Month: June 2005

Cairo Magazine, Egypt
June 10 2005
Inside the Yacoubian building
There is such a thing as bad publicity
By Ursula Lindsey
Photo: Nichan Yacoubian built the apartment building that bears his
name on Talaat Harb St. in the 1930s.
Ahmed Hosni

When the Egyptian-Armenian businessman Nichan Yacoubian built an
apartment building on Talaat Harb Street in the 1930s, he could never
have guessed its future. He could not have predicted how his son
Dikran would emigrate to Geneva after his death, leaving the building
in the charge of several superintendents, how his own ground-floor
store would become the bright Wanan shirt shop, or how the simple Art
Deco façade would grow spotted with air-conditioning units and
billboards, blending into Downtown’s busy commercial scenery. Nor
could he have envisaged that `The Yacoubian Building’ would one day
be a name famous and familiar across the city, much to the chagrin of
its residents.
Alaa Al Aswany’s best-selling novel Amarat Al Yacoubian (The
Yacoubian Building) (Merit, 2002) is on its sixth edition in Arabic,
has been translated to English (AUC Press, 2004) and will soon be
published and distributed in the United States by HarperCollins. More
importantly, the film based on the book – a US$3 million
mega-production starring Adel Imam, Nour Al Sherif and Youssra – has
reportedly just finished filming, and should be out by the beginning
of 2006.
For the actual residents of the Yacoubian, all this translates into
much unwanted attention. The novel’s blunt depiction of the sexual
and financial exploitation to which its characters subject each other
reflects badly on its real-life counterparts, they say.
`People call it the building of homosexuality, of prostitution,’ says
Edward Kamil, one of the building’s administrators. `Not the
Yacoubian building. There are characters in the book who have the
same name as real people. It’s a novel but it deals with real people
and a real place.’
This is the argument of the sons of late Yacoubian resident Malak
Khela, who are suing Al Aswany for LE2 million for allegedly
depticing their father as as a ruthless schemer and a smuggler of
liquor and currency. The brothers say two characters in the novel
share the same names, professions and physical traits as their father
and uncle.
Building superintendent Fikry Abdel Malek is also taking legal action
against Al Aswany, as well as against the film production company of
`The Yacoubian Building’ and screenwriter Waheed Hamid. Hamid is in
turn threatening to sue his accusers, saying they are defaming him.
With so much acrimony in the air, it’s little surprise that the film
crew of the Yacoubian movie (produced by Emad Adib’s Good News Films)
were not allowed to film on location, and were obliged to adjourn
next door to 32 Talaat Harb Street. There, they employed the bawwab
in a small role as a policeman, and offered him and his family the
amusing sight of superstars such as Hind Sabri posing as a baladi
girl and washing laundry for the cameras.
Al Aswany, who had a dentistry practice in the building in the 1990s
and shared a flat with the late Malak Khela and another professional,
dismisses the claims. He says his is a work of fiction and that any
similarities are purely coincidental.
The name of the building – written in lovely elongated green letters
across the threshold of the building’s lobby – captivated him, and he
decided to use it as the title of his work, which he had originally
thought of calling simply Downtown. `The name was only thing I picked
up from the building,’ says the writer, `the characters in the novel
have nothing to do with the building’s inhabitants.’ Al Aswany has
cast doubt on his accusers’ motivations, saying they only became
interested in the book three years after its publication, when news
of the film’s budget was printed in the press.
As far as the work’s supposedly scabrous subjects, Al Aswany says, `I
believe literature must discuss what people don’t discuss.’
But residents of the Yacoubian building would rather the writer had
set his discussion elsewhere. From the top to the bottom of the
building, inhabitants seem to be united in their anger at Al Aswany.
`Everything he wrote is lies,’ doorman Muhammed will tell you from
his bench in the lobby. `What Al Aswany said in his novel is not true
and defames our reputation,’ rooftop resident Said argues heatedly.
`If I saw him, I don’t know what I might do with him.’
;story_id=1035&format=html

Armenian president shakes up judiciary
Arminfo
9 Jun 05
YEREVAN
[Armenian President] Robert Kocharyan has signed a decree appointing
Genrik Danielyan, chairman of the Armenian Court of Cassation, to the
post of judge of the Armenian Constitutional Court, the presidential
press service has told Arminfo news agency.
Genrik Danielyan replaced Mikael Sevyan, who turned 70 in May, in the
post of judge of the Armenian Constitutional Court. Taking up the post
of judge of the Armenian Constitutional Court, Genrik Danielyan
resigned from the post of chairman of the Armenian Court of Cassation.
The Armenian president also appointed Ovannes Manukyan to the post of
chairman of the Court of Cassation and dismissed him from the post of
chairman of the Economic Court.
Robert Kocharyan also endorsed an addition to the list of judges to be
promoted in 2005. According to the list, Eduard Muradyan has been
appointed chairman of the Armenian Economic Court and dismissed from
the post of head of the Securities Commission.
Under another presidential decree, Aram Tamazyan has been appointed
Armenian deputy prosecutor-general.
According to the report, the newly-appointed chairman of the Armenian
Economic Court, Eduard Muradyan, was sworn in today at a session of
the Justice Council presided over by Armenian President Robert
Kocharyan.

EU using Armenia to sideline Turkey – Armenian opposition leader
Arminfo
10 Jun 05
YEREVAN
The European Union will pay much more attention to Armenia within the
framework of the Wider Europe / New Neighbours programme, but the
president is not ready for making even cosmetic changes, the chairman
of the Democratic Party of Armenia [DPA], Aram G. Sarkisyan, told
journalists today.
The world powers have not developed a common approach towards the
Karabakh problem, however, the Council of Europe [CE] may be expected
to issue strict instructions in six months, he noted.
“Currently, the European community is interested in using Armenia as a
spiral preventing Turkey from entering the EU,” the DPA leader
said. He added that this situation cannot last for ever and Armenia
should give the Europeans new reasons to win their sympathy. He said
this impulse could be democratizing the country, bringing the Armenian
Constitution into conformity with European standards and decreasing
the risks of corruption.
Sarkisyan returned from the Netherlands yesterday, where Armenian,
Azerbaijani and Turkish parliamentarians and diplomats discussed the
problems of trilateral relations with the participation of CE
experts. During the discussions a diplomat from a Turkish embassy
said: “We cannot establish diplomatic relations with Armenia since
part of Turkey is described as Western Armenia in the Armenian
Constitution.”
“Our state is so weak today that they are even trying to deprive us of
our historic memory,” Sarkisyan said.
[Passage omitted: Arminfo reminder that there is no mention of
Turkey’s territory being Western Armenia in the Armenian Constitution]

Karabakh party to struggle for seats in parliament
Arminfo
9 Jun 05
YEREVAN
“Standing in the parliamentary elections is not a paramount task, but
the party will struggle for seats in the parliament in order to be
able to submit issues of concern to the National Assembly,” the leader
of the Our Home is Armenia Party and an independent member of the
current parliament of the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic, Ararat
Petrosyan, has said.
The main task of the party is “to defend justice in the republic”, but
the final aim is to merge with Armenia, our Arminfo correspondent
reports from Stepanakert. “Let us not forget that historical Artsakh
was the 10th province of Armenia,” Petrosyan said.
Our Home is Armenia intends to make every effort, relying on the
middle class, in order to considerably increase the living standards
of the population, secure the supremacy of the law and observe
national and state interests. The party thinks it important to clearly
divide all branches of powers and draw up mechanisms of mutual
oversight.
Petrosyan said that his party will pay special attention to the strata
and categories of the population which he thinks do not have enough
state attention. Among them are also Karabakh war veterans, “many of
whom have not found a worthy place in society”, the party leader
thinks.

Armenia submits action plan to NATO
Mediamax news agency
10 Jun 05
YEREVAN
The secretary of the security council under the Armenian president and
defence minister, Serzh Sarkisyan, today officially handed in
Armenia’s presentation document of the Individual Partnership Action
Plan [IPAP] and a letter from the Armenian president to NATO
Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.
Sarkisyan and Jaap de Hoop Scheffer also discussed issues of
developing relations between Armenia and NATO, as well as the
situation in the South Caucasus.
The Armenian minister visited Brussels to take part in a meeting of
the defence ministers of the member states of the Euroatlantic
Partnership Council.
[Passage omitted: background, IPAP’s objectives]

Trial for Armenian man accused of spying for neighboring Azerbaijan
continues
AP Worldstream; Jun 10, 2005

The trial of an Armenian man accused of spying for Azerbaijan entered
its second day Friday, with witnesses describing how he took
photographs of important buildings in Yerevan.
Prosecutors say Andrei Maziyev, 44, allegedly took photographs of
Yerevan’s airport, foreign embassies and hotels in Armenia and
reported on the political and economic situation in the disputed
enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan allegedly paid him US$2,500
(Aâ=82¬2,060), prosecutors said.
Maziyev, who was arrested in January, pleaded guilty to espionage on
Thursday. He could get up to life in prison.
Under Armenian law, trials can continue following a guilty plea.
Azerbaijan has made no comment on the trial.
Relations between the two former Soviet republics are tense, due to
the unresolved conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave located
within Azerbaijan’s borders that saw a six-year war in which ethnic
Armenian troops drove Azerbaijan forces out.
Despite a 1994 cease-fire, a political solution remains elusive and
fighting breaks out sporadically in the no man’s land around the
enclave. More than 1 million people were left homeless and 30,000
killed as a result of the war.
Last fall, a Yerevan court sentenced four Armenians to prison
sentences ranging from six to 14 years after convicting them of
espionage.

AGBU Press Office
55 East 59th Street
New York, NY 10022-1112
Phone 212.319.6383, x.118
Fax 212.319.6507
Email: [email protected]
Website:
PRESS RELEASE
Friday, June 10, 2005
Michigan’s AGBU Manoogian School Scores Big:
TWO AREA CHARTER SCHOOLS GET HIGH MARKS
By Dave Groves (The Oakland Press, May 23, 2005)
While standardized test scores in a majority of Oakland County charter
schools have lagged behind those of their traditional public school
counterparts, two local charters continue to buck the trend.
The recent release of 2005 Michigan Educational Assessment Program
test scores for elementary and middle schools indicates Holly Academy
and A.G.B.U. Alex and Marie Manoogian School in Southfield not only
strongly outpace other area charter schools, but rank among the
county’s top-performing traditional public school districts.
“Our motto at Holly Academy is inspiring excellence,” said Tina
Craven, deputy director of the school.
“We usually attract families who are interested in having their
children see (academic) challenges at the next level.”
This year, an average of 73 percent of academy students were found to
be proficient in math, reading, writing, science and social studies
portions of the MEAP test.
That average compares with roughly 81 percent proficiency rates in the
Rochester and Troy school districts and tops the proficiency rates of
21 other county districts.
This success, Craven said, is largely a result of teacher and
administrator efforts to align curriculum with state learning
benchmarks, ramp up instruction in curriculum areas where students
have shown weaknesses and encourage parents to play an active role in
the education process.
“Schoolwide, I think our teachers have really honed in on how they can
help students be successful,” Craven said.
The Manoogian School – a long-established, private Armenian school
that became a public charter school in 1995 – has seen similar
success.
It posted an overall test proficiency rate of about 76 percent and
topped all but five traditional public school districts in the county.
Principal Nadya Sarafian attributed much of the success to dedicated,
veteran teachers who are fortunate to work with students in small
class sizes.
“We try to keep the best teachers,” she said. “We try to encourage
them to do the best they can with each student.”
Sarafian was hesitant to compare the academy’s scores with those of
traditional public school districts because year-to-year fluctuations
in test results for the few hundred students at Manoogian will be more
dramatic than those of a school district with several thousand
students.
She also acknowledged that Manoogian had the advantage of a running
start over other charter schools when publicly funded academies were
authorized in Michigan roughly a decade ago. A tested curriculum,
teaching staff and school philosophy were already in place.
“It takes time to develop all those things,” Sarafian said.
While charter schools are sometimes seen as competing with traditional
public schools for limited state public education funding, this
appears not to be the case for Manoogian.
Ken Siver, deputy superintendent for the Southfield school district
and a vocal opponent of charter schools, said he does not take issue
with the academy operating as a charter.
“It’s an extremely well-run school,” he said.
Because Manoogian tends to draw students from around the metropolitan
Detroit area rather than just from Southfield, it does not draw
significantly from state funding Southfield receives, Siver said.
“It is not one of those schools I would be critical of,” he said. “My
concern is more with the charter schools that are run by
businesses. In my view, some of those businesses are not particularly
qualified to provide education.”
Dan Quisenberry, executive director of the Michigan Association of
Public School Academies, said Manoogian and Holly academies are
shining examples that charter school students can achieve as well as
any others.
He added that this year’s MEAP scores indicate students in charter
schools across the state are making considerable gains in achievement
levels.
“When you compare them to their peers … they’re meeting and
exceeding those scores,” he said.
Still, most local charter schools have substantial ground to cover
before keeping pace with student test scores in the area’s traditional
public schools.
Newly released MEAP scores show that 10 of 17 Oakland County charter
academies posted average student proficiency rates below that of all
28 local traditional school districts. Five remaining academies had
average student proficiency rates on par with the county’s four most
challenged school districts.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Payvand, Iran
June 10 2005
Iran: Gas exports from Assalouyeh to earn 5 billion dollars a year

Assalouyeh, Bushehr prov, June 9,
IRNA-Iran’s gas exports from Assalouyeh region will earn the country
as much as five billion dollars a year.
Managing Director of National Iranian Gas Company Roknoddin Javadi
told IRNA that his company had finalized talks with foreign companies
for export of 20 million tons of LNG and contract on export of an
additional 7.5 million tons will be signed in the next few days.
Javadi said the contract for transfer of gas to the UAE, Azerbaijan
and Armenia through pipeline is finalized and talks are underway for
conclusion of three more contracts.
Once the contracts are enforced Iran’s annual LNG exports will earn
it as much as dlrs 3.5 to four billion and exports through pipelines
will fetch about one billion dollars a year.

AzerTag, Azerbaijan
June 10 2005
USA AMBASSADOR TO ARMENIA JOHN EVANS STRIPPED OF PREMIUM FOR AMERICAN
DIPLOMATS
[June 10, 2005, 20:36:37]
The American Association of Foreign Service has stripped the
ambassador of the United States to Armenia John Evans of his premium
`For constructive disagreements’.
The said Association consisting of present and former officials of
the State Department annually awards with the premium after Christian
of A. Herter of the diplomats distinguished by `constructive
disagreements’. For example, last year, the diplomat, not concordant
with the policy of the government in Iraq and expressed the opinion
in the official form has been awarded with this premium. The given
premium is founded with a view of increase of creative thinking and
intellectual courage among the American diplomats and entrusted
diplomats who do not quail before bureaucracy of the State Department
and openly state the ideas.
John Evans’s nominee has drawn attention of selective committee after
he, acting this year before members of the Armenian community in
California, has named `genocide’ the events, which have occurred in
1915 in Ottoman Empire. Ambassador J. Evans has declared that it is
necessary to carry out more open and fair discussions on the given
question. We shall remind, that at the same meeting, the ambassador
the USA to Armenia has told to representatives of the Armenian
Diaspora that `everyone understands that Karabakh cannot be given to
Azerbaijan’. However, statement of J. Evans has caused such
diplomatic resonance, that the ambassador has been compelled not only
to take the words back, but even to explain the reason of the
statement. He has told, that, naming `genocide’ of event of 1915 in
Ottoman Empire, he expressed not official, but personal opinion.
For this reason, the American Association of Foreign Service will not
give the premium to John Evans.
As the president of Association John Lambert told the newspaper
`Washington Post’, members of selective committee have once again
discussed John Evans’s nominee and came to a conclusion, that he does
not correspond to criteria of the winner. J. Lambert has added, that
for the first time in the history of the Organization the candidate
loses the premium after its announcement.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

San Francisco Chronicle
June 10 2005
Memoir traces path to communism
Rick DelVecchio, Chronicle Staff Writer
Bob Avakian has devoted his life to the one ideology that he believes
holds the promise of massively releasing human freedom and dignity.
The ideology is communism.
Berkeley-bred Avakian’s new memoir, “From Ike to Mao and Beyond”
($18.95; Insight Press), leaves a breathtaking impression. Having
deepened and purified his convictions over 40 years of personal and
political struggle, Avakian sounds a high, sustained cry for complete
social transformation almost as if he were the trumpet of Lenin
himself.
It’s as if democratic capitalism’s triumph in the 20th century was
history’s biggest mistake, a tragic wrong turn from the revolutionary
road marked out by Lenin in the Russia of 1917 after the writings of
Marx and by Mao in the China of the 1950s and ’60s.
Avakian, 62, a veteran of the Free Speech Movement and other
upheavals of the Bay Area in the 1960s, makes an unqualified case for
Marxism-Leninism as a fertile thought system that’s as alive now as
it was when the two revolutionary masterminds created it to answer
what they saw as capitalism’s fundamental inhumanity.
Although Avakian is a devotee of Marx and Lenin, he’s also respected
in revolutionary circles for his ground-breaking criticism of
communist methods.
“Marxism is not a scripture, it’s not a religious dogma,” Avakian
writes. “It’s a scientific approach to reality.”
New York’s Insight Press premiered Avakian’s paperback in Berkeley
last month. A diverse host committee made up of people who welcome
Avakian as an alternative voice presented the work and will present
it again in San Francisco tonight. Although the author has elected
not to appear, give press interviews or even disclose where he lives,
his representatives say he wants the book to contribute to a renewed
dialogue about Marxism and political theory in general.
“I think that Bob Avakian has taken the whole idea and conception of
communism to another level — he’s revived the communist project, if
you will, going beyond Marx, Lenin and Mao in some really important
ways,” said Lenny Wolff, who wrote the memoir’s introduction.
Avakian’s representatives said the author is eager to have his views
more widely discussed but wants to stay out of sight because he fears
government harassment. He fled America in 1981 amid what he describes
in the book as a suffocating climate of intolerance.
The first half of the book traces Avakian’s four-square upbringing
and swift political development from pre-adolescence. The second half
shows him reclaiming Leninism as he turns aside the conservatism of
the old-line Communist Party, the pragmatism of trade unionism, the
revolutionary exhaustion of the Black Panthers after their prime and
the anti-leadership tendencies of the New Left.
Following what he is convinced is the correct line, he joins with two
fellow Bay Area radicals to form the Revolutionary Union in the late
’60s. He expands the organization nationally in 1970 in a bid to
create a vanguard for a renewed communist movement.
But America in the ’70s goes right instead of left and, in 1980,
Ronald Reagan is elected president. Under surveillance for his
political activities and grieving a fellow revolutionary’s slaying in
Chicago, Avakian goes into exile in France and assumes the
chairmanship of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, a Maoist group
intent on radical social transformation in “the colossus of late
imperial America.”
Today, Avakian remains party chairman and is perhaps best known as a
prolific, uncompromising contributor to the Revolutionary Worker
newspaper. The grandchild of Armenian immigrants who settled in
Fresno to farm, Avakian enjoyed a warm and familial childhood. His
mother taught him compassion and sacrifice. The late Alameda County
Superior Court judge Spurgeon Avakian, who was changed by his
experiences of discrimination as a person of Armenian descent, showed
his son about fighting injustice.
Young Avakian’s religious beliefs and patriotism were deeply felt. He
tells of saying the Pledge of Allegiance as a 9- or 10-year-old and
wanting to fall to his knees in gratitude for “not living in one of
those awful countries that so many people seem to have had the
misfortune of being born in.” Sticking with Eisenhower even though
his parents went over to Adlai Stevenson, he was absorbed in TV
coverage of the 1952 Republican presidential convention.
But devotion to mainstream values gave way to skepticism. A milestone
on the way to Avakian’s transformation to radicalism was discovering
that President Kennedy lied when he used the U.N. Charter to justify
a naval blockade in response to the presence of Soviet missiles in
Cuba in 1962. At first drawn to the Panthers and other radical groups
at the time, Avakian turned to communism under the tutelage of a
disaffected old-line Communist Party member. He took the revolution
to Richmond, organizing workers and poor people — the proletariat —
against the bourgeoisie. He read to them from a popular book about
village life in China before Mao’s revolution.
He went to China in 1971 and was awed by Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
“We saw truly wondrous things,” he writes. He came home convinced
that revolutionary change could take place in American society as a
scientific process.
In the book, Avakian is at his most provocative when he assesses
Stalin and Mao. He applauds Stalin for leading the first historical
experience in building socialism, the Soviet Union, under difficult
circumstances. Although he refers to Stalin’s mistakes, he makes no
mention of the millions who died under the Soviet dictatorship and
insists upon a balanced view.
“If the bourgeoisie and its political representatives can uphold
people like Madison and Jefferson,” he writes, “then the proletariat
and its vanguard forces can and should uphold Stalin, in an overall
sense and with historical perspective.”
—————————————————————-
Book reading
Authors, actors and community leaders will read from Bob Avakian’s
memoir, “From Ike to Mao and Beyond,” on these dates in San
Francisco:
7 p.m. today at Valencia Street Books, 569 Valencia, (415) 552-7200.
7 p.m. June 20 at the Canvas Cafe, 1200 9th Ave. (at Lincoln), (415)
504- 0060.
The book is available at independent bookstores and through the
publisher, Insight Press,