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.
The comment has missed out (chevron, three dots, close chevron) two of these which are in blue and it makes my comment look stupid. It should have read:
“But why should the Cloud behave in such a darned fashion?” asked Weichart.
“Because bastard inside, maybe,” suggested Alexandrov.
becomes:
— Но почему Облако ведет себя таким чертовски странным образом? — спросил Вейхарт. (chevron, three dots, close chevron)
If you click on (chevron, three dots, close chevron, which is in blue) it brings up in English:
“Because bastard inside, maybe,” suggested Alexandrov.
I don’t know why the translators have done it like that, I’m not familiar with the novel and don’t have time to read it even in English. However, if you really want to find out there is a note that it was translated by a bureau of foreign translators in Kiev called Transgalaxy.
[email protected]
I’m sure they can answer any questions better than me.
I see why it has done that. You cannot use chevrons or what they contain because they are used for highlights, bold, italics & c.
Mary, Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours too.
Gloucester is expecting more rain today and that was one of the places visited by the a BBC outside reporter (who I bet gets paid a lot less than those sat in a nice warm studio) but it reminded me of the nursery rhyme:
“Doctor Foster
Went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain.
He stepped in a puddle
Right up to his middle
And never went there again!”
So perhaps floods have been around, at least in Gloucester, for some centuries.
Mary, nor it was, just Brian using your name in vain.
Global Research seems to be a Zionist/Jihadist spoof Zionist/Iranian smokescreen tool for the waging of war by deception and winding up of people.
Why does Brian fall for Syrian terrr propaganda, cut and pasted from Bush terrrr propaganda, which we now know to be a pakalies?
“Mark; There is a Christian Scripture, I can’t recall in which Jesus says ‘It is more difficult for a man to get into Heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle’”
More accurately it was a rich man.
There is a theory that the “eye of the needle” was a local name given to a small doorway in the end of a long wall in the town’s fortifications. I doubt there is any actual evidence to support the theory but to me it makes more sense.
“I see why it has done that. You cannot use chevrons or what they contain because they are used for highlights, bold, italics & c.”
If you mean <…> then yes, it would be impossible to write that because html ignores the brackets and anything they contain.
Made me laugh Fred. So I guess you must have put it inside a blockquote. Never thought of that! Thanks.
@Fred – Dag Hammarskjold achieved the quest and attained into the Kingdom of Heaven, he has left a small book akin to a road map if you will, “Markings” (along the Way). As you mention a “rich man” or a “greenback” chasing (per DG) precludes from passing through the eye of the needle !
Our good yiddish “Catholic” here, Habba, might refer you to Josemaria Escriva instead.
John Goss, are we looking at the same page? I was on this one:
http://evolbiol.ru/cloud/cloud_eng.html
For me, that page is all in English; no Russian at all. The blue text is just blue; it’s not link text.
Yes, chevrons, or “less than” and “greater than” symbols, are used to enclose “html tags”, and if this blog’s software finds a pair of them in our comment text it either uses their enclosed contents as formatting instructions, or just removes them, before displaying the comment.
Fred, you’re showing off!
How thankful we should be to have John Pilger producing his fine articles. This time, he writes of Korea and the horrors of the war we enacted on its people.
The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting
“Good” War, “Bad” War
by JOHN PILGER
Fifty years ago, E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class rescued the study of history from the powerful. Kings and queens, landowners, industrialists, politicians and imperialists had owned much of the public memory. In 1980, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States also demonstrated that the freedoms and rights we enjoy precariously — free expression, free association, the jury system, the rights of minorities — were the achievements of ordinary people, not the gift of elites.
[..]Like most Koreans, the farmers and fishing families protested the senseless division of their nation between north and south in 1945 — a line drawn along the 38th Parallel by an American official, Dean Rusk, who had “consulted a map around midnight on the day after we obliterated Nagasaki with an atomic bomb,” wrote Cumings. The myth of a “good” Korea (the south) and a “bad” Korea (the north) was invented.
In fact, Korea, north and south, has a remarkable people’s history of resistance to feudalism and foreign occupation, notably Japan’s in the 20th century. When the Americans defeated Japan in 1945, they occupied Korea and often branded those who had resisted the Japanese as “commies”. On Jeju island, as many as 60,000 people were massacred by militias supported, directed and, in some cases, commanded by American officers.
This and other unreported atrocities were a “forgotten” prelude to the Korean War (1950-53) in which more people were killed than Japanese died during all of world war two. Cumings’ gives an astonishing tally of the degree of destruction of the cities of the north is astonishing: Pyongyang 75 per cent, Sariwon 95 per cent, Sinanju 100 per cent. Great dams in the north were bombed in order to unleash internal tsunamis. “Anti-personnel” weapons, such as Napalm, were tested on civilians. Cumings’ superb investigation helps us understand why today’s North Korea seems so strange: an anachronism sustained by an enduring mentality of siege.
[..]
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/14/good-war-bad-war/
We were part of it of course. Remember the Glorious Gloucesters?
And as well as Russia, the new enemy is China. Obomber had better be very careful.
If you want to find out how Fred did that, you need to view the source code of this page. On Firefox, go “Tools – Web Developer – Page Source”.
Binoy Kampmark’s latest article concerning news not broadcast on the MSM, that Bosnia Herzegovina is in a state of unrest due to privatization of public companies followed by rapid downsizing of the work-force.
http://newsjunkiepost.com/2014/02/11/bosnias-violent-protests-he-who-sows-hunger-reaps-anger/
Anybody seen this reported in MSM? They’re too busy supporting Al Qaeda in Syria and the rebels in the Ukraine.
Global Research – yes, dodgy as a source, and too prone to conspiracy theorists. But a lot of its articles are for real, and may not have appeared before outside a paywall. Best to search for the original press release. Like this one-
http://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/blog/ny-state-legislator-reintroduces-bill-threatening-academic-freedom-fre
In which the First Amendment is to be ignored for Israel’s sake…
BrianFujisan
Politics is always about personal power never about benefit to others. All politics is lying, and the easiest lie is to use the slogan of nationalism, the nationalism of Arab, or the nationalism of Islam, or the nationalism of Judaism. Nevermind that the interests of individuals are always best served by pluralism, because for various reasons we differ from eachother.
The adoption of a single nationalism is a red rag to the rest, which delivers war and destruction as a natural progression, and which allows outsiders to divide and rule through manipulating the people through slogans. One of the first lessons I learned about social work is that all values discriminate against other values. We have to get our minds into a frame which is non-judgemental and respectful to our fellow human beings. I do not like football, and my value score for football at zero, must not be a cause of hatred between myself and those who score it at 10/10. Must it?
Mark Golding above: ” lose perspective and the information that identifies each one of us turns ethereal, lacking order and strength to break the shackles of time in some profound way.
I myself believe the journey through a ‘singularity’ is the eye of a needle.”
If anybody goes into a peace negotiation pressing the nationalist Syrian slogan they are undisputably opposed to peaceful negotiation. Assad’s Alawi predecessors were placed in power by the French because they have zero score for Islam. They are universally known for being outside any part of Judaism, Christianity or Islam, the three extant Monotheistic divinely revealed religions. That zero score is two fingers up to everyone else around Syria. The poison which the French injected into the Middle East is going to have to be sucked out and neutralised, just as the poison of Zionism that the British injected into the Middle East will one day have to be sucked out and neutralised.
When the Holy Land of Israel becomes a pluralist centre for monotheism in its various manifestations, then you will know that the poison has gone.
Meanwhile the fact that someone viz Obama and his mujahideen is trying to heal the wound inflicted by French colonialism is a source of inspiration to all true Muslims. Of course Assad is going to complain. Why do you listen to them as if they were somehow the solution, FugBrains?
Or just right click on the page, Clark and select ‘view page source’.
Clark, 11:07 am
Actually, I do see a bit of Russian, but just the last two lines at the bottom of the page, with a bit of maths between them.
Ba’al-psalms
Hi, Mr Dodgyname,
It takes one to know one.
I know, I am a pile of batshit myself, and I can see that Global Research is an even bigger pile of batshit than I am.
Beelzebub, thanks. I’d forgotten the context menu. I’ll also display just the source code for just whatever text you select on the page.
So Fred, how would you get this page to display “ampersand lt colon dot dot dot ampersand gt colon”?
This could go on forever. How would the corporate media describe an Al Qaeda attack against another part of Al Qaeda? Is there such a thing as “anti-terrorist terrorism”?
Nextus, if you’re reading, I think this is related to our earlier comments about mysticism. Some things can’t be described from within the descriptive system one is using.
If We were the Lord of the Flies, We would deeply appreciate the existence of batshit…but it ain’t so –
http://www.behindthename.com/name/beelzebub
In fact We may change Our nick accordingly.
“So Fred, how would you get this page to display “ampersand lt colon dot dot dot ampersand gt colon”?
You mean &60;…&62;?
I wouldn’t be able to do that.
We like it.
We survive in spite of politics and politicians. The lesson from Thatcherism. Syria has survived in spite of Assad. Why do UK dwellers still see Thatcher as a cause of success when we know that she personally shredded honesty in banking? Why do UKdwellers see the ruthless tyrant Assad as a champion of pluralism, when this pluralism was the antidote to Assad’s violence, created by the people of Syria?
Clark, I thought you wanted people to look at the Russian version, to the left of the English version.
http://evolbiol.ru/cloud/cloud.html
Fred Hoyle was English and wrote in English. My guess is that Alexandrov, being Russian, would actually have spoken in Russian and I suspect the blue text is to represent that fact in the English. In the Russian all Alexandrov’s comments have a hyperlink (but the linked text is in English).
The site you linked has thousands (certainly hundreds) of scientific art related pieces so the only place you are likely to find out why his words are represented in blue you are only likely to find it in the English original or the Russian translation. Do you know how the original, hardbook version, represents what he says?
If only it were so, then the bats wouldn’t have to fly out of the cave for food, but I’m reliably informed that zebub = zubur = psalms/ hymns of praise.
One could, in effect, live entirely inside the blog cave, consuming the drivel from Global Research, Russia Today, CNN, Webster Tarpley or Press News. Everything has vitamins, if you have the antidote to the toxic content. I am not as yet that far evolved. I go out into the fresh air of the Holy Qur’an for feeding and I only use this blog for letting the jassous/spying community of cockroaches know that I/we are ahead of their stupid game to enthrall the freedom of my/our hearts.
Clark, is Hoyle responsible for the maths behind HAARP?
@guano – If you were to think straight you should probably be more gripped about bandar & wahabi co. in Riyadh instead of their target Assad. Matter of fact Assad may just be a good guy if bandar & wahabi co. are wasting billions (and Ghouta) to bring him down and destroy Syria for israel. Very simple,it figures,but mebbe not if you are a “Sissy” Muslim !
I’ve just come across a football match between UK Chagos Islanders and the Principality of Sealand.
http://www.sealandgov.org/
It is taking place on 23 February at Goldalming.
While the Principality of Sealand seems to have a means of raising funds the Chagos Islanders need a sponsor. Anybody able to help?