War on Terrorism (Politics)

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

It's the end of the special relationship. Britain and the Houthis.

Is Rishi Sunak a Houthi? Jan 24, 2024
If he is a plant he is certainly doing a brilliant job.

Sending Typhoons from Cyprus to bomb people driving around in pick-ups with drones in the back is proving a tough ask but each time ‘Rishi’ orders it, a million Yemenis hit the streets declaring death to the British and undying loyalty to the Houthi cause. One wonders how often he can get away with it before the British intelligence services smell a rat.

However, despite their coup, the Houthi intelligence services can be justly criticised for giving their man a less than believable legend:

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

It's not as if Trump doesn't have recent experience of the way thirty day ceasefires are supposed to work. You may have forgotten--he certainly has--but a thirty-day ceasefire was brokered between Israel and Hamas. To be followed by Stage Two, essentially the end of the war.

Israel proceeded to break every undertaking it had made and when Hamas nevertheless expressed itself ready to move on to Stage Two, the Israelis and Trump castigated Hamas for breaking the terms of the ceasefire (from memory, it was misidentifying for twenty-four hours a hostage corpse but it was difficult to follow the Israeli/American reasoning) so there could be no Stage Two at this stage.

Innocents might assume this would mean returning to the ceasefire but to Israel it meant a return to war. Since Trump is an innocent, Israel explained it meant a ceasefire, except they could treat Gaza as a free-fire zone but woe betide Hamas if it broke the ceasefire by fighting back. Unless Hamas mended their ways, Netanyahu and Trump agreed, Stage One will have to be extended indefinitely, meaning no end to the war.

Something like that. I try to keep up but the Israelis are too serpentine even for cleverclogs me. Or too wicked. Not Trump though. He's too dumb to be wicked.

[Mick Harper]

[Hatty]

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

If there were I would be somewhat mollified. However Trump is not what you would call 'collegiate'. He is like an old-fashioned monarch presiding over a court as well as a country. Not like, say, Henry VIII who chose his favourites for their administrative abilities but like, say, Charles I. He ended up with a triumvirate of favourites consisting of Strafford, Laud and the Queen who pulled him in three different directions simultaneously.

Choosing one favourite and leaving him to be Grand Vizier was the normal French and Spanish royal method. (And Hanoverian?) For an American royal presidential court, the nearest maybe would be the Nixon White House.

Of course Trump will only be king for four years and it is early doors to play favourites ourselves. I can't, for example, see Musk lasting. It also has to be borne in mind that Trump has more self-confidence because of his first term (when he didn't have favourites) and re-election. But he is eight years older and not eight years wiser. As ever, he is unpredictable.

[Mick Harper]

The reason I left Medium is because of the lack of traction I acquired despite years of unstinting efforts. Here's a case in point. A brilliant and original piece that got precisely two reads and no comments. It arose out of something I wrote here at the AEL so judge for yourself whether it deserved better.
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Ex-STASI hood gets ten years Feb 24, 2025
Not the medal he should have got

A German court has sentenced a former STASI agent to ten years for murder after a team of historians, journalists and forensic epigraphists painstakingly tracked down the East German security man responsible for killing in cold blood a young man whose only crime was trying to escape to the West.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

Why, then, did the Israeli government accept the January 'ceasefire' in the first place? I understand there was some need to pay lip service to Trump's promise to bring peace to the Middle East and Ukraine on his first day in office (he didn't specify morning or afternoon) but if they both knew it would require the deal from the Great Dealmaker being torn up pretty well immediately, it seems a strange thing to do. Even by their joint standards.

[Wile E. Coyote]

My feeling is that the ceasefire was agreed as the fate of the hostages was a significant factor politically.

Less so now, why?

The 42-day first phase saw Hamas release 33 Israeli women, children, civilian men over 50 and those deemed “humanitarian cases.”

Now would be phase two, 24 young men, 4 are soldiers some others were young men involved in security of the concert.

Phase three are hostages confirmed dead by Israel.

[Wile E. Coyote]

There is a lesson (ignored by commentators?) here for future terrorist groups that if your general cause has wide support in the west, then capturing women and children is (in realist, not in moral terms) effective and will force negotiated concessions, capturing young men, much less effective.

[Mick Harper]

Not though at the government-to-government level. Remember that woman US basketball-player arrested by the Russians? No special treatment. She might as well have been a journeyman journo hostage. Or a tourist even, Iran specialises in them.

But maybe arresting a whole coach tour of old biddies might get some concessions. Or inviting kiddies to visit Father Christmas 'at his home in the tundra', banging them up and exchanging them for a job lot of FSB spies. Just throwing out ideas, you understand.

Late Breaking News: Trump is talking to Hamas after a thirty year veto on 'negotiating with terrorists'. "In the end we had to ignore our scruples about terrorists and talk to him," said a Hamas spokesperson.

[Mick Harper]

Canadians are refusing to go on holiday in America. Given Canada's geographical position, this is presenting problems. It's OK for French Canadians, they can go look up their roots in the Old Country. But a fortnight with a Blackpool landlady is going to be a bracing experience for the Anglos.