RUSSIAN PEACE PROPOSAL FOR SYRIA

                Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov(L) with Syrian Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister

                Walid al-Muallem in Moscow, Monday.

RUSSIAN INITIATIVE ON
CHEMICAL WEAPONS
GETS WELCOME IN SYRIA:

An apparent slip of the tongue by US Secretary of State, John Kerry, seeming to give an ultimatum to Damascus to de-commission its chemical weapons stocks within one week was gazumped by Moscow with a request to Syria to put its Chem weapons under UN control and quickly welcomed by Syrian Deputy Premier, Walid al-Muallem, in Moscow for talks with Russian leaders.

Syria welcomed the Russian proposal to place the nation's chemical weapons under international control, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said on Monday after talks in Moscow, praising the Kremlin for seeking to "prevent American aggression".

Muallem, who spoke to reporters through an interpreter after Russia expressed hope the proposal could avert military strikes against Syria, stopped short of saying explicitly that President Bashar al-Assad's government accepted it.

"I state that the Syrian Arab Republic welcomes the Russian initiative, motivated by the Syrian leadership's concern for the lives of our citizens and the security of our country and also motivated by our confidence in the wisdom of the Russian leadership, which is attempting to prevent American aggression against our people," he said.

“We are calling on the Syrian authorities not only to agree on putting chemical weapons storages under international control, but also for its further destruction and then joining of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,” Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier.

Moscow proposes Syria’s chemical disarmament in exchange for peace:

After talks with Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid al-Muallem, in Moscow, Lavrov called on Syria to "place the chemical weapons under international control and then have them destroyed".  “We have passed our offer to Al-Muallem and hope to receive a fast and positive answer,” Sergei Lavrov said.

If establishment of control over chemical weapons in Syria can help avoid a strike, Russia will immediately join it,  Lavrov said at  the press-conference. Moscow will try to broker a deal in which Syria submits its chemical arsenal to international control and the West drops plans to attack Syria, Lavrov added. Lavrov also said Moscow is already stoking up diplomacy to this end.

 

The Russian initiative cuts across the real agenda of Washington which is to act for regime change in Damascus and eliminate a Government which has steadfastly resisted US imperialist actions in the Middle East:

"Obama is not listening to Americans, Europeans or the UK Parliament. We thank the American people for standing against striking Syria. We admire the American people who voice their protest against military intervention," said Walid al-Muallem during the meeting  in Moscow.

"What are the real interests of the United States behind launching this aggression? Why does US want to help those who are behind 9/11? The US will be wrong to destroy army and help al-Qaeda," Walid al-Muallem said, adding that "We’re confident Russian efforts on peace talks will stop strikes".

Aggression against Syria aims at weakening the military potential of the Syrian army in the interest of al-Qaeda "But if such aggression against Syria aims, as we suspect, to considerably weaken the military potential of the Syrian army in the interest of al-Qaeda and various affiliated groups, then we will raise our objections," he said. "Then we have the right to ask a question about the genuine interests of the United States that wishes to unleash an attack on the behalf of Jabhat al-Nusra and similar groups," the Syrian minister stressed.

US Senate delays vote on Syria:

The US Senate was set to vote on Wednesday whether to authorise President Obama to use "limited military action" against Syria. But, following a day of debates, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced he would not file for a test vote on a resolution to strike Syria.
"I'm not going to file closure this evening on the motion to proceed to the Syria resolution," he said on the Senate floor.   

"Tomorrow the president is going to brief the Democratic caucus and the Republican caucus separately." "He's going to address the nation tomorrow night. As we all know, the international discussions continue relative to the matter in Syria. Normally, what I would do in a situation like this is file cloture today. But I don't think that's to our benefit. I don't think we need to see how fast we can do this. We have to see how well we can do this matter," Reid continued. 

Meanwhile across the US, Peace activists continued to mount protest demonstrations against the Obama/Kerry insane war plans. On Saturday, demonstrations were held in all major cities in the country adding to the telephone and social media pressure on Senators  and Congress members not to vote for War in the coming debates. In one district in the State of Maryland the voters were 97% against any military intervention in Syria.

                                              Anti-War protesters at the White house on Saturday

The bumbling incompetence of Obama/Kerry's conduct of US foreign policy has shocked NATO allies and is partly the reason why German Chancellor, Angela Merkel refused to sign the communique supporting the US line at the end of the G20 Summit in Petersburg, Russia, last week and French President, Francois Hollande pulled back from supporting a US military strike on Syria as well.

"Mutti Merkel" as she is colloquially described, wears the trousers, literally, as well as politically as she governs from her little palace, the Bundeskanzler Amt, a few hundred yards West of the Brandenburg Gate in central Berlin.

With the United States seeking to rally international support for military strikes on Syria in the wake of what it says was a deadly chemical attack by the regime on August 21,only four EU countries signed the statement.

 

On Sunday, Mrs Merkel criticised the timing of the statement and said she wanted to get all 28 EU members on board before signing.

"I don't believe it's right for five countries to agree on a united stance without the other 23 that can't be there, knowing that 24 hours later all 28 will be gathering around the same table." Merkel, who is seeking re-election in two weeks' time, told a campaign rally in western Germany. "That's why I said, 'Let's see to it that we have a united stance by all 28.'"

The remarks were a veiled criticism of Britain, France, Italy and Spain, the four EU countries that signed the G20 statement on Friday.

Neither the G20 statement nor the EU statement - issued after a meeting attended by US Secretary of State John Kerry - called for military intervention.





See also: "Berlin protests Obama Spynet" here:

 

http://blagaroon2.blogspot.ie/2013/09/berlin-20000-protest-obamansa-spynet.html

 

 

 

Cameron EU Speech Flops

CAMERON SPEECH ON EU-

BOX-OFFICE POISON IN 

BRUSSELS:

This week in the House of Commons, and later at the Global Elite gathering at Davos, In Switzerland, Brit Premier, David Cameron, made his long-awaited public statement on Britain's position in the EU and his vision of the British Conservative Party way of pursuing it in the future.

His speech committing the Conservative Party to a "IN-OUT" referendum on EU membership in 2017, had been postponed for a week, supposedly due to the hostage crisis in Algeria. But,In fact, it was a speech that had been brewing for years, ever since  his taking over leadership of the Tories, for fear that it would rip the party apart. In the end, it is primarily the fact that the Tories are already being pulled apart by  more rabidly expressed opposing positions on the EU  in recent times that forced his hand. This was well demonstrated by the hoots and hollers of the Tory Neanderthals on the back benches of the Commons chamber.

The "Financial Times" Philip Stevens, commented that this was “politics on a tightrope”, motivated by Cameron’s hope that his commitment to a referendum would “forestall a historic split in his own party comparable to its 19th century ruptures over the Corn Laws and imperial trade preferences in the early 20th”. Raucous support from the back-benches didn't hide the dismay in other quarters at Cameron's guff. The Lib-Dem half of the coalition government at Westminster attacked the speech and disclaimed support for it.

More worryingly for Cameron, and the British ruling class as a whole, has been condemnation of the prospect of a British referendum by other EU members and, more especially, by  President Obama in Washington. Although the referendum is not scheduled for another four years and is dependent on the Tories winning the 2015 general election, a dim prospect at the moment with the Tories on only 33% compared with Labour on 39%, Cameron has been attacked for injecting further uncertainty into the European project when it is already in crisis. Philip Gordon, US assistant secretary of state for European affairs, publicly made clear Washington’s displeasure recently when he stressed that Britain’s continued membership of the EU was “in the American interest”.

Cameron’s remarks were intended to try and appease constituencies none of which can be described as progressive; the back-bench Tory Eurosceptics and the UK Independence Party,  who have been yapping more loudly at Cameron's heels since he became Prime Minister, each of which just as reactionary as the other. To his EU partners, Washington and a substantial section of British and international  big business opposed to such a risky move, Cameron pledged that in such a referendum he would campaign for British membership with all his “heart and soul”, a mealy mouthed pledge which went down like a lead balloon.

Cameron presented his move as a means of saving the European project, rather than damning it. Europe’s crisis, he stated, stemmed from its lack of competitiveness and flexibility in the “new global race of nations” now underway, and the challenge posed by the “surging economies in the east and south”.

"With “Europe’s share of world output … projected to fall by almost a third in the next two decades”, Cameron condemned “complex rules restricting our labour markets” and “excessive regulation” on business as “self-inflicted” wounds. Cameron cited German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s earlier pronouncement that Europe’s system of welfare and social provision is unsustainable and has to go.

His proposals essentially consist of a demand that the austerity measures that have created a social catastrophe in Ireland, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy  and elsewhere must be extended and deepened across the continent, in line with the levelling down of wages and working conditions to the levels of sweatshop Asia.

This is why that, even while demanding a “loosening” of the EU so as to protect the City of London, the citadel of British Finance Capital, Cameron supports further fiscal and political consolidation within the Euro zone. He claimed that the Euro zone countries needed “the right governance and structures to secure a successful currency for the long term”— that is; it must have the economic and political mechanisms in place to enforce the diktats of finance capital, while stressing that Britain had no intention of adopting the Euro-currency itself.

On the continuing decimation of the living standards of the working class across the EU, Cameron, the EU, Washington and Monopoly Capital are all united. All of which makes Cameron’s posing as the defender of “democratic accountability and consent” hypocritical cant. Cameron hypocritically referenced “growing frustration” with the EU across the continent that has led to “demonstrations on the streets of Athens, Madrid and Rome” In Britain too, he said, “democratic consent for the EU … is now wafer-thin”. Whereas, democratic consent for the vicious austerity programs being enforced across Europe by Cameron, Merkel, Draghi, Barosso and Rumpoy doesn't exist at all.

But, Cameron’s proposed referendum has nothing to do with establishing the democratic right of working people to oppose and defeat the vicious austerity that has brought millions onto the streets. The opposite is the case. He, with the others, wants to consolidate a right-wing bloc pledged to even more draconian economic measures, in which the interests of Finance Capital, both domestic and foreign are protected while abolishing the remaining legal rights of ordinary workers. Hence his attack on legislation limiting working hours.

This is the kind of  EU to which Cameron is committed. While various European foreign ministers criticised Cameron’s speech, it was not on its substance that they did so, but, for his lack of a united approach with the EU -Wall St. elite and for opening up another nest of worms with his dodgy referendum pledge.

Referring to Cameron’s demand to renegotiate the terms of EU membership, German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, said that “cherry picking was not an option” while his French equivalent Laurent Fabius complained, “If you join a football club, you can’t say you want to play rugby.” Merkel, however, said that Berlin would listen to “British wishes” over EU membership in the hope of finding a “fair compromise”. Only on Tuesday, Merkel and French President, Francois Hollande, had vowed to speed up Euro zone integration and promote European "competitiveness" (code for low wages) in terms similar to Cameron’s. Quoted on the 50th anniversary of the Franco-German Alliance, both stressed the need for “budget discipline” and "labour reforms", more coded language for the further reduction of workers' rights throughout the EU.

Cameron did succeed in creating a dilemma for the British Labour Party, whose leader, Ed Milliband, opposed the idea of the referendum but had no concrete proposals to substitute for the austerity mania currently sweeping Europe. This, itself, is indicative of the inability of European Social Democracy as a whole, including the Irish Labour Party here, of mounting any kind of challenge to the rampage of neo-liberalism led by Wall Street and its cronies in London and Frankfurt. The Global Financial Elite don't need Social Democracy anymore to act as a semblance of democracy and social justice in the Capitalist World. They have decided to use the economic crisis brought on by their own insatiable greed and power mania to gut the organised workers' movement and abolish what has been described as the "European social model" in short order. There is only one reply to this audacious power-grab; massive popular resistance and internationalist solidarity of the working class everywhere.

Also on YouTube :   

http://youtu.be/KXLX40kYGcs

FearFeasaMacLéinn 

 Áth Cliath/Dublin

Eanáir/January 27 2013

Left gains in Greece and France Elections

Greece boosts Left Party status:

France gives Hollande majority
in Parliament!

 

Elections this Sunday in France and Greece produced substantial gains for left parties in both countries:

The result of the Greek General Election gave the Greek New Left group Syriza 27.1% of the vote, the largest vote for the left since WW2. The conservative New Democracy, representing the elite middle class, bankers and pro-EU, pro-NATO forces gained a slight lead with 29.59%

Speaking before thousands of cheering supporters waving red and white flags (some emblazoned with the hammer and sickle) outside Athens'  University building, Syriza leader Lexi Tsipras told the crowd: "Some may think that they won the elections tonight but they did not. The people won. The policies of austerity have been defeated. They will not be able to push forward with them either in Greece or Europe." Tsipras announced that Syriza would not join any Government which agreed to implement the hated IMF/EU austerity plan but would become the Opposition in parliament.

Tsipras was joined on the stage by the World War 2 hero Manolis Glezos who in a first act of resistance against Nazi occupation of Greece tore down the swastika from the Acropolis. The 92-year-old hailed the left's capture of 27.1 % of the vote as "the beginning of the end."

    "Who would have thought, or calculated, that we would go from 4.6 percent to this?" he enthused punching the air with his fist. "We must raise the flag, the flag of victory."

Right-wing and conservative press outlets have been trying to spin the Greek result as “victory for Europe” but, if it was such, it’s a distinctly hollow one. The Greek ND doesn’t have a majority in parliament and will have to bargain for a coalition with mainly hostile parties in no mood to gain opprobrium from the population for implementing the cruel IMF/EU austerity regime imposed on the previous Greek government of ND and PASOK. With a much enlarged Syriza breathing down their neck and an increasingly angry population taking to the streets, an ND led government would have a short life and another election would be called in a few months. It is glossed over that the austerity regime was never voted on by the Greek people but, was effected by an unelected Gauleiter imposed by the IMF/EU.

A new ND-PASOK coalition would hold on to power with difficulty in the next year. Its majority would be slim and so is the trust of the electorate. Although it is likely that the upcoming EU Council in June 27-28 will reward a new government with an extension on its debt payments and may even grant new loans quickly, the terms of the Memorandum will not be substantially renegotiated and the state of Greece’s bankruptcy will continue, as will the general economic decline of the entire Eurozone. Impoverishment will get worse and social unrest will increase. Since the previous ND-PASOK coalition showed itself capable  only of capitulation to external forces, its internal political legitimacy, now bolstered by insecurity and fear, would be bound to collapse and SYRIZA must remain the primary vehicle for the transformation of the old political system.

Whatever new government is formed, the structural defects of the Euro still remain and will continue to hold down growth opportunities as long as Germany, led by conservative Merkel, fails to agree to reducing debt accumulated by financial gambling in virtual reality not related to any real production values. This unjustified credit boom of the last ten years is now a millstone around the neck of the millions of ordinary people who are suffering for the criminal delinquency of the financial elite and their political cronies.

FRANCE SWINGS LEFT:

In France, newly elected President Francois Hollande’s Socialist Party swept to majority power in the French parliament. The Socialist bloc secured between 296 and 320 seats in the parliamentary election runoff, comfortably more than the 289 needed for a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly. The centre-left already controls the upper house of parliament, the Senate.

The far-right anti-immigration National Front achieved a breakthrough, winning its first parliamentary seats (2) since the late-1980s. Its charismatic leader, Marine Le Pen, narrowly lost her race in the working-class northern town of Hénin-Beaumont by a mere 118 votes (out of a total of more than 55,000 ballots) but, Marion Marechal Le Pen, 22, granddaughter of party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, was elected in the southern town of Carpentras.

The left-wing victory gives the Socialists more power than they have ever held as Hollande pushes for new tools to stimulate growth in the euro zone and a European banking reform that would protect depositors and states if banks fail. The Socialist leader flies to Mexico on Monday for a G20 summit that will be dominated by the euro zone's financial crisis as a rift with the bloc's paymaster, Germany, over how to resolve the crisis has sparked a sharp public squabble. Hollande, a european social democrat, has broken with a Franco-German power duopoly established under his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy and is siding with southern euro zone states, calling for more flexibility on deficit targets and stimulus programs to promote growth in the euro-zone economies. With the right now severely weakened, Hollande's strong hand will be a boon as he prepares a mass of legislation for the weeks ahead to raise taxes and start economic expansion again.The Socialists, will use the comfortable majority won in Sunday's parliamentary elections in a special session of parliament next month to cancel tax breaks and increase taxes for large corporations, particularly banks and energy companies.

Interior Minister, Manuel Valls, said the Government would waste no time in pressing ahead with promised reforms."We need to sort out this country's finances, to ensure we achieve a balanced budget by 2017, and at the same time pursue our priorities in terms of growth, employment, education and security," said Valls, promising tax reforms to ensure that the richest French pay their share."We need to mobilise our European partners because piling more austerity on top of austerity will lead to tragedy and a deep rift between the peoples of Europe and their politicians."

With unemployment at a 13-year high of 10 percent and economic growth stagnating, Hollande faces a delicate balancing act in reducing the government deficit and keeping the euro zone's second largest economy beyond the perceptions of financial market speculators attacking Spain and Italy.

FearFeasaMacLéinn

Áth Cliath/Dublin 18 Meitheamh/June 2012.