Where I am at least the giant clock has ticked over from 23:59:59 to
00:00:00 meaning that the old year has ended and the new one has begun.
2014 began with scenes of almost medieval warfare in the streets of
Ukraine's capital Kiev as neo-Nazi and Nazi thugs battled with the
police. Eventually this rioting became so severe that the Ukrainian
government was overthrown and the fascists took control of large parts
of the country. This plunged the nation into civil war as the fascists
tried to purge the country of ethnic Russians and the ethnic Russians
fought back. That war continues as I write and has left at least 5,000
people dead and forced more the 1 million people to flee their homes,
often into Russia.
Within two weeks of the collapse of the Ukrainian government Malaysia
Airlines flight MH370 disappeared on a flight between Malaysia and
China. To this day the plane and the 239 people on board remain missing.
Malaysia Airlines suffered another unfortunate accident in July when
flight MH17 veered off course over Ukraine's civil war and was shot down
either by a missile fired from the ground or by a missile fired by a
Ukrainian air force jet. Whatever the cause 298 people lost their lives
that day.
By the time MH17 crashed Israel and Palestine were already engaged in a
50 day war in Gaza. Those 50 days of war claimed the lives of 2,127
Palestinians and 66 Israelis although that figure rises to 76 if you
include the soldiers who committed suicide after the war had officially
ended.
Just across the border from Israel in Syria the Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL) continued their genocidal rampage and expanded it
to include much of Iraq. Through suicide bombings, executions and
massacre ISIL have so far killed in excess of 9,000 people in Iraq alone
and almost succeeded in wiping out the entire Yezidi religion and the
wider Kurdish ethnic group before the US was begrudgingly forced to
intervene. Despite almost 5 months of bombing that US-led coalition has
barely succeeded in halting ISIL's advance let alone defeated them.
The rise of ISIL was nearly matched by the expansion of Boko Haram in
Nigeria and Cameroon and Al-Shabaab in Somalia who have also began
mounting attacks in neighbouring Kenya. Pakistan which is long used to
Islamist violence also saw the worst terror attack in its history when
the Pakistani Taliban attacked a school in Peshawar killing at least 132
people - the majority of them children.
While all this has been going on the Ebola virus has ravaged the west
African nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea destroying pretty
much everything it touches and killing at least 7,890 people so far.
So if I had to raise a toast to send 2014 on it's way I would say simply; "Good f*cking riddance."
If I had to pick a highlight the year though it would obviously be the
summer World Cup in Brazil. If I had to choose a cultural highlight it
would be the ceremonies of the Olympic and Para-Olympic games in Sochi,
Russia because it was nice to work with something of quality for a
change.
(Originally Posted) 01:30 on 1/1/15 (UK date).
Sunday, 4 January 2015
Wow, Palestine's a State.
Perhaps because they'd taken the BBC's "The Honourable Woman" a little
bit too literally the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Israel - no, sorry the
Fatah controlled Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank - responded
to the summer's war in Gaza by tonight finally forcing through a vote
on Palestinian statehood at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).
Obviously I am somewhat less then impressed that they're asking me to
deal with this on a Tuesday night when, as always, I've been to the pub.
Although due to the festive break I didn't get the opportunity to obtain let alone study the blue text I understand that despite French attempts to soften the proposal the motion tabled by Jordan still required Israel to withdraw within the 1967 borders by, my lord, 2017. If you've had a look at the state of Israeli politics in the aftermath of the summer war you would know that this is simply not possible. On a related note although mine is an endorsement Netenyahu could probably live without I think all Israelis should think long and hard about the size of man they're trying to get rid off.
Honestly I think the best outcome of a resolution being adopted would have been for Israel to look around the room and go; "Supported ISIL in Syria, Supported the UIA in Ukraine, Supported Boko Haram in Nigeria, Killed Qaddafi in Libya, Looked at Hitler in Germany and considered him a jolly nice chap. I think this is just another UN resolution we can safely ignore."
The worst outcome would be that when the next Islamic Jihad missile lands in Israel for Israel to go; "Oh look, the newly formed Palestinian state has just declared war on us. Under international law we can now invade and occupy "Palestine" until such a time as we know longer consider them a threat. In the meantime they will be expected to submit their INDC's to the UNFCCC in the first quarter of 2015."
Obviously then everyone knew that this was a stupid idea. However being vicious anti-Semites and proud Zionists as long as the al-Sauds run Zion the UK quietly supported the motion through the UNSC and UK Commonwealth members Rwanda and Nigeria. Rather then having the motion pass the UK' intention here was to put pressure on the US to veto because Obama is both a vicious anti-Semite and generally a bit of a coward. With question marks being raised over the US veto at the last minute Nigeria reversed their support to an abstention meaning that the motion fell just one vote short of the 9 vote majority that would require a veto. The UK need not have bothered though because at the very last minute the US decided to cast their veto carrying "No" vote. Australia also voted no but despite the infection no-one's ever really voted their balls.
While all this was going on I was actually watching the BBC's "Charlie Brooker's 2014 Wipe" which if you saw the Sochi 2014 Olympic Opening Ceremony you would understand is essential viewing. Despite the fact that he clearly went in hard on my little brother during the "Pharrell William's Happy is great music to run over your dog to" skit I'm going to be charitable and assume that he gave over part of the show to Adam Curtis and his "Power of Nightmares" foolishness to highlight the type of conspiracy theorist lunacy he'd be forced to accept if he was left working for Channel 4 and The Guardian newspaper full time.
After all it's quite clear Vladislav Surkov only published the article to highlight what the US is doing in Ukraine. The reason why the rest of the news is so unrelentingly miserable is that since 2010 the UK's been run by a bunch of mentals and so far Obama's been too cowardly to say "No."
00:15 on 31/12/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 12:10 on 31/12/14 (UK date) to add;
I've now had a good sleep and the alcohol induced headache is starting to fade. However my position on last night's vote has not changed.
As I've said throughout in order to achieve statehood Palestine must first build a functioning state in all but name. Only then can the Palestinians starting requesting that other nations recognise their state. Therefore true progress will come not from big and dramatic votes at the UNSC but a series of small agreements that strengthen the PA. Off the top of my head I would say that agreements that allow the PA to issue deeds of ownership and other building permits along with taking more responsibility for security in what will become the Palestinian state seem particularly important areas.
This very confrontational campaign for UN recognition actually seems to make that less likely. Although certainly not all Israeli Jews are are aggressive Zionist settlers people with those views make up a significant constituency within Israeli politics. The thing that the Palestinians seem unable to understand is that Israel is a democracy therefore if the government does something a large proportion of the population does not like the people will simply change the government. Through the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin it is clear that some Jewish extremists are prepared to go even further then that and simply kill Prime Ministers they don't agree with.
By aggressively pursuing the issue of statehood at the UN and in effect handing Israel a list of demands the Palestinians are substantially provoking the Jewish extremists. In response the extremists will themselves become even more aggressive and their demands will become even more extreme. This makes it next to impossible for the Israeli government to make the series of compromises that are required to allow Palestine to achieve statehood.
Then of course there is the issue of the extra responsibilities that statehood will place on the Palestinians. The one I obviously immediately think off is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) but there are also a host of other international agreements that on becoming a state Palestine must immediately abide by. If a Palestinian state cannot abide by those conventions then often there will be immediate and serious consequences. For example if rockets were to be fired from a Palestinian state rather then an Israeli occupied territory it would be viewed as an act of aggressive war. That would immediately invalidate Palestinian statehood and allow Israel - or any other nation being attacked - to invade and occupy Palestine until such a time as they are satisfied that the threat has been eliminated.
Sadly looking at the way that Palestine is now with it being divided between Fatah and Hamas and government wages not getting paid because of internal feuds I simply don't think that Palestine is ready to take on the responsibilities that statehood brings.
(Originally Posted on 31/12/14 - UK date).
Although due to the festive break I didn't get the opportunity to obtain let alone study the blue text I understand that despite French attempts to soften the proposal the motion tabled by Jordan still required Israel to withdraw within the 1967 borders by, my lord, 2017. If you've had a look at the state of Israeli politics in the aftermath of the summer war you would know that this is simply not possible. On a related note although mine is an endorsement Netenyahu could probably live without I think all Israelis should think long and hard about the size of man they're trying to get rid off.
Honestly I think the best outcome of a resolution being adopted would have been for Israel to look around the room and go; "Supported ISIL in Syria, Supported the UIA in Ukraine, Supported Boko Haram in Nigeria, Killed Qaddafi in Libya, Looked at Hitler in Germany and considered him a jolly nice chap. I think this is just another UN resolution we can safely ignore."
The worst outcome would be that when the next Islamic Jihad missile lands in Israel for Israel to go; "Oh look, the newly formed Palestinian state has just declared war on us. Under international law we can now invade and occupy "Palestine" until such a time as we know longer consider them a threat. In the meantime they will be expected to submit their INDC's to the UNFCCC in the first quarter of 2015."
Obviously then everyone knew that this was a stupid idea. However being vicious anti-Semites and proud Zionists as long as the al-Sauds run Zion the UK quietly supported the motion through the UNSC and UK Commonwealth members Rwanda and Nigeria. Rather then having the motion pass the UK' intention here was to put pressure on the US to veto because Obama is both a vicious anti-Semite and generally a bit of a coward. With question marks being raised over the US veto at the last minute Nigeria reversed their support to an abstention meaning that the motion fell just one vote short of the 9 vote majority that would require a veto. The UK need not have bothered though because at the very last minute the US decided to cast their veto carrying "No" vote. Australia also voted no but despite the infection no-one's ever really voted their balls.
While all this was going on I was actually watching the BBC's "Charlie Brooker's 2014 Wipe" which if you saw the Sochi 2014 Olympic Opening Ceremony you would understand is essential viewing. Despite the fact that he clearly went in hard on my little brother during the "Pharrell William's Happy is great music to run over your dog to" skit I'm going to be charitable and assume that he gave over part of the show to Adam Curtis and his "Power of Nightmares" foolishness to highlight the type of conspiracy theorist lunacy he'd be forced to accept if he was left working for Channel 4 and The Guardian newspaper full time.
After all it's quite clear Vladislav Surkov only published the article to highlight what the US is doing in Ukraine. The reason why the rest of the news is so unrelentingly miserable is that since 2010 the UK's been run by a bunch of mentals and so far Obama's been too cowardly to say "No."
00:15 on 31/12/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 12:10 on 31/12/14 (UK date) to add;
I've now had a good sleep and the alcohol induced headache is starting to fade. However my position on last night's vote has not changed.
As I've said throughout in order to achieve statehood Palestine must first build a functioning state in all but name. Only then can the Palestinians starting requesting that other nations recognise their state. Therefore true progress will come not from big and dramatic votes at the UNSC but a series of small agreements that strengthen the PA. Off the top of my head I would say that agreements that allow the PA to issue deeds of ownership and other building permits along with taking more responsibility for security in what will become the Palestinian state seem particularly important areas.
This very confrontational campaign for UN recognition actually seems to make that less likely. Although certainly not all Israeli Jews are are aggressive Zionist settlers people with those views make up a significant constituency within Israeli politics. The thing that the Palestinians seem unable to understand is that Israel is a democracy therefore if the government does something a large proportion of the population does not like the people will simply change the government. Through the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin it is clear that some Jewish extremists are prepared to go even further then that and simply kill Prime Ministers they don't agree with.
By aggressively pursuing the issue of statehood at the UN and in effect handing Israel a list of demands the Palestinians are substantially provoking the Jewish extremists. In response the extremists will themselves become even more aggressive and their demands will become even more extreme. This makes it next to impossible for the Israeli government to make the series of compromises that are required to allow Palestine to achieve statehood.
Then of course there is the issue of the extra responsibilities that statehood will place on the Palestinians. The one I obviously immediately think off is the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) but there are also a host of other international agreements that on becoming a state Palestine must immediately abide by. If a Palestinian state cannot abide by those conventions then often there will be immediate and serious consequences. For example if rockets were to be fired from a Palestinian state rather then an Israeli occupied territory it would be viewed as an act of aggressive war. That would immediately invalidate Palestinian statehood and allow Israel - or any other nation being attacked - to invade and occupy Palestine until such a time as they are satisfied that the threat has been eliminated.
Sadly looking at the way that Palestine is now with it being divided between Fatah and Hamas and government wages not getting paid because of internal feuds I simply don't think that Palestine is ready to take on the responsibilities that statehood brings.
(Originally Posted on 31/12/14 - UK date).
The End of Year Review Show.
Now Christmas day has gone even the Jews accept that the official year
is coming to an end and the new one is about to begin. For many people
this is a time to reflect on the year that has passed and look towards
the year that is to come. I myself have recently tried to get into the
spirit of things through the relatively new tradition of re-reading
everything I've written over the past year and archiving it in my much
tidier library at http://100badones.blogspot.co.uk/
Fortunately this year I was particularly organised so have already managed to archive the first quarter of 2014. Unfortunately this means I won't be going back over how following Irina Rodnina's carrying of the Olympic torch during the Sochi Winter Olympic opening ceremony and the start of the US overthrowing of Ukraine's government casual racism became a convenient way for nations to express their concern that US President Barack Obama isn't particularly good at his job. Given the fact the levels of racism quickly reached impressive heights it should hardly be a surprise that Obama's campaign strategy for November's US mid-term election of calling anyone who criticised him a racist failed so dramatically.
I will though get a chance to look back at both the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which cost 239 - mainly Chinese - lives and the suspicious crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine which cost 298 people their lives. Although the majority shareholder of Malaysia Airlines is the Malaysian government these aren't even the biggest controversies surrounding Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the moment. Despite his nation suffering some of the worst flooding in a generation Razak has been far more interested in celebrating the Christmas break by playing golf with US President Obama in Hawaii. I'm actually a bit surprised this story hasn't received more coverage because surely there is a way to diplomatically isolate Malaysia over the 537 deaths that falls between all out war and Obama inviting their Prime Minister to join him on a family vacation.
One story I won't be reviewing because I didn't get to cover it at the time is the end of "Mare Nostrum" - an Italian led but European Union (EU) support mission to rescue illegal immigrants who have got into trouble trying to cross the Mediterranean sea from Africa. It has been replaced by "Triton" which will only patrol 48km (30 miles) from the Italian coast and won't be supported by the UK thus making the Mediterranean's reputation as "The Graveyard of Europe" much worse. The EU will though continue to support policies that are not only intended to destroy many African nations such as Libya but also tear the EU itself to pieces.
I have though decided that I won't be archiving the World Cup because I didn't consider that work.
14:40 on 28/12/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:35 on 28/12/14 (UK date) to add;
Today I seriously overslept waking up at around 12:30. So not only did I not have time to have breakfast I didn't really have time to work out what my first instinct about all this was.
However the immediate suspicion falls on Indonesia where QZ8501 took off from. The assumption being that they were trying to express their anger that Razak had been so honoured by a US President who spent his early life in Indonesia. However the next suspicion falls on Malaysia which although certainly a private company Air Asia operates from. The assumption being that Malaysia was trying to spread the blame around by making it look like Indonesia were getting angry in order to reduce the fear that passengers of Malaysia Airlines their consent to be killed which is obviously putting pressure on the business model of the state owned flag carrier.
That said the whole thing still feels to me so utterly random that much like Phil Hughes' death it might actually have been just random dumb luck.
On a somewhat related note if you're looking for more information why December 31st is officially considered the last day of the year I suggest you read up on the 1917 Anglo-French Conference on Time-Keeping at Sea. After all it is something to do but with the conference lasting 8 years no-one's in a rush to revisit that particular treaty.
(Originally Posted on 28/12/14 - UK date).
Fortunately this year I was particularly organised so have already managed to archive the first quarter of 2014. Unfortunately this means I won't be going back over how following Irina Rodnina's carrying of the Olympic torch during the Sochi Winter Olympic opening ceremony and the start of the US overthrowing of Ukraine's government casual racism became a convenient way for nations to express their concern that US President Barack Obama isn't particularly good at his job. Given the fact the levels of racism quickly reached impressive heights it should hardly be a surprise that Obama's campaign strategy for November's US mid-term election of calling anyone who criticised him a racist failed so dramatically.
I will though get a chance to look back at both the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 which cost 239 - mainly Chinese - lives and the suspicious crash of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine which cost 298 people their lives. Although the majority shareholder of Malaysia Airlines is the Malaysian government these aren't even the biggest controversies surrounding Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the moment. Despite his nation suffering some of the worst flooding in a generation Razak has been far more interested in celebrating the Christmas break by playing golf with US President Obama in Hawaii. I'm actually a bit surprised this story hasn't received more coverage because surely there is a way to diplomatically isolate Malaysia over the 537 deaths that falls between all out war and Obama inviting their Prime Minister to join him on a family vacation.
One story I won't be reviewing because I didn't get to cover it at the time is the end of "Mare Nostrum" - an Italian led but European Union (EU) support mission to rescue illegal immigrants who have got into trouble trying to cross the Mediterranean sea from Africa. It has been replaced by "Triton" which will only patrol 48km (30 miles) from the Italian coast and won't be supported by the UK thus making the Mediterranean's reputation as "The Graveyard of Europe" much worse. The EU will though continue to support policies that are not only intended to destroy many African nations such as Libya but also tear the EU itself to pieces.
I have though decided that I won't be archiving the World Cup because I didn't consider that work.
14:40 on 28/12/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:35 on 28/12/14 (UK date) to add;
Today I seriously overslept waking up at around 12:30. So not only did I not have time to have breakfast I didn't really have time to work out what my first instinct about all this was.
However the immediate suspicion falls on Indonesia where QZ8501 took off from. The assumption being that they were trying to express their anger that Razak had been so honoured by a US President who spent his early life in Indonesia. However the next suspicion falls on Malaysia which although certainly a private company Air Asia operates from. The assumption being that Malaysia was trying to spread the blame around by making it look like Indonesia were getting angry in order to reduce the fear that passengers of Malaysia Airlines their consent to be killed which is obviously putting pressure on the business model of the state owned flag carrier.
That said the whole thing still feels to me so utterly random that much like Phil Hughes' death it might actually have been just random dumb luck.
On a somewhat related note if you're looking for more information why December 31st is officially considered the last day of the year I suggest you read up on the 1917 Anglo-French Conference on Time-Keeping at Sea. After all it is something to do but with the conference lasting 8 years no-one's in a rush to revisit that particular treaty.
(Originally Posted on 28/12/14 - UK date).
On the Second Day of Christmas...
...I came home and had a bath.
You may remember that last year I very nobly decided to spend Christmas at home with just my father for company. This was obviously because I was concerned about him getting lonely at this festive time and nothing to do with the fact I was far too tired to bother with anything. This year I made the first trip to spend Christmas with my mothers down in Salisbury. Again this was purely because I thought it was important to be around loved ones at this time of year and not at all because their house is far nicer then mine.
The big attraction this year was that my brother's girlfriend joined us and growing up in a Muslim household she'd never celebrated Christmas. Obviously Christmas in my lesbian mother's house which is right by Stonehenge isn't a particularly religious event. It was though quite fun watching a fully grow adult experience Christmas for the first time. Sadly though my suggestion of giving the couple the full childhood Christmas experience by sending them to bed by nine in the evening after having hung up their Christmas stockings and left mince pies, sherry and carrots out for Santa and his reindeer was over-ruled.
Also my mother's have a Cocker Spaniel. As the writers of Downton Abbey know Cocker's are gun dogs meaning they're bred to chase game out of the bushes and then wait while the Pheasants are shot before bringing the game back to their owners. This means that they're very, very busy dogs who always have to be running around doing something and if they're not doing that they always need to be near the humans. Perhaps because of her Muslim upbringing my brother's girlfriend is terrified of dogs which as far as the dog was concerned instantly made her the most interesting human in the house. As a result I spent most of my time with a dog lead tied around my wrist while sitting on the sofa trying to play a game known as; "Sitting down quietly." This actually suited me perfectly but doesn't make for the most action packed anecdote.
In terms of presents I'm not going to go into what everybody got mainly because my approach was very firmly in the "F*ck it you're all getting gift cards" school. I did though get the first season of "Orange is the New Black" on DVD which I very nearly brought for myself a few weeks ago so I quite literally got exactly what I wanted for Christmas. I did though decide that sitting down to watch it with my mothers would probably cross a line.
15:55 on 26/12/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:10 on 28/12/14 (UK date) to add;
Despite arriving at London Paddington yesterday (27/12/14) on the South West Trains service from Exeter St Davids my brother has finally visited my father for Christmas. So we all went to the pub. Obviously my brother's girlfriend wasn't invited because as she grew up in a Muslim household my father simply refuses to acknowledge her existence. Bear that in mind the next time I say that even my father is shocked by the fact the Jewish Underground were allowed to get away with it.
(Originally Posted on 26/12/14 - UK date).
You may remember that last year I very nobly decided to spend Christmas at home with just my father for company. This was obviously because I was concerned about him getting lonely at this festive time and nothing to do with the fact I was far too tired to bother with anything. This year I made the first trip to spend Christmas with my mothers down in Salisbury. Again this was purely because I thought it was important to be around loved ones at this time of year and not at all because their house is far nicer then mine.
The big attraction this year was that my brother's girlfriend joined us and growing up in a Muslim household she'd never celebrated Christmas. Obviously Christmas in my lesbian mother's house which is right by Stonehenge isn't a particularly religious event. It was though quite fun watching a fully grow adult experience Christmas for the first time. Sadly though my suggestion of giving the couple the full childhood Christmas experience by sending them to bed by nine in the evening after having hung up their Christmas stockings and left mince pies, sherry and carrots out for Santa and his reindeer was over-ruled.
Also my mother's have a Cocker Spaniel. As the writers of Downton Abbey know Cocker's are gun dogs meaning they're bred to chase game out of the bushes and then wait while the Pheasants are shot before bringing the game back to their owners. This means that they're very, very busy dogs who always have to be running around doing something and if they're not doing that they always need to be near the humans. Perhaps because of her Muslim upbringing my brother's girlfriend is terrified of dogs which as far as the dog was concerned instantly made her the most interesting human in the house. As a result I spent most of my time with a dog lead tied around my wrist while sitting on the sofa trying to play a game known as; "Sitting down quietly." This actually suited me perfectly but doesn't make for the most action packed anecdote.
In terms of presents I'm not going to go into what everybody got mainly because my approach was very firmly in the "F*ck it you're all getting gift cards" school. I did though get the first season of "Orange is the New Black" on DVD which I very nearly brought for myself a few weeks ago so I quite literally got exactly what I wanted for Christmas. I did though decide that sitting down to watch it with my mothers would probably cross a line.
15:55 on 26/12/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 19:10 on 28/12/14 (UK date) to add;
Despite arriving at London Paddington yesterday (27/12/14) on the South West Trains service from Exeter St Davids my brother has finally visited my father for Christmas. So we all went to the pub. Obviously my brother's girlfriend wasn't invited because as she grew up in a Muslim household my father simply refuses to acknowledge her existence. Bear that in mind the next time I say that even my father is shocked by the fact the Jewish Underground were allowed to get away with it.
(Originally Posted on 26/12/14 - UK date).
What A Smashing Christmas.
As the Earth orbits the Sun every year it tilts on its axis. So towards
the end of June the northern hemisphere is facing the Sun meaning that
the days are long, the temperatures are warm and everybody is happy.
However towards the end of December the northern hemisphere is facing
away from the Sun meaning that the days are short, the temperatures are
cold and everybody is miserable.
To break up the unrelenting misery of winter the ancient inhabitants of the northern hemisphere used to celebrate the winter solstice (when the earth is at maximum tilt) by dancing, feasting and generally setting fire to things in an effort to chase away the darkness. Being an army of occupation the Romans decided to hijack this Pagan festival by pretending Jesus Christ was born close to the winter solstice thus turning it into a Christian festival in an effort to better control the natives. Similarly they also decided to pretend that the much more important death and resurrection of Christ (Easter) occurred during the spring equinox which is the mid-way point between the winter and summer solstices. I'm pretty sure this was all being covered in the closing ceremony for the 2012 Para-Olympic games up until the point Jay-Z turned up ruining it for everyone.
Regardless of what you call it in the run-up to this big winter festival the darkness, the cold and the stress of preparing makes everyone a bit depressed causing them to become a little crazy. This year the mayhem began in the US because their November Thanksgiving festival seems designed to make the insanity begin that little bit earlier every year.
The first such incident occurred in the Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra on December 15th (15/12/14) when a car smashed into a crowd gathered to watch a light display injuring 11. Three days later (18/12/14) another car smashed into a crowd that was leaving a Christmas Church service in Redondo Beach just outside Los Angeles killing three and injuring nine. In the run up to the winter festival celebrations people tend to drink heavily and then some of them choose to drive. Due to the number of accidents it causes this drink driving has been subject to massive public education campaigns in the UK and Europe so has become totally unacceptable in the public opinion. However in the US which is a much more car dependent society the message still hasn't got through. As a result everyone was happy to put these incidents in America down to simply human stupidity rather then anything more organised.
Unfortunately France then started experience problems. The first of these occurred on the solstice itself (21/12/14) when a man walked into a police station in Tours and stabbed three police officers before being shot and killed by the police. Despite the fact the man shouted "God is Great" in Arabic (Allah Akbar) during the attack and is a recent convert to Islam I pretty much assumed this was just a suicide by cop. After all if you don't understand its ecological origins and don't drink alcohol it can be quite hard to get into the spirit of the winter festival magnifying the depressing effects of winter. I think this effect was also a trigger in the shooting of two police officers in New York City, US on the same day but in that case there were also substantially larger contributing factors. It has though since emerged that the Tours attacker was a keen online follower of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) so I might have to look at that again although there is a huge overlap between people with severe mental health problems and supporters of ISIL. In fact you could go so far as to say that around 98-99% of ISIL supporters have severe mental health problems.
The following day (22/12/14) a driver rammed his van into pedestrians in the French city of Dijon injuring 11. On a technical level this is very similar to the type of run-over terror attacks that have become frequent in Israel in the latter half of 2014 and we saw in Canada on October 20th (20/10/14) However despite the fact the driver also shouted Allah Akbar and claimed he was acting in support of the children of Palestine as far as I can tell he had no links to either Islam nor ISIL. However he has got very strong links with mental health services in France. Therefore his motivations could be something as incomprehensible as simply seeing news of the Tours incident on TV and deciding that it was a coded message from the lizard people that secretly control the world that he should also act.
Sadly though someone in the UK clearly got paranoid that the French had spotted something about the similar incidents in the US and had put on the Tours and Dijon incidents in order to have a coded discussion with the US. So the UK decided to try and muscle in on this imagined conversation by smashing a garbage truck ("bin lorry" locally) into pedestrians in and around Saint George's (A Turkish Crusader) Square in Glasgow, Scotland killing 6 and injuring 10.
Again on a technical level the St George's crash is exactly the same as a run-over terror attack. Added to that when I talk about Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED's) being used by ISIL in Kobane I'm talking about a truck of that size packed with explosives. The route the truck took is very similar to the route a VBIED took from Turkey into Kobane on November 29th (29/11/14) along a road that is usually closed by the Turkish military. Also "bin" is commonly used in Arabic names to indicate "son of" or "originating from" - "Osama bin Laden" being probably the most famous example. Not being very good at Arabic many foreign fighters who have joined ISIL give themselves ridiculous Arab names. Therefore hearing about "Glasgow bin Lorry" you couldn't help but wonder if an ISIL moron was involved. Finally I strongly suspect that the UK intelligence services refer to the mechanism they set up to send no hopers to fight for ISIL as; "The Garbage Truck." If we're looking for suspects I would look closely at the drivers work colleagues particularly his shift supervisor because if you're dealing with someone whose obese, smokes and drinks too much inducing a cardiac arrest is just a matter of picking the right words at the right moment.
Shortly after the St George's crash another French driver smashed into a crowd of pedestrians in Nantes killing we now know 1 and injuring 9. On this occasion the driver also shouted Allah Akbar and not only appears to have attacked a Christmas market but also specifically targeted a stall selling mulled wine which is obvious haram in Islam. However it is not yet clear whether he was simply someone who was made very angry about the darkness and his own confusion over Christmas or whether he was a fully fledged supporter of ISIL who was angered by France's role in the US-led coalition which along with the Kurds is currently giving ISIL a very hard time of it.
This though is the problem with this type of lone-wolf, run-over attack. Even within Palestine no-one plans them or orders them instead they simply put the idea out there into the public consciousness in the hope something will happen. This is exactly what Al Sharpton was doing during his speech to the "Justice For All" march on December 13th (13/12/14) in which he smirked about different parts of the 'movement' embracing different methods while protesters in the New York City "Justice For All" march chanted; "What do we want?! Dead Cops! When do we want it?! Now!"
France is particularly vulnerable to this type of lone-wolf attack for a number of reasons. The main one of these is a lack of social cohesion caused by a lack of an effective urban development policy. Basically French city centres are occupied only by the rich with the poor being forced to live in suburbs on the outskirts. Pretty much every year these poor suburbs whose inhabitants are overwhelmingly black and often Muslims explode into violence and rioting. This problem has been made worse by some awful economic policies of French President Hollande which has sent unemployment and poverty soaring further damaging social cohesion and leading to the rise of the fascist National Front (FN) Party. Sadly just as Hollande realised his mistake and reversed his damaging economic policies the European Union (EU) decided that it wanted to go along with the US' plan to destroy the EU economy, sorry er, "Punish Russia for its aggression in Ukraine."
Added to these serious structural problems and FN's rampant Islamophobia France's involvement in fighting the new breed of Islamist in Mali and now Iraq has led to many of France's young, black Muslims to feel that their country doesn't want them and it at war with them. Seeing everyone busy sinning and celebrating an ostensibly Christian festival only adds to that feeling of isolation. It must be said though that France hasn't done itself any favours by being overly dramatic about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in an effort to muscle it's way into peace negotiations. For example France has sponsered the Palestinians ill-concieved bid for statehood that it wants to bring before the United Nations Secuirty Council (UNSC) on Christmas Eve of all days.
I wish I could be more reassuring to the people of France but this seems set to continue with the French police today stopping a man armed with two shotguns from mounting another attack and the army being deployed to help maintain security. So basically what everyone's hoping for from Christmas this year is for US President Obama to finally grow the f*ck up and get his a*se into gear because ISIL should have already been defeated by now.
(Originally Posted) 17:20 on 23/12/14 (UK date).
To break up the unrelenting misery of winter the ancient inhabitants of the northern hemisphere used to celebrate the winter solstice (when the earth is at maximum tilt) by dancing, feasting and generally setting fire to things in an effort to chase away the darkness. Being an army of occupation the Romans decided to hijack this Pagan festival by pretending Jesus Christ was born close to the winter solstice thus turning it into a Christian festival in an effort to better control the natives. Similarly they also decided to pretend that the much more important death and resurrection of Christ (Easter) occurred during the spring equinox which is the mid-way point between the winter and summer solstices. I'm pretty sure this was all being covered in the closing ceremony for the 2012 Para-Olympic games up until the point Jay-Z turned up ruining it for everyone.
Regardless of what you call it in the run-up to this big winter festival the darkness, the cold and the stress of preparing makes everyone a bit depressed causing them to become a little crazy. This year the mayhem began in the US because their November Thanksgiving festival seems designed to make the insanity begin that little bit earlier every year.
The first such incident occurred in the Los Angeles suburb of Alhambra on December 15th (15/12/14) when a car smashed into a crowd gathered to watch a light display injuring 11. Three days later (18/12/14) another car smashed into a crowd that was leaving a Christmas Church service in Redondo Beach just outside Los Angeles killing three and injuring nine. In the run up to the winter festival celebrations people tend to drink heavily and then some of them choose to drive. Due to the number of accidents it causes this drink driving has been subject to massive public education campaigns in the UK and Europe so has become totally unacceptable in the public opinion. However in the US which is a much more car dependent society the message still hasn't got through. As a result everyone was happy to put these incidents in America down to simply human stupidity rather then anything more organised.
Unfortunately France then started experience problems. The first of these occurred on the solstice itself (21/12/14) when a man walked into a police station in Tours and stabbed three police officers before being shot and killed by the police. Despite the fact the man shouted "God is Great" in Arabic (Allah Akbar) during the attack and is a recent convert to Islam I pretty much assumed this was just a suicide by cop. After all if you don't understand its ecological origins and don't drink alcohol it can be quite hard to get into the spirit of the winter festival magnifying the depressing effects of winter. I think this effect was also a trigger in the shooting of two police officers in New York City, US on the same day but in that case there were also substantially larger contributing factors. It has though since emerged that the Tours attacker was a keen online follower of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) so I might have to look at that again although there is a huge overlap between people with severe mental health problems and supporters of ISIL. In fact you could go so far as to say that around 98-99% of ISIL supporters have severe mental health problems.
The following day (22/12/14) a driver rammed his van into pedestrians in the French city of Dijon injuring 11. On a technical level this is very similar to the type of run-over terror attacks that have become frequent in Israel in the latter half of 2014 and we saw in Canada on October 20th (20/10/14) However despite the fact the driver also shouted Allah Akbar and claimed he was acting in support of the children of Palestine as far as I can tell he had no links to either Islam nor ISIL. However he has got very strong links with mental health services in France. Therefore his motivations could be something as incomprehensible as simply seeing news of the Tours incident on TV and deciding that it was a coded message from the lizard people that secretly control the world that he should also act.
Sadly though someone in the UK clearly got paranoid that the French had spotted something about the similar incidents in the US and had put on the Tours and Dijon incidents in order to have a coded discussion with the US. So the UK decided to try and muscle in on this imagined conversation by smashing a garbage truck ("bin lorry" locally) into pedestrians in and around Saint George's (A Turkish Crusader) Square in Glasgow, Scotland killing 6 and injuring 10.
Again on a technical level the St George's crash is exactly the same as a run-over terror attack. Added to that when I talk about Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED's) being used by ISIL in Kobane I'm talking about a truck of that size packed with explosives. The route the truck took is very similar to the route a VBIED took from Turkey into Kobane on November 29th (29/11/14) along a road that is usually closed by the Turkish military. Also "bin" is commonly used in Arabic names to indicate "son of" or "originating from" - "Osama bin Laden" being probably the most famous example. Not being very good at Arabic many foreign fighters who have joined ISIL give themselves ridiculous Arab names. Therefore hearing about "Glasgow bin Lorry" you couldn't help but wonder if an ISIL moron was involved. Finally I strongly suspect that the UK intelligence services refer to the mechanism they set up to send no hopers to fight for ISIL as; "The Garbage Truck." If we're looking for suspects I would look closely at the drivers work colleagues particularly his shift supervisor because if you're dealing with someone whose obese, smokes and drinks too much inducing a cardiac arrest is just a matter of picking the right words at the right moment.
Shortly after the St George's crash another French driver smashed into a crowd of pedestrians in Nantes killing we now know 1 and injuring 9. On this occasion the driver also shouted Allah Akbar and not only appears to have attacked a Christmas market but also specifically targeted a stall selling mulled wine which is obvious haram in Islam. However it is not yet clear whether he was simply someone who was made very angry about the darkness and his own confusion over Christmas or whether he was a fully fledged supporter of ISIL who was angered by France's role in the US-led coalition which along with the Kurds is currently giving ISIL a very hard time of it.
This though is the problem with this type of lone-wolf, run-over attack. Even within Palestine no-one plans them or orders them instead they simply put the idea out there into the public consciousness in the hope something will happen. This is exactly what Al Sharpton was doing during his speech to the "Justice For All" march on December 13th (13/12/14) in which he smirked about different parts of the 'movement' embracing different methods while protesters in the New York City "Justice For All" march chanted; "What do we want?! Dead Cops! When do we want it?! Now!"
France is particularly vulnerable to this type of lone-wolf attack for a number of reasons. The main one of these is a lack of social cohesion caused by a lack of an effective urban development policy. Basically French city centres are occupied only by the rich with the poor being forced to live in suburbs on the outskirts. Pretty much every year these poor suburbs whose inhabitants are overwhelmingly black and often Muslims explode into violence and rioting. This problem has been made worse by some awful economic policies of French President Hollande which has sent unemployment and poverty soaring further damaging social cohesion and leading to the rise of the fascist National Front (FN) Party. Sadly just as Hollande realised his mistake and reversed his damaging economic policies the European Union (EU) decided that it wanted to go along with the US' plan to destroy the EU economy, sorry er, "Punish Russia for its aggression in Ukraine."
Added to these serious structural problems and FN's rampant Islamophobia France's involvement in fighting the new breed of Islamist in Mali and now Iraq has led to many of France's young, black Muslims to feel that their country doesn't want them and it at war with them. Seeing everyone busy sinning and celebrating an ostensibly Christian festival only adds to that feeling of isolation. It must be said though that France hasn't done itself any favours by being overly dramatic about Israel's treatment of the Palestinians in an effort to muscle it's way into peace negotiations. For example France has sponsered the Palestinians ill-concieved bid for statehood that it wants to bring before the United Nations Secuirty Council (UNSC) on Christmas Eve of all days.
I wish I could be more reassuring to the people of France but this seems set to continue with the French police today stopping a man armed with two shotguns from mounting another attack and the army being deployed to help maintain security. So basically what everyone's hoping for from Christmas this year is for US President Obama to finally grow the f*ck up and get his a*se into gear because ISIL should have already been defeated by now.
(Originally Posted) 17:20 on 23/12/14 (UK date).
Operation Featherweight: Month 5, Week 3, Day 1.
As it approaches its 100th day the Battle for Kobane/Ayn al-Arab is
still stuck firmly in an attrition phase. In the week since my last post
the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) have continued to mount
patrols on all fronts periodically engaging with Islamic State of Iraq
and the Levant (ISIL) fighters killing 11, capturing small amounts of
weapons and ammunition and liberating the occasional fighting position.
On Thursday (18/12/14) ISIL fighters inside Kobane attempted to launch a fresh assault against the YPG on the southern front. This assault was led by two Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED's/truck bombs) and backed by a tank. However after a night of fighting the YPG were able to repel this attack resulting in the deaths of 26 ISIL fighters and the capture of large amounts of ammunition. Sadly 1 YPG fighter lost his life in this battle.
In response to the ISIL assault the YPG launched their own offensive on Friday (19/12/14) against ISIL positions at the Yarmouk School from where Thursday's attack was launched. Although as far as I can tell this operation is still going on as the YPG consolidate their position it appears to have been a complete success with the YPG liberating ISIL positions in and around the school and pushing forward to the edge of the 48 neighbourhood which is the ISIL stronghold on the southern front. During this operation 21 ISIL fighters were killed including Abu Zahra who is the commander of the Chechen Jundullah Brigade. No YPG fighters lost their lives in the operation.
The YPG have also mounted operations against ISIL positions close to the cultural centre on the eastern front and conducted commando-style raids against ISIL in the villages surrounding Kobane - most notably Ko Ali. Crucially they have also manged to maintain control of the villages for Tarmik to the south-west and Helinj and Jalabiyah to the south-east cutting ISIL supply lines to Aleppo City and Raqqa respectively.
At this point I should mention that despite being a desert country in the depths of winter the weather in Syria can actually be both very wet and very cold. Therefore the first battle that everybody people is fighting at this time is the battle to stay warm and dry meaning that there is often a drop in the tempo of fighting. However the deteriorating conditions have spurred people into action in neighbouring Iraq.
You may remember that back in August 2014 ISIL overran dozens of Kurdish villages at the foot of the Shingal/Sinjar mountains. This forced 50-60,000 ethnic Kurds of the Yazidi religion to escape onto the mountain where they faced dehydration and starvation or face certain death at the hands of ISIL. After several weeks the pressure from the press corp became too much for US President Barack Obama to bear so he belatedly launched a military operation to prevent a genocide. After a month of relentless pressure Obama went on to expand the operation to allow it to go on the offensive against ISIL.
Sadly Obama then rapidly lost his nerve, lost interest and randomly started carrying out symbolic attacks against mysterious groups like the Khorasan Group in Syria instead.
On Wednesday (17/12/14) the US-led coalition finally got it together with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi military to break the siege in Sinjar.
At dawn on Wednesday some 8,000 Peshmerga who had assembled at Zumar which is just north of Mosul Dam around 50km (30 miles) north-west of Mosul City advanced west. By the following day they had liberated all the villages and cleared all the ISIL positions within the 700km^2 (420m^2) between Zumar and the city of Shingal/Sinjar. During these two day the Peshmerga were assisted by 98 coalition air-strikes which acting in a close air-support role destroyed more then 100 ISIL targets primarily made up of check-points, fighting positions and ground units.
On Friday (19/12/14) Peshmergas from Rabia which sits on the Syria border around 125km (75 miles) north-west of Mosul pushed north-east liberating the are between Sinjar and the border from ISIL. At the same time the YPG based in Syria along with Yazidi militia pushed up the mountains from Syria to link up with the advancing Peshmerga. This now establishes a wide corridor stretching all the way from the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Arbil to the edge of the YPG's Cizire canton at Serekanyie some 350km (210 miles) away. Unfortunately in the face of the Kurdish advances a large proportion of ISIL fighters have fled with weapons and equipment both into Syria and Mosul which ISIL's stronghold in Iraq. As the US-led coalition made no attempt to cut them down as they fled it is likely that they will now re-group in both areas.
Despite this tremendous success by the Kurds the operation suffered a major setback on Monday (15/12/14) when the Al Nusra Front (ANF) backed by the Free Men of Levant (FML) and other members of the Islamist Front (IF) grouping seized the Hamidiyeh and Wadi al-Deif bases in Idlib province from the Syrian government capturing tanks, armoured vehicles and lots of advanced weapons in the process. Although a loss by the Syrian government isn't really a concern of the coalition a gain by the Al Qaeda allied ANF should be because they are covered by the same United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution as ISIL and the fact that they have begun to work with the IF grouping suggests they are getting closer to getting over their ideological differences and allying themselves with ISIL.
Yesterday the US confirmed that 1,300 extra ground troops will be sent to Iraq in January. The timing of the announcement couldn't have come at a worse time because this week the US ground troops who are definitely not combat troops had their first taste of combat. Essentially a small group of around 100 US troops had been deployed to the Ain Al-Assad base which is around 90km (54 miles) west of Ramadi in Anbar province and around 200km (120 miles) west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. On Sunday (14/12/14) ISIL attacked the base forcing the US-troops to open fire and call in air-strikes to repel the attack. It seems the attack was successfully repelled in just over two hours although the US is remaining so tight-lipped about possible casualties they still refusing to even acknowledge that the event took place.
(Originally Posted) 17:55 on 21/12/14 (UK date).
On Thursday (18/12/14) ISIL fighters inside Kobane attempted to launch a fresh assault against the YPG on the southern front. This assault was led by two Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED's/truck bombs) and backed by a tank. However after a night of fighting the YPG were able to repel this attack resulting in the deaths of 26 ISIL fighters and the capture of large amounts of ammunition. Sadly 1 YPG fighter lost his life in this battle.
In response to the ISIL assault the YPG launched their own offensive on Friday (19/12/14) against ISIL positions at the Yarmouk School from where Thursday's attack was launched. Although as far as I can tell this operation is still going on as the YPG consolidate their position it appears to have been a complete success with the YPG liberating ISIL positions in and around the school and pushing forward to the edge of the 48 neighbourhood which is the ISIL stronghold on the southern front. During this operation 21 ISIL fighters were killed including Abu Zahra who is the commander of the Chechen Jundullah Brigade. No YPG fighters lost their lives in the operation.
The YPG have also mounted operations against ISIL positions close to the cultural centre on the eastern front and conducted commando-style raids against ISIL in the villages surrounding Kobane - most notably Ko Ali. Crucially they have also manged to maintain control of the villages for Tarmik to the south-west and Helinj and Jalabiyah to the south-east cutting ISIL supply lines to Aleppo City and Raqqa respectively.
At this point I should mention that despite being a desert country in the depths of winter the weather in Syria can actually be both very wet and very cold. Therefore the first battle that everybody people is fighting at this time is the battle to stay warm and dry meaning that there is often a drop in the tempo of fighting. However the deteriorating conditions have spurred people into action in neighbouring Iraq.
You may remember that back in August 2014 ISIL overran dozens of Kurdish villages at the foot of the Shingal/Sinjar mountains. This forced 50-60,000 ethnic Kurds of the Yazidi religion to escape onto the mountain where they faced dehydration and starvation or face certain death at the hands of ISIL. After several weeks the pressure from the press corp became too much for US President Barack Obama to bear so he belatedly launched a military operation to prevent a genocide. After a month of relentless pressure Obama went on to expand the operation to allow it to go on the offensive against ISIL.
Sadly Obama then rapidly lost his nerve, lost interest and randomly started carrying out symbolic attacks against mysterious groups like the Khorasan Group in Syria instead.
On Wednesday (17/12/14) the US-led coalition finally got it together with the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga and the Iraqi military to break the siege in Sinjar.
At dawn on Wednesday some 8,000 Peshmerga who had assembled at Zumar which is just north of Mosul Dam around 50km (30 miles) north-west of Mosul City advanced west. By the following day they had liberated all the villages and cleared all the ISIL positions within the 700km^2 (420m^2) between Zumar and the city of Shingal/Sinjar. During these two day the Peshmerga were assisted by 98 coalition air-strikes which acting in a close air-support role destroyed more then 100 ISIL targets primarily made up of check-points, fighting positions and ground units.
On Friday (19/12/14) Peshmergas from Rabia which sits on the Syria border around 125km (75 miles) north-west of Mosul pushed north-east liberating the are between Sinjar and the border from ISIL. At the same time the YPG based in Syria along with Yazidi militia pushed up the mountains from Syria to link up with the advancing Peshmerga. This now establishes a wide corridor stretching all the way from the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Arbil to the edge of the YPG's Cizire canton at Serekanyie some 350km (210 miles) away. Unfortunately in the face of the Kurdish advances a large proportion of ISIL fighters have fled with weapons and equipment both into Syria and Mosul which ISIL's stronghold in Iraq. As the US-led coalition made no attempt to cut them down as they fled it is likely that they will now re-group in both areas.
Despite this tremendous success by the Kurds the operation suffered a major setback on Monday (15/12/14) when the Al Nusra Front (ANF) backed by the Free Men of Levant (FML) and other members of the Islamist Front (IF) grouping seized the Hamidiyeh and Wadi al-Deif bases in Idlib province from the Syrian government capturing tanks, armoured vehicles and lots of advanced weapons in the process. Although a loss by the Syrian government isn't really a concern of the coalition a gain by the Al Qaeda allied ANF should be because they are covered by the same United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution as ISIL and the fact that they have begun to work with the IF grouping suggests they are getting closer to getting over their ideological differences and allying themselves with ISIL.
Yesterday the US confirmed that 1,300 extra ground troops will be sent to Iraq in January. The timing of the announcement couldn't have come at a worse time because this week the US ground troops who are definitely not combat troops had their first taste of combat. Essentially a small group of around 100 US troops had been deployed to the Ain Al-Assad base which is around 90km (54 miles) west of Ramadi in Anbar province and around 200km (120 miles) west of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. On Sunday (14/12/14) ISIL attacked the base forcing the US-troops to open fire and call in air-strikes to repel the attack. It seems the attack was successfully repelled in just over two hours although the US is remaining so tight-lipped about possible casualties they still refusing to even acknowledge that the event took place.
(Originally Posted) 17:55 on 21/12/14 (UK date).
Operation Featherweight: Month 5, Week 2, Day 3.
Before events in Australia got ahead of me this was intended to be a
continuation of my previous post that can be read here; http://100badones.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/operation-featherweight-month-5-week-2.html
Apart from the decision to take no action against Turkey for their material support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and to send a further 1,300 ground troops to Iraq the main outcome from the December 3rd (3/12/14) meeting of the US-led coalition was to establish a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) - the US' name for the operation. This brings all the nations with combat forces in the coalition together into, well, a joint task force.
This represent the beginning of the centralised command structure that I have been pressing for since the operation began. Although the exact details of how this particular CJTF will operate remain elusive it is the way that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members of the coalition (incl Australia) are used to working together. While all nations will be represented by senior officers in the command cell the setting up of a CJTF means that there is an overall commander who is responsible for identifying the jobs that need to be done and assigning forces to get them done. This should make the coalition more effective because it gets everybody moving in the same direction rather then charging around all doing their own thing.
However this is merely a step forward rather then the task being completed because although there is now a way to co-ordinate the forces in the coalition there still needs to be an over-riding strategic plan for them to carry out. For this we have to again look to US President Obama because he either still hasn't understood how a military operation functions or he has yet to come to terms with the fact that ISIL need to be defeated on the battlefield.
The bit I liked the most about this development though is that after choosing a logo featuring Arab-style swords CJTFOIR set up a Twitter account (@CJTFOIR). I appear to have been pre-emptively blocked from following this account which I suppose is a claim to fame of sorts.
Last Sunday (7/12/14) I was tempted to rush out a quick post before lunch explaining that while I wasn't posting I continuing to keep an eye on things and giving a quick update on the situation in Kobane/Ayn al-Arab. However with my PC finally dying a death I was prevented from doing so. This seems to have been for the best because on Sunday afternoon the Israeli Air Force (IAF) carried out air-strikes against Syrian government positions at the international airport in the capital Damascus and a military airbase in the town of Dimas which is around 23km (14 miles) north-west of Damascus and around 5km (3 miles) from the border with Lebanon.
In 1967 Syria declared war on Israel during what is known as the Six-Day War. As the name suggests Israel rapidly won this war and occupied parts of the Syrian Golan Heights. Due to that occupation being unresolved a state of war still exists between Israel and Syria which means that these Israeli air-strikes against the Syrian government were entirely lawful. The target of these strikes appear to have been stores of and convoys moving S-3000 anti-aircraft missiles for the Syrian government to the Lebanon based group Hezbollah.
It is well established that Hezbollah are now fighting in Syria on the side of the Syrian government. Although this is an ideological allegiance that goes back decades it is also well established that Hezbollah are being compensated for their efforts with access to military-grade rockets from the Syrian government arsenal. Therefore this type of weapons shipment going back and forth is a pretty regular occurrence. However the S-3000 missile is a much more serious piece of equipment then anything Hezbollah currently has at their disposal. For example if the missiles had been deployed rather then loaded on the back of trucks they would have been more then capable of shooting down the IAF aircraft that destroyed them. I dread to think what they would do to a commercial airliner.
Therefore it is extremely likely that this threat and an opportunity to eliminate presented itself to the Israelis so they took it.
However whilst the strikes were going on the Saban conference taking place in Washington D.C, US. This is an annual conference on middle-eastern affairs that the US think-tank the Brookings Institute had rather unhelpfully decided to host slap-bang in the middle of COP20. Obviously the fight against ISIL and international sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program were high on the agenda. While I'm certainly not going to account for every political view held and sentence uttered in Israel particularly during an election campaign in the past I have got the impression that when Israel has demanded action on Iran's nuclear program they were in fact referring to Iran's supply of conventional weapons to Hezbollah. Therefore it is possible these strikes were timed to point out that US President Obama may be taking things a little too literally in his efforts to end Iran's nuclear program which even the Israelis describe as an existential threat.
These Israeli strikes though were particularly embarrassing for Syria's Sunni-Arab insurgent groups who take great pride in their hatred of Jews and their desire to destroy Israel. Earlier on Sunday the United Nations Disengagement Observer Forces (UNDOF) which monitors the Golan Heights presented a report to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) detailing co-operation between the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and the insurgents.
For the most part this involved allowing Syrian civilians to be treated in Israeli hospitals but there was also evidence of insurgents being allowed to cross into the Israeli occupied areas to receive medical treatment and to accompany their wounded comrades. I should point out that this is predominately humanitarian assistance and the IDF troops involved were from the Golani Brigades which was set up specifically to guard the border. That means that while the Golani Brigades are elite fighers they are also highly skilled at peacekeeping which this seems to have been part of.
However UNDOF also detailed meetings between people in civilian dress who were being guarded by members of the IDF and the insurgents. During several of these meetings mysterious boxes were handed by what we assume to be Israeli spies to the insurgents. These packages were very noticeably indistinct however they could well have contained the type of communication equipment used to identify ground targets for air-strikes.
Therefore it seems that Syria's Sunni-Arab insurgents ideological commitments are certainly negotiable, for the right price.
(Originally Posted) 18:20 on 16/12/14 (UK date).
Apart from the decision to take no action against Turkey for their material support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and to send a further 1,300 ground troops to Iraq the main outcome from the December 3rd (3/12/14) meeting of the US-led coalition was to establish a Combined Joint Task Force (CJTF) for Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR) - the US' name for the operation. This brings all the nations with combat forces in the coalition together into, well, a joint task force.
This represent the beginning of the centralised command structure that I have been pressing for since the operation began. Although the exact details of how this particular CJTF will operate remain elusive it is the way that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members of the coalition (incl Australia) are used to working together. While all nations will be represented by senior officers in the command cell the setting up of a CJTF means that there is an overall commander who is responsible for identifying the jobs that need to be done and assigning forces to get them done. This should make the coalition more effective because it gets everybody moving in the same direction rather then charging around all doing their own thing.
However this is merely a step forward rather then the task being completed because although there is now a way to co-ordinate the forces in the coalition there still needs to be an over-riding strategic plan for them to carry out. For this we have to again look to US President Obama because he either still hasn't understood how a military operation functions or he has yet to come to terms with the fact that ISIL need to be defeated on the battlefield.
The bit I liked the most about this development though is that after choosing a logo featuring Arab-style swords CJTFOIR set up a Twitter account (@CJTFOIR). I appear to have been pre-emptively blocked from following this account which I suppose is a claim to fame of sorts.
Last Sunday (7/12/14) I was tempted to rush out a quick post before lunch explaining that while I wasn't posting I continuing to keep an eye on things and giving a quick update on the situation in Kobane/Ayn al-Arab. However with my PC finally dying a death I was prevented from doing so. This seems to have been for the best because on Sunday afternoon the Israeli Air Force (IAF) carried out air-strikes against Syrian government positions at the international airport in the capital Damascus and a military airbase in the town of Dimas which is around 23km (14 miles) north-west of Damascus and around 5km (3 miles) from the border with Lebanon.
In 1967 Syria declared war on Israel during what is known as the Six-Day War. As the name suggests Israel rapidly won this war and occupied parts of the Syrian Golan Heights. Due to that occupation being unresolved a state of war still exists between Israel and Syria which means that these Israeli air-strikes against the Syrian government were entirely lawful. The target of these strikes appear to have been stores of and convoys moving S-3000 anti-aircraft missiles for the Syrian government to the Lebanon based group Hezbollah.
It is well established that Hezbollah are now fighting in Syria on the side of the Syrian government. Although this is an ideological allegiance that goes back decades it is also well established that Hezbollah are being compensated for their efforts with access to military-grade rockets from the Syrian government arsenal. Therefore this type of weapons shipment going back and forth is a pretty regular occurrence. However the S-3000 missile is a much more serious piece of equipment then anything Hezbollah currently has at their disposal. For example if the missiles had been deployed rather then loaded on the back of trucks they would have been more then capable of shooting down the IAF aircraft that destroyed them. I dread to think what they would do to a commercial airliner.
Therefore it is extremely likely that this threat and an opportunity to eliminate presented itself to the Israelis so they took it.
However whilst the strikes were going on the Saban conference taking place in Washington D.C, US. This is an annual conference on middle-eastern affairs that the US think-tank the Brookings Institute had rather unhelpfully decided to host slap-bang in the middle of COP20. Obviously the fight against ISIL and international sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program were high on the agenda. While I'm certainly not going to account for every political view held and sentence uttered in Israel particularly during an election campaign in the past I have got the impression that when Israel has demanded action on Iran's nuclear program they were in fact referring to Iran's supply of conventional weapons to Hezbollah. Therefore it is possible these strikes were timed to point out that US President Obama may be taking things a little too literally in his efforts to end Iran's nuclear program which even the Israelis describe as an existential threat.
These Israeli strikes though were particularly embarrassing for Syria's Sunni-Arab insurgent groups who take great pride in their hatred of Jews and their desire to destroy Israel. Earlier on Sunday the United Nations Disengagement Observer Forces (UNDOF) which monitors the Golan Heights presented a report to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) detailing co-operation between the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and the insurgents.
For the most part this involved allowing Syrian civilians to be treated in Israeli hospitals but there was also evidence of insurgents being allowed to cross into the Israeli occupied areas to receive medical treatment and to accompany their wounded comrades. I should point out that this is predominately humanitarian assistance and the IDF troops involved were from the Golani Brigades which was set up specifically to guard the border. That means that while the Golani Brigades are elite fighers they are also highly skilled at peacekeeping which this seems to have been part of.
However UNDOF also detailed meetings between people in civilian dress who were being guarded by members of the IDF and the insurgents. During several of these meetings mysterious boxes were handed by what we assume to be Israeli spies to the insurgents. These packages were very noticeably indistinct however they could well have contained the type of communication equipment used to identify ground targets for air-strikes.
Therefore it seems that Syria's Sunni-Arab insurgents ideological commitments are certainly negotiable, for the right price.
(Originally Posted) 18:20 on 16/12/14 (UK date).
Best Terror Attack Ever!
At the start of the COP 20 Summit I identified Australia as a key figure
within the negotiations. The largest per capita emitter of GreenHouse
Gases (GHG's) in the World the Australian economy is very focused on
mining things like coal which are then sold to other nations - primarily
China - to set fire to releasing GHG's.
However Australia is also a nation that is very susceptible to the effects of climate change. Most of the centre of the country (the Outback) is already too hot for humans to live in and it is surrounded by coral reefs - the Great Barrier Reef being the most famous. Coral is very susceptible to changes in both ocean temperature and acidity which is caused by GHG's being diluted in water. Therefore coral is often considered the canary in the mine shaft for climate change because it shows the effects long before they can be seen elsewhere. Furthermore Australia was probably hit harder then anyone else by the hole in the Ozone layer of the 1980's and 1990's meaning that the population tends to be very aware of environmental issues.
This means that within Australian politics climate change is very much a hot button issue in the same way that abortion or gun control is in US politics. In fact a key part of current Prime Minister Tony Abbott's campaign last year was to do away with his predecessor Julia Gillard's tax on mining companies. That tax was supposed to tackle climate change even though it disregarded the market based mechanisms that absolutely everybody else is moving towards. We are still waiting to see what Abbott's climate change policy will be but I am hoping he will announce some sort of emissions trading scheme although I'm not holding my breath.
Obviously all this policy stuff is exactly the sort of thing that Australia should be including in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) document that they will be submitting in the first quarter of 2015. However Australia appears to have gone in a very different direction.
At around 11:00 local time on December 15th (15/12/14)/ 22:00 on December 14th (14/12/14) GMT what we now know to be a lone gunman walked into a cafe in the centre of Sydney and took 13 staff and customers hostage in a siege that is still going on as I write. The near-by iconic Sydney Opera House was also evacuated amid a bomb scare because as with Kangaroos, hats with corks on them and casual swearing the opera house is one of the things most people associate with Australia. The purpose of this exercise was to exert huge amounts of pressure on the COP 20 delegates both to disrupt the process and help Australia find out where it stands. As a result I don't think there is an element of the story that you couldn't confuse as a coded reference to something else. However I think the main points are;
Economics: The cafe is located in Sydney's Central Business District (CBD). This brings up all sorts of discussions about urban planning and zoning. The fact that the CBD has been shut down during this siege promotes discussion about the possible economic impacts of climate change although the Australians seem focused on the negative impacts of action to prevent climate change. Prime Minister Abbott has already assured Australians that it will be business as usual today. "Business As Usual" is a very big phrase in climate negotiations because one of the main objectives is to get GHG emissions below business as usual. The siege also caused restrictions to be imposed on the airspace in and around Sydney. This obviously re-visited the UK's stunt on Friday (12/12/14) when the closed all the airspace of the south of the country causing travel chaos. Whether the aviation sector is included in emission cuts is also a big issue in negotiations although I thought the point of NDC's was that nations were given the freedom to decide for themselves whether it was included or not.
Sexual Innuendo: Sydney is located in the province of New South Wales (NSW). This acronym is just one letter away from Not Suitable For Work (NSFW) which on the Internet is commonly used to mean pornography. Once you understand that all the references to the female hostages being pressed up against the glass, what they look like, what they're wearing and what they're doing automatically sounds a bit pervy. Added to that the cafe is actually part of a chocolate shop that sits on the ground floor of an office tower block. This could be interpreted as a reference to anal or gay sex particularly as we're all waiting to see if the police will roughly take the male suspect up the chocolate tower. Good luck maintaining an air of professionalism while you have that sort of discussion.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL): As is their position on most things at COP 20 the Gulf Monarchies particularly Saudi Arabia simply started threatening to unleash ISIL style Islamist terrorists on any nation that dares to sign up to an agreement. Officially an example of Islamic terrorism the Sydney siege is supposed to play up those fears by making it appear as though an urgent discussion about ISIL is going on in the US-led coalition.
For example the first thing the hostage taker did was place a banner bearing the Islamic Shahada in the window. Translating roughly as; "There is no god but Allah, Mohamed is his Prophet" this is simply a declaration of the Islamic faith that is used by all Muslims at the start of each prayer. Cleverly the way this banner was placed in the window seemed to use the logo of the Lindt chocolate company (not the brand identity they were looking for) to resemble the seal of Mohamed. This combination of the Shahada and the Prophets seal on a black background is used by ISIL as their flag. However it is also just a symbol used by all Muslims in the same way that all Christians use the Cross and all Jews use the Star of David. ISIL have stolen it in a effort to convince people they are Muslims - you could argue they are literally flying a false flag.
Despite the fact they've been disowned by pretty much all branches of Islam in the west there is still some debate over whether are ISIL are Muslims or not. For example in the UK on December 5th (5/12/14) Yusuf Sarwar and Mohamed Ahmed were jailed for travelling to fight in Syria. This prompted a wave of complaints by the MI6 allied Muslim groups who have been recruiting people to go fight in Syria. However what was really interesting about this particular case is that part of the evidence against the pair is that they knew so little about Islam before they left they had to buy books with titles like "Arabic For Beginners" and "The Qu'ran For Dummies." Australia is obviously trying to feed into this argument and when this all over I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that the suspect is actually a Protestant Christian.
Also referencing things the UK have been up to last Monday (8/12/14) British police in Birmingham were dramatically recalled to base over rumours of an ISIL inspired terror attack. This was a stunt intended to accompany UK Prime Minister Cameron's trip to Turkey. What was embarrassing about it though was that I heard about it hours in advance from several nations none of whom were Britain. The version I heard was that there were two suspects who were planning to either kidnap and then behead a police officer or simply behead a police officer in the street Lee Rigby style. However after lots of reassurance that it will be business as usual the police determined it was a hoax call and arrested a single suspect. In the early hours of the Sydney siege there was of confusion over whether there was one or two suspects involved.
On something of a related note this type of incident highlights why I often end up feeling a bit sorry for the police. Although everyone knows this is nonsense they still have a man with gun holding people hostage. If we wasn't mentally unbalanced to begin with he and all the hostages will be becoming that way as the tension and sleep deprivation set in. In those circumstances the police's priorities are the safety of the public then the safety of their officers followed by the safety of the suspect who still has the right to a fair trial.
So while I think it would be very funny just to shoot him in the head I suspect we're going to be in for a long wait amid lots of hushed rumours about negotiations.
12:00 on 15/12/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 16:05 on 15/12/14 (UK date) to add;
The siege in Sydney has now ended. Badly. Details are still emerging but it appears that the police raided the cafe and two people have been killed and three others are seriously wounded.
Roughly an hour before this took place the police confirmed the hostage takers identity as Man Haron Monis - an Iranian exile. Although I don't have any evidence to support this Monis will be recognised by people in the business as the type of guy the intelligence services keep on the payroll to carry out just this type of stunt. His equivalent in the UK is a guy called Amjen Choudary.
Monis seems to have been chosen for today's task because his name comes from the Latin word "Mons." If you've read my posts about ex ante and ex post review processes you will know that a lot of Latin phrases come up in climate change discussions often confusing a lot of the people involved. The Latin term "Mons" means "higher then that which surrounds it." Australia's GHG emissions are of course much higher then the nations that surround it.
Where the Australians have gone fundamentally wrong in their handling of this situation is that throughout they've treated it as a stunt which they wanted to go on for as long as possible. For example I suspect there would have been a chapter where we were forced to speculate whether Monis was reading this post despite the fact that cutting telephone lines and shutting down cellphone networks is standard practise in this type of situation. Also the US have joined in with their own hostage situation in Pennsylvania which was no doubt intended to carry on in stereo to Sydney.
Therefore I suspect that the police were ordered not to draw up an entry plan to bring this situation to an end at the time of their choosing.
This flaw was massively exposed when the hostages were split into two groups. While Monis' back was turned one of these groups tried to escape prompting Monis to open fire on them. This forced the police to rush an entry while Monis was executing hostages. We are still waiting to hear if Monis was killed or captured in the raid.
Sadly although I've been trying to keep the mood light I've always felt this sort of ending was part of the plan. The big debate about ISIL is whether Commonwealth countries like the UK, Canada and Australia should put the lives of their citizens at risk by allowing the fighters they've sent to Syria to return or simply accept those fighters choice to renounce their citizenship in order to become citizens of another, albeit unrecognised, nation. If Monis has survived while hostages have been killed that represents the fundamental dilemma in microcosm.
I of course think that if there is any decency left in Australian politics most Australians will now be waking up to the news that both Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the UK Queen's representative to Australia Peter Cosgrove have resigned in response to these events.
After all I genuinely thought that a police sniper would have shot Monis in the head a couple of hours after I went to bed last night.
(Originally Posted on 15/12/14 - UK date).
However Australia is also a nation that is very susceptible to the effects of climate change. Most of the centre of the country (the Outback) is already too hot for humans to live in and it is surrounded by coral reefs - the Great Barrier Reef being the most famous. Coral is very susceptible to changes in both ocean temperature and acidity which is caused by GHG's being diluted in water. Therefore coral is often considered the canary in the mine shaft for climate change because it shows the effects long before they can be seen elsewhere. Furthermore Australia was probably hit harder then anyone else by the hole in the Ozone layer of the 1980's and 1990's meaning that the population tends to be very aware of environmental issues.
This means that within Australian politics climate change is very much a hot button issue in the same way that abortion or gun control is in US politics. In fact a key part of current Prime Minister Tony Abbott's campaign last year was to do away with his predecessor Julia Gillard's tax on mining companies. That tax was supposed to tackle climate change even though it disregarded the market based mechanisms that absolutely everybody else is moving towards. We are still waiting to see what Abbott's climate change policy will be but I am hoping he will announce some sort of emissions trading scheme although I'm not holding my breath.
Obviously all this policy stuff is exactly the sort of thing that Australia should be including in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) document that they will be submitting in the first quarter of 2015. However Australia appears to have gone in a very different direction.
At around 11:00 local time on December 15th (15/12/14)/ 22:00 on December 14th (14/12/14) GMT what we now know to be a lone gunman walked into a cafe in the centre of Sydney and took 13 staff and customers hostage in a siege that is still going on as I write. The near-by iconic Sydney Opera House was also evacuated amid a bomb scare because as with Kangaroos, hats with corks on them and casual swearing the opera house is one of the things most people associate with Australia. The purpose of this exercise was to exert huge amounts of pressure on the COP 20 delegates both to disrupt the process and help Australia find out where it stands. As a result I don't think there is an element of the story that you couldn't confuse as a coded reference to something else. However I think the main points are;
Economics: The cafe is located in Sydney's Central Business District (CBD). This brings up all sorts of discussions about urban planning and zoning. The fact that the CBD has been shut down during this siege promotes discussion about the possible economic impacts of climate change although the Australians seem focused on the negative impacts of action to prevent climate change. Prime Minister Abbott has already assured Australians that it will be business as usual today. "Business As Usual" is a very big phrase in climate negotiations because one of the main objectives is to get GHG emissions below business as usual. The siege also caused restrictions to be imposed on the airspace in and around Sydney. This obviously re-visited the UK's stunt on Friday (12/12/14) when the closed all the airspace of the south of the country causing travel chaos. Whether the aviation sector is included in emission cuts is also a big issue in negotiations although I thought the point of NDC's was that nations were given the freedom to decide for themselves whether it was included or not.
Sexual Innuendo: Sydney is located in the province of New South Wales (NSW). This acronym is just one letter away from Not Suitable For Work (NSFW) which on the Internet is commonly used to mean pornography. Once you understand that all the references to the female hostages being pressed up against the glass, what they look like, what they're wearing and what they're doing automatically sounds a bit pervy. Added to that the cafe is actually part of a chocolate shop that sits on the ground floor of an office tower block. This could be interpreted as a reference to anal or gay sex particularly as we're all waiting to see if the police will roughly take the male suspect up the chocolate tower. Good luck maintaining an air of professionalism while you have that sort of discussion.
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL): As is their position on most things at COP 20 the Gulf Monarchies particularly Saudi Arabia simply started threatening to unleash ISIL style Islamist terrorists on any nation that dares to sign up to an agreement. Officially an example of Islamic terrorism the Sydney siege is supposed to play up those fears by making it appear as though an urgent discussion about ISIL is going on in the US-led coalition.
For example the first thing the hostage taker did was place a banner bearing the Islamic Shahada in the window. Translating roughly as; "There is no god but Allah, Mohamed is his Prophet" this is simply a declaration of the Islamic faith that is used by all Muslims at the start of each prayer. Cleverly the way this banner was placed in the window seemed to use the logo of the Lindt chocolate company (not the brand identity they were looking for) to resemble the seal of Mohamed. This combination of the Shahada and the Prophets seal on a black background is used by ISIL as their flag. However it is also just a symbol used by all Muslims in the same way that all Christians use the Cross and all Jews use the Star of David. ISIL have stolen it in a effort to convince people they are Muslims - you could argue they are literally flying a false flag.
Despite the fact they've been disowned by pretty much all branches of Islam in the west there is still some debate over whether are ISIL are Muslims or not. For example in the UK on December 5th (5/12/14) Yusuf Sarwar and Mohamed Ahmed were jailed for travelling to fight in Syria. This prompted a wave of complaints by the MI6 allied Muslim groups who have been recruiting people to go fight in Syria. However what was really interesting about this particular case is that part of the evidence against the pair is that they knew so little about Islam before they left they had to buy books with titles like "Arabic For Beginners" and "The Qu'ran For Dummies." Australia is obviously trying to feed into this argument and when this all over I wouldn't be too surprised to learn that the suspect is actually a Protestant Christian.
Also referencing things the UK have been up to last Monday (8/12/14) British police in Birmingham were dramatically recalled to base over rumours of an ISIL inspired terror attack. This was a stunt intended to accompany UK Prime Minister Cameron's trip to Turkey. What was embarrassing about it though was that I heard about it hours in advance from several nations none of whom were Britain. The version I heard was that there were two suspects who were planning to either kidnap and then behead a police officer or simply behead a police officer in the street Lee Rigby style. However after lots of reassurance that it will be business as usual the police determined it was a hoax call and arrested a single suspect. In the early hours of the Sydney siege there was of confusion over whether there was one or two suspects involved.
On something of a related note this type of incident highlights why I often end up feeling a bit sorry for the police. Although everyone knows this is nonsense they still have a man with gun holding people hostage. If we wasn't mentally unbalanced to begin with he and all the hostages will be becoming that way as the tension and sleep deprivation set in. In those circumstances the police's priorities are the safety of the public then the safety of their officers followed by the safety of the suspect who still has the right to a fair trial.
So while I think it would be very funny just to shoot him in the head I suspect we're going to be in for a long wait amid lots of hushed rumours about negotiations.
12:00 on 15/12/14 (UK date).
Edited at around 16:05 on 15/12/14 (UK date) to add;
The siege in Sydney has now ended. Badly. Details are still emerging but it appears that the police raided the cafe and two people have been killed and three others are seriously wounded.
Roughly an hour before this took place the police confirmed the hostage takers identity as Man Haron Monis - an Iranian exile. Although I don't have any evidence to support this Monis will be recognised by people in the business as the type of guy the intelligence services keep on the payroll to carry out just this type of stunt. His equivalent in the UK is a guy called Amjen Choudary.
Monis seems to have been chosen for today's task because his name comes from the Latin word "Mons." If you've read my posts about ex ante and ex post review processes you will know that a lot of Latin phrases come up in climate change discussions often confusing a lot of the people involved. The Latin term "Mons" means "higher then that which surrounds it." Australia's GHG emissions are of course much higher then the nations that surround it.
Where the Australians have gone fundamentally wrong in their handling of this situation is that throughout they've treated it as a stunt which they wanted to go on for as long as possible. For example I suspect there would have been a chapter where we were forced to speculate whether Monis was reading this post despite the fact that cutting telephone lines and shutting down cellphone networks is standard practise in this type of situation. Also the US have joined in with their own hostage situation in Pennsylvania which was no doubt intended to carry on in stereo to Sydney.
Therefore I suspect that the police were ordered not to draw up an entry plan to bring this situation to an end at the time of their choosing.
This flaw was massively exposed when the hostages were split into two groups. While Monis' back was turned one of these groups tried to escape prompting Monis to open fire on them. This forced the police to rush an entry while Monis was executing hostages. We are still waiting to hear if Monis was killed or captured in the raid.
Sadly although I've been trying to keep the mood light I've always felt this sort of ending was part of the plan. The big debate about ISIL is whether Commonwealth countries like the UK, Canada and Australia should put the lives of their citizens at risk by allowing the fighters they've sent to Syria to return or simply accept those fighters choice to renounce their citizenship in order to become citizens of another, albeit unrecognised, nation. If Monis has survived while hostages have been killed that represents the fundamental dilemma in microcosm.
I of course think that if there is any decency left in Australian politics most Australians will now be waking up to the news that both Prime Minister Tony Abbott and the UK Queen's representative to Australia Peter Cosgrove have resigned in response to these events.
After all I genuinely thought that a police sniper would have shot Monis in the head a couple of hours after I went to bed last night.
(Originally Posted on 15/12/14 - UK date).
Operation Featherweight: Month 5, Week 2, Day 1.
Over the past two weeks I have been covering the 20th Conference of
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(COP20). This is something I've been heavily involved in for at least 5
years now. If it fails it will put millions of lives at risk through
increased climate hazards such as 2013's Typhoon Haiyan in the
Philippines and the 2011 East African famine. If it succeeds the
agreement that is being built should last for at least the next 85
years.
Therefore I think it was worth not commenting on the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) for just two weeks. However the fact that I have not been commenting doesn't mean that I haven't been keeping an eye on things.
At the time of my last post on the subject ISIL had just launched a fresh assault on the Kurdish city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab which sits just 1km (0.6 miles) from Syria's northern border with Turkey. This attack was short lived and repelled by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in a matter of hours. However this big push did succeed in emboldening ISIL fighters who have been trapped in Kobane for the best part of two months now. This led to roughly a week in which those ISIL fighters launched fresh attacks against the YPG in an effort to break out from their positions.
However by last Monday (8/12/14) those pockets of ISIL fighters had lost all initiative and the conflict returned to its usual momentum of the YPG conducting patrols and slowly liberating positions on all fronts. During these two weeks of fighting 5 YPG fighters lost their lives while 150 ISIL fighters were confirmed killed including Asadullah Al-Shishani a commander of the Chechen Brigades who were linked to the terror attacks on Russia in the run up to the 2014 Winter Olympics.
This puts the Battle of Kobane which today entered its fourth month firmly back into an attrition phase. As I've said throughout this worries me because due to Turkey's refusal to establish a supply corridor from Iraq's Kurdish region to Kobane ISIL's better suppliy lines mean that they hold the advantage in these attrition phases. On Friday (12/12/14) though the YPG decided to do something about this by seizing control of the main road between Kobane and Aleppo City - some 150km (90 miles) to the south-west - in the village of Tarmik which sits around 1km (0.6 miles) south of Kobane. Along with the YPG's control of the villages of Helinj and Jalabiyah to the south-east the gain of Tarmik means that they now control two of the three main supply routes into Kobane and have begun to totally cut ISIL positions in the south of the city off from the outside world.
The other major issue to come out November 29th (29/11/14) ISIL assault on Kobane is that a significant portion of it was planned and launched from an industrial facility that is owned and operated by the state-owned Turkish Grain Board (TMO) that is located firmly on the Turkish side of the border. As such people were waiting to see what punishment the US as leader of the anti-ISIL coalition would impose on Turkey at the meeting of the coalition that took place in Brussels, Belgium on December 3rd (3/12/14). For example the US telling Turkey that they were no longer welcome at that meeting would have sent a strong message.
Unfortunately though the US' response to Turkey's material support for ISIL was to take no action whatsoever. This failure in US leadership forced the other members of the coalition to fall in line to avoid a split. So on December 8th (8/12/14) the European Union's (EU) new High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini made her first official visit to Turkey to meet President Erdogan amongst others. Although cancelling this long scheduled trip would have been a major step it perhaps would have been wise for the EU to decline giving Turkey USD12.5 million to aid Syrian refugees and given the money to aid Syrian refugees in Lebanon instead.
Finally in the parade of shame UK Prime Minister David Cameron visited Turkey on Tuesday (9/12/14) and pledged closer co-operation between the UK and Turkish intelligence services while promising to help Turkey become a full member of the EU. On Wednesday (10/12/14) Cameron visited Poland where he was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp to think about what he'd done.
One thing that did come out of the Brussels meeting is that members of the coalition who are not America are going to send some 1,300 troops to Iraq to join the some 5,000 US troops who are already there acting as trainers/advisers to the Iraqi Army. Due to the local knowledge built up during their 8 year occupation of Iraq the UK will be providing the majority (around 500) of these troops to be stationed in three bases in an around the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and one base in the northern Kurdish region.
As these troops will be classed as advisers rather then combat troops this move is permitted by the authorisation given the UK Parliament. However I think that it something that Parliament is going to have to keep a very close eye on because a non-combat role is most certainly not the same thing as saying these troops wont be placed in danger.
ISIL have made it quite clear that they would like nothing more then to have the opportunity to kill troops from western nations which they consider members of "The Armies of the Cross." Through the recent attack on United Nations convoy on "Route Irish" which links Baghdad's Greenzone with Baghdad international airport and Wednesday's (10/12/14) suicide attack on an army base in Samarra just outside Baghdad in which 9 were killed ISIL have certainly proved that they are capable of killing troops stationed in and around Baghdad.
Also the Americans themselves rate half of Iraq's army - some 140,000 men - as either "good" or "very good." When France deployed to Mali to help defeat an enemy similar to ISIL machine gunners in the Malian army had to shout; "Bang, bang, bang, bang!" during training exercises because they didn't have any bullets to practise with. However the Islamists in Mali were still routed in under four weeks.
Therefore I think US President Obama's desire to keep sending more ground troops to Iraq is driven not by necessity but by a desire to be seen to do something without actually doing anything that might risk defeating ISIL. As such the US Congress will also have to keep a very close eye on how the fight against ISIL is progressing.
In the passing of the funding bill that finally happened last night Congress has taken a first step by passing a defence budget that allows the US to fully fund Kurdish forces at the expense of Sunni-Arab insurgent forces in Syria. The real work though will begin in January when a Authorisation for Military Force bill will be presented to the new session of a Republican controlled Congress. The White House wants a three year authorisation while I think a three month rolling authorisation would be more use in keeping Obama on the straight and narrow.
(Originally Posted) 17:20 on 14/12/14 (UK date)
Therefore I think it was worth not commenting on the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) for just two weeks. However the fact that I have not been commenting doesn't mean that I haven't been keeping an eye on things.
At the time of my last post on the subject ISIL had just launched a fresh assault on the Kurdish city of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab which sits just 1km (0.6 miles) from Syria's northern border with Turkey. This attack was short lived and repelled by the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) in a matter of hours. However this big push did succeed in emboldening ISIL fighters who have been trapped in Kobane for the best part of two months now. This led to roughly a week in which those ISIL fighters launched fresh attacks against the YPG in an effort to break out from their positions.
However by last Monday (8/12/14) those pockets of ISIL fighters had lost all initiative and the conflict returned to its usual momentum of the YPG conducting patrols and slowly liberating positions on all fronts. During these two weeks of fighting 5 YPG fighters lost their lives while 150 ISIL fighters were confirmed killed including Asadullah Al-Shishani a commander of the Chechen Brigades who were linked to the terror attacks on Russia in the run up to the 2014 Winter Olympics.
This puts the Battle of Kobane which today entered its fourth month firmly back into an attrition phase. As I've said throughout this worries me because due to Turkey's refusal to establish a supply corridor from Iraq's Kurdish region to Kobane ISIL's better suppliy lines mean that they hold the advantage in these attrition phases. On Friday (12/12/14) though the YPG decided to do something about this by seizing control of the main road between Kobane and Aleppo City - some 150km (90 miles) to the south-west - in the village of Tarmik which sits around 1km (0.6 miles) south of Kobane. Along with the YPG's control of the villages of Helinj and Jalabiyah to the south-east the gain of Tarmik means that they now control two of the three main supply routes into Kobane and have begun to totally cut ISIL positions in the south of the city off from the outside world.
The other major issue to come out November 29th (29/11/14) ISIL assault on Kobane is that a significant portion of it was planned and launched from an industrial facility that is owned and operated by the state-owned Turkish Grain Board (TMO) that is located firmly on the Turkish side of the border. As such people were waiting to see what punishment the US as leader of the anti-ISIL coalition would impose on Turkey at the meeting of the coalition that took place in Brussels, Belgium on December 3rd (3/12/14). For example the US telling Turkey that they were no longer welcome at that meeting would have sent a strong message.
Unfortunately though the US' response to Turkey's material support for ISIL was to take no action whatsoever. This failure in US leadership forced the other members of the coalition to fall in line to avoid a split. So on December 8th (8/12/14) the European Union's (EU) new High Representative for Foreign Affairs Federica Mogherini made her first official visit to Turkey to meet President Erdogan amongst others. Although cancelling this long scheduled trip would have been a major step it perhaps would have been wise for the EU to decline giving Turkey USD12.5 million to aid Syrian refugees and given the money to aid Syrian refugees in Lebanon instead.
Finally in the parade of shame UK Prime Minister David Cameron visited Turkey on Tuesday (9/12/14) and pledged closer co-operation between the UK and Turkish intelligence services while promising to help Turkey become a full member of the EU. On Wednesday (10/12/14) Cameron visited Poland where he was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp to think about what he'd done.
One thing that did come out of the Brussels meeting is that members of the coalition who are not America are going to send some 1,300 troops to Iraq to join the some 5,000 US troops who are already there acting as trainers/advisers to the Iraqi Army. Due to the local knowledge built up during their 8 year occupation of Iraq the UK will be providing the majority (around 500) of these troops to be stationed in three bases in an around the Iraqi capital of Baghdad and one base in the northern Kurdish region.
As these troops will be classed as advisers rather then combat troops this move is permitted by the authorisation given the UK Parliament. However I think that it something that Parliament is going to have to keep a very close eye on because a non-combat role is most certainly not the same thing as saying these troops wont be placed in danger.
ISIL have made it quite clear that they would like nothing more then to have the opportunity to kill troops from western nations which they consider members of "The Armies of the Cross." Through the recent attack on United Nations convoy on "Route Irish" which links Baghdad's Greenzone with Baghdad international airport and Wednesday's (10/12/14) suicide attack on an army base in Samarra just outside Baghdad in which 9 were killed ISIL have certainly proved that they are capable of killing troops stationed in and around Baghdad.
Also the Americans themselves rate half of Iraq's army - some 140,000 men - as either "good" or "very good." When France deployed to Mali to help defeat an enemy similar to ISIL machine gunners in the Malian army had to shout; "Bang, bang, bang, bang!" during training exercises because they didn't have any bullets to practise with. However the Islamists in Mali were still routed in under four weeks.
Therefore I think US President Obama's desire to keep sending more ground troops to Iraq is driven not by necessity but by a desire to be seen to do something without actually doing anything that might risk defeating ISIL. As such the US Congress will also have to keep a very close eye on how the fight against ISIL is progressing.
In the passing of the funding bill that finally happened last night Congress has taken a first step by passing a defence budget that allows the US to fully fund Kurdish forces at the expense of Sunni-Arab insurgent forces in Syria. The real work though will begin in January when a Authorisation for Military Force bill will be presented to the new session of a Republican controlled Congress. The White House wants a three year authorisation while I think a three month rolling authorisation would be more use in keeping Obama on the straight and narrow.
(Originally Posted) 17:20 on 14/12/14 (UK date)
The Eric Garner Case.
In the run up to the
US mid-term elections the was a rash of alleged racist killings by police
officers. Now that election is over these stories are coming home to roost and
it turns out that the outrage doesn't quite fit the facts. The latest of these
has been the death of Eric Garner in New York City.
A career criminal
with more then 30 arrests to his name for assault and resisting arrest Mr
Garner was stopped on July 17th 2014 (17/7/14) by members of the New York
Police Department's (NYPD) organised crime taskforce who were investigating his
role in the sale and trafficking of stolen and counterfeit cigarettes. Other
members of this serious and organised crime gang had been linked to armed
robbery and the violent intimidation of retailers who would not sell their
products.
As he was on bail for
a similar offence at the time Garner resisted his arrest both verbally and
physically. This prompted one of the officers to restrain the 163kg, 6'3"
Garner by grabbing him around the shoulders in an effort to bring him to the
ground. Garner responded to this by lifting the officer off the ground and
slamming him into a wall using his significant bulk. The officer then proceeded
to place Garner in what I would consider a sleeper hold. Despite what has been
widely reported this type of restraint technique is lawful in the US and is
permitted by the NYPD when an officer is in serious fear for his safety as a
reasonable person would be if being slammed into a wall by a man of Mr Garner's size.
While being brought
to the ground Garner repeatedly shouted that he could not breathe. As anyone
with even basic knowledge of first aid knows a person who can shout must also
be able to breathe and is therefore not at imminent risk of death. People with
basic knowledge of the use of force will also be well aware that it is
extremely common for a person being restrained to falsely claim that they
cannot breathe in order to resist that restraint. However once he had be
brought to the ground and placed under control the police immediately called
for paramedics who treated Garner at the scene before transporting him to
hospital where he later died.
As such it seems
difficult to comprehend why this case was presented to a Grand Jury as a
possible criminal matter but very easy to understand why it was rejected by that
Grand Jury. One thing that may have led to confusion though was the New York
Medical Examiner's (ME) decision to rule the death as a homicide with the cause
of death being listed as suffocation due to compression of the neck and compression
of the chest. Perhaps in an effort to keep the outrage going the Democrats led by Mayor Bill de Blasio who
control New York City have so far declined to release the ME's testimony to the
Grand Jury which I suspect played a key role in their decision and led to an
exchange something like this;
Attorney (A): As the
New Medical Examiner (ME) you examined Mr Garner and ruled his death to be a
homicide due to suffocation caused by compression of the neck and chest?
A: That would be the
7 minute video that has been broadcast widely on both local and national TV
under the caption "NYPD Chokehold Death"?
ME: No because the heart compensates by beating faster to pump higher volumes of less oxygenated blood around the body.
A: Does this faster
heart beat increase the stress on the heart increasing the risk of cardiac
arrest particularly in someone suffering from hypertension and heart disease.?
(Originally Posted) 15:50 on 5/12/14 (UK date).
The 20th Conference of Parties: Lima.
Yesterday the 20th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (COP20) opened in Lima, Peru. I was going
to mark this by posting a picture of all the coffee I'd stockpiled in
preparation along with a cheeky caption. However I decided that my time
would probably be better spent reading up on what is going on.
Obviously I want to be fully up to speed before I start commenting in detail. However I think it's obvious that there is a dark cloud over proceedings in the form the recent US mid-term elections which handed control of Congress to the Republican Party. US President Barack Obama doesn't appear to have realised that this has happened so seems intent on wasting what remains of his political capital on race-baiting and a stupid argument over executive action on immigration. This seems to make it less likely that the US will be able to ratify legislation allowing it to sign up to a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol at the COP21 at the end of 2015.
This agreement is supposed to be a global agreement meaning that if the world's largest economy and largest GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emitter fails to sign up as it did with the Kyoto Protocol it will be of limited value. In fact other nations - led by Australia (the largest per capita emitter of GHG's) - have already made it clear that they won't be signing up if the US doesn't sign up. Therefore there seems to be a distinct possibility that Australia will use the mid-term results to widen the gaps in order to sink the agreement. The conflict over the Annex I/Annex II binary approach which elements of the African group still supports looks likely to be a key battle ground although it's clear that Australia is really looking for any excuse at this point.
This situation is likely to be compounded by the fact that the US has brought our old friend Rihanna back into play. The popstar who controls the weather is currently in my home city of London, UK where she attended a fashion awards ceremony yesterday. On December 11th - the penultimate day of COP20 - Rihanna will host a charity ball to raise money for a cancer hospital in her native Barbados. Although this seems likely to fall far short of the expected standard I suppose it could promote discussion about climate finance to the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) grouping.
It is also widely and strongly rumoured that Rihanna will use this so-called "Diamond Ball" to launch her new single which along with a new album will go straight on sale the following day. This of course will create a frenzy of interest around Rihanna in which we are expected to debate whether she has done enough to get her career back on track. After all hijacking a charity event to launch an album does seem a bit tacky.
I'm not sure what exactly the US is hoping to achieve through all this but it seems likely to succeed in reminding everyone that the US can behave like massive d*cks reducing the amount of trust they receive and helping Australia to increase divisions.
The UK of course is still trying to find out where it stands in this and all other forms of international relations. So tomorrow they will be unleashing their autumn budget statement. This is likely to focus heavily on large scale infrastructure spending and flood defence schemes. These are obviously both big issues within COP20 covering both mitigation and adaptation efforts. As this will be the last such statement before the UK's General Election in May 2015 it is also likely to spark off a flurry of party politics.
(Originally Posted) 12:45 on 2/12/14 (UK date).
Obviously I want to be fully up to speed before I start commenting in detail. However I think it's obvious that there is a dark cloud over proceedings in the form the recent US mid-term elections which handed control of Congress to the Republican Party. US President Barack Obama doesn't appear to have realised that this has happened so seems intent on wasting what remains of his political capital on race-baiting and a stupid argument over executive action on immigration. This seems to make it less likely that the US will be able to ratify legislation allowing it to sign up to a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol at the COP21 at the end of 2015.
This agreement is supposed to be a global agreement meaning that if the world's largest economy and largest GreenHouse Gas (GHG) emitter fails to sign up as it did with the Kyoto Protocol it will be of limited value. In fact other nations - led by Australia (the largest per capita emitter of GHG's) - have already made it clear that they won't be signing up if the US doesn't sign up. Therefore there seems to be a distinct possibility that Australia will use the mid-term results to widen the gaps in order to sink the agreement. The conflict over the Annex I/Annex II binary approach which elements of the African group still supports looks likely to be a key battle ground although it's clear that Australia is really looking for any excuse at this point.
This situation is likely to be compounded by the fact that the US has brought our old friend Rihanna back into play. The popstar who controls the weather is currently in my home city of London, UK where she attended a fashion awards ceremony yesterday. On December 11th - the penultimate day of COP20 - Rihanna will host a charity ball to raise money for a cancer hospital in her native Barbados. Although this seems likely to fall far short of the expected standard I suppose it could promote discussion about climate finance to the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) grouping.
It is also widely and strongly rumoured that Rihanna will use this so-called "Diamond Ball" to launch her new single which along with a new album will go straight on sale the following day. This of course will create a frenzy of interest around Rihanna in which we are expected to debate whether she has done enough to get her career back on track. After all hijacking a charity event to launch an album does seem a bit tacky.
I'm not sure what exactly the US is hoping to achieve through all this but it seems likely to succeed in reminding everyone that the US can behave like massive d*cks reducing the amount of trust they receive and helping Australia to increase divisions.
The UK of course is still trying to find out where it stands in this and all other forms of international relations. So tomorrow they will be unleashing their autumn budget statement. This is likely to focus heavily on large scale infrastructure spending and flood defence schemes. These are obviously both big issues within COP20 covering both mitigation and adaptation efforts. As this will be the last such statement before the UK's General Election in May 2015 it is also likely to spark off a flurry of party politics.
(Originally Posted) 12:45 on 2/12/14 (UK date).
Operation Featherweight: Month 4, Week 4, Day 3.
As I mentioned at the time the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) yesterday launched a fresh assault on the city of Kobane/Ayn
al-Arab which sits just 1km (0.6 miles) from Syria's border with Turkey.
This appears to have been primarily a propaganda stunt but also an
effort to rescue ISIL fighters trapped there by the Kurdish People's
Protection Units (YPG) who have been defending the city.
It has now become increasingly clear that this assault took place on two fronts. At the south-west entrance to Kobane ISIL dispatched a column of 3 tanks headed by 2 Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED's/truck bombs) and supported by infantry. At the northern Mursitpinar border crossing that directly links Kobane to Turkey ISIL again dispatched 2 VBIED's backed by 3 suicide bombers and a small detachment of infantry fighters. The attack on the Mursitpinar border crossing was launched from an industrial site within Turkey that is owned and operated by the state-run Turkish Grain Board (TMO). As it was completely unexpected this attack killed 9 YPG fighters and 4 civilians.
In response to the attack from Turkey the YPG immediately requested that Turkey acted to bring the attack to an end. Turkey answered this request with artillery fire. Unfortunately though they appear to have completely missed any ISIL positions instead hitting the centre of Kobane where a reported 6 civilians have been killed. Turkey has also cut off power to the camps housing refugees from Kobane and is using the vast numbers of troops and security forces they have in the area to impose a lock-down to prevent Kurds from moving and communicating with the outside world. Non-Kurds are apparently still fine to do as they like. Also someone has set fire to the hundreds of vehicles dumped by refugees on the border creating a smoke-screen that completely obscures the view of Kobane from Turkey.
Despite all this the YPG did succeed in repelling the attack in quite some style. At the Mursitpinar crossing they quickly responded to the surprise attack killing many of the ISIL infantry fighters and chasing the remainder back to the TMO site in Turkey whether I gather there were few survivors. At the south-western entrance the YPG were most certainly not surprised and destroyed both of the VBIED's with anti-tank weapons before they reached YPG positions. 2 of the 3 tanks were also destroyed in this manner and again the ISIL infantry fighters were either killed or chased off. Aside from that the YPG were also able to gain control of several positions in the south-west that they'd been trying to liberate for a number of days. This suggests that the ISIL fighters in those positions simply used the assault as an excuse to flee Kobane.
Alongside the 9 YPG fighters who were died at least 86 ISIL fighters were killed on Saturday making it a particularly bloody day for the group.
Today ISIL have announced that during yesterday's assault they succeeded in capturing several female YPG fighters (technically YPJ fighters being feminine) including Gill Rosenberg - a Canadian national who recently joined up to fight alongside the Kurds. As a female Rosenberg would obviously be a high value hostage to a group most of whose members only signed up because they couldn't get a girlfriend. However Rosenberg's value to ISIL is increased because she is Jewish and received her military training in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) although I gather Israel currently has an arrest warrant out for her on an unrelated matter.
Although I haven't spoken to Rosenberg myself I understand that this claim by ISIL is completely untrue. The dozen of so westerners who have gone to assist the Kurds have really done so to provide training and technical assistance rather then fight. After all the Kurds have never worked with an advanced air force before. Plus the YPG commanders are smart enough to realise the propaganda value to ISIL of western hostages- particularly Jews. Therefore there aren't actually any foreigners in Kobane and the last I heard Rosenberg was in a training camp on the Iraqi border around 500km (300 miles) to the east.
So it appears that having attempted to score a propaganda victory with their assault on Kobane yesterday only for it to fail miserably ISIL have simply made the Rosenberg story up in an effort to change the subject and spare their blushes.
Away from Kobane the spat between the US-led coalition and the Syrian government over which of them is ISIL's main ally has continued. Last Wednesday (26/11/14) the predominately Shia-Arab Syrian government carried out a massive series of air-strikes against the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa to demonstrate that the Sunni-Arab insurgent group most certainly isn't their ally. On Saturday (29/11/14) the US-led coalition also carried out a massive series of around 30 air-strikes on Raqqa in an effort dispel suggestions that they were closely allied with ISIL.
Also on Saturday the Syrian government declared that the coalitions air-strikes had not succeeded in weakening ISIL in any way. I think that is an overly harsh assessment but with France setting a target of less then 4 weeks to defeat a similar enemy in Mali it is hard to understand why after nearly 4 months ISIL have yet to be completely defeated.
The fact that Turkey - a supposed member of the coalition - are now allowing ISIL to launch attacks from within their territory makes the discussion about who ISIL's allies are even more heated and presents the diplomatic equivalent of a 5-alarm fire or a massive unexploded bomb. How that diplomatic challenge is responded to depends very much on the actions of US President Barack Obama because he is supposedly the leader of the nation that is leading the coalition.
Sadly at this point we're still waiting for the US to even acknowledge that the events of yesterday occurred.
Seriously over the past day I've been watching reports on CNN International which mentioned that there was fresh fighting in Kobane and that US aircraft had carried out fresh strikes to the east of the city. However they just couldn't bring themselves to report that there were even accusations that the attack had originated in Turkey.
(Originally Posted) 18:10 on 30/11/14 (UK date).
It has now become increasingly clear that this assault took place on two fronts. At the south-west entrance to Kobane ISIL dispatched a column of 3 tanks headed by 2 Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED's/truck bombs) and supported by infantry. At the northern Mursitpinar border crossing that directly links Kobane to Turkey ISIL again dispatched 2 VBIED's backed by 3 suicide bombers and a small detachment of infantry fighters. The attack on the Mursitpinar border crossing was launched from an industrial site within Turkey that is owned and operated by the state-run Turkish Grain Board (TMO). As it was completely unexpected this attack killed 9 YPG fighters and 4 civilians.
In response to the attack from Turkey the YPG immediately requested that Turkey acted to bring the attack to an end. Turkey answered this request with artillery fire. Unfortunately though they appear to have completely missed any ISIL positions instead hitting the centre of Kobane where a reported 6 civilians have been killed. Turkey has also cut off power to the camps housing refugees from Kobane and is using the vast numbers of troops and security forces they have in the area to impose a lock-down to prevent Kurds from moving and communicating with the outside world. Non-Kurds are apparently still fine to do as they like. Also someone has set fire to the hundreds of vehicles dumped by refugees on the border creating a smoke-screen that completely obscures the view of Kobane from Turkey.
Despite all this the YPG did succeed in repelling the attack in quite some style. At the Mursitpinar crossing they quickly responded to the surprise attack killing many of the ISIL infantry fighters and chasing the remainder back to the TMO site in Turkey whether I gather there were few survivors. At the south-western entrance the YPG were most certainly not surprised and destroyed both of the VBIED's with anti-tank weapons before they reached YPG positions. 2 of the 3 tanks were also destroyed in this manner and again the ISIL infantry fighters were either killed or chased off. Aside from that the YPG were also able to gain control of several positions in the south-west that they'd been trying to liberate for a number of days. This suggests that the ISIL fighters in those positions simply used the assault as an excuse to flee Kobane.
Alongside the 9 YPG fighters who were died at least 86 ISIL fighters were killed on Saturday making it a particularly bloody day for the group.
Today ISIL have announced that during yesterday's assault they succeeded in capturing several female YPG fighters (technically YPJ fighters being feminine) including Gill Rosenberg - a Canadian national who recently joined up to fight alongside the Kurds. As a female Rosenberg would obviously be a high value hostage to a group most of whose members only signed up because they couldn't get a girlfriend. However Rosenberg's value to ISIL is increased because she is Jewish and received her military training in the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) although I gather Israel currently has an arrest warrant out for her on an unrelated matter.
Although I haven't spoken to Rosenberg myself I understand that this claim by ISIL is completely untrue. The dozen of so westerners who have gone to assist the Kurds have really done so to provide training and technical assistance rather then fight. After all the Kurds have never worked with an advanced air force before. Plus the YPG commanders are smart enough to realise the propaganda value to ISIL of western hostages- particularly Jews. Therefore there aren't actually any foreigners in Kobane and the last I heard Rosenberg was in a training camp on the Iraqi border around 500km (300 miles) to the east.
So it appears that having attempted to score a propaganda victory with their assault on Kobane yesterday only for it to fail miserably ISIL have simply made the Rosenberg story up in an effort to change the subject and spare their blushes.
Away from Kobane the spat between the US-led coalition and the Syrian government over which of them is ISIL's main ally has continued. Last Wednesday (26/11/14) the predominately Shia-Arab Syrian government carried out a massive series of air-strikes against the ISIL stronghold of Raqqa to demonstrate that the Sunni-Arab insurgent group most certainly isn't their ally. On Saturday (29/11/14) the US-led coalition also carried out a massive series of around 30 air-strikes on Raqqa in an effort dispel suggestions that they were closely allied with ISIL.
Also on Saturday the Syrian government declared that the coalitions air-strikes had not succeeded in weakening ISIL in any way. I think that is an overly harsh assessment but with France setting a target of less then 4 weeks to defeat a similar enemy in Mali it is hard to understand why after nearly 4 months ISIL have yet to be completely defeated.
The fact that Turkey - a supposed member of the coalition - are now allowing ISIL to launch attacks from within their territory makes the discussion about who ISIL's allies are even more heated and presents the diplomatic equivalent of a 5-alarm fire or a massive unexploded bomb. How that diplomatic challenge is responded to depends very much on the actions of US President Barack Obama because he is supposedly the leader of the nation that is leading the coalition.
Sadly at this point we're still waiting for the US to even acknowledge that the events of yesterday occurred.
Seriously over the past day I've been watching reports on CNN International which mentioned that there was fresh fighting in Kobane and that US aircraft had carried out fresh strikes to the east of the city. However they just couldn't bring themselves to report that there were even accusations that the attack had originated in Turkey.
(Originally Posted) 18:10 on 30/11/14 (UK date).
Police Body Cameras.
Throughout the three months it took to resolve the shooting of Michael
Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, US there has been lots of talk about
forcing the police to wear video cameras on their uniforms to film
everything they do while at work. Michael Brown's family have made it
part of their campaign to make this a law and shares in Taser
International who make the video cameras have soared. I however am not
convinced.
Believe it or not due to my time as a traffic warden I am actually a fully trained and qualified law enforcement officer. Fair point it was only one law that I was enforcing and it wasn't a particularly important one. However the job did involve lots of wandering the streets in a semi-official uniform telling people news they didn't want to hear. Before that I used to steward at football/soccer games which involved effectively acting as a buffer between the public and law enforcement. In my time I have also been associated with activities of questionable legality and I've been arrested more times then I would care to remember.
If there's one thing I learnt from all that experience is that when it comes to the small, petty stuff justice comes more from a bit of common sense and discretion rather then a rigid enforcement of the letter of the law. It is much harder to use that discretion and common sense if every single thing you do is being filmed all the time.
A not particularly popular example given the circumstances comes from my football days. Throughout our training we were taught that our job was to politely and calmly defuse tension in order to avoid confrontation and violence. However once we actually started doing the job the first thing we were taught was basically how to subtly hit people in such a way as not to do them harm but to get your point across. This was very much less then lethal force and if you've seen a football match let alone a football crowd you would know that this is kind of expected. In fact it was often an important step in winning the respect needed to negotiate and defuse confrontations that would have led to much more serious violence. However if any of us officially admitted that was how the system worked we would expect to be sacked on the spot.
An example of how it can help the public comes from my time as a traffic warden. Without getting into tedious technical detail where I was working there were free parking bays where you could park for free but only for like a maximum of 2 hours. One day I was dealing with these bays when a guy who was either a plumber or an electrician came out and explained that he was working in a house nearby and had to keep going backwards and forwards to his van. However because it was an emergency call-out he hadn't been able to obtain the proper waiver so wanted to know if I could do him a favour.
I replied by explaining that I couldn't possibly ignore an offence but to be sure an offence had been committed I would have to carefully make note of all the vehicles in the bays and then come back in 2 hours. However if as I was doing this someone was talking to me like he was I might get confused and forget to note down a vehicle like that white van over there with a big picture of a tap on the side. He smiled, nodded and told me to get a proper job before walking off happy.
I've also benefited from this type of thing myself. What must've been 15 odd years ago now the police in London started using airport-style metal detectors at railway stations to cut down on the number of people carrying weapons like knives. One day I found myself at one of these checkpoints being forced to had over a bag to be searched knowing full well that it had a small (like 4g) amount of marijuana in it. The police officer carrying out the search immediately found the baggie of marijuana and held it in his hand while he continued to search the bag. When he'd finished he simply said; "No weapons there," put the marijuana back in my bag and let me continue on my way.
In that last example I'm pretty sure the police officer was committing a criminal offence by turning a blind eye and in the other two I was certainly committing a sackable offence. Therefore if we'd had a video camera recording our every move it would have much more likely that we would have enforced the letter of the law rather then the spirit of the law regardless of the consequences.
This strikes me as being a particular problem in Ferguson because the main complaint of racist oppression the protesters can manage is a system of financial penalties and asset seizures that mean if someone is seen by a police officer committing a crime such as driving an un-roadworthy vehicle they will not only be issued a ticket but also expected to pay the fine. In those circumstances I suspect that more video cameras will mean more tickets issued and more fines paid.
Of course one of the other main driving factors behind calls for the police to wear video cameras is that where they are used complaints against the police drop by about 90-95%. That's simply because people like those witnesses who claimed that Brown was shot in the back as he was running away learn not to make bullsh*t allegations of police brutality and racism when they know everything's been caught on camera.
(Originally Posted) 13:45 on 30/11/14 (UK date).
Believe it or not due to my time as a traffic warden I am actually a fully trained and qualified law enforcement officer. Fair point it was only one law that I was enforcing and it wasn't a particularly important one. However the job did involve lots of wandering the streets in a semi-official uniform telling people news they didn't want to hear. Before that I used to steward at football/soccer games which involved effectively acting as a buffer between the public and law enforcement. In my time I have also been associated with activities of questionable legality and I've been arrested more times then I would care to remember.
If there's one thing I learnt from all that experience is that when it comes to the small, petty stuff justice comes more from a bit of common sense and discretion rather then a rigid enforcement of the letter of the law. It is much harder to use that discretion and common sense if every single thing you do is being filmed all the time.
A not particularly popular example given the circumstances comes from my football days. Throughout our training we were taught that our job was to politely and calmly defuse tension in order to avoid confrontation and violence. However once we actually started doing the job the first thing we were taught was basically how to subtly hit people in such a way as not to do them harm but to get your point across. This was very much less then lethal force and if you've seen a football match let alone a football crowd you would know that this is kind of expected. In fact it was often an important step in winning the respect needed to negotiate and defuse confrontations that would have led to much more serious violence. However if any of us officially admitted that was how the system worked we would expect to be sacked on the spot.
An example of how it can help the public comes from my time as a traffic warden. Without getting into tedious technical detail where I was working there were free parking bays where you could park for free but only for like a maximum of 2 hours. One day I was dealing with these bays when a guy who was either a plumber or an electrician came out and explained that he was working in a house nearby and had to keep going backwards and forwards to his van. However because it was an emergency call-out he hadn't been able to obtain the proper waiver so wanted to know if I could do him a favour.
I replied by explaining that I couldn't possibly ignore an offence but to be sure an offence had been committed I would have to carefully make note of all the vehicles in the bays and then come back in 2 hours. However if as I was doing this someone was talking to me like he was I might get confused and forget to note down a vehicle like that white van over there with a big picture of a tap on the side. He smiled, nodded and told me to get a proper job before walking off happy.
I've also benefited from this type of thing myself. What must've been 15 odd years ago now the police in London started using airport-style metal detectors at railway stations to cut down on the number of people carrying weapons like knives. One day I found myself at one of these checkpoints being forced to had over a bag to be searched knowing full well that it had a small (like 4g) amount of marijuana in it. The police officer carrying out the search immediately found the baggie of marijuana and held it in his hand while he continued to search the bag. When he'd finished he simply said; "No weapons there," put the marijuana back in my bag and let me continue on my way.
In that last example I'm pretty sure the police officer was committing a criminal offence by turning a blind eye and in the other two I was certainly committing a sackable offence. Therefore if we'd had a video camera recording our every move it would have much more likely that we would have enforced the letter of the law rather then the spirit of the law regardless of the consequences.
This strikes me as being a particular problem in Ferguson because the main complaint of racist oppression the protesters can manage is a system of financial penalties and asset seizures that mean if someone is seen by a police officer committing a crime such as driving an un-roadworthy vehicle they will not only be issued a ticket but also expected to pay the fine. In those circumstances I suspect that more video cameras will mean more tickets issued and more fines paid.
Of course one of the other main driving factors behind calls for the police to wear video cameras is that where they are used complaints against the police drop by about 90-95%. That's simply because people like those witnesses who claimed that Brown was shot in the back as he was running away learn not to make bullsh*t allegations of police brutality and racism when they know everything's been caught on camera.
(Originally Posted) 13:45 on 30/11/14 (UK date).
Operation Featherweight: Month 4, Week 4, Day 2.
For the last several weeks the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
(ISIL) has been desperately trying to launch a fresh assault on the city
of Kobane/Ayn al-Arab which sits just 1km (0.6 miles) from Syria's
border with Turkey. The reason for ISIL's urgency has been the need to
relieve their fighters who are trapped in Kobane and gradually being
forced from their positions by the Kurdish People's Protection Units
(YPG).
Despite air-strikes by the US-led coalition against ISIL staging areas on Monday (24/11/14) through to Wednesday (26/11/14) that fresh assault on Kobane began today on the 76th day of the battle.
At around 05:00(local)/03:00(GMT) a column of ISIL tanks backed by infantry advanced on the south-west entrance to Kobane. At the same time two Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED's/truck bombs) backed by suicide bombers and infantry units attacked the northern Mursitpinar border crossing that directly links Kobane to Turkey. This was accompanied by an increase in ISIL shelling from positions several kilometres to the west of Tall Shair hill and the fighting between the YPG and ISIL fighters trapped in positions in the east and south of Kobane has continued.
Although 9 YPG fighters have been killed in these attacks at least 30 ISIL fighters have died meaning that neither attack came close to breaking through Kobane's defences allowing ISIL to seize more territory. In fact I've delayed writing this up for a few hours in the hope that it would be confirmed that the assault is over having being successfully repelled. However it now looks as though that confirmation will not come until morning as the YPG currently have more important things then paperwork to deal with at the moment.
However what cannot be ignored about today's assault is that the attack on the northern Mursitpinar border crossing originated from an industrial site owned and operated by the state-run Turkish Grain Board (TMO) which sits around 400metres (436 yards) away from the border crossing firmly on the Turkish side of the border. It was at this location that the VBIED's used in the attack were manufactured and where the infantry units that took part were assembled. As they repelled the attack the YPG chased the ISIL fighters from the border crossing to this TMO depot and engaged them at that location.
As we've all seen on countless occasions the border region close to Kobane/Surac is absolutely swamped with members of the Turkish military and the Turkish security forces who have been trying to stop the YPG receiving supplies and fresh fighters. It takes several days to construct VBIED's and assemble troops for an assault meaning that it is extremely unlikely that the Turkish government did not know that ISIL had established a staging area within their territory. In fact I'm hearing rumours from intelligence circles suggesting that not only did intelligence agencies in the US-led coalition know that ISIL were operating from within Turkey but they also knew that Turkey knew where ISIL were operating from. İzzettin Küçük - the Governor of the Turkey's Urfa border province has also confirmed that ISIL have been operating from within Turkey and today's attack originated from there.
As such it seems that Turkey has now joined the war against ISIL - on the side of ISIL. With Turkey being a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and therefore a formal ally of many of the nations in the coalition to fight ISIL Turkey's actions cannot be without consequences.
United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2170 (2014) authorises military action against ISIL and the Al Nusra Front (ANF) regardless of what nation state they are operating in. Therefore the most serious consequence of Turkey's actions would be for the coalition to now start attacking ISIL targets within Turkey including their semi-official Consulate in the Turkish capital Ankara. As the coalition has already mistakenly bombed grain storage depots by accident in this conflict if I worked for TMO I would be starting to worry about their viability of some of their assets.
Obviously the immediate suspension of Turkey's membership of NATO should also be seriously considered in response to Turkey's decision to ally itself with a terrorist group that is currently fighting other NATO members. It almost goes without saying that there will have to be a UNSC meeting to discuss this latest development and that meeting may well chose to add Turkish government officials including the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the list of individuals who are subject to economic sanctions and travel bans due to their support for ISIL.
At the very least you would expect for Turkey to be refused meetings with figures in the governments of the nations in the coalition it has just attacked and certainly for Turkey to be denied entry to any further meetings of that coalition.
However given the cowardly way that US President Barack Obama has handled this conflict in general and Turkey in particular it would be a miracle if we even got an acknowledgement of the attack let alone a public statement condemning Turkey's actions.
(Originally Posted) 21:30 on 29/11/14 (UK date).
Despite air-strikes by the US-led coalition against ISIL staging areas on Monday (24/11/14) through to Wednesday (26/11/14) that fresh assault on Kobane began today on the 76th day of the battle.
At around 05:00(local)/03:00(GMT) a column of ISIL tanks backed by infantry advanced on the south-west entrance to Kobane. At the same time two Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Devices (VBIED's/truck bombs) backed by suicide bombers and infantry units attacked the northern Mursitpinar border crossing that directly links Kobane to Turkey. This was accompanied by an increase in ISIL shelling from positions several kilometres to the west of Tall Shair hill and the fighting between the YPG and ISIL fighters trapped in positions in the east and south of Kobane has continued.
Although 9 YPG fighters have been killed in these attacks at least 30 ISIL fighters have died meaning that neither attack came close to breaking through Kobane's defences allowing ISIL to seize more territory. In fact I've delayed writing this up for a few hours in the hope that it would be confirmed that the assault is over having being successfully repelled. However it now looks as though that confirmation will not come until morning as the YPG currently have more important things then paperwork to deal with at the moment.
However what cannot be ignored about today's assault is that the attack on the northern Mursitpinar border crossing originated from an industrial site owned and operated by the state-run Turkish Grain Board (TMO) which sits around 400metres (436 yards) away from the border crossing firmly on the Turkish side of the border. It was at this location that the VBIED's used in the attack were manufactured and where the infantry units that took part were assembled. As they repelled the attack the YPG chased the ISIL fighters from the border crossing to this TMO depot and engaged them at that location.
As we've all seen on countless occasions the border region close to Kobane/Surac is absolutely swamped with members of the Turkish military and the Turkish security forces who have been trying to stop the YPG receiving supplies and fresh fighters. It takes several days to construct VBIED's and assemble troops for an assault meaning that it is extremely unlikely that the Turkish government did not know that ISIL had established a staging area within their territory. In fact I'm hearing rumours from intelligence circles suggesting that not only did intelligence agencies in the US-led coalition know that ISIL were operating from within Turkey but they also knew that Turkey knew where ISIL were operating from. İzzettin Küçük - the Governor of the Turkey's Urfa border province has also confirmed that ISIL have been operating from within Turkey and today's attack originated from there.
As such it seems that Turkey has now joined the war against ISIL - on the side of ISIL. With Turkey being a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and therefore a formal ally of many of the nations in the coalition to fight ISIL Turkey's actions cannot be without consequences.
United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2170 (2014) authorises military action against ISIL and the Al Nusra Front (ANF) regardless of what nation state they are operating in. Therefore the most serious consequence of Turkey's actions would be for the coalition to now start attacking ISIL targets within Turkey including their semi-official Consulate in the Turkish capital Ankara. As the coalition has already mistakenly bombed grain storage depots by accident in this conflict if I worked for TMO I would be starting to worry about their viability of some of their assets.
Obviously the immediate suspension of Turkey's membership of NATO should also be seriously considered in response to Turkey's decision to ally itself with a terrorist group that is currently fighting other NATO members. It almost goes without saying that there will have to be a UNSC meeting to discuss this latest development and that meeting may well chose to add Turkish government officials including the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to the list of individuals who are subject to economic sanctions and travel bans due to their support for ISIL.
At the very least you would expect for Turkey to be refused meetings with figures in the governments of the nations in the coalition it has just attacked and certainly for Turkey to be denied entry to any further meetings of that coalition.
However given the cowardly way that US President Barack Obama has handled this conflict in general and Turkey in particular it would be a miracle if we even got an acknowledgement of the attack let alone a public statement condemning Turkey's actions.
(Originally Posted) 21:30 on 29/11/14 (UK date).
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