Month: June 2005

North Bay Bohemian, CA
June 10 2005
Thrash Mental
Has SOAD made the album of the year?
By Karl Byrn
As an album-of-the-year candidate for the tumultuous 12 months of
2001, System Of A Down’s outspoken metal classic Toxicity was hard to
beat. The album was notable in part for the track “Chop Suey!”
perhaps the most visible song banned from the Clear Channel
Communications radio network in the wake of the 9-11 tragedy. At the
time, the song’s desperate martyr imagery was considered too
specific, almost suspect coming from a band whose members are
American-born Armenians. But the moment demanded music that was
conflicted and intense, and ultimately, Toxicity established SOAD as
multi-platinum selling metal leaders.
Does System Of A Down’s latest disc Mesmerize (Sony) have what it
takes to contend for 2005’s album of the year? We won’t know the
answer until this fall, when the band releases Hypnotize, the second
half of a two-disc set they’ve chosen to release separately rather
than together. This maneuver counters rock’s prevailing mode for
double album releases–i.e., issuing two separate albums at the same
time, as folk-pop hero Conor Oberst did earlier this year. Mesmerize
is only half the story, and with a disc package that opens backwards,
there’s some evident intent to confound the fans.
Nonetheless, Mesmerize does find System Of A Down at an interesting
intersection of metal trends. Current heavy rock seems compelled to
be either hyper-technical and difficult, or hyper-emotional and
accessible. The spastic noise-punk of hardcore acts like the Blood
Brothers and Space Tourists is music that’s purposefully complicated.
Bands like Shadows Fall and Mastodon are following a strict Iron
Maiden-like level of progressive musicianship. But if you prefer
sentiments and intimacy, there’s the heartache of yearning
“emo-metal” bands like Killswitch Engage and Thursday.
These tendencies are in bloom on 2005’s important heavy rock
releases. The Mars Volta explore a diverse prog-metal that explodes
with passion on their Latin-flavored rock-opera Frances the Mute
(Universal). Industrial-goth god Trent Reznor is more open and direct
than ever on [With_Teeth] (Interscope), his re-emergence with his
band Nine Inch Nails. Mainstream supergroup Audioslave’s sophomore
disc Out Of Exile (Interscope) pursues a post-grunge thoughtfulness.
Dancing between these trends is Queens of the Stone Age’s Lullabies
to Paralyze (Interscope), a disc too consciously art-punk to be too
technical or too real.
System Of A Down does it all. Mesmerize features their trademark odd
sound, where violent stop-on-a-dime tempo and rhythm changes are
organically crossbred with Eastern European melodic roots. By now,
their abrupt musical shifts are about more then convoluted riffs;
more importantly, song sections are divided into emotional contrasts.
In the same way grunge played loud against soft dynamics, SOAD plays
wacky brittleness against imploring empathy. Much of the credit for
these precision flailings goes to vocalist Serj Tankian, whose
delivery shifts from tweaker Hobbit to raging bullroarer to sad poet
as suddenly as the riffs change.
Heavy rock is finally running parallel to this spastic/sublime
duality, and rock in general is finding the topical passion SOAD has
always offered. On Mesmerize, they’ve already begun shifting their
pointed ire from institutions to the politics of human behavior. The
disc opens with two substantial anti-war jabs, but works its way to
two concluding strikes against an easy target, Hollywood. They’re
attacking–and grieving over–a collapse of ideals.
Hypnotize will have to be the better half of Mesmerize/Hypnotize to
make the set a championship “album” of 2005. At the year’s
near-halfway point, though, the anti-war pile driver “B.Y.O.B” is
certainly up for song of the year. The song’s thrashing shifts
include the uncomfortably bluesy refrain “Everybody’s going to the
party, have a real good time / Dancing in the desert, blowing up the
sunshine.” Then, the band wails out three questions, but only two
have answers. “Why don’t presidents fight the war?” is a silly
question, and “Why do they always send the poor?” is a question whose
answer is stunningly obvious. But the unsettling yet plainspoken
question “Where the fuck are you?” is where System Of A Down offers a
challenge aimed to outlast the trends.

Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of America
3325 North Glenoaks Blvd.
Burbank, Ca 91504
Tel: 818-558-7474
Fax: 818-558-6333
Web:
His Holiness Karekin ii
catholicos of all armenians
In the western DIOCESE

breakfast MEETING between
his HOLINESS and the clergy
of the WESTERN DIOCESE
Thursday, June 9, 2005

On Thursday, June 9, 2005 His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All
Armenians, accompanied by the Primate of the Western Diocese me with
over 40 clergy of the Western Diocese in the Armen and Gloria Hampar
Reception Room. His Holiness entered the room during the singing of
the hymn `Hrashapar’.
Following the blessing of the tables by His Holiness the Primate
once more greeted the Catholicos of All Armenians, and extended his
appreciation to the clergy for their spiritual missions and the
service of their people. He conveyed his gratitude to the Pontiff for
granting crosses to the clergy during the reception of the previous
evening.
The Primate then invited His Holiness to address the clergy in
attendance. The Catholicos extended his appreciation to the Primate
for the events which have been successfully planned and are being
implemented on the occasion of his Pontifical visit. He provided the
clergy with detailed information on the activities and project of the
Mother See.
The Catholicos informed the clergy that the Kevorkian Seminary
housed in the Mother See has reached a new academic level. Currently
there are 250 students enrolled in the Kevorkian and Vazkenian
Seminaries. It is also expected that a Seminary in Gumri be opened in
the near future.
His Holiness said that the center of illumination of our people and
faith is the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin. This has been the case
also in the past, even during times of political uncertainty. The
Catholicos mentioned that more and more clergy are being ordained and
that the Mother See has taken on the task of renovation and
construction throughout Armenia.
The Catholicos also spoke of hospitals, orphanages, medical centers,
and the possibility of a pilgrimage comprised of 1,000 youth.
`Shoghagat’, the religious television station sponsored by the Mother
See will also have new headquarters in the near future thanks to the
donation of benefactors. His Holiness Karekin II blessed the clergy
and urged them to continue their mission.

luncheon for his holiness
and diocesan council
June 9, 2005

On Thursday, June 9, 2005 a luncheon took place in the Armen and
Gloria Hampar Reception Room of the Diocesan Headquarters during
which His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, met with
current and former members of the Diocesan Council. Present at the
Luncheon was also His Eminence Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, Primate
of the Western Diocese, as well as Vicar General Very Rev. Fr. Dajad
Dz. V. Yardemian.
Diocesan Council members were informed by His Holiness of the many
activities of the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, following which a
discussion took place regarding issues and concerns related to the
Western Diocese and the Mother See.
His Holiness commended the dedication and service of the Diocesan
Council, and urged them to continue their support of the Western
Diocese.
Presided by the Primate, the Diocesan Council is an elected body of
the Diocese. The current members are:
Deacon Dr. Varouj Altebarmakian, Chairman, St. Paul Armenian Church,
Fresno
Dr. Vahram Biricik, Vice Chairman, St. Mary Armenian Church, Costa
Mesa
Peter Abajian, Secretary, St. James Armenian Church, Los Angeles
Archpriest Fr. Vartan Kasparian, Assistant Secretary, St. Mary
Armenian Church, Yettem
Ben Krikorian, Treasurer, St. Paul Armenian Church, Fresno
Archpriest Fr. Kevork Arakelian, Advisor, St. Gregory Armenian
Church, Fowler
Archpriest Fr. Manoug Markarian, Advisor, St. John Armenian Church,
Hollywood
Rev. Fr. Datev Harutyunian, Advisor, St. Andrew Armenian Church,
Cupertino
Deacon Barlow Der Mugrdechian, Advisor, St. Paul Armenian Church,
Fresno
Mr. Armen Hampar, Advisor, St. Peter Armenian Church, Van Nuys
Mr. Gregory Tcherkoyan, Advisor, St. Vartan Armenian Church, Oakland

groundbreaking CEREMONY of
taglyan center
St. John Garabed Armenian Church, Hollywood
June 9, 2005

On Thursday, June 9, 2005 at 7:00 p.m. His Holiness Karekin II,
Catholicos of All Armenians, entered St. John Garabed Armenian Church
in Hollywood during the singing of the hymn `Hrashapar’, performed by
the students of TCA Arshag Dickranian School. His Holiness was
accompanied by His Eminence Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, Primate of
the Western Diocese, and high ranking clergy, and was greeted by the
clergy of the Diocese, deacons and students of the Dickranian School.
Upon the entrance of His Holiness doves were released as a symbol of
peace.
Following the prayer His Eminence addressed the faithful saying that
the spirits of the faithful of the Diocese and filled with joy during
the Pontifical visit of His Holiness Karekin II. He commended the
accomplishments of the parish thanks to the efforts of Archpriest Fr.
Manoug Markarian, Pastor; the Parish Council, Building Committee, and
Ladies’ Society.
He also expressed his appreciation to Drs. Petros and Garine Taglyan
thanks to whom the construction of the Taglyan Complex was made
possible.
`We commend the efforts of Archpriest Fr. Manoug Markarian, Pastor,
and the Parish Council, who along with the helping hand of beloved
benefactors made it possible to purchase the buildings adjacent to
St. John Garabed Church, expanding church property,’ said His
Eminence Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, Primate, in his message printed
in the commemorative booklet on this occasion. `Thanks to the handsome
donation of Drs. Petros and Garine Taglyan the construction of the
Taglyan Cultural Center will become a reality. In the near future the
church will also be renovated and given the classic Armenian style and
dome.’
In appreciation of their continued support and handsome
contributions His Holiness bestowed the St. Gregory the Illuminator
Medal of Honor upon Drs. Petros and Garine Taglyan. The Pontifical
Encyclical was read by Archpriest Fr. Manoug Markarian.
`In the course of your God-pleasing life, undertaking the renovation
of St. John Garabed Armenian Church is a new testimony of your
dedication to the church and your love towards God,’ read the
Pontifical Encyclical issued by His Holiness. `The construction of
the hall adjacent to the church will have a significant meaning, and
will serve to host cultural and academic events sponsored by the
church, further strengthening the Western Diocese within the life of
the community.’
His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, delivered his
message to the clergy and faithful in attendance. `Armenia Resonates
in this church,’ said the Catholicos. He continued by extending his
prayers that the blessings of Holy Etchmiadzin become a source of joy
and direction for the faithful throughout their lives. Our forefathers
have enriched the life of our people and the church with new zeal. In
independent Armenia the Church prospers even further through the
prayers of the faithful.
He conveyed his sincere appreciation to benefactors Drs. Petros and
Garine Taglyan, who with their generous donation have made possible
the construction of a Center that will serve as a home for many
parishioners.
The evening concluded with the Benediction by the Catholicos.

OFFICE OF THE WESTERN DIOCESE
June 10, 2005
Burbank, California

Forget the Founding Fathers
By BARRY GEWEN
New York Times Book Review
June 5, 2005
THE founding fathers were paranoid hypocrites and ungrateful malcontents.
What was their cherished Declaration of Independence but empty political
posturing? They groaned about the burden of taxation, but it was the English
who were shouldering the real burden, paying taxes on everything from
property to beer, from soap to candles, tobacco, paper, leather and beeswax.
The notorious tea tax, which had so inflamed the people of Massachusetts,
was only one-fourth of what the English paid at home; even Benjamin Franklin
labeled the Boston Tea Party an act of piracy. Meanwhile, smugglers, with
the full connivance of the colonists, were getting rich at the expense of
honest tax-paying citizens. The recent French and Indian War had doubled
Britain’s national debt, but the Americans, who were the most immediate
beneficiaries, were refusing to contribute their fair share.
The revolutionaries complained about a lack of representation in Parliament,
but in this they were no different from the majority of Englishmen. What was
more, the God-given or nature-given rights they claimed for themselves
included the right to hold Africans in bondage. Edward Gibbon, who knew
something about the ups and downs of history, opposed the rebels from the
House of Commons. Samuel Johnson called them ”a race of convicts” who
”ought to be thankful for any thing we allow them short of hanging.”
Observed from across the Atlantic, the story of the Revolution looks very
different from the one every American child grows up with. To see that story
through British eyes, as Stanley Weintraub’s ”Iron Tears: America’s Battle
for Freedom, Britain’s Quagmire: 1775-1783” enables us to do, is to see an
all-too-familiar tale reinvigorated. Weintraub reminds us that justice did
not necessarily reside with the rebels, that the past can always be viewed
from multiple perspectives. And he confronts us with the fact that an
American triumph was anything but inevitable. History of course belongs to
the victors. If Britain’s generals had been more enterprising, if the French
had failed to supply vital military and financial assistance, George
Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and the rest would be known
to us not as political and philosophical giants but as reckless (and hanged)
losers, supporting players in a single act of Britain’s imperial drama. We
would all be Canadians now, with lower prescription drug costs and an
inordinate fondness for winter sports.
But Weintraub’s book does more than add a fresh dimension to a tired
subject. By giving the war a genuinely international flavor, it points the
way to a new understanding of American history. Instead of looking out at
the rest of the world from an American perspective, it rises above national
boundaries to place the past in a global context. This is a significant
undertaking. At a time when the role of the United States in the world has
never been more dominant, or more vulnerable, it is crucially important for
us to see how the United States fits into the jigsaw of international
relations. Weintraub indicates how American history may come to be written
in the future.
A globalized history of the United States would be only the latest twist in
a constantly changing narrative. Broadly speaking, since the end of World
War II there have been three major schools of American history; each
reflected and served the mood of the country at a particular time. In the
1940’s and 50’s, that mood was triumphal. As Frances FitzGerald explains in
”America Revised: History Schoolbooks in the 20th Century,” the United
States was routinely presented in those years as ”perfect: the greatest
nation in the world, and the embodiment of democracy, freedom and
technological progress.” The outside world may have been intruding on the
slumbering nation through the cold war, the United Nations, NATO and the
rise of Communist China, but the textbooks’ prevailing narrative remained
resolutely provincial. ”The United States had been a kind of Salvation Army
to the rest of the world,” the books taught. ”Throughout history, it had
done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant and diseased countries.
. . . American motives were always altruistic.”
The histories of that time, FitzGerald says, were ”seamless,” a word that
applied not only to schoolbooks but also to the work of the period’s most
sophisticated scholars and writers, men like Richard Hofstadter and Louis
Hartz. Reacting against the challenge of totalitarianism, they went looking
for consensus or, in Hofstadter’s phrase, ”the central faith” of America,
and they found it in the national commitment to bourgeois individualism and
egalitarianism. Americans clustered around a democratic, capitalist middle.
Uniquely among major nations, the United States had avoided serious
ideological conflict and political extremes; even its radicals and
dissenters adhered to what Hofstadter called the ”Whiggish center” and
Hartz termed ”the liberal tradition.” Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. wrote
about ”the vital center.” Daniel Bell spoke of ”the end of ideology.”
Because they emphasized unity at the expense of division and dissent —
Hartz referred to ”the shadow world” of American social conflict — these
consensus historians later were criticized for being conservative and
complacent. There is some truth to this charge, but only some. As a group,
they were reformers, even liberal Democrats, but their liberalism was
pragmatic and incremental. Mindful of the leftist extremism of the 1930’s,
they looked upon idealism as something to be distrusted; grand visions, they
had come to understand, could do grand damage. Taken too far, this viewpoint
could lead to a defense of the status quo, or at least to a preference for
the way things were to the way visionaries said they could be. Down that
road, neoconservatism beckoned. Hofstadter, for one, was discomforted by
some of his critics, and admitted to having ”serious misgivings of my own
about what is known as consensus history.” It had never been his purpose,
he explained, to deny the very real conflicts that existed within the
framework he and others were attempting to outline.
Hofstadter acknowledged that his writing ”had its sources in the Marxism of
the 1930’s,” and an alert reader could detect a residual Marxism, or at
least an old-fashioned radicalism, in some of his comments in ”The American
Political Tradition.” Though the book appeared in the late 1940’s, at the
onset of one of the greatest economic booms in American history, Hofstadter
was still complaining about ”bigness and corporate monopoly,” misguidedly
declaring that ”competition and opportunity have gone into decline.”
Similarly, in ”The Liberal Tradition in America,” Hartz brilliantly but,
it seemed, ruefully, analyzed why socialism had failed to take root in the
United States.
However much these thinkers had been disappointed by Marxism, they were
hardly ready to embrace straightforward majoritarian democracy. Indeed, with
the exception of Henry Adams, there has probably never been a historian more
suspicious of ”the people” than Richard Hofstadter. For him vox populi
conjured up images of racism, xenophobia, paranoia, anti-intellectualism.
The more congenial Hartz described Americans as possessing ”a vast and
almost charming innocence of mind”; his hope was that the postwar encounter
with the rest of the world would awaken his countrymen from their sheltered,
basically oafish naivete.
But if the consensus historians were not Marxists and not majoritarian
democrats, what, during the cold war era, could they be? What other choice
was there? The answer is that they were ironists who stood beyond political
debate, beyond their own narratives. Hartz urged scholars to get ”outside
the national experience”; ”instead of recapturing our past, we have got to
transcend it,” he said. One became an anthropologist of one’s own society.
How better to understand the national character, what made America America?
Yet the outsider approach had real limitations, as became apparent once the
tranquil 50’s turned into the tumultuous 60’s. The consensus historian,
Hartz wrote, ”finds national weaknesses and he can offer no absolute
assurance on the basis of the past that they will be remedied. He tends to
criticize and then shrug his shoulders.” This preference for the
descriptive over the prescriptive, with its mix of resignation and
skepticism, its simultaneous enjoyment and rejection of the spectacle of
American life, was at bottom ”aesthetic.” In retrospect, one can even
begin to see certain links between the consensus generation’s aesthetic
irony and the distancing attitude Susan Sontag described in her 1964 essay,
”Notes on Camp.”
In any event, the work of these historians was drastically undermined by the
upheavals of the 60’s and early 70’s — the Kennedy assassination and the
other political murders, the Vietnam War, the urban riots, the student
revolts, Watergate and the kulturkampf of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. As
division and conflict consumed the country, the emphasis on American unity
seemed misguided. And the ironic stance itself looked irresponsible. The
times demanded not distance but engagement, not anthropologists but
activists, not a shrug but a clenched fist. Everyone was being forced to
make choices, and those choices presented themselves with an almost
melodramatic starkness, especially on the campuses that were the homes of
the consensus historians. It was the blacks against the bigots, the doves
against the hawks, the Beatles against Rodgers and Hammerstein. For
historians, too, the choice was easy: for the neglected minorities and
against the dominant dead white males.
As postwar seamlessness faded in the 1960’s, a school of multicultural
historians emerged to take the place of the consensus historians. This
school has been subjected to a lot of criticism of late, but in fact it
brought forth a golden age of social history. Blacks, American Indians,
immigrants, women and gays had been ignored in the national narrative, or,
more precisely, treated as passive objects rather than active subjects. The
Civil War may have been fought over slavery, but the slaves were rarely
heard from. Who knew anything about the Indians at Custer’s Last Stand? The
immigrants’ story was told not through their own cultures but through their
assimilation into the mainstream. But now, the neglected and powerless were
gaining their authentic voices.
New studies increased our knowledge, enlarging and transforming the picture
of America, even when the multiculturalists worked in very restricted areas.
Judith A. Carney’s ”Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in
the Americas,” for example, describes how the South Carolina rice industry
was built not only on slave labor but on the agricultural and technological
knowledge brought over by the Africans. The book has not found many readers
outside the academy, but it nonetheless changes our understanding of the
black contribution to American life.
At its best, multiculturalism illuminated the niches and byways of American
history. It investigated smaller and smaller subjects in greater and greater
detail: gays in the military during World War II, black laundresses in the
postbellum South. But this specialization created a problem of its own. In
1994, when the Journal of American History asked historians about the state
of their profession, they bemoaned its ”narrowness,” its ”divorce from
the public.” The editor of the journal wrote that ”dazzling people with
the unfamiliar and erudite” had become ”more highly prized than telling a
good story or distilling wisdom.”
Yet what story, exactly, did the multiculturalists want to tell? Could all
those detailed local and ethnic studies be synthesized into a grand
narrative? Unfortunately, the answer was yes. There was a unifying vision,
but it was simplistic. Since the victims and losers were good, it followed
that the winners were bad. From the point of view of downtrodden blacks,
America was racist; from the point of view of oppressed workers, it was
exploitative; from the point of view of conquered Hispanics and Indians, it
was imperialistic. There was much to condemn in American history, little or
nothing to praise. Perhaps it was inevitable that multiculturalism curdled
into political correctness.
Exhibit A, Howard Zinn’s ”People’s History of the United States,” has sold
more than a million copies. From the start, Zinn declared that his
perspective was that of the underdog. In ”a world of victims and
executioners, it is the job of thinking people . . . not to be on the side
of the executioners.” Whereas the Europeans who arrived in the New World
were genocidal predators, the Indians who were already there believed in
sharing and hospitality (never mind the profound cultural differences that
existed among them), and raped Africa was a continent overflowing with
kindness and communalism (never mind the profound cultural differences that
existed there). American history was a story of cruel domination by the
wealthy and privileged. The founding fathers ”created the most effective
system of national control devised in modern times,” Zinn stated. The Civil
War was a conflict of elites, and World War II was fought not to stop
fascism but to extend America’s empire. The United States and the Soviet
Union both sought to control their oppressed populations, ”each country
with its own techniques.” The Vietnam War was a clash between organized
modern technology and organized human beings, ”and the human beings won.”
We have traveled a long way from the sophisticated ironies of the consensus
historians.
A reaction against distortions and exaggerations of this kind was sure to
come. Battered by political correctness, basking in Reaganesque optimism and
victory in the cold war, the country in the 1980’s and 90’s was ready for a
reaffirmation of its fundamental values. After all, democracy was spreading
around the world and history itself (treated as a conflict of ideologies)
was declared at an end. One of the first historians to take heart from the
cold war’s conclusion and to see the value of re-examining the formative
years of the republic was the early-American scholar Joseph J. Ellis. In
”Founding Brothers” he wrote: ”all alternative forms of political
organization appear to be fighting a futile rearguard action against the
liberal institutions and ideas first established in the United States.”
Ellis was a major figure in the new school of founding fathers historians
that emerged in the 1990’s. But as an academic, he was exceptional. Most
were amateur and freelance historians, since the universities had become
hostile to the kind of ”great man” history they were interested in doing.
A National Review editor, Richard Brookhiser, taking Plutarch as his model,
explained that his goal was to write ”moral biography,” a phrase unlikely
to endear him to postmodernist academics; in rapid succession he produced
brief, deft studies of Washington, Hamilton and the Adams family. Ellis, the
biographer of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, saw
himself engaged in retro battle against his own profession, and observed
that his work was ”a polite argument against the scholarly grain, based on
a set of presumptions that are so disarmingly old-fashioned that they might
begin to seem novel in the current climate.” George Washington, Ellis
joked, was ”the deadest, whitest male in American history.”
But if the academy was hostile to these books, the larger world was not. The
volumes by Brookhiser and Ellis, not to mention works by David McCullough,
Ron Chernow and Walter Isaacson, were widely praised. Some won National Book
Awards and Pulitzer Prizes. And in sharp contrast to the restricted
monographs of the multiculturalists, they sold by the truckload. Here was
genuinely popular history, written with a public purpose and designed to
capture a large audience. Ellis’s ”Founding Brothers” was a best seller in
hardback for almost a year, and a best seller in paperback for more than a
year. Isaacson’s ”Benjamin Franklin” spent 26 weeks on the best-seller
list; McCullough’s ”John Adams” entered the list at No.1, staying there
for 13 weeks, rivaling for a while the popularity of novels by the likes of
John Grisham and Danielle Steel. Chernow’s ”Alexander Hamilton” and
Ellis’s ”His Excellency: George Washington” both made the best-seller list
last year.
And yet there are reasons to believe the popularity of the school is
peaking. For one thing, it is running out of founding fathers. The only
major figure still awaiting his Chernow or McCullough is the thoughtful but
unexciting James Madison. No doubt the principal author of the Constitution
will have his day, but the founding fathers school is facing the choice of
reaching down into the second ranks, or going over ground already covered by
others. Brookhiser’s most recent biography was of the less-than-great
Gouverneur Morris, whom he teasingly describes as ”the rake who wrote the
Constitution.” Meanwhile, another formidable biography of Adams has just
come out, and Benjamin Franklin has been turned into an industry unto
himself, the subject of an apparently endless flood of books. There’s always
room for different interpretations, but the bigger picture is in the process
of being lost. A school that arose in reaction to the excesses of the
multiculturalists has started feeding on itself.
Most important, however, 9/11 has changed the way Americans relate to their
past. The war on terror, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the
apparently insoluble problem of nuclear proliferation and the ominous but
real potential for a ”clash of civilizations” — all these are compelling
us to view history in a new way, to shed the America-centered perspective of
the founding fathers school and look at the American past as a single stream
in a larger global current. Stanley Weintraub will never equal the best of
the founding fathers authors in the felicity of his prose, and ”Iron
Tears” is unlikely to reach far beyond the campuses. But by embedding the
American Revolution in British history, by internationalizing it, his book
speaks more directly to the needs of our time than do biographies of Adams
and Hamilton.
Weintraub is hardly alone. Another book that gains immediacy by giving a
global spin to an old subject is Alonzo L. Hamby’s ”For the Survival of
Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s.” The New
Deal is as overdiscussed as the Revolution, yet by internationalizing it,
Hamby is able to raise provocative, revealing questions, even disturbing
ones. The Great Depression, he points out, was a crisis that ”begged for
international solutions.” The Western governments, however, pursued
beggar-thy-neighbor policies, including protective tariffs and competitive
currency devaluations, that ”frequently made things worse.” And the United
States, he says, was the worst offender of all, ”the most isolationist of
the major world powers.” Roosevelt was an economic nationalist who
mistakenly treated his country as a self-contained unit, even actively
sabotaging the feeble efforts at international cooperation. Whatever
economic successes he had domestically — and Hamby, following other recent
historians, shows that those successes were modest indeed — his actions
contributed to the nation-against-nation, Hobbesian atmosphere of the world
arena. Hamby does not go so far as to blame Roosevelt for Hitler’s growing
strength in the mid-1930’s, but it would not be difficult to take his
argument in that direction. Roosevelt was an ”impressive” figure, Hamby
writes. But from a global perspective, the New Deal record was ”hardly
impressive.”
AS if to signal to historians the kind of reassessment that needs to be
done, the National Endowment for the Humanities will sponsor a four-week
institute at the Library of Congress later this month on ”Rethinking
America in Global Perspective.” And one group of professional historians
has already begun submerging the United States within a broader identity.
The growing field of ”Atlantic history,” connecting Europe, Africa and the
Americas through economics, demography and politics, has become a recognized
academic specialty, taught not only in the United States but also in Britain
and Germany. It is generating books, conferences, prizes and, of course, a
Web site. No less a figure than the eminent Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn
has devoted his most recent book to this ”very large subject” that is
”now coming into focus.” Bailyn writes that Atlantic history is
”peculiarly relevant for understanding the present.”
It may be that for general readers trying to understand the present (as
opposed to scholars), Atlantic history goes too far in dissolving the United
States into a blurry, ill-defined transoceanic entity — the might and power
of the nation are not about to disappear, nor is the threat posed by its
enemies. But because the post-9/11 globalization of American history is
really just now taking shape, there is sufficient flexibility at the moment
to accommodate a wide range of approaches. Three recent books, for example,
offer starkly contrasting visions of America’s past and, correspondingly, of
its present world role. They are of varying quality but in their different
approaches, they point to the kind of intellectual debates we can expect in
the future from historians who speak to our current condition.
In ”A Patriot’s History of the United States,” Larry Schweikart, a
professor of history at the University of Dayton, and Michael Allen, a
professor of history at the University of Washington, Tacoma,
self-consciously return to 50’s triumphalism, though with a very different
purpose from that of the consensus historians. Not interested in irony or in
standing outside of history, they are full-blooded participants,
self-assured and robust moralists, who argue that the United States is a
uniquely virtuous country, with a global mission to spread American values
around the world. ”An honest evaluation of the history of the United
States,” they declare, ”must begin and end with the recognition that,
compared to any other nation, America’s past is a bright and shining light.
America was, and is, the city on the hill, the fountain of hope, the beacon
of liberty.” Theirs is a frankly nationalistic — often blatantly partisan
— text in which the United States is presented as having a duty to lead
while other countries, apparently, have an obligation to follow. ”In the
end,” they write, ”the rest of the world will probably both grimly
acknowledge and grudgingly admit that, to paraphrase the song, God has ‘shed
His grace on thee.’ ” This is a point of view with few adherents in the
academy these days (let alone in other nations), but it’s surely one that
enjoys warm support among many red-state conservatives, and in the halls of
the White House.
Critics of the Bush administration will find more to agree with in the
perspective of ” ‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide,”
Samantha Power’s Pulitzer Prize-winning history of 20th-century mass murder.
Unlike Schweikart and Allen, she does not see virtue inhering, almost
divinely, in American history. Instead, she judges that history against a
larger moral backdrop, asking how the country has responded to the most dire
of international crimes, genocide. The record is hardly inspiring. Power
reveals that throughout the 20th century, whenever genocide occurred,
whether the victims were Armenians, Jews, Cambodians, Kurds or Tutsis, the
American government stood by and did nothing. Worse, in some instances, it
sided with the murderers. ” ‘A Problem from Hell’ ” exhorts Americans to
learn from their history of failure and dereliction, and to live up to their
professed values; we have ”a duty to act.” Whereas Schweikart and Allen
believe American history shows that the United States is already an
idealistic agent in world affairs, Power contends that our history shows it
is not — but that it should become one.
A third book, Margaret MacMillan’s ”Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the
World,” is in effect an answer to Schweikart, Allen and Power — an object
lesson in the ways American idealism can go wrong. MacMillan’s focus is on
Woodrow Wilson at the end of World War I. A visionary, an evangelist, an
inspiration, an earth-shaker, a holy fool, Wilson went to Paris in 1919 with
grand ambitions: to hammer out a peace settlement and confront a wretched
world with virtue, to reconfigure international relations and reform mankind
itself. Freedom and democracy were ”American principles,” he proclaimed.
”And they are also the principles and policies of forward-looking men and
women everywhere, of every modern nation, of every enlightened community.
They are the principles of mankind and they must prevail.” Other leaders
were less sure. David Lloyd George, the British prime minister, liked
Wilson’s sincerity and straightforwardness, but also found him obstinate and
vain. France’s prime minister, the acerbic and unsentimental Georges
Clemenceau, said that talking to him was ”something like talking to Jesus
Christ.” (He didn’t mean that as a compliment.)
As a committed American democrat, Wilson affirmed his belief in the
principle of self-determination for all peoples, but in Paris his
convictions collided with reality. Eastern Europe was ”an ethnic jumble,”
the Middle East a ”myriad of tribes,” with peoples and animosities so
intermingled they could never be untangled into coherent polities. In the
Balkans, leaders were all for self-determination, except when it applied to
others. The conflicting parties couldn’t even agree on basic facts, making
neutral mediation impossible. Ultimately, the unbending Wilson compromised
— on Germany, China, Africa and the South Pacific. He yielded to the force
majeure of Turks and Italians. In the end, he left behind him a volcano of
dashed expectations and festering resentments. MacMillan’s book is a
detailed and painful record of his failure, and of how we continue to live
with his troublesome legacy in the Balkans, the Middle East and elsewhere.
Yet the idealists — nationalists and internationalists alike — do not lack
for responses. Wilsonianism, they might point out, has not been discredited.
It always arises from its own ashes; it has even become the guiding
philosophy of the present administration. Give George W. Bush key passages
from Wilson’s speeches to read, and few would recognize that almost a
century had passed. Nor should this surprise us. For while the skeptics can
provide realism, they can’t provide hope. As MacMillan says, the Treaty of
Versailles, particularly the League of Nations, was ”a bet placed on the
future.” Who, looking back over the rubble, would have wanted to bet on the
past?
Little has changed in our new century. Without the dreams of the idealists,
all that is on offer is more of the same — more hatred, more bloodshed,
more war, and eventually, now, nuclear war. Anti-Wilsonian skeptics tend to
be pessimistic about the wisdom of embarking on moral crusades but,
paradoxically, it is the idealists, the hopeful ones, who, in fact, should
be painting in Stygian black. They are the ones who should be reminding us
that for most of the world, history is not the benign story of inexorable
progress Americans like to believe in. Rather, it’s a record of unjustified
suffering, irreparable loss, tragedy without catharsis. It’s a gorgon: stare
at it too long and it turns you to stone.
Fifty years ago, Louis Hartz expressed the hope that the cold war would
bring an end to American provincialism, that international responsibility
would lead to ”a new level of consciousness.” It hasn’t happened. In the
1950’s, two wide oceans and a nuclear stockpile allowed Americans to
continue living blithely in their imagined city on a hill, and the student
revolts of the 60’s and 70’s, if anything, fed the notion that the rest of
the world was ”out there.” ”Bring the troops home” was the protesters’
idea of a foreign policy.
But the disaster of 9/11 proved that the oceans do not protect us and that
our nuclear arsenal, no matter how imposing, will not save our cities from
terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction. Today, there is no
retreating into the provincialism and innocence of the past. And because
withdrawal is not an option, the work of the globalizing American historians
possesses an urgency unknown to scholars of previous generations. The major
lesson the new historians must teach is that there is no longer any safe
haven from history’s horror story. Looking forward is unnerving, but looking
backward is worse. The United States has no choice. Like it or not, it is
obliged to take a leading role in an international arena that is
unpredictable and dangerous, hopeful perhaps, but also potentially
catastrophic.

Armenia, Netherlands sign memorandum to boost economic cooperation
Arminfo
10 Jun 05
YEREVAN
The Armenian government and the Netherlands signed a memorandum of
understanding on the Programme of Cooperation with Emerging Markets
(PSOM) in Yerevan today. The document was signed by Armenian Finance
and Economy Minister Vardan Khachatryan and Dutch Minister for
Development Cooperation Agnes van Ardenne.
After the signing ceremony, Khachatryan said that under the document
the Armenian government will implement two or three projects every
year. Each project is worth 500,000 euros on average and will be
funded by the Dutch government. This grant programme is being
implemented in 42 countries with a total cost of 48m euros. The main
objective of the programme is to facilitate the development of the
private sector by encouraging equal and mutually beneficial
cooperation between the two countries’ business circles, the minister
said.
Programmes aimed at reducing poverty in Armenia and establishing and
developing small and medium-sized Dutch-Armenian enterprises can be
implemented within the framework of the grant, he said.
[Passage omitted: Details; The volume of trade between Armenia and the
Netherlands reached 25.6m dollars in January-April this year]

Armenia’s foreign minister wants more U.S. involvement in resolving
Armenia-Turkey dispute
AP Worldstream; Jun 10, 2005
WILLIAM C. MANN

Armenia’s foreign minister urged the United States to become more
involved in settling his country’s dispute with Turkey, especially in
persuading Turkey to reopen its border and resume normal trade with
its landlocked northern neighbor.
The Turks closed the border in 1993 during Christian Armenia’s
six-year war with another Muslim neighbor, Azerbaijan.
“The United States is active in this, but we would like to see them
more engaged,” Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian said Friday after a
meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
“I believe the United States can be more assertive on the border
matter. Not other matters, but on the border.”
Turkey closed the border after Armenian-backed troops from
Nagorno-Karabakh, a mainly Christian Armenian enclave ruled by
Azerbaijan when Armenia and Azerbaijan were Soviet republics, moved
into other parts of Azerbaijan, seized towns and approached the
Iranian and Turkish borders. A 1994 truce largely ended hostilities,
but a final settlement has not been reached.
Armenia considers ending the Turkish trade embargo the key to better
relations, but at the heart of their estrangement is Turkey’s refusal
to accept Armenia’s charge that Ottoman Turks committed genocide
against Armenians. Armenia says as many as 1.5 million Armenians died
violently or of disease and hunger in 1915-1923 as they were driven
from eastern Turkey. Turkey says the number was inflated and the
deaths resulted from efforts to secure the Ottoman Empire’s border
with Russia and defend against Armenian militants.
Oskanian said universal acceptance of the genocide remains on
Armenia’s foreign policy agenda. Argentina, Canada, France, Poland and
Russia are among countries that have accepted that it occurred, but
the Bush administration remains leery of it. Oskanian said he met with
the co-chairmen of the Armenian caucus in the House of Representatives
while he was in Washington, and they plan again to submit a resolution
on the subject.
Turkey, however, would not have to yield on the question before
relations could be restored, he said.
He said Friday that the United States should emphasize to Turkey that
it “should not only aspire to be a bridge between East and West but
aspire to be a bridge between parts of Europe.”
“Armenia and Turkey are not at war. We have no problem with that
country,” he said. “We have historical differences. Germany and France
have historical differences, which they talk about … but they don’t
close their borders.”
The genocide question “has been put on a different track” from the
border question, Oskanian said, “and those tracks do not meet at any
point.”
Clearly the trade embargo has eclipsed the genocide question as
Armenia’s main worry. Two weeks ago, in Helsinki, Finland, Oskanian
made a similar appeal to the European Union to use its leverage with
Turkey to open “the last closed border in Europe.”
Turkey is a candidate for EU membership, and such enmity among
European states does not sit well with other members who must consider
the Turkish application.
Still, the politics of the situation are complicated.
Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has offered to restore
relations once Armenia agreed to a commission of experts from both
sides to study the history of the late Ottoman period and determine
whether a genocide of Armenians occurred.

Georgia seeks international credit rating
Kavkasia-Press news agency
10 Jun 05
TBILISI
Georgia has started making arrangements to obtain a sovereign credit
rating. Finance Minister Valeri Chechelashvili said at a news
conference today that for the first time in its history Georgia had an
ambition to satisfy the required parameters and obtain the
internationally recognized rating.
A sovereign credit rating is an indicator of a country’s financial and
political stability used as a risk assessment tool by foreign
investors. Currently Azerbaijan has its sovereign credit rating while
Armenia and Georgia do not.
Chechelashvili said that the Georgian government decided to hire a
consulting firm to develop a strategy for obtaining the
rating. “Hiring a consulting firm is an expensive luxury. It will cost
about 140,000 dollars for three months’ services. However, we will get
help from the British Department for [International] Development
[DFID] which is ready to allocate this amount. Once it is allocated,
we will announce an international tender to select a consultant,” the
minister said.
There are three major international credit rating companies: Fitch,
Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. The tender winner will be determined in
about two months after its announcement, and the consulting period
will continue for three months. Chechelashvili did not rule out that
Georgia might obtain a “WB” credit rating [as received] before the end
of this year.

Croatia backs Azerbaijan over Karabakh conflict
ANS TV, Baku
10 Jun 05
[Presenter Eldaniz Zeynalov] President Ilham Aliyev left for Croatia
on an official visit today and met his Croatian counterpart Stjepan
Mesic. The two parties discussed ways of expanding economic, political
and cultural relations between the two countries, the situation in the
region, as well as the Nagornyy Karabakh problem. ANS correspondent
Ali Ahmadov reports by telephone. Hello Ali, what can you say about
the visit?
[Ahmadov] Hello Eldaniz. President Ilham Aliyev and Croatian President
Stjepan Mesic have held a news conference. Among other issues, they
touched on the Karabakh conflict. President Aliyev said that
Azerbaijani land has been occupied by Armenia and peace talks are
under way to solve the problem in a peaceful way. He said that
Azerbaijan is ready to grant the highest status of autonomy to
Armenians in Karabakh.
[Passage omitted: minor details]
The Croatian president said that Croatia’s territorial integrity was
also violated in the past, but then the country managed to restore its
territorial integrity peacefully. He said that no country should
refuse to restore its territorial integrity or allow it to be
violated. He said that not a single inch of Croatian land can belong
to any other country.
The one-to-one meeting between the presidents and the expanded meeting
between the sides ended in the signing of several agreements. One of
the agreements was related to cooperation between the Azerbaijani and
Croatian foreign ministries. Another agreement was signed between the
culture ministries.
The presidents also adopted a mutual communique. Signing communiques
is a normal practice between countries, but this communique expresses
Croatia’s open support for Azerbaijan in the Azerbaijani-Armenian
conflict.
[Passage omitted: similar ideas reiterated]
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

A1plus
| 20:21:08 | 10-06-2005 | Politics |
A STEP FOR THE FUTURE
Today RA NA President Arthur Baghdasaryan received the delegation of Turhan
Chomez, deputy of the Turkish Parliament. The delegation comprised of
journalists and social bodies.
During the meeting issues about the present state of the Armenian-Turkish
relations and the perspectives of development were discussed. The sides
confirmed their readiness to contribute to the development of relations by
means of open discussions. The RA NA President mentioned that Armenia wants
to have normal relations with all its neighbors and thinks that the problems
in the Armenian-Turkish relations must be solved by means of joint
discussions, `We must solve the present problems, not fight against them’,
said the NA President.
The President of the Parliament called everybody to build the relations
looking forward – having the courage to admit the fact of the Genocide and
to go forward taking as basis the way of joint Euro integration. He
mentioned that Armenia expects the establishment of diplomatic relations as
basis to solve further problems.
It was also mentioned that Armenia does not mind having a neighbor member of
the EU, if the dual standards are excluded. The fact of the Genocide is not
under question for us, and we think that we must go forward without
forgetting the past. The NA President also mentioned that in the Armenian
Constitution there is no demand of land from Turkey.
Deputy of the Turkish Parliament Turhan Chomez qualified his visit to the RA
NA as the first of the steps to be taken in future. Mr. Chomez mentioned
that what is done cannot be undone or denied and we must go forward looking
into the eyes of the reality.
Nevertheless, he considered the issue of the recognition of the Genocide the
problem of the historians. `We are two countries living in the same
geographic area and we must come to an agreement’, said Mr. Chomez. He
passed the greetings and the best regards of the Turkish Parliament
president Bulent Arinch to the NA president and expressed his readiness to
spread the ideas discussed during the meeting in the Turkish society and the
authorities.
At the end of the meeting the sides also discussed the possibility of
organizing a meeting of the Armenian and Turkish young people in Yerevan and
Ankara in order to discuss the present problems in the Armenian-Turkish
relations.

A1plus
| 19:54:04 | 10-06-2005 | Economy |
WANTED EUROS
>From next year on the Kingdom of the Netherlands will allot 5 million Euros
to Armenia. Today the Kingdom of the Netherlands Development cooperation
Minister Agnes van Arden informed the journalists about it.
Up to now the Netherlands have been giving 4.7 million Euros to our country
annually. The additional 300 000, according to the Finance Minister Vardan
Khachatryan, is enough money to realize programs. Today the Minister signed
two agreements with the representatives of the Netherlands Government. The
first program was about Economic cooperation, the second was about
Investments.
By the first agreement 2-3 programs at a time can be financed in Armenia,
costing 500 000 Euros each. As for the investments, according to Mrs. Van
Holden, the Dutch businessmen have already expressed their desire to make
investments into the agriculture and food spheres in Armenia.

A1plus
| 18:12:32 | 10-06-2005 | Social |
GAS WILL BECOME MORE EXPENSIVE
`We must be ready for the liberalization of the prices’, said President of
the `Armrusgasard’ LTD Karen Karapetyan to the journalists during today’s
seminar organized in the Tsakhkadzor `Adigas’ complex.
Referring to the issue of the world gas supplies Karen Karapetyan foresaw
that at this rate they will suffice for another 60 years, `as the demand
rises, buy the supplies do not’. According to the speaker, the rise of the
gas cost is a usual tendency in the CIS countries: for the last 3 years in
Ukraine it has risen for 30%, in Georgia and Azerbaijan – for 15% etc.
`Especially for Armenia which does not have natural gas the people must be
ready for the liberalization of the gas cost’, said the President of
`Armrusgasard’. According to him, the cost of gas in Armenia is conditioned
by the costs in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. `Despite this fact
we have managed to keep the prices stable for the last 3 years’, mentioned
Mr. Karapetyan. Nevertheless, he does not exclude the possibility of the
rise of gas costs starting form 2007.