BTW I’ve remembered that I owe you some translation (again quick and dirty) of discussion in David Sandukhchyan’ LJ (http://david-sand.livejournal.com/134073.html?thread=1802937#t1802937)
In hist Original post he condemns the amendments, and cohdemns political fractions in parliament for supporting the bill.

UZOGH: I think that nothing will happen to RFE. It will not lose the airtime. Perhaps it will move to another frequency, but will not be shut down completely…..
DAVID_SAND: Perhaps: If it will switch to Yerevan (meant yerevan-only-covering-frequency) it will not be dangerous.
UZOGH: I.e. it is dangerous on republican (meant full-republic-covering) frequency?
I reckon, that it is not dangerous at all. But it is not an issue.
DAVID_SAND: I think, that Serge is not convinient with marz broadcasting. Though he is not convininet with them anyway. But in marzes especially. In Yerevan there is some information about opposition and other things still leak out, but in marzes it is only PTV (Public TV), some glamorous Armenia and cowardous Shant.

UZOGH: Serzh personally have told you so?

But in marzes there are ALM and H2, and a lot of smaller tv-channels.

DAVID_SAND: ALM and H2 are under control, and you know them. Smaller are intimidated as [russian idiom]. Rub, don’t you understand me?
UZOGH: Understood. I still do not understand why are you sure about Serzh’s thoughts. And a minor correction to marz situation.
DAVID_SAND: I meant that this is originated from republicans. Bargavatches do not care, dashnaks again were not active, but Vahan [Hovhannisyan] have said a few words. The most active are republicans. I.e. Serzh. Although rumours say, that amendments are written at presidential [administration], not in Ministry of Justice.
UZOGH: Is it the first reading? Or amendments are not going thruogh 1,2,3 [readings] cycle?
DAVID_SAND: Going [through 1,2,3 cycle]. How they could not? It is us - who say amendments, but it is a law about amendments to law - everything by procedure.
then DAVID_SAND have gone into details of law making, and I become bored with translation.

Incidentally, as for Jina, I never saw what you were saying on the matter before I saw it mentioned on the Guardian’s blog so please be aware that I wasn’t one of those who said you were wrong.

Of course, I’ll also admit that I never saw the original posts so I might have had I done so.

Anyway, credit where credit is due, it was great work you did on that, and I’m still disappointed that few other blogs (and I suppose media outlets) covered the story.

Back to the RFE/RL - Public Radio saga, why didn’t the latter make it’s position clearer? Obviously, they didn’t. Likewise, I assume that journalists spoke to Public Radio and in all the quotes I’ve seen, they again don’t make the points you do, or as clear, shall we say?

Maybe you should get a job there as their media person.

Thank you for your invitation, Sir!
I think it’s a good idea, and I think that I will contribute.
Is there any exact topic, or I may have freedom in topic selection?
I really wanted to write about the accountability of donors and NGO sector, but not sure, that it is a correct place to put it in.

So here’s the statement from one side.
Let’s wait for the statement of RFE, but I really in doubt, that we will get it.

Just want to remind you the case of Jina Khachatryan. When I found her lying, everybody was saying - let’s wait for her response. And when there was no response, nobody told me: OK, Ruben, you were right.

If Public Radio “rents out air” (hmm, this sounds very funny, but I’ll stick to it), you bet there is still a contract.
It was RFE, that was renting out the air (eter). And the absence of properly written contract is the main issue. RFE wanted a contract with inappropriate (even strange) requirements. I’ve listed one, but there are many.

If you want I’d gladly take a guest post from you (as well as others) although it would have to be in English as my audience consists of English-speaking locals, Diasporans and foreign representatives of the international media and various organizations. Anyway, I can edit for English although yours isn’t bad at all, and I’d like you and others to consider it.

Yeah, hits aren’t many at present (an average of around 23 readers a day*), but that’s normal given we’re 6 months away from the campaign period, and my reason for setting up this blog now is so that it can gradually gain popularity before February next year. At the same time, all posts obviously remain in the database so will come up in Google and other searches, including that facility on this site.

* According to Statcounter. Google Analytics reports 526 unique visits since 20 July (an average of over 30 a day) with 42.40 percent being returning visitors and 36.12 percent being located in Armenia and 36.50 percent being in the U.S. People are reading the posts with the average time spent on the site during a visit being 12.41 minutes. Page views per visit average 3.31. By early next year I obviously expect the number of readers to be significantly higher as more interest is shown in the election.

However, regarding your analogy with buying bread at a shop, I really don’t think that RFE/RL and Public Radio should be working along the lines of my local kiosk. Nevertheless, I reserve judgment on this aspect of the RFE/RL saga because I have heard no real explanation of why this situation was allowed to exist — i.e. broadcasting without payment — from either of them. Indeed, this is the most confusing side of the whole story and one that has not yet been adequately explained or reported on.

Well, EurasiaNet did request clarification on this issue, but RFE/RL “declined to comment.” Even so, I think it’s obvious that someone wanted RFE/RL’s broadcasts limited. On the other hand, I can understand the argument why a foreign broadcaster shouldn’t use public radio or television. That is, for established democracies, and this is my point. When there is a problem with the information being made available to the public, RFE/RL still serves an important role in a country such as Armenia.

Later, I would imagine that when democratization takes hold here, and the local media actually does it job, there will be no need for RFE/RL. That’s for later, though. For now, I think RFE/RL is necessary and contributes to the process of democratization, although somewhat ironically I think we can consider that the government won on this one. RFE/RL will stop broadcasting on Public Radio and will instead work through another station. Time will tell if any other problems — technical or legislative — will emerge before the election.

Uzogh, in legal terms, that is still a contract. Even if you go to the shop to buy bread, in legal terms, there is still a contract, albeit an implied one and obviously no paper is signed: you give money and in return you receive a bread. If the bread is moldy or whatever, you’d go back to the store to complain that the shop didn’t keep up it’s side of the contract, even though these words would obviously not be used. I know it sounds like blowing up a small thing like buying bread out of proportion, but I just wanted to show you that contracts and agreements don’t always need to be written down on pages and pages of paper.

If Public Radio “rents out air” (hmm, this sounds very funny, but I’ll stick to it), you bet there is still a contract. It can be written down or oral (though that would obviously be inadvisable to both parties in this case), but there is always a contract, an agreement the two sides agreed upon where both parties are expected to do certain things (provide a service, pay a certain amount of money, you name it).

As a result, the service suffered and sometimes Freenet users were purposely cut off from the system. I suppose some money privately changed hands for this, but I have no idea other than seeing one company, ACC, use the Freenet office, servers and modem pool in the UNDP building as their own sometime around 1998-9. I also remember that both Freenet and Arminco constantly accused the other of initiating hacking wars to bring the other’s service down.

Anyway, as I said, even if some case could be made for allowing access to email — indeed, this is what those in charge of Freenet argued in order to continue pulling large salaries and to receive funding, but that’s definitely not the case now when you consider that dialup cards are not only more reliable, but they’re also cheaper, and free online mail services such as Yahoo, Hotmail etc are better and more widely available.

(It’s also worth mentioning that among their other tools is yet another Soros-sponsored project: freenet.am, a presently rather pathetic network that unsurprisingly does not link to anything outside its domain, creating the ideal conditions for an echo chamber.)

Hmmm, is it Soros sponsored now? I know that that Freenet was set up as a UNDP project 10 years ago before the project was finally stopped — last year, if this post is anything to go by. It wasn’t meant to last long unless it could become self-sustainable, and really wasn’t necessary for Armenia after 1999.

For now, it looks like Arminco are at least running the helpdesk, but I’d welcome any additional information on who is funding it. I maybe mistakingly assumed that Arminco took it over as they always saw it as a potential threat to their network.

Actually, they over-estimated the threat as Freenet always seemed unreliable to me, couldn’t access foreign web sites and was Yerevan-based because the lines were so damn bad everywhere else.

Regarding everything else, well, I’ve made it quite clear on two blogs I run that the parliamentary election was a step forward. I’ve also made it clear that I am personally shocked by what I consider to be the non-democratic mentality that exists among the “radical” opposition and certain parts of civil society. Some of those groups openly say they will do anything in their power to prevent Serzh from becoming president. My take? Well, what if the majority of Armenians actually vote for him?

Saying both of those things, however, I don’t believe that the election was “democratic” although again, I say, it was noticeably better than before (it was “more democratic” than before) and as many of us suspect — but I admit can’t prove — that vote bribes played a role it also has to be understood that that part of the electorate who took money did so quite willingly and without intimidation. I daresay not being able to see an alternative to the ruling parties also played a role.

However, let’s also recognize one other reality, or maybe two. Firstly, without pressure from outside — and particularly with regards to Armenia’s CE commitments and obligations — I don’t believe that this somewhat arguable progress would have happened. At the same time, I also believe that this form of “managed” democracy is what the West favors in a country such as this.

Anyway, let’s see what will be for the presidential election, but I personally don’t expect it to be “democratic” as I know it. However, I do believe that it will be more democratic and will largely be accepted by the West who can see that Armenia might well have now started to embark on some kind of path of democratization. Nevertheless, I think that international obligations are key although that’s different than say the outside world supporting the idea of revolution in Armenia.

Interestingly, as some civil society groups and opposition parties appear to still be waiting for the West to give the green light for revolution, I think it has to be said that the traditional and radical opposition are also to blame for the slow pace of democratization in Armenia. Certainly, in my opinion, they have lost the trust of those among the public that used to support them compared to 2002-3.

There has been progress, and for a variety of reasons — impotent opposition, economic growth, international pressure, and yes, some limited form of political will among the government — I think there will be progress next year too. I also agree with you that certain other events are also indicative of this as well. The filling in of the pit by the opera, for example, the failure of the media bill to pass, and the arrest of Ghukasian’s son, for example.

Nevertheless, I believe that democratization means that there needs to be checks and balances in the system, civil society has to play a role, and there will always be constant pressure for more change — and that even includes in established democratic countries. On that, if I felt pessimistic before the 12 May parliamentary election let me at least say that I don’t feel like that now.

Time will tell, but I do believe that a managed democratic model is now in play in Armenia and that really does involve pressure from the outside, but also willingness of the internal authorities to accept it. That after all is actually what European integration and CE obligations are all about and something the present authorities entered into quite willingly.

Anyway, with continued pressure from within and outside the republic as well as playing by the (changing) rules I hope we are now on a path towards what we can perhaps be called the slow process of democratization. If that’s the case, I’m quite happy to acknowledge it, but believe that pressure from wherever it comes has to be there. As you say, it’s a test, and so far since 12 May the government appears to be responding adequately, if maybe sometimes reluctantly.

That’s what I think some kind of process of democratization (accelerated for the former SU so it doesn’t take 100 years instead of a decade or two) is. All I wanted to see for the parliamentary election was progress, and although I’d say there are significant problems to be addressed (which is also part of democratization in any and every country), I had to conclude that there was.

Once again, let me point you to my post on managed democracy.