Removing the Kosovo blogs

I once told myself that if something occurs that becomes stressful to people close to me, I would not talk about it. It is for this reason I have chosen to remove the blogs I’ve written about Kosovo.

It took a long time for me to stop internalising what happened there, which is what I finally did 9 years after the fact…and talked about it openly for two years.

However, because of some things that were said to me privately today, and the hurt that appeared to come because of it, I will not leave up what I’ve written. It is not fair to those I love.

I am still passionate about many things, but I now need to choose carefully what I say and how I say it. My family, those to whom I am close, come first. I will take them before my ideals any day of the week.

It is time, as was pointed out to me, to leave the past behind, to look to my own future, and value my life as it is now – away from what I remember.

Does it matter? Perhaps. At the risk of losing loved ones (which may have already happened), it just cannot matter to me anymore. It is time to move on with my life.

Escape

My days are long, and they are full of busy-ness and chaos.  I go to the gym, I then spend quiet time at home.  The past couple of days I haven’t turned on the television, I’ve not paid alot of attention to the computer after about 8 p.m. 

I need escape time, or – as Jim puts it – “down” time.

Some people just sit and stare at the television.  Some people listen to music.

Alot of people, like me, read.  Most read some form of fiction, because they are not only desperate to escape their day, they are desperate to escape the world.

I escape into various forms of nonfiction, and I learn.

This has been the case with Blind Spot:  When Journalists Don’t Get Religion.  I was going to do a review of it, but in reading it, I’ve tried to sort out how I could do a simple review about the size of that found in a newspaper.

For me, this is impossible.

Is it credible to write a white paper on a book full of others’ white papers?  The material covered has been superior to anything I have read anywhere on the subject of what happens when journalists are ignorant to the underlying factors of the stories they report.

I would love to teach this class and approach it from the direction in which this book was written.  I am acutely aware this is something that has never been taught at university level.  It should be, but it won’t be.  The impact of such an education would illuminate the world.

It’s not just that this book talks about the misinterpretation of the role religion plays in major global news stories about conflict, government and culture, but that it touches the heart of the real problem – that journalists, in their exhuberant gathering of pertinent details, don’t understand why the details are important or that the possibility exists that the details they gather are not where the real issue lies. 

This is why I want my sister in Los Angeles to write a book on the war right here in the United States.  Few understand it or are as close to it as she. 

This is why I want my brother to write a book on his experiences throughout the world with different cultures and personalities.

This is why I deeply regret my own ignorance and shyness when family members who were diplomats and amabassadors were recounting their own experiences throughout the world.  I should have started writing about it then, when I was aware at the age of 8 that the world is not all we have learned in history books.

This is why man, in its ignorance and intolerance of other civilisations, continues to see the world through its bias.

This is why it is impossible to get people to understand.

And this is why, if I could, I would insist that a class based on the general premise of Blind Spot be taught not just to journalists, but to everyone.

I am not as frustrated as I am disillusioned with the inability to educate, to understand, to make the light bulb go off.

I am going to write this “white paper”.  It will turn into a book of its own.

Mr. Grist, the OSCE, and South Ossetia

I read an interesting news piece in the Wall Street Journal December 19th, 2008 about Ryan Grist, former Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) operative.  Mr. Grist’s CV includes military and diplomatic missions in Northern Ireland, Bosnia and Kosovo, as well as other places I’ve not personally been.  The man knows his stuff.  He is also known for speaking his mind.  He’s been chastised by the Politically Correct frequently over this.  From all I know of the man, he calls ‘em like he sees ‘em.

Mr. Grist was OSCE second in command on the mission in Georgia prior to the conflict in South Ossetia, August 2008. 

A very short primer on South Ossetia and the real issue at hand. 

South Ossetia speaks Russian and Ossetian.  They are ethnically, culturally, and religiously tied to Russia and to North Ossetia.  They want independence from Georgia.  Be reminded that the line drawn in the dirt between North Ossetia and South Ossetia that gave South Ossetia to Georgia was arbitrarily created without any regard to the people.  As a point of reference, this is essentially how Kosovo acquired its three northern provinces, which are tied in a similar fashion to Serbia. 

“Here, let’s draw the line between this and that.  What do you mean there’s a house in the middle?  Tear it down.  There are people involved in this?  They’ll adjust.  People always do.  This is our decision, and we’ll draw the line wherever we want it.” 

Thus the West has said in its infinite wisdom many, many times. 

Some have said South Ossetia didn’t provoke the attacks from Georgia.  In a sense they are right – not war waged on them by Georgia.  As Mr. Grist said, “…the response from Georgian authorities was disproportionate.  To react with indiscriminate shelling – there just had to be a Russian response.”  He pointed out that he warned of an escalation in South Ossetia and that monitors in certain locations were ignored.  He was angry when Ms. Hakala ordered, from the safety and comfort of her Finnish homeland, the evacuation of monitors from the OSCE building in Tskhinvali, South Ossetia after it was shelled by the Georgians.  He had been organising a wider evacuation, and she stopped it.

I want to interject here that Ms. Hakala stated that what three monitors heard near their locations (in South Ossetia) was “a bit irrelevant”.  Tell me, Ms. Hakala, what is relevant?  Only those bits that were politically acceptable to the West?

While in charge of the OSCE in Georgia, Mr. Grist questioned the viability of Georgia’s attacks on South Ossetia.  As he made known his desire to understand the truth, it became clear that his query was unwelcome – by Georgia and by his superior with the OSCE, Ms. Terhi Hakala.  She ordered him to take a vacation and leave Georgia.

Mr. Grist is like me.  If something is bothering me, I am going to investigate it.  I go with my instincts until and unless I find out for myself that my instincts are wrong.  Most of the time, they’re not.  I’m convinced Mr. Grist has operated this way always.  It is what has given him integrity over the years.  It is also what compelled him to go, without permission while he was on “vacation”, back into South Ossetia to find out what was really going on.

From the moment he tried to get fair and equitable information all the way to his permanent removal from Georgia back to the UK and his forced resignation from the OSCE, Mr. Grist’s treatment has been deplorable.  Unfortunately, this is what can be expected from an organisation steeped in Western culture and tradition.  The West is no more fair and equitable, and often less so, than other cultures.

I know.

I’ve been there.