man attempting to force his way into a police station on Paris' Goutte d'Or street armed with a meat cleaver. He was promptly shot and killed by the police. As the man was wearing a inert suicide vest with wires but no explosives the area had to be shut down until it had been cleared by the bomb squad.
Aside from the meat cleaver and the suicide vest the man was carrying with him a flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and manifesto justifying the attack - the details of which have not been released.
Displaying the extremely negative effect that US President Barack Obama and his Black Lives Matter campaign is having on the fight against terrorism French authorities still do not feel confident enough to claim that this was an ISIL inspired terror attack.
Both of these low-tech terror attacks carried out by self-radicalised lone-wolfs are almost identical to the type of attacks that Israel has been experiencing on an almost daily basis since September 2015.
Although the situations are in many ways very different both Israel and France have a large, predominately young Arab-Muslim population that does not feel as though it is part of mainstream society. This makes them extremely susceptible to the propaganda of ISIL.
Therefore I think that sadly until the international community - particularly US President Obama - gets serious about shutting down ISIL's propaganda France like Israel is just going to have to learn to live with these continuing attacks.
A prime example of how to address ISIL's propaganda is provided by the case of Junaid Hussain a British born ISIL fighter who was one of their most prolific online recruiters. However he's been remarkably quiet since August 25th (25/8/15). On account of being shot in the face.
I still think though that the best first step would be for western media outlets to stop operating as ISIL's propaganda arm. Today Britain's Sky News have provided us with a prime example of this.
The story that Sky News have been promoting all day today is of the dire humanitarian situation in the Syrian town of Madaya which sits close to the border with Lebanon less 5km (3 miles) south of the town of Zabadani and 36km (20 miles) north-west of the capital Damascus.
Sky News has - as always - been mawkishly revelling in harrowing images of extremely emaciated civilians and telling us how the residents of this Army of Conquest/Jaish al-Fatah (JAF) occupied town are being forced to eat grass, leaves and even household pets like cats. Curiously though Sky News then goes and blames of this suffering on the Syrian government.
The scenes coming out of towns like Madaya no longer shock people who have been following Syria's civil war. Nor do they provide any mystery. We've been watching scenes like this for the past five years now and we all understand the cause. Even if none of us are prepared to say it.
As I've said before the JAF coalition is made up roughly 7,000 different armed groups. Many of these function as criminal street gangs fighting over territory with populations they can tax and supply resources to for profit. Like everywhere else in the world one of the most important resource is food.
What many of the armed groups do is seize the entire food supply in an area under their control - particularly that which is given for free by international aid groups. They then restrict the supply of this food to the local population to create an artificial shortage massively driving the prices up. In Madaya 1kg (2.2lbs) of rice currently costs around USD170 whilst here in the UK is costs around USD0.75.
The armed groups then use the profits from these massively inflated profits to buy weapons and pay fighters to seize control of more areas with populations they can tax. Perversely they openly circulate this type of harrowing footage of the people they are starving to death as atrocity propaganda in the hope people will be tricked into blaming the Syrian government and giving the armed groups more aid.
The fact that previously respectable international aid agencies such as the International Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC), the UN's World Food Program (WFP) and particularly the UK's Save the Children have been prepared to supply these armed groups with free resources rather than distributing it directly to the civilian population is further evidence of how they have crossed the line from being humanitarian organisations into being happy warriors in ISIL's war machine.
Some of you may remember that in mid-September 2015 a deal was reached between the Syrian government and the JAF that would see the civilians in Zabadani and some of the surrounding villages set free.
However when the convoys arrived on September 26th (26/9/15) they were blocked by residents of towns such as Madaya and Saraqeb demanding to know why some hostages were being allowed to leave while they were being left at the mercy of the JAF.
Reacting to ill-advised comments by the US that what at that point was a Russian military build-up was a sure sign that the Syrian government would fall at any moment the JAF pulled out of the deal entirely and decided to keep all the civilians hostages.
It was this more than anything that triggered the Russian military build up to become a Russian intervention on September 30th (30/9/15).
I seem to remember Sky News and others protesting loudly against that Russian intervention. But then I suppose it was intended to deny them more snuff movies to masturbate over.
17:20 on 7/1/16 (UK date).
Edited at around 21:05 on 7/1/15 (UK date) to add;
This is probably easier than arguing with CNN's Arwa Damon directly.
As you would expect from a market controlled by armed groups that function much like street gangs the economics of food in Syria is very much like the economics of the illegal drug trade. Most people can't afford 1kg of rice in much the same way that most people can't afford a kilo of cocaine of a kilo of heroin.
However the people who are supplied with this ki's by groups such as the ICRC, WFP and Save the Children divide them down into 1g baggies that they sell daily for about USD1 per time. This provides them with a steady daily income adding up to USD1000 per kilo. As they're being supplied with the product for free this is all pure profit. Ground wheat is preferred because it can be cut with brick dust turning 1kg in 2kgs and a USD2000 per profit which is a nice new assault rifle.
Can't imagine why Obama and Black Lives Matter don't see a problem with this.
As for the rest of the diplomats and the reporters the Syria conflict really reminds me of the infamous Milgram experiments. At the start they were happy to tell the small lie that the protesters were unarmed. After 5 years of incremental increases they now seem happy to lie to starve children to death.
Thursday, 7 January 2016
Wednesday, 6 January 2016
COP21 Terrorism Update #15.
On December 12th 2015 (12/12/15) the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21)
to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)
broke up after agreeing a draft global agreement to combat climate
change.
The agreed draft was so poor that it is only since COP21 ended that discussion over what to do about it has been able to begin. Following a short break over Christmas to assess its position the US has kicked off 2016 with a comprehensive contribution to the discussion.
This has taken the form of a well regulated militia led by the son - Ammon - of somewhat famous Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy staging an occupation of the Headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the US state of Oregon.
This is intended as a protest against the conduct of the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and in particular its prosecution of two Oregon based ranchers - Steven and Dwight Jr Hammond - for arson on land that makes up part of the Malheur Refuge.
There are so many things wrong with the COP21 draft or "12/12 Atrocity" that it is hard to focus in on just one.
However much of the discussion so far has been centred on how the draft places an undue burden on less capable or developing nations by requiring them to keep a full inventory of greenhouse gas (ghg) emitters and sinks in accordance with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) standard while submitting a new Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) plan every 5 years.
This point has been illustrated by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Despite lacking a government whose writ extends across the entire country the 12/12 Atrocity requires the DRC to keep a full IPCC standard inventory of the Congo Rainforest. This is the second largest Rainforest in the World and occupies a space roughly the same size as the nation of Spain or the US state of Oregon.
Within climate change negotiations forests - particularly Rainforests - are considered hugely important. That's because at the moment roughly 20% of all the ghg emissions that are produced by things like burning fossil fuels are immediately absorbed by Rainforests rather then entering the atmosphere causing the temperature to rise.
Therefore if we could increase the amount of Rainforests - say by 20% - then we would be able to emit 20% more ghg's without changing the climate. That means rather then cutting our emissions to zero by completely eliminating fossil fuels we would only have to cut them by 80% allowing us to continue to use some fossil fuels - such as gasoline for transport - without causing climate change.
The problem is that rather then growing the amount of Rainforests is actually shrinking as people cut them down to make money off the land. Cattle ranching is a big driver of this deforestation but the Oregon ranchers made specific reference to logging and mining which are also huge drivers of deforestation.
Therefore before we start talking about increasing the amount of Rainforests we first have to protect the ones we've already got. The obvious way to do this is for governments to take control of areas of Rainforest to protect them from logging, ranching and mining. I suppose they could then name them wildlife refuges.
However this practice of governments taking over large sections of land is always complicated forcing the government to manage the demands of competing groups from the land. Often the big confrontation is between the need for conservation and the need for economic growth and the jobs that it brings.
The other big challenge is that of the rights of indigenous people to use the land in the way that ancestors have always used the lands. As I think I've mentioned before US President Obama's argument over whether we refer to Mount McKinley as "Mount McKinley" or by its indigenous name "Denali" is deeply stupid. Not least because the indigenous name for the mountain has never been "Denali."
However in many Rainforest rich nations - particularly the largest, the Amazon - you do have indigenous tribes living remotely within the forest. Some of these tribes are so remote we probably don't even know that they exist yet. As these tribes entire survival depends on the forest they have become very good at sustainably managing it with practices handed down over generations.
Obviously the government coming along and telling these tribes they've got to move off the land they lived on for thousands of years because it's becoming a wildlife reserve strikes me as deeply unfair. Also it strikes me as counter-productive to remove the people who know how to manage the forest rather then working with them to use their experience to protect the forest.
Even once you've established areas of protected forest how best to manage them is also a vast and complicated topic. Despite the best scientific research we still don't have a definitive answer and different types of forest in different areas need to be managed in different ways.
Take forest fire suppression with in the US as just a small aspect of a very large topic.
Following the Great Fire of 1910 the US Forestry Service mandated a policy of complete suppression. That meant that every forest fire that ignited had to be immediately extinguished. However it's now emerged that these small naturally occurring fires do an important job clearing plant litter - fallen leaves etc - and nourishing the soil.
The policy of complete suppression was preventing this litter clearance from taking placing causing it to build up. So where before you would have small, controllable fires in areas where they were actually helping nature instead the US now experiences massive, uncontrollable fires which threaten wildlife, human life and property. As a result the US Forestry Service is trying to move away from the complete suppression policy.
A nation which has really embraced the idea of using fire to nourish the soil is Indonesia. This leads to an annual smog across the entire region which has become notorious within UNFCCC circles.
A large part of the reason why Indonesians continue with these fires and the government is forced to defend them is the huge inertia that comes from "the way we've always done things." I suppose you could argue that the Indonesian fires are an indigenous rights issue.
The arson that the Hammond's are being imprisoned for was of plant litter in the wildlife reserve. The federal government is claiming that this traditional forest management technique increased the risk of forest fires. It would appear that the federal government is wrong although as with all geography related matters you do need the specific case study in front of you.
In the five years of negotiation prior to COP21 what was envisaged was a standardised format for INDC's. These standardised case studies would then be submitted through both an ex ante and ex post peer review process. This was intended as an extremely low cost mechanism to allow extremely intelligent people to share their best ideas in the hope of creating solutions that are greater then the sum of their parts.
In COP21's rush to get any old crap agreed this vital capacity building mechanism has been stripped out entirely in what I consider an act of mindless vandalism.
It's long been understood that the best way to resolve the competing interests between the needs to conserve forests and those who wish to use them for monetary gain is to find a way to monetise the forests. In short turn them into an economic resource that makes money without chopping them down.
Within UNFCCC negotiations there has long been two, often competing theories of how to do this.
The most well defined approach is the Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation Plus (REDD+). This is what it termed a non-market based mechanism and essentially involves nations such as the US giving nations such as Brazil large sums of money every year to establish and maintain Rainforest reserves.
The other approach is a free market based mechanism known as Carbon Trading Scheme (CTS). Essentially this involves viewing Rainforests as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) factories. If a business anywhere in the World wants to emit ghg's they must pay the owner of one these forest factories to scrub those ghg's out of the atmosphere to stop global warming. This is done through the purchasing of a carbon credit.
Obviously with such a complex problem as climate change the most successful solution is probably going to involve a bit of both approaches. However I must say that I tend to prefer the CTS approach. That's not because it's capitalist but because it better helps affirm the more dippy hippy truth that the natural environment has its own intrinsic value.
One of the big arguments at COP21 was whether REDD+ would be included in the agreement as a core method to protect Rainforests - the "Sheen Clause" as I dubbed it. The nation leading that charge to have REDD+ included was obviously Brazil which has more Rainforest then any other nation on earth. Leading the charge to have REDD+ excluded in favour of CTS was the US. Eventually Brazil won and the US lost with REDD+ being included and CTS being excluded.
What I've always found troubling about Brazil's position is that while they support REDD+ they are equally opposed to CTS which I think deprives nations of a supplementary solution.
It is very tempting to assume that Brazil is opposed to CTS because they simply don't understand how the free market principle works.
After all as part of the Cold War - specifically the School of the Americas - Brazil had a Fascist military dictatorship imposed on it by the US between 1964 and 1985. Although not Communist this type of military dictatorship is probably as far away as it's possible to get from a free society let alone a free market.
As is the case across many South American nations as a backlash to the School of the Americas voters in Brazil have tended to lean slightly to the left of centre to avoid the risk of returning to the bad old days of dictatorship. As a result "Free Market Capitalism" is still something of a dirty word.
This attitude is perhaps highlighted by the ongoing impeachment proceedings against current Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
What Rousseff is accused of doing is taking money from the oil company Petrobras and using it to prop up the national accounts to make it appear as though her governments economic policies are more effective then they actually are. This along with the fact that Petrobras is a Sate Owned Enterprise (SOE) suggests that Brazilians don't quite understand that government and private enterprise are two separate things.
Mind you the fact that Rousseff has got into trouble over this suggests that this belief isn't as widespread as it is in, say, Venezuela. As the largest nation in South America Brazil is of course expected to be mindful of the interests of its smaller neighbours in this type of negotiations.
The fact that the Brazilian President is currently involved in a corruption scandal of course makes it tempting to assume that Brazil is opposed to CTS because it's easier for them to rip-off the REDD+ donors. After all in 2010 Norway gave Indonesia USD1bn under REDD+. After banking the check Indonesia then pretty much shut down their REDD+ program and we assume spent the money on sweets.
However I think the reason why Brazil is opposed to CTS is that they understand free market economics a little too well. Under that economic model businesses are always trying to cut their costs and avoid paying bills they don't have to. In the US in particular there is still a lack of real recognition that carbon credits are a necessary cost of doing business like liability insurance or employee wages.
With the cost of carbon credits under CTS being fixed by simple supply and demand if there is no demand and a glut of supply these credits will be worthless. This will leave Brazil with no money or jobs but a huge unemployed population moving to cities to engage in drug abuse, violent crime and all the other problems associated with young men with too much time on their hands.
In the past it has been suggested that CTS wouldn't operate as a totally free market instead with a minimum carbon price. However by forcing through a non-binding agreement that he can pass through executive order US President Obama has removed any demand for carbon credits utterly destroying the CTS market.
It appears to me that the point the US is trying to make is that with it and Brazil getting bogged down in the detail of the REDD+ argument they've missed the bigger picture and the effects the draft agreement has on nations such as the DRC.
The English expression for this is; "Failing to see the wood (forest) for all the trees."
At around 18:00 on 5/1/16 (UK date) I'm only about two thirds of the way through. I may add more later but realistically I think we're looking at tomorrow.
Edited at around 15:20 on 6/1/16 (UK date) to tidy above and add;
On Tuesday (5/1/16) Brazil responded to this perceived slight by the US by announcing that the Joao Havelange stadium which is the be the centrepiece of the upcoming 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics has had its electricity and water supplies cut off over unpaid bills. This of course makes the point that in a free market capitalist system nobody can expect to be provided with a service without paying for it. As such Brazil's concerns about CTS are far from anti-capitalist or irrational.
Therefore I should point out that the general tone I got from the US announcement was to not make accusations and assign blame. Instead it was to acknowledge that mistakes had been made on all sides and asking for help to rectify them. After all it's obvious to all that the only thing that matters in US politics at the moment is whether President Obama gets to build that extension to his Presidential museum. Whether he's done the work to deserve it doesn't come into the equation.
As such the story also includes plenty of elements highlighting how Obama has turned into an ego mad tyrant rather than a credible political leader.
Throughout COP21 this point was repeatedly made through the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign particularly the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, Maryland and the Laquan McDonald case in Chicago, Illinois.
As I've mentioned numerous times before Obama's main aim of the Black Lives Matter campaign was to sweep the Democrats to control of both houses of Congress at the 2014 on a wave of anti-racist anger.
The secondary objective though was to portray all Republicans as racists in order to prevent them opposing Obama's immigration reforms. This is an attempt to gerrymander the political map of the US by planting Hispanic immigrants like seeds across various Republican states in the hope of harvesting a crop of votes at election time.
So no, it's not a mistake that I've assigned Black Lives Matter the same acronym as the Bureau of Land Management.
However the Black Lives Matter campaign was far from the first time that Obama has used the apparatus of state to silence his political opponents.
Almost immediately after taking control of the organisation in 2009 the Obama administration stopped the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) from issuing tax exempt status - Section 501(c)(4) - to groups that appeared to support a conservative or Republican agenda. This of course made it much more difficult and expensive for those groups to campaign for causes that the Obama administration disapproved of.
Various members of the IRS including Lois Lerner were later found to have lied under oath during Congressional hearings on the matter. However the Obama controlled Department of Justice (DoJ) is still refusing to take action against them.
What is highly controversial about the legal case at the heart of the Oregon protest is that the Hammonds were convicted of this questionable arson offence - was a value placed on the property destroyed? - in 2012 and sentenced to 3 months and 12 months in prison. They served those sentences and were released. It was more than 2 years later that Obama's DoJ decided to re-try them as terrorists and sentence them both to 5 years in prison.
It has long been a cornerstone of the US and many other legal systems that an individual cannot be held accountable twice for the same offence. This is known as the Double Jeopardy principle and is laid out in the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution. Two of the specific things it prohibits is retrial after conviction and multiple punishment.
By putting the Hammonds on trial for a second time and imposing a second punishment it is quite clear that the DoJ has acted wholly unlawfully in this case and has done so to punish people who hold a different political opinion.
The abuse of the legal system to silence opponents rather than as a mechanism to resolve the sort of disputes over competing claims to land use is the mark of a tyrant.
To further emphasise that point on Monday (4/1/16) police officer Micheal Slager had his bail reduced from USD1million to USD500,000 and was released from prison. Slager of course was in prison awaiting trial on a charge of murder over the death of Walter Scott on April 4th 2015 (4/4/15). This case seem to represent one the most grievous abuses of the justice system by the Obama administration.
In the US there is a common law principle known as; "The Fleeing Felon Rule." This holds that if a felon is fleeing the scene of a crime you are entitled to kill them in order to stop them. With it being clear that Mr Scott and Mr McDonald in Chicago were both felons and both fleeing the scene it is hard to understand why their deaths are being considered criminal acts.
This common law principle was tightened in Tennessee V Garner (1985) case so that a person must have an honest belief that the fleeing felon posed a serious risk to the safety of either the person chasing them or the wider public.
It is extremely difficult to prove that an honest belief does not exist and normally involves proving that there was a previous dispute between the actors before the killing had taken place and the fleeing felon rule was merely being used as an excuse to cover up a murder. There is no indication that Slager and Scott had any contact prior to the shooting. Therefore a properly directed jury has no option other then to conclude that Slager's belief was honest.
The rule was tightened again in Graham V Connor (1989) which changed the requirement for an honest belief to a reasonable belief. This means that the person not only has to have an honest belief that a risk was posed but was also acting as a reasonable person in making that assessment.
However if it is found that the individuals belief was honest but unreasonable they cannot be convicted of murder. Instead they can only be convicted of manslaughter by way on imperfect self-defence.
We have video of Scott snatching a weapon from Slager - making him both armed and dangerous - and then turning to flee. I think a properly directed jury would find it extremely difficult to conclude that it was unreasonable for Slager not to notice that the weapon had slipped from Scott's hand during the heat of a hot pursuit.
As such the murder charge against Slager is completely unsustainable under law and even the lesser charge of manslaughter doesn't seem to have a realistic chance of success.
It appears that prosecutors are aware of this so have decided to punish Slager before his trial and inevitable acquittal. They've done this by repeatedly denying him access to legal counsel in defiance of the 6th Amendment and by setting his bail so unreasonably high that he has been forced to spend nearly 9 months in prison without being convicted of any crime.
This has a direct bearing on the Dylann Roof case. If the people that Roof is alleged to have killed in the Mother Emanuel AME Church had engaged in activity to intimidate South Carolina to abuse the rule of law in the Slager case then Roof's actions in killing them was not criminal. Rather then being imprisoned - again without conviction or access to proper legal counsel - he should be commended for his service to society.
In an interesting development the Republican Party have nominated South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to give the parties response to President Obama's final State of the Union (SOTU) address next Tuesday (12/1/16).
This is unusual because Ms Haley is a state Governor rather than a national Congresswoman. She appears to have been chosen so we can discuss whether she has gone along with Obama's tyranny because she believes in it or out of fear she'd be the next one subjected to it.
In response to the Oregon protest Black Lives Matter - whose favoured tactics include occupations, arson and the occasional shooting - have all lined up on Twitter to confess to the World that they are indeed terrorists and need to be punished.
It is a worry that Anonymous seem to think that trolling was invented with the Internet.
The agreed draft was so poor that it is only since COP21 ended that discussion over what to do about it has been able to begin. Following a short break over Christmas to assess its position the US has kicked off 2016 with a comprehensive contribution to the discussion.
This has taken the form of a well regulated militia led by the son - Ammon - of somewhat famous Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy staging an occupation of the Headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in the US state of Oregon.
This is intended as a protest against the conduct of the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and in particular its prosecution of two Oregon based ranchers - Steven and Dwight Jr Hammond - for arson on land that makes up part of the Malheur Refuge.
There are so many things wrong with the COP21 draft or "12/12 Atrocity" that it is hard to focus in on just one.
However much of the discussion so far has been centred on how the draft places an undue burden on less capable or developing nations by requiring them to keep a full inventory of greenhouse gas (ghg) emitters and sinks in accordance with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) standard while submitting a new Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) plan every 5 years.
This point has been illustrated by the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Despite lacking a government whose writ extends across the entire country the 12/12 Atrocity requires the DRC to keep a full IPCC standard inventory of the Congo Rainforest. This is the second largest Rainforest in the World and occupies a space roughly the same size as the nation of Spain or the US state of Oregon.
Within climate change negotiations forests - particularly Rainforests - are considered hugely important. That's because at the moment roughly 20% of all the ghg emissions that are produced by things like burning fossil fuels are immediately absorbed by Rainforests rather then entering the atmosphere causing the temperature to rise.
Therefore if we could increase the amount of Rainforests - say by 20% - then we would be able to emit 20% more ghg's without changing the climate. That means rather then cutting our emissions to zero by completely eliminating fossil fuels we would only have to cut them by 80% allowing us to continue to use some fossil fuels - such as gasoline for transport - without causing climate change.
The problem is that rather then growing the amount of Rainforests is actually shrinking as people cut them down to make money off the land. Cattle ranching is a big driver of this deforestation but the Oregon ranchers made specific reference to logging and mining which are also huge drivers of deforestation.
Therefore before we start talking about increasing the amount of Rainforests we first have to protect the ones we've already got. The obvious way to do this is for governments to take control of areas of Rainforest to protect them from logging, ranching and mining. I suppose they could then name them wildlife refuges.
However this practice of governments taking over large sections of land is always complicated forcing the government to manage the demands of competing groups from the land. Often the big confrontation is between the need for conservation and the need for economic growth and the jobs that it brings.
The other big challenge is that of the rights of indigenous people to use the land in the way that ancestors have always used the lands. As I think I've mentioned before US President Obama's argument over whether we refer to Mount McKinley as "Mount McKinley" or by its indigenous name "Denali" is deeply stupid. Not least because the indigenous name for the mountain has never been "Denali."
However in many Rainforest rich nations - particularly the largest, the Amazon - you do have indigenous tribes living remotely within the forest. Some of these tribes are so remote we probably don't even know that they exist yet. As these tribes entire survival depends on the forest they have become very good at sustainably managing it with practices handed down over generations.
Obviously the government coming along and telling these tribes they've got to move off the land they lived on for thousands of years because it's becoming a wildlife reserve strikes me as deeply unfair. Also it strikes me as counter-productive to remove the people who know how to manage the forest rather then working with them to use their experience to protect the forest.
Even once you've established areas of protected forest how best to manage them is also a vast and complicated topic. Despite the best scientific research we still don't have a definitive answer and different types of forest in different areas need to be managed in different ways.
Take forest fire suppression with in the US as just a small aspect of a very large topic.
Following the Great Fire of 1910 the US Forestry Service mandated a policy of complete suppression. That meant that every forest fire that ignited had to be immediately extinguished. However it's now emerged that these small naturally occurring fires do an important job clearing plant litter - fallen leaves etc - and nourishing the soil.
The policy of complete suppression was preventing this litter clearance from taking placing causing it to build up. So where before you would have small, controllable fires in areas where they were actually helping nature instead the US now experiences massive, uncontrollable fires which threaten wildlife, human life and property. As a result the US Forestry Service is trying to move away from the complete suppression policy.
A nation which has really embraced the idea of using fire to nourish the soil is Indonesia. This leads to an annual smog across the entire region which has become notorious within UNFCCC circles.
A large part of the reason why Indonesians continue with these fires and the government is forced to defend them is the huge inertia that comes from "the way we've always done things." I suppose you could argue that the Indonesian fires are an indigenous rights issue.
The arson that the Hammond's are being imprisoned for was of plant litter in the wildlife reserve. The federal government is claiming that this traditional forest management technique increased the risk of forest fires. It would appear that the federal government is wrong although as with all geography related matters you do need the specific case study in front of you.
In the five years of negotiation prior to COP21 what was envisaged was a standardised format for INDC's. These standardised case studies would then be submitted through both an ex ante and ex post peer review process. This was intended as an extremely low cost mechanism to allow extremely intelligent people to share their best ideas in the hope of creating solutions that are greater then the sum of their parts.
In COP21's rush to get any old crap agreed this vital capacity building mechanism has been stripped out entirely in what I consider an act of mindless vandalism.
It's long been understood that the best way to resolve the competing interests between the needs to conserve forests and those who wish to use them for monetary gain is to find a way to monetise the forests. In short turn them into an economic resource that makes money without chopping them down.
Within UNFCCC negotiations there has long been two, often competing theories of how to do this.
The most well defined approach is the Reducing Emissions through Deforestation and Degradation Plus (REDD+). This is what it termed a non-market based mechanism and essentially involves nations such as the US giving nations such as Brazil large sums of money every year to establish and maintain Rainforest reserves.
The other approach is a free market based mechanism known as Carbon Trading Scheme (CTS). Essentially this involves viewing Rainforests as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) factories. If a business anywhere in the World wants to emit ghg's they must pay the owner of one these forest factories to scrub those ghg's out of the atmosphere to stop global warming. This is done through the purchasing of a carbon credit.
Obviously with such a complex problem as climate change the most successful solution is probably going to involve a bit of both approaches. However I must say that I tend to prefer the CTS approach. That's not because it's capitalist but because it better helps affirm the more dippy hippy truth that the natural environment has its own intrinsic value.
One of the big arguments at COP21 was whether REDD+ would be included in the agreement as a core method to protect Rainforests - the "Sheen Clause" as I dubbed it. The nation leading that charge to have REDD+ included was obviously Brazil which has more Rainforest then any other nation on earth. Leading the charge to have REDD+ excluded in favour of CTS was the US. Eventually Brazil won and the US lost with REDD+ being included and CTS being excluded.
What I've always found troubling about Brazil's position is that while they support REDD+ they are equally opposed to CTS which I think deprives nations of a supplementary solution.
It is very tempting to assume that Brazil is opposed to CTS because they simply don't understand how the free market principle works.
After all as part of the Cold War - specifically the School of the Americas - Brazil had a Fascist military dictatorship imposed on it by the US between 1964 and 1985. Although not Communist this type of military dictatorship is probably as far away as it's possible to get from a free society let alone a free market.
As is the case across many South American nations as a backlash to the School of the Americas voters in Brazil have tended to lean slightly to the left of centre to avoid the risk of returning to the bad old days of dictatorship. As a result "Free Market Capitalism" is still something of a dirty word.
This attitude is perhaps highlighted by the ongoing impeachment proceedings against current Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
What Rousseff is accused of doing is taking money from the oil company Petrobras and using it to prop up the national accounts to make it appear as though her governments economic policies are more effective then they actually are. This along with the fact that Petrobras is a Sate Owned Enterprise (SOE) suggests that Brazilians don't quite understand that government and private enterprise are two separate things.
Mind you the fact that Rousseff has got into trouble over this suggests that this belief isn't as widespread as it is in, say, Venezuela. As the largest nation in South America Brazil is of course expected to be mindful of the interests of its smaller neighbours in this type of negotiations.
The fact that the Brazilian President is currently involved in a corruption scandal of course makes it tempting to assume that Brazil is opposed to CTS because it's easier for them to rip-off the REDD+ donors. After all in 2010 Norway gave Indonesia USD1bn under REDD+. After banking the check Indonesia then pretty much shut down their REDD+ program and we assume spent the money on sweets.
However I think the reason why Brazil is opposed to CTS is that they understand free market economics a little too well. Under that economic model businesses are always trying to cut their costs and avoid paying bills they don't have to. In the US in particular there is still a lack of real recognition that carbon credits are a necessary cost of doing business like liability insurance or employee wages.
With the cost of carbon credits under CTS being fixed by simple supply and demand if there is no demand and a glut of supply these credits will be worthless. This will leave Brazil with no money or jobs but a huge unemployed population moving to cities to engage in drug abuse, violent crime and all the other problems associated with young men with too much time on their hands.
In the past it has been suggested that CTS wouldn't operate as a totally free market instead with a minimum carbon price. However by forcing through a non-binding agreement that he can pass through executive order US President Obama has removed any demand for carbon credits utterly destroying the CTS market.
It appears to me that the point the US is trying to make is that with it and Brazil getting bogged down in the detail of the REDD+ argument they've missed the bigger picture and the effects the draft agreement has on nations such as the DRC.
The English expression for this is; "Failing to see the wood (forest) for all the trees."
At around 18:00 on 5/1/16 (UK date) I'm only about two thirds of the way through. I may add more later but realistically I think we're looking at tomorrow.
Edited at around 15:20 on 6/1/16 (UK date) to tidy above and add;
On Tuesday (5/1/16) Brazil responded to this perceived slight by the US by announcing that the Joao Havelange stadium which is the be the centrepiece of the upcoming 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics has had its electricity and water supplies cut off over unpaid bills. This of course makes the point that in a free market capitalist system nobody can expect to be provided with a service without paying for it. As such Brazil's concerns about CTS are far from anti-capitalist or irrational.
Therefore I should point out that the general tone I got from the US announcement was to not make accusations and assign blame. Instead it was to acknowledge that mistakes had been made on all sides and asking for help to rectify them. After all it's obvious to all that the only thing that matters in US politics at the moment is whether President Obama gets to build that extension to his Presidential museum. Whether he's done the work to deserve it doesn't come into the equation.
As such the story also includes plenty of elements highlighting how Obama has turned into an ego mad tyrant rather than a credible political leader.
Throughout COP21 this point was repeatedly made through the Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign particularly the Freddie Gray case in Baltimore, Maryland and the Laquan McDonald case in Chicago, Illinois.
As I've mentioned numerous times before Obama's main aim of the Black Lives Matter campaign was to sweep the Democrats to control of both houses of Congress at the 2014 on a wave of anti-racist anger.
The secondary objective though was to portray all Republicans as racists in order to prevent them opposing Obama's immigration reforms. This is an attempt to gerrymander the political map of the US by planting Hispanic immigrants like seeds across various Republican states in the hope of harvesting a crop of votes at election time.
So no, it's not a mistake that I've assigned Black Lives Matter the same acronym as the Bureau of Land Management.
However the Black Lives Matter campaign was far from the first time that Obama has used the apparatus of state to silence his political opponents.
Almost immediately after taking control of the organisation in 2009 the Obama administration stopped the Inland Revenue Service (IRS) from issuing tax exempt status - Section 501(c)(4) - to groups that appeared to support a conservative or Republican agenda. This of course made it much more difficult and expensive for those groups to campaign for causes that the Obama administration disapproved of.
Various members of the IRS including Lois Lerner were later found to have lied under oath during Congressional hearings on the matter. However the Obama controlled Department of Justice (DoJ) is still refusing to take action against them.
What is highly controversial about the legal case at the heart of the Oregon protest is that the Hammonds were convicted of this questionable arson offence - was a value placed on the property destroyed? - in 2012 and sentenced to 3 months and 12 months in prison. They served those sentences and were released. It was more than 2 years later that Obama's DoJ decided to re-try them as terrorists and sentence them both to 5 years in prison.
It has long been a cornerstone of the US and many other legal systems that an individual cannot be held accountable twice for the same offence. This is known as the Double Jeopardy principle and is laid out in the 5th Amendment to the US Constitution. Two of the specific things it prohibits is retrial after conviction and multiple punishment.
By putting the Hammonds on trial for a second time and imposing a second punishment it is quite clear that the DoJ has acted wholly unlawfully in this case and has done so to punish people who hold a different political opinion.
The abuse of the legal system to silence opponents rather than as a mechanism to resolve the sort of disputes over competing claims to land use is the mark of a tyrant.
To further emphasise that point on Monday (4/1/16) police officer Micheal Slager had his bail reduced from USD1million to USD500,000 and was released from prison. Slager of course was in prison awaiting trial on a charge of murder over the death of Walter Scott on April 4th 2015 (4/4/15). This case seem to represent one the most grievous abuses of the justice system by the Obama administration.
In the US there is a common law principle known as; "The Fleeing Felon Rule." This holds that if a felon is fleeing the scene of a crime you are entitled to kill them in order to stop them. With it being clear that Mr Scott and Mr McDonald in Chicago were both felons and both fleeing the scene it is hard to understand why their deaths are being considered criminal acts.
This common law principle was tightened in Tennessee V Garner (1985) case so that a person must have an honest belief that the fleeing felon posed a serious risk to the safety of either the person chasing them or the wider public.
It is extremely difficult to prove that an honest belief does not exist and normally involves proving that there was a previous dispute between the actors before the killing had taken place and the fleeing felon rule was merely being used as an excuse to cover up a murder. There is no indication that Slager and Scott had any contact prior to the shooting. Therefore a properly directed jury has no option other then to conclude that Slager's belief was honest.
The rule was tightened again in Graham V Connor (1989) which changed the requirement for an honest belief to a reasonable belief. This means that the person not only has to have an honest belief that a risk was posed but was also acting as a reasonable person in making that assessment.
However if it is found that the individuals belief was honest but unreasonable they cannot be convicted of murder. Instead they can only be convicted of manslaughter by way on imperfect self-defence.
We have video of Scott snatching a weapon from Slager - making him both armed and dangerous - and then turning to flee. I think a properly directed jury would find it extremely difficult to conclude that it was unreasonable for Slager not to notice that the weapon had slipped from Scott's hand during the heat of a hot pursuit.
As such the murder charge against Slager is completely unsustainable under law and even the lesser charge of manslaughter doesn't seem to have a realistic chance of success.
It appears that prosecutors are aware of this so have decided to punish Slager before his trial and inevitable acquittal. They've done this by repeatedly denying him access to legal counsel in defiance of the 6th Amendment and by setting his bail so unreasonably high that he has been forced to spend nearly 9 months in prison without being convicted of any crime.
This has a direct bearing on the Dylann Roof case. If the people that Roof is alleged to have killed in the Mother Emanuel AME Church had engaged in activity to intimidate South Carolina to abuse the rule of law in the Slager case then Roof's actions in killing them was not criminal. Rather then being imprisoned - again without conviction or access to proper legal counsel - he should be commended for his service to society.
In an interesting development the Republican Party have nominated South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to give the parties response to President Obama's final State of the Union (SOTU) address next Tuesday (12/1/16).
This is unusual because Ms Haley is a state Governor rather than a national Congresswoman. She appears to have been chosen so we can discuss whether she has gone along with Obama's tyranny because she believes in it or out of fear she'd be the next one subjected to it.
In response to the Oregon protest Black Lives Matter - whose favoured tactics include occupations, arson and the occasional shooting - have all lined up on Twitter to confess to the World that they are indeed terrorists and need to be punished.
It is a worry that Anonymous seem to think that trolling was invented with the Internet.
Tuesday, 5 January 2016
B*llocks to it: Here's CBBUK.
Or at least it is until I get bored.
Here in the UK we have a show called "Celebrity Big Brother (CBB)." Based on an idea by the Dutch TV company "Endemol" this sees a number of what are politely termed "celebrities" locked in a house for around a month so the shows production company can mess with their heads for our viewing pleasure.
As you may have suspected I am rather interesting in this grand spectacle of people watching. So much so the fact that I've not been able to watch the previous two (2015) seasons due to the ongoing war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has been a source of great personal anguish,
However rather then being respectful of that the producers of the season which has started this evening have decided to get drunk and start a fight.
This has taken the form of booking American no-mark Jonathan Cheban simply because he is a celebrity friend of Kim Kardashian. As I am apparently Twitter friends with Kim Kardashian I am no doubt going to get no end of earache from her to blog about how Mr - I've forgotten his name already - is doing on the show.
I think though we should all support Mr Cheban because no matter how early he gets voted off the show he has already agreed to donate twice his appearance fee to a good cause. I suggest something to do with Syrian refugees.
The CBB producers will of course argue that they are already attempting to support a good cause in the form of Daniella Westbrook.
For those not familiar Ms Westbrook she was moderately famous in the mid-1990's in the BBC soap-opera "Eastenders." This modicum of fame led to her snorting so much cocaine that her nose (septum) literally fell out. This was just the start of a downfall that saw her going bankrupt numerous times and accidentally giving birth to various children by various different fathers.
In order to pay off massive debts Ms Westbrook tried to appear on the January 2015 season of CBB but failed the psychological assessment. I'm not saying that the CBB psychological assessment sets a really low bar but in that season they let in Jeremy Jackson only for him to have a complete meltdown sexually assaulting a fellow contestant and being deported from the country in disgrace.
However they still took one look at Daniella Westbrook and went; "No."
Therefore I think we should be grateful that in the ensuing 12 months Ms Westbrook has now recovered to the point that the show's medics have been prepared to give her a chance. Not least because the fact she's decided to attend dressed as Rita Ora suggests that as the bitchiness of "Dry January" rises we might get to witness a full blown psychotic episode live on screen.
As for the rest of them we've got;
Gemma Collins: A fat blonde waste of oxygen from a structured reality show known as "The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE)." I don't watch it myself but I gather that amongst the lonely fat women who watch the show in between shovelling handfuls of crisps (chips) into their mouths she is considered something of a hero.
Therefore the producers have decided to include her in the hope of depriving some of those poor souls of their money much the same way as Ms Collins has decided to do with her odious plus size fashion line.
Seriously I have to Remember All These Names: The Gemma Collins model has been followed with:
Some skinny bint for the structured reality show "Love Island." - She looks a bit like that Vikky Pattison girl who won the most recent season of "I'm a Celebrity." She may get her tits out but I doubt it.
Some skinny bint from the soap-opera "Hollyoaks" who got fired for being too drunk to work. She may get her tits out but see above.
One of the boys of the structured reality show "Geordie Shore." That Pattison girl was also in Geordie Shore so clearly there's money in it. However if I found myself living in Newcastle I'd be saving every penny to escape to somewhere nice. Like Syria.
Some Irish shite who claims to be a male model. However his decision to have a butterfly tattooed on his throat indicates indicates that he has so little understanding of the visual arts that as soon as the first wrinkle appears he's done. He's apparently already been reduced to appearing of CBB.
Tiffany Pollard: Another of the US impositions Ms Pollard is apparently famous for appearing on the US structured reality show "The Flava of Love."
This is a show centred around William Jonathan Drayton Jr (AKA: Flava Flav) who is a crack cocaine addict from the streets of New York City.
Unfortunately he grew up around four talented friends - Carlton Douglas Ridenhour (AKA: Chuck D), Richard Griffin (AKA: Professor Griff), Khari Wynn and Lord Aswod (AKA: DJ Lord) - who allowed him to ride along in their popular hip-hop band "Public Enemy." This enabled Mr Drayton Jr to buy and smoke a lot more crack.
After soiling himself many times the US VH1 network decided to pay Mr Drayton Jr to appear on the Flava of Love show alongside Ms Pollard. Unfortunately this just provided him with more money to buy and smoke a lot more crack.
Therefore Ms Pollards role in CBB is that of a crack whore with a bad weave.
Demonstrating that if US President Obama wishes to export his Black Lies Matter campaign internationally he may meet resistance we also have Winston McKenzie.
Mr McKenzie is somewhat notorious around my local area. He first rose to prominence in as a somewhat promising middle-weight boxer. After being forced to retire he ran a pub and boxing gym on behalf of his older brother Clinton McKenzie. I believe it was known and the "William IV" but being indigenous I always knew it as; "The blue one, opposite Thornton Heath clocktower."
This pub was of course a front for the sale of cocaine in various forms. The trainee boxers were of course muscle to enforce debts. Eventually it got to the point they were selling crack cocaine openly on the street outside which triggered a lot of local protest.
However the police always responded; "They pay their dues to the Whitgift Estate, so what can we do?!"
Eventually though the protests forced the police to raid the pub where they found a lot of cocaine but just one, half-empty , 24 bottle case of Stella Artois beer. This prompted the building to be seized and in a sop to the protests they knocked it down and built a police station on the site.
This is where the infamous Bensham Manor Safer Neighbourhoods Team (SNT) is currently based. However you'd struggle to notice because it's covered in apartments who all pay much bigger dues to the Whitgift Estate.
Rather proving that we never stop paying dues to the Crown Mr McKenzie is probably most recently famous as a candidate for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).
I think the dynamic between McKenzie, Pollard and Westbrook could prove interesting.
The Intelligentsia: Amid the drop outs and wash outs there is a small group of quality on CBB. This includes;
Kristina Rihanoff - A classically trained Russian dancer off of "Strictly Come Dancing." If I need to say more the BBC's Strictly is a desperate attempt to get the dole scum who watch ITV's "X-Factor" interested in something at least resembling culture. I really missed the last season but apparently ISIL just aren't that into dancing.
David Gest - Apparently auditioning for the role of the World's biggest Jew Gest is the former manager of Liza Minnelli and close, personal friend of Micheal Jackson while that vile paedophile was being separated from his money. As a result there's clearly more going on in that brain then the awful plastic surgery would suggest.
Angie Bowie - Former wife and manger of pop-star David Bowie who now works as a journalist she clearly knows the business.
Nancy Dell'olio - Probably most famous as Sven Goren Erikisson I gather she is also an internationally certified trade lawyer who speaks four languages. So not stupid if more than a little needy.
It will be interesting to see who is brought into the Intelligentsia's sphere influence. I think the most likely candidates are;
John Partridge: A super gay actor who resembles Dr Christian Jessen from the Channel 4 show "Embarrassing Bodies." Made famous from a stint in Eastenders playing the illicit gay lover of a Muslim man he is no doubt well versed in the legend of Ms Westbook's downfall.
Darren Day: A journey man of the UK entertainment industry he has done everything from musical theatre to pantomime, daytime presenting and serious(ish) acting. He used to date Isla Fisher the Australian born actress who is no doubt grateful that her current husband - Sacha Baron Cohen - was prepared to donate USD1m to Syrian refugees partly in her name.
It turns out writing about it is nowhere near as boring as actually watching it.
00:35 on 6/1/16 (UK date).
Here in the UK we have a show called "Celebrity Big Brother (CBB)." Based on an idea by the Dutch TV company "Endemol" this sees a number of what are politely termed "celebrities" locked in a house for around a month so the shows production company can mess with their heads for our viewing pleasure.
As you may have suspected I am rather interesting in this grand spectacle of people watching. So much so the fact that I've not been able to watch the previous two (2015) seasons due to the ongoing war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has been a source of great personal anguish,
However rather then being respectful of that the producers of the season which has started this evening have decided to get drunk and start a fight.
This has taken the form of booking American no-mark Jonathan Cheban simply because he is a celebrity friend of Kim Kardashian. As I am apparently Twitter friends with Kim Kardashian I am no doubt going to get no end of earache from her to blog about how Mr - I've forgotten his name already - is doing on the show.
I think though we should all support Mr Cheban because no matter how early he gets voted off the show he has already agreed to donate twice his appearance fee to a good cause. I suggest something to do with Syrian refugees.
The CBB producers will of course argue that they are already attempting to support a good cause in the form of Daniella Westbrook.
For those not familiar Ms Westbrook she was moderately famous in the mid-1990's in the BBC soap-opera "Eastenders." This modicum of fame led to her snorting so much cocaine that her nose (septum) literally fell out. This was just the start of a downfall that saw her going bankrupt numerous times and accidentally giving birth to various children by various different fathers.
In order to pay off massive debts Ms Westbrook tried to appear on the January 2015 season of CBB but failed the psychological assessment. I'm not saying that the CBB psychological assessment sets a really low bar but in that season they let in Jeremy Jackson only for him to have a complete meltdown sexually assaulting a fellow contestant and being deported from the country in disgrace.
However they still took one look at Daniella Westbrook and went; "No."
Therefore I think we should be grateful that in the ensuing 12 months Ms Westbrook has now recovered to the point that the show's medics have been prepared to give her a chance. Not least because the fact she's decided to attend dressed as Rita Ora suggests that as the bitchiness of "Dry January" rises we might get to witness a full blown psychotic episode live on screen.
As for the rest of them we've got;
Gemma Collins: A fat blonde waste of oxygen from a structured reality show known as "The Only Way Is Essex (TOWIE)." I don't watch it myself but I gather that amongst the lonely fat women who watch the show in between shovelling handfuls of crisps (chips) into their mouths she is considered something of a hero.
Therefore the producers have decided to include her in the hope of depriving some of those poor souls of their money much the same way as Ms Collins has decided to do with her odious plus size fashion line.
Seriously I have to Remember All These Names: The Gemma Collins model has been followed with:
Some skinny bint for the structured reality show "Love Island." - She looks a bit like that Vikky Pattison girl who won the most recent season of "I'm a Celebrity." She may get her tits out but I doubt it.
Some skinny bint from the soap-opera "Hollyoaks" who got fired for being too drunk to work. She may get her tits out but see above.
One of the boys of the structured reality show "Geordie Shore." That Pattison girl was also in Geordie Shore so clearly there's money in it. However if I found myself living in Newcastle I'd be saving every penny to escape to somewhere nice. Like Syria.
Some Irish shite who claims to be a male model. However his decision to have a butterfly tattooed on his throat indicates indicates that he has so little understanding of the visual arts that as soon as the first wrinkle appears he's done. He's apparently already been reduced to appearing of CBB.
Tiffany Pollard: Another of the US impositions Ms Pollard is apparently famous for appearing on the US structured reality show "The Flava of Love."
This is a show centred around William Jonathan Drayton Jr (AKA: Flava Flav) who is a crack cocaine addict from the streets of New York City.
Unfortunately he grew up around four talented friends - Carlton Douglas Ridenhour (AKA: Chuck D), Richard Griffin (AKA: Professor Griff), Khari Wynn and Lord Aswod (AKA: DJ Lord) - who allowed him to ride along in their popular hip-hop band "Public Enemy." This enabled Mr Drayton Jr to buy and smoke a lot more crack.
After soiling himself many times the US VH1 network decided to pay Mr Drayton Jr to appear on the Flava of Love show alongside Ms Pollard. Unfortunately this just provided him with more money to buy and smoke a lot more crack.
Therefore Ms Pollards role in CBB is that of a crack whore with a bad weave.
Demonstrating that if US President Obama wishes to export his Black Lies Matter campaign internationally he may meet resistance we also have Winston McKenzie.
Mr McKenzie is somewhat notorious around my local area. He first rose to prominence in as a somewhat promising middle-weight boxer. After being forced to retire he ran a pub and boxing gym on behalf of his older brother Clinton McKenzie. I believe it was known and the "William IV" but being indigenous I always knew it as; "The blue one, opposite Thornton Heath clocktower."
This pub was of course a front for the sale of cocaine in various forms. The trainee boxers were of course muscle to enforce debts. Eventually it got to the point they were selling crack cocaine openly on the street outside which triggered a lot of local protest.
However the police always responded; "They pay their dues to the Whitgift Estate, so what can we do?!"
Eventually though the protests forced the police to raid the pub where they found a lot of cocaine but just one, half-empty , 24 bottle case of Stella Artois beer. This prompted the building to be seized and in a sop to the protests they knocked it down and built a police station on the site.
This is where the infamous Bensham Manor Safer Neighbourhoods Team (SNT) is currently based. However you'd struggle to notice because it's covered in apartments who all pay much bigger dues to the Whitgift Estate.
Rather proving that we never stop paying dues to the Crown Mr McKenzie is probably most recently famous as a candidate for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).
I think the dynamic between McKenzie, Pollard and Westbrook could prove interesting.
The Intelligentsia: Amid the drop outs and wash outs there is a small group of quality on CBB. This includes;
Kristina Rihanoff - A classically trained Russian dancer off of "Strictly Come Dancing." If I need to say more the BBC's Strictly is a desperate attempt to get the dole scum who watch ITV's "X-Factor" interested in something at least resembling culture. I really missed the last season but apparently ISIL just aren't that into dancing.
David Gest - Apparently auditioning for the role of the World's biggest Jew Gest is the former manager of Liza Minnelli and close, personal friend of Micheal Jackson while that vile paedophile was being separated from his money. As a result there's clearly more going on in that brain then the awful plastic surgery would suggest.
Angie Bowie - Former wife and manger of pop-star David Bowie who now works as a journalist she clearly knows the business.
Nancy Dell'olio - Probably most famous as Sven Goren Erikisson I gather she is also an internationally certified trade lawyer who speaks four languages. So not stupid if more than a little needy.
It will be interesting to see who is brought into the Intelligentsia's sphere influence. I think the most likely candidates are;
John Partridge: A super gay actor who resembles Dr Christian Jessen from the Channel 4 show "Embarrassing Bodies." Made famous from a stint in Eastenders playing the illicit gay lover of a Muslim man he is no doubt well versed in the legend of Ms Westbook's downfall.
Darren Day: A journey man of the UK entertainment industry he has done everything from musical theatre to pantomime, daytime presenting and serious(ish) acting. He used to date Isla Fisher the Australian born actress who is no doubt grateful that her current husband - Sacha Baron Cohen - was prepared to donate USD1m to Syrian refugees partly in her name.
It turns out writing about it is nowhere near as boring as actually watching it.
00:35 on 6/1/16 (UK date).
Monday, 4 January 2016
The Tel Aviv Shooting.
On Friday (1/1/16) a gunman opened fire on a bar in the Israeli capital Tel Aviv killing two and injuring seven.
I was tempted to title this post; "The Israel Terror Attack." However with terror attacks seeming to take place several times a week in Israel that is a statement that seems to have lost all meaning. To understand why this particular attack was different though you have to go back to the events of July 31st 2015 (31/7/15).
That was the night that two family homes were set ablaze in the Palestinian village of Douma near Nablus on the West Bank. The fire completely destroyed the buildings and seriously injured two members the Dawabsheh family who were in one of the homes. The fire also killed the mother Reham Dawabsheh and her 18 month old son Ali Saad Dawabsheh.
Due to anti-Muslim and pro-Jewish graffiti painted in Hebrew at the scene it is widely suspected that this was yet another "Price-Tag" attack intended to force Palestinians from their homes to make way for illegal Jewish settlements.
This particular attack though was so shocking that it provoked international outrage. It also triggered a lot of outrage within Israel and unusually the Israeli authorities immediately set about prosecuting the suspected Jewish attackers to the full extent of the law.
However the phrase; "The Full Extent of the Law" means something different in Israel then it does in, say, the UK or the US. In Israel it means indefinite administrative detention without trial and "enhanced interrogation."
Exactly how far the Israelis go with their interrogation has long been a contentious subject. The Palestinians maintain that it constitutes torture while the Israelis insist that it goes right up to the line of what is internationally considered torture without ever crossing it.
Without the big press conference announcing that prosecutors were seeking charges, the big press conference announcing that the Grand Jury had issued indictments or the media spectacle of a trial many people aren't aware of the level of action the Israelis took against the Douma suspects.
Their supporters certainly did notice and have been aggressively protesting the treatment of their heroes. On one occasion in particular they staged a piece of street theatre in the normally quite liberal Tel Aviv in which one of them was chained to a bed frame and beaten as they claim was happening to the Douma suspects.
Matters in what has been a big and long running story in Israel when in mid-December a video of the wedding of the brother of one of the Douma suspects was broadcast by the Israeli media.
The video showed wedding guests celebrating the Douma attack by dressing up in masks an re-creating it with guns and firebombs. The highlight of the 'celebration' was the groom stabbing a photograph of Ali Saad Dawabsheh with a knife.
I would say that the bar attacked on Friday (1/1/16) was in Tel Aviv's gay district. However the point is that Tel Aviv is so tolerant of gay rights that it doesn't really have a gay district. Instead all the bars, hotels and business just welcome gay customers just the same as everybody else.
Although they mark the internationally recognised, secular New Year Jewish Israelis only tend to really celebrate the religious Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah). In 2015 that occurred on September 13th/14th and marked the start of the year 5776.
However the bars and clubs in Tel Aviv all celebrated the secular New Year with parties and special events. The specific bar that was attacked was no doubt full of people nursing hangovers and comedowns as they were across much of the world.
Therefore as soon as the attack took place pretty much everyone - including the first responders - just assumed that it had been carried out by Jewish settlers as revenge against the treatment of the Douma suspects and punishment for the godless gays loving Jews for not being religious enough.
It turns out though that the attack was just another one carried out by an Israeli Arab. That suspected attacker has been identified as 19 year old Nashat Melhem but is still on the run creating fear that he may attack again. With Israel Arabs attacking Jews several times a week at the moment I wouldn't think that there is one more out there would be considered much out of the ordinary. However this particular story seems to have run and run.
A large part of the reason for this is that because a firearm was involved the attack was slightly different than all the knife and run-over terror attacks. This gives people something new to talk about.
However I think the story also highlights how this current wave of Palestinian terror has been heavily influenced by US President Barack Obama. Particularly his Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign and his response to the February 10th 2015 (10/2/15) Chapel Hill shooting.
Immediately after one of these attacks occur either the attackers family or someone from the Palestinian community come forward and announce that they were a good boy who didn't do nothing and it's all just police brutality. The lesson they seem to have learnt from cases such as Micheal Brown and Freddie Gray is that if they make this ridiculous claims everyone will rush to support them and completely ignore the video of the crime being committed.
In this particular case it was immediately claimed that Melhem was suffering from some sort of mental illness. However it's emerged that at no point did he attempt to seek treatment for this mental illness nor was it identified by any of his employers or during his 5 year prison sentence. This is another trick the Palestinians seem to have learnt from BLM who frequently claim that feeling a bit sad one day frees you from any legal responsibility for your actions.
American Jews who tend to be politically left of centre have been big supporters of Obama's BLM campaign. However if you're familiar with the 1968 Baltimore riots on the 1991 Crown Heights riots in New York City this seems to be more to do with pragmatic self-preservation than an ideological endorsement. The Israeli left - which is extremely left-wing - has also been big supporters of Obama's gun-control quest.
This case highlights just how futile that quest is because Nashat Melhem didn't buy the gun used in the attack legally or otherwise. Instead it belonged to his father who obtained permission to own it by serving for several years in the Israeli police force and going through the yearly process of re-certification. If a background check that rigorous can't stop a terrorist obtaining a gun no background check is going to stop them.
In fact in response to Friday's (1/1/16) shooting the Israeli authorities are now talking about strengthening their already extensive firearms licensing system so the background checks include not only the individual applying but all of their family members and known associates.
On Saturday (2/1/16) US President Obama made his New Years address.
This occurred three days after the Belgian city of Brussels had to cancel its New Years Eve celebration due to the terrorist threat and two days after the German city of Munich had to shut down its rail network to prevent a terrorist attack. It came the day after several people were injured in an Islamist run-over attack on French soldiers guarding a Mosque in the town of Valance.
It also came on the day that Saudi Arabia announced that it was moving beyond the proxy of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) towards open warfare against the regions Shia-Muslims with the highly provocative execution of Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others.
In her Christmas/New Years message the UK Queen spoke of a world being consumed by darkness and tried to reassure us that light would eventually prevail. The French President Francois Hollande used his New Year's message to look back at the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres and warn the French people that they still face the threat of terrorism at its highest level before thanking the French military who are working hard to protect the nation.
In his New Year's message US President Obama ignored all that. Instead he announced that he was going to disregard the result of the 2014 mid-term election and force through his precious gun control measures by executive action by-passing Congress.
To many in the business this was seen as Obama announcing that he has absolutely no intention of actually doing his job in 2016 his final year as President. Instead he's going to cling to his position to use the powers it brings to settle old scores and impose his prejudices on the nation.
In short Obama's become the type of tyrant the second amendment is supposed to protect against.
Today it's been announced that the Douma suspects have been charged as terrorists and will face trial. I think this can only be a good thing because when I heard it was being dealt with quietly by immediate concern was that they'd be quietly released in six months or so.
Their guilt or innocence will now become a matter of public record and if convicted I think they could well be looking at whole life terms.
21:30 on 4/1/16 (UK date).
I was tempted to title this post; "The Israel Terror Attack." However with terror attacks seeming to take place several times a week in Israel that is a statement that seems to have lost all meaning. To understand why this particular attack was different though you have to go back to the events of July 31st 2015 (31/7/15).
That was the night that two family homes were set ablaze in the Palestinian village of Douma near Nablus on the West Bank. The fire completely destroyed the buildings and seriously injured two members the Dawabsheh family who were in one of the homes. The fire also killed the mother Reham Dawabsheh and her 18 month old son Ali Saad Dawabsheh.
Due to anti-Muslim and pro-Jewish graffiti painted in Hebrew at the scene it is widely suspected that this was yet another "Price-Tag" attack intended to force Palestinians from their homes to make way for illegal Jewish settlements.
This particular attack though was so shocking that it provoked international outrage. It also triggered a lot of outrage within Israel and unusually the Israeli authorities immediately set about prosecuting the suspected Jewish attackers to the full extent of the law.
However the phrase; "The Full Extent of the Law" means something different in Israel then it does in, say, the UK or the US. In Israel it means indefinite administrative detention without trial and "enhanced interrogation."
Exactly how far the Israelis go with their interrogation has long been a contentious subject. The Palestinians maintain that it constitutes torture while the Israelis insist that it goes right up to the line of what is internationally considered torture without ever crossing it.
Without the big press conference announcing that prosecutors were seeking charges, the big press conference announcing that the Grand Jury had issued indictments or the media spectacle of a trial many people aren't aware of the level of action the Israelis took against the Douma suspects.
Their supporters certainly did notice and have been aggressively protesting the treatment of their heroes. On one occasion in particular they staged a piece of street theatre in the normally quite liberal Tel Aviv in which one of them was chained to a bed frame and beaten as they claim was happening to the Douma suspects.
Matters in what has been a big and long running story in Israel when in mid-December a video of the wedding of the brother of one of the Douma suspects was broadcast by the Israeli media.
The video showed wedding guests celebrating the Douma attack by dressing up in masks an re-creating it with guns and firebombs. The highlight of the 'celebration' was the groom stabbing a photograph of Ali Saad Dawabsheh with a knife.
I would say that the bar attacked on Friday (1/1/16) was in Tel Aviv's gay district. However the point is that Tel Aviv is so tolerant of gay rights that it doesn't really have a gay district. Instead all the bars, hotels and business just welcome gay customers just the same as everybody else.
Although they mark the internationally recognised, secular New Year Jewish Israelis only tend to really celebrate the religious Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah). In 2015 that occurred on September 13th/14th and marked the start of the year 5776.
However the bars and clubs in Tel Aviv all celebrated the secular New Year with parties and special events. The specific bar that was attacked was no doubt full of people nursing hangovers and comedowns as they were across much of the world.
Therefore as soon as the attack took place pretty much everyone - including the first responders - just assumed that it had been carried out by Jewish settlers as revenge against the treatment of the Douma suspects and punishment for the godless gays loving Jews for not being religious enough.
It turns out though that the attack was just another one carried out by an Israeli Arab. That suspected attacker has been identified as 19 year old Nashat Melhem but is still on the run creating fear that he may attack again. With Israel Arabs attacking Jews several times a week at the moment I wouldn't think that there is one more out there would be considered much out of the ordinary. However this particular story seems to have run and run.
A large part of the reason for this is that because a firearm was involved the attack was slightly different than all the knife and run-over terror attacks. This gives people something new to talk about.
However I think the story also highlights how this current wave of Palestinian terror has been heavily influenced by US President Barack Obama. Particularly his Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign and his response to the February 10th 2015 (10/2/15) Chapel Hill shooting.
Immediately after one of these attacks occur either the attackers family or someone from the Palestinian community come forward and announce that they were a good boy who didn't do nothing and it's all just police brutality. The lesson they seem to have learnt from cases such as Micheal Brown and Freddie Gray is that if they make this ridiculous claims everyone will rush to support them and completely ignore the video of the crime being committed.
In this particular case it was immediately claimed that Melhem was suffering from some sort of mental illness. However it's emerged that at no point did he attempt to seek treatment for this mental illness nor was it identified by any of his employers or during his 5 year prison sentence. This is another trick the Palestinians seem to have learnt from BLM who frequently claim that feeling a bit sad one day frees you from any legal responsibility for your actions.
American Jews who tend to be politically left of centre have been big supporters of Obama's BLM campaign. However if you're familiar with the 1968 Baltimore riots on the 1991 Crown Heights riots in New York City this seems to be more to do with pragmatic self-preservation than an ideological endorsement. The Israeli left - which is extremely left-wing - has also been big supporters of Obama's gun-control quest.
This case highlights just how futile that quest is because Nashat Melhem didn't buy the gun used in the attack legally or otherwise. Instead it belonged to his father who obtained permission to own it by serving for several years in the Israeli police force and going through the yearly process of re-certification. If a background check that rigorous can't stop a terrorist obtaining a gun no background check is going to stop them.
In fact in response to Friday's (1/1/16) shooting the Israeli authorities are now talking about strengthening their already extensive firearms licensing system so the background checks include not only the individual applying but all of their family members and known associates.
On Saturday (2/1/16) US President Obama made his New Years address.
This occurred three days after the Belgian city of Brussels had to cancel its New Years Eve celebration due to the terrorist threat and two days after the German city of Munich had to shut down its rail network to prevent a terrorist attack. It came the day after several people were injured in an Islamist run-over attack on French soldiers guarding a Mosque in the town of Valance.
It also came on the day that Saudi Arabia announced that it was moving beyond the proxy of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) towards open warfare against the regions Shia-Muslims with the highly provocative execution of Nimr al-Nimr along with 46 others.
In her Christmas/New Years message the UK Queen spoke of a world being consumed by darkness and tried to reassure us that light would eventually prevail. The French President Francois Hollande used his New Year's message to look back at the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres and warn the French people that they still face the threat of terrorism at its highest level before thanking the French military who are working hard to protect the nation.
In his New Year's message US President Obama ignored all that. Instead he announced that he was going to disregard the result of the 2014 mid-term election and force through his precious gun control measures by executive action by-passing Congress.
To many in the business this was seen as Obama announcing that he has absolutely no intention of actually doing his job in 2016 his final year as President. Instead he's going to cling to his position to use the powers it brings to settle old scores and impose his prejudices on the nation.
In short Obama's become the type of tyrant the second amendment is supposed to protect against.
Today it's been announced that the Douma suspects have been charged as terrorists and will face trial. I think this can only be a good thing because when I heard it was being dealt with quietly by immediate concern was that they'd be quietly released in six months or so.
Their guilt or innocence will now become a matter of public record and if convicted I think they could well be looking at whole life terms.
21:30 on 4/1/16 (UK date).
Operation Featherweight: Month 18, Week 2, Day 2.
Yesterday (3/1/16) the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) released a video in which they murdered five people and made numerous threats against Britain.
Despite the fact or possibly because I've recently brought Season 4 of "Game of Thrones" watching real people being really slaughtered is not high on my list of priorities at the moment. Therefore I did not join in with the mad rush to watch this video before it was deleted to become some sort of glamorous myth.
However I gather the central message of the video is that the five victims were spies who had been helping to direct British air-strikes against Raqqa - ISIL's de facto in Syria. The men were forced to give false confessions to their 'crimes,' apologise for being apostates to Islam and begged to be re-admitted to ISIL's perversion of Islam before being killed. The video ended with with a child of no more then 11 or 12 threatening an ISIL attack on the UK.
Towards the end of November 2015 the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) started giving tours to western media outlets - particularly America's CNN and the UK's Sky News - marking the success of their Hasakah/Al-Hawl operation. Rather unprofessionally during these interviews members of the QSD told the media that they'd established a resistance force within Raqqa and were supplying them with weapons in preparation for an operation to liberate the city from ISIL.
Since then ISIL have been extremely paranoid about the issue of spies within Raqqa. They have rounded up numerous people and publicly murdered them in an attempt to terrorise the residents of Raqqa from joining the resistance force. The fact that these latest five people have been accused of being British spies seems simply to be a lie to allow their murders to be used as a message to Britain.
The message ISIL were trying to send was multi-fold;
In the first instance both the central, 'executioner' figure and the child at the end spoke English with a native English accent. This was intended to remind the UK that it has sent many of its Muslim citizens to fight for ISIL in order to highlight how easy it would be for those fighters to return and carry out attacks in the UK.
This is hardly news because many of those fighters were sent to ISIL by an MI6 agent codenamed "Glasgow bin Lorry." Most of 2015 was spent on a large inquiry into his actions. Curiously it did not end with prosecutions.
Secondly the central figure in the video was masked in almost the exact same way that Mohammed Emwazi (AKA: "Jihadi John") had been in his numerous murder videos. The intention being to highlight how utterly irrelevant the killing of Emwazi in a November 12th (12/11/15) air-strike was because ISIL would simply replace him with someone else.
Again this is hardly news because at the time of his death I pointed out that Emwazi hadn't killed anyone for about 9 months yet ISIL's murders had continued.
Although it wasn't ISIL's intention I think it is important to consider the way that ISIL use masked killers and Emwazi stopped killing once his identity had been revealed. What they're trying to do is glamorise their killing by shrouding it in mystery and secrecy.
By immediately removing these videos so they can only be alluded to in hushed tones in newspapers and on TV I can't help but worry that we're actually assisting ISIL by helping to build up the mythology around them.
As for the guy featured in this video I'm pretty sure that I already know his name. I just need to recover it from my memory palace.
The video of course was released on the 1 month anniversary of the UK Parliament voting to authorise air-strikes against ISIL in Syria. Promising attacks on the UK in response to the air-strikes is a clear attempt to encourage those who claimed that air-strikes would increase attacks on the UK to campaign for the air-strikes to end.
As I explained at the time this is a completely false argument. ISIL have been trying to attack the UK on an almost daily basis for certainly the past 18 months. Attacking them in Syria has not changed their desire to attack the UK but it has restricted their ability to do so.
That is why ISIL want the air-strikes to stop.
In threatening that ISIL would soon invade the UK the video made the rather curious claim that UK Prime Minister David Cameron would do nothing to save those“fighting under his banner on minimum wages.” This is an attempt to recruit more British Muslims to ISIL's cause.
Throughout the past 18 months or so numerous theories have been put forward as to why young British Muslims join ISIL. It has been suggested that it's because they're so outraged by the brutality of the Syria government while others have talked about complex brainwashing and this mysterious "radicalisation." The main reason though is actually a lot more simple then that.
ISIL pay foreign fighters around GBP2,000 per month. This works out at around GBP24,000 per year which is pretty much double the pay of someone working a 35 hour week on the UK minimum wage. Not only don't ISIL fighters have to pay tax on their salary it is on top of free housing and a monthly food allowance. Exact price comparison data isn't really available but I'm guessing £24,000 buys you a hell of a lot more in Raqqa then it does in London.
As such the people fighting ISIL on the ground don't refer to them as Muslims, Jihadists or even terrorists. Instead they refer to them simply as Mercenaries because they're in it for the money.
Therefore by referencing the minimum wage ISIL was hoping to remind British Muslims in minimum wage jobs they'd earn far for more fighting for ISIL. It's also quite disheartening for people like me to be reminded that ISIL fighters are earning more then four times what I'm forced to make do on. Members of the Syriac militias fighting ISIL as part of the QSD actually have to pay for the privilege by buying their own ammunition.
Yesterday's video also seems to be a response to the numerous official statements issued by the UK during the Christmas and New Year period.
The most important of these was the Queen's Christmas Day message in which the Queen speaks as both the Head of State and the head of the Protestant Christian Church of England.
I thought this message was actually rather well done. Rather then speaking about ISIL directly the Queen instead used the refugee crisis - no cause was mentioned - to talk about the darkness that it currently enveloping the world to reassure us that light will prevail. Any reference to ISIL's role in this modern day "Massacre of the Innocents" was so oblique you really had to be looking for it.
The second most important was the Archbishop of Canterbury who was speaking in his role of effectively general manager of the Church of England.
Obviously speaking exclusively to an audience of Christians as their spiritual leader he was able to speak much more freely about how great he thinks Christianity is and the plight of his fellow Christians. This he did going so far as to compare ISIL to a modern day King Herod who carried out the Massacre of the Innocents as it appears in the Christmas story.
However his main message was not that Christians should oppose ISIL because they claim to be Muslims. Instead it was that Christians should oppose them because they're so intolerant of other faiths. Therefore the best way to oppose them is for Christians to be more tolerant of other faiths including Islam.
These messages seem to have provoked ISIL's self-appointed leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to release a message of his own the following day (26/12/15) in which he reassured followers that ISIL had not forgotten about Palestine before making various threats against Israel. With all the comparisons to King Herod this seemed to be an attempt by al-Baghdadi to refute claims that he is the illegitimate King of Judea being kept in place by the evil Empire.
By contrast though the Christmas message by UK Prime Minister Cameron was appalling ill-judged. Despite not speaking in any religious capacity basically listed ISIL's atrocities before announcing that the UK would defeat the Muslims savages because it is a Christian country.
Proving there are some rather tedious people on Twitter this was immediately seized upon and mocked mercilessly using the hashtag; "YouAintNoChristianBruv" in a play on the "YouAintNoMuslimBruv" hashtag that sprung up in response to the December 5th (5/12/15) ISIL inspired stabbing attack in Leytonstone, London.
ISIL of course like to portray themselves as the heroic guardians of Islam helping to protect Muslims from the Imperial wars of the vast Judeo-Christian conspiracy against them. The UK Prime Minister announcing that the UK is on some sort of Christian Crusade/Jihad against ISIL is pretty much doing ISIL's propaganda departments job for them.
Cameron was warned about this extensively when he did the exact same thing in announcing the death of Reyaad Khan in an unauthorised UK air-strike in October 2015. If he continues to behave like that people are going to have to start questioning whether Cameron's loyalties lie with the UK or with ISIL.
That prospect has clearly got ISIL worried. If we start being honest about the fact that ISIL are simply western mercenaries acting to hold back the Muslim world their popularity is going to plummet even further.
No wonder they described Cameron as an "imbecile."
16:05 on 4/1/16 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:45 on 4/1/16 (UK date) to add;
The child in the video has already been provisionally identified by the media as Isa Dare from Lewisham, South London.
It's a bit embarrassing for Channel 4 News because it turns out that back in 2013 they interviewed his mother - Grace Dare - as one of those 'moderate' fighters they assure us are just outraged by the brutally of the Syrian government and have absolutely nothing to do with ISIL.
Despite the fact or possibly because I've recently brought Season 4 of "Game of Thrones" watching real people being really slaughtered is not high on my list of priorities at the moment. Therefore I did not join in with the mad rush to watch this video before it was deleted to become some sort of glamorous myth.
However I gather the central message of the video is that the five victims were spies who had been helping to direct British air-strikes against Raqqa - ISIL's de facto in Syria. The men were forced to give false confessions to their 'crimes,' apologise for being apostates to Islam and begged to be re-admitted to ISIL's perversion of Islam before being killed. The video ended with with a child of no more then 11 or 12 threatening an ISIL attack on the UK.
Towards the end of November 2015 the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF/QSD) started giving tours to western media outlets - particularly America's CNN and the UK's Sky News - marking the success of their Hasakah/Al-Hawl operation. Rather unprofessionally during these interviews members of the QSD told the media that they'd established a resistance force within Raqqa and were supplying them with weapons in preparation for an operation to liberate the city from ISIL.
Since then ISIL have been extremely paranoid about the issue of spies within Raqqa. They have rounded up numerous people and publicly murdered them in an attempt to terrorise the residents of Raqqa from joining the resistance force. The fact that these latest five people have been accused of being British spies seems simply to be a lie to allow their murders to be used as a message to Britain.
The message ISIL were trying to send was multi-fold;
In the first instance both the central, 'executioner' figure and the child at the end spoke English with a native English accent. This was intended to remind the UK that it has sent many of its Muslim citizens to fight for ISIL in order to highlight how easy it would be for those fighters to return and carry out attacks in the UK.
This is hardly news because many of those fighters were sent to ISIL by an MI6 agent codenamed "Glasgow bin Lorry." Most of 2015 was spent on a large inquiry into his actions. Curiously it did not end with prosecutions.
Secondly the central figure in the video was masked in almost the exact same way that Mohammed Emwazi (AKA: "Jihadi John") had been in his numerous murder videos. The intention being to highlight how utterly irrelevant the killing of Emwazi in a November 12th (12/11/15) air-strike was because ISIL would simply replace him with someone else.
Again this is hardly news because at the time of his death I pointed out that Emwazi hadn't killed anyone for about 9 months yet ISIL's murders had continued.
Although it wasn't ISIL's intention I think it is important to consider the way that ISIL use masked killers and Emwazi stopped killing once his identity had been revealed. What they're trying to do is glamorise their killing by shrouding it in mystery and secrecy.
By immediately removing these videos so they can only be alluded to in hushed tones in newspapers and on TV I can't help but worry that we're actually assisting ISIL by helping to build up the mythology around them.
As for the guy featured in this video I'm pretty sure that I already know his name. I just need to recover it from my memory palace.
The video of course was released on the 1 month anniversary of the UK Parliament voting to authorise air-strikes against ISIL in Syria. Promising attacks on the UK in response to the air-strikes is a clear attempt to encourage those who claimed that air-strikes would increase attacks on the UK to campaign for the air-strikes to end.
As I explained at the time this is a completely false argument. ISIL have been trying to attack the UK on an almost daily basis for certainly the past 18 months. Attacking them in Syria has not changed their desire to attack the UK but it has restricted their ability to do so.
That is why ISIL want the air-strikes to stop.
In threatening that ISIL would soon invade the UK the video made the rather curious claim that UK Prime Minister David Cameron would do nothing to save those“fighting under his banner on minimum wages.” This is an attempt to recruit more British Muslims to ISIL's cause.
Throughout the past 18 months or so numerous theories have been put forward as to why young British Muslims join ISIL. It has been suggested that it's because they're so outraged by the brutality of the Syria government while others have talked about complex brainwashing and this mysterious "radicalisation." The main reason though is actually a lot more simple then that.
ISIL pay foreign fighters around GBP2,000 per month. This works out at around GBP24,000 per year which is pretty much double the pay of someone working a 35 hour week on the UK minimum wage. Not only don't ISIL fighters have to pay tax on their salary it is on top of free housing and a monthly food allowance. Exact price comparison data isn't really available but I'm guessing £24,000 buys you a hell of a lot more in Raqqa then it does in London.
As such the people fighting ISIL on the ground don't refer to them as Muslims, Jihadists or even terrorists. Instead they refer to them simply as Mercenaries because they're in it for the money.
Therefore by referencing the minimum wage ISIL was hoping to remind British Muslims in minimum wage jobs they'd earn far for more fighting for ISIL. It's also quite disheartening for people like me to be reminded that ISIL fighters are earning more then four times what I'm forced to make do on. Members of the Syriac militias fighting ISIL as part of the QSD actually have to pay for the privilege by buying their own ammunition.
Yesterday's video also seems to be a response to the numerous official statements issued by the UK during the Christmas and New Year period.
The most important of these was the Queen's Christmas Day message in which the Queen speaks as both the Head of State and the head of the Protestant Christian Church of England.
I thought this message was actually rather well done. Rather then speaking about ISIL directly the Queen instead used the refugee crisis - no cause was mentioned - to talk about the darkness that it currently enveloping the world to reassure us that light will prevail. Any reference to ISIL's role in this modern day "Massacre of the Innocents" was so oblique you really had to be looking for it.
The second most important was the Archbishop of Canterbury who was speaking in his role of effectively general manager of the Church of England.
Obviously speaking exclusively to an audience of Christians as their spiritual leader he was able to speak much more freely about how great he thinks Christianity is and the plight of his fellow Christians. This he did going so far as to compare ISIL to a modern day King Herod who carried out the Massacre of the Innocents as it appears in the Christmas story.
However his main message was not that Christians should oppose ISIL because they claim to be Muslims. Instead it was that Christians should oppose them because they're so intolerant of other faiths. Therefore the best way to oppose them is for Christians to be more tolerant of other faiths including Islam.
These messages seem to have provoked ISIL's self-appointed leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to release a message of his own the following day (26/12/15) in which he reassured followers that ISIL had not forgotten about Palestine before making various threats against Israel. With all the comparisons to King Herod this seemed to be an attempt by al-Baghdadi to refute claims that he is the illegitimate King of Judea being kept in place by the evil Empire.
By contrast though the Christmas message by UK Prime Minister Cameron was appalling ill-judged. Despite not speaking in any religious capacity basically listed ISIL's atrocities before announcing that the UK would defeat the Muslims savages because it is a Christian country.
Proving there are some rather tedious people on Twitter this was immediately seized upon and mocked mercilessly using the hashtag; "YouAintNoChristianBruv" in a play on the "YouAintNoMuslimBruv" hashtag that sprung up in response to the December 5th (5/12/15) ISIL inspired stabbing attack in Leytonstone, London.
ISIL of course like to portray themselves as the heroic guardians of Islam helping to protect Muslims from the Imperial wars of the vast Judeo-Christian conspiracy against them. The UK Prime Minister announcing that the UK is on some sort of Christian Crusade/Jihad against ISIL is pretty much doing ISIL's propaganda departments job for them.
Cameron was warned about this extensively when he did the exact same thing in announcing the death of Reyaad Khan in an unauthorised UK air-strike in October 2015. If he continues to behave like that people are going to have to start questioning whether Cameron's loyalties lie with the UK or with ISIL.
That prospect has clearly got ISIL worried. If we start being honest about the fact that ISIL are simply western mercenaries acting to hold back the Muslim world their popularity is going to plummet even further.
No wonder they described Cameron as an "imbecile."
16:05 on 4/1/16 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:45 on 4/1/16 (UK date) to add;
The child in the video has already been provisionally identified by the media as Isa Dare from Lewisham, South London.
It's a bit embarrassing for Channel 4 News because it turns out that back in 2013 they interviewed his mother - Grace Dare - as one of those 'moderate' fighters they assure us are just outraged by the brutally of the Syrian government and have absolutely nothing to do with ISIL.
Saturday, 2 January 2016
Operation Featherweight: Month 18, Week 1, Day 7.
The BBC are continuing to deny that they voluntarily took their websites off-line on Thursday (31/12/15) morning as part of the UK's competitive New Year's Eve (NYE) celebration.
The BBC is now claiming that they've been contacted by a never before heard of US-based hackers collective "New World Hackers (NWH)." It is being reported that NWH have assured the BBC that the Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attack was a practice run to allow NWH to test the power of their server before they launch a cyberwar against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The purpose of this little fairytale is to promote discussion about the much more well established hacker group "Anonymous." Following the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres Anonymous declared their own cyberwar against ISIL. The concern is that this little effort will cause more problems then it will solve.
After all Anonymous are the type of people who would consider Edward Snowden to be some sort of rebellious hero. The reality is that Snowden's superiors not only gave him permission to run off to China they actually gave him the idea. The purpose being to heap extra pressure first on China then on Russia during Rihanna's 2013 Diamonds World Tour by forcing them to decide what to do with him.
The information Snowden leaked had been carefully vetted. The intention being to provide a baseline of what all other intelligence agencies knew about the US' spy programs. That way no foreign intelligence agency could deny that they were in possession of that level of information.
This was actually referenced heavily by the latest, Season 5 of the US TV Show "Homeland." However it wasn't referenced in the hacker to exposed information about the US spy programs nor the annoying, rebellious journalist who was desperate to publish the story.
Instead it was referenced in the offensive, Arabic graffiti hidden in the stage design in the Lebanese refugee camp portrayed in the show. The artists who'd hidden these messages in the background were keen to boast to everyone about how rebellious and subversive they'd been. However they were actually doing exactly what the director wanted them to do.
To see the problems that Anonymous can cause in the fight against ISIL you need to look no further then the case of Emanuel Lutchman who was arrested in Rochester, New York State, US on Thursday (31/12/15) just as he was about to carry out knife attacks against NYE revellers.
Lutchman had been instructed to carry out his attack by members of ISIL over the Internet. However because the social media accounts in question were being monitored the FBI were able to send in undercover agents to befriend Lutchman and prevent the attack. If Anonymous had taken down or otherwise interfered with those accounts they could have wrecked the FBI operation with pretty messy results.
Then of course there was the 7 day Anonymous DDOS attack on Turkey's domestic Internet infrastructure which began on December 14th (14/12/15). Although hilarious Turkey has taken this as permission to launch its own cyberattacks against Russia adding another dimension to an already complex situation.
So while it's nice that Anonymous are prepared to fight ISIL their efforts might be better spent campaigning for national governments to actually fight ISIL properly.
US President Barack Obama in particular needs to learn that his continued support for ISIL is simply not acceptable.
23:30 on 2/1/16 (UK date).
The BBC is now claiming that they've been contacted by a never before heard of US-based hackers collective "New World Hackers (NWH)." It is being reported that NWH have assured the BBC that the Distributed Denial Of Service (DDOS) attack was a practice run to allow NWH to test the power of their server before they launch a cyberwar against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The purpose of this little fairytale is to promote discussion about the much more well established hacker group "Anonymous." Following the November 13th (13/11/15) Paris Massacres Anonymous declared their own cyberwar against ISIL. The concern is that this little effort will cause more problems then it will solve.
After all Anonymous are the type of people who would consider Edward Snowden to be some sort of rebellious hero. The reality is that Snowden's superiors not only gave him permission to run off to China they actually gave him the idea. The purpose being to heap extra pressure first on China then on Russia during Rihanna's 2013 Diamonds World Tour by forcing them to decide what to do with him.
The information Snowden leaked had been carefully vetted. The intention being to provide a baseline of what all other intelligence agencies knew about the US' spy programs. That way no foreign intelligence agency could deny that they were in possession of that level of information.
This was actually referenced heavily by the latest, Season 5 of the US TV Show "Homeland." However it wasn't referenced in the hacker to exposed information about the US spy programs nor the annoying, rebellious journalist who was desperate to publish the story.
Instead it was referenced in the offensive, Arabic graffiti hidden in the stage design in the Lebanese refugee camp portrayed in the show. The artists who'd hidden these messages in the background were keen to boast to everyone about how rebellious and subversive they'd been. However they were actually doing exactly what the director wanted them to do.
To see the problems that Anonymous can cause in the fight against ISIL you need to look no further then the case of Emanuel Lutchman who was arrested in Rochester, New York State, US on Thursday (31/12/15) just as he was about to carry out knife attacks against NYE revellers.
Lutchman had been instructed to carry out his attack by members of ISIL over the Internet. However because the social media accounts in question were being monitored the FBI were able to send in undercover agents to befriend Lutchman and prevent the attack. If Anonymous had taken down or otherwise interfered with those accounts they could have wrecked the FBI operation with pretty messy results.
Then of course there was the 7 day Anonymous DDOS attack on Turkey's domestic Internet infrastructure which began on December 14th (14/12/15). Although hilarious Turkey has taken this as permission to launch its own cyberattacks against Russia adding another dimension to an already complex situation.
So while it's nice that Anonymous are prepared to fight ISIL their efforts might be better spent campaigning for national governments to actually fight ISIL properly.
US President Barack Obama in particular needs to learn that his continued support for ISIL is simply not acceptable.
23:30 on 2/1/16 (UK date).
Sooo, A Relaxing Couple of Days.
For Christmas my sister gave me an Amazon Fire wi-fi tablet.
This sounds luxurious until you realise that Amazon sell these devices at a massive loss as a way to up-sell customers their online retail services such as Amazon Prime. As a result in the UK they retail for around £70. A packet of cigarettes costs about £10.
The first problem is that much like a long line of wi-fi enabled devices before it this new tablet is incapable of connecting to my home wi-fi.
As you probably know even if you haven't realised it in order to connect to secure wi-fi network a device has to send an authorisation code to the network - basically a passcode. The Internet Service Provider's (ISP) network then checks the code is authentic before granting or denying the device access to the network.
Unfortunately my ISP has been hacked to prevent it from verifying the authentication code in order to stop me using multiple devices on my Internet connection.
Essentially this is the same problem experienced by customers of the UK bank "Natwest" yesterday (1/1/16) when it's payments network was unable to verify customer's Personal Identification Numbers (PIN's) against their electronic payment cards.
It is also essentially the same problem that affected "Oyster" cards on London's public transport network this morning.
If you are not familiar with what an Oyster card is it probably sounds like something taken straight from the pages of a sci-fi novel about a dystopian future.
Certainly since the September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) terror attacks the UK security establishment has been trying to introduce national identity cards but have been blocked by civil liberties campaigners. So instead they introduced contactless smartcards - named "Oyster" - which you need to access London's public transport network.
This of course allows the security services to track in real time the movements of Londoners as they go about their daily business. Officially you don't need to register your Oyster card in your name and address but you are strongly encouraged to do so.
Since it was introduced in 2003 the Oyster system has been gradually expanded. I think it was at the start of 2014 that it became the only way that you could access buses in London. Ever since then whenever someone who lives outside of London has visited me the following conversation has taken place;
Them: "Shall we get the bus, it's only what £3?"
Me: "Yes but, first we've got to find an railway station where staff are on duty. Then you've got to pay £5 for the card and another £10 to put some credit on it."
Them: "F*ck it, we'll just take the car."
Apparently this year there are plans to make the Oyster system the only way to access both the underground and overground railway networks doing away with paper tickets entirely. Although the technology is new and shiny I think they might want to think that one through a bit.
After all I can think of no reason why an another why sane person would want to use a contactless bank card.
Another thing that's slightly controversial about Oyster cards it that out of sheer laziness I don't have one and therefore cannot catch a bus into Croydon town centre. A visit to Croydon town centre isn't really worth the effort of finding a staffed railway station to by an Oyster card. Particularly as due to the Crown's continued refusal to settle its debts I'm operating on something of a tight budget.
The other problem with this new tablet is that displaying his usual understanding of boundaries my father seems to be under the impression that he's been given an new tablet for Christmas. As a result he's sitting there constantly trying to connect the thing to wi-fi and constantly failing.
What he's yet to notice is that I've switched the new tablet for one that's so old it still uses a stylus. Mind you he's failed to notice that tablet sitting next to him on the table throughout the past five years he's been going; "Shall we get a tablet."
What's annoying about this is that while he's gormlessly hammering away at what is a somewhat sensitive diplomatic issue I'm forced to make statements like this one apologising for him.
In the first instance this feels like I'm going; "Come One Burglars, you know the police have given you permission!"
Worse then that though it sort of starts a whispering campaign around my sister saying that I think the present she gave me was rubbish.
That couldn't be further from the truth. It's actually a very thoughtful and generous gift.
It's just one that assumes we live in a world where David Cameron's a competent Prime Minister and BBC News tells the truth.
15:40 on 2/1/16 (UK date).
This sounds luxurious until you realise that Amazon sell these devices at a massive loss as a way to up-sell customers their online retail services such as Amazon Prime. As a result in the UK they retail for around £70. A packet of cigarettes costs about £10.
The first problem is that much like a long line of wi-fi enabled devices before it this new tablet is incapable of connecting to my home wi-fi.
As you probably know even if you haven't realised it in order to connect to secure wi-fi network a device has to send an authorisation code to the network - basically a passcode. The Internet Service Provider's (ISP) network then checks the code is authentic before granting or denying the device access to the network.
Unfortunately my ISP has been hacked to prevent it from verifying the authentication code in order to stop me using multiple devices on my Internet connection.
Essentially this is the same problem experienced by customers of the UK bank "Natwest" yesterday (1/1/16) when it's payments network was unable to verify customer's Personal Identification Numbers (PIN's) against their electronic payment cards.
It is also essentially the same problem that affected "Oyster" cards on London's public transport network this morning.
If you are not familiar with what an Oyster card is it probably sounds like something taken straight from the pages of a sci-fi novel about a dystopian future.
Certainly since the September 11th 2001 (11/9/01) terror attacks the UK security establishment has been trying to introduce national identity cards but have been blocked by civil liberties campaigners. So instead they introduced contactless smartcards - named "Oyster" - which you need to access London's public transport network.
This of course allows the security services to track in real time the movements of Londoners as they go about their daily business. Officially you don't need to register your Oyster card in your name and address but you are strongly encouraged to do so.
Since it was introduced in 2003 the Oyster system has been gradually expanded. I think it was at the start of 2014 that it became the only way that you could access buses in London. Ever since then whenever someone who lives outside of London has visited me the following conversation has taken place;
Them: "Shall we get the bus, it's only what £3?"
Me: "Yes but, first we've got to find an railway station where staff are on duty. Then you've got to pay £5 for the card and another £10 to put some credit on it."
Them: "F*ck it, we'll just take the car."
Apparently this year there are plans to make the Oyster system the only way to access both the underground and overground railway networks doing away with paper tickets entirely. Although the technology is new and shiny I think they might want to think that one through a bit.
After all I can think of no reason why an another why sane person would want to use a contactless bank card.
Another thing that's slightly controversial about Oyster cards it that out of sheer laziness I don't have one and therefore cannot catch a bus into Croydon town centre. A visit to Croydon town centre isn't really worth the effort of finding a staffed railway station to by an Oyster card. Particularly as due to the Crown's continued refusal to settle its debts I'm operating on something of a tight budget.
The other problem with this new tablet is that displaying his usual understanding of boundaries my father seems to be under the impression that he's been given an new tablet for Christmas. As a result he's sitting there constantly trying to connect the thing to wi-fi and constantly failing.
What he's yet to notice is that I've switched the new tablet for one that's so old it still uses a stylus. Mind you he's failed to notice that tablet sitting next to him on the table throughout the past five years he's been going; "Shall we get a tablet."
What's annoying about this is that while he's gormlessly hammering away at what is a somewhat sensitive diplomatic issue I'm forced to make statements like this one apologising for him.
In the first instance this feels like I'm going; "Come One Burglars, you know the police have given you permission!"
Worse then that though it sort of starts a whispering campaign around my sister saying that I think the present she gave me was rubbish.
That couldn't be further from the truth. It's actually a very thoughtful and generous gift.
It's just one that assumes we live in a world where David Cameron's a competent Prime Minister and BBC News tells the truth.
15:40 on 2/1/16 (UK date).
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