The US will soon be retiring their space shuttles to replace them with a new vehicle, scheduled for 2013. Until then, the Americans will be riding on Russian Soyuz capsules. But the Soyuz itself, a 40 year old technology with many modernizations, is on its way out, to be replaced with bigger better platforms.

The replacement for the will be the Kliper, a ship carrying 6 crew and a half ton of cargo. It is scheduled to fly its maiden voyage some time in 2010. The ship is about twice the size of the Soyuz and will require much larger rockets, most likely the Zenit class of booster rockets, in order to make orbit. It will return to earth by extending wings and gliding down, for a soft landing.

Interestingly enough, if things go according to plant, the new, larger Kliper, will actually save money. The present Soyuz missions run between $20 to $30 million each (compared to the American space shuttles at around $300 million each). Kliper flights are supposed to move more equipment and people for less money, but even it the costs stay the same, with more room on the ship, there will be room for more space tourists and at $20 million per pop, the ships will earn a profit, with just one added passenger.

Development of the Kliper is also priced at the low cost of $1 billion, compare that to the $10 billion for the American Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), which is still on the drawing board.

But the Kliper is only the first modern step in a new plan by the Russian space agency to conquer the inner sphere of our solar system. Next on the development board is a manned spacecraft powered by a nuclear electric engine. For decades, Russia and the Soviet Union have developed nuclear powered satellites, which did not have to rely upon easily damaged solar arrays, for power. Of course those put out only kilowatts of power, while this ships engines will have to run on the megawatt range.

The ship’s design is scheduled to be complete by 2012 and a finished by 2021, at an estimated cost of 17 billion rubles, or $580 million. More realistic estimates put the price tag at $1 to $1.5 billion, over the next decade.

By Kate Botterill

The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall was celebrated by thousands of Europeans and World leaders at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany last week. World leaders at the celebrations on Monday night talked of Mauerfall as a decisive moment in history signalling a political shift from repression and state control to freedom, prosperity and individual opportunity. The political speeches proclaimed 1989 as a turning point in overcoming the ideological force of socialism, where east Germans emerged from the “darkness” of a socialist existence towards self-liberation and unification with the west. Representations of East and West have long since been used to categorise regions geopolitically, constructing a binary between the post-socialist world and ‘the rest/the west’.

Critiquing such representations of East and Central Europe, Stenning and Horschelmann (2008) argue for a reconsideration of history, geography and difference in the ‘post-socialist world’. They support an approach to theory in which history is non-linear and non-deterministic and, drawing on post-colonial discourse, suggest a deconstruction of the east-west binary. They read post-socialism as extending beyond East and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, re-examining geographical categories and existing histories, and advocating methodologies that validate ‘the subaltern, the discursive and the ethnographic’ (330). Thus, they pay particular attention to the ‘lived experiences’ of people in the region and challenge a ‘persistent tendency to marginalise the experiences of the non-western world in a discourse of globalisation and universalisation’ (312).

Read Berlin marks 20 years since the fall of the wall in the Guardian

Stenning, A. and Horschelmann, K. (2008) History, Geography and Difference in the Post-Socialist World: Or, do we still need Post-Socialism in Antipode

October 30 2009

Migrant workers in Israel’s agriculture sector are among the most exploited, according to a 28 October report by Kav LaOved, an Israeli NGO campaigning for the rights of disadvantaged workers in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Ninety percent of such workers work more hours than allowed under Israeli law, without overtime payments, said the report, which has been presented to members of parliament.

The report summarizes hundreds of complaints by agricultural workers and dozens of inspections by Kav LaOved volunteers at work sites around the country, and paints a grim picture of systematic exploitation and severe violations of workers’ rights in the agricultural sector.

Hanna Zohar, Kav LaOved director, said the workers, mostly Thai, are completely unaware of their rights.

“Having paid US $8-10,000 to work in Israel, they are prime material for abuse by the farmers, as they are afraid to lose their jobs and not able to pay off the loans taken to cover these payments to the middlemen,” Zohar said.

The launch of the report has been timed to coincide with the current campaign by farmers for additional permits for migrant workers, and is intended to further public debate on the issue.

Farmers have been demonstrating for more permits in recent weeks and there have been violent clashes with the police.

Some 30,000 migrant workers are employed in the agricultural sector, mostly from Thailand, Nepal, Sri Lanka and some from the Palestinian Authority, according to Kav LaOved and official figures from the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour.

The Thai workers come from rural areas after paying middlemen in Thailand and Israel, and most work in remote and isolated locations, unaware of their legal rights, according to Kav LaOved’s research done in the past year.

The report said it is common practice in many agri-businesses to dock leave, and some employers give workers only one day off a month.

Employers who withhold passports – strongly condemned by the legal authorities – are still commonplace, according to Kav LaOved and Moked, another NGO which campaigns for the rights of migrants.

Since the beginning of 2009, 10 percent of agricultural workers (2,950) have been injured, the report said.

Harsh living conditions

Evidence of harsh living conditions and demeaning treatment crop up routinely in Kav LaOved’s inspection reports.

At a visit to one farm, IRIN found some workers living at a potato crop disposal site, in a small, stifling container. Workers told IRIN they cannot leave as they must pay off huge debts in their home countries.

The Israeli Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labour spokespersons’ unit said: “The department of foreign workers has been investigating private manpower and building cooperatives to prevent [the] charging [of] migrant workers sums that exceed those allowed by lawâEuro¦ In 2009, dozens of licenses were revokedâEuro¦ We ask Kav LaOved to work jointly with the attorney in charge of foreign workers’ rights in the ministry, Iris Maayan, and allow the different enforcement factors in GOI [Government of Israel] offices to work more efficiently. The issue is of great importance for the Ministry.”

Source

Migrant caregivers in Israel – report to the UN Migrant Workers Convention
by: Kav LaOved

Migrant caregivers in Israel:

problems and recommendations

General background

All elderly and disabled Israeli citizens who meet disability criteria set by the Israeli National Insurance Institute are allowed to employ a domestic migrant caregiver with National Insurance subsidy. The number of permits available to employ migrant caregivers in Israel today stands at about 55,000. It is illegal to employ domestic migrant workers other than as caregivers. Most migrant caregivers in Israel come from south east Asia (Philippines, India, Sri Lanka, Nepal), and some from eastern Europe (former soviet union, Romania). The vast majority of migrant caregivers in Israel are women.

The legal status of migrant workers in Israel depends on their active employment by a person with a migrant caregiver employment permit. Workers who lose their work due to dismissal, quitting or employer death must find new legal employment within at most 90 days or leave the country. As will be explained below, most employers prefer to bring new migrant workers from abroad, rather than employ a worker who is already in Israel. The result is that the number of migrant workers who entered Israel with a legal migrant caregiver visa, and whose maximum period of legal work in Israel (63 months) has not expired, is 10,000-40,000 higher than the number of available permits (55,000). Migrant caregivers who have lost their legal status are usually employed illegally in domestic work.

Since the beginning of 2009 the employment of migrant caregivers must be arranged through a certified Israeli migrant caregiver placement agency, which shares with the employer the responsibility for the rights of the migrant caregiver. These agencies cooperate with overseas agents to recruit workers.

Problems

1. Brokerage fees

Migrant caregivers in Israel are charged a brokerage fee typically ranging between $6,000 and $13,000 in order to get a legal migrant caregiver visa. This charge is illegal according to Israeli law, but no effective enforcement is conducted to prevent it. This money is shared between recruiters in countries of origin and Israeli job brokers.

Brokerage fees encourage brokers to bring new paying workers from abroad, rather than assign to work migrants already in Israel. This creates a surplus of migrant caregivers in Israel, which enables reduction of wages and exploitation.

Brokerage fees force workers to go into debt. The interest rates are high gray market rates, and many workers mortgage their property to raise the money. Failure to repay the debt puts the life and livelihood of the worker and her family in danger. This debt, therefore, prevents workers from returning to their countries of origin before earning enough money to repay the debt, even if it means working illegally.

1. The binding arrangement

Migrant caregivers in Israel must be actually employed by a permit carrying employer to retain their legal status. Migrant workers are thus bound to their employer, and work termination means a threat of deportation. This arrangement was declared a “modern form of slavery” by Israel’s High Court of Justice already in 2006, but the State has not essentially changed this arrangement. Last year the State was found guilty of contempt of teh court.

For further information on the legal status of migrant workers in Israel see:

http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/media-view_eng.asp?id=2275, http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/media-view_eng.asp?id=2263

1. Fraud and labor rights violations

The high brokerage fees are an incentive to bring migrant caregivers into Israel even if there is no work awaiting them. This results in the type of fraud called “flying visa”: a worker is brought into Israel legally, but the broker who brought her does not provide her with work. Given the surplus of migrant caregivers in Israel, the worker is unlikely to find alternative employment, and risks losing her legal status and being deported before repaying her debt.

Another kind of fraud is “open visa”: an employer who has a migrant worker employment permit, but who does not actually require the service, registers a migrant caregiver as legally employed for a fee and/or services, while the worker actually makes a living by other means (usually illegal cleaning or au-pair work for other employers). If authorities expose this fraud, the worker will lose her legal status and be deported. This fact allows employers to extort ever increasing sums of money for the “open visa” they provide, and sometimes leads to debt bondage situations, where migrant workers keep getting into debt to hold on to their visa.

The reality of a surplus of migrant caregivers in situations of debt and threatened loss of legal status forces workers to accept illegally low salaries, withheld pay, non payment of social benefits and forced overtime. Workers are sometimes forced to do work that’s not related to their job description, such as cleaning for family members. In some cases workers must accept poor lodging and food, confinement, threats and violence, and some workers are even forced to provide sexual services. Such circumstances may amount to trafficking and forced labor.

State enforcement mechanisms are usually highly inefficient. Investigations are poorly conducted due to low prioritization and lack of adequate, reliable and objective translation services (this extends to courts as well). Sanctions are rarely set on employers; if sanctions are set, they are usually restricted to fines too small to deter offenders. Confiscation of migrant worker employment permits of abusive and delinquent employers is extremely rare. This means that repeated offenders can continue employing migrant caregivers.

While crimes against migrant workers are not properly tried and sanctioned, Israel invests in a 200 inspector task force to hunt down and deport migrant workers who lost their legal status, including those who lost it due to fraud, exploitation and abuse

This encourages further abuse of migrant workers, as employers can count on the victims being deported, rather than confronting them in court.

For further information concerning crimes against migrant workers and inadequate enforcement see: http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/media-view_eng.asp?id=2337,

http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/media-view_eng.asp?id=2094

1. Suitability for work

Some workers come to work in Israel as caregivers, but speak no English or Hebrew, and are therefore unable to communicate with most prospective employers. These workers are likely to lose their jobs and legal status, and find themselves deported and in debt. Some workers are not physically strong enough to lift and move heavy patients. These workers are also less likely than others to find legal employment, and therefore risk deportation.

2. Work load and overtime

Migrant workers in Israel are usually paid for 8 hours of work per day. In fact, most of them are either employed or on call for 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. The legal status of overtime and on-call hours is not resolved, and the issue is deliberated at the High Court of Justice.

The lack of clear definitions of work, overtime and on-call hours leads to situations where some workers are forced to actively work to exhaustion, caring for several family members and cleaning large households. The situation is aggravated where migrant caregivers have to care for more than one patient who requires constant care (such as a married couple of disabled people in a poor health situation).

3. Health, safety and social security

Most migrant caregivers in Israel are employed or on call 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. The intimate circumstances of domestic work make the boundaries between employer and employee vague. This may result in positive family-like relations, but can also deteriorate to sexual harassment and exploitation.

Migrant caregivers are often left alone with a single care patient, and have no access to friends and community life. Sometimes they are strictly prohibited from leaving the home where they work except to accompany their employer to receive medical care. This puts great mental stress on migrant caregivers. The result is a higher than usual rate of mental problems and nervous breakdowns, which in rare occasions result in violent treatment of helpless patients.

Many migrant workers have to lift heavy patients several times a day, and carry them between the bed, chair, toilet, bath and car or taxi. This puts great strain on the worker’s muscles and back, and leads to severe injuries that may result in permanent damage.

The mandatory health insurance for migrant workers in Israel is far inferior to the insurance provided to Israeli citizens and residents by law, and expires if a worker becomes incapable of working for three months or longer. In such cases insurance companies can send the worker off to her country of origin, where adequate care may not be accessible. Many insurance companies prefer this solution over actually covering costly medical care.

Workers’ right to social security is very limited, and is covered only partially by the National insurance law, even if workers reside in Israel for many years. Pension rights, social security and health insurance are not coordinated in bilateral agreements between Israel and countries of origin. This results in lack of continuity of insurance coverage.

4. Family

Migrant workers in Israel may work in Israel legally for up to 63 months. If they continue working for the same employer, they can continue working indefinitely. Nevertheless, migrant workers do not gain the right for family reunification regardless of their duration of stay.

In fact, if the Interior Ministry finds that a migrant worker has a close relative working in Israel, or has coupled with another migrant worker (whether actually married or not), one of the related workers will lose their legal status and be deported. Relatives of migrant workers can’t even travel to visit the workers in Israel. Migrant workers who have children lose their work permits and must leave Israel within 3 months of giving birth. For further information see: http://www.kavlaoved.org.il/tal/No%20state%20for%20love.doc

Migrant workers require permission from employers to visit their country of origin. Without such permission, the worker might not be allowed to return to Israel, even if she has not completed the maximum period of 63 months of work. Employers sometime refuse, as they would require replacement care. As a result some patients must choose between continuing their work in Israel and visiting a dying relative or attending a family occasion.

5. Residency and citizenship

Migrant workers, even if they reside lawfully in Israel for many years, do not have the right to acquire permanent legal status in the country. As a result, workers may face deportation after two decades or more of lawfully residing in Israel, if their employer passes away or the employment relationship is otherwise terminated.

Israel does not see itself in any way bound to recognize migrant workers’ children right to gain lawful status in the country. As a result, a group of migrant workers’ children reside in Israel without documented status, which severely restricts their access to basic rights.

Recommendations:

1. As long as a worker’s legal status is linked to her active employment, employers can extort migrant workers to accept exploitation and abuse. The legal status of migrant workers must be completely independent from their work situation, and they must be free to choose their employer from among those allowed to employ migrant workers.

2. Exuberant brokerage fees lead to debt bondage and force workers to accept exploitation. The recruitment of migrant workers must therefore be taken away from private brokers and handled by State agents or international agents such as the IOM. Close scrutiny must be taken to prevent corruption and illegal collection of brokerage fees.

3. The State must share in the responsibility to provide workers with employment opportunities. If the number of workers allowed legal entry for work in a specific sector exceeds the number of prospective legal posts, migrant workers must be allowed to work in other sectors, or provided with unemployment benefits.

4. Mass deportation of migrant workers encourages their exploiters to force workers into illegal situations and have them deported, rather than confront the workers’ legitimate claims. Enforcement must therefore prioritize protection of the human and labor rights of migrant workers, severely sanction abusive employers, and revoke the migrant worker employment permits of repeated offenders. Enforcement agents must have access to adequate and reliable interpreters.

5. Work load, overtime and on call time must be well defined for domestic work, so that general work time laws can be applied.

6. Migrant workers’ health and safety must be protected by adequate insurance, which covers extended disability, and subject to social worker scrutiny.

7. Migrant workers must be allowed enough free time and mobility to associate with their friends and conduct healthy community life.

8. Migrant workers’ right to family life must be acknowledged, especially when a worker remains in the country of destination for an extended period of time. Long term migrant workers and their families must have access to permanent residency and citizenship.

9. There must be active and efficient bilateral cooperation between countries of origin and Israel aimed at protecting workers from exploitation and abuse through all stages of their migration, from recruitment to repatriation. In particular, social security and health insurance must be rendered continuous, and the recruitment process must verify that workers can communicate with prospective employers and are physically able to do the required job.

10. Israel must sign and ratify and obey the International Convention for the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and the members of their Families.

Source

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I blogged recently about Estonia’s achievement at being included, for the fourth consecutive year, among the global top ten in the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) annual press freedom index. Unfortunately this news seems to have escaped the notice of the editors of The Economist Newspaper (sic). Or perhaps they preferred simply to ignore it, since Estonia’s standing on the list would have diluted their argument, set out in this week’s issue (October 24th 2009), that “media freedom is under threat across eastern Europe.”

The article does cite deplorable examples of press freedom infringements in several countries, including Poland (ranked #37), Slovakia (#44), and Bulgaria (#68). But The Economist–one of the finest English-language news publications in the world–goes a step too far in attempting to paint the entire region with the same broad brush.

No mention is made of Estonia, and Estonia is flatly omitted from the list of countries and rankings that accompanies the article. Most egregiously, after briefly bemoaning media restrictions in Britain and Italy, the article warns that “the climate farther east, in the former Soviet Union, is far chillier.”

For the record, RSF’s Press Freedom Barometer for Estonia shows:

• Journalists killed: 0
• Media assistants killed: 0
• Journalists imprisoned: 0
• Media assistants imprisoned: 0
• Cyberdissidents imprisoned: 0

So I offer this friendly reminder to The Economist: media freedom is actually in pretty good shape in some countries in eastern Europe, and indeed in the former Soviet Union. They are called Estonia (#6), Lithuania (#10), and Latvia (#13).

The EU fact-finding mission, headed by Switzerland’s Heidi Tagliavini, into the causes of last summer’s war in Georgia has released its Report. The Daily Telegraph has misrepresented the latter’s conclusions as amounting to an attribution of primary blame to the Georgian side in the conflict, with the satisfying result of inducing some premature gloating on the part of various pro-Putin elements who didn’t bother to read the text themselves. Whereas the Daily Telegraph’s headline proclaimed ‘EU blames Georgia for starting war with Russia’, this is untrue: the Report is damning primarily for the Russian side. It is characteristic of the EU’s customary inability to take clear moral standpoints that its fact-finding mission has drawn up an extremely balanced, informed and objective summary of the facts but then shied away from drawing the appropriate conclusion.

The report rules absolutely against Georgia on one count only: that its inital assault on South Ossetia was not in accordance with international law. It states: ’There is the question of whether the use of force by Georgia in South Ossetia, beginning with the shelling of Tskhinvali during the night of 7/8 August 2008, was justifiable under international law. It was not.’ The report goes on to state that the Georgian assault was not proportionate to the requirements of a defensive operation, while South Ossetia’s actions to repel this attack were in accordance with international law. After that, the report rules against Russia on almost every count. To sum up:

1) The report acknowledges the massive and sustained provocations to which Georgia had been subjected by Russia in the period preceding the conflict. Among these, ‘The mass conferral of Russian citizenship to Georgian nationals and the provision of passports on a massive scale on Georgian territory, including its breakaway provinces, without the consent of the Georgian Government runs against the principles of good neighbourliness and constitutes an open challenge to Georgian sovereignty and an interference in the internal affairs of Georgia’ (p. 18). Furthermore, ‘The decision by the Russian Federation to withdraw the 1996 CIS restrictions on Abkhazia (March 2008) and to authorise direct relations with the Abkhaz and South Ossetian sides in a number of fields (April 2008), added another dimension to an already complex situation in the area’ (p. 31).

2) The report acknowledges that the Georgian offensive did not come out of the blue, but in the context of escalating military preparations and activities by both sides over the preceding months, involving exchanges of fire and explosions on both sides of the front lines, so that the ‘ever-mounting tensions in the conflict zone were approaching the level of open military confrontation’ and ‘the stage seemed all set for a military conflict’ (pp. 18-19).

3) The report states that although ‘[t]he Mission is not in a position to consider as sufficiently substantiated the Georgian claim concerning a large-scale Russian military incursion into South Ossetia before 8 August 2008′, nevertheless it does not reject the claim; on the contrary, it lists several pieces of evidence that lend weight to Georgia’s accusations of a preparatory Russian military build-up prior to the war, including ‘the provision by the Russian side of training and military equipment to South Ossetian and Abkhaz forces prior to the August 2008 conflict’; ‘an influx of volunteers or mercenaries from the territory of the Russian Federation to South Ossetia through the Roki tunnel and over the Caucasus range in early August, as well as the presence of some Russian forces in South Ossetia, other than the Russian JPKF battalion, prior to 14.30 hours on 8 August 2008′; and the fact that ‘it seems that the Russian air force started its operations against Georgian targets, including those outside South Ossetian military boundaries, already in the morning of 8 August, i.e. prior to the time given in the Russian official information’ (p. 20).

4) The Report rejects Moscow’s claim that it was waging a defensive or legal war in Georgia. It notes that ‘much of the Russian action went far beyond the reasonable limits of defence’; that Russia’s actions ‘cannot be regarded as even remotely commensurate with the threat to Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia’; that Russia’s ‘continued destruction that came after the ceasefire agreement was not justifiable by any means’; and that ‘the Russian military action outside South Ossetia was essentially conducted in violation of international law’. It therefore concludes that ‘insofar as such extended Russian military action reaching out into Georgia was conducted in violation of international law, Georgian military forces were acting in legitimate self-defence under article 51 of the UN Charter.’ Consequently, ‘In a matter of a very few days, the pattern of legitimate and illegitimate miliary action had thus turned around between the two main actors Georgia and Russia’. The report notes in addition that the second front against Georgia opened by the Russians and Abkhazians in Abkhazia was ‘not justified under international law’ (pp. 23-25). 

5) The Report rejects any possible justification of the Russian intervention in Georgia on humanitarian grounds, both because ‘Russia in particular has consistently and persistently objected to any justification of the NATO Kosovo intervention on humanitarian grounds’ and ‘can therefore not rely on this putative title to justify its own intervention on Georgian territory’, and because ‘as a directly neighbouring state, Russia has important political and other interests of its own in South Ossetia and the region. In such a constellation, a humanitarian intervention is not recognised at all’ (p. 24).

6) The report categorically rejects Russian claims that Georgia committed genocide against South Ossetian civilians: ‘After having carefully reviewed the facts in the light of the relevant law, the Mission concludes that to the best of its knowledge allegations of genocide committed by the Georgian side in the context of the August 2008 conflict and its aftermath are neither founded in law nor substantiated by factual evidence’ (pp. 26-27). It notes that the total number of South Ossetian civilian casualties in the whole of the August 2008 conflict was only 162, not the two thousand initially claimed by Moscow (p. 21).

7) Conversely, the Report attributed the worst and most systematic atrocities to the South Ossetian side: ‘With regard to allegations of ethnic cleansing committed by South Ossetian forces or irregular armed groups, however, the Mission found patterns of forced displacements of ethnic Georgians who had remained in their homes after the onset of hostilities. In addition, there was evidence of systematic looting and destruction of ethnic Georgian villages in South Ossetia. Consequently, several elements suggest the conclusion that ethnic cleansing was indeed practiced against ethnic Georgians in South Ossetia both during and after the August 2008 conflict’ (p. 27).

8 ) Finally, the Report condemns Russia’s recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as contrary to international law: ‘South Ossetia did not have a right to secede from Georgia, and the same holds true for Abkhazia for much of the same reasons. Recognition of breakaway entities such as Abkhazia and South Ossetia by a third country is consequently contrary to international law in terms of an unlawful interference in the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the affected country, which is Georgia’ (p. 17).

Far from blaming the Georgian side for the conflict, the Report ends with a conclusion that most reasonable friends of Georgia could readily endorse: ‘This report shows that any explanation of the origins of the conflict cannot focus solely on the artillery attack on Tskhinvali in the night of 7/8 August and on what then developed into the questionable Georgian offensive in South Ossetia and the Russian military action. The evaluation also has to cover the run-up to the war during the years before and the mounting tensions in the months and weeks immediately preceding the outbreak of hostilities. It must also take into account years of provocations, mutual accusations, military and political threats and acts of violence both inside and outside the conflict zone. It has to consider, too, the impact of a great power’s coercive politics and diplomacy against a small and insubordinate neighbour, together with the small neighbour’s penchant for overplaying its hand and acting in the heat of the moment without careful consideration of the final outcome, not to mention its fear that it might permanently lose important parts of its territory through creeping annexation’ (p. 31).

To sum up: the Report rules against Russia on every ground except one. Although it acknowledges the illegality of the Georgian assault on Tskhinvali, it describes this assault not as gratuitous or unprovoked, but as having occurred in the context of a long period of sustained military and diplomatic provocations on the part of Russia, a great power, against its small neighbour, whose fears about permanent territorial loss were very real. The Report rejects Moscow’s claim that it acted for humanitarian reasons; that it acted to stop genocide; or that its action was in accordance with international law. On the contrary, it explicitly condemns Russia’s military actions as illegal under international law, and acknowledges the legality of Georgia’s attempts to defend itself from Russian invasion. The Report attributes by far the worst atrocities to the South Ossetian side, and endorses Georgian accusations of South Ossetian ethnic cleansing. It meanwhile rejects the massively exaggerated Russian claims of Georgian atrocities.

This is a Report that all friends of Georgia and opponents of Russian imperialism should be publicising to the best of their abilities. It amounts to a ringing endorsement of those of us who at the time recognised the Russian military action for what it was: an act of aggression, illegal under international law, by a hegemonic power against a small and ‘insubordinate’ neighbour. Yet while the factual conclusions of the Report represent such an endorsement, the Report’s authors seem unfortunately unable to draw the only natural conclusion from the evidence they have amassed. Instead, they conclude with a few wishy-washy ‘everyone is to blame’ platitudes of the kind that made the EU synonymous with moral bankruptcy at the time of the Bosnian war in the 1990s: ‘Where lies responsibility for what has happened ? Overall, the conflict is rooted in a profusion of causes comprising different layers in time and action combined. While it is possible to identify the authorship of some important events and decisions marking its course, there is no way to assign overall responsibility to one side alone. They have all failed, and it should be their responsibility to make good for it. Finally, it must be noted that there are no winners in this conflict [etc. etc.].’

Contrary to what the Report concludes, there was a winner in the Georgian war, and it was Russia, which was able to provoke a war against a former colony and current Western ally, inflict a heavy military blow against it and torpedo its chances of joining NATO, all without incurring much in the way of punishment from the Western alliance. The Obama Administration’s recent abandonment of the US plans to install a missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic is further proof that Moscow has been successful, through its assault on Georgia and other aggressive acts, in extracting concessions from the Western alliance vis-a-vis the area that Russian imperialists view as their backyard. So long as we are afraid to draw the logical conclusion from evidence that is staring us in the face, and are afraid to call a spade a spade, an aggressor an aggressor and a victim a victim, we are simply encouraging further violent acts of the kind that the Report’s authors deplore.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

As reported on Aljazeera.Net. An EU-sponsored report into last year’s Russia-Georgia war, the result of a 10-month investigation, said that South Ossetia and Abkhazia had no right to secede from Georgia, and that recognition of their independence is illegal. Full Story

Leaders of the US’s East European allies have hailed the move by US President Barack Obama to abandon the Bush Administration’s plans to base an anti-missile defence system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The move was made in response to Russian concerns that such a defence system would threaten the security of Russian missiles in the event that they were launched at Polish or Czech cities. ‘In attempting to restrict our ability to slaughter huge numbers of civilians in Eastern Europe, the US was clearly indicating an aggressive intent with regard to Russia’, President Dmitry Medvedev said at a press conference earlier this week. ‘We welcome President Obama’s new readiness to respect the security of Russian missiles aimed at Poland and the Czech Republic.’

US officials had been quick to point out that the planned missile shield was intended to defend against a missile strike from rogue states such as Iran or North Korea, not from Russia. ‘We want to indicate to the Russians that we fully respect their right to launch missiles at our NATO allies’, said President Obama, who has been perceived as eager to distance himself from the hawkish unilateralism of the Bush Administration. ‘It’s the Iranians who aren’t allowed to launch missiles at Eastern Europe, not the Russians. Admittedly, abandoning the missile shield will make it easier for the Iranians to do just that, but we’re vaguely hoping that this gesture will make Moscow more cooperative in countering the Iranian nuclear programme.’

Although they had previously supported the missile shield, the leaders of Poland and the Czech Republic have been quick to hail the US turnaround. ‘We have a long history of problems with Iran’, said Polish President Lech Kaczynski; ‘In 1939, Iran joined with Nazi Germany to partition our country, and massacred thousands of our officers and soldiers at Katyn Forest in 1940. Even today, the Iranians appear remarkably unapologetic about this. With the Russians, by contrast, we have never had any problems. Coordinating our defences with the Russians seems like a really good idea.’

Czech Foreign Minister Jan Kohout agrees: ‘In 1968, the Iranians invaded our country to stamp out our experiment in “Islamism with a human face”. With President Obama’s new move, we feel safer from the Iranians than ever before. We feel that NATO is serving its purpose, and will happily send out troops to fight alongside the Americans in places like Iraq or Afghanistan. Our faith in the US has never been stronger.’

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili had some reservations about the US move, but remained positive overall: ‘Despite having been the third largest contributor of allied troops to Iraq, we find that large parts of our country are still under Russian control. But thanks to President Obama, we feel safer than ever before from the threat of Iranian invasion.’

‘Both Russia and NATO have a wealth of experience in missile defence. We should now work to combine this experience’ said NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, while unveiling a statue of Stalin at the NATO headquarters in Brussels last month to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact.

Greater Surbiton News Service

At the beginning of this month, two very troubling reports on the state of democracy in the world have been released almost simultaneously, and both are concerned with the highest locus of legitimacy and authority when dealing with democracy and human rights, the UN and, most specifically, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the successor of the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) since 2006. The first research is Freedom House’s annual report on the activity of UNHRC and the second was released by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). This article will present the conclusions of these two reports, briefly corroborating their results with the most recent Freedom House’s Freedom in the World Report (2008) scores on political rights and civil liberties (a scale from 1 to 7, 1 for the highest degree of freedom, and 7 for the lowest level).

The first analysis is the Freedom House UNHRC Report, an annual report that evaluates the activity of this inter-governmental body of the UN and its official reactions to various cases of human rights violations in the world. The research uses 5 benchmarks totaling 11 criteria in order to asses the efficiency of the UNHRC in light of its declared goals, and concludes with a very grim evaluation:

A failing grade in 4 of the 11 criteria: Adoption of resolutions and use of special sessions; the global threat against freedom of expression; voting records of democracies during Council elections; voting records of democracies on key resolutions.

A mixed grade in 6 other criteria: Relevance and independence of special rapporteurs;   Universal Periodic Review process; the global threat against freedom of association; accreditation process for NGOs; mixed opportunities for NGO engagement at the Council; level of U.S. engagement at the Human Rights Council.

A pass grade in one of the 11 criteria: Quality of special rapporteurs and reports.

Additionally, the Report highlights a significant number of other vulnerabilities of this body, which could affect its ability to further assess human rights violations and take appropriate measures. One of these vulnerabilities is the continuous pressure some countries exercise in order to eliminate the country-specific rapporteurs, that is the assessment made by an independent team on the ground in specific countries, favoring instead the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a process by which the monitoring is realized by member states working together with the state under scrutiny, every four years. Moreover, these reports allow a very large space to maneuver for the regime under scrutiny to manipulate the process of investigation.

Another pressing case is the meager capacity of this intergovernmental body to issue condemnatory resolutions on those countries that are involved in grave violations of human rights. Belarus, China, Cuba, Sri Lanka, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Laos, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Zimbabwe, Chad, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, have been exempted of such resolutions, whereas Israel received a disproportionate number of condemnations on the same charge.

The freedom of expression received a significant blow from some members that push for the passing of resolutions against “abuses of freedom of expression” on race or religion. Most of these propositions are furthered so as to prohibit “anti-Islamic or blasphemous speech”, Pakistan, as a delegate of the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) countries being the sternest advocate of such a resolution.

The 47 seats of this body are distributed proportionally along the five regional groups of states designated by the UN, and the seats are most often decided inside each group, instead of allowing free competition for the seats.

The accreditation of the NGOs is in the hands of a politicized committee made of the member states representatives, thus making the official approval of NGOs an arbitrary decision of national governments, sometimes ranked as non free (the case of Russia, China, Cuba, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Cameroon etc.) or partly free by the very reliable FH Freedom in the World Index.

The ECFR report covers the activity of the UNHRC during the 2008-2009 session and focuses mainly on the relative weight of the EU inside the UN body and its ability to forge a stable majority in the decision-making process reflecting the liberal-democratic values of EU countries. The key variable this research uses is the “voting coincidence”, measuring the degree to which the members of this UN’s body vote congruently with EU states in matters relating to human rights. The report shows that the voting coincidence dropped from 75% during 1998-1999 to 55% during 2007-2008 and to 52% last year.

The bulk of the countries that disengaged from the vote backing EUs perspective on human rights are in Africa, but a growing number of members that are either against EU’s votes or are abstaining from taking a position in cases of gross human rights violations are to be found in Latin America. Another group of countries in disagreement with EU’s views on human rights is the OIC, the main point of divergence being OIC’s desire to push through a resolution condemning “abuses of freedom of expression”. Moreover, the inability of EU states to impose their perspective on UNHRC’s agenda was emphasized by their disunity when the Periodic Review on China’s encroachments on human rights was released. ECFR’s report notes also the EU’s failure to coalesce a majority in its response to the crisis in Sri Lanka, but it does acknowledge its success in the case of Darfur, the more so since the majority of African countries backed the opposite view on the sanctions against Omar al-Bashir.

The most interesting part of the ECFR’s report deals with a list of suggestions to improve EU countries influence in the agenda of this body. The main points are as follows:

EU needs a long-term agenda, in order to act as a coherent agent and avoid polarizations induced by other actors (especially the USA). It must also consolidate the bilateral diplomacy with China and Russia and make efforts at building strategic coalitions on each crisis, and should also pay more attention at economic rights and development aids for poor countries. Thus, the main advice given by this report is to build a better strategy to regain the support EU’s values enjoyed in the 1990s, at the peak of the third and most impressive wave of democratization in the world. Both reports also greet the return of the US diplomacy in this UN body after a period of disengagement during the Bush administration, emphasizing an amelioration in the democratic stance of the UNHRC, for instance in the case of Darfur.

However, this optimism based on the belief that a better strategy of coalition-building of western states and the new Obama-era of American foreign policy must be moderated by a worrying trend in the global state of democracy, as the FH Freedom in the World Reports keep showing for some time now. The obstacle on the promotion of EU’s values is not so much a problem of coalitional mismanagement as a difficulty in finding democratically-oriented partners for dialogue. From the 47 members of the UNHRC, 22 are free countries (scores form 1 to 2.5), according to the FH Index, 17 others are partly free (scores from 3 to 5), and 8 are not free (5.5 to 7). Thus, the free countries are outnumbered by the partly free and not free members. Moreover, the last three FH Freedom in the World Reports show a decline of rights and liberties in the world and especially a worsening of these indices in the countries of the former Soviet Union, including Russia, and in four Latin American countries (Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, and Nicaragua).

Furthermore, this decline in the state of democracy should be corroborated with a tendency of regional attraction exercised by not free countries or partly free countries with grave violations of democracy principles and human rights (Cuba, Russia, China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela), cases of regional authoritarian leaders deploying a contagion effect of a non-democratic character. This authoritarian contagion (abuses against independent media, repression of opposition parties, violation of the rights of expression and association etc.) is very much visible for instance in Venezuela’s neighboring countries or the countries associated with it in ALBA (especially Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua), in the Caucasus region or in some OIC countries, as well as a democratic decline in a number of African countries with strong economic ties with China.

It should also be highlighted the fact that a significant number of the UNHRC member states have received very high scores on the two scales of political rights and civil liberties, thus making their democratic credentials very much doubtful. Indeed, the proximity of more than 50% of the partly free countries to the non free bulk of states should make one wary of any easy solution to foster more democracy at the UNHRC in the short term.

On June 10, 2009, a very confusing UNHRC press release announced the results of the Universal Periodic Review on Cameroon, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. In it, a number of countries praised the democratic quality of Cuba, and the very good state of its social, economic and political rights. Among other things, that press release said as follows:  “Cuba had withstood many tests, and continued to uphold the principles of objectivity, impartiality and independence in pursuance of the realization of human rights”.

For a previous comment on this issue, see.

Andreea Nicuţar

Bellow, a table of the UNHRC member countries, according to the FH Democracy Index 2009

Today I am in Moscow staying with my good friend, Denise Renner. Almost 20 years ago Denise came to the former Soviet Union with her husband, Rick and her 3 young sons. She moved away from family, friends and everything that was familiar to her because of the call of God on their lives. She moved to a land that, when she was a girl, seemed to be the greatest enemy of the United States. Upon arrival they were deceived by people who called themselves Christians. They lived in homes that had dirt floors and no running water. In spite of all this, Denise was able to maintain joy, not think of herself and reach out to others. As a result of her unselfishness, they are reaching people all over the former Soviet Union and in parts of Asia and the Middle East.

Denise is a compassionate woman. She feels what people feel and is able to fellowship with their sufferings. As a result of this, she reaches out to women who have been beaten down emotionally and physically. She and her team minister to women in prisons, hospitals and orphanages through humanitarian outreaches and the Word of God. Denise has a television program called “Heart To Heart With Denise Renner” where she interviews people whose lives have been transformed by God. Many of them are testimonials of women who have been changed as a result of their ministry in the former Soviet Union.

Denise is someone who provokes me to reach out to others. If she can reach out with a language and cultural barrier and touch lives, I can do it in a country where I speak the same language and understand the culture. I can be sensitive to the needs of others, instead of just being concerned with my own little world.

I hope her life kindles a flame in you to reach out and touch someone.
Until next blog…many blessings,
Linda

To learn more about Renner Ministries go to www.renner.org

"High culture meets hooliganism": Taping a bottle of champagne in Puskin's hand.

I’ve left St. Petersburg after a year there and 15 months in Russia.  What did I learn?  That Russia’s an arbitrary, unpredictable and sometimes mean place, but that’s why we love it  It’s the Wild East, the big vacation from the Western banality that suffocates like a drawn-out waterboarding.  It’s simultaneously a refined culture that is breathtaking in the beauty of its everyday manifestations; high culture meets hooliganism.

My last day was a lesson in these contradictions: In the afternoon, I raced a bunch of drunken Russians down a river on blow-up dolls in the 2009 “Bubble Baba Challenge.”  Then before I left for the airport at 3 a.m., we followed Russian tradition and sat down for a moment of silence, airplane be damned.  It’s the second time I’ve left, and the second time this moment of silence has buoyed me up before the coming storm.

In Russia, I love the bold people, the contradictory culture.  I love sovok.   I love the angry cashier ladies.  And I even love the language, kind of like how a dog owner loves his mangy pooch even when it shits on the carpet every day.

Of course, back in America it’s very … nice.  A lady in the airport saw me breaking my fist on the bank of pay phones and offered me her cellphone: “Good karma,” she said.  Boring, but nice.

Even though my Russia dream has died its inevitable first death, the blog won’t be going the way of the Dodo.  I’ll be focusing on translations of Russian literature and music, reviews of Russian movies, and bits of Russian current events that may elsewhere be overlooked.

I’ll soon be back in Russia, or at least the former Soviet Union, but until then, I take my leave with these lines from Bulat Otkudzhava’s song “Vashe blagorodiye”:

“Your Honour, Madame Farewell,
We are kinsfolk of old, what a thing to see.
The letter’s in the envelope, wait, don’t worry,
I’m not fortunate in death, but in love I will be lucky.”

http://ow.ly/npFP Afghan War Needs New Strategy: US Commander McChrystal

I include many areas where the world faces huge challenges, including the former Soviet Union (FSU).

We make a mistake when we segment challenges. One boat rocks others. We may not be gaia but there is some truth to our interdependence.

In all these situations, violence is active or incipient. In all of them, there is no solution being proposed that promises an end to the prospect of more of the same.

To cite examples:

There is every possibility that Iran will remain firm in refusing to stop enriching uranium and this will activate Israel eventually. If that happens the US may not be far behind.

There is every chance that the civil violence (if that is not an oxymoron) in many areas of the FSU will continue and that worsening economic conditions there will exacerbate conflict. Again involving other nations including the US.

In Africa there are at least five situations in which any notion of rights and decent behavior is a pipe dream without international action that would involve the US.

In Asia, Burma and Sri Lanka are merely the most conspicuous examples of continuing repression. I have not even mentioned North Korea.

And in Afghanistan we have the head US military man suggesting that with more resolve and manpower we can succeed — a truth that is no more likely to hold than the belief that Iraq will be a stable and unified democracy over time.

No serious thinker following Nietzsche and living through the Holocaust believes that the world can permanently weather a continuation of the dynamics which gave rise to the cataclysmic wars of the 20th Century.

We cannot weather full economic breakdown and a global nuclear winter.

How then are we to proceed?

I see no way other than for our President to declare a global emergency and address the underlying issue of a global military-industrial complex and a reliance on force that is fueled by governments still operating with 20th century notions that the sword is the instrument of peace and justice.

President Obama needs to declare a restructuring of the moral apparatus of the world. Realpolitik must be seen as the politics of negotiation and peace. Religion must be seen as the proximate capacity to dream, not as a license to kill. Economies must be made to create sustainable communities, not fortress societies.

Only the leadership of courageous persons can accomplish the movement needed today. Specifically, in Afghanistan we need to understand that there cannot be a military victory, period. In the future the only real victories will be those of aroused peoples who insist that the ways of war be permanently shelved. This will mean more movements like those in Iran following the most recent elections.

The President needs to stand at the helm of a global civil rights movement. He needs to show that realism is not inconsistent with this. He needs to hark back to Eisenhower and identify the military-industrial complex as the true enemy of civilization.

This is a moment of truth. This is not one person’s belief. It is the stance of all who have lived under the lash of the global war machine. We must reject the leadership of those for whom belief in force has overcome belief in themselves.

The moment of truth is a reappropriation of who we are and of our inherent possibilities.

The likelihood that Ireland will vote in favour of the Lisbon Treaty in its referendum this October brings a federal Europe one step closer. In the probable event that the Conservative Party wins the next general election in Britain, it will then be in a quandary over how to respond to this reality. Now, more than ever, is the time to evaluate – not whether we are for or against the EU, but what kind of EU it is that we want. And the sad truth is that a more centralised EU is likely to result in weaker, not stronger European intervention in world affairs.

The Lisbon Treaty will create the posts of President of the European Council and High Representative for Foreign Affairs, in theory promising a more unified voice for EU foreign policy. Yet there are reasons to be skeptical about whether ‘unified’ means the same as ‘good’. Despite the notorious claim by Luxembourg’s Jacques Poos following the outbreak of the war in the former Yugoslavia in 1991, that ‘the hour of Europe has dawned’, the EC/EU proved itself wholly ineffective in bringing an end to the fighting, which dragged on for another four years. The war was finally ended, not by the European states getting their act together – which never happened – but by the US under the Clinton Administration reluctantly assuming leadership of Western intervention in the crisis, and imposing a more robust policy than the Europeans were ready to adopt on their own initiative. The negotiation of a peace settlement for the Bosnian war in Dayton, Ohio, by US diplomats in November 1995 was a US triumph that put the Europeans to shame.

The European failure over Bosnia in the first half of the 1990s cannot be put down solely to poor leadership, although this was clearly a major factor. There are, rather, structural factors why the EU, as a body, is unlikely ever to play as robust a role in global affairs as the US. With 27 members favouring different policies, EU policy inevitably must essentially be that of the lowest common denominator. Even though 22 out of 27 EU members have recognised the independence of Kosovo, including all the larger and West European members except Spain, the fact that five members have not done so has prevented the adoption of a common EU policy on Kosovo’s independence. Yet even a single member, if it is sufficiently stubborn, can impose its will on the whole of the rest of the Union, if no other member feels particularly strongly enough to oppose it. Thus, the accession of Croatia and Macedonia to the EU is being held up by Slovenia and Greece respectively. Slovenia would like to annex part of Croatia’s sea territory while Greece would like to force Macedonia to change its name, and Slovenia and Greece are obstructing the EU accession of their victims until their demands are met. Even though this amounts to outright blackmail and abuse of the accession process, there appears to be no way in which the EU can bypass them given the absence of will to do so on the part of other members. Thus, EU expansion is held up by a couple of troublemakers. It is very difficult to pull EU foreign policy forward decisively, but very easy to drag on it until it slows to a snail’s pace.

Far from a more unified EU resulting in more decisive European intervention globally, such an EU will increasingly tie the hands of those states that do wish to act, forcing them into line alongside more dovish, do-nothing members. Though Britain’s response to the Russian assault on Georgia last year was among the more forthright, Britain was ultimately forced to remain in step with the French and Germans, who quickly made it clear that they would not allow Russia’s misdeeds to get in the way of their burgeoning cooperation with Moscow. For the problem with the EU is not that it has too many members, but the way in which some of its members behave. The EU has grown up around its Franco-German core, yet France perennially chafes against Anglo-Saxon leadership of the Western alliance, while Germany is intent on developing its partnership with Russia. The dominance of the Franco-German axis within the EU therefore militates against the adoption of forward and progressive foreign policies by the Union as a whole; ones that would strengthen the Western alliance while promoting democracy and human rights globally.

At issue are two rival visions of what the EU should look like. Proponents of a federal Europe, or of extreme vertical integration, favour increasing centralisation and homogenisation of an inward-looking, geographically limited Europe. They will not sacrifice this centralisation for the sake of horizontal expansion beyond a certain point. They seek to exclude Turkey from the EU, in part because because the inclusion of a not very rich or sophisticated country of over 70 million would render their vision of a homogenous, federal Europe unachievable. With a geographically restricted Europe increasingly centralised, its separation from the rest of the world sharply increases. European countries excluded from EU expansion – such as Turkey, Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia and perhaps Moldova – would form a buffer zone vis-a-vis Russia, which would be a natural partner – Fortress Russia in collaboration with Fortress Europe. An EU built on this model would itself increasingly serve as a buffer zone between Russia and the US, restraining US intervention worldwide.

The alternative vision is of an EU that looks outwards instead of inward. Such an EU would eschew excessive centralisation in favour of expansion to take in Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, and ultimately perhaps Belarus, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well. Indeed, there are no natural limits to its possible expansion, something that might one day stretch to include countries such as Cape Verde, Israel and Morocco. Rather than being a Fortress Europe, such an EU would be accessible to new members, consequently a catalyst to democratisation in all Europe’s surrounding areas. Rather than collaborating with an authoritarian Russia, a Europe built on this model would seek ultimately to incorporate Russia within the democratic world. The incorporation of more East European countries and Turkey would strengthen the EU’s Atlanticist element and dilute the domination of the Franco-German core. Such an EU would promote the democratisation of the world, rather than hinder it, as the first version of Europe would.

The second vision of Europe is more in keeping with the sentiments of the political classes and publics of the more Euroskeptic countries, such as the UK, which are uncomfortable with the excessive transfer of power from their own parliaments to Brussels, as well as with those of former Communist bloc countries that are deeply unhappy with the readiness of the Western alliance to appease Russia, an unhappiness indicated by the recent open letter to the Obama Administration on the part of a stellar panel of Eastern and Central European statesmen. It is these countries to which Britain should be looking for allies within the EU, as counterweights to the more pro-federalist and pro-Moscow states of Western Europe.

But resisting the drive toward a federal European super-state is not simply a matter of seeking allies; it is also a matter of putting forward winning principles. If it wants to resist this drive, Britain can and should highlight each and every one of the EU’s ethical failings – over Croatia, Macedonia, Georgia and so forth - which stem from the politics of the lowest common denominator and the obsession with consensus and not rocking the boat. In each of these cases the principle of national sovereignty is under attack, for the EU’s politicians and bureaucrats have repeatedly made clear that the national sovereignty of Croatia, Macedonia, Georgia and in principle any state is expendable in the interests of internal EU harmony and pacific foreign relations.

The British government must also point out the national and geostrategic importance of including Turkey within the EU. Turkish EU membership would halt the drive toward the federal Europe so out of tune with the British public’s aspirations. It would also lock this strategically crucial and economically and culturally vibrant state within the Euro-Atlantic democratic framework, halting its slide toward alignment with the hostile states of Iran and Russia. Rather than keeping Turkey out of the club and watching as it backslides on its democratic reforms and pro-Western orientation, the inclusion of Turkey would secure one of the world’s most important countries for the democratic bloc, strengthening our position in Iraq and vis-a-vis Iran and the Arab world. British public opinion has traditionally been receptive to Turkey’s EU membership, and it would be a terrible defeat for British policy if we were to allow this receptivity to be eroded by ill-informed fears about greater immigration and Islam.

For too long, the Euro-federalists have been allowed to get away with pretending that they are the only true ‘pro-Europeans’. Yet any vision of Europe that permanently excludes a large part of the continent’s population cannot rightfully be considered ‘pro-European’. It is the supporters of a broader, more inclusive, more outward-looking Europe – and the supporters of national sovereignty within the EU – that are the true pro-Europeans. True European unity and national sovereignty are complementary, not contradictory. Only by making this point, loudly and consistently, will be achieve the Europe that we want.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

The former soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan came into the spotlight this week when it was announced that Russia would be opening another base in that country. Russia already has one airbase, the Kant airbase, which is just outside of the capital city, Bishkek. Kyrgyzstan is a member of the Russian dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), whose leaders met for an informal summit in Kyrgyzstan on Saturday, August 1. The other member countries are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. The Americans also have an air base, the Manas air base, close to the border with Kazakhstan. This base was set up to transport supplies to Afghanistan and is currently the only one they have in Central Asia. At the summit today, a memorandum was signed between Presidents Dmitry Medvedev of Russia and Kurmanbek Bakiyev of Kyrgyzstan saying that a Russian military contingent will be deployed into Kyrgyz territory, and a formal agreement will be signed November 1.

This base, which will be in the southern city of Osh, will house the proposed rapid reaction force of the CSTO. The purpose of this reaction force is to respond to the “broadest range of threats and challenges”, according to President Medvedev. According to the Russian president’s foreign policy advisor, the rapid reaction force “would deflect military aggression, and carry out special operations against international terrorism and extremism, trans-border crime, and drug trafficking”.

This is a win for a Russia trying to expand it’s power. Because of Russia’s dominance in the CSTO, the organization is really only a tool for Russia to expand its influence in the member countries. And while Russia managed to gain a new base in Kyrgyzstan, the United States had a loss. This year, their agreement with the Kyrgyz government about the use of the Manas air base was renegotiated. The US no longer maintains the base as a full fledged air base, but now may only use the airstrip to transport non-military supplies to Afghanistan. Their rent was also increased from $17.5 million a year to $60 million.

Cites

• Additional Russian military forces to be deployed in Kyrgyzstan – RT
• Russia to station more troops in Kyrgyzstan: agreement
• Russian-Led CSTO Grouping Adds Military Dimension
• US, Kyrgyzstan Reach Deal on Continued Use of Manas Air Base
• CSTO leaders agree to create information center

Disability Rights Fund seeks Program Officer

About the position
The Program Officer position offers a unique opportunity to join a groundbreaking grantmaking initiative supporting the rights of persons with disabilities. As a member of a small team, the Program Officer will help shape the Fund as it matures and incorporates the best strategies in funding disability rights in the Global South and Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union. The main objective of the position is to work with other Fund staff in the creation of grants strategy and process and the oversight of grantees. To do this work, the Program Officer will build field contacts and partnerships and work with grantees in the field. Other program and administrative responsibilities related to both grantmaking and the general operations of the Fund are also foreseen. The Fund is looking for a candidate who is able to work in a fast-paced environment, is flexible, takes initiative, and is independent, but team-oriented. This position is not necessarily Boston-based.

About the Disability Rights Fund
Launched in March of 2008 as a project of the Tides Center, the Disability Rights Fund is a grantmaking collaborative aimed at building community capacity to achieve the rights of all persons with disabilities. The Fund makes modest grants (USD $5000-70,000) to Disabled Persons’ Organizations in the Global South and in Eastern Europe/former Soviet Union for advancing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) at country-level.

Program Officer responsibilities
· Help design a grants proposal process that is accessible to people with disabilities
· Serve as liaison to grantees and prospective grantees
· Working closely with Tides, administer and manage grants(e.g., grant award and declination letters, disbursements, report tracking, grant files)
· Together with the DRF team, evaluate grant proposals, conduct financial and critical analysis of applicant organizations
· Provide technical aid to grantees during grants application and implementation
· Prepare concise written analyses of grant proposals and funding recommendations for Steering Committee comprised of field advisors and donors
· Arrange and conduct site visits and meetings with grantees
· Provide organizational effectiveness assistance to grantees or recommend helpful resources as appropriate
· Evaluate and monitor the impact of grants; review and analyze grantee reports
· Develop professional relationships within the field of disability rights to inform the grantmaking of the Fund; keep abreast of trends within the field of disability rights
· Collaborate with DRF team, Global Advisory Panel and Steering Committee to develop and refine grantmaking strategies
· Assist with the day-to-day operations of the Fund as needed
Skills and qualifications

The ideal candidate should demonstrate:
· Passion and commitment to advancing the human rights of people with disabilities
· Familiarity with the community of DPOs and the CRPD (particularly in the Asia Pacific region)
· Grantmaking or grantseeking experience (or relevant nonprofit experience)
· Experience supporting capacity development within civil society
· Demonstrated ability to work well with diverse populations from around the world
· Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English. Other language proficiencies a plus
· Strong administrative and organizational skills; the ability to manage time efficiently
· Computer proficiency (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint); willingness to learn additional applications (and accessible technology) as necessary
· Bachelors degree, or equivalent with minimum 5 years of relevant experience; advanced degree desired
· Ability to travel independently in developing countries
· Ability to combine the roles of objective evaluator and empathetic observer

Compensation
Salary and benefits negotiable, based on experience.

How to apply
Disability Rights Fund, a Project of the Tides Center, is an equal opportunity employer. We strongly encourage and seek applications from women, and people of color, including bilingual and bicultural individuals, as well as members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities, and people of other (non-U.S.) nationalities. People with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.

Please email or mail a cover letter, resume, three references (with contact information and relationship), writing sample (five page maximum) to:

Disability Rights Fund
Diana Samarasan, Director
Third Sector New England’s NonProfit Center
89 South Street, Suite 203
Boston, MA 02111-2670
dsamarasan@disabilityrightsfund.org (please no phone calls)
Fax: (215) 261-4593

Deadline: Applications must be received by August 1, 2009.



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Most of us can probably remember, at least once in our lives, asking some apparatchik something along the lines of ‘Couldn’t you please, please make an exception, just this once ?’ and getting the reply: ‘I can’t do that ! If I made an exception for you, I’d have to make an exception for everybody. It’d be more than my job’s worth.’ You and the apparatchik both know that he could perfectly well make an exception for you if he wanted to. But you also both know that he is right in saying that there is nothing special about you, and that you are not uniquely worthy of being treated as an exception. The question is: does he like you or doesn’t he ?

Similarly, trying to pretend that recognising Kosova’s unilateral secession from Serbia is legitimate on the grounds that it is wholly unique and without precedent in international relations is unconvincing, firstly because it isn’t true, and secondly because it begs the question: if it can happen once, can it not happen twice or multiple times ? To which the only reasonable answer is: yes. There may very well be occasions in the future when the Western alliance will be forced to recognise an act of unilateral secession by a subject people and territory from the state that rules them. Everybody knows this is entirely possible, and pretending it isn’t simply destroys the credibility of those who do.

Of course, the reason our officials and statesmen are pretending that Kosova is a unique case is in order to avoid scaring away other countries from recognising Kosova’s independence; countries they fear might otherwise worry a precedent were being established that could be applied to a secessionist region or nationality of their own. But this calculation, too, is misguided, because a) it rests upon a fallacy, and b) it represents a bad geopolitical tactic. We shall briefly explain the fallacy, before focusing on the bigger question of why the tactic is a bad one.

a) It is fallacy to point to Kosova as a precedent, because if a precedent has been established, it was established long before Kosova’s independence was recognised. It was certainly established by the early 1990s, when all the members of the former multinational federations of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia who wanted independence were granted it – except Kosova. This was despite the fact that in the case of Yugoslavia, the federal members that declared independence had done so unilaterally, without the consent of either the federal centre, or of all other members of the federation. There is absolutely no reason why the recognition of Kosova’s independence should not be treated as essentially the same as that of Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia. In contrast to Abkhazia and South Ossetia, for example, which were not members of the Soviet Union but simply autonomous entities within Georgia, Kosova was a full member of the Yugoslav federation in its own right, independently of the fact that it was also an entity within Serbia. As a member of the defunct Yugoslav federation, Kosova was entitled to self-determination after the dissolution of that federation had been internationally recognised, and after other members of the federation had been accorded that right.

More generally, the former Yugoslav states are far from the first unilaterally seceding entities to be accorded international recognition – think of France’s recognition of the US in 1778 and Britain’s recognition of Bangladesh in 1972.

b) There is no need to pretend that Kosova is a unique case to avoid scaring other states away from recognising its independence, for the simple reason that, when all is said and done, other states’ policies on whether or not to recognise Kosova are really not determined by fear of Kosova becoming a precedent – even if these states are faced with separatist threats of their own. Turkey, faced with a very real Kurdish separatist insurgency and bitterly opposed to the secession of Nagorno Karabakh from its traditional ally, Azerbaijan, was nevertheless one of the first states to recognise Kosova’s independence. Turkey has also promoted the break-up of Cyprus, via the unilateral secession of the self-proclaimed ‘Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus’. Russia, which vocally opposes the independence of Kosova, which is faced with secessionist movements within its own borders and which brutally crushed Chechnya’s bid for independence, has nevertheless simultaneously promoted the unilateral secession of Abkhazia and South Ossetia from Georgia. India, which likewise opposes Kosova’s independence and likewise faces secessionist movements within its own borders, was instrumental in achieving Bangladesh’s unilateral secession from Pakistan. In other words, states which might be seen as having as much reason as most to fear a ‘Kosovo precedent’ being established are quite ready to support unilateral acts of secession when they feel it is in their interests to do so.

It might be objected that the states in question are all powerful enough to feel confident that they can crush any secessionist movement they face. Yet fragile Macedonia, which fought an armed conflict with Albanian separatists earlier this decade, and which might have more reason than almost any state to fear a ‘Kosovo precedent’, has recognised Kosova. Fear of the ‘Kosovo precedent’ is not, therefore, a decisive factor in a state’s decision on whether or not to recognise Kosova’s independence (we can make an exception here for states such as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova that are currently in a state of  territorial dismemberment, and that, were they to recognise Kosova, might conceivably suffer retaliation in kind from Belgrade or Moscow)

It may be that, all things being equal, a state faced with a secessionist movement of its own is more likely to sympathise with Belgrade than with Pristina. In one or two cases, such as Spain’s, this sympathy may be electorally significant enough to sway the course of its foreign policy. But so far as almost all non-recognisers are concerned, other factors count for more: a state is likely to oppose Kosova’s independence if it is hostile to the West (Russia, Iran, Venezuela); if it has traditionally enjoyed good relations with Belgrade (Greece, Egypt, Indonesia); or if it simply sees no particular interest in recognising it. All these factors are reasons why it is not only pointless, but actually counter-productive to pander to the opponents of recognition by reassuring them that Kosova is a unique case and will not become a precedent.

As things stand, rogue states have no reason to fear that the international community will ever grant independence to secessionist territories. They therefore enjoy a virtual carte blanche to suppress secessionist movements or other rebellions as brutally as they wish. None of the forms of deterrent threatened against or exerted on the Sudanese regime, from sanctions to international war-crimes indictments, appears to have cooled its bloodlust with regard to Darfur. But were Khartoum to fear that its genocidal actions might potentially result in the loss of territory, it might be less inclined to pursue them. The Western alliance would enjoy that much more leeway in exerting pressure over a rogue state such as Sudan.

Conversely, a close ally such as Turkey, which faces a genuine secessionist insurgency, knows very well that the Western states will never make it the victim of such a precedent: everyone knows that Turkish Kurdistan is not going to be liberated by NATO, as Kosova was; a ’Kosovo precedent’ will not frighten states like Turkey. But this does not mean that such states can get away with indiscriminate brutality with impunity. Turkey’s treatment of its Kurdish population has dramatically improved over the last ten years, as Ankara’s goal of EU membership has required it to improve its human rights record. Just as NATO acted as the bad cop over Serbia and Kosova, so the EU has acted as the good cop over Turkey and the Kurds. Western allies can be guided toward ending repression and discrimination against national minorities, reducing the appeal of violent separatist movements. Rogue states, on the other hand, should have reason to fear that their brutality may potentially result in a loss of territory. For all states that abuse the human rights of their national minorities, this is a healthy choice to be faced with.

This does not, of course, mean that the Western alliance should indiscriminately threaten states that abuse human rights with territorial penalties. Rather, the ‘Kosovo precedent’ could function rather like the nuclear deterrent, i.e. deter more by its potential than by its actual application, and by its occasional application against only the worst offenders: as was Milosevic’s Serbia; as is Bashir’s Sudan. Nor would a ‘Kosovo precedent’ mean a free-for-all for all secessionist movements. There is a lot of space between the untenable pretense that Kosova is ‘unique’ and the rather comic nightmare-scenario threatened by Kosova’s enemies: of innumerable separatist territories all over the world responding to Kosova’s independence by trying to become Kosovas themselves. Kosova itself, after all, was scarcely given red-carpet treatment by the Western alliance in its move to independence: a decade elapsed between Milosevic’s brutal suppression of its autonomy and its liberation by NATO; almost another decade elapsed between liberation and the recognition of its independence, during which time it was forced to endure international administration and engage in exhaustive negotiations with its former oppressor. Even now, Kosova  is still faced with a very real threat of permanent territorial partition, as the Serbs maintain their hold on the north of the country. The Kosova model may not prove as straightforwardly attractive for other potential secessionists as the Cassandras claim.

Kosova’s independence was recognised as the result of a confluence of multiple factors: its existence as an entity in its own right within the Yugoslav federation; its overwhelmingly non-Serb, ethnic-Albanian population; the brutality of Belgrade’s treatment of this population; the unwillingness of the Milosevic regime to reach an accommodation with the Western alliance over the issue, following on from its years of trouble-making in Croatia and Bosnia; the unwillingness or inability of post-Milosevic Serbia in the 2000s to reach agreement with the Kosovars; and the simple lack of any workable alternative to independence. These were an exceptional set of circumstances. The truth is, that it is possible to envisage a similar set of circumstances leading the Western alliance to recognise the independence of another secessionist territory in the future. Sometimes it is better to tell the truth.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

This post analyzes the deterioration of “Free Press” in the world and questions whether “Foxification” of 24-hour news contributes to the Free Press issues in democratic countries.

According to Freedom House’s Freedom of the Press 2009 report, the world has experienced yet another year of decline in press freedoms. Unfortunately, this is now the seventh year in a row that press freedoms have moved in a negative direction. The main areas of concern are East Asia, the former Soviet Union, and North Africa as evidenced by this Map of Press Freedom – 2009 chart.

Further, the 2009 report suggests that Not Free Press countries came in at 33%, Partly Free at 31%, and Free Press nations at 36%; in contrast with 2002, where Not Free Press countries were at 32.8%, Partly Free at 26.9%, and Free Press nations at 40.3% (Karlekar, 2009, p. 1). Of the entire world inhabitants, only 17% live in countries with a Free Press, 41% in Partly Free, and 42% in Not Free Press zones (Karlekar, 2009, p. 1). Sadly, several open and democratic countries fell from the Free Press category to Partly Free, they include Israel, Italy, and Hong Kong (Karlekar, 2009, p. 1). There were actually twice as many losses in the Free Press arena as there were gains. Most troubling is the fact that “repressive legislation against journalists and media outlets is the key factor behind global declines, as are the persistent threat of physical harassment and attacks against reporters” (Karlekar, 2009, p. 1).

In light of that, let’s take a look at Gary Langer’s (2009) ABC News/Washington Post Poll on U.S. Views of Islam. According to Langer, 48% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion of Islam and 55% of Americans admit they lack a basic understanding of Islam (Langer, 2009). Most startling are the political and ideological variances where two-thirds of moderates and liberals see Islam as peaceful; in sharp contrast, only 26% of conservatives and just 33% of Republicans see the faith in a favorable light (Langer, 2009). How is it that so many more moderates/liberals see Islam as a peaceful religion versus conservatives/Republicans? Maybe it has to do with perceptions. That which you perceive, you tend to believe.

With freedom of the press in decline, this does not bode well for the future when it comes to conceptions and misconceptions. Obviously, Langer’s poll shows the varying degree of opinion in the United States. But, in the case of Islam who is misinformed, the moderates/liberals or the conservatives/Republicans? According to Kull (2002), only one forth of Americans realize that a majority of nations are more sympathetic to the Palestinian side. In fact, only one out of three people were aware that more Palestinians have died in the conflict than Israelis. Why are two-thirds of Americans ignorant of this fact? Is it because they are feeding on a source of news that doesn’t tell the “rest of the story”?

Cushion and Lewis (2009), suggested that network and cable operators are falling prey to the ‘Fox effect‘ in hopes of commercial success with more sensational coverage and a slant towards partisan views. This trend toward celebrity coverage, an overabundance of human interest stories, ideological positioning, a strong political slant, and a disproportionate amount of military or professional experts instead of regular people or actual victims may explain why certain groups of people do not have a sense of what is really going on. Instead of relying on the facts or a variety of perspectives, the news is supplied in a flashy format and over time the people are mesmerized and do not realize they are being mislead. Cushion and Lewis (2009) asserted that the overuse of military analysts could lead viewers to perceive that certain networks are pro-war.

So, if Cushion and Lewis (2009) are right that the broadcast news outlets in the U.S. do not have strong public service ideals, but are instead pushing news bits and programs on Americans that serve corporate or government interests, is capitalism really providing democracy fair and balanced news? I tend to agree with Cushion and Lewis, yet many Americans feel that the market will correct itself. But how, especially if part of the market receives skewed bits and pieces; and, since the US Federal Communications Commission in 1987 suspended the ‘Fairness Doctrine’ which required balanced news coverage (Cushion and Lewis, 2009)? Unfortunately, a by product of the demise of the doctrine was the extreme right-wing and left-wing radio hosts who have polarized the citizens of this country into a quagmire of misinformation.

Interestingly, according to Wells (2004), a survey in Great Britain revealed that 85% of the public trust television news, compared to only one-third in the U.S. Further, Cushion and Lewis (2009), asserted that the U.K. still has strong impartiality guidelines similar to the Fairness Doctrine. Could there be a cause-and-effect scenario between perceptions of fair and balanced coverage? Cushion and Lewis (2009) argue that the stricter regulations “prohibit news outlets from significantly breaching viewers’ trust” (p. 148). They also highlighted a poll conducted in 2008 that showed that Americans would favor more fair and balanced news and suggested that America’s President Obama might bring back the Fairness Act (cited in Cushion and Lewis, 2009).

So, would a re-introduction of the Fairness Act limit the amount of misconceptions? Will we ever know? It doesn’t look like it. President Obama campaigned that he was opposed to the Fairness Doctrine and according to Fox News he’s sticking to his word (Berger, 2009). So, the best way to combat misconceptions and misinformation is to be as media literate as possible. I encourage people who only use one media source for their news to broaden their horizons to two, three, four, or more. Better yet, include in those new sources a few international news outlets. If we all do that, maybe the market will correct itself.

It’s official – Serbs are the agents of Western imperialism ! This, at least, is what the xenophobic Communist dinosaur Vladimir Voronin, President of Moldova, seems to believe; he has claimed that nine Serb nationals, working for the US, were responsible for organising protests in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau. Indeed, just as the Poles and other Central Europeans spearheaded the revolution against Communist tyranny that swept across the Eastern Europe and the Balkans in 1989 and the former Soviet Union in 1989-91, so it was the spectacular popular revolution against the Milosevic regime in 2000 that presaged the subsequent ‘colour revolutions’ in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. As democratisation spreads eastwards, so nations that were yesterday in the firm grip of tyranny are today viewed as sources of the democratic contagion by the tyrants and xenophobes who remain.

Moldova is not a one-party dictatorship and Voronin’s regime may enjoy the support of a majority of Moldova’s citizens. Yet the regime’s reaction to the popular protests against the Communists’ disputed electoral victory earlier this month shows that Voronin and his clique are anything but democrats. While the activists of Moldova’s ‘Twitter Revolution’ carried US flags and demanded EU integration, Voronin resorted to the familiar demagogue’s tactic of blaming evil foreign influences for the resistance to his regime. In addition to Serbs, he has singled out ‘imperialist’ Romania as the instigator of the protests – the former land of Ceausescu is apparently now a dangerous source of democracy. The Romanian ambassador to Moldova has been ordered out of the country and the Moldovan envoy from Bucharest recalled, while a visa regime for Romanian visitors is being reintroduced.

Natalia Morar, the supposed architect of the Twitter Revolution, has been placed under house arrest and may be charged with ‘inciting mass disorder’. A UN investigation has found evidence of the beating in prison of detained Moldovan protesters. Three people in total may have been killed in custody; the corpse of one, twenty-three-year-old Valeriu Boboc, was returned to his parents covered in bruises. Indeed, the torture meted out to prisoners has echoes of Serb concentration camps in wartime Bosnia. According to one victim, Ion Butmalai, ‘We were made to stand with our hands up facing a wall… They beat us with truncheons, and with their fists, and kicked us. They also hit us with rifles, on different parts of our bodies, in the head, in the back, in the legs.’ After being made to spend three or four hours outside in the cold, Butmalai says they were taken inside and forced to strip naked, then beaten again: ‘We were beaten until some of us were covered in blood, falling over. After that we were taken to the cells, 15 or 16 people to a cell.’

Police brutality, persecution of dissidents, extra-judicial killings and raging xenophobia are precisely what one would expect in response to popular protests from the regime of a president who, after being elected in 2001, pledged at a rally celebrating Lenin’s birthday:  ‘Moldova must hold out in Europe as Cuba is holding out on the American continent… We will hold out to the end as Cuba is holding out among imperialist predators.’ You can take the apparatchik out of the Communist dictatorship, but you can’t take the Communist dictatorship out of the apparatchik. Yet Voronin’s tyranny does not exist in a vacuum: he is simply one of the clients of the Russian despot Vladimir Putin’s neo-Soviet empire. For Moldova never fully achieved independence following the break-up of the Soviet Union, as Moscow responded to Moldovan independence by providing decisive military support to separatists in Moldova’s Transnistria region, ensuring that this considerable slice of Moldovan territory would remain a Russian imperial outpost. Voronin has pursued a pro-Russian and anti-NATO foreign policy and soft-pedalled Moldova’s pursuit of the reintegration of Transnistria in return for the Kremlin’s backing. Moscow has ‘rewarded’ its Moldovan client by not formally recognising the ‘independence’ of Igor Smirnov’s grotesque neo-Soviet puppet-regime in Tiraspol, as it has with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which it similarly hacked out of Georgia.

Voronin may be aspiring to be a Moldovan Putin and retain power behind the scenes after he steps down to make way for his presidential successor, but he is far from the worst of the Kremlin’s clients. That honour probably goes to the Russian-installed tyrant of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. Although Moscow justified its murderous and destructive reoccupation of Chechnya with the claim that it was fighting Islamist terrorists, it is Moscow’s own protege, Kadyrov, who has introduced an exceptionally crude and brutal Islamic regime in the country. He was recently reported as justifying the murder of seven young Chechen women in honour killings on the grounds that they had ‘loose morals’ and deserved to die. In the words of the New York Times: ‘Kadyrov describes women as the property of their husbands and says their main role is to bear children. He encourages men to take more than one wife, even though polygamy is illegal in Russia. Women and girls are now required to wear head scarves in schools, universities and government offices.’ Meanwhile, Kadyrov has shown himself to be an adept instigator of international terrorism, systematically assassinating his exiled Chechen opponents from Vienna to Dubai. With Russia this month declaring its military operations in Chechnya over, the results of its Pyrrhic victory are all too clear: the creation of a Islamist, terrorist Frankenstein’s monster enjoying arguably as much real independence as the rebel Chechen regime of the 1990s ever did, but exercising it with a great deal more brutality.

The nature of the regime in Moscow is such that it works ceaselessly to prevent democratisation and stabilisation in the region. Following his energy dispute with Russia in 2007, Belarus’s Alyaksandr Lukashenka has moved closer to the EU and relaxed the reins of his dictatorship. Yet Russian pressure on him to recognise the breakaway Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia may, in the entirely possible event that he succumbs to it, drive a new wedge between Belarus and the EU and derail the country’s reform.

In Georgia, meanwhile, pro-Western president Mikheil Saakashvili is far from being a model democrat. Yet as the Economist notes, he is showing a willingness to reform: following a heavy-handed crackdown against protesters in November 2007 and resulting international disapproval, Saakashvili has responded with restraint to recent demonstrations against his rule, in a manner that contrasts favourably with Voronin’s behaviour. Even Eric Fournier, the French ambassador in Tbilisi, recently praised the Georgian government’s reaction to the protests as proof that ‘Georgia is developing as a democratic country.’ Yet the democratisation of Georgia, too, is being sabotaged by Moscow. In a manner reminiscent of Slobodan Milosevic’s use of Kosovo Serb demonstrators to threatend and destabilise other Yugoslav republics, Moscow recently attempted to send a convoy of vehicles carrying activists of ‘Nashi’, the Kremlin’s youth movement, into Georgia. The aim was to join the anti-government protests in Tbilisi, or failing that, to stage an incident at the demarcation line between Russian-held South Ossetia and government-held Georgia.

The Nashi foray was a continuation by other means of the Kremlin’s brutal assault on Georgia last year; an attempt to prevent the country’s transition into a functioning, economically successful Western-style democracy, and keep it within the Russian imperial sphere. Hardly surprising, then, that Saakashvili should be apprehensive about the possibility of a US detente with Russia in which Georgia would be sacrificed in return for Russian support for the US in other parts of the world: ‘I used to idealize America under Bush, when ideas were above pragmatic politics. Now it is a new time, when pragmatic politics are in charge of ideas. That might spoil the America I know.’

There are worrying signs that the Obama Administration may be seeking an entente with Russia at the expense of the US’s alliance with Central and East European states – Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Georgia – in the hope that Moscow will prove cooperative over Iran, Afghanistan and other areas. Such a policy would be disastrous. For quite apart from ethical objections to sacrificing relations with allies to appease an enemy, it simply will not work. The Russia of Putin and Dmitri Medvedev sees itself as a great power with the right to its own imperial sphere of influence in eastern and southeastern Europe, one that it sees as rightfully extending over countries that aspire to join NATO and the EU. Organised as it is along fundamentally authoritarian and populist-nationalist lines, the Putin regime is aware that maintenance or extension of this sphere is fundamentally irreconcilable with democratisation of the countries that lie within it, and with acceptance of the same set of international legal norms employed by the European democratic family. The present Russian regime is, in other words, structurally incapable of playing by the rules and of being a good neighbour.

To counter this Moscow-inspired corrosion of the eastern flank of democratic Europe, the Western alliance must insist loudly on respect for democracy, law and human rights. Flawed democratic allies such as Georgia must be firmly pressed to reform, but equally, we must take a very hard and vocal line against abuses of the democratic process in Moldova; against violations of international law by Belarus; and against acts of international terrorism and persecution of women by Chechnya. States whose police beat up and kill peaceful protesters or imprison pro-democracy activists, or that collude in the territorial dismemberment of other states, or that assassinate their dissidents abroad, must learn that they will pay a very heavy price in terms of their relations with NATO and the EU. In the case of Chechnya, which is not an independent state, Russia should be named and shamed for promoting an Islamist-terrorist regime within its own borders.

Romania has responded to the Moldovan regime’s behaviour by proposing that up to one million Moldovan citizens be granted Romanian citizenship. As Paul Bisca notes in the Washington Post, it is indicative of the EU’s pusillanimity in its reaction to the Moldovan events, that it has been more upset by the supposed danger to regional stability represented by the Romanian plan than by the behaviour of the Voronin regime in the first place. In fact, if the Romanian plan helps to destabilise the order represented by Putin, Medvedev, Lukashenka and Voronin, it should be welcomed, not feared. There can ultimately be no modus vivendi in Europe between democracy and neo-Soviet tyranny. The other side appreciates that; it is time we did as well.

This article was published today on the website of the Henry Jackson Society.

No wonder we continue to have plagiarism in the former Soviet country of Kazakhstan when we have artists copying one another with such detailed abandon. In the art world the highest form of flattery is to copy the masters. Sunday I went to the Almaty Crafts Fair and found a piece that was going for about $50 replicating the “genius” of Vincent van Gogh in his rendering of sunflowers in a pot. Though intentional, it is not easy to copy an oil painting while using colored wool pieces that are battened down to felt. The felt piece is very difficult to put together as each color has to be put in the right spot and then smoothed or pressed down. Refer back to my earlier post on Kazakh art.

Also, I’m showing what my friend Kathy bought this past Sunday at the Crafts Fair which will go on her wall. The one with the red edge has gold thread and different stones or beads attached, very vibrant and beautiful. Not meant to be knelt on but the other larger one is, yet that will possibly go to Kathy’s daughter and on her wall. Many beautiful things to take in at these Crafts Fairs in Almaty.