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.
“Syria talks: UK and France blame government for collapse”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26213826
Little willy Hague says:
“The responsibility for it [the collapse of talks] lies squarely with the Assad regime,”
Note the use of “regime” not government or administration.
However if you read further we get:
“The government’s chief negotiator, Bashar al-Jaafari… stressed that terrorism must be dealt with fully before any other point could be discussed.”
It seems that the opposition side wanted to move on to other items on the agenda without finalising an agreement on the first item: terrorism.
Bashar al-Jaafari said:
“Once you have an agenda you should respect the agenda fully without any interpretation or misinterpretation… we said that we cannot move from… item one to item two or item three or item four without fully considering this item and concluding by a common vision of this item by the two sides, something that the other side objected to.”
“Opposition spokesman Louay Safi again insisted on discussion of a transitional government that does not include President Bashar al-Assad – something the government rejects.”
So, by insisting on changing the agenda and demanding something that the opposition know is unacceptable to the government side, the talks collapsed.
It’s a common tactic and the western media will report dutifully that it was the Assad government side that caused the failure of the talks.
Mr Scourgie
I see you’re out on day release again.
Don’t you owe me answers to a couple of questions?
“Nice straw man there! Th “quibble”, as you choose to call it, is about the number of people killed in the big raid. If you think the difference between 26.000 and 260.000 is a quiblle, then I suggest you return to school to brush yp in your maths.”
If you think the difference makes it any less a crime against humanity I see no difference between you and a Holocaust denier.
Dresden was a city with a civilian population of around half a million people and the British government deliberately and needlessly turned it into an inferno.
That’s all we need to know.
“Trolls: Please stop altering people’s names. ie Go to Gross. It is SO childish.”
Are only the grown ups allowed to do that?
“We will be back to the holocaust shortly”
But that Mr Gross was saying that the US is just as much a police state as Nazi Germany was. Didn’t the Nazis do the holocaust, mummy?
“I told you not to talk about that”
Why mummy?
“You’re not old enough to do irony and anyway you don’t want to get into an argument with Uncle Blackjelly. Anyway lets go for a nice walk in the silver birch wood and then we can snuggle up afterwards and do some nice cut and pasting”
Brian. 1 42 am
Thanks for bringing into the discussion one of the few american witnesses to the Dresden holocaust, from the underground slaughterhouse meat-store where he was imprisoned.
“There were no particular targets for the bombs. The hope was that they would create a lot of kindling and drive firemen underground. And then tens of thousands of tiny incendiaries were scattered over the kindling, like seeds on freshly turned loam.
More bombs were dropped to keep firemen in their holes, and all the little fires grew, joined one another, became one apocalyptic flame. Hey presto: fire storm.
It was the largest massacre in European history, by the way. Everything was gone but the cellars where 135’000 Hansels and Gretels had been baked like gingerbread men. “
Kurt Vonnegut Jnr.
https://www.google.com/search?q=dresden+firebombing&client=ubuntu&hs=IM1&channel=fs&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=8Z0AU_CQIorg7Qbc5ID4DQ&ved=0CDMQsAQ&biw=1215&bih=710
Any chance of a little Osama Bin Laden statue beside Bomber Harris’s outside the Chapel of St Bloodsoaked Terrorist in the Strand?
And then they go starting more wars using humanity as their excuse. As if any of them ever gave a damn about humanity. All they ever cared about was their own lust for power.
Very revealing how some here get so abusive and sanctimonious about someone pointing out the actual numbers killed in Dresden. Yes it was a complete horror and yes it added very little to the overall war effort and hence was unjustified – yet what do we hear in response to the deniers of the Shoah, those who want to play games with the numbers killed, those who provide links who blame it on the Rothschilds, support for those who make jokes and songs about the Shoah, those who copmpare that state of affairs to the modern day US, those who apologise for those dictators who invade their neighbours, commit serial human rights abuses against their own people etc.etc.etc.
The answer in truth is a complete and deafening silence and abuse laid on those who point our such inconsistencies. Not one person saying that such statements are going too far – not one person trying to disassociate themselves from such comment, not one person pointing out that the cause they believe in might be strengthened rather than weakened by not linking itself to such blatant racism. If that makes me a horrible little “c***” as well – then I am more than proud to wear that label as well given who is awarding the accolade.
Mary. 9 13am
You draw attention to the kind of horticultural cluelessness that I’d say indicates a person writing from a place far away.
But don’t be too hard on our little toiler. In Uncle Craig’s virtual compost heap isn’t a constant addition of diverse ingredients is essential for a truly aromatic, fertile and enlightening product?
There may be issues regarding the aim and dilution that our friends bring to the party, but nobody is immune from their enlivening effect. Someone needs to piss on it all.
All this proverbial urine, sprayed over plentiful layers of Herbie and assorted fiberous and sometimes flakey offerings from a busy rabble of contributers, and mixed with the barrowloads of BS that Dad wheels in day and night (how can any mortal being produce so much?), and a veritable feast is layed out. Here, any number of bacteria, fungi and invertibrates can dive and cavort to their heart’s content. Sofia can’t resist coming along to give the mixture a regular stir, to let in air and light. I’m not sure what’s the bilogical effect of Fred whacking the heap with his spade every now and then, but it sure feels good! And the piesse de resistance….a light sprinkling of Guano. Compost heaven!
I’m off into my waterlogged and windswept garden.
Vive la diversité chez nous!
Sofia
Big tip you can be as good at gardening as Mummy if you cut and paste stuff from here http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=251. Mummy is dead good at cutting and pasting, or pruning and planting as gardening types call it. I am getting a lot better but Mummy gets a little stressy when I use the gluepot near here keyboard – she says something about it getting in the way of the great anti fascist struggle.
Anyway I do hope all those nasty trolls can be nice to Mummy she’s been a bit ratty since the USA beat the USSR at ice hockey the other day – she said something about how the old KGB would have known how to fix the result and perhaps Mr Putin should concentrate a bit more on sporting achievement and a bit less on his girlfriend. She got very cross when I asked if Mr Putin was my daddy.
More interference on Scottish Independence this time from the European commission president Barroso.
“In his interview with Andrew Marr, Mr Barroso said: “In case there is a new country, a new state, coming out of a current member state it will have to apply.”
“He said it was important that “accession to the European Union will have to be approved by all other member states of the European Union.”
Then the BBC says:
“However, Mr Barroso made clear that it was up to the people of Scotland to decide their future, and he said he did not want to interfere in that process.”
Well he just did!
Resident Dissident at 16 Feb, 2014 – 9:07 am,
“I am afraid what is said without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
Well, what is dismissed without evidence may also be dismissed.
OK, since you will only discuss anti-Semitism, let me ask you a question:
Do you believe that some people make unjustified accusations of anti-Semitism to suppress criticism of Israel?
guano 16 Feb, 2014 – 9:47 am
Quite possibly it is because many of them have Nazi ancestry. For the same reason it’s a good job the Royals are not running the country. Cromwell did do some good.
Getting back to Dresden many trolls and even Brian Fujisan are claiming that the PressTV article mentioned 260,000 killed in the Dresden bombing, which if you read the actual comments (or better still the article) it does not. That is why I linked a second article about the blanket bombings, carpet bombings, whatever you want to call them to try and improve Anon’s knowledge of history. So I repeat the figures from that site in my comment of 10:51 pm last night which sent Anon running for cover.
“61 German cities were attacked by Bomber Command between 1939 and 1945 containing a combined population of 25 million inhabitants;
3.6 million homes were destroyed (20% of the total)
7.5 million people were made homeless
300,000 Germans are thought to have been killed as a result of the raids, and 800,000 were wounded.”
The article mentioned Dresden and Anon assumed that the dead mentioned all related to that city.
@Doug Scorgie
If the people of Scotland vote for independence they are only voting to give Salmond more power in Scotland.
They can’t give him the authority to dictate terms to the rest of the world.
Black Jelly/English Knight/Larry/whoever.
You have been around this blog for long enough to know that the majority of contributors are critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestine. A lot of issues are aired here which Israel’s supporters would like to suppress. It has already been closed down once because one contributor threatened to inform the police about anti-semitic comments.
If you are what you pretend to be, you will wish this blog to continue. Your comments are deliberately provocative and are putting this blog at risk. Please stop.
“They can’t give him the authority to dictate terms to the rest of the world.”
Fred, no, we’ll leave that to the US.
It was Vilnai who referred to Cast Lead as ‘a greater Shoah’
‘After Ehud Barak won the party leadership election in 2007 he appointed Vilnai as Deputy Minister of Defense. In February 2008, Vilnai threatened that Gazan Palestinians “will bring upon themselves a bigger ‘shoah’ because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” The word shoah (שואה), literally “disaster”, is used in Israel to refer to the holocaust.’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matan_Vilnai
I listened to The World This Weekend on Radio 4 earlier. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vd15z
It is obvious that HMG have not a clue about the number of British jihadis in Syria.
Correra was presenting the programme and spoke to Brokenshire, Mrs May’s lieutenant.
There followed an interview with Dame Helen Mirren nee Mironoff who will be at the BAFTAs tonight to receive their Fellowship. She said how proud her Russian émigré father would have been and she thanked Britain for giving her family shelter. Interesting is it not, with her background, that she played The Queen most convincingly. Could you tell them apart? Does Queenie have Russian as well as German blood? I have never studied the ancestry of the Saxe Coburg lot.
Command Performance
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/10/02/061002fa_fact1?currentPage=2
Dame Helen will be in company with Clooney, recently advocating Shillary for President. Nice.
testing
What is the life of a liner? MS Marco Polo aka MS Aleksandr Pushkin was built in 1965, ie it is 49 years old.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Marco_Polo
The widow of the elderly man who died when a wave broke through a window into the restaurant, injuring 14 others, is implying it is rusty.
16 February 2014
Wife of cruise ship passenger killed by wave criticises vessel
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-26216192
The ship is owned by Global Maritime based in Stavanger.
http://www.globalmaritime.com/home
and chartered to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_%26_Maritime_Voyages based in Essex. That company replaced Transocean who filed for bankruptcy in 2009 !!
Quite a history.
The World This Weekend is now on the iPlayer and the segment on Syria starts at 11mins in. It was preceded by John Sweeney of the SNP and followed by the interview with Dame Helen Mirren.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03vd15z
A message from Jamie in Falkirk
Dear Mary,
I’m Jamie, a member of Concerned Communities of Falkirk (CCoF), who are a group of residents who have spent 18 months fighting plans to turn the heart of Scotland into a gas field. I wanted to get in touch to say a massive thank you.
In just a few days 38 Degrees members have chipped in over £20,000 to our legal fund and saved the campaign.
If you want to see the up-to-date figure, just click the link below.
https://secure.38degrees.org.uk/falkirk-gas-field-donate
But you’ve given us much more than money, you’ve given us hope. I can’t tell you what it’s like fighting Dart Energy, an opponent with bottomless pockets and support from Westminster. But your donations have shown we’re not alone. That’s priceless.
38 Degrees is all about people power, and that’s what’s been so great about this campaign. A movement of ordinary people, coming together to fight an entire industry. Here’s what that looks like, I wish you could have been at the public meeting we held a few days ago.
picture of packed public meeting in Falkirk
38 Degrees members have made a real difference to our local fight. Now, we have the money to finally instruct our crack legal team to prepare our case for the inquiry. An enormous relief, and a massive step forward.
But we still have a mountain to climb. We still need money to make sure local residents, farmers and councillors can tell the Scottish Government how they feel about the potential harm to our community.
We’re trying to raise £35,000 in total. Our lawyers will then be able to cross-examine Dart Energy and fight for our community at every important inquiry session. Three days ago this seemed inconceivable. Now with your support, and in combination with upcoming local fund-raising events, it genuinely seems possible.
I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done. But let me do it once more.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,
That was more than once. But you get the picture.
Mr Scourgie
““However, Mr Barroso made clear that it was up to the people of Scotland to decide their future, and he said he did not want to interfere in that process.”
Well he just did!”
___________________
The more the Eminences post, the more they reveal about their mindsets.
When someone – eg Barroso in this instance – points to facts which the Eminences find inconvenient, he’s immediately accused of interfering.
Such is the twisted world of the Eminences.
Mary says
“Note the Habbabkuk ‘gambit’. John Goss and I were talking of the jailed Russian pilot so the RI returns to the death toll of Bomber Harris.”
_____________
Could this be a hitherto undiscovered “Mary gambit”?
The clue is in the words “..the RI returns to…” – which would appear to indicate that the discussion was about Dresden and bombing raids and that Mr Goss and Mary then deliberately tried to derail by starting on about a jailed Russian pilot.
That was surely distraction at its worst? Lose the argument about Dresden/allied bombing and swiftly turn to something rather unconnected….
A Node
“OK, since you will only discuss anti-Semitism, let me ask you a question:
Do you believe that some people make unjustified accusations of anti-Semitism to suppress criticism of Israel?”
_________________
The answer to that is yes.
And now a question to you : do you believe that some people, including some on this blog, citicise Zionists as a cover for their anti-semitism?
BTW, I bid a hearty welcome to a new poster – Mary’s Love Child.
Intelligent, witty posts and I encourage him/her to continue!
PS to Mary – will you acknowledge parentage?
“OK, since you will only discuss anti-Semitism”
Just not true, I discuss all sorts of things.
“, let me ask you a question:
Do you believe that some people make unjustified accusations of anti-Semitism to suppress criticism of Israel?”
Yes some do – but they I am not aware of them on this blog. I am aware of the greater number here who will use anti Semitism in the rather stupid and racist belief that it strengthens criticism of Israel and the there are the passive crowd who believe in the totally incorrect belief that unity with the racists, and hence greater numbers of supporters, actually strengthens their cause.
Oops Habba – just blown my cover
Dedicated to the originator of the three in a row above.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWaJ0s0-E1o&feature=kp
I got something about retirement apartments – Mary posted 3 in a row, Habba posted 4 – the spirit of the internet has spoken.
Could someone tell me what that funny smell in the potting shed is every time Uncle Clark visits?