Syria and Diplomacy 2917


The problem with the Geneva Communique from the first Geneva round on Syria is that the government of Syria never subscribed to it.  It was jointly chaired by the League of Arab States for Syria, whatever that may mean.  Another problem is that it is, as so many diplomatic documents are, highly ambiguous.  It plainly advocates a power sharing executive formed by some of the current government plus the opposition to oversee a transition to democracy.  But it does not state which elements of the current government, and it does not mention which elements of the opposition, nor does it make plain if President Assad himself is eligible to be part of, or to head, the power-sharing executive, and whether he is eligible to be a candidate in future democratic elections.

Doubtless the British, for example, would argue that the term transition implies that he will go.  The Russians will argue there is no such implication and the text does not exclude anybody from the process.  Doubtless also diplomats on all sides were fully aware of these differing interpretations and the ambiguity is quite deliberate to enable an agreed text. I would say that the text tends much more to the “western” side, and that this reflects the apparently weak military position of the Assad regime at that time and the then extant threat of western military intervention.  There has been a radical shift in those factors against the western side in the interim. Expect Russian interpretations now to get more hardline.

Given the extreme ambiguity of the text, Iran has, as it frequently does, shot itself in the foot diplomatically by refusing to accept the communique as the basis of talks and thus getting excluded from Geneva.  Iran should have accepted the communique, and then at Geneva issued its own interpretation of it.

But that is a minor point.  The farcical thing about the Geneva conference is that it is attempting to promote into power-sharing in Syria “opposition” members who have no democratic credentials and represent a scarcely significant portion of those actually fighting the Assad regime in Syria.  What the West are trying to achieve is what the CIA and Mossad have now achieved in Egypt; replacing the head of the Mubarak regime while keeping all its power structures in place. The West don’t really want democracy in Syria, they just want a less pro-Russian leader of the power structures.

The inability of the British left to understand the Middle East is pathetic.  I recall arguing with commenters on this blog who supported the overthrow of the elected President of Egypt Morsi on the grounds that his overthrow was supporting secularism, judicial independence (missing the entirely obvious fact the Egyptian judiciary are almost all puppets of the military) and would lead to a left wing revolutionary outcome.  Similarly the demonstrations against Erdogan in Istanbul, orchestrated by very similar pro-military forces to those now in charge in Egypt, were also hailed by commenters here.  The word “secularist” seems to obviate all sins when it comes to the Middle East.

Qatar will be present at Geneva, and Qatar has just launched a pre-emptive media offensive by launching a dossier on torture and murder of detainees by the Assad regime, which is being given first headline treatment by the BBC all morning

There would be a good dossier to be issued on torture in detention in Qatar, and the lives of slave workers there, but that is another question.

I do not doubt at all that atrocities have been committed and are being committed by the Assad regime.  It is a very unpleasant regime indeed.  The fact that atrocities are also being committed by various rebel groups does not make Syrian government atrocities any better.

But whether 11,000 people really were murdered in a single detainee camp I am unsure.  What I do know is that the BBC presentation of today’s report has been a disgrace.  The report was commissioned by the government of Qatar who commissioned Carter Ruck to do it.  Both those organisations are infamous suppressors of free speech.  What is reprehensible is that the BBC are presenting the report as though it were produced by neutral experts, whereas the opposite is the case.  It is produced not by anti torture campaigners or by human rights activists, but by lawyers who are doing it purely and simply because they are being paid to do it.

The BBC are showing enormous deference to Sir Desmond De Silva, who is introduced as a former UN war crimes prosecutor.  He is indeed that, but it is not the capacity in which he is now acting.  He is acting as a barrister in private practice.  Before he was a UN prosecutor, he was for decades a criminal defence lawyer and has defended many murderers.  He has since acted to suppress the truth being published about many celebrities, including John Terry.

If the Assad regime and not the government of Qatar had instructed him and paid him, he would now be on our screens arguing the opposite case to that he is putting.  That is his job.  He probably regards that as not reprehensible.  What is reprehensible is that the BBC do not make it plain, but introduce him as a UN war crimes prosecutor as though he were acting in that capacity or out of concern for human rights.  I can find no evidence of his having an especial love for human rights in the abstract, when he is not being paid for it.  He produced an official UK government report into the murder of Pat Finucane, a murder organised by British authorities, which Pat Finucane’s widow described as a “sham”.  He was also put in charge of quietly sweeping the Israeli murders on the Gaza flotilla under the carpet at the UN.

The question any decent journalist should be asking him is “Sir Desmond De Silva, how much did the government of Qatar pay you for your part in preparing this report?  How much did it pay the other experts?  Does your fee from the Government of Qatar include this TV interview, or are you charging separately for your time in giving this interview?  In short how much are you being paid to say this?”

That is what any decent journalist would ask.  Which is why you will never hear those questions on the BBC.

 

 

 


Allowed HTML - you can use: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

2,917 thoughts on “Syria and Diplomacy

1 13 14 15 16 17 98
  • Mary

    One rule for one, another for the rest. I have friends who had no electricity for over a week, one of whom looks after her elderly father who lives with her and her family.

    Engineers diverted to David Cameron’s house to fix his TV while flood victims were without power

    Electrical engineers were ‘diverted’ from helping flood victims to fix a small problem at David Cameron’s house after the prime minister’s TV cut out while he was watching the Sound of Music.

    Residents left without heating and lighting had to wait to get their power back after workmen were redirected to Mr Cameron’s £2million family home, it has emerged.

    Engineers say they were sent on a 17-mile diversion to Chipping Norton after the prime minister lost power towards the end of the film on New Year’s Day.

    However, the outage was later found to be a minor problem – and power was restored by flicking the fuse box trip switch.

    George Faulkner and Alan Paton were part of an emergency repair team trying to restore power to 11,000 houses in Oxfordshire when they were suddenly diverted, they told BBC Radio 4.

    Mr Paton said: ‘We could have been employed on better things but we got called out to a ­property where the trip had gone that they obviously hadn’t checked properly.’

    Mr Faulkner added: ‘It didn’t need much sorting out. If he had got his minders to check the trip switch it would have saved us the journey. There was nothing wrong with their mains.’

    A Scottish and Southern Energy Power Distribution spokesman said: ‘The prime minister did not receive preferential treatment when we attended his property and this visit was not to the detriment of other customers who may have been without power.’

    A No.10 spokesman told the Sunday Mirror: ’The power went down because there was a leaky roof. There was water around the fuse box. The engineers came to fix it, which they did.’

    http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/26/engineers-diverted-to-david-camerons-house-to-fix-his-tv-while-flood-victims-were-without-power-4277588/

  • Herbie

    Two realities.

    The ordinary bloke on the ground who does all the work:

    “Mr Paton said: ‘We could have been employed on better things but we got called out to a ­property where the trip had gone that they obviously hadn’t checked properly.’ ”

    and the bloke in charge at No 10, telling everyone else what to do, who can’t do basic home maintenance:

    “A No.10 spokesman told the Sunday Mirror: ’The power went down because there was a leaky roof. There was water around the fuse box. The engineers came to fix it, which they did.’ ”

    That’s Labour’s whole ad campaign right there, but…

  • fred

    “A No.10 spokesman told the Sunday Mirror: ’The power went down because there was a leaky roof. There was water around the fuse box. The engineers came to fix it, which they did.’ ”

    I’m wandering what power company engineers were doing working on someone’s fuse box. Their responsibilities end at the meter.

  • Resident Dissident

    @Doug Scorgie

    “Sound familiar?”

    Yes…another regime change but not a Muslim country this time

    Yep sounds all too familiar – another case where the people of a country express their disapproval of yet another Putin backed regime – but rather than supporting the freedom of said people to express their views and understanding what they are complaining about, the political position of many here is defined as the antithesis of the US position. First the views of the people are ignored, then the US position is found out, then the protestors are called US dupes, then they are all accused of terrorism – and anyone who opposes such a thought process is clearly one of the “usual suspects” (yes that is the description employed – who says that some here learned nothing from McCarthyism). It becomes somewhat difficult to engage and debate with such overpowering logic – and quite frankly I have my doubts as to whether it is worth the effort.

  • Jay

    A few passionate protesters make not the majority of opinion.
    Although the Doctrine of the West again assumes this to be.

    Democracy and majority rule is desirable but difficult to obtain when the nature of the systems are completely narrow minded.

    All consuming greed. No expense spared!

    How are those rain Forrest’s coming on. Back of a truck probably…

  • Herbie

    “I, for one, do not think that anything Chilcot says or does not say, will bring BLiar to justice. The whole thing is a theatrical.”

    Me neither, unless of course someone decides that he’d be a useful scapegoat. Bush and Co have faded into the background. Blair is inyerface all the time. Like, annoyingly so. And he really does seem to be disliked across the political spectrum. He’s the poster boy for the unlawful destruction of Iraq and the loss of untold lives and habitat, and I’m still weirded out by that clip from the early 1980s where Michael Foot, then leader of the Labour party, points him up as someone with an especially bright future. Blair was a media darling during those long years of Opposition. “Tough on Crime. Tough on the causes of crime.” He was Bambi up until 9/11, and then during a holiday in the US he morphed from crap casual mum’s knitwear woozie hippie to sharp Italian suited warmonger and destroyer of worlds.

    Let’s just say. It ain’t what you’d expect when plotting the graph; unless you watched his dismantling of the core principles of The Labour Party, and that curious incident when as Opposition leader he himself took over the argument in the House when Jack Straw was losing badly.

    This is an excellent, very well-researched and footnoted book on the making of modern US presidents. Obama’s history is way weirder than you think:

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/Presidential-Puppetry-Obama-Romney-Masters/dp/0988672812

    The author, Andrew Kreig, talks about his work here:

    http://www.boilingfrogspost.com/2014/01/10/bfp-exclusive-interview-with-andrew-kreig-the-cia-global-empire-the-u-s-presidency/

  • fred

    “…then they are all accused of terrorism…”

    Only the ones that cut people’s hearts out and eat them.

  • BrianFujisan

    Herbie

    “Blair was a media darling during those long years of Opposition. “Tough on Crime. Tough on the causes of crime.” He was Bambi up until 9/11, and then during a holiday in the US he morphed from crap casual mum’s knitwear woozie hippie to sharp Italian suited warmonger and destroyer of worlds.”

    Well said

    Here’s a Section from a good take on Blair’s attempt at saving his putrid soul…by trying to blame religious ideology @

    The idea that the solution to the problems of the Middle East and beyond is a campaign of education about tolerance and moderation from the likes of Tony Blair is beyond satire. The implication is that the problem of these regions lies with the people themselves — in other words, blame the victims of the ‘war on terror’ for their own suffering.

    Tony Blair has clearly decided that attack is the best means of defence. This latest intervention is no doubt partly motivated by concern at what the much awaited Chilcot inquiry on the Iraq war may reveal. Blair’s office is briefing that the report will confirm he did give assurances to George W Bush in April 2002 that Britain would support the US in the illegal pursuit of regime change in Iraq. This may be part of a pre-emptive campaign to predict worse criticisms of Blair than will actually be in Chilcot’s report — a classic spin technique.

    Whatever Chilcot’s conclusions, the facts remain: Tony Blair made promises to Bush to take Britain into a war on Iraq behind the back of his own cabinet, parliament and the British people, to all of whom he then lied systematically over the following months in the lead up to the launch of the US-UK invasion in March 2003.

    As he parades his ‘concern’ for the Middle East and Central Asia, and attempts to make religious ideology the culprit for the ‘war on terror’, Blair aims to write out of history the horrific consequences of his actions which brought so much death, destruction and instability to the region.

    Source: Stop the War Coalition

    http://stopwar.org.uk/news/hiding-war-crimes-behind-religion-how-tony-blair-absolves-himself-of-guilt#.UubKa9LFK6b

  • Mary

    Thanks Brian.

    The pressure on Oxfam is building.

    Scarlett Johansson is “ambassador for oppression,” says Oxfam founder’s grandson
    http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/scarlett-johansson-ambassador-oppression-says-oxfam-founders-grandson

    One of UNICEF’s previous ‘ambassadors’ was Susan Sarandon. I remember her attending the opening of a new store for a blood diamond dealer who supports Zionist Israel, Lev Leviev.

    http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2007/12/27/what-do-susan-sarandon-and-alan-dershowitz-have-in-common/

    Susan Sarandon’s Double Standards
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omid-memarian/susan-sarandons-double-st_b_113823.html

    What’s up with these actresses?

  • Mary

    Why has it taken four years for the ConDems to establish that the Royal Bank of Scotland (80% taxpayer owned) has made a loss of £8billion for 2013 and incurred total losses of £45billion since the 2008 ‘crash’? St Vince of Cable is sounding surprised at the news, and is outraged!

    RBS faces £8bn in full year losses
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25918998

    I wonder if anyone actually knows the real figures.

  • John Goss

    RBS. Why does the taxpayer own this? I’ve seen what governments do when they nationalise a business that is in debt. I go back to the RB 211. All the banks are in debt. All the banks are paying bonuses. Bonuses for failure! Because otherwise they would lose these highly-skilled personnel abroad. What a crock of shit! There’s nowhere for these thieves to go. The whole world is in debt. The bankers have caused it. We should really be fighting for taxpayers’ money not being wasted on these criminals. When the crunch comes remember who caused it. Get them to roll up their sleeves and do a proper day’s work. And let the taxpayers run the replacement banking system. But never forget who caused it!

  • Ben

    John; If a reset is on-deck, currency re-evaluation necessitates freezing assets and they usually do this over a week-end under the cover of ‘maintenance’.

    Zero-hedge has been on this. Of course anyone who cites these rumblings as portentious is known as a gold-bug. I guess that’s better than being a dung-beetle.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Excellent post at 20h49, Resident Dissident! I suppose we can look forward to a groundswell of support building up on this blog for Ukraine’s lovely President as the days go by….

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Announcing the establishment of “HOW” (Habbabkuk’s Obsession Watch).

    Mary is currently homing in on actresses.

    Tip to Mary : some actresses are…..Jewish!!

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    @ John Goss:

    why won’t you tell us why you took the trouble to learn such good Russian?

  • John Goss

    Ben, as well as commandeering the banks it is most important that a new society takes control of the media and ensures that there are no monetary pressure groups buying news space for their inane, mundane and insane news stories.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    “as well as commandeering the banks it is most important that a new society takes control of the media”

    ____________________

    Note the expression “takes control”.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    12 posts today from the Resident Denigrator (so far…) – that’s about one an hour.

    Please think of generations yet unborn – too much hot hair causes global warming.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    ““…then they are all accused of terrorism…”

    Only the ones that cut people’s hearts out and eat them.”
    ____________________

    No, just the ones who won’t let UN humanitarion relief into Homs.

  • Resident Dissident

    John

    Could you pleaae explain how an increase in the Dow Jones Index from 13200 to 16400 in recent times is in any way comparable to the increase in the index from 200 to 350 which occurred in a similar period in the run up to the 1929 Crash and can be seen as the basis for forecasting an imminent crash as you did in an earlier post which you linked to here.

    https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/stunnning-chart-todays-stock-market-is-eerily-reminiscent-of-1929_12042013

    Until you do might I suggest that you stay away from the subject of statistics and economic forecasting. I am happy to predict on your behalf that if you keep predicting that there will one day be an economic crash that one day you will be right.

    I do remember looking at a post in which you proved to your own satisfaction that it was “statistically” several times more dangerous to travel with “famous” people which was afraid based on a pretty obvious statistical fallacy. I restrained myself from pointing out the error of your ways, perhaps wary of the vigour to which you attach yourself to other fallacies based on flimsy evidence – I am not sure that I should be so kind in future.

    Before you ask I have an degree in economics of which about a third was made up of papers in Maths and Statistics – so while I can except that there are many different and valid economic viewpoints from my own, I am pretty sure that nearly all of those would see the writings on which you base your faith as being cod economics and statistics rather than the real thing.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    Herbie

    “Remember too that Assad himself went from goodie to baddie when he didn’t do what the West wanted and of course Saddam before him.”
    ___________________

    Is your problem that the West considered Assad and Saddam Hussein as goodies, or is it that the West considered them as baddies?

    Presumably, if you think that the West was mistaken to consider them to be goodies, then you should welcome the fact that the West changed its mind and subsequently thought of them as baddies.

    Conversely, if you dislike the fact that the West came to consider them as baddies, then this implies that you think the West was correct in once thinking them to be goodies.

  • Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!

    “@ John Goss

    Do you regret the demise of the Soviet Union?”
    _______________________

    John, you treat us to your views on many things. So why do you decliunbe to answer this question?

  • Resident Dissident

    Habba

    I found the reference to a “new society” even more worrying – what do they wish to do with the old one? I am presuming that they do not prescribe to the line about there being no such thing as society.

    John Goss

    Did you cry with George Galloway on the break up of the Soviet Union? What are your feelings about its break up?

  • BrianFujisan

    Clark

    i’ve been looking into that Stuxnet Malware story…i find it all very interesting…and Dangerous….some stuff on it for ya…including a few dates.

    Many suspected either the U.S. or Israel, or some collaboration of the two was behind the attack, but nothing other than rumor could support the theories. In June 2012, David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, published an article which described a number of significant revelations regarding America’s role in using cyber warfare against Iran. In particular, Sanger writes that Stuxnet was part of a joint program of Israel and the United States, coded name Olympic Games, which aimed to prevent—or at least delay—Iran from developing the ability to enrich uranium to weapons-grade.

    According to Sanger, the cyberwar program began under President Bush in 2006 when, after negotiations between Iranian and American officials flailed, Iran restarted its uranium enrichment plants. The program was a joint effort of the National Security Agency and Israel’s top secret Unit 8200. By 2008, an early version of the bug was already attacking the Natanz facility. Under President Obama, the bug made even more complex and sophisticated, giving it the ability to disrupt a critical array of nearly a thousand centrifuges yet remain completely undetected.

    Olympic Games experienced a significant setback when, in the summer 2010, it was discovered that the worm had spread beyond Natanz and could be found all over the internet. In a matter of weeks, the mainstream media was alive with discussion of the dangerous and enigmatic virus, deemed Stuxnet, lurking in computers around the world. Despite the breach, Obama order the program to go forward—soon succeeding in destroying around a fifth of Iran’s centrifuges.

    http://k1project.org/stuxnet/

    from another site….

    In May 2012, Kaspersky Lab received a request from the International Telecommunication Union, the United Nations agency that manages information and communication technologies, to study a piece of malware that had supposedly destroyed files from oil-company computers in Iran. By now, Schouwenberg and his peers were already on the lookout for variants of the Stuxnet virus. They knew that in September 2011, Hungarian researchers had uncovered Duqu, which had been designed to steal information about industrial control systems.

    While pursuing the U.N.’s request, Kaspersky’s automated system identified another Stuxnet variant. At first, Schouwenberg and his team concluded that the system had made a mistake, because the newly discovered malware showed no obvious similarities to Stuxnet. But after diving into the code more deeply, they found traces of another file, called Flame, that were evident in the early iterations of Stuxnet. At first, Flame and Stuxnet had been considered totally independent, but now the researchers realized that Flame was actually a precursor to Stuxnet that had somehow gone undetected.

    http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/security/the-real-story-of-stuxnet

1 13 14 15 16 17 98

Comments are closed.