POLITICAL ANALYSIS / Srebrenica: Devaluing Genocide

At this time of recalling the event that took place in the area of Srebrenica town in July 1995 during the civil war in Bosnia, the characterization of that event remains controversial. The execution of a few thousand Bosnian Muslim military aged-men committed by armed forces of Bosnian Serbs has been branded a genocide by the United States, its EU followers, and Bosnian Muslims (Bosniacks). However, it was not a genocide according to the other side involving Bosnian Serbs, Serbia, and their allies. Both sides have legal experts supporting their views.

There is no balance between the two opposed sides. The pro-genocide side is better organized, abundantly funded, and very loud. The counterpart hangs back in defensive trenches and is aggressively silenced every time it dares to speak. While legal and ethical justifications are readily aired, vigor behind the silencing efforts raises the question regarding political motives of the silencers.

Why Srebrenica is not a genocide

Can the single event of executing military aged-men by armed forces of Bosnian Serbs be characterized as a genocide committed over the entire Bosnian Muslim population? Legally, a genocide is an intended destruction of large groups of people based on racial, national, ethnic, religious, or cultural roots. When this definition is applied to the Srebrenica 1995 event, the answer to the question above is – no! The Srebrenica killing could possibly be a war crime, but not a genocide.

Genocides recognized in the recent history include the Holocaust (5 million Jewish victims) and Rwanda (1 million Tutsi victims). Raphael Lemkin, the creator of the genocide concept, wrote about genocides over large ethnic groups in the Central and South Americas. Spanish conquerors threw into slavery, murdered and forcibly converted to Catholicism many people. Lemkin also insinuated that genocidal acts could have been committed by other European colonial powers in their conquests that were not shy of mass murder and forcible cultural conversions.

There may have been genocides in the recent history yet to be recognized. For instance, World War II murdered over 35 million of Slavic peoples, most of them Russians. Nazis considered these another minor race to be destroyed. Millions of Chinese perished during the Sino-Japanese wars in the same period. Millions were killed by the American military in its aggressive war in Vietnam. Millions perished in recent American wars in Iraq and in the Middle East. Still, recognizing genocide requires making a concentrated effort usually by the victorious side.

To grasp why the Srebrenica killings did not constitute a genocide, one just needs to look at some simple facts:
• A singular event cannot constitute a holistic policy of destruction of the Bosnian Muslims;
• The number of victims is far below those in the recognized genocides (estimates of Srebrenica figures range from 2,000-8,000);
• The victim group composition was narrowed down to men and teenagers of the military age, while children, women and elders were set free. It makes no sense that a genocide perpetrator would release women as they are the key to perpetuating the very group to be eliminated, to paraphrase a former UN commander in Bosnia, Canadian Gen. MacKenzie (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_MacKenzie ).

International law specialists also cite the first two points above and agree that an intent of destruction cannot be identified in the case of Srebrenica execution. One is Canadian professor William Schabas, a world expert on genocide. Other legal experts stress that the notion of genocide has been arbitrarily stretched in decisions of the Hague Tribunal (for example, K. Southwick, 2005, https://utd.edu/~mjleaf/southwickGenocide.pdf ).

There is also a political analysis that reveals some shocking details. For example, Norwegian documentary entitled “A town betrayed” offers evidence that Alija Izetbegovic, advised by his foreign sponsors, consciously victimized the people of Srebrenica in order to win the war against the Bosnian Serbs (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhOq8ev6YhI&feature=youtu.be ).

Foreign sponsors to Bosnia war

The civil war in Bosnia was a baby of American foreign policy. In the process of breakup of Yugoslavia the peoples of Bosnia could have found their way of living together within a smaller Yugoslavia. But Bill Clinton’s government of the time sponsored the extremist Muslim party led by Alija Izetbegovic, who advocated an exclusive Muslim state intolerant to other religions. Upon the sponsor’s advice, Izetbegovic’s party pushed for a referendum for Bosnia’s secession. Boycotted by the non-Muslim inhabitants of Bosnia, Serbs and Croats, that move became the overture to the civil war.
When the war started, the American sponsor was pushing Izetbegovic toward conflict rather than cooperation every time when some agreement or resolution could have been reached. Britain’s Premier Tony Blaire was a loyal partner in wrongdoing. The bloodshed unfolded, masses of Bosnia’s people of all ethnicities suffered and perished in the war.

With help of special operation forces and propaganda proliferated by PR firms, the foreign sponsors successfully detracted attention from themselves and vilified Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia. Srebrenica was a trap the Izetbegovic’s sponsors prepared in order to get NATO involved in a direct war against the Bosnian Serb army. Effectively betraying his own kin, Izetbegovic believed that a few thousand Muslim victims of Srebrenica would not count much in Allah’s notebook.

Genocide as political instrument

In the last 20 years, the notion of genocide has been used for branding warring factions involved in civil wars. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was established in Hague, Netherlands, especially for investigating crimes in civil wars that accompanied the process of disintegration of Yugoslavia. However, from the very beginning, political agendas overshadowed legality of the Tribunal’s decisions. Indicatively, most of the indicted are Serbs. Persons from other nations that lived in Yugoslavia have rarely been accused; if they were, they were usually acquitted. The most notorious case is mafia boss Naser Oric.

Paramilitary troops of Oric had terrorized Serbs in the Srebrenica region and murdered about 2,500 elders, children, and adults of both genders. Oric used Srebrenica as the basis, although it was a designated UN safe heaven. The Srebrenica execution in 1995 was largely motivated by a revenge to Oric’s horrendous crimes. Norwegian documentary “A Town Betrayed” makes this point convincingly. Touted “the defender of Srebrenica,” Oric betrayed the town and its people before the July attack by the Bosnian Serb army.

Incapability to prosecute war criminal Oric devalues the concepts and law of genocide. In addition, putting millions of victims in historical genocides in the same category with thousands of Srebrenica victims appears as discounting the genocide concept. Worse yet, this may offend the victims of established genocides. By dogmatically insisting despite technical shortcomings that a genocide was committed in Srebrenica, the Hague Tribunal and its sponsors endorse politics over law. The sum-effect is that genocide was turned into an arbitrary instrument for political pressure. It is so in spite of calls for “reconciliation” issued in the recent EU resolution and the failed UN declaration, which was championed by the Great Britain.


20th anniversary

The commemoration on the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica tragic wartime event went in the way fitting with its chaotic history. It gathered the usual suspects in Srebrenica. Bill Clinton, the architect of the Bosnian war and the Srebrenica tragedy, showed up only to endorse his failing project; the only thing he could offer to the region that couldn’t heal in the past 20 years was empty rhetorical shells. But he clearly stated that NATO needed Srebrenica as a justification for its overt military intervention in the Bosnian war. Represented (curiously) by the Queen’s daughter, the 12th in the line of succession to the throne, Britain confirmed a hardliner pro-genocide stance. Days before the commemoration, it tried to push it into a UN resolution albeit with no success.

The EU official for foreign policy and security didn’t show up at the commemoration, fittingly so as the event and the location weren’t secured properly. Serbia’s Prime Minister also knew that but still showed up, only to be booed and stoned, barely escaping lynch. All these anniversary happenings fit the big picture of Srebrenica and Bosnia delusions, exposing a failed policy of blaming exclusively the Serbian side for Bosnia's continuing troubles.

Victims are victims and should be honoured regardless their side. Crime is crime, and it should be sentenced appropriately on each side. That is so, if a path of justice is followed. But it is not so in the case of Srebrenica and the civil war in Bosnia. The victor writes history and debits the defeated with all the evil the war had brought. The foreign mentors keep helping wholeheartedly. A lip-service to law and justice is being done and consciousness is happy for being killed. The mission impossible, or multi-ethnic Bosnia by a Pax-Americana recipe, still keeps going.

Big Data – 3V and 3W

By Bob Travica

Big in volume, variety, and velocity (speed) – that is what Big Data is about. The defining three “V” aspects are depicted in the figure below. You search the Internet looking for some brand product, purchase it in a Web store, “like it” of the Facebook, talk to people who talk about it in some other social medium, mention it in texting via your cell phone… All these data (and more) coming from different sources (high variety), may be collected continuously (high velocity) and submitted to customer profiling analysis. The data can also be compared to historical records for the same customer, which would grow it in volume. Another volume booster is by looking at other products associated with the same customer, or by looking across customers sharing the interest in the same brand product. Although it hasn’t been around for long, Big Data has generated big interest. Technologists are interested in the technical part which challenges traditional database systems. Data in various formats and states of organization challenge rules behind well-known relational databases. Say, integrating text messages with data in traditional tables requires new technologies, such as Hadoop and NoSQL. Players in the use and management arena are equally interested in Big Data.

Applicability of Big Data creates a list that keeps growing. Here is where what I call the first “W” of Big Data surfaces—worth: the monitoring of oil-well sensors, human genome research, managing energy grids and transportation networks, studying cancer cell behavior, observing patient vital signs and bacteria sensors in animals, analyzing product-related sentiments on social media, tracking cell phone communications and locations for business purposes…

The worth list is so long that I need to insert a new passage for easier reading. Big Data enable personal analytics in many areas, including fitness, tracking of psychological moods, managing finance, and handling romance. Monitoring technology performance spreads to cars, athletic equipment, machinery, home appliances, power grid and consumer devices. International threats and lawbreakers are more effectively tracked.

In economy, one gets better understanding of business fundaments, such as the customer, competitor, partner, employee, product, performance, and market. Some writers differentiate between transactional data (for example, messages exchanged) and the data about transactional data – metadata (the identification of communication systems used, actors’ locations, times, message size, etc.). Some authors assume that Big Data is more about these contextual descriptors than the content itself. I’d say, it’s about both.

The worth of Big Data may overshadow potential threats. Big Data is not necessarily all good. Beware of another “W” that stands for “worry.” While some of the profiled customers from the example above may be happy when getting an unsolicited marketing message based on their profiling, others may not. Big Data analysis can also break anonymity of an evaluator of films watched in separate digital environments that intersect with the Internet. Consequences may be worrying if the evaluator is from a conservative, small town, living an alternative life style associated with the film’s topic. Consequences may be quite worrying if the evaluator is tracked down by authorities who advocate against the filmed behaviors endorsed by the evaluator.

Profiling lawbreakers appears a useful social use of Big Data. But if a lawbreaker profile is automatically attributed to a wrong person, a big worry arises for all parties involved. The problem gets even worse if the police act upon criminal profiling with the hope of preventing crime before it happens. No matter how good a prediction based on history and profiling of law offenders is, there is always a probability that a crime may not occur. Arresting-just-in-case pre-empts the due process, and turns crime prevention into a mockery of legality. A long-term worry arises from the character of digital footprints everybody does or will have to leave behind. These footprints grow over time into permanent profiles that may haunt a person to the end of life. A picky employer and oppressive political regime come to mind as unexpected users. But all possible users cannot even be conceived today. Migration in the space will no longer provide an escape. As in the other worrisome cases, freedom is the ultimate victim.

As Big Data evolves in technology and problem solving applications, uncertainty will paint relationships between firms and between countries, since digital and economic divides will widen. Consequences of the divides are hard to predict, as they will become part of opportunistic moves and emerging strategies.

The remarkable contrast of the worry and worth brings us to the third “W” of Big Data. It stands for “wisdom.” The development, use and management of Big Data require big wisdom on the part of all the players in order to avoid the big worries that parallel the big worth. Instead of unconstrained optimism due to technological possibilities or expected particularistic benefits, I recommend wise weighing of options. With Big Data, each step in its life process is big.

BitCoin: Money is electrons, as long as you accept it

BitCoin: Money is electrons, as long as you accept it

By Bob Travica

Recently, some advocates of BitCoin were arrested in the US. Not long ago, BitCoin was banned in China. These events again swayed public attention to BitCoin, and interesting international phenomenon that was born in 2009.

BitCoin is a form of digital currency, created in the open source community (programmers who make their software available in the form of source code and often free). It is a form of money that is used as a means of exchange among those who voluntarily accept it. There is no mint authority, no specific country issuing the money, no banks, no coins (although there could be plastic pieces imitating coins but hiding digital circuitry inside). And there is no money exchanging pocket, just shuffling of encrypted messages that specify transfer of BitCoin form one owner to another.

There are many problems with BitCoin, such as its exchange rate with regular currencies, large fluctuations in value, its geographical coverage, and, not the least important - BitCoin is sometimes used for irregular trade like narcotics. Advocates of BitCoin and other digital currencies point out that alternative means of exchanges serve as a rescue from over-powering banks. The argument goes, if a particular community agrees on its currency and it does the job of facilitating legal trade, who is to say that digital currency is inappropriate?

The bigger picture behind this story is digital format of money. In the 1950s, some visionaries asserted that money was going to be electronic. Bankers laughed. Today, however, most of banking transpires in the form of transferring debit and credit figures electronically.

Money is essentially a social contract between parties accepting a certain means of payment as legitimate (normal). They also accept that the given money is an appropriate meter of economic value of goods and services traded. As long as the contract exists, it doesn’t matter if the money is paper, metal, electronic numbers, or nearly anything to which imagination can stretch. It is important though that the particular format cannot be easily forged.

In the past, money itself had economic value; e.g., sheep, edible plants, and then gold and other precious metals. While gold survived as a sort of money, it is impractical to use it in regular trade due to wear, robbery, impossibility of measuring smaller value, etc. Up until early 1970s, paper money was backed by gold reserves in national central banks. After abandoning the gold standard, limits to digital money definitely disappeared.

Clock: Update thinking with technology progress

Clock: Update thinking with technology progress

By Bob Travica

Commando Delta speaking in his RF device:

- Delta to Alpha, a sniper 3 o’clock, ten-four.

Commando Alpha speaking back in his RF device:

- Copy that.

To make use of this potentially life-saving message, Alpha needs to be facing the same direction as Delta (Alpha must see what direction Delta faces), and then to concentrate on the perpendicular direction, 90 degrees to the right. In other words, Delta has to visualize a good old clock. Even if Delta actually wears a watch with a numeric dial.

But Delta is trained to make the visualization of a fading technology in order to orient himself in physical space.

Doug is a teenager who never wore a watch with the classical dial. Wait, he’s never worn any watch, as his cell phone tells time. Doug wants to learn to waltz for the upcoming wedding of his older sister Anna. She loves it and requested that Doug better be ready to waltz with her at least once. Anna is sure she can teach Doug to waltz in no time.

“Doug, it’s like walking in three steps, right, left, right, and then same with the opposite footwork. All the time you keep turning clock-wise…” explains Anna. “Got the three steps part,” fires back her brother. “But what do you mean to turn clock-wise?” “You know, move in the direction of the hands on a clock.” “Daaa?” stares Doug back at his frustrated sister. “Oh, Doug, it’s just the vocabulary we use for dance instruction. Don’t be such a moron, you’ve got to get it!”

Technologies change faster than our knowledge of technology metaphors. Some pieces of knowledge appear as if they are cut in stone of institutions that resist change. “Three o’clock” is same as saying “watch East” or “90 degrees to the right.” And “turning clockwise” is same as instructing “turn around the right shoulder.”

War on Libya: Saving Civilians, Of Course

A holy coalition of former colonial powers led by the Big Gun, which humbly call themselves “international community,” has picked Libya for a target. For the mass consumption, the cause is “humanitarian” – saving Libyan civilians from their dictator. By brute military force, of course. If the people who are to be “saved” get harmed by the saviour, that will be the usual “collateral damage”. Of course.

As in the recent bellicose precedents, the infamous one being Iraq eight years ago, global media of mass informing demonstrate, of course, freedom of press. This an unfathomable freedom of worshipping marching orders issued by the US State Department and the UK Foreign Office. For example, the BBC World News keeps playing a fill-rouge announced as the first interview of Colonel Gaddafi to Western media. But there is no interview to see, just a brief sketch of Gaddafi saying to a journalist that he (the journalist) does not understand the Libyan system and the war in it. And that’s it. Ah yes, spiced up by assertion that BBC takes all angles. Of source, it does, as long as it’s the angle of the UK government. If Gaddafi’s statement is idiotic, BBC’s method of “all angled-coverage” is a perfect match. The selection of “experts” and other details clearly demonstrate that old methods of brain programming is back again in full swing. At BBC, CNN, elsewhere... As if the Iraq scam never happened!

I have no sympathy for Libya’s long-time dictator Gaddafi. His good deeds for the mass population of Libya are now buried in the far past. After overthrowing the monarchy in 1969, he was a populist leader who used oil revenues for public good. But he stayed in power for too long, trampling the internal tribal divisions by brute force. I visited Libya in the 1980s. I found a country with eerily emptish public squares, covered with gigantic portraits of the leader of Libya’s “green revolution.” Most people walking on streets were men. Police was everywhere. I kept away from them.

I was especially on the lookout for BMWs with no license plates. I knew their owners were Gaddafi’s revolutionary guards who had extremely broad discretionary rights. Guys with that hair style and sun glasses, a replica of the revolution leader. I’ve suffered their jerky bite right at my entry to Libya at the Tripoli airport. For about one and a half hours, a young guy with a bushy, curly hair searched me, yelled at me, and kept asking who I was and where I was going. All this in spite of the fact that I had a valid business visa. Like a parrot, I was promptly spitting back demanded answers. But to no avail. The scary guy was in for teaching me a lesson in revolutionary piety. This included humiliation (he stripped me naked while searching me “for dollars” that, of course, all "spies" were supposed to have). Piety and fear, did he teach me. No, I do not have sympathies for such a regime. Gaddafi stayed in power far too long, and enjoyed far too much of power. Any power corrupts and big, prolonged power corrupts most.

But if I do not like Libya’s dictator it does not give me a right to remove him. If the US and its allies do not like Gaddafi, they still do not have a right to remove him from power. Only Libyans have that right. Policing their or anyone else’s home from the outside is unacceptable in international relationships among sovereign countries. If sovereignty shouldn’t give dictators a license to kill, this doesn’t mean that the international tailors of limited sovereignty can grab such license for themselves. The United Nations is not the united states but an organization of states that are supposed to be equal before the international law. That is the golden principle. Whenever it is violated with a blessing of The United Nations, this organization loses a boulder in its foundations.

Of course, the war on Libya by the trigger happy coalition has nothing to do with saving civilians. First, based on the attacker’s logic, some Libyans should not be saved because they cooperate with the dictator. Therefore, if these perish in the air attacks, so much the better. But this changes the programming formula into “saving some civilians.”

Second, Libya has lots of oil and of high quality oil, which is always an attractive stake to grab. Gaddafi nationalized the oil sources and barred Big Oil out of the country. A never forgiven sin! Would it not be more convenient to install a puppet government in Libya and rush in to exploit rich oil reserves to make fat pocketbooks of Big Oil even fetter? Of course, it would.

Third, Libya is so strategically positioned that keeping naval bases there gives a huge advantage to the keeper. Both the UK and the US had a military presence in Libya when it was a kingdom. This was the period right after Libya gained independence from the former colonial masters, the UK and France. Of course, these are now partners in the attacking coalition.

Fourth, the peoples’ unrest in the Arab world has got out of control of the Big Gun. Influencing directly the outcome of the civil war in Libya gives a chance to influence political developments in Libya and around. Diplomacy is a tedious business, of course. Putting a military muscle at work warrants quicker solutions in policing.

And fifth, the victim is familiar. The Big Gun already attacked Libya in 1986 and a number of times in undeclared, swift actions calculated at reducing defense capabilities of the country. All in all, it follows that even the programming formula “saving some civilians” needs adjustment. How’s this: “saving some civilians eligible for serving Big Oil and Big Gun?”

Tools of Peace and War

Oh mother oh mother, war the deadly dragon,
Swallows like a python, with no care for love,
Nor fear of God above.
Weep not; cry not, enough isn't enough,
For they are so deaf to your plea oh mother,
None will ever bother.

A teacher and poet Jokondino from Uganda wrote these verses and posted them recently on the Internet. Jokondino lives in a northern zone of this African country, which for long has been torn by a local war. As Patience Akpan-Obong, African scholar who lives in the U.S. and investigates Ugandas’s Internet put it, Jakondino gives voice to unspoken fears and dreams unutterable during the war.

The curious part of the Jokondino story is about a lack of reliable, fast access to the Internet available to an average family in Canada. Jokondino accesses the Internet via equipment that runs on 12V solar batteries. Steady supply of electricity is not available in those refuge camps. The battery-operated equipment is an American technology and its installation in refugee camps has been made possible by international aid programs. Akpan-Obong explains that this unusual access to the Internet gives an opportunity to disarmed soldiers and victims of the war to tell their stories to the outside world. Jokondino uses the Internet for practical purposes as well, announcing when his school needs rechargeable batteries and chargers.

In another refugee camp, a secondary school teacher was able to connect via the Internet his students with overseas donors who offered scholarships. Not only that educating overseas has guaranteed better prospects to these young people, but they were also rescued from temptations of surviving by volunteering for paramilitary formations.

These vignettes from Uganda tell us that the Internet can be a tool of peace. It can help communication, openness, discussion, and acceptance of differences as the conditions for democracy and advancement of civic society.

But the same Internet can also be used in the opposite way, as a tool of war. Individuals, groups and organizations with extreme political views air their aggressive agendas on the Internet. Beyond this obvious communication abuse, the Internet can serve as a venue for stealing sensitive information of national interest, breaking into defence computer systems in order to damage them, attacking power grids, water supply facilities and other infrastructure that uses computers connected to the Internet. All this has given rise to a new sort of war called “cyber warfare.”

Cyber warriors include intelligence, military agencies and other government organizations, industrial espionage, and militant groups and individuals around the world. A recent example of cyber war is the attack on computer systems of Google China in December 2009. Google provides the world’s most popular Internet search service, along with a free email system and some other services. The alleged cyber warrior: the Chinese government. The cause for the attack: getting hold of information on human rights activists. A number of other foreign companies doing business in China were also attacked. In fact, militant uses of the Internet continue on the 24/7/365 basis. The dragon of war spits fire through the Internet as well.

Technology is what you make of it.