However, in the past this has been the case. So, what such events end up being is simply a free rock concert staged under some banner funded by a western organizations. Neither the bands or most of that audience actually care about that message, and nothing changes as a result. Now, don’t get me wrong. Sksela does care and does have its position on the internal political development of the country which is pretty much opposition or radical opposition.

However, most of those people going to their events don’t know about the politics or more usually, simply don’t care. In a sense this is why I’m amazed the municipality turned down their request for an open-air event. Basically, Sksela poses no threat to anyone. It’s dedicated following is probably about 50 people at most and the vast majority of youth in Armenia have nothing in common with the type of young Armenian that joins.

Still, we get a free rock concert courtesy of the British Embassy so that’s at least one positive thing to come out of it all. I just hope the British taxpayer appreciates all of this.Both Sksela and the British Embassy will no doubt herald the 200-300 young kids — most of whom won’t be able to vote anyway — who will come to the event as a huge success for the organization and for democracy, but in reality it will just be a free rock concert.

Nothing more.

When I think of such things I have to wonder if the same wasn’t true for similar groups such as Kmara in Georgia, and from some people’s accounts they too actually had a very small following. However, what they did have was an environment for “revolution” and three opposition figures, and one in particular, who people would rally behind. In Armenia, of course, we have neither. Still, it’s some kind of civil society activity one supposes.

Of course, Nagorno-Karabagh conflict, among other conflicts and wars, present, past, and future, as well as “spreading of freedom and democracy” are just tools in achieving their goals. Have we not learnt from World War I or most recent Bosnian Wars how these powers made profits from selling arms to one side while providing loans to another? A plethora of cabals, not only the World Bank, the IMF, the Treasury Department, and U.S. AID, are employed for the purpose of directing events to their advantage. Add the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission, among others, and the picture will still be incomplete, because there also exists an army of individual collaborators—both local and Diasporan—who either cold-mindedly sold their souls to those powers or honestly think they serve Armenia’s national interests but in reality run their errands.

Rudolf Perina is just an instrument in their hands and, personally, I’d avoid making a fuss out of the fact of his appointment to Armenia.

Is there a salvation from evil? Yes, there is: our Christian faith. This is one and the only force that can thwart efforts of turning Armenia into a sweatshop, as you put it, and ensure existence, security, and well-being of people.

The A1+ middle-manager of democracy in Armenia right now is, of course, Rudolf V. Perina.

Perina got his BA from the U of Chicago, and his MA and PhD from Columbia in the 60s and 70s, at exactly the same time that the Chicago School of Economics had sent its tentacles into every department in those two universities, specifically.

Fact: Chicago School theories lay behind many of the policies of the World Bank and other Washington-based financial institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund and U.S. Treasury Department [1], which embraced market fundamentalism as an universal recipe for economically wrecked countries, as was expressed in the Washington consensus. Under its influence, from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, large portions of the state-owned companies in many Third World countries were privatized. (Mason 1997:428) [from wiki]

And what kind of people did this school produce? The Chicago Boys.

FACT: The Chicago Boys [were] a group of about 25 Chilean young economists, trained at the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, and who worked under the Augusto Pinochet administration to create a free market economy and decentralize the economy. [wiki]

Another professor there at this time was none other than Leo Strauss, Robert Maynard Hutchins Distinguished Service Professorship at the U of Chicago, 1949-1969. If you don’t know him, he is the “brains” behind the neoconservatives like Wolfowitz, Pearl, Inc, who brought us the war in Iraq, and the one whose philosophy in large part forms the basis of Commentary magazine.

Wolfowitz & co., graduated and entered politics as anti-Soviet democrats, whose main job was spreading paranoid about the Soviets’ nuclear ability. And, yes, Wolfowitz got his graduate degrees at the University of Chicago, c. 1970.

So, it was in this intellectual milieu that Perina made his academic contribution: Intellectuals and political change in Czechoslovakia : a history of Litera?rni? Noviny and its contributors, 1952-1969. Recall that 1969 was the end of the Prague Spring. An alternative title for the book might be: Writers in the Eastern Bloc that are opposed to the Soviets and why they deserve Nobel Prizes for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with their Political Positions. Unfortunately for Perina, the world had to wait until Vaclav Havel for a mediocre Eastern Bloc writer to produce a “masterpiece” like Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago.

Vaclav Havel was part of the Prague Spring in 1969, back when he indeed was “new.” Vaclav Havel also led the Velvet Revolution of 1989, when he was, presumably, still new in spirit. During the Velvet Revolution, Mr. Perina was Director for European and Soviet affairs on the National Security Council (1987-89), and Deputy Chairman of the U.S. Delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Confidence and Security-Building Measures in Europe (1989-92). How many coincidences does it take to make a link a causal one?

Immediately after that post, Perina became Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade (1993-1996). The Kosovo War started in 1996, the same year that Perina came back to North America. To make it plain: Perina was the Chief of Mission in Belgrade right up to the breakout of war, a war which ended in the bombing to kingdom come of the Christian Serbs, after they started being called “ethnic cleansers,” and the propping into power of the Albanians. It doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong, what matters is this, that the end result has been a conflict that just doesn’t end.

These facts make it quite clear what Mr. Perina’s qualifications are for being in Armenia: experience in ethnic/religious war between Turks and Christians; a neoconservative, neoliberal ideology and everything that it implies; and a deep-seated enmity toward the former Soviet Union and the present Russian bureaucracy that is effectively continuing to resist the “west.”

The evidence suggests that Mr. Perina’s purpose has nothing to the with the plight of the common Armenian people. His purpose, like I’ve said a million times and the further evidence that I’ve presented here bolsters, is to privatize everything in Armenia, ideally to the point where the mere act of breathing can not be accomplished without a monthly bill paid to Haliburton, Inc., and periodic calls to customer service.

If you think that is an exaggeration, then you are likely to think that it is an exaggeration, too, that when Mr. Perina was the ambassador of Moldova, it was documented that not only were Moldovan women entering in droves the “service” sectors of Moscow and Turkey, but Moldovan men were selling their kidneys on the black market for fast cash, usually via Turkey. After all, you’ve got two, right?

You are sitting in front of the computer and you have access to the internet. If you think I’m lying or exaggerating, look it up.

I began this comment with facts, and I’ll close with a fact, a fact that is perhaps more important and telling than the others.

Mr. Perina was recently interviewed by Eurasiaorg.net (in fact, Mr. Perina and Eurasia and all the other usual suspects, like US Aid, keep “happening” together, for some mysterious reason.)

In any case, the Eurasia reporter asked Mr. Perina about the Gharabagh conflict and…terrorism, yes, terrorism:

EurasiaNet: How does official Washington regard the idea of dispatching US trainers to Azerbaijan for fighting terrorists in Nagorno-Karabakh?

Perina: I know the notion “terrorism” has been used in a wide sense. By “terrorism,” the US means specific problems, for instance, [terrorist] organizations and persons supporting these organizations. We know very well what we mean by “terrorism”.

–Konul Khalilova. “Q&A: US DIPLOMAT DEFENDS MINSK GROUP’S ROLE IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH TALKS.” Eurasianet.org, September 17, 2007. Link:
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/qanda/articles/eav042402.shtml

There you have it: A redefinition, a kind of back-definition, if you will, of the word “terrorist” to mean “specific problems.” It doesn’t matter that that is not what the word means.

That is what the representative of the US to Armenia said today, September the 17th, in answer to a question specifically about terrorists and Gharabagh. The representative in question was Rudolf Perina, and you have enough of his background associations to be able to judge his comment or, at least, I’m hoping, to be inspired into thinking really, really carefully about what you are doing and whom you are associating with.

Because if Perina’s history is anything to go by, chances are that right about the time he leaves Armenia the war will start up again. That’s what happened when he was in Belgrade. In any case, unless circumstances change drastically, he probably won’t do anything to bring lasting peace, because it is not, in his mind, the right thing to do: neoconservative strategy does not call for peace, it calls for perpetual war. But, of course, we’ll have to “wait and see.”

Still, let’s see, although the British Embassy involvement should now officially forbid certain activities and words at the event. At the 2005 Rock the Referendum rock concert they also sponsored, for example, bands were forbidden from wearing orange or expressing their opinions.

Of course, I’m sure this event is first and foremost seen by Sksela as a way to mark their return and also to specifically gather and recruit a core group of activists for later more politicized actions from among the larger group of young people who will be more interested in attending a free rock concert. That will at least be successful, one supposes.

BTW: Although it’s still speculation, I want to throw a question out there relating to the possible return of Levon Ter Petrosian in time for the 2008 presidential election. One argument for his nomination is that he represents a political figure who could be acceptable as president to both government and opposition figures.

Already, the previous opposition has pretty much made it clear that they are behind him or are at least discussing the matter with him personally, but what about the voters? For many Armenians, LTP is considered synonymous with the economic hardships and high corruption levels of the early 1990s.

Moreover, while many people are unhappy with the situation in Armenia today, you just can’t compare it with the years under LTP although there are certain grounds to consider that the economic reforms of the mid-1990s are partly responsible for some of the growth today. However, I want to direct this question towards youth in Armenia.

For example, most young Armenians eligible to vote can remember the dark and cold days of LTP’s first few years in office and some do consider that he can be held accountable for that. Moreover, although it’s still hard to earn a living in Armenia, those same young people now have discos, cafes and other recreational venues at their disposal which in a sense has made life not only bearable, but perhaps even enjoyable.

But where would this leave Sksela if the battle to prevent Serzh Sarkisyan from becoming president — and this is pretty much what the election will be for many in civil society — means having to support candidates such as Levon? We saw those same groups, including many from Sksela, side with Impeachment and the Republic party in the parliamentary election, for example.

It didn’t work then, and as those same two parties are the main forces behind Ter Petrosian’s candidacy, what would make it work now? And if say another candidate from the opposition looked like the front-runner, who would they support then? As I’ve said already, I hope Sksela can remain politically neutral and just be interested in civic education activities, but past experience has shown that such things are not possible in Armenia.

Of course, I might be forgetting the obvious. To date there is no candidate eligible to run that appears able to offer an alternative to Serzh Sarksiyan. With or without vote bribes and administrative levers, and don’t doubt that the Republican party can attract more youth than Sksela through pop concerts and free buses to universities, the lack of any viable opposition candidate still makes it more likely that the prime minister can win next year than not.

Certainly, the almost constant focus on Levon Ter Petrosian really raises some questions about democratization in Armenia given that not even Kocharian called the tanks out onto the streets of Yerevan when elections were falsified. If he does become the opposition front runner, is that the option civil society will put before Armenia’s youth?

I don’t know. Comments please, especially as these are questions everyone should be starting to ask themselves by now. People talk of democracy, but with no potential candidates of any note at all, one wonders whether democratization (and managed democracy in particular) isn’t really the best course for Armenia.

As Fisk recently wrote, it shows where Armenia is as a country where the choice being spoken about in some circles is Serzh or LTP. Actually, it’s quite sad, really.