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.
Beelzebub
“Ah. So Ottoman property rights still apply in Israel, then. A lot of people will be very happy to hear that!”
_____________________
Ever heard of the Treaty of Sèvres (1920, with the Ottoman Empire) and the Treaty of Lausanne (1923, with the new Republic of Turkey)?
***********
And now go and park your ignorant backside on an ottoman. 🙂
I killed the Guardian!
I destroyed Humbaba who lived in the Cedar Forest,
I slew lions in the mountain passes!
I grappled with the Bull that came down from heaven, and killed him.
Fred
“Should Cuba take America to court on the grounds they broke the terms of the lease by building a prison in violation of international law, kidnapped people and took them there in violation of international law then water boarded them in violation of international law they would have a good chance of winning”
________________
So why doesn’t it (they’ve had 10 years)?
And now : up yours, Fred.
10 February 2014
Palestinian refugees’ suffering in Syria’s Yarmouk camp
By Yousef Shomali & Yolande Knell
At the entrance to Yarmouk, the Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus, the scale of the devastation is shocking.
Fierce fighting from the Syrian civil war has left only the shells of buildings still standing, and there are huge piles of rubble.
In the past few days, thousands of residents have crowded near here hoping to collect food parcels being given out by aid workers.
The situation has grown desperate since last summer when the Syrian army blocked regular supplies to the camp in an attempt to force out rebels holed up inside.
Activists’ videos and photographs have shown little children crying in hunger and with visible signs of malnutrition. Residents told the BBC that recently there have been about 100 deaths from starvation.
“Many were old people who I was responsible for but I couldn’t do anything to help,” says Um Mahmoud, a Palestinian care worker living in Yarmouk camp. “They were dehydrated and had no food, medicine or medical attention.”
“Babies also died because there was no milk. Their mothers couldn’t breastfeed them because they were sick and undernourished.”
Palestinians in Yarmouk say they have resorted to eating boiled herbs and plants found growing near their homes.
Caught in clashes
The unofficial camp was set up as a home for refugees who left or were forced from their original homes because of the 1948 war that led to the creation of Israel.
Over time, it grew into a busy residential and commercial district of the Syrian capital where about 150,000 Palestinians lived alongside Syrians.
Although the Syrian authorities did not give citizenship to refugees, they had full access to employment and social services. Many say they had relatively good lives compared to their counterparts in other Arab countries.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26085336
Clark
Further to our conversation, I was talking earlier with a gamekeeper friend of mine who has worked on some of the country’s largest shoots for 30-odd years, and I mentioned that I had been informed (by you) about mass graves of shot game and asked whether he had heard of this.
His reply, to paraphrase:
“This used to happen on a shoot I looked after. The reason was that due to the overcrowding in tiny breeding pens, disease was rife and a medicine had to be used [the name escapes me] to control it. The medicine made the birds unfit for human consumption and so they were buried and birds for from a local game dealer were handed out at the end of the day to the guns instead”.
Appalling, we both agreed. But the chemical is now banned and the breeding pens are far larger and, he told me, even on the largest shoots, including Sandringham (where he was a keeper), all shot birds are consumed.
By your own admission, game birds have a better standard of living than supermarket poultry, and all birds shot are eaten (which has certainly been my experience, though I’m sure if you scour google you might find the odd example where they have not been), so what exactly is your problem, other than your perception that it is a rich man’s hobby?
To which I would reply, you cited the costs of guns (£200 for a semi-decent shotgun), cartridges (a pittance), off-road vehicle (not necessary) and the cost of shooting (wildfowling and rough shooting can be had for free), so please tell me how you have come to this conclusion? It can be cheaper than virtually any hobby I know and it should be remembered that even those rich Londoners who pay top dollar bring a lot of money into struggling rural economies.
(PS, game birds run before they fly. It’s what they do. I have encountered game birds in parts of the world where they have never heard a gun and they still run before they fly!)
Anyway, sorry to bore everyone with this but Mary first raised it with her outlandish claims, and it makes a change from preeminent obsession of this blog, namely The Joooooooooooz.
Fred
You seem rather fixated on shit and arses (well, I suppose they do go together, don’t they), so I thought I’d share the following limerick (adapted) with you.
Just a general suggestion of course – nothing personal!
“That macho poster, Fred Garsall,
Once did himself up in a parcel;
He addressed it ‘Lord Garsall,
The Keep, Garsall Castle’
And mailed it first-class up his arsehole.”
After I ruined Babylon, smashed its gods, exterminated its population by the sword, so that the very soil of that city could be carried away, I took away its soil and had it thrown into the Euphrates, (thence) into the sea. Its debris drifted as far as Dilmun. The Dilmunians saw it and fear mingled with awe inspired by the god Assur overcame them. They brought their gifts I carried off debris from Babylon and heaped it up in (the) temple of the New Year Festival in Assur.
Fred scrawls:
“@Habbabuk Yes shit for brained little twat I popped up to point out that you are talking out of your arse as usual.”
We must remember that Clark, on the basis of merely disagreeing with the prevailing orthodoxy (which Fred ought to know a thing or two about! ), accused me of being bitter and angry, whereas Fred comes across to him as being quite a nice chap, actually. You must come and stay some time, Clark! 🙂
Eslo,
Do you come to this blog for intelligent debate or childish bickering? Ask yourself which one Habbabkuk encourages.
Hint: here is the closing sentence from his last 5 posts
And now go and park your ignorant backside on an ottoman.
You are a miserable lickspittle – who has the chutzpah to talk about respect and redemption…
More idiot than useful.
I meant to write “popped up” but on reflection what I wrote is even more apposite.
You are like a five year old trying to play Premier League football.
“Anyway, sorry to bore everyone with this..”
________________
No bore there, Anon! Good to see you back – read back a page or so to witness the magisterial crushing of a wannabe international relations expert. 🙂
Let your emperor send us gold, for I and my companions suffer from a disease of the heart for which gold is the only cure.
My my, if we had more Catholics like habs on our side, crypto or otherwise, I could almost forgive the Pope for being silent when Hitler was at it. That leaves this delicate issue about Yahweh being silent too but whatever His reason, this time we are stocked up with nuclear weapons.And Benzion Melikowalski has almost finished building the nuclear bunker albeit only for the chosen chosen.
We practically wiped this nation clean of Marxists.
“So why doesn’t it (they’ve had 10 years)?”
I just told you shit for brains, now go fuck yourself I don’t play stupid games with imbeciles.
A Node
Well, you’re a failure at summarizing, but you do do lists. This is encouraging, and I urge you to persevere.
We Conservatives hate unemployment.
Fred
““So why doesn’t it (they’ve had 10 years)?”
I just told you shit for brains, now go fuck yourself I don’t play stupid games with imbeciles.”
__________________
Err, you haven’t actually told me. You predicted that the US would ignore an adverse verdict but if you’re so sure that the Cubans would win their “case” then they should bring it anyway, shouldn’t they? For the principle of it, if you get my drift.
No, I suppose you don’t get it – do you ever?
PS – I hope you enjoyed the limerick.
Long silence from Mr Goss!
Is he speed-reading through the UN Charter, the Vienna Convention and the US-Cuba Treaties?
Or just takin’ five?
The ant has made himself illustrious
Through constant industry industrious.
So what? Would you be calm and placid
If you were full of formic acid?
@Anon
What you and Clark get up to is nothing to do with me.
There is still the case of Nicaragua v US I raised as an example of the futility of taking America to court.
Did you want to argue the facts on that one or did you want to make it personal like bollok brains?
And now, on a lighter and distinctly non-controversial note, here is my book recommendation for February. It is:
“Iron Curtain – the crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956” by Anne Applebaum ((Allen Lane, 2012).
To quote from the blurb:
“Applebaum describes in devastating detail how political parties, the church, the media, young people’s organizations – the institutions of civil society on every level – <ere quickly eviscerated. She explains how the secret police services were organized, how the media came to be dominated by communists, and how all forms of opposition were undermined and destroyed. Ranging widely across new archival material * and many sources unknown in English, she follows the communists' tactics as they bullied, threatened and murdered their way to power. She also chronicles individual lives to show the choices people had to male – to fight, to flee, or to collaborate."
* in Warsaw, Berlin and Budapest (but not in Moscow, where such material is, strangely, still not generally available)
A splendid book – and one which illustrates rather well why, for all their faults, we and more pertinently the peoples of Eastern Europe should be grateful to Mrs Thatcher, President Reagan and His Holiness Pope John Paul II for spearheading the drive to bring down the Evil Empire.
A must-read!
“There is still the case of Nicaragua v US I raised as an example of the futility of taking America to court.”
________________
That is an evasive and bull-shitting reply, Fred.
Nicaragua still did it though. Why doesn’t Cuba if, in your opinion, it has such a strong case against the Guantanamo base? Answer : because it has no case.
“That is an evasive and bull-shitting reply, Fred.”
Then fuck off and don’t reply to it shit for brains.
Are there any lawyers with expertise in International Law that support the view that the US lease over Guantanamo is illegal and have put down the basis of their view. I sorry that, though he is undoubtedly kind to children and his mother, John Goss’s analysis or the website that he links to do not really cut the mustard, particularly given the treaty clauses he refers to do not at first sight appear to apply. Just because the US may have got it wrong over Native Americans also doesn’t in itself support the argument – unless you subscribe to the philosophy that the US is always in the wrong.
Habbabkuk 8:22
But it woz equil and fayre.
“Are there any lawyers with expertise in International Law that support the view that the US lease over Guantanamo is illegal and have put down the basis of their view.”
There are those who say that the United States has undoubtedly violated the terms of the lease.
http://www.law.ubc.ca/files/pdf/events/2003/november/GUANTANA.pdf
Anon, I was told of mass burials of excess dead birds by a gamekeeper, glad he’d found employment on an estate where that didn’t happen. Just excess shooting, nothing to do with disease. But what you report – “overcrowding in tiny breeding pens, disease was rife and a medicine had to be used to control it” – is not humane either.
The shooters here drive around the estate in off-road vehicles. Most of them never walk more than 100 paces from the cars. And their money goes to the local landowner, not to the general rural community.
The locals dislike the shoot. The sense of entitlement of the shooters contributes to this. I’ve had them approach me as I walked toward my house and tell me to go away because the estate is private! I was walking on a public bridleway. Walkers have told me that gamekeepers have threatened to shoot their pet dogs.
…….
For the sake of those who don’t know, when anon writes “guns”, as in “birds […] were handed out […] to the guns instead”, he means the people who shoot.
“Perhaps you think the Creator sent you here to dispose of us as you see fit. If I thought you were sent by the Creator, I might be induced to think you had a right to dispose of me. Do not misunderstand me, but understand fully with reference to my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to return to yours.” Hinmatóowyalahtq̓it, rejecting the demands that he lead his people onto a reservation. 1876
Four hundred years broken treaties, manifest destiny and massacres documented in “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” by Dee Brown.
http://books.google.ie/books/about/Bury_My_Heart_at_Wounded_Knee.html?id=02nyRlY4rMUC&redir_esc=y
Anon, and yes, I’d choose to spend any day with Fred rather than you.