Bias

You may think my posts on Gaza have been somewhat biased. I think you're probably right, so here, to provide some actual balance, is the "STATEMENT OF SPECIAL RAPORTEUR FOR THE PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES" published by the UNHCR this weekend. Now, I hope we can agree that while various media outlets might have their own axes to grind (in whatever direction), the UNHCR is pretty much as neutral as it gets (Though I'm under no illusions that there won't be lots of the extremist wing of the pro-occupation faction who will say that obviously everything the UN is involved with is biased).

Anyway, the full text is here, but here are some excerpts for you if you don't have the time to read the whole.

This concern about exclusion has been compounded during the period preceding the Israeli attack upon Gaza, as well during the military operations, by denying access to foreign journalists, a policy that has been successfully challenged in Israeli courts, but as yet with no tangible results. As noted in the New York Times, Israel denies media representatives access to the humanitarian impacts of its military operations in Gaza while encouraging journalists to view any harmful effects of the rocket attacks on civilians in Israel. Even requests by the International Committee of the Red Cross to investigate scenes of supposed humanitarian abuse have so far been refused, e.g. to visit the site of military action in the Gazan town of Zeitan that reportedly killed by deliberate action 60 members of the Samouni family, including several children. This issue of access is crucial for the work of Special Rapporteurs and deserves the attention of the HRC, and of the United Nations generally.

The rationale for this Special Session is the existence of a humanitarian emergency in Gaza, a set of conditions that has been questioned in many public settings by the Israeli foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. Ms. Livni contends there is no need for a 'humanitarian truce' because there is no humanitarian crisis. She asserts that Israel has allowed shipments of food and medicine to cross the border, but as UNRWA and other UN officials have observed, these shipments will not alleviate hunger and nutritional difficulties unless distribution becomes possible, which is not the case given the war conditions prevailing in most of the Gaza Strip. To what slight extent this dire circumstance can be addressed by the three hour pause in combat operations announced by Israel on 7 January remains to be seen. Beyond the immediate crisis some underlying features should be noted: about 75% of the population lacks access to sanitary water and has no electric power. Such conditions are superimposed on the circumstances of Gazans resulting from the prolonged blockade that had deteriorated the physical and mental health, and the nutritional status, of the population of Gaza as a whole, leaving some 45% of children suffering from acute anemia. Interference in the supply of medicines and health equipment, and border closures, had made it impossible for many Gazans to receive or continue treatment for life-threatening conditions. It was also reliably concluded that up to 80% of Gaza was living under the poverty line, that unemployment totals approached 75%, and that the health system was near collapse from the effects of the blockade. This set of conditions certainly led impartial international observers and civil servants to an uncontested conclusion that the population of Gaza was already experiencing a humanitarian crisis of grave magnitude prior to 27 December.

It should be pointed out unambiguously that there is no legal (or moral) justification for firing rockets at civilian targets, and that such behavior is a violation of IHR, associated with the right to life, as well as constitutes a war crime. At the same time, the nature of the offense must be evaluated with the context of its occurrence, including the relevance of the temporary ceasefire that had held since June 2008 until seriously disrupted by a lethal Israeli attack on Palestinian militants in Gaza on 4 November 2008. For the year prior to 27 December, not a single Israeli death resulted from rockets fired from Gaza. Further, since June of 2008 a ceasefire had been observed by both sides, with some infractions taking place, but without altering the willingness of both sides to uphold the ceasefire. During this period Israel had been expected to lift, or at least ease the blockade that had imposed severe hardships on the entire population of Gaza, especially through restraints on the supply of food, medicine and medical equipment, and fuel, but failed to do so. The acute harm done to civilian Gaza has been repeatedly pointed out by leading UN officials on the ground, including the commissioner-general of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that is most directly engaged with the daunting task of meeting the humanitarian needs of Gazans.

This blockade in effect for a period of 18 months was unlawful, a massive form of collective punishment, and as such in violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, and also a violation of Article 55, which requires that the occupying power ensure that the civilian population has sufficient food and that its health needs are addressed.

The Israeli military campaign was also justified by Israeli leaders as an 'inevitable' and 'unavoidable' response to the persistence of the rocket attacks. Here again it is important to examine the factual setting of Israel's justifications, which go to the reasonableness of such action and its defensive character. Most accounts of the temporary ceasefire indicate that it was a major Israeli use of lethal force on November 4, 2008 that brought the ceasefire to a de facto end, leading directly to increased frequency of rocket fire from Gaza. It is also relevant that Hamas repeatedly offered to extend the ceasefire, even up to ten years, provided that Israel would lift the blockade. These diplomatic possibilities were, as far as can be assessed, not explored by Israel, although admittedly complicated by the contested legal status of Hamas as the de facto representative of the Gazan population.

To mount a major military campaign against an essentially defenseless society already gravely weakened by the blockade accentuates the disproportion of reliance on modern weaponry in combat situations where military dominance was largely uncontested.
It seems significant that Palestinian casualty totals at this time are estimated to be 640 killed, some 2800 wounded, included many critically, with civilian victims set at about 25% by qualified observers. In contrast, according to the latest reports, four Israeli soldiers have died, apparently all as a result of 'friendly fire,' that is by Israeli firepower wrongly directed. The one-sidedness of casualty figures is one measure of disproportion. Another is the scale of devastation and the magnitude of the attacks. It is obvious that the destruction of police facilities, as well as many public buildings, in crowded urban settings represents an excessive use of force even if Israeli allegations are accepted at face value

There have also been a variety of allegations made by qualified observers of Israeli reliance on legally unacceptable targets and on legally dubious weaponry that violate the customary international law prohibition on weapons and tactics that are 'cruel' or cause 'unnecessary suffering.'

That was more excerpting than I was actually planning to do, but it was all so damning that I couldn't reasonably snip it. And remember this is a neutral source.

Csikszereda in the Indepedent

Just got the following link thanks to Lucy Mallows (who wrote it, and has a fascinating blog on Budapest here) - it is a potted version (I presume) of her book Transylvania: The Bradt Travel Guide (I say I presume because I have yet to get hold of a copy of the book.)

Anyway, there we go, a very useful potted guide to travelling in Transylvania. I reckon the book is probably great too. When I actually get one I'll let you know for sure.

More anger

I'm still too upset/angry/disgusted by the massacre going on in Gaza to post coherently on any other subject (less joking about my inability to post coherently about anything at any time at the back please). I've spent this week working in the UK and have been really really appalled at what passes for TV news there. I mean I kind of imagined that Sky News would be poor, given its ownership, so that was no big deal, but the BBC...what happened to the BBC? A couple of years ago an independent study of the BBC's coverage of the Israel Palestine issue found that it was relatively even-handed with slight pro-occupation bias*. But since then rather than getting better it has got immeasurably worse. Yesterday I watched the Israeli spokesman repeating the lies that Hamas were firing rockets from that school that the IDF bombed (which is fairly clearly the usual bullshit they pull to try and cover themselves whenever they do something like this - see also Qana and various other similar indefensible acts of mass murder) and the guy interviewing him never even once pushed him on this, never asked a probing question, never did anything to try and force him to get closer to the truth. It was truly an appalling lapse of journalistic integrity. Luckily my faith waas partially restored in the sense that there are still some TV journalists in the Uk worthy of the name when later in the day the guy interviewing Mark Regev on Channel 4 News actually pushed him to respond to the ICRC's condemnation of the fact that the IDF had left a bunch of children starving next to their corpses of their mothers and hadn't let any ambulances come. (Just, for a moment, muse on that scene. Children. Starving. Next to the decomposing corpses of their mothers. Utterly utterly sickening isn't it?). Anyway while Regev flim-flammed and refused to apologise for this heinous act ("we have to investigate for ourselves" - this is the ICRC we're talking about Mark. They are the most neutral body in the world. They never criticise anyone unless something really really fucking bad has happened and the facts are incontrovertible), but the journalist, to his credit, really did try to get the slimeball to say something that admitted that maybe just maybe the IDF are not the squeaky clean lovers of humanity and ethics that he likes to portray them as. He didn't of course, but at least for a while he felt vaguely uncomfortable. (I presume the result will be that they ban Channel 4 News from reporting in Israel)

(*Just to be clear, there are two positions here - pro-occupation and pro-peace. I am pro-israel, in that I want Israelis to be able to live in peace and security, and to get that result they need to end the occupation. I reject the pro-Israel/pro-palestinian dichotomy which is used as shorthand to suggest that anyone who supports the palestinians right to life and liberty and so on as being an anti-Israeli viewpoint)

Unhappy New Year

Making comments about Israel and Palestine on the Internet tends to be the most surefire way imaginable of getting loads of mad crazy people from the extremes of the debate from both sides to launch insane cyberhate campaigns against one.

But I cannot just sit here and say nothing about this appalling revolting vile murderous indiscriminate killing launched on the people of Gaza by the Israeli government. Not that it's any surprise that the Israeli government (any Israeli government) would decide to start killing Palestinians (apparently as a particularly disgusting murderous electioneering tactic, or perhaps just - just - a massive collective punishment). What is really sickening is the craven mealy-mouthed non-condemnations emanating from the so-called "International Community". All Bush has done is condemn Hamas for firing rockets, and has said nothing about the bombing of women and children in Gaza - like it's OK. They are only Arabs after all. (And the US has refused to sign a call for a ceasefire in the UN. Why? Because they actually want more deaths? I guess so. The EU has done sod all too, and where is that "envoy" Tony Blair? What the fuck is he doing?

And then there is the media coverage. I've watched this unfold on various TV channels, and all of them post the whole thing as some kind of Israeli "response", and just a self-defence. Why do we have to have the media (and I'm talking about the BBC, CNN, etc here) just parroting the Israeli government line? We have that scumbag Mark Regev on our screens every couple of hours smoothly and calmly explaining that he sees the Gazans as victims too (well if you lifted the siege and stopped bombing and murdering them they might not be quite such victims, Mark, you vile apologist for mass murder). It's not even remotely balanced, and anyway, why should there be balance? We don't ask our news channels to present the murderers point of view when there's a trial. Why now, when this massively heavily armed war machine is indiscriminately killing women and children, bombing mosques, schools, shopping centres, and universities, dropping bombs on one of the most overcrowded places in the world with no mercy, no thought for people as people, why now do we have to give prominence to the view of the aggressor? And of course Israel doesn't allow any reporters into the Gaza Strip, so we just have sanitized pictures from outside, of tanks massing.

It's disgusting, and barbaric and vile and a massacre. And the mass media is saying nothing. Nothing. Bastards, vile motherfucking bastards. I cannot watch TV anymore, it disgusts me so much.

I'd normally make an apolgy here for my intemperate language and for saying nothing light-hearted, but I won't. In fact I have moderated my language somewhat.

Some better places to get news untainted by being regurgitated Israeli Government statements or my angry ranting:
The Electronic Intifada
B'Tselem
ZMag Middle East Watch
Miftah
Bitter Lemons
The Guardian - Israel and the Palestinian Territories

Kellemes Ünnepeket

And so on. Was intending to sign off at the weekend but got flu, and had to stay in bed (by the way, I was recently told that the official medical/scientific way you can tell whether you've got flu or just a bad cold is to imagine looking out of your window and seeing a 20 pound note (or 100 Lei, or 20 Euro or whatever) lying on the path. If you would go outside and get it, you've got a cold. If not, it's flu. Anyway, I had flu (at least by this rigorous definition) and so there was no writing a long happy christmas message, there was just lying in bed feeling sorry for myself. Anyway I wish everyone who comes across this note well and the compliments of the season and a happy new year and all of that jazz.

In addition I would like to point out that although I am the same age as the new Romanian prime minister Emil Boc, I look younger than him. This is not because I look especially young but that he looks a lot older than his years. His name is an anagram of "embolic" by the way, which means "of or relating to an obstuction of a blood vessel". Mine, on the other hand, isn't. And on that cryptic note I bid you, my reader, adieu for 2008. Have a good one.

Coalition of the Unwilling

I missed the election, being in a country which doesn’t really believe in such things, but as I understand it the results turned out more or less as expected including a record low turnout (which I expect wasn’t the supposed point of the new uninominal voting system). The PSD got a very slightly greater proportion of the votes than the others, but the PD-L got slightly more seats due to the new system. The PNL got the third most, and the UDMR were the only other party to break 5% and therefore get representation. This means that the good news is that both the PRM and the PNG, the two extremist right wing parties, aren’t in the parliament at all, which is nice.

Because of the slight disparity between popular vote and most seats, there seems to have been major difficulties in working out who gets to have first stab at forming a workable coalition, which has meant that everybody kind of milled around for a while partly attempting to seduce each other and partly trying to act strong and tough. Metaphorically waving a leg clad in a stocking and a hob-nailed boot.

The seeming upshot of all of this is that the PSD and the PDL are going to try and come up with a coalition government, with maybe the UDMR in too, though this seems debatable (I’m not sure why they would need the UDMR as they’d have close to 70% of the seats between them even without the UDMR, so why they would need an extra partner is beyond me, but I guess the UDMR made some kind of deal with Basescu or someone else in the PDL) [Note:Technically Basescu is no longer in the PDL because as President he had to resign his party affiliation, but I assume no-one really believes that he has no pro-PDL sympathies].

I can’t really see this (or any other potential coalition) lasting that long to be honest, since the three parties seem to hate each other massively, so I think the upshot is that Romania will trundle along with its leaders bickering incessantly until the global financial crisis really reaches Romania (which it sort of is about to do – I think it hasn’t yet, because we’re a bit behind), and then there’ll be no-one prepared to do anything about it. Still at least we have some palinka to tide us over.

What the Mikulás brought

Friday was the day when the Mikulás came. The Mikulás, or St Nicholas as you may know him, shows up on December 5th with various small gifts and sweets and stuff for children. [I should note here that there is some confusion over this date. Here, he comes on the 5th, but apparently in Hungary he comes on the 6th. It seems that his Romanian counterpart, Mos Niculae, comes on the 5th, so perhaps that's why the Mikulás comes then here]

Anyway, he came, as usual, and brought various sweets and cakes and fruit and stuff, and also brought me safely home from Uzbekistan and - on that day - Turkey, which is apt, since that's where he (St Nicholas) is from. The other thing he brought though was of much greater interest and value. He brought our palinka. I mentioned some time ago about the abundance of plums that we have acquired as part of our new land-owning status, and that we would be making palinka from them. Well, on Friday, Erika (and a friend, since I was unavoidably unable to be there thanks to the Tashkent fog) carted our barrels of fermenting plum mash off to the village church for just this purpose. For reasons which are unclear to me, but perhaps related to the role of the church at the heart of the community and the priest as guide to the people, the distiller had set up his equipment in the priest's garage next door to the church. And so a few hours after dropping off our plums, we had a significant quantity of delicious 53% abv palinka to our name. On Saturday evening some friends came round and we sampled it (and continued to sample it for quite a long time, to really make sure it was as good as we thought).

Yesterday morning I woke up without the merest trace of a hangover, which I take to mean that thius is really top quality stuff, since these days, I do tend to get some fairly brutal hangovers if I drink too much, and for that reason do so less and less. The fact that this palinka was able to do the job without leaving me comatose for the day is testament to the skills of our distillers. I raise a glass in their general direction! (hic)

Fogbound

I am fogbound in Tashkent airport (at least I am at the moment I am writing this, when and if I finally post it I won’t be, because there is no internet here at the airport, so it will have to actually go up later)

Last night I left the hotel here at 1.30 and got to the airport in good time. After various bureaucratic procedures (Uzbekistan is very bureaucratic as that’s as good a way as any to control people), I made it to the departures lounge and sat down to sort of doze and wait. After an hour or so, a Turkish Airlines man showed up to inform us that the plane would be a little late (the actual phrase he used was “a little untimely” which was, I thought, a nicely euphemistic phrase for “late”). When pressed he confessed that he didn’t know how untimely it would be because the plane was circling above us, hoping that the fog would lift enough to let it land.

Obviously it didn’t because an hour later he appeared again, looking stressed (or perhaps “a little untranquil”) to inform us that we should all return to our hotels because the plane would not actually arrive that night and had been diverted to Ashkabad (for those unfamiliar with Central Asian geography, that’s the capital of Turkmenistan). We should come back to the airport at noon. First of all we had to retrace our steps through the bureaucracy, since when we showed up again later (feels like the next day, but technically it isn’t) we’d need to hand over all the various forms we’d presented just then – so it would be necessary to reclaim the forms (the hotel registration card, the customs declaration and various other ridiculous bits of paper). That took a while, and eventually I ended up at the Turkish Airlines office to work out what my options would be regarding onward connections from Istanbul – obviously the plane to Bucharest I was supposed to catch was out of the question, but it also turned out that by the time we eventually get to Istanbul (fingers crossed) I’ll have missed every feasible connection for the day, and I’ll have to spend the night there.

After reconnecting with two Iranian colleagues who were fogbound with me, we got back to the hotel (after taxi haggling, and the realisation, upon emerging from the terminal, that the fog was in fact very very thick – somehow that was a piece of good news, since it meant that we weren’t being dicked around for no actual reason) , had a short argument with the hotel regarding the fact that we knew the rooms had been paid for for the whole night, and yes, while we had actually checked out, that they could put us back there for a few hours, so we could have a kip (by this time it was well after 5, so everyone was a little frazzled and not really in the mood to deal with the problems caused by Uzbek bureaucracy – once you’ve checked out, you’ve checked out). They relented eventually, and I was able to sleep for about 3 hours, before getting up at 9 to sort out various problems caused by this unscheduled extra half day in Tashkent (and consequent 24 hour delay in my eventual arrival home). So, here I am, back at the airport, knackered and hoping that the plane eventually comes (the fog has lifted mostly), and that I will be able to catch a few more hours sleep on board (unlikely, I fear).

I appreciate that these destinations may sound evocatively exotic to many people (Tashkent, Ashkabad, Istanbul), but you’ll have to trust me that spending three hours at Tashkent airport in the wee hours is not in any way glamorous. However, to try and find a silver lining, there are people in this story worse off than us – the plane load of passengers who after circling Tashkent for 2 hours, were directed back to spend the night in Ashkabad (and I’m having a guess that Ashkabad airport makes Tashkent look like a comfortable and uncomplicated haven of tranquility).

In theory we take off in one more hour from now, but I’m not holding my breath.

[Update: Am now finally in Istanbul, after 5 more unexplained hours at the airport today. Rather intriguingly when they fed us at about 5.30pm local time, they decided to stick with the plan and give us breakfast, which was somewhat taking-the-piss I felt. It's not often I have breakfast with red wine]

The Romanian election is approaching, and I, for one, am as baffled as ever by the shifting allegiances in Romanian politics.

The election will take place on November 30th, which is next Sunday, and frankly an odd choice for an election day. You see, that's a long weekend, as December 1st is Romania's national day. Thus many people (one assumes) will actually be away from home (and hence the place in which they are registered to vote) either visiting family or enjoying the first of the winter snow (which I'm reliably informed is just round the corner), and not really looking to spend Sunday at home so they can vote.

This is the parliamentary election to elect a new government (but not a new president). This, at least, will presumably stop the endless bickering between the current government and the current president. Unless of course the current government get reelected (though this seems unlikely at the moment). So, here, basically is a quick primer on which parties stand a chance of having seats and being involved in coalition speculation.

Let's start with the PSD. The PSD (Social Democrats) are essentially the ex-communists. I presume by now there are some young and thrusting members who were never in the Communist Party, as they were not yet adults in 1989, but it seems like most of them were. The grand puppet master of the PSD is Ion Ilescu who was Ceausescu's right hand man, before positioning himself handily at the revolution and ending up as president following Nic's unfortunate violent death. I'm not sure what he's up to now, but his presence is still very strong around the party. The PSD are nominally of the left, but who knows what that means these days. Most confusingly they've allied themelsves at this election with the Conservative Party (PC). Obviously it's a tad confusing being English and finding an electoral alliance between the ex-communists and the conservatives, but I'm coming to terms with the idea that names don't mean a great deal (as if to prove this the conservatives were formerly called the humanist party). But the Conervatives seem to me like a trad right wing party - anti gay, in favour of "family values" whatever they are, and basically you're run of the mill bunch of rightists. No idea what the thinking behind the coalition is.

The other two major parties were allies four years ago, but now seem to hate each other's guts. There are the Democrats (PD) from which party comes the current president Traian Basescu (he's the bald bloke you see on photoshoots of EU leaders). They are kind of centrist (but to me what these days counts as "centrist" really is soft right. The party they fell out with the Liberals (PNL) who currently head up a minority government without the PD because they are not friends any more. They are to the right of the PD. Most of the last two years of Romanian politcis has been about the feud between these two, with each attempting to ridicule the other, and especially the most visible face of each party - Basescu(PD) and Tariceanu(PNL), the Prime Minister. Nobody I have spoken to thinks this election will change anything much, but at least, presumably, we'll see less of this soap opera for a while.

Those three will get most of the votes, but other parties that might get above the 5% threshold needed to get seats are the UDMR (The Hungarian Party who are big fish in my small pond), the PMR (extremist right wingers, who are thankfully on the wane) , and that's about it. Thankfully Gigi Becali's PNG party who are just a bunch of mad far right extremist "christians" are unlikely to make it.

The voting system has also changed this time. Before it was a party list system, but this time it has been changed into something called the uninominal system. This means, I think, that you actually get to a vote for a person rather than a list, which I suspect will serve to make Romanian politics even less interesting to the electorate since the candidates are so often such faceless nobodies, At least if you voted for a list you could choose policies, now they're being asked to vote for a sack of white potatoes or a sack of red potatoes. I could be wrong though, and maybe turnout will floruish with excited voters all wanting to vote for their man.

On which note, the final point for now (and I certainly hope that I get some comments here correcting what I expect to be a litany of errors), and that is the gender of the candidates. The last word of the previous paragraph was chosen carefully. Because you see there are no women. Well obnviously there are 1 or 2, but really this is about the most male election I can imagine. Today I drove from Miercurea Ciuc to Bucharest and passed loads of election posters. Tons of the things, and I saw one woman, One woman in 250 km of election advertising plastered over every billboard. It's a tad depressing. The one successful woman in the last parliament, who was elected woman of the year in the European parliament, Monica Macovei, got kicked out of the justice ministry in Romania for trying too hard to stamp out corruption.

Minstrels

Every now and again, the stuck-in-the-pastness of Romania* catches my attention. I've learned to overlook the horsecarts and the dingy little shops selling communist era tinned goods, and now I more or less forget that they are there. But once in a while I'm jolted back to reality.

TV Comedy in Romania is pretty ropey, and mostly of a sub-Benny Hill style slapstick, but there is one show which has always seemed to me to be a cut above. That show is called Cronica Carcotasilor. The hosts seem to be quick witted, and they lampoon most things that they see in Romania (and as an added bonus, they really rip the piss out of Gigi Becali). It does have this sort of gratuitous scantily clad dancing girls thing going on, but I figure they have to do that just to get the show on TV.

But then yesterday I caught a part of this week's show. Which they did blacked up wearing afro-wigs, and with the name cards Oblada and Obladi in front of them, and occasionally punctuating their lines with 70's style jive talk. What decade are we living in here?

Don't believe me?


The house band: The guy here appears to be, yes, I'm not joking, doing a monkey impression.

For fuck's sake.

(The really sad thing is that they probably felt they were doing this in some kind of spirit of celebration and empathy, and were not attempting to make just a bunch of cheap racist jibes)

*Because I seem to have acquired something of a reputation of being anti-Romanian among some people, I want to make it clear that I don't think this kind of thing is confined to Romania, and I'm guessing similar "jokes" have been made all over Eastern Europe this week. Which doesn't in any way excuse it.