Syria and Diplomacy 2917


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.

 

 

 


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2,917 thoughts on “Syria and Diplomacy

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  • guano

    Oh dear all my paras been fused into one block. No problem you all think I’m bonkers anyway even if i put it in words of one Beelzebubble.

  • Jay

    @Guano

    You right well although credence is not necessarily so.

    What controls our earth badly are Merchants and Emotions or corporate ideas.
    These of which have created disorder at where we are.
    Let’s hope functionality becomes godly once again.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Mr Scourgie

    “Habbabkuk, the conclusion I draw from your conclusion is that you support the existence of Israel as a Jewish state and the ethnic cleansing and land theft it carries out.”
    _______________________

    Firstly, you cannot draw that conclusion from my conclusion about Nevermind’s post. You might as well conclude, for example, that I like apples because I conclude that you do not.

    But certainly, I support the existence of Israel and, as a consequence, do not believe that the Jews there should be driven into the sea.

    ****************

    So how’s the count so far? Nevermind has come out into the open – he doesn’t believe that Israel has the right to exist.

    Re Mary : despite my asking her 4 times, she avoids answering. Given that she could have qualified a “yes” answer, by adding, for example, “within its 1948, or 1967 (or whatever) borders” but chose not to do so, I think that the only conclusion must be that Mary too does not believe that Israel should exist.

    As for you, Mr Scourgie, I think the conclusion must be the same.

    Sp it has now been established that 3 of the Eminences do not believe that Israel has the right too exist.

    Any one else?9

  • A Node

    Hurray, Britain is better than the USA …. oh …. er …. at using dirty tricks on its own citizens

    “GCHQ Has Entire Program For ‘Dirty Tricks’ Including Honeypots, Using Journalists, Deleting Online Accounts

    Remember the story from last year about the NSA using dirty tricks, like spying on the porn habits of non-terrorists and then trying to leak them to discredit those (again, non-terrorist) individuals? Apparently, the UK’s version of the NSA is way ahead of the NSA on that. A new report by Glenn Greenwald and others at NBC, based on Snowden documents, shows that the GCHQ has an entire program dedicated to these kinds of attacks. Now, there is some reasonable argument to be made that this is part of basic espionage protocol, but generally speaking that’s supposed to be the mandate of the actual spy agencies (in the US, that would be the CIA, in the UK MI5 or MI6). When it moves over into organizations like the NSA and GCHQ, which are supposed to be more about merely collecting and analyzing “signals intelligence” rather than “offensive” attacks, it becomes increasingly questionable. And yet, the GCHQ seems positively giddy about its ability to go online and mess with people and companies. For example, a presentation shows that they will mess with people’s social networking accounts, and leak info to friends, colleagues and neighbors”

    http://stratrisks.com/geostrat/17935

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    ““There was one Arab state created out of the British mandate – it is called Jordan”

    And one state that wasn’t created – it’s called Palestine.”
    _______________________

    Do you know the reason why Palestine wasn’t created?

    (Hint – who administered the West Bank from 1948/9 to 1967?)

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    “Anon, whoever you are, you’re THE arse.”
    __________________

    Mary, you’ve been using the word “arse” rather frequently of late.

    Are you rattled in general or is it just by Anon’s welcome reappearance?

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    re Mary on Victoria Nuland :

    “The usual Jewish exclusivity is displayed.”
    _______________________

    Yes, we know, Victoria Nuland is Jewish.

    Congratulations are due to Mary for finding and quoting a source that manages to slide that information in!.

    Anti-semite and Israel-denier!

  • A Node

    Only Jews can speak the truth about Israel without being accused of anti-Semitism – they’re called ‘self-hating Jews’ instead. Take a bow Gerald Kaufman …..

    “The time when we could condemn and think that that was enough has long passed. The Israelis do not care about condemnation. They are self-righteous and complacent. We must now take action against them. We must impose sanctions. If the spineless Obama will not do it, we must do it—even unilaterally. We must press the European community for it to be done. These people cannot be persuaded. We cannot appeal to their better nature when they do not have one. It is all very well saying, “Wicked, wicked Hamas.” Hamas is dreadful. I have met people from Hamas, but nothing it has done justifies punishing children, women and the sick as the Israelis are doing now. They must be stopped.”

    This is part of his speech to the British Parliament on 5 February in a debate on the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Here’s the rest:
    http://rinf.com/alt-news/latest-news/mp-calls-israeli-sanctions-gaza-injustices/

  • Mary

    Biter bit.

    Immigration minister resigns for employing illegal immigrant

    http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/feb/08/immigration-minister-resigns-illegal-immigrant-mark-harper

    The immigration minister, Mark Harper, has resigned for employing an illegal immigrant as a cleaner, Downing Street said on Saturday.

    ‘Last year Harper launched a government advertising campaign that targeted racially mixed areas with mobile billboards warning illegal immigrants to “go home or face arrest”‘

  • Mary

    February 08, 2014

    NYT Selectively Quotes To Denigrate Russian Olympics

    Even after the Sochi games have begun the New York Times and continue their ridiculous anti-Russian campaign reaching as a last straws to this or that official uttering while conveniently leaving out those quotes that give real meaning of what was said and which condemn the NYT for exactly what it does.

    Headlining The Darkness Behind Sochi’s Sparkle the front page piece looks for lost doorknobs and missing pillows, how terribly inconvenient and impossible to happen in the “west”, and talks about “Russia’s oppressive antigay law and its suffocating restrictions on freedom of speech”. This even after the opening show in Sochi included the Russian band t.A.T.u, famous for their lesbian kisses (vid), and lots of music by Tchaikovsky, the great gay composer.

    It calls as witness the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, misrepresenting him as if he somehow did what the Times is doing:

    At the opening ceremony, during which he sat next to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, Bach gave a strong speech to kick off the Olympics. He made points that sounded like sharp digs at Putin and the law he signed that banned the distribution of so-called gay propaganda to children in Russia.

    In the most refreshing speech by an I.O.C. president in decades, Bach did not kowtow to the host country. He said the Olympics should set an example for “human diversity and great unity.”

    “To the athletes, you have come here with your Olympic dream,” he said. “You are welcome, no matter where you come from or your background. Yes, it’s possible even as competitors to live together and to live in harmony with tolerance and without any form of discrimination for whatever reason.”

    He did not have to come out and say it, but many people who heard him knew exactly what he meant.

    Bach said what is said at any Olympic Games. Leave out the politics. Be peaceful and tolerant. But the author obviously completely missed what Bach was really saying. The very next sentence in Bach’s short speech, not quoted by the New York Times, was this:

    “Have the courage to address your disagreements in a peaceful, direct political dialogue and not on the backs of these athletes,” he said.

    But that is of course not what the Times wants to do. It wants to mix the issues, sports and politics, and demean the apolitical games only to insert its political pet peeve.

    ~~~

    Some of the comments are good too. Especially this one!

    Putin has already met w/ Ukraine Yankovich @ Sochi and that is pissing the Americans off, and did you see Karzai sitting in the audience? Nuland was forced to apologize for the FU to the EU and now another vid has surfaced where she says the u.s. has spent $5 Billion in Ukraine regime change. @ 7:25 mark http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=861DJLR4Cek

    Posted by: TikTok | Feb 8, 2014 9:23:33 AM | 5

  • Mary

    Another item has been added to the ‘Controversy’ section on Mark Harper’s Wikipedia page. What bad luck.

    4 Controversy
    4.1 Characterisation of people collecting disability benefits
    4.2 Proposed sale of public forests
    4.3 ‘Go Home’ ad campaign targeting illegal immigration
    4.4 Resignation re illegal cleaner

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Harper

    Tory Central Office put out a motormouth, Nicky Morgan MP, to speak to the media. It was hilarious on Radio 4 PM earlier. It took the presenter several attempts to get her to say ‘Yes. Mark Harper did employ an illegal immigrant’. He finally succeeded.

  • Mary

    This is Nuland in full flow at a gathering of some US Ukraine support gathering where she reveals the $5 billon dole handed out to the opposition.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=861DJLR4Cek#t=74

    Again the comments below are apposite.

    ~~~

    She needs some lessons in public speaking. Her whiny voice and heavy intakes of breath are annoying.

    Why does she pronounce Kiev as Keeve?

    Is she another Shillary in the making? A snake with a forked tongue.

  • Mary

    The twerp who has resigned as Immigration Minister is a Con Friend of Israel.

    Several trips to Israel are recorded on http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=11588 plus this trip to USA.

    Overseas visits
    18-21 September 2005, to USA. Travel and accommodation costs met by Dr Liam Fox’s office from a donation by Mr Michael Lewis, a businessman from London. I received flight upgrades on outward and return journeys from London to Washington from Virgin Atlantic
    ~~

    Michael Lewis a South African ‘tycoon’ was head of BICOM and a Tory donor to the partei, and to that pair of scamps Fox and Werritty.

    ‘Tycoons who funded Fox’s friend: Right-wing donors helped pay the bills for pair’s globetrotting

    By Tim Shipman and Christian Gysin and Ian Drury
    12 October 2011

    A millionaire with close links to Israel is at the heart of a network of right-wing donors who helped fund globetrotting by Liam Fox and Adam Werritty.

    Michael Lewis donated to Dr Fox’s 2005 campaign for the Tory leadership and was a donor to a fund which paid for Mr Werritty to attend at least one conference in the Middle East.

    Insiders say a web of half a dozen wealthy donors directly or indirectly funded Mr Werritty’s luxury lifestyle as an informal adviser to the Defence Secretary.

    [..]

    Mr Lewis, 52, a South African-born tycoon was, until four years ago a vice-chairman of the British Israel Communications Research Council (Bicom), and became a donor after he resigned his post in 2007.

    Bicom has admitted paying for Mr Werritty to attend a conference in Israel in 2009.
    He was flown at Bicom expense to Herzliya in February 2009, where he watched Dr Fox give a speech on European-Israeli relations.

    [..]

    Mr Lewis who runs the blue-chip fashion retailer Foschini, donated £5,000 to Liam Fox’s leadership campaign, £10,000 to the Tory Party and £13,822 to Atlantic Bridge, a charity run by Mr Werritty and established by Dr Fox to further links between America and Britain.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048421/Liam-Fox-Adam-Werritty-Michael-Hintze-tycoons-Right-wing-donors-helped-pay-bills-pairs-globetrotting.html

  • A Node

    Sofia Kibo Noh, my tuppence-worth on bitcoin.

    Maybe it’s what it seems to be, maybe not. I find it hard to be sure of anything any more, but empires live and die on the strength of a currency and
    I find it hard to believe that a new-fangled incorruptible currency of the people is going to be allowed to muscle in.

    I believe that bankers control most of the world. They’ve done it by taking control of the money supply, nation by nation. Assassination and war are their standard tools to maintain and increase control. A new form of currency which wasn’t under their control would threaten their power. They could snuff it out if they wanted, therefore the most probable scenarios for me are are …..
    (a) …. the bankers were involved in its creation (a universal world currency might very well fit their plans), or …..
    (b) …. the bankers weren’t but are allowing it to develop in case it has potential, knowing that they can destroy it or take it over whenever they choose.

    This report was written by the NSA in 1996. It doesn’t prove anything but it shows that US government agencies were leaders in the field of cryptography of anonymous eletronic cash long before anyone had heard of bitcoin. For me, it makes possibility (a) above the favourite.
    http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/money/nsamint/nsamint.htm

  • Clark

    I’m not sure that any state has “a right to exist”; I’m not even sure what such a right means. Does the Roman Empire have some “right to exist”? Did pre-2003 Iraq have “a right to exist”?

    Two things seems certain. The question “does [state X] have a right to exist” seems only ever to be applied to Israel. And if anyone doesn’t proclaim support for this odd, apparently exclusively Israeli “right” when demanded, they’ll immediately be accused of “wanting to push Israel into the sea”; here’s an example:

    http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2014/01/syria-and-diplomacy/comment-page-7/#comment-439767

    Always Israel, and always that “push into the sea” phrase. Hmmm. Emotive, vague, selectively applied, and only used as a method of discrediting certain people; looks like propaganda to me.

    People should have human rights, democratic rights etc.. If states are to be accorded rights, they must come with responsibilities, just as they do for people.

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    A Node.

    Thanks for the link.

    Yes, Bitcoin and it’s creator(‘s) are not the first people to give thought to electronic cash.

    What the NSA don’t consider in the 1996 document is the possibility of an open-source, decentralised, peer to peer network. Their conceptual box is well illustrated in Fig 6 by a triangular diagram which shows the bank at the top. Bitcoin dispenses with the “trusted third party” of the bank with a robust technology that enables a vast network of peer-nodes to trade amongst themselves.

    It has survived and gained increasing acceptance over four years.

    The technology can’t be de-invented and put back in the box. The cat is out of the bag that we can trade with each other, from tiny transactions to the equivalent ot millions of dollars worth, without using fiat currency debt certificates, for which our unborn children have already been promissed a bill.

    Will Bitcoin be successfully destroyed by the banksters and their servants? Lets watch this space. For sure we are still in the era of a debt-based currency waking nightmare and more shit will happen. But what Bitcoin has already shown is that the horse-drawn era elite-controlled currencies that we are expected to use cannot match up to at least one up to date currency. My guess and wish is that it will become on of many.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin

    That’s only one example.

    So I wish Bitcoin well, and all the other alternative curencies that give real people the power to trade their skills, produce and passions with each othe as peers.

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    Brian.

    The Shaman wants to know what’s now? No bbc4 in the Great Caldera of Wathefekia.

  • Clark

    A Node, Bitcoin seems genuine to me. My mathematics isn’t good enough for me to personally assess it, but the software is all free and open source and thus open to the scrutiny of the global mathematical community.

    There are crucial differences between Bitcoin and the concept in the NSA paper you linked to. The NSA article concerned merely encoding conventional bank-regulated currency into electronic forms, and how these could be either traceable or untraceable (unsurprisingly, the NSA were worried that tracing it might not be possible). Conversely, Bitcoin is a currency in its own right and, crucially, it requires no central authority; generation of Bitcoin is governed by a fully disclosed mathematical process rather than value defined by a bank, and transactions are validated by a peer-to-peer mathematical process.

    I was at the London Bitcoin conference a couple of years ago. Speakers included Richard Stallman and Birgitta Jonsdottir. The audience were mostly intelligent young hackers and geeks.

    I’m not sure that the banks could snuff it out. How do you think they might go about it? It isn’t dependent upon banks in any way.

  • A Node

    Sophia, OK, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.
    I certainly hope someone comes up with a better way of bringing bitcoin to the High Street than Canada has done ….. anonymity? …. palm scan? …..

    (written to the music of ‘Us and Them’, thanks Brian)

  • Clark

    If you’ve got Bitcoin, you don’t even need a bank to keep it safe in. You do need to secure your computer, but we have Free, open source software to help us do that. OK, it’s not perfect, but at least the Greek government (for example) can’t just declare it isn’t yours any more.

  • Sofia Kibo Noh

    Clark.

    You liked it. Good.

    You can drag the globe round and double click to zoom and if you click “Earth” you get all sorts of options including ocean currants and precipitable water. Also seven different altitudes up into the permanent storm-blast of the Ionosphere.

    Puts us in perspective.

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