France, Russia, Turkey

My most recent post on this blog was written just as the terror attacks in Paris were being reported in the national press.  I decided not to write about these attacks at the time, however, as I had already decided to write about student finance, and because I felt it proper to learn more about the terror attacks before writing about them.

One of the first questions which occurred to me was whether or not the attacks were a false flag.  The attacks may have been - as is widely reported - the work of Islamic terrorists linked to ISIS.  They may also have been - as the columnist Peter Hitchens has suggested - the  work of Islamic terrorists unconnected with ISIS.  The atrocities might have been the work of the French government, just as the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers was almost certainly the work of the United States government. Another possibility is that the attacks were an elaborate hoax with nobody actually dead, as happened with the Sandy Hook school shooting.

I watched some videos on Youtube which argued for the Paris attacks as being a hoax, but found them lacking substance, and so I will proceed in the belief that the attacks were indeed the work of Muslims, although I will concede that Peter Hitchens might well be correct about there being no link to ISIS.

The President of France has used the terror attacks to justify air strikes against ISIS positions in Syria, which reminds me of the Renaissance writer Niccolo Machiavelli who argued that a prince who is unpopular at home should start a war.

Russia has already been attacking ISIS positions for some time, and recently suffered the loss of an aircraft shot down by the Turkish army for allegedly violating its airspace.  It is widely reported that the Russian aircraft would have been in Turkish airspace for maybe ten seconds at most, whereas the Turkish government has claimed that the Russian jet was in its airspace for around five minutes during which time several warning were issued.

Some commentators have even gone so far as to argue that this incident could trigger World War Three, but I will believe that when I see it.

The facts as I understand it are that ISIS is funded in large part by oil revenues.  Oil companies are expected not to buy from ISIS however, and so ISIS sends much of its oil in tankers into Turkey, where it can be sold on the international market as if it had been sourced in Turkey.  In other words, it appears that the Turkish authorities are helping to fund ISIS.

Predictably, Turkey objects to the destruction of ISIS oil tankers in Russian air strikes, and so it has been argued that they decided to hit back by taking out a Russian military aircraft.  Obviously, however, the loss of just one aeroplane makes little difference to the Russian bombing campaign, which leads me to conclude that either the Turkish government is planning to shoot down yet more Russian aircraft, or else that the Turkish government is in fact telling the truth about the five minute violation of airspace.

Related previous posts include:
The insanity of a war without frontiers
A war against ISIS would be savage and pointless

Glamour model with student debt

Catherine Byrne is a young woman who recently secured £14,000 in student loans, which she then spent on breast enlargement surgery so as to allow her to pursue a career in glamour modelling.

The loans do not need to be repaid until she starts earning £17,335 per year, and will be written off after twenty-five years if she never earns that much.  Miss Byrne intends never to earn that much, and never to repay any of her student debt.

So far as I am aware she has not broken any law.

Miss Byrne is far from alone.  While I am not aware of any other person who has spent their student loans on cosmetic surgery, I am aware that many graduates try to exploit the earnings threshold so as to avoid paying off their graduate debt.  I can't say I blame them.

Miss Byrne has said that her breast enlargement surgery has benefited her career more than any degree ever could, which may well be true.  There are at present many thousands of graduates in this country who are either unemployed or else trapped in poorly paid jobs which they do not enjoy.  By contrast, Miss Byrne can realistically hope to earn £17,000 per year working only fairly modest hours.

She is quoted as saying that she is probably happier than most of the people who enrolled on the course at the same time as her, and I won't argue with that.

As Omar Khayyam noted more than nine hundred years ago: Make game of that which makes as much of thee.

Related previous posts include:
The sordid truth about far too many young people

The insanity of a war without frontiers

I rarely condone war, and the ongoing international war against ISIS must rank among the most stupid wars in history.

As I write, the consensus in the press appears to be that the Russian Metrojet aeroplane which crashed in the Eyptian desert killing all 224 people on board was destroyed by a bomb.  The British government, in the person of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, has responded by arguing for Britain to launch bombing raids against ISIS.

I have previously made some positive remarks on this blog about Russian president Vladimir Putin.  This was not because I regard him as in any way a hero, but because he is a renegade among world leaders who plays his own game while refusing to bow to pressure from other countries.

The Russian armed forces has recently been unleashing one devastating attack after another against ISIS fighters in Syria, and I expect Putin has enjoyed being able to play the tough guy.  Nevertheless I was not remotely surprised when I read that a Russian aeroplane had crashed in a country with a majority Muslim population.

Quite simply, the war against ISIS is a war without frontiers.  There is no reason to think that there are not ISIS fighters in every major country in the world.  Amost any ISIS supporter anywhere in the world can perpetrate an act of murder, possibly on a large scale, and we must expect aeroplanes to be the prime target.

An ISIS supporter in the UK, for example, could explode a bomb in the centre of London.  Such a bomb might kill a hundred people or kill nobody.  By contrast, a bomb on an aeroplane can reasonably be expected to leave not one survivor.

I was not at all surprised to read that a Thomson flight from Stansted narrowly avoided being destroyed by a missile on 23 August.  David Cameron is well known for his support of war in Syria, as a result of which no British aircraft is safe.

If Britain steps up its illegal war against ISIS, then the main impact will be to increase the danger to the British people, not reduce it.  A war against ISIS cannot be won through armed aggression.  If every ISIS fighter in the world were to be killed tomorrow, then the organisation could be resurrected by the end of next week.  This war is ideological, and needs an ideological solution.

Related previous posts include:
A war against ISIS would be savage and pointless
Emma and Chris are veritaphobic
A triple murder in Syria

The proper limits of government

Once again I find myself with many things to write about, but I am drawn to a press report on the case of a prison chaplain called Barry Trayhorn who is taking HMP Littlehey in Cambridgeshire to an employment tribunal because they objected to him reading out loud a passage from The Bible concerning homosexuality.

My first reaction is to wonder what the point is of having chaplains in prison if they are not allowed to quote the book which is after all foundational to their religion.  I also wonder what the prison's reaction would be to an imam quoting an Islamic source about homosexuality.

However what really interests me here is one of the comments left on the website of a national newspaper, which reads as follows:

If the Bible contains text that breaks the law, it should be removed from sale and public viewing, so should any other religious book that does the same. Why should people be subject to abuse by medieval practices and literature.

An immediate response is that this comment is a classic example of Britain's ongoing slide into communism. If communists do not like a text, then no one should be allowed to read it.  As it happens I do not like The Koran, but I do not seek to ban other people from reading it, although I have previously advanced a case for banning it from prisons.

I then found myself pondering the question of the proper limits of government.  In Britain, governments enact laws with the support of parliament.  On the whole I feel that laws are there to be obeyed, even if I do not agree with them.  Nevertheless there may be exceptions.  For example it is illegal to beg in public, but I wonder how many people would refuse to beg if they had no other source of income.

So far as I am aware, it is not currently illegal to give money to a beggar.  If it were, I wonder how many of us would never break that particular law?

If people are expected to obey laws, then it is perhaps reasonable that governments should tend not to enact laws which people are unwilling to obey.  A failure to understand this simple point appears to be one of the hallmarks of a communist.

Update: Barry Trayhorn's employment tribunal claim was unsuccessful.  I merely observe the fact.

Related previous posts include:
Now ban The Koran