What The Former UK Ambassador To Yugoslavia Has To Say About Kosovo...

I can't say that I fully agree with this Article by the former UK ambassador to Yugoslavia Charles Crawford, but he does make an important point that I think is indisputable: the Kosovo issue is a lot more nuanced than it's being presented in the mainstream Western press.

Serbia: Commentary – Elephant's Graveyard

Rambouillet To UN Resolution 1244: Questioning The Principles And Legality Of NATO’s Negotiations And War With Yugoslavia

Introduction

On the 24th of March, 1999 the almost unthinkable occurred: NATO, a military alliance forged during the Cold War for the mutual defense of its member states against the Eastern Block, now with the Cold War just over, attacked the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – a small, increasingly impoverished, and politically disintegrating country in the Balkan peninsula of Europe. Yugoslavia posed no threat to any NATO member state and the claim was never advanced that it did. Instead, maintaining that Yugoslavia was conducting a campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide within its own borders, NATO justified the attack on humanitarian grounds.

NATO predicted the attack would force Yugoslavia to capitulate to NATO’s terms in a few days at most, but the war was to continue for eleven weeks. How this unprecedented war unfolded and the aftermath that followed is interesting in itself, but just as intriguing are the events that led to the war and the events with which the war concluded. The war itself, the negotiations preceding and concluding the war, as well as the legal implications of these events, contain many surprising elements.

Specifically, when the negotiations and proposals that bracketed the military campaign are considered, two fundamental questions emerge. Firstly, to what extent were NATO’s negotiation framework and consequent attack on Yugoslavia consistent with its publicly stated reasons for engagement? In other words, how consistent were NATO’s actions with its rhetoric? Secondly, to what extent were NATO’s negotiation framework and consequent attack on Yugoslavia consistent with important legal frameworks to which its member states were signatory? In other words, how legal were NATO’s actions? This paper addresses these two questions, arguing that NATO weakened the tenets of world order, over which it engaged Yugoslavia.

A Brief Historical Account of the Kosovo Crisis

Whether Slobodan Milošović was motivated to address inherent imbalances in the Yugoslav constitution or, as it is more frequently argued by western analysis, his motivation was to kindle Serbian nationalism, with which he hoped to assure his popular powerbase, in 1989 he reduced the autonomy Kosovo had enjoyed within Serbia under the 1974 Yugoslav constitution . With this action not only did the process of Yugoslavia’s disintegration begin, but Kosovo also became a ticking time bomb that would cause the final explosive conclusion to the Yugoslav conflicts. Although Albanian alienation was present in various degrees throughout Yugoslavia’s history, the1989 reduction of Kosovo’s autonomy and the resulting Serbification of institutions in Kosovo further disenfranchised the Albanian population and let to the creation of a Kosovo Albanian independence movement.

The most relevant force among the Albanians became the LDK (Democratic League of Kosovo) with its leader Ibrahim Rugova. The LDK promoted non-violence and pacifism as a means to secure Kosovo's independence. Under the LDK’s stewardship Albanians gradually withdrew from Yugoslav institutions and set up a shadow government which unofficially but effectively collected taxes and ran a full range of government services. On July 2, 1990 the unconstitutional Kosovo parliament unilaterally declared independence and in September of that year adopted a separate constitution for Kosovo. In two years this was followed by a referendum that was observed by international organizations. Eighty percent of the population participated in the referendum; 98% of those who cast a ballot voted for independence. Despite Belgrade’s surprising tolerance for Kosovo’s shadow government (probably in no small part due to the LDK’s pacifist nature) frustration increased among the Albanians with the fact that a longer term solution, with international recognition seemed unobtainable. The Dayton Accord with which the Bosnian conflict was tentatively resolved proved to be a further source of Albanian frustration since it did not address the Kosovo question. A cycle of increased violence followed, along with the gradual ascension to power of the UÇK (Kosovo Liberation Army) which advocated armed insurrection to achieve Kosovo’s independence. The LDK, though never irrelevant, was increasingly eclipsed by the UÇK. Spiraling patterns of UÇK and Serbian violence, followed by relative lulls, increasingly demonstrated that the Kosovo question required a more comprehensive solution.

The United States’ involvement in the Kosovo issue was ambiguous at the outset. Although condemning Milošović’s “nationalist” policies, the United States saw Milošović as a player without whom no agreement in the Balkans was possible. Moreover, Robert Gelbard, the American envoy to the region until 1998, while condemning both sides of the conflict, had no trouble branding the UÇK as a terrorist organization. Milošović increasingly began to be perceived as more the source of the Balkan Peninsula’s problems than the solution to them.

On January 15, 1999, 45 civilians were found murdered “execution style” in the Kosovo village of Račak. Though later forensic experts would dispute the charges that an execution had occurred (not only did it turn out that the victims had been shot from various angles and not at close range as was initially assumed, evidence also emerged that the bodies may have been planted) the reaction was swift and severe: the Serbian authorities it seemed had finally crossed a line and began to be perceived by the United States as almost wholly responsible for all of Kosovo’s problems.

A conference was hastily convened in Rambouillet, France on February 6, 1999. Both the Serbs and the Albanians were presented with essentially the completed text of an agreement, and were told that very little in it was open to negotiation. The situation was grave; if both parties accepted the agreement then NATO (the United States had by this time rallied NATO countries to form a perhaps reluctant, but still unified coalition) would step in and in essence run Kosovo as a protectorate, and within three years there would be a referendum on Kosovo’s independence. If Albanians did not accept the agreement (or if neither party accepted the agreement) then NATO and the United States would disengage from the problem. If the Kosovo Albanians accepted the agreement and Serbia did not, then NATO bluntly stated that Serbia would be subject to a bombing campaign until it complied.

At first neither side complied. The Serbs refused mostly because of military aspects of the accord and the provision assuring a referendum on Kosovo’s independence within three years. The Albanians balked because the accord did not grant them immediate independence. However, under increasing United States pressure – and when it became clear that the Serbs were not going to sign – the Albanians acquiesced and signed. The Serbian delegation returned home and issued a public critique of the process on March 23, 1999. On March 24, 1999 the bombing of Serbia Yugoslavia began.

The United States and NATO expected the bombing to last a few days at most; conventional thinking was that Milošović did not care about Kosovo as much as he pretended he did and, after a brief show of defiance intended for domestic consumption, he would comply with the Rambouillet text. What followed however upset all plans: instead of relenting quickly, Yugoslavia showed no signs of backing down. The bombing campaign that was supposed to have taken only several days at most lasted eleven weeks. During the bombing campaign Serbian military and paramilitary forces carried out a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing (NATO also claimed genocide) that caused a human tragedy of catastrophic proportions. The length of the bombing, the increasingly urgent plight of the refugees pouring out of Kosovo, and the steadfast refusal of NATO to consider ground troops created serious public relations problems in a number of NATO member states, thus still further undermining the legitimacy of NATO’s actions.

In the midst of the bombing campaign new diplomatic efforts resulted in an agreement that was in many ways fundamentally different from the original proposed text, raising questions about NATO’s handling of the Rambouillet negotiations as well its intentions.

With this overview of the Kosovo conflict the ground is set for answering the first question.

How consistent were NATO’s actions with its rhetoric?

NATO stated that its primary goal for intervention was to avert a humanitarian crisis, but were NATO’s actions consistent with this goal?

Even before Račak, the Serbs were increasingly viewed by the United States and the rest of the West as perpetrators of the worst ethnic cleansing. True, the ethnic cleansing that the Serbs were accused of occurred in Bosnia, but the connection between Milošović and the Bosnian Serbs has always existed. Sometimes this connection had been positive since it was only through Milošović that the international community had been able to negotiate with the Bosnian Serbs, but by Rambouillet it did seem that Milošović had become guilty by association. Events in Bosnia had not gone well for the international community; it was felt that due to inaction by Europe and the United States a humanitarian crisis had been allowed to take place, and Europe and the United States had made only half-hearted gestures (this was also true for the Rwandan Genocide which many observers also felt had been preventable). There was optimism regarding military solutions since many western analysts felt that NATO strikes in Bosnia had been instrumental in ending the Bosnian conflict (though Croatian successes on the ground probably had been more relevant). With another ethnic conflict now looming in Kosovo, NATO’s position (and especially the United States’ position) was that this time there would be no hesitation in wielding the military option.

Unfortunately, this lack of hesitation meant that negotiations were not given a fair chance. Almost everything was done to assure Serbian intransigence. The LDK, because of its pacifist stance was already somewhat marginalized in increasingly radical Kosovo, but instead of attempting to legitimize them (after all they were moderates and much more palatable to the Serbs than the UÇK who were by any standards a terrorist organization), the United States and NATO did not offer them a serious a role. In contrast the UÇK were rehabilitated and, though western endorsement of the UÇK angered the Serbs, this was considered irrelevant. NATO, it seemed, had already decided to solve the conflict by force.

The rushed nature of the negotiations was also indicative of the deliberate nature of NATO’s “policy of failure”. The talks began on February 6, 1999 and were concluded on February 23, 1999. Even though the Serbs objected to the timetable and asked for more time, the only time the deadline was postponed was at the Albanians’ request. Even some of the Albanians questioned the fairness of the process. For example Adem Demaci, the UÇK’s former political representative, was against the Rambouillet process, and almost convinced the UÇK’s chief negotiator Hashim Thaci to withdraw.

Another important key to the puzzle of Rambouillet was that the two sides never met. All negotiations were carried on through intermediaries. The Serbian delegation asked for direct meetings several times but was turned down each time. Milošović would later claim that “Rambouillet was not a negotiation; it was a Clinton administration diktat: it wasn’t even take it or leave it, it was take it or else...”

The preconditions of the negotiation, if we are to accept NATO’s sincerity in averting war, seem very odd. The fact that the text of the agreement was presented as essentially unalterable, when it had been prepared by neither party that it principally concerned is hard to understand. Aspects of the text were so unpalatable that even the Albanians initially refused to sign it – only after extreme pressure by the United States, by Madeline Albright in particular (who stressed that without their consent to the agreement no bombing could occur), was their acceptance procured.

Still, the precondition most unacceptable to the Serbian side was Rambouillet’s clause that granted a referendum for Kosovo’s independence within three years. Despite the fact that Albanians clearly wanted Kosovo’s independence, Kosovo’s special meaning to modern perceptions of Serbian self-identity should have made this issue a crucial point that should have been negotiated rather than a priori assumed or dictated; there are, after all, mechanisms to guarantee ethnic minority rights other than full independence.

The United States’ and NATO’s insistence that the peacekeeping and monitoring force be a NATO force is also not easy to understand within the context of humanitarian intervention. When the traditional Yugoslav values of non-alignment (almost even rejectionism) are considered it becomes difficult to overestimate how important it was for Yugoslavia that the military component of any agreement be UN authorized; but the Serb insistence had a more practical side for them as well: with Russian and Chinese permanent membership in the UN Security Council, the UN offered a more equitable environment for airing Serb concerns. Finally, the UN in contrast to NATO had experience in peacekeeping, and this also must have played a role in the Serb position. But NATO and the United States were already so overtly anti-Serb by Rambouillet that nothing the Serbs said was taken seriously. When the matter of a UN mandate was raised by the Serbian delegation they were told quite bluntly that this element of the agreement was simply not negotiable.

Not only did NATO insist that Yugoslavia accept NATO troops with only a NATO mandate, in an Appendix hastily added to the agreement in the middle of the negotiation process, Yugoslavia was asked to allow those troops access to not just Kosovo but to all of Yugoslavia. The text stated that “NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters” and if that was not enough “NATO personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from the Parties' jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal, or disciplinary offenses which may be committed by them in the FRY”.

It is hard to imagine that such conditions were necessary to deal with a humanitarian crisis in Kosovo, but even if we accept that they were, then NATO’s conduct after the failed Rambouillet negotiations shows either NATO’s shortsightedness or NATO’s dishonesty.

Firstly, if the above conditions were so necessary, then, after the bombing that by all accounts did not go well, why were they all dropped in UN Resolution 1244 with which the war concluded? After all, UN Resolution 1244 did not contain any of the preconditions that NATO had insisted on at Rambouillet: NATO did not get access to all of Yugoslavia, a UN mandate was supplied for the operation, and the reference to the Kosovo vote for independence that the Serbs were so bitterly against was not included.

Secondly, if averting a humanitarian crisis was the true goal, then by NATO’s and the United States’ own descriptions of events after the bombing began, the entire affair must be termed a disaster. UNHCR for example claimed that about 850,000 refugees were created during the bombing campaign. Fair enough, the ethnic cleansing was carried out by the Serbs, and they were to blame, but NATO could have immediately sent in ground troops to secure the Kosovo countryside, to avert or reduce the scale of the suffering.

Not only did NATO not deploy ground troops, NATO did not even use low flying aircraft or helicopters that are specifically designed to target forces on the ground. NATO had a plethora of such aircraft and helicopters and their deployment would have relieved much of the pressure on the Albanian civilian population but, by its own admission, NATO did not put them to use since they would likely have suffered losses . By NATO’s calculus the lives of a few pilots and the loss of a few aircraft were more valuable than life and death interests of hundreds and thousands of refugees. Not exactly a credible description of humanitarian intervention.

Two more issues are of interest: During the war Clinton and Albright regularly updated and expanded the estimates of the number of Albanians deliberately killed by Serbs. Figures of five thousand, then ten thousand, fifteen thousand and finally even figures of thirty, forty even fifty thousand were mentioned. The United States administration claimed that they had satellite evidence of the killings. News media sources even reported three hundred thousand and more killed. After the bombing, when NATO entered Kosovo no evidence was discovered of systematic killings on the scale that Clinton and Albright had claimed. The accepted figure of deliberate Albanian killings at the hands of Serbs seems to be about five thousand. Since it is hard to imagine how estimates could be ten times higher than they were, we are left with the fact that the United States most likely fabricated its estimates.

Secondly, when the bombing campaign ended on June 11, 1999 and NATO forces entered Kosovo, Kosovar Albanians, returning to their homes, turned on the Serbian minority in Kosovo and carried out so-called reverse ethnic cleansing. Of the initial population of 220,000 Serbs about 100,000 remain today, mostly in enclaves in the extreme north Kosovo and under constant guard by the international troops. As well as Serbs, Roma, Turks and Bosniaks were also victims of Albanian ethnic cleansing. Finally, the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo was not just limited to people but also Serbian heritage sites, with historic churches and gravesites destroyed.

What has happened? With analysis, the picture off NATO’s intervention that emerges is unpleasant but inescapable: NATO did not avert and to a certain extent caused a humanitarian crisis. Logically, there are two explanations: Either NATO failed its mission or had a different agenda than it announced.

Leaving aside which of these two possibilities are more likely, we turn now to our next question, the legality of NATO’s actions.

How legal were NATO’s actions?

On March 23 1999, after the failed Rambouillet negotiations, the Serbian Parliament issued a response which outlined their grievances against the Rambouillet process. Since Yugoslavia wanted to avoid (or minimize) a military confrontation with NATO, the Serbs sought to build a position on legal principles, hoping that the international community as well as public sympathy in NATO countries would apply pressure against the alliance. The second article of Yugoslavia’s response refers to the most grievous violation of international law, the violation to the UN charter.

The UN Charter article 2, paragraph 4 clearly states: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” but NATO during the Rambouillet process specifically threatened Yugoslavia with force in an attempt to redefine Yugoslav territories and internal political structures. This threat of force was already a clear violation of the charter, but when Yugoslavia resisted, force was actually applied resulting in a further violation.

Had the UN Security Council authorized the attack against Yugoslavia (or had the attack been conducted in self defense) the UN’s charter would not have been violated since other clauses govern those cases. But this was not the case – the Serbs were right and NATO was in violation of the UN Charter.

The UN Charter actually itself only reproaches states who apply force improperly; it spells out no consequences. The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties in its article 52 goes further: “A treaty is void if its conclusion has been procured by the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international law embodied in the Charter of the United Nations” (Interestingly, by the same argument, Yugoslavia is not, in theory, bound by UN Resolution 1244, with which the NATO/Yugoslavia war concluded since Yugoslavia compliance too was arguably procured by the threat of force thus making it null). Again, NATO countries were in violation.

NATO violated another important international agreement that deals with the retaliations between states – the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe or, as it is often known, The Helsinki Final Act. Of the ten principles guiding relations between participating states contained within the Helsinki Final Act, NATO’s negotiations with Yugoslavia and consequently NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia ran afoul of the following: Principle I, Sovereign Equality, respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty, Principle II, Refraining from the threat or use of force, Principle III, Inviolability of frontiers, Principle IV, Territorial integrity of states, Principle VI, Non-intervention in internal affairs, and also arguably Principles V, Peaceful settlement of disputes, and X, Fulfillment in good faith of obligations under international law. True, Principle VIII, Equal rights and self-determination of peoples, does say that peoples have the right to determine their “internal and external” political status, but signatory states are neither bound nor allowed to uphold this right within another state by the use of force without UN Security Council approval. In other words, although Serbia and Yugoslavia themselves might have been in contravention of the one principle of the Helsinki Final Act by denying the Albanian Kosovars the right to self-determination , this in no way gave NATO license to further violate (and arguably more grievously violate) another seven of the principles.

Finally, the North Atlantic Treaty, under whose banner the attack on Yugoslavia was conducted, also restricts the application of force. NATO as an organization is not just restricted in how it may wield force, but North Atlantic Treaty signatory members, even outside the alliance’s auspices, individually, because of their membership are equally restricted by how they may apply force. The North Atlantic Treaty states that force shall be used by NATO members only under two conditions: 1) either in a manner consistent with the Charter of the United Nations (even going so far as to explicitly state signatory members will refrain from the use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purpose of the United Nations) or 2) in self defense, if one of the member states comes under attack in Europe or North America. As surprising as it seems every member state violated the North Atlantic Treaty when they attacked Yugoslavia – and NATO itself as an organization – was in violation of its own charter.

It seems that on questions of legality NATO looks no better than it did on questions of consistency or efficacy; NATO and NATO countries, were in significant violation of every relevant international agreements to which they were signatory.

Conclusion

This paper began with two questions: How consistent were NATO’s actions with NATO’s rhetoric and how legal were these actions? We have arrived at the answers: NATO was not very consistent with its rhetoric and not legal in its actions.

Often, however, the answers to questions do not provide respite, but instead lead to even new and in some ways more difficult questions. This is one of those cases. Our answers are unsatisfying and they are unsatisfying not just because we would like to believe otherwise, but because they provide an enigma. Why did this war occur? The question is poignant, but there are no entirely satisfactory answers. Not only do events in the Balkans offer little insight to this question but also a broader survey of the historical events occurring outside the Balkan Peninsula sheds little light on the matter.

It is beyond the scope of this paper to analyze the entire context and rational of NATO’s decisions and actions, but it worth considering that the times were profound. NATO’s principal antagonist, the USSR, had recently ceased to exist. Communism as a world movement had collapsed. True, things were still not completely certain with the new democracies in Central Europe and in the former USSR there were problematic areas, but, though there was a fresh optimism in the air, there should have also been cause for prudence. It did seem that only the Balkan countries were truly disappointments, but this was hardly reason to have thrown away so rashly the political capital that had been so carefully and at such a cost accumulated during the Cold War. With popular opinions in almost every country both within and outside NATO against the war, it is not Yugoslavia that conducted “war against the whole world” as western popular opinion believed , but NATO.

The war severely strained NATO’s relationship with the new Russia government and a wave of skepticism, if not outright anti-Americanism that exists to this day, began among the Russian people. Chinese protests in Beijing and other cities across China against NATO’s (probably accidental) bombing of their embassy in Belgrade demonstrated the globality of the resentment of NATO’s actions. Why had NATO after so delicately not only surviving but in fact, winning the Cold War now blundered so profoundly?

It has often been pointed out that with the end of the Cold War NATO was in a struggle for its existence, and this may have played a role in the decisions regarding Kosovo. But this explanation by itself is too simplistic. The historical context of NATO’s actions was the fall of the Soviet Union, but the cultural and political beginnings of that historical context had begun with the Gorbachev’s gradual embrace of the Western values. While the Soviet Union and Communism were real global alternatives, and not just the military threat of the Soviet Union but no less importantly the Soviet Union’s cultural and ideological alternatives provided countermeasure to NATO by always contextualizing its actions, such an adventure as NATO’s war with Yugoslavia was impossible. So, is it not arguable that with the so called “End of History” in sight, with the confidence that comes from being “being proven right”, NATO countries were so emboldened as to not give due consideration to not just their own carefully constructed international laws and agreements, but to common sense itself?

Bibliography

1. Nation , R. Craig, War in the Balkans 1991-2002, August 2003, http:///www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/display.cfm?PubID=123

2. Cohen, Lenard J., Serpent in the bosom; the Rise and Fall of Slobodan Milosevic, Boulder CO, Westview Press, 2000

3. Carpenter , Galen, NATO’s Empty Victory; A Postmortem on the Balkan War, Washington D.C., Cato Institute, 2000

4. Daalder, Ivo H. and O’Hanlon, Michael E., Winning Ugly; NATO’s War to Save Kosovo, Washington D.C., Brookings Institution Press, 2000

5. Johnstone, Diana, Fool’s Crusade, New York., Monthly Review Press, 2002

6. Mandelbaum, Michael, “A Perfect Failure; NATO’s War Against Yugoslavia”, Foreign Affairs, Sep/Oct 1999, Vol. 78 Issue 5, p2-8, 7p

7. Luttwak, Edward N., "Give War a Chance.", Foreign Affairs, Jul/Aug 1999, Vol. 78 Issue 4, p36-44, 9p

8. Wikipedia – Kosovo, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo

9. Wikipedia – Rambouillet Agreement, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rambouillet_Agreement

10. Wikipedia – Serbia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serbia

11. Wikipedia – NATO, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nato

12. Wikipedia – Legitimacy of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NATO_bombing_of_Yugoslavia

13. The 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties – http://web.archive.org/web/20050208040137/http://www.un.org/law/ilc/texts/treatfra.htm or http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_on_the_Law_of_Treaties

14. Kosovo Interim Agreement (Rambouillet Agreement) – http://www.state.gov/www/regions/eur/ksvo_rambouillet_text.html

15. Serbian Official Response to the Rambouillet Agreement – http://www.serbia-info.com/news/1999-03/24/10030.html

16. UN Charter – http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter

17. UN Resolution 1244 (1999) – http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N99/172/89/PDF/N9917289.pdf

18. Conference on Security and Co-Operation In Europe Final Act (Helsinki Final Act) http://www.osce.org/documents/mcs/1975/08/4044_en.pdf

19. The North Atlantic Treaty available from http://www.nato.int/docu/basictxt/treaty.htm

Gregory Levonian

Solidarity With Serbia

According to the print version of Ottawa print edition of Metro Weekend (see Metro for the electronic version) there will be a rally on Parliament Hill tomorrow (Saturday March 1, 2008) at 12:00 in support of Kosovo's unity with Serbia.

This rally is important because so far the Canadian government has not (yet!) recognized Kosovo's independence.

I'm going, and maybe you should consider going too.

Nightmares

Just in from xkcd:

From the same people who brought you Robert '); DROP TABLE Students;--

The Weather

Acording to my Mimino.Org Personal Start Page Tbilisi is twenty nine degrees warmer than Ottawa right now.

It's +6 in Tbilisi and -23 in Ottawa.

Kosovo Madness: Get Me Outta Here!

Yes, I admit it, I've been checking every three or four minutes for the inevitable Kosovo article by THE EXILE...and not to disappoint it's finally here:

Kosovo Madness: Get Me Outta Here!

Have fun!

What's cool is that it's not written by the War Nerd but by the man himself, Mark Ames (and not only that, it seems he actually went to Kosovo to write the piece).

Sad Stories: The Coffee And The Muffin, Part II

So, I can't wait until tomorrow so I go back for a second coffee and muffin and though it's only eleven O'clock I have to burn my mouth some more.

But this time, when they guy rings it, up it comes to only $1.67. I look at the guy behind the counter as I pass him my two dollars and ask him what's up with that. This morning I tell him it cost $1.69. He kind of looks at me blankly and tells me that it costs $1.67.

I consider insisting on a two cent refund from the morning while muttering something about "Did the laws of arithmetic change since I was here last?" but before I come to a decision, I watch him count back $1.67 in change.

There is, of course no moral question of it being the right thing to return the money (I am a bastard), but I am in a another sort of a moral dilemma: which is going to going to apply more Darwinian pressure on this guy: me keeping the improperly calculated change, or (and this would be more fun of course) humiliating him by giving him a lecture on the need for accuracy?

Sadly, it occurs to me that if I just keep the money, I get to retire a good fifteen minutes earlier and that's the end of my moral dilemma.

Have you every been watching a really bad movie and wished it would just end already? Did you really think that 15 minutes wasn't much time then?

Sad Stories: The Coffee And The Muffin

So second and a half day on the job and already I'm disgusted at myself (I'm only counting Saturday as a half day, because I thought it was a Friday and I only stayed for half the day once I realized my mistake).

I get off the bus and start looking to see which of the convenience stores has the cheapest coffee. I find this place that has a coffee and muffin special for $1.59. As I go in all I can think about is that I hope that the muffins are those big oversize things that people get fat eating.

Woo-hoo, paydirt! So, I'll be dragging myself into this place every day now. Right off the bus I'll get my coffee and muffin, I'll drag it to my cubicle, and I'll burn my mouth with coffee as I read my email.

The only thing that annoyed me about this was the with tax it came to $1.69.

I hate paying tax.

Call Me

Check out the sidebar and you'll see a new button that looks like this:

You just click on it, enter your name and your telephone number and then the provider of this service, Grand Central, connects you're phone to the phone nearest to me.

You might be interested to know that Grand Central has been recently bought by Google. You can read about the Google Purchase of Grand Central here.

Наглость

A friend of mine predicted I'd enjoy Ottawa for about a week before things would fall apart.

Well, he was wrong, it didn't last a week. All it took was one day to make me understand how miserable I will be (am) here.

There is bookstore on Sparks street that I walked by, and they have this huge banner sign, about 10 feet tall, strung up: THE WORLD NEEDS MORE CANADA. I think they were trying to say, that Canadian authors should be read more, but still, can you imagine?

Even the Americans, the English, or the French have more shame.

My Phone Number In Ottawa

Yes, as much as I don't want to talk about it, it's true: I'm back in Ottawa.

I have a new phone number: +1 613-799-4096.

Hurry up and call me because I don't know how long I'll manage to stay here.

Rose Revolution Discomfort

I know, it sounds like a medical condition for which you should be able to get over the counter drug, but for those of us who are interested in Georgia, it's a serious question.

On the one hand, there is no question how far Georgia has come under Saakashvili and the national movement, but on the other hand there are certainly things that have happened that leave one, to say the least, unsettled.

Those that are completely dismissive of Saakashvili and the National Movement, have either forgotten (or had never experienced) Georgia under Shevernadze. In my opinion the country is much better off now than before.

However, those use Saakashvili's achievements to justify his shortcomings are falling into a trap: it is precisely this kind of pacifism that creates the conditions for authoritarianism (and I would argue that Georgia is particularly vulnerable to this precariously flawed logic).

The real question is, to what extent are Misha's transgressions justified to safeguard the Rose Revolution, and to what extent is the Rose Revolution vulnerable to these transgressions themselves.

The Harvard International Review published two articles that criticize the Georgia's Rose Revolution: What Was Georgia's Revolution For? and Georgia's Hollow Revolution.

Here is a letter that Benjamin Wheeler wrote in response:

February 18, 2008

To the editors,

Lincoln Mitchell and Vladimir Papava's articles on the state of democracy in Georgia ("What was the Rose Revolution For?" and "Georgia's Hollow Revolution", respectively, February 2008) do a good job of presenting the good (reduced corruption, transparency in college admissions, reliable tax collection, removal of regional autocrats) along with the bad (the brutal police response to the November 2007 demonstrations, opaque sources of military funding, machinations such as the appearance of evidence of corruption by deposed Minister of Defense Irakli Okruashvili just when he began to organize an opposition party). But as with most articles in the "wilted Rose" vein, they commit two omissions.

The first regards the state of political discourse in Georgia. The problem is that there is no policy debate among Georgia's parties, except as regards the relative power of the parties themselves as dictated by the constitution and Parliamentary rules. On Russia, Abkhazia, Iraq, pensions, health care, public transportation, and European integration, the parties agree. You might expect that this would make for harmonious rule, but it is the contrary: since policy appeals are out of the picture, parties can jockey for power only by politicking and undercutting one another. If you watch opposition party press conferences on television, you will see every variety of ad hominem attack, from accusations that the president is a foreign spy to insulting and threatening birthday gifts. You will seldom see proposed policy alternatives, except demands for earlier votes and constitutional changes that would give opposition parties with little voter support more power.

President Mikheil Saakashvili's National Movement party does not have the clarity of democratic purpose of Solidarity or Charter 77, but it should not be taken lightly that every election since the its ascendance in the Rose Revolution has been free and fair. It is significant that the debate over the outcome of the January presidential election hinges on whether or not the entirety of the opposition's accusations of electoral fraud, if true, would bring the results from 53-27% in Saakashvili's favor down to below 50%. The furor over this lost cause is a good illustration of the opposition's irrelevance. The Republic Party of Tina Khidasheli and others often distinguishes itself as a serious and constructive exception, but even they have declared all-out political war on the ruling party on the complaint that the recent presidential vote was fraudulent, on the evidence of reports by international observers--who all certified the election as fair--that a small percentage of precincts showed signs of fraud. Another exception to the opposition's general fracture and destructiveness was the opposition coalition that nominated Levan Gachechiladze and Salome Zourabachvili for President and Prime Minister for the January election. But this hasn't stopped politics as usual, for instance (according to Radio Free Europe) Gachechiladze's personal threat while storming the elections commissioner's office that "you will be punished for this, I give you my word!"

I agree with Mitchell that the desperation of the opposition is partly a problem of the National Movement's own making, since it changed the constitution to erode the power of Parliament, the only venue where the opposition had a chance to prove its policy worth, and since it tends to ignore equally the Republican Party (once a member of the National Movement's own coalition) and those opposition leaders who do no more than tilt at windmills. But Mitchell is wrong in his thesis that the West has ignored this mistake. In public comments, US State Department officials Sean McCormack and Matthew Bryza and EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus Peter Semneby have been making it clear for years that they want to see the National Movement engage the more constructive members of the opposition, and work with civil society groups that disagree with the authorities. And though investigative reporting critical of the government has suffered in Georgia since the Rose Revolution, it is unfair for Mitchell and Papava not to mention, for the benefit of readers who are relying on them for a fair picture of what Georgian democracy is like, that Georgian television contains far more coverage of a far greater range of political voices than American television does. The ruling party has not helped cultivate a credible opposition, but it is neither their fault that practically none exists. For a writer to evaluate Georgian democracy, he really must first recognize how badly Georgia needs a credible opposition party that can produce concrete policy proposals, does not resort to threats, and accepts when it has lost fairly.

The second omission is much more glaring. I am not sure when the HIR issue went to bed, but since at least Christmas of last year there have been published recordings of Badri Patarkatsishvili, the now-dead opposition leader, presidential candidate and owner of the television station Imedi, giving an undercover agent bribes and instructions for the kidnapping of Interior Minister Vano Merabishvili, and further planning for the agent to stage a televised, and false, confession of aiding in vote stealing. The agent also recorded Patarkatsishvili's campaign chief explaining his plan to impersonate government agents and attack polling stations in order to call the vote into question. I know this sounds outlandish, and I would not believe it either if I had not read for myself the transcripts and confirmations of independent observers. (Just why this news continues to be absent from analysis by knowledgeable observers like Mitchell and Papava is a mystery to me.) During the November 7th 2007 demonstrations and government closing of Imedi, when Saakashvili and Parliament Speaker Nino Burjanadze warned of a coup attempt, I dismissed this as saber-rattling, as Mitchell and Papava continue to, but it appears that we were wrong and the Georgian authorities were right.

Since I have long ago crossed the line into apologia here, let me go further. The violence of the November 7th protest dispersal was appalling to me, from the use of tear gas against protesters and non-protesters alike far from the city center, to the beating of the elderly and children, to the apparent enlistment of Patriot youth groups as extralegal enforcers. Certainly that was worse than how illegal protests are handled in the US. But how much worse? Here in the US, I have had young friends gassed, pepper sprayed, arrested before protests even started on laughable pretenses, arrested during protests on laughable pretenses, attacked by police horses, and attacked for demanding to see an undercover policeman's identification. Let me emphasize that these routine abuses came when our government was *not* the target of violent overthrow by the country's richest man and the television station he owns. I don't mean to dismiss this as simply the way things are, but rather to point out that Mitchell and Papava and others are making accusations of democratic disappointment that beg the question of the standard they are using as a yardstick. Transparency International, Human Rights Watch et al. are correct in their criticisms of Georgia as needing greater transparency and equal application of the rule of law, but they are also right when they criticize the United States and Europe thus. To ask why the West didn't see November 7th 2007 coming is to ask the wrong question.

There are specific positions where the Georgian government is incorrect, and specific aspects of democracy I may wish they would understand as I do, or the US government may wish, or the human rights community, Mitchell or Papava may wish. But while I look forward to a western consensus on these matters along the lines of the human rights community's shared views, today there is none. The fact that the Georgian government's actions do not follow such an imaginary consensus is as likely to mean Georgia's inclusion in the club of Western nations as it is to mean her exclusion; that this is true is not Georgia's fault. Neither is it fair for European and American observers to chalk up Georgia's emphasis on increased security and territorial integrity to provincialism and domestic politics, or to a failure of influence of the West. The North Caucasus beyond Georgia's borders is a locus of terrorism and trafficking of nuclear materials, weapons and people, in part thanks to the permeability of the borders of the two separatist regions within Georgia and their function as poorly governed havens for illegal operations. Opaque military funding accounts are the wrong way to go about it, but a strong Georgian military and security apparatus is in the immediate interest of not just Europe and the US but every single one of Georgia's neighbors.

Sympathy For Serbia

I think this from THE EXILE sums it up best: Sympathy For Serbia.

De Waal On Kosovo And Its Implications

Separation Anxiety

More News About Nothing...

I hate writing whiny blog posts about the mundane issues that make up my life now, but sometimes it can't be helped. Here is a synopsis and closure about my year or so in Tbilisi.

Well, I thought it would be easy, then I thought I'll never get it done, but finally I was wrong on both counts: my apartment is done. There may be a scratch here and there, right angles are not quite 90 degrees, the hardwood isn't perfect, and so on, but it's really nice. Really, really nice. I'm satisfied. Ask anyone who knows me, I'm a perfectionist and there's now way I could be 100% happy. When I say it's nice, it means you'd love it.

When you buy a new apartment in Georgia, you get the concrete/brick shell. Now I have freshly painted walls and hardwood and ceramic tiled floors. The drapes are up. There whole place is wired for Dolby 5.1 sound (with wires inside the walls). There is a walk in shower that is a an extension of the bathroom. The horizontal kitchen cabinets have automatic accented levers that open them (like a hatchback's back door). The counter tops are solid granite with matching granite windowsills and a bar. There is halogen accent lighting. The balcony floor is real stone. Damn, it's nice.

Next, my house: a whole year of screwing around with paperwork. I've always loved Kafka, but now I understand he was a genius. My entire time engaged in this, I've felt like alternatively like the character in Before The Law and the character in The Trial.

I didn't quite get the building permit. So I lost the war.

... or at least so far. I won number of battles along the way though. I got my property lines changed to reflect the physical layout. I got the documentation that that parameterizes the kinds of reconstruction allowed for my house. I got the paperwork that approves the seismic stability of the existing structure and describes the parameters of what additions are possibles. I got the building plans drawn up by my Architect. I got the plans approved by the city.

What's left? I need to get the technical data from the city on the water, electricity, sewage and gas hookups. With this information I need to draw up the respective adjunct technical plans. I need to get those plans approved.

I've given power of attorney to my builder and he said he'll get those things done and have the house built by the end of the summer. The next time I'm here, I'll have a concrete shell with a roof.

So the war isn't over yet.

When I get here the next time I'll start doing everything afresh doing the same kind of renovations like I did in my apartment. Only it's 10 times the size. The apartment experience, I'm sure, will prove invaluable.

And I got Georgian citizenship. This was easy, but if I'm going to kick myself for the stuff that should have been easy that was hard, I should remind myself of what was easy that should have been hard.

I've got a new respect for immigrants, because in a sense, what I've gone through is what ever other immigrant must go through. The only difference maybe is that they are usually trying to support a family at the same time. Oh, and they don't whine as much as I do.

And there was some really weird stuff too. I edited a couple of issues of one of my English language newspapers here. I wrote an Article on Perovskaia Street. I edited an Article that the Azerbaijani ambassador wrote on Karabakh (he would have gone ballistic if he found out that an Armenian was asked to edit it). I worked as an industrial spy for a couple of weeks (finding out how well foreigners are treated by a cell phone company's sales staff).

All very strange for someone who really is a career civil servant in Ottawa.

I'm exhausted. I've never felt worse in my life. Everything aches. For the first time in my life I think I've understood what people mean by stress. It really can affect your health, if you let it. Once you let it get a hold of you, it's hard to stop it.

I know everything I've written is banal. This stuff is what every person both here and "back home" in Canada deals with. I can't help but feel I'm making a mountain out of mole hill. Maybe I am, but maybe I'm not. I just don't know. Home renovations? In one sense this stuff really is banal, but on the other sense, perhaps this is the kind of stuff that life is supposed to be made of. Who knows, really.

I'm sorry I'm leaving, but I'll be glad to be back in Canada for a bit. Leaving is easier this time than other times not just because I'm so worn out, but also because I absolutely know I'll be back.

Europe!

So, I'm coming out of my apartment and I can't believe my eyes: there's light in the stairway!

For those of you who think this shouldn't be surprising a brief transgression: all over the former Soviet Union, by Western standards the common areas of apartment buildings are in terrible shape.

For a long time I (like most people) used to think that this was a legacy of the collapse of the USSR. Although the individual apartments were privatized (actually, despite what you may have heard about private property, in people for the most part owned their apartments under communism), the actual buildings never were. It's not clear who owns the buildings right now - probably the state, but for all intents and purposes nobody. The problem is even during the Soviet union, judging by films, things weren't much better.

I have a different theory now: people here just have a different concept of inside and outside.

For us North Americans, you come "inside" when enter an apartment building. For a Russian or Georgian, you come "inside" when you enter an actual apartment. The common areas are more or less an extension of the street. Sort of the way we think of an underground parking garage.

But my building is new. It's supposed to end up as some supper duper luxury complex. It should be diffrent, but frankly I've never taken those claims very seriously.

Anyways, I come out of my apartment and they've up and installed a light on my my stairwell! As I walk down floors I see they've put lights on every floor!

When I come into the yard I look up and my whole building is lit up light a Christmas tree!. I see my neighbor talking to the security guard and as I pass them I ask my neighbor if he can believe his eyes. But he never gets a chance to answer: the security guard makes this grand sweeping gesture seeping his arm around the complex construction site and with a ear-to-ear ironic, but not completely ironic, grin says "Европа!" (Europe!).

And so there you have it: the question of Georgia's geography finally answered. Georgia + lighting = Europe. This is how the continental plates move it seems.

Lia Tarachansky Interviews Me About My Experiences As An Election Observer During The Palestinian Elections

Yesterday Lia Tarachansky interviewed me by Gtalk chat about my experiences as an Canadian election monitor in the Palestinian Territories. I'll post link to her article when it's ready, but for now here is the (mostly unedited) transcript of the interview itself.

LT: What is your history as an activist?

GL: I'm not an activist. From my experience activists are reactionary at best and at worst it's just a way for people to meet friends and have fun. I like keeping up with world events. I find cultures, people and especially conflicts interesting. I've always thought local news is boring, national news not much more interesting, and world news intriguing. These are probably the reasons why I went.

LT: When did you first start getting involved in the politics of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict?

GL: As I said, I've never been particularly interesting in the middle east But... then this opportunity came up to monitor the elections there, and I realized that I really should be more interested in the region and so I volunteered.

LT: How did you find out about the Palestinian elections?

GL: I read about them in The Citizen probably.

LT: Why did you decide to go?

GL: To be fair, the fact that my parents are from Egypt probably has kept my interest in the region somewhat paradoxical... On the one hand I hate following my parents footsteps, on the other sometimes it can't be avoided.

LT: What was the biggest contributor to you actually going?

GL: I decided to go because I realized that I really ought to be more interested, and I firmly believe that travel is the best way to really find out about something like this.

In this case I was right too... I have to say I realize now that a lot of what I read about the region is bullshit.

LT: Were you in the West Bank or Gaza? What was that like?

GL: I was in the West Bank. The first day I was in Ramallah - that was a completely European Environment. I could have probably have found a disco if I looked. But I monitored deep in Hamas territory's and that was another world. Basically no women on the street and those that were 100% covered. It was best to simply ignore the women.

LT: What was your travel like? Were you allowed to travel freely? If so, what was your experience at checkpoints?

GL: Well, it was a bit surreal, actually. Several times I had IDF snipers point guns at me at checkpoints and track me as I crossed.

Here's some news for you readers: you think that you're a Canadian, and that everyone likes you, right? Well, I'll tell you, the people at those checkpoints don't like anyone. The feeling I got was that they've had it with foreigners coming there. They think that all the foreigners are there to help Palestinians, and they just hate them. But the thing was that Israel REALLY wanted these elections to go through. The feeling was that Abbas' people were going to win, and the Israelis needed a negotiating partner with a mandate. We were there to help the Israelis as much as the Palestinians.

But the soldiers didn't see that way at all. It's odd but only towards the end it seemed that information filtered down to the IDF soldiers not to harass us, and then it was all smiles.

Well, I'm not against racial profiling. I don't recall any problems like that. I mention that I'm not against RP so that my so-called biases are on the table.

LT: How do you feel about these agencies interfering with the fairness of the election monitors?

GL: There were several days of training conducted first by CIDA working with DFAIT and then one day by Department of Defence. The CIDA/DFAIT was in Ottawa, and then Defence training was in Petawawa. I DONT think they interfered. The whole organization bent over backwards to make sure we were unbiased. Most of the stuff they said (like almost everything Government of Canada says) was at the grade school level - common sense really, but in no way were there any biases that I saw.

LT: Can you talk a bit about what sort of training you received?

GL: The CIDA people as usual were totally useless. They gave infinite talks about "cultural sensitivity" to a room full of people who all had been abroad more than you can imagine. Typically Canadian: All theory and no information. The DFAIT speakers were much better. They had actually worked in Arabic Countries. They said "Don't do this", "Do that:. When people say this they mean this. They gave us a crash course on Arabic culture. They were great.

The DoD training was all about how to handle potential conflict situations. First they showed us a bunch of guns. You know, Canadians are always freaked out by guns, and that's not good. If you have to be around guns, it's best to be calm.

So, they showed us a bunch of guns and let us touch them and stuff. Then they explained what each of them can do. Sounds stupid, but actually a pretty good idea. Then they gave us a bunch of talks on negotiating skills. Not on how to get a raise, but on how to not get shot. How to keep you mouth shut at the right times. Etc.

Finally, there was role-playing where we had to deal with fake obstructive IDF personnel and then finally a kidnapping scenario.

All that was very useful.

LT: Did your sense of safety alter knowing what these guns can do?

GL: Well, no. But it was interesting and useful. There are a lot of guns in Palestine and familiarity helps.

LT: Do you feel this training came in handy in Israel/Palestine?

GL: Yes. Very. Well, there was constant shooting near our hotel.

Then one day there was an RPG attack. Another day someone actually got killed and the whole neighborhood was very tense. People were expecting skirmish as families and friends sought revenge. In the end serious fighting didn't erupt though. This was all intra-Palestinian fighting, by the way.

LT: Could you compare your general feeling about life in Palestine after the training, and after arriving there?

GL: Well, I used to have much more sympathy for Israel before than now. I still have a fair amount of sympathy for Israel, it's really in a no-win position... But... I mean I used to think that the Palestinians were a bunch of yahoos who couldn't be reasoned with. After seeing what their lives were like, my perspective changed. I mean, I can't put into words what they go through. They’re constantly humiliated. I mean, it's hard to say if its just callousness on Israel's part of it's a deliberate policy. I'm not even sure what would be worse... In any case it's terrible

LT: What was your general sense of the Palestinian people before going to Gaza?

GL: First, I want to explain some of my misconceptions about the Palestinians. I was expecting them to be a bunch of uneducated hicks. I mean after a few generations living in refugee camps, what could you expect? Well, wrong.

They’re profoundly intelligent and educated. I hardly met one that didn't speak at least three languages. English, French, German, Hebrew, Russian and English were all common. Many had lived abroad. There certainly is a drive to education.

LT: What would you comment about their strive for education in the face of living in refugee camps?

GL: Well, first, I'd like to say that when you think of refugee camps, you think of tents or barracks or something. The refugee camps are indistinguishable from the regular cities now.

If someone didn't tell you that you were entering a refugee camp, you wouldn't know. I couldn't tell them apart from regular cities and neighborhoods. I had to be told when we were entering one or leaving. People have been living there so long they've built nice houses. There are stores and restaurants and snack bars and cafes

but in general the housing is not as good probably. There is another factor too. The Palestinians have had exposure to the Israelis! There are a number of very positive aspects to this. A lot of the Jewish respect for education, work ethic, democratic principles, seems to have rubbed off. The Palestinians I met were quite open about this. One thing they mentioned pretty often was that these elections were important to them because they wanted to show the world that they were just as capable as the Israelis of running a democracy. So it's pretty complicated, or at least that was my impression.

LT: How were you received in Gaza?

GL: As for interacting with the population, you land, you get on a bus, you go to your hotel, you read the election laws on the bus and plane... Then you try and sleep or read the election code some more... The point is that you just don't have time to meet a lot of people. The people we were working with, the locals were all NGO people and the lefty types (the Canadian government had hired them). Of course they were going to receive us well - that was a given... But what was a surprise was how well Hamas received us. There were lots of Hamas people at the poling station. So this put us in a paradoxical position: Hamas is a terrorist organization, so contact with them is a serious offence. But then, you can't monitor the elections and be fair if you ignore half the people in the polling stations can you? The Canadian policy on this was not to have a policy. They didn't say so, but they pretty well left it up to us to handle this: the only solution really. Any instruction one-way or the other would have been ridiculous. I (of course) decided to treat them just like everyone else. So to get back to you question: how did they treat us? My answer: fantastic. They were smart, educated, dedicated, committed people. They were as interested in the fairness of the election as much as anyone else. That was my impression.

Ant they were principled too. You could see it. They just did things by the book. They had organization. The only thing is they really didn't feel all that comfortable dealing with the women observers. They certainly wouldn’t shake their hands, something that some of the idiotic women tried to make them do. Trying to make someone do something that goes against their religion just for the sake of know-it-all-ness is idiotic. Might as well have tried to make them eat pork too. If they didn't like them, they should just as well have stayed home. Bye the way, the Hamas people would were very polite.They simply looked down, and shook their heads with some embarrassment.

LT: What about Israel?

GL: We had very little time Israel. On the way back we went to the Dead Sea for about 45 minutes. And we had about 3 hours in Jerusalem

LT: Were you afraid for your safety?

GL: Our translators, guards, and drivers felt unsafe sometimes.

LT: What is it like to work as an election monitor?

GL: Monitoring an election is really demanding hard work. When we weren't working we were sleeping. I got to know my translator and driver pretty well. You have training sessions. You study the maps, you try and figure out where the poling stations are, you plan you route, you visit as many as you can, you fill in your forms... On Election day you work till the morning because all night votes are being tabulated and counted. The rest of the time you get about 3 hours of sleep a night.

LT: How does a polling station work?

GL: You have the CEC (central election committee) running the place. The staff is composed in part of people from all the parties. Their supposed to watch each other. Also there are observers from each of the parties. And then local NGOs observing. Finally international observers i.e. me.

LT: What were your translator and driver like?

GL: Well, the translator and drivers were just what you might expect. The translators were lefty sorts, pretty steeped in the "peace" movement. They all had NGO connections, since they were educated and that's where all the good jobs are. They’re what my Armenian (Yerevan) friends call NGOshiki or humanrightshiki. The drivers/translators were locals of course. They [translators] all loved us... but really what else could we expect from them... These guys all have western educations, and western values! They get salaries from people like us!

LT: Who issued the guards that were with you?

GL: They were PA authority security. That's a bit odd actually. Political parties have their own armies. Odder yet was that one political party was providing security for impartial observers.

LT: Did you feel your presence had an impact on the objectivity of the elections?

GL: Well, in my view (and in the view of most people) it's impossible to have proper elections without international observers. As I mentioned before there was a real sense that the Palestinians WANTED these elections. They were really proud of their first step as a democracy...

It's just that they elected the wrong people. And now I guess their paying the price. Well, for one, they should have not [voted for] a group that pledges to destroy Israel. The problem is the Palestinians never saw it in those terms. For them it was a choice between PA corruption and Hamas with (hopefully) better governance.

The problem is, the destruction of Israel is part of the Hamas platform.

LT: Considering the political situation in Gaza right now, how do you feel about those elections?

GL: But, I must say, the situation has in my view been totally aggravated by what the international community has done. Hamas DID talk about a "long term truce"... etc. And Hamas isn't a uniform organization either (no org is). This cutting off of funds. The strangulation of the Hamas government was just stupid. Yes their terrorist, but who isn't?

Israel isn't? The point is that it would have been much better to accept the sad fact of Hamas' victory and engage them, rather than isolate them. What we did gave the no choice but violence, and it strengthen the hand of the militants. But this of course goes beyond my experiences as an election observer and I'm hardly qualified as a political analyst. It's been sad for me to see what happened immediately after the elections and sadder yet to see how it's all played out. (By immediately after I meant the US and EU reaction.)

Oh, I should add that only the Russian reaction made any sense.

They invited Hamas to Moscow. Man, did that piss off Israel.

LT: What do you think about the ability of the international community to get involved in the results of Palestinian elections?

GL: Look, I don't agree with the EU and US reaction, but i think it's wrong to criticize them on that level. Nobody cut off funding or contact because the elections were flawed. They never said they were. But if a country (even democratically) followed had a politic that the US doesn't agree with, they US does not have an obligation to support them.

LT: Was the funding cut off due to the outcome of the elections?

GL: No, the funding was not cut off due to that. That's just not correct.

The funding was cut off do to Hamas’ politics. If Hamas renounced violence, and recognized Israel's right to exist there would have been no problem.

But don't you feel there is an enormous double standard there?

No. Where's the double standard?

LT: No one is asking Israel to denounce violence and recognize Palestine's right to exist

GL: True. But the IDF is a pretty good army. The Palestinians have a choice to make: cut the best deal they can, or sacrifice another generation. Look: Terrorism has gotten the Palestinians so far. I firmly believe that without resistance and violence Israel would have gobbled up all that land and destroyed the people... But... I don't think it's going to get them any further. There comes a time when ever terrorist organization has to reform itself

LT: What do you think would be the reaction of the world if the United States cut off funding to Israel?

GL: I don't know, but I certainly think they should. Let Israel solve it's own problems.

LT: Do you think this is possible without the U.S. support?

GL: Sure. The problems would get solved a lot faster (and probably better too).

LT: Do you see yourself getting involved again with middle eastern politics?

GL: Not really. I'm pretty fascinated by the ex-Soviet space.

Like I said, I really don't know much about the middle east. The one country in the Middle East that does fascinate me is Iran. And I couldn't tell you why.

LT: What would you say now to activists involved mostly in dialog about the Middle East.?

GL: I don't know. I'm pretty cynical about all this western advice. I just don't see election monitoring that way. We [Canada] have international election monitors by the way. It's not aid.

LT: What would you have to say about Israeli violations of the fairness of the elections?

GL: First, are you aware that in fact there WERE some serious violations in the conduct of the elections. They did make it into the report, but were not all that widely publicized (do journalists ever read the read first sources?) The violations were all in Jerusalem. Israel ran the elections in Jerusalem. Once it became clear that Hamas might win (later it became clear that they were going to win by a landslide) Israel banned all Hamas advertising in Jerusalem. How fair is that? Also, the polling was conducted at post offices (run by Israel) and there were huge lines. Many people could not vote despite the fact they waited all day. In the final report, this was mentioned, but was given secondary mention after a most minor infraction. All over the west bank there was campaign posters closer to the poling stations that was allowed by the election code. This was clearly a technical error. All parties had posters too close... This was an honest error (and every election has them)

During our debriefing I mentioned this: how could the first thing be given less importance than the second!? And basically I was told that the issue is politically sensitive (as if that wasn't clear).

LT: And how do you feel about the nature of the mission?

GL: This was a Canadian observation mission What is that anyway? The idea of having international monitors is impartiality. But states (though they probably are more impartial that locals) still have their biases. It's much better to send observers to international organization that are mandated to do this kind of thing like the OSCE and NDI, etc. rather than have Canadian missions. It's just a way of keeping things a bit further arms length. But the problem is that this isn't as flashy... And where have we run missions (as Canadian missions)? Palestine (huge Canadian Diaspora) and Ukrainian (huge Canadian Diaspora)...

One could almost think that it was a bit about vote getting...

Liberal vote getting at that. On closing, when Hamas got their upset victory Steven Harper got his in Ottawa. Most of the observers were more aghast at Steven Harper's victory than Hamas' (we got the news of Steven Harper's victory in Palestine)! I found that pretty funny.

LT: And about Iran…

GL: The one country in the Middle East that does fascinate me is Iran. And I couldn't tell you why. Mostly maybe it's because I've never met an Iranian I didn't like. Or maybe because Iranian women are simply stunning. When I think of Iran it's hardly the current regime that interests me. Iran's always been super progressive. The current regime is a total aberration

Google Reader (And GL.Mimino.Org)

You know, it's not every day I gush on about some new technology, but once in a while it's hard to hold back.

This minute, this very minute, go and sign up for Google Reader.

Right now. The link's just above, so click there.

Are you still reading this post? I said right now! Here I'll put the link down here as well to make it easier for you: Google Reader.

Sigh... Why doesn't anyone take my advice? Oh well. If you're going to keep reading the least I can do is keep writing.

What is Google Reader? In short, it's an online RSS reader.

What's an RSS reader and what makes Google Reader so great? Well, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication and it's a mechanism for websites to publish information about themselves in a manner that other programs and websites can read, parse and extract information from. An RSS reader like Google Reader does just that: it sucks information from sites that you are interested in and presents that information to you in one place.

Why would you want to do that, when you can read the original sites? Simple, the RSS feeds (as they are called) are date and time stamped, so your RSS reader can show you what's new on each site. Imagine looking at one page and seeing what's new on all the websites that you're interested in. Do i have your attention now? Good check out Google Reader right now.

Still here? Ok, there's more. What I've told you so far, any RSS reader will do. What makes Google reader so cool? Well, in a word Google.

The longer answer is the following: Google really understands the Internet. They're not interested in just making a great RSS reader, they want to restructure the Internet.

First, Google doesn't believe that you should have to install software to make you 're computer work. You should only have to use your browser to open software, just like you open regular websites. That's why Google Reader is an online RSS Reader.

Second, Google understands information, and gradually they're coming around to the idea that not just search engines are going to make information accessible. They want you to help them. How will you help them? In part, by sharing you Google Reader items publicly or with your friends.

As you read with Google Reader if you think anything that you're looking at is interesting you can share it. Anything you share, people can look at a number of ways: first everyone gets a page where their shared links go.

For example, here's my page of what I'd like to share with you)!

But wait, but wouldn't it be great if you could publish a RSS feed of that page itself? Well yes, it would be great! And (yes, you guessed it) you can!

For example, here's my feed of what I'd like to share with you! You can plug this link into Google Reader (or into any other RSS reader for that matter).

But what if you don't use an RSS reader (and after reading this, god knows why, you're still not going to check out Google Reader)? Well, dear reader-technophobe, I think it's so important that you read, what I think you should, that I've made it dead simple. Look on the sidebar: just below my blog archive I've put the feed of my shared items, so that you can not only read what I'm writing, but now, you can also read what I'm reading!

Neat huh?

Oh, and one more thing Google Reader it's by Google, so it's got an amazing user interface! Really, amazing.

And I ask you again: what could be cooler?

Have you ever watched Bueller's Day Off? Actually, it doesn't matter: look what are you still reading for? This post is over! Go sign up for Google Reader!

Какие Люди!

Кажется жаренные или тушеные... но окажется, что разливные!

По-грузински "пиво" - "луди" (с грузинскими буквами "ლუდი").

And don't forget to say thanks, because, as you can read for yourself, you are welcome (sort of, anyway).