Interestingly enough, just moments before I opened my email, I was chatting with someone regarding Civilitas. And we were chatting in particular about Oskanyan, and in line with my recent analogies of money laundering, I stated that my impression is that Oskanyan and his Civilitas do for the face of democracy in Armenia what Island banks do in money laundering.But why do I say this? Well, I have made my feelings clear in the past, both in individual posts and even in essay-format a while back. But, I'll put it this way. To me, it seems, that if one were truly, sincerely, concerned about the voice of civil duty, of civil rights, of democracy, and all else of which they speak, then as observers, we should (not) expect the following...
-To hear the voice of Oskanyan in place of Kocharyan's during March 1-2, 2008
-To then hear Oskanyan's voice backtracking, covering his own tracks, with no
reasonable explanation, apology, or true criticism of the government, or of the fraud, violence, oppression and murder that took place
-I would not expect utter and complete silence with regards to the existence of political prisoners in Armenia - whether it be Nikol Pashinyan, or Ashot Manukyan, or more than 10 others... Or Sasun Mikaelyan, who, it appears, was being denied appropriate medical attention for weeks while in prison...
-I would expect a loud voice when residents of homes just around the corner from the Civilitas office on posh Northern Avenue were evicted from their homes, under dubious circumstances
-I would expect protest and criticism from Civilitas when the next generation, the voice of hope and dreams, the future of Armenia, was beaten time and time again while exercising their basic CIVIL rights...
And the list goes on... So, you can imagine my reaction when my inbox showed a forward (of a forward of a forward) from Civilitas which contained the following exerpt, especially in light of my impression of the ostrich-like approach to foreign affairs the US and the rest of the West has taken:
Finally, with support from the US Embassy in Armenia, we are helping nearly a dozen of Armenia’s regional libraries become centers of civil society, by improving their physical quarters and acquiring books.
It's a feel good party all around - at least, for those who have nothing to lose.
1 comment:
Island banks are too sophisticated. A more proper analogy to Civilitas would be Al Capone's coin operated washing machines. Even those might be intellectually more superior. But I digress.
Looks like the latest banditocracy feel-good measure is to collect books. There was some hoopla on Livejournal by the minions of banditocracy to collect books for Kashatagh. It's not necessarily a bad initiative (we were doing that for Karabakh libraries in the late 80-s) but given the other enormous problems facing Armenia, it just seems silly.
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