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.
Clark,
I’ve got a friend who’s bought a few bitcoins and their value has spiralled. We have this argument often. He thinks bitcoins are going to save the world from the bankers. I believe nothing significant has happened for a century without the bankers engineering it or allowing it. It’s an extreme view, I admit, but it explains the world for me.
I totally appreciate the strength of the bitcoin concept – an encrypted blockchain, perpetually added to, every coin containing the complete history of all the transactions its been part of. Actually, it’s got huge additional potential as a way of timestamping documents (think legal documents, property titles, patents, copyright, incorporation…)
How could they snuff it out? Probably by methods I can’t even think of, but here’s some I can …
(1) Buying up huge quantities of bitcoins and fluctuating the market to ruin confidence in it.
(2) Using vast amounts of computer processing to control the rate of creation of new bitcoins while simultaneously increasing their bitcoin stake.
(3) Running a propaganda campaign claiming Al Qaeda are using bitcoins for buying weapons and declaring everybody that uses them a terrorist.
(4) Not allowing the the 95% of the business world which they control to use them and attacking the other 5%.
(5) Even if the maths side of it is uncrackable (a big IF), there are other many ways of robbing a bank. You can get inside the vault by blowing off the doors, picking the lock, cracking the combination, tunnelling in from below, previously bribing the vault builders, taking the bank manager’s family hostage, launching a full scale military attack, cutting a hole with oxyacetylene, pretending to be a vault inspector, storming it while the door is open, stealing the key, working for the bank, …………
I guess it boils down to whether, like me, you believe bankers rule the world, and further, that they do it through control of the money supply. They control continents and they control the internet. Bitcoin is a detail.
Sophia,
It was BBC4 TV but it’s over – now it was a treat.
And since we’re way off topic, let me thank you for a link you put up here months ago to Orchestra Baobab, I’d never heard them before but I’ve barely stopped playing them since. This was the one that hooked me:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldLO4LwNLHY
And then there’s the earth.nullschool.net link. I’ve had it bookmarked for a few months, love it, but never knew that there were more options if you clicked on the word “earth”.
Glad you’re back 🙂
I suppose I daren’t say that the UK is slipping into fascism, but maybe I can say that it is becoming a police state:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2014/jan/29/drax-coal-case-police
Palm scans, and fingerprint scans, are useless for authentication because we leave copies of them on everything we touch; fingerprints have already been “lifted” from surfaces and used to make synthetic copies that can fool a fingerprint scanner. They’re good for identification, but that’s not the same thing. The recent debate about fingerprint scanners seems to have missed this important point, and we should oppose the use of fingerprint scanners for authentication.
It cannot be a coincidence that the currencies of some African countries such as Ghana and South Africa are falling through the floor. Why and what is going on?
Ghana limits dollar transactions to protect cedi
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-26064127
The free fall of the Ghana cedi- one side of the die
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=299943
From the above –
‘Conclusion: The USD has been appreciating against several other currencies across the globe. The Ghc is among the worst affected with significant decline that to some qualifies to be termed free-fall. The deepest decline is seen in the South African Rand, falling by ca 31% in the last year. The trend observed in Ghana is in part due to the exogenous or external component, that is, the USD gaining momentum in recent times.’
PS I agree with Someone on the bankers’ control. Look at Goldman Sachs and Greece.
‘Eurozone paves way for third Greek bail-out
Telegraph.co.uk - 5 days ago
Germany will press the fragile ruling coalition in Greece to speed up unpopular austerity measures and economic reforms and the finance …’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10614315/Eurozone-paves-way-for-third-Greek-bail-out.html
The modern day version of rape and pillage.
The Ps Charles and William are campaigning to protect surviving large mammals from poaching. Commendable. The statistics are shocking.
The crawler, Nicholas Witchell, reports.
Princes Charles and William ‘unite for wildlife’
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26106137
Is the title supposed to be ironic? P William has just been in Spain killing deer and wild boar for sport along with his brother with the psychopathic tendencies. Rather bad timing, one could say!
Prince William goes hunting a day before wildlife plea
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-26105706
A little admonishment in that report from the same Witchell.
There is to be further outsourcing of the welfare system, or what remains of it. Private contractors will intervene to keep workers off long term sick pay. The scheme will be called The Health and Work Service (shades of ‘Work makes you free’??) and is announced to the media on a Sunday morning rather than in Parliament.
Long-Term Sick ‘To Get Back-To-Work Support’
The new Health and Work Service will help employees who have been on sickness absence for four weeks to return to work.
http://news.sky.com/story/1208832/long-term-sick-to-get-back-to-work-support
Meanwhile ….
“We’re actually finding people taking food back to foodbanks because they can’t afford to top up the gas and heat it.”
– Peter Smith, National Energy Action.
http://welfaretales.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/people-taking-food-back-to-foodbanks-because-they-cant-afford-gas-to-heat-it/
http://welfaretales.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/the-governments-jobmatch-website-is-carrying-bogus-vacancies-from-nine-online-recruitment-agencies-run-by-a-baptist-deacon-in-coventry-who-makes-money-by-encouraging-visitors-to-post-their-cvs/
A reminder of our present idiocracy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ocih62dSJR8
Ref last Wednesday’s debate in Westminster Hall on the Humanitarian Situation in Gaza.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmhansrd/cm140205/halltext/140205h0001.htm#14020575000002 and on following page.[video: the first 90 minutes of http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=14727%5D.
Now Karen Pollock of the Holocaust Educational Trust has rebuked one of the MPs who spoke in that debate, Yasmin Qureshi. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/feb/07/labour-mp-apologises-holocaust-remark
This was the “offending” passage:
“What has struck me in all this is that the state of Israel was founded because of what happened to the millions and millions of Jews who suffered genocide. Their properties, homes and land—everything—were taken away, and they were deprived of rights. Of course, many millions perished. It is quite strange that some of the people who are running the state of Israel seem to be quite complacent and happy to allow the same to happen in Gaza.”
(It’s on the second parliament page linked above)
Why didn’t Karen Pollock also criticise Sir Gerald Kaufman, a long term critic of Zionist Israel, who a few minutes previously in the same debate had said this:
“Again and again, Israel seeks to justify the vile injustices that it imposes on the people of Gaza and the west bank on the grounds of the holocaust. Last week, we commemorated the holocaust; 1.7 million Palestinians in Gaza are being penalised with that as the justification. That is unacceptable.
The statistics are appalling. There is fresh water for a few hours every five days. Fishing boats are not allowed to go out—in any case, what is the point, because the waters are so filthy that no fish they catch can be eaten? The Israelis are victimising the children above all. Half the population of this country is under the voting age. What is being done to those children—the lack of nutrition—is damaging not only their bodies and brains; it will go on for generation after generation.
It is totally unacceptable that the Israelis should behave in such a way, but they do not care. Go to Tel Aviv, as I did not long ago, and watch them sitting complacently outside their pavement cafés. They do not give a damn about their fellow human beings perhaps half an hour away.”
If you cannot see any difference then you go on the HET website and ask Ms Pollock why she picked on Ms Qureshi, who is Muslim incidentally, and not Sir Gerald. Is it OK to criticize Israel only if you are Jewish?http://www.het.org.uk/index.php/contact-general/#form
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasmin_Qureshi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocaust_Educational_Trust
Charity No.1092892
Income £3,148,609 Spending £2,911,637
These other charities from the Charity Commission website appear on a search for ‘holocaust’.
Charity name
509022 BETH SHALOM LIMITED Registered
1092892 HOLOCAUST EDUCATIONAL TRUST Registered
1109348 HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY TRUST Registered
1084433 HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FRIENDSHIP ASSOCIATION Registered
1127592 NATIONAL SIKH HERITAGE CENTRE AND HOLOCAUST MUSEUM Registered
1060206 THE FOUNDATION FOR HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS Removed
326702 THE FRIENDS OF THE HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL YAD YASHEM FOUNDATION Removed
327640 THE HOLOCAUST EDUCATIONAL TRUST Removed
1111411 YEDIDIM ASSOCIATION LTD Registered
A Node. 1 26am
I can’t argue with any of that, but I hold on to the notion that this drama may be the beginning of the end of the log-jam of debt-cert currencies and their creators. Even bad things come to an end at some point.
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.
Percy Shelly
The same could be said re fiat currencies a sRichard Silverstein puts it re Israel, “History has a way of making fools of those who believe the status quo can last forever. The harder we try to maintain it, the harder it tries to return to some form of social or political equilibrium. Eventually, this will happen to Israel too.” (from http://jfjfp.com/?p=55728)
If you liked Orchestre Baobab you might like this too,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCHR9mLG92o
Sofia, good to have you back from your travels and in top form, especially with the parent chiding. Your quote above repeated below is saying the same thing as my latest article, though mine regards the UK (Great Britain they used to call it) and how its empire declined and now it is a vassal of the US.
“The same could be said re fiat currencies as Richard Silverstein puts it re Israel, “History has a way of making fools of those who believe the status quo can last forever. The harder we try to maintain it, the harder it tries to return to some form of social or political equilibrium. Eventually, this will happen to Israel too.””
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2014/02/08/empires-come-and-go-the-uks-decline-to-a-us-colony/
John. 9 27am
Thanks for the link. Spot on, and great images! I love the road sign.
Re the parent. Thanks to Gary’s kindness and Dr Bulstrode’s pragmatic attitude to medicine Dad seems a lot quieter at present, aside from a brief eruption yesterday.
Jay. 8 37am
Thanks for the reminder.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. Voltaire
Lost Amid ‘Fuck the EU’ Controversy: The US Got NSA’d
http://wakeupfromyourslumber.com/news/lost-amid-fk-eu-controversy-us-got-nsad
Thanks for Ghana links Mary – Nadira has told me Craig is in Ghana.
A Node reminds us of the global dominion and subjection from the banksters. He is right.
The ‘jackals’ [IMF] sent the economic hit man into Ghana some time ago and now revenue from off shore oil fields is used to repay the loans; peace and security in Ghana was part of the deal.
The African Peace and Security Council is struggling against insecurity and violence precipitated by the smashing of Libya by the banksters terrorists including NATO.
http://www.issafrica.org/uploads/Annual_Review_PSC_2013-2014.pdf
Mary 6:01am
Mary, hunting deer and wild boar on an estate managed for the purpose is beneficial to the game, forest, hunter and other wildlife alike. It is not in the anyone’s interests to eliminate the wildlife. You have had this explained to you before.
Illegal poaching of endangered elephants and tigers for the illegal ivory, skin and Chinese medicine markets is an entirely different matter, and there is nothing “ironic”, or hypocritical, about campaigning for the protection of such animals whilst being a keen hunter of managed game stock.
Understood?
I know Habbabkuk brooks no criticism of the royal parasites.
Are you writing from the same script in the same office Anon?
Has it been established that the Spanish estate where the killing took place is managed. If so, how cruel that dumb animals are bred to be killed for sport.
P William would be much better employed in the Somerset levels at the present time showing a bit of solidarity with the serfs/peasants as the people are probably thought of in ‘royal’ circles. Ps William and Harry should have proper jobs in the non military world.
Absolutely bloody sickening.
The airhead wife is apparently back from the Caribbean with Boy George and stayed at home rather than going to Spain which she has done before.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2554484/Prince-William-flies-shoot-wild-boar-Spain-days-launching-campaign-combat-illegal-hunting.html
They are not “bred” to be killed for sport, Mary. Stocks are maintained by selective culling, making for a healthier population as the animals have no other natural predators. Damage to the forest is reduced, habitat is preserved and managed for the benefit of wildlife, money flows into the rural economy, and food is provided for the table.
You have no arguments, Mary. What you can’t stand is ‘rich toffs’ out in the country enjoying themselves while you wallow in misery and envy.
From your link:
“The 37,000-hectare property is teeming with wildlife including wild boar and stag”
Do you understand now?
Anon 9 Feb, 2014 – 12:43 pm
Yes they are. A sporting estate is an artificial habitat, managed to maintain a breeding stock plus a certain number of excess creatures which can be shot for sport.
Where I live is partially a hunting estate.
Dear breed naturally and need to be culled to contain their numbers to preserve the woods. Licences are issued, and the gamekeeper polices the shooting. Hunters pay to shoot deer with rifles. Standards of marksmanship are a requirement. The meat is sold for food, some of it on Chelmsford street market. Occasionally I buy some, but I don’t often eat meat, usually once a week or so. It is good quality meat, clearly better than the supermarket, intensively-farmed stuff.
Pheasants and partridges are deliberately bred for shooting. People pay to shoot these with shotguns. No skill is required, the only requirement is a shotgun licence and the money to pay. The shooters are gung-ho and often at least tipsy; one gamekeeper was sacked for being intoxicated on duty. The gamekeeper’s main responsibility seems to be to ensure that the shooters don’t injure each other with stray shots. I’ve often found live cartridges lying discarded around the estate. The shooters barely leave their vehicles, which churn up and ruin the footpaths and bridleways.
There was one man who had sought and obtained permission to shoot rabbits, but it’s been some years since I saw anyone doing this. He shot rabbits for food, for himself and people he knew.
Generally, the local residents complain about the tipsy gung-ho fools who shoot the birds.
———
Our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, and the desire to hunt is natural to us, particularly to men, who were the hunter part of the combination. Ironically, the only hunting I’ve seen women involved with is the cruellest of the lot, fox hunting; I suppose it’s just because women tend to like dogs and horse riding.
Most people in affluent societies eat meat, usually more than once a day. Nearly all such meat is intensively farmed; the animals have NO life apart from serving their function for humans, and their conditions are at best unsatisfying for them and often cruel. Even the pheasants and partridges bred for and shot by the fools with more money than sense get more of a life than most farm animals.
On this matter I disagree with both of the polarised positions expressed earlier. I wish people could look at the matter rationally. Excessive meat eating is the cause of by far the greater part of the cruelty, and could not be generalised to the entire human population due to insufficient land.
Never miserable and certainly not envious of those empty royal lifestyles whose days are numbered. They are not sustainable.
Any answer forthcoming? ‘Are you writing from the same script in the same office Anon?’
Have you nothing to say about other more important matters that have been raised here recently?
My final knockings on this so don’t bother replying.
‘The estate is stocked with boar, stag and partridge, for hunting. The numbers of smaller species like partridge, hares and rabbits are encouraged for the sake of raptors.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Garganta_(finca)
The royal princes are bloodthirsty idlers.
Chapter and verse here.
http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2007/12/07/the-princes-secret-spanish-playground/
Personally I think that breeding birds for shooting is wrong. Due to pressure from the landowners, the bird shooting here is quite conservative, by which I mean that the population density of birds for shooting is kept quite low.
Other estates raise far more birds per unit land, and the number of birds shot by each shooter is consequently higher. It becomes like “shooting fish in a barrel”. Such shoots result in a massive excess of dead birds, far more than will ever reach the table; I’ve heard of them being buried in pits to dispose of them:
and yes, I fully understand when people are sickened by this sort of thing.
Anon accuses Mary of envy and misery, but Anon sounds pretty bitter him or her self. I’m sick of accusations of envy being used to justify obscene differentials of wealth. Shotguns, cartridges, off-road vehicles and shooting licenses are expensive, and it is obscene that a privileged few can afford a couple of thousands of pounds in less than a day to create a small hill of dead birds that will never be eaten, while others go hungry, visit charity “food-banks” (so unlike a money bank) and/or are forced to work without pay.
The breeding of birds for shooting is wrong for yet another reason. Hundreds of chicks are raised in pens and eventually released. They never learn by associating with adult birds, and they are not well adapted to their environment. Their short lives are lived in utter paranoia, as is evident from their behaviour…
It is considered “unsporting” to shoot birds on the ground (why?), and the birds seem to have developed some genetic memory or instinct about their overwhelmingly likely fate. Whenever faced with a potential threat, the conflict in their responses is very clear; they run frantically, terrified to take flight lest they be shot. It’s pathetic to observe.
Anyone who can support this deliberate generation of mass life-long terror has a compassion deficit.
Mary at 12:37 p.m.
It does not surprise me about the royal hunters because while they are the sons of the assassinated Diana they also have their father’s genes (and many think that if not behind it, he was certainly aware that they were going to do her in). They are a gross family. Charles has been down to the flood-planes in his wellies to offer his (taxpayers’) monetary support. The reporter thought this would be comforting, but in fact things have got much worse since his visit. Who does he think he is? God? King Canute? Yes, get your keyboards out you sycophantic trolls.
An interresting article by Herrn Ischinger, a german diplomat, on the nature of a morphing European defence. How Britain is part of it and how its latest ‘sharing’ of resources with France will make a European peace and Defence force more likely.
That this would inevitably weaken links to supra national alliances is merely hinted at. This development, imho, is twenty years overdue. Once the wall fell Europe was free to take off its NATO attire and organise amongst each other, but we all know that we are wedded to that ‘special relationship, those spooks who have soured relationships between countries with their excessive data steals of late, so we are a little late in Europe.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/opportunities-for-britain-in-european-defense-a-950673.html
The other article is for scholars of the last great unpleasantness, and the mistakes made by all that led to Hitlers popularity. Since this is the year, this article is as valid as others, although the focus is on the long term.
‘How WW1 peace guaranteed more violence’
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-world-war-i-peace-guaranteed-more-violence-a-950982.html
“It does not surprise me about the royal hunters because while they are the sons of the assassinated Diana they also have their father’s genes. ”
Do you mean to say you don’t subscribe to the conspiracy theories concerning Harry’s parentage? There’s hope for you yet.
Charles no longer shoots for pleasure, only for the table, so it sounds as if he needs to have sharp word with his boys.
Thanks for that link to the African economic forum, Mark, and for the update of the blogs Shannock. So Ghana is being shafted because it has supported a wider globalised agenda and trusted foreign banks.
It is immensely rich in resources and my guess is that these are now being crowbarred out of them by any means possible.
This is happening everywhere in Africa, it has become the focus for empires and unfettered colonialists of all kinds.
Its time for Africa to develop its own mines, sell its own diamonds, gold and time to rely on its fellow Africans rather than the colonial leftovers that periodically return, with more violence, insatiably and for more of their resources.
Imho, this is forboding as it sours the prospects of Africa’s future generations to the extent that they will have to revolt to have any say over the pirates that leech on them.
But then, thats exactly what we want them to do, sow insecurity and fight wars, make them dependent on our arms so we can get their resources, as cheap as we can make it, chips don’t come into it and blood loss does not matter much to us.
Kempe: “conspiracy theories concerning Harry’s parentage”? I’d never heard of this, but you have made me chuckle. I suppose having sex outside marriage is a sort of conspiracy, but this really seems like stretching the term “conspiracy theory” to the absolute limit – which is two people, obviously.