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.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/490951894286964/requests/?notif_t=group_r2j
Mary 11:10 am, thank you for that excellent excerpt.
Quite. No one becomes part of the elite by giving away power. The myths of benevolent gods probably distort people’s thinking; “The Lord” gives us all we have. This is probably why the powerful insist that it’s morally vital to indoctrinate infants into a religion, any religion, before they’re old enough to think logically. You can’t join the Freemasons unless you admit the existence of a Supreme Being, but it doesn’t matter which one.
Resident Dissident
10 Feb, 2014 – 8:32 pm
ResDis says:
“Perhaps you might wish to point out the distinction to many who post here who are unable to distinguish between anti-Judaism (or anti Semitism to give it its more usual and dictionary definition) and anti-Zionism. The failure to be able to distinguish has made this blog little short of a sewer in recent days…”
ResDis you seem confused; anti-Semitism is not anti-Judaism it is anti-Jewish racism and that is racism against all Jews whether they are religious or not.
Both religious and political Zionism have one common objective: the creation and development (expansion) of a Jewish state called Israel, run by Jews for the benefit of Jews. This is to be achieved by the ethnic cleansing of non-Jews from the state of Israel and then from Greater Israel – Gaza; the West Bank; The Jordan Valley and Golan and maybe part of Lebanon.
The political Zionists use anti-Jewish racism (which undoubtedly exists) as the reason for the desire to create a Jewish state. The religious Zionists use the argument of the biblical “promised land” and that Jews are “God’s chosen people”.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!
10 Feb, 2014 – 11:41 pm
Habbabkuk says:
“…it does also seem reasonably clear that this blog is well on its way to becoming one of Britain’s premier anti-semitic (sic) and anti-Jewish blogs.”
Anti-Semitic AND anti-Jewish?
Oh dear, for a Zionist your understanding of detail is crap.
John Goss, I can’t read Russian, so I didn’t know of the Russian translation, presumably linked from the home page. The English version (my first link on this subject, 14 Feb, 2:26 am) was the first page I found on that site, from a Google search on [“Fred Hoyle” “death temperature”] (with the quote marks).
Hoyle’s original book was entirely in English, including Alexandrov’s lines and the labelling on the diagrams, the latter being in Russian on the page I linked to.
I don’t think Hoyle made any contribution to HAARP; most of the theory seems to be in the patent application linked from the rense.com page you linked to earlier.
I saw a BBC Horizon programme about the origins of HAARP. Of course it could be complete misinformation, but the story it told is consistent with the science of radio and with cold-war politics. It went like this…
The US wanted the ability to communicate with its nuclear submarines without them having to surface, but sea water, being a reasonable conductor of electricity, is good at absorbing and hence blocking radio signals. The higher the frequency the more they get absorbed, so the US wanted to produce very low frequency signals to penetrate the water.
But the lower the frequency the longer the wavelength, and hence the longer the antenna you need to transmit at that wavelength. So the US built the biggest antenna in the world, a huge circle of wires on poles, hundreds of kilometres in diameter. It worked, but it was expensive, too near the ground (restricting its range), and unreliable and vulnerable because any break at any point along its immense length would disable it as an antenna.
Then someone came up with the idea of making use of a natural phenomena by interfering with it. An antenna is a loop of flowing electrical current, and the ionosphere already has two such loops (they’re natural), one centred on the North Pole and one on the South Pole. The idea was to modulate the northern loop by directing microwaves into it, and HAARP was designed to achieve this.
What the Horizon programme didn’t mention was all the other stuff in that patent application – stuff about bringing down missiles, or creating “tacky” particles in the upper atmosphere. The programme only mentioned HAARP’s capabilities as a communications device. It also went to some lengths to discredit HAARP “conspiracy theorists”.
The point of my excerpt from The Black Cloud at 2:26 am:
20° Fahrenheit is just over 11° Centigrade. Our politicians are saying that we should limit global warming to 4°C. Even if the calculations are absolutely reliable, this uses up 36% or more than a third of our margin towards the death temperature. We need to do this to save our “economic system”. This is utterly reckless.
Guano…wtf you babbling on about…
As for Global research…they do have many very good writers, thoughout their archives and ongoing…. and if i think something needs double checking i try to do so…. I noticed last night, that the Talented John Hilley had put up the Australian investigative film showing the Israeli army’s mistreatment of Palestinian children… Only hours before i posted it here… ok from a different source…but the exact same Video…
Merry valentines Mary to you n yours too
I should have been more explicit.
Yes, happy Valentine’s Day to Mary and to everyone.
In the UK, Valentine’s Day is almost completely associated with erotic love, but in the US it’s a sort of celebration of friendship. I learned this from a girlfriend in 1993; I only knew her six months before she committed suicide by hanging herself.
Happy Valentine’s Day Marion; I’ll never forget you.
Guano: ‘but I’m reliably informed that zebub = zubur = psalms/ hymns of praise.’
In Arabic, yes. Not as far as I can see in old Hebrew (zamr, or something similar) or its close cousin Canaanite, which is probably what the Philistines spoke. Anyway…it’s an interesting byway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal
Thanks for your wishes John. Valentine is drowning today. Torrential here in ‘leafy’ (as the troll calls it) Surrey except that all the leaves are lying in a thick mulch blocking all the gullies because in broken Britain these days, they don’t do kerb or gully cleaning.
Clark once wrote about a visit to a Job Centre, inhabited by Mr Duncan Smith’s heavies and people with clipboards.
Here is a another account which is very harrowing even to read yet alone witness. What a cruel country this has become.
Those vile people sitting in the jobcentre a few feet away doing absolutely nothing.
by argotina1
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-People-Vs-The-Government-DWP-and-Atos/430588573684275
“I’ve just seen this outside Devizes Job Centre:
A man standing crying and so distressed he wet himself. He was saying ” they won’t help me! They won’t let me have any money! They say I’ve used all my foodbank vouchers”.
He proceeded to collapse to the ground and curl up in a ball, his arms around his dog. Two passers by were supporting him. One went to buy him some food & the other had gone to get him a blanket. Several people averted their eyes and hurried past!
I couldn’t do any more than was already being done for him, though I would have liked to help. I cried my eyes out for him and cried in anger at the vile, despicable people who are sitting in the Job Centre a few feet away doing absolutely nothing!!!
I cannot believe what is happening in this country.
This system is totally horrendous, obnoxious and despicable!”
https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-People-Vs-The-Government-DWP-and-Atos/430588573684275
‘ The idea was to modulate the northern loop by directing microwaves into it, and HAARP was designed to achieve this.’
Microwaves? All the pics I’ve seen show shortwave-to-VHF (metre-wavelength) arrays. And it may shock you to know that ordinary long-range surveillance radars can put out 3MW pulse power. Some of which is probably hitting you, and everyone else, right now.
Thanks too Brian. And Clark too. Very sad about your friend Marion who rests in peace now hopefully in a kinder place.
~~~
John How and where did you learn Russian and how long was the course if you don’t mind me asking? Very impressed.
Aww Shit…. Sorry to hear of that sad time Clark…. Good that you still Cherish the memories.
Couldn’t agree with you more Clark. We are reckless, or rather our leaders are reckless. A knowledgeable friend of mine believes that whatever is done the planet can no longer be saved for human survival. Her estimate less than another 20 years.
The Russian site you linked to is called Problems of Evolution. It is available for all who have an interest in evolution, biology, and others with an interest various ideas as to how the earth on which we live evolved.
It contains 30 surveys on questions of evolution
A library of more than 600 works on evolution
A paleontological database of programs for evolutionary research
A forum in which you can discuss with specialists
A photo album of around 1300 creations from ancient organisms
But there is nothing about why Alexandrov is blued that I can find.
John Goss @12:17 pm John……..One of the engineers behind the the design of HARP was the late Robert A. Helliwell who
was at the Antarctic Siple station were they zapped a hole in ozone layer using a Ex US navy transmitter. This research was for the US military although it was not allowed due to international treaty’s. The research funds were were channelled to the project by cover institutions. I you want to find out about this ELF and VLF work you need to get access to NATO research papers on the subject. Also you don’t need Giga or Mega watts to get some interesting effects,you just need to inject
a small amount of energy at the right place. The transistor effect. This kind of phenomenon is found
using sound. When Concorde went through the sound barrier over South Africa the boom burst out over Devon and Cornwall causing quite a bit of damage to houses. The boom in fact had increased
in amplitude. You will not find this information on the internet or wiki.
Mary, my Russian is not that good. I have had hardly any oral use of it but I had to learn a language as part of my first degree in international relations. It constituted about one sixth of the course. My reading is not bad but as the years pass I find myself struggling to remember the exact English word I need, let alone Russian. 35 is too old to be learning your first language. I had good teachers. I learnt the basic grammar which is important and I can always look up words I don’t know, or have forgotten. The centre was CREES at University of Birmingham (Centre for Research in East European Studies).
They will be lucky if they are able to play water polo in Godalming John, let alone football. Non locals and especially Americans always pronounce it God-AL-ming instead of GOD-al-ming. It has a lovely little pedestrianized High Street in which there a museum. There is a large section devoted to the memory and history of Jack Phillips, who was the wireless operator on the Titanic. A brave lad.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Phillips_(wireless_officer)
The shops are still mainly family businesses. The multi nationals and globals have not got at it yet.
~~~
I disagree with the criticisms of Global Research. The site owner Prof Michel Chossudovsky is known to me and also some of the authors there. Read back to what he wrote about Iraq and Afghanistan. Anti the New World Order and the PNAC boyos. Perhaps that is what sticks in some people’s craws.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/about Founded two days before 9/11!
He is nobody’s fool and a fine member of the human race. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky
His father Evgeny was a supporter of the Palestinian cause.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/evgeny-chossudovsky-writer-with-a-distinguished-un-career/1955
“Thanks too Brian. And Clark too. Very sad about your friend Marion who rests in peace now hopefully in a kinder place.”
When you’re born you cry while everybody else is full of joy and happiness.
When you die everybody else cries.
Dave Lawton, that’s really interesting. I know there is a lot they don’t let you know but I have seen US military documents from the nineties about modifying the weather. Thanks.
Black jelly
Yo peace and goodwill to all. You think Sisi is the good guy? Mmmmm.
Both engines????
BREAKING NEWS:Investigators say police helicopter which crashed on busy Glasgow pub suffered failure of both engines
BBC website
We have not heard yet about the US military crash in Norfolk. Anything in the local press Nevermind?
Thanks John and very profound there Fred.
“ECJ: web links do not infringe copyright law”
http://www.wbs-law.de/eng/copyright-eng/ecj-web-links-infringe-copyright-law-50403/
Nothing at all Mary, the coroner has abdicated her responsibility and let the USAF deal with the pathology….
No talk of it anymore, as far as I’m concerned the story was hushed up somewhere.
I put a FoI request to the EDP asking for them to deatil the monies received from other news agencies for the articles they wrote, as yet no answer.
sorry to hear that Valentines day is a day for bad memories to you Clark.
Believe it or not, the troughers are off until 24 Feb. Ask your MP to sign this if they can spare the time when they get back.
Early day motion 1080
POWER CUTS IN GAZA
Session: 2013-14
Date tabled: 12.02.2014
Primary sponsor: Morris, Grahame M
Sponsors: Durkan, Mark
Ritchie, Margaret
Lavery, Ian
Bottomley, Peter
Galloway, George
That this House calls on the Government to recognise the severe situation faced by Palestinians in Gaza in accessing electricity; notes the call from UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk that the situation in Gaza is at a point near catastrophe due to fuel shortages resulting in daily power cuts for sustained periods of time which have undermined an already precarious infrastructure; further notes that the provision of all basic services including health, water, sanitation and education is being severely disrupted; recognises that specialised health services are being interrupted daily, including kidney dialysis, operating theatres, blood banks and incubators, threatening lives; and further calls on the Government to respond to the call made by Amnesty International to urge Israel to lift the Gaza blockade immediately and urge Eygpt to open the Rafah border crossing.
How will she cope? Changing outfits four times a day. Goodness gracious me.
Kate’s regal makeover
The Queen demands that the Duchess of Cambridge’s short skirts are replaced with tiaras ahead of her Australian tour.
http://home.bt.com/lifestyle/fashionbeauty/fashionbeautynews/kates-regal-makeover-11363872066463
The above crap is from the BT website with which I am now regaled daily since BT got rid of Yahoo Mail.
I found this:
http://helihub.com/tag/accidents+UH-60/
UH60 is the generic airframe from which the HH60 Pave Hawk is derived. As the latter are all military, and the military don’t publish any details ever, perhaps all the other fatal incidents are merely coincidental. From August 2013 to date 23 crew have died in 7 UH60-type crashes. Up to that time, the rate seems to be less. Looks like a component has passed its sell-by without someone noticing.
Mary, I’ve sent it to Steve McCabe (my M.P.) but anybody who considers his or her self as ministerial material very rarely supports EDMs.
“Both engines????
BREAKING NEWS:Investigators say police helicopter which crashed on busy Glasgow pub suffered failure of both engines ”
Due to fuel starvation. Although there was 76kg (below the minium limit for night flying) in the main tank one of the engine supply tanks was empty and the other contained just 400 grammes. It seems that low fuel warnings for both tanks had been activated but were either not noticed or ignored by the flight crew.
I know it won’t satisfy the truthers but this report explains the current state of the investigation.
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources.cfm?file=/AAIB%20S2-2014%20G-SPAO.pdf