The problem with the Geneva Communique from the first Geneva round on Syria is that the government of Syria never subscribed to it. It was jointly chaired by the League of Arab States for Syria, whatever that may mean. Another problem is that it is, as so many diplomatic documents are, highly ambiguous. It plainly advocates a power sharing executive formed by some of the current government plus the opposition to oversee a transition to democracy. But it does not state which elements of the current government, and it does not mention which elements of the opposition, nor does it make plain if President Assad himself is eligible to be part of, or to head, the power-sharing executive, and whether he is eligible to be a candidate in future democratic elections.
Doubtless the British, for example, would argue that the term transition implies that he will go. The Russians will argue there is no such implication and the text does not exclude anybody from the process. Doubtless also diplomats on all sides were fully aware of these differing interpretations and the ambiguity is quite deliberate to enable an agreed text. I would say that the text tends much more to the “western” side, and that this reflects the apparently weak military position of the Assad regime at that time and the then extant threat of western military intervention. There has been a radical shift in those factors against the western side in the interim. Expect Russian interpretations now to get more hardline.
Given the extreme ambiguity of the text, Iran has, as it frequently does, shot itself in the foot diplomatically by refusing to accept the communique as the basis of talks and thus getting excluded from Geneva. Iran should have accepted the communique, and then at Geneva issued its own interpretation of it.
But that is a minor point. The farcical thing about the Geneva conference is that it is attempting to promote into power-sharing in Syria “opposition” members who have no democratic credentials and represent a scarcely significant portion of those actually fighting the Assad regime in Syria. What the West are trying to achieve is what the CIA and Mossad have now achieved in Egypt; replacing the head of the Mubarak regime while keeping all its power structures in place. The West don’t really want democracy in Syria, they just want a less pro-Russian leader of the power structures.
The inability of the British left to understand the Middle East is pathetic. I recall arguing with commenters on this blog who supported the overthrow of the elected President of Egypt Morsi on the grounds that his overthrow was supporting secularism, judicial independence (missing the entirely obvious fact the Egyptian judiciary are almost all puppets of the military) and would lead to a left wing revolutionary outcome. Similarly the demonstrations against Erdogan in Istanbul, orchestrated by very similar pro-military forces to those now in charge in Egypt, were also hailed by commenters here. The word “secularist” seems to obviate all sins when it comes to the Middle East.
Qatar will be present at Geneva, and Qatar has just launched a pre-emptive media offensive by launching a dossier on torture and murder of detainees by the Assad regime, which is being given first headline treatment by the BBC all morning
There would be a good dossier to be issued on torture in detention in Qatar, and the lives of slave workers there, but that is another question.
I do not doubt at all that atrocities have been committed and are being committed by the Assad regime. It is a very unpleasant regime indeed. The fact that atrocities are also being committed by various rebel groups does not make Syrian government atrocities any better.
But whether 11,000 people really were murdered in a single detainee camp I am unsure. What I do know is that the BBC presentation of today’s report has been a disgrace. The report was commissioned by the government of Qatar who commissioned Carter Ruck to do it. Both those organisations are infamous suppressors of free speech. What is reprehensible is that the BBC are presenting the report as though it were produced by neutral experts, whereas the opposite is the case. It is produced not by anti torture campaigners or by human rights activists, but by lawyers who are doing it purely and simply because they are being paid to do it.
The BBC are showing enormous deference to Sir Desmond De Silva, who is introduced as a former UN war crimes prosecutor. He is indeed that, but it is not the capacity in which he is now acting. He is acting as a barrister in private practice. Before he was a UN prosecutor, he was for decades a criminal defence lawyer and has defended many murderers. He has since acted to suppress the truth being published about many celebrities, including John Terry.
If the Assad regime and not the government of Qatar had instructed him and paid him, he would now be on our screens arguing the opposite case to that he is putting. That is his job. He probably regards that as not reprehensible. What is reprehensible is that the BBC do not make it plain, but introduce him as a UN war crimes prosecutor as though he were acting in that capacity or out of concern for human rights. I can find no evidence of his having an especial love for human rights in the abstract, when he is not being paid for it. He produced an official UK government report into the murder of Pat Finucane, a murder organised by British authorities, which Pat Finucane’s widow described as a “sham”. He was also put in charge of quietly sweeping the Israeli murders on the Gaza flotilla under the carpet at the UN.
The question any decent journalist should be asking him is “Sir Desmond De Silva, how much did the government of Qatar pay you for your part in preparing this report? How much did it pay the other experts? Does your fee from the Government of Qatar include this TV interview, or are you charging separately for your time in giving this interview? In short how much are you being paid to say this?”
That is what any decent journalist would ask. Which is why you will never hear those questions on the BBC.
John Goss
“I can understand why certain mining villages celebrated when the old bag died.”
One of the worst parts of the video is when the parents of a little boy get him to say “My name is Jack and I love it when she’s DEAD!”
Hi Habbabkuk, there’s a whole lot more in that article.
I always feel that the real reason for the hatred of Thatcher is not because of what she did, but rather that she was right. That’s what they really can’t stand and that’s why the hatred is so intense.
“Goss
If the Stalinist idiot Scargill had balloted the Union on strike action the miners would have won against Thatcher – and I speak as one who spent a lot of time and effort supporting mining communities throughout the strikes. Zionism had nothing to do with it whatsoever.”
____________________
To which I would add that by his own declarations, this was a political strike for Arthur Scargill, aimed at overthrowing an elected govt (and moreover a govt elected by not just one small section of society, ie the miners).
This was in itself sufficient reason for the govt to take all necessary steps to ensure that the strike did not succeed. He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.
@ESLO – semantics and ant-semitics aside, can you come up with the new camp which may now account for the 1.9m hole. Sorry no Butlins or numerical chicanery allowed.
BTW-if you dont believe in the Almighty, you cant believe in being “chosen” with a right to the Holy Land, so puhleeze vacate Palestine pronto ! Instead its us BBCs (from whom all you with recessive genes are descended) who are the “chosen” and able to give proper facials.
“I always feel that the real reason for the hatred of Thatcher is not because of what she did, but rather that she was right. That’s what they really can’t stand and that’s why the hatred is so intense.”
I’ve lived in both times. In the days when you could walk out of one job on a Friday and into another one on Monday and in the days of zero hours contracts that you have to accept because there’s no chance of finding another job if you don’t.
Thatcher might have got it right for the cocaine snorting Porche driving yuppies and her arms dealing son but she sold out the people of Britain.
John Goss
As you know I share your views about Thatcher. You know you have to keep up with the traffic on your bicycle in the city. The day you stop to answer daft questions from trolls dressed as pedestrians is the day you get shunted into kingdom come by a 20 ton lorry. Please don’t read the trolls.
http://www.vineyardsaker.blogspot.co.uk
“I normally don’t do movie reviews here, but after watching “The Fifth Estate” yesterday I felt that I ought to warn everybody that this is a crude hatchet job clearly aimed at maliciously slandering Julian Assange and, through him, his defiance of our “1%” overlords.”
Fred
Stop purring against my shins. There’ll be some Fukushima fish for you later. The reason why people hate Thatcher is not because of who or what she helped or why. It is because she tried unsuccesfully to u turn the moral values of this country from thinking collectively how to work together for a mutually beneficial world, to extreme selfishness in which it is morally acceptable for the Zionist bankers to gorge on people’s savings.
In other words she was a devil in disguise.
Thanks Guano, I’ll bear that in mind. One of them’s had the bare-arsed gall to claim Thatcher was right. She was wrong in everything she did and helped make this country the shit-heap its become with no industry, except investment, which takes place abroad buying and selling on the Stock Exchange and siphoning it off to tax-havens. Our money. And now they want to frack us to death. Cease the day when it comes! It won’t be long. Shell profits are down. They’re still outrageous.
As to pit-closures under Labour, I opposed them too. But they only closed 60% whereas Thatcher closed more than 90% in the end and killed off an industry my family had helped to sustain for three centuries.
“Stop purring against my shins.”
If I want advice from a haven’t got a clue newbee I’ll ask for it.
I reserve the right to give my opinions as and when I see fit and in response to whomsoever I want to.
‘No I am repeating what miners I knew at the time said.’ (ESLO)
Notts NUM? The ones who knew their jobs were safe? NACODS members, perhaps. Not NUM faceworkers from the threatened areas, I’ll be bound.
‘I’ve lived in both times. In the days when you could walk out of one job on a Friday and into another one on Monday and in the days of zero hours contracts that you have to accept because there’s no chance of finding another job if you don’t.
Thatcher might have got it right for the cocaine snorting Porche driving yuppies and her arms dealing son but she sold out the people of Britain.’ (Fred)
Exactly. Service industries and periodically collapsing funny-money trading replaced actual production. And we now import coal from Poland, along with cheap labour.
Question is: who’s ‘we’ any more?
I never listened to Sid or the others selling us our silver we already owned, proof that trickery works. Todays Royal Mail sell off is just the latest manifestation of this preponderance to sell off state assets to private chums, only these days its done openly and not many bark about it.
Yes she sold us what we did not know we had, or already paid for, over and over again.
Then we were allowed to buy our council houses, hurray, but dare not spend any returns on new housing. And those poor souls who thought they could afford it? 600.000 lost their houses to the banks and building societies, thats the privatisation Thatcher had in mind, it was known that much of the housing would go to financial institutions long before the first house sold.
she was a shopkeeper workaholic, with a mouth for slogans, she would also have been successfull selling panties on Grantham market, maybe she then would have reached the lofty hights of local Government her beloved daddy occupied.
Mum? well, she did not like to talk about her mother much, whether it was embarassment or that she rather enjoyed the fishing trips, the rock climbing or the many visits to Grantham council daddy took her on.
I added the fishing trip and rock climbing, to embellish and make it look as if she had an exciting life, not just a daddy’s tomboy.
seize the day about our times greatest concerns.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxe23WRxG_Q
Notts NUM? No miners from Yorkshire, Derbyshire and South Wales – you forget that the NUM had national ballots for all their previous strikes and that miners are not stupid. Read Beckett’s book on the strike if you want further evidence.
Habbabkuk – don’t tell Goss it was a Soviet newspaper that gave her the nickname “Iron Lady”.
Let’s not forget Orgreave when mounted police attacked peaceful picketing miners but when it got to the BBC news they showed the miner’s response first and the police charge second, the footage was edited to make it look like the miners started the fight. Let’s not forget the miners who were then arrested and charged with serious offences for defending themselves against police brutality.
Habba
I don’t agree with you on the miners’ strike – I don’t believe any declining industry arguments could excuse the brutality and intransigence of Thatcher towards the mining communities. There are better and kinder ways of handling economic change. Labelling all the miners as the enemy within as she and much of the Press effectively did was inexcusable. The fact is that Scargill and his cronies were stupid enough to hand her that card which was really the only one she could play as none of the other arguments would have held much sway with general public opinion. If Scargill had held the ballot as had happened before with national miners strikes, then I’m convinced that the result would have been very different.
From a quick scan, there seems to have been a troll fest here today. DON’T FEED THEM OR ENGAGE WITH THEM.
I heard a talk this afternoon from a woman who was a secretary in the FCO, working in Moscow, Washington, Vietnam, Bogota, Peking/Beijing, in the 60s and 70s. You can imagine all the boring anecdotes. I yearned to stand up and tell her that the British Empire and its dirty tricks departments are dead, dead, dead. After her giddy life in the FCO, she married an army officer who served in Germany and then the UAE? Then he dumped her for an older woman so she took a job with a pharmaceutical company who were subsequently acquired by Glaxo Smith Kline, who now pay her pension. All bases covered. Unbelievable.
She finished by saying that she was donating her fee to a charity that helped persecuted Christians. No mention of persecuted Muslims btw. She concluded with a one liner that there are many persecuted Christians in Syria! I wondered if she realizes that she is still spouting propaganda.
Out tonight with friends. Toodle pip.
Why hate Thatcher? ….
…. all the above, but also because she got off with it.
She did more harm to this country than Blair, but unlike him, the majority of people didn’t see through her betrayal, and some still don’t.
Mr Birnbaum had better get ‘busy with the fizzy’!
SodaStream Drops Amid Sanctions Over Jewish Settlements
Feb 3, 2014 An employee uses a forklift truck to prepare pallets of SodaStream products for export… Read More
SodaStream International Ltd., the Israeli maker of home soda machines with a factory in the West Bank, sank to the lowest since 2012 in New York amid growing criticism for businesses operating in a territory that Palestinians seek for an independent state.
SodaStream slumped 3.3 percent to $35.34 in New York, the lowest since Nov. 20, 2012. The stock plunged 26 percent on Jan. 13 after SodaStream reported worse-than-forecast preliminary earnings for 2013.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who is leading U.S. efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, cautioned Israel at the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 1 about an “increasing delegitimization campaign” that includes “talks of boycotts.” Actress Scarlett Johansson publicly split with Oxfam last week after the U.K.-based charity criticized her role as a spokeswoman for SodaStream, because of its plant in a settlement in the West Bank.
“John Kerry made comments about the economic damage of the sanctions and this scared investors a lot,” David Kaplan, an analyst at Barclays Plc who has a buy recommendation for SodaStream, said by phone from Tel Aviv. “On top of that, they missed earnings without clarifying why they had missed earnings and what they plan to do going forward. The stock will be down until they figure out a way to restore confidence.”
Yonah Lloyd, SodaStream’s chief corporate development and communications officer, declined to comment on the stock move in an e-mailed statement.
‘Headwinds’ Expected
SodaStream Chief Executive Officer Daniel Birnbaum defended his company to journalists yesterday during a press tour of the plant, which employs 500 Palestinians, 450 Israeli Arabs and 350 Israeli Jews.
“We’re not a settlement, we’re a factory,” Birnbaum said.
SodaStream reported on Jan. 13 preliminary adjusted net income of $52.5 million for 2013, below the $65.4 million median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of four analysts. Chief Executive Officer Daniel Birnbaum said after the earnings were released that he expects some “headwinds” to extend into this year, overshadowing the Jan. 10 announcement that Johansson will become the face of SodaStream’s new marketing campaign.
The Hollywood actress touted a SodaStream machine in a Super Bowl ad.
Boycott Debate
Oxfam said Jan. 30 that it accepted Johansson’s decision to step down because of her work with SodaStream. The anti-poverty organization is opposed to all trade from Israeli settlements, which it says are illegal under international law, according to its website.
The boycott debate comes after pro-Palestinian activists scored several successes in a campaign to blacklist businesses operating in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, land occupied by Israel since 1967 and claimed by Palestinians for a future state.
Dutch asset manager PGGM, which oversees more than 150 billion euros ($203 billion), announced last month it would stop investing in Israeli banks because of their financial operations in the settlements. Norway’s sovereign oil fund last week renewed an investment ban on two Israeli construction companies that build in the West Bank, Africa Israel Investments Ltd. and Danya Cebus Ltd.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-03/sodastream-slumps-on-sanction-campaign-over-jewish-settlements.html
ESLO there was no time to hold a national ballot. Thatcher was already buying coal from abroad. What a bitch hey? She would destroy and industry at home and support the same industry abroad. She hated us all, the nasty . . . fill in the blank someone.
It was the Notts pit-village I went to school in that sold out. Now they have no work either. What a mistake on the part of the Notts miners, not Arthur Scargill. “I’m all right Jack” springs to mind.
Perhaps all the members of the Arthur Scargill fan club and his revolutionary and undemocratic approach to politics should note that his approach led to pretty near complete failure for the miners who were in effect starved back to work after a year with no negotiated settlement and with Thatcher having a free hand to do what she wanted with the mining industry and workers rights. And what lessons do the muppets learn from such an abject failure? How do they thing things should be approached in order to achieve tangible results? All I can see here from the toy town revolutionaries is the desire for a repeat performance and another glorious failure.
ESLO there was no time to hold a national ballot.
Bollox
It’s obviously going to be cheaper to obtain coal from an open cast mine than from deep underground. As the graph from the link in my post above shows, coal production had been in continual decline since the War and most of the pit closures were made before Thatcher came to power. No one seriously doubts what Thatcher did was right – the argument is whether she did it too ruthlessly.
In any case, most of you are opposed to burning coal as it allegedly causes global warming. And now you are opposed to a fracking, another potential source of cheap energy.
“Thatcher was already buying coal from abroad. ”
Imports of coal began at least a decade before Thatcher came to power, home production had been in steep decline ever since the end of WW2.
It doesn’t bother them, Kempe. They have made up their minds.
It woz Fatch wot done it.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Pjx-pOsZYk0
Fred
..or was that newclee…prawns…??? Stop fighting in the dustbins over Mrs T’s fishbones. You see, you’re choking now Eghghgh!Errghghhhhhh!
” Labelling all the miners as the enemy within as she and much of the Press effectively did was inexcusable.”
Yes people were branded as evil for wanting to go to work, for not wanting to be on the dole, for wanting to earn their keep.
Now her little assistant is branding the children of those she threw on the scrap heap as evil. The press is busy demonising “benefits scroungers” just as they demonised the hard working to allow the Tories once more to do a hatchet job on the people and starve those unable to get work and the public are falling for it once again.
Thatcher announced 25 pit closures on 6th March. Scargill announced that there were to be 75 pit closures and called for a national strike on 12th March. Thatcher lied through her nasty meat-tearing incisors while Arthur Scargill told the truth. There was no time to organise a national ballot in 6 days. If they had got the support of the steel-workers and some transport unions it was winnable. But again it was “I’m all right Jack” even though the miners had previously supported the steel-workers with their dispute. Not any more. Nobody can support anybody any more. The unions have been divided and conquered.
As for the historic treatment of Jews, none have a less anti-semitic attitude than the Catholic Church… 🙂
http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/mine/timeline.htm