Month: October 2005

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock)
October 5, 2005 Wednesday

History lesson Turkey and genocide

THE NEXT time a reluctant student or clueless adult says that history
doesn’t matter, it’s time to talk Turkey. As in Turkey the somewhat
democratic country that’s located mostly in what used to be called
Asia Minor.

Over there, a long-festering political sore has broken open. It seems
that some of the country’s professors are insisting that their
countrymen face up to Turkey’s dark past, aka the Armenian genocide.
An estimated 1.5 million Armenians are believed to have been
systematically massacred by the Turks between 1915 to 1923.

It’s a touchy subject in Turkey, where national pride in the old
Ottoman Empire still runs strong. To accuse the old regime of
practicing genocide is an accusation still so offensive that
participants arriving at the conference on the subject were pelted by
fresh eggs and rotten tomatoes.

It seems the history of events now almost a century old still
reverberates. Turkey is up for membership in the European Union, and
the Union has objected to the difficulties organizers encountered in
setting up such a conference on Turkish soil. The conference had to
be canceled twice, once by Turkey’s minister of “justice” and a
second time by a Turkish court. The minister accused those organizing
the conference of “stabbing the people in the back.” The court
demanded to know the academic qualifications of those who would speak
at the conference. Free speech this isn’t.

The meeting did finally get off the ground, but the European Union
still has questions about just how free its newest candidate for
membership may be. The consequences of trying to censor an ugly past
aren’t just emotional. It turns out they’re economic and political,
too.

The excuses for refusing to deal with the past are all too familiar
by now. What’s the point, the apologists ask. It’s all ancient
history. Those living today-at least most of them-aren’t responsible.
They didn’t participate in those crimes. But the simplest excuse of
all is the falsest: It never happened. The Turkish version of denial
goes like this: Yes, some Armenians may have died back in the bad old
days. But not as many as the critics claim, and lots of Turks also
died in the unrest that came with the First World War and the
collapse of Ottoman rule.

Such denial is common in Japan, too. That society has yet to fully
face its crimes against humanity during the Second World War and the
runup to it. The Rape of Nanking is an especially horrific example.
In what some Japanese textbooks now call an “incident,” Japanese
troops systematically slaughtered the Chinese residents of Nanking in
a six-month orgy of violence in 1937-38. An estimated 150,000 to
300,000 died. The Japanese may downplay it, but the Chinese aren’t
about to forget. Neither should the rest of the world. Incident,
indeed.Compare the way the Japanese have played down their past with
Germany’s response to the Holocaust. Bitter as it had to be, the
German government accepted that nation’s responsibility for the
Holocaust. That doesn’t change what happened, but it provides an
opportunity for conciliation and even redemption. Facing the past is
the first step toward freeing ourselves of its iron grip. It is
truth, not denial, that sets us free.

Turkey has a long way to go. But this conference in Istanbul shows
that at least a few Turks are willing to look at the past. That way
lies a better future.

This article was published 10/5/2005

Los Angeles Times
October 8, 2005 Saturday
Home Edition

IN BRIEF Los Angeles County / LOS ANGELES;
Van Nuys Man Accused of Defrauding Investors

>From Times Staff and Wire Reports

A man accused of fraudulently raising about $20 million through his
Glendale investment firm has been arrested on suspicion of mail fraud
and other violations.

Melkon Gharakhanian, 43, of Van Nuys, also known as Mike Garian, was
indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on eight counts related to
his operation of National Investment Enterprises Inc., according to
the U.S. attorney’s office.

>From late 1999 to 2001, Gharakhanian falsely told investors he had an
inside line on initial public offerings for technology-related
stocks, according to prosecutors. Authorities say Gharakhanian
targeted Armenians and never used investor funds as promised.o7

Los Angeles Times
October 8, 2005 Saturday
Home Edition

George J. Mason, 74; Founder of Armenian Newspaper, Financier

Jon Thurber, Times Staff Writer

George J. Mason, who founded the California Courier, the first
English-language Armenian newspaper in the state, and had a
significant career in finance as a senior managing director of the
Los Angeles office of Bear, Stearns & Co., has died. He was 74.

Mason died Oct. 5, according to a statement from MGM Mirage, where
Mason was a longtime board member. He was being treated for cancer at
the time of his death.

Terry Lanni, chief executive officer of MGM Mirage, which owns the
Bellagio and Mandalay Bay casinos in Las Vegas, called Mason “an
incredibly influential figure in the gaming and finance industries.”

Born in Los Angeles, Mason earned his bachelor’s degree in Slavic
studies from USC. He went on to earn a master’s degree in political
science from Columbia University.

Mason served in the Air Force in the early 1950s. In 1958, he founded
the California Courier in Fresno and served as editor until 1970.

“I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that George’s California
Courier was and will be remembered as a journal of Armenian life in
California,” Vartan Oskanian, Armenia’s minister of foreign affairs,
said in a statement released by MGM Mirage.

“George left a legacy for the Armenian community in the written
word,” said Raffi Hamparian, a member of the board of directors of
the Armenian National Committee of America.

“He is a tribute to the Armenian experience in America that largely
emerged from nothing to become a vibrant and active community.”

After leaving the paper, Mason entered the world of finance. He
worked for Kirk Kerkorian’s Tracinda Investment Co. for several years
in the 1970s before joining Bear, Stearns & Co. in Los Angeles in
1973. According to the announcement from MGM Mirage, Mason was a
senior managing director at Bear, Stearns & Co. from 1973 until his
death.

Mason is survived by his wife of 52 years, Sally; their six
daughters, Cassandra Goehner, Melanie Goodman, Teresa Mason, George
Ann Mason, Diana Chakalian and Mary Mason; and his sister, Shirley
Rakoobian.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. today at St. James
Armenian Church, 4950 W. Slauson Ave. in Los Angeles. A reception
will follow at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel, 101 Wilshire Blvd. in
Santa Monica.

Instead of flowers, the family suggests that any donations be made in
Mason’s name to: Nevada Cancer Institute, Continued Research in the
Field of Bladder Cancer, 10000 W. Charleston Blvd., Las Vegas, NV
89135.

City News Service
October 7, 2005 Friday

Investment Scam

LOS ANGELES

A Van Nuys man accused of fraudulently raising about $20 million via
his Glendale-based investment firm made his initial appearance in
federal court today on mail fraud and other charges. Melkon
Gharakhanian, 43, also known as Mike Garian, was indicted Wednesday
by a federal grand jury on eight counts related to his operation of
National Investment Enterprises Inc. Gharakhanian, who was arrested
yesterday, could face up to 40 years in prison if convicted of all of
the charges against him, according to Thom Mrozek of the U.S.
Attorney’s Office. The defendant’s bond hearing was postponed to
Tuesday, so he will remain confined over the weekend, Mrozek said.
Arraignment is scheduled for Oct. 17. Last year in a civil action,
the Securities and Exchange Commission won a $2.6 million judgment
against Gharakhanian and his firm, Mrozek said. From late 1999 to
2001, Gharakhanian falsely told investors he had an inside line on
initial public offerings for Internet- and technology-related
securities, promising quick profits, the indictment alleges. But
Gharakhanian, who targeted people of Armenian descent, never used
investor funds as promised, though he sent out false account
statements supposedly documenting the purchase of highly sought-after
IPOs, the government alleges. Some National Investment Enterprises
clients recouped their initial investments but, when the firm
collapsed in 2001, investors lost about $5 million, Mrozek said.

ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
October 9, 2005 Sunday 1:17 PM Eastern Time

Monument to Russian Cossacks unveiled in Yerevan

By Tigran Liloyan

YEREVAN

A monument to Russian Cossacks who died in the Russian-Persian and
Russian-Turkish wars in Armenia was unveiled in Yerevan on Sunday.
The monument was installed near a Russian Orthodox temple and the
Russian military base.

The monument location is not accidental, Yerevan Mayor Yervand
Zakharyan said at the ceremony. A Cossack regiment, who helped to
free Armenia from the invaders, was deployed on the place. Now it is
the location of a Russian military unit. “The fact that the monument
was unveiled on the Yerevan City Day is another proof to the lasting
friendship and brotherhood between peoples of Armenia and Russia,”
the mayor said.

“Russia and Armenia are connected by ties of kinship and
brotherhood,” Rostov Governor Vladimir Chub said. “Our countries have
been dynamically developing, and this development is rooted in our
history,” he said. A large Armenian community took residence in the
Don area in the times of Empress Yekaterina II, he said.

The history is not only the constructive labor but also the blood
spilled in the fight for independence, and it is a great sin to
forget about that, Kuban Cossack Troop Ataman Vladimir Gromov said.
“Today’s event is an important reminder for future generations,” he
said. “Russia and Cossacks have always been together with Armenia,
and at present our states and peoples are loyal to commandments of
their ancestors,” he said.

Head of the Rostov Armenian community Eduard Vartanyan financed the
monument project.

The Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia)
October 8, 2005 Saturday

Big fat Greek wedding ship

BRIDES (PG)
***

A POPULAR choice as opening-night film at this month’s Greek Film
Festival, Pantelis Voulgariss’s drama — his first international
production — is sure to resonate with mainstream moviegoers simply
looking for a well-acted, well-told adult story.

A box-office hit in veteran Voulgariss’s native Greece, the project
attracted Italian-American maestro Martin Scorsese as executive
producer.

Scorsese’s personal links to America’s immigrant experience no doubt
provided reminders of the Greek experience portrayed here.

While Voulgariss isn’t particularly effective at suggesting the
ship’s movements for the scenes that provide the bulk of the
locations, interest is held by the human drama being played out on
the S.S. King Alexander in the 1920s.

The ship is carrying 700 passengers — young women from Greece,
Turkey, Russia and Armenia — bound for America and arranged marriage
to strangers.

Perhaps looking to broaden the appeal of a story that could have been
treated in documentary fashion, Voulgariss has opted to focus on a
romance that develops between an American photographer, Norman Harris
(Irish actor Damian Lewis) and one of the intended brides, Niki
(Victoria Haralabidou).

She’s a dressmaker from Samothrace who is bound for Chicago to fulfil
a marriage contract a younger sister has broken because of
home-sickness.

There’s suspense as the King Alexander gets closer to New York. Will
Niki fulfil her heart’s desire and accept Norman’s marriage proposal,
or will she stay true to her family honour and go ahead with the
planned marriage?

More could have been made of the taxing conditions in third class
where the bulk of the women travelled.

It’s left to veteran British actor-director Steven Berkoff to provide
the film’s dramatic element as a nasty Russian marriage broker
Karaboulat not beyond trading the innocent young women as sex slaves
during the voyage.

Most of the performances are above-average, with Dimitris Katalifos
as the ship’s captain whose mind-set is getting his passengers to New
York with a minimum of fuss, and Andrea Ferreol as a colourful madam
who makes the voyage livelier than the brides, who are kept pretty
much in the background.

Los Angeles Times
October 9, 2005 Sunday
Home Edition

Governor Puts a Wrap on Legislation

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Friday completed action on the 961
bills sent to him by the Legislature this year. In total, he signed
729 into law and vetoed 232. For more information on bills, go to

*

Bills Signed

Armenia: Extends a law to allow California to create a trade office
in the Republic of Armenia and authorize the state to accept private
donations to run the office. (SB 897 by Sen. Jack Scott, D-Altadena)

[the rest omitted]

Detroit Free Press (Michigan)
October 6, 2005, Thursday

The soprano superwoman

By Mark Stryker

For an opera regarded as one of the peaks of the repertoire,
Vencenzo Bellini’s “Norma,” which opens Michigan Opera Theatre’s
season this weekend, doesn’t often make it to the stage. The reason
is simple: Norma — the Druid priestess who breaks her vow of
chastity in an affair with the Roman pro-consul, the mortal enemy of
her people — is possibly the most difficult role to cast in opera.

The vocal demands are immense, requiring a soprano who marries
Herculean strength and stamina with the usually contradictory agility
and control. Those qualities are all needed to sing Bellini’s florid
coloratura lines, unusually expansive lyric melodies and floating
high notes . Dramatically, the singer must express the mercurial
depths of a woman who is part warrior, part politician, part lover,
part mother, part feminist and part Medea.

“If you can sing this role, you are truly blessed,” says Armenian
soprano Hasmik Papian, who will alternate with American Brenda Harris
as Norma in MOT’s production.

A failure at its 1831 premiere, “Norma” rallied quickly, earning a
reputation as the greatest dramatic masterpiece of the age of bel
canto — literally “beautiful singing” — defined by the
hyper-lyrical and fluidly melodic works of Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti
and Gioacchino Rossini. In Bellini, even more than his
contemporaries, melody becomes the key means to express drama and
character.

Like Hamlet, Lear or Stanley Kowalski, Norma has always been
associated with specific stars dating back to Guiditta Pasta, who
sang the premiere. Legends like Rosa Ponselle and Rosa Raisa were
associated with the role in the 1920s and ’30s. Maria Callas reigned
supreme in the 1950s and early ’60s, and for many her intensity still
defines the role. Joan Sutherland took another path, relying on
blissful vocal splendor in her 1960s and ’70s performances.

In 1989, Sutherland sang the last Normas of her career for MOT in a
production that general director David DiChiera commissioned
expressly for her. The same production, designed by John Pascoe, is
being redeployed this time around.

After Sutherland and the slightly younger Montserrat Caballe, others
have stepped into the role, some successfully, some disastrously. But
in recent decades it seems like God stopped making Normas.

“Actually, it’s not that God hasn’t made Normas,” says DiChiera.
“It’s that God hasn’t made superstars who are Normas. In America it’s
not an opera that’s reached the broad public like those by Puccini
and Verdi. ‘Norma’s’ success from the box office perspective has
depended on superstars. People weren’t necessarily going to see
‘Norma’ in the past. They were going to see Maria Callas or Joan
Sutherland.”

For years, DiChiera has wanted to revive the opera, but every time he
traveled to Chicago, Toronto, Los Angeles or elsewhere to hear a
soprano hyped as the next great Norma, he’d return home dejected.
Then he discovered Papian, who has made the role a specialty, earning
rapturous reviews in Washington, Montreal, Vienna and elsewhere —
and the endorsement of some aficionados as the Norma the opera world
has been waiting for.

Papian first sang the role for Polish National Opera in Warsaw in
1992. She was drafted as a last-minute substitute, five days before
opening night. Though she had previously studied the role, she did
not have it nearly up to performance standards when she impulsively
agreed to the offer.

“I said yes and then I realized, ‘My God, what have I done?’ ” she
recalls.

The director of the production, fortuitously, was mezzo-soprano
Fedora Barbieri, who had sung the supporting role of Adalgisa to
Callas’ Norma and was able to pass along a number of insider tips,
among them that she should sing the famous aria “Casta Diva” — a
prayer to the moon for peace between Gaul and Rome — with no
extraneous body movement. “It’s a prayer. Everything is in the
voice,” Papian says.

As difficult as Norma is, Papian says that singers cannot let the
challenge intimidate them. A steely confidence is required. The role
demands respect, but not fear.

Still, it can be daunting knowing that every time you step on stage
as Norma, the cognoscenti will be comparing your every move to
Callas, Sutherland the rest of the pantheon. All of which feeds into
mythology of the role.

Harris, who is singing just her third production of “Norma” for MOT
but has generated promising buzz, recalls a recent MOT rehearsal when
stage director Mario Corradi referred to a couple of Callas
recordings of “Norma” made a decade apart that differ greatly in
terms of detail. His point was that even the greatest artists keep
searching for new depths .

“I said, ‘Look, if you’re going to start throwing the C-word around
here, I’m going to leave the room,’ ” says Harris with a laugh.

Harris tries not to think about the inevitable Callas comparisons,
but she is aware of the lineage and responsibility.

“I think about it with regards to how awesome this music is and am I
doing it the best justice I can — whether that’s in the greatness
range or just my own greatness range,” she says. “I’m someone else
with my own strengths and approach. But if I thought about it too
much, I couldn’t do it.”

The Age , Australia
Oct 10 2005

Diamanda Galas

By John Slavin
October 10, 2005

Hamer Hall, October 7

PHILOSOPHER Theodor Adorno once wrote: “After Auschwitz, poetry is no
longer possible.” It is a contentious statement for a number of
reasons. Poetry is the paramedic of culture: without poetry, what
will cleanse language through which history, politics and media is
polluted?

The other contention is that there were other genocides before the
Holocaust. Greek-American artist Diamanda Galas confronts these
issues head-on. Hers is a poetic chronicle and angry protest of man’s
inhumanity to man pushed up hard against the glass of memory.

The horrors that her extraordinary, over-the-top performance
commemorates are the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the Anatolian
catastrophe of 1923 in which an estimated half a million Greeks lost
their lives and another 1½ million were displaced. “The Defixiones”
of her title are the lead beads left on graves in the Middle East to
warn against the desecration of graves. Her hour-and-a-half sustained
chant for the dead based on poems by the Greeks Ritsos and Seferis
and eyewitnesses to the murders in Armenia and the writings of the
novelist Dido Soteriou, among others, are the chain of a rosary told
for the victims upon which she hangs her performance.

It is one of the weirdest and most intense theatre events I have
seen. Dressed in the dark robes of an Orthodox nun, Galas wails,
rails and rants her anguish. The voice range is four octaves. It
could crack glass at 20 metres, but the strain she imposes on it is
enormous.

As with the KARAS Dance Company’s Green, there is a reliance on
hypnotic repetition and the presentation of oblique, introspective
art. This disjunction between text and performance is the central
problem.

Although a minute printout of the poems is provided, the audience
seated in the dark can’t possibly understand the details of a recital
delivered in a smattering of Greek, Armenian and Turkish.

The effect is that of the Delphic Oracle at the mouth of her cave,
who warned of disasters yet to come in a psychobabble that none could
untangle.

This is the contradiction of protest art. Galas, like the Beat poets
of the ’50s and ’60s, with whom she has much in common, takes the
anger and internalises it so that the body and the voice become an
instrument of emotional reaction. The moral anguish is undoubtedly
genuine, but the difficulty is one of communicating a position that
can be shared and acted upon. Portraying the horrors of World War I
proved less effective at the time than the ironic cartoons of Grosz
or Dada artists mocking all assumptions about rationality in
civilisation.

Diving into Galas’ performance is like entering someone else’s
nightmare. It is intense, incomprehensible and finally tedious. It
did, however, arouse an enthusiastic response from an audience of
ululating Goths who might have identified with Galas’ romantic
despair.

Diamanda Galas performs today at 8pm at Hamer Hall

photo: Over the top: Diamanda Galas, on Friday night, dressed in the
robes of an Orthodox nun, during her hour-and-a-half sustained chant
for the dead. Diving into Galas’ performance is like entering someone
else’s nightmare.
Photo: Wayne Taylor

ARKA News Agency
Oct 7 2005

MOSCOW, YEREVAN MAYORS DISCUSS COOPERATION PROGRAM

YEREVAN, October 7. /ARKA/. Moscow and Yerevan Mayors, Yuri Luzhkov
and YUewrvand Zakharyan have discussed the implementation of the
cooperation program between the two capitals, as well as the
decisions of the 1st meeting of the working commission for
cooperation between the Moscow and Armenian Governments. The Yerevan
Mayor reported that the Moscow Mayor is visiting Armenia as part of
the Year of Russia in Armenia, Days of Moscow in Yerevan and Days of
Yerevan. Zakharyan said that the implementation of the cooperation
programs between the Moscow and Yerevan executive powers for
2005-2007 has been sped up, which is evidence of intensified
relations between the Russian and Armenian capitals. “The holding of
Days of Moscow in Yerevan testifies that it is a common festival of
multipronged Russian-Armenian cooperation, which is a striking
example of warm relations between the two fraternal nations,”
Zakharyan said.
The Moscow Mayor is to hold meetings with RA President Robert
Kocharyan, Prime Minister Anranik Margaryan and discuss the
development of relations between Moscow and Yerevan. P.T. -0–